Hey everybody, it's the Nightmare Debating. What best explains reality, atheism, or Christianity? And we are starting right now with Michael's opening statement. Thanks so much for being with us, Michael. The floor is all yours. Yeah. Thank you, James, for having me and Stuart for agreeing to participate in this. Really appreciate it. I'm going to share my screen here. I'm an educator, so I had to prepare a PowerPoint. I apologize in advance.  So I apologize for all the jargon I'm going to throw at you. But I think some of this is necessary in order for me to clarify my position. Can you all see my screen here? Good to go. Yeah, OK, awesome. So which explains reality better, atheism or Christianity? I'm going to go ahead and basically concede the debate. I don't really think atheism provides much of an explanation of anything. Whether we're talking about physical reality, spiritual reality. Atheism, if we just stick with the basic definition, is just a denial of the belief in God or the denial that God exists. In terms of explanatory power, that's about all you get out of it. So I'm going to, of course, pivot a little bit and instead of talking about atheism, I'm going to talk about naturalism. I prefer to label myself as a naturalist over an atheist just because I think it provides a better explanation of what I actually believe, a positive affirmation of what I believe instead of a negative. So naturalism, just to jump straight into it, we have a couple of important distinctions to make these terms.  And I'm doing this because naturalism is oftentimes some of this jargon is confused with each other. So it's important that we understand what we're talking about. So naturalism just very simply put is the usage of natural causes to explain the natural world or appeal to natural causes in order to explain the natural world. Now there's an immediate division in naturalism between what's referred to as methodological naturalism and ontological naturalism. Ontological naturalism is the philosophical claim that the only thing that exists is the natural world and the only things which can exist are things which can be explained via natural explanations. That is not the position I'm going to take this evening. I'm going to take a offshoot of methodological naturalism. So methodological naturalism, like I said before, is an appeal to naturalistic causes slash explanations slash phenomenon in order to explain natural events. This can be further divided into two more positions. Sorry, this probably doesn't make any sense, but I'm going to take what's referred to as provisional naturalism. Okay, so let me give you a clear definition here. And I'm going to read this so that way I don't foul it all up, but it's got a couple of different names. Some people call it pragmatic naturalism. I'm going to call it provisional naturalism. It gives empirically grounded commitment to naturalistic causes and explanations, which in principle is revocable by extraordinary empirical evidence. So provisional naturalism doesn't eliminate the existence of the supernatural or the paranormal, whichever word you prefer there. It allows for granted that enough evidence can be provided for it. According to this conception, methodological naturalism did not drop from thin air, but is the best methodological guideline that emerged from the history of science. So if you look over the course, over the past three to 400 years, methodological naturalism has been the most successful method attempt to describe reality and has therefore been adopted by the natural sciences. In particular, the pattern of consistent success of naturalistic explanations. It's been successful in its attempt to describe reality. Appeals to the supernatural have consistently proven to be premature, and science has never made headway by pursuing them. So naturalistic explanations have become, if you look back at the history of science, have been favored over supernatural explanations because of the naturalistic explanatory power. That's not to say that science has never used supernatural explanations. It has. My background is in the history of science. There are several really prominent examples of this, but that nowadays the preferred method is that of naturalism. There's some big characteristics of provisionary methodological naturalism. I can get into these maybe later if we want to. The first, falsification slash skepticism negation, fallibilism, however you want to put that. The second, empiricism slash the use of mathematical models as a way to explain slash understand reality. And the third is successful research programs, phenomena technique, the application of technology with theory. And the progress of scientific knowledge. Okay, so what's the conclusion connection here? So methodological naturalism has provided this produced body of knowledge slash research that does not need to appeal to the supernatural for causal explanations of the phenomenon they study, whatever that might be. And we're talking about the natural sciences here. We're talking about the social sciences. We can even expand this definition to broadly include things like the study of history, whatever. If we accept provisionary naturalism, the history of science has shown us that to date appeals to the supernatural and divine causation have been replaced by naturalistic explanations. And that in fact these explanations are favorable to supernatural ones. That leads us with a couple of different conclusions and maybe we could talk about this a little bit more later, but I'm not saying that this 100% eliminates God. I think it does leave open the possibility for God. I don't know if it would leave open the possibility for the type of God that Stuart would claim to believe in. We could talk about that later. But one of the conclusions is that God doesn't exist. Now, one of the possible conclusions. Now all four of these conclusions I think are acceptable, but no matter which one you accept, you're still at the end of the day left with a sort of methodological naturalism. And in terms of explanations of reality, I think you still, regardless of which four you accept, you'd have to accept that naturalism provides a better explanation. Or maybe even that naturalism has produced a bigger body of knowledge or a more secure body of knowledge or has been more fruitful in terms of the technologies and research that has come from it. And that's it. Thank you very much for that opening, Michael. We are going to kick it over to Stuart now for his opening as well. I want to let you know though, folks, if it's your first time here at Modern Day Debate, we are a neutral platform hosting debates on science, religion and politics. We hope you feel welcome no matter what walk of life you are from. And don't forget to hit that subscribe button. As for example, we have many more juicy debates to come. For example, at the bottom right of your screen, whether or not liberalism requires the domination of Islam is a juicy debate that's going to be at our in-person conference. Next month, you don't want to miss it. So hit that subscribe button for juicy debates like that one. And thanks so much, Stuart. The floor is all yours for your opening as well. Thank you, James, for another healthy debate. And Michael, great to meet you and have this first time debate with you. So it's a great question because I like this one more than just, is there a God? Yes or no? I like bringing in, it sounds more like a worldview, even though you did talk about atheism and simply positing either, obviously, some form. It's interesting that you kind of said there's no room for the Christian God, perhaps, but there is potentially room for another type of God. I've never heard an atheist say that to me, at least on this channel. I've actually maybe never heard an atheist say that. So what I like about you saying that is 150 years ago, you could say there was probably way less of a type of cross-pressure. The philosopher Charles Taylor talks about that when it comes to belief in God. 150 years ago, there was no heterogeneity. It was homogenous. You were either believed there was a God or you didn't. But now there's a lot more spillover. So kind of what you were talking about where you can hopefully question your own worldview, which is whether it's secularism or humanism or hedonism connected, perhaps, materialism, naturalism connected to atheism or Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism. So any number of things. But I hope, I hope, and I find so many different atheists all the time, whether it's online, whether it's in person, different universities. So many atheists and fundamentals Christians never doubt their own beliefs or their own what they think is proof, which most likely is not proof. And that is tremendously frustrating for me. So it's very incredibly refreshing to hear you say exactly what you said, where you do have conviction. And at the same time, you did leave room for doubt. And I think that's what an honest truth seeker is somebody who leaves room for doubt. So I encourage atheists and theists to do the same kind of thing. Okay, so back to the title of the debate, which I like. What makes sense of reality more? And it was Christianity and atheism rather than theists, you know, some type of theism versus atheism. What I'll do is I'll, I'll kind of go with theism as well as Christianity. And so don't get the two confused. I obviously believe in the Christian God. So they're one in the same. But for me, it comes down to the reason why reality when it comes to the Christian God and Christianity is, it makes way more sense to me than a type of secularism or just a worldview that is imbibed infused with atheism. It's because you can break it down into many different categories. The three I typically like to break them down into. And then what I do is I give different sub points under these points is the emotional, intellectual and cultural side of things. And so if you look at, for example, the emotional, when it comes to meaning, you go to the early existentialists, nihilists, who talked frequently, you know, where's Camus, Sartre, so many, Nietzsche, they would make statements like if there is no God, then the only question that modern man has to ask himself is why not kill himself? And if you draw that really out, then you could say, yeah, there's a point to that in terms of there, there really isn't any objective meaning. And all that we do here on this planet is ultimately going to be for naught. That's why you have a guy like Leo Tolstoy, who when he was at the very apex of his career, considered the most gifted author in the world at that point, Russian. He completely had an emotional breakdown because he started to realize, wow, my life has no meaning despite all this success and worldly fame. And it's up for debate whether he became a Christian. I know Dostoevsky did, not sure about Tolstoy potentially. Either way, though, that is if there is no God, total breakdown of meaning. Yes, you can still make up your own meaning. I'm going to find my meaning in being an altruist or I'm going to find my meaning in being like a good dad. So I think in terms of it being durable, in terms of it not crushing you, in terms of it being consistent with there's not just going to be a heat death of this place and all that we've ever accomplished is just going to go up in smokes. It's like when Steve Jobs talked about how even though he was an atheist, we're not sure how he died, what his worldview was.  Which he was communicating supposedly just this total shock and just misunderstanding of what life really was. But before he said that, he talked about it's so hard to think that all meaning and purpose to all my relationships, but especially my work and all the experience I accumulated is just going to go away with the click of the mouse. And in reference to obviously click of his life. So you can see this played out and I think so many people who don't believe in God and don't believe in some type of eternity really try and deny and entertain themselves to death like Neil Posman talked about in order to not have to deal with the meaning question. As opposed to if there's a God, then you truly do your all your work has meaning in it, and it will be fulfilled. Whatever work is actually spoiled. Leaf by Niggle is a great, great short story by C.S. Lewis that talks about this type of frustration here on earth where we can't finish things and there's unfinished relationships and everything in us wants to finish things. And that's what heavens ultimately going to be. We're going to be bought back. There's going to be perfect relationships like Jonathan Edwards talked about it's like a clogged pipe here on earth that that pipe will officially be unclogged in heaven relationships will be perfect. Everything about me even judgment day.  Unfortunately a lot of people are fighting it. But think about all those abused. I've been to safe homes and Costa Rica and elsewhere.  Think about how many of their perpetrators are just going to get away with it. If there is no judgment day, no heaven, no God, they're going to get away with it and just tough tough luck. And I've talked to some of the top atheists and they've and they they stutter over that one. They're like, I know it stinks and they just they stop there. There is no answer for it because they don't want to just say, yep, that's how reality is even though they know that. All right, then next would be identity. I find so many people in my area who go into New York City. There's millionaires. There's some billionaires around here and they're living for wealth. And typically most of them are crushing their families and there's a type of child sacrifice that goes on, which is I never see my kids my kids, kids barely even know who I am. And identity and I'm not saying that they can't be Christian as well.  And if say if it is your kids within all of a sudden you're putting so much crushing weight on your kids to get into a certain school or something that you're going to destroy them or say it is wealth and money. Well, all of a sudden that's how they're going to leave you tremendously lonely or later on turn oftentimes what I see is tremendously wealthy people will lose a good amount and they'll turn to alcoholism or something worse like opioids. And so every single good psychologist talked about a God shaped hole and what are you going to fill it with? Well, I think God makes the most sense in terms of if you want to have a healthy identity and then freedom. Secularism eats up committed love relationships. It's like, but what do you mean by that? And I'm just saying again, you talked about naturalism. I would say secularism is connected to atheism, but maybe you wouldn't call yourself a secularist. But I would still say in our culture today, which is called secular by many, despite the spread of Christianity, I would still say that there's negative and positive freedom. And negative freedom is I don't want any type of restrictions. And that's why atheists on average now are having 1.4. I believe kids. And that's why the there is such a staggering increase in divorce, because negative freedom is I want my options always open versus if there is a God specifically the Christian God. All of that is about covenant and commitment that God made to us in Genesis through the Old Testament, through the New Testament in a different kind of way. And you're supposed to remain committed to God because God is always committed to you. You're supposed to disadvantage yourself for your spouse. And you're supposed to always be trying to make your spouse better and then always remain committed to your spouse. And then obviously in Genesis, there's be fruitful multiply. It's not saying you're a sinner if you don't have kids, but it is the encouragement to have kids. So the individualistic view is connected to atheism, typically. And the individualistic view is eating up our country in a pretty bad way. And I don't think it I don't think it jives with what we experience as reality, what we want all want reality to be. Then there's the intellectual side. You know, there's something rather than nothing. That's that's an issue for an atheist to deal with or moral obligation. You know, I love how Arthur left this. This great writer talked about how if there's, you know, no divine law, there's no God behind law, then there's no way to differentiate on how to make laws. It would just be your opinion versus my opinion. And we just shouted each other and you could take the Nuremberg trials as a perfect case and point of that before Justice Davis talked about, no, there is a God above culture.  Even though they said they were just following orders from the higher ups, ultimately from Hitler. And then there's the cultural. Okay, what where's the case for justice? And we talk about justice all the time these days. Where's the case for forgiveness? Because I see in so many different movements today, it's all about justice, justice, justice, but cancel culture. Let's go ahead. You know, that person messed up. Let's not forgive them. Christianity is all about justice and forgiveness and grace. And so many times, many examples, the Amish do it best. The Black Church does it best. I would say the Amish and the Black Church are the best examples, especially in the last few hundred years of how to show grace when you are treated tremendously and tremendously unjust kind of way. And so you need those two. I think every human heart, every human, if they're honest to themselves, wants both of those. They want justice. They want the perpetrator to ultimately be dealt with. But at the same time, they want to be forgiven when they mess up. And then the Christian story explains the trash and future glory redemption that we all have. I think we all want this too. The vast majority of movies and stories point to trash, some type of big mess up and brokenness, and then a savior, some type of messianic figure, and then a future glory. And I believe just about all those are obviously myths and fiction pointing to the greatest myth that is reality, which is Christ. And so I think that explains reality the most as that proves there is a God or anything like that. No. Thirty seconds left. And then finally, finally, I still think that every single claim is an exclusive claim that anybody makes, even if it's they're all gods of the same. The question is, what is going to be the most exclusive, inclusive claim that is going to be the reality that that really works as a worldview? I believe that's Christianity. You got it. And want to say thanks so much, Stuart, for that opening and reminder folks that our guests are linked in the description as well as mind your friends. If you didn't know, modern day debate is having our first ever conference January 15 and 16 in Dallas, Texas. You don't want to miss it, folks. I am putting the link for the in person tickets in the live chat right now. I've already put it in the description box and we're extending the early bird pricing for the tickets as I reached out to Bob today. I said, let's just extend it because we do really want you to be able to get these early bird tickets because we're actually going to ask the speakers to promote this on their channel as well. And at that point, we're not going to have the early bird pricing. And so we do want to say, hey, jump in on it right now. That way you can get that early bird pricing as it is a great deal right now. It is a stacked conference. But with that, we're going to jump into the open conversation. Thanks so much, gentlemen. The floor is all yours for that open dialogue. All right. You mind if I start us off with a quick clarification, Stuart? Absolutely. Okay. So I was just going to clarify. I didn't mean to suggest that I didn't think there was room for the Christian God specifically. I just didn't want to assume any theological beliefs that you might have. So I don't know what branch of Christianity you come from. So I would just say that naturalism limits God's interaction with the world in certain ways. And I didn't know where you fall on that spectrum. So I didn't want to make assumptions there. No, definitely. So the philosophy of naturalism, which you were right to say, certainly assumes that there is no God. You know, macroevolution, all those fall underneath it. And so that's why I love, though, that it was interesting that you talked about the possibility for a God within. You didn't call it the philosophy of naturalism, but you just talked about naturalism. You would do a better job splicing the two for me. But no, thanks for clarifying that. I saw on your board, which I liked. You talked about, I saw it there somewhere, new creationism, young Earth. I am not a young Earther. Fair enough. Earth is 6,000 years old. So maybe you were headed in that direction. I don't know. No, no, no. And I don't, again, I'm not trying to get super technical, but I think it depends upon, it would depend upon your view of divine intervention and the ways in which you believe that God does or does not interact with the physical universe, whether or not the sort of naturalism that I'm advocating for would limit the role slash action of God. I mean, you could get, you get people who take the position, and I could get a little bit into this if you want me to divide it up. But some people would say, well, you know, God's, God's actions are synonymous with natural law, in which case my understanding of naturalism does not say anything or disprove anything about that. It is what it is.  And I don't, you know, Christians can be pantheists. We don't have to go there. But, or you could say that, you know, God's actions are just completely ineffable. They're beyond human understanding. Again, in which case my understanding of naturalism would have nothing to say about that sort of God. So just as a clarification. Gotcha. Totally random question. It was connected with one of the points I made. Do you think racism is wrong? Yes. Why would you say, Michael, from your... You might have a connection issue. If it's probably not just me, Stuart might have froze. So I might have to give him... Yeah, I can't hear you. You're saying you can't hear me? No, I can't hear Stuart. Oh, okay. I think if you're able to go back just about 20 seconds, Stuart, we missed you for the last maybe, maybe more like 10 seconds. Unfortunately, I stopped talking there, James, because I stopped talking. So I went silent. But I was just saying that... Gosh, now I can't remember where I was.  What was my point? It was on racism. But I think I had just asked you... Oh, yeah, yeah. In terms of... As a naturalist, why do you... Especially with science, just 100 years ago, we were doing... Whether it was tests on different races. I mean, we don't even have to get into euthanasia and different forms of abortion. But how about just the scientific tests on different races that were going on just 100 years ago, especially as a naturalist? How do you go about saying, you know, I am definitely against racism in a very serious way. I believe in quality for all. How does that make most sense of reality from that perspective than, say, the Christian worldview? Yeah, that's a good question. So science has a lot of skeletons in its closet, for sure. I absolutely love the history of science. So to bolster what you're saying there, I mean, you have the neo-Darwinians of the late 19th century who believed that Darwin's idea of natural selection led to kind of a hierarchical view of humanity. Of course, the people who were arguing that were European scientists and, of course, they said that the Europeans were the top of the hierarchy. You have a whole laundry list of the 20th century of highly, highly unethical experiments that were carried out on minority groups. The Tuskegee experiment comes to mind. Yeah, so I get that. Stuart, I would... So I don't think that science is the only body of knowledge that describes reality. So I'm a philosophy teacher, and on a regular basis I teach ethics. Ethics is a description of a certain part of reality, and that's the part of reality that we all share together, and it asks questions about how we're supposed to live and interact with each other. And there are multiple... Give a quick distinction. You have what's called meta-ethical theories, which are these big grand theories of ethics, such as deontology, utilitarianism, virtue ethics, rights-based ethics. There's a whole lot of them. Anne Rand's Objectivist Ethics. None of which rely upon appeals to divine authority. So that's how I would address issues of systematic racism. I think you have to... It does depend on your understanding of ethics. I think it also depends on your understanding of politics, economics, even down to like city planning, all that good stuff. So it's a very... I'd have to give a very complicated nuance answer that involved other bodies of knowledge. But even in ethics, going back to ethics and even in these big meta-ethical theories, these theories don't assume naturalism because philosophy doesn't argue in the same way that science argues. But regardless, there is a sort of pseudo-naturalistic methodology in the sense that to support your philosophical argument, you're appealing to commonly shared evidence and not to a divine being to justify your claims. See, I would agree with all of that because I think there's ethical systems out there that certainly absolutely eradicate any understanding of God and do just fine. But I would still say that the intellectual resource underneath them is typically just not even present because I would say I'm not a racist because I'm a Christian. If I wasn't a Christian, I would say I'd have a tough time pulling up intellectual resources that are clear to explain why I wouldn't be a racist. I think I certainly would hope I would still not be a racist even if I wasn't a Christian. All of, at least, all I can think of my non-Christian friends are definitely not racist. So it's not... When Dostoevsky talks about you remove God and man can do whatever he wants, obviously Dostoevsky was not saying that non-Christians are somehow just going to live way more debauched lifestyles than Christians are. He was more so getting at the intellectual resources underneath these claims that people were making. And so for me, if I don't have Christianity, then my tribe has more power than others and I'm going to cling to my tribe because I need power. I don't just want power, but I need it to survive and I need it for my kids to do better. And so why would I fight against something like racism and why not occasionally would I live in a racist sort of way in order just to better myself? That would just make sense at times. And then because another way we see it today is conversations so quickly go into outrage over things like racism. And that's because there's no grounding. There's really no grounding for why racism is wrong.  And if you challenge that in any kind of way, all I can do is shout at you because I don't have any grounding or intellectual resource to really challenge you. But I can shout at you and just tell you you're wrong and everybody knows that you're wrong. Come on. Come on, Michael. Everybody knows. I mean, we're in the great U.S. of A. Hello. Everybody knows racism is wrong. We don't really know why it's wrong, but we know racism is wrong. And so it's just that quick movement towards outrage and it's around things like racism and around things like sexuality. And I think it's, again, if there's... If we don't want... If we want this kingdom that we live in without a king, you're going to have problems like this. I mean, it's kind of like a playground without a teacher. You know, whoever rules in the playground is going to be the loudest, the strongest, like ultimately just the bully. And that's who's going to win out. That's who's going to define things. That's who's going to try and make sense of things, struggle doing it. So what we see is, you know, the victim should be protected, but now it seems like there's this race to the bottom to see who is the victim.  And I find that in this tribe, even if it is an oppressed people group. So I think for me, if you were to push me, though, and say, okay, fine, well, why is racism wrong, then? Why do you think your Christianity is the reason why you're not an atheist? I would say it goes firstly back to Genesis chapter one. Every single human being is created in the image of God. And if God created the entire cosmos, certainly all human beings, and we're created in this image, we have no right to ever treat another race as somehow less than ours. And it's not all just about power plays and whoever's on top. Now, have Christians absolutely made huge mistakes? Like you talked about the skeletons in the science closet. There's absolutely tons of skeletons in Christianity's closet. And I mean, every single major civilization has had slavery, right, since the beginning of time. But Christianity in particular, isn't that the issue is absolutely there? But again, you look at the very center of it. In many ways, Jesus was a slave. He was absolutely a servant of all, but many would even call him a slave. You know, servant, doulos and slave are actually, if you go back to the Hebrew, they're very similar in definition. And he always talked about whether it was Paul, talking about Philemon and Onesimus, you run away slave, allow him to go free, accept him back as a brother. Even during the Civil War, the Civil War is a theological crisis by Mark Knoll. He talks about how it wasn't people sitting down with their Bibles and like praying and meditating over Scripture and saying, ah, no, seeing the Old Testament is clear. There are, Ishmael was clearly somebody who was black and we need to rule over the black people. No, it was always over power plays. It was always over money, you know, nationalism of sorts. And so Scripture, if you get into it, if you see that everything is about actually uplifting the other, if it's about dying for your enemy, even when they're crucifying you, that gives you a resource to actually go about treating everybody equally. Yeah. I mean, so I see where you're coming from there. I mean, I think Christian ethics, I get the logic there, but I don't really. So you said that you don't think that these other ethical systems don't have. I can't remember the phrase that you use. They don't have something undergirding them. Actual, like a good intellectual resource underneath them. Yeah, premise and conclusion. Okay, so, I mean, so racism would be a good example. I mean, I think that through, if I was going to talk about institutionalized racism in the United States, for example, I can make a good historical case for the origins of racism, going back to American slavery, how American slavery was racialized, how American slavery, the legal process that went into subjugating an entire group of people. And I could show how those legal processes were harmful to African Americans historically by appealing to common evidence, like the laws that were passed. You could talk about the rates of poverty that haunted these groups long after slavery was abolished. I mean, there's all sorts of evidence that I think I could point to and say, yeah, I mean, regardless of your ethical system, this is bad. But why is it bad?  We could measure the badness by, we could talk about the economic impact on the group of people, how it negatively affected them. We could talk about the social impact, how it socially isolated them, made them feel like a people set apart. We could talk about, I mean, if we could even talk about the spiritual impact that it had upon them as psychologically speaking as a marginalized group. I mean, I think there's a couple of different angles you could go to to demonstrate that. But if we were to serve them, we'd be, you know, we were here first, whoever the we, I might be referring to. And if we were to serve them just for the sake of we feel like it's harmful to be racist. Okay, there's a couple problems with that. And first of all, just why do that? I mean, we were here first. We need to serve our own to what is harm and why would that ultimately matter? I mean, we harm people in different ways, whether it's say through pornography, because we know pornography is directly connected to the sex trade. We know many of those who are in the porn industry themselves are being abused. We know via Billie Eilish recently that mental health is horribly connected and tied to pornography. So there's harm in all sorts of things. And yet we consider pornography as not bad. And so I think with racism, it's sort of like, again, there is no grounding from the atheistic position for why it's that bad, especially if you look at naturalism and how we grew up strong eating the weak.  I could even go to the extent of saying that's being selfish of an atheist because you're actually depleting your own resources and not looking after your own. Rather, you're somehow just looking out for a race that's other than you who isn't even connected to your tribe. Yeah, I'm not. I don't think naturalism has anything to say about ethics. And I don't know if I could really defend the position that people like Sam Harris would take that would say that ethical principles are derivable from scientific laws. I don't personally don't get that connection. For me, I would talk about ethics within the context of society, the kind of social contract theory, the sort of rules and regulations that we need and all that we all need in order to exist peacefully with each other. Again, the basis for that evidence I think would be there's a lot of different appeals that you can make. Again, you could talk about it in terms of economics in terms of the ways in which certain political policies have affected certain people. You could talk about it the no harm principle of utilitarianism, whether or not these policies are harmful physically harmful emotionally harmful to people. I just don't see the need to further underlie that with some other sort of support and the philosophy conferences that I've been to and if you pick up an introduction to ethics, I mean it's going to talk about divine command theory. Because historically that's been a prominent ethical theory, but these big meta ethical theories don't need divine command theory or don't appeal to it in their explanations. Sure, but so you would, did you used to be a Christian? I did, yeah. So, did you get an idea that the oppressed were supposed to be looked after the original humanist humanistic atheists. Obviously they weren't atheists but humanism has been stolen by atheists and secularists as their own but the original humanists were Christians, just like the original progressives were Christians because progressivism meant you're progressing in a certain direction and ultimately Christians call themselves progressives, or at least a large portion of them did, because you're going towards eternal life. And so humanistic values, many that I'm sure you would espouse, these are the types of things again, even Friedrich Nietzsche would say, you have to be a Christian if you're really going to live them out. Because the grounding that you're talking about, I still see you talking about ethical systems and some of those being like as long as you're not harming somebody else.  Okay, maybe, but still why wouldn't we go about why is that more what we've evolved to that position rather than simply the strong eat the weak. Why, if we're living in an atheistic universe, why do that when you can get away with something else and just, you know, be the selfish naive and be a freeloader? Why wouldn't you be a freeloader in a godless universe? That doesn't really make sense to me. And so there's all these questions. You are putting back good points in terms of these systems where you don't need God and I'd agree with that. But again, my position is not trying to prove God. It's just trying to show a piece of reality that clearly, at least from my perspective, is way it makes more sense. And it motivates you to go after people of different races in very different ways than perhaps other systems.  And again, you can you can find ways to try and philosophize and hopefully get out from underneath it one of them being, you know, well we want everybody to be comfortable and no harm. Okay, but, but why disadvantage yourself from strictly a naturalistic theory of things, and go after and help those who are really hurting, especially if you're going to lose resources, or perhaps even lose physical comfort or enter physical pain.  Thurman I can't remember her actresses name.  And he makes that act. And it doesn't really line up with what seems to be his theory and philosophy of life. And you know what the movie is highlighting is we will go to those extents now the question is why. And I believe in a godless universe, you have a tough time explaining that a real tough time explaining that, as opposed to a universe where there is God, especially Christian God. Yeah, might be at a little bit of an end pass here because I'm not really sure what quite needs explanation there. I mean if we if we look at it in terms of a concrete problem like how to best address the effects that systematic racism has had on the US economy and society. And if we're looking at a particular marginalized groups or right now I'm staying for example in Milwaukee and if we ask the question, how do we best. How do we best help the impoverished people in the marginalized people here in the city of Milwaukee? The answer to that question. Most likely from a political standpoint. We have separation of church and state as well but it's not going to involve an appeal to a divine authority. And I don't not that that somehow disproves divine authority. I'm not saying any of that I'm just saying that it's not necessary in these explanations. Whether it's a scientific explanation or I'm not really comfortable talking about political explanations because politics is not my cup of tea. But or in philosophical explanations and ethical explanations. You just don't really see that. And I don't. I'm not sure of too many philosophers who would believe that it that sort of explanation is necessary to begin with. Totally agree. I agree with 110% of what you just said. But you started off with saying how and I'm not asking about the how I'm asking the why. So why are they doing these things and they all have different answers and that gets back to my original point of it's just a mountain.  And all of a sudden there's tremendous confusion. And so that's the point I'm making and then so again it's not the how it's the why. And if the why is not there we can still go about doing it and just not really talk about maybe this will help. This woman named Becky Pipper was auditing this Harvard class she's an author. She talked about how she was sitting in one of these Harvard classes and this psychologist professor brought up a case study, which is the young girl was very distance from her dad things ended poorly with him. And basically the psychology professor was saying okay how can we get about helping her in her anger. Becky raised her hand in the back of class and said, Well wait a second what about forgiveness like can't they reconcile can they forgive and reconcile. And the psychology professor laughed and said whoa whoa whoa. Religion Christianity class is down the hall on your right, because there's no place for Christianity in this kind of area in terms of the why we have the how. But why like why would you forgive and why even talk about that. And so I you know, going historically for example, you look you look deeply into into other times and places. And you have so 18th century enlightenment and through the 1800s to when the when enlightenment hit a lot of Christian ideals came out of the enlightenment and a lot of Christians actually a lot of people don't realize this but they actually really influenced the light in a healthy way, but something that was very atheistic that came out. It was humanistic was the thinking that we are all good and great and perfect human beings. And that's, that's the reason why that's hilarious to me is first of all we just know that's not true. But secondly, because we worldwide but especially Westerners. So whether it's in us in the US or those in Europe have been trying. For example, there was one of these ladies with the head was the head of the welfare system in England for 30 years, and she said, I thought education and technology, just like your Milwaukee example. That's the how right. We were able to do things and improve certain situations, but the biggest issue upon retiring was why do them. And then also how what how is there going to be sustainable change in order to preserve human life and social systems. And she said it all comes down to the human heart. And I think any honest psychologist sociologist any honest person would say like souls and eats and talked about Martin Martin Luther King Junior talked about the line of good and evil goes through every single human heart. Now, what are you going to do about it? And how do we know that? Why do we know that? And it's all based off the the theistic understanding of the world, which is we know that we are a mix like Paul talked about in Romans chapter seven of good and evil, even Paul said that about himself. And so we have to figure out what world you fix that. And so this is connected to our some of its loosely connected to what we were talking about in the sense of the why, like why, why not be a racist? Why preserve certain people's lives, especially if they're taxing society in some type of way? Why not follow certain Eastern European countries right now and saying let's make sure we abort every single Down syndrome kid? Like why not? Why not go back to the Roman Empire before Christianity really began to spread? And say we agree that all of the girls should be just thrown out on a on a garbage heap. And it was then the Christians that came and saved all those girls lives. That's why Christian Church was up to two thirds women after about 100 years. So it's the why, like, like why do this? And I, I, I so appreciate atheists humanists who say let's do it and they'll go with tremendous conviction and do it. Why? Like, why do it? And I think in certain situations, some some have good reasons, but definitely not great reasons, especially, especially compared to what Christianity says. Again, I think I see where you're coming from might want to pivot away from ethics because I mean, so I don't necessarily think most people need a why. And I think your presentation of history would suggest that, you know, it's because of Christian ethics that some of these things such as the example of the women that you gave took place. And there's a lot of historical questions I'd want to ask there. I'm not sure that that would be worth or fun to listen to. I do want to address some of the other things that you claimed if you if you're okay with moving away. I mean, we could keep talking about that if you want to. No, no, I was done with that. Yeah. Okay. It's a very relevant topic right now. That's kind of part of the reason I went there. I mean, yeah. So you claim that Christianity makes sense of reality. Makes more sense of reality. And tell me if I got this right. Emotional intellectual, culturally. Yes. So I want to return for a second if you don't mind to explanation. So when I when I hear reality, my mind goes straight to physical reality, maybe because of my naturalistic tendencies. But what would you say about that? Do you think that create Christianity offers some sort of explanation of physical reality or aspects of physical reality? We can start there guys. Yeah, the reason why I brought up. Intellectual emotional cultural is because I think you're an atheist, not just because the intellectual, a lot of atheists think that they're atheists just because they intellectual. I think we have way more biases than we realize. So do I have to check my biases, for example, that I am, you know, I'm a pastor's kid. Actually, statistically, I should not be a Christian. I should be an atheist. You know, there's the reputation perceives itself in terms of and the stereotype rather of all, you know, pastor's kids are typically non Christians. And that's for a number. I know all the reasons, but we won't get into them. They're interesting. So I would say that to your to your question on those three areas. I know you're talking about physical. But so emotionally, you and I are both biased, culturally, you and I are both biased. Like, white Westerners now are usually atheists, at least a large portion of them. There's still a huge portion of Christians. And because of immigration, there's many different religions coming in. But the question just simply doubting, doubting God that you're stuck in a cultural moment right now and a given location, right? Majority of places in the world, you would not be asking this question. And you wouldn't be an atheist. Like atheists make up, like, what, 8% of the world, 16% of the U.S. I and that's only decreasing because of fertility and other reasons. But so there's the cultural, emotional and us in the West always atheists always just want to go with the physical intellectual. But I'm saying that that's not it's not fair to reality. It's not fair to one's position, one's worldview. And so that's that's why I go there. So so when you say physical, so I can answer your question a little better. tease that out a little bit more for me. Yeah, so I would even include the emotional in the physical description because I think, you know, I think psychology is a science that assumes methodological naturalism. So explanations of mental phenomena explanations of emotional states, all of those I think fall under the peer view of naturalism. So in that regard, I guess, and let's stick with the emotional then. How would Christianity explain. I'm going to assume and feel free to disagree here but I think if you walk into a psych 1101 class in your closest college. It's not going to be taught from a Christian perspective that it's going to assume a sort of methodological naturalism. So how would Christianity. I guess my question is how would Christianity explain the emotional better than modern psychology would. Great question. So one of my closer friends, he's also kind of my mentor. He he has been in leadership at two of the top site facilities in the world actually that are in the US McLean in Boston, and then here in New Canaan Silver Hill. And he says to me that the Bible is the best psychology book known to man ever written hands down. And if you look into the Psalms, if you look into Proverbs, if you look into a lot of what Paul talks about, you go deep. And it's so true because it does take into effect and real consideration. Psychology issues come up because of physical reasons, social reasons, relational reasons, intellectual reasons, spiritual reasons. And most by and centered therapeutic textbooks you'll find are only going to take one, literally one peg out of that wheel. When the Bible takes an incredibly comprehensive look at the field of psychology and mental health, that is so much more nuanced than any type of modern day psychological textbook. It's scary. So that's the first. The second would be Irvin Yalom is the atheistic psychologist who I look up to the most.  And yet I find it hilarious when he tries to tackle existential issues to bring about better mental health for folks. Because if there is no God, you he keeps running up against things. It's like ultimate meaning, suffering, suffering that you can go with suffering in a way that won't strip you of meaning. See, the Christian perspective suffering can actually add to meaning. That's true of other religions too. But atheists, there is no way that's that suffering can somehow add to meaning that that's why it's dangerous for us to become more of a secular age here in the US. Because sociologists and psychologists will say that atheism has the least amount of resources to deal with suffering out of any other call it philosophy or worldview in the history of mankind. And if you really think out the implications that that makes sense and and a lot of atheists will actually say that I've debated one. But Jeannie out there in in London who wrote the Oxford intro to atheism, he actually admits that himself. But so those are two areas I could, Michael, I could talk about this forever because I have a master's in mental health and then a master's in divinity. And so I did the integration. So I don't want to bore you with more. But those are two in terms of the Bible is the best psychological textbook fits humankind unlike any other. And then to the Bible answers all those questions of meaning, hope, purpose, identity that brings about emotional and relational well being unlike any other type of textbook or or worldview could. So I think this would be a really awesome conversation to have with you maybe in the future. I think this is a really interesting area and I will say that in terms of therapeutic psychology in terms of psychotherapy, the spiritual health of the client, I think is becoming more and more of a thing that people take into consideration. So I agree there. I guess what I was referring to and I'm sorry, the history teacher in me would want to say to push back on the Bible is the best psychology book. I would say that that's a historical anachronism that. Boy, I wasn't saying that's historical. My buddy said that. I did say sociologists who are secular and atheist and one that I talked to who's who's also a best he's written bestsellers have said to me what I said historically about atheism, giving the least amount of resources and dealing with suffering. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, in terms of psychotherapy, I think if the patient is a believer, regardless of what belief system they hold, I think it's, you know, therapists will appeal to that belief system in order to help them work through some things. But in terms of like. So yes, I grant you that. But in terms of like neuropsychology in terms of, you know, psychological diagnostic manual in terms of. I guess the more brain focused part of psychology, I don't really see how Christianity or any sort of supernatural explanations come into play there. In terms of things like consciousness. We can use consciousness if you want to. I think that's the can of worms. Um, you know, let's say that. Let's talk about. We could talk about emotional states. We could talk about mental disorders. We could talk about. Memory processing in the brain. Whatever. Yeah, simply trusting your memories from a physical point of view. I mean, me actually trusting my memories that you and I actually even started this debate. Say one hour ago. Trusting my memories takes a rational mind, and I believe you only get a rational mind from a rational being. You don't just get it by a blind unguided process called evolution. I believe in evolution. I don't believe in philosophical naturalism that takes evolution to such an extent that there is no God and there is no supernatural piece to things. And so that would be one in terms of kind of just trusting your memory. Things connected to stuff like consciousness reflection on a rose. I can look at a rose and reflect that I'm looking at a rose reflect that I'm reflecting on looking at a rose and go on ad infinitum. And that's a huge part of consciousness that we know if there is no God you have a tough time with just like having these discussions. Things like meaning and purpose seeking after truth. How do you get seeking after truth from a philosophical naturalistic atheistic perspective. It doesn't fit with evolution. Evolution is all about strong eat the week just survive proliferate your species. There's nothing about actually having these debates that we're having and that also is directly connected to like why would you ultimately trust your mind. If it's simply a highly evolved monkey's mind that that even Darwin struggled with Darwin actually really struggled with that one. And so, and then that gets back to the other piece of the brain and the mind of love, you know a lot of atheists all debate especially on college campuses. This is becoming and it scares me it really scares me. More and more. And I guess as a naturalistic atheist that you may take this point of view I think you may have to actually. It's a form of determinism. So try and get out from underneath their determinism by forming a type of hybrid free will deterministic thinking. But then they're just going to say love is, you know, oxytocin the color chemical it's endorphins it's all these different types of things. And so you just connect all of these perfectly. And then you have this evolutionary sense of wanting to mate with this specific being. And now here you have that's love and love is nothing more it's not really connected in this ephemeral kind of way it's not it's not this type of existence in and of itself. It's not anything other than just firing neurons. And I think nobody's heart would tell them that there are some brains that you have to detach from hearts. That would say, hey, you know what, I think this is just really how it is. But no, we know that there's a greater reality to love than simply our endorphins and oxytocin levels. Wouldn't you say. Yeah. Sorry, I was trying to. I threw a lot at you. We went from consciousness to love and I'm still trying to think about the question. Your question was more alongside of the line of love. I thought your original one with the motions and the brain and because love is the one that's most often connected. But consciousness is to love consciousness. Beauty are typically all three that I get kind of at once when it comes to the brain. I got a met steward. I didn't really expect the debate to go this route. So I have a great answer here. I mean, I am a physicalist when it comes to consciousness. I think consciousness is ultimately reducible to the brain. Not that that demeans consciousness in any way. I think it's still the most profound mystery of the human experience. I mean, it's mind boggling, right? No pun intended, but so and something like love, though. Well, there's a lot you said, okay. Yeah, so I'll just stick with love for the time being. Yeah, it is a there are neurochemicals related to being in love. I mean, I don't know if that's really arguable. We can put your brain under a MRI and look at the chemicals going around to and say, oh yeah, he's it's hitting this part of this part of this part. He's romantically interested in this person, whatever. But and this goes to some some one of the things that you said before, and I don't think that we are not necessarily reducible to our biology. Humans have. And this is more of a philosophical observation, but in many respects humans have overcome our biological limitations. And in many respects, we're not beholden to pure biology. That's, to me, in ethics, that's where that that's where ethics comes in. I'm sorry, was somebody about to say something. No. Okay. Yeah. Ethics is not reducible to biology ethics is greater than biology because we have the ability to act against our basic biological inclinations.  That's wrong. I can't do that. I'm going to live in society. So yeah, for me, it's the same with love. Is love a result of a biological process? Yes. But I'm not a reductionist in that sense. I think you also have to take culture. You have to take socio economic status. You have to take your historical location. I mean, there's a lot of a lot of things that influence our ideas and understandings of love. Okay. Can I ask one?  I'll ask them why they lost their faith. If you're comfortable, I'd love to ask you just after this point, because that might help us also to finish off on one topic. But I think it's just interesting, though, because I agree with everything you said. I think when push comes to shove, though, somebody who is exiting this world or somebody who goes through a painful divorce, typically they're going to say love is a lot more than just the biological and all those other compartments that you mentioned. There's something greater than that. And it supersedes those categories, just like sacrifice, which is connected to love. And so for me to go home tonight and say to my wife, hey, hey, you great looking thing, you know, what we got going is just oxytocin and our cultural moment here and location. It's like, OK, well, so what's going to be the motivator for me then? Is it just going to be what are we going to compare ourselves to dolphins and say we don't go and meet with others just because dolphins don't and we're similar in kind? And it's from an evolutionary perspective. That's why we remain committed to each other. Now, again, I think there's more to that, too. I think yes, free will comes into play and we decide to sacrifice. And that's what I was getting at in terms of the negative versus positive freedom. Positive freedom is deciding.  So I am I'm getting rid of certain freedoms in order to gain a larger freedom than I want. And that's what we see from the Christian point of view, which is like you just said, you are eliminating certain things that go against our nature. Now, the question is, why are you eliminating them? But I think you just again, especially when it comes to committed relationships, especially when it comes to marriages, Christian reality makes way more sense than secularism and studies. All the studies show that, too, in terms of why to remain committed. Why not to just cheat on your spouse? Because a secularist could come up with reasons not to, but ultimately the question is, why though? And what's going to keep you from not doing that? Just like what's going to keep you from not stealing the SAT scores? Like, why not be a freeloader if there's no God? Like, why? I mean, yes, you want to be a good person, maybe social contract theory, maybe all say, hey, huddle up, let's not do this. Okay, so it's for the betterment of us all. Okay. Is that really going to be better than if I make a commitment to God and say there are things like Judgment Day and know that the motive is going to be a lot stronger. And that's why I think that's another piece to it. Yeah, I think we've circled back around to our ethics conversation. Tell me, tell me if you wouldn't mind, Michael, why are you not a Christian anymore? Oh boy. You know, I'm not really quite sure how to best put this into words. I mean, I've always kind of been. Yeah, I've always been a curious person. So my interest in religion, Stuart started when I was younger. I was raised by a single mother. And we lived with my grandparents and I would, you know, get into the psychological here. But I experienced the death of my grandparents, my grandfather, especially who I've viewed as a father, hitting me pretty hard. And we were very poor. So my mother didn't have a lot of medical resources or psychological resources to help with that. And so when I had all these questions about the death of my grandfather, she took me to the local church and I spoke with the local pastor and got a form of a form of counseling. It was Christian counseling and that kind of naturally in my mind associated with I started to associate religion with the answers to these big questions that I had about why certain things happened in my life. And this was further, and this is kind of depressing. So I'm sorry, but this was further exemplified in my early teens with the death of my father is actually what got me interested in the ministry. Thinking about those questions, I was always, I mean, looking back and not to turn this into a Michael therapy session. You know, I had a some mental illness and other stuff related trauma childhood trauma related to that that I was trying to work out the best way that I understood how and for me that came in the form in the in the how I lost my faith. I was always kind of naturally curious though I have a very interesting family dynamic. So I grew up in kind of rule Bible Belt Georgia. However, on my father's side, my grandfather was a Buddhist from Cuba. So kind of always had these kind of two different ideologies in my head, two different worldviews going on. And so I was always kind of curious about spiritual slash religious matters and that in high school, especially in early college got me interested in science interested in the study of philosophy. I was a Christian throughout most of my undergraduate career. I started off as a strong evangelical Christian and then throughout my college time in college kind of slid from that to a more nominal liberal Christian. And to be clear, I have a tremendous amount of respect for what the church did and does, especially in like the types of communities that I grew up in. Oftentimes the only reason why we had food on our table for Thanksgiving and Christmas was because of the church. So hats off. The first car that my mother ever got was from the local pastor. You know, so, you know, we might have our differences but I do think that the church does do good. It also does bad but you know whatever. That's any belief system right. And so I kind of slid from the evangelical flavor of Christianity to more liberal Christianity and then from liberal Christianity. Darwin once in his journal said that the Anglican church was the feathered bed for the falling atheist. So for a more liberal Christianity, I kind of just eventually gave up on the God part and just accepted the social responsibility and social ethics part. So it sounds like a mix between suffering. I answer questions perhaps contained in the suffering connected to wanting to be more of a truth seeker in different ways. And it's interesting because Darwin almost gave up. Well, so in some ways he was like CS Lewis in his journey because Darwin, even though even though people think it was his theories that led him away from Christianity, it was actually suffering. Yeah. That's what he experienced. And he, I doubt he became a Christian but some have speculated that towards the end of his life that he actually started believing in God.  He did at one point he actually said that he thought belief in God and what he was espousing an evolution was actually could go in tandem, could work together. And so I just find that fascinating and I find connected to CS Lewis because CS Lewis said the same sort of thing where he couldn't believe in God because of suffering. But then suffering and evil led him to believe in God, which typically never does for any atheist. But it did for him because he started to say, you know, what's the standard here? Why am I calling evil evil? Why am I saying that? Well, why am I so bothered by this suffering? So, but man, thanks for sharing that with me. It means a lot just to hear that and hear your personal journey. And, you know, I'm not, I don't know if you, if you differentiate between religion and Christianity. Christianity is a religion. But at the same time, often, you know, the majority of people I know, even who come to my church oddly enough, that might surprise you. Get Christianity and religion totally wrong. Because if I sit down with them one-on-one, they'll just say, oh yeah, be a good person, right? Maybe you can throw Jesus in there. It's like, well, even Martin Luther thought that it was always about being a good person and getting on God's good side. But no, it's all about the grace of God sending Christ to live and die for us and that gets back to our sin problem. And that's another piece I was going to share tonight where I think the Christian doctrine of sins sound crazy, but makes sense of the world, makes sense of reality way more so than atheism and secularism does. Definitely humanism. And so kind of just getting back to what you were saying is just, I would certainly hope, and you probably already know this, but it's fascinating that you say what you say because when I've suffered in my life, I've definitely doubted and gotten away from God. And yet it's so fascinating how Christianity is considered the suffering religion.  And so even David, talk about psychology going back to the Psalms, he talks about how death is my greatest friend. He says, get away from me, God, over and over again. And so I think there's moments there where, for me, when I suffer now, it actually draws me to those kind of passages, suffering where I do have an ability to relate. And it's more than just, you know, I was on this atheist YouTube channel not too long ago, and this guy was like, man, it's so cool that you find so much inspiration in your Christianity. But that's all you find, right? It's like great music, right? And I had to explain to him that, no, it's beyond just this like philosophy of life. It's way more so where, no, I think the evidence points to God. The evidence points to actually Jesus having existed. The evidence points to him living, dying and resurrecting. And that's where the explosion of death came from. And so it's not just this type of religiosity. I think religiosity, it's actually many symptoms in the DSM. A lot of mental health disorders are connected to religiosity. I am not religious in that sense whatsoever. So a couple of things to point out, and I'm not trying to nitpick, and I hope this doesn't come off as no-place-game. But yeah, so I spent quite a bit of time studying Darwin. I read through, and I'm not bragging about being a nerd here, but I read through a lot of his primary works and letters. I don't see where he accepted Christianity. I mean, I think you're right in saying that one of the things that led Darwin away from God was suffering, specifically animal suffering, and specifically the sort of suffering that is implied by evolution. So Darwin was willing to accept that you could be a Christian and accept the theory of evolution. I personally don't think there's anything inherently illogical about that. But it does raise some questions about evolution as a brutal, brutal process. And so for Darwin, he couldn't quite reconcile why God would use a process like evolution to create life slash human beings. He has this famous example in his correspondence with Aisha Gray, who was a very prominent Christian slash botanist I think he was in the United States at the time, where Darwin is given, and I can't remember the name of the beetle, but it's the worm. It's the wasp that lays its egg inside of the worm, and the egg eats its way out. Darwin used that as an example, and he says, like, how does that make sense? Right. So you are right there. There's something else. Now I can't remember what it was because I'm thinking about that larva eating its way out of the worm. Don't watch the videos. They're pretty gruesome. What was it? You can respond. I'll try to think of what else I was going to say. I'll just respond to that in saying it's interesting that Darwin went there because you look at Praying Mantises. It's typically the wife that eats the husband in just this really brutal way. You look at so many other examples within the animal kingdom of just total brutality. And yet, why is it that we as human beings, what is this, a higher level of sentience? I don't buy that. It's got to be more than that. Why are we so bothered by it? It's like we either need a lobotomy or we just need to accept it and not be so bothered by it. Why be so bothered by evil too? I think from an atheist's point of view, you can be kind of bothered by evil, but you shouldn't really be that bothered by it. And I think that lends credence to a Christian worldview. And it's kind of confusing to me, again, when I hear this tremendously, tremendously... Okay, so I live 30 minutes down the road from Sandy Hook, where that guy went in and shot up all those kids. And people were trying to get away from the word people because they knew it was a religiously loaded term. And so they'd say things like, oh, really bad. It's like, no, you know that was really evil. Don't run away from the word evil.  You know it was something more than that. Yes, that absolutely came into play, but there's something more. And I had a friend who worked on that case and was interviewed by New York City, you know, it was Fox 5. And he and his secular psychologist friend both said, that's downright evil and we have no explanation for it. We cannot talk about these things in psychological terms, sociological terms, can't talk about his parents, can't talk about any of that. That is pure evil. And they were appealing to a supernatural realm. Both of them, even the secular guy. And so I think Darwin would, it would be interesting to hear what Darwin would have to say about that. And it gets back to, you know, this whole sin issue of good and evil. Any good narrative will show both good and evil. I think every single narrative, whether it's atheism or other philosophies, typically only cling to good or evil. They're never a mix. And if they are a mix, why are they a mix? Again it gets back to the why. And these are pieces that have to be considered.   But most likely they're going to go back to grazing pretty quickly. And so again, that's just another example of many great minds have gone and looked at that and have been very troubled with why are we as humans so bothered by it? Why set up huge nonprofits to fight evil injustice, whether it's from the human realm or from, you know, the animal kingdom. Yeah. And this spills over into getting back to the image of God, we talked about earlier. I have a serious concern. I joke about it usually, but it's actually kind of a serious concern where I see more and more people falling in love with dogs and their studies showing that people would save their dogs over the life of somebody that they wouldn't know. And that, that right there, if there is no God, that's fine. That makes total sense because there's no being created in the image of God where you have worth and value above an animal. And so slipping into that again, everything gets there's tremendous frustration. There's chaos. There's confusion. If human beings creating the image of God goes away. Lots of points there. For one, if you if you hear loud snoring in the background, that's my 80 pound asthmatic dog. So who am I? You know, I guess it depends on the person. Thank you. So, and we don't have to get into the problem of evil. I will say very quickly, I think the problem of evil is evil. I don't I don't have any problem using the word evil. It does carry theological slash religious connotations that some people might not be comfortable with. As long as we define our terms, I'm fine with it. But it was very quickly. So we could distinguish, of course, between natural evil and moral evil. We were talking kind of with the Darwin example about natural evil. Philosophers like J. L. Mackie would really explore this concept. And I think where people have an issue is not the fact that natural evil occurs. I mean, you can't really call anything that happens in nature evil because saying that implies that there's some sort of choice that was made. And, you know, it's just a natural process. It's not the line isn't evil for eating the gazelle. The lion's just doing what lions do. Right. Same with as tragic as it might be, but a natural disaster. The hurricane that destroys the city, the hurricane isn't evil. It's just a hurricane. Where it becomes a issue slash problem is where you get into gratuitous suffering caused by these things. Right. And, you know, the classic problem of evil frame within a Christian framework, if you have an all powerful and all good God, you could kind of frame it in a logical way to kind of show why it would be an issue. But again, I think that might be a different debate for a different day. Yeah. That might be if you have any other ideas that you guys would like to discuss. Otherwise, that might be a good transition for going into the Q&A. Sure. I'm good with that. Awesome. And do want to remind you folks, first, our guests are linked in the description box. So if you'd like to hear more from Michael or Stuart, you certainly can hear more by clicking on their links. And that includes if you're listening via the podcast, as each debate is uploaded to the podcast, usually within 24 hours of the debate being live, with the guests linked there as well. And so again, if you're listening via podcast as well, you can also hear plenty more of Stuart or Michael by clicking on that link in the description. Also though, my dear friends, got a couple of quick announcements besides that. We had mentioned the in-person tickets for our first-ever conference are on sale. That's linked in the description. If you are anywhere near the Dallas area, you don't want to miss it. That's January 15 through 16. And we were absolutely pumped for it, as well as for this first question in the Q&A coming in from, I Got Cookies, says Stuart will be an atheist. Eventually, mark my words. Stuart, what are your thoughts? You know, James, it's interesting. On your channel, I get that on a semi-regular basis. It makes me do some soul-searching every time I end these debates. That's funny. Yeah, frankly, you're not the only person. I see a lot of people seem to accuse atheists of, eventually, they'll become an atheist. But anyway, this one from You the Bro Dilemma says, can a rapist repent and go to heaven? There goes that justice. I think that they're saying, Stuart, what about the rapist who, if you say that they can turn to Jesus, where is their punishment? Well, there's still, you get throughout Scripture, there's still going to be punishment for the believer as well. So there's still going to be a level of justice, and that's what I'm getting at. It's the perfect mix of justice and grace. But that repentant person. So, hey, forgetting her name, it was that huge case in the early 2000s of that woman in Texas who pickaxed to death her husband who she found sleeping with another woman. And she picksaxed her to death too. Anyway, long story short, she was in jail, was getting the death penalty, and she was in jail for something like, I don't know, seven years. And she repented, found Christ, people in that system and out of the jail system as well were saying, this woman could not have drastically more changed her personality and character. It's scary. And then she got the death penalty. And I'm not getting political here. I'm actually getting more theological in the sense of that would be an example, just like the thief who died on the cross who was also probably a murderer. Deathbed conversions and changing your heart. That's the beauty of grace. And yet God says there's still going to be judgment. It's not going to be purgatory.  They're still entering eternity with him. But they're still going to face a form of his punishment. You got it, Anne. Thank you very much for this question. Youth's Road Dilemma as well says, Stuart, marriage is to serve as some utility in our finite life. Do you agree that you aren't the same person as in your 20s? Is marriage ordained or a consequence of geography? And will you be married in 100 trillion years? I'm not sure if I totally get the first half there. James, if you really get it, let me know. I can break that up in pieces for you too. What's that? I can break it up in pieces for you because there's a lot of questions in here. There's a lot of moving pieces, but they said, Stuart, marriage is to serve as some utility in our finite life. Do you agree that you aren't the same person as in your 20s? I don't know if those questions are for sure related. I think that they're supposed to be though. Yes. Yes, across the board there. In terms of the location, I think the second part is location, right? Yes, my wife and I, she is from California. I'm from Connecticut, so fairly far apart there. And I was graduating literally from grad school when she came into our grad school. So it was kind of a last second, seemed really lucky. I would call there, yes, God was in the works, I would say, for a number of different reasons and ways. So yes, I believe that occurs too. And what was the last part? The last part was, is your marriage ordained or a consequence of geography, which you basically already answered? Yep. This one coming in from Barry Berry says, Stuart, according to your quote-unquote morality, what happens to a lifelong sex trafficker who finds Jesus and repents at the end of his life? Also, what happens to his victims if they lead a virtuous life but die without accepting Jesus? Wow, that's deep. That's intricate. Yeah, so that's the freakest thing about grace. I love that these questions are coming in. I have not heard your camp ask these kind of questions before, James. And I would say that that's the freakest thing about grace. You still get a level of justice, like I said.  So start with his character. He's the same yesterday, today, and forever. You see his grace shown even in the Old Testament. Yes, you see judgment too. Absolutely, of certain people groups. Jews as well. And you also see him dying on the cross. His only son dying on the cross for our sins. So firstly, start with his character. He seems pretty filled with justice and grace. And then also understanding that even our good... See, this is important because our good works are not... That's the whole thing with these two questions. These two questions are still not taking into consideration sin and brokenness and darkness and evil in this world that are in our human hearts. Because all these questions have to do with is, am I a good enough person? If I did murder, I should be in. If this person did murder, they should be out. Well, hold on. Again, it's not a matter of goodness and badness. It's a matter of changing your heart, deciding, I am not going to live my life just for myself. I'm not saying Michael is living just for himself. But I'm not going to live my life in a way where I am not saying that God exists and going to actually say that there's a king who's on the throne. He's on the throne of this kingdom. And so, at the end of the day, still recognizing that, yes, it's a freakish thing, this grace. That's why someone like Newton, who actually was one of the leaders of the slave trade, who became a Christian, said, But therefore, but the grace of God go I. And basically what he was implying was, I could have done endless amounts of atrocities if it wasn't for the grace of God. And so it all comes back to his grace. He's not going to let anybody get ripped off. And at the same time, every single person is never too far gone. And that's the most beautiful thing about it, to change and then to have eternal life with God. You got it. Thank you very much for this question as well. I got cookies says Stuart can't bring up racism when slavery is in the Bible. Yeah. Okay. So I'm guessing that person means the Bible is a proponent of slavery. I think that they mean that it's slavery based. That it's endorsing. I think that, sorry, what I meant to say is, I think that they're saying that the slavery in the Bible is race based.  Well, first of all, it's not race based. You know, different civilizations in a sense it's race based. But at other times it's not race based. I think they're saying in the Bible specifically it's race based. That it's condone. Oh, no. No, there's there's examples in scripture of it not being race based. Now other parts, absolutely, you know, yes, the Israelites did have slaves from conquered people groups. And yes, finally, men and onesimists were different racial groups. But no, it was not always based off of just race. Slavery existed based off the photos of war in the Old Testament as well. And people sold themselves at the same race into slavery in order to make a make a living for themselves. So, so now that that's not the case. I think that, but I think that they're to be fair, just to, I think I'm giving them a charitable. I'm trying to give a charitable read of their question. I think that they're saying even if there's one example, even if they're saying maybe not all of the examples of slavery in the Bible are based on race, I think they're saying that even if there's just one that's based on race, then what do you say to that with regards to your bringing up racism early as being evil? Sure, yeah, it was in a system. It was caught in a system where there was slavery going on. And sometimes that slavery with it, you would have a slave who was of a different race than the enslaved person or people group. But look at how the system fell apart based off of the gospel of Christ, which was not Christians taking over the government and changing laws overtly in that kind of way. But it was at the gospel where you actually have your God becoming a slave and pushing so hard for equality for Galatians 328, for example, neither slave nor free, all are equal or going back to Genesis, all made in the image of God. That's why you had the William Wilber forces. That's why, gosh, Douglas himself was not just an abolitionist, but he was an evangelist saying, clearly Christianity as a foundation is going to go about breaking down racism more so than any other philosophy of life could. You got it. And thank you very much for your question. Endos says for both of you. So we'll start with Michael on this one. They said, have you heard of the evil God challenge? Do you have a good response to it? It seems all the theodicies can be reversed in favor of an evil God just as well. So I think that you guys have probably heard like Stephen Law has talked about the evil God as a potential rebuttal to the moral argument for theism. I think that they're saying with regard to any argument for theism though, can you just as well easily say that it's an argument for an evil God just as much as it is for a good God? I'm going first. Is that correct? Sure. Yeah. I've heard of the evil God. I'm not familiar with it to the point that I can really comment on it. So I'm afraid I'm going to have to not give an answer there. I don't know. You got it. Stuart. This is Stephen Law from what Cambridge? Where's he? Right. I think Stephen Law, you know, he had originally popular, it became popular from him when he argued that the moral argument is no better of an argument for a good God rather than an evil God. And I think this person is trying to apply it more broadly saying maybe is this true in the, they said it seems all the theodicies, namely the explanations for the problem of evil can be reversed in favor of an evil God just as well. So for example, I mean, the one of the more common responses being free will. But well, Stuart, I'll give you a chance.  Well, Stephen Law, we debated on our YouTube channel. So if you go into our YouTube and just type in Stephen Law, he was a fascinating guy. We tried to push him pretty hard on his his thinking on evil, especially he had a little bit of a tough time. I saw a debate with William Lee and Craig on this topic as well. But this is the one he's known for. And and no, I'm like Michael, I'm not as familiar with it when I debated him. He didn't he didn't go that route. He went more so the suffering route. But but no, I think it makes way more sense. The theodicy argument from from the point of view that it's an all good God and especially moral obligation. I mean, how are you going to justify it being an evil like you could try to and it could work, but it wouldn't. It wouldn't make anywhere near as much sense as if you had a immaterial, all powerful, omniscient, personal, all good being that's going to make decisions for human beings to flourish best. You got it. And thank you very much for this question coming in from Sunflower says. MG, science has usurped archaic invocations of God to explain things, yet it may never explain the quote, something from nothing slash infinite regress problem. How then can it ever sufficiently explain reality? I'm not sure what MG. Oh, that's Michael Michael. Where's the first reason I was go ahead, Michael. I'm sorry. Can you repeat it again? I want to make sure I understand what you're asking. Science has usurped archaic invocations of God to explain things, yet it may never explain the quote, something from nothing slash infinite regress problem. How then can it ever sufficiently explain reality itself? To nitpick about language a little bit, I wouldn't call divine explanations archaic.  I mean, it's a problem if you accept a risk to tell Aristotelian cosmology. Of course, we've gone beyond Aristotelian cosmology. There's not an infinite regress. If you accept the Big Bang cosmological model, we go back to a singularity. Now, I don't think that singularity is a physical event. I think it's just the breakdown of Einstein's relativity equations. So I'm not sure how I would answer that question. I don't I don't think there is an infinite regress. I guess would be my answer. You got it. Thank you very much for this question coming in from Endos as our secular humanism focuses on well-being. Christian morality focuses on what God wants. Isn't it better for us to focus on what's good or healthy for us? No, no, Christian well-being, yes, in worshiping the God of the universe, who doesn't just want our best but who wants a loving relationship with us, that would bring us a type of human flourishing and bliss that would be way stronger than just some type of dictator who wanted us to worship him and him just to get goody goodies from it. No, he's the God of the universe. He doesn't need us to worship him. He's sharing the trinity that he has. He's Father, Son, Holy Spirit, perfect community, perfect unity in that kind of way, perfect love, and he's sharing that with us in order to flourish. We talked about the God-shaped hole, and I tried to bend over backwards. We obviously didn't have time to go over all of them, but identity, hope, suffering, meaning, purpose, all of these things are connected to human flourishing or undoing things like suffering, and all of those are connected to the God-shaped hole things, which is you have God fill those holes, and now all of a sudden you're going to flourish as a human being way more so than if you didn't have God. And I can speak to this personally, not just my own personal testimony in regards to just me, but I've done psychology and therapy at UMass General Hospital at different big churches, and I can tell you spirituality, like Michael talked about, is not just the first question that is now asked in the therapy office, but it's also one that if you really want to get somewhere with somebody, you're going to ask those existential questions, and if you don't bring God in, you're not going to get far in the conversation at all. You got it, Anne. Thank you very much for your question. Coming in from hacking the headline says, I really enjoy these debates. Thanks for all your hard work on this channel. It is our pleasure and all credit to the speakers, which are linked in the description, folks. So we really do want to say this is a great opportunity just to say thank you to not only Michael and Stuart, but thank you to all of the speakers as they're the lifeblood of the channel, and they are indeed linked in the description right now if you want to hear more from Michael or Stuart. Very, very. Thanks for your question. Said Stuart, you said, quote, with racism, there is no grounding from the atheist position for why that's bad, unquote. Are you being truthful here? Has no atheist ever explained to you why racism is wrong from our perspective? Honestly. I don't think I said that. And if I did say that, I changed it later because I remember saying something that was not that, which was that Christianity gives you a better grounding and fits with a reality that says racism is wrong more so than something like atheism does. I can give all those reasons again, but that'll take at least another seven minutes, so I won't do that. This one coming in from Duke of Sahib says, Stuart, when God commanded the killing of the Amalekite babies in 1 Samuel 15, would you say that was a moral command? Would you have followed his command? Yeah, first off, with Jericho, Canaanites, Amalekites. God can do whatever he wants, and I know atheists and me as a theist actually don't like hearing that, but if he's the God of the universe who's created everything, he can do what he wants. Secondly, the Amalekites, he has specifically gave 400 years to repent and change. Just change, change their lifestyle. 400 years. And he said, if that doesn't happen, judgment is coming. And so what happens is, yes, those even babies are actually obviously killed. And yet what's so interesting is elsewhere in 1 Samuel, you get with King David, when he loses his baby because of his adulterous relationship with Bathsheba, he prays and says, I will go to him, he will not come to me, showing that babies will be in heaven. So those Amalekite babies will probably be in heaven. And an eternal destination is a little bit more gratifying than an earthly one. But I'm not using that to justify, obviously, just, you know, taking a Pauline passage and saying, oh, it's better to be with the Lord than here and present.  Well, no, obviously not. Elijah's not allowed to kill himself when he's depressed because an angel comes and says, no, you're going to be here. God has a plan for you here. But the Amalekites, again, that 400 years is crucial where, yes, there is a form of judgment. There's even holy war by the Jews in the Old Testament. And yet it's always for a reason. And there's always grace connected. But see, some of my atheist friends who push me on these types of texts, they don't read the whole Old Testament. And so they don't see the long narrative arc of grace and forgiveness, even of these tribes and people groups who've been shown justice. And there's no genocide, which is the wiping out of the complete people group, because all of them pop up later on. You got it, Ann. Thank you very much for your question. This one coming in from Mr. Monster. Let's see, they've got a two-parter, sassy. They say, doesn't religion only explain fantasy? How can you convince me that an innocent child is born with sin, Stuart? Use facts, please. Very sassy. I just had two. Those are my facts right there. Both of them are born with sin issues. I debated two child psychologists. We're both humanists, secularists. And Sigmund Freud, I go by Sigmund Freud. Id, ego, super ego. Sigmund Freud was not a Christian. He was a secular Jew. And yet he said, absolutely, people are fallen, sinful beings born into this world. Sigmund Freud has influenced, you could argue, the US culturally more so than any other figure in the history of the US. And I think he was onto something there when it comes to us being broken and born broken. And you just have to have a couple of kids to understand that they have an incredibly beautifully, seemingly perfect side, but then also a sinful side. And it's that blending, again, of good and bad, good and evil, beautiful and perfect that the Bible talks about unlike any other worldview. Can I respond to that question as well? Sure. You bet. Okay. I think we want to be careful to still man our opponent's positions as much as we possible for when it's going to be fair, debaters, slash, and alloculars. And I also want to emphasize the fact that most religions are an attempt to explain reality, physical reality, emotional reality, as Stuart explains, as Stuart claimed. Religion in the ancient world, especially not so much anymore because going back to my argument, I think that modern science has replaced these explanations with naturalistic explanations, but religion was an attempt to explain physical reality, social reality, ethical reality. It's not just something that people did on certain days of the week that they thought didn't have any bearing. I think for sure it does. You got it. And thank you very much for your question. Coming in from his holiness as a small amount of cash to see the interperson debate happen. Thanks for your support. And do want to remind you folks, actually, I don't know me. I don't think I mentioned it in the stream yet. We are, well, I did mention the conference, but I do want to mention we have a crowd fund that is helping support making this conference happen. As airlines, we are flying in all of the speakers. Airlines don't give away flights for free. And so that is why we are having the crowd fund as well as selling the tickets. And hopefully, if we can break even on this event, I want to let you know we plan on doing a second debate con conference. And we also want to let you know if there's any additional funds that come in, 100% of them are being reinvested back into modern day debates, debate con conferences. So that means if you happen to put in any amount for the crowd fund, 100% of it is guaranteed to go toward putting these conferences together where we get people from different walks of life having conversations like these. So I'll throw that crowd fund link in the chat now. And thanks for your support. This one coming in from Zach Morgan says, Stuart, do you stick with your beliefs out of fear of what it would cost you if you happen to abandon them? Oh, it's interesting. This atheist said to me and my dad, and we're pastors at this church, and he said, I would hate for you guys to abandon your faith. I'd be fearful of that, but it wouldn't happen if people would supposedly drop off and lose, you know, emotional health, spiritual health, lose their Christianity. And I thought that was ridiculous. I mean, that was very kind of him to say that. But no, I don't have, I don't have fear. Maybe the question we better put, at least to me personally is, do you have this faith because you have fear of death? And I think a lot of Christians could potentially have that. You know, some people said that Martin Luther even wrote all of his books. There's 95 feces and everything with this fear of death behind his theology. And that's why he had his Christianity and Protestantism the way he had it. And so, so no, I have no fear of giving it up. But again, that's also connected to biases. There's biases that we all have, whether it's fear, whether it's I want to sleep with whoever I want to sleep with, even though it's against the Christian ethic, love ethic. It's what Tom Nagel, who wrote Mind and Cosmos and is big around here in New York City. He's at Columbia or NYU. He's a secularist, but he says, even as a secularist, I know I don't want there to be a God. I don't want the world to work that way is the quote. And so he says, honestly, I have many Christians who are incredibly gifted in their studies and academia. So that's unnerving for me. And I am very, very cognizant and aware of my biases because I don't want there to be a God because then I would have to curb certain areas of my life style. You got it. And thank you very much for this question coming in from do appreciate it very, very. Two seconds is loading here. Very embarrassing. I'm not at my usual place here. I'm at the public library and sometimes things are a little bit slow over here as I've got a list of questions, but sometimes it takes a little bit longer to load reminder that our guests are linked in the description. And this one coming in from Connie upstate says, how can you know the things actually witnessed by people were done by an all powerful all knowing God instead of an advanced being like an alien. So I'm guessing that to me. I think so. Yeah, yeah, didn't Richard I think Richard Dawkins one time said that there could be aliens and I think Joe Rogan said a similar kind of question he said he believed in aliens. I think he's taken that back. But it's it's no you don't there could be absolutely there's no way for me to pick apart directly if I'm going to say certain things happen to me supernaturally or I experienced this crazy miracle. There's no way for me to absolutely prove to you that that wasn't some type of other celestial being or a physical thing that was chemical in me or I couldn't say it was drug related perhaps I could I could prove that to you. But this is the problem with Christians who debate from that point of view, which is, I'm going to try and absolutely claim that it's certainly from God. When so often it's not. And then you get into crazy different testimonies of, you know, my kid went to heaven and back but I made it all up. A lot of Christians look really bad. Because there was this claim that God had this encounter with. So, so no, trying trying to make those claims and proofs in those types of situations. I don't go there. You got it and thank you very much for your question. This one coming in from you have heck you says for both and James if Christianity is true, why can't we get Medicare or all in America Medicare for all. What do you think, guys? Stuart, you want to go first. You like the politics. I'm going to leave this one with you. Is if well, the first part of the question if Christianity is true. That's not the position I was arguing for. I guess I'll say more rhetorical. We can jump to the next one. I wasn't going to answer it either. Well, maybe you really want you can but I would have jumped into that. I let it go too long. That was my fault. This is thank you very much for your question. This coming in from contrary and 420 says, Stuart, you previously said you've not read Hindu or Zen books like the Vedas. Why wouldn't you explore these teachings before claiming Christianity as the ultimate truth? I never said that. I never said I've never read any of the Vedas on the Apana shots. I haven't read as much as I should have by now. You got it. Next one coming in from I found the oh, I did find the question. This one coming in from Randolph. Thanks so much for your question. Gosh, two seconds. Still loading. Stuart, why does why does he think? Just laws are not possible without God. Is he not familiar with John Rawls is veil of ignorance from a theory of justice. Yes. Justice right and wrongs. I believe is his book is a good one. No, I I think I would have to be reminded that it's been a while since I read that but. I think it's it's you can have a form of just law. But again, where is that? What's your definition of justice? And is there going to be? Is it going to be? How subjective? How much of an what type of ethical system is going to be getting back to Michael's earlier point? And look at our justice system today. How did it come about? And somebody like who's the lawyer who did who did. OJ Simpson's case is at Harvard. I can't remember his name, but he talked about how justice systems. If you look in the history of the world. If you take like a shame and honor society. If you take a secular society. And then you take a Christian society. We are so formed by the Christian humanism, not secularism Christian humanism that we have in our culture that if you have somebody like. An old granny crossing the street and she drops an orange. You're going to go help her. Even if it sacrifices an extra 10 minutes of your time, because you genuinely genuinely want to help her rather than something like a shame and honor system where you're going to go help her. Because you want to look a certain way or you're terrified of potentially not helping this old lady and other people seeing you not help her. Now we could still have that in our Christian culture.  You got it and thank you very much for this question coming in from Barry Barry says Stuart, can you please elaborate on this justice that sinners face in heaven.  I hope not. I've been a pastor now for a while. That would be dangerous. Scripture is it's fairly. It's fairly quiet. So I wouldn't. The guy is right. Whoever's asking that to an extent in the sense of I wouldn't want to get too detailed and say that, you know, if Michael goes back to his faith, or maybe it's one saved always saved. So Michael is still saved even though he's an atheist or claims to be. But you know, I've been a Christian and never claimed to be an atheist. So I'm going to be on a higher rung than Michael in heaven. No, that would be heresy. There's nothing in Scripture saying that my point was more so you get all the, for example, Pauline texts talking about striving, striving to win the race to win the crown that cannot rust. All of that type of language. And then he talks about hope, hoping not to give up what I've already gained. So many of his passages sound like that there's still we're not going to be working off our bad deeds or anything Hindu related like that in heaven. But there's still going to be some form of whether it's levels or whatever it might be what type of potential potential punishment like I was alluding to. We don't know. We're not certain on that. And yet it certainly seems like no, if God has got God has placed you here a certain time for a certain reason. If you choose to use your free will in a horrible kind of way and then just repent and say I was going to repent anyway. Good luck. Good luck playing playing little sneaky cheeky boy or girl around God like that. You've got to dance. Thank you very much for your question. This one coming in from Bez says, if I build a wobbly table, does that make me perfect to that table? If I make an imperfect species, does that make me perfect to that species? I'm assuming that's first to work. I think so. Yes, in order to have a standard of goodness, you need to understand that there is a standard where there's a squiggly line versus a straight edge. You got it. Thank you very much for this question. Coming in from mango tea says some sort of weird conversation with Millahan. But a sunflower says, Michael, what's your best reason for why an atheist should not commit an immoral action for personal gain as long as they're certain they won't get caught? Yeah. Somebody was named Youth Afro Dilemma earlier. This goes back to a question that was raised in Plato's Republic. The ring of Gaiji's example, right? Would you do something that you knew you could get away with? I mean, again, it depends on what the action is if we're going to go the consequentialist route. If you're going to go the virtue ethic route, doing acts that are potentially harmful to somebody such as theft of property would damage your character as a person. So you would not want to do that. And if you're going the utilitarian route, stealing is not something that benefits the greatest good for the greatest amount of people. So you wouldn't want to do that there either. You got it. And this one coming in from, by the way, folks, we have so many questions that this is the last. We can't take any more new questions. This one coming in from Mr. Montreux says, I think we should put more importance on going on in life than what happens in the afterlife. Do you agree? Yes and no. C.S. Lewis put it perfectly saying, if you aim at heaven, you'll get earth thrown in. If you aim at earth, you'll get neither. I thought that's the best way to put it where, you know, if we just, I do not meet too many Christians. I've met one who was a good friend of mine.  Every other that I've known, it's more motivation because it's not just going to be 70 years here for us on this planet. And that's it. It's not just going to be working for the next generation. And that's it. No, we're going to keep actual human relationships and God has us here for a reason. He created this place with his own hands in the dirt. So he created us to do things like work and make meaning and purpose.  Take it up with Leo Tolstoy. Take it up with so many of these large figures who said without eternity. Just focusing on this planet could get a little depressing. Gotcha. This one coming in from Mango Tea claims, Stuart, all religious people are on the mental illness spectrum studies show.  I want to debate that guy. Sounds funny. I like it. This one coming in from son. Got that one. Mr. Let's see. Oh, I think we might be caught up. Let me just double check. Oh, we did very, very. Thanks for your question. This is the one I meant to get to earlier. It says, why do Christians refer to Jesus's crucifixion as, quote, the worst death imaginable, unquote, or the worst way to die, unquote?  So that was historically considered the worst way. You can actually dig into stuff. They have a good amount of history, I think, based on crucifixions.  The Romans were the ones who came up with crucifixion. And it was there. They thought it was worse than even throwing people to the lions or putting them on, you know, impaling them to death.  But some people it was, it was over a day that they would hang there. And so, yeah, sure, you can imagine different ways today, but it was considered back then the most torturous. You got it. And that's actually it for questions. Oh, wait, we did that one from Noly. Thanks so much for your support. Appreciate your super sticker, Noly. There was also a debater on the channel oftentimes. So we do want to say thank you so much, folks, for listening. If you want to hear more from Michael, if you want to hear more from Stuart, their links are waiting at the top of the description box. Right now we can go to their channels and hear plenty more. I want to say thank you Michael and Stuart. It is seriously been a true pleasure to have you guys. Thank you for having us. Thanks, James. Great. 100%. I will be back in just a moment, folks, with a post credit scene giving you updates on things like upcoming debates. So stick around for that. We'll be back in just a moment. And once again, our guests are linked below. Gentlemen, thrilled to have you here. Want to say a couple of things before I've got to go. I'm actually, I'm traveling. I'm visiting my folks in Wisconsin, which I'm super thankful to get to see family and friends during the holidays. But I am at the library. They close and I've got to be out of here in just a few minutes. So I do want to mention, though, my dear friends, a couple of things that we were absolutely pumped about. I see you there in the old live chat. Good to see a Dharma defender, known unknown. Carm M and Hamilton CA. Thanks for being with us as well as Bradders and dark and TC, the unbeliever. We're glad you were here and want to let you know, though, folks, I have pinned at the top of the chat, the crowdfund link. And I've got to tell you, it's not just to make sure that this debate conference happens, although that's true. I mean, basically, if we have enough support through the crowdfund and through ticket sales, then we want to have a second modern day debate. Con conference in May of 2022. But the trick with that is we need to raise the necessary funds because we're flying the speakers in. We're covering their costs in terms of hotel and I've got to tell you, folks, we are absolutely pumped for it. But if you are willing to throw into the crowdfund, not only are you supporting the conference, but some of these debates, for example, the debate shown at the bottom right screen, a bottom right of your screen will only be live for those who are either one, putting into the crowdfund or two, those who are a Patreon supporter or three, a channel member. And so we are not able to have all of the debates be live. Some of them will be only for those who throw into the crowdfund. And one of those debates that's actually going to be because there are actually four of them. One of the debates that is going to be those is the controversial juicy debate at the bottom right of your screen. That one, you will only be able to see it live if you throw into the crowdfund. So I do want to encourage you, the crowdfund link is in the description box and I have pinned it to the top of the chat. Click on that link, help us make this possible and be able to watch all of the debates live. You could say that weekend as we're going to have 10 debates during the conference. And you might be wondering though, you're like, Ah, James, I don't know about all this. Like, this is kind of new to me. What I was saying was this conference is going to be epic. I'm showing you right now, my dear friends, debate con is going to be gigantic January 15th through 16th. You don't want to miss it. And Indiegogo is the crowdfund platform that we're using to raise funds to make this conference possible as well as of course we told you we were selling tickets. And I want to just take you through a little walkthrough because you might be like, James, I don't know about this. This is kind of weird. Like tell me more about it because I'm kind of new to this. Well, I've got to tell you, my dear friends, it is really easy. For example, you can click on that Indiegogo link. You don't even have to create a profile. You can actually just sign in through Facebook. It's that easy, really user friendly. And not only that, you might be wondering like, well, yeah, but why do you need to raise funds? Well, here's just an example. The venue cost is the far right side of the pie graph. The venue does actually cost a lot of money and so they don't give it away for free. That's something that we have to crowdfund for. And this is a big risk, but we are confident we have met all of our crowdfund goals in the past. And you might be wondering really, James, I don't know. Have you had successful crowdfunds in the past? We have. Here's an example of one a year ago. We met our goal for that one. And we of course also had this one. If you guys don't remember this, this was a juicy debate in the early part of the summer with Matt Delhonte and Kenny Rhodes. We met our goal for that. So we are determined. We can make this crowdfund goal. Help us make this goal as we are 100% pumped for this conference. And like I said, you'll get to watch all the debates live, which is something that only people who throw into the crowdfund or become a member or Patreon supporter of modern day bait are able to do. We are absolutely thrilled for it. So join us as we fulfill the vision of providing a level playing field for everybody to make their case on a neutral platform as we strive to get people from all walks of life engaging with one another. So I want to say, you guys seriously, I love you. Thanks for your support. Thanks for your last minute. Super chat from Contrarian 420. We really do appreciate it. Sorry that I think that super chat came in just a moment too late before I was able to ask the question to Stuart before we wrapped up. But I do want to say my friends, I've got to run because like I said, I'm going to get out of the library in a second. We are going to be back on Thursday for another juicy debate. So if you haven't already hit that subscribe button as we are excited about the future, we're excited about this epic conference coming up, modern day debate con. It is going to be a massive conference. We are determined and absolutely pumped up for debate con. You guys, I love you. Thanks for making this channel awesome.  You make it a blast and we're excited about the future as we fulfill the vision of providing a neutral platform for everybody to make their case on a level playing field where we get people from all walks of life engaging with each other. So thanks everybody. I love you guys. Seriously, we're excited about the future and fulfilling this vision together. Join us as we have big things in store for the future and I will see you next time, guys. I wish I could talk longer, but like I said, I've got to go. They're closing at the library and I'm excited to talk to you more like we normally do at the end of streams. I just have to go in this particular case. This is my last night at the library. So thanks everybody. Love you guys. I'll see you next time.