 everybody. Tonight we're debating whether or not God exists and we are starting right now. So does God exist? And two arguments for God's existence. The first is a fairly influential argument which fairly certain everybody knows about. The Kalam cosmological argument. And I'm just going to run through the premises real quick. Everything which begins to exist has a cause. The universe began to exist. Therefore, the universe has a cause. I already anticipate everybody's saying well that's not an argument for God. I will get to that. That's a gap problem and I will attempt to close it. On behalf of the premises. So premise one, everything which begins to exist has a cause. So why should we think that's true in the first place? The first reason would be immense inductive support, right? So when you look around you, you see all these things which begin to exist also also have a cause. So what's the unifying explanation for this data set? We can cash that explanation out in terms of a causal premise. And so what would that causal premise be? It would be the premise that everything which begins to exist has a cause. That would explain why everything that we see that has a finite past or begins to exist, same thing, has a cause, right? And we want to find these unifying explanations, right? Because it's not just one instance, two instances. It's an everyday thing. Everything which begins to exist has a cause. So it has that immense inductive support, right? And then the second reason. I hope I'm not going too fast here. Where's all the uncaused stuff, right? So assume, let's say for reductio, things can come into existence from nothing. So what would explain why things don't just start popping into existence uncaused all the time? What sort of thing could explain that? One can't appeal to the laws of nature, physical laws, for example, because they're not governing anything. We're talking about the absence of anything. And when I say nothing, I'm talking about something like the philosophical nothing, I'm not talking about the term nothing as used by scientists sometimes to refer to a vacuum. Instead, I'm talking about the literal absence of anything. So if something could come from that, something could begin to exist in from the absence of anything, then why don't things just come from nothing all the time? Again, we want a unifying explanation because all because every moment that we don't see things popping into existence would be an instance of this out of that question of where's all the uncaused stuff. And so the explanation again can be found in premise one that everything which begins to exist has a cause. So something just couldn't come from nothing because then it would be causeless. And then the third reason is intuition. So it's an intuitive premise, I think that's very obvious that everything which begins to exist has a cause. And in the absence of defeaters, we think our intuitions are true. So if we intuit that this premise is true, and we have no defeaters whatsoever for it, and we have evidence for it, then we ought to think it's true. That seems like a reasonable position to hold. And so I won't go much further into premise one. I think that's really all I have to say about it. Premise two, the universe began to exist. So there's two things about this one that ignore the wall of text. The Borg-Guth-Velenkin theorem, okay, the BGV theorem boiled down pretty much to its bones. Inflation from eternity entails that you have speeds going faster than light, right? But then as we know, that's impossible. So inflation doesn't occur from eternity. So it occurred past finite, right? Finite time ago. Therefore, the universe began to exist because that big thing is just inflation and then expansion, right? That's like the first thing right there, that expansion. And so that began a finite time ago. And so the universe began to exist on the Borg-Guth-Velenkin theorem because that's what it aims to prove, that the universe is past finite, or however you want to say it. And then we have causal finitism, right? So this is basically sort of proved by reductio, or proved by contradiction, however you want to say it. And there's a few paradoxes that support this, but there's the grim reapers paradox, and I take this from reasonable faith. It goes like this, we're invited to imagine that there are denumerably infinitely many grim reapers whom we may identify as gods. Anyways, you are alive at midnight and grim reaper one will strike you dead at 1am. If you are still alive at that time, grim reaper two will strike you dead at 12.30am. And if you are still alive, grim reaper three will strike you at 12.15. And so on. So such a situation seems clearly conceivable, right? We mentioned conceivability. So it's conceivable given the possibility of an actual infinite number of things. And you don't have to actually rule out an actual infinite number of things for, in fact, that can exist. But what we do have to rule out now is that infinite causal series is possible because if it was possible, then this was possible. And what's the issue with this now? I would say it leads to a contradiction because by the time it's 1am, you must have died because an infinite number of reapers have already come to pass, right? So if one, if you'd have to be dead, right? But which one killed you? None of them could have killed you because for each one that could kill you, there would have to be one before it that killed you. So no grim reapers killed you, but you're also dead. There's the contradiction. And the idea is that if you allow infinite causal series, then this is possible. But surely this isn't possible because anything that entails a contradiction is impossible by extension. So it's not possible. So one of, so a step there has to be mistaken. And I would say the mistake here is that we're assuming infinite causal series are possible. Now then, if we say an infinite causal series isn't possible, then you couldn't have an infinite causal history for the universe. It would have to go finite towards the past, right? And then you'd have to have a first cause. And that would suffice for the argument because you'd have a first cause which causes the universe and causal histories finite. Okay, moving on. So that's for the cosmological argument. And again, I'll attempt to bridge that gap in a bit. The next argument I was going to use is the fine-tuned argument. So the universe is fine-tuned. That's the first premise, very contentious premises here. And if the universe is fine-tuned, it is either due to design, chance, or necessity. Premise three, it is not due to chance or necessity. Therefore, it is due to design. So it's proven by exclusion, right? We can exclude chance and necessity. So it must be a design. Now premise one, the universe is fine-tuned. And we can appeal to examples of fine-tuning here. And I take this from Luke Barnes, his paper, a PhD physicist. A universe governed by Maxwell's laws all the way down will not have stable atoms and hence no chemistry. We don't need to know what the parameters are to know that life in such a universe is plausibly impossible. Two more examples. If gravity were repulsive rather than attractive, then matter wouldn't clump into complex structures. Now this is important because you can't say maybe another life, another form of life could occur, because this excludes any kind of life. Because if matter can't clump into complex structures, then you can't have life whatsoever, carbon-based. However else life you want to talk about mysterious forms, you just couldn't have it, matter won't clump up. Moving on, if in electromagnetism like charges attracted and opposites repelled, then there would be no atoms. Again you can see why that no sort of life could emerge like this. So these are just some examples of how our constants, the constants of the universe are fine-tuned because they permit life, right? When they could have not. And so we seek an explanation for why there are such that they permit life instead of otherwise. Then moving on, premise two, if the universe is fine-tuned, it is either due to design, chance, or necessity. Now this is just like a conceptual truth, right? Because the explanatory list that you can give for explanations of fine-tuning, it's exhausted by these three. It's either necessity, it couldn't have been otherwise, it's either chance, which is beat the chances, or it's design. So then premise three, and this is I guess the most important one, it is not due to chance or necessity. And Luke Barnes, again citing him, combining our estimates like the likelihood of a life permitting universe on naturalism is less than 10 to the power negative 136. So lots of zeros after that decimal, a lot of zeros. This I can send is vanishingly small. And so on naturalism, the universe is indifferent. The universe isn't going to pick out a set of laws that are life permitting, right? Because naturalism doesn't care. It's not an agent. It doesn't want to pick out things that are life permitting, nothing like that. It is indifferent to this. So that's why it's vanishingly small, because we're talking about the entire set of possible ways the universe could have been in terms of constants and laws of nature. So on naturalism, again, indifference. So it's vanishingly small there. Moving forward, why not necessity? Okay. So there's a few reasons for this. The conceivability of different constants. And so we mentioned conceivability before, but to disambiguate the notion conceivability is not like imagining things in your head. It's not having a mental image of something. To conceive of something is for it to be conceptually possible. So for example, Superman is Clark Kent, right? But it's conceivable that Superman is someone else. Because the notion or the concept of Superman doesn't include Clark Kent. It just includes a superhero. They're distinct notions. You have to observe something about the world to know that Superman is Clark Kent. So that's an example of conceivability. And it's impossible, right? And this is to say that conceivability doesn't always mean possibility, because we're going to want instances of conceivability that don't entail possibility. Like for example, I'd like to say that we can conceive that God doesn't exist, but it's not possible. But it's a good guide to it. It's not entailing, but it guides us to it. For everyday things we can conceive of like humans having three heads, pigs flying, all of these things are conceivable. We have reasons to think that they're possible, right? So here's the idea. If something's conceivable, then we have prima facie evidence that it's possible. In the absence of defeaters, then we should think it's possible, right? So that's for conceivability. And we can conceive of the laws of nature being different. I can conceive of, for example, those examples I mentioned before with electromagnetism and repelling atoms instead of attractive. Moving forward, discussion of counter-legals. So a counter-legal is just like something that goes against the laws of nature, right? Okay. Dial just since it's on there, I'll have to skip. Where's the evidence, right? So it's up to me to ask, right? What's the evidence that they couldn't have been different? If you want to say they're necessary, you have to give some kind of reason, because it seems totally possible for them to have been different. And the universe began to exist. Is this the only universe that could exist? One with rare parameters that are life permitting? This is an interesting coincidence, and I'm pretty skeptical of it. And so timeless, faceless, immensely powerful, immensely intelligent personal being that created the world and designed it, which follows from fine-tuning. And this, all men call God. And I guess that's all I have to say. Thank you very much for that opening statement. And we will kick it over to our ex-Muslim guest, Apostate Prophet, as we debate whether or not God exists. Thanks so much as well for being with us, Apostate Prophet, as well as Reformed Salih and want to kick it over to you for your Salafi. Sorry for that, friend. And the opening is all yours, Apostate Prophet. Thank you so much. Thank you, James. Thank you, Reformed or Khaled. And thank you, everybody, for joining. I want to quickly clarify that our opening speeches will be independent from each other. So we make our opening speeches independently and only in the rebuttal section will I be responding to what our friend Khaled just presented. So I will begin with my independent section on why I don't believe in God. Now, what do we mean by believing in God? What does it really mean to believe in God, to have faith in God? It means that you trust in something. You don't know something. You simply trust that there is a God. A God is in existence. That is what you do. You don't know. You simply trust. Now, and what is the importance of establishing whether God exists or not? While this discussion, this debate came into existence because my opponent Khaled here insisted that we should have a discussion on whether God can or cannot exist in order to then have a discussion on whether Islam is true or not. Because according to his idea and according to his logic, it was necessary to first have a discussion on whether God can exist or not, because only that could then lead us to conclude that Islam, for example, is true or false. I don't want to twist his words entirely, but he basically says it is necessary. While I entirely disagree with that notion, I don't think we need to prove or disprove God. On the contrary, I don't think we can prove that God exists and we cannot prove that God does not exist. That is not because this is beyond our comprehension. It is rather because God doesn't really have a meaning. It is just like proving or disproving that reincarnation is real or that karma is real or that ghosts exist, that spirits roam the world and look at us. I cannot prove that that is true. I cannot disprove that. I can merely play with the thoughts and talk about whether it's logical or illogical, possible or impossible. When it comes to God, God is not something that has meaning in it of itself. It is not a cognitively meaningful term. When I say does God exist or does God not exist, it needs to be further clarified what I exactly mean by God. That's why I usually call myself a post-theist or a non-cognitivist, because I am out here merely saying, hey, God doesn't mean anything which is why to me the idea is merely something that came into existence because of certain ideas that came before God, which is why we are arguing about God right now. Just in our example, in our case, God itself is meaningless. A horse is something that refers to something meaningful in the world which we can verify. Everyone knows what we mean when we talk about a horse. We're talking about this animal that has four legs, runs around and so on. A house, we know what a house is. We know what a clock is or what a human is. When we talk about a God, there is no proper understanding of God that is unambiguous that we can all agree on. It is something that is entirely subjective and depends on belief. According to some beliefs, God is the creator of everything. According to others, God is the essence of everything. Or God is outside of everything, above everything, material, immaterial. And I'm not just talking about religious ideas disagreeing with each other. I'm also talking about monotheistic beliefs disagreeing with each other about the nature of God and what God is. Christians, Jews and Muslims disagree with each other. Muslims internally disagree with each other. Some say that God is an eternal being that is outside of everything. Some say he's above his creation or above the skies. Others say that he's literally close to us all the time. Some Muslims say that he is within everything and nothing is there without him, which is, for example, a belief that is considered heretical by traditionalist Muslims. It is considered blasphemous, I should rather say. So people don't actually have an ambiguous definition and understanding of what God really is because God is culturally defined and entirely depends on what you believe in. So in order to perceive God, in order to talk about God and to define what God is, you need to first start from a religion. What people do is they start from a religion and then they form ideas on why their religion is true. The religion teaches you that God exists. You then form arguments in order to explain why God exists and why your beliefs are true. You go from that starting point. You don't start from arguments and conclude that God exists and then you find the best explanation for this. In fact, even many Muslim scholars, very prominent ones, would agree partially on that. For example, according to the Maturidi school or the Ashari school or even the traditionalist Atheri school within Islam, the main theological schools, according to scholars like Imam Shafi or Imam or Ibn Taymiyah, for example, who is very big in the traditionalist circle, he wrote a piece on revelation and reason and he himself, for example, also said that prophets bring knowledge that you cannot acquire and cannot understand, cannot reach by reason alone, which is why you must be dependent on the knowledge that you get from revelation. Because without revelation, by reasoning alone, you could never come. There is a possibility but it wouldn't be enough to come to the conclusion that there is a God and that Islam is true, for example. You need revelation for this, which means it is not based on reason alone. It is based on something that you learn and then you explain the reasoning of it in the form of certain arguments, which all came into existence after these religions were adopted and spread. Now, why should I believe that God exists? When I ask the question, why should I believe in God? The response is then, well, because it is true. When I ask how it is true, the response is then generally reliant on dismissing different explanations of how the world came into existence baselessly. For example, you dismiss the idea that everything simply popped into existence. Now, I'm not saying that these ideas are true, but these are all ideas that are simply dismissed in the name of religion, in the name of your presupposed beliefs. For example, that everything simply popped into existence by itself or that something was always there and things develop in the world all the time from each other. Could be explained with a multiverse, for example, that there are many creators, that there is a chain of creators, that there is a creator above this creator that we have, that this goes on endlessly, which would be in contradiction with the idea that we are under an almighty God. But there is nothing illogical, nothing impossible about this. Or that everything was simply as it is right now. Or there are many other ideas, many other beliefs, but we have to somehow agree because it agrees with the religions that we have at hand right now that there is this one great causer and that we must somehow get to him. And we somehow have the obligation to prove that the existence of this being is impossible. And I'm sure we will get to the topic of impossibility when I make my rebuttal to Khalid's opening here. Now, I want to simply get to some reasons as to why I don't believe in God because the discussion today should not be about about why I think God does not exist or it shouldn't be me trying to prove that God does not exist. Because what we have here is that I am simply an atheist who does not believe in the idea of God. I am not here to go and destroy the belief in God. Whereas the religious person like Khalid is out here saying God exists. God is true. We believe in him. It is of course logical. We should believe in him. And on the pursuit of this very goal, he and many others like him employ certain arguments which are not convincing and which originally and actually do not serve the purpose of convincing other people of the existence of God, but rather of defending the idea of God and challenging others to prove that their arguments are illogical, which I think makes no sense. My starting point is neutral. I don't have a thing called God. It is then the religious person who comes to me and says, hey, you should believe in God because God exists. Well, here is why I don't believe in God. Why I don't believe God exists. Number one, there is absolutely no reason for me to believe in the existence of a God, which makes me an atheist. To me, God is an idea that is not conceivable, that doesn't mean anything, that simply comes into existence because of your religious books and beliefs. Therefore, I have no reason to believe in God unless you can prove to me that God is indeed not just logical, not just possible, but real, true, existent. If you cannot do that, then why would I believe in God? Why would I be convinced by the idea if I don't find it convincing? Number two, humans are not a reliable source of knowledge. Religions rely on certain prophets, messengers, people in the past who claimed to have received certain missions or revelations from God. And in order to justify the belief in those specific people, we have believers who nowadays argue for the existence of God and for the truth of their religions. But humans, as I said, are a very unreliable source of knowledge. They have made numerous mistakes in the past. We are mistaken about many things today. We don't know what lies outside our observable universe. We don't even know what lies in the unexplored oceans. We don't know much of it. Why would I trust the knowledge of certain people who allegedly spoke to invisible beings 1400 or 2000 years ago? Even if God did exist, why would I care? Why would it be relevant to me? Just the mere thought of a God existing doesn't really do anything. Okay, what am I supposed to do with this idea? Maybe God exists. Okay, so what should I believe? If not, what will happen? Will I be judged for not believing in that God? Obviously, it is very hard to believe in that God by reason alone. We are supposed to go to a certain scripture, which is my entire point from the very beginning. We have to discuss the scripture. We cannot discuss the existence of God independent of that scripture. If we do that, then God shouldn't judge me for not believing in him because obviously the reasons alone are not convincing enough, even according to Islamic scholars. Number four is we live in a random world and I will not expand on this very much right now. I will get to that in our rebuttal. Number five was also about that the world is imperfect. It is not perfect. There is no perfection in nature. Perfection is not really something that objectively exists. It is merely an observation that we make. The world does not look like it has been perfectly designed or made. We simply happen to live within the world and make judgments about it by looking at a very tiny part of the world. Finally, as I said from the very beginning, the existence of God is a nonsensical discussion because we are basically arguing about whether something that has no cognitive and unambiguous meaning exists or not. We could just as well argue if spirits exist or not or if they interfere with our lives because they are upset about the things that we do. Therefore, I don't believe in God. Thank you. You've got to thank you very much for that opening and I want to let you know, folks, if it's your first time here at Modern Aid Debate, we are a neutral platform hosting debates on science, religion and politics and we hope you feel welcome no matter what walk of life you are from, whether you be atheist, Muslim, Christian, you name it, we are glad you are here. We're going to jump into the rebuttal sections. These are going to be eight minutes at a time before we go into open discussion followed by closings in Q&A and also want to remind you in the old live chat, we do want you to keep it friendly, attacking the arguments instead of the person and with that, thanks so much. Reformed, Salafi, thanks for your patience. The floor is all yours. All right, that's a bit too intact in eight minutes. So I think one of his chief objections was that just the concept of God is too ambiguous, it's meaningless and I think obviously not true because you can just define it and that's what we do with virtually everything. He mentioned a horse, four-legged animal, however you want to define it, but why is it a horse? It's because we call it one. That's subjective as well, it's mind-dependent, it's not objective and definitions are just like that and I think there's a sense in which meaning also is outside of the head but generally definition, we define things ourselves, it's not other people, it's not other existing things, they don't have definitions in themselves, I guess, or a dog isn't just a dog because that's just what it is, it's a dog because we call it one, right? In that same sense what I'm arguing for is like a minimal version of theism that a timeless, spaceless, immensely intelligent and immensely powerful being exists and this being is also a personal being, that's probably the most important aspect of it and this being creates the world and designs it too and that is a very common notion of what God is, it's a very minimal notion of what God is, you can add things on top of that later on, you can add necessity, assayity, you can go along but that's a minimal notion, that's what I'm arguing for, a very minimal notion of what God is and okay, so moving forward, he mentions that some Islamic scholars, they believe that no rational proofs work, I might be misquoting here, but he mentions Maturidi school and Ashari school and then proceeds to cite Ibn Taymiyyah who is the greatest enemy of both of those schools, so I think there's a bit of confusion there and Ibn Taymiyyah himself believed in just believing in God from something like the census divinatus, right? That it's intuitive, it's the human nature to believe, right? And so of course he would not agree that there's no reason to, no rational reason to believe in God and okay, moving forward, one objection he made, as far as I remember, is from randomness, he didn't get much time to elaborate on this but I suspect that randomness, okay, that's a bit vague by itself, if by randomness things happen for no reason, that's obviously false because the laws of nature are governing the world, everything that's happening is happening according to some effect, some effect from a cause deterministic, indeterministic, it's all governed by laws within the universe, nothing random is happening here, nothing chaotic is happening here, there's actually order, a lot of order and everything is going according to that order, so I don't think there's randomness there, what else is there to say? And to push this point further on God being a meaningless concept, but if you just want to say because different people disagree on it, okay, say for example someone in China says this four legged thing we call a dog, it's not a dog, I call that a cat, does that mean suddenly that the term dog has become meaningless? Of course not, you could say they're wrong, you could say it doesn't really matter at the end of the day, there's just this notion here that four legged thing and so on with the details and that's just what we call a dog, you can call it a cat if you want, you can do what you will, but at the end of the day is just what we call God, China recall the rest of the points he made. Right, so this was an important one and he mentions that the first step is actually discussing scripture instead of whether God exists or not, but I think that's just totally misconceived here because the first thing should be whether God exists because religion as a project does not get off of its feet if you cannot show that God exists, furthermore if you can show that it doesn't exist then the entire project is just thrown out the window, there's no point in talking about it, so that's why I think discussion of God just comes first because there's no point talking about scripture if it turns out that God doesn't exist unless you just want to talk to the believer about why he believes despite the fact that God does not exist, but in essence there's no point, there's no point moving towards scripture if we could say God doesn't exist, the scripture's false, it doesn't matter how good it is, it doesn't matter what it says, nothing about that matters if it says that there's a God and a God doesn't exist, you just throw it out the window, so that's why I think the discussion of God comes first and because you can make arguments from God's existence as a designer and so forth, it's a religious religion, right, and you can also make arguments such that the God that you're trying to prove is very similar to an Abrahamic notion of God and you can go on towards those lines of reasoning, so I think the discussion of God comes first, it's very important, I think that's all I have to say, I'll just pass it over. You got it, we will kick into the eight-minute rebuttal from Apostate Prophet as well, want to remind you folks if you haven't yet hit that subscribe button as we have many more juicy debates to come, for example the bottom right of your screen, you will see we're absolutely excited for this. Apostate Prophet returns next weekend debating whether or not Muslims should or I should say ex-Muslims should be punished, you don't want to miss that one, so do hit that subscribe button and that notification bell with that, thanks Apostate Prophet, the floor is all yours with your rebuttal. Thank you so much and thank you Khaled for that response, so first of all I want to clarify a few things before I get to the rebuttal of the actual opening statement. So when I say that God is not something that has an unambiguous cognitive meaning, what I'm referring to is obviously God itself, when we speak of language it is a dog or a horse is not ambiguous, it is only ambiguous what we call a horse or a dog, whereas what we call God is it's not just that that is ambiguous, it's the very nature of God itself that is ambiguous. Even if you go into all kinds of different cultures and speak different languages, people know what a human is, people see the human, people can verify it, they only give the human different names, people see what a horse is or what a mountain is, they merely give it different names, people don't have a common understanding of what a God is, so and yes it is all subjective, funnily enough you should mention China, I think I often give China as an example where people don't have any concept or any idea or any relevant idea of what God actually is, so the entire discussion does God exist or not is completely meaningless to the vast majority of the population in China, the discussion that we are having right now would be regarded as nonsensical and irrelevant, why do we care if God exists or not. When it comes to the source on reason versus revelation to correct that I said that the Asheri, the Maturidhi school and the traditionalist schools generally agree that reason alone is not enough to find God and Ibn Taymiyyah in his article about revelation and reason says that reason alone is not sufficient to find God or to find the answers, you must combine reason and revelation, of course he doesn't go further to agree with me and say therefore you can't arrive at God at all with reason or that this makes God nonsensical, that is merely my conclusion from that. Now when it comes to the history of God and what God is or means, when you look at the anthropology, the history of religion, you see that the idea of the one God is merely a few thousand years old and it didn't even start with Abrahamic religion and when it did start with Abrahamic religion it actually developed from an idea of God that was not merely monotheistic but that was rather polytheistic or Hinotheistic. The history of religions of beliefs and gods of different nature is much older than the idea of the one God and spans over thousands of years before that. We have traces of religious practices in religious places long before discussions about the one God started. Apparently it wasn't very relevant to humankind before that. Finally if you want to find arguments in order to justify that God exists, you will find an endless supply of arguments when you start with the idea that God does of course exist because your religion is true. Therefore I say that you start with a religion and then come to a God, you don't start with arguments for God and then conclude that God exists and then pick a religion which makes sense to you. No you choose the religion, you don't even choose the religion, in most cases you are born into the religion and then develop ideas such as the Kalam cosmological argument or the fine-tuning argument. I'm kind of disappointed because I was expecting Harid to run with the modal ontological argument more because I felt like I thought that was what Iba was primarily interested in from his comments. I'm honestly a bit disappointed to see the Kalam cosmological argument. Now when it comes to the premises of that specific argument, I have said before that I find these arguments not really relevant to believing in Allah or to believing in Islam but for the sake of simply engaging with the argument. Premise, whatever begins to exist has a cause. Fine, good, that's an observation that you make based on the limited number of observations that you have made so far in the world that we find ourselves in. But that is only a conclusion that we come to because we observe things that we have seen in our lives around us. We don't even know very much about all the objects that surround our earth, our planet for example. We have only discovered within the last 100 years that there is an endless universe out there. So you would only look at a very specific small number of things to conclude that everything that begins to exist has a cause. Okay, it is the best explanation that everything that begins to exist has a cause. I think it is a very reasonable explanation to make, but in the end it is simply an assumption. You don't know about the vast majority of the universe. You are only a tiny dot. When it comes to whether the universe came into existence or not, there is a misrepresentation on what is actually being said about the beginning of the universe. The the theorem represented concludes that objects in the universe are expanding and therefore separating themselves from each other. That is accompanied with additional evidence for the Big Bang, such as that temperatures on the objects surrounding us seemingly change toward a single direction, which is a theory that has recently become recently come under scrutiny by scientists by the way. But what all of that leads to is that there is a beginning to what we have right now. There is an expanding universe, a starting point. It does not conclude. None of these arguments, none of these theorems, none of the scientific hypothesis that we have conclude that the universe came into being, into existence, out of nothing. That is nowhere. There is no scientific consensus on such a thing. There is only consensus that what we have right now seemingly began to expand from some point. Before that there was a singularity and we don't know what was before that. We don't have an answer to that. We can't make assumptions about that. So we can say, yes, the universe that we are in right now began to expand from a certain point, but did it really begin to exist? Literally, nobody can tell. We can't really know that. You can't really make an argument. We can't really make an assertion about that. It will be entirely based on baseless evidence, on baseless arguments without evidence, on merely a series of hypotheses. We don't even know for sure whether the Big Bang is true. We only assume for the time being that that is the best explanation given the evidence that objects are separating themselves from each other and that everything seems to come from a certain point in what we call the universe. So when you make these assumptions and say the universe began to exist, which is not true in the sense that you want to present the argument, but when we come to the idea that since the universe began at some point, something must have created it. Fine. You could go ahead and make such an assumption. Unfortunately, it is not entirely based on certain proof, and you don't really know what brought it into existence, and whether there is an endless or a limited number of chains of things that brought it into existence. I mean, maybe it was a God that is under other gods, and they are just playing. Maybe they're just experimenting. Maybe they just want to see if this works. You know, they just want to try out a new scenario. Maybe they don't want to be worshipped, which, by the way, also debunks the idea of the one God being universal. Not all cultures agree that God is a personal creator who brought everything into existence and who asks for worship. That is so because you believe that it is so according to your religious beliefs. When it comes to fine-tuning, I realize I don't have much time left. I just completely disagree that the universe is fine-tuned. Yes, sure. We are in existence in a world that is very much chaotic, that could have turned out in many different ways. The thing is, we look around us. As far as we have explored the universe right now, we have not found signs of life on a single planet or satellite of all the ones that we have looked at. What we have is a planet that is full of disaster, full of chaos, full of destruction, and we live despite it while looking for ways to survive better. That doesn't look like fine-tuning, but perfection. We can talk about that. We'll jump into the open conversation and thank you very much, gentlemen. I want to remind you folks, our guests are linked in the description and that includes if you're listening to this debate via the podcast, we put our guest links there as well. Gentlemen, the floor is all yours for open conversation. Okay, so there's just one thing I wanted to mention. You mentioned being more interested in the modal ontological argument. There's a pretty good reason I didn't use that. Do you know what the S5 modal axiom is? Explain it to me. Well, that's the point. I know what the modal logic in reference to the existence of God refers to and why you would be using it. One second. Mistake by me there, it's a system. Anyways, the idea is that you have these modal systems and axioms like B, for example, which you can derive their inference from possibility to actuality from a necessary being possible. But if you don't understand the modal logic behind that, what's the point of me using that? So the point of me using an argument like Kerem and fine-tuning is because everybody knows them and everybody understands them as well. There's no utility in me coming here with phasers, 50-premises, Aristotelian argument for God. There's no utility in me coming here with modal ontological, modal cosmological argument. There's no utility in that. I'm coming here with very simple arguments that anyone can understand and trying to defend those premises. I understand that. My only problem with that is couldn't we simply boil down the ontological modal argument to God as a necessary being because of certain reasons that are outside of this argument, by the way. And if God is a necessary being, then there could not be a world or a reality without this God because he is a necessary being. And if that is the case, then he necessarily exists. I mean, you could boil it down to such a level that it is quite easily understandable. We don't have to overcomplicate the matter. That's not really what it says. What it says is that you're starting from a concept, which is God, as a necessary being, and you're just going from the concept. You're not saying that there exists this being that is necessary. You're saying, okay, we have this concept and it's possible. If it possibly exists, then it necessarily exists. And that inference is based on modal logic, which you're not aware of, like axiom B system S5 and so on and so forth. That's the point. There's no point going into a discussion with, and I'm not saying it's in an insulting manner, but there's a level of misunderstanding that's going to emerge if you don't understand the logic behind it. There's no point in that. I was just saying I was expecting that. I'm not criticizing it. Yeah, it's a side point. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have even pursued it. But anyways, one point you did bring up, and I think this is a really interesting point, is that what we do see is just that life is in a very small part of the world, right? But the argument doesn't entail that the entire universe is going to be saturated with life. All the argument is saying is that the parameters are life permitting, such that life could exist in the world. And that's what's surprising, right? What's surprising? It's surprising on naturalism. No, that's the issue, because there's an indifference there. Naturalism doesn't care, it's not picking something out. So that's the idea. I'm not saying that the entire universe has to be saturated with life. If there's anything you want to comment on that before I move on. Sure, just a quick question. Let's make a difference between two thoughts based on the idea that the universe is fine-tuned and that life came into existence due to what you might interpret as fine-tuning and what may simply be an arrangement of things. Do you conclude that it is absolutely true based on these observations that there is a God or that it is highly likely that there is a God who did everything? Are you basically asking whether I think each of these premises has 100% probability of being true? Well, of course not. That's not how reasoning works. When you go into a discussion, like most of the time you're bringing premises that are more plausible than their negations, right? That's what I'm trying to bring here, premises that are more plausible than their negations. I understand. The reason I'm asking this is that the fine-tuning argument rests on certain observations based upon which we say, okay, there is a chance of this happening and that happening. And based on all these different factors, there is a very high likelihood that this was probably purposely made so instead of all of that coming into existence randomly. Not only that there's a lot of leap of faith, but that's many leaps of faith to me. And you could come to many different conclusions. I could say, okay, maybe it is very likely that all of this was intelligently designed and planned accordingly. I certainly don't see it, but there's still a little possibility that it was not. So why would I use this to base my faith and my entire life on believing in a certain religion or in God? Because if we're reasonable people, then we accept the best explanation for things, because the best explanation is just what we ought to believe. If we have a set of data, we have numerous explanations, and one of them is the best, then we just ought to choose that one and believe it. That's what, as rational agents, that's what we should do. And I'll just pass it back. When I hear you say best explanation, what I see there in that argument as a best explanation is not that there is a personal creator who created every single one of us and expects from us a certain thing. What I see is, okay, there's probably something beneath all this that may or may not have designed it. We understand very little from the universe that we have right now, but there may be something above this. I don't see how you possibly come to the conclusion there that it is the one God who is personal and who knowingly created everything for us. Well, the personal part comes in so far as it's an agent with free will that fine tunes it for life to be permitting, right? That's where the agent or personal being comes in. Something about wanting everyone to have salvation. I'm not arguing for that. I'm arguing for a much more minimal conception here, and I think it's baby steps, right? You go forward and then you can argue for the next position. The idea here is that you have a cause for the universe and a designer. And one thing you mentioned is that, how do you know it's not like a God on top of another, on top of another, and just an infinite causal series? The first thing I would say is that's just explanatory superfluous, right? I don't need all of that. If I could suffice with just one cause, one designer, and there's one in the same, Occam's razor or parsimony, then that's again the best explanation because your explanation or this possible one you're positing posits way more entities than mine. Mine just posits one that does all the explanatory work. And so it is the better explanation. That's why I would choose it over those other ones. That is a misapplied use of logic here in this case. You would not go for the best possible explanation. You would simply go for the explanation that best makes sense to you. Because if you went for the best possible explanation, you would go for that explanation for which you have reasonable evidence, but you don't have evidence that there is only one creator. You only have evidence that there is something or that there is a creator or that there is a reason or a design in this. So your best explanation is not that there is one creator. Your best explanation is that there is a design. Well, here's the idea. Explanations have virtues, explanatory virtues, and one virtue is simplicity or parsimony, right? And so yours just completely negates any sort of parsimony because you can you can pause it as many of those creators as you want. But all I'm doing is pausing one that does all the work. I'm pausing one entity that does all the explanatory work, whereas you would be pausing five, six, a million, a trillion infinity that does that explanatory work. That's superfluous. That is explanatory, unvirtuous or non-virtuous. Whereas my hypothesis here is more virtuous. And because of that, that is what makes it the better explanation, right? That is that is completely subjective, though, because what you are doing, there is no reason to conclude that one being that creates everything, and as the might to create everything, and all the might is a better explanation than multiple beings that might not be almighty or not be, you know, superior to everything else. It is only to you subjectively a better explanation or better or more virtuous, that that one is a better explanation than a multitude or an unlimited number of beings. That's the issue. You don't have evidence to suggest that one is a better explanation than the other. You only have evidence as far as you see, I don't think there is any evidence to that, but you only have supposed evidence for a design. You don't have an understanding by which we can measure whether one is a better explanation or more virtuous than 5,000 or an unlimited undefined number. I think you're confused here. It's not subjective. I'm saying that there's a standard by which some theories are better than others. Some theories meet that standard. Some don't. And if one's positing so many different entities to do the same explanatory job, that the other theory that just posits one, then there's a sort of asymmetry here, right? Might posits way less and does the same exact job. That's why we should prefer it, right? Another issue would be if there's an infinite causal chain one got on top of the other, then that would violate causal finicism. I don't think that's possible, right? So I think that can be excluded deductively. But again, one of the main arguments I'm making here is that this is the better explanation because it's more simple, right? You're doing all of the explanatory work with a single entity. It's not just because it's better for me. Of course it is better for me, but I think that's also a successful line of reasoning because I'm appealing to simplicity here. That is a theoretical virtue. I'll pass it back. There's a creaking noise that comes. Is that from you, James? That might be me. Yeah, I hear that. Sorry about that. Is it really loud? It's happening right now. Yeah, it's just a little bit distracting. I'll mute when I'm not talking. There you go. Are you? Is it like, I don't know. Go ahead. I don't know what it is. It's just a little bit unnerving. So again, you say it is simplicity. Simplicity according to you. There is no standard based on which we can say that one is simpler than undefined. I think it is much easier since we have no evidence for the quantity of things that we may call originators or gods or creators to say that one is a simpler explanation or a better explanation than the other. You appeal in order to justify your idea that this is a simplest or the best explanation to certain reasons that are outside of the argument, such as one person creating all of this makes more sense or is more reasonable, is more simple than many people or an undefined number of people creating all these things. Why would you make that assumption to begin with? You're assuming a number to begin with. Why not simply go with undefined, unknown? Okay, just to unpack this for a bit. It can't be undefined because we know there's at least one. So it's one or more. And so I'm trying to understand what you mean by you can't say it's more simple. Is one more simple than five? Like is one entity more simplistic than five entities? I don't know. It could be that five doing everything together is simpler than one. I'm going to show up. It's based on how you define a simple. It's based on how you define this. Could you, for example, accept the idea, the possibility that it is an immense number of creators or that it's five creators? Do you think it is possible or do you rule these out entirely? It would depend on what you mean. If you mean you have one God or an infinite series of gods, I would rule that out. But if you're saying you have all of these just existing independently and uncaused, then I wouldn't rule that out as insane. I wouldn't say that's impossible a priori at least. Fair enough. So here's the idea. Five doing the same explanatory work as one is less simplistic. That's just by definition because one entity doing all the explanatory work is a better explanation than five doing the exact same explanatory work. You're just adding entities for no reason. So according to Alcom's razor, we should just shred all of these off until we get to one that does all the work, which is what I'm positive here. A single cause that designs the universe. That's basically the reasoning behind it. Yeah. I don't see it. And you may say that this is simply my flaw. But I still think that the entire assumption that one is a simple explanation to things rests on certain reasons that are simply not part of the fundamental idea of the designer behind all of this. It is, again, as I would say, subjective. But you could say this is my mistake. I accept that as such. And we can proceed to the next idea. Which is, for example, if you want to move on there, I don't know if you want to say anything else about this. Go ahead. I guess all I'll say is I think there is a confusion there because I think one entity doing the explanation instead of five is going to be more simple because I think there's just an obvious sense in which one is more simple than five. We can move on from there. Sure. And that's how you see it. I don't see it that way. Maybe I'm mistaken. I don't know. But if we come to, if we come, for example, to the cosmological argument, it is your idea that the universe came into existence. What do you mean by came into existence? That it's past finite, that it's history. It's causal history does not extend infinitely. I think that's all it means for something to begin to pass to be finite. But do you think we have any knowledge which can be proven and supported with evidence that there was nothing before that? Well, I don't think there was nothing before that. I'm a theist. I mean, I think there was something. Okay, but sense the universe. Yeah, but would you define the Creator or the God as something in existence before that? I mean, what I'm talking about is the universe itself. Do you suggest that that nothing existed in place of the universe if we do not count the Creator God, for example? Well, I think it's incoherent to say that nothing existed in the place of the universe because nothing is just the absence of anything. So to say that nothing existed in its place is just a category error. I'm not sure. It's just, I think, an incoherent sentence, which is why you could do you rule out the idea that there was something always in place or many things like the universe were always in place, but simply did not, but simply are not always expanding and ours simply happened to expand from a certain point from a singularity. Well, do you know the singularity is? Singularity is the absence of time and space. It's a mathematical description. It's not something that literally exists like a physical object. I know what it refers to, but we use it in order to refer to a certain state in which you cannot explain or you cannot define time or space, for example. The idea here is that space time is past finite, and that's what the word good blank and theorem aims to show by proof of by showing that inflation from eternity isn't possible. That's the goal. And if that's the case, then space time is past finite. But that's what I need because all I need for on premise two is that the universe began to exist disambiguate that what's the universe space time and its contents that it began to exist. If it's past finite, it did. Is it past finite? I think there's scientific evidence for that. One second just before you move on, you talk about proving things. I mean, if you mean proof, like sort of like a mathematical proof, that's not what I'm aiming for. I'm aiming to provide evidence for claims and say these are our best explanations. These are our best scientific theories. We should accept this. That's basically the idea. Again, my initial idea about that, my initial criticism about that is a very common one. I'm sure you're aware of it, is that the scientific consensus is not that this is all there is and it began to exist at a certain point. The scientific consensus as far as we have, because that is all that we can have access to as far as evidence is concerned, is that it everything seemingly began to expand from a certain point in the past. Because that is what the majority of evidence that we have points at. So everything began to expand from a certain point, which points us at the idea of the Big Bang theory, that everything started from one certain point and continued to expand and is still expanding. The idea behind that, however, is not that everything then, that things then came or popped into existence. So you could not use this as evidence for the argument that something was brought into existence from nothing, such as in a creation, you know, ex nihilo, where God creates everything from nothing. The scientific consensus merely trusts that things began to expand from a certain point. But we don't know anything beyond that. It is still a possibility that this is merely one of many such cases, of which we have no further knowledge as of yet, because all we have is the observable universe, which we mostly can observe, but also don't really we can't really investigate and inspect it. Yeah, thanks for that. So the idea here behind the board with Lincoln theorem, though, is that it couldn't for this reason, right, because in this reason is that you'd have faster than light speeds. But because that's not possible, then we say inflation couldn't have been occurring from eternity. So there's a finite past here. And so do you accept or reject that space time is finite? As far as we define space and time, as of now, sure, yes, but this doesn't rule out certain other theories of how exactly this expansion began, you know, to happen, or, or for example, that doesn't rule out different ideas of a multiverse, for example. They simply seem more, some would say logically, not as good of an explanation, but they can't be ruled out. Okay, so look, that it began to exist, or that it began to start inflation, or however you want to cash it out, that this thing began, that this just means that there's some sort of cause behind it, if we accept premise one. One thing you mentioned is that we like can't rule out things like a multiverse, I can't rule out that there's a demon under my bed, or forget under my bed that there's a Cartesian demon that's deceiving me. And perhaps you don't exist. Maybe James doesn't exist. Maybe nobody except me exists. And this demon is convincing me that everybody exists. I can't rule it out. But it's not reasonable to believe that I have no reason to believe it, right? And you deny the claim that I'm making because you have no reason to believe it. So the idea here is that just saying, we can't rule this out. It's not informative, right? We want informative claims. I understand the issue is I'm not saying, okay, there are different explanations. One of them is true. No, I'm just I'm merely saying there are different explanations. Some of them could be true. Maybe yours is true. These are possibilities, right? We're playing with possibilities with certain explanations with hypothesis. This is how philosophy has been has gone forever. I am merely accepting your idea, your proposal as one possible explanation among many. The scientific consensus that we have right now, this is where the scientific consensus lies, is that the universe as we see it as we have it right now, most likely, according to the established scientific theory, which basically just translates to explanation, a scientific explanation is that the universe that we have began to expand from a certain point. Now, the evidence which brought us to this idea is still not entirely firm. It is still changing today. But that is all we know. All we know is that the universe that we have right now, in which we are, began to expand from a certain point. That's the best explanation. But you can't make further assumptions about how and why that happened and then expect people to simply take that as evidence and believe in that. That's all I'm saying about it. Okay, so a comment here. Do you bring up, for example, the multiverse explanation, but that wouldn't be an explanation for the conclusion of the KCA? Because what the Kalem argument is just saying is that there's a cause, right? You might bring up multiverse in objection to the fine-tuning argument. But the multiverse is not an explanation and not an alternative to the conclusion of the Kalem argument. So that's a point to be made. And second, I think there's a sort of like taxicab kind of situation here where it's always like, I mean, trust the science until the science says something that might entail a conclusion we don't want to agree with. And so, for example, you might want to accept evolution because that's where the consensus lies right now. You might want to accept all kinds of theories where the consensus lies. And but I don't think you're going to cast the same sort of skepticism over these theories. Maybe you will. And that would be consistent. And I respect that. But are you going to? Of course. Of course. For example, when we talk about the Big Bang theory, I explicitly said, I believe many times that this is the best explanation that we have, simply because I do not say that this is 100% the truth. I don't hold that as a conviction. I'm merely saying this is the best explanation. In fact, I often say, we don't really know. It is entirely possible that this is not true, that there is something else that is true. It is entirely possible that what you're telling me, as absurd as I think it is right now, turns out to be true. And I'll be like, holy hell, I mean, I guess it is true. That's okay. That's cool. So best explanations as a rational agent, do you agree with this proposition? As rational agents, we should always accept the best explanation for the data sets or the observations we make? Depends on how you define accept. I mean, I'm very skeptical in terms of how far we want to go with accepting a certain explanation or accepting a certain theory. Believe in theory. Again, depends. When we talk about the best explanation of why the universe is moving the way it's moving, I think it is currently the best explanation. And I would possibly accept it as most likely true that the Big Bang is true. But when we talk about life on other planets, I would say, hey, it is the best explanation that life exists on other planets. But I cannot say that this is what I accept as true. It is simply reasonable based on what we observe so far. That's great. Because remember what I said earlier. What we're looking for here is premises more plausible than their negations. I take that from Craig. We want premises more plausible than their negations. And I think that's what I've provided here. Two premises that are more plausible than their negation in the Kalam argument. And fine tuning, I guess, is a bit far more contentious for you. But so do you accept then that you should believe in the conclusion of the Kalam argument that the universe began to exist and has a cause? I'm not sure, because I don't know how we exactly define... Here's the thing. I could say it is very likely that the universe came into existence based on our understanding of coming into existence in the argument. And that it has a cause. But I don't know if this cause is something that brings existence altogether into existence, or if it is something outside of that, as we have discussed. So what we are left with is, even if I did accept a cause, I don't know what the cause possibly could be. And there is no reason to say it is a personal being. When it then comes to the fine tuning argument, I would say we have no idea to come to the understanding that it was a certain being or just one person. Okay. I think this is a lot of progress here. So then the next issue is bridging the gap. Right? So what would make that cause God? I think there's two ways I could go about it, and one would be combining the argument. So if the universe began to exist and has a cause, and then proceed to say the universe is fine tuned, and if the universe began to exist, has a cause and is fine tuned, then the best explanation would be that one entity is doing all of the explanatory work. And so you'd get to a single entity that's an agent, because it's doing an intelligent one and a powerful one that's doing this fine tuning. And from Calam, yeah, that is me. We've got to wrap up once you finish this sentence and go into the closing statements, just get you guys out of here on time. Yeah. So last thing I wanted to say is from Calam, you get that it's spaceless because it created space time, which is where you get physicality from, right? Dimensionality, so on and so forth. And it's timeless because time or change in this sense, metric time, it's from the universe. We'll jump right into the closing statements followed by Q&A. So we're going to do this four or five minutes very quickly, starting off with reform. Salafi, thanks so much. Floor is all yours for five minutes. Okay. I don't think I have much to say, but what I will say is that I think I've given premises that are more plausible than their negations, but the first of which was... If I might quickly chime in, what we could do if you think you don't have much to say right now, we could just reverse the thing. I could make a final closing statement and you could then add more to that if you want to. I don't know, whatever you want if you... I'll just say a few things and I'll pass it to you. I don't think I'm going to take my full time. Okay. Okay. So the premises there that I think are more plausible than their negations, as I think I've shown with arguments, and I have not assumed anything to be true without argument. For each premise that I've given, I've supported it, whether with inductive evidence, whether by deduction, for example, that there couldn't be an infinite causal series, so the universe had to begin, causal finitism right there. And so I've attempted to support all of these premises and I don't think any good objection has been given. Let's see. I think that's all I have to say. I'll pass it back. You got it. We'll get over to AP for his closing and then the Q&A folks heads up that if your question comes in at this point and forward, we may not get to it. We're going to try to rush through as many questions as possible, but Reform Salafi has to get out here by a decent time and so we're thankful to have him for the time we have him. Go ahead, AP. Sorry. Thank you so much for that. Well, first off, I think there is a misunderstanding, which is I never accepted the fine-tuning argument to begin with as the best possible explanation or as reasonable. I merely asked you certain questions about why you would assume that there is one being instead of an undefined number of beings or instead of multiple beings and so on. So I don't accept to begin with the idea that the universe is fine-tuned or that it looks like it is fine-tuned. I don't think so at all. I think on the contrary, the universe is full of randomness, full of chaos, full of imperfection. Perfection is not something that is objectively true. It is subjective. It is an observation, something that we merely say in order to refer to something as perfect or imperfect. It doesn't exist in nature. Do you want to... Yeah, I was hoping you would give me a minute to cover something like that. So about perfection, I don't think the argument entails that the universe would be perfect. In fact, I mean on my theology and I don't want to get into theology and scripture, the universe isn't perfect and it wasn't meant to be perfect. And from the argument alone, you could not derive that it's going to be perfect. So that's not an entailment from the argument. The second one now is that it's chaotic. I think that's a very vague term. What does it mean to say it's chaotic? Are you saying that random? It's random? Well, what does that mean if you're saying things are happening for no reason? It just straight up falls because things are happening for a reason, right? The laws, there's order, everything is happening, there's cause and effect and things are happening according to an order. There's a rhythm, there's a rhyme to the world and things are going about how they are. Okay, I can go on with that. So okay, what I mean by chaotic is actually I think very simple. This is my objection to the fine-tuning argument because I simply do not think that there's anything in the universe that looks like it has been intelligently designed or defined or made. There is no pattern to anything. When it comes to randomness, I'm not saying that everything is completely without purpose. Obviously, we have the earth that we have right now revolves around a sun. This seems to continue in a certain pattern, although it changes all the time continuously. We have a moon that we are surrounded with, which goes around us, which also has no perfect pattern. It also changes over time. These are pretty much the things that we can say are in place and serve a specific purpose. The thing is there is a very wide range of a distance between the earth and the sun that would make it possible for life to exist on this planet and to flourish. The earth could be at many different positions in the solar system that we have right now, and life could still form and still come into existence. There are many other planets in our solar system where life could be existing. We simply do not know yet, because the distance is not that precise. There could be a huge variety of distances that would make it possible. A moon, we could have multiple moons, we could have just simply one satellite, doesn't really matter. What we have is a satellite. It helps us function. Here's what I find very funny. You look out into the world, you look out into space. What you see is that there is vastly simply chaos. We are surrounded in our solar system with rocks that are aimlessly flying through the solar system without serving any purpose at all. On the contrary, they keep destroying and simply wandering out there. We have multiple planets, multiple objects in our solar system that have no purpose at all. You could argue that maybe the existence of one big planet protects us from certain rocks, but that is not entirely true because it also endangers our planet because it attracts different rocks from the sky. If we look at our solar system and what we see mostly, what we see is it is mostly aimless chaotic. It doesn't make any sense. If you look outside of our planetary system, what it seems like is that many other stars out there, most stars out there seem to make no sense, seem to have no aim, are mostly chaotic, came into existence out of chaos. The objects around them are chaotic, mostly serve no purpose at all. So far as we have observed the universe, what we have found is that among all the observed objects in the sky, in space, only ours seems to have found a way to function where we can, where our life has successfully developed and lived for so long. So the best possible explanation here in this case, if we want to simply rely on the number of observations that we have made would be that in the universe it doesn't really look like life was, everything was designed for life. On the contrary, it looks like we simply exist on this planet despite the chaos that we have. And even in this planet, we are currently talking about a possible large scale destruction of the universe because of climate. We are constantly surrounded by chaos, earthquakes, this and that. So there is no proper design to this, just because you happen to exist within all the chaos, you cannot simply conclude that this is designed. Just to jump into the questions, because we have so many questions, virtually all of which are for our dearest friend, Reformed Salafi. So I am going to speed through these as fast as possible. And folks got to let you know, there's no chance. I don't think we're going to have enough time to get your question if you fire it in now, because you've only got 11 minutes. I'll try not to give really long-winded responses so I can answer as many as I can. I will do my best then to help you with that as well. Okay. You got it. This one coming in from Constellation. Pegasus says, where is the evidence of Allah on the first temple period or earlier? Didn't Islam and Allah and Muhammad appear late in history? Okay, well, the first thing to mention is that's not even relevant to the topic about whether God exists or not. But setting that aside, I mean, I don't claim for this to be like an entirely new thing. I mean, I think it traces back in that history goes behind and that there's more prophets than just Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. But yeah, I guess I'll just set that aside then. Got it. Ozzy in talks says, you are confusing infinite causation with infinite time. If you believe God is eternal or infinite future afterlife, then you believe in infinity. An infinite future afterlife is not an actual infinite, because I don't deny actual infinity. Nowhere did I say that actually, I accept that actual infinities are possible. What I deny is an infinite causal series, right? Especially when extending towards the past, something like something that can be emulated in like a grim reaper type paradox. But I don't think actual infinities by themselves are impossible. That's not what I said was impossible or what the grim reaper paradox entails is impossible. Is that a bit different from what William Lane Craig says about actual infinities? Yes. William Lane Craig says actual infinities themselves are impossible. I disagree with that. This one coming in from, do appreciate your question. Ozzy in talks strikes again, says energy is the metaphysical necessity and is eternal cannot be created from nothing. Constants could have eternally existed too. In other words, not be created or have a beginning. I'm not sure what that means. What does it mean for the constant to be eternally existing is just a description. But anyways, what's the proof that the energy is metaphysically necessary? I've given reasons to think the universe, for example, and energy by extension, isn't necessary in terms of conceivability, for example. I can conceive, for example. So what's the counter argument? I don't think he's given much of an argument. He's just trying to say that it could be necessary. What's the argument for that? This one coming in from, Malivia says question for both. Why do religious people say that when they feel God quote unquote feel that is proof that God exists? It isn't. It's one person saying something. Give you a chance to respond. Some internet atheists really have the most penetrating critiques of arguments theists never make at least professional philosophers. So I don't have much much else to say about that. I would say I've heard that from quite a few people, including professional speakers. But yeah, I think it's not an argument that Khaled has made that I wouldn't expect from him. He has a more sophisticated way of arguing for God, I would say, in comparison to such people, for example. But yeah, that's not really an argument. That simply means I have certain feelings. I agree from do appreciate your question. Constellation Pegasus says Sumerian writing is the oldest. No Judaism, God and Allah in them kind of a clue that both don't exist. Again, this is not a debate about whether it's true or not. This is just a complete error. I've made no claims about which religion is true or not. And I don't think the truth of this religion in particular is contingent on whether it's in Sumerian texts. I don't see how that follows. Whereas the entailment, I don't see it. If I quickly say something about that, just very quickly, I do want to know it's related to a lot of questions. And it is technically true that it is it isn't per se. I just want to say because we will have a debate about this as well, right? We'll we together will have a debate another debate about whether Islam is true or not. We're going to play this. Yeah, so this one coming in from Malivia. Thanks for being pithy on that. Malivia says question for both. Why do religious people say we got that one? Darth Hor says gravitational force depends on the changes and masses of particles. The strength of gravity is an arbitrary number and is not fine tuned. I'm not sure I understand what he's saying there. Is he just saying that it's what does arbitrary mean? There is he saying it's random? Well, I think that begs the question. I don't think it's random. So so I'm not sure I understand the question at least. This one coming in from Darth Hor again says, isn't a repulsive gravitational force posited early in the universe that explains the expansion with negative pressure at gravity will be repulsive? Do you have something to say about that? Well, I guess if you want to argue that human life is the only life that exists. And given that idea that gravity that we have is the only relevant gravity to a functional universe, you could say that gravity other than this would be irrelevant to the actual points. But the point I was making with that example, and I'm not sure if he grasped this is that if you had this was the law governing the universe in totality, then you couldn't have those complex clumps of matter. So I'm not sure he's addressing the point there. He's just I'm not again unsure what the point of that is exactly. This one coming in from do appreciate your question bubble gum. No, that one Arabian princess says for reform Salafi, why do you follow a God who doesn't remember how many days it took him to create heavens and earth? One verse says six days and other says eight days. What verses are they talking about? I'm not sure about the number I forgot. But yeah, there's an ambiguity about the numbers of days it took. The issue is some of these are related mostly to Islam itself and we will have a debate about Islam. I did ask you I did bring up in my opening that the history of the one God is very limited and very short and some of the questions might be related to that such as the Sumerian history, for example. This one coming in from constellation Pegasus says Hashem Allah Jehovah or whatever name you want to use is the worst author in history. Let's see. We're looking more for substantive questions in that. Thank you for your opinion. I know that sometimes you get off to saying things like evolution is a fairytale for grownups or religion is a fairytale for grownups, like stuff like that. But we are looking for more substantive stuff. They say, but what about when people disagree on how to interpret the Quran? Isn't that a problem reform Salafi? I don't think so because I think that arises with any text. That's just the nature of, I guess, written text that people are going to disagree about. I think what makes the text right or wrong is whether the claims are right or wrong. I think those claims can be broken down. For example, a claim my religion makes is that God exists. Is that right or wrong? I argue that it is. It's right. If they're just saying that there's disagreement about what some parts of the text means, I don't think that's interesting. I don't see the point behind that. Why would it be a problem? You got it. Thanks for your question. This one coming in from Muhammad Hakeem says, KCA, begging the question, nothing else really began to exist except the universe. FTA, could pi 3.14 be a different value? If not, then it could be the same case with physical constraints. How does the KCA beg the question? I don't think he knows what begging the question is. The conclusion is not contained in the premises. If you're going to say that the premises just entail the conclusion, then congratulations, every single deductive argument begs the question. As for what he said second, is 2 plus 2 equals 4 an example? Does that count? Obviously, it's a disanalysis. There's no symmetry between mathematical truths and truths about physical laws. Thank you very much for your question. This one coming in from experiments and prebiotic chemistry says if God is all powerful and benevolent, why are there thousands of starving children in the world? I don't think the problem of evil has much power on the theology I accept because first time an anti-realist about morality similar to Ridvan. Secondly, I identify good. I'm a divine command theorist. I think whatever what's good is good because God commands it. I don't think God is a moral agent that's held to a moral standard. God's the one that sets the moral standard. Anything he does is good as a matter of definition. This one coming in from Muhammad Hakim says, we got that one. Off one says, if the Quran is real, why does it say that the earth is flat? Well, I don't think it says that. You can appeal to some interpretations that say that. And once again, these are irrelevant questions, but you can appeal to interpretations like that, but others like Abul Aziz interpret it differently. Just an example, there's different interpretations. If you just want to say, I would say both are valid. Why should I accept the flat one? Irrelevant question anyways. You got it. Arabian princess says, and we've got a time for about two or three more questions. Really quick says, Reform Salafi, why do you follow a God who says you can marry and divorce children? Surah 65 verse four, the Sahaba confirmed this. Ibn Abbas and Muhammad married a child. I guess you guys really don't like asking the one questions. I don't see where the argument is. Assume it does say that. Let's say it does. Where's the argument? Where's the entailment from this to falsehood? There is no entailment, so it's not an argument against the truth of Islam. This one from Darth Horace says, the Borg, Borg-Guth-Willinkan theorem does not rule out a universe that has infinite past. It breaks down for quantum space times according to Sean Carroll. Did you read that question, sorry? You said the Borg-Guth-Willinkan theorem does not rule out a universe that has an infinite past. It breaks down for quantum space times according to Sean Carroll. So she's saying roughly, well I'll let you. Yeah, I don't think that's what it's saying. I think what it's saying is that you can rule out an infinite past in virtue of the fact that it would entail something that just isn't right, which is that faster than light speeds are possible if inflation from eternity is possible. Gotcha. And then reform Salafi, I do know that I promise you that we'd get you out of here on time, and I did warn people that we may not get to any new questions, so I do want to get you out of here on time as promised. And so do want to say, folks, we do have more questions. I, if they are for myself, I can definitely answer them in the post-credits scene once I come back. But otherwise, obviously, we don't want to throw the questions out into the air without giving reform Salafi a chance to respond. He will be back with Apostate Prophet in the future. And so if you have likewise, if there are any questions for Apostate Prophet that I did not get to, you will have a chance to ask them next time. In fact, you can even remind me that you asked them during this debate and we'll read them first on the next debate. So we want to say thank you very much, Apostate Prophet, and reform Salafi. It's been a true pleasure to have you guys. Thank you so much. Go ahead. Thanks for having me and thank you to Apostate Prophet, sorry for entertaining this. I think it was a pretty good discussion. Excited to talk to you again. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. I really appreciate that I said it myself as well. So no problem. I think it was a very nice discussion. I really appreciate you added to it. It was very truly enjoyable to me as well. And I hope to have another debate on is Islam true or not, which we should arrange within the next few weeks that will be precisely focused on that topic for everyone who is interested. A lot of questions came on that. 100%. So I want to say folks, our guests are linked to the description. Highly encourage you to check them out. And that includes in the podcast. I'll be back in just a moment with a post credit scene letting you know about upcoming debates. And thanks so much everybody. And last of all, thanks so much AP and reform Salafi. It's been a pleasure.