 Everybody, today we are debating whether or not atheism is the default, and we are starting right now. Ladies and gentlemen, thrilled to have you here. We have one echo. I just have to figure out where this echoes. There it is. Got it? So, with that, ladies and gentlemen, we are thrilled to have you here. Today's epic debate on whether or not atheism is the default is going to be an epic one. If you're in the live chat, if you can let me know. If there is an echo for you, or if it's just for me. No echo. Oh, that's terrific. I'm the only one hearing it. That's good. I can deal with it. So, thanks for being here, folks. We are very excited for this epic debate, as today we will be debating whether or not atheism is the default. We have our dear friends Randall and deflating atheism. It's going to be a great time. Oh, that's terrific. I'm the only one hearing it. With that, that's good. Very excited folks to have you here. So, thanks for being here, folks. What we're going to do is we're going to do this epic debate, as today we will be debating whether or not atheism is the default that we are very excited for, including if you haven't heard about it somehow. It's going to be a great time. We are going to have Mike Jones and Matt Dillon to debate on whether or not they're good reasons to believe in God this coming Saturday. So, that's going to be an epic debate, folks, very big debate coming up. Also, I want to let you know that our guests have the links in the description. So, both Randall and Mike Jones and Matt Dillon. There is an echo. Okay, forgive me, guys. I'm so sorry, you guys. That's going to be an epic debate. Very big debate coming up. There's a little microphone noise on your right. Our guests have the links in the description. Randall, there's a really bad echo. Oh, I know what it is. There is an echo. That's embarrassing. I just took care of it. Thank you, guys, so much. All gone. Oh, that's so embarrassing. Thanks so much for your patience, everybody. So excited to be here. We tried. We're basically doing a new way of streaming in which we have these future events that are coming up. And so, that's what you were hearing as we were doing this. And it's all good now, though. So, thanks, both Randall and deflating Atheism for your patience. We've still got, it looks like everybody stuck around. Thanks for your grace, everybody. Everybody's Odyssey. I gotta say, I was telling both Randall and deflating Atheism before we started. I was like, this is honestly, it puts me in such a good mood. I'm so thankful for the debaters coming here. There's a lot of places they can debate. So we're thankful they come here to hang out with us. This channel, the debaters are the lifeblood of the channel. Like they make it great. And so, if you enjoy this channel, want to let you know, please give those debaters a thank you and just let them know how much you appreciate them. And if you do enjoy what you're hearing from them, if you're like, mmm, I like that. I want to hear more of that. You can click on their link and subscribe in the description box just down there. If you can see in that little description box down there. Now, we are very excited. So, basically for today's debate, though, we're going to have Randall leading off. It's a flexible 10 minute opening statement. And for that, somebody's asking for a microphone check. You bet. I think that it's a little bit, I can turn you guys up. I've got you guys up like pretty good now. Randall, go ahead and if you guys want to say hello, thanks for being here, you guys. Hello, I'm Randall Richardson. I'm with the Canadian atheists and I'm here to argue that atheism, the absence of belief in deities is in fact the default when we're born. You betcha. Thank you very much. And deflating atheism. Thanks for being here as well. What have you? Hello, my name is deflating atheism. I'm the provider of the YouTube channel, deflating atheism, which is now pretty much moribund. So please do subscribe because YouTube is making it very difficult to organically grow your YouTube channel these days. But yes, thank you for having me on. Gosh, you betcha. And also before I forget, first I want to say thank you so much for MathPig and Tony Designs. Tony Designs very, very cranky moderator. I love you, Tony. But Tony is like, we're working out this like, what do we allow in terms of like abuse in the live chat, stuff like that. Obviously, we don't want to hate speech. Tony has, he sticks to the YouTube guidelines, which is kind of like, hey, who can blame them? I mean, that's pretty smart, right? We're on YouTube. So if Tony ever says, hey, please don't call the debater the B, or it's like, it's also true. It's like, well, we're thankful to have the debater. So please don't call, please don't abuse the debaters. If anybody lob your anger at me, I'll take it. But MathPig and Tony Designs have set up a discord for us. We will party there after this debate. So we're, it's a Randolph I know can make it and deflating atheism. I was so, I'm so bad at reminding the, I didn't let him know on time. So he might not make it, but it's going to be a party. Everybody's invited Christian atheists, no matter who you are, we hope you feel welcome there. We'll be partying in the discord after, and that's linked below in the description if you haven't seen our discord yet, which again, thanks to Tony Designs and MathPig for setting that up. So anyway, stoked. We're going to let Richard get the ball rolling as he's going to make his case for why atheism is the default and so flexible 10 minute opening, you know, something like that. So thank you for being here again, Richard, and the floor is all yours. Randolph. Oh, gosh, I got that you're a mix of your first name and last name. Thank you Randolph. Thank you. No problem, James. Well, thank you very much for having me on this program. It's a pleasure to meet deflating atheism. The proposition today is basically in a form of a question whether we are born knowing, believing in a deity or multiple deities or not believing in any. It seems to me that we're born under the concept of tabula rasa, which means blank slate, which is a term that is used in philosophy. And it seems to make sense to me since the brain is still going through major development at the time of birth. And we are starting out, we may have some personal character traits, personality traits and things that will incline us to have certain interests in the world or just because it matches these things. But I think that when it comes to believing in a deity or a number of deities, there is a minimum intellectual requirement of having at least a basic idea of the concept of what a deity is. It doesn't have to be a full complex concept, a fully involved concept. It just has to be a very basic general idea. So first that idea has to be formed. And then after that idea is formed, it would then be possible to believe in that deity. So how this idea gets formed, some people created. But I think based on what I've seen throughout my life, it seems that most people are introduced to it by somebody else, maybe through a book or maybe because word of mouth or because of their social circles. What is very interesting is if there is supposedly a deity to believe in. And the idea being that this deity has imprinted this belief on us at the time of birth or even before then, so that we're ready for it when we're born, why is the result different in so many different parts of the world where some people are believing in a single monotheistic deity. It could be Allah from Islam. It could be the Christian God. It could be goddess from some other faith or it could be a number of deities in a polytheistic religion. So I think it's it's going to be interesting to hear the explanation for why there is this discrepancy as well. I'm not convinced that it's the case. I'm I don't want to go so far as to claim definitely not because I don't know the minds of those who are newly born. But I looking back on my own experience, I have never held a belief in a deity. So it just to me, it seems to make more sense that we're born without any beliefs and without any knowledge. And we develop this over time as we get older. Thank you very much. You bet. Thank you very much. Randolph always a pleasure. And now we will switch it over to deflating atheism for his opening as well. Glad to have you here as well, deflating. Thank you. I kind of anticipated that that he might lean more towards the lack of belief atheism. I try to cover both bases in my opening statement. But I think a lot of the content I'm responding to here is our positions he will take later on as to a more kind of Gnostic God does not exist. So I'll just start with what I printed out a half an hour ago. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy states in philosophy at least atheism should be construed as the proposition that God does not exist or more broadly the proposition that there are no gods. As such, atheism represents a truth claim and quote as such atheism represents a truth claim and truth claims encourage burden of proof. Contrary to received atheist folk wisdom, the burden of proof admits of no exceptions, not for negative claims, not extraordinary claims or default positions. However, one may choose to define those terms. Now, at this point, many contemporary atheists the mirror claiming that theirs atheism is not the strong atheism of one who asserts as a matter of fact that God does not exist. But rather theirs is the weak atheism, the lack of belief atheism they presumably share with babies, raccoons and tree stumps. In my back and forth with the moderator about the topic of this debate, I made it clear that I had no interest in debating whether lack of belief atheism is the default position since to grant the possibility that a default position could be a non position or an absence of a position would be to set the debate on a nonsensical foot. If Randolph Richardson's atheism means only Randolph Richardson lacks a belief in God, all I have to say is I agree Randolph Richardson does lack a belief in God, and there's no basis for debate since there's no disagreement. Moreover, the definition of atheism as the absence of a belief or the absence of a position would fail to account for commonly encountered atheist assumptions of the improbability of God's existence or the irrationality of theistic belief, which are the hallmarks of the adversarial brand debate, internet atheism. All this has been said, I have an evidential belief in God, I believe the existence of God can and must be supported by good reasons. I trust you will find my attitude reflects that of the entirety of Christian apologists and the majority of Christians as a whole. The idea that a person should be compelled to believe in God unless God's existence is disproven is anathema to my way of thinking. By the same token, the idea that a person should be compelled to disbelieve in God until God's existence is proven is similarly anathema to my way of thinking. And it's not because I don't have evidence. In my experience, when an atheist demands evidence of God from you, they will swat away your justifications for theism with facile objections and one liners, and then expect you to default to their preferred assumption. We call an argument from ignorance is to sell short the atheist offenses to reason, an argument from ignorance is when a debate or expects his opponent to accept his preferred premise in the absence of opposing evidence. Atheists, on the other hand, expect their opponents to accept their preferred premises after evidence has already been provided, but they personally are not convinced. My experience to accept the premise that God doesn't exist until atheists are persuaded by the evidence otherwise is to accept the premise that God doesn't exist full stop, because atheists refuse on principle to be persuaded by any evidence. I'm sorry, but atheist refusal to be persuaded by evidence of God doesn't entail a compulsion for me to accept their preferred assumptions is true. Just as a flat earthers are fused to be persuaded by evidence of around earth doesn't entail a compulsion for me to accept their preferred assumptions is true. I'm going to skip this part. Atheists will often involve invoke the null hypothesis of scientific methodology, or the innocent until proven guilty presumption of innocence in American jurisprudence to support their claim that negative claims are the default position, or that negative claims bear no burden of proof. Both these analogies fail for reasons that will be happy to explain in the body of this debate. And I have other stuff written here that I'll skip. Lastly, is the matter of the of the intellectual cowardice of flinging arrows at an opponent from an undefined intellectual position, or taking a superior condescending attitude towards them. And then when challenged to justify your own beliefs, denying that you have any beliefs to defend, to Randolph Richardson and to all atheists who cower behind the notion of atheism is the default position. I ask you please have the cards of your convictions. I went a little adversarial at the end there. I kind of misjudged the tenor of this debate. But that's okay. That's fine. Thank you very much, gentlemen, for those those short and pity, a very fun opening statements. We'll now get rocking and rolling into the open discussion. And so I just love the the internet allows us to do so many things. And it allows us to bring people totally different perspectives and so together from across the world in some cases. So with that, gentlemen, we are thrilled to hear your open discussion. Thanks again. Well, first of all, I'm going to take issue with the with the assertion that atheists hold a superior attitude. In my opening statement, I did mention that belief in a deity does require a minimum level of intelligence. Atheism doesn't have such a requirement. So what I'm actually arguing here is based on the idea that theism does require a superior level of intelligence. I think there may have been a misread on on my approach on this. So so you would you would agree with the proposition that a tree stump is an atheist? If you want to include atheists, if you want to include tree stumps into the classification of not believing in deities, then I guess so. I don't see it as very useful for this debate because I think we're talking about when people are born, what is the default? But it could be used in that way. I don't really use it in that way. There are some people who do. I believe bionic dance is one who's examined this and accepted it. And I don't really have an objection to it. I just don't see the relevancy. OK, well, I think it becomes problematic to any degree you kind of extend it. Like I said, as I said in my opening remarks, if Randolph Richardson's atheism is simply a Randolph Richardson lax of belief in God, there's no basis for debate at that point. I agree. I agree with I claim I have no reason to believe that what you state about what you say about your own mental state is inaccurate. I hope you're not trying to get out of this debate because it sounds like that. When you say lack of belief, I do take issue with calling it a lack because I feel that lack implies that there's something that's normally missing. I normally use the word absence because it's more neutral from my understanding. And I mean it in the neutral sense of the term that it's it's not something that replaces a position. I quite clearly view atheism as as a classification, not believing in deities and anti-theism as the position that there are no deities and theism that there's a position that there is at least one or more deities. They're all those are anti-theism and theism would be opposites on the belief position spectrum. As far as the Stanford encyclopedia is concerned, the philosophy, it does ignore linguistic structure. It does ignore anti-theism, doesn't even define it. And it is esoteric within their circles of philosophy. I find that the term atheism does is polysemic polysemus, so it has multiple meanings. It is used in different ways and because it's used in different ways, I look at what is the fundamental in the meaning of this. And fundamentally where everything gravitates toward with the term atheism is just that not believing in deities. The other things are valid uses as well, but fundamentally it is just simply not believing in deities. And when we're talking about when we're born, whether we believe in something or not, I think that it makes sense to discuss fundamentals of these definitions as well because we're talking about the fundamentals of life here. Okay, well, do you mind if I kind of table that for the time being? No, probably if you want to get back to it later, anytime is fine with me. Yeah, so you said something about linguistic structure. Are you talking about the etymology of the word atheism itself? Well, I did mention etymology separately as well. A linguistic structure is you have prefixes, for example, the anti-prefix denotes opposition, where as the a prefix denotes absence or without something. And that's the linguistic structure. The etymology just happens to work with that and be consistent with that. Okay, well, you are aware that atheism is actually, I mean theism, rather, is actually a back formation of atheism. Term theism was coined centuries after the word atheism, where atheism was coined from the Greek atheos, which is godlessness. So it is technically, it is the ism of godlessness rather than the lack of theism. Actually, the French language did clarify that they got it from the Greek language and they introduced atheism approximately 80 years, if I recall correctly, before introducing theism to the language. And then from there is where English got it. And the French are very clear about it. So, I think that, hold on one second, forgive me. I think that, Randolph, it's a, if you're able to speak up just a little bit louder and then deflating, if you're able to push your mic just a little bit further. Sorry. I'm basically, I'm splitting the difference because the gain on your mic is probably a little higher deflating. And so I'm trying to, so you're a little bit louder. My mic was on the table. I've got it in my hand. Now is this better? Yeah. Much better. Definitely. Thank you. So, but I do look at that with the Greek having atheism, the A, I see it as a prefix. That is how it is commonly defined. That is how it is laid out in the etymology as well. So that's consistent with the linguistic structure. So that's what I'm going with. And that's what most of the world seems to be going with. We see a lot of different dictionary definitions. And a competitor to Stanford's encyclopedia of philosophy is the internet encyclopedia of philosophy, which does side with this as well. So it's interesting. Stanford's not alone. Stanford's got, Stanford has an adversary in this. Well, well, what is convenient for internet keyboard warriors may not be the most useful for debate, you know. Yeah. This is okay. So, geez. But I can tell you this. If you want to say that an anti-theistic attitude that there's a belief that there are no deities, I would use the same reasoning I'd be on your side on that one. I think it applies equally to being born with a belief in God is equally as credible as being born with a belief that there is no God. I don't believe either of them. Okay. Well, well, I would say that you don't have, you don't accept the majority, the consensus of you of the definition of anti-theism either. I would say it is the belief that that religion is harmful to society, or that belief in God is harmful to the society. Yeah. Again, we're getting into policy, Seamus wording here. And definitely there are a lot of anti-theists who do define it that way as well. And some of them have been recently changing to using the term anti-religious. Okay. Okay. For that, I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm just trying to elaborate on your point here. I would say like strong atheism would I think perhaps be a clearer term. Now, do you mind if I, I just kind of grill you on Yeah, sure. questions. I'm not afraid of anything. There's the wrong answers and I'd have nothing. But do you think, do you think in your opinion, yeah, is God's existence, let's say, the kind of generalized you know, first cause of Aristotle, let's say, or however, you know, in the theism in the most general sense, you think that God most likely does not exist or most likely does exist. Yeah, in terms of probably, I actually haven't been able to take a position on it because from the standpoint of skepticism and critical thinking, I don't have enough information. I haven't been able to, I don't have the tools necessary to, for example, to explore the entire universe. In fact, the entire cosmos, for that matter, to to validate this either way. You might you might just like kick the legs out of my whole argument. Okay, so let me ask you another question. Do you believe that theism is irrational? Is theism irrational? I think that the problem with that question is that it is formed on the basis of the black and white fallacy. I'm not meaning that you're committing a fallacy. I mean that the question itself is fallacious because there are many rational and irrational aspects to religions. So it's it's hard to say, I can't say the whole thing is rational and I can't say the whole thing is irrational. So I do think that when it comes to believing in a deity, though, that people are taking it on faith, they're taking it as something that they're some are relying on Pascal's wager and and doing it as a gamble, in fact. I'm sure you you're probably familiar with that. There's so what I would want to look at is more on an individual basis and and find out why isn't that somebody believes that. Does the reason seem to make sense? I would say that somebody who's using Pascal's wager, even though I think Pascal's wager is defective and an attempt at manipulating the populace, I think that if somebody is using that, they're they're attempting to be making a rational decision and and that to me, I don't consider that irrational, but if somebody is saying, okay, they took some mushrooms and they they had a conversation with God and now God is ordering them to go and kill a bunch of children, okay, that's irrational. So it really depends on what the reason is behind it and there's lots of different reasons people believe, I think. Okay, well, I mean, you know, that's not necessary to answer the question. I mean, I could ask you, you know, are all cats gray? The answer to that question is no, you don't have to say, well, my neighbor had this cat, you know, oh, just it is theism irrational, just taken as a whole. It doesn't sound like you can answer that question. Well, I don't have to explore the entire cosmos to determine that all cats are not gray. See, the problem with the the deity question is that the deity is often defined as or pretty much always defined as a supernatural being who is outside of nature and the claims that go with it are very often you can't measure it. You can't detect it because it's outside of nature. But then there's also people claiming that this deity intervenes in various things in reality. So anything I would think on principle that can intervene with reality, we should be able to test that and or at least detect that or be able to observe it somehow. Well, yeah, I mean, you're adding a lot of stuff to the question. In fact, you kind of jump to a different topic. Sorry about that. I didn't mean to. I've been for God's existence while I was asking you about the rationality of theism. But yeah, I can't say, I think I think that's a gray area. I don't think there's a straightforward yes or no answer to theism being rational. Okay, now we have to hop onto a different line of question. Sorry. So you are the president of Canadian atheists and you founded this organization. Yes. Oh, I imagine that you clawed your way to the top climbing over the bodies of all the defeated Canadian atheists. And finally, you're the king of the mountain after many decades of struggling to the top of good. So what exactly we're not, we haven't been around that long, but it sounds like the plot for a fantastic movie. Cheers. So if atheism is a lack of a belief and you're not going to commit to the premise that God most probably does not exist and you're not going to commit to the premise that theism is necessarily irrational, what exactly are you guys doing up there besides tapping maple trees? What is the raison d'etre of your organization? Well, our primary concerns are that there are a lot of people who are vilifying atheists just for being atheists, which we think is wrong. And it is a violation of our constitution here in Canada, particularly our Charter of Rights and Freedoms. You should have read my first draft of the opening statement. Well, send it to me. I'll take a look later. So we're concerned about that. We're concerned about legislation when people try to bring in legislation that favors religion. In the U.S., you have in your constitution that you can't pass laws favoring a religion. But here in Canada, our laws are structured a bit differently. We do have freedom of religion. We are a secular nation and that means, which I think is good for everybody because it also protects the rights of religious people as well as non-religious people. And that's very important to defend. One fellow, a number of years ago here, did start a petition with our government to remove some anti-blasphemy laws. And that, so I participated in that. And this is before we started the organization, but this has always been kind of an interest to me. And so I've started this organization to bring like-minded people together who also want to get rid of this vilification and make it, we want to normalize atheism. We want it to be that people will feel comfortable saying, just saying openly without making a big deal about it that, hey, I just don't believe in deities and not get attacked for it, not get vilified for it. We don't have, I think, as much conflict here in Canada compared to in the U.S., where there seems to be, people get a lot more into the heated arguments on these matters. But, you know, there still is a quite a degree of it here that is somewhat significant that I think we've got a good opportunity right now to bring it into it a lot more easily than, say, maybe 10 years from now, if we allow it to fester. We're also promoting some other things like donating blood and whatnot and these kind of things that are helpful to humanity. So that sort of stuff. And by the way, people can join this organization. There's no requirement to be an atheist to join. Anybody can join. Well, you kind of preempt in my comment because I was about to say that, you know, freedom of religion anti-blasphemy laws, you could be a religious person and be against, I'm against anti, I'm against anti-blasphemy laws. Yeah, if you want to draw a picture of Muhammad, you have that right as a freedom of expression. Yeah, I still wouldn't do it, but yeah. Yep. So I am for opposing anti-blasphemy. I am for blood drives. So why are you arbitrarily narrowing the appeal of your group then? If you have these causes that could potentially appeal to a much wider swath of people. We're not narrowing anything. Things are actually quite wide open. What we're concerned about is that people are trying to limit our rights as atheists. And that's what we're trying to primarily put a stop to. But, you know, having these other programs is good too because people want to be part of organizations that do things that they consider to be helpful to society. And so the encouragement of people to, for example, donate blood is showing, I think, some leadership to say, hey, here's something you can do to actually be a positive contributor to the community. And this counters some of the vilification that people will say, oh, atheists don't ever donate anything. Atheists are selfish. Atheists are greedy. All these kinds of things. So it kind of plays into that a little bit as well. And it's also, you know, we have a membership and if we can encourage them to do things that are helpful to society, I think we should do that. By the way, we also specifically don't ask for tax exempt status. I was going to make a joke there, but yeah. Yeah, please do. I like your good humor. Any percent of zero is still zero. Okay, that hurts. Well, yeah. So, geez. So you specifically do not exclude non-Atheists from your organization? That's right. We couldn't if we wanted to anyway because the, but we don't want to exclude but our Charter of Rights and Freedoms has under section 15, non-discrimination. It is illegal for an organization here to discriminate against people based on all sorts of different things. Sex, race, age, and different things like that, including whether or not they believe they follow a religion and if they're associated with a particular group. So actually, it was our intention not to exclude anyway. It just happens to be that our laws are also consistent with that. Yes, James, do you have anything to add here? Thank you very much, gentlemen. And regarding the particular, I had never thought about it, Strangely, never crossed my mind. It could be interpreted that today's debate title means either, like from an epistemic standpoint, what is the default for like just grown adults? You know, so you say like, well, you know, where should you be? Like, is there a default such that you should say like, I don't know, I'm like 50-50 on whether there's a God. I'm just like zero. I assign, you know, like, or, you know, very small probability to the possibility of a God. Or maybe the question could also be interpreted as like, what's the default in terms of human nature? Namely, are we born such that we're just atheists or theists and then are we eventually kind of taught one or the other, something like that? I'm actually interested in deflating atheism's argument for why it is somebody would be born believing in a deity. And because I think that's your position and like, if I understand correctly. Actually, no, it is not, but you can find some more in the social sciences. I have called up here on Amazon the book Born Believers, the Science of Children's Religious Belief by Justin L. Barrett. And he describes a tendency towards some form of spirituality and, you know, in particular some form of theistic belief that that seems to be a near universal. Now, obviously, not all those kids, as you note, end up as Christians. You know, obviously, a substantial position, substantial percentage of the world's population belongs to some sort of monotheist faith. But it's certainly intuitively, we could say, well, if that's the case, there might be some sort of innate reason for it. And this man actually subjects that kind of intuition to a kind of scientific methodology. There's another question where I kind of hinted at my comments, actually wrote more than I actually said, where if I were to press you, or if I were to press most lack of belief atheists on the issue, they would conclude, at the very least, that God's existence is more improbable than it is probable. That is a truth claim. And as such does incur a burden of proof. Yeah, I don't have enough information for that. However, your book, the book that you're referencing, talking about people coming to that conclusion, I'd be interested to know if it covers the Paraha people in the Amazon, who don't even have words in their language to describe deities or spirits apparently. There was some kind of a Catholic or a Christian priest of some sort who went there a long time ago to visit with them and tried to bring them the word of God. And they laughed at it and they just didn't go for it at all. I think this makes a compelling case for being a counter-example, at least, to what the book is presenting. Well, if you are a religious missionary and you go to some far land and to some uncontacted tribe and you try to spread the word and they laugh at you, I think you got off pretty easy. A lot of people have darts throwing at them. I'd rather be laughed at to be honest. You're thinking what happened in India recently, aren't you? That fellow who went on to that island, it's an isolated tribe and was warned, even by the people he paid in the black market, to bring him there. They said, don't do this. And he went and did it and shot and killed. Wow, he has all the warnings and still insists he's going to do it anyway. That's a lot of determination there. And this, to me, seems to be one of the irrational sides of religion where people are getting so convinced that the ideas are right and more important than people and the priorities are going off. I do think that people are more important than ideas. It's not a function of believing that your ideas are right. It's about the practicality of disseminating those views. It's how that person's practicing it, of course. However, I don't think one can deny that that person was majorly influenced by their religion in doing that. Well, the problem is that there's not really much of a secular analog. It seems that not many atheists would be willing to die for their beliefs, even without the promise of some sort of an afterlife or something. And the lady who started the American atheists, she was killed over that. By atheists? I think it was a Christian who killed her, wasn't it? Oh, Madeleine Muriel Hare? No, she was killed by people within her own organization. That's a very different story than what I've learned. Well, they made a movie about it. Maybe you saw the movie. Yeah. My understanding is that somebody didn't like what she was doing, promoting atheism, and took her, and I believe a couple of her family members or coworkers or something. And that is true. Yeah. And basically killed her for not believing in deities. But of course, in that time, I don't know if it can be accurately reported either. But it sounds to me like that's pretty likely. Will forgive me. Just to jump in really quick to let everybody know if you have a question, fire that question into the live chat. If you tag me with at modern day debate, it's more likely that I won't miss it. And we'll try to ask those immediately following the conversation as probably go for a few more minutes yet. And then we will jump into the Q&A shortly as it's been an interesting one, a fun one. And I appreciate, we've kind of like run the gambit, different topics. This is one that I'd never heard of regarding the Madeline Marie O'Hare. I had never known she was apparently murdered. But so yeah, that's interesting. Anyway, I'll back to you guys. That time is a terrible, terrible incident. You mentioned null hypothesis. And you classified it as a position. I'm thinking of it as more of an absence of position. It's everything is wide open. We're waiting for information. Did you mean to classify it as a position? Well, I specifically brought it up as something that atheists invoke to defend their position that atheism is the null hypothesis or is to be assumed correct until they are convinced otherwise. And I avoid saying until evidence is presented because often they refuse to be convinced by evidence. But yes. What evidence? Oh, well, that's a separate issue but I will point first off to you made the point. The argument is the most persuasive. You can get to the five ways. You can get to the column. I think those are all persuasive arguments. But as for the null hypothesis, that is a methodological assumption. So you can't scale that out to reality because what you assume in the context of a scientific experiment isn't always the irrational assumption. Let's say I'm replicating an experiment that's been done many times before with the same result. So which very rarely happens these days. But yeah. So this experiment has been replicated again and again and again. Oh, by the way, to the viewers at home, the null hypothesis is just kind of the assumption that some sort of correlation between two observed sets of phenomenon does not exist. So you kind of fall back to the assumption that a correlation between these phenomena does not exist. And so atheists try to say, God is somehow analogous to this non-existent correlative relationship. Already they're kind of stretching it there. They're kind of stretching it there in my opinion. But yes, let's say there's an experiment that has been replicated. It's been replicated. I do it again. Now, what is the null hypothesis in that situation? Again, null hypothesis in every experimental situation is to assume that the correlation does not exist. But what is rational to assume in that case is that it does because the experiment has been done again and again and again with the same result. So yeah, I don't think it helps their case at all. Well, I also brought up the presumption of innocence, too. That doesn't help them, either. The presumption of innocence. That is innocent until proven guilty in America. That's a courtroom standard. Yes, that's why American jurists prove it to us. Yeah, yeah, we have the same thing here in Canada. Yeah, so it's a common thing in modern civilization that values people's rights. And it's an important right, too. Yeah, it's based on kind of the ethical principle that it's better for an innocent, I mean, a guilty person to be free than an innocent person to be in prison. Yeah. So it's an epistemic principle. It's an ethical principle. I agree with that. Since you're mentioning ethics, what is your view, I'm curious, on atheism in society? Do you think it's a good thing? Do you think it's a problem? Do you think it's a bad thing? Do you have some other kind of view on it? Again, you're asking a question with a lot of qualifications to be added. If a person is an atheist like you, or what you kind of advertise yourself to be here, which is the atheist who concludes that God does not exist and then just rests his hands in his lap in his easy chair and doesn't do anything about it. I mean, I have no problem with that. If an atheist concludes that God does not exist and he goes on the internet and he calls all Christians and religitards and something and does all these horrible things. Yeah, I have a big problem. In fact, I think it's poisonous. I think their influence on discourse in general, particularly on the internet, has been poisonous over the last 15 years. That stripe of atheism, which I think you all find, is a sizable, sizable majority of self-professed atheists. I think their influence has been very negative, to say the least. Just to be sure that your TV is not on fire. You probably have a candle behind your TV, right? Deflating atheism? Oh, those are just string lights. Yeah, my house is not on fire. Oh, okay. One of them looks like it was maybe flickering, but that's good. I'm glad to know. And with that. That safety message is a public service from James. Thank you, James. Yes, hopefully everybody out there, we hope that your house, it's worth checking. You know, maybe hook over your shoulder. We'll go massively viral at that point, yeah. I'd like to follow in a little bit more into this poisonous influence that you've observed. Because like, you know, my approach to things is these are just words on the screen in a way. And the same argument is made with religious people. They're just words in a book. There are people who influence each other's thinking. I think what can help to counter that kind of influence when somebody makes a bad statement. And I've even called out a few atheists who I thought were making some really bad statements before. But mostly I'm up against religious people who are making some grand claims about the universe and whatnot. And sometimes quite bigoted in comments about people. I think critical thinking, I think, is something that should be taught more in the schools. If we have a population, a society where people are better at critical thinking, we can have, people can have these kinds of discussions more freely and without having this kind of poisonous influence. Do you think that, do you agree with this? I have no disagreements there. Okay, yeah. So can you give me an example of maybe one or two in particular these kind of poisonous points that you're finding people are making? Well, I would say that, for instance, society would be better off without religion. I think that is an idea that has a murderous legacy throughout history. Murderous? Yes. Okay, so it sounds like you're saying that a society that has religion won't have a problem with people being murderous. Am I understanding you correctly? It is certainly not my position. Okay, so maybe you can clarify what you mean by a society without religion is murderous. Maybe you can clarify what you mean. That was never my claim. That was never my claim. Oh, I think there's a difference. What did you say? So sorry for jumping in really quick. Last one is, I think there's maybe a bumbling, like somebody have a mic that's maybe like dragging across their shirt or something. I feel like I can hear maybe like a mic that is like having something like rush up against it slightly. Maybe it's just my imagination. It's ham, jacuzes, jacuzes, it's Randolph. It's poor Randolph, sorry. Is that my microphone? Okay, yours, it looks like you've got a nice mic over there. I don't- It's got a Yeti. I'd be surprised if it'd be yours. Yeah, Yeti's pretty nice. It's got a blue Yeti. It's black, but it's called a blue Yeti. It looks sharp. All right, sorry about that. Go ahead, you guys. I'm so sorry. I'm putting the mic stand. So it sounds like from what you were saying that it almost like you were possibly implying that a society needs religion. Were you saying that? I, well, that is something I would agree to in the general, but that was not my position in the case. What I said was the idea, the anti, what I would call an anti-theistic idea that society would be better off without religion or that it is necessary for society to be without religion, I should say, does have a murderous influence in our history. And you could see that through the reign of terror, through the red terror, through the USSR, through Korea, whatever, Albania, and anywhere where this idea has taken root, the result has been piles of thousands of thousands. Let's take a look at North Korea then. I assume it's North Korea you're referring to. Yes. So you're saying, is it your position that they don't have religion there? Well, I think, yeah, they basically outlawed almost all forms of religion, except for the state-sanctioned religion, which is kind of atheistic, yes. My understanding of the North Korean leadership there, or which I like to refer to ownership, actually, is that they have, they actually, they regard their current leader's father as a deity, and they did as a living deity before while he was alive. That sounds like, that doesn't sound like an atheistic religion to me. That sounds like a belief in a deity. You could arbitrarily redefine anything to be a deity. I mean, you could say the Egyptians worshiped cats. I mean, therefore, if you're an atheist, that means that you don't believe in cats. There are people in the world who still worship cats today. But that's a different matter. I think, yes, I mean, I believe in the existence of Kim Il-sung. So, yes, I guess. Yeah, yeah, so, but calling it a state religion, I think is a point that shows that, you know, there is, that I agree with, they have this idea, you have to pray to this leader, and he is a deity who will make it rain, and so your crops will grow better, and things like that. And there's this kind of going on, this is a religion, as you said, state-sanctioned religion. And I think there's an example of a society with religion that isn't doing so well. Well, well, that's why I kind of qualified at the beginning when I talked about theism, is that there is a very distinct through line in Western thought. You know, we could start from the Aristotelian idea of the first cause or whatever. It goes through the kind of Abrahamic faiths, and you could argue about some of the details, but there is a through line in kind of Western thought about what God would be. That is why when I say, when we have these arguments about theism or atheism, that is kind of what I'm referring to, and when I ask you questions like, is theism rational or irrational? I'm talking about that thing. I'm not talking about any one particular subset of that belief. Okay. So, I don't think you could honestly qualify various belief structures that might kind of use the word God, whether it's North Korean, their belief system, or whatever, 5% nation of Islam, where people on earth are the gods. I'm not, those are all disqualified, as far as I'm concerned, if they don't believe in a transcendent first cause creator and designer of the world. Also, to you, that's the, those are the characteristics that make a religion legitimate. I never said that. No, that's why I'm asking you a question. I'm asking you to clarify. No, no. Again, this is a question for sociologists to answer really, because I mean, you could get into that debate. I could say, you know, it's a chair that has four legs. Well, this chair has three legs. This chair is up on the wall. We can have that debate. It's not really what I'm particularly interested in, you know. Okay, okay. I'm just trying to understand your thinking better. That's the whole purpose of that question there. So, yeah, you mentioned some characteristics of the deity there being transcendent and being the creator of, we'll call it 42, life, the universe and everything. By the same token, by the same token, a person can believe in a deity and not be religious, like I was for many years. I believe that's true. Steric theism will not adhere to any given religion. So, yes, there is, neither one necessitates the other. Okay. Yeah, they seem to work quite well together, but I agree with you. Yeah. Okay, good. Yeah, they don't, they're independent things, a religion and a belief in deity's theism are definitely different things. Overlapping, but a non-concrete sense. They work well together. It's like, yeah. Okay. So, did you have some other questions for me? I guess, If it has to come, if the conversation has to end soon, I actually think that point of agreement would be a good time to do it. Yes. I have to admit, I was a little disappointed that you would not commit to certain positions, but I kind of feel like if I kept pressing you on certain things, I would encounter a contradiction where you actually do proclaim these things. You know, I find that typical of many atheists that they would disavow making this claim, but you find in practice that they actually do think, okay, well, God is very likely not to exist or theists in general are overwhelmingly irrational in their beliefs. Oh, never mind. Further claims like, you know, the world is fundamentally material. You know, further claims like that. Okay. I think it's important to give honest and strict court answers as much as possible. So, if I'm not committing to something, it's because I can't because I don't honestly have a position on it either way. Okay. That's why it's like that. And that's the reason for that out of respect for you, of course, as well. Okay. Well, what people say and what people actually believe are not always the same thing. So, I'm not guessing you there, but often this does come out in debate, you know. Yeah. And that's what the great thing about debate is because we can learn more from it and be exposed to more ideas and whatnot. And yeah, the free exchange of ideas I like to call it. I like to encourage that. And that's why I'm delighted you're here. Oh, thank you. Thank you. I'm delighted with my... Well, Canadians are delightful in general. Well, I can say thank you very much. Not all, but many of us, I guess, are. Again, in the much more adversarial version of this debate, I had kind of pictured in my mind, I was going to be deflated Canadians. I did not. Hey, we're happy for anything we get. We're all delighted that we got a place in South Park a few times. If you guys are ready, we can jump into the Q&A. Sure, let's do that. Excellent. Stoked. Thank you very much. It's been a pleasure. Thank you guys. Love listening to you guys. And now we will jump right into these folks. If you have questions, fire them in the live chat. Can't guarantee you will get to them as we've got a good list already. But here we go. I want to ask you a bunch of questions. And I want to have them answered immediately. First up, thanks so much, Stephen Steen, for your super chat. He says the only default is James's smile. And it suddenly makes sense. Thank you, Stephen. I think someone has a crush. I think someone has a crush. There was a comment early up in the chat that it's probably the same person. Yeah. You've got to look out for that guy. Really nasty guy. Because I heard he's got tons of pictures. Who is it? Gary Busey? He's like his room is covered with pictures of Gary Busey. I don't know. But thanks for your super chat. Your other one, Stephen Steen, he says what version of atheism is default? OK, so I think he's saying lack of theism or positive assertion that there is no God. He's asking which is the default? Can I take that since I proposed the topic? I'll follow up. Internet atheists will define both versions as the default. And they might profess the lack of belief in atheism. But what they believe in practice is God does not exist in atheism. But they will kind of imply that both are the default position and are to be assumed correct until they are convinced otherwise. Yeah, that sounds a bit like you've run into some people who have some pretty strong views on things to put it nicely. The definitely I would say the default is that where there's no the absence of belief in deities is there. And I think you even kind of agreed with that. You were looking forward to having more of a position against another opposite position kind of debate here as you've mentioned. But the interesting thing that I think a lot of people get confused about is they try to think it's all one thing. And they ignore the fact that somebody who does take the position that there are no deities also is as a matter of consequence, an atheist by simply not believing it. If you're believing that there are no deities, you are as a matter of consequence. You also don't believe in deities. You fit that classification as well. But that classification doesn't reciprocate to the anti-theistic viewpoint. I agree. I agree that would be the fallacy of composition. Yes. Yeah, sorry, fallacy of composition. Yes. Yeah, exactly. I agree. Very good catch. So, since you say not everything is black or white, I have a question for you. Yes. This morning, I was scrambling eggs. When I'm scrambling eggs, I'm just in the zone. I block out the entire world because I'm just so focused on this task of scrambling eggs. That's terrific. I just relish that task of scrambling eggs. In fact, I was so invested in the act of scrambling eggs, I was not thinking about God. Nowhere in the time of scrambling eggs, I do not give one single thought about God. Was I an atheist when I was scrambling eggs? What do you think? No, I'm not going to pull the psychiatrist ruin on you. Using your lack of belief definition, I would say, yes, I was an atheist when I was scrambling eggs. So, I think this is an interesting point because we've gotten into a fascinating philosophical point with this. The underlying message here is that belief in anything does require effort. Not believing in something doesn't require extra effort normally, unless I guess you're up against people who are telling you you should believe and then you're making a choice not to believe. And that's a possibility too. But I think I would say that because you have proclaimed to me that you believe in a deity. Even when you're not thinking about it, this is your personal characteristic. This belongs to you. This is who you are. As soon as you finish the task that requires your full attention, you're going back to who you are. That hasn't changed. Scrammling the eggs hasn't changed that. That's just something that you've put your full attention on temporarily. And I don't think that that would really overall change the fact that you're an atheist. And I think it would be insulting if I was to say, yeah, you're an atheist temporarily there. I will say, however, that being an atheist does not speak for atheism at least. There is no minimum period of time that you have to not believe in deities to qualify as an atheist. And I think that's the case for many religions as well. Okay, so your position is that a baby is an atheist. We come out of the womb's atheists. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I think that we just don't have any beliefs. We develop those along with our brain developing. When we're two years old, we can believe in some simple concepts. When we're 10 years old, we can believe in more complex concepts. In our early 20s, we're doing dissertations to get a PhD. And on and on, it gets more and more, our capabilities are higher. I haven't done that. But I've heard. Just have a really awesome YouTube channels. So now I'm going to. Good example. I'm going to keep pressing. So a baby comes out of the womb as an atheist to the best of your knowledge. And then when they get so old, their parents start to talk to them about God. That sounds good to them. The world has a creator and a designer. Sure. It sounds good to them. So then they become what you would call a theist. So how is that period of lacking a belief in God not comparable to my lack of belief in God when I'm scrambling eggs? You could say that there's a continuity there. Just like there's a continuity when I went from being actively believing God's a scrambling eggs to actively believing God. Two things. You're a theist before you started scrambling eggs. You have no intention of changing that while you're scrambling the eggs. And if I were to interrupt you and yank that frying pan away. Don't you dare. Don't you dare. You might ask God for help to rain down on me something awful. There you go. But it is, I think it's important to take in consideration what a person is beforehand before they're engaged in activity. So when somebody passes away, for example, and they are a theist, I think as a matter of their right to intellectual integrity and bodily integrity, etc., is similar to that, that I think it's quite reasonable to say here's a person who's died, a theist who died. And so we know them as having been a theist in their last moments. Forevermore, they're, they fit that classification. That's just really gracious of you. In America, once they die, they call them Democrats. Next up, to jump to more questions. Excuse me, I have a few more questions of his own mind. First up, thanks Dwayne Burke for your question in Super Chat. They said, how can a baby lack belief based upon a lack of evidence when they can't even comprehend evidence, let alone comprehend a God proposition? Because atheism is not a proposition. Atheism is a classification of not believing in deities. I also like to just kind of go back to the previous question a little bit too, because I think the point, I don't know if I made this point, but yeah, you were talking about a child becoming a theist because their parents taught them about God and whatnot. I think that's a very common thing. And the little point I just want to touch on there was that children, as they're growing up, very young, they try to do everything they can to please the adults who rule their world. So if their reason for believing in a deity is because somebody told them to versus because they came to that conclusion that they should believe that on their own accord, which one is better? I would think that somebody who's made that determination for themselves, instead of being convinced by a salesperson or a parent or somebody who has a lot of influence on them, I think somebody who genuinely has come up to that on their own has probably is more genuinely has the better reason for it. What is your thought on that? Well, I think you're kind of putting on your psychologist Beanie there. So I mean, I don't, you know, this is a question that could be studied psychologically or sociologically, but my my own position is that is that the idea that the unit that the world has a creator designer is not a counterintuitive comment. And that that's why I say is that they can glide very easily without any sort of parental coercion in into into this idea that that God exists, because they may not have thought about it before, but it's an idea once you hear it, it's possible that once you hear an idea, it sounds like a good idea to you. And there's no there's no back and forth there. Oh, that makes sense to me. So I'll accept it. If I come charging into your into your, you know, into your room and say, oh, wow, there's this really cool red car outside, you have to come out and see this red car. You're probably going to assume that there is a red car outside. You know, I'm not lying to you until you encounter a reason to believe I'm lying to, you're going to trust that that there's a red car outside. I have a high percentage of confidence in something like that. And if somebody comes along and tells me they believe in a deity, okay, I usually not going to disagree with that. Now, somebody comes along tells me they're Christian, I'm generally going to believe that too, unless they're dressed up in Muslim traditional outfit. Then I might have some questions. But yeah, I think what my point I'm trying to allude to is really it boils down to the reason why somebody is a theist. Why do they believe like, what is the reason? Did they are they just following somebody else and doing that? Or are they believing it because they have some actual reasons to justify that? And I think that's an important thing to consider when talking about these kinds of things. Why do you believe that? And I do not disagree that the former can be the case. I think that there are probably a lot of people who are who are sleepwalking through their religious belief. I don't I don't deny that at all. But to get to the person who asked us the question, we're giving very long answers here. Randolph never actually said that that a person lacks a belief because of a lack of evidence. You never said that person lacks a belief, you know, that this necessitates, you know, because of a lack of evidence. Yeah, there's no no dependency on skepticism there. There is, however, there are many atheists I know who do use that as justification. So they are taking their absence of belief as a position instead of just something that flows in naturally like I do. Yes, well, that there is a lack of evidence is itself a very contentious claims, but we'll kind of not talk about that right now. Gosh, next up. Thanks for your super chat from our good friend, fourth dimensional Jake. Appreciate it. They said we are born tablerosa. Therefore, we are not born atheists, nor are we born theist. We were born non-theist. To conflate atheist with non-theist is wrong. Okay, so actually what's happening there? That question is conflating terminology. The atheism actually means not theist, not believing in deities. Absence of theism, absence of belief in deities. They're probably thinking of the terms kind of more of an anti-theistic attitude, taking a position that there are no deities. Gosh, again, I would highly dispute the etymology there. I think if I know you do etymology. Atheism is the ism, is the belief system of godlessness rather than the absence of theism. There's a website that I've put together called defineatheism.com, and I get into all that in great detail, including the etymology, including references that some of which are academic and even further elaborate on that. Gosh, thanks so much. Next up, Steven Steen, you sicko. Thanks for your super chat. He said, ETA five days until heaven touches earth. I think maybe he means the Flat Earth Debate. If you haven't heard about it, it's going to be between Nathan Thompson and Team Skeptic. Hopefully the universe doesn't implode. Hopefully it's not too crazy, guys. I don't know. We're hoping that it's going to be safe, but they're going to be in the same room. So like five feet away from each other, face to face, and hopefully it's going to be safe. I don't know. Live, live debate. Wow. Absolutely. So we will be in person in Dallas. It's going to be a while. You're going to have viewers all around the globe, yes. Yeah. And the only thing I'm disappointed about in that is it wasn't a reference to the law of vibes. It's going to be wild. I am stoked. So it's going to be a lot of fun. But yes, anyway, Steven Steen, thanks for that. AP, thanks for your super chat. They said, do you believe universes or realities magically create themselves for no reason whatsoever? FYI, this is a religious position and is implied by atheism. Implied. No, I don't think it's implied, but I do have some thoughts on this. And I don't know, deflating atheism, did you want to answer as well? Or you can go ahead, if you like. Well, I think James misread the question or something. It was very confusing to me, but I'm sorry. I can give it another shot. What's here? Do you believe universes or realities magically create themselves for no reason whatsoever? FYI, this is a religious position and is implied by atheism. So in other words, they're saying like, under atheism, if you're an atheist, then it's implied that you believe that universes or realities magically create themselves for no reason whatsoever. Yeah, I magically is a real loaded term in that. I won't go so far with that. I think I have put some thought into ex nihilo nothing, absolutely nothing. And I'm thinking that not so much that the universe created itself, or even the cosmos for that matter, but more to the point of when we have absolutely nothing, there are logically, there's no laws of nature. There's no rules. There's nothing restricting it. As soon as you place a restriction or a rule on it, it no longer qualifies as absolutely nothing. And because of this, that makes it that we can't predict. I'm not saying it makes it unpredictable. It makes it that we can't predict how it will behave. We can't predict that nothing will erupt out of it or that something could erupt out of it. So this is a big mystery. This is a big mystery of life. There are different ideas on it. And of course, religions have their answers as well. They have a deity that is responsible for all this. And I'm just not willing to go there. Okay, well, I will say that I understand what the viewer is asking. If I've misunderstood, I look forward to hearing clarification. I would say that that's an uncharitable view of atheism. Now, maybe there are atheists who do believe that, that is a logically self-contradicting view, is that something to bring itself into existence if it assumes its own kind of causal priority? That's an illogical position, which doesn't mean that atheists don't believe that. I mean, there could very well be many atheists who believe that. I think the more defensible, the more defensible, not defensible, but more defensible atheist position is that the universe is a brute fact, is that it exists just because. Now, what you were talking about Randolph, you were talking about some sort of state of nothingness where there's no prohibition out of which emerges the world. I have a ton of problems with that. But yeah, of course you do. But yeah, absolute nothingness would be a lack of potentiality too. So an absence. Thank you very much. Dwayne Burke, thanks for your super chat. They said, money for James to purchase more tissues. Ha, ha, very funny. So with that, I want to know that I am sick, but don't worry. I'm going to bounce back. You know what? And it's- You're folding his cocaine habit. Yes, that's what it really is. It's just tough. James shall overcome. Gotcha. So yes, next super chat, we appreciate that. Not my real name. Thanks for yours. They said, more Canadians, please. So you've got a fan out there. I hope that makes you feel good, Randolph. All right, thank you. Then Michael- Glad to come back. Good old Michael, the Canadian atheist. Thanks for your super chat. They said, this is for Steven Steen to hit on James Moore. Oh, nasty guy. Wrong answer. Steven Steen is like- These trolls today, they're just not up to par with what we've had in the past. We've got a lot of benevolent trolls. They're always just very kind, very sweet and sexual. Yeah. You can say whatever you want about me. Just give me a super chat. Yeah. Next. AP, thanks for your super chat. They said, Randolph, does default atheism equal valid atheism? Does what atheism? Can you read that again? It broke up. No problem. Well, they said, does default atheism equal valid atheism? Well, calling it default atheism sounds like a redundancy to me. But valid atheism, I don't see how it's invalid. So I'm not really sure how to answer this question. Gotcha. Thanks very much. Next up, appreciate your super chat from Dwayne Burke. Thank you for these debates, James and debaters. So I'm so glad you enjoy them, Dwayne. It's always a pleasure for me to be here hanging out with you guys. And thanks to the speakers, they really do make the channel fun. So thank you guys. Fourth dimensional, Jake, thanks for your super chat. He said, Atheist. Oh, I think I can't tell if they're using, if it was a typo or if it's like meant to be code, equals. Oh, okay. No, they just mean Atheist equals. There are no gods, not Black Theism. Black Theism is, I have no idea what that is. So yeah, they're, Atheism is what I would classify as a position that there are no deities. I use the term deities because that includes gods and goddesses and other, I guess, possibilities. The atheism is just the absence of belief in deities. However, the statement is not entirely wrong because somebody, as I mentioned earlier, who takes the position there and they believe that there are no deities is also, as a matter of consequence, an atheist because they don't believe in deities. Okay, will you agree with this statement? Is that the lack of belief, the absence of belief definition of atheism, cannot, in principle, be a position in a debate? Normally, it's not a position because it's a classification, but if somebody wants, so I can agree with that respect, but it can be a position if somebody wants to justify it with skepticism since the ultimate conclusion of skepticism is doubt. Okay, well then that, into your mind, would not be atheism properly defined. That would be, that would be with some other non-essential aspect. Justification is optional. Okay, that's what I'm saying. Justification for not believing something is optional. Not believing something is not believing something. Assuming you're a premise, yes, I agree with that, but like I said in my thing, if you say I lack a belief in God, I could just say I agree. I have no reason to doubt you when you say that you lack a belief in God, so there's no basis for debate unless I want to start psychologizing you, which I know. I agree with that. I agree with you there, yes. Got you. Next question, appreciate it. Destroying Angel said, DA, deflating atheism, do you know what a straw man is? I think this is from all the way back to your opening statement. They must have thought something you said was a straw man. Well, yes, I came prepared for a debate that didn't actually happen, so yeah, I tried to cover both bases in my opening statement and I skipped over a lot of it because it just was not pertinent, but I hope you will find that the position of atheism I was responding to is the position of about 95 plus percent of people who call themselves atheists, which is that God does not exist, that or that God most likely does not exist, and that people who do believe in God are irrational. I think those are very common characteristics of atheists, to say the very least. And with all due respect, I reject that in the absence of statistics. Gotcha. Thank you very much. What are you trying to ask? I'm not going to go back to that. We're not going to go back to that. Next up. So, thanks so much. Quick one. Next is, thanks so much for your question, Craig Nightwolf. They said, for deflating, do trees or rocks or a glass of water have epistemology in which to build a worldview and come to conclusions about whether God exists or not? No, I would say they don't. Gotcha. Thanks so much. Next up. Jeremy Pace. Thanks for your question. He said, why do some cultures not have a concept of God if believing in a deity is the default? Well, that's a different question. That's a different question, whether people are more prone to believing in God. I believe they are more prone. I believe the book-born believer supports that claim. That wasn't really the topic of the debate, though. Gotcha. Next up, Kay Roach. Thanks for your super chat. They said, where does your morality come from, Randolph? It comes from me. I make my own determination, and I hope that I get it correct. Take a look at John Rawls' theory of justice, particularly the veil of ignorance, which is used by, hopefully used more and more by legislators to draft fair and just legislation that is consistent with the fundamental principles of justice, wherein everybody should be equal under the law. Everyone is equal under the law, and everyone should have equal access to the law. So the idea with the veil of ignorance is that when you're drafting legislation, you're supposed to think in terms of this hypothetical idea that I, as a legislator, for example, I'm not a legislator, but just as an example, hypothetically, if I was to be put into a position that was randomly selected without any of my control in society after I draft these laws come into effect, how best can I draft these laws so that they will be fair? And it's kind of a mental exercise in a way, but it's an important one, because it causes us to think about all the different possible ways that this law could affect different people. It can affect poor people. It can affect rich people. It can affect people with different privileges for different things, people with military access or not, people who have certain health conditions, people with linguistic language difficulties, blind people, deaf people, all kinds of things. See, the more that you can consider, the more that you can draft this law fairly. I take this philosophy and I attempt to the best that I can of my ability to try to apply that to my own moral determinations on things. I don't know if I'm doing it correctly, but I certainly strive to. And I still question whether I am doing it correctly if I've overlooked something when I make these determinations, but I do the best that I can with that. So that's probably at the core of, I would say that's at the core of my decision making and just trying to understand different perspectives and whatnot. Engaging in these debates helps me to understand more perspectives as well and different ways of thinking. So that's, I hope that helps to answer the question about where my morality comes from. It comes from me. It seems to me you contradicted yourself within the space of- Hold on one second. We, just to keep going with it, as I try to get through as many audience questions because they fire them in and I want to try to get through as many as we can. That was a deep question. It required a longer answer. I can give you a chance to defend yourself since deflating said that you would contradict it to yourself. So I'll give you a chance if you want to- Well, he says that he is the source of his own morality and he tries to get it right. Get it right compared to what? It seems like you're assuming there's some external standard and then you give an example of Rawls's model that that's assuming that egalitarianism is a desirable outcome. Could you put it in two sentences though? I can answer that. I don't think that my sense of morality is objective in any way. I try to make objective determinations as best I can, but I know that the influence is around me and the system I live in with its laws here in Canada and other sorts of things are subjective influences. So I do the best I can. I am the source of making my own determination on morality, but I am looking at other factors as well. So it's not just me. I'm having to consider other things. I'm sorry if that sounded like a contradiction that was definitely not intended to be. Gotcha. Thanks so much. Next up, got a super chat from fourth dimensional Jake. Appreciate your question. They said atheist is a non-theist, but non-theist is not necessarily an atheist. A house is not always a castle. Consult the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. As I mentioned earlier, a standard encyclopedia of philosophy has a defective definition. It ignores linguistic structure. It ignores anti-theism. It doesn't even define it and is somewhat esoteric within their own circles of philosophy. We did cover this near the beginning. Gotcha. Thanks so much. Next, we appreciate it. Your super chat translator. Thanks for yours. They said trained linguist here. The structure of quote unquote atheism is ambiguous. Like how quote unquote unlockable can mean either unable to be locked or able to be unlocked. And this is why we need to look at the etymology as well. And when we take a look at common usage, we see that the absence of belief in deities is what is there. I don't see the ambiguity there, but I'm going to look into this because that is a very interesting point. Thank you. Gotcha. Next, Kay Wright. Thanks for your super chat. They're coming after you Randolph. They said, thank you for your answer with no ultimate right morality. Who gets to determine right from wrong though? Most people who do evil don't feel they are. Yeah. And so this is where we have laws that are formed in society. And this is why we need to have laws and we need to enforce them. We form governments whose fundamental purpose is, one of the fundamental purposes, and I would say one of the primary ones, is to protect its citizens, to oppress the strong from oppressing the weak and that sort of thing. And so we have these laws in place to say, hey, these are certain basic rules that we need to follow, not killing each other, not vandalizing each other's property, not causing injuries and things like that, all kinds of different rights and freedoms and whatnot. So we have a trade-off wherein we live in society and there are certain things that we can't do and they can be extremely limiting to the psychopaths. But of course, if everybody was permitted to be psychopathic and just kill anybody they wanted, our society probably wouldn't last very long. Gotcha. Thanks so much. Next up, hold on, let me pull this up. It would be a terrible society to live in. Thanks for your question from... Try walking across the bridge to the Detroit. I did that when I was very young, not the bridge, but a street nearby bridge. Next up, praise I am that I am. Thanks for your question. They said, has Randolph seen the studies that show children intuitively know that God exists? No, I have not. Gotcha. So with that, folks, we are at about the hour and a half point, want to let you know. So thanks so much to our speakers. It's been a pleasure to have them. It's always fun. And we also have a discord party afterwards. So I will be in the discord doing this new thing called live chat. I'm still learning it. Very embarrassing. But I will be there. It's going to be a terrific time. I am very excited. Basically, it's just going to be like a quick hangout. If you have like any sort of feedback, you're like, Hey, this is how the channel might be improved. Like love to hear it. Or if you're like, Hey, I love this. This is like, oh, that's the coolest thing. Keep doing it. That's amazing. Let me know. We can keep doing it. So very excited to get your feedback. You know, otherwise just like, Hey, you know, introduce yourself, say who you are. I'm excited to meet you. It's always fun. You guys make it a blast for me to be here. So with that, I know that Randolph will be there. We'll be partying on Discord together immediately after this. And then also, I'll make a good effort. I'll make a good effort. I can't wait the entire duration. No, don't feel out of it. It's like to have you there. Happy to have you there. But don't feel out of it. It's all right. And so thanks for all of your questions, folks. It's always a good time. The voice chat is that's what Tony Designs told me. That's what it's called, I guess. I'm new to this. I'm cool. I'm with it. I'm getting it. All right. So it's dope to have you guys. Final things we can say before we go, I guess. If you guys want to make any last summary points, you're more than welcome to. If you have a kind of like ways of drawing together the threads of the discussion. I guess just like to talk a little bit about my organization if that's okay. You bet. All right. Yeah. So I'm with the Canadian atheists. We're at www.canadianatheists.ca. If you'd like to learn more about us or even become a member, everybody's welcome. The membership is only $42 a year. Canadian, which is a real deal for American dollars right now. And it'll be very helpful because it supports us in what we do. There's also, for those who are more interested in the definition of atheism, please definitely take a look at this website, www.defineatheism.com. And with that, thank you very much for having us on your show, James, and deflating atheism. It was a pleasure to speak with you and to meet you and have this conversation today. I really enjoyed it. You bet. Thanks so much. And deflating, if you have any last statements before us. Thank you. Thank you to James. Thank you to Randolph. This was very pleasant, even if it wasn't exactly the debate I came prepared for. I came with a gun to a tickle fight, I think. But yes, please subscribe to, if you are so inclined to my YouTube channel, Deflating Atheism. I also have a, you know, attendant Facebook page, Deflating Atheism, Instagram page, Deflating Atheism, and Patreon, Deflating Atheism. So please check all of those out. Thank you. Terrific. Excellent. Thanks so much, folks. It's always a pleasure, always very fun, very exciting. So with that, we will see you hopefully in the good old discord for that party. See you at the party, Richter. Looking forward to it. Thank you, James. It's going to be a great one. Take care. Keep sifting out the reasonable from the unreasonable, everybody. Thank you, both of you. Have a good day. Remember, before you're with your visions. Always.