 Hey everybody, today we're debating whether or not there are good reasons to believe in God and we're starting right now. Ladies and gentlemen, thrilled to have you here for another epic debate. This one, oh my goodness you guys, it's hard to say, this might be, I don't know if I've ever been as excited as I am for this debate right now. This is going to be terrific. Want to let you know, just a few things covering up up front, just want to let you know first, want to say a huge thank you to the atheist community of Austin as they have been extremely helpful as they've basically, they're hosting us right now, we are right there with them and they have been, like I said, extremely helpful with every detail and getting us set up and going. Also want to say of course thank you so much for our speakers as both of them said just because they love to debate, just because they love ideas, they said, hey, we'd be happy to and doing it for free, we really appreciate them, thanks so much guys. Wait, we're doing it for free? Oh my God. That's right. I have a couple coins here if that will help or something. That's what it's going to have to be at this point unfortunately, but we are stoked. It's going to be great. We also want to let you know up front that all of the Superchats tonight are actually going to go to be the match bone marrow donor, the be the match bone marrow donor foundation and that's something we're just kind of saying, hey, you know what, it's true, we disagree on a lot of things, but all of your Superchats, we think you folks, you know, you're the ones doing it. We want to say, hey, there are things we definitely at the end of the day agree on and be the match is basically they work toward healing or curing leukemia. So basically cancer of the blood. So that's something we are in agreement on and we want to let you know whether you be a Christian atheist or one of the many strange creatures in between, we're thankful that you're here at Modern Day Debate. We hope you feel welcome and with that, let me just quite run over the format for tonight's debate and then we'll get rocking and rolling. So 15 minute openings and we'll be starting with the affirmative. So Michael will be starting first. He's on my right. And then 10 minute rebuttals followed by 40 minutes of open discussion and then five minute closings. Lastly, question and answer for about 30 minutes. Also want to let you know if you happen to have a question, feel free to shoot that into the live chat and we will try to pull out those questions. Super chats will go to the top of the list. And again, thanks for that. If you do that, as that'll be going to be the match. And last, if it's your first time here, consider hitting that subscribe button as we've got a lot more debates coming up. We're excited for Aaron Raugh, who will be on tomorrow debating Dr. Mick Leroy, that'll be in Dallas as we wrap up our Texas tour with that debate on creation of illusion. So with that, very excited to have you here. And one last thank you to our speakers. Michael, the floor is all yours for your opening statement. Fortunately, my screen just went blank again. I'm not sure why. No problem. I want to let people know as we're working on that. What we'll be doing tonight is basically kind of a hybrid in terms of partly formal as well as partly open discussion. And so if you do have those questions, quick reminder, I would love for you to tag Travis Lee. So Travis Lee is one of the moderators in the live chat right now. And Travis is actually going to collect all of the questions. He is going to put them into a list. And then those are the questions that we'll try to get through as many as possible at the end of the debate, depending on how many superchats we have, if we do happen to have a surplus, want to let you know, so sorry, folks, just to respect the time of the debaters. We do want to keep our promise and end when we have agreed to end. And so we really only can do 30 minutes of question and answer. And once that's done, I'm very sorry, we'll try to get through as many questions as possible, but just to respect the time of the debaters, we'll have to wrap up at that point. All right. Well, I'm ready to go. Sorry about that delay there. My screen just keeps going blank. So I fixed it, I think. All right. Well, I've been looking forward to this debate for some time now. And I'd like to thank Matt for agreeing to discuss the topic tonight because I've been following that for years. I've seen numerous of your debates, and I've had a lot of respect for your debate skills, the charisma and your patience you display for some of your opponents. So I appreciate the honor to engage with you again. So diving right in, I'll start by noting I call myself a classical apologist. So that means I'll be arguing a theistic or deistic worldview is more probable given the evidence than a non-theistic worldview. So I don't claim I can prove God exists and I won't be arguing specifically for Christianity. I'll be arguing for basic theism and I'll present three arguments. First, by God, I simply mean a necessary and immaterial mind that created the universe. And so there's no need to argue for anything beyond that at this point. So the first argument I'll present is something called the emergent universe or digital physics argument. Let's begin with the data. In several of my videos, I've presented various lines of evidence that space-time, our universe is emergent and not fundamental. In the hunt to rectify quantum mechanics with relativity, physicists discovered something known as the holographic principle. A theory would suggest the entire three dimensional universe can be seen as two-dimensional information. In other words, the whole three dimensional universe, the particles that make up reality would emerge from underlying information in quantum field theory. In 2017, a peer-reviewed study published observable evidence for the holographic principle. From looking at irregularities in the background of radiation, their team found that simple equations of quantum field theory could explain almost all cosmological observations is marginally a better fit than the standard model and can potentially explain apparent anomalies. Another study from last year found evidence of non-locality, even when two particles are not directly entangled. Thus, as the slide is meant to show, what this means is the information between particles is not affected by space as it could be transferred instantly. So to sum up the implications, I'll quote Sean Carroll. Space is obviously not fundamental. Space is something when you go from classical mechanics to quantum mechanics, space more or less disappears. This implies space is not fundamental for the underlying world of quantum mechanics, but an emergent phenomena of the classical world that only exists after measurement. So the evidence implies all of space-time is emergent. Now, I could argue the emergent nature of matter or space-time from numerous areas, be it quantum mechanics, holographic principle, Brian Whitworth's features of a virtual reality are in many other ways. But the idea of space-time as emergent and not fundamental is accepted more and more by physicists every day. For example, physicist Hyen Silke Yang says emergent space-time is the new fundamental paradigm for quantum gravity. Thus, the most up-to-date evidence suggests all of what we experience, space, time and matter, all seem to be emergent constructs of the classical world, not fundamental aspects of reality. But of course, the question becomes from what does space-time emerge from and how does this relate to God? I'm sure Matt would say something like even if the universe is emergent, that doesn't mean it comes from a God. Well, essentially, the classical world emerges from the underlying information or the universal wave function of the quantum realm. However, interestingly enough, these same underlying features have been seen to parallel aspects of the mind or mental thought processes. So in 2009, physicist Dijerk Erics published a paper noting that our cognitive processes can be readily modeled using the mathematical formulas of quantum mechanics. In other words, our inner mental world of thoughts, qualia, dreams and emotions can be modeled in terms of quantum processes, the same processes we just discussed that have been shown to give rise to space-time and matter. So space-time and matter are emergent from the quantum wave function within Hilbert space, a spaceless non-physical reality, and our inner world of consciousness and mind can be modeled via quantum process through the study of quantum cognition. So this would suggest the evidence implies that what space emerges from would be similar or indistinguishable from the same properties of a mind. So if what the universe emerges from resembles a mind, it is far more parsimonious and plausible to suggest it resembles a mind because it likely is a mind. This is also backed by the recent work of astrophysicist Franco Vasa and neurosurgeon Alberto Feliti, who wrote an article on the similarities between neural networks and the cosmic web of galaxies. There they show the properties of neural networks are similar to the cosmic web of galaxies, which is something we would expect if it's emergent from a mind. So thus the argument can run as follows. So emergent universes exist in either a computer or a mind. Premise two, the universe is an emergent universe. I think from the data I just went over, this is a theological conclusion. Premise three, emergent universe on a computer would still emerge from a mind. Okay, this follows from the fact that computers require atoms to exist. They are physical constructs. And so even if our universe was just a computer simulation, that computer would require a physical universe to exist in. And so we would still have the issue of what the physical universe emerged from. So computers that create digital universes still need a universe to exist in. So to break the infinite regress, we ultimately have to appeal to a spaceless, timeless entity. And since what we have just shown, the underlying quantum world, mimics the properties of a mind, it seems reasonable to refer that it is likely a mind. So premise four, the universe is emergent from a mind. And again I would argue this is more likely, given the data we just went over and the parallels found in quantum cognition. Thus this mind is what we call God. Now notice, God is just a title for the underlying reality from which the universe emerges from. Therefore God exists. The second argument I would like to present is called the cosmic conscious argument, named from Eugene Wigner's work. So contingent minds either have a personal explanation or a natural explanation. This is not too controversial. Almost all theories of mind either hold to reductionist type views or believe consciousness is irreducible, as is, it would have to come from a fundamental conscious source. So premise two, quantum mechanics and other fields of science apply the natural universe is emergent from information processing and consciousness. Most controversial premise. But this could be argued from the data I just went over to support the digital physics argument. And I've argued this more extensively in my videos obviously. But essentially, numerous experiments in quantum mechanics does suggest consciousness does play an important role in wave function collapse and the appearance of material reality. We get more to this later in the discussion section, but essentially experiments such as interaction free experiments, delayed choice quantum or racer experiments, the violation of the legate inequality, confirmation of the coach and specter theorem, leads to the inference consciousness does in fact cause collapse. Here's an interesting study from chess last year that without getting into much detail, they argued this result lets considerable strengths to interpretations of quantum theory already set in an observer dependent framework and demands for revision of those which are not. So the observer does seem to play a role in quantum processes. Now the number one objection I get on this is that interaction or decoherence alone is enough to explain wave function collapse. But this is a popular misconception. Does decoherence solve the measurement problem? Clearly not. What decoherence tells us is that certain objects appear classical when they are observed, but what is an observation? At some stage, we solve to apply the usual probability rules of quantum theory. Maximilian Schlauhauser says, decoherence arises from a direct application of the quantum mechanical formulas to a description of the interaction of a physical system with its environment. By itself, decoherence is therefore neither an interpretation nor a modification of quantum mechanics. And of course we have observed collapse in experiments without interaction taking place. Thus is John Von Neumann, Henry Stapp, Fred Kuttner, Bruce Rosenblum, Bernard Haasch, Richard Conn, Henry, Stephen Barrie and Squires all argue this philosophically leads to the conclusion that consciousness ultimately causes collapse. Notice I'm relying on physicists here. So it follows the appearance of the material reality is emerging from consciousness, not the other way around. Thus, conclusion one, the natural universe cannot be the explanation of contingent minds since the material reality emerges from consciousness. My third argument will support this as well. Premise 3, the explanation of the existence of conscious minds is personal. This personal source is what we call God and therefore God exists. So unless macademnus right consciousness is emerging from the brain and trust me I'm willing to go over several studies in neuroscience as I've done on my channel, the most likely explanation is consciousness is irreducible and thus grounded in a personal source. This is also supported by philosophical arguments like indivisibility of personhood, unified visual perceptions, and the irreducibility of consciousness. Now Matt is obviously aware of the hard problem of consciousness and recognizes there is an insufficient materialistic explanation for this. On the atheist experience, July 28, 2019, in response to a caller named Noah, Matt said, I personally have the view that consciousness is something that is the product of a brain. But let's say we have no explanation for it. Then we are in a position where we have no explanation and that doesn't mean you get to claim that a deistic or pan-deistic view is somehow likely just because you think that it offers an explanation for something for which we don't have an explanation. Now, sorry, but this is not really a good response to the argument from consciousness. If there is no materialistic explanation for consciousness, that doesn't mean someone can ad hoc exclaim we cannot offer other explanations for consciousness. Materialists do not have a monopoly on explanations and and all other alternatives have to be dismissed. And the fact is from a prayer reasoning about our own consciousness, as well as data from neuroscience and quantum mechanics, the evidence suggests consciousness is irreducible, which is why materialism suffers from the hard problem to begin with. As William James said, matter is not that which creates consciousness, it is that which limits consciousness. Thus, contingent minds, like ourselves, would likely be contingent on some sort of larger consciousness, so to speak, that controls reality and brings other contingent minds into existence, and we call God. And once again, God is just a title for the mind behind the universe. Finally, I was planning originally to present a moral argument, but I feel that topic deserves its own conversation, so I'll supplement these two arguments with the introspective argument. So premise one, the mind exists. So no one with a mind can doubt this, this isn't really too controversial. Premise two, the properties of the mind are not that which matter can have. So far there is no evidence or theory which can show how consciousness or mental properties can reduce to matter. So John Sear says, how does a mental reality, a world of consciousness, intentionality, and other mental phenomena fit into a world consisting entirely of physical particles in fields of force? Colin McGuinn says, the problem with materialism is that it tries to construct the mind out of properties that refuse to add up to mentality. There is simply no evidence consciousness can emerge from matter. All neuroscience can show at best is correlation, not causation. However, the properties of matter that we experience can easily be reduced to mind. Since all of what we experience is a world of qualia, taste, sounds, etc., see we essentially experience a world of a mental reality. So there's no reason to posit a discrete material world beyond what we experience. Keith Ward says it like this, any physicist will say that brains are mostly empty space in which molecules, atoms, electrons, and corks, and other strange particles buzz about in complicated ways. It seems as though physical objects, when not being observed, have no colors and no sounds, smells, or tastes either. Sounds, like colors, are not physical events. Neither are smells, tastes, or sensations. Things do not smell like, taste like, or feel like anything when nobody is smelling, tasting, or feeling them. The physical world, it seems, is totally vacuous. No colors, smells, sounds, tastes, or sensations. What on earth is left? Second, two neuroscientists also recently argued space and the rate of time we experience were just emergent models of the mind, again correlating with this idealistic worldview. Thus the first conclusion is mind is not reducible to matter, and then premise three, substance dualism is unnecessary. So, Matt, I, from what I gather, agrees with me on this, so I don't have to worry too much. I can argue this from Spinoza's interaction problem, but conclusion, all is mind. If all is mind, this correlates with the previous two arguments that a governing mind, there is a governing mind that brings us contingent minds limited in matter, into existence and experience and operating reality. Finally, I want to remind people tonight, the debate is, are there good reasons to believe God exists? Now, I've presented several reasons to conclude yes. I've also presented nothing I've not presented on my channel. If Matt doesn't think these are good reasons, he must tear down these by offering better explanations for the data I've presented tonight. He probably is personally not convinced, and I would expect that. He's welcome to believe whatever he wants, but that isn't, but that is not an objective case against the reasons I've presented tonight. Instead, if he wishes to argue there are no good reasons to believe in God, or that he doesn't, he's not sure, he must account for this data with a more plausible and parsimonious explanation. I will contend any attempt will either not be plausible or parsimonious. So, in conclusion, theism is more parsimonious, more plausible, and more plausible, and therefore more probable. Thank you. Matt, thank you very much, Michael, for that opening statement, and now we'll be switching over to give him at a chance to make his opening statement. So, I'm resetting the clock for 15 minutes, and Matt, thanks so much. The floor is yours. Sure, if you can just let me know, and I've got like a minute left to unwrap and time this out. You bet. So, first of all, thanks for setting this up, and thanks to you for showing up and presenting that. I don't have any slides. I'm not going to be quoting anybody, and I'm not going to be, well, doing what I'm told I must do. One of the curious things in a lot of these debates is that people will present their case and say that, therefore, this is a good reason or this is probable, and in order for me to, you know, in order for my opponent to win, they must present a more plausible explanation. Well, that's flatly wrong. If the claim is there are good reasons to believe in God, I don't have to come up with better reasons to not believe in a God, or I don't have to come up with better explanations for something, because if there's a mystery in the world, and the position, the correct position, is that we don't yet have compelling evidence to say that we have come to a good evidence-based conclusion on that, then that is the conclusion, and we are stuck in the position of, you know, I don't have to have an explanation for something in order to be able to say that, hey, you presented something, but it's not quite there yet, as if we come across a murdered body, and you have this, you put together a case for the butlers, the one that killed them. It's not up to me to come up with a more plausible potential killer. It is only up to me to say either you have made a good case for the butler did it, or you have not made a good case for the butler did it, and here's why. When we talk about are there good reasons to believe something, it is a sticky topic, because ultimately you either are convinced, or you're not, and becoming convinced is the result of not in a conscious decision on your part, I'm going to just choose to believe that this, you make choices, and you make decisions as an agent, but you're not just saying, ah, I am now convinced. It is something that you're compelled to do by the weight of the evidence and the weight of the argument, and we have to do this knowing that we can be, in fact, wrong, that we can become convinced of things, and that we may have good compelling arguments, and reasons for it, and ultimately the thing we're convinced of is not true. Once upon a time, it was, there were good reasons to believe that the sun went around the earth, really good reasons to believe it. Everybody saw this and experienced it. Everybody who stood outside said, yep, there goes the sun, it's a direct observation, and the application of Occam's razor to a more porcimonious explanation would obviously have been that the sun goes around the earth, and if you asked me now, or asked me then, hey, are there good reasons to believe the sun goes around the earth, I would say, yes there are, and yet we have better reasons to understand now that that perception is because of the earth spinning on its axis, assuming you're not a flat earther. The thing is, at different times, you can have good reasons to reach a conclusion, and that's independent of whether or not the conclusion you've reached is actually correct. And so, when we hear certain claims in realms that we cannot properly investigate, it is almost obvious, and I'm not going to come up with the right word for it. It seems reasonable that our intuitions about it are likely to be correct. If you go to a psychic reader and they lay out their tarot cards and they do a reading for you, and it seems to apply to you, if you don't have any other information and you've been told that these people have some power to do this, then that is currently the best explanation that you have for it. This is true, this is what magicians exploit, and this is why magicians often went after the psychic readers and everything else, because they figured out, hey, these people appear to be doing the same tricks that I'm doing in my show, only they're claiming that it's a supernatural thing. The reason we're able to debunk that to whatever extent we are is because we have found the thing that you're looking for, which is here's a better explanation. And so, did you in fact have good reason to believe that the psychic was communicating with, you know, the dead? Perhaps, but if the case is essentially, I can't come up with any other explanation, we know that that on and of itself is not a good reason, it's not a compelling reason to believe things. This is how we've come to virtually every wrong belief that we've come to, is our intuitions, our biases, lead us towards a good conclusion. And so, if we're going to talk about whether or not there are good reasons to believe something, the first thing we have to do is figure out, what do we mean by good reasons? If we look at something and we make observations and we do our best to remove as much of our individual biases we can, and we come up with a collection of data, and we can put together a model that currently explains the data, then that would certainly be considered the current best explanation for that data. But whether or not you have a good reason to believe a particular explanation is also dependent on whether or not the thing that you're explaining is, or the explanation you're coming up with is something that you can investigate and explore. Because if you try to solve a mystery by appealing to a bigger mystery, you haven't done anything. And if you try to solve a mystery by just labeling it something, I don't know that you've actually bothered to explain anything. And so if we look around at the universe and we say what would, what would we have to do to try to make sure that we're coming up with good reasons or the best reasons, or that our internal model of reality is as accurate as it can be, then one of the key things is to remove any biases we have to operate, you know, the veil of ignorance is something that I've referenced quite often with regard to morality, other things, but this same sort of thought experiment applies to any other question. And if we, if you come across somebody who's hanging by the neck from a rope, if that's all you're told, your intuition is going to be, ah, they either committed suicide or somebody hung them, whatever. But that's because we don't think about the possibility of an accident and the fact that we haven't been given enough information. It's entirely possible, as somebody who served in the Navy, I can tell you that a bite of rope laying loose that gets tugged could cause an accident where somebody ends up hanging from the neck. So the next thing we want to do is we look at and investigate the rope. Is this, was this rope tied in a knot? Was it secured? Is it a special knot for this? And you continue going down that line to collect as much information as you can. If you just start at the, at the initial observation and say, how best can we explain this? Of course you're going to get to the notion that, you know, consciousness must come from a mind or anything along those lines because you don't yet have enough information. And so we can, I don't, I don't know why we would, you know, go to a bunch of physicists to have them start doing philosophy for us. I mean, that seems a bit strange. Here's a bunch of physicists who say that philosophically speaking it should be this. I'd rather, I don't know, I would say I'd rather go to the philosophers however that's potentially just as much of a mess as anything. Because if you have something that appears mysterious and you don't have a solution for it you have to work to demonstrate that not only here's a solution but here's a probable solution. And probability is something that you don't necessarily have to actually calculate but you should be able to at least approximate. And you can't say that X is more probable merely because it hasn't been disproven or merely because somebody hasn't come up with a better explanation because it's more probable than what? It's more probable than no explanation? Well that, that is not, if we don't know anything about who killed the person the butler is a more probable explanation than nobody did it. But the people who are not convinced that the butler is guilty are not saying nobody did it, they're saying we don't know who did it. You may have enough evidence to make it a compelling case that this was a murder but you haven't come up with you know our compelling case for who actually did it. So the the explanation that we come up with needs to be unique to the claim. We, our explanation shouldn't be able to justify multiple competing claims which is why no offense here but when you argue for the classical god as opposed to a specific god I really don't think that it gets us anywhere because at, at most even if I conceded everything and said that oh if you're just going to define god as that which serves as a foundation for the universe then you've defined god in a way that doesn't, it doesn't have any of the properties of anything that people are going to or any unique properties of what people have classically identified as god. It doesn't have to be you know a personal being or all powerful or anything else would get you to a particular one and if you know Christians and Muslims and Hindus and everybody else can use these the same case of ah there must be some mind at the end of it that doesn't get us anywhere near uh an understanding of what that means and so while I'll I'll save a good chunk of that for actually going through the rebuttal when we have a claim a mystery acknowledging oh this is this is a hard problem is good but it's not I'm not here to defend materialism is in the sense of philosophical materialism I'm not even claiming that there is in fact an explanation for this so when we look at for example the origin the universe of the origin of consciousness it may be enough to say we don't know this is an unsolved problem and then people come in and say yes but we have this and this and this and here's this in quantum physics and it appears that that observations you know will help the waveform collapse and so there must be a conscious observer except that we also have other experiments that show that there's not necessarily a conscious observer when you're doing the double slit experiment the the measurement happens at the time that it's going through the slit not when the scientist comes in and looks at what the results are um now even if there is seemingly good evidence that somehow consciousness is collapsing it you have no mechanism by which you can say that this is the case and this appears to be a good chunk of of the the arguments that are being presented both here and elsewhere so if we're going to say are there good reasons to believe in a god well we could go down an entirely subjective route and say that I'm convinced and I think these reasons are good and they're good enough for me and therefore I'm just going to call them good reasons but then we run into that problem where we know that there are people who think that they have good reasons and it's just that they don't have enough information at one time it may have been all of humanity they didn't have enough information about whether or not the sun orbits the earth or the earth orbits the sun and they had a flawed perspective on it they still had a good reason the question then becomes have we graduated to a point where even on questions where we don't have an answer that what would at first blush appear to be good reasons to reach a conclusion are in fact not good reasons because of other things we know we don't do we have to have a counter explanation that we then show is more plausible because more plausible or more probable doesn't tell us much what if what if the probability that classical god is the correct explanation is one percent and we come up with something that's six percent we still don't have any good reason to think that we are beyond the let's say 50 point whatever percent to get us to something that yes this is worth reasonably concluding for now and the thing that people don't often remember is that science often gets pointed to as the best of all these it is that the scientific methods are the single most consistently reliable way we have of understanding the universe but science doesn't make proclamations about truth it creates probabilistic models based on what we understand it explains things in terms of other things that we understand and when we are at the fledgling front of some scientific disciplines that too many are going to appear as almost identical or indistinguishable from magic more you know I know we didn't get into string theory stuff here but it it raises the question of is this proposition falsifiable and just by example without going too much into rebuttal at the outset the fact that we can make a simulation of something I don't see how that could ever lead someone to the conclusion that therefore the something we are simulating is also likely or more probably a simulation itself the fact that because what we're doing when we simulate something is essentially we're describing it in an abstract way in some other language in some other environment we're creating a computer model of it we're creating a model of it in our head and to say that because I can create this model in my head or I can simulate it in a computer perhaps the thing this it's it reminds me and I don't mean to dismiss it this way just comes into my head this way the scene in animal house where they're all high and they're talking about you know what if we're all part of the universe on a fingernail it's a cool cool idea that the notion that we might be living in a simulation is interesting and I've seen some models that suggest that the processing power of it would become you know especially for a dynamic universal become exponentially prohibited but that none of those arguments will fly either because those are based on the physics and understanding that we have in our let's say simulation and so what can you tell about the world outside of the simulation all of these problems where we seem to reach a limit in our ability to explore to investigate and to understand my view is I don't know what the explanation is I don't even know how you could say what is more probable as an explanation and the best thing we can do seemingly is to argue by analogy which when we've done that in the past when we have made these claims that this is the best explanation that we have based on our current understanding at any time later where we've found out what the actual explanation is we found out that we probably were wrong we're constantly being wrong which is why all of science is this this tentative proclamation about a likely model based on evidence and not this is the truth or this is the absolute truth like I don't think we can get to absolute certainty on anything and so I wouldn't be expecting you to get to absolute certainty on anything but to to say that we have good reasons a real argument could be made that we can have good reasons for anything if we go down this I have limited knowledge and I have this subjective experience if we're going to talk about whether or not we have good reasons to think that our answer is likely not that it is the best of the potential candidate explanations right now but that it is actually likely true that is a different bar and that is that is the bar that I'm kind of holding to which is if we have no explanation any explanation anybody offers that isn't falsifiable would seem like a better explanation but does it rise to the level of being an actual good explanation is it sufficient to explain this and do we have good reason to think that it is likely or probable or are we just saying hey this is weird I don't know how we could possibly explain the mind or the origin of the universe but people have proposed this idea that there is a being that is not bound by space and time that is immensely powerful and reasonable and wonderful and awe inspiring and of course that being could do that that being could serve as a ground for this and because we don't have another explanation that being is necessarily more probable than a non-explanation and therefore I have good reasons to believe it and I don't see how that rises beyond this feels better to me than not having an explanation if in fact the truth is we don't have the most likely explanation I don't know how to tell the difference between those two could go thank you very much Matt for that opening statement and now we will switch into rebuttals so thanks so much everybody we have 10 minute rebuttals and I've got the timer set for you Michael the floor is all yours all right well thanks for that Matt I appreciate a lot of what you said in fact there's a lot there I agreed with a lot of what you said seems to be talking about possibility of being wrong possibility of finding better explanations in the future and I completely agree with that I agree with a lot of the things that you said there the problem is is that possibility is not probability one of us is talking about possibility the other is talking about probability and then you said you don't know you know if we can get to that sort of threshold correct me if I'm not representing your words correct I apologize because said a lot there I'm just trying to keep up some of the things you did talk about it's how you talk about appealing to a bigger mystery here I want to respond to that with a quote by Peter Lipton he says explanations need not themselves be understood a drought may explain a poor crop even if we don't understand why there was a drought I did understand why you didn't come to the party if you explain you had a bad headache even if I have no idea why you had a headache the big bang explains the background radiation even if the big bang is inexplicable and so on his point is we just can't say that we shouldn't pause at explanations just because they bring more mystery I mean that's what quantum mechanics did we thought we were almost there with Newtonian physics and then Max Planck found all these really interesting anomalies and we got more mystery Charles Darwin did that he brought us evolution now we have to explain all these transitional part areas and whatnot that's just the way science moves forward that's the way philosophy moves forward that's the way every discipline moves forward so I don't understand what that would actually be a real objection into there and yeah I agree there's a lot of subjectivity that goes into a lot of this stuff but a lot of it is just sort of appealing to the possibility yeah I fully acknowledge I could possibly be wrong and if something comes up in the future then I hope I will be willing to change my mind understanding the psychology psychology reports like for example the 2012 study called cognitive sophistication does not actuate the bias blind spot a larger bias they noted a larger bias blind spot with associated with higher cognitive ability so I don't think we can ever get rid of that I fully agree with you on that but at the same time all I'm trying to do is offer the best explanation at the end of the day if you're just not convinced there's nothing I can say to that it's like if you were arguing with a Christian yeah all right good day Matt if you're arguing with a Christian and you gave him all the evidence against or arguments for evolution and he said well you know I just don't agree nothing you can say at that point just walk away you know he's not going to listen if at the end of the day you're not convinced nothing I can say I'm not here to convince you subjectively I understand that you know people have all sorts of reasons for not believing things I don't really care I'm just going to keep offering the evidence and say I think based on the data based on the rules of probability parsimony that at least ad hoc this is the best explanation from there I can't really do anything beyond that other than say well unless we have a better explanation I'm just going to keep saying this is the best explanation could I be wrong absolutely could there be a better explanation down the road yeah and if that happens I hope to change my mind for example if we explain the mind in terms of purely materialistic aspects we're able to explain our consciousness emerges from the brain I in terms of my Christian theology I can just agree with theologians that argue for physicalism like Dr. Joshua Moritz for example so I don't really see that as an issue but that's in the future for all we know we can just get more evidence to support these theories all I can do is go on with what the evidence I have now is and that's what I'm trying to do you talked about one thing in here I want to correct regarding person walks in looks at the detector kind of thing in terms of quantum experiments that's not entirely accurate in terms of it what causes collapse is more about which path information knowledge of collapse it's not looking at the results so this is seen in things like delayed choice quantum eraser experiments there was a very interesting study in 2012 called experimental delayed choice entanglement swapping where they would send state of entangled particles one to one detector one to a detector that hit it at a later point in time and based on how that detector determined how to measure it it would affect the thing in the past and their point was it's not so much detection that causes collapse or it's looking at the results it's more about knowing which path information so I just wanted to make sure that you said it could be indistinguishable from magic well I mean like I'm not even sure what that means maybe you can clarify that in the rebuttal period because I mean I in terms of like sometimes how I hear materialists try to explain how consciousness emerges from the brain it almost sounds like magic I would need to know beyond what that means and I honestly am not really sure where we're going with that you talked about the processing power objection in terms of the simulation hypothesis an objection I support because that actually helps my theory that we're not being simulated in the computer because the processing power limits it makes more far more sense that there's some sort of underlying reality that resembles a mind which is what I argued for in my opening statements so I'm not really sure what else to go on because again I said I I agree with a lot of what you said I agree we could possibly be wrong I'm in it there are three positions that have taken a debate the affirmative the negative and a neutral if you're just taking a neutral all right I don't know what else to do here at this point other than just keep presenting more data to support my my position so I got about five minutes left there is some more data that I did want to present that I had to cut out from my opening statement because I didn't have enough time because James said I can only have 15 minutes because he's so mean so in terms of consciousness being caused by the brain for example I want to refer to a quote by Dan Dennett because I know you're a fan of him so Dan Dennett on page 254 of his book Consciousness Explains says there is no single definitive stream of consciousness because there is no central headquarters no Cartesian theater where it all comes together now I'm not sure if you entirely are that or not I know you're a fan of Dennett the problem with this is that kind of theory doesn't seem to be supported by the data because if we remove parts of the brain would consciousness go away for example there have been some cases of hydraencephalus I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that term right that's where there's mostly fluid in the brain there was a 2008 study called the presence of consciousness in the absence of the cerebral cortex there was another study in 2014 consciousness without a cortex a hydraencephalus family survey I'm probably butchering how you say that name by the way but even back to the 1990s a reciprocal neurosurgical development of twins disconcordinate with hydraencephalus so we see these cases where we don't have a fully functioning cognitive brain and yet people are still consciousness in 1984 there was someone named Andrew Vanda who was born without a brain and just fluid in his skull despite all of the predictions he actually lived for a good four years was able to smile respond to stimuli and all that thing if consciousness is a product of the brain I'm actually curious about you on this because you might might be okay with this but do you think plants are conscious because I actually do think plants are conscious and a book called the deep structure of biology Anthony Chuevas in one of the chapters note that plants display several features which resemble conscious behavior they display phenotypic plasticity which is the plant's version of movement they target areas to grow into and they can make choices they are able to sense their environment communicate through chemical reactions display territorial behavior and compete for space they recognize other plants as the same species or not so they can recognize if there's a foreign invader type plant or if there's another plant that's the same species as them they make decisions and plan for the future like how to preserve resources or not they can even seem to form memories and certain species display hive behavior so if consciousness is like sort of like a function of the brain I would suggest we can see consciousness where there is not entirely functioning brains and it creatures that it technically do not even have brains in terms of that other data I would like to go over is things like top-down causation so materialists predicted that taking things like LSD or psilocybin would actually result in more brain activity because people were having more vivid experiences they're experiencing brighter colors well this was a prediction that was actually falsified they found the exact opposite in studies like neural correlates of the psychedelic states as determined by fmri studies within psilocybin Christoph Koch even said to the great surprise of many psilocybin a potential psychedelic reduces brain activity so people are reporting far more psychedelic experience far more vivid experience and brain activity is decreasing that seemed to not fit with the materialistic paradigm that brain was sort of creating consciousness because it should be increasing brain activity Jeffrey Schwartz and other researchers have looked into things like mindful attention and argued there is evidence of top-down causation papers like training induced cognitive and neuroplasticity plasticity constrained induced movement therapy to enhance recovery after a stroke change the mind and you change the brain effects of cognitive behavioral therapy on the neural correlates of spider phobia and they basically argued that mental processes seem to be creating top-down causal effects and brain chemistry that was again not predicted originally by the materialistic paradigm because consciousness mental activity supposed to be the product of brain activity being built up but we've seen we do see evidence of top-down causation there's also some very interesting studies on disassociated identity disorder so for example there was actually a really peculiar study called sight and blindness in the same person gating of the visual system this person had disassociated identity disorder and they added one alter that said they were blind and they said okay sure but when they actually they had that blind alter came up the brain activity changed to the point that mimicked an actual blind person and the argument was is that mental seems to precede the physical when the physical follows through from the personality so I only have 30 seconds left but I'll sum up from there I agree with you it's possible I could be wrong I fully agree if you want to be neutral fine I don't care I'm just saying this is the best explanation that's all I can do at this point you bet thanks very much Michael we'll now switch over to the rebuttal from Matt got the timer set for you and the floor is yours depending on how we categorize things I may or may not be neutral I don't think I'm actually neutral I don't think it's a neutral position I'm taking what I'm saying you know I get to the center you present a lot of studies that have nothing to do with anything I've ever advocated for but I find all of them interesting because the sort of brain studies are this gets to how we label the difference between for example consciousness and sentience and so you could make an argument that if we're going to define consciousness this way maybe a plant's conscious but maybe it's not sentient maybe it's not doesn't have the ability of self reflection or self identity and things like that you started off by talking about though this problem that I keep citing by trying to solve a mystery by appealing to a mystery and the quote that you used referenced you know you don't have to understand how a drought works to know that drought is the explanation and you don't have to understand why somebody has a headache to know that the headache is the explanation the problem here is that drought is the label we put on for an observable phenomenon a headache is the label we put on an observable phenomenon we know that these things are real to the extent that hey we experience headaches we experience droughts we observe the effects of these why a drought occurs I agree you don't necessarily I don't even know how my car works to know that it does work I don't even know how or what what weather conditions occurred that resulted in a drought to be able to say hey we're in a drought because a drought is particularly defined as you're not getting any rain you're low on water that's not what we're doing when we say hey what is the explanation it would be like saying what's the explanation for a drought I don't know we don't have anything it must be God God's send droughts God send droughts to punish people for allowing gay marriage this is the same thinking of why hurricanes slammed into New Orleans it's not that that saying hey you have a drought is not appealing to a bigger mystery it's labeling the thing that is now you can do that and it seems that you're trying to do that by saying God is merely the label that we put on that which is responsible for the universal emergence or the emergence of the cosmos or the emergence of consciousness and stuff like that but when I talk about appealing to a bigger mystery it's not just oh we don't know the explanation for X I'm not saying you have to explain God I'm saying you don't get to use God as an explanation and tells us time as you can demonstrate that there is such a thing as a God we can't use a headache as an explanation until we have a good understanding of what a headache is and what we're talking about if you say oh I don't want to come to your party because I have a kerfluffle a little bit well nobody knows what that is and okay it's nonsensical and then when I define it as saying it's a particular type of headache that occurs in my toe well that may be really strange and really confusing but we might be able to find out that what I meant by headache is you know pain and pain in the toe whatever identify and label things to the degree that we understand them we're no longer solving a mystery by appealing to mystery we're just saying this is the thing but that thing that we point to is something that needs to be demonstrable I don't know how you can point to the non demonstrable the unfalsifiable as if it is a foundation for those things and so I'm not taking a neutral position I'm not saying we don't know and we'll never know I'm not saying everybody's potential explanation is flawed I'm saying coming up with what you view as or what may even be a better explanation than nothing doesn't mean that you have an explanation that rises to the point that it should qualify as good because I you know people invent conspiracy theories all the time and they have their suspicions about what's going on hey my husband didn't come home or came home late from work repeatedly I don't have any other information to go on and rather than sitting here wondering about what all could be I'm just going to conclude that he's having an affair well hang on we know that affairs happen I'm not appealing to a mystery but do you have any evidence that's a fair well you could put together evidence that is consistent with an affair provided that the only evidence you have is that it's about looking at the other evidence this is why science position isn't about affirming science position about is attempting to falsify and so if we have a case being made for something I saying that I was be taking a neutral position isn't necessarily true if all I'm doing is pointing out flaws in a particular explanation and if we have no explanation and an explanation where we have flaws that we know in other circumstances would result in an untrustworthy unreasonable explanation if we find a fallacy in an argument we don't conclude that the conclusion is false we just render the conclusion unknown that because there is a a fallacy in the argument we cannot be confident at all in the conclusion that's the whole point behind a fallacy this is why you have a structure because true premises lead to true conclusions and you can mix this up in a reductio at absurdum by putting in a premise that is suspicious and if it leads to a conclusion that is demonstrably false then you know that that premise is not acceptable but if you have premises that are questionable and you reach a conclusion you don't know whether or not that conclusion is reasonable and so when we look at things like the mystery of consciousness the mystery of the universe to say hey science hasn't come up with a better explanation and the scientists are talking about things like quantum mechanics and the breakdown of the wave function and all of this is something that I can spin in a way that's it's consistent with you know a god of classical theism when I talked about the the potential for processing power to be ultimately limiting but we don't you know we're still stuck within our simulation so we don't know what processing power could exist beyond that and essentially all you've done by suggesting that this is consistent with the god is yeah processing power is going to be limited and god's going to be unlimited how do you know that oh because we've defined god as being unlimited but god necessarily is that thing that is unlimited that could be infinite processing power sufficient to sustain a simulated universe but you've made no demonstration that such a being exists or could exist or likely exists it's just a big panacea of we need an explanation that can do this isn't this so we'll call god label god the explanation does this it was right there in the initial opening where you were essentially saying that you know I'm only arguing for god and god being defined as that which is sufficient to explain whatever the hell it is that I'm you know arguing for whether it's consciousness to the universe so the process that we go by when we figure out whether or not there's good reason isn't justice a subjective thing like I think you and I would agree on this that if somebody comes along and they think the earth is flat and you show them all this evidence and they ultimately just sit there and go well you didn't convince me that doesn't matter at all you're not going to make any headway probably in that until you have a conversation at a different level like are they being consistent in how they apply logic and reason and evidence and if you can show that they're being inconsistent that they're engaged in some kind of special pleading for their god or for flat earth or whatever else then you've demonstrated that they are in a position that is unreasonable not that it's false but that the the argumentation the foundation that they've presented is essentially unreasonable now that's not necessarily going to convince them in it either you could tell somebody and show somebody hey you're being unreasonable and they could say yep sure I am just going to take it on faith or whatever else this isn't about what would convince anybody or everybody it's about what should be considered convincing and compelling convincing and compelling and in some cases it's about is there sufficient evidence for the claim not every claim requires the same degree or type or quality or quantity of evidence you know if you tell me hey I just drank a shot of whiskey okay I'm good with that if you say that that whiskey was teleported here by aliens from another galaxy two minutes before the show I'm not going to take that claim at its word and so it's not just a matter of I'm just going to sit here and subject to say nope not convinced I'm not convinced it's not about whether or not I'm convinced it's about whether or not on a foundation of reason we should be convinced that is and that's what I considered to be the entire subject the debate are there good reasons to believe in God because somebody just said are there reasons to believe in God yeah I'd have to say yes are there reasons to believe in God that some people think are good yeah but is belief in a God a particular God or even an abstract God sufficiently supported by reason and I would have to say no because in all the time that I've been dealing with this and in everything that I've been presented and what gets presented to be by other people in the course of these debates it's either there is an argument that is ultimately fallacious which means the conclusion is questionable or there is a mystery for which we do not apparently have a sufficient understanding to offer an explanation to something in the universe and people are instead saying but I know of this God thing this was would anybody absent someone proposing a God as an explanation have a path to get to discover that it is in fact a God as an explanation not just that I can't think of a better one or this is the most plausible or whatever else but when I'm when I'm evaluating something one of the things that I have to consider about whether or not I'm going to change my mind is what is the cost of accepting this how many other positions and beliefs what I have to change because the foundations of my reasoning has been changed if I accept the claim for a particular or even an abstract classical notion of God what does that change about the laws and rules that I apply to what is a good reason and how many other beliefs what I have to change and we can put those into a reductio and as long as we're willing to accept the foundations of reason doing that in the sense of if you're right that would change this and this and this and this and we those things that have stronger evidence for them then we're clearly aren't at we aren't at least being reasonable yet I think I went like five seconds over that's okay no problem we are excited to go into the open discussion section folks so this is going to be about 40 minutes of open conversation between the two speakers and as mentioned before if you do have a question fire it into the live chat we will pull it out and we'll save it for the q and a thanks so much guys so I have a question what do you mean you said you know it's demonstrable there's you know we need to demonstrate brexit hunter brought this up with you in his debate as well what do what does this mean how do we demonstrate something in your view or what do you mean by that so it's a good question because a lot of times when we're talking about these things we'll use a word and everybody just assumes they know what it means and maybe we're not even talking about the same thing so for me something is demonstrable is something that we can everything that we get we get through our senses and exploration so can we set aside the problem of heart solips and just agree that we're sharing a universe fair enough sweet as long as we're sharing a universe then I have a way to demonstrate to myself and to others independently and get their confirmation of what is or isn't in this can or that there is a can it doesn't mean that the explanation itself needs to be materialistic but because we are physical beings in a material world that demonstration needs to be physical and I'm not saying there could be a supernatural being for example that can interact that can do miracles that can do mind reading that can do that kind of stuff but there would be a manifestation in reality that is detectable identifiable discoverable and that means that some things are going to need to be repeatable like a single occurrence can all it's almost always going to be incredibly difficult for anybody to reasonably accept unless it is in a category of something that is mundane like I dropped my pen now it's in the past how do we explore the past how do we investigate the past oh somebody could have recorded this and it's a it's an edited thing apart from you know the actual instant of doing it how would I go about demonstrating it well maybe we can go to the recording maybe we can go to the fact that it's live maybe we can see that the pen is on the floor maybe then we can make an you know an abductive or an inference about what the best explanation is at the end of the day though the claim that I knocked a pen on the floor not a big deal you talked about the past now you and I both accept the theory of evolution now I have debated Young Earth Creation so I'm debating one next month in Toronto they say this kind of same stuff is you can't demonstrate that single celled organisms slowly evolved in two hominids and I go I actually just say yeah I can't because I don't have a time machine but I do have a lot of evidence radiometric dating looking at different transitional fossils and I can make a good explanation arguing to the best inference right I'm trying to do the same thing here I'm saying look at all this data we have oh sorry go ahead I'm saying we look at all this data we have we have correlations quantum cognition we have evidence of mental correlations there we have strong evidence of top-down causation from consciousness we have no evidence of consciousness being reduced to matter but yet we have plenty of evidence matter can reduce the consciousness just from basic philosophy like David Hume's bundle theory or some of the stuff I was talking about earlier it just seems like this is the best explanation for the same reason I accept the theory of evolution it's the best explanation except that when we're talking about things like radiometric dating all of the different components of what we're talking to build our inference because science is all inference so everything that we're using to build that is something else that is demonstrable so we're taking sturdy bits of things where we talk about you and I could probably have fun with a young earth creationist at some point because I love when they do the oh well carbon dating is only good to 50,000 years hey you're right yeah that you're actually correct but it overlaps with a bunch of others and that is that overlap that builds a case that is so compelling that we can have a reasonably good way of dating things to determine how old something is are there going to be mistakes? anomalies? you betcha and that's already counted for in statistical analysis and it's about being as right as we reasonably can at no point in modeling the theory of evolution which is what you're going to get from like young earth creationists is it hey this seems a lot like this and so now we're going to appeal to something else so mind comes from mind well first of all mind isn't particularly well defined and there's disagreement about you know is is it the mind a product of the brain is it what the brain does is it a thing that actually exists or is it an emergent property of something that exists you know like wetness from water type thing wetness doesn't exist it is the interaction of particles you know in a fluid I would disagree you think wetness exists no I would not say it emerges from matter wetness is a mental property that we experience when we interact with water it emerges in consciousness I have no idea how to say that matter what would create wetness because wetness is a physical sensation that we experience in our mental reality one definition of wetness is certainly based on what we actually experience although maybe everything is based on what we actually experience that's one of the arguments and describe that however there's a property of there's two distinct things piece of paper and fluid and it's a property of how a fluid interacts with us that we describe as wet that property isn't just us experiencing our experience is tied to it it is something about our interaction with that I would agree I mean I agree my argument coming back to that though is is the way we're going to describe that piece of paper is certainly in terms of mental properties the way it feels the way it looks its sensations just to invoke the you know alchemist razor why invoke an entire substance why not invoke just mental phenomena mental information kind of thing because that's one of my main arguments we live in a giant mental reality and now and I use this word varied importantly analogous to like some sort of simulation why why pause it like when you're playing a video game there's this discreet room you're walking into and when you walk out it's still there well no it's just code merging from the code kind of thing and you take David Hume's bundle theory he talks about physical objects you can explain everything in terms of their properties their mental properties take away all the properties what do you got well nothing so why pause it so just vote cockams razor why positive discreet material substance beyond the mental there I'm not well I'm well who I don't know that I am positing that so one of the one of the things go ahead yeah I'm interested so if if you take away all of the physical properties or all the physical components of something you also take away all of its ability to interact with anything else I don't there doesn't have to be a mental experience for there to be friction it's what it doesn't have to be a mental experience for there to be a strong nuclear force or a weak nuclear force you take away these things it's about how they interact and our interaction with a water or fluid we describe that as wet but also the wetness this reduction in friction and the ability to slide over occurs all the time even without our experience it occurs between the molecules interaction and between waters interaction with other things there's a reason why we can use a a water cutter to cut through metal even though dripping water on metal isn't going to do it it's because the interactions between them which isn't our experience is something that we can then describe who that's that's a rough interaction that's friction interaction I like where you're going because you're describing everything in terms of physics and that's what I agree with physics reduces in mathematics again it all reduces to information whether we're describing things by mental sensations mental phenomena or physics we're all describing it in terms of information basically and in terms of information I want to make sure let me let me define this I'm going off C. E. Shannon's 1948 a Mathematical Theory of Communication so if materialism is true information refers to material arrangements if idealism is true or substance dualism is true information will refer to phenomenal states that can be qualitatively discerned from one another qualia sound sensations thoughts mathematics mental phenomena he strictly says you know so when I talk about information I want to make be clear what I'm actually describing here I'm referring to mental phenomena now if we don't have any evidence for the material beyond what we're sensing experiencing why not just explain it in terms of the information itself which would be an idealistic account and it gets us right back to where we were well be essentially it would be arguing for a some version of heart solipsism I would disagree completely because so would you agree with me that if we removed every thinking mind from the universe friction is still something that was going to occur in the universe not the physical emergence of it but the information of it just happening there so to give an analogy going back to the video game thing if you have let's say you're in an RPG game you come across some sort of site that you could see like train track friction that happened in that video games past it didn't physically happen like the information arrangement got there but there was no physical observers to sort of cause collapse to observe the physical phenomena but you can still have the underlying information processing taking place to get you to that point so the difference I'm distinguishing here between the information and the material so it seems and I don't want to lay down a trick route to get here I just legitimately want to understand this because it seems what's happening is you have a view and it's going to lead to an eventual collapse at some point because for example if this is all just information and is contingent upon a mind then you can't have evolution at all you can't have chemicals interacting because there's no mind there and so therefore you pause at a God mind to serve as that which is going to collapse okay then how do you solve that well that's a good question I'm glad you brought that up so in terms of that though I don't say that I talked about this in my video on the cosmic conscious argument I don't say that God is sort of like has some sort of giant eyeball looking down on space and some sort of globe or whatnot so the evolution of the wave function is deterministic this is something Lawrence Krauss said in his debate with I forget I think it was Dennis de Souza or something I can't remember exactly that wave function is still deterministic the information within the wave function is still deterministically evolving to get to a certain point when it comes in contact with a conscious observer all that happens is it collapses to the physical appearance of it so as Fred Kutner Bruce Rosenblum Bruce Rosenblum say in their book the quantum enigma absence of there being a physical particle there that's just the wave function the evolution of that information and then when an observer comes in it causes sort of like the collapse of the physical particle best way I can explain is an analogy I found the analogy works really well the video game you have the sort of getting to that certain point when a conscious observer comes in the information is building up all the observer does is just cause physical collapse but the information was still there which observer the person playing the game the person playing the game well so now if I if I step away from the game and it keeps going without me and there's not another person involved nothing's happening within that simulated realm I'm referring to the avatar the person you are using if you were in a video game room and then you walk out of that room does the room still exist in some sort of absolute space setting well first of all it depends well no it does it does depend and hang on it depends on the type of game we're talking about because if if the game is a simulation of a house that doesn't remove the room so that you can go in and out of them then that that room is still being essentially rendered within the engine of the game even though you're not in that room to look at it but it's not on the screen so all that it exists the screen and you might as well that's just that's like saying if I close my eyes does the world go away well I mean I'm not actually arguing that because I understand decoherence but you are arguing that because you just said if it's not on the screen it can't be said to exist well I'm using that as an analogy remember I made that very specific I'm using this as an analogy okay so but it goes back to the question that I was asking which is if there aren't any thinking minds in the universe do things like friction and you know do chemical molecules interact and the answer is yes they must well they interact in an information setting but there's no reason to just pause it they would sort of exist in the space-time temporal setting because there's no need for them to be it's again the wave function which is simply be deterministic without collapsing to a definite position it's if you're saying if we eliminated every thinking mind in the universe right now that everything would stop because there'd be nothing to collapse the wave form well essentially yes that's what I'm arguing okay I don't know I mean I don't I don't know how to possibly argue against that that seems to me to be an unfalsifiable proposition that violates Occam's razor actually no I could argue that it is falsifiable you have to find hidden variables within quantum mechanics because it goes back to what I was talking about in my opening setting so there was an experiment called the confirmation of the Cochin-Specker theorem the Cochin-Specker theorem argues that non-contextuality is incompatible with quantum mechanics now what does that mean let me sum it up in a quote from Anton Zellinger he says what we perceive as reality now depends on the decision of what to measure which is a very impli- interesting implication about the universe we're not just passive observers end quote so what he's basically arguing is that the Cochin-Specker theorem which was confirmed in 2011 does actually show that we aren't passive observers we are playing an intricate role 2006-2007 there was something called the violation of the legged inequality they falsified all non-local hidden variables that were testable now it is possible there are some hidden variables like maybe the Bohmian wave and Bohmian mechanics is somehow giving us the illusion that the observer is somehow playing a role the problem is there's just no evidence for it and the most likely explanation is that observers actually are playing a role this is why I rely so much on people like Fred Kutner Henry Stapp who have argued for this that we just have to follow the philosophical conclusions to what we're actually what's actually showing us so curiously while I'm not a physicist I mean some of the physicists that you've cited and referenced like Sean Carroll obviously doesn't agree with the conclusions that you reach on it no I don't have any expertise in this area and yet as we sit here talking about whether or not the world would cease to exist if we removed all thinking minds and you seem to think that one of these models has essentially found a way to falsify that I'm unaware of it I'm not just doing the subjective unconvinced but I don't know how this gets us to a god well that goes back to my original arguments I gave so the universe once again is emerging from consciousness but this is all just by analogy in the same way that you're saying this model would seem to suggest that a materialistic view a standard materialistic view just doesn't work and so therefore there must be a god however what there must be if a materialistic view which I think we would all agree is incomplete and is never asserted to be complete so the real situation that we have is our current understanding within a materialistic view even not just philosophically materialist but a methodologically materialistic view where we just don't get to appeal to the supernatural and tell such time as it gets has been demonstrated to be real or and be able to affect reality a materialistic view doesn't have all the answers and we don't have enough information or we don't have a good enough understanding to say things and therefore it's plausible to say that there must be some sort of non-materialistic explanation there how do you determine that it's more plausible to suggest a non-materialistic explanation than it is to suggest that there's a materialistic explanation that we are as yet unaware of have you ever read a book called called four against I've never read a book well let me pour you a drink then cool have you read a book called four and against method by Emery Lakatos in Paul Fireben it's a pretty good book on philosophy of science I always recommend it when people want to learn how science is done in that book Emery Lakatos is trying to respond to Paul Fireben who is famous for trying to argue that science is like art and he's recognizing the subjectivity of scientists but he's also responding and trying to save the objectivity of science and one of the things he talks about is degenerate and progressive research programs you asked how do I know about it's more probable that it's an immaterial otherwise a non-material explanation because right now as you were talking about and all the evidence I was giving the materialistic research program is degenerate it's it's having to get more haddock to explain things away now that doesn't prove I'm right the materialism is wrong it does lend credence to the idea it isn't the second way I do it is the same way I would respond to young earth creationists when they say well how do you know God just didn't make it that way I'm saying well yeah it's possible but it's not likely given the current data if we find more data in the future to support that then I'll take that view so when you say how do I know it's not a future materialistic explanation very well could be let's wait to see what actually happens but for right now I'm going to argue this is the best explanation given our current data and our current understanding okay so that didn't really answer that the question I asked I think because if basically it was my point was that we don't have a materialistic explanation for x and that we also understand that we don't have full understanding and that every time we found an explanation for x it's been material to or whatever whatever x and here we are without an explanation for something and you are positing that a supernatural explanation or a non-material explanation is more plausible or more probable than a material explanation that we don't know and when asked why you would think it's more plausible or more probable you talk about basically complaining that people are doing materialism wrong that materialism is collapsing on itself materialism isn't collapsing on itself maybe people with are doing things right just like the science isn't going to collapse on itself now materialism asserting that it is the one and only explanation for stuff that's something that I don't accept and haven't put forward anyway because I don't know how you could demonstrate that in the first place that it every explanation needs to be material but I live in a world where every time we've explained something it's been material at no point have we ever explained something and confirmed that the explanation is supernatural and throughout history people have said hey materialism doesn't have an explanation for this therefore I'm going to pause at a supernatural explanation and say that it is the best current explanation we have and like I pointed out earlier it may be the case that it's the best explanation even though it's not an explanation at all it doesn't have any explanatory power it is just a it is indistinguishable from saying magic did it or mystery did it or whatever else just would put a label on it and so if we've gone through through this and have yet to confirm anything supernatural I don't know how you could say that it's more likely that the explanation is supernatural until such time as we find a natural explanation or material explanation but what's worse than that is that what you said was that I'm going to keep believing it's supernatural until we come up with a material explanation it's literally I mean well first of all we can rewind that's what you were saying that this is the best explanation so I'm going to accept it and my objection here is that accepting what you find to be the best explanation and then putting a burden of proof on someone to show you wrong which you've done repeatedly from from your opening statement right up until just a minute ago from your opening statement where you're like here's what Matt needs to do he needs to come up with a more plausible explanation than the one I've offered that's not the way reason works reason isn't just nobody else has come up with an explanation nobody else has come up with a better explanation so I'm just going to go with this one that's not what skepticism is that's not how reasoning works that's not critical thinking the real position is to proportion your confidence to the actual evidence for something and to accept something tentatively to the degree that it's supported by evidence at no point is it I'm going to believe this until somebody proves me wrong well there's a couple misconceptions I need to think over here I'm not saying I'm just positing this just because this is why I started out with the evidence I laid down several pieces of evidence and I never said supernatural because I reject that distinction entirely I don't even know what supernatural means every time we're in the same boat supernatural natural distinction it's so arbitrary I don't know except that you're asserting it's non-material which I would say is supernatural so then is quantum entanglement supernatural because it doesn't happen in space time it violates a speed of light I don't know is consciousness supernatural I don't know well then there you go if you're just going to say I don't know I'm going to say that and I'm not just saying I don't know I'm saying I don't know and you don't either but you seem to be claiming that you do I don't know I don't know I don't know that you don't know what I'm saying is that your argument for why you know is flawed how? because saying something is the best explanation that we have we know the fact that something is the best explanation we have doesn't mean it has any kind there's any likelihood that it's actually true or that is the best explanation we will ever have it's possible yeah so it's like saying hey the butler did it is the best explanation I have well first of all I don't like comparing things to sort of murder investigation for the very simple reason that in a court of law you do believe beyond all reasonable doubt that's not how we do science that we do history that's how we do philosophy maybe for a murder trial but it's not that way for all trials there's also there's also to a preponderance of the evidence that's true that's kind of what I'm getting at and putting in the same terms of sort of historical narrative I believe Hannibal crossed the Alps with elephants because the evidence supports it I don't believe that Hannibal used spaceships because there's no evidence to suggest it so it's again I'm just going with what the evidence suggests it's something every word that you just uttered is something that we know to be real that is a potential explanation God is not why? we don't know God to be we know elephants are real we don't know the same about God you can't show me a God okay that's all you can do is and this is why you're not arguing for a specific God or presenting evidence for a God you're arguing that there needs to be some explanation for the universe so there needs to be some explanation for consciousness it's you literally said God you are merely defining as that which is sufficient as an explanation for whichever those arguments God is just a title I've given evidence there was a mind behind the universe and I said well this fits the description I can call it God if you don't like that title I don't care that's your prerogative okay again and again going back to what the thing is it says you don't know what we would call God this seems like or we don't have any evidence for God this seems like circular reasoning if I give evidence you're like well that can't be demonstrated therefore there's no evidence for God it just seems like we're going in a constant circle here no matter what I present it could never be evidence for God because you just assert constantly as I've seen on your show God can't be can't be demonstrated and I don't even know what that means so first thing to do is to define God and state what characteristics and then provide the evidence for it and if all you're going to do is God is the title that I give to the thing that explains the universe okay I'm completely disinterested I don't care if you're disinterested I know but here's the thing that God is as useless as not knowing the answer it has no impact on anything that we believe nothing we do it cannot get you to a particular God or how you must live your life or anything like that it is just say it is a tautology the universe has an explanation I'm going to call that explanation God I don't really care about uselessness this is the same argument that university directors use against people studying quantum mechanics because they were like how useful is this going to be for us in the future I'm not arguing from utility of I'm saying I'm saying that it's a tautology to label God as that which is responsible for the universe and then to argue that the universe needs something to be responsible for it in order to do that makes it a tautology you have provided nothing new there's nothing explanatory you have simply said the universe needs an explanation consciousness needs an explanation God is the label for that which explains once again I did not ever utter those phrases I said given the evidence this is the most probable explanation if there was evidence that the universe just existed eternally I wouldn't have to do that what properties does God have what properties has got I listed it in the beginning think you want to put the slide back up all as I said what was it is a immaterial necessary mind behind the universe okay how do you determine it's necessary and how do you determine it's a mind well first of all I gave evidence for it being a mind that's the difference that's the thing is you gave a definition of a God that specifically limits it to the thing that you're trying to explain but you are assuming that I didn't come up to that definition prior to looking at the evidence the the definition was based on the evidence I presented in my arguments I simply put it up forward to understand what I was going to argue the evidence leads to this gets us to where the column goes wrong everything that begins to exist has an explanation for its existence the universe as a cause for its existence the universe began to exist therefore the universe has a cause for its existence that is the full and total column cosmological argument at no point in there does it say what the cause is at all it is only people saying we're going to call that cause God God is not even a premise within the column cosmological argument God is not a premise as far as I can tell in any of your arguments it is these are the the universe requires a mind it requires a mind this reduces down to where it requires a mind which is something that I don't necessarily accept we've gotten to but even if it does now all of a sudden God is that mind okay so you're just upset with the title then yes because here's the thing I live in a world where the overwhelming majority of people currently and throughout history have believed in a variety of different gods and they use the label and it carries with it some baggage and whenever we want to have a discussion or debate about whether or not this is a reasonable thing to accept they toss out all the baggage and then just make God this you know the God of classical theism or the the nondescript that God is the first cause and I'm not saying I'm not saying anything else about his properties I'm not saying whether or not he is you know has any desires for people or cares who you sleep with or whatever else it's just this and so in a sense it is and in every circumstance it is here's a mystery it needs to have some explanation I'm going to call that God and I'm going to tell you nothing else about God other than that is the label I'm putting on the explanation which tells us nothing there's no edification there it is not anything that you could even build a religion off of it is not it's not consistent with what the overwhelming majority of people if I go out and poll people of all religions not just Christianity what's God are they going to come up with God is the mind that is responsible for the fact that there's a mind well first of all three things appeal to consequence I don't really care second thing I don't really care what people on the streets are going to say that's kind of an unpopular fallacy and once again this is step one I never said I'm just going to stop here I think there are better reasons to keep moving forward but if we can't get past this step I mean what's the point of going forward and if you're just upset about the title I mean I don't know what to tell you it's just a title now once again I agree with you we don't get very far with this in terms of how it affects our lives but again quantum mechanics when it was first discovered didn't really affect people they had research problems because they're like how is this really going to help us in the future well it turns out it's actually using cell phones and all sorts of other technologies it actually came about once again if we care about truth and what is actually true about reality then we look for those things and we don't go well how is this going to affect us the problem here and you can dismiss it as Matt's just upset about the title yes I am and here's why because I would agree with you conscious needs an explanation what's the justification for calling it God the universe needs an explanation what's the justification for calling it God when we call it God we are smuggling in all of the baggage in the world that has ever been attributed to God and then denying that any of this is the case could you define God for me how you would define it then so here's the thing I know of many different definitions of God and the overwhelming majority of them I am not convinced or real and so when I interact with people it's not up to me to define God and say you didn't prove the God that I want you to prove it's up for them to say hey here's how I'm defining God let me make a demonstration that that's there and if you start by defining God as that which is responsible to serve or that which serves as a foundation for the universe and there's nothing else there including the demonstration that this is a thinking agent or that interacts with reality or has done anything or whatever else then what you've done is just saying God is that which is responsible for the universe and all you've done is label it I could agree all day long that there's an explanation for the universe if the question is why then call it God and if what we're going to do is toss out all the other baggage and say look I've proved God by saying I'm going to label this the thing that's the explanation for the universe what have we actually accomplished for me dealing with actual real people not that you're not a real person I don't want to make that I'm not you're dreaming right now I can't prove I'm not actually I kind of can't but I can't anyway it's contextual if all that had ever happened was somebody said hey there needs to be some explanation for the universe or consciousness and we're going to call it God I'd be like okay because it's just a word you can call something whatever you want it and I don't want to fault you for the failings of countless past apologists by defending a notion that doesn't get to anything I'm just saying that even if I agree with you on everything and I have no expertise in quantum mechanics and I have friends who do and I've had conversations with them and there's things I understand and things I don't understand overwhelmingly the ones at least among my friends and this is a clearly unfairly biased sample but they don't agree with the conclusion that you're reaching and they don't necessarily agree and none of them it would say hey it's a good idea for us to conclude that the universe must have an explanation and then to call it God it's not that so words are our play things we get to do whatever we want with them but you also have to be cognizant of the baggage that's out there and if the overwhelming majority of people throughout history have had a notion of a God as not just the philosophical or the label that we put on a the conclusion of a philosophical argument that the universe must have an explanation but as the intentional agent supremely powerful moral etc creator of the universe governor of our lives and who has some vested interest in us and what we do and everything else and I don't know I don't know what your excuse me I don't know what your theological position is I don't know what denomination or religion or just know Ken Hoven would say I'm a heretic if that helps well that's okay because that you see we're both heretics because I did this debate on morality recently with Glenn and of course one of the first things a Glenn Scrivener one of the first things that happens somebody comes out and goes Matt was a heretic when he was a Christian and he's a heretic now and I'm like whatever because I don't get to define what a true Christian is or a true Jew or true anything I'm not saying this as I don't know what your theology I genuinely have no idea what your theologies are other than that you're a you accept evolution sure do you are a theist sure am and beyond that I don't know I like long walks on the beach picking flowers reading poetry there's a beach not far from me can I respond to two things you said sure so in turn well he's in charge of the time just less than 10 minutes we got about eight minutes I want to respond to two things you said first in terms of yeah there's a lot of disagreement in terms of quantum theory I fully understand that you didn't bring it up earlier but I did bring some surveys with regarding understanding the consciousness cause collapse interpretation versus others I'm not going to use them cause I don't think you're actually arguing that way but I understand that that's why I'm relying primarily on the evidence in terms of experts disagreeing with me you're also not making this argument but I do want to bring it up just to bring their 2012 study called cognitive sophistication does not create the bias blind spot a larger bias blind spot was associated with higher cognitive abilities they found that more educated more cognitive sophisticated sophisticated people actually were developing larger bias blind spots I can buy that yeah so I mean so when some people tell me again you're not making this argument but I know other people will when people say well the experts don't agree with you it's happening in chat right now I'm sure I can't even see it it sure it is when experts don't agree with me I'm like well okay sure but I'm again I'm trying to go on the evidence there are experts that do agree with me and sometimes some of the experts can develop large cognitive blind spots let's follow the evidence the second thing I want to address is you talked about this baggage it could bring okay once again I'm going to repeat myself and then I'll let you talk after this but it's appeal to consequence there is some baggage sure but that seems to be more of a it's not appeal to consequence because I'm not saying you're wrong okay I'll retract that then if you're not saying that sure there is baggage that comes with that but there's baggage that comes with a lot of things I mean the theory of evolution I deal with young earth creationists who are making very similar arguments that if you start preaching evolution that's going to be the Nietzschean ideas that are start getting put in there and all this and I'm like listen it's not about how it might affect us we should try to be on the side of truth regardless if you don't like my label call it whatever you want magical pixie creating universes however you use I don't care I'm talking about a mind behind the universe fits the description of God pretty well you don't like that label don't care that's not really what I'm arguing for I get it and I don't know how much contention there is here except that it's a bit like saying I'm going to call it a peanut butter sandwich because peanut butter sandwich does have some usage and so it's spawning confusion and so it almost be better to give it a new label one that is not carrying baggage to say you know I'm not going to make one up now because my brain's not working can I make up one? sure universal mind behind the universal is that a universal way of function? universal mind except that mind has some baggage as well that asserts and limits what the possible everything has baggage by the way no no no but that limits it's like once upon a time there was a a thing on CNN where they had two Christians and a Jew standing there and the the banner behind was why do atheists inspire such hatred? and so first of all there's no atheist there to address this but also the question is poison because it assumes that atheists inspire hatred rather than why is their hatred directed at atheists? so getting the question wrong is a big problem and it's a big deal for me and while I know that your what you were attempting to do was to show that it is more probable that there is a mind behind it I have various reasons that I don't accept that we reached that but by saying it's a mind we're narrowing the options because what if we find out that it's not a mind? so now we're just at there must be an explanation for consciousness and we can call it something we should invent it in completely new word blogadoub blogadoub is the explanation for consciousness and now if it turns out that in fact there is a mind behind it whether or not that mind qualifies as a God cool if it turns out there is a God behind it cool blogadoub is now co-equal to God but by injecting that baggage into the label for the unknown we are narrowing the options of what we can do of what we can explore so I completely see where you're coming from I'm not going to agree because at the end of the day I don't care about baggage I'm going to say the theory of evolution is true regardless of how much young earth creations go get gas bad that's not what I'm arguing well then I don't understand what you're arguing because at this point we're not even talking about evidence I'm arguing about clarity as opposed to confusion just the other day yesterday as a matter of fact I was told that I was an idiot because in this debate that I recently had about morality I pointed out that humans don't have any intrinsic value because nothing has intrinsic value and they didn't make a distinction between intrinsic and inherent which would have cleared things up a little bit and allowed me to do this but instead when I said it's we who imbue things with value and we value things and go down that road and so I make all these attestations and the people who were in the room with me then went on Twitter and said it's a shame that Matt will not affirm with other humanists that we should treat people as if they have with respect as if they have value and I'm like I absolutely affirm that have repeatedly affirmed that I will treat people as if they have value whether they have value or not this is the same thing we're talking about here I'm not saying like the people who are like oh you're supporting evolution and that could lead to this and this and this I'm not doing that I'm saying that there is a God label and a mind label that by applying those as the label for the explanation we have unnecessarily limited the scope of the explanation by giving it properties before we can necessarily affirm that it has those properties so my argument is is that simply that limiting the scope to me is not a big deal for the simple reason that the future holds numerous possibilities we've limited ourselves in the past before it happens we expand and get out of that but why do it because that's what we do if there's 10 possible answers and you say limiting the scope to two is not a big deal for me if we don't know then what we should do is not limit the possible answers I'm saying we have good enough reason to not know but infer that these if you want to update me later let's do it I'm perfectly willing to change my mind now let me clarify that I understand the studies I've cited on bias means that's going to be hard and not easy to do and I don't buy that crap that we just believe we have to believe whatever or we know we can't change our beliefs because I've been reading a lot of studies on that lately but regardless of that we should follow the evidence where it leads I agree but if we're limiting our scope by pre-defining properties of the thing we don't get to pay attention to certain things it's somebody called on the show one time and said if God didn't create the universe who did now who did is a poisoned question that limits the scope so that the only potential answers are who's I'm not doing that yes you are I'm not saying who's I'm saying that's the whole point there are plenty of possibilities if God isn't the mind behind the universe what mind is behind the universe you're doing exactly that because you become convinced of that that we should narrow it to a mind and I'm saying that that I'm not convinced that that's the case why limit it once again I'm saying the there is we infer a mind because of the evidence if you have evidence that it is not a mind some sort of eternal universe model a multiverse that's shifting the burden of proof I'm not saying that you have to give that burden I'm just talking about a hypothetical you did earlier talking about a hypothetical now so in terms of the hypothetical I'm not saying that it has to be a who I'm saying the evidence implies that it probably is a mind and though therefore I can say a who if it is not then I would have a conversation with someone who may hold to eternal universe models many worlds interpretations and maybe in a behavioralist view of consciousness sure we have that conversation but until then I'm just going to say that this is the best explanation given the data and from here I don't know what else to say I know I'm not going to convince you I have conversation with people all the time on evolution or we're not going to be convinced what am I supposed to do at that point just keep following the evidence and that's what I'm going to keep doing cool with that we are at about 30 seconds left so it's a natural stopping point if you guys are ready you go into clothing I have one more thing to say you're not an idiot you're adorable so going to start dating you know I'm single again that was really beautiful I don't think my wife would appreciate that that's all right so with that ladies and gentlemen we are very excited to go into the closing statements this has been one of the most enjoyable conversations I've ever gotten to listen to in doing this this has honestly been a true pleasure really fun stuff to think about so with that we will start with Michael Jones and I'm setting the timer for five minutes to draw together the threads from this discussion and then we'll do the same for Matt right after the four is yours appreciate this conversation I'm not going to use my whole five minutes because I really feel like we really hash it out in the discussion Matt made some great points I appreciate feedback on this as you people notice the last time I had this debate I debated with Destiny YouTuber named Steven and I actually updated the digital physics argument based on his criticism he said don't label it this label it this great I love it I want to get more feedback because I appreciate the conversations refining this probably eventually in the future going to get my philosophy of science degree and this will be my things I want to start publishing on so I appreciate the debate one of things I just want to affirm is that I want to try to follow the evidence as best I can I understand we're all subjective humans we all of our own biases there's outcome bias anchoring bias my side bias all these different types of biases that play into this the best way to limit that bias is to have these conversations that's why I really appreciate having them I encourage people to follow the evidence the arguments I laid out I would say are best explained from a theistic account if you want to label it God if you don't want to label it God I don't really care at this point for the same reason if you want to label quantum mechanics you know do Uncle Mahaka who cares it's just a label labels are property of language or their derivative of language and that's not really what we're getting at what's really matters is the ontology the ontology behind what we're talking about so again appreciate the conversation I had a lot of fun and I have more whiskey so anyone out there wants I'm not taking this home I don't drink that much but I think I've had enough tonight as it is thank you very much Michael and we will now switch over to Matt for his closing statement I'd like to say I won't take anywhere near near five minutes either but I also know that well this should take about 45 seconds I talk a lot and just go on and on go ahead I think it took all the way to kind of the end of the conversation to get to kind of the crux of the differences in our approach into whether or not there's good reasons for something and even while I was arguing it I was thinking about another aspect of this where the thing that I'm objecting to which I'll get to in a second isn't even entirely wrong which is fun this process of limiting the scope of the type of answers that we're going to be looking for I understand how and why you did it and it's because you view it as and you know you can correct this if I'm wrong since we have extra time you view this as a proper scientific approach approach we can't spend our time and energy exploring every possible of infinite explanation so we need to narrow it down so we get our focus moved more towards one thing and you become convinced as you presented arguments for that okay focusing on a mind type thing is probably reasonable and the core difference of course is that I'm not necessarily convinced that justifying a limitation of the scope to a mind is the thing but if we were working to limit our search in a scientific method I would agree that's the case that is fundamentally different from saying God is the best answer to this which is different from saying God is the best current answer to this which is to say which is different from saying that God is probably the case and until such time as we get to God is probably the case I certainly couldn't argue on behalf of God existing and I certainly couldn't live my life believing that there was a God if I wasn't convinced that it was probably the best answer not or probably the most likely correct answer not just the best answer because if we only have four potential answers they're not all at 25% likelihood and if we have 700 potential answers the best one might still be less than a percentage likely and it could be that the actual answer or a most probable answer is one that we have still to discover to begin with hey you need to you need to come up with a more plausible answer than mine before I change my mind I get it we all are going to do that but when it's been exposed that if you don't have good reason to think that yours is most probably the correct answer and not just the best answer shifting that burden of proof to say I'm going to keep believing this until somebody proves it wrong is kind of like saying I'm convinced it's the butler and I'm going to be stay convinced of that until somebody proves me wrong but at a minimum just for the sake of argument let's just limit it to the staff let's figure out which member of the staff is the one that actually committed this and for that you would need to present arguments that it's most likely mirror the staff which is what you tried to do in the in the sense of I think it should be narrowed to the mind so I'm going to show that a mind is required for that it would be interesting and not enough time for it to what I will do is I will take on board some of the things that you said and go through the arguments and details it's very difficult to here's the premises and let me try and jot down notes and think about it and do all this in a live setting Can I say one thing about that? Sure Same thing having women to date with destiny and I just simply said fair point you're not that makes perfect sense and that's what I want I want to keep the conversation going keep thinking about it but I think I think that my main objection is that as I took down notes as quickly as I could during the initial arguments all of these seem to be at my initial glance analogies and I know that there's intrinsically a mistake that we make when we go down that path and so I get back to the fact that I can make a simulation of X doesn't mean that X is also likely to be a simulation this is the argument essentially that you're making that at some point we've got to stop this infinite regress and you stop it with God and this is the same thing we've seen from other potential first cause arguments there needs to be a cause well what causes that cause well what causes that cause I stop it at the universe that I experience and as far back as I can actually reasonably investigate which is of course limited by the plank time when we get to the origins of the cosmos and so I can't reach beyond there with actual investigative techniques and there it becomes more I'm reluctant to say philosophical even though that's the word that comes to mind speculative is probably the best thing and so if you're going to speculate and say that based on all my experience it's more likely a mind and I'm going to conclude that it's God that's fine until you bring other things in to say that because now I believe there's a God I can do this and I have this view and this view excellent thank you very much gentlemen for an excellent debate this has been honestly extremely stimulating I'm very excited also for the Q and A as we're going to jump into these quick and we want to respect the the time of the debaters so I do want to move quick and I'm going to be a little bit selective just to be sure so if we've got a super chat that says you would like to see Michael in a bikini or something and it's like well we've all been there but we've got to keep focused on this debate your wife is going to be so irritated that is only for my donors okay so we appreciate that it's a patreon perk exactly it sure is so thank you very much for your super chats thanks for your question first one capturing Christianity Cameron thanks for your super chat they said by the way dill hunty and IP will be debating the resurrection on my channel on April 2nd and the link is on my channel thanks for setting this one up James my pleasure and I also I actually quick grab that link for that upcoming debate and I put that in the description of this video folks so do go there for sure that's right down there the description so you can see both of these guys live as that debate is coming up on April 2nd I'm not traveling for that one unless Cameron pays for me to come out here I'll be in my home safely with the whiskey that I enjoy the most it's going to be epic I'm sure so I grab my I grab my count because so like the other day somebody said hey in a couple weeks you're doing a debate in Austin and there was so much because originally I thought this was online and then there was and so my head was wrong and I was like what debate do I do oh you're debating inspiring philosophy and I'm like really where's that and everything and I and I wasn't finding it on the calendar because on my calendar I just put Austin debate and because we hadn't firm things up when I put the initial thing and I went so when Cameron messaged I was like is that April 2nd debate on my it is on my calendar it is in fact on my calendar so we're good to go it's going to be an epic one and Cigafratos Arabia thanks for your question they said Matt are you for solipsism if you agree there are other minds why would you not fall into inspiring philosophies arguments if you don't believe in other minds what is James for example so yeah without digging in too much I have on occasion proposed potential solutions to the problem of heart solipsism I can't prove it's certainly not to I can't demonstrate anything to an absolute certainty I may not even be able to demonstrate to a reasonable certainty that I am not a brain in a fat or that I am not the only mind in existence this is just a limitation of our ability to investigate and explore and apply reason that you know even when Descartes did the Kajito it was I think it was Hobbes that pointed out that that is contingent on the primacy of reason that reason must be reasonable for you to even get to I think therefore I am and because the primacy of reason is something that we assume is a presupposition but it's not just that so my best argument against heart solipsism is that I can demonstrate at least within the world that I experience that I learned something today that somebody knew about yesterday now it's true all of the evidence that I can gather is still within this realm they call it the matrix it's still within the matrix and so I can only operate on those reasonable grounds this is what magicians and psychists do so somebody could write down the solution to a math problem put it in a locker yesterday leave it there keep a camera on it let me sit in front of it let me you know watch it all around and put it in a box and then I come you know come up with a solution to math problem and now I know that somebody knew something that I didn't know before that I think is a better deconstruction than what I used to do which was to say well if if heart solipsism is true that means I've been every crappy caller to the show and I've written every terrible song that I hate as well as all the songs I love and I don't even like I don't understand music well enough to write things that would be like that I don't understand the mechanics behind it there's no real solution to this because all the evidence that I'm gonna get still gonna get me there it's just I don't think I'm arrogant enough to presume that it's likely true that I am the only mind in the universe that would that would be that'd be pretty bad I agree gotcha thanks so much next up Shannon Q thanks for your super chat she said hugs to both Mike and Matt I'm excited for this thanks so much Shannon that's nice well it's over now kind of so are you still excited Shannon are you gonna beat me up later and here's what she should have said no why did you do that why are you she'll beat me up later next up epic christ thanks for your question they asked why do Matt why does Matt say that the concept of God is meaningless unless it can be demonstrated this is pure positivist a pure positivist move this question is to Matt yeah I don't think that's quite what I said the issue is whether or not I have good reason to believe it if it can't be demonstrated not whether or not it's meaningless I'm not saying like if you say if you go with the classical the God of classical theism the omnimax God I'm not going to say that's incoherent I'm not going to say that the concept is nonsense or that it is without meaning I'm going to say that until you can demonstrate that this God exists we don't get to use it as a potential explanation we can or as anything more than a speculative explanation and I would argue that it doesn't actually explain anything and I think the drought headache thing kind of gets to this as well I don't have to know how a drought works to know that or I don't have to know why you have a headache to know that the headache is your explanation for why you didn't want to come to the party but I do need to know about headaches and I do need to be convinced that this is a real explanation and when you tell me I'm not coming to your party because I'm a headache that is at least an explanation I know that that means that you don't feel good you know you're ill if you tell me I'm not coming to your party because of God okay now I need to know more what is it about God that's preventing what is God how is God preventing you from coming to the party and so if all we've done is constructive tautology where God is the explanation for the universe the explanation for colleges colleges consciousness then what I'm saying is it doesn't get us any further than that until you add something to it and it's the additive things where that's where you get religions and that's why I think we're going to have issues you bet thanks very much this is she is self titled this stupid whore energy as she calls herself thanks for your super chat you should have do that to James she's gonna start blushing and turning red he doesn't like to say those words are you sure it's a her I'd have matter how dare you okay yes she says for IP if phenotypic plasticity has to do with movement as you claimed why do we see it in I might need help with this word that's embarrassing sessile is it sessile I'm not sure what that is sessile plan now the what I was talking about is a chapter in the deep structure of biology he uses that more as an analogy I'm not sure if I worded that correctly so maybe there was just some miscommunication on there he says like the feet maybe I could just pull it up here really quickly in terms of what I wrote while you're pulling it up when you were going through that thing about plants I've heard stuff like that before and it would have been big to dig in on I think that some of the things that they're seeing and describing in plants certainly are true but whether or not consciousness is the best label for what's going on there who knows yeah who knows but I also think that some of what they're seeing in plants is us anthropomorphizing plants and you know like though they're able to detect other plants and whatever well they have abilities that aren't the same as like if I say I detect another person that's that's it's not sorry I can't see that way it's not the same as when a plant detects another person yeah there's not like a cognitive process there if I am aware there's another being it's a reaction it's instinctive all I would say is read the chapter in the deep structure of biology to get the full reference in what he's talking about I actually brought the book so you can see the cover here so if you want it just read this book I was reading it over today just to familiarize should bring a bible it's on my phone does that count okay how dare you I'm just like it's it's it's if anybody took that as a as a legitimate cheap shot to shoot down anything related to this debate it was not it was me having fun yeah no it's fine I prefer I got a bible on my phone too which would which would actually be more damning I prefer the bible app I've been using it like crazy now I just prefer that there's a there's an app I should point you to and point everybody to because it's called it's at edashsword.net it is called the sword of the lord it was put together by a guy you can put almost as many bibles as you want in there some of them you have to pay for but it is you can do multi versions you can there's hyperlinks to dictionary definitions and concordances and countless materials for somebody who seriously wants to study the bible edashsword.net is an app that I've had well I don't have it on my current tablet but I've had it on my laptops and computers for years I used it when I was you know finding my way out and still use it today but it's designed for preachers I'm gonna look this up this looks really good yeah thank you yeah looks really nice and I think it's free apart from the bibles you have to buy like the like the copyrighted bibles like the niv who the hell decides that the word of the lord needs to be copyrighted oh well it's different editors who don't want to have their authors cite different bibles they're owned by different publishing companies what do you expect yeah that's why despite the fact that I'm not a theist who's a nutso av1611 authorized version only I will go with that one because it's in the public domain and now I can quote it all the time without being sued would that you did that Johanan Rotz thanks for your super chat donation to be the mash they asked they said their arguments might use as in this debate first originated on my channel here good luck Mike so we're hoping to have Johanan on soon by the way so Johanan hopefully you got my email to be fair a lot of the data he used I did build upon I formalized a lot of it so yeah I've worked with him a lot in the past to sort of get to where we are at now he inspired me to look into a more a lot of this stuff and I've been building on he inspired inspiring philosophy that should be a t-shirt for him he inspired this aspect but not my Genesis series or other aspects I don't know why you want to limit the scope of what he oh sorry nice next up Cigafredo Serrabio thanks for your question they said if you agree in evolution Matt why would you not agree consciousness is emergent by the process how is consciousness used for God holding to evolution they put my name in there but that reads more like it's for you yeah turn it you're right you say you're right it starts with at IP if you agree in evolution oh as Matt does sorry start start over because I'm a little bit sorry so if you agree with me about evolution why do you still believe in a God is thank you it's always for some reason the debaters are always I mean oh gosh I but hopefully it's not just simply wait is that second one mine did you you should always do a shot yeah I'm waiting to do a shot with you because it's well the hard thinking parts over so yeah well I say that I'm not trying to diss anybody who had a question but I'm not going to get drunk by the time the last question comes in I think that so I think Matt nailed it and so I'll read it one more time but so they said IP if you agree in evolution as Matt why would you not agree consciousness is emergent by the process house consciousness used for God while holding to evolution okay yeah good question so I have a video on my channel titled was life inevitable where I tie this into a lot of my views and the idealistic views so check that out I don't really have time to get into that I cite so many Edward T. Oaks who passed away recently look more into that why don't I agree with Matt because Matt and I don't agree with everything regardless James and I aren't gonna agree with everything regardless some of the people I cite it I don't agree with everything they say I mean that's just the way it is I agree with Matt on evolution we don't agree on consciousness with different data different subjects that's all I can say on that we should at some point discuss how much God fiddled or didn't fiddle with evolution or do you think he just knew everything was going to happen kick a ball off I don't think he fiddled with evolution mine is more of a structuralist view I follow people I got you and Jay Gould in the future though I'd like to give you these Stephen Jay Gould I'd like to give you arguments you could use against Younger's creation is from the Bible that would drive them up a wall sweet hey and then we can get in to non overlapping magisteria if you're going to cite Gould I'm just like okay oh that's what you were talking about I was on the Bible at that point I'm like no Stephen Jay Gould's Noma is oh yeah yeah I know thank you very much and Jason thanks for your question he said does IP think does IP understand quantum mechanics better than quantum physicists can I yeah good no he doesn't and it doesn't fucking matter exactly oh am I allowed to curse on this that's okay it's not it's not it's lying you fucking it's it's all free whatever you like but they say wave collapse is to do the particles interaction with other particles yeah I remember back to my opening statement I addressed that interaction is not a modification it's not even a modification of quantum mechanics we're trying to explain this check out the paper I cited by Maximilian Schlauhauser who goes over just the most popular interpretations is like a 30 page paper on interaction and decoherence and whatnot it's not a modification I don't know as much as quantum physicists when I talk about the violation of legality inequality back from 2006 I'm not stuck you wrote the paper yeah I I didn't write the paper I didn't do the experiment I don't fully understand everything that's why I rely on until on him Anton Zellinger and what he talks about there was one point earlier that I I decided not to dig in on there was a quote that you read from Dennett about consciousness related to there not being a a catesian a theater and then everything you said afterwards seemed to actually support what Dennett was saying was that your intent or did you think you were countering it I was trying to show that consciousness if you if the consciousness is sort of like this emergent property of the full brain yeah that's not Dennett's position okay he's talking about the event Dennett is in no way countering neuroscience or saying that neuroscience is wrong about can kind you don't have to have a full brain for there to be conscious Dennett's well that's in that quote is that there this perception we have of a Cartesian theater where we are an agent and they're looking at a screen or in a VR goggles or whatever else that that theater doesn't exist and it doesn't exist as a localized single thing within the brain it is I'm not saying that either I think there's just some missing communication going on anyway you got it all right thanks so much and Steven Steen said one or a thousand in the live chat tonight new record for mdd thanks so much Steven and also we've hit 10,000 subscribers during the stream which is exciting as we hope you we hope everybody really does feel welcome and I think we mentioned this he did that we want to let you know whether you be Christian atheist gay straight Republican Democrat you know no matter where you're coming from we hope you feel welcome and thanks for that encouragement Steven we really appreciate it I will say about a month ago I passed a mat and subscribers and I kind of kind of had a like a woo-hoo moment you did I did on youtube on youtube sweet I was like holy crap I can't believe it it's the number of people who passed me on subscribers staggering ouch it's it's all right you have a bigger pool to pool from possibly yeah yeah that's uh yeah yeah right absolutely yeah lots oh yes stupid uh as she calls herself stupid horror energy she says for ip if it were shown that the only thing necessary for the universe dimensions and consciousness to exist is energy and mutations would you still believe in god uh probably not if you're talking about the emergence of the universe and consciousness and all that types of things that you could explain in terms of energy it would really damage my case I fully acknowledge that so it then once again you actually have to show that what's gonna happen on the line I don't know there are other arguments I use I don't deny that you see my channel where I use all sorts of other arguments but it would damage my case and it would probably if I have to accept that consciousness and the universe and everything can be explained in terms of energy maybe there's a eternal universe model conscious give it's really gonna make me go back and reconsider and I would say the studies on the the biases I was talking about here that I probably would fight it first is that we all do every single one of us fight belief changes when it happens hopefully I could push through and keep moving forward I mean that's what happened when I started accepting the theory of evolution so many years ago you bet thanks very much also Steven Steen thanks for your generous donation to be the match he said I donated bone marrow through be the match sign up and do it it's worth it a million times over so that's awesome Steven that's just terrific and again thanks so much for that donation to be the match by the way just for transparency's sake we I'll be sending that email out to each of the debaters namely the donation receipt for all those superchats that you guys have given and so thanks for doing that everybody and also I will be sending the email out to both of the speakers if you are here for the first time and you're like hey can I see the donation receipt yes absolutely no joke just email me at modern day debate I will send you that donation receipt because we really do want to emphasize that kind of that transparency if we say we're going to do this we have to have that transparency and accountability so thanks for that sigifredo sorabia let's see let's see if you've got time we'll come back to this I just want to try to get kind of the first question from a lot of different people so Harley Wikes thanks for your question first time I think I've seen your question they said Stanley let's see Stanley they said Stanley Huros forgive me if I mispronounce the name I'm not sure if this is like a famous academic Stanley Huros says that even if you could prove a God existence that it would not be the God of Abraham Isaac Sarah and Jesus thoughts that's a topic for another time Matt and I will have that in April perhaps maybe you're right I don't at this point that's not really what we're talking about but yeah it could be the case I don't know who that is though gotcha thanks so much translator Carmenum thanks for your question they said how can you justify positing a mind completely unaccompanied by any physical brain when there's no precedent or other support for that possibility well there is a lot of precedent and support for that possibility I gave a lot of evidence early on I gave a lot of evidence in my videos I'm going to be updating that series there was a series I called Case for the Soul I've slowly I've slowly grown to reject the word soul I don't even like that word anymore so I'm going to update that with even more data to argue for this case it's about the evidence itself in what we can say is the best inference this idea that we need that minds and brains correlate well I agree I absolutely agree and there's no other of course minds and brains correlate how that's part of my idealistic interpretation I said I'm a monist well I am a monist because I'm an idealist that just naturally infers so of course minds and brains are correlated David Hoffman argues that you know that the brain is the extrinsic experience of a first person conscious experience so of course there'd be some sort of phenomenal experience of what a first person conscious experience would be so of course we're going to have that correlations itself does not imply causation I would need to see some sort of evidence for that I'm going to argue there's plenty of evidence to argue the causation goes in the opposite perspective so that series will be out this year though but aren't you so this is a question that I had thought about asking and then I realized that there was at least one problem with it basically so far as we can tell there is no example of a mind absent a material brain or even if we went down the road of AI calling the processor a brain I have no examples of a mind absent a material brain and so while you can either through inference or abduction try to argue that what we're talking about is mind like and there may be the possibility of some mind that is absent a material brain it would seem to some including this person questioning and potentially to me that if all the examples of a mind we have or something that comes material that this would be the the flaw of arguing by analogy that there's something mind like outside of this because as soon as you get to mind like you're no longer you're saying it needs these qualities but it doesn't have these other qualities that are associated with a mind so I wrote this down because I expected you to actually bring it up during the debate yeah I sometimes I skip stuff so you know I would actually again once again this seems to be nothing more than a correlation causation fallacy just because we see these things correlated as Thomas Nagel said correlations need to be explained they themselves are not the explanation of themselves this I would argue that again it goes back to one of the examples I gave with young rich creationists they say if you want to say that humans evolve you need to actually demonstrate humans evolving and I'm always like no I don't it's about making inferences from the evidence that we do have that show that humans actually did evolve and I could actually turn this around in the same type of skepticism if all we have is matter that is in terms of mental properties how can we demonstrate discreet substance known as matter independent of minds well I wouldn't put that on you because I understand it's about arguing to the best explanation and I would expect well we just agree with a conclusion there so I'm fine with the notion that there is some physical universe that exists to absent our understanding or interpretation of it but I don't think it's a correlation fallacy to say that if all of the examples we have of a mind tie to a material processing thing whether you know I'm only doing this to let the AI people in the door then to posit a mind absent that is to posit something that is mind-like that is absent a particular property how do you how would you demonstrate a mind exists without a phenomenal state there needs to be some sort of medium to sort of demonstrate we are the phenomenal state you exactly that's what I'm getting at but no so this is a this is a level of scope thing you're asking how would we demonstrate that the same way we demonstrate anything else the we are the only ones we can demonstrate to or from but that's what I'm getting at I mean so demonstrate that there's a mind absent a brain that is the transcends the universe but what I'm trying to say well I would go back to my original arguments to go back through that and argue the correlations and whatnot but what I'm trying to get at with what I'm responding to this is if there are conscious agents and they want to interact there needs to be some sort of phenomenal state connections some sort of medium between them the physical world that we communicate but that's what I'm getting at there if there is no physical world how would I demonstrate it so I'm not the one saying there's not a physical world I'm the one saying that even if all the brains go away the physical world stay here because the preponderance of evidence is such that that is the case physical world is still here just not at the emergent state that we experience it as well when I talk to you I mean granted we're going to do this differently because my my voice makes vibrations through the air which are picked up by this microphone turn into electric signal which makes it over to your headphones through a bunch of stuff but all of that is physical and so this is how I would communicate yeah we get that if every example we have of a mind this is not a black swan fallacy a black swan fallacy or consequence fallacy would be I'm not accusing you I know I know but I want to make it clarity for the people that are watching would be if I were saying you're wrong there is no god or there is no mind outside of the universe because all minds must come from this that's not remotely what I'm doing and he knows I'm not doing it what I'm saying is if all of the examples we have of a mind are of this nature then how do you demonstrate well not it almost doesn't matter how you would demonstrate can you demonstrate a mind that is X materia that is X material yes through the evidence best inference I don't want to just keep repeating myself going back through the same line I'm not expecting you to do it right now the best way I would say it is the same the best way to do is just our is teach through analogy you know as as a common saying going is I'm not going to demonstrate humans actually evolved from homo habilis to homo erectus to homo height of organism to homo sapiens I say the evidence is the best explanation of that but I don't know we can move on unless you want to say something else I just think that this is the baggage thing that that you know oh well this is I'm not going to go down the road again we've done it go ahead what's next because we're almost out of time yeah we are we got time for one last quick question things sigifrado for your question I think Matt might have been alluding to this or even kind of directly getting to this during the debate they said for Mike how does your God the Christian God compare to the God described in your slides wouldn't a mind causing emergence be timeless when the Christian God is temporal and intervening in human will to become matter as Jesus a good question so I did a video called Christianity and Pantheism because I argue I'm a weak Pantheist a Palomite Pantheist I got it both transcended and imminent so yes I do I do not take the William Lane Craig position that God is sort of in time I don't take that I'm not an atheist when it comes to time I do think God is outside of time but even at that God could actualize all his moments in time within a single instance it's hard to imagine that's hard to accept I get it but my basic view is that God is outside of time everything I argued I would say is consistent with the Christian worldview given my understanding of acceptance of what Gregory Palomis argued via Calisto Swear in terms of that for more information see the video I have mentioned yeah going going back to your RPG example let's assume God is the player and not the creator because that gets sticky but I as a player exist outside of the time the localized time there and this is both and it's weird to say supportive of what you're saying and also contradicts most models of a God it's not that something something that is truly timeless couldn't act or do anything because actions are necessarily temporal but our local presentation of time may not be what time is and this applies both with regard to a God that exists outside of time on some other timeline or a multiverse that the the laws that we have about time and physics within our local presentation of the universe don't tell us anything about what it's like outside of it all we know is that it's different and it would seem at least intuitively obvious to me that if there is a local timeline that's encapsulated in the universe we experience that whatever is outside of that must necessarily encapsulate that timeline and so must have some time of its own but that that winds up limiting a God which doesn't always work for everybody to build on that the wheeler DeWitt equation which calculated the universal wave function of the universe actually noted the time factor dropped out in 2013 there was experimental confirmation of this so Sean Carroll actually makes very interesting point that maybe there could be some sort of underlying different structure of time different than our space time because the evolution of the wave function is still deterministic but that's not contingent on our space time it gets very complicated I recommend his work even though I don't fully agree on his many worlds interpretation or other things he says you know I think a lot of his information on that is actually quite interesting and informative I refer people to that you bet so thanks so much everybody want to give the debaters a huge thank you as this has been absolutely amazing folks it's been a true pleasure tonight and just want to let you know yeah hopefully give the debaters some love if you see them just let them know that you enjoyed this as the debaters really are the lifeblood of the channel so we just really do appreciate them this has been tremendous to get to listen to and so with that folks want to say thanks for being with us tonight and keep sifting out the reasonable from the unreasonable take care