 Everybody, today we are debating human evolution, and we're starting right now. Ladies and gentlemen, it's real to have you here for another epic debate. At Modernity Debate, we host debates on science, politics, and religion. And so, if you're a sick puppy like us, we encourage you to consider hitting that subscribe button as we have many more debates to come. For example, this Friday we are very excited as Austin Whitsit gets it and Tom Jump will collide on none other than the shape of the earth, whether or not we have a flat earth. So that should be a lot of fun. Also want to let you know, very excited that our guests, I have linked both of our guests in the description. So that way if you're listening and you're like, hmm, I like that, I want to hear more. You can hear more. That's why those links are there for you. Also want to let you know, a couple of housekeeping things up front. Modernity Debate has invaded the podcast world. So we're excited. 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So I don't have any sort of videos on like my personal views or anything like that. Totally cool of channels like to do that. Don't get me wrong. But here we said, Hey, we're just going to have the debaters come and make their case and then you, the audience, you can decide who you found most persuasive. So let's get right into it. We're excited. Want to let you know it's going to be a fairly flexible format. It's going to be about five to 10 minutes from each side, starting with Erica. Then it'll be going into open discussion after those openings and then Q and a. So if you happen to have a question, feel free, fired into the old live chat. If you tag me with at moderated bait, it makes it easier for me to get every question in that Q and a list and super chats are an option in which case you can not only ask a question, but make a comment toward one of the speakers and your question or comment will go to the top of the list for the Q and a. We are excited to get into this. So without any further ado, let me just first say thanks and greet Erica and Smoky. Thank you both for being here. It's a pleasure to have you. Thank you, sir. Absolutely. I'm always psyched to come on modern day debate. It's always a pleasure ever since it's on podcasts because we we went back in our podcasts and we dug up Erica's first debate here, her debut against Kent Hovind. That is a popular one of our most popular downloaded podcasts I've seen. And so anyway, it's always a thrill to have you here and we're going to get rolling. So with that, Erica, thanks so much for being here. The floor is all yours. Oh, man, thanks, James. I you know, I'm always I'm always happy to hop on here. I'm going to throw some some quick shame on the chat because you guys need to like this video for for the algorithm. The algorithm is a glutton and requires likes in order to promote modern day debate. So go like the video, do your deal. And with that, I'm going to share my screen, I think, and and give my little my little opening statement, which as I'm I'm sure many of you have seen my the likes of me before around here on day today. So my presentation will be a little a little similar, but a little bit unique. I like to try to mix it up so that it doesn't get boring for anybody out there because, you know, we we we cover similar topics and sometimes it's good to just have a refresher. So I like to cover all my bases. So I'm going to hit my timer and go ahead and start. OK, so my name is Erica. I go by gutsy Gibbon on YouTube. And today we're discussing human evolution, which is a topic that I very much enjoy talking about. So obviously I'm here for the affirmative and I want to go ahead and clarify what human evolution is very briefly. So human evolution is typically concerns the study of the lineage of organisms that spans the geologic period between the common ancestor of extant humans. That is to say us and chimpanzees are closest living relatives to the present. So the common ancestor between us and chimps to now all of those species. That's what human evolution kind of concerns itself with. Now, generally speaking, this involves the fields of anthropology, biology, genetics, geology and physics. But there are a couple more in there. These five fields typically corroborate one another and support the conclusion that to the best of our current knowledge, modern humans evolved from an ape-like ancestor in the East African Rift Valley some 7 million years ago when our lineage split from that of the modern genus Pan, so chimps and bonobos. So what testable predictions can we use to support or deny this idea? Well, if human evolution is true, we should be able to show via physics and geology that the Earth is very old, 7 million years at the very least, but more like 4.8 billion. And we should be able to show that we are currently primates, haplorines, catarines, hominoids, et cetera, via genetics, demonstrating the nested hierarchical pattern present in all lineages. So we should be able to show basically that for all the means that we decide that a rhesus macaque or a baboon is like a haplorine or a catarine, humans would meet those same criteria. We should also be able to demonstrate via genetics when comparing humans to the rest of the extant animals that are closest living relatives to chimpanzee. This should hold whether we're comparing ERVs, microRNAs, pseudo genes, or whole genome. And we should be able to show via paleontology that from our last common ancestor to chimpanzees, which would be around, say, length of resturances, there exists a slow transition of the suite of characteristics that makes us different, extended through geologic time. So is the Earth old? That's the first question we have to ask. You guys have seen this slide before, but radiometry of dating is indeed as solid as a rock. It's based on a firm law in physics known as the radioactive decay law. It essentially just measures how parent nuclei decay into alpha particles and daughter nuclei. We measure those ratios to dictate how old something is. And to our knowledge, decay rates don't change in meaningful ways over time and in nature on our planet. And this is something that even creationists will admit to. The rate group has been discontinued since 2005. They were heralded by answers and genesis in the Institute for Creation Research. And they were like, yeah, we can't figure this out. There's got to be an exotic solution or miracles or something along those lines in the future. And on top of that, there's a $257 billion industry that depends on this annually that depends on radiometry dating working. The oil industry, the natural gas industry, the coal industry, all of those depend on using the methods of radiometric dating to find these caches of fossil fuels. So are we primate? So I very much like this picture. This is Jennifer Garner and Bonobo. Both of them are holding their child on their hip. I just think that that's very telling. I find that this comparison very beautiful. But genetics dictates relatedness. So by full genome comparison, which is just a souped up method of the paternity test, we can see that we share 96% to 99% of our genome with chimpanzees depending on whether we're looking at coding or non-coding. This number accounts for the size and unsequenced regions of both of those genomes. We also know that chimps and bonobos are more closely related to humans than they are to gorillas or orangutans. Now those who deny human evolution are all too happy to accept paternity tests and genetics linking the likes of lions and tigers or crocodiles and alligators. But they will arbitrarily draw the line between humans and genus pen because they don't want to be considered apes. The point here is not, I want to be very clear on this, it's not that humans and chimps are the same. It's not even that they're like mostly the same, even though they are. The point is that genetics determines how closely related organisms are within and between species. We can't draw a line like anywhere in genetics. So my question would be to Smokey, like where would he draw the line and why does he draw it there? That's a line you guys have probably heard from me before. But so what do I mean by this? Like what's the point here? Well, Smokey and his brother might be completely different. He may live as a hermit in the woods, hunting his food with a bow and arrow and never shaving or showering. He can barely remember how to speak English or my brother might be that way. But you might live in a high rise, like in a city, and have a sweet job, get takeout every night, and have excellent hygiene and be fluent in four languages. Your behavior, appearance, and even your cognitive ability are very different, but that's still your closest living relative on the planet. This is a very crude analogy to humans and chimps because genetics dictates relatedness. That's the point. So morphology bolsters genetics. So I very much like all these pictures. We have strep trends versus haplorines and orangutan, mimicking some local fishermen and fooling around with a spear. A baby gorilla reacting in the same way as a baby human when touched with a cold stethoscope. The white sclera of a chimpanzee which creationists often complain that replications of the hominids have white sclera. Well, that's because many apes have white sclera as well. A gorilla's hand with vitiligo and the Y-shaped molar pattern that we share with all the other hominids. But what do the fossils say? Cause that's what I like to talk about fossils and primates in general, but for the sake of human evolutionary fossils. So can we show morphologic change over geologic time in the suite of differing characteristics between humans and say hello to the students? Say hello to them through this being this very chip-like, probably mostly knuckle walker, habitual knuckle walker, primate. And the answer is yes, resoundingly yes. So I love this picture I showed in everyone and every debate that I'm in because I find it to be so poignant. You can't draw a line here. I don't know any, I've never met a person in a debate who's drawn a line for me here and told me which are apes and which are humans, which is what creationists tried to do and indeed must do if they want to invalidate human evolution. So we're gonna go through some of the fossils. Say hello to the students. Artipithecus cadaba, Artipithecus ramidus, and aurorantuginensis. They're all very chip-like in most of their features, except for one, which is that their pelvis is starting to look like a humans. It's very bowl-like. These guys probably spent quite a bit of time on their two feet, much more so than chips or bonobos today. They had a more inline big toe and they had a brain case that was pretty much just the chips, but their teeth were already starting to look very human-like. They had very small canines, all of them did. And the head of their femurs was starting to croak so that it could hold the weight of the body over the feet. Then we have our australopithecines, anamensis, afarensis, and africanus, all very mosaic. And you'll see what I mean on the next slide, but we've got Lucy there in the middle. We have multiple specimens of each of these guys. I wanna be very clear. Most of the hominids that I try to represent and talk about, we have multiple specimens of. And we can indeed tell pathology by looking at bones. So it's not like an organism with dwarfism or something like that. But yes, so these guys are very mosaic from their pallets to their feet, which are with a very inline big toe to their brain case, which is larger than chips, but so much smaller than humans, a bowl-shaped pelvis and knees that look like they could have come right off a human cadaver. These guys are indeed very mosaic. But we also have other mosaics. We've got australopithecus sediba and homo habilis, which creationists have occasionally resorted to calling artificial species or like, as if they're a mix of ape bones and human bones, which is very hard for me to buy, considering the pictures of the fossil finds are like in two separate clumps, representing two separate individuals. And the author of the paper who initially said that they were maybe a mixture of two species, one of the authors has since recanted. But these guys are indeed very mosaic as well, small brain cases, but still much larger than chimpanzees. The rest of their post-crania, that is the skeleton below the skull is starting to look incredibly human, like these guys were almost certainly obligate bipeds. And then we've got erectus heidelbergensis, nerotolensis and floresiensis, which almost everybody from creationists to those who are more into a conventional scientist, except are human because for conventional reasons, they're in the genus homo and for creationists because they look very human. But here's the point. You can't tell what's human and what's ape. Creationists cannot tell, that is precisely the point. This is a diagram here of multiple different creationists trying to draw the line. And as you can see, none of them can agree, which is of course the point of the matter. It's very difficult to tell. Anthropologists can't even tell based off of what, like which general we should put them in. Sometimes we argue about it, at least we admit that we argue. It's mosaics all the way down. We don't look at the hominids in the fossil record and place them in a neat line of direct ancestry. It's bushy and overlapping. What we directly observe is this. The suite of traits that separate humans from seholeanthobstitensis can be seen changing gradually through geologic time from basal to derived. We measure the ratios of these traits in all the hominids and see a trend towards humanness. This is the foundation of biological anthropology. So the dos and don'ts like all these hominids, you should put them in a march of progress style line and what you should do is put them in overlapping nice graphs. So here's my conclusion. Numerous field support humans as having evolved from an ape-like ancestor some seven million years ago and our current status as hominoids. To discredit this, numerous concepts in science must be overturned systematically. Radiometric dating must be shown to be non-constant. Amines to separate humans from the other apes must be determined and it must be standardized to the rest of life. That's a very key part of that. And alternate explanations must be given to invalidate the morphologic change through geologic time pattern seen in the hominid fossil record that can be applied to the whole of paleontology. And that's my presentation. Awesome, thank you very much. We'll switch it into the main screen mode and we'll kick it over to Smokey. Thanks as well Smokey for being here. Excited to have you. And... Beautiful. The floor is all yours. Beautiful, thank you. Well, thank you James and thank you Erica for taking the time to show up and do this debate tonight. Of course, I'm kind of the pinch-hitter coming in off the benches to fill in the debate and make this thing kind of happen. So this isn't kind of my typical area of expertise or study. So I've kind of just, I've done a bit of research really looked into it. Kind of to refresh myself today. Because of course, I like to look at these perspectives and ideas and belief systems from a little bit more of a personal perspective as well. Because I know all the things that we believe is based upon kind of a belief network, a structure that's in our mind or psyche, something that we refer to to judge our reality. Reject certain things and accept certain things that fit in nicely. What I've kind of seen as I've dissected a lot of the information and arguments from both sides of the camps, refreshing myself most recently, is I'm starting to notice a couple themes in the evolutionary camp. And it seems, and I think it did come out a little bit in Erica's presentation, that it seems that the preponderance of evidence that is being relied upon is all predominantly morphological. As in these things look the same as these other things or these things have similarities to these other things. Now, you can draw an inductive argument or even an abductive argument I suppose to draw to the conclusion that this is a product of naturalism. But in order to do so, you're essentially presupposing naturalism. The mechanism of what you're presupposing for naturalism to explain heredity of these different species leading down to each other morphologically carries with it the insertion that is it is all naturalistically motivated. Now, I have several issues with this type of perspective that don't seem to function in a logical framework for how the theory is supposed to operate supposedly the evolutionary theory, particularly human evolution, which is the idea that this information seemingly increases. Now, if the driving force of evolution is indeed mutation and unless I can maybe provide an example to the otherwise I believe mutation is either the elimination or the neutral amount of information in the code. So we never see an addition of information or an attributation of additional traits. We tend to see really the opposite. And this also flows in line with the second law of thermodynamics. Our universe we know as a universe of atrophy everything is wearing down. And this includes information and information transcription. So as time goes by and the information and our DNA and our cells is transcribed and rewritten time after time again it can have errors. Now we of course have error correcting software built into us to deal with a lot of these negative mutations but some of them might get through and they might become permanent mutations. And generally most of these mutations are fatal or detrimental to the organism rather than beneficial or even allowing it to survive at all. So I need probably some type of reconciliation of how one can claim that the increase of information could possibly be provided through mutations. That's something that I have a hard time really reconciling and dealing with in my mind. As for actual pressures again another one of these mechanisms claimed to be for evolution is external natural pressures. But yet I don't seem to see a lot of information being provided on anyone having any clue what the possible environmental pressures could have been to push apes into intelligent upright walking humans. Why did it push some of us in that direction and not push the rest of the chimpanzee population or the other great apes into a similar direction? Why were we so fortunate? These are the types of things that for a tested supposedly concrete theory I would expect it to be able to propose answers with these types of predictions. And I don't really see that happening. It kind of seems to be the type of ideology where it almost is looking constantly looking for its own bias confirmation and ignoring everything that doesn't quite fit or what they can't explain. And then they fill that gap with well we don't know yet but naturalistically someday we'll figure it out. And I don't think that's particularly good science and I don't think it's really good logic or philosophy. So if we're and I will just bring one last little example the Galapagos Finches which have been considered a really prime candidate for the understanding of evolution now since they've been studied with a little bit more information of their genomes their actual genomes are being studied now we noticed that there's a specific gene in them that we also as humans have that governs the shape of our skull structure and that is what gave the Finches their different beaks. So it's not actually as we find out they came from an ancestral Finch that had the collective genome information for all these Finches. So it's not actually a product of evolution or an increase of information or even really a change of information. It's just a product of selective breeding basically like natural pressure turning a wolf into a great day. That's kind of essentially what we're seeing and of course we know that adaptability from our worldview is actually programmed into all of the species so that we actually have a chance for survival in a dynamic changing environment without adaptability being programmed into us we'd have no chance of survival and with that I suppose I can yield. Thank you very much. We will kick it into open discussion. Plor is all yours. Absolutely. Well, I'm down to talk about whatever. I have a couple of questions for you because I'm not 100% sure where you're coming from like if you're a young Earth creationist or standard person. I'm not young. Well, let's put it this way. I'm neither young nor old. I kind of just don't need to take a position. I will say this. I do lean towards acceptable scientific arguments for either because there's some honestly there's some on either side of the fence I've heard that are pretty compelling. But I'm gonna look at it more through the lens of if I think on a collective sense that cosmology, geology and biology all tend to point to older type of Earth or older type of environment. I'm not necessarily just gonna throw it out to satiate my bias. Sure, sure. So I want to touch on something first. So first the advent of new information. So I find that defining information can be kind of a tough term to nail down I feel like a lot of times when at least I can only speak for myself but when I'm having conversations with other creationists and non-creationists alike I think that sometimes we end up talking past each other because we're not really... Let's not do that. Let's not do that. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, cause we're not really talking about the same thing. So for me, I heard you speaking about how mutations tend to be neutral or deleterious. So there can be beneficial mutations but whether or not this is a key thing that at least I personally see gotten wrong a lot from creationists. But what is fit? What makes an organism more fit and what makes a mutation beneficial is almost entirely determined by the environment, right? A great example would be looking at bacteria that are antibiotic resistant, my mistake. So if you take an antibiotic resistant bacteria and a regular bacteria of the same species and put them in an environment where the antibiotic is present well, the antibiotic bacteria is going to vastly outperform the regular bacteria because it's in an environment that it has essentially adapted and mutated to survive. But if you take both of them and put them in an environment with no antibiotics the antibiotic bacteria or antibiotic resistant bacteria will actually be outcompeted by the original bacteria. So the environment kind of dictates whether or not a mutation is truly beneficial. So when we say like, can new information and first of all, that's kind of my spiel on what is a beneficial mutation and then very quickly on can information be added? I give this example a lot because it dictates it really helped explain to me what it means when we say information is added in conventional evolutionary biology. So if you have a sentence, the cat, right? The letters are the codons or are the nucleobases or whatever. The cat portrays a set amount of information. It conjures up an image of a cat in your head and you're like, okay, that's cool. That's like, it's a sentence but it's a very short sentence. So if you had a duplication event, so you had the cat, cat and then you had a frame shift mutation. So now you have the cat, sat. Well, that already is quite a bit more information than the original sentence. You have another duplication event and you have the cat, sat, sat and then an additional frame shift and you have the cat, sat, sad and then you have like a relocation. So you end up with the sad cat, sat. That's infinitely more information on being hyperbolic but it's infinitely more information than just the cat. So duplication events are being tampered with add new information from a conventional perspective. Okay, I kind of get the analogy you're drawing to that but here's my issue with it is that none of those extra additions into that sentence mean anything unless the language exists to interpret what those additions mean. So for instance, you can say I'm adding these letters. I'm adding this extra info into it basically but if the language isn't prepared to do anything with that if it doesn't know what to do with those symbols with that those additions then it's basically gonna be incoherent. The language has to know what to do with that information so that if you are adding information, it's sensible. Now, change your example a little bit. Let's say it wasn't sad, it was sav and it's SAV and that's not even a word. That's just basically random jumbled nonsense. So you could put that in there as a mutation. That's not gonna work. That's a degrade. But yeah, and I totally agree with you because in that case it would be selected again, right? And that organism wouldn't be able to do that job. So most mutations are neutral. Some do bad things and then under the right conditions, some do good things. But the only way, yeah, my point was but the only when I hope this was carrying through the only way it could do something good is if that addition of those symbols those extra symbols is information that the language can already interpret. So it's not like it's really being added. It's already there. It's inside the language. Otherwise it would be incoherent to what to be done with that thing. You see what I'm saying? But we're looking at like the alphabet, right? Right, right, thank you. Yes, there we go. Thank you. Well, I mean more not really even really the alphabet even deeper than that, the language behind the alphabet because the alphabet is just the letters that make up the language. So I mean, we're really talking about the actual expression the actual value of the data, the value of the letters. Yeah, I think that's a really good point. And John Maddox and I discussed that very lightly over when I talked with him over on standing for truths channel and I found that very compelling because it's not compelling in the sense that I just didn't know very much about the talk. No, yeah, I understand. That's interesting. I've never looked into it. Well, just so you understand from our perspective or at least my perspective, I shouldn't say are because I do not see a lot of things eye to eye with my young earth brothers and sisters, but they still love me. They still love me. Yeah, sure, sure. No, I get it. So, you know, just so you kind of understand how I'm looking at it from my view, like in the terms of like, say you have a whole, I don't know, and I'm just gonna try and make it real simple. It's messy, but just bear with me. You got a protein chain and this protein chain is mixed up with basically a bunch of different symbols. There's some sort of mechanism. There's a language that knows what all those symbols are, what each one of those things are and what they can and can't do and where they need to go. Now, the symbols just being there is fine. That's just jumbled noise. That doesn't mean anything until there's a language to tell all those symbols what they actually mean and what they should be sorted to. And I guess from our worldview, from our perspective, we're always trying to reconcile that with the evolutionists. Where does, not where does the data come from? Not where does the info come from? Where does the language that interprets it come from? Yeah, the laws that govern it, I'm with you. And that's what I'm saying. Like when I talked to John, I was like, I've never really looked into that before. So, and granted, I haven't had a ton of time lately, but I do. No, I know you got engaged and stuff. Congratulations. I know planning a wedding is insane. So, you know, yeah. Yeah, things have been complicated, but I did have some time to look very briefly into it and I have some papers that I've really only read the abstract and conclusion right now. That's all I had time to read, but I wanna read the rest of them. Well, and we don't have to spend a whole bunch of time drilling into it. Yeah, sure, sure, sure. I felt like they had to be relatively compelling. Yeah, we can kind of redirect maybe a little bit. If you maybe wanna repose or go a different direction, I'm fine with that. Yeah, sure. My finishing thought is just, and I can post them in the comments. Yeah, no, no, go ahead. Yeah, sure, yeah. I was just gonna say that they present some very interesting cases that the second that you have anything that selection is acting upon that is coherent as a biochemical slurry, I suppose you start getting a selection for this very, very basal form of communication. They had some physicists and stuff. It's a little bit over my head because I'm pretty like macroscopic animal style studying, but I'm gonna try to warm my way through and I might make a video on it later because I found it very interesting. But when I wanted to ask you a question because I agree with an evolution. So what do you make of all the hominids? Like in your worldview specifically, how do you do it? Well, let me be honest with you. I'm still kind of one of those guys where I'm looking for, I'm really sifting through the better models of what kind of makes the most sense because it is, you know, I understand, see here's the thing, I don't like when people tell me I judge on consensus. Like there's lots of things in our history that have been judged very incorrectly based upon consensus. So what I would rather do is look at the actual argumentation and the justification, see if there's any gaps or any, I don't know, I'm trying to maybe be in a little too stern with this, but philosophical deficiencies. Things that I feel that if they're gonna convince me that this is the model of acceptance, to me there's almost certain reconciliations that should probably be able to be made, even to me as the layman. You know, I'm not even talking about scientist level but to the layman. So to me in my current kind of scope, I guess probably what I would say the model which seems to give me the most kind of understanding or possibility is the idea that mankind is its own kind of very unique thing. Like not even really like the Neanderthals and I know we found Neanderthal, I guess we found Neanderthal code genomes in human DNA tracking it back and I don't have an issue with that because here's the thing, from the evolutionary paradigm, I don't see how we could necessarily prove or show evidence that either A, Neanderthals were just some selectively bred out portion of us, a different race, kind of like the Pygmies. You know, I don't see why it couldn't necessarily just be that as much of an explanation as it could we came from Neanderthals and I would lean towards thinking Neanderthals came from us because of the genetics because they seem to be, I guess, maybe a more inferior stock and I found a couple papers, one of them I think standing for truth may be sent to me or maybe it was in one of his debates, I don't remember, but it was something talking about the genome meltdown of some species were like, you know, at a certain- Medic entropy. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, like at a certain point, they're just like basically no longer viable for any type of survival and see for me, that's a huge problem from the, I'm sorry, I'll finish up. No, no, no, it's okay. From the evolutionary paradigm, that's a bit of a problem for me because I would expect from the evolutionary paradigm that that wouldn't happen because they're kind of saying, well, no, no, no, we increase, you know, we increase in order, we increase in information, we are, there's adaptability. You know, to me, from the naturalistic evolutionary paradigm, extinction events should be less frequent. Like we should see more, I guess, evolution instead of extinction, I guess, if that makes sense to you. Yeah, yeah, no, I'm with you. And a lot of that, like a lot of those are really good questions. I want to briefly cover, so conceptually speaking in human evolution, most of the hominids lived concurrently with other hominids. Like humans are the exception to the rule and that right now we're the only like hominins that are still kicking around. Our closest and relative would be the chimpanzee. But both humans and Neanderthals came from an ancestral hominid called homohidobragensis. And part of the way that we know that is looking at the genetics because while we can find Neanderthal DNA in human DNA, we've also managed to salvage it from Neanderthal remains because they didn't go extinct until relatively recently, looking at the grand scheme of things. And we find that they are 99.7% related, like similar, identical to the human genome, whereas humans are 99.9% similar to one another at like maximum difference. So we know that they're different enough to be like separate genetically, but at the same time we know that we could interbreed. So there's this weird concept in species, like the concept of species in that, and you can actually just talk to the most scientists, the most biologists about this and they'll probably agree with you if you're like, I think species are kind of arbitrary. And they'll be like, yeah, because they kind of are. Sometimes we'll group species by being reproducibly isolated. Sometimes it'll be because they're geologically isolated but can actually just interbreed like tigers and lions, for instance. Polar bears and grizzly bears are indeed very different genetically, but they can produce offspring, the grower bear. Sometimes porpoises can do so with porpoises that are outside their own genera. It's this very weird deal where sometimes life finds a way. I love that quote. Yeah, there's all these weird little nitpicks that happen in genetics because we don't wholly understand what makes compatibility different when we swap around in families or in genera or in order even. So it's interesting to kind of consider it from that perspective. With genetic entropy, Stanley and I have had it out on that one a few times. Genetic entropy is the creationist term for error catastrophe, which is like the biology terminology for it. And it's never been observed. So it's kind of a theoretical idea that, okay, well, we might be undergoing some kind of degradation. And sometimes I'll talk to creationists and they'll be like, look at humans, we're getting dumber, we're getting weaker, we're getting sicker. And my answer to that would be, yes, of course, we have medicine. Like we are the only species that has taken natural selection into our own hands. And when we have a sick individual, we heal them and we take care of them and we're intelligent enough to do so outside of just helping them out until they die, like Neanderthals did. Like we know they dragged their dead around because they cared about them. And some monkeys and chimpanzees do this as well. They're very empathetic. So I'm sort of of the school that there's this big gradient like across the tree of life when it comes to, because I would agree with you that humans are unique in many cases, but many other animals are very unique in their own way. Mantis shrimp have 12 cones, we have three. So they can see like four times the color that we can see. What are all are we missing out on, you know? So there are all of these interesting little bits about that that I'm kind of like, I see the world is very old, as you know. And so I look at the great age of the earth and I look at evolutionary theory that says, things should change morphologically over time in response to their environment. And then I go, I track it backwards, like in my head. This is how I justify it to myself. How it makes sense to me. And I look at all the hominids and I see them slowly get more and more basal as they go deeper in time. And then you look at, you arrive at something that just looks kind of like a chimpanzee. And it's in the same part of the world and it's in the same kind of environment and the same things are changing at relatively different rates. And then you arrive, you corroborate that with genetics and you're like, well, if that's the case then our closest living relative should be something that's rather chimp-like. And then it is. So those are the kinds of things that I'm like, it clicks with me, you know? So I'm eager to hear your perspective on that. Well, when you say it is, like we checked that and it is, can you clarify that a little bit? Yes, so no matter which metric you measure similarity via genetics, because I think both of us could agree, I think everyone in the audience could agree that paternity tests are accurate to 99.99%. They hold up in court. That's how accurate they are. So paternity tests dictate who is the father, right? It tells us how related one human is to another. You don't have to do that with your dog. You can sit your dog's DNA in and you can look for certain markers and find out what breeds make your dog up. So there's this general idea of genetics and relatedness are intermingled to one another. So with that in mind, if we're looking at how species are related and creationists do this too within their kinds, right? So they might do this within the cat kind and say, okay, which ones are in and which ones are out? Cause you get some things that look like they might be in hyenas cause a hyena looks kinda like a cat dog. It's like, is it in the cat kind or is it in the dog kind or is it in its own kind? And so creationists will build these trees as well looking at genetics to find out what's more related to what. Which ones can fall into the same category because they're so dang similar genetically you just can't argue otherwise. And humans are more similar to the chimpanzees when we're comparing the entire genome, which is basically what you do with the paternity test except instead of comparing the whole genome you compare set markers that are known to vary a lot in humans. Right. And that's why I was, I had a little bit of an issue with that in terms of the comparison because it seems like they had to, they just did. They kind of ignored like, cause the chimps genome is actually larger than ours. And, you know, the genome information, like, I mean, it's a massive difference. And this is why I have an issue with the argument from similarities is because, and if you don't mind, maybe I can read this to you. No, please, please, by all means. I've just monologued. So please say it. No, it's fine. This is an article from Dr. Fuzurana PhD biochemist and he had collected a paper from Matthias Krings and it was the Neanderthal DNA sequencing and the origin of modern humans. And this was taken from the report that says, researchers conducted first studies on three distinct specimens at date between, and this is talking about Neanderthals between 30,000 and possibly 100,000 years in age from three locations in the Neanderthals range, Germany, Russia and Croatia. So as you were saying, they're kind of, they're geographically separated, right? They're not necessarily interbreeding ready. They're completely separated from each other, different areas. And it says the DNA sequences obtained for all three Neanderthal specimens display remarkable agreement with one another. In fact, the DNA sequences vary only about 3.7%. The sequence diversity compared favorably to that measured for modern humans, 3.4%. Such similarity within the species, but dissimilarity between the species tends to indicate that these animals did not actually make the genetic evolutionary contribution to humans. So when we're talking about similarities and kind of look at, I kind of looked at this just lightly today, like our differences between the gorillas, like our differences between the gorillas is basically the same amount of difference between the chimps and the gorillas or several of the other ape species to the gorillas. Yet the difference between the chimpanzee and the gorillas, they're still very similar creatures. They have the same amount of genetic, genome information differences to us, but they live on all fours, they don't have the same intelligence factors, they're vegetarian, all these things. They don't walk upright. So I have an issue, if an assumption is being built around things like that are basically just morphology and similarities, I don't see that that's really proof of anything unless you're presupposing and can prove naturalism as the hidden premise of the argument. And I guess that's maybe where I'm stumbling. So I wanna ask you though, if you were to take that concept of apply it to humans, you would think that it would work, because that's indeed how we tell which humans are related. Do they look similar? You got your father's eyes. And are they genetically similar? Well, but yeah, we don't rely upon that for... We do. There's no other way to tell, there's no other way to tell paternity other than genetics. That's... Okay, yeah, but not the morphological appearance. Yes, yes, I agree with you. I'm mostly arguing that it's parsimony, right? So science is, as I'm sure you know, it's very much built on different fields agreeing in areas where they cross, right? So in geology, right, we get very similar dates when we look at the rocks that we find hominid fossils in, as we do when we track back divergence time based off of mutation rates. So those two things are completely separate. They've got nothing to do with each other. And yet you can still get a very, very close match. And of course, they're not gonna be identical. I think it's within like 100,000 years or something like that. But for why large, they're very, very helpful to one another in that you would think that if it weren't the case, like, and those are just two methods you add in like ice coordinating or dendocrinology or something else. And you're like, okay, well these are definitely old and we find them sequentially and they're changing in the same order that it looks like we're seeing new traits emerge genetically when we analyze the genome. Well, you kind of say they're changing, but again, it's kind of a little bit more of that insertion again, you know, like for just back to the Neanderthal, just real quick. Like if they are different species, like if that, and again, you kind of said we muddle that word a bit because we don't really have it. Yeah, yes, yes we do. But you know, like I would almost expect and I'm using this word tongue-in-cheek, but I would almost expect that there would be a little bit more specificity into that because, and the reason I say that is because like if it was a different species that would be an incredible discovery because as we understand when we have very, very similar species, like I don't know, the ligers or the mules, you know and we managed to get them to breed because they just so happened to still be genetically compatible. We tend to get infertile or sterile stock. You know, we can't do anything with that. It seems so, it's just when the paradigm is telling me, okay, Neanderthals bred out humans and humans interbred with Neanderthals, that seems less probable, even from the evolutionary paradigm than the humans bred out Neanderthals. Like- Yeah, you're touching on a cool question because like that's an argument in anthropology right now as to whether or not, like that's a current debate. Whether or not Neanderthals should be- It's a current debate in my own brain. Just there because I get where you're coming from and a lot of people are like, okay, well, you know what constitutes a different species? Like it comes down to the muddy, like we said, the muddiness of that term. Generally speaking, it's because they have morphologic uniqueness. So for instance, humans are the only hominid that has a chin, we're the only ones. We also have brain cases that are much smaller than Neanderthals. We have a different like limb ratio, which is very unique. So there you've got genetic uniqueness and you've got morphologic uniqueness. And yet we know for a fact that they couldn't interbreed. So they're in nice, the question, you know it would be very similar to looking at polar bears and grizzly bears, which can indeed make a grower bear, which to my knowledge isn't sterile. It may be, but I don't think so. They're- Yeah, I don't know how far off, you know on the genetic markers they actually are to where, and that would be the interesting thing is we don't even know what that line is. You know, like what is that line in the genetic code that makes it a different species? Yeah, I don't think it exists, is the fact- Well, it might not, and it might not, but it kind of still ends up then kind of leaving this really huge open-ended question. I mean, are we really truly talking about a descendancy? Like I mean, is this, because it looks the same, because let me try to give an example. It looks like how I kind of look at this. All right, I'm gonna give you the dumb example first, okay? It's like, okay. So like digging up a tricycle and a bicycle and thinking one evolved from the other, or digging up a Chihuahua and a Great Dane and thinking one evolved from the other. You know, because they have similarities, we can draw, we can assume lots of things. We could assume, number one, that they were just interbred and this happened to be one, you know, small segment of the genome information of that particular kind of creature, or we can go with a more naturalistic assumption that it was actually evolutionary. There was demutation, it was a driving factor, information was added, that information was known what to do and this thing was produced. But I guess, let me draw that all forward now to a big question I'd love to ask you from your expertise. Can I ever breed a flipper dog? Can I have a dog, can I breed a dog that'll have flippers and go swing with me in the ocean? Can I do that? You know, if you had enough time, I do believe that you could. I mean, essentially that's what we saw with pinnipeds, like dogs and pinnipeds, so seals and walruses, they share a common ancestor that had a lot of traits, it was actually probably more dog-like. Well, no, I mean like, can I take a current modern day dog, and not even a wolf dog, because the wolf has a stronger genetic, you know, complete genome. Back to the genetic atrophy again. So like, we have some dog breeds that are just kind of a bit of a genetic nightmare. You know, I mean, they don't survive long, they're generally not happy, they have lots of health issues. They're a mess. If they weren't, yeah, if we weren't there to make sure they survive, they would have gone extinct by then. Yeah, so, you know, I look at things like that and I think, you know, well, when we're digging up dead things, and we're saying they look alike, like, how do we know? Like, how do we know it's an evolutionary, mutation-driven thing, or just some selective breeding, and the species were all kind of there, and then they just all kind of, you know, filtered down to what they are, because, you know, I just kind of see, like, again, let me just bring this back real quick. Yes, please. To a full-blown Christian-esque worldview, okay. So like, God creating a perfect ecosystem, as I've heard kind of the naturalists say, like, well, why didn't God create a perfect? You know, it just all kind of relies upon itself and pristine synchronicity, and it just, you know, never falters that type thing. And what I would say is that the adaptation, the programming adaptation in the species to be able to speciate, to be able to fill vacant gaps in ecosystems was necessary for the survival of the species, because what happens, if you have a perfect ecosystem, it's perfectly balanced, it's perfectly set up, and you just have one severe dynamic event, one dying out of one tiny species, the entire system crumbles. You have to be able to create a system that's able to handle errors that work their way into the system, especially if you're in an environment where there's constantly entropy and breaking down and things like that, I yield. Yeah, sure, so there's a lot to touch on there. So generally speaking, I want to touch on the dog thing first, because I feel like I've heard something a bit similar, but I think your example is somewhat unique in how it was presented. So artificial selection, the only difference between artificial selection, that is to say breeding, and natural selection is that humans are taking on the role of natural selection and intentionally breeding for certain traits that we like. That's how we get all the domesticated animals that we have in domesticated crops and things of that nature. Natural selection does the same thing, except slower, and the decider of which trait should move on is entirely dictated by what works well in that given environment. So if you have a chimpanzee, like let's take, let's look at it in actual frame of how did humans evolve according to conventional science. So we have this stock population of Sahelanthropus genensis. They look very much like chimps. They probably acted very much like chimps and they lived on the eastern African rift. The rifts split apart though, and we can tell based off of rock and soil samples that prior to this split when the eastern African rift kind of moved slightly away, this area was big on rainforests. Now, if you're a tree climbing ape, rainforests are awesome, but the second the trees are gone, who boy? What you need is you need to be able to get around safely on all fours or alternatively, you can stand up and see the predators that are coming at you. And what we see is right after seven million years ago, 13 to seven million, depending if you're looking at divergence or speciation, what we see is this drastic change in habitat and that's what drove the two populations, the one that would end up being chimps and the one that would end up being humans in their respective directions. The rainforest that chimps live in today is mostly unchanged than from the one that the stock ancestral population lived in, but the area that the human population was pulled from that eastern African area where we find all of the fossils, all of the early ones and many of the late ones is bone dry, it's super arid. So what you need to be able to do is you need to be able to get around on two feet, you gotta be a very efficient walker and just biomechanically speaking, two legs is more efficient than four as far as going long distances. This is why ostriches are one of the best long distance renders in the animal kingdom, weirdly enough. So what I'm basically saying is that- Well, but doesn't that mean then there had to be a species that just, I'm sorry. No, please. There had to be, how do I put this? I'm gonna make a mess of this, just bear with me. There had to be some member of, there's had to be some group of that group that had a little bit longer legs or something that they were somehow given the advantage type. It's not like the pressure was, if the pressure was just put on them and they had no mechanism to survive the pressure at all and the pressure would have caused them to go extinct, wouldn't it? So there had to be someone in the group or well, there had to be multiple members of the group that had this trait that would have spurred their evolution forward to carry forward this trait. But if the population was kind of all the same, that would be an extinction event, wouldn't it? Because none of them would now be able to bend to the pressure. Potentially, yes. And that's how many species do go extinct. You could be the most fit population of T-Rexes in the world, but once an asteroid strikes the surface of the planet, there's no sauropods to eat and it doesn't matter because all the plants are dead. So an excellent real life example to this is, and I forget the island, it's an oceanic island. And there are humans that live on this island, this is today, you can find it in any list of are humans still evolving and they'll present this people group. And they have this insane inordinate ability to hold their breath for long periods of time. Olympic swimmers. I heard about that. Yeah, no, they've basically evolved in the water. Well, they say they've evolved in the water, which, and I get what they're saying, like basically they've accustomed themselves to lives in the water. They've almost bred out characteristics to be able to be like Olympic swimmers and spend minutes. No, it isn't, they're almost fish people. No, it is, I've seen that, yeah. Right, and so here's the key, here's the key. I mean they don't have gills, they don't have flippers and they don't have webbed hands, but, you know. Which might be nice. And who knows, if we get a water world type scenario, maybe we'll get that down the line. But the point, I'm tied back because behavior and evolutionary theory, behavior always precedes morphologic change because behavior is more flexible and it can be passed down. So in social animals like primates, we see a lot of behaviors that emerge very quickly and either they get passed on to the next generation and it becomes a quote unquote culture. This is frequently seen in like tool using chimpanzees or it doesn't get passed on and that behavior dives with its progenitor. So in the case of these individuals who are swimming out on this island, what we see is a group of people and this is historical for that location that what they do for their livelihood is they dive for their food. They dive deep out on the water, they get bivalves, they get clams, whatever. So that's the behavior. The holding breath longer is something that is very slowly emerging because as you can imagine, the guys who can swim and bring in the most, bring home the most bacon are probably the ones who are producing the most offspring and they're the ones who are surviving for longer because they're providing for them and theirs. Yeah. So that was an example of pressure, right. Right. And so in this ancestral population, what we probably saw is, and this is total speculation, this is just need like for the sake of the argument saying this is a way it could have happened. We could have one individual, just one plucky young St. Helanthropus Cherensis who peaks up over the grass, stands up on two legs and the next time a predator comes, he's the one that doesn't get eaten. So he starts standing up more and more often. This is the behavior that's starting to sink in as he learns that this behavior prevents the fear and the trauma of almost getting eaten and slowly ensure his relatives or her relatives as if it's a female start picking up on it and you've got a whole group of St. Helanthropus Cherensis that's spending more time on two feet. Maybe they survive, right? That aptitude for standing on two feet is going to be pressured essentially. So the ones who are doing it are getting eaten less and they're passing that behavior first onward. The second there's a mutation that exists to capitalize on that behavior and again, we're dealing with millions of years here for these mutations to occur. By the way, if I may. Yes, please. That is my issue, the millions of years because here's the thing, I tend to think that environmental pressures are usually pretty dynamic and quick and usually detrimental to a species. Like if their ecosystem goes south or something changes or one of their reliant partners in the ecosystem goes extinct. There's this kind of cascade effect that can take place. And so when I look at it and I say, okay, well, these things needed to adapt and adapt quickly because the pressures, the natural pressures that would have been put on them likely would have been quick. Now, I'll try to go back to the Galapagos finches. Let's say the Galapagos finches only had one food source. Let's say there wasn't other potential food sources, other harder seeds or larger seeds that larger beaks could handle. Let's say that wasn't there. Well, the one single event, one single event of wiping out that one food source for those finches and they're all dead, gone. Yeah, that's it. And that's the fate of most species. Well, and that's what I'm saying. So if we're saying that, and here's my problem then, I guess this is where I'm going back to, if that's the fate of most species, like why are we kind of believing that some species create, I'm using this very generically, but create the information to fill the gaps. And it's kind of back to my same thing of like, could we breed a flipper dog? And the reason I say it that way is because, yeah, dogs we have forced basically into selective breeding to get all of these different traits really, really quickly. We've basically gotten dozens and dozens of breeds of dogs in what, two, 300 years, something like that. So we've been able to do with dogs, relatively complex creatures, tons of variations, but we're not breeding anything in a dog that isn't already inside the genome of the wolf. It's not like we're able to somehow breed out a non-wolf characteristic into a dog, something that comes from a different phyla or a different species or family or something like that. We're only getting whatever was included in that genome. And as we continue to do it, as we continue to cross breed, those genomes are breaking down. Like our pressure onto causing the, it's kind of like the inbreeding problem. Like in certain parts of our countries, I'm sure this is something that's part of even your argument or your field of study, certain groups of people will get together and maybe they're too small of a group, they'll inbreed too much and they'll just die out. They're just, that's that genome meltdown situation. They just completely fall apart. So like all of us today, we're all super watered down from what we were to where, basically the population we are today, the idea of inbreeding is a huge thing because our genetic information is so filtered down that these types of errors, these types of transcription errors that we add in through the inbreeding is just disastrous and fatal. But someone, something with a stronger genome bringing it back to the wolf, an inbreeding scenario won't be as detrimental because you're still now starting back with the original species, I guess, from what you're getting all these other breeds from. You understand what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah, I'm with you. But the difference though is with dog breeds, humans are selecting the traits and by and large the traits are aesthetic. Like there are some dogs that we train for doing specific jobs, like they're working. Oh yeah, radders, hunters, fetchers, warpers, oh yeah. And they tend to be the species that in cities that have feral dog problems, if you take their mutts and you look at their, which breeds have led into their sort of classic mutt, it's always the ones that have been more bred for physical prowess, not aesthetic prowess. So they would probably do okay if we let them lose in the wild. I wanna tell you an interesting study I think you should look at. Yeah, please. There's a population of wolves in North America, I believe near Alaska, I wanna say. It's definitely that northern area. And these wolves traditionally hunt, they used to traditionally hunt in the woods there. The local Indian tribes and things like that used to talk about the wolves and hunting down the deer and seeing them when they did that, et cetera, et cetera. But because of how the climate is changing, the deer have migrated to different locations and they were essentially getting very emaciated. They stopped seeing the wolves as often, it's all detailed in the study. But the wolves recently received a resurgence. And the interesting thing is when we look at this wolf population, the wolves spend the majority of their time like elbow deep in water. They spend their time in the tidal pools and on the coastline in the ocean and they hunt fish. And their paws have webs on them. They've got the webbiest paws of all the wolves. Which is something that we, to my knowledge, don't see in any other canid, like across the planet. There are no aquatic... Well, no, I've seen some dog breeds that do have webbed feet. And in fact, I've even seen, in fact, my mom has a golden retriever that we swear. I've got two goldens myself. And the goldens love the water. Goldens love to jump in the water in the pools and stuff like that. And I've had dog breeds that do kind of have that. And I can understand that even type of trait, being inherent, again, it's inside the wolf. To me, it's inside the wolf, it's there. The fact that some of those wolves gravitated towards the water, are they swimming? Like, are they swimming after the fish? Are they just kind of like sitting there waiting for the fish to swim by type thing? I mean, are they opportunistic predators, or are they like... Yeah, to my knowledge, the fish make up the majority of their diet. So I think they hunt... But like, I mean, are they using the webbed feet, or is it just kind of like they happen to have webbed feet? Yes, they're using them. They're patting the fish. Okay, so those animals happen to gravitate towards that environmental. Yeah, they have like a pressure, right? And that's all I'm talking about. Like, I would be interested in which trait... So whichever dogs could catch the fish, one. They stuck around, right? Yeah, because the deer were gone. And so the ones that were better at catching the fish caught the fish, and the ones that had more webs on their feet, and you're right. That probably does exist in the ancestral wolf population, because we obviously bred it into our water dogs. That too golden to myself, very webbed. Well, and I guess maybe to ask you this question real quick then, could we... Of that population of the wolves that have only webbed feet, could we get non-webbed feet wolves out of them again? Yeah, you probably could. Okay. Yeah, you probably could. And you know, there's this concept... Because you don't think that information's lost. Like, it's still there. It's just what, dormant maybe, or... Yeah, it depends. So in humans, right, I'm sure you've seen... Or actually, I think this is a better example. So in whales and dolphins, in cetaceans, when they're undergoing embryologic development, there is a period in the first couple of weeks when they're just an itty-bitty teeny little pea-sized embryo where they have hind limb buds. And when we compare this itty-bitty little tiny pea-sized embryo to that of a human or that of a dog or whatever, they all have limb buds of the same size. They're not reduced or anything like that. They're just limb buds. It's what's supposed to turn into their hind feet. But dolphins actually have a gene that silences those limb buds and stops them from developing. So they come out and then they go back in. And then you have dolphins that don't have hind legs. So the point being, yes, most of the things that re-emerge in populations that were there in an ancestral population, they just never really went away. They weren't necessarily selected against because they didn't really harm anything. That being said, embryologically, it would be metabolically better if dolphins didn't waste energy on making those limb buds and then eliminating them. So, and that leads into my next point, which is that I can't think of it. And I had a professor who put it to me this way and she was like, it was gonna be a long conversation, but you can pretty much take any trait that any organism has and you can walk it back and you can see what first went and emerged in the fossil record and then which precursors maybe it came from. Well, right, and that's kind of my point. Things like that. Yeah, and that's kind of my point is like we see a precursor. We see a, I guess, a more complete version of the information as we like backtrack. So like we get back, we go further back. It seems like we have a more, I guess you would almost, and again, I'm using an assumptive language here, but a more complete, a more stable genome. I mean, even from the law of entropy and of course, even the second law of thermodynamics, that's what I would expect to see. I would expect to find that the information, the caliber of information is a little bit more pristine, hasn't gone through as many potential disastrous mutations or transcription errors over the time. So it's a little bit more stable, I guess, maybe. Well, I would disagree with that because I think there are a lot of traits that we can look at that exist today in organisms that are much more complete or better than they were in previous organisms. Well, and again, that's my point though because now what we're saying is we're saying these morphological differences violate the law of atrophy and thermodynamics. So I guess to me, I'm not, I don't mean to throw this at you, but I think you've made an extraordinary claim and I need extraordinary evidence. So I will do you that service. First of all, the second law of thermodynamics applies to closed systems. And in the world of physics, at least when I took physics, but I took physics like two years ago. So to my knowledge, the earth is considered an open system because the sun is feeding into it. So most organisms on this planet like actually tend to, there's two interesting papers that I'm gonna link in the description here and that I can send to you as well or send to James to you. That they're papers by physicists. And the argument that they make, I think they're like 2018, 2019 papers, so fairly recent. The argument that they make is that one of the reasons why life would be inevitable, quote unquote, as long as the proper ingredients for the primordial soup for lack of a better term were there is because the goal of entropy is to release heat, right? To transfer energy to heat. And nothing is better than doing that than weirdly enough, the structures of RNA and DNA. Like by temporarily organizing your chaos, you end up with more chaos in the long run is the very rudimentary argument that they make. I'm really dumbing it down, but that's the argument that they make in it. And they have all these like whack-o equations that... That sounds bizarre. I would be willing to look at that because right now it sounds like reaching, but I would be willing to look at it. See, you would think that, but like in chemistry, when we have a soup of chemicals, like I'm not not even organic chemicals, any kind of chemicals, what those chemicals do is they self arrange into their most stable form. Now, whether that is by degrading into a more stable form or binding to form something that's less unstable, that's just like a trait of chemicals is that they want to be, quote unquote, more stable. They don't want to break down. So it makes sense to me that the reason that they're doing that, even chemicals, if chemicals follow that rule and then eventually degrade down the line, releasing a lot of heat and in turn amplifying the entropy that wouldn't have been as intense if they just stayed chaotic in the beginning. It kind of makes sense to me that that would apply in sense to biology, but I'll see, I'm eager to hear your opinions on the paper. I have not completely read them because they were very much out of my... Yeah, and once we're kind of getting down to that level of the evolutionary paradigm, I see even more problems than kind of the rest. And I mean, I don't want to turn this into a whole a biogenesis thing, but to me personally, and I've seen multiple PhDs state this, when we're doing experimentation about original life, protein synthesis, or even just the RNA world type experiments, we're not in any way replicating what prebiotic earth looked like based upon our best knowledge. We're kind of jimmy rigging the environment and basically inserting intelligence. So the best example for me is the homochiral problem, which is that you have to have purified, filtered, all left-handed amino acids before you even can do anything at all. And the first experiment to generate amino acids basically created a bunch of left-handed and right-handed amino acids inside a whole bunch of toxic soup. So basically just completely fundamentally, absolutely unusable. I mean, even if it wasn't surrounded by a bunch of toxic mass, even the structure itself was not a homochiral so that it could actually even be used for any type of protein synthesis or folding whatsoever. So that's... I'm sorry, go ahead. No, no, I was gonna say, I think I would love to have a chat with you at some point about ABiogenesis because I'm very loosey-goosey on my biochem like with regards to like... Well, this is all new to me. This is all stuff in the last two weeks because I met some awesome brothers that had kind of been filling me in on it. So this is all kind of new to me, but I don't wanna pick up. Yeah, I don't wanna turn this into an ABiogenesis thing anyway. Really what I wanted to do, if maybe we could, because maybe you could finish up. James, how much time do we have here? Say normally we would go into the Q and A in the next few minutes. Can I maybe just touch on one more topic, see if we can carry this through one quick thing? If Earth has got the time, I've got the time. I've got all the time in the world, James. Okay, so let's just run through this real quick. And it's kind of one of my bigger, I guess you would call it maybe philosophical concerns from the paradigm. And it has to do with kind of whether or not either side is taking a consideration of like confirmation bias. And like, so like for instance, just to kind of give an example for like Darwin. And I know Darwin, of course, has given a lot of credit for the emergence and, of course, the refining of the evolutionary theory. But it's not like, you know, it's not like he was the first one. You know, his grandfather Erasmus, I think was his name. You know, he wrote a book, what is it called? Zuomia or something like that? Zoonomia? Something like that? Yeah, something. And that was kind of some progenitor. That was some information basically his idea on, and I know atheists love to throw at us, indoctrination, indoctrination. But I think maybe Darwin had a little bit of that, you know, training in that type of way of thinking. So I almost feel like when he was going out looking for things, there might have been a little bit of confirmation bias there. And that's okay. I don't, I almost expect it. You know, I almost look for it in what scientists might say or their papers or their arguments or their conclusions. I almost anticipate to see some bias. But what I look for in order to see those people that are really actively tackling their bias is if they're willing to kind of attribute or give falsification criteria to their theories. Like, are they evangelizing? Are they preaching? Are they really pursuing truth? Are they really interested in whether or not this is actually true? And so I guess maybe what I'm seeing is, if it is confirmation bias, how do we, what mechanism do we have in the evolutionary theory to falsify it? Like what do you think maybe we could discover that's actually practical or even realistic that might show, this is all just nonsense. Like we've been kind of filling the gaps with naturalism and assumptions and we shouldn't have been doing that. And now we should leave it more open-ended, because again, I don't expect science to make a conclusion, God did it or God didn't do it. I never expect that to appear in any paper either to the positive or to the negative. If there's anything beyond what science can discover, that's gonna be up to us to draw our deductive and inductive conclusions. But with that all yield, please go ahead. Yeah, so I think that's really interesting. Yeah, so with Darwin, so obviously we have Lamar who came along kind of initially and he was like, yeah, you have Linnaeus who's the father of taxonomy and Lamarck and Lamarck was like, yeah, things tend to inherit the morphologic things that their parents did. Like the giraffe that stretches his neck up really tall and then passes it to his or her offspring and then they already have that minimum of a neck. So you have all of these kind of proto ideas and Erasmus was very similar. He had no idea about natural selection and he kind of touched on heredity. He touched on it. Yeah, he kind of touched on it. It was a little bit on heredity and a little bit of like a little of natural selection but Darwin honed it and did all of that. I called it speciation light. Yeah, sure, sure. I think that's fair enough. But Darwin, looking into Darwin's life is very interesting because he was a devout Christian way past hero origin. And he also was almost going to be an Anglican preacher for the majority of his young life before he was very into like collecting insects and birds and things like that, which is why he took the job to go on the beagle. It wasn't his intent to write a forge of species necessarily when he went on that trip. But he took with him the book written by Charles Lyell on Principia of Geology or whatever. And he was like, oh my gosh, the earth might be very old. What's up with species? How do they come? How do they go? And so while I think that bias is inherent to everyone when given how they interpret things, I don't think that it was especially so with Darwin outside of just the fact that he was like into that kind of thing. Like that was like his jam. He was like in the biology fandom. But to take that a bit further, within the realm of anthropology, there has been fight after fight after fight after fight on which traits came first, who humans are directly related to, whether or not. And of course, there's some very racist terrible things that went on in the beginning of anthropology as there was some very terrible racist things. I read about some of that today. I was a little disgusted. It's awful, but fortunately humans are not great about not being racist sometimes. But there are all of these different ideas that the one that sticks in my head is was it bipedality first or big brain first? And this anthropologist went back and forth and back and forth. Both sides were sure of their conclusion of which evolved first. But what decided it was finding a fossil in a geologic layer that made parsimonious that bipedality did indeed emerge first. There was no other way to piece the puzzle together for lack of a better term and have big brains as the emergent quality. So anthropology is basically just forensics over millions of years. I don't think that, like for me, the kicker is always how on earth can we separate humans from the other apes in a standard way that we can apply to other animals? Because to my knowledge, we can't do it. Now, if someone wants to come up to me and say, I think humans are spiritually special, but quickly I do agree that we are indeed apes. We share all of the same characteristics of apes. Even if they didn't wanna go so far as to be like, I don't think we evolved, even if you wouldn't take that step, I would be like, we do indeed share common ground on that, I'm okay with that. I think that humans, I mean, I would obviously push them on the evolution thing. Yeah, I think I've had no issue. I think I've had no issue kind of even almost saying morphologically, if you wanna classify us as apes, go for it, you know? Yeah, I just, I have a hard, cause I do run and I very much appreciate hearing that from you, cause I have a lot of conversations with folks who are just really not wanting that. And I'm like, it's literally just like an anatomical. It's just, it's literally just, yeah, it's just a morphological classification. It's irrelevant to me. Sure, and because I'm so into primates and things like that in a conversation with that individual, I would take it a step further and I would be like, I also think many of the things, humans do some things that are entirely unique. I would agree with that. I think a lot of animals do also do things that are entirely unique though, which makes our uniqueness not unique, if that's kind of makes any sense. But there's also this gradient of like, so people will say, all right, I'm an ape, whatever, but humans are special because morality and the degree to which humans display morality is indeed very interesting and cool and awesome and in our compassion and cooperation and things like that. There are so many cool studies out there where we show that other primates and even other animals like cetaceans and corvids are cooperative and they mourn and they console and they reconcile and they innovate. And of course it's a gradient, so it's different. Yeah, it's a spectrum, it's a much lower spectrum, but yeah, I think that's kind of the same thing when they play the name of the trait argument. Yeah, and so my thing with that is I look at that and I'm like, okay, it's all a gradient and then people say, how come humans are so far to this side on intelligence? Where are the other ones? And that's when I point to the fossil record and I say they used to be here, but now they're not. Very similar to like a giraffe. Like giraffes are the only animals that have these really, really long necks. Why are they the last ones? Well, probably because of a slurry of different wild pressures in part due to the fact that the current giraffe that we have was just the best at what it did. But when we look to the fossil record, we find all sorts of long necked animals including ones that are just giraffes with shorter necks. So sometimes it just ends up that you have one lineage that outcompetes the rest for whatever reason and manages to make a name for themselves with their specialized trait and for humans that trait was cognitive ability. Like our brains are just so dang big for better or worse. But the cool thing is- Well, but bigness doesn't necessarily mean intelligence though. That's right. I mean, because ravens- Let's look at ravens. You know, they can do something. I mean, ravens understand water displacement. Yeah. I mean, that's incredible. They're so cool. Corvids are awesome. The bird people in ecology though are wild. They think birds are always the smartest. This is my point. Oh, yeah. Sorry, James. I wanted to finish that before you go ahead. Yeah, no, I was just gonna say. Yeah, intelligence is body-to-brain ratio, typically. So brain size with relation to how big the, it's relative to the body size. Which is also seen when we look backwards at the hominids. And we find that in accordance with like, okay, once you reach a certain level, we start seeing like coma erectus using fire. We find their bones and we find ash marks in the caves that they died in, or, you know, tools and jewelry and things like that with Heidelbergensis and Neanderthalensis and all this stuff. And you're like, what the heck was going on in these guys' heads? Like, you know, the first dude who, you know, realized fire keeps me warm was probably like, this is it. Right, right. But yeah, I don't wanna take up too much time. I had a blast talking though. I really enjoyed this conversation. Appreciate it. Yeah, I did too, Erica. Thank you. No, I did too. Well, thank you very much. Both of you, wanna remind you folks that both of the speakers are linked in the description. So if you wanna hear more, what are you waiting for? You can right now. And very excited we're gonna jump into this Q&A. Also, there is an after show. We're willing to announce it no matter what you could say position or what walk of life somebody is coming from. We're willing to plug and put the after show links in the description. So John Maddox, logical plausible, probable, is hosting one tonight. If you'd like to host one, no matter what walk of life you're from, for real, let us know and we will put it in the description for you. So thanks so much. Let's jump right into it. First one, this one comes in from Michael, the Canadian atheist. Good to see you, Michael. Says, James, you demand an evolution in an absolute fact of population genetics. Thanks for your kind words. Says, I don't, it doesn't matter what you think, it's true, yes, it is. I think so that's for you, Smokey. That's not an argument, sir. Michael, okay. Just to be sure you heard it. Yeah, that's, yeah, what we call, sir, I know you might have one. Hold on a second, let me, just to be sure everybody heard it because I read it fast. Evolution is an absolute fact of population genetics. Okay. That was it. Like I said, I wanted to be sure everybody else heard it as well. If you want to respond to what you can. Yeah, no, we've already established that Michael has a lot of empty asserted faith in a lot of things, including his belief at knowledge claims and he's kind of a little bit philosophically illiterate. So, sir, when you're ready to make an argument instead of an assertion, we can have a chat. That's right, you guys have a rivalry, don't you? You guys- We do, sir, yes, of course. iPhone musings, thanks for your positive sticker. Appreciate the positivity, logical, plausible, probable. Here it is, says, don't miss the after show, share your thoughts. Also says, for Erica, do you know what formal prescriptive information is? If so, is such information in genetics? Nope, I don't know what that is. I'm in the midst, LPP, of going through your series of papers. So hopefully I'll get there. Like, I feel like I've read the term, but again, it's very, genetics, my level is okay. Programming, my level is bad. So I will hopefully get back to you on that. I wanna have another conversation with John Maddox. I did enjoy our last chat and once I'm up to date on his papers and a little bit more adept at speaking the programming lingo, I would love to engage once more. Maddox is my boy. Gotcha. And Anthony Aguilar, thanks for your statements at Hello All Longtime Lurker, I like that. Create another channel and subscribe so I could comment. Love the channel and these science debates with Erica in particular. You got a fan out there, Erica. That's very sweet. Next up, Stupid Horror Energy is in the building. She says, HMGA2 is the name of the gene that is responsible for the Finch beak. Different sizes are due to variants. I don't know if that was meant to be in variations, but says it has nothing to do with skull size in humans. No, it's the, yeah, no, she's wrong. It's, I'll pull the paper. It's the exact same gene when they decoded the genome. She just doesn't know what she's talking about, but that's okay. Next, don't worry, she's got plenty more for you. Oh, I bet she does. Sige Vredo, thanks for your question. Said Erica, are science and religion mutually exclusive, or can anyone be a religious scientist? Does something like evolution make this notion implausible? You know what, I have long considered that. And I've heard people from both ends of the spectrum give their thoughts on it. And for me personally, I think that they can absolutely live happily side by side. I think there are a lot of excellent scientists for a lot of very different walks of life out there who all do some really great work. I think if you're going to be in biology, typically knowing evolution tends to be good, especially if you're going into pathology or virology or anything like that, where evolution plays a very large role in anticipating disease and things of that nature. But that being said, I mean, I used to be like a really diehard and theistic evolutionist. And it wasn't science that ever impacted my thoughts on the matter. So I absolutely believe that those things can go hand in hand. Look at like Francis Miller, the Human Genome Project. You've got like, Theodosius Dobzanski. He was another big one. There are tons of awesome folks out there, even evolutionary biologists who also have their faith. And I think that's awesome. Really cool. And thanks for your question, Mr. Clark. Or didn't see a question, but I know you have one coming up. So Danish Debater, thanks for your question says. Erika, congratulations. James Erika, James nice tone going on. Tone? Thank you. And I hope the entire debate will be pleasant and informative. Erika, can we see the papers? Ooh, which papers are we talking about? I'm going to take, I have my little list to the side here of the ones that I owe in the chat. So as soon as I'm done with the Q&A, or I guess I have to wait until this is posted, but I'll put the, I'll throw them up there. Oh, and they also corrected. They said, that was, they said, sorry, what I meant to say is James Erika and Smokey, thanks to all three. So thanks for that. Appreciate it. Okay, cool. And it's okay, I felt I was being left out. It's all right. No, you're very loved. Okay, thanks for your question says, the language is complex chemistry. The emergence of biology is not so crazy when you think hydrogen and oxygen, two gases can form something wet. Oh wow. Yeah, dude, try to come and debate that trash in my channel. Sometimes please, we got, we got a couple of chemists and some guys that love to talk to you. Feisty. And Sigefratos Rabia, thanks for your other question says, Erika, did astralopithecus ever really exist if they were hominids the whole time? Are, why are we not called astralopithecus sapiens versus homo genus? That's a really good question. I think generally speaking when we're like, you'll remember the chart that I showed in my presentation that shows a whole lot of overlap with regard to kind of the who's who depending on their ratio of traits. So when we look at things like when you hear someone say we're related to Lucy, we might be, but we also, the reason they give them that specific genus and species name is because it might also be an organism that we haven't found yet that was very similar to astralopithecus afarensis. So it's kind of a dicey situation because we're working with an incomplete fossil record and you can't very well give everything the genus homo, right? So what we essentially do is, separate it out by trait ratios and kind of put a pin in it. Which I, you know, I mean, a lot of people complain about how science changes around a lot. I think that's great. I think science should change when new information comes to life, where it comes to light. I think it's one of the very few aspects of life that should be given a free pass to change so long as they weren't coming out initially and being like, this is it, this is for sure the case, which unfortunately a lot of pop science articles do frequently, which is why I always recommend to read the original paper. But long story short, taxonomy is complicated. Gotcha. And look at the traits. You got it, thank you. And Ger, Mania, thanks for your question. Said, this is, I think for Smokey. Says, if evolution was garbage, how would that resolve all the bloodshed contradictions and flawed logic in the Bible, such as God knowing atheists will be damned to eternal hell, yet making them anyway? Yeah, you're a predestinarian. You just have a very low-witted and unintellectual perspective of both reality and the God claims. If you'd like to unpack it, you're welcome to come to my channel, but you're disastrously undereducated on the things which you're claiming to reject. Gotcha. And happy dude, thanks for your super chat. Said, my favorite channel, ignore the haters. Appreciate that. And I can assure you, the haters only make me more motivated. So we're excited about the future and we appreciate that positivity. Ian Chen, thanks for your super chat. Said, Erica, great debate. You're so articulate, thumbs up. Ian, Ian is awesome, dude. He's like, absolutely one of the most based people I know. So very, thank you Ian. Continue to be the way that you are. Gotcha. And thanks for your question statements from Mr. Cluck says, Smokey, what is the difference between faith and fact? Please explain, please. Gosh, what is with these questions tonight, guys? Come on. Okay, faith is nothing more than confidence. You know, you believe things based upon confidence, facts are something that exists in the natural world. You can believe or disbelieve a fact. You know, this is all about individual epistemology. You're asking non-comparative questions here, trying to get an answer. It's nonsense to me. And thanks so much, appreciate your question. This one comes in from Blue Heron asks, if you found the evidence for evolution compelling, would you be okay with being an evolution accepting Christian? Is that for me? Yes. Or is that for her? Did I, maybe I said that wrong. I think that's for you, Smokey. If you found the evidence for evolution compelling, would you be okay with being an evolution accepting Christian? Yeah, I mean, I don't have anything inside my book that particularly excludes that. So I suppose, yeah, if I could actually find the, I don't find the evidence to be compelling enough. I feel it to be kind of just a bunch of assumptions laid on top of assumptions stacked on top of assumptions. And then when you put all the assumptions together, you call it evidence. And I guess, I guess I just have a problem with that. Gotcha. And thanks so much for your question. This one, this is a logical, plausible probable says, open mic after show time responses before group discussion, look for the link in the chat. That's true. Just do me a favor, don't post it. Don't copy and paste it. No spam. Yeah, we're pretty flexible, easy going, but if you can help us out. Jeff Sol, thanks for your question, says this is a crucial service for everyone. Thank you, appreciate that. Jeff really do, the positivity seriously means a lot folks. Love it. Danish debater, thanks for your question, said, has anyone seen CDK007's quote, evolution is a blind watchmaker video? Just because Smokey mentioned try slash bicycles, I find it a fun and informative simulation. Yeah, I haven't checked out that particular video. No, I have not. Gotcha. And Mothra J. Disco, thanks for your super chat, that Eric Rivals are in raw on educating creationists. Love the channel, James, keep it up. Thanks for that, Mothra. You got a fan, Erika. Mothra's too sweet. There are a lot of sweet hearts out there, you guys better stop it or I will find you and I will give you a hug. Gotcha, and Jungle Jargon, thank you for your statement. Question says, Erika, since copying errors in the genome result in sideways variation plus backwards loss of function, where is the forward mechanism for evolution? Well, it depends on the environment. That's the thing, evolution is entirely dependent on mutation meets selection and what typically dictates selection is environment. So duplication under some circumstances can indeed be a bad thing, just as frame shifts can or deletions, but they can also be good things and help you out if the proper pressures are at hand and if you have like the necessary material kind of, there's this idea of precursor mutations where it's like if you've got a three-parter, we can need all three aspects to create, I don't know, a flagella. Having the first two, they're kind of silenced and don't really do anything to harm you, but the third activates all three. I think there's a better term for it and I'm just messing it up. I need someone to give me a corrections corner on that, but yeah, that's what I would say. I would say it's very dependent. I think that fitness is frequently misunderstood and environment is often downplayed. Gotcha, and thanks for your question from Roadstar1602, says Erica Superpower is making any conversation civil. Oh, that's sweet. Listen, I think that people hopefully know me well enough by now to know that I genuinely just enjoy the conversation and that's what I'm here for. So I'm not trying to like hurt anybody's feelings. It's more a statement on how much of a jerk I am than that you made it civil, so that's probably. Oh, Smokey, I had a great, you were very sweet to me. I tried, I tried very hard. I know, I can, ooh, I riled people up sometimes. Next logical plausible, probable strikes again, says after show kicks off five minutes after the debate ends. Absolutely, that's linked in the description and as mentioned, folks, no matter what lack of life you come from, we will link you in the description if you have an after show, just let us know. Motherday Disco, thanks for your question, said we have artifacts that are 10,000 years old, so. Okay. It's for you Smokey. Okay, well, I'm not, what does he think? I'm still young earth, is that what he thinks maybe? Yeah, I don't, I guess I don't care maybe. Next up, Gregory Salyers, thanks for your question, said if he is concerned about inbreeding, then how do you explain Adam and Eve? Well, again, that was me back to making my point that at some point, our genetic information was really, really pristine, like prime stock. You know, didn't have as many mutations, errors, all of the races of mankind were ultimately filtered down into these people. So inbreeding was not an issue until the genome got filtered down, watered down to a certain point where those errors in the transcription through inbreeding would be an issue. That's my perspective. Gotcha. And thanks so much for your question from Andy McElravi, appreciate it, says it seems like Smokey mostly believes in evolution and is just afraid to let go of his god belief for philosophical reasons. I don't, I don't need. Great job, hold on, I'm not done insulting you yet. Great job, I'm kidding. They finished with great job, Erica. Okay, well, now you have to reread it because I'm really tired and you messed up my brain. Now you gotta reread it. They said it seems like Smokey mostly believes in evolution and is just afraid to let go of his god belief for philosophical reasons and great job, Erica. Yeah, nothing about evolution or science precludes or includes God at all. So, so evolution has no statement on the matter whatsoever. Now, if evolution fails to answer things naturalistically that behooves me to start looking for non-naturalistic explanations. And I think I'm certainly approved for doing so. So I just, the simple fact is that you guys wanna claim naturalism of the gaps and you can just fill it with this blind empty faith that someday naturalistic processes will explain it. Doesn't mean you get to condescend to me for believing that intelligent agent is most likely essential for these processes to emerge. You're the irrational one, not me. Gotcha. And Ezekiel, Brad, thanks for your questions that Erica, is there a way God could fit into your worldview? Smokey, is there a way evolution could fit into your worldview? Yes, yeah, I, again, I used to be a very fervent theistic evolutionist. I would consider myself agnostic or an agnostic atheist. I guess I'm working through sort of the theology aspects of things and just seeing what I think. I was raised Christian and then I was like very, like I said, very into theistic evolution for quite some time after I left Young Earth. And so, yeah, I'm always open to new information and I think everyone's just trying to find out the truth. I hope that's what everyone's trying to find out. Yeah, I don't seem to quite understand what this obsession is with the how. Like the how will necessarily even tell you whether or not there is a who. You're gonna have to extrapolate from the information inside the how, even with the basic information we have to get to it. Like atheists seem to have this idea. Like if, like we somehow have to tell them the how and yet they don't. And I guess that really kind of perplexes me because like, you know, you're telling us that we need to tell you how, exactly how God did it in order for us to be able to validate God when we're saying the fact that there's no naturalistic method to explain it seems to elude to intelligence. This is a more rational, more direct interpretation of the information in my opinion. And by the way, just a quick side note in terms of any of the other people asking about whether or not evolutionary theory as it's presented or any of the data that's been presented so far is in any way ultimately contradictory to my worldview. No, I don't think evolution based upon what it's trying to prove has actually made its case which is essentially naturalism. I don't think evolution has proved naturalism. And so I don't have to believe that. Gotcha. And thanks for your question. This one comes in from Josiah Hansen. Says, congrats to Erica. She was just nominated for team skeptics debunkie award in the non-flurf debunker division. I fought for your nomination team, Erica. Ugh, I'm honored. I didn't even know I was up for the award but I'm glad that you were fighting for me. Very special, exciting stuff and stupid whore energy throws her hat into the ring. Oh, I bet it's for me. Yeah, I bet it's for me. She says, actually, actually, Darwin started out as a big fan of William Paley's design argument. Interesting. Well, good for him. Why did he change? Could you have? You know, I mean, you know, that's a funny thing to say that and say that he was a fan. What do you mean a fan? Like he read it? Because that's not what he landed on. That's not what he proposed. That's not what he pushed. So what point are you making, madam? I yield. Next up, thanks for your question. Scott Duke says, I wish I had an intelligent question to ask. So I'll just say thanks to James and thanks to my favorite science communicator, Erica. We all need to thank James on this day. James hauls out here all the time and listens to all of us argue with each other and he puts up with the smile on his face. So give my good job. Thank you, whatever compliment put it James this way. He deserves it. That's nice of you. I have to pass it over to dearest Smoky. Don't worry, Smoky, you're not forgotten. Look at you in your picture. You look so sad. Your head is down. And then next, Roy Stigall. Thanks for your question says, remember that time Smoky was right about anything? Yeah, me neither. Congrats, Erica and James. Stay sexy. I appreciate that. Yeah, I love it when the cultists will actually send a super chat. Yeah, it's okay, bro. It's okay, I appreciate you. Flume666, thanks for your super chat. Support, didn't see a question attached but let me know if you have one that you'd like me to read. LunaticThinker says, love this channel, Smoky. I don't like your point of view but I respect you being genuine in this discussion. Second law of thermal dynamics only affects closed systems, by the way. Yeah, you can call it closed or open all you want. We still see in our universe that order breaks down. It doesn't increase in order. Doesn't increase in specificity. Everything breaks down. Now, whether or not you wanna directly apply it to the law of thermodynamics or simply just generally the rule of atrophy. We do not see any type of manifestation in our reality, the type of paradigms that the naturalists are promoting through the evolutionary theory. If you have something to present, sir, come into my stream and give me evidence. I'd be interested in hearing it. Gotcha, and Gabrielle Kay, thanks for your question, says, if you have chemists who understand emergence, I will definitely come to your channel but it's a cute way to promote your channel. Jesus and I both love you. Guess that's maybe for me. I don't know who that's from. Gabrielle Kay, appreciate it. You've baffled us all, we appreciate it. I think she maybe was talking about me because I said something about, I have a pharmaceutical chemist named Tony and he's in my stream and we kind of proposed to the atheist to come and dare prove that there's any watertight evidence for a biogenesis whatsoever. So yeah, any of you atheists that think you have any type of coherent argument for the origin of life, please come to my channel, try to pitch it, we're waiting. Gotcha, and Macracy, thanks for your question, said, Erica, can creationists accept new information? I feel like that's more of a play on words. So I will just say, I have known creationists to accept new information, yes. Gotcha, that is a clever pun if it was. All right, thanks for your, Jim Benton, thanks for your question, said, how do I participate in a debate? If you email me at moderndatabate at gmail.com, we will try to get you set up. And that is open to anybody. Want to let you know, folks, we're open to anyone coming on to debate. So for real, no matter what walk of life, Christian atheist, even if you're one of those like political, like extremist, like gay straight, you name it. No matter what walk of life, we do want you to feel included and welcome and you're welcome to come on and make your case. And so, Jim, if we hear from you, excellent, we'll try to get you set up. And again, Twitter DM is also a great way to reach me. Facebook messaging, I don't check as much. It's really cumbersome. It's so slow to open it from my page. Stupid whore energy, thanks for your question, said, there's another Finch gene called ALX1. That does affect face shape in humans, but it's variants that cause the different beak sizes. The beak sizes aren't all already in the ancestral gene. Yeah, no, no, the information for them is. She's trying to oversimplify what I actually said. The genetic information for all of the crossbred species, everything that bred out from the ancestral feature, the Finch, the genome included the information that was necessary for different beak sizes that could have filled in the gaps of the ecosystem. That was essentially what I was saying. Gotcha. Jungle jargon says, are Christians accepted here? Aren't you a Christian jungle jargon? But we absolutely, everybody is. By the way, one thing I do want to mention, we have so few Muslim guests. So I do want to let you know we would love to have more Muslim debaters. I'll debate a Muslim any day of the week, James. Please get me a Muslim to debate. If anybody knows, anybody who comes from a Muslim worldview, please help us. If they love to debate, we'd love to have them on as we definitely want to have everybody have their chance on an equal playing field here. Gabriel Kay, thanks for your question. This is for, I think, for logical plausible purposes. Dude, why are you spamming James? Earn your own crowd. This is not logical or probable or possible. Don't be a clown. Biggers can't be streamers. I appreciate that. But yes, as I mentioned, anybody, if Atheist channels or any type of channel wants to have an after show, let us know, we will link it. It's true, John Maddox does a lot of after shows, but the door's open to anybody. So flume or flume, let me know if I mispronounced that. 666, thanks for your super chat. Didn't see a question, but if you have one, just let me know in the live chat and I'll read that out for you. Just, oh wait, Spart, I forgot yours. Spart344, thanks for your question said, as for the, let me see if I can get this back. X, I'm sorry, as for the second law of thermodynamics, is the earth an open or closed or isolated system? Well, again, it doesn't matter. And I don't know unless someone can show me some sort of definitive paper evidence on that of exactly what it is and what they're trying to apply it to. Again, it's still irrelevant to my point. Order breaks down, specificity breaks down, information breaks down, it doesn't increase in order, it doesn't get better with time, things do not improve with time, everything breaks down. If you have an example of something that doesn't, even in biology or evolution, please just give it to me. Stop asking me nonsensical abstracts about something that isn't even my point. Gotcha. And thank you for your, you had a long day today. I did. His tomato has got fried by the sun, people. Take it easy on him. We'll see. That's true. So thanks for your question. This one is from, hold on, I missed one. Brian Stevens. Good to see you buddy says, question for Smokey. Does he have a competing scientific theory to evolution or is he just a beta? Well, again, yeah, that's fine. Yeah, again, I'm not really trying to defeat evolution and then certainly everyone kind of defines it differently. What I'm trying to defeat is the idea of naturalism being the driving factor that you can interpret all of this through naturalistic lenses and still be coherent with not having to prove your case that naturalism is true. It's not, it's not honest. It's not genuine. All you're doing is trying to avoid the natural burden of proof you yourself have. It's not something you get to just run from and deny. It's philosophically relevant and it's there. So if you guys don't want to address it, that's up to you, but you're just being religious zealots. You're not being rational skeptics. You're being irrational cynics. So get yourself a little self-actualized with some of these questions. Gotcha. And thanks for your super chat from John Maddox. Logical, plausible, probable. He jabs back saying, I literally super chat, not bag in all caps. So thanks for your question. Okay. Yeah, let him have, that's a good closing word if we've got no other, oh wait, we do. I was gonna say. Oh wait, there's one from Spart. Spart is giving me the last half of his question because I got the first half. Then, Macracy, thanks for your questions. I'd please debate, Russia gate, Ukraine gate, and impeachment. Those are good ideas, that'd be fun, especially kind of wondering like, what would impeachment, how would that be? Like, just should it happen? I think that's what they mean. Spart, got your question. Okay, thanks for your patience, Spart. Their question. And then we gotta wrap up folks. I wanna let these guys get to sleep at a decent time. I think Smokies in California, Erica is in, you're on the East Coast, right? Oh, normally I am. I've been back and forth a lot of visiting family, like non-stop, it's been actually kind of terrible, like driving back and forth. So right now I'm actually in central time, but normally I'm Eastern. Nice. What's that bag for me today? Which state? Right now I'm in Tennessee. Pretty dang. And Smokie is in California, but he, you know, he still usually goes to bed at like eight, so you gotta wrap this up fast. I'm an old man, I'm an old man these days. So thanks for your question. This is from Spart344. Says if we took all, oh, did I get this? Nope, that can't be right. Give me two seconds. I got this, I promise. We'll get it, we'll get it. Just give it time. Let's see, that reminded me of, okay, so Spart344 says if we took all of the bones that Erica laid out in her opening, is it fair to say that the progression seems like it would be climbing an improbable mountain with James being at the peak? Thank you for that. I really thought that was going a different way, but I really like where it ended up. That's great. If you want to, let's see, if you want to respond, Smokie will give you a sec and then. Yeah, no, that's funny, that's all good. I'm sure if you placed James's skull postmortem next to all of them, it would appear like we've just. Yeah, I think James would almost, yeah, James would have to be like the prime specimen. The next step. Yeah, like when Hitler was writing Mind Conf, he had James in his mind. He's like, this is the one. No, that doesn't sound good. No, that doesn't sound good. No, that doesn't sound good. No, that doesn't sound good. Did I make it weird? Did I make it weird? Yes. No, we didn't do this thing nasty. Gabrielle Kay thinks your question said cry Maddox, Smokie, you start on infinite turtles. What? What does that mean? Is that like a turtles all the way down thing? I don't, I know the phrase, but I don't know if that's. Yeah, I don't know what that, do you know what it means? I don't know what that means. That was my guess is there was a reference to that, but I don't know, I don't, did you ever bring that up? Is that what you believe? What, what, that the world's sitting on a turtle? Yeah, big turtle. Many turtles, okay. I think that, oh yeah. So I think we're all caught up on questions. So thanks folks, really do appreciate it. Wanna let you know we are stoked folks. As this Friday we will have an epic Flat Earth debate. Tom Jump returns for the first time ever taking on Austin Whitsett-Gitzett, who is, you could say kind of like Nathan Thompson's, would it be fair to say kind of, I don't know if I'd say apprentice, but he's got a lot of Nathan Thompson debate style in his arsenal. So yeah, Erica's- Tune in, tune in everyone. Earl Buddy Nathan, yeah, but we are very excited for that one. So yes, folks, we really appreciate you. Just wanna let you know, thanks so much for all the encouragement. It means a lot. You really do, you have no idea. It really does mean a lot. So feel free to hit that like button on the way out if you wanna support this stream. We really appreciate it. And most of all, thanks so much to Erica and Smokey just for being here, hanging out with us. It's a privilege. Awesome, thanks guys, appreciate it. Thank you. So with that, folks, keep zipping out the reasonable from the unreasonable, take care.