Everybody, tonight we are discussing whether or not one can reasonably believe the violent Bible is revealed by God and we are starting right now with open dialogue. Thanks so much, gentlemen. The floor is all yours. Well, okay. Well, I'm just going to end the argument by saying, no, okay, yeah, definition of reasonableness would of course be helpful at that point. I can I'll say a few more things and then Aaron can feel free to come on back. I want to begin with the first of all, James, thanks for hosting and Aaron for participating.  So I love your senior great Pyrenees in the background. I've got an 18 year old lasso cross at home. Okay, so here's a few of my thoughts just to kick us off. What are you drinking there, by the way, this I'm embarrassed that most of the stuff that I drink is locally brewed and this one is from Illinois. So I'm drinking Yankee beer today, but it's a it's a 14 point something ABV and it's sweetened very, very well. Beautiful. Well, I will say that I believe the trappists of Belgium brew some of the best beer in the world. So that's something the Catholics are doing right. I hope you could agree with that. Well I like the take that they've that they've had on fasting. So if you have to fast, let's just drink beer that is bread. Yes, liquid bread, as they say. All right, so so let's get down to business. I just want to say word first of all to kind of frame it the way I'm approaching it from the perspective of worldview. So everybody has a worldview. They have some convictions about what exists, what human beings are, what our problem is, what human flourishing is. Can you help me? Can you help me with that? The word worldview never comes up in science ever at all. It's irrelevant. But other people tell me that I have this worldview thingy. So what is this worldview thing other people tell me that I have that I don't think I have? Well, so as I sort of divided into four parts. So what exists? So people have convictions about what exists out there. And in particular about the ultimate constituents of reality of what is ultimate in the story? So for example, a theist would say God is ultimate, typically an atheist might be a naturalist and they might say, for example, the universe is ultimate. I mean, Carl Sagan famously said, the cosmos is all that is, was or ever will be. That would qualify as a naturalistic worldview. So that'd be the first. Unless you want to take into like a multiverse option in which case that wouldn't be ultimate either. I don't think I have an ultimate. Well, you could be agnostic about it, right? There are people who are agnostic, but other people who, theism, naturalism, those are just two examples of worldviews. OK, well, that didn't help because I don't have an ultimate. I don't. I mean, agnostic, if we're certainly in with regard to God, I was I spent like 15 years as an agnostic atheist. I'm not agnostic about that anymore. But I don't know what agnostic means in other contexts.  Yeah, OK, so that's one piece has said what exists, what human beings are would be another view. So there are different understandings as to what human beings are. Different understandings as to what the human problem is. I mean, there are worldviews typically recognized. There is evil and suffering in the world. Can you define what a worldview is? World view is our understanding of reality. As everyone has a has an understanding of reality. Yep. OK, I would argue that. OK, I know people who believe things that are so deranged that they clearly do not have any understanding of reality. What's that? Well, that just the fact that what they what they believe is deranged or irrational or inconsistent doesn't mean it's not a worldview. It may mean it's not a good worldview. OK, so what is the relevance then of saying the word worldview? If it just means you think you know what you think you know. So what I'm doing is I was setting up so then we have these two different worldviews, naturalism and Christianity, and I wanted just to say word about contrasting each one of them. Can we also specify that that's not the contrast? I mean, it's not naturalism versus Christianity. It's naturalism versus supernaturalism, and that includes a whole lot. I'm not I'm not what I'm simply doing is saying these are two examples of worldviews. I'm not saying that that these are logical compliments of one another so that together they exhaust the options. I'm simply saying these are two examples of worldviews. And there were many other examples as well.  That's the thing I hated about the Buddhists. I'm just I'm really trying to see what's that all Buddhists. No, not all Buddhists. I mean, I don't I don't think in terms like that. But but the the Buddhist arguments like the classic story where the Bodhisattva says, you know, when somebody comes up in a horse drawn cart and says, this is my carriage and the Buddhist grabs the the wheel of the cart and says, is this the cart? No, is this the carriage? No, is any grabs the door? Is this the carriage? So he's deliberately trying to not understand.  Well, I think not to get on a tangent on your example, there, but of course, a person can be doing many things in a situation like that, apart from just obfuscating or trying to be confusing. They could be trying to challenge a person's categories to get them to think in another way. So there are many different ways that one might be motivated to respond in a way that you think is less than optimally direct and clear. It's it's like the Jewish rabbi is famously known for always answering a question with a question. So it's equally maddening. But not necessarily a bad thing. And certainly not necessarily in with ill intent, right? I mean, first ask the question with a question. And they could be kind of trying to hedge themselves because they don't want to reveal what their position is. And that could be frustrating if you want to say, hey, but where are you going to hang your hat? On the other hand, they could be just trying to challenge the other individual to think in a new way about something. So anyway, my perspective on worldview and maybe this is not correct because I don't know what a worldview is. But recently, because everybody brings up that this is that I supposedly have a worldview that I wasn't aware that I had. I figured that maybe my worldview is that I don't want to be fooled into believing anything that isn't evidently true, that I can see submitting tentatively to things when the evidence is so overwhelming that it becomes perverse to question it. But that even then there exists a remote possibility that the thing that I thought was overwhelming might turn out to be false. And so that could still be questioned, not absolutely everything because I don't think it absolutes, but there must certainly be something somewhere that I'm wrong about. And that then my worldview is that I want to improve my understanding. So what you've just described there is right, epistemology or theory of knowledge, which definitely would form part of a person's worldview. What do they understand truth to be? What do they understand rationality to be? How do you gain true beliefs about the world? So that's fair enough. I've studied a fair bit in epistemology, thought a lot about it, did some doctoral work in that area. But anyway, so in terms of naturalism, so what naturalism is, is it put in a minimal definition, all that exists is natural or is a descriptive fact about nature. Now a more sophisticated way to put that, that some naturalists have endorsed is that all that exists, is that which we would be defined in the theoretically completed natural science. I think E.O. Wilson is a great example here. He just passed away. And so in honor of the great sociobiologist, he published a book back in 98 called Consilience in which he gave this vision about explaining all reality from quantum physics all the way up to biology and then on to things like aesthetics and ethics in one unified scientific explanation of everything. That would qualify as a naturalistic worldview. It's a belief about what exists in terms of nature, how we come to know it, how human flourishing is defined in respect to gaining this kind of scientific knowledge about the world, okay? So that's one example. Now I would proffer a slightly different version. I mean, what I've always heard for naturalism and this is from the religious people that are arguing against me from whatever stripe they are whether they're young earth creationists or what they call serious theologians or whatever they identify themselves to be. They always criticize me for believing in naturalism which I think is ridiculous because I think we both accept that there is a natural universe and the theist is trying to posit in addition to that that they want to posit an additional of a supernatural maybe not alternative reality but supplemental reality at least. And so I think we both agree that most of the time we both agree that there is a natural world and so I'm not believing in that. I mean, I'm just accepting as Hume said, I don't have a choice. I have to make the same assumptions that a baby or a beast would in that regard that there is a reality because it's literally madness. You cannot operate any without that. I'm just not assuming the supernatural which I identify with magic. I mean, everything that is traditionally said to be supernatural is you could equally say that it's magical. And so I'm not assuming naturalism only means not assuming magic. Okay. What you're describing there I think is you're expositing to me aspects of your worldview, right? So that you understand you believe everything is natural and that anything that is not natural would be properly defined as magic and you don't believe there is any magic. So that's all part of your worldview. But that's pretty close. I mean, I'm not limiting myself. I try not to say, I try not to put everything in limits. Like if there is a supernatural, I mean, I would love for there to have been such a thing. I mean, I was a theist at one point. I was a pagan at one point. I was a spiritualist for a long time. I would really like where I would have liked for there to be some aspect of the supernatural. Psyonics at least, you know, Jedi power or something along those lines.  Well, then let's segue to one challenge to naturalism as it is often defined such as the ways I defined it. I'm gonna quote Richard. Pardon my, if you guys really want to take it this way, it's okay, we could debate naturalism but just to be sure, maybe we quickly soon after. Yeah, see what I was planning is I thought that I would just give a quick introduction to these two different views, naturalism and Christianity and then we'd get into it. So I can kind of plow through quickly to make the point and then Aaron can feel free to come back any way you like. Okay, so Richard Dawkins in River out of Eden, very well known quote, he says this, in the universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is a bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless and difference. Now that quote would be a good description of naturalism and one of the implications of that quote, he says there's no evil and no good. Another way to cash that out. Can I paraphrase that? If I could, if I'll just plow through because I know James wants to get on to the main thing, biblical violence. So I'll just plow through and then feel free to just eviscerate everything that I've just said, if you like. So I just wanted to throw in one little thing. Okay. In the most beautiful line I think from my philosophy in the Tao Te Ching is that nature acts without intent and so cannot be said to be benevolent nor malevolent to anything. And I think that's the same thing you were saying right there. Kind of similar, yeah. Another one is Stephen Crane in his famous poem, The Man Said to the Universe, I exist. Now this is somewhat of a paraphrase. The universe responded that has not created in me a sense of obligation. In other words, the universe neither knows nor cares and there's nothing beyond that. Okay, so one of the challenges of naturalism as defined in those terms is that it does seem to many people that there is such a thing as objective good and objective evil, objective good and evil facts. So one example, Eli Wiesel in his book Night, he describes in Auschwitz witnessing a young boy being hanged as retaliation for a person who escaped from the prison. And many people, they consider that and they say that is objectively evil in which case there must be objectively evil normative facts. So ethical facts on this view are normative rather than descriptive. They're not simply descriptions of nature. They're descriptions of what ought and ought not to be and you ought not to hang a child like that. That is objectively evil. And so what that gives is a challenge for the naturalist. Do I bite the bullet and say contrary to those moral intuitions? No, there just is no moral evil that's objective as Dawkins said or do you bite the bullet and revise your understanding of the world to encompass normative ethical facts? And many atheists do that. So for example, you have people like J.L. Schellenberg We have to hate to do this, but just because we still haven't quite gone into the violent. We're getting there, we're getting there right away. So I'm like simple point is this, say if many atheists that then revise their understanding of the world in order to accommodate those facts about morality. The same thing is with the Christian theists. See, the Christian theists says they accept that there are objective normative facts. So they don't have to modify the worldview but they are challenged in another way which brings us to the topic. The problem is biblical violence. There's a lot of content in the Bible that appears to contradict our knowledge about morality. Much as the person who denies that the child hanging in Auschwitz is objectively evil. There are things in the Bible that appear to be commanded or commended by God which appear to be objectively evil. And so my point is that just as a naturalist has to think what am I gonna do? Am I gonna modify my worldview or understanding in light of that? So the Christian theists needs to wrestle with that problem which I'm sure Aaron would like to say things about. So that's simply my point. I wanted to set up the conversation to say that we all, with our worldviews, we have to wrestle with moral content, with moral facts and how our worldviews will accommodate those facts. Okay, so you mentioned earlier that we have to have an idea of what truth is and I've had to define that for myself and I find that in conflict with a lot of believers who want to tell me that the truth is whatever the hell lie they're selling at that moment. And so I have to put in a criteria, well, how do you know that that's true and how can you call it truth if you can't show that it's true? And that's one argument. And then when you say that I'm afraid there was something that I missed in there where you said something about God doing things that are objectively evil, did I hear you say that? No, so what I said was there are things in the Bible that God appears to command or command which are moral intuitions seem to support as being objectively evil. That's why what you have to do is think, how do I resolve that cognitive dissonance? So the only way that we can determine whether it's objectively evil is it becomes not a matter of opinion, but rather criteria. Does it fit the definition of evil, right? Sure. Okay, so if we have a definition of evil and we all agree or we all understand that this is the meaning of what it is to be evil, this is what evil is. So that we're all speaking common language. Then yeah, I would say that there's plenty that God does in the Bible that is objectively evil. And the strange thing is when all these people tell me that I have no objective moral standard when in fact the believers don't because they tell me that whatever is moral or immoral is determined by God, which means that you're taking the subjective opinion of your deity or more accurately, you're taking the subjective opinion of whatever human is pretending to represent that deity. But even if it was the deity speaking itself, it would still be a subjective opinion because they're not giving a reason. It's because God said so. And I think even as children, we understand because I said so is not an explanation. Every child knows that. Yeah, one of the challenges and I think a lot of issues in what you just said, but one of the challenges is that when you said every claim, the truth claims needs a reason, a moral statement needs a reason, that would immediately set you off in an infinite regress because if your first claim needs reason number one, then that is a claim which then needs reason number two, which needs reason number three, ad infinitum. So you'd quickly deconstruct because you'd have to have an infinite number of reasons. And that's why you have starting points. In philosophy, you mentioned epistemology or your epistemology earlier. So you have a distinction between what are called properly basic beliefs or starting point of reason. And then the beliefs that are non basic which you reason from those starting points. When it comes to morality, I think you were talking about defining evil as you did. I don't think that we really begin with a formal definition of evil as an abstract concept, but rather we begin with ostensive definition. In other words, we point at things in the world and we recognize certain things as objectively evil, other things as objectively good or morally virtuous. And that's how you begin to build an understanding of moral reality. And you do that by starting with intuitive starting points because you can't reason back infinitely. You have to start somewhere. Okay, so I don't understand how you ascertain an infinite regress. I mean, I just took as a role when I saw Scott Clifton do a presentation on the treatise of morality was the video that he did. And I thought that beautifully, succinctly, cleared up the whole thing of what morality is, that it is immoral or wrong to unnecessarily harm or cause pain or suffering or death to another person when you didn't have to. So I'm being a little bit redundant because I already said that it was unnecessary. But I mean, that seemed to be a pretty fair rule. Now, I realize that there's some nuance there. I've heard all sorts of experiments or activities, mind activities when you have a hospital that is now dealing with all of these different patients in this different situation where they have deprived resources, where they have to make decisions about who gets to live and who gets to die on what criteria. I've heard all of these different things. So I know that there's a depth of exploration we can do that's beyond just the surface rule. But the Bible doesn't provide for that either. What are we supposed to do? Just whatever God says? Because now we have battling theologians, all pretending to know what their think their God says, even though they all contradict each other, even though they're supposed to be the same unchanging and universal God talking to all of them. Yeah, so first of all, you gave Clifton's principle there. That would be a principle that you are accepting as properly basic. So that's where you start, you think intuitively, yeah, you don't have to justify that, but that is the point that you reason from. And so you look then for objectively defensible harm inflicted upon another versus indefensibly objective harm inflicted upon another. And if the act is categorized in the latter, then you define it as evil. Fair enough, but then that's the point. You're reasoning from an intuitive starting point that you've accepted that principle. Now, I've noticed- Or have you accepted a principle or a definition of the word? I mean, again, we're just talking common language. Well, you accepted a principle that Scott Clifton defined in his video, which he really liked. Mm-hmm. So I accept the definition then. So as I want to have a definition where we're not, if we don't understand the words that we're using, we have to have a common definition where it doesn't make any sense. That's the most frustrating thing about arguing with creationists because they have an entirely different lexicon about what macro evolution means. For example, what evolution means, what theory means. I mean, they just think all these words mean something different than what I can show the academics say that they do, but I can't get them into a common language. So I mean, if you're not going to use the same word- So you want to avoid equivocation so it's important to get to definitions, fair enough. Yeah, and I'm not a creationist. So I'm just saying, I'm not suggesting that you are. I'm actually happy when James invited me to talk to you.  So, okay, good. I've got that threshold covered at least. Yeah, this is a big one. Okay, so- I should have said he's not another barking mad lunatic on the street corner. So- He's entirely a barking mad lunatic on the street corner. Maybe some days I am. A step up. I was trying to say something respectful, sir. Yeah, and I appreciate that. Hey, we're on, a year ago, right? The Capitol was stormed by people who I think were trying to overturn democracy. And one of the great challenges, and I'm not American, but I'm looking south of the border at the U.S. I'm thinking people have to learn how to talk to one another and listen to one another and understand one another without marginalizing one another as idiots. So I appreciate what we're doing here to try to overcome some of the barriers and misunderstandings that may arise. Yeah, the last person that I was invited to talk to in a format like this was somebody who was touted as some kind of super genius of young earth creationists and was just, I knew he wasn't gonna meet the bar.  All right, well, then let me make it even more refreshing. So one of the things I like to do when I'm thinking about my own view is steal, man, the objections to it, which I think is a good discipline for any one of us is what we wanna understand is what are the strongest objections to my worldview or to my theory or perspective on reality or what have you? Hold on, I gotta make a comment. I just saw something in the chat where somebody said that I like non-threatening opponents. That person has obviously not seen me up until now. One, I was not saying that you were non-threatening. I would more expect an intelligent person to be a bigger threat in a venue like this than the people I've been dealing with up to now. But I just saw that that was a huge misrepresentation in the chat. Go ahead, please. Yeah, sure. Yeah, I mean, yeah. The fact is we frame this conversation so that's not supposed to be threatening. It's not supposed to be people trying to score one upmanship on one another in the standard debate model, right? We're having an open conversation. So in terms of defining the objections, like one thing I've done in the past, a few years ago I debated the atheist philosopher Michael Ruse on a British radio show, Unbelievable, but I invited him to debate the other side. So I defended atheism and he defended Christian theism. And that was a lot of fun. And that way you really come to understand the positions that you don't hold and so on. So one of the things I did in that argument, in that case was arguing first of all against the existence of God, but then against the truth of the, as a Christian theism I should say, and making a case based upon biblical violence. And this is certainly something I'm very familiar with and I thought a lot about. And so we do have to begin by steelmaning those objections. So for example, in one of my books, Conversations with My Inner Atheist, I give the example of violence in Torah and in particular stoning. And I think people really need to get their minds around how violent an act like stoning, killing a person is always violent. In fact, there's a book called Gruesome Spectacles that offers a survey of modern approaches to killing people.  And yet the Bible includes in the Torah, descriptions about God commanding the stoning of people. So you have to, as a Christian, think through what are you gonna do with that? Are you gonna revise your views on the stoning as not being intrinsically immoral, inhumane? Or are you gonna find a new way to appropriate to interpret, to read that text? Another huge one, which my most recent book, Jesus loves Canaanites was devoted to is genocide. Because God appears to command genocide in Deuteronomy and Joshua with respect certainly to the Canaanite peoples. And so I argue forcefully on that point, go ahead. I was just gonna say, and not just there. Not just there. Yeah, the Amalekites for Samuel 15, I think the Midianites and Numbers 31 and so on. And the Canaanites, because we have to clear out the Promised Land from the people that are already living there. Yeah, there's different rationals that are provided. And I think that here's the thing is we would consider those rationals automatically illegitimate if we applied them in any other context. One of the points that I make in the book is to say we need to have a thick narrative description of what we're wrestling with. And so what I do is I argue compared to Rwanda in 1994 because in fact, the killing of the Canaanites if it had occurred, it would be very much like Rwanda, close contact killing with cutting implements. And so if you think intrinsically what happened in Rwanda when the Hutus killed 800,000 Tutsis, if that's objectively evil, that means it's always evil, right? If you have an objective moral fact, well, then you can't then attribute to God who's ostensibly a morally perfect being, a command that you consider to be objectively evil. So you- Why would I have to assume that God is an ultimate moral being if he's doing immoral things, if he's constantly misleading people and he's using faulty judgment throughout, he created hell, not for activities that he's gonna be judging people on, but over what they believe, he is objectively evil. I just preached a sermon on hell, just a few days ago, that would not be the understanding of hell that I have or that I certainly would endorse. But so anyway, the basic issue is this, yes, how do you define God? Some people, and this is the way I think you should define God. And this is certainly mainstream in the Judeo-Christian tradition, is to understand that God is a perfect being. As Ann Selm said, God is that being then which none greater can be conceived. So if you're gonna understand, well, who's God? Well, God is, we don't wanna talk about definitions, God is a perfect being. So then what you have to do when you encounter these kinds of things that appear to disconfirm the claim that God is perfect, you either have to reject that moral knowledge, that intuition, or something else, or you need to revise your definition of God and say, okay, God isn't perfect. Or as I do in Jesus loves Canaanites, say there's a long tradition of offering different interpretations of different parts of the Bible. And so that's what the project that I'm engaged in. My first attempt at this, I remember when I was a 12 year old boy and I tried to read the Bible because I was told that God is love and God is infinite wisdom and that the Bible is the word of God. So logically then, if I read the Bible, I'm going to be connected to this infinite loving wisdom. And of course, you don't get four pages into the Bible before you realize there ain't any of that in there. So I realized that either, if God is a perfect person, then the Bible is talking about somebody else. And so the Bible, one way or another, the Bible collapses. If there is a God, the Bible's still wrong. Yeah, so to see there's no love in the Bible. And I think is that that- I didn't say there's no love. Wisdom and God is infinite in all of these things. But if you read the Koran, it's the same thing in the Koran where God is constantly referred to as infinite forgiving, infinite mercy. No, he's infinite punishment. He's infinite judgment. So they've just reversed everything. Yeah, so whether it be the Koran or the Bible, each of these different religious traditions have a diversity of complex ways in which the text has been interpreted and appropriated within the community. The one thing I'd like to stress at the outset is the Bible is a complicated book. I like to give the example of the Norton anthology of American literature. So there you have edited collection of writings. I did a degree in English Lit many years ago. And this collection of writings tells the story of the American people through a selection of writings from American history. And it is an absolutely diverse collection of writings, different genre, different types of writings, different socioeconomic, cultural and literary contexts. And you can't just go into the Norton anthology and say there's just one way to read everything. And unfortunately, people tend to have that assumption about the Bible, right? It's just one way to read it like a newspaper when in fact the Bible like the Norton anthology is a very complicated collection of ancient writings written between two and 3000 years ago in a very different alien set of cultures and in three different languages that very few people speak today. So we have to appreciate the distance between the contemporary reader and the text if we're gonna engage with the text seriously. I find difficulty engaging with the text as anything more than a collection of folklore. I mean, we know it was written by different people. We know what original or earlier legends or stories or fables that a lot of this stuff was based on. When you have two different versions of the 10 commandments, for example, first of all, it's not 10 commandments in Exodus 20, 21, 22, 23. It doesn't become 10 commandments until it gets to Exodus 34. And then it's a completely different set. Well, I can't say completely different because the first two are paraphrased versions of the original. But the reason that there are two different sets is because it's written to appeal to different people at different times for different political reasons very often. And we know where a lot of these legends were lifted from and so it's folklore and that's all it can be. So I mean, I can't take any of it. I mean, when people, I don't know why people put such reverence on it. It's like, when you read, if you read a holy scripture from a religion that you were, you were not raised with that you're completely unfamiliar. If you read the Adigranth, for example, I had this problem in the same thing, reading the Bhagavad Gita or reading the Hadnaknas. They're mindless gibberish, right?  It's what people imagine is what their mythology was detailing to them. That's what the Bible is. I can't give it any more reverence than that. Okay, it's interesting. So I was saying, first of all, I don't expect somebody who's agnostic, atheist, skeptic, what have you to have the same attitude toward the Bible as a Christian would just as like I wouldn't expect a Christian to have the same attitude toward the Quran or the Adigranth or the Bhagavad Gita, right? These are all, or I wouldn't expect a Christian to have the same attitude toward the Cretias is on the nature of things that some naturalists might have. So we're all going to apportion different status and interest to different texts based upon our background worldview and our understanding about the nature of reality. But I would say this. So you said, first of all, I said when it comes to the Bible, we shouldn't just all interpret it like a newspaper. You said, okay, it's all folklore. Well, that's another single categorization. And you could be meaning that one of two ways. So folklore in terms of just not true or folklore in terms of a specific genre of literature. I mean it in the latter, that it's a collection of fables and legends and traditional stories and maybe even some historical events. Okay, thrown in there. Yeah, yeah, okay, that's better. I think that there are certain elements that could be interpreted within particularly the Deuteronomic history that one could understand as folkloric. There is also all sorts of other different types of genre like the Psalms or different kind of genre and then there's wisdom literature and then there's the Gospels which are Greco-Roman biographies. There are epistles which are Mediterranean Roman letters. There's apocalyptic in places like Revelation. There's cosmogony at the beginning of Genesis which is similar to other ancient and Eastern creation narratives or myths or stories about how everything came to be. But those are all distinct genre of literature. And so we have to be careful about any single brush and trying to paint the entire complex Bible with that same simple brush. And I think I do. As I said, it's a cultural collective. And I look at this when I read the Christian versions of it and how I realize how they've interpreted certain things and how the Christians reached past the Hebrews and took other elements of Zoroastrianism and incorporated it into their own belief that the Jews did not have. And then in reading the Quran seeing how the Arabs at that time also interpreted, of course they think that the Bible is corrupted. They think that the Christian Gospels, the New Testament is also corrupted but they're still basing the religion on that. It's just that pick and choose thing about believing whatever they want to. But it's still, again, it's entirely cultural and it's not any of it factually accurate. So for example, the wisdom literature, there's no wisdom at all in the wisdom literature, you would say? I would say that Ecclesiastes 3, 18 to 21 contains an arguable element of wisdom but only in the sense that it contradicts absolutely everything else in the Bible. The book of Ecclesiastes I certainly think has a lot of existentialist wisdom that a lot of people gravitate toward. I mean, the Bible is a complex book that offers a variety of different perspectives on life circumstances. Let me give you maybe a Christian understanding of how to interpret. Because as I said, it's a very diverse collection of writings. So for me, the kind of interpretive grid and sort of a standard Christian way of approaching the Bible, which cycles us back into the biblical violence issue which really is ostensibly the whole grounds for our encounter today through dialogue, is for me the center is Jesus, is to interpret the Bible through who we understand Jesus to have been revealed to be. Paul, in 2 Timothy 3, 14 to 17 says that the scriptures, now he's a graph A, the writings in Greek, the scriptures are there to make us wise for salvation in Christ Jesus. And then he says, by teaching and buccane correcting and training and righteousness so that we are thoroughly equipped for every good work. So how do you hold that position after you've read it? When you realize that that statement can't be true. So the point then is what this says is this gives us this following interpretive grid that when you're reading the Bible, this is what St. Augustine said in the 4th century. This is not new. He said, you always ought to read the Bible so as to increase love of God and neighbor, which makes sense because Jesus said the totality of the law as you should understand it is to love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and love your neighbors yourself. And when Jesus defines neighbor, he consistently defines it as the outsider, the other person. So you have all the people who are the standard outgroups in 1st century, Palestinian and Judean society, people like tax collectors, prostitutes, Samaritans, those are the people that Jesus reaches out to and embraces. He says that's very different from my reading. He has been said, hate your enemy. I say love your enemies and pray for those that persecute you. So just to summarize quickly. I wish I could remember the citation right now explaining that when it says love your neighbor, but this isn't necessary. I don't think this is a Jesus quote. I think this is referring to the commandments. Love your neighbor meant love your fellow Jew. I think the language used in the Hebrew was to love your fellow Jew. Well, in Leviticus it also explicitly says, treat the outsider who lives among you as your neighbor. But what I'm saying here though, is that Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, let's say Matthew five to seven, he even goes beyond that, right?  I say love your enemy. Pray for those who persecute you. So for Jesus explicitly, your neighbor is also your enemy, the people who are the outsiders, the people that you might be tempted to dehumanize, to objectify. And so for a Christian, I believe, if you want to interpret the Bible rightly, there can be a lot of things you don't understand and you're not sure how to figure out.  And sadly, I know a lot of Christians who aren't, and I think they're misreading the Bible at various points. Well, I don't understand why that would be a goal.  Because I don't understand where the obsession is with convincing yourself of things that are not evidently true. I mean, we know Adam and Eve did not exist. That's a fable. We know that. There's no doubt about it. There's no possibility of it. The global flood of Noah's Ark didn't happen. There could be a kernel of truth in a parable sort of a way to, or a metaphoric way to the Tower of Babel. But obviously, that didn't happen literally either. A number of scholars have assured me that there's never been an exodus, at least not the way the Bible was described. And I'm talking about Christian and Jewish scholars saying this together, and that Moses evidently never existed. So why would we put such trust into a book that we know is wrong about so many things? The Heart of Christianity is captured well in the Apostles Creed. And the Apostles Creed begins with, I believe, in God the Father Almighty. And then it goes on to Creator of Heaven and Earth. And then in Jesus Christ's only sign, and it describes Jesus, and then it describes the Holy Spirit, and really summarizes that's the Heart of Christianity. There are a lot of questions that people are gonna have about various parts of scripture, including aspects of what you've been referring to, Genesis one to 11, which is a set of etiological texts. In other words, they're describing the origin of things, like the origin of the diversity of languages, or the origin of human beings. There are also Genesis one to three, cosmogonic creation narrative. They're also describing the brokenness of the world. I would be very cautious about reading that as a newspaper, as some Christians do. So you should be circumspect about that. But you can have questions about all those things. Just remember this, that the Heart of Christianity is Jesus Christ, and living like he did, and following the teaching that he gave us. And that would be kind of your job. Let's talk about that then. Let's talk about living like he did. We're talking about a guy who, one, he drank wine, hung out with hookers, and also advocated that you should pay your taxes, and that you should sell all your clothes, sell all your goods to give to the poor, and that a rich man cannot get into heaven. So everything about prosperity gospel is immediately wrong if you look at Jesus. And all the people that are advocating that they're single issue voters, so they're gonna vote for pro-life, because they've never read Numbers chapter five. So they're not being biblical. So if you wanna talk about living like Jesus, we're talking about a first century faith healer who didn't understand poisons, or nutrients, or drugs, or infectious pathogens, or any of that, because he said that it didn't matter what you take into your mouth, it's what goes out of your mouth that is the issue that can corrupt you, because you believed in magic words. And he talked about not washing your hands the way the Jewish tradition had always held, for that reason.  And he thinks that diseases are caused by demons. And that one point alone is reason why you would not wanna take medical advice from this guy. He clearly does not know what he's talking about. Right. Do you think that you would have any problem with lacking charity, and how you interact with other people? I'll just say this as just a general observation, and then just get your feedback on it.  Is it possible to interact with other people, and disagree with them about big issues without using kind of sending into meaning language? And as I said, we're here on the anniversary of January 6th, right? I have to learn how to talk to people who accept QAnon conspiracy theory, because if I just insult them, then we're not gonna get very far.  So do you think that language is helpful? Well, I wanna be very clear, as I indicated before, that I was pleased that I was invited to talk to somebody of your caliber, having that usually I'm talking to the batshit, you know, barking lunatics. So I'm happy to have this opportunity, and I don't mean to appear at all disrespectful of you as a person, but I can't change the fact. Jesus thought diseases were caused by demons. That means he didn't know better. So, yeah, assuming that Jesus is wrong and that your worldview is right and there are no non-physical beings such as- We know that diseases are not caused by demons.  So for example, scientists- What was he right about? I can just finish, scientists in the 16th century all really all accepted the Batalla make theory of the universe.  That was the best knowledge and understanding at that time. I mean, the very first step in charitably engaging with others is appreciating the socio-historical context of their degree of understanding. No, and I do appreciate that. I don't want to be misunderstood, but the point is we're talking about whether we can take the Bible to be literal, or, excuse me, whether we can take the Bible seriously. And that's just on the point of the violence. And while the violence alone is certainly inexcusable, that's not the only inexcusable aspect of it. There is not a redeeming characteristic in a whole of Christianity or theism in general, period. And that's being charitable. Like none at all, no redeeming qualities at all. The purpose of, what is the purpose of Christianity? Let's just hear that first in your words before I... You said Christianity has no redeeming value at all. It's done nothing at all. That is positive. Right, so we're gonna be judged permanently, forever, heaven or hell, the ultimate carrot and stick, based entirely solely on what we believe. Right? No, I mean, I just said, no, that's not correct. But that's what the Bible says. You have to believe. So how do we take the Bible seriously? Where does the Bible say that? Where does the Bible say that? Yes. So when Jesus says that if you don't, if you have to acknowledge him, violate the very first commandment, by the way, you have to acknowledge him as being before God. He's the gateway to God. And if you don't do that... Before God? What do you mean? Of course. He existed before God? No, no, no. He put in the first commandment, God says there are no other gods before me. And then Jesus positions himself as the gateway to God, which is a violation of the very first commandment. Why would that be a violation? He says he's the gate you're referring to in the book, John? Right, no one comes to the Father but through me. John 14.6. So Jesus has positioned himself as someone who is before God. Oh, so two things. First of all, of course, is Jesus himself divine? Is one question, which of course Christians believe. He's the second person of the Trinity. The other thing, of course, though, is that even if you're a Unitarian, right? You don't believe that Jesus is divine like the Father. That's not a contradiction of the first commandment that God, the Father used a mediator. So it's just a non-sectivary. You still, no one comes to the Father, but through me, that puts Jesus ahead of God. No, it puts Jesus as the chosen mediator to the Father. Exactly what I just said with different words. Okay, I don't think that's an issue.  Paul says in 1 Timothy, we have one mediator between God and... So the first commandment is saying there is no mediator. There is no one before God. I'm not saying that. Okay. That's not what it's saying. All right. Oh, but let's segue back to evil and suffering and so on. So, I mean, I was gonna get to the point about why we are judged at all, but then you say we're not judged. So I don't want to strong in your position. People are judged simply by what they believe. That's what you're saying. Okay, is there a judgment? Yes, there's a judgment. Okay, based on what? The judgment is based upon whether people are choosing to be in relationship with God, the source of all life and goodness or not. So we're being judged over whether we make this assumption. What judgment is, what I would understand judgment to be, is that judgment is the consequences of one's own actions. So it's not, it's actions, not belief. Well, actions, certainly belief and actions can go together, right? But for example, in Romans one, Paul, in Romans one to three, talks about the universal sinfulness of all humanity, right? That's his point is everybody has fallen, Jew and Gentile were all alienated from God. And one of the language he uses in Romans one is that God gave them over. Now, this is passive language. What God is doing is because people want to act in a way that is self-destructive to their nature, God allows them to do that.  It's the same, that's the same kind of idea. Okay, so I thought these might come in handy because I thought it might be relevant, but it seems that there is a judgment and that it's based entirely, entirely on what you do or don't believe. Not actions, belief. So what do you want to quote? Just go ahead and quote something for me. You have to, the one, let me put them in a phrase in a different way. You can be forgiven for any sin if you but believe, but if you don't believe, then it doesn't matter whether you're a good or bad person because the only sin that will not be forgiven is the sin of disbelief as according to the three quotes on my t-shirt. You have to believe whatever the clergy or someone you're referring to. So let me talk about one parable of Jesus and then come back to the unforgivable sin if I may. Okay, so the parable of Jesus, the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25, here he says, at the end of the age, there'll be these two different groups, sheep and goats. And then he goes on to define how you distinguish sheep and the goats. It is how they respond into others. Did you clothe me when I was naked? Did you feed me when I was hungry? Did you visit me when I was in prison and so on? Some people will think that they were sheep and in fact, they turned out to be goats and he will say, I never knew you. Others are gonna be surprised.  And the way that he defines it there is all about action, what you do, how you live your life. Now you wanna refer, you wanna talk about the unforgivable sin, what is the unforgivable sin? The blaspheming of the Holy Spirit. Yeah, let's look at the context. So in the context, for example, in Mark 3, Jesus has just healed someone. And what the Jewish leaders that are opposing him begin to suggest is that he's able to do good. He's able to heal people because the devil is doing that through him. And so then he warns them about blaspheming the Holy Spirit. The meaning of what he is saying there in response in the literary context of those individuals is that people who refuse to submit and recognize truth that is right in front of them, they will suffer the consequences of that. Think about what you just said. That is the sinful will. Right, think about what you just said. Those who refuse to submit, do you not understand the gravity of that already? It's about control. It's about manipulation of the masses. That's it. You are not supposed to have questions. You're not supposed to improve your understanding. There is nothing about the judgment that would allow anybody a means of rehabilitation or improvement of their situation. No, you get eternity to pre-exist according to some religious beliefs. And then you get this momentary glimpse where you exist. And for that, you get the entirety of eternity again where you were going to be judged, damned or saved. And the saving part is arguably a damnation as well. All based on this one momentary glimpse where by our terms and our perspective, we would say that you didn't have sufficient ability to make that determination. And in fact, all of this, if we include in original sin on this, is based on judgment of people who literally didn't have the knowledge of right and wrong and therefore shouldn't be held accountable for the decision that they made. I don't see, and I'm waiting for you to, I will offer you an opportunity to give me a redeeming feature, but I don't see a redeeming feature in Christianity. I think you might be on mute Randall. There we are. All right. So Paul, I mentioned Romans one to three earlier. He talks about in Romans chapter two, verses 12 and following. Each individual is judged based upon the light that they have been given. And so he's contrasting their Gentiles to Jews.  Jews acting in accord with the law that God gave them through supernatural revelation. Each is judged according to the law they've been given. So God's not holding people responsible for information for which they did not have access. So that's sort of the first thing. So all of the quotes on my shirt are wrong. You can still be forgiven even if you don't believe. You can be forgiven as long as you want to be forgiven. Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew, okay? Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew, he uses this language of weeping and gnashing of teeth and where he talks of literally weeping and gnashing of teeth. It's language that he uses several times. The Greek word there for gnashing entails or implies anger and hatred. So it's another place where a similar word, Bruko is used is in Acts 754, where the Jewish leaders gnashed their teeth at Stephen because they didn't like what he was saying. They're really angry. And so this idea of gnashing is of people who are really angry and refusing to submit. So the point Jesus is making there is that those who end up alienated from God are those who refuse to have anything to do with God. And because of that, as C.S. Lewis famously said, the gates of hell are locked on the inside that those who don't wanna be a part of God's kingdom will not be a part of God's kingdom because God's not gonna strong arm anybody. But it's not simply about a matter of, ah, you missed this. You didn't believe this thing you're supposed to believe. It's a question of, do people want a relationship with God or not? I'm sorry, I don't find that any more valid than when William Lane Craig says that when those who reject God reject God, that we do it not because of a lack of evidence, we do it because we love sin. That's not a valid explanation. You're talking about people that don't want a relationship with God. Well, what about people who want a relationship, not just necessarily just with God, but with whatever is truth? And we find there is no truth to any religious belief and that's a problem. And so we're gonna be judged for that. Now you say there's no heaven or hell. What is the judgment then? I never said that.  I said that what Jesus defines damnation as in terms of weeping and gnashing of teeth is people who are choosing their own alienation from God. They don't want to be a part of God or his kingdom. Okay, so that's not a damnation. I would happily accept that option. Matter of fact, I prayed to God for that option when I was a child. Yeah, I don't know what option you prayed for, but I will say this just to clarify, this isn't Bon Scott singing Highway to Hell, which I'm kind of tempted to break into here because I can do a pretty good Bon Scott imitation, but this is rather, this is more like a person who's just deciding to inflict misery upon themselves. It's not a pleasant thing. It's not a happy thing. And I've, you know, that's the William Lane Craig argument again. No, it's not that way. We're not inflicting misery. If you love truth, if truth and improving your understanding matters to you more than anything else, then you would not let yourself be deceived by things that are not evidently true. You would not let yourself be convinced unless the evidence is, and you can test this yourself to some degree, you can show that, well, so far as I can tell, this is all valid. Everything seems to check out. I guess this is correct. Aaron, can you define, because you've appealed to this principle of believing things that are quote, evidently true. You've appealed to that several times. Could you define that criterion for me? What does it mean to have been established as evidently true? Well, it's going to require three definitions for that.  It's a point of data that is objectively verifiable. Then evidence is obviously objectively verifiable data that is either positively indicative of or exclusively concordant with one available position or hypothesis over any other. And then the truth is, because you have to remember that every liar sells their life as truth with a capital T. So how do we know that it's truth? You have to be able to show that it's true. That's the minimum requirement. So the truth is what the facts are, what we can show to be true, not whatever else we might assume or imagine beyond or instead of that. So two things you mentioned. So objectively verifiable, could you define what you mean by that? And then you also said, show it to be true. And I'm thinking, show to whom? You see, for example, in academic philosophy, philosophers disagree about all sorts of things. It's going to be very hard to get any unanimity. But if you were to say, the only things that you could know would be the things that you could show to be true to everyone, then you're really going to- I didn't say that. Yeah, so I'm asking you to define the show to whom and what does it mean to be objectively verifiable? So very often I have these arguments with religious believers who always want to tell me that the Bible says things the Bible doesn't say. And of course, they can't tell me where the Bible says that because in fact, it doesn't say that. But when I say, well, the Bible actually does say this, and then they'll tell me, no, the Bible doesn't say that. And then I will open it up and I'll show you. It does say that exactly here, here it is. And then that's not what the Bible says immediately becomes that's not what the Bible means. But that's objective verification. I can show you what it says. Now, if I say that I know something to be true, but if I can't demonstrate that at all by any means whatsoever, to any degree at all, then I don't really know that, do I? I mean, if you're gonna stall philosophy, then you would certainly say that if you can't demonstrate your knowledge at all, period, then you don't really know it. But if I can tell you, if we're gonna argue over what the Bible says and I can show you the Bible actually says it, just crack open the book and show you the verse, that's objective verification. So two things, I guess one thing I would have is, there is something called interior conscious states that I experience, which I can't show you. I can tell you I'm having them, but I can't show them to you. I can't give you, if I'm tasting licorice right now, I can't give that taste to you. It's private to me. It's not some third thing I can point to in our shared environment. And so if that is required, that I have to be able to show you, then I can't know my interior conscious states, which seems to be pretty devastating. Many times, there have been times when I knew things to be true that turned out I didn't really know them. I thought that I left my, I knew that I hung my keys up when I came home and then I found them in my pants pocket that a pants I was wearing yesterday, proving that I didn't really know that. So it becomes what you demonstrate. That's a non sequitur. The fact that our knowledge is fallible is not what I'm talking about here. What I'm talking about here is that you appealed to objective verification as a criteria for knowledge. And that means that I'm able to show you the truth of that claim, but I have interior conscious states that I can't show you because they're inaccessible to you. Now, if you were a brain surgeon, you could perhaps study my objective patterns of neurons firing, but that's not the same thing as my conscious states. Right? Well, what about the Mandela effect then? Go ahead. What about, what are you speaking? I'm not familiar with that. It's like a common cultural misunderstanding. We all remember that in Casablanca, he said, play it again, Sam. But in fact, he never said that. He said, play it. You can, you played it for her. You can play it for me. But we all collectively think that he said play it again, Sam. We've heard it recorded somewhere. We've heard it reported somewhere. And so that's how we say it. We have false impressions all the time. So maybe you can put a degree of criteria on how important it is. On Carl Sagan's comment about extraordinary claims requiring extraordinary evidence. If you don't put it in a dichotomy, if you put it as a sliding scale in the more preposterous it is, maybe the more evidence we need of it or the more extraordinary or the more extreme if you prefer. But my point is you might know what you had for dinner last night and then realize that you misremembered and that tonight's not Thursday. Tonight's Friday. And so yeah, you were thinking about Wednesday, right? But I'm talking about what we can demonstrate. You talk about truth. Yeah, this is the important thing. I wanna stick on the topic. If we're gonna talk about truth, people always come to me and say, well, Jesus is the truth. I'm like, well, no, Jesus is not a fact. It's not objectively verifiable. There's nothing about Jesus you can show to be true, not a thing. So Jesus therefore meets none of the criteria to be called truth. Okay, so again, I provided what I would say as a defeater for your claim that objective verification that knowledge requires this objective verification that I can show you because I can't show you my conscious states and you're pointing out that memory is fallible is just irrelevant. That's a non sequitur. I'll give you one more example of this because the latest Matrix movie just came out and sadly it bombed at the theaters. But of course, the thing about the Matrix is that it points out this age old epistemological question, right? How do you know reality is as you experience it? How do you know you're not a brain in a vat? How do you know you're not being deceived by a Cartesian demon? How do you know that you're not in the Matrix? Or as the idealist says, how do you know that there is a world that corresponds with our conscious experience? It could just be that there are minds and their conscious experiences as George Barkley famously argued. And here's one of the things you can't refute those skeptical and idealist scenarios in such a way to show it to everybody that they are false from which it follows that you can't also know the external world exists. So your criteria not only defeats the interior contents of your mind but also your knowledge of the external world. But then when we have these arguments, as I said, I usually do these with creationists and the reason that I do, because I've noticed some comments about this in the chat, the reason that I argue with creationists more often than not is because I like to have an argument that we can win with objective facts.  Philosophical arguments you can never win by design. That's why Hume apparently didn't refute Aquinas depending on whether you already liked Aquinas.  So that's where you are in a philosophical argument. So I try to avoid the philosophical argument. I don't like the matrix for the reason that suddenly caused everybody to say, well, hey, I wanna pretend that I have magic powers so I'm gonna pretend that reality isn't real. And that means that I can break the laws of reality since reality doesn't really apply to me. And I actually know people, multiple people who believe we live in a matrix and who consequently believe by their description that God is the infinite liar, the most elaborate liar ever because we have these very intricate explanations for how all of our senses work and God had to create all of these illusions on top of illusions to mislead us further for things that he didn't need. We don't need these illusions. We don't need the explanations if this is an illusion. So why would create all of this? So these people believe that their God is wholly deceptive on every level. But they wanna argue that we don't really know anything that we know and that allows them to believe whatever they wanna believe. And that's what I keep running into. People who cannot admit that they're wrong about anything. And while I'm not really all about getting somebody to admit that they're wrong, I mean, how else can you establish who's right if you're gonna investigate what the truth is? You have to have a common language and the people I'm arguing with refuse that. Okay, so your response to... So I was offering a rebuttal to your epistemology, your epistemological principle of objective verification by showing it undermines both your knowledge of your interior conscious states and also your knowledge of the external world. And your reply to me was, well, in philosophy, nobody can decide anything. I don't think that's a good reply. I don't think that's certainly not how I understood your argument. Okay, well, anyway, to say that you seem to appeal to a general skepticism about philosophy and its value in analyzing epistemological concepts and indeed all other areas. And I think in fact, what I've done falsifies that because I think I have provided good reasons not to accept your epistemological claim of objective verification. If it undermines the interior conscious knowledge of your own mental states and also your knowledge of the external world, you ought to seek a new criterion. I missed, I guess, that whole part of the conversation where you gave me any reason to question my understanding of reality at this point. Maybe you could explain what, I don't know, 10-minute conversation I missed out of that because I never heard anything like that. Nor did I say any of the things that I remember that you were just describing. Sure, I'll give you a quick rundown. So I asked you how you define this concept of objective verification. You said, well, because that's required for you to make knowledge claims. And you said, well, it means I can show you. And so then- It doesn't mean me. Objectified definition means that it's not dependent on one person's subjective opinion. It can be corroborated with others. Now I realize- And you said I can show you. That was, so what you said is you define verification in terms of being able to show. And I said, well, you can't show me your interior conscious mental states. And I gave you a clear example of that. Tasting licorice, right? I can tell you on tasting licorice, you can accept my testimony. You can look at my brain states, but you don't have my interior Aqualia that I'm experiencing in my conscious states. And then I said, also, what also undercuts that claim is that there are very skeptical scenarios about the external world, such as the Matrix movie, which are fully consistent with everything we experience, but which do not have an external world to the mind. And so you can't show that realism about the external world is in fact true. And so because you can't show it, you can't justify that as a knowledge claim either. But if you end up with that kind of radical skepticism, what you need to do is rethink the epistemology rather than live in cognitive dissonance and inconsistency. Okay, then what we have here, what I've encountered a number of times where people wanna bring up this Matrix-like illusion in order to negate evidence, so that they will tell me that when I say that there's, we know that the Noah's flood never happened, for example, because we have such evidence or whatever, or that there isn't such evidence over the Exodus ever happening, well, then it becomes the philosophical argument that I can't prove that I existed two weeks ago. But if in fact, if reality is real, as we understand it to be, then in that reality, even if reality is an illusion, even if we live in a video game that was constructed to see this this way, the confines of the rules of the laws of the system that we are in show that there was no global flood. So whether reality is real or not, the Bible is still wrong. Okay, so I did not bring up the Matrix to negate evidence. I actually brought up the Matrix to provide it a feeder for your epistemological principle. So I can't speak to the younger creationists due to debate, but I'm certainly not one of them, but that's why I brought up the Matrix. But the Bible is still wrong. That's the point of this discussion, isn't it? You've asserted the Bible still is wrong. What I said- We never had a global flood. We know the Tower of Babel is fraught with issues, moral issues, not just factual issues. Oh, of course, I already pointed out, Genesis one to 11, you should be very careful about interpreting that as something like a newspaper accounts of the ancient world. I mean, Genesis six to nine, for example, do you know what kind of a literature that is? It's a poem, right? It's written in a poetic form. And it goes in a form where the beginning idea parallels the end idea and then the next one parallels the next to last. And it goes on and then moves into the very central idea. It's called the chiasm. And chapter eight, verse one is the center of the chiasm when it says God remembered Noah. And the main message there for any reader who would understand the literary form of chiasm is that God remembers the righteous. So when young creationists get all in a tizzy about trying to argue for a global flood, I think they're just missing the wood for the trees because they're not grappling with the kind of literature it is. So I think it's just a cul-de-sac if we wanted to beat a global flood. Yeah, now I realize that the argument that you're making and I've also seen people in the chat who think the same thing, that I'm just not versed enough in the Bible to be able to have this conversation. But yeah, okay, so I already understand. I've known many Christians who accept that the flood is just folklore and they find other truths in the Bible. They treat it more metaphorically. And every, as I pointed out before, serious theologian views the Bible that way. They don't take Adam and Eve as beings that are really, they find other meanings in that other truths as they put it. But that still comes down to Jesus referring other people to the flood as if it had literally happened. So why, if we're gonna be taking it into the purpose of this conversation today is can we take the Bible seriously? Jesus is still referring people to things we know did not happen as if they happened. So your example you're referring to when Jesus says, as it was in the days of Noah, is that what you're referring to, for example? Yeah, first of all, that doesn't require a reader to think that Jesus literally believed that those events happened as when your young creationist reads them. You have to first of all appreciate the context in Jesus' doing is his point is judgment. And he's appropriating and appealing to the story to talk about a model for judgment. Whether that corresponds to a historic past flood, let alone a global flood as the young creationist debate believe in is really beside the point. The main point that Jesus is making there is that it is about coming judgment. The same thing when he talks about Jonah being in the belly of the whale as an allusion to his resurrection, the standard boilerplate view among biblical scholars is that Jonah is probably like a historical novel. It's like a story that's making a theological point. Jesus can appeal to that story in order to make a point about his own future resurrection without requiring the reader to assume that Jesus believed or that we must believe that Jonah was an historical person. It's just another issue. I understand that. And I realize that there are people in the chat, although I haven't seen comments to this effect yet.  I want to just believe that I have no idea what I'm talking about. But I understand that we are taking a metaphorical view that every seriously, those in takes a metaphorical view on some of these older legends of the Bible. I get that, but it's still the point that, and let's just ignore, I mean, there's a large point we could make on whether we're gonna take the Bible seriously and the Bible presents all of these myths that we know didn't happen and that are indefensible. Adam and Eve are indefensible in one respect to the Tower of Babel is a whole other indefensible thing. We could have different shows just about how indefensible each of these fables are. But for the moment, let's just talk about the judgment. Because I think of all of the idiocy in the Bible, all of the absurdities, atrocities, inconsistencies and contradictions, the worst of all of them is this notion of judgment over what you believe. So I don't know how to steel man your position, being completely honest. So I'm gonna ask you to explain your position regarding that. Yeah, so I did actually, and I would say this, I mean, like I wrote a book called Is the Atheism My Neighbor, where I defend atheism and critique Christians who target atheists particularly with what I call the rebellion thesis that all atheism is born of rebellion and a rejection of God and evil and so on. And that's why I do that. I think it's, again, a good exercise for everybody to deal with the problems in their own community. And if a person doesn't know how to steel man the position that they're interacting with, then definitely they need to do some homework. In terms of- Oh, excuse me. I was being very charitable to you. I was asking you to express your position so that I don't- And I am saying, like I am saying, if you don't know, I mean, and this isn't, we're talking about person to person. I've talked to many different types of people who believe many different things. I'm asking you to give your belief. Yeah, so I was explaining, for example- The response to that I'm saying, the response to that is not by telling me to do my own research, because in this case to do my own research would mean reading all of your books, but it would be much worse to simply ask what your individual position is. It's not like the worst thing to read my books. I'm not gonna read all your books when I could simply ask you the question, what do you believe? Yeah, so I was saying, so here's the thing, when I was talking about the religious leaders, when Jesus is performing miracles, miracles are there, the Greek is Simea or sign and dunamis are power. What they're meant to be is their signs of God's power breaking into the world. And what their response is, is rather than to take Jesus seriously because they don't like him, they look for any reason to explain away the miracles that he is doing. So whether or not you think it happened, I know you don't think it happened. I'm just saying in terms of what's going on in the narrative, okay? Just look at it as a literary text. They dismiss what he does and the evidence, the miracles that he's providing in support of his own identity by attributing his actions to the devil. And that's when Jesus warns about blaspheming the spirit. The point he is making is that God's spirit draws people to God and if people don't want to be drawn, they reject God, then they will not be drawn to him. The point then is if the religious leaders don't want to recognize him, then they won't. Nobody's going to force them to. But it's a simply- So what category then? It's a relationship. It's an idea of relationship. What category does that put us in when we don't want to be fooled into believing things that are not true? We've been lied to by all kinds of religious leaders. I'm sure you would agree that there's a whole lot of religious leaders who lie for a living, right? There's more than I would like. And some of my favorite songs are about those guys, like Ozzy Osbourne, Miracle Man, or Skid Row, Quicksand Jesus, those are going back a few years now, but those are some great songs. Well, we're in the same generation. I like the same thing. Excellent. I was trying to get some culturally appropriate references. I used to be a big Skid Row fan and still appreciate Ozzy. In fact, Crazy Train describes North American society today. And as Ozzy said, we need to learn how to love and forget about hate, right? Amen. Can we agree on that? Can we agree on that? Oh yeah, absolutely. I have no problem agreeing with that. That's my biggest problem with the political divide right now. Again, it goes into the dichotomous thinking where you have to put everybody into two boxes. There's no such thing as nuance. And then once you have a label to staple onto somebody, well now you've stapled onto them all of the other negative connotations that you ever thought applied to that. And you don't have to ask that person whether that's their opinion or not.  We might, this might be, we could end it with a grievant. We could, we could jump into the Q&A right now, guys. Let's listen. Okay, with that? Let's jump into it. I wanna finish one point because I never understood the concept his notion, his personal opinion regarding damnation or salvation, what either one means. So what salvation means is being reconciled to God and the rest of creation. What damnation means is refusing to be reconciled to God or the rest of creation. I will say, I wanna just say this though, okay? Some people, what they have is a very narrow conception of what that reconciliation would look like. For example, well, you gotta pray a Jesus prayer in this life or something like that. And then there are other people that are much more broad and inclusivist and careful about opining on where God's grace does and does not appear. And I actually think that the parable I referenced earlier about the sheep and the goats should really warn and caution Christians or any religious people from having an overly cavalier attitude that I'm on the in group and you're on the out group because actually the parable, the sheep and the goats totally turns that upside down. I've been told all my life that I was one of the goats. I've been told that I am the evil side of whatever coin anybody wanted to flip simply because they disagree with me. And as this is where I said, once you have a label to apply to somebody then you can just dismiss everything, every other aspect about them. But the problem in this conversation is that you have your opinion about what salvation and damnation mean and what you call damnation is my salvation. And what other Christians say is that their salvation would be my damnation. And there's a huge disparity. If we are to take the Bible seriously then why are there so many different disparate opinions about it? Why is there no clarity? Why is it not based in fact? Why is it determined by belief when none of that should matter? And why is there no ability to rehabilitate if we were wrong? And why would it matter if we were wrong about what we believed? I'll just say two things and then maybe we'll turn it over to the Q and A. So the first thing is I wanna apologize for all those people that have said those things to you. It's not their place to say that. So I do apologize for that. And I do think that as Christians we need to learn a fair degree of humility and every night at the end of the day reflect on what I did and did the things that I do and the things that I said make the world a better place or not make the world a better place. Tony Campolo said, well-known Christian leader said there's this old phrase love the sin or hate the sin. That's not what God says. He says love the sin or hate your own sin. Stop worrying about other people. Start worrying about yourself. And I think that's probably a good point on which I'd like to end. All right, we're gonna thank you very much for that. We're gonna need to be very efficient. I'm getting that we're supposed to be very efficient on the questions on the Q and A. So let's try to answer them as quickly as we can. You read my mind. Thanks so much for your question. Mr. Monster says, Aaron Ross is the best and wanna say, I gotta remind you folks, both Aaron and Randall, Dr. Randall Rouser are both linked in the description right now. So if you wanna hear more from them, you can. And I also forgot to mention at the start, if you like juicy debates or discussions like this one, don't forget to hit that subscribe button as we have many more coming up, including the one at the bottom right of your screen in person in Dallas, Texas on January 16th between Elijah Shavor and Destiny and whether or not religion and government can overlap. You don't wanna miss it. So hit that subscribe button right now so you don't miss it. And Quani Upstate says, if you believe the violent Bible was revealed by God, thank you for showing people why they should stop caring about this God. So I think that they're saying, Dr. Rouser, they're saying that this God is immoral or violent and so you shouldn't care for this God. Yeah, I think they're trying to be ironic saying that I just did not succeed in accomplishing my task. In fact, I made it worse. So I won't pass that statement on to the Dean of the seminary. We'll just leave it at that. You got it. And UNFHQ says to Aaron, if evolution is real, why can't we get universal healthcare in America? That comes up in every single debate's Q and A. But Marcos Laurenti, thank you for your questions. A super pumped, just signed up for the conference in Dallas, modern day debate, debate con. Thank you, Marcos, for your plug for that. So see you soon live, James. And congrats to Aaron on your acceptance into the temple, temple of Satan. The Satanic temple. Wow, I hadn't even heard. Yeah, I gave them a $25 donation because I wanted to support the Satanic temple on their First Amendment defense. They've done a better job than regular atheist organizations could do in defending the First Amendment. And now also, they're the only front countering Texas's attack on freedom of choice. Women's right to bodily autonomy. And so I advocate, hey, support the Satanic temple. And so I gave them their donation and now I have a membership. And so now technically I'm Satanic, so Hail Satan. Well, as we're gonna get from Alexander Williams says, Randall, please define your axiom slash starting point for what evil is. So what I gave is an ostensive definition of evil because I don't think it is necessary. I mean, I could give like an Augustinian definition of evil as the absence of being or something like that. I don't think that kind of abstract metaphysical discussion is helpful for a context like this. An ostensive definition is one that says we can recognize at least basic evil actions intuitively by recognizing and by pointing to them. And I give an obvious example of a child being hanged at Auschwitz. Whether or not you can give an abstract definition of the metaphysics of evil, you can recognize that that is evil and thus is objectively evil. And that's all I need for this discussion. Yeah, I need to add that I will be a featured speaker at SatanCon on Darwin Day weekend in Scottsdale, Arizona. Wow, you're really getting into this Satanism stuff. And then this one coming in from Bombastic or BoomBastic says, Dr. Rouser, I invite you to leave this, let's see, this nonsensical, let's see, view and accept the religion of Moses, Jesus and Muhammad. I am confused on what they're trying to get at. Is this another one that's supposed to be ironic? I'm just gonna leave that one where it's at. I'm not sure, but it's clear that they're dissatisfied with me, that much is clear. Next up, okay. I thought maybe sometimes it's contrary and 420 says if human thought is fallen, doesn't any human concept block God and become an idol? Quote, the letter killeth, whereas the spirit giveth life, unquote. No, I mean, so the concept of the fall is what we'll be talking about here. A concept that's common in Protestantism, but not so much in Catholicism is a particular view of total depravity, which is to say that the fall skews all of our reasoning and our will, whereas Catholics tend to focus more just on the impact on the will. But I think we can appreciate this, all of us, is that human beings are beset with cognitive biases. And so we all need a lot of work when it comes to our thinking, but it's not the kind of problem that totally undercuts our ability to have any rational beliefs at all. This one coming in from Zagros Ozkan and despite it seeming like it's maybe, I think they're being sincere. It's supposed to be a philosophical puzzle.  And if not, why would you disobey? Yeah, so this is a common kind of, it's trying to be like a gotcha question. What I like to do to respond to these kinds of questions is to say that you can generalize those kinds of questions for any moral theory. So for example, you can say to a utilitarian, if you could secure the greatest gift for the greatest number by killing an innocent person, would you kill the innocent person? If it was Aaron, would you kill him for the greatest number?  You can do the same thing with various theistic accounts of morality. So in my view, there are certain things I believe we have kinds of moral knowledge we should talk about in Jesus loves Canaanites of certain things that it would always be wrong to do. Now, I don't think that killing a person in and of itself is always morally wrong. I mean, there could be if a kidnapper is holding a person and they're threatening to kill them, I think a sniper could defensively take out the kidnapper, for example. But there are kinds of actions that are intrinsically evil, such as genocide. And so I argue that at length in the book. You got it. And heads up, folks, just because we want to get the speakers in here, not here in about a half hour. We may not be able to read all the questions that are coming in right now.  We are running out of time. Nicodemus, the daemon says, Aaron, do you agree or disagree? Objective equals evaluate with respect to goals. Absolute equals applying in all circumstances. Is that the entirety of the question? And then they say, stop conflating the Dr. R and Theus. I have no idea what they're talking about. Conflating the Dr. R? I think Dr. Ferrando, I think they're referring to, but I don't know what they're meaning by that. I don't know. I have no idea what they're talking about there. I don't conflate so far as I know. I try my best not to. And I try not to deal with absolutes. There are few absolutes in my reality. Gotcha. And this one in from Heywood. Thank you very much. She says, Aaron is awesome. And sunflower, thanks for your answers. Aaron quote, I don't know why. I think they're saying that this is your position and maybe again, being ironic. They say, I don't know why people put such reverence on it, namely referring to religion. Then they say, but you are in that case literally referring to the most influential text of all time. Is it really that hard to figure out why people put reverence on it? Yeah, it's a little disturbing. I remember having a conversation about this with my daughter when she was a teenager. As soon as we mentioned the Bible, I don't know, really, you should read it. I mean, how are you really gonna know why you don't believe it unless you read it? And she didn't wanna read it because she thought it was a creepy book. And the fact that I was promoting that she should read it actually disturbed her further. Because most of the external family around her were all creationists.  So what can I do? This is coming in from EMP says if Christian beliefs are interpreted and if human interpretations can be flawed, how do you know that you haven't been tricked by Satan? How can you be sure that you're serving God and not Satan? Yeah, so the question there is, I mean, that's really no different than René Descartes, evil demon, which I referenced in passing earlier where Descartes raises this conundrum. How do we know that we're not being deceived by an evil demon? And I don't think actually Descartes ever satisfactorily answered that question. He didn't, I got the impression he did not. Yeah, which leads to what we call the Cartesian circle. But I mean, that's not an issue, particularly atheists, right? That's a general epistemological question. And I think the proper response to it is to reject what Descartes assumed he required, which was certainty in order to have rational belief or knowledge. I don't think that. So I'm what we call an epistemic fallibilist, which means I think it is reasonable to accept your beliefs unless you have some good reason not to.  I would have to say that we agree on that point. Good, awesome. This one coming in from Victor Hallock says, for Dr. Rausser, thank you both. And says, if God was, quote, all good, unquote, why does he choose to launder violence through us, susceptible humans instead of simply allowing violence to be consistent with his other infinite attributes? So there's two questions. I mean, there's a general question, the problem of evil, why does God allow violence and so on in the world and suffering? And then there's the specific question, why does God reveal himself through violent means or why does the Bible include violent texts? Which I mean, I haven't talked a lot about it today. What I was simply saying, because there's not enough time to do what I do in the book, but just to point out that Christians have given a wide variety of responses to that. What I did give was a criterion based upon an understanding from 2 Timothy 3, an Augustinian principle, read in the core with love of God, a neighbor, which guides a person and leaves it open how they understand the nature and purpose of some of the violence that is in the text. But you shouldn't use that violence as a pretense to dehumanize, objectify, and harm other people. This one coming in from Jet Guitars says, I read the Bible and found that love is sicking bears on children and sending them to burn forever for making fun of a bald person. If that's love, I don't want to worship it. I think they're referring to the prophet Elijah. Yeah, they're referring to the story of Elijah, the young and probably teenagers that they were calling him old Baldi, something about making fun of him because he didn't have any hair on his head. Now, that's one of the issues right there is how do you interpret that single story within the Deuteronomic canon, which runs from Deuteronomy to the end of 2 Kings? I mean, one thing I'll just say that story is not in the Apostles' Creed. It's not a central part of Christianity. So there's a lot of different ways of interpreting stories like that. And so if God wanted to establish a message there, then immediately following Elijah off that path would be Jason's Stadium and the Rock. This one coming in from Daniel Seemsters says, I did Kent prove the books with errors he found. I don't know if I want to know what that's from. Did Kent prove the book with errors that he found? I'm sorry, the way that that question is phrased, I can't make sense of it. Me too, and Victor Hallock says, for Aaron and Ra, do you believe that quote, belief in God is inherently an act of violence? No, being fooled by something is not violence. This one from Victor Hallock as well says, Dr. Rouser, thank you for your thoughtfulness and especially in the face of the final boss, Aaron Ra. They say, please consider joining the STEM fields. I think that's a compliment. They also say cold loyalty says, how do you everyone just wanted to say that this was a great discussion? I just had my first born son. I'm excited to create a second generation of modern day to pay viewers. Thank you for your support. Congratulations, cold loyalty. That's exciting. We're all happy for you, no matter what walk of life we're from. Ralph William, thanks for your super sticker popcorn and apocalypse here says for Dr. Rouser, is God the creator of all things or not? And if he is, then it follows that he must be redeemer of all and all must be saved. Well, that doesn't necessarily follow, but I will say that there are, there is a Christian tradition of universalism that the belief that all will be ultimately reconciled to God and Christ. That was the predominant view arguably in the Eastern church during the patristic era. So people like Clement or Origen or Gregory of Nyssa, and that continues to be a tradition in the church down to our own day. So that's part of the wider story of Christian theology. And I would agree that it doesn't necessarily follow. This is coming in from Captain V says, Aaron, you sent me a core, you sent me on a course that led to anthropology and a subsequent still working on it, Master's degree. Thank you. I can't tell you how rewarding it is to hear something like that. I've gotten that from a few dozen people over the last five years or so. And I, I'm just absolutely stoked every time I hear a comment like that. And this one coming in from Contrarian 420 says, Aaron, your quote, objective verification, unquote, hinges on the philosophical assumption in the concreteness of an observing intellect. Isn't this a faith in ego? No, because again, I have to refer back to Hume. We have no choice, but to assume that there is a mind independent reality, that it is not possible to function on any other assumption. So we have literally no choice. And given that we have no choice that it is literally madness to assume anything else, then it doesn't even follow under, follow under the category of presupposition. We have no choice. We can't even presuppose it. This is just the fact that we are given as a statement of our existence. This one from Victor Halak says, for Aaron, you've often said faith is the most dishonest position one can have. Do you see a potential redeeming quality of faith that it might inspire a first step, even with incomplete evidence? No. This one from Ralph Wiggum says, cheeseburger and Kia Star 67. Thanks for your super chat. Says, thanks for helping me in showing kindness on your show the night my mother died. 1321. I remember that. Kia Star, we hope you're doing well.  I enjoy almost all the debates and often see how hard you work to the point of sleep deprivation. LOL, awesome work. Peace out. Well, thanks, Kia Star. Seriously, we really do. We appreciate you. And all of us can say we appreciate you. That's something we agree on, whether it be Christian Atheists, we are glad that you felt like it was a community here for you. So we hope you're doing well and thank you for being with us. And I support community in all things. I mean, if people feel that they have a community and being part of your audience, then I must salute you for that. Because we so need that right now. Yeah, that's for sure. It really is encouraging when I just, that makes, that means so much. And I remember that night. And I also do wanna let you know, folks, we really do, for real, whether you be Christian Atheists, Muslim, you name it, we really are, you know, we try to be as fair as we can here and we hope you feel welcome. And so we really do hope you feel like it's a community because there are things that we agree on, no matter what walk of life we're from. And, you know, for example, everybody wants to be treated fairly in these discussions or debates or whatever it is, panels. And so we really do appreciate you. And so experiments in prebiotic chemistry, thanks for your question, philosophical quote. So they're saying quote, philosophical arguments, you can never win exactly. They say you can prove anything using philosophy, but you can't prove anything with science. Science is more strict when it comes to demonstrating things. Let's see. I have a feeling you might both have some opinions on this. I'll give you. Yeah. Well, there is a tendency within science that they don't want to prove things one way or another. There is some of that. But, and in philosophy, they want to prove and can't. So it's quite the reverse. I mean, philosophy, so Bertrand Russell gives a famous illustration, where he says you have science on one hand, you have theology on the other. And in the borderlands, you have philosophy. I don't entirely agree with that picture, but one point that I do agree with that he's making there is philosophy is dealing with questions that are just intrinsically difficult, like what is the nature of knowledge? What does it mean to exist? What is language? How does it function? Like these kind of fundamental profound questions. And so you get, that's why we call philosophy. It is the pursuit of wisdom. We want to understand these things, even though they're on the limits of human existence and understanding. But I don't think that justifies a skepticism. I mean, anybody who reads a philosophy journal, certainly an analytic philosophy journal, you will find high level, very complex argumentation. So anybody that says that doesn't happen in philosophy, just hasn't done their homework. Yeah, I'll just keep quiet. This one coming in from do appreciate it. Alexander Williams says, what genre is first Samuel 15? Would God, as you define him, either command the genocide there or cause to be written a story where he is claimed to command such? Yeah, so that's the reference to the Amalekites. And it's the exact same issue as with the Canaanites. So I would simply point someone to a book where I spend 330 pages talking about the Canaanites, which provides a grid and framework for thinking about those other topics as well. Hey, how about this? This line from Jules Songhands, Only Kindness Matters. That's actually a profoundly Christian sentiment. That's what Paul's saying in 1 Corinthians 13, the greatest of these is love. If you don't have love, you're a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. So that's a good place to start. Just to help out the audience with this reference to the Amalekites, it's where the Bible says that, I will strike out all memory of Amalek. And the way that you're gonna strike out all memory is by writing his name in the Bible so that it's remembered for all time. This one coming in from A.J. Ari, says, what does Christianity bring that Islam doesn't? Well, actually, I wrote an article the other day talking on my blog where C.S. Lewis famously enters a room when people are debating what makes Christianity unique and he says, it's grace. Now, I actually pushed back on that and said, Islam, Buddhism, other religions, certainly Judaism have conceptions of grace as well. So I think we have to be careful but kind of saying this is the theological idea that's unique here. I would certainly say that I believe Christianity is true. It's why I'm a Christian. And so the most important thing I could say is I think it's the fullest manifestation of truth in terms of metaphysics and ethics when properly understood. You got it, and this one coming in from T.Torchon says, Arryn, I am wondering about your epistemology. They say, I can't quote objectively, unquote, demonstrate I am thinking of a cat and yet I am. Arryn, are you a positivist? Their project failed. Namely, they're saying- He's talking about a logical positivist because people always want to assume that I base my perspective on verificationism because I don't want to be convinced of something I can't verify but that's not the same thing. I don't subscribe to verificationism so I am not a logical positivist but everybody wants to miscategorize me nonetheless. You got it, and this is Mike MC says, I am also an Austin and a TST member, hell yeah. Is TST, I can't remember what's that? The Satanic Temple. Oh, that's right, okay. Got a terrible memory, sorry. Mr. Monster says, was it evil for God to kill everyone in the flood without offering them a form of redemption like he did later on with Jesus? So, I mean, this is a question in terms of how one interprets the narrative. I already pointed out, for example, that the place to start with interpreting that narrative is not thinking of it as a newspaper account of past events but as a poem that shows God's faithfulness to those who are righteous. Well, then let's be clear, did the flood happen? I certainly don't think a global flood happened. Did a regional flood happen? And is that story that is telling the narrative about God remembers those who are righteous? Is it based upon some past memory of a flood like that? Certainly that's possible. Okay, that was sufficiently vague. I just think I was quite clear, but I've also hedged my bets. I mean, the belief in a particular understanding of the flood is simply not part of essential Christian doctrine. And Genesis one to 11, people should not be, I mean, I was raised in a fundamentalist context where, yeah, to look for evidence of Noah's Ark and Mount Errat was as important as looking for evidence that Jesus rose from the dead. And that is simply a conflation of categories. Yeah, again, we agree. And I have met many Christians with whom I would argue on any number of topics, but we agree that the flood did not happen the way the Bible describes it. And nor is it a requirement that you believe that in order to be Christian.  Yeah, we would disagree. That's for sure. I mean that individual. This one coming in from, do appreciate your question, D6 says, Randall, what is your standard of telling something is true? How is it different from Aaron's model? So I, and I wrote a book 12, 13 years ago with Oxford University. Okay, I'm tired of hearing about this guy's book. I've got a third one on the way, okay? All right, awesome. I gotta apologize. I know people sometimes think that sounds pretty obnoxious, but I am simply the point I'm making is I describe a moderate foundationalist and defend it in this book, Theology in Search of Foundations. So I would be what's called a moderate externalist foundationalist. I don't think I have the time to explain what that means here. This one coming in from, appreciate it. Quani Upstate says the violent Bible absolutely was revealed by, let's see, I think this is one of those being ironic, Randall. They say, they say, reveal by God and they say, thank you, let's see. They say, I don't think this is a God worth worshiping. Randall, if you wanna give a general response, it's like pretty broad, their take is pretty broad. They're gonna give a chance to respond if you'd like. Well, I'll just say that if I believed a particular agent did something that is objectively evil, then I would not worship that agent. So if a Christian comes to this tension of cognitive dissonance at that point, that's why they have to either revise their understanding of morality or they have to revise their understanding of how they read the text or they have to say that individual's not God. You do have to resolve that cognitive dissonance in some way. I would love you to answer somewhere else because I know we don't have time. I wanna know what worship means, but at another time of this. This one from Gavin Hurlman says, question for both, why doesn't Aaron acknowledge the overwhelming pro-social effect that Christianity has had on Western culture? I don't know if- Because it's overwhelmingly negative. Juicy, and this one coming in from Grisgad production says, if no one can oppose God's will, how could the devil have done so, Dr. Rouser? God is an omnipotent being. And Christians understand God to be all powerful. So the only reason that any agent acts contrary to God's will is because God allows that agent to exercise their free will. So that would be the answer. Because God plays both sides of the chessboard. Sorry. Well, in the same way that a parent allows the child to act contrary to the parent's will and the parent has some morally sufficient reason to do so, presumably. This one coming in from Daniel. Oh, okay. I think I get what Daniel was saying. He said this earlier. He said, did Kent disprove the textbooks with the errors? I think what he's saying is Kent Hovind as a video, if I remember right on, it's called Lies in the Textbooks where he takes on these ideas in textbooks. And Daniel seems sort of saying- Yeah, real quick, I did a 30-part series, each video being like 10 to 20 minutes long, in which I show that Kent Hovind had no idea what the textbooks even said. Gotcha. And so I guess your answer would be, I know that Kent didn't disprove the textbooks. That's what coming in from William Kurt. Kent disproved his own PhD there, yeah. This from William Kurt says, Aaron, do you reject the possibility of natural theology or is it that you just aren't convinced by arguments you've seen thus far? Knowledge of God through analysis of the material could be plausible. I'm open for someone to show me that there is such a possibility to consider. You got it. Madelia says, if the Bible is an errant, should, if the Bible slash an errant should not be read like a newspaper, is debatable, allegorical or influenced, how can you pick parts as truth and others as being allegory or whatnot, Dr. Rouser? So I would just say it's the same thing as when you interpret, as again, the Norton Anthology of American Literature, the response of the person studying the text is not, there's no way to interpret this or it's all subjective. No, you do your homework and learn about the different genres that are in the collection so that you get some of the tools for how to read them in terms of their literary and socio-historical context. You got it, Anne. Thank you very much for your question or support coming in last minute. Luke Steven says, just wanted to send some love to the Modern Adubate family. Stay safe and healthy everyone. Thanks for your support. Anne, I couldn't agree more. Stay safe and healthy everybody. I'm gonna be back in a moment with a post-credits scene. I wanna remind you that both Aaron and Dr. Rouser are linked in the description, both their YouTube channels, and then I threw Dr. Rouser's book in there because it came up during the debate, that's relevant. And then, Aaron, if you have any books you'd like me to add that had anything to do with the topic from tonight's debate as well, I'm happy to throw it in there, so let me know. But I wanna say thank you both, Aaron and Dr. Randall Rouser, it has been a true pleasure to have you guys.  We agreed about a lot. We like Great Pyrenees dogs. We like Strong Beer. We like Ozzy Osbourne. And we're Epistemic Fallibleists. So I say that that's a lot in which to build a friendship. So we'll end it on that. We agreed on more points than I have with any other theologian I've argued with so far. Absolutely. This last second one, they said, Aaron, what is your epistemology and metaphysics and ethics? So I guess maybe you're broadly speaking like whether or not you're... You give me that question. It's the last question in the last minute. That's right. It's for the last minute. I could have answered that in the last minute. I tried to torch on, but tune in, you had options. If you wanna hear more from either of the guests, folks, you can click on their links below. And if you have questions for either of them, you can hear more or read more from them. And we wanna say thank you so much, guys. We'll be back in just a moment, folks, with updates on this upcoming conference in Dallas, Texas on January 15th and 16th. So stick around for updates on that. And wanna say one last things, Aaron and Dr. Rausser, it's been a true pleasure. Thank you very much, sir. Pleasure has been all mine and I'll be right back in just a moment, folks. Stick around. We are excited. That was a fantastic discussion. We really do. Seriously, that was one of the better ones we've had in a long, long time. I really enjoyed that. And I'm so excited just to see you here. I wanna say hi to you in the old chat. Get to say hello. Chippy Meyers, free naturalist, coffee troll, Kristoff, Fred and Six Fly, as well as Luke Stevens. Thanks for your support. Thanks again. And Marianne Grann, Grand Bruheim, Exum Music and Darth Revan. We are so glad you were here as well as Fred and Six Fly. Thanks for coming by. We are pumped. And I've gotta tell you guys, we are absolutely pumped for one week away. We are one week away. We get a day from modern day debates, first ever in person conference debate con coming at you from Dallas, Texas, January 15th and 16th. Tickets are on sale. There's a link for the description in the description box for these links. And I'm gonna throw that same link in the old live chat here. And I've gotta tell you, we are absolutely pumped for this. For real, it is going to be fantastic. You don't wanna miss this debate or I should say debate conference debate con, the first ever for modern day debate. We are absolutely thrilled for that. So seriously, you guys, you don't wanna miss it. It's going to be amazing. And that is linked in the description as well as pinned at the top of the chat as we would love to get to meet you in person. Whether you be in Dallas, Texas or Houston, Texas, Austin, San Antonio, Lubbock, drive on over. This conference is going to be huge. And it's right there at the hotel. So you could just conveniently get a hotel room as well. And that link that I threw into the live chat, you can actually use that link and you can actually get a hotel room right there at the hotel. We really would love to get to meet you guys and wanna say thank you guys so much for all of your support of this channel. It has been so encouraging to see this channel grow as it has. Like seriously, we are so encouraged by you guys making this as fun and awesome as it is. And so I wanna say Nick Hanley, Kodos, Manic Pandas, as well as J3Root, J3Alla, we are pumped. You are with us. Thanks for being supporters of the channel. We appreciate you just hanging out with us seriously. Len D, thanks for being with us as well as Charles Newland. Seriously, we love you guys. I really do appreciate you.  And I just enjoy being here. Seriously, I wanna say whether you be atheist, Christian, Muslim, agnostic, you name it. We are so serious that we really do appreciate you being here. And there are things that unite us across boundaries. Seriously, whether you be Christian, whether you be atheist, we all agree on these things. One, everybody wants it to be a fair discussion or debate or panel, whatever it is that we're hosting on the modern day debate. That's something we always do wanna try to be as fair as we can to the guests. We appreciate people like Aaron. We appreciate people like Dr. Rouser. Seriously, we really do wanna be, and I think this is something we all agree on, we value fairness no matter what walk of life we are from. And not only that, but I think we all value seeing people from different walks of life still interacting with each other because things have gotten pretty extreme. You know that it's not, I don't think I'm exaggerating, there's even research on it. Things have gotten kind of extreme so it's nice to see people still engaging, interacting with each other in discussions like tonight. And I've gotta tell you, if you enjoyed this discussion, hit that like button because I gotta tell you, I really enjoyed it. And I gotta tell you, I'm pumped that we've already got 326 likes. We are only four away from 330, which is 33 tens, if you think about it. That's a lot. So hit that like button if you haven't already as we are so close to 330 likes. That little goal we are about to make it in just a few moments, I can feel it. But I gotta tell you, my dear friends, we've got other sweet updates. So for example, if you haven't heard about modern day debate con, let me tell you about some of the debates that'll be there. As you can see in the bottom right of your screen, Daniel, who is on the left side of the thumbnail or promo poster there, he is going to be debating and he's a Muslim taking on destiny on whether or not Islam requires basically by nature of what it is, does it require such that liberalism must confront or dominate it? It's gonna be juicy. It's gonna be a mix of religion and politics. So if you like those topics, whoa, baby, it's gonna be a good one. But let me show you another one. This one's gonna be epic as well. This is our main event for the entire conference. We are pumped. Elijah Schaefer will be taking on destiny. So destiny is in both of these main eventers. It's gonna be huge. Taking him on on whether or not religion and government can overlap. Controversial to say the least. My dear friends, I am pumped for it.  They're gonna be gigantic. And so you might be wondering, well, Jay's like, how are you making this happen? They're gonna be in person. Like, did you fly them in? Yes, we're flying them in, recovering their hotel rooms. We are wanting to take modern day debate to the next level with debate con. And let me show you some of the things that we are planning on doing. Cause you may be like, James, I don't know how you're doing this or like, how does this work? I'm kind of confused. And what is debate con? Well, let me tell you, look at the screen right now. Don't worry, I'm not a ghost. I'm okay. Look at the screen at the top row. So right up here, you see these debates up here? That is the first day of modern day debate, debate con. It is going to be amazing. So let me tell you, first, for example, we have whether or not Muhammad's marriage to Aisha was ethical. In other words, like roughly speaking, they're kind of debating whether or not Muhammad was a pedo. It's really controversial. And so, I mean, like, but nonetheless, you don't want to miss it. That's going to be a gigantic debate. And not only that though, the next one is holy Kool-Aid is going to be debating Mike Jones on whether or not Christianity is dangerous. That's going to be a monster debate. We're pumped about that as well as the next one. The third one you can see there, T-Jump versus Kenny Boomer on whether or not atheism or Islam provides a better foundation for ethics. And then T-Jump versus David Wood, a very similar debate that's going to be juicy in particular though, whether or not God or secular humanism provides a better foundation for ethics. Then you had already seen that debate, Daniel versus destiny, Muslim versus atheist on whether or not liberalism is basically in its nature required to dominate Islam. That's going to be a controversial one. A lot of fun though. And then the second row of debates, you can see these right here that you can point to that one right there is that is the second day of debates at DebateCon. And I got to tell you, there are three types of debates. There are the types where it's open to the public. Everybody gets to watch it even if they don't throw into the crowd fund. That's amazing. And that's even both main events for the conference because we really do, we're like, hey, we know that not everybody can give. We want to have these be available to the public even live. Now, some of them though, we're like, hey, help us make this event possible. We are asking people to throw into the crowd fund, which is we basically are using Indiegogo to help fund this huge project as believe me, we are absolutely pumped for it, but it does cost a lot of money to book the venue, to book the flights, all that. And I've got to show you this. Our crowd fund is helping us make that happen. And so I've got to show you that is linked in the description and it's also pinned at the top of the chat is help us make this conference possible by throwing into the crowd fund and not only will it's guaranteed 100% of the funds that you put into the crowd fund or by buying a ticket are going to go into this conference. Amazing, but not only that, you will get to watch all of the debates that are going to be live streamed live because some of the debates about four of them are only going to be available to those who are either channel members or Patreon supporters or people who are giving to the crowd fund. And so for example, the second debate in the top row, Holy Kool-Aid versus Mike Jones on whether or not Christianity is dangerous, that is going to be a monstrous, huge debate and I've got to tell you, it's only going to be available if you throw into the crowd fund or if you're a channel member or Patreon supporter. So I've got to tell you, that is one of the four debates total that are going to be like that. And so we've got to say, hey, help us and not only help us make this event possible, but also be able to watch all of the live debates live at home, it's going to be amazing. And then there's a third type of debate. There are just two debates during the entire conference that only if you are buying a ticket and they're in person, you will be able to watch live because otherwise we're recording them and uploading them later to the channel, just like all of the debates will eventually be uploaded onto the channel within the next week or two after the conference. But I've got to tell you, you guys, we have only got seven days left. We've only got a week left for this crowd fund. It is going fast for real. So I got to tell you, if you haven't thrown into it already and you've been thinking about it and you're like, yeah, it's cool. Throw in right now, because I'm telling you guys, you don't want to miss any of these debates live. It is going to be just live debates the entire day. And if you throw into the crowd fund or if you are a Patreon or channel member, you will get to watch all of those live. So I am pumped though. I am really pumped. Let me tell you why. You know, James, why are you so pumped? Well, let me tell you something. We have been working on this project for so long and you might be wondering, but James, like, how do I give? Like, I don't know how that works exactly. Like you're talking about this modern day debate, debate con, I don't even know what that is. That is our huge up and coming conference. This is the logo for it. And we are using Indiegogo. That's the little logo there at the, you could say at the bottom of the screen. And that is linked in the description box. You might be thinking, James, I don't know how to use Indiegogo though. Do I have to create an account? No, you don't even really have to create an account. Here's how easy it is. Look, and this is what you'll see. If you click on the link that's in the description box for Indiegogo or that is pinned at the top of the chat, you can actually just sign in with Facebook. You don't even need, you don't even need to create an account. You can just kinda smoothly, fast pass, move your way through to make that donation. And I've gotta tell you, it's really user friendly, user friendly and easy. But here is what you'd see, for example, if you throw in nine bucks, and this is a little bit outdated. So now we've got a lot of people that have signed up, but there's plenty left. So this is an unlimited one. Some of the perks have sold out, for example, I think we actually sold out for the ask a question during the Q and A, as we cannot guarantee that we're gonna read super chats. We frankly, because we have a live audience, I don't think we're gonna get to super chats, but you can guarantee that you can ask a question from home during this live debate, if you throw in 50 bucks. But maybe you're like, I don't know, I don't know if I can do 50, but I'd like to just maybe throw in nine bucks and then I can watch all the debates live that day. That sounds good. Hey, that one's still available. And it's as easy, I mean, very easy, pretty intuitive as you can see with this little, this is an actual screenshot from our actual crowdfund in Indiegogo. But you might be thinking, James, I don't know, are you, you know what you're doing? Have you ever done this before? Yes, we have done this for projects in the past that have been a success. For example, is Christianity dangerous? This happened about a year ago. It was a great debate. And that was between Mike Jones and Michael Shermer. We are absolutely pumped, you guys. It was fantastic. It was phenomenal. And that was our first crowdfund and we met our goal for that crowdfund. It was a huge success. But you might be thinking, ah, beginner's luck, James. No, no, no, we've had success using this strategy. So here's another example. Maddalini versus Dr. Kenny Rhodes, that was a fantastic debate. We really enjoyed it.  And I've got to tell you, absolutely phenomenal debate. And another example of how we have successfully used this crowdfund strategy, we really think it's the future of modern day debate. It's one way that we can grow and get bigger guests, bigger events, including this big in-person conference. It's gonna be amazing. But I gotta tell you, my dear friends, you might be wondering, James, I am wondering, is this going to be in-person? Yes, it's going to be in Dallas, Texas. And what date? Do you remember? I'm quizzing you. January 15th, which is a Saturday. And January 16th, which is a Sunday. It is going to be amazing, my dear friends. Seriously, we're 100% pumped for this conference. But I wanna say hello to you in chat. Martin Mertz, good to see you, as well as you to have Heku and Master Optics. Good to see you, Andrew Hampson. Glad you were here. As well as Jacob, Roinon Fisher, pumped you are with us. Jared A, thanks for being a supporter and a member of the channel. And Kia Star 67, thanks so much for being with us. Seriously, your super chat meant so much to me. Thanks both for your generosity and thank you so much just for your kind, your warm words. I remember that night, I was in my friend Ryan's basement when you had shared that news with us and my heart went out to you. Like my heart still goes out to you. I just, we hope you're doing all right. And so seriously, we love you. I really hope you are doing well. I hope that your new year is going well. And so thanks for hanging out with us at Modern Day Debate. And seriously, you're more than welcome here. And we want to say, I just, man, I love you. Thanks for just being so vulnerable, being so real and being so honest. And so we will love you. And we're glad you're here always. And Martin Mertz, good to see you there as well as Melody, Kate, thanks for coming by. We are glad you were with us as well. It's Kurt, Hanuman, thanks for being with us. And Melody, Kate says, donated. Thanks so much, Melody, pardon me. Thank you, Melody. Not Melody, sorry, it's embarrassing. Thank you for throwing into the crowdfund. We are pumped. And I've actually got to update it. I am pumped. You guys, as you have seen that little meter as we get to update it as people throw into the crowdfund. And so thank you so much, Melody, for throwing into the crowdfund. It has increased. And so you'll see the meter jump in just a minute as I update the page for that meter for this little, you could say widget, but basically so many little pop-ups, try me and see. But you guys, I am pumped as we are growing in terms of the crowdfund. And that helps us, this is kind of a backup, but got to be honest with you. You might be thinking like, huh, how's this whole thing work, James? Well, I didn't show you something. Let me show you this, is I've talked about the crowdfund. So I had showed you this, for example, we've had past success using this method in order to make big events happen. I've got to show you this one though, two seconds. There it is, how embarrassing. Okay, I've got this popped up. You might be thinking, James, like why would you have a crowdfund? Why would you sell tickets?  No, no, no, no, no, no. 100% of the money that comes in from the crowdfund or from selling tickets for this in-person debate conference, 100% of it is going to go toward the conference or future events like it, such as a second conference we are considering or we might do a kind of a spread out conference where it's got 10 debates over eight weeks. We might, in other words, take modern day debate on tour, for real. So it is going to be reinvested back into putting these debates on. So I just want you to know that because you might be wondering like, ah, I don't know, James, but yeah, it is and that's something that we're absolutely committed to and we do want to have financial transparency. But I also want to show you kind of transparency with regard to like, why is it? Because you might be like, James, why is it that you have this crowdfund and this is like YouTube, man, why are you bringing money into it? Well, if we want to put on an in-person conference like this, I've got to show you. It is pricey, but nonetheless, many hands make light work. In other words, if enough people throw in, we're able to do this and it's something that, hey, we can do big stuff like this, which is cool because it's making a big impact. It's something that's big on YouTube because it's a big splash, it gets a lot of attention. So it's something that we're excited to do it as it really does help further the vision of providing a neutral platform so that everybody can make their case on a level playing field as they're discussing the big questions of life and as we are excited to get people from different walks of life talking. So I got to show you this. The blue chunk of the pie, that's the cost for the venue. It is quite pricey. Then that orange chunk at the bottom, that is for the speaker hotel rooms and then the chunk on the left, that is for the flights for the speakers and then that yellow chunk at the top. You see that? That's for the food for the speakers. And so that little sliver, you can see there's another little blue sliver at the top of the pie. That is for the Kickstarter or I should say, that's right, Indiegogo we use now. Kickstarter, no, no, no, sorry, Indiegogo fees, it's been a long day. Oh, but I got to tell you, my dear friends, we are excited about this. It is taking us to new places and we are seriously, we are really excited. H. Jasper E says, hey, if you don't like Indiegogo or if you don't have a Facebook, you could always consider going to the Patreon for modern day debate and you'd get to watch the conference that way as well. Absolutely, thanks for saying that H. Jasper E. Or if you just become a member, it's serious. It's like two bucks a month. So I mean, like there are three ways that you can do it. It is a piece of cake. And I got to tell you though, you might be thinking, James, let me update this page, two seconds. That's weird. It keeps putting these weird advertisements on. But I've got to tell you, you might be thinking, James, I want to tell you how my day has gone and I'm looking forward to hearing that. So I'm watching the live chat now. Please do. I want to hear how you guys are doing. Jacob Roinon Fisher, thanks for coming by. Seriously, we hope you're doing well. How are you doing? How about you, Martin Mertz? Thanks for coming by as well as Darth Revenant.  Abel Cain's brother, how are you? Tell me how you guys are doing. John Smith, good to see you. Glee Glorp, how are you doing?  It's worth it. Thanks for your support, Jared. Seriously, I appreciate that. I'm sending a based, amazing emoticon your way. Thanks for your support, seriously. And I am pumped though. I've got to tell you, we are pumped about the future. Join us while we are small, my dear friends. If you haven't hit that subscribe button yet, hit that subscribe button as we have got big things in store for the future. We are absolutely pumped. I really am thrilled, pumped, excited about all of the stuff that we've got coming up at Modern Data Bait. We've got stuff planned for 2022. We are determined. We are absolutely going to get to 100,000 subscribers. We are pumped that we just made the 60,000 subscriber mark. That was encouraging. We are really thrilled by that. And thank you guys. Seriously, thank you.  Manic Pandas and Exo Music and Sight Show Nav and Chippy Myers and Martin Mertz. All of you, for real. Thank you for making this channel awesome. And VM FM. Thanks for coming by. Says, hello, James and Waves. Right back at you, friend. And Amanda says, amazing. Good to see you, Amanda. Thanks for your support of the channel. And I just love though, that this really is a mix of people from different walks of life. And Vlad Teeps, good to see you as well as Tinkle. Tink, thanks for coming by. Let's see here. My dear friends. Oh, let me say hi to the old Twitch chat. Brooke Chavis, good to see you. Says, hanging in there, James. Go lad, I'm glad to hear that. And, but yeah, we were pumped. I am really excited, you guys. Chessie707, we are glad you are with us. Says, what's up, James? Happy New Year, dude. Thank you for that. Seriously, that's encouraging. I appreciate that. And Jacob Roynon Fisher says, I'm doing good. Any advice on getting on a debate? Even though I'm a layman. If you email me at modernadebate at gmail.com. And if you have a topic and an opponent and ideally a strong opponent, like that's a good start. Like right now, I'm really behind in terms of setting up debates. It is so, so hard. Seriously, I feel really bad. I've got like seriously so many people that have reached out and it's really hard for me to stay kind of even caught up with my own emails anymore. But it's, I'm trying and I'm really sorry that I'm slow. But, so yeah, I gotta tell you it's gonna be hard in the near future, especially with the conference. Conference has been taking up so much time. It's been crazy. But yeah, thank you guys so much. I love you guys.  We are excited though. We've got big stuff planned for the future. It is encouraging. It really is. And thank you so much for the person who just threw into the crowd fund. We just jumped up again. Thank you so much for your support. I've gotta update the meter again. We really do appreciate that. We have just moved from 1916 to 1966. So we're almost to the $2,000 mark. Amazing. Seriously, that helps a ton. That's actually more than enough to cover the food for the speakers. That's actually like pretty much like right there. We've already, that's a great threshold. So thank you so much. We've got some great momentum there. And I am excited though. I just wanna say thank you guys for supporting this so much. And then Jacob Roinand Fisher says, I'll make sure to send an email but I don't have a specific opponent in mind. I appreciate you reaching out and bear with me if it takes me a long time to respond. And I'm sorry that if it does take me tim