Hey everybody, tonight we're debating divine hiddenness and we are starting right now. With our Christian apologist and guest, Stuart Nettle on the right side of your screen, thanks Stuart for being here and the floor is all yours. Appreciate you having me on James, David looking forward to this. You picked the topic and it's a good one.  Last time I was on here with Dillahante, we had a similar type of discussion in terms of getting into actual Scripture, knowing what and who the biblical God is. What does he call us to? And something like divine hiddenness makes you really search and look into why would he call us to say, talk about parables, actually see what he's trying to teach us, his son Jesus through parables. Why is he so hidden? Is that moral? Is that immoral? And so for me, thinking deeper into this tough topic, it's definitely one of the tougher ones for me when I came to faith and struggled with doubt, but then moved out of doubt and definitely still struggle with, let's just say, microdoubts. But this is one of the toughest ones next to, say, suffering and a few of the other biggies. But the way I think through this one would be one asking the question, who really is, say, a God worthy of worship? You have to wrestle with that one because if you have a God that's based out of, say, moral, therapeutic deism, which is kind of the top type of understanding God for high schoolers and college students right now.  And then the deistic part is he's far off though.  Jesus is this kind of, I can have this close relational intimacy with him. No, that's kind of ridiculous. That's absurd. So they leave that out. They call it deism. And then the moral part, they still believe that there is a level of right and wrong, but many of them are relativistic. So they would say, I choose it. You choose it. Don't cross my turf and we're good. Second point would be saving. Now, what does that have to do with it? Well, if in order to get through divine hiddenness, you have to take something like the cross offensively. Okay, so it's a provocative thought because many Christians would come into the faith and think, yeah, you know, Jesus just died for my sins and we're all good, right? Like, easy enough, I'm in. Kieran Knightley kind of rift on this one saying, you know, it'd be so easy to be a Christian, you could just say, I believe, you know, Jesus Christ down across from my sins and do whatever you want. Obviously that's a misinterpretation of a lot of many different parts of scripture, the central one being the cross. But she is onto something in the sense of there is this block. And one of the times I was on James's show, too, I had two atheists who, like both of the guys, but the very first conversation I had with them on their channel, right out of the gate, they said, you know, what's with saving? I hate that idea in the Christian faith, saving. And right there, it ticked me off too. Is this more of an emotional issue or is this really intellectual?  If you can't start there with understanding, is this God truly worthy of worship? It's just like, there's argument, this whole debate, the whole topic just breaks down. So wrestling with that is very important. And that's connected to sin. What is sin? I look at sin as, say, a cosmic breakdown, natural disasters, for example, sociological breakdown, divorce, et cetera, psychological breakdown, depression, et cetera. I mean, look into these things, or you look at Sigmund Freud, for example, when he talked about the ego, super ego, he talked about a dark side. He even called it sin, but he definitely wasn't Christian. And so I think sin is very important in saying, I need saving and it needs to be a higher power, higher power. And third point would be, God is not just interested in the business of showmanship. He's not just looking to say, hey, David, hey, Stuart, hey, James, just believe in me. I mean, you don't really have enough, but just believe, or maybe you do have enough evidence and just believe. No, we know based out of Numbers chapter 22, Balaam, he got this divine appearance, and yet he didn't believe in the God of Israel. Or do you think of John chapter seven and Jesus's brothers, his disciples saying, come on, get out there, miracle boy from Nazareth, just show yourself, prove yourself, do some miracles, and everyone will just come to know you. And he says, no. Okay. So we get it right in scripture with Jesus's closest friends, or you look at, for example, the Pharisees when they're always saying, just give us a miracle, a nice revelation and we'll believe in you. Or the demons even out of the book of James, for example, you know, they believe in God, we get James saying, and yet, obviously they're demons for a reason. They don't have a type of saving relationship, trusting relationship with Christ. So all that to say is, it's not about just God existing. Yes, that's a part of it. But way more importantly, it's, do I have a loving relationship with the God of the universe, his son, Jesus Christ? That's what all of scripture is about in terms of getting at this whole hiddenness thing and overcoming it. And then lastly, the Holy Spirit. You know, I think this is the toughest one for atheists to respond to. But it could also be a cop out for a Christian. I get that because a Christian can just say, you know, let me compare my experience versus yours. And you know, I had this, I always had the Holy Spirit experience where, you know, my joy, my happiness, yes, it's a level of conviction at times over what I've done right or wrong. But that type of experience, the elation high that I get from it is way stronger than any type of drug hit I've taken or sexual experience. And so maybe you're just not having this and maybe you don't have this type of saving faith that I got and that the Holy Spirit is pouring into my life on a daily basis. But I think it's tremendously important, obviously, because God is not so much about just giving us a bunch of different arguments. Yes, we get out of Romans chapter one, natural theology, right? Conscience, you can look at Psalm 19, having to clear the glory of God. So you can think Emmanuel Kant, he said, clearly you have beauty in nature. And then we have our conscience telling us what is objectively right or wrong. So that is strong evidence for God. So we have those types of arguments, but that's not really what we're talking about tonight. Instead, it's the vast majority of people I know, even though I'm into apologetics, and I love thinking through the faith, the vast majority of people I know and in the world, 34% of the world is Christian. So such a high percentage of that is I've had an encounter with the Holy Spirit, yes, probably connected to some type of beauty I've seen, or maybe it's a special revelation. I've read a Bible or it's through a friend. Whatever it might be, but that Holy Spirit experience is oftentimes what people say is, hey, God was hidden to me, but then I had an encounter with the Holy Spirit, and I can't even explain it. It doesn't make any sense to me, but I can tell you right now, God is no longer hidden. Those are the points. You got it. Thank you very much, Stuart, and want to let you know, folks, our guests are linked in the description. We are honored to have them. And so I want to encourage you to give them a friendly welcome as well as remembering to attack the arguments instead of the person. And so I want to let you know, even if you're listening via podcast, we actually put our guest links in the description box for the podcast episode as well. So check them out there and we're going to kick it over to skeptic, comedian, and actor David C. Smalley. Thanks for being with us. The floor is all yours.  Cause that's all I wrote down. Yeah, I thought this was a roast. I just wanted to make fun of him and his haircut. It would be way better. Just tea off, dude. I'm just jealous because you have hair. That's the reality of it. That's random. Don't be too jealous. Yes, that's true. I think about that when I get down about being bald and like, I couldn't be a ginger, so that's a good thing. No, thanks for doing this, man. This is I'm looking forward to this and thanks, James, for having me on. Yeah, I don't want to spend a whole lot of time on the opening remarks. Like I feel like a lot of times people start these debates and it's almost like my blog versus your blog and it gets a little boring and bogged down. So I just want to say a little bit about it and then and then get into the Q&A and the sort of back and forth discussion, if that's OK with you guys. Look, we've known for a long time that when someone has more power, they tend to have the responsibility, right? Cops are supposed to be held to a different standard. And that's what's kind of going on right now because they have power. They have authority. They have a Batman tool belt full of weapons to hurt us. So they have different rules to play by. We've all said to someone who's leaving the house, hey, wake me up when you get home. Wake me up when the oven goes off. Why? Why do we? Ask someone else to wake us up. Well, because that person has the power to understand time and and space and locations and where things are happening and why we are literally unconscious at that point. So we're asking the person who is conscious to wake us up. We're asking them because they have the power to know the difference and we don't. So with that power comes that responsibility. And when we ask someone to wake us up, it's because we're acknowledging we don't have the ability to wake ourselves up. And the same is true if there is a God. If there is a God, I know I exist. I don't know if the God exists. But if there is a God, God knows I exist and he knows he exists and he also knows what it would take for me to believe in him, yet he does not provide that. So I don't really understand this idea that there is a God who wants a relationship with all of us, yet does not make himself known to all of us. That is a direct contradiction. Now, if the argument becomes God just doesn't want to know some of you people.  Well, then you have a more of a you kind of kind of have a better argument, right? That God picks and chooses his favorites. These are my people. These I want nothing to do with. By the way, you could take these as slaves, but don't rule ruthlessly over these special ones. Then it starts to sort of make a little more sense that God doesn't want a relationship with me and Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins and millions of other Americans. But if you think about it, those of us with some sort of platform with other skeptics or nonbelievers, we should be some primary targets, right? If you if if God were to convince Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris and Dan Dennett and I'll throw myself in there, we could we could really work for the Lord here and and convert people by the millions. Yet he's just as hidden as he was when we started this. So in the end, I don't have the power to be blamed for not believing, right? So if I don't believe it's God's fault. He has chosen not to have a relationship with me because he's the only one that knows for sure we both exist. And if evidence is enough for Lucifer and if evidence is enough for doubting Thomas, why not me? Why not every atheist watching this right now? I'll stop there for now. I've got some other questions and some other things I want to get into.  Yet he chooses to let people fight and die over who has the better imaginary friend. Thank you very much, David C. Smalley for that opening statement and want to let you know, folks, we are thrilled. You'll see at the bottom right of your screen, we have many more epic juicy debates coming up. For example, evil ideas, deplatform them or debate them. That is the title of our debate on Monday that you don't want to miss. So hit that subscribe button and that notification bell, as it's going to be a great one and you don't want to miss it. So with that, gentlemen, the floor is all yours for the open dialogue. Thanks again for being here. All right. So, Stuart, I have a question for you. If you don't mind me going first with my question. Does God want to be detected? Yes. But. You know, I love the term the Hound of Heaven. Because when I see people who've had dramatic life change and people.  Another part is being an apologist who speak on college campuses and other platforms, pastoral side. Pastor of a of a big church. It's a young crowd. But when I'm with a young person dying or an older, because we have some older folks, you often can see with these people when I'm counseling them or with them on their, you know, as they're dying of something like cancer. They'll say, you know, yeah, God has never really shown himself to me. And I don't think they'll go that far to say, you know, it's not like he, you know, he doesn't want to be detected. But they will say towards the end of their lives without fail. I can't think of a single person. And I'm talking nonbelievers right now who I've kind of counseled, walked through end of life type stuff where they've said, yeah, I got nothing from God. Absolutely nothing. No supernatural experience.  Call it some type of supernatural higher power.  Let me just be nice to him since he's walking me through this. But it never felt like that. It always seemed genuine where they had some type of experience where the hiddenness was shaken off. So does that have to do with your question or what's not at all in the slightest? But I think that's another issue, I think, near-death experience is something we could definitely get into and talk about as far as, you know, why people feel completely relaxed and at peace with death. And there are scientific explanations for that across multiple regions, across multiple religions and different belief systems. So that's not necessarily something that's unique to Christianity.   You tend to see the God you were taught from age four to believe that that was the God. So I guess my question was more directly, does God want to be detected? And then the second part is assuming you say yes, why can't I detect them?   When they cry out to God and they beg for God and they want to have that relationship and he doesn't grant it, yet you say he wants to be detected. Help me tie those together. Why would both of those be happening? Well, so you could easily make the case then that kind of you started this, it seems like it's tied, but in your opening, when you were talking about, it should be this type of general revelation to all, everybody gets an equal shake. How do we not know that if it's the God of the universe, let's say, I mean, if it's a God who created the universe, he's that big, we would guess his thoughts are a little higher than our thoughts. If that's the case, how do we know he's not coming to us at different times in different ways that's different from how he comes to other people? We're boom, it's just growing up in the faith. Okay, so that would be like me saying, I'm gonna give you a metal detector, Stuart, and I'm gonna sneak over to your house and hide things and you have to find them. And for years, you never find anything.   What? You gave me a brain to detect reality and then you remain hidden from the very attributes that you allowed me to detect and then you blame me for not having the right tools. You know, I gave you the metal detector so you were looking for metal, but then I only hid plastic and then blamed you in the end. And by the way, if you didn't figure out, I'm gonna set you on fire. That's a little much, right? And that's why I say it's God's fault. He gave us our detectors and then it remains undetectable according to the parameters he set up from a physics perspective within our reality. Yet we're supposed to blame ourselves or say that we are not good enough or we're broken or we didn't pray hard enough or we're sinful or for whatever reason we're not worthy of God's presence. When he's the one creating the rules, it just doesn't make sense. Okay, let me, you had a lot there. Let me go back to two minutes ago with what you said. One, this is like keeping them honest on a sports show. I know you've got the celebrity stuff going on. So maybe you'll appreciate this, maybe not. When you said that Jesus is not popping up in other religions, there is a mass movement right now to Muslims where Muslims are having dreams in Saudi and the Middle East where they're seeing Jesus and coming to know him. And the crazy part about that is, you know Muslims, especially in the Middle East, they would never become a Christian unless they had some type of crazy experience. And so I've read all these studies and still I was like not convinced. It's like, okay, yes, it seems like there's a ton of evidence for this. Then I had a couple buddies who are actually over there and I was friends with them in seminary and they said, this is happening and the type of revelation that these Muslims are getting by the thousands is just insane where they never had any type of encounter with this white blue-eyed six foot two American Jesus. And yet all of a sudden they come to this faith because they have this encounter with this Jesus who comes to them, who obviously is not white and six foot two and an American Jesus, but who they actually go to the Bible and want to find out about. So that gets to part of your piece. And then you brought up kind of the genetic fallacy where absolutely where we're born, where, you know, what kind of faith we're born into. Certainly that has a lot to do with whether we head down that trajectory or not. But that type of reasoning has just as much to do with the atheists as well. I mean, there's a reason why 70% of atheists in the US are white males, right? And there's a reason why so many people just with that type of thinking that says that there's a genetic fallacy. I mean, that's very white Western thinking. People are not saying that in other cultures, right? So there's genetic fallacies and there's those types of misfireings and thinking all over the place. But now to get to your most recent point, David, I would say, I mean, again, those are good examples you brought up in illustrations, but that could be easily connected to the whole point of like, if God, if the God of the Bible took the approach of Zeus or any of the ancient Greek gods where it's just this type of power, I'm going to lord it over you, you better appease me or I'm going to smite you on the spot. You're going to worship that God based out of tremendous fear, are you not? And so if the God of the Bible took that approach, it would be the exact same thing. And I see this over and over again, even in my church where the meritocracy that goes on is scary when it comes to believing in God. I mean, a guy said over Christmas, he was dead serious, he said to his family members, he said, yo, let's get some life insurance. Let's go to church just this Christmas time. That's it. And the whole thing there is, it's fear. It's fear like what if there could be a God, I need to be able to get in versus the biblical God, which is if I were you, I would have not have been so much praying towards I got to get to God, but God just reveal yourself to me. And maybe you were doing that. But instead of me trying to chase that for God, asking God to come to me, reveal himself in a way where we can build a relationship, not just some kind of type of, I wanna just know you exist. We don't know. We don't know what the metal detector is. Nobody, God knows.   And I give you the metal detector and say I want you to find the things. And then all I ever hide is plastic, but I never reveal that to you. Would you think that I wanted you to succeed in the game? Okay, so it sounds like a cosmic bribe kind of thing. It sounds like all stick, no carrot. I heard you say set you on fire. I want you to directly respond to what I said though. If I gave you a metal detector, but only hid plastic and then you had this horrific punishment if you don't get it right. And later you find out that I was hiding plastic the whole time, but I gave you a metal detector. Would you think that I wanted you to succeed? No, not at all. Okay, that's how it feels that God does not want a relationship with us because that's all we have is the metal detectors to where that's all we really know is how we gauge and test empirical reality. And if God is not playing in the realm he set us up to understand how is it our fault for not detecting him? Right, and so I hear you say feels and you don't strike me as the typical type of atheist that I'll debate who are more of the fundamentalist types who where it's, you know, there is no God and I hate him for it. So it's strictly emotional.  And he's gonna say, you're going to the lake of fire if you don't believe in me. You don't believe I exist. But I don't want that kind of God. I wouldn't believe in that kind of God. Not a chance, not even close. Cause I think that's manipulation, it's coercion. I think that's, I mean, talk about slavery. That's the most type of, that type of enslavement would just be scary. But that's not what we get in scripture.  One would be- Can you tell me where my analogy breaks down? Why is it not the metal detector analogy? Cause when I say it feels, I'm not just talking emotional. That's how it is. That's how it's set up. Because anytime I have these divine hiddenness conversations, it's always either you're not praying hard enough, you're not living a righteous enough life for God to be worthy for God to show himself or whatever. And the list goes on. It's always me that's broken. It's never the responsibility is on God. So if he doesn't want atheists to succeed in building that relationship, how is it our fault when he's the only one that knows we both exist for sure? Like, I don't understand how the onus is on the atheist to know a God that is undetectable according to the attributes and detectors that God gave us. So how does my analogy not fit there? No, it's right in line with what David struggled with, what Job struggled with, what Thomas struggled with, what Peter struggled with. Divine silence is a very scary thing. And it seems very unfair. I totally agree with you 110%. When my uncle, who is head of transplant surgery at Duke, when his only daughter was killed in a car accident, he went straight to Psalm 88 because it ends with darkness is my only friend. And he said that was the only place out of any piece of literature or anything anybody could ever tell me that gave me solace. Darkness is my only friend. And so the reality of God not speaking when evil and suffering occurs, you can't say that's not a reality when you're reading the Bible. Absolutely is. And there's so many fundamentalist Christians who would cover that up and that's a total joke. I appreciate you acknowledging that. That's great. So that gives me, you know, I truly believe if you look in the Psalms, for example, God totally understands how we speak when we are desperate and he allows it to happen. So if you look at David, literally cursing at God and then being called the man after God's own heart, that's pretty crazy and he's cursing him for silence in the face of suffering. So dealing with that has always been helpful for me when I've struggled with doubt and felt like, hey God, what's up? I'm living a pretty good life here. I'm chasing after you. I, there's nothing tangible about this relationship whatsoever. It feels like a door has just been slammed in my face, especially when we're going through tough times. What's the deal? But then if I go into the Psalms, if I go into Job, if I go into any number of the disciples who struggled when Jesus died on the cross and he disappeared and left them disillusioned, then all of a sudden I can dig deeper into, wow, maybe God functions in a way that's slightly different in terms of how he shows himself to us. Yeah, slightly different, but that slightly different is actually undetectable to our detectors that he gave us. So do you think God wants a relationship with everyone? And if the answer is yes, which I assume it is, why did he give us the metal detector and only hide plastic? So the only way I can answer that question is if I know where you're coming from and asking that, the question of what kind of evidence would you want? And then what do you think this type of saving faith is? So evidence, what kind of evidence would you want? I don't think you're purposely moving the goalposts. You don't seem like that kind of guy to me. Many atheists like that, and I'm sure many Christians. But what kind of evidence would David want?  Again, are you just operating out of just God existing? And man, that gets me into heaven? Or is it something more? I don't know what evidence I would want, but God does if he exists, which is my entire point is that he has all the information. He's the one that's awake. And all I've said is, he wake me up because I'm gonna be unconscious and I'm gonna need you to wake me up.  He's letting me sleep through the alarm going off. He's letting me sleep and miss modern day debate. And he's just not letting me, he's not waking me up for anything. Yet blaming me for not being wake-up-able. Am I not good enough to be awakened? Why? Is something wrong with me? So the person with the awareness should have the ability, right? We've all taken care of a drunk friend, right? We've all made sure they fall asleep face down, right? We all, we understand that the person with the wherewithal has the ability to control the situation and should do good by those things to help other people out. Yet God, again, gives us this metal detector, shows up in plastic and then blames us for not having the right tools. I don't know what it would take for me to believe in a God but if God exists, he does and still hasn't shown it to me. I'm not an angry atheist. I don't hate any God any more than you could hate a leprechaun but I just don't see the evidence to believe in a God that would give me tools to detect him, remain undetectable and then punish me for eternity for not detecting him according to the game exactly how he set it up. That's not my fault. I totally get that and thanks for your vulnerability there. I thought there was a lot of good stuff. I rarely hear atheists say that sort of thing. I would make two points there. One would be, well, one or two, one would be saving. Do you have a problem with needing to be saved? Like if you were to go into AA, could you be like, yeah, I see myself here. I'm not an alcoholic but I know I struggle with other things and I need a higher power to save me. I can't save myself. Because a lot of atheists would say that's absurd. One atheist said to me, he said, hey, I like this Christianity thing. Like I wanna go to church. I hear it's good for you. I saw the Harvard study recently. It's good for you psychologically, relationally. I think I might become a Christian. And I said, okay, yeah. So here's how it goes. And when I got to the whole sin piece, he said, whoa, whoa, whoa. What are you talking about? I've never sinned my entire life. I was dead serious. And I said, are you sure? Are you sure you've never made one little sin? And he said, all right, I yelled once at my wife and they've been married like 35 years. And so I think the misconception of sin, what is saving? Again, if we don't start there, that's the whole biblical God. Like if we wanna debate over Zeus or a law even, that's a totally different discussion. But if you don't start here, then that's an issue. And then the second point would be, I almost think you're a Christian. And I don't wanna put that on you. I don't wanna put words in your mouth here. I don't wanna be disrespectful. But you almost sound like a Christian. I wanna mean by that in the sense of, you could be angry. You could be angry and that's fine. But with how much you're talking about the searching, searching, searching, it almost sounds like you're currently still searching in some ways, maybe not currently, but definitely searching in the past. And it sounds like searching in the present. Like how do we know that you're not a Christian then? I don't wanna sound universalistic. I don't wanna sound like one of these powder puff liberal universalistic Christians. That's not what I'm trying to do right now. But I don't believe you always, you can't look at scripture univocally. See, a lot of Christians will go to, clearly it says in 1 John that unless you bend the knee and confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord, you're not going to heaven. But then hold on here, what about Hebrews 11 where there's so many people, Abraham et cetera, who've not even heard of Jesus yet are gonna be in heaven, or Romans two, general revelation where you don't even know what Paul's talking about here. It almost sounds like a type of universalism where it's not judging hearts. And according to Matthew 721, there will be a lot of people who bend the knee, yet still not into the kingdom of heaven because it's about to be a little pop. So yeah, totally, totally. And so, and that's why you have in like Matthew 25, the whores and the whore mongerers and the tax collectors get into heaven ahead of you, Jesus says to the Pharisees. And I think that's connected again to this very topic that we're talking about right now, which is this whole tricky dynamic of what is grace and it's not to cure a nightly understanding of cheap grace. What is grace that is actually going to change hearts? And I think we're struggling with this right now. You brought up the race issue. You look at Jonathan Hite, the psychologist at NYU when he talks about how we're not just righteous, every single person, atheist, Christian, Muslim, we're all self-righteous. We all think we're right on everything. And we so rarely doubt our own opinions, it's scary. And so we have this cognitive bias where we're just going out to just back up our own assumptions and we see this in politics right now. And the reason why I bring that up is because the Christian faith is understanding grace, which is I do not know everything whatsoever. And God is able to reach any person no matter what they've done in their life and change them and they can get into heaven, even if it's a thief on a cross, even if it's a murderer in prison, whatever it might be. And that's the crazy part. Again, that's him coming to that person in a special specific way, not in this general way that supposedly he comes to every person in the same kind of way. Because I think if you're going to go there, then the burden of proof switches to the atheist. If it's everybody has to come to believe God exists and have a type of saving faith and trusting relationship to Jesus in the same sort of way. That's so funny.  Like you completely avoided answering my actual question. And then somehow called me a Christian and then put the onus on me to prove that there is no God. And there are a lot of Christians who probably go, this guy's amazing and I'm going, I'm getting nothing here. So maybe your question would be smart for me. What's that? Maybe your question was just too intelligent for me. Just right, maybe that was one of the... Now that would have been the best answer to my question right there. And we could just move on. The question more directly, and I am interested to know why you think I sound like a Christian. I am interested in that. But let's table that for just a moment. The direct question is, why did God give us the metal detector and then show up in the form of plastic? Why is he not making himself detectable? That's the entire point of this debate. And I think what I've done here is remove the onus from the atheist because the atheist is, according to Christians, a puny brain human who doesn't understand what's going on. You guys talk about humans like that all the time, right? Oh, God knows so much better than us. God knows so much more. He has the entire universe on his shoulders, but it's your fault humans for not connecting with a higher power. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Since when does the tiny puny brain person get blamed for everything that's happening? That doesn't make any sense, right? So it's kind of Christianity talking out of both sides of its mouth. When it's convenient for you, the human has the responsibility to seek after God, but when it's convenient for the problem of evil or divine hiddenness, then God should come out to the human, but the human must be ready and must understand. It just doesn't work both ways, Stuart. So I'll end it with a direct question that I really wanted an answer to. Why did God, in accordance with my previous analogy, why did God give us the metal detector and then show up in the form of plastic? That was the same way. Ask me it in a different way. I see what you're saying, but expound even further. Because again, that's not the biblical God, but that's why I'm saying ask it in a different way. Okay, so we understand the laws of physics. We see things, we touch things, we have our five senses. Some argue there may be six or seven. We smell endorphins that we don't understand. We smell, right? We have these things that are bordering on physical, but we understand the basic properties of physics. Yet God allegedly operates outside of what we can detect and measure. Yet it's incredibly important that we acknowledge and believe in that God lest we be tortured for eternity, depending on which version of Christianity you ascribe to. So the question is why would God give us these senses to detect him, make believing in him the single most important thing any human can do, yet remain undetectable according to the tools he gave us? Good, yeah. Okay, so I would say you start with, there is clearly like you alluded to earlier, a universal hunger for some type of God, like 98%, maybe it's slightly lower than that, of the world believes in some form of God or higher power. And the issue for me then is obviously, okay, God has shown himself then to a lot of people. And maybe we can get down to, again, it's so case specific, because I'm sure you know some atheists where you'd say, well, obviously, that person's so closed off to God, they're so rude and irreverent to anything even remote, however you'd like to put it, that I could see that person, okay, God's not gonna really show himself to that person. But me, me, come on, I'm kind of a nice guy and I did some searching. I was an altar boy for a little while, didn't work out too well, but I was looking. And that sets up this dichotomy all of a sudden of, okay, so who's trying harder?  Like I'm a PK. PK statistically, you're not supposed to be a Christian.  And so I don't feel like I was given a fair shake and I don't feel like I've done anything in the sense of like chasing after God in a way to all of a sudden get his favor. No, it all comes back to this freakish nature of what is grace. And that's why you have a Liam Neeson, for example, who can literally look at somebody who's in chains and say, but there for the grace of God go what? I started this place of I could be in chains, I could be that prisoner, I could do whatever that prisoner did, but it was God saving grace that made me who I am today. And so this is back to your whole point of, why am I not good enough? Why am I not great enough? What's going on here, God? So that will be one piece. The second piece would be, I do think it has a lot to do with ego and self. Absolutely. When I say ego, I don't mean pride necessarily or, you know, the wide receiver dancing in the end zone. That's not necessarily the type of ego I'm talking about. I am talking about more so, I think Buddhism slightly has it right in the sense of how do I get out of myself? How do I view myself as almost an illusion because I'm part of the all soul? Obviously Christianity is different from that, but I agree with that part of Buddhism in the sense of we do have to get away from simply living for self. And that's why you have the frequent line that I love in Christianity, which is all you need is need to be a Christian. All you need is need. And so that's why I said, kind of started going on the road of you might be a Christian because you are saying I have some needs. And so how do you know God is not, you're not saved. There's a good, good chance you are saved. And so that's the piece where versus many other atheists who come storming out of the gates saying, I don't need a God, God doesn't exist. God's a rapist, God is XYZ. Yes, I wanna live for myself. I could write a better Bible. If God aligned the stars like many atheists have said to me, saying, hello, David, trust in me, I created this universe. Somehow come to believe in me. And I say, that wouldn't be enough. I've never heard so many atheists say this. That type of irreverence in wanting more evidence, more evidence. Well, how much evidence? I have no idea. Endless amounts of evidence. So how are you ever gonna be able to get to the place then of actually saying, I believe in you God, if there's endless evidence that's never going to convince me. I never said any of that. I never said there were endless amounts of evidence. I never said if the stars aligned, I wouldn't believe. No, no, no, I said them. Yeah, all of those are arguments from people that aren't here today.  Yeah. No, I'm not. I'm definitely not a Christian. And it's because I've said that whatever the answer is, God knows and he doesn't provide it. So how was that my fault? Mm-hmm. God is the conscious one. God is the responsible one. God created the game. Another way to put this, let's say there is a football game going on and you put the guys out there and you make them start playing, but there's no lines on the field whatsoever. You're calling penalties. You're calling them out of bounds. You're saying they didn't get it first down. Nobody knows what the hell's going on. And the ref's just going, you gotta have faith. You gotta believe. Belief and faith is all up to my own interpretation.  There's gonna be a difference where that Christian goes, my God agrees with me on this. And the other Christian is gonna go, no, no, no, no, my God agrees with me on this. I've done this for years. And anytime I get two Christians in the same room, at first it seems like it's two on one, then you certainly find out it's every man for themselves because they're not even worshiping the same deity. When you dive down far enough, everybody's got their own interpretations. So at the end of that football game, nobody knows what the hell's going on. Nobody knows what the score is. To look at the refs and go, you really wanted us to succeed, didn't you? Nobody would believe that. You'd go, no, they didn't want us to succeed. They didn't put any lines out there. We didn't understand the rules when we started. The information got passed down and changed. And nobody knows what the hell's going on. In fact, there's roughly 30 to 40,000 different rule books arguing about the rules. Yet it's the player's fault for crossing an imaginary line we didn't know or we didn't point to the east when we were bowing or when we died, our feet weren't pointing the right way so we could be resurrected in the coming days. Like nobody knows what the hell's going on. There's only one that does know if he does exist. And if that God exists, he's the one responsible for letting us know. He's responsible for letting you know, for letting me know, for letting Harris know, for letting each individual person know. And if he's everywhere all the time, that shouldn't be hard. He could whisper it into my ear right now, whatever it may be. Yet he's the one with the power, but he doesn't do anything about it.  I can't meet you there, Stuart. I can't meet you there and say, yeah, humans are despicable. Humans are the ones at fault for rejecting God. What about those of us who aren't rejecting? What about those of us who are waiting, who have asked for years and years and years for evidence and for proof and who have dedicated our lives to talking with theology professors and scientists and Christian authors and theologians and preachers and pastors and priests and deacons of all different denominations, trying to get to the bottom of this and seeing contradiction after contradiction after argument and all of them are pointing to this unknowable undetectable being that you say I'm responsible for forging a relationship with. He has the responsibility, Stuart, not human beings. He set up the rules. He gave us the metal detector. It's not our fault. It's just not our fault. He either, if he exists, he doesn't want a relationship with me. He doesn't want a relationship with millions of Christians who have hit their knees and begged for a sign or begged for the abuse to stop or begged for the cancer to go away. He has remained hidden from them as well. And they're watching this right now. So what do we say to those people who have hit their knees and who have begged to know God and he is just as available as Casper the Friendly Ghost? What do you say to those people who have zero evidence for God? And yet by saying they need to be responsible for forging that relationship, you're blaming them.  How does that make any sense? Well, okay. So I never said you are fully responsible. Okay. You put words in my mouth on that one because you're right. Some denominations would, well, that's unfair. So hold on. So you think God, so you, okay, so I apologize. So you think that God does bear responsibility in forging a relationship with me? I think it's free will and God's sovereignty. It's a mix of the two has to be. Would example help? Maybe an example would help on that. So throughout scripture, you get like Acts 26. You get in Hezekiah. You get these examples of where Paul and Acts 26, for example, is shipwrecked. And God says, if any sailor here leaves, you guys are going down. But Paul, you have to keep them on the ship. And so it's this mix of, Paul, you got to do this. But at the same time, I'm going to be working in a way where you're not going to drown because he follows it up with, you're not going to drown mostly. And so Paul already knows he's not going to drown and at the same time, you better keep everybody on the ship. Then you have in Hezekiah, this king who gets 15 years added to his life.  And so it's very similar to faith in that type of way. It's not, I am totally responsible, God. I have to figure out how to play all this, this crazy chessboard. I have to play it all lifelong to try and find a way to get to you.  It's not that. It's just totally not that. It's God is going to have to meet us. He's going to have to, I believe it becomes way more than just halfway. And then yes, we need to respond. There needs to be, the God of the Bible, it's clear that He comes to us and then says, you do have to respond, but it's based off of His grace, not our own works, that's going to give us this type of trusting relationship and secure eternity. Yeah, I don't know how we could accept grace from something we can't even improve exists. What does that mean? What is grace to you? Forgiveness. Yeah, so. Beyond that. Yeah, it's part of it. Well, I was just starting, but I'll give you an example. So, let's say I'm in charge of two children. And the children say, dad said he wants us to rearrange the living room this way. The other kid says, no, no, no. Dad told me he wants to change the living room this way. No, he wants to couch here. No, he wants to couch here. And I'm standing in the room. Imagine me just standing there, watching them argue. Let's see what turns out. Let's see how this works out. A lot of parents do that. That's fine. But then let's say they started punching each other in the face. They started gouging each other's eyeballs out, pulling each other's hair, setting each other on fire, and I'm still just watching with indifference. When I could easily say, guys, hey, I want to couch over there. He was right. Problem solved. Nah, I'm just gonna stand behind the couch, watch them literally kill each other over what I allegedly want. And I do nothing to solve the problem. Knowing that solving the problem would keep the peace and let them both know I am there. I am a parent. I am physically involved in their lives and I care. I saw a meme one time that said, to be a parent, you must make yourself a parent in the lives of your child, APP, a parent. You have to be present in order to matter to your children. You can't just show up when they're 27 and say, damn it, I'm your dad. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's gotta be earned over time, even though you had the authority originally, even though you assisted in creating that human being, you don't just get authority because of who you are. You've got to be a parent in that person's lives. Do you really want that parent for eternity though? I wouldn't want that parent at all. And that's my point, Stuart, is that- Want a parent though?  I mean, the amount of evil that has happened in the world, it's not just that God allows it, it's that he remains hidden behind the couch the entire time as we are out here trying to figure out what's best for humanity. And then the Christian apologist shows up and looks at the person who had their eye gouged out and says, you didn't seek God good enough. It's you, you're the reason that he didn't come solve this problem. Me, the little puny brain human who doesn't understand anything outside what the physics that I can detect, it's my fault. That's like blaming the janitor for the company going under. He doesn't have access to the financial records, he's cleaning the toilet. How is it his fault that the company went under? It's taking responsibility, turning it on its head and then giving God the glory when something amazing happens and then blaming the little guy when he never finds God. It should be the other way around. It's God's responsibility to start the relationship because he knows I'm here and he knows what it would take. And so this gets right into natural theology and arguments for whether there is there a God or not. And so I think right out of Romans chapter one, you get scripture saying, conscience within, beauty outside. That's more than enough evidence right there in and of itself to point us to something related to God. I was talking recently with somebody about how all the different psychological studies out there and more books out there, like the God shaped whole, for example, many different books right now, talking about how it is empirical. It's empirically verifiable that kids are born with this innate understanding of a God. And I think right out of the gate there, that's not a way to say automatically, oh, see God's revealed himself, but it certainly says something. And I think what those studies show are connected to exactly what Paul's talking about in Romans in the sense of conscience, in terms of the sense of general revelation, in terms of the sense of special revelation, which is scripture, the gospels. And I think you have to deal with that. Your illustration's a good one, but now you're putting too much of the onus again on free will, on people. The God of the Bible is not saying that in terms of, it's all up to you guys and you guys are gonna burn. I'm throwing you myself right in the lake of fire if you don't believe in me. And you talked about faith, David. Okay, faith is not just this emotional high. It's not like when the saints won the Super Bowl, how every single huddle that they had was, let's just have faith. Come on, it's sincerity, guys, sincerity. No, pistis in the Bible, you look at, say, Acts 1731, for example, it's all connected to the resurrection and the proofs that were given, the evidence that was given.  Am I going, or a guy, am I going to marry this person or not based off of the evidence I have and enter, finally, how to make that leap or not into a trusting relationship with them? And that's all connected. My final point here based off of your good question analogy is Luke chapter 16. We've got to talk about hell at some point tonight because you keep talking about burning and you keep talking about the free will piece, which is legit. You have the rich man in Lazarus. You have the whole point of why is the rich man's name not given? And that's the only place where a person's name and an entire new testament is not given. It's because Luke is trying to highlight that this rich man has totally lost his or her, obviously him, his identity. He's just rich man. So he's living for something else. And he was happy, but obviously that's turned him miserable after a while. It wasn't just this lake of fire, but he is miserable. And that's because he said, I don't want anything. I certainly don't want a God. I want this wealth that I can see that I can feel that gets me something. And it, like C.S. Lewis talks about, it is this eternal rumbling that took place because of his greed just eventually ate him alive in throughout eternity. And so if you notice, he does not want to get out of heaven when you have Lazarus and he's saying, please Lazarus, go and just tell my brothers and sisters, they don't want to come here. And he says, your brothers and sisters clearly have the prophets and an understanding of the evidence that Jesus rose from the dead. And if they don't believe that, it won't matter. Even if they saw this dead man rise themselves, even if they had this tangible five cents connection with him. So it's way more so an identity issue versus, and it gets back to the whole reason behind, why do we accept God versus is it just him existing or does he want a loving relationship with us?  I believe in this God, I'm getting saved. Look at you, buddy. Want to jump in. Okay, I do want to mention one sec. I'll give you a chance to respond, David, but I do want to mention that maybe now or after your response, David, I know that we had talked about a quick intermission at the hour mark. Okay, sounds good. So Stuart, real quick on the children being born with some idea of God, right? On that note, let me just ask you this and briefly answer if you have one.  And she carries them to safety. How do they know that's a safe mouth to jump in? They literally just entered the world out of an egg. The gazelle who drops the baby out and within 10 minutes it's standing up and staying really close to its mother. How does it know that that's a safe place to be? I'm honestly asking, do you have an answer for that? Because of the parent and they believe the parent brought them into the world. Okay, so then why would they need to believe in a God beyond the parent? Well, no, hold on, that crocodile who hatches, it just sees a crocodile mouth there. It could be a predator, it could be a competing male, it could be a competing female, it could be anything that wants to eat them, but it just willingly jumps right into her mouth. How does it know? Would you accept that there's a biological element to creatures recognizing a larger, safer version of itself to go to for comfort? Sure, definitely. Okay, so to me, that is exactly the response to children being born with some idea that there is God. And it makes perfect sense why man has created God in his own image.  We have evolved to the point that we start to realize we have limited time and we're gonna die someday. And we have reached a point that we can no longer run to something that's a bigger version of ourselves, so we invented it. That instinct that you're talking about in babies is not because there is a God and it sure is an evidence of it being a God, it's evidence of evolutionary biology telling us we need to run to something bigger than ourselves that looks like us for safety and support. The last thing I wanna say is, Trisha replied to our tweet just about two minutes ago and she said, I begged, begged God to reveal himself to me and honestly sought after him and knocked on a door that never opened. Still open and ready for a revelation to this date, nothing, the ball is definitely not in my court. What do you say to Trisha? I totally agree with you, every kind of way. Well, if the ball is not in our court, it's God's fault because he remains hidden. You've gotta ask the question, what are you looking for? See, I wish I could get an answer out of you, David, tonight about what kind of evidence you're looking for and what do you want God? How do you want him to prove himself? So evidence to improve. I had a secular Jewish friend who told me incessantly, my secular Jewish friend, really sharp guy, went to an Ivy League and he said, Stuart, easy, thank you for asking. If Jesus shows up five times a day, every single day, just to me, just to me, not to anybody else, just to me to prove himself, I will believe in him. Case closed. So you gotta ask, I'm not saying you want that. I don't think you're quite that extreme, but you still have to answer the question because then we have an idea of what is this God worthy of worship or not? And what is this evidence and potential proof that he's offering? Trisha, if you want me to answer that, David, I'm glad you asked me to answer. I would simply say, keep asking God to reveal himself to you. And God is not a white male, he's not even a male, he's genderless, but that's another discussion. Keep asking him to reveal himself to you. The onus is not on you. Yes, you absolutely do. Again, you're asking him, so you are praying. So I guess in that sense, the onus is on you, but you're simply taking one step, frequently asking God, please just reveal yourself to me. I know that this universe did not just come from nothing, come about by accident. I know the natural laws are not just popping up and we're expecting them to be the same every single day. That should not be normal like David Hume even said. We could go on and on and on. So simply just keep asking, God, please show yourself to me. And I don't feel you. Ask like David did, ask like Job did. The Bible is replete with examples of people who say, God is silent, I don't see him. And yet God always says you are doing the right thing. Or Trisha, you could not waste your time and create your own destiny. That's it. That's it right there. That is the crux of this whole debate tonight. Create your own destiny.  I don't think David does. And I don't think that's cause he's a bad guy, but I don't think he wants a father figure. And I don't think he wants a displaced identity that's given to him by God. I think he wants his own and that's legit. Well, while we're on this little break, I'll be looking for God and I'll let you know if I find him. We will take an innovation and we are excited folks as we have maybe a bit more open discussion as well as Q and A coming right up. Do want to let you know a couple of things in particular folks, if you haven't heard yet, we're absolutely thrilled for this upcoming debate with Christian apologist Dr. Kenny Rhodes and Matt DeLahunty coming up on June 5th. We are doing a crowdfund to make that event happen on our airings for the speakers that we are pumped about as it has been cruising. We've been super excited and so want to encourage you. If you've ever found this channel fun, you're like, yeah, yeah, it's all right. Consider joining the crowdfund with us. The crowdfund is linked in the description and that's right below our guest link. So I do want to mention that as well. We are thrilled to have David C. Smalley as well as Stuart here with us tonight. They're linked in the description at the very top of the description box and that includes folks. If you are listening to modern day debate via podcast as we are thrilled folks, if you haven't yet pull out your phone, find your favorite podcast app and look up modern day debate as we are absolutely pumped that we are on podcast. All of our debates that are here on YouTube also end up on the podcast. And that's right now we're catching up. We're about a week behind in terms of when the live stream occurs and then when the debate makes it onto the podcast. But you can find both David C. Smalley and Stuart's links in that description box for the podcast episode as well. And so we are shortly going to go into the Q and A and depending on David C. Smalley, do you happen to have, if you want more open discussion, we can. Otherwise, if you're ready for the Q and A we'll see what Stuart says. I think Stuart will be back in just a moment. What are you feeling right now? So I'm ready for the Q and A. You got it. I think we've beat that dead horse long enough. So. It's been a fun one. And so I got to tell you, both you and Stuart, I got to give you kudos. People have really been enjoying this. And so I really do, we want to let you know folks, if this is your first time here at modern day debate, we're a neutral platform. So we don't take any stances. We only host debates and we host debates on science, religion and politics. And we want to let you know no matter what walk of life you are from, we really do hope you feel welcome whether you be Christian, atheist, gay, straight, black, white, Republican, Democrat, you name it. We're glad you're here. And so thanks for being with us. James, do you not ever tell anybody what your stance is on anything? They know what my stance is on a couple of things. However, I try to never, like if people ask I might say but most of the stuff I'll, I haven't disclosed. So are you a Christian? I am a Christian, yeah. Oh, wow. Well, thank you for having this platform. It's very, very brave of you. That's nice of you. Thank you for your kind words. And again, we can't thank the speakers enough. So folks, please do give some love to David C. Smalley and Stuart as we really do appreciate them for just hanging out here. It makes it fun. And so we'll jump into these questions. This one from Oz says, and the stream Smalley is the victor. You got a fan out there and we've got a spicy road says Stuart, why is God more successful in less educated countries rather than in higher educated countries? And by successful, I think they mean in kind of being believed in. Yeah. So I would say the secular hypothesis which is atheism connected with science and the growth in technology, God was supposed to disappear and atheism was supposed to just keep increasing. Now it's 12% in the next, I think 10 years is supposed to drop down worldwide to 7%. Now a lot of that has to do with just atheists just don't have babies. But I think that's connected to a type of, well, first of all, it's just wrong. That's just a wrong statement in many ways. It depends on how you look at the statistics because you could look at the US right now and you could say, hey, religious nones are increasing greatly. Okay, fine. Take a poll of those religious nones, the non-religious types. They're not atheists. The vast majority of those are kind of the Oprah Winfrey spiritual types which is there's a higher power. There's some type of supernatural being. Well, Stuart, let me just clarify the question for the question asked. Yeah, yeah. You do acknowledge the peer research surveys and studies that come out every few years that repeatedly show the lower education, the more likely someone is to be religious and the higher the education, the less likely the person is to be religious. And the same thing goes with God belief. The same thing goes with belief in ghosts, belief in angels, belief in demons. It's kind of the same pattern, right? You do acknowledge that the more education one attains, the less likely they are to believe in a God. I think that's what the question askers trying to get at. Why is God more successful in being believed in where there is lower education and it's harder for him to convince people who have more education? Shockingly, I thought that was true too. It's actually false. Check out inspiring philosophy and Michael Jones once on our show. He did a meta analysis, meta studies showing the cross studies that clearly show that that's false. And then look at the Harvard study that the US, it was a gosh, I think it was the post put out study over the last 20 years saying that if they didn't have IQ on there, so maybe don't check that one out, but in every other area in terms of health, psychological health, relational health, happiness. I think IQ was on there, but I don't wanna be certain on that one. It's greater if you go to church, for example, on a weekly basis. And so, yes, I don't fully disagree with the person in the sense of if you go to, I've been to Haiti, I've been to a lot of those poor countries and yes, a belief in some form of God is burgeoning in different ways. But I would say look at Lominsana, Yale, look at others who clearly show that Christianity travels so differently than any other religion, it's not even close in terms of every world religion other than Christianity is still the majority of, the high percentage of is still located where that religion started. You look at Christianity, it moved from Palestine over to Europe and to the US, Latin America, Africa. So it's impossible to say that ultimately in terms of those things. Well, growth of a religion has a lot to do with adaptability and has nothing to do with its truthfulness. Got one from Tom's chair. Says me versus your sorry chair, let's go. Thank you for that, Tom's chair. And Sunflower says, Dave, to fix your metal detector analogy, I would say that it should be that you are compelled to keep on using it out of faith and one day we'll find something. Yeah, that's more of a question or a challenge for Stuart, I think. And they're just improving upon my argument that I just got into on my second beer. They just came into my head here. Thanks to the God I worship, Sapporo, not a sponsor. I think Stuart should really answer that. Yeah, imagine that. Imagine the game where I say, okay, I've given you a metal detector and then you find out I've only hit plastic and you go, well, I don't need this metal detector. And I go, you have to keep searching with the metal detector in order to find the plastic. That's kind of the hand we've been dealt if your version of God exists. And I think that's what the question asker's getting at here. Gotcha, and this one comes in from Magellan asks, Stuart, can you give a single example of God's existence versus his non-existence? And in particular, a tangible example. Holy spirit, that's the only tangible one you could say in my mind. Gotcha, Chris Peacock, thanks for your support. Okay, the Holy Spirit, hold on, the Holy Spirit is tangible?  It brings conviction, you know when you're right or wrong, it brings happiness, it brings joy, and it sheds light on who Jesus Christ truly is. So that's the closest you can come to tangible. You're right, if you say in terms of grabbing this table, no, it's not that type of tangibility. But the closest you can get tangible would be the Holy Spirit. Yeah, tangible means perceptible. And I don't think having an emotion run through your body would be considered touch. So I would reject that the Holy Spirit is tangible. We could parse that one in different ways, sure. This one coming in from, thanks for Chris Peacock for your super sticker and David Bauer socks. Thanks for your question for Stuart. They said, David having an atheist platform means more people are becoming atheist. As a matter of stopping that conversion, shouldn't David be a top target? Oh, is that for me? Yes. I guess he's asking shouldn't God target me because I have a platform of atheists? No, no, no. There were a lot of successful angry atheists in the Bible who God did not target and smite. No, I like that atheist YouTube channels are growing, it seems. I don't know the studies on them, but it seems like in some ways they're growing because it shows that there's a type of pluralism in the US right now. And if there's not multiple platforms with all religions, atheism, et cetera, that the Christian faith is not gonna grow as fast, oddly enough, that's a study show. And no, atheism worldwide, again, it's decreasing. It's because atheists are not having babies.   So if you're in evolution, be a Christian. Yeah, but when those babies start googling stuff you're saying, I think Christianity's gonna go back down. So I would encourage people to fact check what you're hearing here tonight. This one comes in from Brian F. says, I read the Bible, asked questions and prayed for three months. One day, God gave me a full-blown revelation. All my problems in life were a result of not obeying. David, have you ever honestly seeked God? Absolutely, I actually was saved. Stuart was right when he said there's a really good chance that I was saved. In fact, the moment I was dunked in the water and the preacher said, do you believe Jesus Christ died for your sins so that you may enter the kingdom of heaven? And I said, I do. And he said, you are hereby saved in the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. And when I went underwater, I was like, well, that doesn't make any sense. How does punishing the innocent pardon the guilty? This doesn't make any sense. And how I've got thousands of more questions now. And then I came back up and I was petrified that I'd been baptized, but I didn't really understand what any of it meant. And then I was like, told to go knock on doors. And I say on my podcast that I felt like I was given the jersey and pushed out on the field. I knew none of the plays or what sport I was even playing. And I felt responsible for winning souls when I had no idea what the hell was going on. So yeah, me knocking on doors and saying, I want to talk to you about Jesus. And then having someone say, honey, you need Jesus and slamming the door in my face made me think, maybe she has the correct version of Jesus on the other side of that door. And I'm pulling people out of their faith.  That's what led me to actually start reading the Bible. So I was baptized into the faith. I was raised as a believer. I believed until I was a late teenager into my early 20s, I kind of fought it and then just openly became an atheist publicly. And a lot of my listeners who have been with me for the last 11 years or so have seen the journey, right? And my book, Baptized Atheists kind of details that journey of the questions I started asking at the beginning, the theology professors I sat down and talked with, the preachers and pastors, the conflicting information I was getting from Christian sources, the conflicting Bible verses, the multiple contradictions that couldn't make sense. That has all been a journey. So yeah, when people ask me if I've ever actually asked God, and yes, I've given my entire life to God, I was a part of the music ministry and at one point had plans on becoming a preacher. So yes, I've given it a fair shot. I gave it everything I had. I gave it my entire life. And I've even given it the last 15 to 18 years as an atheist starting as a writer and editor of American Atheist magazine. My approach has always been searching for the truth, not disproving something by plugging my fingers in my ears. Gotcha. And this one coming in from Marcus. Gillard says, this is for both debaters. Does personal experience prove that God exists? I used to have dreams of God now, not at all. I'm searching for God too. I would say no, personal experience can be an excuse for why you suspend reality because your personal experience was so strong. But I don't think that can be proof for anyone else that there is a God. Agreed. I would say it's strong evidence. Gotcha. And this one coming in from Victor Hallock. Thanks for your question, Victor says, for Stuart, honest question from a believer friend. If God exists, why would he not hide quote unquote clues in his creation to reaffirm his existence for those who search for him? Reality appears to directly contradict his existence. Brian, just read John Edwards or John Piper study Christian hedonism, the way those guys get in touch with nature and have such an experience. I mean, these guys are brilliant by the way, like insanely brilliant. Not just these fundamentalist Christian types who live under rocks and are not smart, brilliant people, not the emotional types, the intellectual types who have had such crazy experiences of the Holy Spirit and God walking through nature in the woods specifically that they've had to say, God, please stop. And so I think those clues are there for example, general revelation. Yeah, one in 33 birth defects, one in 33 births has a birth defect. Look at hurricanes, look at tornadoes, look at earthquakes, look at mudslides, look at the absolute destruction nature has caused. Look at the multiple bone diseases and cancers in COVID-19. You wanna look at nature for God?  It looks like a God that's trying to get rid of us. And I would say that's evidence for God because why would that bother you so much if there wasn't a God? That's why CS Lewis became a Christian. Because I love other human beings. And I don't need a God. I don't need a hateful God in order for me to love humans. No, but you have this strong conviction and desire and you're calling it wrong where you get this type of moral obligation to say that it's wrong. See, this is what the most reluctant convert, CS Lewis, one of the smartest men ever to be at Oxford and Cambridge, he became a Christian for this point because he was making your point. He said, all the suffering, that's why I can't be a Christian. But all of a sudden he started to realize, wait a second, why is this bothering me so much? And that led him to fail. Well, us all being connected as human beings, us having mirror neurons in our brain and understanding the concept of suffering, we can get back on the schedule and I can have you on my podcast so we can have an entire debate on morality because I'm one of the few atheists that'll step up and say, I do believe in some aspect of objective morality. So I knew at some point we would have this, where do you get your morality from question? If we wanna expand that onto another show, another version of this debate or you wanna come on my show, I'll be more than happy to get into that because I do have answers for those questions. But the fact that someone feels love in their heart, the fact that someone sees someone else struggling and wants to help them, there are multiple examples of that happening in nature outside of humanity. Dogs saving dogs from a street, gorillas saving other gorillas, bears saving birds from drowning, no God needed for one mammal to have compassion for another mammal. So we can table that until next time.  I think Moe referred to Muhammad. I thought maybe Moses. Oh, that could be, that makes sense. Okay. I would just say, keep in mind, who was the question asker there? Sarah Jenkins. Sarah, I understand that that is an answer maybe you have heard. And I would say, just imagine, keep in mind in all of this, that if that's true, God is also the one who made that rule, right? He created the physics that we understand and live in.  That's only because he designed it that way. So he created this rule that just seeing him would melt our faces off. Who would do that with someone they want a relationship with? Who would make that the rule? Just think about it that way. Jumping into the next question from Harry White says, only interspirituality can give you belief in God. More of a statement. Next, no thoughts? You don't have to if you don't have anything. Yes, I mean, part of it. I would say partly. I wouldn't fully agree with that. No, I would say evidence can give you belief in God, but the evidence has to make sense and be- Right, what is belief? Yeah. Right, right. It's a subset of, yeah. Got you. And David Bowers-Ox, thanks for your question. Says, what do you have coming up on the DCS show? Oh, on my podcast, I've got a couple of people lined up, Christians, a couple of crystal healers. I've got a person who is a Reiki healer who is set to come and I've got some comedy shows that we're talking about June 11th and 12th in the San Diego area. So I'm broadening my horizon outside of just Christianity and we're doing a lot of stuff on people who believe in laying hands on someone and healing them or believe in Reiki or some sort of audio sort of, this started with someone trying to sponsor my show and I turned them down and they got angry, right? It was like, hey, I want you to tell people about this product that they can go to sleep and listen to sound waves and it cures cancer. And I was like, not a million years am I gonna advertise that on my show? And then I go, I can prove to you it works. And I'm like, let's do it. And so, yeah, I'm all about that. So I'm about testing claims and I'm also a comedian. So I try to walk that line of like, being funny and having a good time during the show without directly offending the person I'm talking to because I also want to extend an all the branch of respect. So, yeah, it's a lot of that coming up. We're kind of branching out away from Christianity but still a lot of Christian schedules. So, yeah, you can just look at the title of the episode and it'll tell you pretty much the type of guest I have on that day. You got to thank you very much. And then Magellan, thanks for your questions. That if Triangles had a God, it would have three sides. I love that. That's great. Stuart, do you get the reference? No, give it to me.  So if Triangles had a God, it would have three sides. If circles had a God, it would be a circle. I love that. I'm going to use that moving forward. Who said that again, James? Magellan. Magellan, damn it. That's good stuff, man. I love that. If Triangle had a God, it would have three sides. That's a perfect response to this. That's a really quick way of saying, it's like a Twitter version way of saying what I talked about, the crocodile example. To that baby crocodile, that mother is its God. It is protection. It is savior. It is everything. It's the source of food. It's literally everything. And the same for the gazelle that pops out and has no idea what this new world is. And when the two-year-old is walking around the living room and there's a big thunder clap outside and it runs full force for its mother, you didn't have to teach that. It wanted to be around something bigger and more powerful that looks like itself for protection. It didn't run to a chair. It didn't run to a stuffed animal. It didn't run to the big screen TV. It ran to the thing that looked like itself. And I think that's a brilliant way of saying, if a Triangle, I think it's a brilliant way to say it, that if a Triangle had a God, it would have three sides. We created God in our own image. I don't look anything like Jesus looked. Yeah, you do. Yeah, you do. No American flag or Jesus. This one coming in from Victor says, Stuart with peace and love, you would be a great mind on some genuine pursuits in the STEM field. Please consider moving into one of the STEM fields. I agree. And? Is it Tasha? Let me know if I pronounce it right. Tasha Thomas, thank you very much for your question. Said, David, the problem of atheism is not without a detector, but a faded detector is what the problem with atheism is. They say in parentheses, self-inflicted memory loss. To win a game, you have to play it. I'm not clear on what that means. Is she saying, forgive me if I'm misgendering, I thought you said it was a woman. Is she, help clarify that. Is she saying that my metal detector is like I'm, I'm sorry. Really? It is a, so one thing I'm gonna change when I read this time, I think they meant with. So I think they're saying, David, the problem of atheism is not with a detector, but a faded detector due to self-inflicted memory loss. I think that they're saying that you're purposely not wanting to detect God. Yeah, and again, that just goes back to victim blaming. I have no control over that. If my memory is gone, I don't know how that could be my fault. I'm not, and I don't know any atheists, in fact, who are intentionally suppressing this idea of God. Stewart seems to talk to these crazy atheists who are angry at a God they don't acknowledge exists, which that doesn't make any sense to me whatsoever. But yeah, I don't, I think blaming the person for not having the memory that they allegedly caused themselves to lose is just a very convenient sidestep to let God off the hook and to just victim blame the little person.   And then later people are like, bro, you left the three-year-old by themselves. And I go, hey, they suppressed my memory of telling them to lock the door. It's kind of their fault they got taken. Hold on. If I'm the responsible adult in the room and I'm the smart one and they have the puny brain of the three-year-old, isn't it my responsibility to ensure their safety? And if I leave and avoid making sure they're safe and they do something that causes themselves to be in danger, rather than blaming me, if I go, they screwed up, that's just victim blaming. That's just picking on the puny brain thing that didn't know any better. And I think that's a cop-out for Christianity. This one coming in from Abdullah Ibn Ibn Iblis thinks that enjoyed it. So glad you did enjoy this one tonight, folks. And Abdullah in particular, Tom's chair says, I wouldn't want God to show up to me. I'd want God to show up to the children's hospital first. I think that they're pressing you on the problem of evil implicitly. Well, I'm gonna defer to Alvin planning a, he talks about the pup tent example with the noceums. There could be, how do you know if you're granting a God complete omniscience? And we are this puny little way below an ant in our ability to even start to think compared to God. How do you know that there could not be reasons for any type of evil and suffering? And I know that could sound callous in certain situations, absolutely good. But I'm simply looking at it from a philosophical, not more of a counselor perspective.  He lost his finances, he lost his family, he lost his own health. And then think about how the story of Job has helped so many people going through suffering for thousands of years. And then imagine blaming that ant for not developing a relationship with the ant farmer.  Well, I mean, if he's making the rules as to how I can play, I think it's ultimately up to him. Like don't forget, I can't, there is no way any Christian could ever stand in condemnation on somebody's soul. You don't know. You just don't, I mean, look at the thief on the cross. Deathbed conversions, you have no idea if somebody is saved or not. I don't know, but John 724 says you can pass righteous judgment once you've reached righteousness. So if you have a relationship with God, do you not have authority, divine authority in fact to pass righteous judgment according to John 724? Well, what is righteous judgment? I mean, is that saying that I literally believe I could judge your soul that it will absolutely be in hell? Some could take it that way. You could take it that way. I certainly don't take it that way. I don't think you get an ounce in scripture on anything saying that a human being could say that somebody's gonna absolutely be in hell. Even Hitler. You can jump in the next one and this one coming in from Pastor John says to fix David's, they like your analogy. They got a kick out of that. And so they are giving alternatives. They're trying to give kind of new ways of living. They say to fix David's analogy by assuming God has given you a metal detector you assume you will find God through empirical means. God has given you a map to follow, seek and find if you seek with all of your heart. That's again victim blaming. What that ultimately turns into is all of the people watching right now and listening through the podcast who have sought with every fiber of their being who have cried out to God who have been in desperate situations who were raised in the church who were raised by pastors who were sexually abused in the church or abused by pastors for years and decades and so on all of those people who cried out for help who didn't get an answer. What you're saying, Pastor John, is it's your fault. You didn't seek hard enough. You didn't cry hard enough. You didn't believe enough. You didn't say the right words in the right way. You didn't get enough hands clasped in prayer. You didn't get enough heads bowed in prayer.  He never cared. He watched with indifference because you didn't say the right combination. You didn't say the right magic words. And then when we die, our reward is to worship at the feet of the one being who could have prevented that suffering and chose to watch with indifference. That's not a reward to me. That's shoving it in my face. Next one coming in from Sphinxer of Doom says, the supernatural cannot be known by definition given the natural means by which we experience or perceive things and any natural perception of his influence could not be distinguished from nature. I have a strict policy of not answering questions from someone named Sphinxer of Doom. I'm not sure what the other answer is. Sphinxer of Doom, I gotta be honest. I didn't listen after you said Sphinxer of Doom. I kept imagining what that could possibly look like. So I have no clue what you said after that. It is a long question. So I'm frankly still piecing it together even though looking at it. So any natural perception of his influence could not be distinguished from nature. So I think that they're saying that it's like roughly speaking. Sorry Sphinxer, if I miss, if I say this the wrong way, but they said roughly speaking, I think they're saying like, we're using the wrong means if we're looking like with an empirical emphasis. They say I'll read it again. The supernatural cannot be known by definition given that the natural means by which we experience and perceive things and any natural perception of his influence could not be distinguished from nature. Right, that's exactly my entire point of the analogy of the metal detector is God is metaphysical, yet we don't have the ability to detect the metaphysical. We can't see things that are invisible by definition because they are outside of our field of vision, right? So that's the whole point is that God gave us the ability to go, this is a glass, I can touch it, I can feel it, here's how I detect things. I know that I'm cold because I can feel the air on me and I can go do something about that. And then God's gonna go, listen, the most important thing about your existence as a human is to detect me and develop a relationship with me. And so the human then goes, all right, great, which plane of existence are you gonna exist on? The one that I can smell, the one that I can taste, the one that I can feel, the one that I can hear? Oh, no, on a plane of existence that you can't detect, you just have to hope you're right about the version of me that other people tell you about from a book that's gonna be translated by 1,600 different authors, I mean, sorry, over a period of 1,600 years by dozens of different authors over 300, over three different languages, we're gonna make it really confusing. And by the way, in the book, Jesus is gonna specifically talk in parables with the intent to confuse you so that you will hear, but you will not understand. We're gonna do all of this on purpose and I'm the God who have put all of this into place. That's kind of the whole point of my analogy is that I have this conversation all the time with Christians and I, the blaming the human being for not detecting the God who has intentionally set up the game for itself to remain undetectable, just makes me wonder, what are we doing here? Like, what are you doing, Stuart?  It has to be a hope, it has to be a feeling, it has to be a belief, but you can't know on something that's that important that your eternity literally depends on it, that's the one thing you have to take on faith. I just don't see a loving God setting up a game in which he remains undetectable, yet his detection is the most important factor.  I'll give you a chance if you want to do one. Okay, yeah, so is this still Sphinxer? If it's still Sphinxer, the whole supernatural piece is exactly right because if you go into any hospital and you have a finger that the top of it's missing and miraculously your finger grows back, there is no way to test the miraculous because of a control environment and you need repeatability, right? So science can't touch the supernatural, so you're spot on about that one. And that's connected to the five senses which David just hit right now. And I would add, I don't think there's strong evidence for God, but it's definitely evidence. Recently, there was a poll taken over 30 million people across only three continents have had direct experiences with the supernatural, miraculous or NDE's even.  And we know there are many of those, but I think that in and of itself, these new studies are showing something where there is this type of universal ability to connect with something supernatural that is not necessarily tangible. And I just wanna say, I request extra credit points for being two beers in, hearing the words finger and finger in the same sentence and not making a joke about it. That's true. That is some raw self-control and power. Thank you, David Seeswally. This next one from MikeQ922 says, David and Stuart, thanks for expressing your views.  Any thoughts on this? That's the number one that I hear for people not coming to the faith and yes, many leaving, but it's also the one, oddly enough, this is the pastoral counselor side of me. I'm not going with the callous philosophical. Pastoral counselor side, I've seen many people who've had things like cancer that they've literally been a shell of themselves and painkillers have not been able to help them whatsoever. And they will read the Bible and again, get some type of solace that I can't call it anything other than some type of supernatural solace, to be quite honest. If you wanna be totally honest with you and I'm more of the scientific type side of things. And so, yes, I see some people leave the faith because of things like a stillbirth, but I see way more people come to know God through some type of suffering, they'll at least come to church. Any atheist will step in the doors of a church if they're suffering because they're gonna test everything, right? The drugs aren't working, the counseling's not working, all right, let me try church. And so, no, I think it cuts both ways, but that's typically the one you'll hear. Gotcha, this one coming in from Ron Tronimus. Thank you very much. Said the whole thing is based on the assumption that anyone could possibly understand or know what they or God may be or is thinking or planning, but isn't this unknowable? I think they're saying like, couldn't it be that God has a plan or a reason that makes it such that God is in the alleged case that not in any way appearing to anybody? Yeah, that could be the case. I'm sure Stuart would agree, right? And that's kind of what you believe is that he's not appearing. I guess the question I would have on my side is fine if that's the case, but to then offer some form of punishment for those who don't figure it out or eternal reward for those who do is just cruel.  It just, it doesn't, if you're gonna make yourself invisible, don't make that the number one goal of the entire existence of humanity is to find you.  It's like a babysitter going, all right, you gotta find me, count to 10.  Like if you don't find me, okay, I come out of hiding and we do it again, right? But there's no drastic consequence for not finding you.   I see it as God's ultimate love and respect for our freedom and choice, whether to live with him or not.   Let's at least stay friends and then maybe something and then two years later, everybody's had that type of experience. Well, God is not going to do that type of thing to us. No, he's gonna be the boyfriend or girlfriend who says, I respect you as just a friend and I know you don't wanna love me, even though I love you and so I'm letting you go. Are you suggesting that if God showed himself to me, I would be forced to love him? No, absolutely not. Okay, then your analogy completely fails because Lucifer knows for a fact that God exists and he chose to turn his back on him. So God's showing himself to me right now, cause I'm gonna, let me let you want a little secret. If God were to appear right here right now on this live stream, by the way, let me make room for him. If God were to show up right here, give me something. Okay, I tried. If God were to show up right here, I would be like, why in 1 Samuel 15,3 did you tell Saul to go wipe out the Amalekites and tell them to stomp out the little infants and the children who were still nursing? Why did you tell them to be killed? Why didn't you just unhardened the heart of the pharaoh instead of wiping out the firstborn of all the people in the village? Why, why, why, why? I would have a million questions for that God. It was done. Give you the last chance to respond, Stuart, cause they originally directed the question. In your Eastern culture, I have no problem with God judging in that kind of way where it was done even more ruthlessly by other civilizations, one. And then two, David's going right back to my main points, which were, no, God is not just gonna, your God show up right now, that gets right back to God being the cosmic bell boy, the genie in a bottle baby. No, it's not that type of game playing with the God of the entire universe. Again, remember, this God created the whole universe. Are we simply asking this God who created the whole universe to be our nice little assistant? That's literally what we're asking him to do right now. No, that's not what I'm saying. But again, and then David going back to show up God, show up God, this gets right back to my two points, two of my four points, which is, it's not about just believing that God exists. Hey, he's here. Whoa, it's not belief. It's loving relationship and trust. That's why you've got to go to the gospels with Jesus Christ, cause here's where I do believe with David. You've got to be shortened. If we didn't have the gospels in Jesus Christ, then yeah, there would be no way I could actually have a trusting relationship with any type of God. So agree there. This one coming in from Harry White. This is for you David, this is an interesting one. They say, even if God doesn't exist. So they're saying, you know, let's grant, that's the case. And they say, wouldn't an atheist world be nihilistic? In other words, there's like suffering or harm that happens to organisms, but it's not imbued with this deeper moral meaning. And they say, have you ever considered this, David? Sure. And I'm fine with that.  It's about adapting to your surroundings. I'm fine with bad things happening to people if there is no God, because chance and random chance and car accidents and humans are fallible creatures who create fallible machines and we're gonna make mistakes. And I'm fine with loss. I've lost my dad. I've lost my son to a motorcycle accident. My mom just got breast cancer literally last month. She's surviving, she's fighting through it, just had surgery. I'm fine with dealing with all of these things as an atheist because I know that this is the reality that I have and I've gotta fight through it and deal with it problem by problem with as much science and reality as possible. I'm not hitting my knees, asking for an invisible deity that I've created in my childhood to help me with something. I'm dealing with the problems as an adult one-on-one as they come and saying goodbye to people as they leave my life the best I know how. I'm mourning the death, I'm welcoming new babies. I'm solving problems the best that I can according to my human standards but it makes sense that there would be suffering if there is no God because evolution doesn't give a damn about you. But as soon as Stuart says there is a God who loves you and seeks a relationship with you but is remaining hidden from you when he has the power to show himself that only introduces thousands of more questions as to why he's not making himself known. Gotcha. Sorry to hear about those things, David. And we are glad to have you both, David and Stuart here. We've got just a few more questions. Wanna let you know, folks, we're gonna kind of move through these quick. We for sure won't be able to get through any questions. We do wanna respect the time of our guests and so please no more questions. But long nights, YouTube and thank you for your question said it's now proven that UFOs are real and we don't know what's flying them though. Pastor, is it safe to say that they don't believe in that Bible or your Jesus? I have no idea. I have no idea. And if aliens are on other planets, they easily could be Christians or atheists. It's all speculative. They could be God. Chewsey and thank you for this next question. Bubblegumgun says the same reason aliens and others won't politics. Next up, thank you, Band for Life, your super sticker, as well as Flat Earth Guy who says I endorse this channel. Thank you. Next up, Bubblegumgun says the creator is a free market anarchist, hands off. And then there are just, I think maybe two more that I had seen that let me just load this page. But wanna remind you folks, our guests are linked in the description. We do appreciate them. I wanna remind you, friendly reminder, 99% of you do a phenomenal job at this. And so for that 1% that sometimes struggles with it, we wanna encourage you to attack the arguments instead of the person. And this one coming in from Victor Hallock says, Stuart, what's your favorite Christian band? So I get in trouble with this one because I'm more of a pop kind of guy. And my worship music is, let's just say my worship little podcast playlist is pretty small. I would say it would be a singer named Keith Green. Keith Green, died in a plane crash too young, back in I think the 80s. Gotcha, thank you for that. And then this next question, I don't know if this is serious. They say, if God were to, sorry if that was an insult, Bubblegumgun. So they say, if God were to act out of love, it would be theft. This kind of sounds actually a little bit like, okay, I don't understand this. Do you have a view? If God were to act out of love, it would be theft, I'm not clear. Okay, it's not just me then. Okay, well, thank you for your question, Bubblegumgun. And we do appreciate, oh, that's, no actually, okay, Sarah Jenkins says my question is for Stuart. Oh, okay, gotcha. Well, let me just humor Sarah because we do appreciate your question, Sarah. Sarah's question, I think that they wanted to see what your response was Stuart and they didn't hear it.  So he hides for us like Stuart, what were your thoughts on this? Did you respond? I can't remember. No, I didn't respond. Okay. So his holiness in, well, it's really Christianese term, but it is in the Bible, so I'll use it. Shekinah glory gets at such incredible holiness and he's the source of all moral goodness. And so once Jesus Christ comes, then we have access to God, the Father. But before Jesus Christ came because of the moral goodness and holiness, which simply means set apart in such a powerful way, humans could not connect with God in the sense of being his physical presence at that time. Say for examples like Moses with the burning bush or it's a theophany where God is showing up in a bush or at other times like in a cloud. So when you, it just shows the seriousness of God, the Father and the Old Testament when it comes to his holiness and goodness, which again makes sense. If he's the God of the entire universe and he's the ultimate source of all goodness and holiness and everything right and good, then we humans who are fallible and broken most likely are gonna have a tough time in his presence. But again, if we didn't have Jesus Christ, then I would have a tough time believing in this God and wanting any type of relationship with him. But because Jesus came, that gives us a possibility to actually have a relationship with a historical figure. All according to God's plan. Want to say thank you so much folks for hanging out with us. I will be back with a post credit scene in just a moment letting you know about juicy upcoming debates that we're excited about, but want to give one last thank you to David C. Smalley and Stuart for being with us. It's been a true pleasure gentlemen. Be right back folks. Thank you David. Thank you, thank you Stuart. Be right back in just a moment folks and stick around. Ladies and gentlemen, that was an epic one, really fun. So I am so excited folks. Gotta let you know about several awesome things. I'm excited to get to say hi to you in the chat and starting with upcoming epic stuff. You guys, we are absolutely pumped about this. If you have not heard on the bottom right of your screen, this debate is coming up on June 5th. It's only 20 days away and it's going to be epic. Matt DeLahunty, atheist debater and you could say juggernaut in the debate world. We will be taking on Dr. Kenny Rhodes, Christian apologist on whether or not there is good evidence for God. You don't want to miss it folks. It's going to be epic. So hit that subscribe button and that notification button as well so you don't miss out on that awesome debate. We're pumped about it. So what we are doing folks is if you have somehow not heard, maybe you're new here. Who knows what it is but want to let you know what we are doing is this event, we are raising funds for the honorariums for our speakers. And so we absolutely are determined to, as you see on the far right side of your screen, that right there is our ultimate goal for the project. And that includes some extra as we're trying to put out advertisements for this huge debate as well. And so that's built in as well as like the, you could say Indiegogo fees and all that stuff. And so our goal is 3,500 and folks, we are getting, I'm pumped that we are cruising in terms of this crowdfund. Want to say folks, if you haven't already, join us on this crowdfund as I got to tell you a couple of things. One, the link to the crowdfund is in the description box below, right below the speakers links. And also you guys have to mention this. I'm going to throw it into the actual live chat right now, our crowdfund. So you can access it there as well, pinned at the top of the live chat. And we highly want to encourage you folks. This is going to be epic. And we are, as mentioned, these guys put in a lot of preparation. They're putting in a lot of time in terms of this debate, becoming a great debate as they get ready for it. And also, of course, their time debating. We really do want to honor them. And so that's why folks, we absolutely have to reach this goal for this debate to happen. And so we are determined, we're going to make it happen, but want to let you know, folks, let me give you some of the deets about this event, because you might be brand new to it. And maybe you're like, I don't like what crowdfund? What is that? What is he talking about? First, this is the debate we're talking about on screen, Dr. Kenny Rhodes and Matt Dilla-Hunty. And as of now, folks, it's set to be public for the actual live stream. So the last one, we had the live stream private for those who put into the crowdfund. So it was only like three bucks. If someone put in a minimum of three bucks into the crowdfund, they would get to watch it live. In this case, we're like, well, we think people are excited about the crowdfund, regardless of whether or not it gets them in, you could say the ticket to watch it live. But this time, we were like, hey, so as a result, it is as of now, we're planning on it being shown to the public, like completely, like absolutely to the public from the very live stream. So last time we basically had it in private during the live stream and then we released it on the channel a couple of days later. And we might do that depending on how the crowdfunding is going. If it looks like nobody's like, I think we're doing well, but if it looks like we kind of sputter out and we don't really have the crowdfund growing closer to that goal, we might do that. But we're pretty confident. We're going to be able to just have it be public so everybody can watch the live stream as well, even if they have not put in to the crowdfund. But also want to let you know about a couple of other things. You might be like, well, James, are you sure that you can do this? I mean, like this crowdfund idea, YouTube channel, you're doing that. We have already done it. Look at the bottom right of your screen. We did this in January. Basically, December, January, we used as months to crowdfund to get Dr. Michael Shermer, who you're seeing on screen, to face off with Michael Jones, popular Christian apologist on whether or not Christianity is dangerous. So we've already done it. We've already, you could say, gone through the process, believe me, we're going to make this goal. In fact, last time we had 143 backers. Right now we have 29. So we have many more people that we were expecting are going to jump in on this crowdfund and we appreciate that so much. So thank you guys in advance for supporting this. As we have 3,000, last time we had raised 3,141. And so this bumped up goal, it's only bumped up by, what is that, 300, about 350 bucks. And so we absolutely can make this goal and we're going to, we're determined folks. Believe me, I'm crazy. I don't care if it's me and T-Jump that have to do a car wash, it's going to happen. We're going to make this event happen. And if you are new to it, you're like, I don't know, like how do I Indiegogo? What is that? Indiegogo is just like Kickstarter where basically you can throw a few dollars or however much you want. I'll show you the perks in a moment. You can throw in a few bucks at the lowest tier. It's, you know, for example, three bucks, the price of a cup of coffee. And you can sign in so easily. For example, you can sign in with Facebook and you can just breeze on through so you don't even have to give them your email or anything like that. And you can actually make your contribution that way, which we really do appreciate as this allows the channel to make, you could say take bigger risks in terms of getting more high profile debates and debaters. And so we are excited about this strategy as, hey, we plan on continuing to use this to get bigger, batter debates that are more epic. And in the future, like no joke, this at the end of the summer, we were thinking about like some other kind of another project assuming this one goes well. And so if you support moderated debate, if you support the vision of a neutral platform, providing this level playing field so everybody can make their case, we want to encourage you to join us in fulfilling that vision by giving to the crowdfund. And again, that's linked at the top of the chat and it's also in the description box, but want to show you this last of all folks, we have added perks that weren't there last time. So I will show you if you look at the top of the screen right now, you will see I'm gonna adjust it. So first perk number one, the first level you could say, just helping make this event happen, just three bucks and it's a price of a cup of coffee. I mean, easy peasy. And so that helps support the channel, which we appreciate. If it's ever been kind of like, yeah, you know, this channel is all right. I've gotten a few hours out of it. That helps us a lot as we're trying to provide you better content and bigger debates and more epic, you could say, just absolutely enthralling events. So we do appreciate that support. And then the next tier, making this event huge adds an extra few dollars, which helps us get the word out via promotion. And then the next tier is your name on screen. So at the very bottom of the screen, we have that ticker that has people's names, as well as your name read out loud. And so that's another cool one where at the end of the debate, we will read all of the people who are at the fourth tier. We will read off their names in a list, just like we did last time. The next tier is, it actually doesn't show on the sticker because it's so new that I have to update it still. We actually have a modern-day debate mug. So you should check that out at the Indiegogo link. And you can see that perk as well. So that's another option you have that's not even showing on screen, but the embossed postcard is the next one up. A popular one, I'm excited that people have found it useful. The modern-day debate t-shirt you can see is the next tier or perk. And so I love the modern-day debate t-shirt. I've got one myself. And then modern-day debate hoodie is the next tier up. And then Zoom Chat with James is the next tier. So in other words, if you want to do an interview or you want to do, let's say, a friendly little debate, it would be only an hour, so it's kind of a mini debate, but that's something that you could upload on your own channel or something like that. I'm pretty easy going about what that's used for. If you want to know, how do we make the show of modern-day debate? Like, what software do we use and how do we do the tech stuff? Because it's actually almost all free software. OBS is free. And then the other types of softwares that we used in conjunction with it, most of which are free. And then meet and greet with the guests. The most epic tier, folks. That's the final tier that you see in the bottom right and or at the very bottom of the page.  We don't want p- I don't think anybody would start a debate with one of the guests, but just so everybody's at the same page, you just be like a friendly meet and greet where you can get to say, and then I'll be there as well with the speakers, Dr. Kenny Rhodes and Matt Dill-Hundy. So folks, really excited about those new perks. And so, wanna say hi to you though and say thank you so much for all of your support, you guys, I am thrilled about the future. And so, thank you guys for all of your support. It really does mean a lot. And so, we wanna let you know folks, as I had mentioned, if you hadn't already heard folks, it doesn't matter if you are Christian, atheist, black, white, trans, you name it folks, Republican, Democrat, I was trying to think of all the different groups, but folks, we hope you feel welcome. We really do. And so, this is a melting pot of different people here. And so, we really are glad that you're here no matter what your background or you could say belief system is, all that. We really do appreciate you hanging out here. And so, saying hi to people in the chat. I'm catching up, I'm almost there. Give me a moment. Oliver Katwell, thanks so much for your positive, I love your positivity. That is super encouraging. Says, that was an awesome debate. I agree, a really fun dialogue. And you guys, we can't thank the guests enough. They are the lifeblood of the channel. So, I wanna encourage you in the description box as well, their links are at the very top of the description box. And that includes if you're listening to Modern Day Debate via podcast. Folks, you can get to our guest links that way as well. And so, we hope you give them a friendly hello as we really do appreciate them. And then Dave Langer says, I really hope you can get stew and David have that morality debate. That would be awesome. I think David, they might do it on David's podcast. So, that would be an epic one indeed. Cause I feel like they do have a great, what's the word I'm looking for? Chemistry. They're pleasant together. It was a really fun one for me tonight to just get to be here and listen. And so, it is also always great if they're so, they're professional. And I could go on and on about how much we appreciate these guys. Cause when it's, if it's a dumpster fire and I have to constantly jump into moderate, that's where I'm like, I don't really get to enjoy it as much, but this tonight was just phenomenal. So anyway, Platium says, join the official Modern Day Debate Discord. And I say it as well, please do join the official Modern Day Debate Discord. And also while you're there, please, by the way, that's linked in the description. And then I'm gonna throw it up at the top of the chat right now as well. So I wanna let you know, if you are able to get into the old Discord, want to encourage you, say hi to Let's Farm, aka Larry Let's, as well as Platium and Mathpig, who have done a phenomenal job of building the Discord. In fact, like I, it's, it's, I can't overstate how much they've done. Cause I frankly, I'm embarrassed to say, I'm trying to learn Discord this summer. I don't know, it maybe it's cause I'm a boomer. I don't know, but believe me, I'll get there folks. So given that I have not been in there, it is all them. They deserve all the credit and we appreciate them so much. And so Second Horizon, good to see you, as well as Samuel Doolittle, thanks for coming by. And DeCatis Moonblade says, thanks everyone. Thank you DeCatis and thank you for coming by. We're glad you're here. And a lot of people maybe seeing in the first, seeing for the first time, let me know if there are any people who are new here for the first time. We really do appreciate you just coming by for the first time and I hope it's fun. And so I also see Grumler, good to see you again. And Jane Casper, thanks for being here. As well as, is it pronounced Tasha or is it Tisha Thomas? Let me know. But Hinker Hill, Ingress Soul, thank you for coming by. I hope I'm pronouncing it right. And let me know if real folks, if I ever don't pronounce it right, let me know if I mispronounce your name. As well as the Twitch chat, good to see you. Thanks ASEAN for your kind words. As James is looking pretty good for being a boomer. Bless your heart. I will pay you the $20. I promised that I would pay you once I see you next time. And so thanks for that. ASEAN, let's see. VizMetal, thanks for coming by as well. This is no way to use a boomer.  So I'm like, hey, I'm a boomer I guess. That's the way they define it. I don't know, what are you gonna do folks? But VizMetal, good to see you. And so thank you so much. Tapatsul, good to see you as well in the old Twitch chat and move 37. And that's right, yes. Folks, if you didn't know, we're pumped that we do have Twitch. And so if you're like, hey man, I'm cool with YouTube, I'm down with it, I got nothing against it. I wanna mention that we also have Twitch, which I'm gonna throw that into the old live chat as well. And so on YouTube, so that if you wanna, what's the word I'm looking for? If you wanna meander over there, you can click on that link that I just threw in the YouTube chat. And then you can find us there and Twitch and follow us. Cause, hey, we're happy to have you watching whether it be YouTube or Twitch. We appreciate you hanging in. Brooke Chavez says, everyone please like and subscribe if you haven't already. Also head over to Twitch and give modern day debate a follow. Thanks for your support, Brooke. Seriously, that really does mean a lot. That honestly is encouraging to have just a culture here that you guys are just phenomenal. Thank you for being so positive and supportive. And so, Nephilim Friis is open mic after show on my channel. Ooh, juicy. And we also just booked a debate. That's right. Dr. Wilson is a newcomer. We're excited to host him. He is excited to take on Nephilim Friis on Evolution on Trial. You guys don't wanna miss that. That's gonna be a fun one. And that's coming up I think in a week. So let me know if I am I right about that, Neph? Is my memory right? Doth my mind deceive me? But Charles Darwin, good to see you. And Be Bad, it's good to see you again, as well as always looking at self. Glad you made it. Thanks for coming by. Pastor John, glad you're here. Raw neckedness says I'm a beta. She is, but we still are happy she's here. Veej, probably it's good to see you again. It's been a while. And Sandy Pigeon, glad you're here again. Chuck Pike, thanks for coming by. And Benny, as well as Trisha Cassidy. Thanks for dropping in. We're glad you're with us. And Philosopher Tiger, we're glad you're here as well. Let's see. I'm perfect one, good to see you. I'm gonna try to jump to light speed in the old live chat, because it's moving fast. Fishtrogdolphin, good to see you. Says that was such a great discussion. I agree, I really enjoyed it. And so we can't thank these guys enough. We really do appreciate them. And so I said, James, have you thought about doing a debate on the recent UFO images released by the U.S. military? Psyops, human tech, time-traveling aliens? No, let me Google this, UFO images. Oh, are you talking about like in April when that happened?  I think I remember this happening. Didn't they release some juicy stuff last spring too? It was like, I think it was about a year ago. I thought they released some juicy stuff in addition, or I should say originally. And yeah, so I'm glad you mentioned that. I'm open to it. If you know of any people who are really big on debating UFOs, like I'm like, I'm cool with that. I'm open-minded. We're willing to do it. We host the old Bigfoot topic, so we're open to pretty much anything, but thank you. I mean, that's the thing.  And it's like, hey, good, but do you host Bigfoot debates? So we take our open-mindedness seriously. Be Badass is another good debate, James. Thanks so much for your kind word. It's a great stream, bud. I appreciate the guests are great. So passing the street cred onto them. And thanks, Michael Howard, for being here. And GKB forever. Thanks for having stopped by. Thanks, I see you there, David C. Smalley. Thanks for coming by. So that was fun. I couldn't agree more, really fun. And also, Colub, aka Caleb, thanks for coming by. We're glad you made it. And Reservoir of Gora said, yes, nasty guy. Always talking about twerking, but we're glad you're here anyway. And then, let's see, I'm catching up. I'm almost there. Thanks for your super chat, David C. Smalley. I just saw it. They said, I think David C. Smalley won by three points. He was my favorite. That's funny. Thank you for that support. And let's see, I'm looking for it. Did anybody mention that if they happened to be, let's see. Thanks for your support. Hannah Anderson said, Kenny Rose is a wonderful guy. Y'all will really like him. He, yeah, I'm excited. He seems like a really pleasant fellow. So that is just really cool. And Be Badass is another, thanks for your kind words, Be Badass and Hinker. Hinker shill, Ingersoll says, Whale equals Jimmy. I don't know what that means. Me, Jimmy? Because I used to go by Jimmy. But Spicey Rose says, James, do you ever want to answer a question in the debate rather than a sidestep? Do you ever want, oh, do I ever want an answer to a question in the debate rather than a sidestep? Yeah, you know, that's something that frankly, I should probably do, some debaters handle it well where they'll kind of press the person. And some people are probably new and they're kind of like, the moderator doesn't press very much because we are pretty, I don't like to be super involved as a mod because I think it's more fun and organic when I am involved as little as possible. And so long story short, I'm actually, I notice it sometimes when I'm kind of like, they didn't answer the question at all. But I usually, the other debater will call it out and it's also, you know, you have to wonder sometimes and whether or not it's like purposeful or on accident that they miss the question in terms of like, well, did they just attention slip or did they, are they just not wanting to answer the question? But all over Catwell says it's gonna be the speedo thing again. Is it? It may be folks, we may have to do the good old, what is it called? We might have to say T-Jump and Steven Steen get those speedos on. We're gonna have to go do a car wash for the fundraising. Stretch Kitty 21, thanks for coming by. We are glad that you are here and Sunday Worship, good to see you as well as exposing Moz tricks. Thanks for coming by. Good to see you again and Jane Casper. Thanks for your kind words. It's so proud of the progress James. It's all thanks to you guys. You guys make it fun and you guys make it epic and I'm so pumped though, yeah, about the future. We've got a lot of fun new ideas, new topics, new faces. We're planning on keeping this fresh and doing a lot of new stuff. So thanks for your kind support Grumler who said support James. Thank you Grumler for your support. That means a lot. And then Eric Nelson says, Alpha James, I will pay you the $5 that I told you I'd pay you to say that later. Ed Kellubs is our Reptilians welcome, that's right. We are so open to lizard people, it's not even funny. And let's see, Spicey Rhodes says, you're not a boomer. Thank you, bless your heart. Hannah Anderson says, no James, you have been in there before. In where, oh, the discord, I have been in there before. I struggle with it. So I try to make my way through it to figure out what's going on. But it's not an easy trick. You guys are young and hip. You guys just kind of catch on to it fast. And well, I do want to show in a moment, I want to say hi to more people, but I also want to share about the upcoming debates. So want to say hi to a few more people first. And hash, good to see you again, as well as Sandy Pigeon and WilkZack90. Thanks for coming by, as well as Michael Howard. And I'm trying to think of, let's see, Dave Langer, good to see you. He says, yes, they're releasing more and more UFO stuff now. That's pretty juicy, pretty fun stuff. And that's a good idea that theoretically, if there is something that would shock the public, you'd want to do it like little bits, like a faucet where you let a little bit out at a time so you like gradually change their beliefs. And thus they would be like less likely to react strongly because they're kind of like, well, you've been given like a little pinches of information here and there over let's say years or something, I don't know. But that's my conspiracy theory. Dave Langer said, you should host Marvel versus DC. I'm open to it. That'd be a juicy one. And Be Badass says, 1,552, almost there. We are, and we are excited about that. So you guys, it's seriously, it's something that I'm pumped about, is that, wow, thank you so much. We just had another backer. So now we are actually, it just jumped up to 1,608. So thanks so much for your support from that new backer, as that's super encouraging, as that's over $50. So that's a really big contribution that we appreciate 100%. And so let me see if I can actually get this update on screen, as we are able actually to update the fundraising little needle there. And you can see it there on the far right of your screen. It has gone up just a bit too, that's 1,608. So we are excited, folks, that's 45%. If it's hard to see from far away, is that we are at 45% and believe me, we are absolutely determined and excited. We are going to make it, folks. And so thanks so much for all of your support through that.  I don't know if you know this. I am not a comic book person, like person per se. I think comics are cool, like the ideas and the stories and the archetypes and things like that. Now, but I don't like read comics. However, I did, this is actually a comic, because I don't know if you guys know that on Indiegogo and Kickstarter, which are basically the same thing, they just have different branding. But it's like, virtually identical in terms of the idea of what they do, very similar. I actually did take part in a crowdfund for another project that was on there. And so this came in the mail just like a week ago. And so I am excited about that as I'm like, oh, it's fun. And it's something that, like I said, folks, it's a cool thing that you can be a part of something that like kind of making this kind of cool project that somebody comes up with as an idea and just for as little as like three bucks. I mean, that's pretty cool. And so that's something that if you haven't done it yet, I would say, hey, it's kind of like a new life experience in a small way. And so anyway, tremendous. But Reswad of course says maybe you could sell MDD branded Usman baby oil for hot bodies. That's very funny, Usman. You spelled his name right, good job. I don't know if anybody has heard of the Usman story, but our dear, dear friend Usman. We hope he's doing well. I don't know if he watches. I don't know. He could be. I put this, sometimes the stream goes on. When we live stream, sometimes it goes on my Facebook wall, in which case Usman, if you're listening, we hope you're well. But Victor Hallock says, do you have a favorite debate that you've done so far? Man, I did love the Michael Schumer. The last crowdfund we did, like for real, that was one I love. Anything that talks about psychology, cause that's my main specialty in terms of like what I'm getting my PhD in. So anything that talks about psychology studies, and Michael Jones had brought a lot of studies within the domain of psychology, which for me, I'm always like, I get a kick out of getting to like listen and kind of like sift through what the debater is saying. And sometimes I can tell that they know what they're talking about. And sometimes I'll always be neutral. So I'll never say who, but sometimes I can tell, I'm like, I think they're new to that. They're just learning, but I'm not gonna, I can't take sides. So I don't, I let the other debater call them out. But so yeah, anyway, anything that has to do with psychology, I actually enjoy a lot. You could tell I enjoyed that controversial topic that we hosted the other day. I was much more involved in that debate because I, not only because it was more of like a dialogue, there wasn't too much disagreement. There's a lot of agreement. But also I got a kick out of the juicy controversial topic. I'm not for it, but it is interesting, this idea that as a Namo was saying, and I think she's really intelligent, she's read a lot about this. And she's like, no, there is like, she's not INCEL herself, but she thinks that it's a, you know, kind of, you could say a real problem in society. And so long story short, those I enjoy. Buddy Gordy, thanks for your kind words, a great job moderating James. Thanks for your kind words. And thank you, buddy. Oh, you're funny. Let's see. Victor, oh, B-Bata says, it doesn't answer the question you could always maybe ask to elaborate more. That's true. And we've been doing that more lately where I'll, I'll sometimes say, do you want, like, do you want to say more? I think you had seen that in the last debate with MC Tune and always Ryan. That was a nice debate too. I really enjoyed that. Brooke Shav is good to see you. She said, we need merch that says nasty. That's right. We do as well as juicy. You guys, I love this T-shirt. I was so encouraged. This is like maybe my favorite T-shirt. I've got to get it in the modern day debate font and start putting it on T-spring. Someone sent this to me and I appreciated it so much. This is one of my favorite T-shirts folks. 100%. And so, yes, so many juicy debates coming up we're excited about. And that is true though. We do have some new topics this month. A lot of them are controversial. Hold on to your butts folks. There is going to be some controversial ones. Some people are saying like, hey, will you do this topic? Or like if YouTube allows it, we'll do it. So, WilkZack90 says red. Read it as Veal Chuck. Oh, well Veal Chuck, thank you for letting me know about that. I do appreciate that. And Brian Griffin good to see you. He says, here's a fun debate topic, fake grass versus real grass. That is a juicy topic. And Victor Halleck says, I dare you to show us what's outside your window. Actually, I think I've, I don't know if you've ever seen that this is not, obviously it's not a solid wall. You could probably put that together. But this is, yeah, definitely a sheet that just leads to the back of it, or I should say the front of, my sweet desk you guys, check that out. So you can see the dust decorations there. You can see my Thorin, as well as my, what is that, a picture? Oh, it's a picture of my cohort when I first came here to the program. And Jim J, good to see you. Says, I'd like to not attack a person just an idea. We appreciate you wanting to attack the ideas instead of the people. So that is encouraging. We do appreciate that. And then Beebada says, we got 16.08 now, sweet. I am in full agreement. That is sweet. So thank you so much to the person. I always want it for confidentiality reasons. I think Indiegogo and Kickstarter also tell the project people, like don't say the names of the people, like keep it confidential. So I don't want to say your name, but I do want to say thank you to the person who joined in during this debate in terms of the Indiegogo project. And yeah, I mean, I'm pumped though that we're folks, we're pretty close to 50% of the way, which is cool. I'm pumped about that. And so one thing I noticed last time is that yeah, StretchKitty21, glad you're here as well as, is there anyone I didn't get to say hi to? Let me know. I do want to say hi to you and just to let you know, we appreciate you being here and said you pronounced it perfectly, James, I love your channel. Thanks so much for your kind words. Ira Virchuk, Wilczak, thank you for your kind of support. Platinum says, we haven't had a pineapple on pizza debate. Hey, I'm an open-minded guy. Like I said, if you want it, maybe. But Victor Halleck said, thanks for the answer, friendo. My pleasure. And Resort Of Gore says, Usman is doing more than just watching. Nasty guy. There he goes again. Resort Of Gore is going to jail, the YouTube jail. And Be Badass says, Snow White was my favorite zombie. That's so funny. You're familiar with it. Are you familiar with Britain's project that was on Kickstarter? And, but yeah, I am pumped though. And so thank you all so much for your support. I've got to go. I've actually got to move my car pretty soon. So I can't hang quite as late as I usually do. But I do like getting to just be here with you guys and chill after the debates. I'm like, why haven't we always done this? I think we only started it like, was it six, maybe, yeah, about six months ago? And so I am glad about that. And then let me tell you about upcoming debates. Now's a great chance. So in particular, Monday, you guys have already seen it. Let me show you this. On Monday, folks, T-Jump and Demon Ma will be debating. That's going to be epic. That's on whether or not evil ideas should be de-platformed or debated. So that will be a fun clash. Vegan Gains will be here on Tuesday. I'm looking at the calendar. Vegan Gains will be taking on Phillip on whether or not veganism is a moral obligation. So I'm pumped about that. And then I'm also pumped about Ben Burgess. Dr. Ben Burgess will be taking on Dr. Michael Humer. I'm excited. This is a cool, another like new topics and stuff and new faces, Dr. Michael Humer. We've had on once before, actually. But pumped, I didn't get to moderate though when he was there. So I'm pumped to do it this time. He will be, they'll be debating whether or not taxation is theft. So that'll be a cool new topic. Then this coming Friday, the 21st, pantheist versus atheist versus Christian versus pagan. So it's going to be a panel