Hey everybody, tonight we're debating atheism versus theism, which best explains morality and we are starting right now. With our theist guest Arjuna, thanks so much for being with us. The floor is all yours. All right, let me just get my special victory couch. So today I'm defending the proposition that theism is it gives a better explanation for objective morality than atheism. I think there's two things that a system of objective morality needs to give us. Those two things are we need to get objective values and you need to get some kind of should or should not statements out of it. I don't think you can have this on atheism. Also you could say that the the shoulds or should nots are derived from the value. So maybe you could say there's just one thing you need objective values. Objective here means that their value is independent of what anybody thinks of them. So you know if it's the case that suicide is wrong then it's wrong even if everybody thinks it's right and so on whereas money has subjective values so if people change their opinion on which currency has value then that changes which currency has value. So the reasons why I think atheism can't account for objective morality are first of all ontological I think two key factors of an objective morality are the fact that conscious entities exist which are capable of suffering and I don't think atheism can account for that. Of course that's a different debate the hard problem of consciousness and so on but conscious there's lots of reasons to think consciousness is fundamental that's a debate we can have another day and the other thing you need is to have shoulds or should not. So even if we do have on atheism the ability for other living entities to suffer we still need to give some kind of should or should not statements and so why should I care about the suffering of another living entity you always give an argument for why you should not do something based on some value a murder is wrong well I don't care about that well you're going to go to jail if you murder well I don't care if I go to jail and you know any kind of argument you could give somebody could just reject the value which is a key premise in your argument and then you'd have nothing so on atheism I can't see what you could possibly say to somebody who doesn't accept the values whereas on theism I think it is possible to have objective morality for a few reasons one is because you can have objective values so you have a deity who is a personification of good and they are the source of objective morality and also because you can have a system of rewards and punishments for certain actions you know in the harry christian tradition we call this karma and it goes across many lifetimes it explains a lot and this can give an argument to anybody regardless of what values they've accept unless they're complete nihilist as to why they should or should not do certain things based on objective values or at least based on the consequences so if murder is wrong the person might not care about going to jail they might not care about this or that but there'll be some kind of divine reaction for their crime which they will care about and so then you can have objective shoulds and shoulds nots on that basis of course you get quite a lot of nuance and variety within morality it's not that there's just some clear cut I mean there's a few clear cut things are right or wrong torturing babies is pretty clear cut that that's wrong but there's other areas where there might be multiple right answers and multiple you know right courses of action and so on so there's there's a lot of nuance there we don't want to I want to open myself up to any objections on in that regard and so with regard to t-jumps morality I can quickly list off a few objections which is so has a morale system morality is based on the maximization of free will we can call it desirism so he thinks that a moral system which has that to reduce the amount of impositions and free will is is the highest good so to speak but so you can call that he can object if I if I'm getting this wrong when he replies hopefully I'm getting it right so a system so he has objective values at that level but he doesn't have any shoulds or should nots which is what I've heard him say elsewhere you can correct me if I'm wrong so I think in that sense it's vacuous as a moral system unless you can tell somebody why they should or should not do actions based on them being right or wrong I don't think you have a moral system at all and then above so at the middle level you have objective values there it's objectively valuable to allow people to express their free will on his system but at the above the middle level it's all nihilistic so you could have a perfect match of sadists and masochists and this would be a good good and t-jump system of morality because the people who are being tortured had volunteered for it and the people were torturing weren't violating anyone's free will and then so generally when we think of morality we think that there's some things that objectively right and objectively wrong so I think there's nihilism it doesn't account for or explain away our moral intuitions so I think it fails in that regard and he t-jump describes the greatest world imaginable as being one where we all live in some kind of simulated reality where we can do whatever we want we can have anyone we want the arrow gone and I don't think this really does describe the greatest possible reality generally we want to have people who are interacting with we don't want to interact with simulations you know you want to marry a person and interact with the person you want to have real children you want to have real relationships you don't want to have you know simulated aspects of your reality because that's all you could get that we're happy with your particular desires and then if you are gonna have people come together there's gonna be conflicts of desires so it's one it's not possible I know it's got answers for not being possible but I don't think I think the best possible world is in fact one where we're surrounded by other moral agents but where those people are perfected a moral character and this world as a place for perfecting us in moral character and when we become qualified we can go to that world which is full of beings that are perfected a moral character and that world is the best of all possible worlds not one where people of shady, moral character just get to have their own reality and you know be depraved in their own way I'll leave it at that and t-jump can take over. Thank you very much Arjuna for that opening statement and I'll let you know a couple things folks our guests are linked in the description so you'd like to hear more from them you certainly can and that includes if you are listening via the modern data bait podcast as we are now on podcast as well if you haven't heard and so we put our guest links in the description box of the podcast episode as well and so with that we'll kick it over to Tom for his opening statement thanks so much the floor is all yours. Yes the topic today is which better explains morality atheism or theism and the answer is the same as for every other question of whether what explains something better atheism or theism the answer is always atheism because the correct way to address any unknown is to take the unknown phenomenon say here's a phenomenon and then try to make principles that describe the pattern in the phenomenon and only then do you try and figure out what the ontology is of what is the cause of that phenomenon. Theists do it completely backwards they just say ah we don't know this therefore God God has done it God has got us the cause start with my God and then use that to explain everything else which is starting with your conclusion and working backwards which is exactly the the wrong way to address any unknown the correct way is to start with the phenomenon and describe the patterns in the phenomenon the phenomenon of morality is feelings we have we have we got these feelings that when James punches a baby that that is wrong as a moral he ought to not do that so we feel that it's wrong and these feelings are ultimately the thing we're trying to explain when we're trying to discover what morality is so we have to start with the feelings we have to describe a pattern in those feelings why did these actions feel wrong and immoral why do these actions feel right and moral and why ought to someone do this and ought to not do that those are the starting point for describing an accurate model of morality you have to start with the phenomenon create a pattern in the phenomenon and describe that pattern with the principle and then only then can you try to infer what the ontology of that principle is what is the cause or source of that principle and again yes we're doing this backwards they're just starting with her God they have no principles are just saying if my God does it then it's good and if my God doesn't do it then it's bad it's not a principle it doesn't tell us anything about morality and so it is not even a contender for a model objective morality which is why most philosophers who are moral realists and atheists completely reject the God hypothesis the God model does not at all work for an objective basis of morality it's pretty easy to understand why if you think of any moral situation like the trolley problem if you imagine there is an all powerful being there like at the trolley and is it going to flip the switch or is it not going to flip the switch we don't say something as moral because the being is going to do it like it's not moral because the being does it it's moral because or the God does it because the action is moral there is some set of criteria that this action adheres to that makes it the moral action and that's why the being does it so it's it's clearly not the case we would never say that the only reason an action is objectively morals because there's this all powerful being who would do it in that situation that tells us nothing about the principles of morality that just tells us the location you're saying objective morality is located in this being somewhere that's nice but doesn't doesn't tell us anything about the principles of morality what we need to know is what principles describe the moral action so that we can know whether it's good or bad to flip the switch and just saying whether or not the objective being does it is completely irrelevant you just again telling us the location it's like me saying morality is located in this magical potato like that's great but that doesn't tell us anything about morality so in order to count as a real philosophical basis of objective morality you got to start with the principles you got to tell us what the principles of morality are and then infer what the ontology is not the other way around so that is the fundamental reason why theistic models completely fail because they don't start with the evidence and work to a conclusion they start with the conclusion and try to post talk explain away the evidence and I I'll conclude there go into the the questions that thank you very much Tom for your opening statement want to let you know folks we are absolutely thrilled as next Friday Dr. Boyce and Jonathan Sheffield will be debating Dr. Josh and Jim Majors on the book of Daniel forgery or prophecy you don't want to miss that folks it's going to be an epic one so don't forget to hit that subscribe button right now in that notification bell as well as it's going to be a great debate we're excited for it and with that gentlemen thanks so much the floor is all yours for that open conversation I wanted to jump in with the odd thing that Arjuna brought up so is something moral because you should not do it or should you not do it because it is moral you're muted sorry say that last bit again is something moral because you should not do it or should you not do it because it is moral uh well I say there's there's objective values and those objective values are where we derive the the odds so life is objectively valuable therefore murder is bad so murder is bad we can start with that so murder is bad is murder bad because you should not do it is that what makes it bad or should you not do it because it's bad for some independent set of criteria or reasons I'm sure I understand the question what are those are those statements just saying the same thing in different ways no it's like saying it's what makes it bad what makes it immoral is simply the fact you should not do it there's like a should not do it property in the action and that's what makes it moral or is it more of for some independent reason and then because it's immoral for this independent reason we didn't say we should not do it uh yeah yeah yeah that that one has bureau for an independent reason right and the tax should not do it as so that's that shows we don't actually need the odds so the odds aren't in the morality we apply the it's immoral for some reason and then we say because it's immoral for this reason we therefore should not do it. Now, I totally am fine with that. My model is totally fine with that, because my model is trying to describe what morality fundamentally is. And once you know what it is, what you know what those underlying properties are, then you can, of course, say, well, therefore, because it has these underlying properties, you ought not do it. But the whole point of my morality is that the aughts themselves are not in the morality, the first part. It's like, it's not the fact that you ought not do it. That makes it moral. Right. But you still need to be able to derive an aught. So how do you do that? Just, just like how I just said, so if we know what the fundamental nature of morality is, which doesn't contain any aughts, then we can say, well, because this is the fundamental nature of morality, we therefore ought not do it. Yeah. But so, I mean, like, maybe you need to give a concrete example, because I could just say, whatever value it is you use to derive a should, I could just say, I don't accept that value. I have no idea. So murder is wrong. We ought not murder. Okay, murder is wrong. But, you know, what if I feel like murdering and I don't feel like it's wrong, then you would be incorrect. So demonstrate that I'm incorrect. I don't need to demonstrate you're incorrect. That's not part of the argument. So again, the argument is, is that aughts aren't in the morality, aughts are something we humans apply to the morality. So if there's, like, like you said earlier, there is the reason something is immoral is not because we should not do it. We should not do it because there is some independent criterion of what morality is, right? You still agree with that? Yeah, yeah. Okay, so the whole point of me saying there are no aughts is just the same exact point that I just made is that the aughts aren't in morality. There's not like an aughtness particle in morality. Aughtness is a property we apply to it. So we say there is something that is moral, whatever it is, we just assume there is an objective morality there. Whatever that is, like a value, it can be, yeah, we can be a value would be one of the possibilities. So let's say values are what objective morality is. So there's a value there, value do not kill or whatever it was assumed that's right for the sake of the argument. Human life is valuable, therefore you should not kill. Yeah, so we say something is valuable. Human life is valuable. That's the moral standard. That's all morality is. You need no aughts. There's no aughts in that statement. And then we come along and say, because human life is valuable, therefore we ought to value it. So the aughts aren't in the morality. You don't need the aughts at all for the morality. The morality is there completely independent of the aughts, right? Yeah, so from the value you move to the aught, that's fine. So what do you say to somebody who doesn't accept your values? It doesn't matter. There's wrongs. That's irrelevant. So again, that doesn't matter to the point. The point here is that you don't say you're wrong about Krishna. Okay, but we can get there. So one point at a time. So the point here is that the aughts are not in the morality. You do not need aughts anywhere for an objective morality because you have the morality based off of some independent standards. And then we humans apply the aught statement. The aught statement is we ought to do it because it has this moral property in it. It still needs to be able to be generated by the moral system. What does? The aught. You need to be able to provide the moral space. So if we have some metric that can determine what morality is, like my model says, any involuntary position of will is immoral. So we can say, oh, that action has an involuntary position of will. It's immoral. And then we can do the same thing and say, oh, because it's immoral, we ought not do it. So what if I like torturing people and I don't want to torture it? It's relevant to the question. So again, that's irrelevant to the question. We're going to assume my model's right. It's just objectively true. God ordained it. So God ordains it. We would say Vishnu ordains my model is correct. That's perfectly fine. Now we can know that it's immoral to involuntary impose on wills. And there's no aughts in there, right? There's no aughts anywhere in that at all. We derive the aughts by saying, well, because it's moral for this independent standard, therefore we ought not do it. But the aughts aren't anywhere in the morality, right? Well, they come out of it. I mean, we're kind of splitting hairs here. You're like, it's generated by the moral system or it's innate to the moral system that are kind of irrelevant. The point is, you need to be able to derive aughts. In all of the examples I listed, there was no aughts there. So we said, as you agreed before, something is moral, not because we should not do it. We should not do it because it's moral based off of some independent standard, right? You agree with that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's fine. But then if you have the like human life is valuable, how do you get that? How do you know human life is valuable? That's a separate question here. So separate question here. So the aughts are irrelevant that they do make no difference whatsoever to the model. If you have some objective moral value, human value, human life is valuable or whatever. There's no aught anywhere in that that's an objective moral value with no aughts, right? You then add the aughts later, but you don't need the aughts. That is itself the morality. Human life is valuable. Full stop. There's no aughts in there, right? I mean, it's kind of like saying if you need to buy groceries, you need to find a store that sells milk. It's like, well, a store that sells groceries may be out of stock of milk. It's like, you can describe it in different ways. The moral system is going to give you aughts. But anyway, we can just move a step back and talk about objective values. So you need objective values and we can forget about aughts. Objective values will give you aughts and we can just talk about how do you get objective values? Okay, so I mean that you're conceiving the aughts aren't required because that's kind of like three of your major points. Well, I can't, you still need to be able to get an aught. Well, I showed by implementing the system. Yeah, so if you are going to do this, that aughts are not in morality. There's no more aughts anywhere in morality. You don't need aughts at all to describe objective morality. You can then once you have objective morality, which doesn't require any aughts whatsoever, you can then get aughts from whatever that is. Anything you come up with with objective morality, you can get an aught from that just by saying because this is objective morality, we ought to do it. But the aughts themselves are irrelevant to the morality. You don't need the aughts for the morality. I think we're just disagreeing in semantics in a sense. I mean, you need to be able to arrive at aughts, but you can arrive at aughts if you have a value. So let's just see if you can get values. Well, you can arrive at aughts with anything, any objective moral fact, if it's values or cheese nuts, cheese pizza, whatever, you can still get an aught. You could say this is objective morality, whatever it is, therefore we ought to do it. The aughts are irrelevant to the morality. Anyway, if you have values, you can get aughts. So I was talking about it from aughts and aughts is something you can get if you have values, but we can just as well talk about it based on having, being able to get values. So can we move on to values? Okay, sure. So how do you get values on your moral system? I look at the evidence of moral intuition and moral progress. And I make a principle that describes the pattern in those things. And I say that principle is probably the moral value that is objective. Moral progress is assuming that objective morality already exists. No, it's a phenomenon that we observe and we feel. So we feel as if some societies as they grow become more moral. And we feel as if when James punches a baby, that's immoral. So these are not proofs of a morality. They're the evidence that we're using to try and build a hypothesis. They're not the proof. Okay, so the data in a moral system is intuitions, moral intuitions. I'm fine with that. And so a good moral system should be able to either account for our moral intuitions or explain them away. Well, no, it should be based off of them. So that's like the only way we would ever know of morality is we have a feeling that we see some action and we see, oh, that feels like it's bad. So that is our evidence of morality. That's the thing we're trying to explain when we are talking about moral systems, whether it's subjective or objective, we see we have these feelings that that action is wrong. And then we have to use those feelings to try and find a pattern in those feelings to make a principle that describes the pattern. That's how we try to discover morality. That sounds like subjective morality. No, so it doesn't tell us whether it's subjective or objective. It just says here is what the word morality refers to this phenomenon. We have a feeling and whatever is causing that phenomenon, whether it's a God or an undiscovered law of nature or an abstract object or evolutionary subjective things, whatever is causing those feelings or whatever those feelings are referring to in reality, that's morality. So morality starts with epistemically, the only way we know about it is we have feelings that are about morality. We have a feeling that James punching a baby is a moral. That's a feeling we have. That's how that's the only way we know about morality. So we have to start with that data to build a model. Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't disagree too much. You're just saying that the moral, yeah, okay, I'm fine with that. Well, that's you asked, how does my model get valued when we start with the evidence, which is the phenomenon. And then we build a set of principles that seems to describe the pattern and the phenomenon. But you're describing a pattern of the subjective opinions of humans. And if you're going to bring an evolutionary theory, then it'll just be whatever moral intuitions were favored survival. And it would be hard to call something like that moral because what favored survival might be murdering people of another race so that your race has a survival advantage. No, you're again, just going about it backwards, like the point here with any scientific model as you look at the patterns of the phenomenon, and then you describe a principle. So when Newton described the patterns of the planets, he's obviously using observations and maybe we're all in a matrix and so they're all wrong. But that doesn't matter because what we're doing is we start with the phenomenon, describe the pattern, and that's how you build evidence. The fact that we could be in the matrix or we could all be under a delusion doesn't change anything, you're using the exact same evidence. Like starting with your conclusion saying, God tells us nothing, like you can't do it that way, you have to start with the evidence, which is all of our evidence, like if we all came about by evolution, then obviously all of our evidence is going to be caused from evolution. But you have to start with the exact same evidence we do and say we have these feelings. That's all you got. There isn't any other line of evidence for morality.  You're saying it's based on our moral intuitions. I don't think there's that much of a difference between those two statements. The difference is what I said in the intro is that the secular models start with the evidence and then try to build a conclusion, whereas you start with your conclusion and try to fit the evidence. Well, if you have an explanation or a worldview, which is a perfect fit for the evidence, then what's wrong with that? I'm sure you've gone about it the other way around. You've taken an explanation and examined it based on the data to see whether it fits with experience and whatnot versus trying to come up with a theory from the ground up. You could go from the ground up and come up, arrive at the same theory and have all the same reasons to believe it that you did if you started with that theory and then examined it compared it against reality. Well, if that was true, that would be good evidence. I just don't see how you can do that. The difference is that there's infinitely many hypotheses that can post-hoc explain the data. I recently posted several clips from Richard Feynman and other scientific YouTubers who explicitly said that in the philosophy of science, a theory that starts with the data and tries to explain it from the data is always seen as better than one that can post-hoc or accommodate past known data. It's because of the problem of undetermination every single infinitely many theories can post-hoc explain all of the past data we don't know yet. So you can start with magical pineapple and it can explain the data with magical pineapple juices. But if a good theory is one that starts with the data and then tries to come up with a hypothesis from the data, not the other way around. So it's just inherently bad epistemology to start with your conclusion because you're starting with your conclusion. You have to start with the evidence to lead to your conclusion. You said that you could do this. You said that if you started with the evidence, it could lead to a conclusion. So I'm curious how, how does the evidence of morality lead to the conclusion of Krishna or God or of any kind? Well, we're talking about ascending versus descending knowledge here. So one example would be if you can be given a password and you can determine if it's the correct password by typing in and seeing if it grants you access. Alternatively, you could try to brute force or some other method hack the password and you might get the password, but you might not. And so if you're given a conclusion, you should, I don't see any problem. Supposing the conclusion that science has currently arrived at, we're just written in a book 2000 years ago and we dug it up and we're like, and instead of doing the inductive ascending route of knowledge, we just read that book and it said, oh, look, there's all this scientific knowledge. Let's see if it's true. And we went and verified it all. Would that be any worse than if we had figured it out from the ground up without having found that book? Well, if we just found a book that has predictions about what we're going to discover in 2000 years, no rational person should believe it. It's just somebody made up a book. It would only be rational to believe after we confirmed it. That's the part that we're trying to figure out here. So if you have a book that says God is the magical source of morality, like, okay, what evidence indicates that? Why do you think it's a reasonable conclusion rather than just something somebody made up like magical potato, magical pineapple? Like that's the question I'm asking here is that it seems to me all you've done is you've made up a hypothesis and then you are trying to get the evidence to fit your hypothesis, whereas a reasonable hypothesis goes the other way around. So like in the case, if we dig up a book that says a bunch of stuff about 2000 years from now, it's not reasonable to believe it until we can confirm the predictions. So what is this? How do we start with the evidence of our moral intuitions and say, James, punch in the baby is wrong? And how does that lead to Krishna? I mean, my example was more like, suppose we find a book that says carbon. Here's how you build a combustion engine. And some dude found the book went took a built a built a combustion engine and now has a working motor vehicle. Or versus another guy who figured out all the physics from himself from the ground up without reading any books, built a combustion engine and built a motor vehicle. I don't see why there's any meaningful difference between the two. Both of them have managed to produce something and both of them have knowledge. I don't think it makes any difference. I'm not under the knowledge versus one of them having figured it out on their own. Yeah, I'm not understanding how you're building an engine in relation to morality. So the only building an engine we have is we observe moral stuff.  That's we feel that's moral. So where is this building the engine part of the analogy seems to make no sense? Well, that was just to show that it doesn't matter whether the knowledge is ascending or descending. It just matters. What's the reason for believing it? Right. So but the question we've never actually had like descending knowledge that's actually been confirmed to be true outside of science books. So the question here is that why do you think that your descending knowledge is true rather than just a made up book like Harry Potter? That's the question. Where is this knowledge it's given you that you've built an engine block? I see no moral engine block. I don't know what that even means. Morality is a special field. So epistemology applies a little bit differently to morality because the data is purely epistemology. But there are cases of divine knowledge being revealed and scientific accuracies such as the research work that Siddharth has done to show that the piranhas give accurate information of the age of the sun, the age of the universe and specifically just about morality. So forget all the other science stuff because that's dubious and I reject it because we've already had debates on that. But let's say what about morality does how does starting with our moral intuitions because you agreed that the way we come to knowledge of morality is that we have these feelings about certain actions. How does any pattern in those feelings lead to Krishna? Or do you have to go to other fields because nothing in these patterns leads to Krishna? Well, our discussion here is metaethics rather than ethics. And it's also which is it gives a better account for objective morality. So we're not really arguing whether or not God exists. We're just arguing if God did exist versus if atheism were true, which one would give her a better account of objective morality? So we're going to see how you can have objective morality on atheism. I think you can on theism. I don't need to prove that that reality we're living in is that one. As far as how it comports with our moral intuitions, like use for instance, say that it's immoral to impose on the free will of other living entities. I forgot to clarify. There's no free will in my model. It's just will, no free will. Get rid of the free word. That's that was the thing I was cringing at. Okay, right. So what that kind of without free will, you kind of have to wonder what it even means. Then like, suppose you just had two sacks of chemicals that were functioning as electric chemical machines. What would it mean to say one was imposing on the will of another? A will is a specific combination of chemicals. And so if that specific combination of chemicals is being infringed upon to stop it, that would be in the imposition of will. But that's a separate topic. So again, my, my original question was, is that when we're talking about what better accounts for morality, the best way to account for morality is to start with the evidence, build principles, then try to infer what it's made of. My model does that your model seems to go do the opposite way. So how do you come to the conclusion that yours counts as a good explanation when none of the evidence seems to indicate your conclusion? Now, obviously, I don't, I'm not asking you to prove God exists. I don't care about that. I'm care about how do, how does moral intuition or evidence of moral examples lead to a God? How does that indicate a God at all? Because it doesn't seem to indicate anything relating to a God whatsoever. So our moral intuitions might, might not take us all the way through to do, you know, like a robust theism, but they at least get us to some kind of deism or maybe even Buddhism where you have like naturalism isn't the case and you have like something amounting to some kind of impersonal deity, which is the grounding of objective morality. So we have this idea that something's objectively wrong. And like you can track moral disagreement, moral intuitions and try to give reductive explanations for all of them. But they all fail any kind of reductive explanation you can give for what our moral intuitions are based on. You can always give a counter example, which shows that it's not, not accurate. So it seems what's more accurate seems to be that our moral intuitions are based on what is, what is the good or what is right or, or in our best interest and so on, rather than based on your desires. You're losing me. So you said that morality can lead us to a deist of God. How? So that the fact that they're, you know, if it's the case that there's a such thing as the objective good or, you know, things that are objectively bad, then we've got non-natural objective moral facts. And so there's a such thing as a, as like an abstract good, which exists. And, you know, that's one feature which is ascribed to God. So we might only get that one feature, not the rest of the features of God, but you can't get that on physicalism. We're still lost here.  So there's no require for supernatural. Secondly, platonic objects, you can have abstract objects that don't entail a God. So both of those things you could have without any reference to a God. So I'm not sure why what. Well, the idea of a circle and the idea that human life is intrinsically valuable are two very different things. Platonic objects just Google platonic objects. So the point here is that I don't agree with the project objects model. The point is that you don't need a God for the platonic abstract objects, including moral ones, which again, played out platonic objects. He digitally did say the good was a platonic object. And you don't need a non-natural thing for moral objective moral values. That's again, part of just moral naturalism, Stanford encyclopedia philosophy. So neither of those things seem to indicate a God or why do you think they indicate a God? I mean, like, they, you know, philosophers can say that, but I'd like to see their justification for it. If like, and again, I was saying it might not get you to false theism. But what are the issues you think that are that exist with that? Why would that be different from being grounded in the God? Like, where is the issue here? Well, like that, you know, how can life be objectively valuable unless that's grounded in some abstract good? And that can't exist on physicalism. On physicalism, you've just got chemicals and atoms. Yeah, there could be a law of nature. That's the moral law of nature. That would be perfectly fine. That doesn't make any sense. Like, how would that be a natural law? It's exactly the same way it would be a part of God's nature. It could just be a part of nature's nature. Well, I mean, I think you're just, it's definitely not physicalism. And then we're just, we're just distorting the definition of naturalism to include all these abstract things, which is, no, I didn't say anything about abstract. I said, like a law, it's like gravity. So it's a field, essentially. And I'm saying that it's a part of the universe, as in it's a fundamental aspect of the universe's nature, just like you believe that morality is a fundamental aspect of Krishna's nature. So what kind of a law is it? I mean, laws of physics generally describe the way matter behaves. What does this law describe? Morality. It's the moral law. So it's an undiscovered law of nature. There could be more that we haven't discovered yet. Yeah, but I mean, laws of physics are things that describe the behavior of particles. I mean, known laws of physics, but I'm saying there's, there could be more that we haven't discovered yet. So I'm saying, why would there be, why would it be more reasonable to say that there is this nature or property of a God than to say that the same kind of nature or property exists in nature? Like, what's the difference? Again, I don't understand how it would make any sense to call this a law of physics. Like, I mean, you're saying there might be laws of physics that don't describe the way matter behaves, but I mean, they might be categorically different from laws of physics such that they won't deserve the same name. Laws of physics do not just mean move matter emotion. There's laws of physics applied to quantum fields and lots of things that have nothing to do with matter. So you're just incorrect about how the laws of physics work. And also the laws of physics only describe the known laws. They're not fully exhausted. Like we could discover other kinds of laws of physics that have nothing to do with the current laws of physics. There's no limitation in physics that says, well, anything, any other laws just can't, we'd have to call them something different. Like no one in physics says that. So my question here is that, why do you think that this moral property could be a property of a God's nature? And how is that any different from the property being a part of the fundamental nature of reality without a God? What is the difference there? Forget physics. Physics doesn't matter here. Physics is just science.   That's why it matters. A law of physics again is just a scientific epistemology tour. It doesn't change the ontology one bit. So again, what is the difference between the ontology of morality being grounded in the being of a God versus the being of nature? I think that, I mean, the word nature or naturalism is used in philosophy as has too broad a meaning to be precise. So if you want to say nature, I mean, I've had people, I was debating, say that if God existed, God would be natural. And the word that can be stretched to me that is pretty vacuous. Okay. So what I mean by natural is unguided forces that don't have a mind. So yours has a mind. Mine has no mind. Unguided forces that don't have a mind. Right. I mean, that's a reasonable definition. It's definitely not a physicalist account. We're definitely getting into something, you know, at least along the lines of Buddhism here, where we've got, you know, objective goods existing separately and so on. No, this is purely a part of physicalism. It's called moral naturalism, which is a kind of physicalism. So, I mean, on physicalism, you've just got particles interacting. How does that give you? How is there a right way for particles interacting and a wrong way for particles to interact? Because there's a moral law that governs right and wrong and it's there. It's a field. So it's not exactly just particles. Particles are not fundamental fields or fundamental. So there is a moral field that exists, just like the Higgs field exists. So how is this any different from saying that there is this moral property intrinsic to a field is different from saying there's this moral property intrinsic to a being, a God, where is the difference? Just saying it exists doesn't solve the problem. I mean, how can there be a wrong way for particles to exist? There has to be properties intrinsic to humans that make them valuable. And so you need to have something more than just physics to account for that. No, the properties in humans could be a way that it interacts with the fields, just like how particles are a result of the fields interacting. So again, I'm not hearing you answer the question, what is the difference between morality existing fundamentally to a non-conscious nature and a conscious being?  You're just trying to cut off one of God's properties and have it existing in a vacuum and saying, look, we can have this feature without having theism. Yes. And you can't describe how it could have anything to do with physicalism. So you're kind of creating a no-man's land. I know, because physicalism doesn't have any limitations. Like, there's no thing that we couldn't discover in the future that could potentially be physical. So you're applying these arbitrary limitations on physicalism to mean the stuff we have now and nothing more than that. It's not how science works. So yes, you were right in the first thing you said, that I'm taking the properties of God, removing one, the consciousness one, and saying, oh, we can still have all those properties like the moral one without the consciousness. Therefore, we don't need the God because God entails the consciousness. I mean, just saying we could discover it in the future, I mean, that's nice. Maybe we'll discover it in the future, but currently it's just a theory, right? So that's the same between the God and my alternative. So what's the difference between the God and my alternative? I'm glad you appreciate the similarity because I was going to say that to you. I wish Ram had said that when you had a debate on my channel with him on that, because he was pushing you on, where's the evidence why I should accept it? And you're like, it's a hypothesis. It doesn't need to have evidence. And I was thinking, he just needs to ask like, if it's just a hypothesis, how is it any better than anyone else's religious beliefs? So it seems like you accept that point. Well, so again, my argument here is that we're taking your hypothesis, we're moving one of the properties and saying, oh, we can still have the morality without that property. Therefore, God is not required for morality because we can have morality without the consciousness. So obviously you don't need the God. That's, that's the whole point of the argument here. Now, the reason mine's better is because I start with the evidence to lead to a conclusion, whereas you start with the conclusion and try to fit the evidence. So that's why mine's better. How does the evidence get you there? Give me where? How do you get there from evidence? How do you get from observing the world to this thing called morality exists as a law of physics objectively? That's not the conclusion I argued for in the intro. That's an alternative to theism. So the whole point of that argument is to show here is one way that we could have morality without the God. That's the only point there. That's not, that's not the conclusion of my moral hypothesis. That's just a possibility. So the whole point of that argument is to show that you don't need the God for morality. Here is one logically possible way to have morality without the God. Remove the consciousness. Yeah, but how are you getting there from the evidence?  I'm not. I'm starting with your hypothesis. I'm saying you say that in order to have morality, you need a God. I say, no, you don't. Here's why we can take your God, remove a property and still have the morality. So this has nothing to do with the evidence of morality. This is simply to demonstrate you don't need a God for morality because that was your whole argument is that you need a God for morality. I don't think it makes any sense to say objective moral laws could exist independent of a mind. Like, you know, values are something that exists in a mind. So how can there be values existing separate from a mind? Values can be something we impose on stuff. So there is... Yeah, that's just objective morality. You're trying to defend objective morality. Yeah, so there could be an objective moral property and then we call it valuable. But like, say, human life is objectively valuable. You know, a value is something that exists in a mind. And so these are objective things that exist. So, no, like, there could be a property of morality, like a moral particle, and humans have this particle within them. And then we recognize that particle and say, ah, humans are objectively valuable because they have this particle in them, the moral particle. So you can have a moral particle that exists within people and then we recognize that and call it valuable. The value itself doesn't exist. That's definitely not physicalism. I mean, values are made of physics. It's not the point. So again, this isn't about physicalism. The whole point here is to show your argument, which you said it doesn't make sense to have morality without a mind. The whole point here is to show that, yes, it does. You can have morality, which is a particle, and then minds who have values can recognize that particle. You're just taking morality and calling it a particle that doesn't really do anything. I could call myself a unicorn. You're just taking morality and calling it Krishna, Vishnu. So what's the difference? Well, Vishnu is an account of morality, which gives full explanatory power, and you can't even arrive at categorical. Where is the difference in the explanatory power between these two hypotheses? Well, for one thing, you can say why is life objectively valuable? You can say because the creator, who's the ground of all good, thinks that it's objectively valuable. That's personified goodness. That's what he thinks. Therefore, that's the case. Subjective by definition, but let's suppose that works in some crazy way. It's not subjective when you're talking about God because God is the ground of reality. Is it God's opinion? Opinion is a bit of a misnomer. The God and the good are identical, so it's not that God's opinions are subject to whimsical changes. The changes don't matter. So is something good simply because God believes it's good, or does God believe it's good because it's good based off of some independent standard? God is the personification of the good. They're identical. So is something good simply because he believes it or does he believe it because it's good based off of some metric that he's using to assess his goodness? Something is good because it's good, and God's opinions converge with the good because God is the personification of the good. That doesn't make any sense. Something is good because it's good. So again, the question is, is something good because God believes it and no other reason than just because God believes it, or does the God believe it's good because it's good based off of some independent metric that we assess? There's another issue with that question. This is the panentheism that you find in the Hare Krishna tradition, which is that nothing exists separate from God. So it's not like the goodness of something is something separate from God, which God then either has an opinion on, which converges with which his opinion determines. So I'm not saying there's other stuff other than God. So even if God is the only thing that exists, there's different parts of God. You have God's opinion, and then you have God's feelings, and then you have God's pinky toe. There's different parts of God. So the question is, is it only moral because God's opinion? God's opinion is what makes it moral, or is it moral because there's like some part intrinsic to God's nature or whatever, and the goodness adheres to that part of God's nature. And then God's opinion then fits his nature, but his opinion isn't the reason it's good. It's his nature is the reason it's good. I think you're just misunderstanding the identical relationship between God and the God. I mean sure you can say God has a hand, a God has a pinky, and these things are different, but there's a meaningful sense in which they're connected. Right. I just said that God's nature is why it's good. So I was literally saying this part of God is what makes it good, not his opinions, his opinions, or is it the other parts of him that are not his opinions? I mean you could say there's a third thing, which is the good, and then the goodness of that object and God's opinion can both converge on that good. Okay, so the options here are God's opinion or anything other than God's opinion, which includes parts of God or parts of the thing. Those are the two options. God's opinion, not God's opinion. It's not possible for a perfect being to have an opinion which diverges from the good, so the question is incoherent. So I'm asking chicken or the egg, which comes first. Does the opinion come first or does the good come first? They're identical. When it gets down to God's being there, the same thing. So is God's being God's opinion? I mean opinion's probably a mis-number when it comes to God. God is like categorically different from us. Opinion is a view or a judgment about something. So you said, an opinion is a view or judgment about something. You said that God views human life as intrinsically valuable, something like that. Well, I mean we have an opinion which means I have an idea which could possibly be wrong. God doesn't have ideas that could possibly be wrong. There's no part in this definition that says possibly wrong. So I'm saying why the word opinion is misleading because we use it in a particular way. Opinion is a view or judgment. So I have a judgment that human life is valuable. Like if I'm a God that can't be wrong, it's still an opinion or it's a judgment statement. So it's fine. The truth amount in this doesn't change the fact that it's an opinion. The question is, is something good because God views it that way? Or is it good because it like coheres to his nature and then that's why he views it that way? I mean the goodness comes from the groundiness of goodness. If you wanted to talk about ontological priorness, then you could say the goodness and the grounded in the nature, which is also grounded in God is where the goodness comes from. Say that again. So the goodness is grounded in something, something... Then the goodness of a thing is grounded in the goodness and the goodness is part of God's being. Yeah.  Again, I think the opinion thing is misleading. So you're saying it's not a part of his opinion, correct? I suppose you could say that. Okay. That's the whole point is that his opinion, his view, doesn't make a difference. His view that human lives are intrinsically valuable is because there is some objective moral good, either in the humans or in God's nature or something. And he has a view that sees this, but it's not the view itself that causes this, right? I mean, my understanding of theism is that the goodness doesn't change over time. So you could say it's necessary that what is good is good. So therefore you could say the opinion doesn't change and the object doesn't change. The goodness of the object doesn't change. I don't care. So I'm asking, is it good because of the view God has? Is it the view God has that makes it good? Or is it some other part of God's nature that adheres, that is like the fundamental nature of goodness? And it happens to be like this fundamental nature of goodness. His view itself that makes it good. Yeah. I guess it would be that one. Oh, sorry. I mean, it's the goodness. Yeah. Something being good is because it's grounded in the goodness and God's opinion is converged with the good because it's grounded in the goodness. We can put it that way. Right. Yes. Perfect. So that means that it's not the view. It's not his opinion that makes it good. His opinion is just reflecting the fact that it's good, which is grounded in himself or something. Okay. So that means that since you don't require the opinion part, you don't require the consciousness part, then you don't need the God for the morality. You can just get rid of the consciousness part altogether. The view, just get rid of it. It's still grounded in God's existence. I don't see how you can get it any other way. I mean, otherwise you just got physical part of smashing and avoid. Remember, so I took your God, I removed the consciousness and said you'd have morality without this. And then you said it's incoherent to say you could have morality without a mind because it's his view of goodness that gives it meaning or whatever. And then you agreed, oh, no, it's not the view. It's actually some fundamental part of his nature and you don't need the views. So that would lead back into my argument. Okay, so we can have the objective morality grounded in some nature of some kind without consciousness. The view part doesn't really do anything or add anything to the hypothesis. You can still have morality without that. Leading to the conclusion, you don't need the conscious agent for morality. So how do you arrive at what the good is on your view? How do you know what the good is? How do you know that the good exists? We look at the evidence and then try to make a principle that describes the evidence just like we do with science. Okay, so can you flesh that out? We look at moral examples like it's wrong to punch babies. It's wrong to steal. It's wrong to murder, et cetera. And we create a principle that describes the pattern in those feelings. And I think it's in the involuntary position as well as wrong. I think that is the accurate description of the pattern, just like Einstein described the pattern f equals ma and g or equals empty squared. So we found a pattern of the phenomenon. We described the pattern with a principle.  There are people who think the world is flat. Why do I care? Well, I mean, your whole epistemology is simply based on people's subjective opinions on moral subject matters. So yes, everyone has a subjective experience, like that the planets move around the earth. And then we try to describe that subjective experience with principles. And then we apply those principles to future subjective experience to see if they can agree. It's how all evidence in science works. I mean, how do you know that you don't have anything more than just a bunch of subjective data that describes a pattern, which is how things have happened to happen when you were observing them? It's like asking how do we know we're not in the matrix? We can't know with certainty. It's just a predictive hypothesis. So my inclination is that the reason morality is objective is because it's probably going to apply to all life forms all across the universe. They're all going to build some kind of a model of morality. Independent of evolution, like artificial intelligence, are probably going to come up with a model of morality. And they're all going to converge on a single model of morality. I think that all the different models that all develop throughout the universe are all going to converge on a single model, just like they are for scientific facts. And so that is why I believe morality is objective.  We're not talking about gravity here. It's not something you can guard and repeat and measure. You're just talking about, oh, I feel like this is wrong, or I feel like this is right. It's a very different thing from being able to... Those are the same. So I have a subjective experience that I see the planets going around the sun. I literally all experience a subjective experience. And then we try to take that experience and map it onto a principle and see if that principle can describe future experience before we know it. So all science is based on subjective experience that's then put into principles that can try to predict future experience of everybody else and yourself. So we're doing the same thing with morality. We're saying we have this subjective experience that punching babies is wrong, just like we have this subjective experience that the earth is going around the sun or whatever.  And then we take that equation and apply it to future experience. Like if this equation is right, then here is the future kind of experience we would expect to have or that we would expect to see in other species who have the same kinds of sensations. We would expect that if they are looking at the planet, they would also be able to accurately calculate their subjective experience of the motion of the planets with this equation. And we're doing the same thing with morality. So we're saying that if this moral principles that we're using to describe our moral experience is correct, then we can infer that other species all across the universe will be able to come to the same conclusion, just like they would about orbits of the sun. So you're just talking about something that every government around the world has figured out, like freedom to the pursuit of happiness and the Constitution of America and so on, that the basic right to liberties and so on is something governments all over the world. And you're just adding one thing to it that it describes an objective moral law. I don't see how that's justified and I don't see how it's anything other than taking something other people have figured out and then just claiming that it's a law of physics. If all of the independent species all across the universe all came to the same conclusion, that would be pretty good evidence. So it's not just the governments. Well, I mean, you'd have to explain how, you know, with the gravity example, you can make predictions based on that. You can go and observe it and see it happening with, you know, I feel like murder's wrong. All you ever have is a feeling that murder's wrong.  So I don't see how you can One years can't make any predictions either. So that's irrelevant. Secondly, you don't. I can make predictions. I actually do. I say, here's how moral intuition is going to change over time across different areas with resources across different species. Here's how you can predict how it's going to change. So you can make predictions using it. But saying that you can't doesn't help your case because yours doesn't either. So that still doesn't show that mine is not better than yours. So I can just say, yeah, sure, mine doesn't make predictions. But neither is yours. So mine is still better than yours. Well, I mean, a prediction of mine would be that by following, you know, say the process of Krishna consciousness, you would develop a moral character, which is something that's widely observed. So many people get annoyed when their child becomes a Hare Christian and they give up drugs and start waking up early and living a clean, pure life. And they start thinking that it wasn't not such a bad thing after all. So that doesn't work because you're using your conclusion as the measuring stick for your conclusion. So you're saying that, well, if you follow Hare Krishna consciousness, your morality, your moral nature will improve. Well, how do you measure your moral nature? Well, we see if it fits the Hare Krishna consciousness. So it's kind of like the same thing you've been saying to me the entire time. Well, how do you observe a moral nature? How do you measure a moral nature independent of Hare Krishna? No, it approves based on objective things that other people agree on. Like the parents who are not Hare Christians think, oh, my child's actually a better person after becoming a Hare Krishna than they were when they were just some deadbeat teenager.  Well, that's what you're offering. Yes, that's kind of the point. So your objection here doesn't apply because it's the exact same thing for both models. We're using their subjective experience to try and measure this stuff. It was all we got. You said about predictions and I said we can make predictions. What's your predictions? I can't. I've heard you say about aliens. I don't see how that would be valuable because if we got the subjective opinions of, not that many people agree that objective morality is some law of physics grounded and naturalism. So you don't even have many humans agreeing with you and then you think maybe aliens are going to come along and we'll find some who agree? So I said the conclusion, the model itself would be. The grounded and naturalism part is a different hypothesis there. So that's separate. Again, that's the alternative to theism thing just to show that you don't need a God. So those are two different hypotheses I brought forward. The point here is that you don't, like everything that your model does and uses, mine does. So my predictions are actually better than your predictions. My predictions are that eventually we'll see rocks as far on people as immoral in however many hundreds of thousands of years or whatever. So mine makes real predictions about changes in the future that we don't know yet. Whereas yours is just predicting that if you adopt this lifestyle, people will see you as morally better, I guess. Which I mean, I don't think that's true. Probably provably false in many cases. But my prediction is still better than yours. And again, we're starting with the same evidence of I have a subjective experience of fields of that this is immoral and we're trying to, at least mine, tries to build a model off of that. Whereas you're, again, reverse engineering that and nothing leads to Hari Krishna from the evidence we have. You're just starting with your conclusion working backwards. Well, the morality explained in Bhagavad Gita is it does fit with our intuitions in large part. So it does fit the data in that sense. Anything can fit the data if you post talk, explain me for things. That's not evidence. Well, I gave the example of finding a book that tells, you know, that's 2000 years old, which tells you how to build a motor vehicle. Yeah, and I asked, what does the motor really mean? I don't think it really matters. No, but that example just shows that it doesn't matter whether you have top down or bottom up knowledge as long as you've got knowledge. Right, but to know it's knowledge, you have to actually build the vehicle. That's the problem. You haven't done that with the moral case. You just asserted, you have a book that says, here's how to build a pink tower, but you've never built a pink tower. So you don't, you don't have knowledge. You just have a book that says you could do it. You have to actually do it to show the book is right. That's the part that we're missing. I mean, there's thousands of people all through history who've improved the moral character by following religious traditions. And by taking marijuana. That's not evidence that marijuana is key to the universe. So that it doesn't help your case. The question here is that my model starts with the evidence, tries to build a conclusion based off of the evidence. Your model starts with the conclusion. And you're saying that, well, if we discovered a book that could do something or teaches how to do something, that would be evidence that the book is right. Sure, I'm happy to do that. What does this book teaches how to do? And your only evidence is, is that some people had their lives improved. Well, I mean, some people have had their life approved by literally everything. Anything that they could do has improved somebody's life somewhere. Self-injury has improved somebody's life somewhere. Drugs have improved lots of people's lives. This is not evidence. This is a common feature of human nature. Like it's predicting the sun will rise tomorrow. It's not, not a prediction. So what I'm defending as as meta ethics, that, you know, the ontology of these and gives a better account for the existence of objective models. So I don't need to get into the specifics of the ethics of the Harry Krischer tradition or any other tradition. So my argument was, is that anybody can make up an account. Making up an account isn't evidence. So that doesn't help your case. But it provides a better ontological basis.  Therefore, you can say you shouldn't do bad actions because you'll get bad karma. And there's karmic reactions for any given activity that any sane person will not want to have. So you've got the ontology of anything. So mine can have categorical imperatives. I've literally explained how mine does that in the first beginning. So you just asserted that yours can't. And I'm asking, well, why is yours any different from mine? That was how can yours have categorical imperatives? We know what the objective moral thing is, like if there's a moral particle, then we can say, ah, we ought not do that. That's how you discover whatever objective moral is and then say the word, I ought not do that. Yeah.  It's like, yeah, but I enjoy torturing people and I want to do it. It doesn't matter. Like if there is an objective fact of the matter that this particle is the moral particle, and we can know for a fact that this action has this particle, then it is a fact that that is the moral thing. And your opinion doesn't matter. No. Whatever objective morality is, if there is one, it is factually the case that this is moral and this is not moral. And then we can just factually say, this we ought do and this we not ought do because there is the fact of the universe. And you need a value to get an awe. And if I don't accept the values which entail that awe, then there's nothing you can say to me. The values are again irrelevant. Like if I can say there is a fact of the matter, this is the moral thing, then I may have the value I ought not do it, but it's irrelevant. It's still a fact that this is the moral thing, regardless of whether or not I have the value I ought not or ought to do it. It's irrelevant. If I have the value I ought to do this immoral thing, that doesn't change the fact of the matter. It's still the immoral thing to do. So the fact of the matter is true independent of any values or aughts at all. That was kind of the point of the whole first is something good because we ought do it or do we do it because it's moral. The whole point of that analogy is to show that aughts don't make any difference with the morality whatsoever. It's just the descriptive term we apply to the morality. Yeah, again, I'm not seeing how that works because like, I mean, you went through that thing with opinions, but I mean, the idea of a circle is one thing, but a value is a very different thing. I still don't see how that can exist independent of a mind. You're saying it's true whether or not you appreciate it, but if I don't appreciate the value, then there's no way to give me an imperative. You can't say I shouldn't murder if I don't appreciate any of the values which entail murdering to be bad. I can say you shouldn't murder regardless of what you believe. Your beliefs are irrelevant. They make no difference. So morality could be a particle. So the value is no aughts. You don't need any values or aughts for morality. We can then apply values and aughts to whatever is moral. So morality is this particle. This particle is the moral particle. If you don't do it, you're immoral. It's a fact, a fact of the universe. And then you may or may not have the value you ought to do it. It's irrelevant. Your values are irrelevant. What if I like being immoral and I think being immoral is a good thing to do? Your values are irrelevant. Just like I just said, it is the fact that this is moral whether you like it or not, whether you believe it or not, whether you value it or not. This is the fact. That's what objective morality means, objective facts means it is the case, regardless of any of your subjective values or opinions. Yeah, but this fails because you've got nothing to say to people who don't accept your system other than, well, it's true even if you don't accept it. My objective literally means it doesn't matter what you believe. It doesn't matter what your value is. You don't have categorical imperatives and you've still only got hypothetical imperatives. You've still got... This is true. And if you appreciate the truth of it, then you should act accordingly. So again, what objective facts mean is that it doesn't matter what your values are. It doesn't matter what you ought to do. It doesn't matter what you believe you ought to do.  That's what objective facts mean. So if there's an objective morality, it literally means it doesn't matter what you ought or what you believe you ought to do or what you value. It's irrelevant. So your subjective values make no difference to the objective facts. Well, I mean, trying to say I should or should not do something, it kind of does matter what I think my values are. No, it doesn't. That's literally what the word objective means. Objective truth means your subjective values do not matter. So I don't care if you subjectively value it. It's irrelevant to objective truth. You could subjectively believe the world is flat. You are objectively wrong. Same with morality. There's no difference. I mean, how do you get a should out of it then? If I don't... You don't need to. I just said this like six times. Subjective means not subjective. So your subjective values of what you think you should do make no difference ever. Yeah, but then how do I know it's not just your opinion versus my opinion? You don't need to know. Knowledge epistemology is irrelevant to the ontology of the fact of the matter. If it's ontologically a fact that this is moral, what you know or believe your subjective epistemology, your subjective values do not make any difference. Okay, but how is it any different from just talking about pink unicorns? It's like neither of us accept that pink unicorns exist, but they might still exist and our epistemology just be off. So similarly, we might all think murder is not wrong. Even though it's wrong, but how does it mean anything to us unless we have some way of grounding that and our understanding or... Right, evidence and our evidence is that we feel these things are wrong and that we try to build models based off of those evidences just like we do with anything in science. Right, and then onto the free will thing. So you think... Sorry, will is the primary principle, but I don't think that that comports with our moral intuitions because I might...  And I need to impose on the free will of my two-year-old to prevent them from doing that so they don't get malnourished and potentially badly injure themselves. And generally, when we think of a good parent, we understand that they do something in position of free will. We don't think, oh, they're immoral, but they're only a little bit immoral because they've taken the least immoral of the available options. We think we commend good parents who raise their children well. And we fully understand that they've imposed on their children's free will in order to raise them well. So basing it on the imposition of will seems like a really weird way of stating it when really what's going on is we've got a more intuitive explanation would be duties and obligations and objective goods and bad. So parents have a duty to raise their children well and there's certain ways you can achieve that and obligations parents have. And if they fulfill those obligations, we consider them to be good parents. So I think a duty-based morality better explains morals, ontology. So yeah, no. The only reason it's justified to stop your kids from playing with knives and eating cookies is because of the malnourishment and the stabby-stabby part that you mentioned. If we could solve those problems of saying that give someone nanobots so they could have food processed exactly what they needed in their body and dispose of everything else, there would be no justification for stopping your kids of eating chocolate chip cookies. It would be immoral to stop them from eating chocolate chip cookies because they should be able to enjoy as much chocolate chip cookies as they want as long as you can have some nanobots to make sure they're not malnourished. Same thing with knives. If everyone has a personal force field, there's no reason to stop people from running around with knives because they can't stab anybody with them. So again, the only reason it's justified to stop people from eating cookies or run around with knives is your subjective limitations that you can't prevent the consequences because you don't have the power to do so. But if you were objectively able to prevent the consequences, then the objectively moral thing to do would not be to stop them from eating cookies or to stop them from running with knives.  You used a subjective limitation of humans that they are subjectively unable to prevent malnourishment and stabbing with their power. And so contrasting our subjective limitations when trying to describe it, objective morality is a clear self-contradiction. If we want to know what objective morality is, we'd have to compare what we should do for any being of any level of power in that situation. So if there is an all-powerful being in that situation, should he let the kids eat chocolate-to-cookies?  That would be the moral thing to do. It would not be moral for the all-powerful being to stop them from eating chocolate-to-cookies and to stop them from being able to enjoy life, simply because it doesn't care enough to prevent them from being malnourished. Same with running with knives. So your example fails because you're applying subjective limitations to an objective model of morality, which would apply to all possible beings, not just humans. And in my model, what you do is you start with this objective standard of what an all-powerful being would, the standard an all-powerful being would be measured against and then apply our subjective limitations. So you'd say, because we are not all-powerful beings, we cannot give you anti-malnourishment nanobots. Therefore, we have to stop you from eating chocolate-to-cookies because we don't have the power to do otherwise. So it's a justified immoral action because you don't have all-power to be able to allow them to be cookies. But the moral thing to do would be to let them be cookies and prevent their malnourishment. So the only way to have a perfectly moral human being would be for them to have superpowers where they could make imaginary force fields and change the laws of physics and all sorts of things. Yes, a perfectly moral being would be one who could do the most moral thing in every case. Humans cannot do that.  I don't think that fits with our moral intuitions. Generally, we think of being moral as doing the best thing given what you had. We don't think of moral as having superhuman abilities to deliver what everybody wants all the time. That would come into a different calendar where you're not necessarily morality. Well, I definitely know it's the majority religion view, like Christianity has that view, that all of us fall short of the glory of God that they have the same view of morality that we aren't able to achieve perfectly moral systems. Like, you know, if my bank accounts empty and I don't give any money in charity, that's not immoral of me. But, you know, if I've got billions of dollars and I don't give any charity away, we could consider that immoral. I definitely would not. But the point here is that, yes, most religious people or the biggest religious people do agree that morality is unobtainable. A perfect morality is unobtainable for humans. So that's not an uncommon view. The second thing is that if you're trying to say that morality is objective and not subjective, well, then you need to acknowledge that our subjective limitations or that objective morality is not going to be based on our subjective limitations. Objective morality is going to be based on what would it be applied to all beings, not just our subjective limitations. So obviously, most people's moral intuitions are that morality is subjective and evolutionary, in this case, because it's anthropocentric, designed to be around human limitations, which I think is wrong. I think objective morality has nothing to do with human limitations. That's subjective morality. And I agree that, yeah, if you're basing morality on our subjective limitations, that's not objective. So when I want an objective morality, what I'm trying to do is I need to filter out those subjective limitations and see, well, what would be the objective moral standard that would apply to all possible beings? Not just humans, because clearly it doesn't make any sense to try and base an objective morality off of subjective human limitations. I think it doesn't make any sense to call our limitations subjective, that our limitations exist objectively.  So a paraplegic, let's say there's Stephen Hawking. He has limitations. He can't move his arms or legs. Are those objective limitations that apply to everyone or are they subjective limitations that only apply to him? Well, sure, they only apply to him, but it's an objective fact that he has those limitations. Right, but they're his subjective limitations. So we obviously, if we're trying to make an objective morality that applies to all beings, we wouldn't say, well, Stephen Hawking's personal subjective limitations are this, and we're going to base the objective morality on that. Like no, we would say that he has, that's just his subjective limitations. We want a model that applies to all beings, right? We wouldn't try to base objective morality on Stephen Hawking, right? Well, you just add in the principle of based on, you know, the options available based on the circumstances. So, you know, if I have, it's not immoral for me to have no money in my bank account. What's immoral is if I have lots of money and I only use it for selfish purposes. Right, so you would filter out the subjective limitations and you would apply an objective standard. So that's the whole point, is that you would take the subjective limitations and you'd say, okay, so we need to filter these out somehow. You would say, do this, maximize this to the best of your means or whatever. And so, to the best of your means, what it does is that it filters out all of the subjective limitations and says there is this objective standard here. And then once we know that objective standard, we can apply your limitations and know the closest you can get to it is this. Right, something like that? Yeah, I just think it's more accurately described as duties. So like a police officer has a duty to treat criminals differently than they treat like law-abiding citizens, but a doctor has an obligation to provide medical care to everybody regardless of their criminal background. What? So I think obligations and duties based on somebody's position in society, skills, resources and so on, is a better way of looking at morality rather than we should all try to maximize everyone's expression of will. Well, mine doesn't say you should maximize. Maximization is pragmatism. It's not about maximization. So that's also a thing you misrepresented about my model. But so you're saying that people have duties and those duties are based on their subjective limitations, right? If you're a cop, you have these duties.  Yeah. And if you're an all-powerful being, you'd have significantly more duties. Sure. So the duties are based on your subjective limitations. And then if you want to know what the objectively moral thing to do is, you start with the maximum, the highest amount of the all-powerful being level of duties. And then you could know the objectively moral thing in all possible situations. And then you would say, okay, now that we know the objectively moral thing in all possible situations, we have to apply the individual limitations. I'm saying, so this guy is a cop. He's not an all-powerful being. So the best he could do in this situation is this. This is his subjective best. This is the best he can do, right? Well, I think it's different. Like the duties of an all-powerful, all-knowing being are different in many respects from us. Say we're playing a game where you have to guess things. If somebody might know the game inside out, know every single possible guess. So they don't really have a duty to play for one team and make that team win, because they know the whole game. It wouldn't really be a game if they knew everything and they played. So it's kind of the different duties that fall upon you when you know everything. Like you've got the good cop, bad cop dynamic. You need certain features present in the world in order to create, like I said earlier in my opening, that I think the best possible world is one filled with moral agents who are perfected in their moral character. And I don't see how we can perfect ourselves in our moral character unless we go through certain circumstances where we can make decisions and get it wrong, get it right sometimes, and have consequences for our actions and learn right from wrong and develop motivations to do the right rather than the wrong and so on. Okay, but so I already admitted that yes, an all-powerful being would have different duties than a cop who is not all-powerful. Yes, I agree. So to discover what objective morality is, to know what's moral for a cop, you would have to have some kind of objective standard to say here is the absolute perfect best thing you could do, and then you'd have to work backwards and say, okay, so you can't do that because you're not all-powerful, but this is the closest you can get, given your limitations of being a cop, right? So you couldn't just, you'd have to have some kind of objective standard to compare to, right? Yeah, I mean, that could work. Within our tradition, we often understand the concept of an acharya who is a descending divine, a great saint who comes down and they live, but by their example, we learn how the religious principles are to be applied in different circumstances because so we then have something to compare to and to live up to, so no argument there about having an ideal and comparing to it. Right, so that's the point, is that you have this ideal, this perfect something or another, and then you say, okay, so you're not perfect, but here is the closest you can get to that, given your subjective limitations, right? And the objective is the perfect and the subjective is the best you can do, right? That's an accurate use of the words. Um, I usually think of subjective in terms of like postmodernism, like it's just imaginary. Right, right. There's lots of objective and subjective, lots of different usages. There's a purple dragon in my room and it only exists for me, it doesn't exist for anybody else, that kind of thing. Right, so subjective and objective have lots of different usages, I totally agree, but it's just in this context, I'm saying the objectively moral thing to do is the perfect thing. That's the real objective standard. And then the best you can do isn't the objectively moral thing to do, it's the best you subjectively, as an individual can do, right? That's not an incorrect usage of those words or that context. Yeah, I mean, sure, you could look at it that way. I think looking at it based on duties is as more helpful and a simpler description. Well, there essentially is the same thing. So the way you're describing duties is the subjectively best you can do, given your duties, that's, but it's obviously not the objective standard. You're not perfect, you're not a perfect being. So you're going to do the best that you can give in your limitations. But we're not talking about maximization of, sorry, reducing in position on will here. We're talking about something else. I didn't bring that up here. So this is just for any model of morality. You have an objective standard and you have the best you can do to get to that objective standard, whatever it is. Yeah, sure, right. So the point there was that that's the way I'm describing morality here is that it's the subjective limitations are not what you're basing the objective morality on. You're basing the objective morality off of the objective standard and then apply the limitations after that.  That's, and that's what you have to do to have an objective morality. No, I mean, you can, you can look at, talk about objective morality in terms of a given circumstances and say, given that circumstance, this person has objectively done the best they could or they've chosen one among the available moral options. There may be more than one moral option. There may be more than one, more than one wrong option. So we can objectively say that in this circumstance, this person has objectively done a right or a wrong thing. And those options change based off of the different beings. So if there's a more powerful being, they have more options and there's a more moral option and them choosing the option of a less powerful being would be immoral. Yeah, sure. So that's, you're agreeing that the subjective limitations are not the basis of objective morality. Those are subjective limitations. Well, my point, which I think you're agreeing with is that it's more accurate to call it based on duties, based on. They're just different terms that mean the same thing. So what you're calling duties is the exact same thing as what I'm calling the subjective best you can do given your limitations. Those are the, they mean the same thing. Right, but I think the duties way is a simpler way of wording it. You're kind of talking about it in a more complicated, back to front way. Well, I'd say that your way doesn't actually work. Like duties don't exist. They're not, it's incoherent to say there's such a thing as duties. My way actually makes sense. That's kind of the point I'm illustrating is that the user seems to make sense a lot more.   The job has a job description. You agree to perform those the duties that come with the job when you take on the job. There's no categorical imperative. It's not like you have to do what your employer has asked you to do, but you did agree to it. And if you don't do it, you're going to lose the job. So there's some normativity there in that sense.  Like, you know, people have different duties based on their career, every family, and so on. And if you don't do that, then you may not get a human birth in your next life. Sounds like slavery. Sounds like you're obligated to have some kind of rules that you have to abide by without your consent. By something else, it sounds like slavery when you say duty. Well, we're inextricably existing in this reality. We don't have a choice, do we? And there's the principles that govern this reality which we live in, if you don't abide by them. Like, you know, for example, that the description of, you know, where you go in your next life is based on the qualities you have in this life. So if you live like an animal, you'll take birth as an animal.   So if you perfect yourself and moral character, in other words, then you get to be surrounded in your next life by other beings who are perfected in their moral character.   Well, I didn't mean to make a criticism of just the Hare Krishna worldview there, but just as a comparison, clearly it seems more moral to give everyone their own universe and let them design it however they want. And if they don't want to die and have immortality, they should have that choice. Or if they want to be reborn as a chicken or a cow or whatever, they should have that choice. And that system that I'm just described is probably a morally superior system to yours, which would be good evidence of why mine is better in addition to the other reasons. But the point I was making earlier is that when you say we have duties, like when you're a human, you have certain duties as a human or whatever, that sounds like slavery. That sounds like someone else has conscripted you to obey a certain set of rules. And if you don't, you're being punished, which is, like I said earlier, a more immoral system than the one I described where everyone gets their own universe and you can do it whatever you want with. So clearly my system seems to get morality correct, more likely to be correct than yours. So the reason why it's moral is because it brings about the greater good. So your idea, I don't think it brings about the greater good because if we could just, you know, all live in our own fantasy world and have it the way we want it all the time, I don't see how we would ever become perfected in our character and eventually attain to a higher and more satisfying reality. So your idea I think is nihilistic and doesn't result in the elevation of us to a better reality. Like we don't want to live in a false reality. There's a thought experiment.  And you can set all the parameters and you can enter into this reality except you were the only person there. And while you were in there, you wouldn't know. You'd think you were interacting with real people. You'd think it was a real reality, but it was just something you had programmed and all the people there didn't actually exist. When the thought experiment is offered, you don't get people saying, yeah, I'd go into that. We'd have to go into that. But that's, so my analogy, that wasn't like my analogy. So my analogy is that you get your own universe, you get to design it however you want. So which would include, other people can visit you if they want to. So mine would be just as real as everything else. It's not a virtual world. It's a real one. You get your own real universe and you get to really meet real people who voluntarily choose to cohabitate with you. So mine wasn't like yours. So why would my universe, where everyone gets their own universe and they can design it however they want and choose what they experience to be a less moral universe than yours where people are conscripted with duties they didn't consent to, to be punished whether they agree to this system or not? Well, I'd argue that your system wouldn't result in the greatest good. I think it would result in we might just all grow more and more selfish in our inability to interact with one another in productive, meaningful, cordial ways would become worse and worse as we all became more and more hedonistic and self-interested and so on. And I think that kind of hedonism would, we'd be unabated in our hedonism. So this reality we're in kind of brings our hedonism down a little bit which enables us to develop some wisdom and learn that there's more to life than just satisfying your senses and so on. We have to learn to cooperate and that this being forced to do these things creates moral character in us and allows us to grow as people. Whereas your reality would just kind of be like some kind of simulated reality where we don't see how we would ever be moving towards a greater reality where we actually develop our moral character.  Well, yeah, I mean, the argument would be something to the effect of the ends just by the means. But you do get people saying that, you do find people who've gone through all sorts of abuse that come out of it and say, I've gained an invaluable wisdom from this. Like Gabramate worked in palliative care for 10 years and he even had one patient that died of cancer. And at the self-reflection he was able to do well on his deathbed. He got valuable wisdom and he actually said to Gabramate that this experience has taught me wisdom which is so valuable that it's worth it. And that was someone who died from the cancer saying that. What's more moral to force someone to go through that pain and suffering to learn it or to give them the option? Well, you can learn all this stuff if you go through this pain and suffering and they can choose whether they want to go through it or not. Which one of those is more moral? Well, how do we know we didn't choose to come here and go through these experiences? We might have been given another option. It's not what I asked. So I asked, is it more moral to give someone the option to go through suffering to learn something or is it more moral to force them to suffer whether they choose it or not to cause them to learn it? I think the action reaction that we get in this material world is just intrinsic things. It's not like a punishment thing. So if you have immoral character, you get surrounded by other people with immoral character. So it's not like it's forced upon you in some kind of unfitting way. It's just these are natural consequences for these actions. And with the say drug intervention, say somebody, we apprehend somebody who's a drug addict and intervene on them, put them through all sorts of detoxing, they're suffering like anything. But eventually they get out the other end of it and say, I'm so glad you guys forced me through that because now I have a good life. Okay. So again, is it more moral to force someone through rape and murder and torture and prison without their consent, what they didn't want? Or is it more moral to give them the option, say you can go experience this world of rape and murder and torture or you can go to your own world without any of that stuff, which is more moral, force them into being raped and murdered and tortured and cancered without their consent or to give them the option to say, no, I'd rather not have that, which is more moral. So the now Vaishnava tradition does talk about how we made a choice to come here and we rather than going to the spiritual world and our actions in this world have earned us those consequences. So we did choose this. Not what I asked. So it's perfectly fine. If we chose to be here, that's perfectly fine. But I'm asking, which is more moral? Is it more moral to force someone to be raped and murdered and tortured without their consent? Or is it more moral to give them the option where they can say, no, I'd rather not have it, which one is more moral? I mean, I would say in this case that it's a question of the ends justifying the means. So say with the drug addict example, say you forced the person through the detox. They didn't want to do it. You gave them the option that they could just commit suicide and then they could just not have any of that. But instead of doing that, you just said, and you just suppose it was guaranteed, you knew that this person was going to succeed at going through this detox and come out the other end. And when they were finished in it, they were going to say, I'm so glad you put me through that because now I have a good life. Then I would say, based on the outcome and based on their future self, or we could say their higher self by higher self, I mean, themself when they're thinking rationally and properly informed. If their higher self would want you to do that, then I would say it's the moral thing to do. Like if your two-year-old wants to say, your four-year-old wants to become a unicorn or wants to commit suicide, should we let them do that? They're just expressing their will, how they like and choosing what they want. But we don't let them do that because the cognitive faculties aren't properly developed. We withhold their ability to make these decisions. So similarly with the drug addict or someone who's impaired in some way due to not fully understanding reality and making bad decisions and covering their consciousness over with the material energy. If we let them make unabashed decisions without some kind of like, well, this is what's best for you. So we're going to kind of nudge you in that direction anyway. Then I would say it's a moral thing is to understand what's in the person's best interest, what their higher self would want, and to put them through what they need to to get there. Yeah, my view is that it's not moral to force people to be raped without their consent. I'd say it's more moral to give them the option to say no. That would be my position. And why I think is a pretty good way to conclude is why my model is significantly more moral than yours has a better understanding of objective morality.  It's life. It's just an unfortunate feature of reality. I don't see how you're accounting for the existence of these things. If it's against consent, if people don't consent, it's a moral in my model. Yeah, so it's a moral on the question of a view too. Yeah, but in yours, you're forced to go through it without consent. In mine, we would say, no, you would have to consent or it would be impossible. I don't understand what you're saying. Well, as you just said, you said the ends justifies the means. So under yours being forced to be raped against your consent, if it led to the detoxing, whatever, it would be moral. And in my view, no, it's moral to give someone the option to say, I don't want that. That would be more moral. So it seems like my model has a better understanding of morality. But I'm ready to go to the Q&A, you are. Yeah, okay. You got it. And with that, we will indeed go into Q&A. Want to say our guests are linked in the description, as you can see in this bottom right box right here. And yes, that's even if you're listening via podcast. You guys, if you have not already, pull out your favorite podcast app, such as these right here on screen. Find Moderative Aid. We are really excited that people, to my surprise, found the podcast useful.  And so we are really thrilled and want to let you know if you're listening via podcast, both Tom and Arjuna's links are in the description box for that podcast episode as well. And so with that, we're going to jump into the Q&A. But do want to do one more housekeeping thing. In particular, folks, we are very excited. We've got a lot coming up in the next several weeks. Have to let you know tomorrow night, Yaron Brooke, who is the executive, kind of the head honcho of the Anne Rand Institute, controversial, juicy. He will be debating mouthy infidel on whether or not welfare should exist. So that's going to be an exciting one. And then also Monday, you don't want to miss this one as well, you guys. Dr. Josh and Skyler Fiction are teaming up yet again, a power team as they are taking on Cliff and Stuart Nettle. That's going to be a juicy one on Old Testament Ethics on Trial. So you don't want to miss it, folks. And so thanks for your questions. We're going to jump into these and do appreciate it. This first one coming in from Franks92 says, Rise chair bears.  I think chair bears is like the name that we're giving my followers. We've agreed chair bears is probably like, because people name their followers, their fan base or whatever. All right, always has to be about Tom. But anyway, yes, they're beautiful chairs. So thank you very much for your questions or spicy roads. Thanks for your super sticker and Sigmund. And he says, Graven images of the chair are immoral. Arjuna is a bold strategy. I like it. Good day to you, sir, says, Arjuna, if morality is based on human well-being, certain actions objectively move us towards or away from that goal. Despite anyone's subjective opinion. Yeah, so if you if you start with the value of human form of life, then you've you've got something which of course leads you to morality. But then we need to understand how you're arriving at the fact that human life is valuable and how you're ontologically grounding the existence of that fact. Gotcha. And thank you very much for your question. This one coming in from good day or rodent last name says, we need better words than just morality loaded language. Can be like a marble on a mountain peak. It can roll in many directions. Sure. But I mean, we kind of agree but morality means like the principal's governing what is right and wrong kind of a thing. Gotcha. And Sigmund and he says, I wonder if benevolent impositions on will are moral like me imposing on James's synapses to proclaim quote unquote, I punch babies in exchange for $5. And thank you. And thank you. Good day to you, sir. For your question says Arjuna. Why did God even issue a brain instead of just sticking the Veda holy books in your head? Why did God issue a brain rather than sticking the holy books in your head? I'm sure I understand the question. I think I think it's kind of like, well, why didn't you just download the Vedas into our brains without us having to read it? Oh, I mean, we chose to turn our backs on God. So God's facilitating that desire by allowing the possibility of ignorance of God. There's some quote. I can't remember what it was. There's enough lightness in the world for anyone who wants to seek it and enough darkness for anyone wants to seek it. So we can explore our different desires and figure out that they're not satisfying and ultimately, you know, if we've become exhausted all of that and return to God. And, you know, without the possibility of exhausting our material desires and it's not, you know, meaningful, you know, there needs to be alternative and we need to exhaust these desires so that we can meaningfully return to God as a choice, both as a choice and both by being free of alternative desires and we can have real love. Gosh, I am there. Thank you very much for your question. This one coming in from Rodan Lastname says, I derive all of my moral subjectivism from Tom Jumps chair. Tom Jumps chair is a neutral arbiter of what is comfy and what is not comfy. Thank you for that. Your precious chair, Tom. We're going to have to, when we go on tour, we're going to have to load that up and bring it with. So this one comes in from or at least get a backdrop, just like that's true. Tom, you need to get a printed banner that we could put behind you in the debate. That would be cool. Well, what's thinking about getting like a neon sign of my logo? That'd be pretty cool. Touche and Sigma and he says, if we can't know the entirety of a God's character, such as a full knowledge of his morality, how can we presume that what we think we understand about his morality objectively reflects his morality? Also, can you read the first part again? Sure, they said, if we can't know the entirety of a God's character, then in some, how can we presume that we, you know, that what we think about God's morality objectively reflects it? Well, yeah, that's raising the epistemic problem.  But I would accept that as a concern, but simply say that you can think, you know, you've stumbled upon divine knowledge and be mistaken, but once you have got divine knowledge, it will supersede any false knowledge. So you could have ascending levels of realization. It's not possible to have true knowledge and then, you know, trade that in for false knowledge. So you could go from one false belief to another false belief, but you can't go from that, you know, true understanding back to the false belief that there's something that that fixes you in it once you have it. Gotcha. And thank you very much for your question. Thank you. Let's see. Rodent, no last name says, Arjuna, if God commanded you to do something against your personal moral beliefs, would you do it? So this is something I've thought a lot about and discussed.  Well, I'm just going to think that I'm either mistaken about what the guru's saying or the guru happens to not be representing God in that moment because my intuitions that God would not say that to me and my intuitions that I should not do that supersede any kind of reason I have for thinking that God's telling me to do that. So I would not do the wrong thing if my, if it didn't agree with we like, we have an idea in Christian consciousness of super soul in the heart.  So if my heart is telling me that something is absolutely immoral, I'm going to listen to that and not do it. You got it. And thank you very much for your question. This one coming in from Jordan Gerard, who says if morality is a field, it could be manipulated to suit subjective whims. So it isn't objective. You can't answer, quote, ought we manipulate the field or not? Well, I mean, the fact that there's a field doesn't mean we can manipulate it. Like we can't manipulate the Higgs field. So I don't, doesn't make any sense. The fact that it doesn't field being there doesn't mean we can manipulate field. Like you can't make Higgs negative. You can't make a negative field. So in fact, there's a field doesn't mean it could be anything. Either. Gotcha. And thank you very much for your question. This one coming in from Farron Salas says, we are in a simulation with T jumps chair all the way down and pictures of turtles stacked on top of each other. Very nice. Stefan Brace, thank you for your question says, Arjuna. So if you live a life that, quote unquote, God doesn't approve of.  Well, it's not necessarily based on God approving or not approving.   If you're not making proper use of the human form of life, the human form of life affords us the ability to inquire into the absolute truth, you know, to question why we're here, what exists, and so on. If you're not doing that, you're just simply living like an animal, the only difference being that you go around on four wheels rather than on four legs and there's no reason why you shouldn't just do that in a human body. And many respects, animal bodies are better suited for sense gratification than human bodies are. Gotcha. And thank you very much. Stephen Brace, you know, read that one. Rodin, no last name says, is a cheetah killing an antelope on the African landscape moral. Is a human hunter killing an antelope moral? Is a virus killing an antelope quote unquote moral? Is killing a virus moral? Any involuntary position of will is moral. So killing an antelope is a moral no matter who does it. Viruses don't have a will. So but killing viruses is not a moral. So the moral status of an action depends on, you know, that the moral agency of the person committing the axe. So a tiger doesn't have moral agency. It's just simply surviving and it's acting according to the nature of a tiger. There's no morality when one animal leads another animal. It's just that they're just both animals are just functioning according to their nature. Whereas what the human kills an antelope, they're choosing to do that. So that they're humans are moral agents so they can get there's moral value to their actions. Joshua, thank you very much. And this one coming in from top hot two says, how many babies do James have to punch to create analogies for today's debate? Believe it or not, Tom talks about me as much as he does in his speeches because he loves me because we're brothers. A lot of people don't know that but really special. So seven babies. It was it was seven. Ozzie and says, Kallel revealed to me through personal revelation that T jump is correct. So you ought to be moral Arjuna. Superman reference. Sweet. I'll accept that revelation. I'm converted. Next up. Endo XD says Arjuna, your morals are based on the presupposition that God exists and that God is good. Mine are based on the presupposition that well-being is good. Aren't ours both subjective?   So the debate here isn't is it is it the case that God exists? So that would be a different debate. But given, you know, the assumption that God exists, we have a better account of the existence of objective moral values.  Gotcha. Welcome to the show. It's Friday. Thank you very much. And next question. This one coming in from Barry Barry appreciate your super sticker and soldier of science says James Tom and Arjuna. Thanks for the show. Yes, I'm shamelessly saying with three more subs. I will launch a new video on my deconversion story. How about it? I think they're saying three more subs. I would think it's maybe to their channel or mine like modern day debate ours. I can't tell. But soldier of science we're glad you hang out hang out here my friend and let's jump into the next one. So great. We've caught up. Let me jump over to the standard question list. We have one from Chaos Theory. They've been gunning you in the chat, Tom. They said, I have a crazy question. Ask Tom if it's actually wrong for Tom to marry a pig. Not if the pig could consent and have enough intelligence to be the intellectual age of consent than no, it would not be. Gotcha. And thank you very much. Yes, welcome to the show. Indeed, folks. It is Friday. We're excited for that. And so John Smith said question for Arjuna. Do you demonstrate why God quote cannot be wrong without appealing to authority? Would the universe look different if God could be wrong? If God could be wrong, he wouldn't be God. It's like true by different by the definition of what God exists. So perhaps a well Christian is does God exist? And that would be a different topic. Gotcha. And stripper liquor, thanks for your support out there in the live chat says smash that like button and please do smash that like button. If you've been pleased by this debate, or if you're pleased by this question from Darth Revan, which is Arjuna or ask Arjuna if he is aware of... Oh, we got that one actually. I covered that one with him because they thought you were a Christian. But they found out how do I pronounce it? Is it Hari Krishna? Yeah, Hari Krishna. There was actually one dude that found a bag of a gear in the bushes once and he started chanting Gary Krishna read the whole thing was convinced and he was chanting here, Krishna, here, Krishna, Krishna, here, here. Here, around here, around here, around here. But yeah, it's Hari. Hari, okay. Hari Krishna, Hari Krishna. And thank you very much for your question. This one just came in from Rodent, no last name who says if Stan Lee, so writer, creator or marvel wrote revelations of Spider-Man how do ancient comic books prove God exists? Oh, sorry, read it again. It happened if they were coming up on the screen. They said if Stan Lee wrote revelations of Spider-Man so, you know, like if he wrote a holy book about Spider-Man how do ancient comic books prove that that God exists? Well, I mean, you've got many different lines of evidence pointing to God's existence, you know, philosophical arguments like, you know, ontological arguments, cosmological arguments you've got personal experience and so on. So I don't see how Spider-Man fits the same category of those, you know, that you get serious philosophical debate all through history around God's existence. You don't get that around Spider-Man, but yeah, as far as the real proof for God's existence exists on a private level to someone who's engaged in a practice which elevates their consciousness to the point where they can experience God. Gotcha, and to put serial, thanks for your super chat said Tom Jump, how do you go from quote-unquote killing babies is wrong to quote-unquote it's natural law like gravity? So a complicated argument, check this time for psychopedic philosophy from rural nationalism, you can just read the whole thing on there. Sassy Tommy. N-O-X-D says fun debate, I enjoyed this. Thank you, U3. Thank you. And we can't thank the guests enough, you guys. We've got more questions, but I want to remind you they are linked in the description. And this next one, coming in from, thanks for your super chat, Cole Beasley says James, how do I get on here to participate in a debate? That's a great question. So folks, here's the trick. If you email me at moderndatabate at gmail.com, that's my email. And we, please, just so we can streamline it, because I'm always behind on emails. If you can let me know your preferred topic, what your stance on it is. And ideally, if you have an opponent lined up, we oftentimes, if you're a first timer, we'll ask if you will do at least one tag team debate so we can get a feel for you. That's not necessary. There are ways, if you want to do a one-on-one, but it's probably, it's probably more, so we'll talk over email. Thanks for your question, Lockbeard, who says, in all cats, this entire thing, he's yelling the entire thing. There is no universal morality. Establishing a moral code makes you a religious cult. I can't believe the atheists made me have to say that. He really needs to check the Stanford or the field surveys paper, which says the vast majority of philosophers, like academic philosophers are atheists, like 70%. And they're also moral realists. They also believe in objective morality. So it's pretty sad that most YouTube atheists don't realize that, yeah, actually, you can believe in objective morality without a God, just fine, most philosophers do it. Juicy. And Tim Cass podcast says, in all caps, order to ceased and assist. The big comfortable chair is protected by a utility and service patent. Continue use at your own peril. Thank you for that. Live lighting patents. So many patents. Tom, I love that chair.  I think you've told us before. We've always asked, you know, but let's see. What was the model of it, though? Because this is like lazy boy has like certain models, like in addition to the make. I looked it up at one point. I think it's a cantella or something like that. Sophisticated, Tom. I like that. I've got two chairs today. That's true. I mean, you're giving Tom a run for his money finally. I mean, only the chair could. Dave Langer says, question for T jump. Do you like your chocolate chip cookies warm out of the oven? Or do you prefer them to be cooled off? No, they've got to be warm and mushy and squishy and barely cooked because they get hard. They're just not good. Nasty guy. And John Smith says, another question for Arjuna. Why is quote unquote higher existence better than being able to choose who or what we can be?  Well, there's objective measures for how animal life is in many respects suffering.  You study sea life is particularly bad.  There's not a single description of a deep sea creature that doesn't either talk about how it's eaten or what it eats. It's a constant fight for survival.  So you might like to take birth as a pigeon. But if you like, you know, sort of getting into like understanding the deeper nature of reality and, you know, more getting at the essence of things, you know, above the material level of sense gratification, then it might not be ideal. And, you know, you know, suppose there was someone who was going to infinitely spend their life as a drug addict, then it might be better to intercede and, you know, get it to the point where they were in a drug addict and actually had a good life because there's the life of a drug addict is objectively suffering. You know, they have no good personal relationships and they've got a dependency where they're miserable when they're not on drug and so on. Gotcha. And soldier of science sends in his question saying, Arjuna was singing for Jane's addiction better than porno for pyros. I don't know the latest song. I don't know if I can answer that. Some sort of adult film. Rodent, no last name says, I had personal experience with Spider-Man and believe the Marvel comic universe which dates back to the discovered manuscripts of the ancient times of the 1980s. I'm from the 1980s. They say, how is Spider-Man not the basis for morality? I mean, obviously, that's a parody question. I mean, Spider-Man's just a superhero streamed up by some comic, but the comic doesn't even claim to be true, whereas you get the scriptures claiming to represent reality. And, you know, in many respects, we can argue the Vedas accurately describe at least the features that we're able to verify are accurately fit reality. You got it.  I forgot to mute. Did you guys hear that? Anyway, very, very thanks for your super chat says, Arjuna, you mentioned the quote unquote many lines of evidence for the existence of God, such as philosophical, cosmological, ontological arguments, and personal experience. Do you think that adding a bunch of bad evidence equals good evidence? That actually says Aram. I don't know who Aram is. I wasn't saying Arjuna. I figured it was a typo. You never mentioned any of those arguments. Yeah, I mean, that's another debate. And it's not something I've gotten to personally myself, but the fact that philosophers to this day take these arguments seriously and like, you know, even the ontological argument, which in popular circles is kind of scoffed at, yet there's like serious philosophers on both sides of the debate that take that argument seriously. So I mean, you can call them bad evidence and says you want, but there's intelligent people with degrees who study this level stuff at the highest level that think that there's some weight to it. And then personal experience. I mean, a personal experience isn't evidence for anything. Then we've got problems. We've got general skepticism there. So someone has an experience of God firsthand. I don't think know how you can raise doubts about that without raising doubts about anybody's ability to perceive anything about reality. Gotcha. We might have time for holy smokes. It's almost been we're going on two hours that didn't seem like two hours. I've been like living the dream. This has been super fun. It's flown by tape deck has one last question they're going to squeeze in. So how can a lion do anything immoral if we can come back as one? Are we stuck as a lion after that life? Can't wait. Let me rest his question is that quiet. Are we stuck as a lion after that life since can't be any more immoral? So his question is asking since there's reincarnation but lions can't do anything immoral. How could you be a lion and then have a moral life to reincarnate as something differently if nothing if none of your actions are morally significant. Yeah.  I mean it said we have unlimited stores of karma because we've lived unlimited lives so you don't have to burn up all your karma but you go through some amount of your karma and then it might be your next life or it might be many lives later that you eventually take birth as a human again. And at that point you're kind of just writing on your karma.  I mean there are stories of animals getting liberated actually but they're they're not the norm they're just kind of just exceptional cases. You got it. In lock beer it says sorry in many chats we're told to put questions in caps. Oh really oh I see what you're saying. Okay that's cool. I always I get a kick out of hearing like how other chats work. Like it's interesting just to hear like the different rules that different channels have just in virtue of that. So anyway we want to say thank you to our guests. Look at these guys. Look at them. They're tremendous. We love them. Just love putting you guys on this spot. Thank you Tom at Arjuna. They're both linked in the description folks and we really do appreciate them. The debaters are the life blood of the channel. If I tried to do a channel like Tom where it's just me debating all the time you I just couldn't do it. You know I mean and Arjuna I'm guessing you've got debates on your channel as well. So why don't let you know folks if you're at moderated debate you must love debates. Tom has debates on his channel all the time. Arjuna I know you've got to have some on there I'm guessing because you. Yeah yeah yeah. And because I know you've come on here before and so you probably got at least some of the ones from on here and I'm guessing you maybe have other ones so. I've got little videos I produced to like sort of rationality rules kind of style of just arguing sort of philosophy of religion points working on one right now and evidence and reincarnation to my last one up is an attack on William Lane Craig's exclusivism. Interesting James likey I'll have to check that out and Cole Beasley last one says dodge coin to the moon. Oh that reminds me I don't even know what that means is that some like it's a cryptocurrency. That just went up by like 700% in the past week. Apparently it's got no fundamentals behind it so it's all just hype and stuff so if you're into gambling go for it. Oh juicy and Rodin known last name fires the last one and says with great power comes great responsibility. How is that not the basis for moral spider-man? I was like why does so much reference to spider-man because I don't get into comics and stuff I just get into Mahabharat and stuff that I wish they do more comics about the Vedic stories it's so much cooler. That's super interesting and so we do appreciate our guests they're the lifeblood of the channel so thank you both Tom and Arjuna it's been a true pleasure. Folks I will be back in just a moment with a post-credits scene letting you know about upcoming debates such as this one less than what is it yeah less than a week away you guys the book of Daniel prophecy or forgery I'll tell you about other ones once I'm back so thanks one last time to our guests and I will be right back folks. So you guys we're really excited thank you guys for coming by it's always fun to have you here so I do want to get to say hi to you guys I just love hanging out here it's always fun and so I want to say we love you thank you thank you for hanging out with us oh now if you just let's see let's see we'll save this for Tom for next time I you just missed him I don't know if you're if you knew but yes basically those last super chats well we'll since I think Barry Berry is an atheist I'll maybe you and Nephilim free are up for a debate it looks like you happen to disagree Nephilim free I don't want to read the one challenge is I don't want to read super chats that are partial just because I don't want to take sides after the debaters have gone so I can't read a super chat that says you know like Christianity is true or atheism is true or whatever you know but anyway want to say we are stoked to have you here and thank you Barry Berry for your super chat thank you Nephilim free for your super chat and stoked to see you Timo says hit like please do hit that like if you enjoyed this show thanks Brian Stevens and Timo for your hitting like reminders thanks for your support both of you and we are excited you guys as there is just epic stuff coming up I have to tell you about this it is going to knock your socks off but first like I said let me say hi you in the chat just appreciate you hanging out here I like turtles glad you are here good to see you again Ian spider good to see you as well Daniel Casmer have I seen you here before I'm trying to remember the name sounds familiar but the avatar looks different I can't remember Amy Newman good to see you of course glad you're back tape deck good to see you Chad Martin and boiled pizza raw nakedness thank you for coming by and zero zero zero zero zero zero thank you for coming by as well truth shoes 101 stoked you came by now Mark Reed we're pumped you're here Mark Reed oh my boy now Nephilim free I see you were in the chat Neph I know you're too cool for school but I did email you like four days ago so I mean you know whatever you feel like getting around to responding but Chad Martin stoked you came by and Anzi Sorvisto good to see you again soldier of science glad you're back truth shoes 101 pumped you have returned auger he's an angry fellow we love him thanks so much we're glad you came by auger is a cranky fellow in the chat folks you've probably noticed but you know we keep him around he keeps us on our toes we like that you know he keeps things lively and so you know it was a little like fun like kind of sparring a little banter you know he's a sad little man auger I'm kidding come on it's like it's okay but he's entertaining I mean you know even if he's a cranky fellow but uh but auger we love you how long glad you came by and John Pelosi good to see you sigma any thanks for coming by nocturnal prelude glad you're pongo gigantic pumped you are back as well and that's right n-o-x-d good to see you and is there anybody I missed albert bitcoyne of course is here good to see you albert never misses a show he's our favorite bot sigma any thank you for your super chat appreciate it and neflam free says welcome james thank you nef and the myriad dharma thank you for coming by you're glad you're with us somebody somebody thanks for coming by too and Darth Revan good to see you thanks for your question today so I'd show nav glad you made it bob hope you're doing well forgive me am I okay to call I just doxed you man just the first name though but thanks for your stripper liquor says 200 likes equals james shows definitely not showing my underwear but I will say yes we are stoked I will show you what's behind the curtain you guys I do try to pull out something cool from behind the curtain so this is a curtain behind me that's not actually a wall and it's not actually just like black space that goes on forever it's actually a curtain so we'll show you something cool if we can like let's shoot for 150 likes can you do it folks I mean I'm telling you there's got to be something cool back there I can't remember I think I've I'll show you some of my cool stuff I've got some like interesting stuff actually you know what maybe I'll show you I've got something on this shelf over here that I've wanted to show you guys for a long time it's a book signed by one of my favorites and one of the most frankly like one of the most a very famous at college but anyway truth shoes 101 says love back at you James thank you for that truth shoes and raw nakedness you are just like Nephilim free because you are not very good at getting back to people just so you know so calling you out and silver Harlow says sorry I missed it I hope it went well well silver we appreciate that you made it so I hope if you get to watch it later cool if you don't well tomorrow we've got another one so believe me you won't regret it tomorrow is going to be absolutely so don't miss it it's going to be cool and John Pelosi good to see you but let's see here I do have to ask let's see I always like getting oh yeah is there anybody here who I'm always curious to see like how YouTube works is it such that in other words is this anybody in chat is this your first time you've ever seen this channel where you're like what what is this channel like what what is this strange thing that I'm in right now this modern day debate so it is a neutral platform if you didn't know we have no videos where I take any sort of position on anything because that for me I'm like I don't want to you know it's if I ever do put out position videos which I don't know if it'd be maybe in like 10 or 20 years it'll not be on this channel this channel will always be a debate channel and only that in other words if there's a view getting criticized on the channel we're going to be darn sure that there's going to be somebody kind of getting pushed back to that criticism so it's always going to be balanced in that way and as Brian Stevens likes to say his his catchphrase is fair and balanced he likes to say so I don't know where he got that from but I'm like okay I guess it sounds good so we really do work to be non-partisan and depote cereal said thanks for feeding our egos thank you and depote and the last question came in from ANSI Sorvisto thank you for your super chat says work has been super busy uni consume my life I hate and love teaching this is just for you James keep it up oh well that's I think I maybe remember you telling me so are you also working on your doctorate um whatever whether you'd be working just as an instructor or if you're master's or doc