 Oh, there we go. Gotta make sure my mic is on. Welcome to Modern Day Debate, everybody. Tonight we're debating, is Christianity true? Kick us off, we have Trey. So the floor is all yours. And thanks for being here, everyone. Great, thank you so much. I'm so grateful, Brian, for giving me the opportunity to participate tonight. Thankful for Modern Day Debate and providing an open forum for discussing ideas and the stuff that we talk about like tonight is of significance. And I'm hoping that maybe we can get some enlightenment, if not for us as debaters, then at least for the audience. I'm also thankful for you, Matt. Thank you for taking the time to engage. And it's always a delight to speak with someone to challenge my ideas and hopefully get a little better with my perspective or maybe have some part of my perspective that I need to change. So I am obviously the topic for tonight is, is Christianity true? And obviously I have the affirmative. So I bear the burden. So Matt doesn't have too much to do today other than to find hold with my perspective. But I'm very happy to take the affirmative and give a positive case from my perspective. But before I get into my argument, I'd like to delineate my approach or distinguish it from other apologetic methodologies that are extant today in our contemporary culture. Generally today what we've got is usually three main schools of Christian apologetics. We've got evidentialism, presuppositionalism, and classicism. And evidentialism is an approach that is empirical in nature. And it's one that is dealing with probability rather than certainty. And usually what the apologists will do who's going from the evidential approach, will usually take somewhat of a cumulative case for their perspective. And they will maybe begin with the archaeology saying the reliability of the Bible and then move through predictive prophecy and oftentimes end up with like the resurrection for Christ. And they say, given all this information, it's more likely than not that Christianity is true. But they can't really make any strong assertions. And that's from my perspective, I think it's a fine approach as far as it goes. But it's not strong enough for me. And then you've got the second approach which is called presuppositionalism. And rather than being empirical in nature, they are analytical or rational in their argumentation. And in their argument, they're seeking certainty rather than probability. And what they oftentimes will employ is the transcendental argument for God, which is a manual con in the 18th century who originally came up with that terminology. And basically what it says is that there must be a God who is rational, reasonable, personable, for there to be such a thing as logic or morals or telos. And the problem with this perspective is that it requires you to begin with their conclusion that the God of Christianity exists. And anytime you have your conclusion in one of your premises of your argument, you have committed the informal fallacy called the Petitio-Principi fallacy. And that's what they do. And what presuppositionalists do is they confuse the order of being with the order of knowing or the ordo ascendi with the ordo cognacendi and they either kind of lump them together or don't make distinguishing those two characteristics. And it ends up, they may think they're doing something clever but they're really not. And I think it's more or less kind of a useless approach. It's just a 20th century innovation that for somehow 2000 years the church missed out on it, which usually when somebody says something like that, you wanna start asking questions. And then the third approach is my approach, which is classicism. And it too, like presuppositionalism is an analytical approach in trying to make a rational argument that is seeking certainty with the argumentation. But my perspective does not commit an informal fallacy in doing that. And so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna construct my argument in three parts. And as we all know, the specific message for salvation for humanity is delineated in the special revelation of the Christian scriptures, which is the Bible. But before you can have a word of God, you must first have the God of the word. And so I will begin my defense of the existence of God with an argument from contingency. And then I will proceed to an argument for moral law, which is an argument for teleology or for purpose. And these two arguments correspond with Romans one and Romans two. And these are generally categorized under the rubric of philosophy and not theology because this is information that is available to everyone and this information is analytically true. And so once we have established that there is a God of the word, then we can move on to the specifics of the Christian faith. And before I jump into exactly what I'm gonna talk about in my third portion, I wanna talk about the difference between evidence and proof. Evidence is empirical. It employs our sense perception and it can only, as I stated, yield probability because our senses are prone to error. This is why science is always changing. We have misperceptions about the reality of the world in which we have and we have to change it. So evidence is, again, only gonna give us probability but proof is analytical in nature and it gives us certainty. And so if the premises of an argument for inquiry are granted, the conclusion necessarily follows logically. In other words, it cannot be refuted but you've gotta agree though on the terms that you're making in your argument. For example, the famous syllogism is always a all men are mortal, socrates is a man, therefore socrates is mortal. And you gotta agree that men are mortal and that socrates is a man. And if you grant those two ideas and have an agreement on the idea, then it necessarily follows that socrates is mortal. Some other analytical proofs are like a mathematical proof of two plus two equals four or a bachelor is an unmarried man or a triangle has three sides. The subject and a predicate are just restatements of the same thing. And there's nothing new added to the statement. For example, you say the dog has a tail, you're adding tailness to the subject, the dog, that would not be an analytical statement that would be a synthetic statement. Okay, so the first two arguments that I'm gonna give are analytical. And you may hear some complaining or some whining, maybe, maybe not, or a desperate attempt to change the subject from the other side of the aisle for me or I've been accused of putting words or ideas in my opponent's mouth that they did not, are not saying, but all I'm doing basically is I'm pointing out the problems with the retort that my opponent is trying to give. But one thing that she won't hear, in my opinion, I believe this is, I've been doing this 10 years. Not only have I not seen a defeat of the argument, I've not seen a valid rebuttal. Now, baby that Mr. Dilahunty is a great savior of the atheist community and the great hope, and he will deliver that rebuttal, but I've not seen it yet. Okay, so the third portion of my argument will focus on the specifics of the Christian faith. And these are gonna be evidences and not proofs. So we're not gonna have the same level of certainty as the first two arguments because they are based on empirical data. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna begin with the general reliability of the Bible as evidenced through the science of archeology and then focus on Christ's opinion of the Bible as being authoritative. And so with that, I'd like to just give a quick introductory statement as the first portion of my argument from contingency. And then Matt and I can interact with the data once he's finished. And but it goes like this, if something exists, there are only four possibilities. Either it is an illusion or it is self-created or it is self-existent or it is created by something that is self-existent. And these are the only four possibilities to explain reality and only one of them is viable. And we'll flesh this out in our cross-examera discussion time when Matt finishes his opening statement. So with that, I'd like to close out my opening statement by saying, let's get ready to rumble. Trying to get us demonetized right off the bat. You know that's a bad one. I'll get us right in trouble. Now, let's thank Tray for his 10-minute opening there. We're gonna kick it over to Matt for his 10-minute opening. Floor is all yours. So first, I guess, thanks everybody. It's the first time I've heard an opening that was all preamble with nothing substantive at all. So is Christianity true? I try to do a different take on this than I've done many of the other times in the past. And that is if we're looking at the claims of Christianity, we need to figure out which elements or which doctrines we're going to claim are necessary. As in if this is true, then Christianity should reasonably be considered true. And if this isn't true, or we can't demonstrate it's true, then we can't warrant belief in Christianity. And the claims fall into two different types for me. One are biblical claims, where the source of the claim is the Bible. And then the other one is extra biblical claims, where the source of the claim comes from outside of the Bible. And this can either be from contemporary sources used in support of claims that originate from the Bible, or perhaps modern sources or events purported to specifically support the veracity of a particular Christian doctrine. Someone talking about their lived experience and what works they think God has done in their life, that sort of thing. The claims also fall into a couple of categories. One would be mundane claims, place names, events that are not specifically tied to Christianity. So Jerusalem is a place, and the fact that it appears in the Bible and is referenced within Christian stories, doesn't in any way lend any credence to affirming the truth of Christian doctrines. The next one is mixed claims, where you have some mundane fact for which a principle of Christianity is used as the explanation for that fact. So the existence of reality, that would be a mixed fact where we would both agree, I would hope that reality exists. But the Christian believes that Christianity serves as the true explanation for why reality exists. And then the third one is something that is Christian specific. These are the core doctrines. People might look at Genesis one and say, oh, well, that's a metaphor. It's not meant to be taken literally. And some other Christian might think that it is meant to be taken literally. But the Christian specific doctrines are things like sin, redemption, substitutionary atonement. To say that these things are true are fundamentally tied to the truth of Christianity and I don't see how Christianity could be true if those concepts are not true. Now we can set aside the mundane claims, the mundane facts as they aren't tied to the truth of Christianity. Only the Christian specific claims and the Christian explanations for mundane facts need to be evaluated in order to show that Christianity is true. Generally, you'd want to say, you'd want to make a list of all of them and you'd have to prove all of them to be true or demonstrate all of them to be true. I don't want to nitpick on proof versus demonstration. But we don't have time for that as is evidenced by the fact that we haven't even defined what tenets of Christianity we should care about in the opening. When we talk about whether or not something's true, luckily, Trey and I both agreed that truth is that which comports with reality. And so for me, I'm gonna borrow something from my friend, Aaron Roth, three different phrasings where a claim, I would just say claim X, X is either evidently true or X is not evidently true or X is evidently not true. The difference being X is evidently true means it's demonstrably consistent with the facts of reality and consistent with all of the relevant facts to that subject or perhaps the overwhelming majority of relevant facts because you can, obviously we're not gonna get things perfect. And then when you say X is not evidently true, that means it isn't necessarily disproved by the evidence, but it simply doesn't have the quality or quantity of evidence that would warrant calling it evidently true. And the final category, where X is evidently not true, that is when the claim is inconsistent with the facts of reality, such that we can say that it's not true or if you prefer false. Now, if the roles were reversed here, as Trey already pointed out, he's got the burden of proof tonight. So he needs to demonstrate that Christianity is evidently true. And all I need to do is point out where it's not evidently true or evidently not true. For each part of Christianity that he chooses to defend tonight, he must show how it fits into the category of being evidently true. If you go through the Bible, which is the primary source of most everything about Christianity, starting at the very beginning, it gets the order of creation events wrong. Well, maybe that's literal, maybe it's not. Maybe science is wrong, but at least the order of creation events are inconsistent with the facts of science. It gets the origins of humans wrong. The origin of language wrong. The origin of animals wrong. These are inconsistent with the facts of reality and are evidently not true. The same is true for a global flood happening while humans existed. The same is true for the sun standing still in the sky. There's not evidence to support those things. The same is true for giant humans living alongside regular sized humans. The plagues of Egypt's miracles as a category by definition are not consistent with scientific observation. And thus, they can't be evidently true. They may be true in the sense of internal consistency, but the supernatural, we are stuck where there is no way for us to investigate or confirm the supernatural. And so until there's somebody provides a method where if you sell somebody presents a method by which you can interact with, investigate and confirm the existence of the supernatural and supernatural's interaction with manifestations in reality, then nothing that is proposed to be supernatural in origin can be confirmed to be evidently true. And they're just at best not evidently true. Falsifiability is the critical distinction there. Now, Paul in 1 Corinthians 15-17 says, and if Christ be not raised, your faith is in vain. You are still in your sins. That's an incredibly important verse. At least it was for me when I was a Southern Baptist. That the notion of Christianity, there are plenty of things that we could argue about. If I were to put my Christian hat back on about, you know, origins and what's literal and what's not, but when it comes to the core, this is about man's fall from God's perfect ideal. The concept of sin and the process of substitutionary atonement that results in Jesus dying and being resurrected. And that's why in Corinthians, Paul says that if Christ be not raised and your faith is in vain, but Paul already betrays a flaw in his reasoning in that exact verse because he says, if Christ be not raised, you are still in your sins. But that means that Paul is buying into a concept of sin and atonement that if Jesus isn't raised, would also not be true, which means that you're not actually still in your sins. Paul's not ready to give up the entire concept of sin and fall from grace. Just maybe Jesus wasn't the Messiah is essentially what he's saying, which means he's buying into a notion that there should be a Messiah, that there should be a Christ. Nothing about the life of Jesus is evidently true. And we can, or nothing specific to the doctrines of Christianity, and we can at best grant the mundane part that somebody existed, if we want to. Mythesis don't, I'm not going down that road tonight. But the major story, the star guiding wise men, those are not evidently true. And while the census of Carinius may or may not have happened, the notion that it happened in a way where it required people to travel back to their place of origins is not only not evidently true, but it's evidently not true. Miracles are unverifiable, untestable, unfalsifiable. Zombies, sorry, people don't like it when I say that. In Matthew 27, verses 51 to 53, it talks about the dead rising up and marching on the dead saints marching on Jerusalem. I like to call it the zombie march on Jerusalem, darkness shrouding the arena, the area, the tearing of the temple veil. None of that is evidently true. The doctrines of sin, redemption, substitutionary, atonement have not been demonstrated. I don't even know how you could, which is why it seems that nobody even bothers to try. We just assume that that's the case. So where is God? A God that can do reportedly anything that is possible could easily demonstrate that these claims are evidently true. But he hasn't even bothered to attempt to do that, which is why we have debates over and over and over with people just asserting that because the story was believed in popular, that they have good reasons to think it's true, or, well, which is also true, by the way, for Islam and other religions as well, and is fallacious. Trey has already pointed out the problems related to an evidentialist approach and a presuppositionalist approach and is going for a more classicist approach. But which portions of Christianity fit into the first category where those portions of Christianity are evidently true? That's the only thing that matters tonight, not distinctions between analytic and synthetic truths. Children are real, wardrobes are real. Children will play hide and seek and may hide in a wardrobe, but that doesn't mean there's a passageway to Narnia. And if you did find yourself traveling through a wardrobe to another land, and there were trees in Narnia and snow and beavers, those are all real things, but beavers don't talk the way they supposedly do in Narnia. The existence of those things doesn't mean that a magical versions of them are plausible. So if you walk through the wardrobe and land in a strange world, that doesn't mean that every story about that world is true. On the resurrection, the empty tomb is the most common phrase that you'll hear when people try to present evidence. And the existence of an empty tomb is irrelevant. I could show you an empty box, but that doesn't mean it used to have a body in it. It doesn't mean that if I had a body, it doesn't mean it was the specific body we're talking about. Each individual fact of this story needs to be confirmed because even if you were able to show that Jesus existed, died, and eventually there was an empty tomb, that doesn't tell us how or why that tomb became empty. And yet because they don't have anything substantive to go on, you're gonna hear arguments from definitions and arguments from intuitions, arguments from contingency evidently as well. But Christians don't even have a case to bring on the resurrection, which is the most critical element, the one that Paul said, if Christ be not raised, then our faith is in vain. And while I can't show that Christianity is evidently not true on all points, we can show that for all of the non-Monday Christian specific claims, they are either not evidently true or evidently not true. And virtually none of the doctrinal claims have ever even been attempted to be demonstrated as evidently true. Instead, we want to infer a God and then assert that it's this particular God. In that situation, for any religion other than Christianity, any sensible Christian would declare those claims as not true. If your book makes claims that are evidently not true and other claims that are not evidently true, why would you have any confidence in untestable, unverifiable additional claims being true? After all, even if every mundane fact were true, that wouldn't make the other ones become true as well. Christianity is either not evidently true or evidently not true. But I've heard nothing at all so far and we'll see if we hear anything better that would demonstrate the truth of Christianity, which is the only thing that matters tonight. Thanks. All right, well thank you to both of our speakers, Matt, for your opening statement there. We're gonna kick it into an open discussion format. Just want to remind everybody if you're hitting, if you're hanging around in the live chat to hit the like button that helps us out a lot in the algorithm. And we're also gonna be doing a Q and A at the end of this. So remember to be your nice and friendly selves when you're asking the questions. Keep it pointed to the debate and the arguments, not the speakers, and they'll be read. So we'll usually kick it to the other side to start out with the open discussion. So Trey, we'll kick it over to you. Okay, thank you. Thank you for that opening, Matt. Your entire opening remarks were oriented toward evidentialism and I'm not an evidentialist. But before we begin our inquiry though, would you grant me two instrumental presuppositions for inquiry as we begin our time back and forth, namely the law of non-contradiction and the basic reliability of sense perception? So you're asking me to grant the law of non-contradiction? Sure. And the basic reliability of sense perception. I don't know how much of that I can grant. Cause I- No, no, just basic. I know that our senses, we- I was- We have no connection to the world without our senses. You agree with that? So I was trying to explain that the word basic carries with it some baggage in philosophy. And so I wanted to make sure that what I was conceding to begin with, if you're just mean without any deep philosophical context about properly basic, that generally we are forced to rely on our senses. Yeah. Okay, yeah, nobody's ever given me trouble with that, but I gotta get those at the beginning because of kind of the groundwork. We gotta have those instruments for inquiry. Okay, so as I stated in my opening comment, I start with the existence of God because you've gotta have a God before you have a word of God and you, therefore, thereby being an atheist, do not believe in God. Would that be a fair thing to say? Sure. Okay. So if something exists, say for me, and it can get as simple as possible, I can do this argument even with solipsism. I can say I'm the only thing that exists or whatever. But let's just say if something exists, me the inquirer, okay? There are only four possibilities. Either all that exists is an illusion or it is self-created or it is self-existent or it is created by something that is self-existent. Now, we know that the first one is false because it says everything is an illusion. You're familiar with Descartes cogito. Sir, go ahead, Mark. Very, I'm glad you're bringing this up because this is the only thing, and I'm not trying to trash you by saying this, but this was the only thing that was close to substantive in the debate, everything else was preamble. So when you say, and now you've said it twice, you've said if something exists, it's either an illusion, self-created, self-existent or created by something that is self-existent. Those are the only four options, okay? Yes, yes. I exist, which of those is true for me? Am I an illusion? Am I an illusion? Well, that's what we're going through. If you don't mind, we'll go through each one of those and set some out between us, is that okay? I guess, but it seems to be a big waste of time because if I, so first of all, I exist, so if something exists, and I'll be the something, I'm not an illusion, I'm not self-created, I'm not self-existent, and there's no evidence that I was created by something that is self-existent. Okay, so why are you not self-existent? All right, self-creation, I mean, I'm sorry, an illusion, you gotta have somebody asking a question so you're not an illusion, right? I don't know, I'm saying you list that there are only four possibilities, and the first example that comes to mind is me, and I don't know which of those four applies to me or how you can tell, and why there isn't another one. Do you think that it's viable that you're an illusion? I don't see how I could be. Okay, so then that's not a viable option, right? I don't know, but I'm just saying- What do you think you don't know? Are you asking a question? Okay, I'm not- Are you familiar with- Are you familiar with- Holy crap, can I finish my sentence? You just asked me the question two or three times now. Yes, I'm familiar with the- Just one second. I'm familiar with the Kajito, which is contingent on the primacy of reason, but your thing says if something exists, so I'm the something, only four possibilities. It's an illusion. I don't know whether or not I'm illusion. I don't think that I am. I don't see any good reason to think that I am, and it may in fact be impossible. I don't think that I'm self-created. I don't think that I'm self-existent, and so that leads to number four, which is created by something that is self-existent, but I pick up a rock. I don't think the rock's illusion. I don't think the rock is self-created. I don't mean Dwayne Johnson. I mean a pebble. I don't think it's self-existent, and I don't think the rock is created by something that is self-existent. So I reject your assertion that there are only four options that you have exhaustively cataloged the options to explain something's existence. That's the point I was getting to. Okay, well, you won't even allow me to walk through each one of these. You keep saying I'm interrupting you. No, sir. No, sir. Okay, when you accuse people in the opening of potentially whining and then being accused of putting words in the mouth, I'm just trying to get clarity. I'm not the moderator here. It's not, I won't allow you. I had a specific question about this, and I wanted to get clarity on what we were talking about. And I'm trying to answer it all in a second. It's your time you can continue, but you don't have to whine that I'm not letting you do something. I'm trying to get clarity here. I go ahead there, Tranny. Sorry about that. Okay, so we could continue on. So everything cannot be an illusion because otherwise there would be no person asking the question, right? You agree with that, Matt? I don't know. You just said you don't think that you are an illusion. I don't think so. Why? Why? I don't have any reason to respond to you on this. So you just switched context, by the way, because the first three times you said this, it was if something exists, and now it's everything. Well, no, if anything exists, and I said you the inquirer, are you an illusion? And if not, why? I don't know. Why? Why is that not a good answer? Why is saying I don't know not an acceptable answer for you? Is it because it doesn't lead down the script you want? Well, no, you said that you don't think you are. I am not convinced that I am an illusion. I'm also not convinced that I'm not an illusion. Okay, why would you think that you are not an illusion? I think- You don't even wanna go there, do you? Sorry, I think- No, no, no, no, no, no. Don't you dare do this, you don't wanna go there. I just pointed out, I am neither convinced that I am an illusion, or that I'm not an illusion. You haven't done enough here to describe what an illusion is, how it's possible for me to evaluate this. Okay, that is- All I'm saying is I don't know, and if that's not good enough for you, tough you didn't bring enough ballgame. Okay, well, you're ducking out before we even begin. I know it's not a rebuttal. I'm not ducking out, sir. I gave you the honest answer, I'm sorry it doesn't fit with your format. Well, yeah, my format of reasonable inquiry to reality. Are you an illusion? No, I'm not, because I'm asking the question. How do you know? How do you know? Because if I think therefore I am, that's what you're supposed to go with. But I think therefore I am, as I pointed out to you, as Hobbs pointed out, is contingent on the primacy of reason, which we can't demonstrate. I asked you for reason at the beginning, you said yes. No, sir. You asked me to concede the law of non-contradiction, but that is not the sum total of reason, or identity, or excluded middle. Okay, I'm saying I accept, no, sir, I don't. I accept all of those things as I've talked about for years. Okay, then... If you wanted to continue on with other examples that you brought up there, Trey, like I said last time, it's expected that the other person's probably not going to agree with you on certain points, but for the sake of the audience, if you want to present your argument and have that back and forth, I don't think we're going to get much further with the RU and allusion. Yeah, because Matt doesn't want to go there. He doesn't even want to engage the argument. This is the worst I've ever seen. Let's try to move on to your next question. Wow, I'm the worst you've ever seen. How well do you think this is going to go, Trey? If you keep pointing out that someone who's honestly answering your question and saying I don't know, because you haven't answered enough details to give them something, how do you think that's going to go for you? You didn't say, I don't know, you said, I don't think that I am, and I asked you why and you won't answer. I don't think that I'm an illusion because I am not convinced that I'm an illusion. That doesn't mean that I can articulate. And I'm asking why, not just because you say so. Would you let me finish my, as I was in the middle of saying before you jumped in, that doesn't mean that I can articulate to you why I don't think I'm not convinced of something. Not, being in the state of not being convinced of something does not have a burden of proof. You don't have to have a proof for anything, but if you read it, you'll need to get a reason. Then why would you keep asking me why I'm not convinced? I'm not convinced. There's no burden of proof. There may not be a why. The reason I'm not convinced is because you haven't convinced me that I'm an illusion and neither has anybody else. It's just a blind face statement for you then. It's not, wow. I'm sorry that you don't seem to grasp this even though you pretended like you did during your opening. When I say I'm not convinced, that is not a faith position because I'm not asserting X is true. I'm saying I'm not convinced of something. If you think that there's good reason to be convinced that I'm an illusion, you can present that case. I have not been presented with an evidence, I have not been presented with an evidence-based case to show why I should believe that I'm an illusion. Okay. If there is a doubter, then would it be fair to say that there is no, everything cannot be an illusion? If there is a doubter, would it be fair to say that everything- Because the doubter has to think in order to think you've got to be. See, we've switched from whether or not I'm illusion to whether or not everything is illusion. I don't know, anything, anything. We can take you or whatever. Anything essentially. If somebody wants to say everything is an illusion, then I ask them who is asking the question then. I'm not saying everything is an illusion at all. I'm answering your question about whether or not- And I'm asking you why. About whether or not I'm convinced that I'm an illusion. I'm not convinced I'm an illusion. You're not convinced that you're an illusion. Correct. So if you are, you do not wanna affirm your own existence. I am convinced that I exist. So you're not an illusion? I don't know whether or not existence and illusion are mutually exclusive in this context. All I'm saying is I'm not convinced that I am an illusion. I don't know why this is such a big deal or why it's so difficult other than it's not what your script's ready for. Okay, well, if something is an illusion, what I'm saying is that it's not real. Do you think that you are real? Well, here's the problem. Your position is if something exists, there are four possible criteria. And the first one is it's an illusion. And now you're saying what is an illusion is not real? Well, if something isn't real, then it doesn't exist. So already your argument, if something exists has item number one being it doesn't exist is one of the options. It's not real is what I'm saying. Some people say everything is not real. And I say, well, it must be real if it's questioning its own existence. What is real that doesn't, or what exists that is not real? Well, someone might say it's like a dream or illusion or something that's not capable of, it's not, I'm not saying it's not nothing because it's impossible to conceive of nothing because the idea of nothing is something. So how about this? I don't see how that's relevant. Your position here is if something exists, there are four possible reasons. Number one is it's an illusion. Well, you just defined it's an illusion as not real. And so that means that your first thing is if something exists, one possibility is it's not real. To me. Essentially. And that's why I say it's not viable. To me, if something's not real, it doesn't exist. Right, so you would have affirmed that you exist. Are you in agreement, just curiosity, that if something is not real, it does not exist? If something is not real, it does not exist. Yes, if it doesn't have ontology, it's not. So your statement, if something exists, one possible explanation is that it's an illusion. But you defined illusion as something's not real, which you've also now agreed does not exist. So what you have is if something exists, one possibility is it does not exist. That's a logically flawed statement. Well, I would say it is ethereal and not real. Forget it. Let's just say you agree that everything's not real. Now who doesn't wanna play? I point out a logical fallacy in your assertion of four possibilities and now you don't wanna play, okay? Go move on. If you wanna play, we'll stay on the illusion, that's fine. Well, if we can make sure that we're tying this back into the debate topic, is Christianity true? And just remind our audience how you're tying this into the debate topic, if you don't mind. Well, as I stated in my opening statement that if there is a word of God, first you gotta have a God in order to give a word, right? You gotta begin with the existence of God before you can say that he somehow spoke. And the argument that I'm giving is an analytical argument. It's not something that's evidential by nature. It necessarily follows. Contingent being cannot exist non-contingently, would you agree with that Matt? A contingent being cannot exist non-contingently, non-contingently, sure. Are you contingent? I don't know. I appear to be. Okay, do you need something in order to exist like food, air, water? That is apparent. Okay, what does it mean to be self-existent? I don't know. It means to not need anything else. It means that you don't change. Anything that changes is contingent upon whatever that is actual outside of itself that brought to its new state of existence, okay? So anything that changes cannot be self-existent. That's the third option there. So we know you're not self-existent. And you know you're not self-created if you have to be and not be at the same time in the same relationship. So the first three are not viable options logically. And the only one left is a fourth, unless you can come up with a fifth. No, no, no, no, that's not the way this works. See, just because you listed four, that's not somebody else to come up with fifth. Because I said that's all there are. Then you concede the argument. Well, congratulations. If you say that's all there are, that must be all there is. Well, give me another one. What a winning argument. No, sir. No, sir. That's not the way this works. Your job is to come up with a robot. No, sir, that's not the way this works. You don't just get to a cert. Here's the four options. And then when I ask you questions about them and expose that they don't make sense as the only four options, you don't get to say that you're right until I come up with a fifth option. Okay. So then you think that there are, that those options, there are other options than those four. Or those four are not valid. Give me an alternative. No, I just explained to you that that's not how this works. I asked you at the beginning, when you started, when you started on this track, this was the only thing in your opening. And I tried to have this discussion at the beginning, which is if something exists, you say there are four possible explanations for it. Your first one is that it doesn't exist. No, that it's an illusion. And illusions aren't real. And what is not real is that illusion is not real by your definition. And what is not real does not exist by your admission. So your first candidate of an explanation for if something exists is that it doesn't exist. Then you went to, it's either self-created, self-existent, or created by something that is self-existent. Well, the fourth one could be created by something else that was created by something else that was created by something else that was created by something else, eventually ultimately getting to non-contingent. But you skip past all that, which is the discussion that I wanted to have at the start. And now you're gonna say, what's the fifth option? Okay, well, the fifth option is created by something else. And then that is created by something else. Oh, you're saying that complexity argument. I'm sorry? You're answering nothing, man. You're just adding complexity to the argument. He's familiar with parsimony. Yes, I'm well familiar with parsimony. You're unnecessarily adding complexity to the argument. You can babble all you want, but your argument is logically flawed and has absolutely nothing to do with, is Christianity true? You haven't even hardly talked about Christianity at all. And I already demonstrated the logical flaw in your first potential explanation, that if something exists, one candidate is that it's an illusion, which is not real, which doesn't exist. So you're saying if something exists, one possible candidate is that it doesn't exist. I will direct the audience to my opening remarks and what I said would happen, exactly what's happening. Your opening remarks were vapid and did not touch on the subject of, is Christianity true? And the one part of that that was even substantive to begin to discuss, I've already pointed out a logical flaw, a problem with your fourth potential premise, or fourth potential explanation. And none of this gets us anywhere near to, is there a God? Is it the God of Christianity? And is Christianity true? I said he's gonna wanna change the subject. He's gonna hand wave. I didn't wanna change the subject. I haven't called me a name yet. I'm the only one, Jackass, that talked about Christianity. Oh, there it is, there it is. You got it. You win. To be fair, yeah, we aren't really touching on the, is Christianity true? I don't think. Well, yes we are. No, sir. I'm the only one who in my opening remarks talked about Christianity in any way about establishing claims about Christianity and whether or not it's true. You didn't do any of that in your opening at all. You haven't refuted any of the poor possibilities. There's nothing to refute. You're full of shit. I did just refute option one. You refuted it. You're self-refuting. No, an illusion is something that is, that you're saying is just, it's something that may be like a dream in somebody else's mind or something like that. No. It's kind of my option. I'll agree with that. No, that's your tap dance post-hoc on illusion. When I asked you what illusion was and whether or not it's real, you acknowledged illusions aren't real and that what isn't real doesn't exist. I'm sorry that you walked into an obvious contradiction in the very first part of your argument, but you did. You are trying so hard. Just hold on a second there. Yeah, as I say, if we can, like I said earlier, I don't want to pick on you there, Trey, just because you are on the burden tonight. If we can tie this back into how that confirms Christianity or the Bible or Scripture, I'm not against any of the points you're trying to bring up here. Just if we can, like I said, tie this into how this relates to that specifically, I think that would be helpful. Ryan, do you agree that there must be a God in order for him to give word of revelation? I'm not here to agree or disagree with anybody, so... Okay, well then you need to just let Matt go ahead and try to dig himself out of this hole. I'm not in a hole, sir. You have the burden of proof, as you acknowledged. I do. To demonstrate the truth of Christianity, please do. Okay, so you agree that the only viable option is it was created by something that is self-existent? No, I don't agree. Why? Because you haven't made the case for it and your argument is flawed. Okay, where was my logic flawed? I already demonstrated where your argument was flawed. You demonstrated. Yes, I did. In premise one, it can't be an illusion as an option. And the fifth one that you don't want to acknowledge is that it was created by something that isn't, that is still contingent. I exist. Okay, is it contingent? This is why I asked you at the beginning. I exist. I don't think, what's that? The filibuster of words. There's no filibuster here. I asked you at the beginning. I spotted the flaw in your argument from the beginning, which is why I asked. Here. This is a rubber band. I don't think, I don't believe it's an illusion, do you? I do not. I don't believe this rubber band is self-created, do you? No, I don't. I don't believe this rubber band is self-existent, do you? If you can bend it, no. I do believe that this rubber band was created, but I don't think it was created by something that is self-existent, do you? No, it's called an artifact. Do you think this was created by something that is, do you think this was created by a human that is not self-existent? So it was not, it was created by something that is not self-existent, right? It is created secondarily by something that is not self-existent, yes. Not secondarily, a human isn't self-existent. It's an artifact, do you know what an artifact is, man? Why is it that you won't answer this question? I didn't answer it. Okay, there are four possibilities by your definition. Here's a rubber band. It is either an illusion, self-created, self-existent, or created by something that is self-existent. Which of those four explain this rubber band? Do you know what an artifact is? You don't need it. Which of those four in your argument explain this rubber band? The human that made it is made by something that's self-existent. No, sir. It's an artifact. No, sir. What? Is the creator of this rubber band self-existent? No, the creator was made by something self-existent. Then you are ignoring your four, the only four criteria that you've given, and you are opting for a fifth option. And your fifth option is- No, I'm not. Yes, you are. Your fifth option is that it is an artifact of something that was created by something that is self-existent. Right. But how does that- That's a fifth option. That's not a problem. That is a fifth option. All you're doing is adding complexity. That's fine. No, it's the fifth option. I'm sorry that you can't- I'm sorry that you can't see this, but it's the fifth option. Let me ask you this. So do you agree that necessary being must exist in order for contingent being to exist? Let's go the heart of it. No. Why? Because contingent being cannot exist non-contingently. Why would you ask me why? And then the second I try to give you an answer, you just talk over and give your own answer. Why would you do that? It's kind of a hot hit. And you're a jackass. What else would you like to do? I'm fine with this because when you ask me, am I convinced of something? And I say, no, you keep going, why not? I'm not the one with a burden here. I'm not convinced of it because I haven't become convinced of it. Okay, blind faith is not a debate, my friend. I'm not presenting- Give me reasons for your perspective. How many times, I don't know, how many times I have to explain this to you, not being convinced of something is not a blind faith position. It is not being convinced. Just like I'm not convinced, you know what the hell you're talking about. That's not a blind faith position. But if you don't think I know what I'm talking about, then you should be able to demonstrate it, right? I did. I demonstrated that there was at least a fifth option to your thing, and that the first one is self-refuted by you. And I did it with a rubber fucking band. Oh, you're a genius. Yeah. I am. Thanks, though. Now, to answer the question more thoroughly, is that you were asking, do I think that a contingent being has to be brought about by a necessary being? Right? Right, yes. Yeah, no, because I think a contingent being could be brought about by a contingent being, by something that's contingent. And there could be a chain of those. Whether or not that ultimately ends or begins in a necessary being, I don't know, I suspect it does. But I don't suspect that it's necessarily a being, that's the problem. Okay, so let me give you an example. Let's imagine a bin circle of all the universe of everything that exists, okay? If you want to say it's, pardon me? The universe of the cosmos, because the universe is the local presentation of our space time. Cosmos, cosmos, everything that exists. I got you. Everything that exists. Got you. So, and all of those are, you're going to say turtles all the way down. They're all dependent. No, I'm not. If you'd have listened to me just a second ago, I said that I think it ends in something necessary. I'm just not convinced it's a being. Okay, oh, so you concede necessary being? I know, sir. Wow, it's like you hear only what you want to hear. As I've said now for the third time, I'm convinced that it ends in something necessary, but not a being. What is, how do you have some, what is, you just, is it nothing necessary? I don't understand what necessary means for you. Noncontinental. Yes, does it have ontological status? Non-contingent. That doesn't mean that I'm convinced that the thing that is non-contingent, if we get down to that point, is a being. Okay, there's only two categories, Matt, being and non-being. Yes. It's a necessary non-being? I don't know. Because non-being is nothing. No, sir. Non-being, I mean, the word being here is agent. Okay. Not existence. It's either a, it's either a, it's either a non-contingent agent or a non-contingent non-agent. Some natural physical, whatever. Okay, so it has, so it has being. Are you investing the term being with personhood? A being is an agent. A being is an, no. A rock is not an agent. A rock is not a being. A rock is a, has ontological status. It really is something. A rock has being. A rock is not is being. It is not a being. It is something specific. It is not a being. It is not a being, an entity, an agent. It has being in the sense of it is, but it is not, personhood's not even the right word for it. When you say, is there a non-contingent being? The way I hear that and the way people hear it and the way it gets, end up getting used is, there must be a non-contingent being and that being, that personage, that agent is God. Now, if you want to just say there's a non-contingent thing that has being, then we're not quite as far apart. I just don't know how you get to that either. But I'm not, I'm, when you, when you just flat out say, Matt, are you convinced that, that there's a non-contingent being? No, because I'm not convinced that whatever ultimately would be non-contingent is a being. Is that clear? Whatever is non-contingent is a, but you agree that there must be some entity that is necessary in nature that gives rise to contingent being. No. As I've said, I am convinced that there may be something non-contingent, but I don't know what it is and I don't know that it is. It would not be surprising to me, but the problem is, is that all of this ties to causal chains and time, because it doesn't, I don't know what it means to exist outside of time or absent time. And so the furthest back that we can track is essentially to the plank time at the beginning of our cosmos or the beginning of our, sorry, our local presentation of the universe. And beyond that, I don't know how we can investigate. It seems analytically the case that a contingent thing and a series of things, this is the problem here is that you're trying to, well, you're not trying to, let me re-track that. You are identifying as not an evidentialist and so you wanna use analytic arguments, which have a problem that you didn't acknowledge when you knocked down the problems with the other ones, which is they are essentially attempts to define something into being and they are not tying, they are not tying, yes, sir, they are not tying the subject to reality. They are, you can define whatever you want and evaluate it analytically, but that doesn't tell you what ties to reality and we have no way of investigating reality prior to what we identify as the beginning of time at Big Bang Cosmology's T-Zero. But I still don't see what that has to do with Christianity being true. Okay, would you agree that, would you agree that, I forgot what I was gonna say, something with that, that last point that you said. I really like for you, oh, good. We didn't get very far. We didn't get anywhere. I mean, the whole point of is Christianity true, is the religion of Christianity, the tenets of Christianity, are they demonstrably embodied in the facts of reality and we didn't get to any of that? You didn't even list. Does Christianity teach that there's a God? Isn't that the number one thing Christianity teaches? Yes, well, I don't know that it's necessarily the number one thing, but you can look at it as the number one thing, yes. What would be second to it? The resurrection of Christ. What would be better? What's that? See, the thing is, Jesus had to be God. Hang on, oh my God. The point is that the existence of a God is not exclusively tied to Christianity. It's tied to tons of different religions. And so if we're gonna say, is Christianity true, we need the tenets of Christianity. And that is that Jesus was the substitutionary toned for sin. It is the death and resurrection of Jesus. Whether or not he was divine or any of that, all of those things are up for debate and demonstration. But when you say the number one thing Christianity teaches is that there's a God. That's when I listed those categories of claims. That is one of those that is not exclusive to Christianity, that there is a God. Instead you need to talk about a specific God. And yet you can't even, I mean, I know you're trying to get to the, there must be a God and then I'm gonna prove that it's the Christian God and then I'm gonna prove that it's Jesus. But it'd be really cool if you'd just list three things about Christianity that are exclusively. Please, please, just change the subject. That's all you're asking. I'm not changing the subject. The subject of the debate is Christianity true? It'd be really fucking nice if you'd present anything at all about Christianity. I'm not changing the subject of the debate. I'm the only one that's talked about it. I'm the only one that's talked about it. I'm the only one that quoted from the Bible. I'm the only one that talked about what Christianity is. I'm the only one that talked about how you would go about demonstrating the truth of it instead of trying to poop all over evidentialist and presuppositionalist and then throwing out one flawed argument at the end of it. This debate is about is Christianity true? Are you going to do anything to defend is Christianity true or did we waste our time? Yeah, I tell you what, Ryan, why don't we go to Q&A? I don't think we're gonna get anywhere here. Cool. Maybe you'll answer some questions from them. Maybe I will. I'm sure there's going to be all kinds of launching off of discussion in the Q&A. Sorry to everybody who might get upset every once in a while. You're in the live chat saying, Ryan, you're on mute. I do that on purpose a lot of the time, sometimes not, but a lot of the time just so that if I'm like 10 seconds and I gotta mitigate time that you're not hearing me a bunch in the podcast. And just a reminder next to me, you will see that you might see these upcoming debates that are happening on modern day debate. They've actually already happened. They're just a reminder that we are posting these on our podcast. So check those out. And we're gonna move into Q&A now. So thanks to our speakers for being here. And let's get right into it. Adrian Radis 499, could you conceive of a world where humans exist without need of a God? What would that world look like? Why would it look like that? Is that for me? I think so, yes. Okay. No, I cannot conceive of a universe where everything is dependent independently without violating a law of identity. All right. We'll continue on from there. And thank you so much for that. That was actually the first super chat from Adrian. So thank you so much for that. Pointless Poppy 499. Thank you again for being in the Q&A. Trey, if humans are prone to sin and lying as a sin, why isn't it likely that the followers of Jesus lied about his resurrection? Why isn't it likely that they lied about his resurrection? I'm sorry, I don't really understand that. They're saying that if humans are prone to lying, how did you determine that the people who claimed to have seen a risen Jesus didn't lie? Because people are prone to lying, doesn't mean they lie at all the time, right? No, but the question is, how do you tell when they're lying and when they're not? Well, they were considered to be faithful followers of the Christian religion, would that be a fair thing to say? And that liars will not inherit the kingdom of heaven. Okay. Can you show that they inherit the kingdom of heaven? Humans do not have to lie. Correct, but they can lie. Can you show that they inherited the kingdom of heaven or not? Well, by the testimony of their lives that they were, gave a testimony of righteous people, yeah. You're saying that their testimony shows that they were righteous. Yeah, so they were upstanding people in the society in which they live. And so when they say that they saw a risen Jesus, that means it's more likely that they're telling the truth. Yeah, but it's not, they just made this thing up, it came up out of nothing. There was prophecy that said that the Messiah would come who would be born of a man, who would be born from Abraham, who would be born of David, who would suffer for their sins. There's a rich, a very clear prophetic line that shows that Jesus Christ was the promised Messiah who the Jews were looking for who would save the people from their sins. John the Baptist said then we first saw him. What, behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Yeah. Alrighty, let's continue on from there. Let me just pull these super chats back up. But yes, thank you for that pointless poppy. Let's continue on. Pippal Punk, $5. And keep those super chats coming in everybody and we'll keep the conversation rolling. Trey, how do you justify lending more credence to the supernatural claims of Christianity than other religions? Well, it'd be nice to be able to have a conversation, something like that. I mean, what other religion are you talking about? The only religion that makes any sense to me, they can answer the ultimate questions about metaphysics and about morality as Christianity. None of the others like Islam, for example. The God of Islam is a Monad. And therefore he has no plurality of person. Therefore, he cannot have the attribute of love because love requires a lover and a loved. And so therefore the God of Islam, Allah, is dependent upon his creation in order to have the attribute of relationality. And therefore he's not God because he is dependent for something and he's not self-existent. So that's just one example. Or if you have multiple pluralities of gods, that doesn't make sense because an ultimate reality cannot have accidental properties which are properties that it participates in. The ultimate reality must be one, even ancient Greeks came up with this without any Christian ideas. And so none of the religions that I've seen are able to answer the metaphysical questions in a satisfactory way that would make me want to follow it. Any thoughts on the other side or do you want to continue on? No, generally speaking, I don't say that same injection doesn't apply to a God with regard to, or the Christian God with regard to love and needing it. As a matter of fact, that's been brought up many times. Because God is three in person in one, in essence. As a, wow. Nevermind, Trey, you do all the talking. Well, we do want to try to mitigate the interruptions, but yeah, it does sometimes put us in a hard position where it's kind of like, well, where do we pass it now? So, Trey, if you want to give your thoughts there and then Matt, if you had some thoughts too, we'd love to hear them. I know it was a bit of a short debate, everybody, but I figured we might get into a little bit more meat with the Q and A, so let's continue on. So, Trey, did you have some more thoughts on that? On what exactly? Justifying lending more credence to the supernatural claims of Christianity than other religions. That was from Pippalpunk. Oh, no, I'm just saying, give me the religion and give me the argument for it and I'll consider it. I've just never seen anything that's even close to Christianity. Are there not many, is there no super chats? All right, yeah, well, we can continue on then. Yeah, keep the super chats coming in, everybody, you know, and we'll keep the conversation rolling. Rusty Colon, I love that. Isn't that just a nice name to say out loud? $10 Canadian. Trey, if you grant that there might be a creator God, how do you go from uncaring being, uncaring an uncaring being to a personal being and reconcile all other claims of religion truth contrary to what you believe? Okay, so it's something about uncaring. Is he asking a question of why there's such a thing as evil if there's a good God or something? I didn't really understand that question. Well, I think it's a little similar to the last one where they're trying to say, why do you believe this one over the others? That's kind of the follow up of the question there. Okay, well, I think the part that we didn't get into though is how do you go from an uncaring being to a personal being and reconcile all other claims of religious truth? Okay, well, let me say this. So to say that, and we never really got to this in the argument, but there's a principle called the principle of proportion and causality and it's that something cannot cause in something else what it itself does not have. For example, I cannot communicate the attribute of flying like a bird to my children because I don't have that capacity. So if by way of modus ponens, if we see there's such a thing in this universe as empathy or value, then like for example, that I care about Matt and Ryan, then there must be something eternally that is a value or a teleological because unintentionality cannot intend intention. So if I care about stuff, then the thing that gave rise to me must have that attribute in order for it to pass on to me. All right, any thoughts over there or do you want to continue on? Yeah, all right, let's continue on, everybody. All right, so let's scroll on up here. Yeah, there's a bunch of them pouring in now, so we'll try to get through all these. Tag Hua, $10. Matt, are you convinced that you're not convinced that you're not an illusion? No matter what you answer, you contradict yourself. Get it? Am I convinced that I'm not convinced that I'm not an illusion? You're not an illusion, you say it. Yes, I'm convinced that I'm not convinced that I'm not an illusion. And there's no contradiction in that because when we're talking about things being subject to the primacy of reason, we can't justify that. But as long as we're going to accept reason, which I'm happy to grant identity, non-contradiction excluded middle of right off the bat, which is why it was so easy when he asked about non-contradiction, as soon as we do that, then everything else is predicated upon that or derived from that. And so me being convinced is a matter of direct experience. And while the direct experience that I have of reality may not tie to the ultimate reality, are you in the matrix? I can't solve Sarge solipsism. Getting back to the Kajito, I think therefore I am, even though that is contingent on the primacy of reason, once we're stuck where everything is contingent on the primacy of reason, then via the same reasoning that results in Kajito or Grisum, I am in fact convinced that I'm not convinced that I'm not an illusion. All right. Well, we could always add another, are you convinced to that? So yeah, that's a fun one. As far as the questions go, thanks for your first super chat, Taghuwa. A BVGS $5 says, if God is eternal and never changes, why isn't the universe eternal? Why did God's mind change to decide to bring about the universe? Chime in, Matt. Oh, sure. Well, I can put my Christian hat back on because something that is eternal doesn't have to create something that is eternal. There's no requirement that an eternal, perfect God necessarily creates something else that is eternal and perfect. That's impossible. Nevermind, Trey, you answer all of them. Go ahead. You are so thin-skinned. You are such a whiny little bitch. Oh my gosh. Well, if you could wrap up your point there, Matt. No, I'm done. I'm done. Trey's not gonna present anything on why Christianity is true. Why should I do any work? All right, Trey. So same question. God is eternal and never changes. Why isn't the universe eternal? Why did God's mind change and decide to bring about the universe? Well, yeah. I think maybe what he's saying is that if the universe is not eternal and God created it, did he not change his mind and move to a new state of being in order to make the universe which started in time and begins with time? Because time is just a measurement of change and the way we understand it, of contingency. And so the thing that you gotta remember is that contingency cannot define necessary things and necessity. So necessary being is not somehow contingent upon contingency by definition. So it's a logical necessity to say that God in his eternal state is not changing because then he would not be assay if he didn't. But to say that his change necessarily represented a change in him is to say that contingency must rule over assay which is irrational. So I'd say there is a mystery in there but it's not irrational. And you've got to, sometimes you gotta embrace mystery rather than affirm that which is logically repulsive. All right, well, let's continue on. Yeah, more super chats are coming in and thank you so much for that, for super chat there, ABVGS. Stay curious. Trey seems to know the five Ds of apologetic arguments. Dodge, dive, dip, duck and dodge. Well, thanks, Stay Curious for your $5. You don't really have to respond to that if you don't want to because it's not really a substitute. He got me, I'm nailed. All right, native atheists, $10. Trey's arguments haven't approved any at all. Once again, you don't really have to respond to that. No questions? Yeah, I guess they're just, you know, we like the fan, we like fan chats, you know. They have a right to be mad by the way. I would argue that they absolutely have a right to be mad because people gave time up to come here to discuss and watch two people discuss, is Christianity true? I took extensive notes on your opening where as we're getting closer and closer to the 10 minutes, you started talking about the arguments that you were going to present, but the time to present your arguments in a debate is in the opening, not in the discussion. The discussion is for about discussing what you presented in the opening. And you didn't present those arguments in the opening. You spent your opening- I didn't present the argument. No, no, sir, you didn't. You talked about evidentialism, you talked about presuppositionalism, and then you presented one part of a possible argument from contingency, but you didn't get to any of the rest of your argument, your argument for moral law or purpose in your opening. You didn't talk about how those corresponded with Romans one and two. You didn't actually present anything tying to the specifics of Christianity or how you can tie that to truth. That was not your opening. Your opening was, here's, I'm sorry? I did, we were talking about Christianity. No, sir. The whole time, at a fundamental level. At a fundamental level. Well, I'm sorry, but during your opening, the only thing that came close to an actual argument for the beginnings of Christianity was, if something exists, there are four possible explanations for it. It's an illusion, which is already the logically flawed one of your four. It's self-created, it's self-existent, or it's created by something else that is self-existent, but that excluded another option, which is that it was created by something that was contingent. So you presented, and it took us all that time to finally get to a point where with a rubber band, we demonstrated that the first part of your contingency argument, which is the only thing that you got to in your opening in 10 minutes, supposed to be about Christianity is true. I, on the other hand, did a 10 minute opening talking about the specifics of Christianity gave examples of what isn't identifiably true, what is identifiably not true, and all of these things are tied to Christianity, right down to the resurrection, which is the most important thing about Christianity. They have a right to be mad. This was time-wasted, sir. The second possibility is irrational too, as well, do you agree with that? That's my point. That's my point in giving the four points. Number one and two are irrational. Number two is empirically, we know it's false. Sure, I have... Wow, I can't believe we're getting back to this, but yes, I don't know under what circumstances... Are you gonna start it up? Wow, wow. I don't know under what circumstances something could be considered self-created, if in fact it existed forever in some form or another, but changed form for the local presentation of our universe based on... That's number two. Okay. Hold on a second there, Trey. I don't wanna put you on mute. So if you wanna just, if you could just let Matt wrap up and then like I said, we'll definitely let you respond. All right, so yeah, if you wanna respond to that, Trey, I might have injected it at the wrong point. No, all right, well, we'll continue on everybody. Oh, oh, sorry. Oh, were you saying, I didn't know you were turned over to me? Is that what you said? Yeah, sure. No, no, I don't have anything to say. I'm just saying, I didn't know I was being rude. It's kind of odd to me. Okay, cool. All right, so let's continue on here. Tag, who are another $5? Matt, what's the ontological difference between an agent and a non-agent? Ontological as in real, non-subjective difference. What I would say is that the difference between an agent and non-agent is intentional action. That's the thing that makes something an actor. And an agent is typically used in philosophy to describe an actor or a thinking, you know, like a leaf isn't an actor, a bug is. A bug has agency. So the ontological property is intentional action. All right, we'll continue on there. Justin Johnson, thanks for becoming a member there. Or welcome to Extra Juicy. Yeah, excellent. Yeah, it's been Juicy. Tee Will, $5 Canadian, oh Canada. Trey, please explain what happens to the being of a rock if you break it into a bunch of pieces with a hammer, because you know it's a rock. It becomes smaller. All right, any other? That's weird, because it, I mean, it's certainly divided into pieces that are smaller, but it doesn't become smaller. It depends on what you're assigning to the rock. Which piece? Well, if I break a rock in half, the rock is now in half, but everything that made up the rock didn't get smaller. It got divided. It's not smaller? Why, did the matter change? Did the quantity of matter? It's separated. Separated does not mean the smaller. The two pieces are still the same as the whole. It's just dividing in half. If I cut a pie in half, the pie didn't get smaller. The two pieces, no, no, it didn't. If I take a pie and I cut it in half. You have two halves of a pie, which is equal to the whole. I'm sorry that math escapes you, but two halves equal the whole. Okay, I guess I'm not understanding what he's asking. All right, well, let's continue on there. Thanks for your super chat there, T-will. Angel Quels, $5. Matt, what was the deconstruction phase like when you came out of your belief in God? Well, that's a long story. They've done a bunch of podcasts and I don't wanna spend a bunch of time on it, but I can tell you this. My family and everybody else thought that God wanted me to be a preacher. I was actively working to fulfill that goal after having denied it for a number of years. I thought that God had punished me and I had a roommate who was an atheist. I wanted to find a way to convince him because I didn't want to get to heaven and have God say, why is this man who you love like a brother burning in hell because you refuse to do what I've commanded you to do in first Peter 315. And so I set out to try to find a way to convince an atheist and that backfired. The deconstruction process took, well, it's ongoing, I suppose, but the bulk of it was about a year and a half. It resulted in quite a few strained relationships, but it also resulted in everything about me and my life being better in the long run. All right, let's continue on from there. I mean, it's a bit of a personal question, but thanks for answering that there. And we'll continue on. I see there's about 1,600 of you fellas hanging out in the live chat, take it or we're watching live. I don't know how many are actually in the live chat right now, but if you got a moment, if you got hands, if you're that type of being, hit the like button guys. It helps out a lot. Let's continue on with our super chats before I make any more terrible dad jokes or other things that can't even be classified as jokes. All right. Lileth, $2. Thanks for the laughs. Nice, Matt. Well, I think that's a fan chat, so we'll take it. Thank you. We appreciate that. It's a while because don't get me wrong. I've participated in chat and there's plenty of people in chat who can't stand me and then there's fanboys. And honestly, I wish there were no fans. It is ridiculous to come in and do a debate and have somebody be like, Matt won before it started. I don't tend to look at these things as win-lose. They're about trying to get to the truth or something. And I think everybody lost today. All right, well, let's continue on. Keep those super chats coming in, everybody. We're having fun over here. Let's continue on. Doot, doot, doot, do scrolling again. Doug, first super chat, thank you so much. Matt, could you grant the existence of Trey's generic God so he can continue to show all of us how Christianity is true? If you wanted, so I actually just got offered to do a debate where they wanted me to grant this premise and that premise and all these other things to build up. If I granted for the sake of argument that a non-contingent agent that could be viewed as a God existed, all the work that we do after that would wind up being fairly useless. It'd be like saying, I'm gonna grant that magic is real. And then all of a sudden you're gonna start arguing for Harry Potter. Would I do it? Sure, I would say, as long as we were clear for the sake of argument only and perhaps for reductio, I could grant that there was a generic agent, non-contingent agent that was a first cause or that is the prime thing that everything else is contingent on. Yeah, I could grant that only for the sake of argument. The problem is that doing that here when you already have people who are, Trey lost, Matt lost, Trey's terrible, Matt's terrible, this is terrible, that's terrible. I don't see what the benefit is to conceding the most important point because I'm not just a non-Christian. I'm an atheist. I'm not convinced that a God exists. And we've done, does God exist over and over and over again. We've had these debates for ages. The apologists have different lines of attack so much that they don't even like each other. The evidentialist, the presuppositionalist. I agree with a good chunk of what Trey said about evidentialists and presuppositionalists. I'm sure that we would agree on a great deal of things about nature but there's specific things in the phrasing which is why I had to ask about basic because properly basic is something different. And when you say that there is a being that's different from X has being, like a rock has being but it's not a being. And I wouldn't even make that clarity over agency. If you present something that isn't well defined and you need clarity, you gotta dig in. But sure, if there had been, I can grant almost anything for the sake of argument. But when the thing that we're granting is the foundation of an entire worldview that is the subject of the argument, granting it seems like giving away the farm. Which seems funny to me then why you were so intent on changing the subject for the later. Because I don't wanna give up the farm and I didn't try to change the subject. The subject of this debate was, is Christianity true? Nobody watching this thinks we spent any significant time talking about Christianity or truth. You are an angry person. And you are dishonest. Let's try that. Because I showed up to talk about is Christianity true and you did not. And so did I. No, sir, you didn't. You wasted your 10 minutes of opening and then you wasted the time trying to nitpick over something where you have a flawed argument. Over the thing that you said is the most important. No, sir. Yeah, let's carry on. Because I do have a question here for you, Trey. So Benjamin $5. Does Trey understand the difference between I am not convinced X is true and I am convinced X is false? Sure, yeah. It's just that you don't see enough evidence to convince them. So all I wanna ask is I just wanna know the reason why you're not convinced so we can work through that. So I do understand that. And as I explained, I don't necessarily, we haven't defined things well enough and a case hasn't been presented to convince me of something. That's why I'm not convinced. You seemed, when you ask why are you not convinced almost every time that you went down that road of asking me why I'm not convinced, you switched it to assert that I had a blind faith which only applies if I had a position that I was convinced of. It doesn't take blind faith to not be convinced because you and your ilk have not demonstrated sufficiently a position for me to accept. And that's not faith-based. I'd be happy to tell you why I'm not convinced once we have the discussion to where I can figure out what it is that you're actually presenting and I can articulate why I'm not convinced. But whether or not I'm convinced is irrelevant to is Christianity true? I'm not the one avoiding the subject, sir. But yes, you were because if you do not hold to- You're a liar, you're a liar. Okay, thank you. And everybody can see it. Let's try to carry on to our next question there and everybody let's, we'll keep the super chats coming in, keep them friendly. I try to read them before I pull them up but sometimes I go back to the live chat and then I get back in here and then I end up reading some terrible things. Anyways, it's fine. Keep them friendly. Berserk, $5. How can an all-powerful God be bound by ego? Needing validation is a product of insecure ego. Therefore, not needing validation puts you above God. Needing validation, I think is assuming that God has need something. Christianity doesn't teach that. All right. Well, I suppose could touch on this thing of him basically saying that Allah needs his creation but the God of Christianity doesn't need his creation. Polition doesn't necessarily entail a need. I don't know that either has been demonstrated or is the case at all but I'm not sure that's what the, can you read the question one more time? Yeah, sure thing. So from Berserk for $5, how can an all-powerful God be bound by ego? Needing validation is a product of an insecure ego. Therefore, not needing validation puts you above God. I'm already above God and I don't need validation. All right, well, we'll continue on. And I like validation. My wife is actually watching this live stream and let me know she likes my dad jokes. Love you, wife. All right. It's nice to have people that love you. Yes. As I say, my old bandmate Josh is in the chat too. So I've got all kinds of love here tonight which is wonderful, love you fellas. Charles Lainer, 999. Matt, given your understanding of the creation narrative, are you at all worried these young earth-like hermeneutics had anything to do with your back slide? Wait. Are they saying that I was a young earth-er? Well, let me just see here. I know I stumbled on that one. So given your understanding of the creation narrative, are you at all worried these young earth-like hermeneutics had anything to do with your back slide? So basically, I think they're saying like, did the creationists turn you off, I think is what they're asking. Yeah, no. It's difficult for me to go back and talk about, let me rephrase this a little bit so that people aren't confused. I don't think I was ever a young earth creationist. I'm not even completely sure that I was a biblical literalist, but I was really close to it. And so when you say could that kind of young earth like hermeneutics have been responsible for my back slide? So for me, back slide takes on a completely different meaning. I backslid lots of times. I mean, that was actually the primary method of raising teaching Southern Baptist teenagers. You'd go to summer camp, you'd go to church frequently. I was there all the time, but you'd be called out for not living the life you're supposed to live under Christ. So you were never going to be successful that way. And so you were constantly backslidden. You were, oh, if you looked at somebody and lost, you're backslidden, if you did this, you backslidden. So to me, backslidden takes a different term. If you just talk about, do I think young earth like hermeneutics led to my abandoning or giving up Christianity? No, because I studied all of it. I went through day age stuff, everything. The fact of the matter is the order of events listed in Genesis does not match what we know to be the order of events from science. And so then you're left with saying, okay, then Genesis one should be viewed as a metaphor only. The problem is that when you turn original sin into metaphor, then you now have an issue of what is there to be saved from? And when you don't have a way to investigate the supernatural, you don't have any way of getting to what is there to be saved to? These are inferences that people make once they begin with as Paul did, you are still in your sins. And when you actually begin to look at, do I have any reason to think that the concept of sin is a useful truth as it's described within Christendom? For me, it became very clear that it's not a useful truth, that it is one aspect, it's one of the reasons why I listed it in my opening. When I listed aspects of Christianity that are in that specific category of Christian specific doctrines, that haven't been and I don't think can be demonstrated, sin, redemption, substitutionary atonement, that stuff. That's why I couldn't believe it anymore, not because of a young earth thing. Alrighty, we'll try to continue on from there. Thank you so much for your super chat there, Charles. The Kenneth for $20, he's got a twofer here boys, so just watch out. Trey is having an answer to a meta whatever, the same as having the right answer. Having the answer to the meta, whatever, the same as having the right answer, you know what that was? He's talking about ultimate reality, I guess. Yes, is having some answer to a question the same as having the right answer to the question? No, but you do need to be reasonable, I guess. You can't be unreasonable and you're dealing with an issue, that's my problem. Alrighty. So for example, your perspective as an atheist, Matt, is unreasonable, is untenable. Insofar as you say that all being is contingent. Now, I know you said unnecessary, but there's a lot of equivocation there, but I'm saying any atheist that thinks that all being is contingent is utterly irrational. All right, well, the other half of that question is for you. Hang on, because if you're gonna accuse me of being irrational, that's not my position. Okay, well, that's what I'm saying. That's not my, wow, can it, fuck it, I'm done. Yeah, as I say, we have to try to mitigate the interruptions when Matt said. I didn't even know I was interrupting. He is so thin skinned. You are such a jackass. I'm sitting here trying to find a way to be decent and answer your question and I get half a sentence out and you immediately jump all over it and you've done it like 10 times. Well, I apologize, I'm not saying you need to be an artist. It is impossible, you're the one who's accusing me and all atheists of having an unreasonable position. Maybe you should have picked that debate and defended that, but when the moon you assert that my position is that all being is contingent, that is not my position. And so every time I try to defend you and claim, hey, Trey does know the difference between X is not, or I'm not convinced of X and I'm convinced of not X, then you turn around and betray that you don't do that by asserting that it's a blind faith position or asserting positions that I don't have and haven't expressed as unreasonable. It is a dishonest debate tactic. It is a dishonest discussion tactic and I'm tired of it. I have no interest in that, Matt. There's no benefit to be cheating or to use underhanded tactics. Well, let's get to the second part of your question here, the Kenneth and we'll try to get our full thoughts out here. So Matt does Trey, and this is a little ad hominy, but I know that Trey can handle it. Matt, does Trey make you miss Psy? So I think they're saying like, do you find this similar or is it worse? No. So I'd rather have a conversation, believe it or not, I'd rather have a conversation with Trey than with Psy. And not for the reasons that a lot of people expect. My debate that I did with Psy, Tim Bergenkate, it got a lot of views, it pointed out a lot of stuff. Psy made a terrible logical argument, but the key is Psy's a presuppositionalist. And Trey isn't. And so when you, there's no point in debating someone who is truly a presuppositionalist because it about the subject that they presuppose. When Trey was talking about this and he talked about evidentialists not having a strong enough position because it's probabilistic, my view is that there are no absolutes that we can verify and probabilistic is the best we have, which is why I'm an evidentialist, which is why there was no chance that a classical analytic kind of thing was going to actually convince me, but you still get to present it. But he said that presuppositionalists, essentially he went around about lengthy way of essentially claiming that it was a circular argument. You are assuming or presupposing the very thing that you should be defending. And that's not a defense, that's just an assertion. And that's why having, trying to have a conversation with a presuppositionalist is, in my view, a waste of time. So I don't plan to debate presuppositionalist. I'm sure I will again. I'm sure somebody's going to surprise me because despite what people think, I don't look up my opponents for these debates. I saw, I think 30 seconds of Trey debating somebody else because when I'm preparing for these debates, I don't prepare for the person. I prepare for the subject, which is why my introduction was about, is Christianity true? He might be interested in that. I was supposed to debate Sai and he backed out. He's not allowed to debate anybody anymore. He, well, knows it before that. Oh, yeah, I don't know the full on thing of what he did, but it seemed that he, there was some sexual sin which his church chastised him about. And I was like, dude, leave your church, get laid, start thinking and get back to, you know, maybe you'll be in a better debater for it. He claims to be a Christian. Christians have a standard. He has disqualified himself permanently because I know the details. Well, I don't know the details, so cool. I really don't care if somebody disqualifies himself as a Christian because I'm no longer impressed with Christian apologists, but I will say Muslim apologists are absolutely the worst hands down unequivocally. And the last five debates I've done, yeah, it's awful. All right, well, let's continue on there. Oh my, calling out all kinds there, but yeah, fun, let's continue with the Super Chats. Dude to do, I gotta scroll up again here. So yeah, thanks for that too for there, the Kenneth. Yeah, we had some fun with that. LHRPG official $5. Hey, Matt, big fan. What's your favorite argument from theists for the existence of God to debunk? Well, I guess we'll say it's not presuppositionalists. We factored that out. I don't know, it might be because that's, I mean, that's really the easiest. It is, why on earth are you trying to present an argument for the thing that you presuppose? I think it's really, and I think Trey kind of hit on this a little bit. I think it's really easy to show that presuppositionalist positions aren't worth discussing. There's not an argument presented. Similarly, I think the classicalism that Trey's advocating for is similar, but not the same and not as bad. I'm an evidentialist. I would prefer to have discussions with evidentialists because I care about the facts of reality and synthetic arguments get to the facts of reality rather than just the abstractions. Hey, okay, go ahead. Oh, okay, I was gonna say. I'm blocking trolls and chat. Oh, no problem at all. It's just for fun. It keeps it clear. Do what you need to do, block all the cave trolls you need to, but Formac gives you a block there. Smash the like wherever you're watching this from, you know? Yeah, I was gonna say help us out. It's always fun. And yeah, I know our live chat might be mad at us because we almost spilled the tea a little bit on some of the Psy business there, but no cigar tonight, fellas. Russell H, $5. Thank you so much for your super chat. Trey, can you list three claims slash aspects of Christianity and the evidence for them being true? Big claims of Christianity, what do you mean? I think that's them. Probably. Sorry, go ahead. My main argument, what I would say is that, as I begin with the beginning, that you cannot dispute the existence of God. It's an analytical necessity. You cannot dispute teleology that God is purposive because purpose instantiates in us and with the principle of proportion and causality, you must exist. And then the claims of Christianity is there's a reasonableness to the entire message of the special revelation of the Bible that is the scarlet thread, it's been called of Christ throughout the entire scriptures that there was a beginning, there was a fall and something needs to be fixed and Christ is that remedy. Any other thoughts there? Shall we continue? Yep, sounds like we're good. I can't list three facets of Christianity and why they're true. I can list three facets of Christianity, just not why they're true. All right, I didn't know if you wanted to respond there. So Rhonda, area $7. How does someone who has not earthly father come from any paternal line please satisfy the claim that Jesus was born of a virgin? Sorry, Rhonda, that wasn't written out so great. How does someone who has not an earthly father come from any paternal line? So it's probably for you there, Trey. Someone who does not have an earthly father not come from paternal line. Well, they had a shared lineage, Joseph and Mary, but this is not my forte, but there's something about that there was someone who was cursed in Joseph's line. And but I'm not really up on that, I don't know. Is it important that Jesus was born of a virgin for your particular take on Christianity? This is curiosity that's not trapped, just curious. Yes, Curtis Homo, St. Anselm wrote a book on this, basically saying that Jesus had to be both man and God because only God can make the eternal payment or the sin against an eternal being, and he also had to be man because it is man who he was making the atonement for. So that's why it's not some just little quirky thing, but it's sort of a logical necessity that he'd be born of a virgin, both be God and man. Okay, wow. A logical necessity that he'd be born of a virgin because the reason that you just gave of why it's important that he was born of a virgin, I don't understand how being born from a virgin does that. I don't know why God couldn't create someone who was fully God and fully man and whether or not somebody, because virginity is a bullshit concept. It's a complete fiction. There's no such thing as virginity in any kind of sense, but it would seem to me that if Mary had had sex, God could still have impregnated her on his own and resulted in the man-God, even if she wasn't a virgin. I don't understand what virginity has to do with it or certainly not how it's a logical necessity, but... In what way would he be divine if he were procreated naturally? I didn't say he would be procreated naturally. Mary could have had sex with someone else prior to this and God could have still magically impregnated her, right? No, because she would have been a sinner. God can't magically impregnate a sinner? Well, no, but why would he? Why would he not choose someone who's holy, who loves him? Wow, it's like we're speaking different languages. Can God take a virgin and make that virgin pregnant? He can, but why would he? Why would he not do what he did? I said, you just said he did. I said, can God take a virgin and make that person pregnant? Yes, of course. Can God do the same to someone who's not a virgin? Yes, he could. If God creates a baby in a non-virgin, how is that baby any different or less than than the baby he created in the virgin? I'm sorry, I'm not understanding your point. Okay, Mary doesn't have sex, she's a virgin. God impregnates her with Jesus and you say this is a logical necessity that she be a virgin. God could also impregnate someone who had previously had sex and is no longer a virgin. But she wasn't married. Yeah, I give up, I give up, I give up. Everybody can see. You are so thin-skinned. You are so unwilling to actually engage with a subject that exposes your flaws. My goodness. My goodness. The point is, can God make a non-virgin woman pregnant with God's offspring? Go ahead, say why would he again. There you go, that's the answer. Not why would he, which you did multiple times. So if God can, then the question is, what is different? The question was, what is different about that offspring than Mary's offspring? Because the woman that God overshadowed and made pregnant was not a faithful woman. You don't know, we didn't include that in the criteria of our fictional abstract woman. Are you incapable of engaging in a hypothetical? Two women, Mary and blah, blah, blah. Mary is a virgin, blah, blah, blah is not a virgin. God impregnates both of them. They both give birth to a child. What is the difference between those children from the standpoint of theology and divinity? So the woman was married who God impregnated, right? Is what you're saying? No, not married, I didn't say the word married. I didn't even mention the concept of married. One of them has fucked someone and one of them hasn't. That's the difference, marriage is irrelevant. They both have been pregnant from God. So can we move on? Running away, eh? You coward. I have no idea what you're saying, Matt. I know you don't, but keep running. Then why call me coward? Because you're running away because you're afraid to take a moment. I am not afraid, Matt. You are, you're afraid to take a moment. Just think about the thing that might expose the problem. That's what you're running away from. You don't understand it and so you're running away. No, I just think, no, I'm not running away from it. I just think we can move on. It seems like a silly point. It's not a silly point. You asserted that it is logically necessary that God impregnate- Does she be holy? Yes. No, no, sir, you liar. That God impregnate a virgin. All right, well- That's what you said was logically necessary and people can rewind it and see and see how you dodged it. That I was asking the specific questions to reduct you, your ass and you ran away. Your interruptions are so quick, Trey. I don't have time to go a snap over there Ryan, I don't even know I'm interrupting. It's like what? I know, sometimes there can be stops and gaps in the internet and audio. It's really fun. If you're done with the topic and ready to move on, you don't have to say anything and then you won't be interrupting. Well, our next one is coming in here. This one's from... Yeah, the last one actually from Russell. That was his first super chat. So thank you for that. Let's see here. Russell H, $5 Tray. Did Jesus walk on water and heal the blind? If yes, what is the evidence of these miracles besides the claims themselves? Besides the claims themselves. Well, you have the very purpose of a miracle. I mean, miracles are conspicuous by their absence. So the very purpose of the miracle is to verify the message of the prophet. So for example, you've got people today like Benny N or whatever, and they say they do miracles and do all these healings. They're not doing miracles. I don't believe miracles exist today. I think that there can be extraordinary providences with God. But a miracle by definition is something that is extraordinary. And the purpose is to verify that this person is speaking for God. For example, when Jim Jones says he is speaking for God, I'm not gonna believe him. And even if he can perform miracles, I'm not going to believe him because the Bible says that God has spoken through the fathers, through the prophets and many in various ways, but today he's spoken through his son. Even the Charismatics today believe that their supernatural signs that they say are really not signs because they don't, they don't, you know, when they're wrong, they say, well, it's not that big a deal. It's not the same thing. It's in the Bible. So I don't believe we have miracles as signs anymore. So the reason I believe the Bible is because of the signs. That's the only reason that I would want to believe that this person were supposedly speaking for God, that they could demonstrate through supernatural signs that they were speaking for God, like Nicodemus meeting Jesus in the night. He said, you must be the son of God because nobody can do these unless God is with him. Hey, Ryan, could you read the question again real quick? Yeah, sure. Trey, did Jesus walk on water and heal the blind? If yes, what is the evidence of these miracles besides the claims themselves? Trey didn't come close to even remotely answering the question. The question is about an epistemological way to justify that a claim about Jesus walking on water is in fact true. Trey instead went on to talk about miracles don't exist today and he wouldn't believe people who did miracles and all of these other things. Trey offered absolutely nothing beyond he believes it. He didn't answer the question. He didn't provide evidence. Okay, there was a question. The way that I'm not just believing the Bible because somebody told me it was so, but the Bible is considered to be an accurate representation of what happened in 1st century Palestine. And this would have been further on in my talk by the signs of archeology as evidenced by Sir William Ramsey, the Scottish archeologist who was at the Tubigen School for CF Bauer, which was higher criticism in Germany. He was taught that the book of Acts was written a hundred years later than when it was purported to have been written. And he absolutely was a part of that school and was sure that Luke was not written when it was. It was not authentic. And he spent his entire life studying the book of Luke Acts and came out of that saying that Luke is the greatest historian of antiquity. And it's even been said that he had the accuracy of Thucydides, which is a father of scientific history. So the example that we have in the book, say for example, in Luke as an author, he's been called the greatest historian of antiquity. So we have an accurate rendition of what has been said there. And we have a faithful witness of what was said at that time. So it's not just like, oh, somebody told me that the Bible is true, therefore it's true. No, the scientific archeology has given us a testimony that the witnesses of New Testament were faithful in telling us what was happening. Yeah, the problem is, is that the question was, what evidence is there behind the claim? And Trey said that he doesn't just believe the Bible because someone says so, it's about the archeology. Well, I was gonna ask, what is the archeological evidence that confirms Jesus walked on water? But we don't have to waste time on that because there isn't any, there can't be despite your interruption. What archeological evidence could there be that Jesus walked on water? So instead, Jesus Christ, instead what he says is how this archeologist talks about Acts being written 100 years later and Luke being the greatest historian to show that what he's reporting is accurate. But that isn't evidence in addition to the claim in the Bible that is the claim. And the fact is, despite twice saying that he doesn't just believe the Bible because someone says it's so, all he pointed to was someone saying it's so. Okay, what evidence would be good enough for you that Jesus walked on water? See, that's irrelevant. That's not what was asked at all. The question was asked. No, it's not. Nobody asked what would convince me. They asked what evidence do you have beyond the claim? And now that you've dodged it, now that you've dodged it twice, you're asking me what evidence would convince me of that or what evidence should convince me of that. That wasn't the question. I'm sorry that you can't be honest and address it because the right answer is, there is no evidence beyond the claim and for you, that's enough. And is the claim a reliable rendering of what happened? No. Okay, why? Because someone saying a miracle occurred isn't sufficient evidence to warrant believing that a miracle occurred. There needs to be additional evidence for it because of its extraordinary nature. Saying I just got a new puppy doesn't require anything beyond your word because I have mountains of evidence in reality of people having puppies. Saying you just got a new fire-breathing dragon requires some evidence beyond your word. Saying someone walked on water, hell, I saw a video of Dynamo walking on the water and he's just a magician. The needs to be more, and that's evidence. It's just that there's another explanation. When somebody says what evidence beyond the biblical claim is there for Jesus walking on water, the one and only correct answer is there isn't any, which is what you were trying to get to, but you didn't. And instead you talked about everything else. So Matt, is it possible for there to be some kind of evidence that would verify that empirically? I don't know what evidence we could reasonably expect for a historic claim of a miracle. But if there's a God, anything that would qualify as a God, anything that would qualify as the Christian God should be capable of presenting all of us with indisputable evidence for these claims. And that doesn't happen. Well, I gave the claim at the beginning of this argument and you would not deal with it. If there is a creator, is it a problem for him to interrupt the supernatural and to perform a miracle? That's the first time that question or sentence has come up during this debate. How could you say that you did this at the beginning? It was the first part of my whole argument that there's a creator. If a creator creates something ex nihilo, is it a difficult thing to think logically that something could transcend what we see naturally like water to wine or loaves and fishes being multiplied? Not only was that not discussed or brought up, it's irrelevant to this. The issue here is, what evidence is sufficient to warn? Oh my God. You know what? Fuck it, Trey. I'm done teaching you. You're incapable of learning. I'm just too stupid. Yep, yes, you are. I've never done that in a debate, but you are clearly either too stupid or too scared because I was actually sitting here saying, wow, we're getting close to something. And then you presented, as if you'd presented it two or three times before or at the beginning, a subject which doesn't actually address this. And it's just, we are incapable of having a conversation about this because the issue here is, what evidence do you have beyond the claim? We don't have any. What evidence, and you like to respin that to what evidence could we have? And I don't know what evidence we could have in a world without a God, but in a world with a God, we could have incontrovertible demonstrations of the truth of everything. Are you saying that God is incapable of providing evidence of his existence? I think that he has given us incontrovertible evidence and you will not even deal with it because you can't. That's funny for somebody who's not an evidentialist and avoided presenting any evidence, but thank you. All right, let's carry on with our super chats there. We'll try to bring it back full circle here, everybody. Before we continue on though, we've been going now for what, almost two hours. So if you just wanted to have a moment here to grab a drink or use the washroom, that's fine by us. I can find a question for either one of you. No, okay. Oh, I thought we were done at the two hour, but. Well, we still have a few super chats so we can try to blast through them. I mean, when I say a few, I mean. I will give you shorter answers. Yeah, I was gonna say, we did have a quick open discussion. So yeah, let's, we'll try to blast through them. And when I say that, I meant that I needed to take care of that myself. So moment, $5 tray. Jesus is part of the omniscient Trinity. Yet Mark 1332 quotes, no one knows nor the son, but only the father. How do you explain this? Because Jesus was speaking at his category as a man. As a man, he was not, as a category, as a man, he did not know the day or the hour of, was it his return? Did he go somewhere? I'm gonna guess that, that Ryan Bolton out for a bathroom break. So we could scream at each other for a minute if you wanted to. I, you know, you brought this up and kind of touched on the Trinity. It's obviously too much to get into a couple of minutes before the debates to end. But when the question is, how did Jesus not know something? I am confused at how, and I don't necessarily know that you or anybody else are gonna have an explanation for this because nobody's given a satisfactory explanation of the Trinity as far as I can tell. But to say when somebody is both fully God and fully man, to then say he's answering in his capacity as a man, are you saying that he knew but wouldn't say? Just clearly in his capacity as a God, he knew, right? No, according to his human nature, he did not know. That's what you're speaking of there. But he's also God and has a God nature and that nature knew, right? Yes, and according to his deity, he did know. Okay, so this being who is both God and man knows the answer is God, but opts to answer as a man and says he doesn't know. Yes, there's a voluntary, there's a voluntary veiling of his knowledge in his condescension in humanity. How is that not a lie? Well, if he's lying, that wouldn't make him a very good savior, would it? That's not my problem. I don't think he's a very good savior to begin with. He didn't sacrifice anything. There's nothing to be saved from or to, but I would gladly sacrifice more than Jesus ever did, but the question isn't, does that make him a very good savior? My question was, doesn't that make it a lie? No, it doesn't because he has two natures. What, you know, some people would say that people are two-faced or liars and that if you claim to have two natures and one of your natures knows the answer to a question and the other one doesn't, not only does that not make any sense, but if you opt to answer as the one that doesn't, you are being intentionally deceptive. Can God be intentionally deceptive? No. So, did he harden Pharaoh's heart? Yes, but what that means in anthropological language. Did he give people over to reprobate minds? Yes, he just... Did he speak in parables in order to intentionally confuse people? If I were you, I would be screaming and hollering that you're talking over me and not letting me talk. I know. I know. It's tough when it comes back that way, but did he intentionally talk in parables so that people wouldn't understand what he was saying? Yes, he said that in such a way so that the people who were humble would ask for help and those who are proud would receive what they deserve, which is ignorance. Yeah, and then he put it all down in a book so that everybody could see that he was doing it. So when you say that he's not capable of being dishonest, you are wrong. Okay, well, you don't understand it. I understood it. It's explained there. Right after Jesus gets done speaking in a parable, his disciples ask him what he meant and he explains it to them. So it's written down in the book. It's like saying, hey, let's wipe these people off the planet and never speak about them again, but let's write it down in the book so that people speak about them again. The Bible is embarrassing on things like that. No, it's not because you say you understand it, but you don't understand it. You are part of the ones that have a heart in the heart and it goes right over your head. I don't know how to answer that. I don't know, Robin Hood had a tune. What I use is same. I mean, the thing about Jesus is different from Robin Hood is Jesus playing to be the Messiah, the promised Messiah. I've let our chat down again here because I popped out for just one second there because I'm not as pro as these guys at holding my bladder, that's for sure. So I'll read the question again, just because our live chat. Mine's gonna fail in about 10 minutes, but. No, what, sorry? I missed that. Mine will fail in about 10 minutes. Oh, okay. I drank a big thing of Gatorade during this. Yeah, at any time, if you need to step out, I'll, like I said, I'll pass the buck over to and try to find a question for the other person. So the question that we were just addressing there everybody was, Trey, Robin Hood has a tune that is said to belong to him. How would one investigate whether it did or didn't belong to him in reality? Did you use the same criteria for Jesus's tune? No, I wouldn't, because Jesus had an incredibly rich history of the promised Messiah that could be trained. His lineage could be studied and known that it was more than just some guy coming along and coming down in a parachute and saying, yeah, I'm this or that and look after it. But the person of Christ is so much different than Robin Hood would ever be. So it really wouldn't, I mean, there might be some things in common that you're gonna look at maybe, you know, eyewitness accounts or something like that, but I'm gonna focus more on the promised Messiah and if Jesus fulfilled the promise of the Messiah and then his sacrifice, which was supposed to be the Messiah was supposed to be for his people. And then he had to be raised from the dead so that his sacrifice was received and that he was, cause death is the punishment for sin. And so Christ's rising from the dead shows that it was sacrifice was received. So it's a completely different thing than just talking about Robin Hood from my perspective. Yeah, and I completely disagree for any proposed tomb of person, whether that person is real or fictional, if we have a proposed tomb, the same methodology should be used to verify whether or not that tomb belonged to that person. You don't go and see, do they have a rich history of being a promised Messiah? That's irrelevant to whether or not a particular tomb fits a particular person. And the methodology that you would use should be the same. Oh, maybe so. I didn't know you was talking about a specific particular tomb cause we don't know where Christ's tomb is, do we? I don't know. I don't think we do. I don't, but Christians, as I mentioned in the opening, which may have been what he's responding to, frequently talk about the empty tomb. Yeah, but we don't have the tomb. Okay, but do you think there was an empty tomb? Well, there were eyewitness accounts, over 500 of them. We don't have any eyewitness accounts and we certainly don't have 500. You don't have an account of any eyewitness, no book in none of the New Testament was written by eyewitnesses and what you have are second-hand accounts of people supposedly talking about an empty tomb. But my question was, do you believe there's an empty tomb? Yes, I'm a Christian. If Christ raised, if Christ has not raised, then I'm dead of my sense, as you stated in 1 Corinthians 15. Yeah, so you believe there's an empty tomb, although your only evidence for the empty tomb is a claim in the book that there's an empty tomb. And the question here was, how could you verify the empty tomb? You don't think you know where it is, but you think you know that it is. And that's a different question, both of which are problematic for me. Because the Messiah was said to die and to rise. Okay, which also isn't a methodology for figuring out if it's true. Except that it was told exactly what would happen before it happened. No, it wasn't told exactly what was happened and what your interpretation and other people's interpretation of prophecy doesn't mean that what happened is actually what was prophesied. All right, well, let's try to continue on there, everybody. High flyer 499, if I'm a cisgendered non-binary Marxist lizard, am I an illusion? Why? Go ahead, man. I have no idea if you're an illusion. I don't think you're illusion, but I don't know that. So a cisgendered non-binary Marxist lizard. Yeah, actually in that case, you would potentially be an illusion because you have contradictory labels in being cisgendered and non-binary. That's not true because we're living in a nominalist world where people can be whatever they want to be. No, sir, cisgendered and non-binary would be the rough equivalent of saying you're a married bachelor. What if you redefine those terms, which is what they do today? Well, you know, if you're gonna redefine those terms, then you've redefined terms and we're no longer talking about the same thing, but that's not what the trans community is actually doing. Cisgendered and non-binary have specific uses that are uniform across the entire trans community. I would recommend that you call into the trans Atlantic call and show some Thursday, except that that's the show that my wife does and I'd rather not have her annoyed by you. All right, well, let's carry on there, everybody. Thanks for your super chats and we're gonna try to carry on and keep rolling through. Pippal Punk for $5. This has been the best thing to watch while unbelievably blitzed. Well, cheers, brother. We appreciate you, Pippal Punk, for your super chat and I'm sorry for letting you all down with my mute button there earlier. I've been a real cad tonight with that. So, foot awkward. Maybe that's what I'll do. I'll pay you back with a good impression. $5, let's see what we got here. At least we didn't hear these, those horrible minimal facts arguments tonight. Any thoughts, gents? We didn't. All right, Ozean Talks, $5. All right, we'll try to give you a Peterson on that one. Man, did Trey's non-argument prove Christianity is false? What's your favorite snake? I was supposed to debate Ozean and he backed out. I don't know who that is. He's a Flat Earth expert, I guess, something like that. Which, by the way, I can't stand Flat Earth. He's a national treasure. A Flat Earth expert. That's like a Bigfoot expert, only worse. Well, he does a lot of debates on here against the Flat Earth side. So, he was on against Witsit there last. So, I'll hit two things, because I refer to Arden as my wife and people in chat are like, when are they getting married? We're not officially married. We've referred to each other as partner, wife, husband, other things. Sometimes that's just what I say, having been married for years. We're not legally married, we might as well be. But I don't want to saddle her with my financial stuff. Otherwise, it probably would be. On the favorite snake front, I think the critically endangered and almost non-existent San Francisco garter snake is probably one of my favorites and incredibly beautiful. And you can't have one, because they're endangered status. You can get a California red-sided, which is really close. It's just not quite as nice as the San Francisco. So, you don't have that snake, you just like that snake? Yes, I love that snake. And I have snake, well, I have hundreds, well, not hundreds yet, but 60 some odd snakes right now. That's my other business. But I don't have any of the San Francisco red-sided garter snakes because I can't. It would be illegal. Not allowed to? Okay. There's several others that I'd like to have that I can't have a Texas indigo, but I can have other snakes or similar. Anyway, this isn't the snake debate. Yeah, that's all fun. Well, we answered the question and thank you so much for that, Matt and Ozy and for your super chat there. And yeah, it's hard to do Peterson with headphones on. I'm sorry. It sometimes is just- You do a good job though. It sometimes just turns into Kermit over here, all right? So polarity, $20. Trey, who you are can be changed with altering the brain. When I die and manifest as a soul somehow, which version of me will I be? The one that was hated toward LGBTQ people because my pastor told me to? Or after I changed? We have to re-read them. Can you read them in our perspective? I'm sorry, I thought- I think they're basically asking the question of like, which me am I gonna be in heaven or as a soul? Like, which me, am I gonna be a young me? Am I gonna be old me? He's saying- I'm sorry, I misunderstood that that they're asking me. Yeah, so they're saying like, am I gonna be hateful towards LGBTQ people like my pastor told me to? Or am I gonna be different? Obviously, they're saying that they're no longer hateful towards LGBT people. So they're saying, am I going to be the person that I am after that opinion changed or am I gonna be the person before that? I think that when you die, you will be the person that you die in. I mean, we all change our minds many times in our lives. That's actually, I know there's a long history of talking about this in Christendom about who am I gonna be in heaven? Because if I die at 90, I'm gonna get a new body and am I gonna have a body like that? And that's what a lot of people focus on. And they're like, oh no, you'll be your idealistic version. And there's nothing in the Bible that supports anybody reaching any conclusion on what you might look like physically. But I would have to agree with Trey that who you are mentally at the point of death is the only thing that makes sense to move forward because if you, well, commit apostasy or fall away or change your views on something, it wouldn't make any sense for like 18 year old mental me to be in an afterlife based on all the rest of the life that happened. So even though none of us know, and I have no reason to think it's real, I think that's the most reasonable conclusion to make with if you adopted Christian theology. All right, let's carry on there, fellas. If you got all your thoughts out on that. Know the afterthought, Trey? All right. No, no, no. To do then, thank you for your question there. So, there we go. Blake, 499, Matt, did you think the founders of Christianity, Paul, Peter, James, et cetera, were sincere in their belief or could they have had another motive? I don't have any way of assessing that because I don't have any way of investigating. If we were to assume that we have an accurate record of their thoughts, then I would think it's not, it's not, I think we think it'd be a mix. I would think that there were things that they were gonna be sincere about and there's things like any other human being that you might exaggerate or put the best look on. I mean, all these, let God be true and every man a liar, all of these individuals are still just human beings. But I don't think I have any way to accurately assess who these people were and what they thought because the Bible that I have today, while we can be fairly confident that it is fairly accurate to what was written down in the earliest manuscripts, we don't have any autographs, we don't have any of the earliest manuscripts, we have copies of copies of translations of copies. And while there are mistakes in there that people wanna write off as scribal errors, the claims that are in there are such that if I can't substantiate them, it would be a mistake for me to say, hang on, Paul was definitely telling the truth, especially when Paul and Peter were at odds. It's like trying to pick out, I know more about who I trust in the Johnny Depp Amber herd thing than I do in the Paul, Peter, James, John, all of those. And ironically, how sad of a testament is it to God's actions to preserve a record of truth that this is all we have, a handful of scraps of writing that tell a story and then nothing for a couple of thousand years after. Any thoughts over there, Trey, or do you wanna carry on? Well, the New Testament is the best attested work of antiquity by exponential numbers. And I'm the funniest guy in this room by exponential numbers, but that doesn't tell anybody how funny I am. Okay. Well, darn it, we can't all just be charming, can we? All right, let's carry on then and try to be good comedians here. All right, John, at least myself, right? I'm just here to read the questions and keep it flow. And but we still got quite a bit to go, so let's keep it brief if you guys wanna get out here in good time. John, $3, Trey, embrace mystery. How is that an explanation? So they're saying that you're advocating to embrace mystery as an explanation. Boy, I hope I can do that. I wanna try to do this as quickly as I can. There are three categories. There's a contradiction, there's paradox and there's mystery. A contradiction is something that is irrational and you cannot be reconciled. A paradox is something that you think is contradictory, but then in further investigation, you see that it actually is reconcilable, like Jesus saying, if you wanna save your life, you must lose it and you can come and you can reconcile that. But mystery is something that is necessarily an aspect of God's communicating with us. He must analogize His language in order for us to be able to understand because the only way that we can understand logic is through complexity. So for us to make a sentence for logic is subject plus predicate. But for God, He knows everything all at once and at one time so that He must accommodate Himself with language that we can understand because if He were to share that type of knowledge to us, then it would be a predication. It's impossible for Him to share exactly what He is because sharing it itself is a potentiality actualized. So it necessarily follows if there's such a thing as a self-existent being, then there must be at some point, a point of mystery. Now, many people will jump to mystery way too early and I say that's cheating. But to say that mystery is somehow a cop-out is actually no, logic teaches us that there must be such a thing as mystery because simplicity cannot be communicated in God mother's example. Let's try to wrap it in 10 seconds, if you can. I'm sorry, I'll leave it there. I'm sorry, it's really a deep question. I guess so, I'm sorry about that. Did you ever- I was liking it when we were talking about contradiction and paradox, but when you tied mystery to an aspect of God communicating, I was like, wow, why do we have to go to God there? But I think the takeaway from that is that God cannot make us so that we are capable of understanding Him. That's a failure on God's part. No, God cannot make Himself. God can't, if God can't make us capable of understanding Him, then God, there is something that God fails to do that God is incapable of doing. Okay, if God were to make Himself, then how could He make us eternal if He made us? It's irrational. I didn't say anything about God making Himself, I didn't say anything about God making Himself or eternal. Because you don't understand the concept. It's like, yeah, I don't understand, I'm the idiot. You tossed out a word, so it's irrelevant afterwards, but I don't understand. Sorry. You didn't understand it, but it's not, it's not like I'm the same thing. God cannot make us capable of understanding Him is your position. And that means that there's something that God can't do. Okay, next question, please. Let's continue on. Rasa, $5, what is logical below one person dying for sins of others on top dying for anyone who is a failure, a future follower, more logically dying person is God. This is very strangely worded, Gents. So if you can figure out what's going on there, what is logical, one person dying for sins of others? There's nothing logical about anyone dying for anything. There's nothing logical about having to slaughter lambs for the sacrifice or to slaughter God incarnate as a sacrifice is blood magic that is archaic and stupid. There must be punishment percent. Yeah, except there's not, but that's all right. Well, let's try to carry on. Maybe we got something that you guys can sink your teeth and do a little bit deeper here. Let's try not to butcher your name. Tafka, Tritcher, five euros. Trey, do you believe that Jesus could walk on water? Yes, he was gone. Any thoughts on the other side or carry on? No, all right. That's both the answer to whether he could as far as I can tell and whether I have anything else to add. All righty, Desmond Smith, five dollars. Trey, can you tell me why more women weren't authors in the Bible? If it's the word of God, I shouldn't have the word of all people. Well, no, because it's a patriarchal society and Christianity is a patriarchal religion. It doesn't mean that men or women are less than others, but men are the leaders. That's literally what patriarchy means. Wow. It literally means that women are less and the Bible holds women as less. No, it absolutely does from start to finish. Have you read the New Testament? It absolutely does from start to finish, including how much you should pay for them as slaves and whether or not they are treated in the same way and have to be let go as slaves. Women aren't allowed to own property in the same way that men are. I've done an entire video, start to finish of how the Bible does not in any way promote women as equal. And you absurdly just said that it's a patriarchal view, but that doesn't mean that women are inferior when that's literally what patriarchy means. There's neither junior, Greek, slave, nor female, nor female. What does that mean? That is about whether or not you are eligible for salvation, not whether or not you are equal. No, God thinks that women are less being. They are inferior to men. As man is ahead of the house, as Christ is ahead of the church, it talks about who can own property, how much property they can own, who inherits, what they inherit. Women are not equal in the Bible, period. It's not even. They have different roles. This isn't even controversial. Anybody who knows the Bible, anybody who knows about, go watch my video where I do chapter and fucking verse. Okay, FNN is an FNN. You are lying or you're ignorant about what the Bible actually says. Okay, thank you. You're welcome. All right, well, let's try to carry on there, fellas. We're having a pretty lively discussion. It's juicy. I've got 10 minutes and then I'm done. All right, let's carry on then. Yeah, so Robin Page, thanks for your super chat. It's just an ad-hom, so I'm not gonna read it. I don't know. Is he complaining because God doesn't love all people equally or something at the point? Because God is not obligated to love everyone equally. Make some people poor or mercy and some for wrath to express his justice. All right, well, yeah, if you want to clarify there in the live chat, that's fine. We'll carry on. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. We'll carry on. Robin Page, the debate topic was, is Christianity true? As in, was Jesus the son of God? Was he born of a virgin? Did he die for our sins? Was he raised from the dead and ascended to heaven? Terri totally ignored it. Thoughts, Terri? I didn't ignore it. You gotta have a God before you have his word. You gotta waste 10 minutes talking about evidentialists and presuppositions before you present any actual argument. Any thoughts there, Terri? No, I mean, no. Okay, let's carry on then. So, Jacob Smith, 499. There's no question attached, but thanks for your super chat. We'll just carry on here, guys, because we gotta get this closed out here and we got lots, well, not lots, but I'm gonna stop preamble. Tag Hua again for $5. Matt, if intentionality is an ontological property, matter can possess why must a non-contingent entity lack intention? Why must a non-contingent entity lack intention? I don't know that it must. Just- But you assert that it is, right? That it's unintentionally if there is a necessary thing? No. I didn't assert anything, and I'm trying to answer this question here. One more time with the question, just to make sure I'm answering it correctly. Yeah, sure thing. So, if intentionality is an ontological property, matter can possess, why must a non-contingent entity lack intention? I've never said that it must lack intention. A non-contingent entity may or may not lack intention. I don't know. I don't know of any non-contingent entities. Alrighty. Yeah, we'll keep it to the person that's addressed to, I guess for the rest of the debate here, just to close us out. Just laugh and honk your nose, $5. Why does Trey address the moral question of infinite punishment for finite crimes? I'm just jumping in. So, apologies if I'm assuming something incorrect. The finite crimes are against an infinite being and therefore require an infinite punishment. All right, well, thank you for that, Trey, and thank you to our super chatter. Demolisher, $5. Trey, just for fun. If you were an atheist, what would you imagine your deconstruction to be like? I would need somebody to demonstrate to me that contingent being can instantiate non-contingently. Alrighty, Robin Page for $5. The existence of Mormonism is proof that any religion can be completely fabricated to fool and control the ignorant. Trey, explain Mormonism. I'll say about a minute or so. Okay, well, he just sapped off a Christianity with some wild stories that have no verification whatsoever. He's a good storyteller, Joseph Smith. Right, kind of what happened with Judaism. No, because it's historically verifiable. No, it's not. Archaeology doesn't verify it. Archaeology does not verify doctrine. It does not verify the supernatural. That's what, these are the list in my opening. You see, you didn't bother to address anything that I said in my opening or even attempt to rebut it. We never got that. I know we didn't, because you didn't even make a case for his Christianity true, but I gave categories and mundane things like place names aren't relevant. All right, let's carry on there, fellas. So, pointless poppy, $4.99 to you, Trey. Why didn't God give the power of writing to all witnesses of Jesus to ensure we know his existence was real? You mean why weren't there more authors? Is that what you're saying? Yeah, he said, why not give it to all people? I mean, to me, that just says, well, why didn't he do it a different way than I would like, I don't know. All right, well, yeah, that's what we got there. So, let's carry on. Charles Lainer, $1.99, Trey, where can we find you online? My name, my YouTube channel's my name. All right, that's not true. Oh, I'm on Twitter too, not really on Facebook. In post-production, if it's not already there, we will have both of our debaters tagged in the description and it will be in our podcast. So, check them out if you like what you're hearing. Matt, where can anybody find you at? Where are you hanging out? Just Google my name, you go to patreon.com slash atheist debates, my YouTube channel, Sans Deity, where you will find a video about what the Bible actually says about women, along with many, many other videos, including new ones posted tomorrow and one of them should be on my Highlander argument against Christianity. All right, it seems like good PR to ask both sides there. Stegobro, $4.99, we use the Gregorian calendar to this day. Matt, what does AD and BC stand for? Anatomenean before Christ or whatever the other one is, but I tend to use CE and BCE. Alrighty, let's carry on there, unless you had any thoughts there, Trey? No, I don't know what the question was for. No, okay, we use the Gregorian calendar. Who was for Matt, so let's carry on. Connor Klassen, $6.99, Canadian. Trey, could evidence for Christianity or God be better than it is? And if God wants to save all, then why isn't it? God doesn't want to save all. Ooh, short and snappy. Could the evidence be better than it is? No, because it's not. There's plenty of evidence. So the evidence couldn't be better than it is because it's not. So that it is impossible that there could be better evidence or Christianity. Right, because then you would be saying God had a deficiency of the way he did something. Cool. All right, John, $10, Trey, you claim we are no longer in a time of miracles. Do you claim that your perceived absence of miracles is evidence we are no longer in a time of miracles? Please elaborate how you know this. So, yeah, up to a minute there again. I'm not saying there's no supernatural intervention. I'm saying there's no miracles to verify the word of God because people are not still writing the Bible. So strictly speaking, that term miracle is a misnomer. I would say that Puritans use the term extraordinary providences and like ordinary promises, ordinary promises like God's using doctors to be able to come up with aspirin and stuff like that. Extraordinary problems would be God supernaturally helping you in a situation where you need to be. I do believe in that, but I just don't believe there are people going around speaking the word of God anymore. And those people that pretend do, they're just, it's their imagination in my opinion. All right, you heard it here, guys. It's in your imagination, says Trey. We're gonna continue on. Yeah, we still have quite a bit of questions here. Let's try to whack them out. John, Trey, yeah, sorry, we just read that one. Max Bones, that's why I got tripped up, 999. No question attached there, but thank you for your 999. Twister, dude, $5. Thanks for being on the show, Matt. Love your dissection of these logical positions. So you got a fan. Don't need fans, but thanks. All right, well, thank you for your $5. And yeah, Justin, for another $5. Trey, can you explain what you think the difference is between epistemology and ontology? What is your standard for knowledge? Okay, epistemology is our perception of reality. Ontology is just what is. I'm a Christian Platonist. So I believe there's an objective real out outside of us and our opinion of it has nothing to do with it. I believe in correspondence theory, true. So epistemology is just our perception of reality and how we know what we know. And you can come up with, you know, sciences on how that is and different theories. But that's basically what's in here, depending on ontology is what just is. All right, any thoughts on the other side you wanna carry on? I wouldn't have thought he didn't know. I don't even know why somebody would ask that question. Those two things, I mean, I would have phrased it slightly differently, but he's not telling, epistemology is the philosophical exploration of how do we know what we know? And ontology is just what is, what a thing is. So I wouldn't have ever suspected that Trey didn't know that. So I don't understand the question. I just said what you said. We're all in agreement. So when I said that I would say it a little bit differently, I said it a little bit differently because one of the things that you did say about epistemology, I find to be problematic, but I didn't wanna waste time on it. And I was sitting here defending you and calling the question absurd, but nevermind. Oh, I didn't, I misunderstood you, I apologize. Yeah, you fucking misunderstood me all night. I got one minute, Ryan, no kidding. All right, well, that's all right. We'll try to get the questions whacked out. 499, what is the most impressive prophecy or miracle in your opinions that can be verified today? Any thoughts there, Trey? Well, the most important would be the resurrection, I would say. Okay, Justin said can be verified today. Oh, oh, that can be verified today. That would be Matt's existence. Okay. He's a contingent being. Justin, for $10, in classical Judaism, there is no concept of hell and no concept of original sin. If God changed his mind on this, does this not imply he made a mistake and thus is not perfect? Sorry, I didn't catch that. That's all right. Yeah, so Matt, if you've only got one minute left, if you wanted to make a closing statement before you take off, that's, you know, if you need to leave now, that's fine. But if you wanted to make a closing statement with the time you got left, that's fine by me. All right, I could knock something out in 30 seconds. Go back and listen to my opening. Is Christianity true? We talked about the various types, or I talked about the various types of claims and how we would potentially go about looking to see if something is true. What we have to consider it evidently true or not evidently true or evidently not true. Basically true and false with an indeterminate thing. And if we had started tonight by saying, is Christianity false, then I would have been, had to burn a proof to demonstrate what about Christianity is evidently not true. And despite the fact that I didn't have to burn a proof, I listed many things, the order of creation, the origin of humans, language, animals, facts inconsistent with reality is a big problem. And how do you go about figuring out what the truth is? Miracles, which he doesn't think exist. But my entire case was about using evidence. And he thinks the best evidence already exists, which makes me wonder why anybody who thinks the best evidence already exists wouldn't argue about the evidence. And clearly it seems to be from a recognition that the evidence is insufficient. And he pointed out why he objects to evidentialists. So despite the fact that he thinks that there's a God who has not failed at all to give the best possible evidence for Christianity, his view of evidentialism is just that it's just probability and that's not good enough. So let's do something better than address the evidence he thinks God gave. And that's why we heard virtually nothing from him about whether or not Christianity is true and everything about a flawed attempt to define what could potentially serve as an explanation or anything that exists. That's all I got. Awesome. Well, thank you, Matt, so much for being here. It's been a lot of fun. Don't worry, everybody, we will finish up the questions but Matt's gonna leave the Zoom chat in the house. So thanks for being here, Matt, and everybody give a, like I said, a big round of applause in the live chat. Thanks for being here, Matt, and we'll see you next time. Later. Later, Gator. All right. All right, it's just me and you now, so we will continue answering the rest of your questions if that's all right by you, Trey. And as per usual modern data bait fashion, I will ask you, Trey, just to try to not make mention of the person that's not in the room anymore now that Matt's no longer here. Or if you do make mention, just specifically the arguments, that's usually the way we do things anyways, but. But if I have a closing statement, do I? Absolutely, absolutely, don't worry about that. So as for our super chats, so, Justin, yeah, we read that one, sorry about that. Yeah, Justin for $10. In classical Judaism, there is no concept of hell and no concept of original sin. If God changed his mind on this, does this not imply he made a mistake and thus not perfect? Yes, if God changed his mind, it changed a lot, but the ignorance of Old Testament believers toward the concept of hell in no way says that God did not intend that or somehow changed his mind. Alrighty, and yeah, depending on how much time you have as well, Trey, like I said, you can elaborate more unless you're in a bit of a hurry to get moving on yourself in which case you go with whatever pace you'd like. Yeah, I'd like to close it up in here pretty soon if I could. All right, that's fine, I will move along then. Vdub asks, Matt, are you more gaming, do you have more gaming streams coming in the future? I'm sure he does. I think he does gaming on Twitch and stuff like that, so. Oh, Matt, does that, he does Twitch? I think so, I mean, I haven't been on Twitch, so I don't know, but if memory serves, I'm pretty sure he said he does do that, so. High Flyer 499, is the San Francisco gardener snake strung out on heroin and defecating all over the SF streets? Well, aren't you fun High Flyer? I think somebody said in the chat that God is most high. I think you might be the most high right now. Go have a drink of water, you'll be better. All right, Herber Aradondo, $5. Why will you not defend the veracity of an almighty being that confirms Christianity? When did I say I wouldn't do that? I came here as a Christian, defending the Christian faith, so I'm not sure where you got that. All right, and last one here from B. Head Kamikaze, so $5 for Matt Trey and Ryan. What is the one best piece of evidence that could show Christianity is true, each in your best Australian accent? Oh, Jesus. No, sir, I'm too tired now. That Christianity is true. Again, I'm going to use the, before I go out to get on the barbie, I'm gonna say that there must be a God in order there for there to be contingent existence, which is myself. So that would be the best evidence for Christianity from my perspective. All right, well, Matt's not here to give his piece of evidence, and this is my advantage here, everybody. I've remained hopefully enigmatic as far as what I believe. Hopefully nobody's caught a good sniff of that besides maybe Ozy and who's debated me on a few things in the old Discord there. So maybe this will be my chance to just say, if anybody from our Discord is hanging out in our live chat, tag our Discord because you can find me in there when I'm not busy with my kids or being a husband and all that fun jazz and all the guitar playing I like to do, screaming in people's faces, all that et cetera, good stuff. So what we're gonna do, everybody, Trey will hand it over to you. So I think Matt had, you know, he said he was gonna take like 30 seconds. I think he was like a minute and a half. So you can riff for a little bit here about your closing thoughts. I won't really, you know, I'll let you know when you've gone on for two minutes. That sounds good. I won't take that long, I don't have much to say. But thank you, Ryan, for inviting me. It was an enjoyable discussion. Didn't get nearly as far as I wanted to. But as you'll remember, when I started in my opening statement, I said, I was gonna tell you before it happened that I was gonna get obfuscation. I was gonna get name calling. I was gonna get people wanting to change the subject. And, but one thing I wasn't gonna get as a rebuttal to the argument, and it was even worse than I thought. He would not even engage the argument and ensure the world. I thought, I said, well, maybe Matt is the great savior of the atheistic community, but unfortunately he was not, just as I thought it wouldn't. Like I said, I've engaged in this argument forever. It's an analytical argument, people. It's an argument that cannot be reputed. You cannot have dependent being instantiating independently. Something cannot make itself. And if you are a dependent being, then there must be something somewhere that has the attribute of self-existent. And Matt was wanting to, almost wanting to concede it sounded like, but then he said, but it's gotta be a non-personal being or not an agent. And again, I would say that by way of the fact that we are agents and we are personal, then that which gave rise to us must have those same attributes, otherwise we would not have them. So I don't feel like we, certainly we didn't engage the argument very much, but Matt wouldn't even go there. So I don't know, maybe I'm a big loser and I don't know what I'm doing as usually people say, and that's fine, but it's gotta make sense to me if you're gonna demonstrate that I was wrong because to me that seemed like I like Matt, he's a very intelligent guy, he's a nice guy, but he was one of the worst guys. And he'd probably say the same thing about me, he wouldn't even engage the argument. And so we couldn't even hardly move off of a first base on that. But anyway, it was enjoyable to be able to interact with him and to participate in a modern day debate. I very much appreciate James and Ryan, they're very nice individuals and they do a great job of, you know, moderating debate and not taking sides. And I very much appreciate that. And so Ryan, thank you for taking time this Friday and thank you for providing this venue for us to talk. Yeah, for sure. And I, you know, let's, let's chat a little bit after this for a few minutes. And because I, you know, I've got some other prospects for you here, I think as far as what's going on, but SimLife, you caught me. Always, I'm Nova Scotian. What can you expect? Mwah, mwah, mwah, mwah. All right, everybody, this was our debate. Matt Delhoney versus Trey Jadlow is Christianity True. Hit that like button, share this out in all those spaces where you like to argue. Send it to that uncle of yours that you're always debating with, you know, have some fun with it. And in the meantime, we are going to see you probably, I'd say, well, from the looks of things, we'll see you in about four days. So cheers, everybody. Enjoy your evening. And peace out. Regression. Turnies mixed with self-oppression. What am I to do? We'll tear away when I'm boiling at the top. Try to find a way to fight the fires. Smell the wrath from the minds of liars. With all the shots you bat your heads. The mind you never stops. Make mistake. Cut the strings before your life starts to decay. From tears of blood to grit, settle after. Turn around and I'll be faster. Your hollow shape as a faith begins to drop. That the world would be untrue as it was.