Ready to say yeah Hey everybody, welcome to another modern day debate tonight's topic secular humanism versus Islamic ethics We got Mark and Hussein tonight gonna debate this topic and Mark is going to start first mark the floor is all yours Thank you very much. Just not just share my screen Just tell me when we are ready to go Yep, one sec. I lost my share screen button And it's got to be there somewhere Yep, live-screen share. There it is. So here's my fantastic. Cheers. Thank you so much. Yes And thanks for moderating and thanks to the same for being here and thank you for joining me I'm today. I'm gonna be looking at secular humanism comparing it with Islamic ethics secular humanism is generally an ethical system and Yeah, it's great to be here So first off what's secular humanism? Well, humanist values have been around for a long time sort of it can be found in ancient Greek philosophy and pre-Socratic philosophers There are Western philosophers attempt to explain the world in terms of human reason and natural law Without relying on myth tradition religion or any gods Protagoras lived in Athens about 440 BC put forward some fundamental humanist ideas and only fragments survive But Epicurus also touched on what would be the foundations of humanism Morality and understanding of the world without appeal to any kind of supernatural or God-based belief They're almost there's elements of humanism all throughout the Enlightenment as well when it was particularly developed one It's a philosophy and a belief system that maintains that morals and ethics are possible by Understanding humanity's place in the natural world and not derived from dog Handed down by any religious institution or belief in a deity a rejection is made by secular humanism that people are inherently Good or evil and evaluates what is good or bad by having the effect our actions have on society and the rest of humanity Although there's several schools of thoughts regarding humanism They're the corporate that these are the core principles of rights and moral codes that humanists all embrace I think Nelson Mandela expressed humanism boiled down to I am who I am because you are who you are The principles of secular humanism were summarized in the Amsterdam Declaration which outlined general principles We have to accept that morality is inherent to the human condition We affirm the worth and dignity of the individual and the right of every human to the greatest possible freedom and the fullest possible Development compatible with the rights of others. We hold that personal liberty must be combined with a responsibility to society We recognize that we are part of nature and accept our responsibility for the impact we have on the natural world We're convinced that that the solutions to the world's problems lie in reason a human reason and action We believe that individual joy and fulfillment that harms no other is perfectly fine. We treasure artistic creativity imagination transforming power of of arts We believe that the commitment to the human well-being is ageless or without end We we don't seek to impose our views on Anybody else, however, we are committed to Presenting a way to live that for the betterment of all without making it compulsory So modern human humanism is a culmination of long traditions of meaning and ethic the source of inspiration for many great thinkers Artists humanitarians and it's interwoven with the rise of science the first Humanist manifesto really gave science carte blanche, but it was rewritten in in number two the manifesto to Because science has to be tempered with the outcomes that it that comes with it good science is helpful bad science is incredibly destructive and the first manifesto written in 1933 was before some of the atrocities of World War two that made us review what we thought about the way science has in in our world So humanists don't maintain that we don't need anything other than ourselves and our rationality to apply ethics It rejects superstition wishful thinking and the understanding we have the right to change or attempts change people by force It will never seek to oppose ourselves and authority on the world if we wish people to acknowledge our beliefs We have to acknowledge others in this way secular humanism is compatible with any Ideology or religion which seeks the greater betterment of human and society this well-being or greatest happiness is called Utilitarianism in which the flourishing of society is the goal or the utility that we seek and is compatible with anybody else that Seeks that same utility Humanism doesn't claim any absolute authority. It doesn't lay down dictates It makes no inherent moral superiority and rather it uses Consequentialism or judges by the consequences those ethical actions have on other humans and on human society in general It's flexible acknowledges that knowledge is an ongoing process and it's compatible with anything that promotes human well-being Now Islam according to the traditional account Muhammad has sort of received what considered to be divine revelation in 610 CE It basically means submission to the one God Allah with the expectation of imminent last judgment for where with each of the promise of either paradise Or seven hells for all of humanity It does mean to submit to Allah's will and what does Allah want for humanity That can vary from person to person. It's the interpretation of man that we have to understand the will of this God There's no direct dictates from a God and instead they all argue over what a God wants There's no consistent goal for Islam except God's will and no one to clarify what that will is Except for interpretation of men and women who interpretation quite often coincides with what they want So these are some descriptions from some scholars and while I think there is some merit to Muslim intentions and ethics There's a problem here so much of the ethical positions are based upon a knowledge of God or a relationship with God that people Different people interpret in vastly different ways Aklag is also reliant on the reality of hereafter which is a problem as the reality cannot be demonstrated to anybody So if Muslim Aklag is provided it defined as good habits then what are they? It's basically something called virtue ethics. It seeks to promote characteristics or virtues that are supposed to be followed It seems like a good idea but quickly when faced with reality it runs into problems Say take an example of a possible domestic abuse for example Following these virtue ethics one should bravely confront the situation However the police tell the public over and over not to do this as it can cause escalation out of control The humanist would judge based upon the consequences of the situation And realize that sometimes discretion is the better part of valor And perhaps heroic idiocy may lead to a worse outcome for everybody concerned This is just one example of where virtue ethics are rigid and inflexible Leading to poor outcomes as its followers do not shape their ethical decisions to the situation Rather they just display the virtues that have been commanded of them There's no getting away from Quran being the source of ethical instructions It claims to be the ultimate source of knowledge for both moral and ethical considerations And provides guidance to those who have submitted to Allah's will Look at Quran 3.134 on the bottom there As the consequences are good if you spend freely when in poverty or adversity as the Quran says The next is even worse should be pardoned all men should be pardoned Jeffrey Dahmer The last part is promising a reward for taking the actions described in the Quran And it raises the question are you being ethical if you need a reward Is that even ethical at all? There's many verses in the Quran that have this kind of transactionary promise You know it has reward for the right action Let's look at the backbone of ethics which is basically plagiarized from the 10 commandments As you can see it does not outlaw killing it says legal killing is perfectly fine So this allows actions that have led to honour killings and executions And nations in the Middle East Like Arab Emirates which practice stoning up until 2020 Usually as a default punishment for adultery One of the main tenets is fulfilling a covenant with Allah and tells people not to follow any other way Islam is the only way to follow This is why apostates in Muslim society have to fear for their lives As well as death for apostates is a legal killing in some places There's nothing unethical about that according to the Quran Here we see the implementation of ethics into punishments for people that go against the submission to Allah Mutilation, crucifixion, whipping, horrendous punishments that are banned under the international covenant on civil and political rights None of these barbaric actions violate any of the virtue ethics that Islam lays down And while back in the 7th century warring Arab tribes It made probably sense to do this But now we need to update our ethics and get results and provide more humane responses to transgressions Some people make mistakes that should not render them bereft of hands for the rest of their lives Sometimes people are convicted unjustly I also point out the last one prevents any defence from a person who has to receive lashes Which is completely unethical to a modern concept of justice where the accused always has the right to face their charges Think about if you didn't have the right to face your accuser and were just convicted ad hoc It would be a terrible situation So in conclusion, secular humanism is a very flexible and forward thinking ethical system It bases things upon their consequences on how they turn out and it's constantly approving itself While unfortunately Islamic ethics, while it does have some virtues It's bound by shackles to the original dogma that produced it There are key tenants in the Quran that it cannot go against And therefore it cannot adapt itself to the future A few things we can sort of put into practice is looking to the future and say How will this ethical system make ethical judgments on future technologies Asteroid mining or cloning or any of these things while the secular humanist can just implement consequentialism And utilitarianism, these ideas of what's the outcome, is it of the greatest good for humanity Islamic ethics cannot do this because the book does not cover And the virtue ethics doesn't cover a way to move forward with it So this is why I think that secular humanist ethics are superior to Islamic ethics Thank you Alright, thank you Mark So for all of you who are just joining us Thank you so much for coming out to watch modern day debate tonight We have secular humanism versus Islamic ethics We're about to start our second opener with Busan Don't forget to hit that like and subscribe button everybody And yeah, so on the floor is yours for the next 10 minutes Thanks Thanks Mark for being here Always a pleasure to see you Today I'd like to set out to show that Islamic ethical values are the middle and true road Insofar they correlate and resonate with the human condition or human spirit Obviously I think that atheists would probably disagree with that But this is something we would call the fitra and atheists frameworks are at I should say in this case secular humanism offers only a slice of the truth And actually sometimes things like consequentialism or utilitarianism Or consent based morality would actually lead to weird and interesting conclusions So for example like incest is generally viewed as wrong However both people and most people for example don't even need to argue against it They just intuitively know that it's wrong based on this It's basically like an axiom shared throughout all societies Islam affirms this through God's command as well as essentially our initial disgust It's a response from our intuitive brain However people who like to hyperanalyze and think in a vacuum Would say that actually there's no negative outcomes on incest If they never produce a child and therefore it's actually morally good Because two people consenting as adults agreeing to have incest is okay And we have actually people who've been on MDD who are atheists such as Ravan and Harris Sulton Actually agreeing to that so you have other numerous atheists who agree to cannibalism Beceality and other things which you know under utilitarianism you can definitely argue for But based off our intuitive brain or intuitive thinking we would just know it's disgusting and reject it automatically Most healthy relationships and societies are built upon these intuitive and axiomatic values throughout all cultures Islam preserves these unlike atheism So Mark would say we should care about human flourishing but under a world with no God Why should I so there's a whole form of ethics under existentialism Which literally talks about that literally talks about that so some versions of human secularism basically just boils down to Jean Paul starts like you can do what you want as long as you know it doesn't harm this vague principle of the harm principle And there's obviously been issues on that So let's see what it was I so okay Most ethical theories have pros and cons within them however Islam does have divine theory Which are just things that like you know they're good or bad period There's intuitive thinking in that there's virtue ethics like Mark highlighted and there is actually a form of utilitarianism Or consequentialism involved in Islamic thinking but intentions do matter so it kind of encompasses the whole way to be an ethical person where secular humanism simply only relies on consequences Which as we'll see is a huge flaw in the ideology or ethical theory So much of the atheist spear likes to display Islamic thought and ethical values in a negative light only highlighting what they deem as problematic Despite ignoring their own ethical faults or in worldviews and then Mark's been a little bit more fair on this I think so I love talking to him However once God is removed atheists do ignore the ramifications of their choice mainly existentialism and I'm going to try and go into that and why secular humanism just fails as an ideology And there's a chronic thing on this which states have you seen a prophet those who've taken their own desires as their God And this comes to the world where we're at now under modern secularism people are mostly lost and freely following their whims and conjecture of the time You can see this within certain subsections for example of leftists who actively like to stay in their own grandparents so he did mention for example how secular humanism may be positive because of progressive elements But the irony is that mark could be seen himself as an immoral actor 10 years from now hell even five months from now depending on what he says So it's actually like a very flawed system of thinking liberalism secularism and utilitarianism is like the unholy trinity to me With the funny conclusions that I've highlighted before and the have led to many downfalls of societies as well as moral rot If you contrast this with the Islamic world there is a consensus and a way to behave even among Shia and Sunni differences and the Sharia involves multiple aspects of life on how you treat your spouse duties Ode to your spouse duties to parents to children to country to fellow humans to Muslims and non Muslims. It's an all encompassing ideology. Many people like when he was mentioning honor killings like that's not allowed in Islam I mean literally Muhammad peace be upon him got rid of people burying their daughters which is a form of honor killing So I've kind of lost where I was at but yeah like we can start the opening dialogue All right So before we get into our open dialogue, I just want to once again thank everyone for coming out to modern day debate If you haven't hit like or subscribe yet Please do so right now modern day debate is an open platform where we encourage anybody to come and defend their positions whether those topics being science religion Politics and if any of you guys right now in the audience are thinking I can do that then go into the community tab of this channel There is an email address there for modern day debate send James an email. That's right. It's still James's channel James is here. He's always watching us And let him know what topics you think you can defend confidently and maybe we'll get you on stage someday And with that if you guys don't have your super chats going yet, feel free to get those started And as I said it no less we get one so the pile is beginning Open discussion we got 50 minutes on the clock and I will leave it to you gentlemen have fun So yeah Oh, sorry That's okay Interrupted already Yeah, I know it's not so bad. So what I want to touch on first is the first opening thing was you said a true road kind of thing like I want to talk about meta ethics. So what is the sort of above the goal of Islamic ethics in your mind? What is the so meta ethics is sort of talking about where the ethics are heading or sort of one level up Rather than ethical implementation like when you say the true road, what do you think it is and why does it disagree with a lot of other people's ideas of what it should be No, I don't I don't think that how do I explain it there are ethical people who who I could say are like not Muslim or not religious even But the the point is so the thing would be this it would be in a way the same thing right so you're trying to develop God consciousness as well as displaying good character So like you you mentioned that essentially it's inward reflection and it's how to be emblematic of like an Islamic Islamic virtue right So there is going to be obviously like I said like intentions and utilitarianism a bit but it is mostly focusing on developing good character so whether you're an atheist or not Someone who strives to be ethical would have to develop that character and through that they have to ask themselves like okay well what is good character like what are good virtues like how do you behave Stuff like that so I'm not necessarily saying it's only regulated to religion does that make sense Well I mean it's okay I mean I understand what you mean by sort of saying that that you know some parts of it incorporate utilitarianism but what is the utility you're looking for So it's there's going to be things like leaders who have made decisions that they're making decisions on what would most benefit the ummah or the people within their boundaries So for example even people who are denies are paying like the jizya so they're under Islamic protection so there has to be things that take into consideration the entire country So you have to have like a bit of utility so Ibn Tamir had some writings on that where he's basically talking about how to deal with the mongols who they claim to be Muslim But are maybe not doing like the most Islamic things and then even like Muhammad sallallahu alayhi salam when he like for example first started preaching It's not like he went right away to like banning alcohol for example it's a process right so you're shedding your layers of sin and you're developing this good character and this faith in God And like you said submitting to God after that and then after that okay you know I can get rid of alcohol I can get rid of all these other sins does that make sense Kind of but sort of so when you're talking about utilitarianism you're really looking at some form of utility that you're looking to promote or some sort of goal that you're trying to get about Like for instance the utilitarianism of secular humanism usually has the greatest happiness principle or human well-being of both individuals and societies is the utility that you're after And you bear we can argue that it's like that the problem that I see happening is that your utility seems to be these virtues that may or may not lead to the best outcomes So if you're just sort of saying hey you look to sort of sort of a negative utility reduce sin I'm wondering how that translates into What does that translate into when you reduce that sin because it doesn't seem to lead to some of the best outcomes in most of these Muslim countries Very sure so something I could contrast this for example and that I wanted to bring up is like when we originally had this topic where we're kind of contrasting right so Islamic societies are like promoting marriage more so but obviously like to the detriment at like the GDP right but overall like when pulled there actually have more higher life satisfaction So it's kind of like are you picking your poison you're picking your poison in a sense but a empty vacuous like secular state where basically I think you're just maximizing autonomy and individualism basically liberalism You are not you may think you're doing good but in reality you're actually maximizing like horrible choices so like people could have the choice right or the freedom to commit suicide but most people just intuitively would know that that's not a good thing to achieve right But you're saying oh well I should have the freedom to do it and I want to maximize my utility and my in my independence or freedom right it's just a basically a conflict of value so Islamic values would be like you know things like social cohesion marriage and you know the good of all people You know being closeness to God at peace things like that Which obviously Yeah I don't I don't have a problem with that necessarily but it seems to be consigned to only Muslim societies sort of so peace and social cohesion don't seem to be a worldwide thing it seems to be well you're really worried about Muslims and nobody else No I'm not I'm not saying that I would so like for example I live in the West right I would say that I don't personally for example like agree with Francis policy of like banning the hijab but I do understand what they're trying to do is promote social cohesion right they're They're paying they're trying to make Muslims and immigrants basically be French so here's the irony right so they're saying they're basically themselves would call themselves a secular humanist right or like a secular nation and to them. You can be religious so far as in like you meaning you can pray at home right but you can't really be religious or Muslim and public you have to be French and public per se right so their tolerance. Like ends you know there right so um well I do understand what they're doing nation and I'm glad that you sort of sort of reviewed your statement that are secular humanist because they're not there. Well they're secular liberal nation. I mean so I was going to ask you about this so. We were talking about secular humanism people have like different definitions of secular humanism. In a sense that like for example Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins would say that they're secular humanists, but they for example, like argued that yeah after the democratic mission or like democratizing the Middle East and invading them is actually good. And then you have like other like French philosophers who argued the same that we need to save Muslim women from Muslim men and then invade them to give them liberalism and freedom for example. Now these some of these people did claim to be secular humanists obviously I think you would disagree with their conclusions, but here's the thing in a world where they were successful right let's say they were successful. And we only care about the consequences and final outcome right. It wouldn't matter that French slaughtered the millions of pill millions of Algerians and Moroccans, because if they were no longer Muslim and secular and like a like a secular humanist country for example, you could argue then under consequentialism that that was actually justified. So I think I think you've sort of really misquoted Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins because I don't think they thought that the method that was done in order to say stop Saddam Hussein for instance was particularly a good one. I think that the methodology by the method that they used was absolutely terrible. Whether it was a good thing to remove someone from power, it may very well be if done through say popular uprising or supporting people that were laboring under his, you know, horrible rule. But I don't think anyone would say hey that was a great way that America did it kind of thing, you know, no absolutely not it resulted in the deaths of over a million Iraqis that's that's absolutely horrendous. I'm not sure that they would agree with with you on you know that was a good thing. But they may say hey there's there's certain atrocities out there that we have to address the in the Middle East particularly like I said it stoning was completely legal stoning was completely legal up until 2020. That's when they stopped the practice of stoning adulterers to death. I mean, you're really looking at a barbaric and medieval thing. And I think we've had this conversation before sort of cutting people's hands off for stealing is not something that we really should accept in modern society. I don't know why you would sort of think that that would be helpful to either a social cohesion or be any kind of peace and well being of anybody. So some so this is something I wanted to talk about too so when you're talking about it. So some social circular humanists they talk about we can use empiricism right to determine morality in a sense right so in correctly. Okay, not currently not currently okay. No, no, no, not directly. So empiricism is a hallmark of science and we're saying we can use science, but the empiricism isn't the only thing in science it uses a specific methodology to come out with sort of the best models we can. So we do promote science as the best way to interpret whether our models of societies are working or not working sure but we don't say hey we just use empiricism. Yes, so but implicit implicit or the implication with what you're saying is someone has to pick the criteria of what that society is producing is good or bad. So when you have a Western lens or a liberal lens you can say that oh these Middle Eastern societies are producing actually negative things by chopping hands and then I could say for example that actually if you look at it within a few generations. The theft rate has gone significantly down and now people leave their doors unlocked people feel very secure with leaving their belongings. So maybe that harsh punishment, like the Quran quote says, you may dislike it you may feel empathy for the person you're having to do this to, but that is the requirement of a good ruler, they're making this decision that in the down the road. The consequences may be good. So for example, You support mutilation of say, you know, somebody pickpockets say an 18 year old pickpockets you would support cutting their hands off in order to, you know, sort of that that would would be something you would advocate for as a cry. Well, so Islam doesn't. So Islam does allow mercy so I'm not saying you would be chopping off all their hands but yeah as a rule as just some hands on a rule on as a rule yeah and why is that the problem so for example. Why is that a problem. So I'm trying to explain to El Salvador right El Salvador, they're rounding up all the people who are committed are being gang members right and so currently he's rounding them all up right and he's thrown them in prison so now he's being accused by western liberals and secular people as a fascist. Okay, but the real world implication of his harsh action has been that it's reduced crime and then now the country can actually develop. So like no one's doing this crime. I want to get to your your thing of what the problem is the problem is that innocent people may be having their hands cut off when they're in, you know, sort of falsely convicted. We have not yet found a way to get 100% you know certainty with any kind of crime. People are convicted of being murderers all the time that are innocent on death row. So how would you feel if you were the innocent one having your hands cut off because somebody thought you were stealing when you weren't stealing.  No but false accusations are like punishable as well. Ironically they're not punnish they're not ironically they're not punishable under liberal countries you know you can make false you know accusations what are they what are they punishable with weird. Huh punishable with what are they it depends on like the school of thought but I read that some people who have made false accusations. So for example like in the in the adultery one instead of the person the woman getting lashed who's being accused or the man it could be either by the way. The person who made the false accusation would be lashed. And he doesn't even get a chance to defend himself. Okay so you said no to that thing of like would it be ethical to chop your hands off if you were innocent. You said no the problem there is that if you're falsely convicted you're not punishing the person making the accusation with the punishment in the Quran is lashes I believe it's 80 lashes. So you're not being punished for making the accusation because you've been convicted and you said no which means that in your system and your perspective it's ethical if it happens to somebody else but it's not ethical if it happens to you. No that's not what I'm saying. No no no no that is that if I if I did no no no Hussain let me finish. If I commit the crime and it's ethical if I know but you didn't it would be ethical. It would be ethical. Hussain that is not the case that is not the case I said I'm justly convicted now. Yeah no no I understand but I'm saying so what you're saying is so let's flip the script. Okay if you're saying so okay right now there's 10 years okay for like stealing something right okay under a US law or whatever okay if you were unjustly thrown into jail for those 10 years then of course the person. It would be wrong because the first and falsely accused you right. Okay yeah we both agree so I don't understand the problem but that doesn't make the system. So those 10 years because you didn't let me finish just like the top of the is not a nice let me finish because what is ethical at that point is releasing the person from jail remedying the situation and compensating for them for their loss but you can't do that when you chop somebody's hands off. You can't remedy the situation when you've cut somebody's hands off it is permanent unless you know away 10 years down the track to sow those hands back on or maybe a miracle from a lot could heal them. That would be great but you can't remedy that situation and that is what makes it unethical because if I was unjustly convicted and thrown in prison after 10 years I could say hey that was ethical because there is a way for the state to remedy the situation. There is a way for me for that that incorrect prosecution but there is no way for the Islamic State and it doesn't seem interested in remedying justice for those who have been incorrectly convicted. There seems to be a faith position of well they're convicted it's Allah's will they lose their hands. So you know that the hand chopping thing doesn't happen unless there's like sufficient evidence right like if you're just accused like there's there's laws and protocols and how these things go. Like again that they just you're like making a straw man of it where they're just chopping off everyone's hand if you always right they're always right. You're claiming that because the way because to enact any but these punishments are called our hood dude punishments. So even for example like the the one for cheating and adultery like you need a basically for witnesses. Okay how are you ever going to get that the point is is basically you'd have to be fornicating in the street the only way I could actually accuse you of doing it Mark is like doing it in the street. So again it's not like what you're saying. Yeah so I don't even know like you're sort of you're sort of suggesting that people wouldn't lie to cover up for their friends or do any of this stuff that it's never justice has never gone awry in Islamic society kind of thing which is just a. No I never I never. Naive statement to make no you only said it's only when it's absolutely certain that there's a lot of people were absolutely certain they're guilty that I'm not in fact guilty just because Islamic ethics doesn't go back. Mark do you have any remedy it doesn't mean they haven't convicted people unjustly. So do you have any punishments this is a big big conflict we had where I want I'm for restrictions of people and and apparently you're like never for. You're for mutilation of people. Yeah if they commit crimes. Just don't commit a crime whether on. No no no that's not the criteria for being mutilated the criteria for being mutilated is being convicted of a crime. Yes you have. Because we can't tell for certain whether someone has or has not committed a crime there is no foolproof 100%. We should never punish anyone Mark we should never punish anyone in any society. I already explained that but we should keep punishments to ones that we can rectify and not mutilating and destroying people's bodies that we can't rectify if we found out we made a mistake. Just because Islamic ethics doesn't admit mistakes doesn't mean it doesn't make them. No Muslims readily admit there's a whole saying on this that is long so they do admit when they do yeah we do what do you mean. So the whole point is Muslims say oh we're not perfect but Islam is perfect. That's the whole point of view. So you can make mistakes. You know so human being makes mistakes.  So if Islam is not perfect.  I said Islam is perfect. Human beings are not. So for example the rule makes sense there's and there is consensus. So for example you made it seem like Muslims don't have a consensus but they do and there is a consensus and they all agree to this. Okay the point is though is that the rules make sense because human beings and funny enough existentialist philosopher Nietzsche wrote about this. They need harsh punishments and in order to use coercive methods to make people act correctly and honor rules. Was Nietzsche a secular humanist? No but Jean-Paul Sartre was. No it wasn't. I mean if there's a study an empirical study Mark that showed chopping hands you know really reduce the rate of theft. Are you going to admit that it's okay to chop hands? No no. So then you don't even believe you're on your own. Excuse me are you asking a question excuse me. So I think that there's certain inalienable rights that all humans have and one is bodily autonomy. We don't have to solve crime by chopping off hands. We can lock people up and they can't commit the crimes either. And the problem with chopping people's hands off is that when you do so they no longer can find gain employment. They are a drain on the society. They can't like they usually will end up running scams or begging or any of these things because they can't be productive members of society anymore. And I love that you're sort of pointing to a hypothetical study that doesn't exist that says chopping off hands reduces the crime rate because you have no such study. And what we have noticed from corporate and capital punishment is that what we have noticed from those things is they don't lower crime rates. They're completely ineffective. What works is rehabilitative justice. As you can see in the nations that are most closely aligned to secular humanist values like the Scandinavian countries, Norway, Sweden, you know, these Netherlands, these type of countries. They have the best outcomes and they don't practice these horrific things. Can you get me that study? Yeah, I can get studies that show that as long as countries have less crime.  So that that does not mean that the cause of it is chopping off hands. Does it saying those are the other they have harsher punishments than say America like and even in America you can see that there's like certain among states there's differences. So states that may have like harsher crime, crime laws in those counties typically can have lower crime. So we're like liberal cities. Obviously you can try and explain it away by, you know, socioeconomic factors and, you know, population densities and stuff like that. So, but there's other things. So correlation does not equal causation. That's a mistake. So if you're sort of saying, hey, there's less crime in these countries, I'd love to see a study of that that says there's less crime than say, you know, the Norwegian countries. The Scandinavian countries, I'm sorry, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, you know, these countries that practice more humanist ways of approaching things.  And you sort of said, if there was a study, we'll get the study. Go get it. So I'm saying, I just want to, I just want to test the, your, how should I say your commitment to empiricism. So for example, right, you mentioned in your definition of secular humanism, you talked about like humans strive to be rational. You also talked about how like you wanted to go above maybe things like tribalism. But the irony is that there's studies that show that actually like human beings are just innately very tribal and predisposed to be tribal. And then there's also studies that show that humans aren't actually as rational and we just make post-hoc rationalization after making decisions. So when you're talking about innate attributes of humans, you're kind of talking about the evolutionary traits that we possess. Humans and innately aggressive as well. It doesn't mean that those are things we should lord or try to emulate or implement in our societies. We're aware of the downfalls and pitfalls of the human origin. And we don't think that it's worth sort of, you know, lording these values. A lot of the things that constitute modern society as humans overcoming these traits, not promoting them. So I don't know why you would think that. And I also want to bring up my whole point was that Islam is more congruent with humans and basic like functions, right? So if we're saying, you know, this is how human beings behave. Look, I will make a concession to you. I'll make an absolute concession to you. Islam and the Quran are more congruent with how seventh century primitive warring Arab tribes behaved than modern society. I will make that absolute concession. I completely believe you. Okay. But again, you're just prescribing. So you're saying, oh, we're in this modern time. We can act this certain way. And in reality, you're just taking what we have now currently for granted. And you're not actually recognizing how human beings truly are. So again, this is why this is why secular humanism is false.  So something I did want to ask you about is like, for example, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on. ethical systems are not true or false. They're a way of doing something that's a misapplication facts are true or false. You know, it's just a way of implementing things with a focus on the consequences. Human rights in general. You've got to somehow explain why these, these Arab countries are so backwards and not, not progressing very well as far as human rights. So again, you're only one. You're only focusing on GDP and human rights. So you're saying human rights is the highest value and then therefore they're failing. Okay. But if you look at other criteria like life satisfaction, marriage rates, not divorce rates, less rates of infidelity, these things, then they're, then they're succeeding. Again, most statistics are biased in a sense. Like if I choose a bunch of subjective values, right? If in a world without God, everything is subjective. And if I'm choosing these subjective values, then those societies are better. If I'm choosing another set of subjective values, then I could say rush is better than America. It was all based off picking whatever value you think is the highest. Yeah, but you've basically got, you know, we can, we can measure life satisfaction, but in those countries, there may be entirely uneven distributions of satisfaction. I mean, you've got a system where women are treated way less fairly than men are. And while they're held up under the Islamic virtues, they certainly are bereft of a lot of choices when it comes to a lot of different things. In fact, the Quran says that a woman that disobeys a man can be beaten due to neither. No, so, okay. Most of what? Yeah. So Islamic rules or Sharia is putting restrictions on people. So for example, many women are quick to anger and impulsive, right? So if they get angry and I'm not saying that this is okay, I'm not saying this is okay, Mark. Oh, man, me. All right. So men can, for example, get angry and they'll hit their wife. Okay. But in the application of Sharia, it says, oh, you can't do that. You can't do this in anger. You have to deny them in bed. You have to speak with them. And then on the last occasion, can you lightly hit them with what is called like a muscle, muscle whack, which is basically like a little twig.  And then in reality, you can just divorce them if you don't, if they're obviously being too unruly. Right. So why doesn't the woman get to, why doesn't the woman get that to do that to the man if they're being unruly? Women are operating in a different way.  Women, you know, don't do things for men. Like women can manipulate men in other ways. Like they both do things, both genders operating in different ways. Incredibly unhealthy. That's incredibly unhealthy and just, just terrible. Yeah. So this kind of brutal, totalitarian control over, over people. Basically, where you're basically saying, well, if you do this, I'm going to punish you in this way. But if I do the same thing, I don't have it applied to me. I'm a man. I have a different set of standards that I don't get this kind of thing applied to me. But here's the problem with Israel. That's not how it works. There's duties for men too. Just because you have been doing this since the 7th century doesn't mean it's a good idea to do. So I've yet to see any study, any study produced at all that says that there's less crime in these countries and that cutting people's hands off reduces the crime rate.  I'll look into it. I mean, I had it in another debate. I had it in another debate with the one with Aaron Raugh. But, you know, I don't have it obviously pulled up now. So. So I have a quick question on that. So you're talking about studies, right? And you're putting a lot of emphasis on them. If there were studies that showed, for example, like people have discussed with, because you never answer this, like say, for example, like is incest okay, morally okay to you. If your only virtue is freedom and consent, you would have to say. So, so what you obviously didn't listen to my introduction because as I really strenuously pointed out that freedom has to be balanced with a responsibility to society. Now we do have a responsibility to society and every secular humanist believes that like you're not talking about sort of open sort of libertarian where you should be able to do anything you want like some kind of anarchist libertarian. You're talking about secular humanism where your personal freedoms. Not only has it got to be balanced with others freedoms and others rights. It also has to be balanced with an obligation to society. And we take that very seriously. So why would incest be breaking society? What obligation are they breaking to society? Well, it's not healthy for why. Why is it not healthy? Well, because people that are related that produce children. No, no, no, no. If they can never produce why I have to. They can always wear condoms. They can get a vasectomy. There's there's solutions to this when we're progressing. Why are you a big about incest mark? You should be for it. Well, no, I'm personally not. I think that the power relationship between families can lead people to be manipulated. I think it was a brother and sister say brother, sister, same age, something like that. Yeah, no, I think that that is like it's a power imbalance that like I don't. I also I also don't think that say a coach of an adult team and or an employer should have sexual relationships with an employee because it's a power imbalance that leads to unhealthy consequences. It's because of that imbalance. I think it is unethical. It may not be illegal and you may be able to do it, but I think it is unethical because of the relationship those people have. So what we're talking about is how to maintain healthy relationships with those around you. So sometimes a healthy relationship as in the case of people that have met warm and love, etc. is good for society. But when you're talking about a preexisting relationship, sometimes it can be very unhealthy. And that is like in the case of when I work for my boss and have a relationship with them as well. That can be incredibly unhealthy. But how does that have to do with incest? You don't think brothers and sisters have relationships? Is there something wrong with you here saying? No, they have relationships, but they shouldn't have relationships in its actual matter. But what I've already I'm explaining is under a purely under quote unquote maximizing utility maximizing freedom. They should have the autonomy to do that. I never I never said my utility. I never said my utility was freedom. I never did I say that you said happiness, right? So if they're maximizing their well, it's not it's the greatest happiness principle, which is a bit misleading because the person who coined it wasn't talking about just happiness. He was talking about the overall contentment of a society, the overall health and contentment of a society. And this is where people like you they miss they mischaracterize what the greatest happiness principle is because they're not familiar with it and that's OK. I get that you're not familiar with it. Greatest happiness principle is the overall satisfaction of the country and the society, not just the happiness of one individual. Yeah, so OK, I would really love if they pulled like who's happier Western societies where they have like higher increase of SSRIs now, depression, mental illness, all this stuff or traditional cultures. I wonder who's you know, I think it'd be really interesting study. I mean, if you look around, if you look around the crime index, like it is varied among Islamic countries like Indonesia has a very high crime rate, Pakistan has a very high crime rate, Bangladesh has a very high crime rate. There are these countries, Turkey, Iran has quite a high crime rate. Like your idea that all of these Islamic countries yet places like Oman and very, very strict and oppressive countries seem to have it lower like Kuwait. But you know, as you get up there, you find that, hey, Afghanistan has an incredibly high crime rate. OK, wait, I don't believe you can't you can't tell me you believe any stats from Afghanistan, right? So for example, there was a there's a stat there was a status recently released, right? OK, they said countries with the high the most it's where it's most unsafe for women, right? And they basically picked all Muslim countries, right? OK, the irony being is that this Brazilian couple went through all those countries, including the Taliban led Afghanistan and then only had an issue when they went to secular basically secular liberal India. And that's where they had an issue. I mean, nice anecdotal. No, I just thought it's funny. I just thought it's funny because I don't know how much you can believe. Do you think it's perfectly safe for women in Afghanistan? It could be. I'm not saying that the stats are true. Oh, well, then taking it on faith, you know, taking it on faith. I don't know if you can believe I wouldn't. I wouldn't have a lot of implicit bias. Yes. Yeah. So yeah, just looking through Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Syria are right up there on criminality.  And Iraq back to back to so you don't I wanted to talk about I do think you think incest is wrong then right just to clarify. So your position was not OK. I think there is a power and relationship imbalance between because of that. I think that when you have a relationship of siblings where one's older and has a power imbalance over that. I think that's wrong to abuse that kind of relationship. Yeah. That's unethical. There might not be anything illegal about it. There might not be any any wrong outcomes for the people involved. But I think that there's a lot of relationships like the relationship between a coach and a player, for instance, in a team that I would say hey, that relationship is unethical. The relationship between a employer and employee. That would be unethical. There's a lot of that one has an obvious power dynamic over that person. What you don't think older and younger siblings do. Yeah, I can't judge. You know, I need a study to tell me if it's apparently OK. That incest is right or wrong apparently. So I will say to you know, I think that it's OK.  Just looking at the overall criminality score as well. It's interesting what you find at the bottom places like Japan. And Poland, South Korea, Australia down here. Interesting. Interesting. Have a question on that mark. Well, I did want to cover some come to different I brought up. Hang on a sec. No, no, no, no, no, I brought up this multiple times and I wasn't allowed to continue. So I would like to touch on it. You basically went to your moral intuition as a good moral guide for what you think is right and wrong. Automatically moral intuition. Why do you think that your moral intuition is accurate where it comes to things like when you try to appeal to utilitarianism? What makes you think your moral intuition is a good guide? Because consequentialism is essentially false because you would have to have extreme hubris to think that you can always know consequences. So for example, a good example of this would be like say I attempted to murder you right. I would never mark I would never I like you. You know, but say I did right and I inadvertently.  Okay, no one would look at that and be like yeah he did a moral good because the consequence was positive. No, no you'd be insane to think that so clearly only following con consequences right is is like a false false suggestion right so there's things like intuition intent values right so I think I think intent is important that's why we have like attempted crimes right like so nobody is saying that intent sort of intention of the consequences that you're trying to produce is an effect and nobody's saying that so I'm not sure why that's where you're going to but I'm more thinking stuff like my moral intuition would say it's horrible to cut off someone's leg right. People say so the intuition is the is basically funny enough, a form of like the harm pressure principle right even Daniel hook you get you to talk about that where he says, there's a basic human intuition psychologically that harming someone is not okay, unless justified and that's the key word so if they did do something wrong, that's why most societies practice this right. See, see someone was a caught reaping someone they would hang them or like theft or whatever most people punished criminals by death. So, you know, if anything Islam is more merciful by than the standard of history so. So, so, basically you're saying that the moral intuition has to be looked at in view of what are the consequences that it provides. I'm saying that I'm saying that is it does your moral intuition say that it's wrong to cut off someone's leg. No, it says if it's unjustly than it is is what do you how do you justify it. Because if someone commits a crime then they deserve to be punished. And I don't know why that's problematic. Also by the way you talked about not saying someone commits a crime I'm just asking you a question. What like you're basically saying hey you can't just use your moral intuition, you've got to justify it. What are you justifying it with what process are you justifying it with. What process am I using to justify. I'm saying, yeah, yeah, so I'm saying, well one Islam says if you still above a certain amount then and under certain criteria.  So look, you're not even understanding me.  Not not Islam says because that's not a process of justifying anything that's dogma that's just hey my religion says it's okay then it's okay. How are you using what process are you using for justifying it or is it just if Islam says it's okay it's okay. So that was my whole point when I was asking you about do you actually think human beings are rational. So what I was saying is that, and the reason why virtue ethics is so strong and cultivating good virtue is because people cultivate good habits and then they naturally make good decisions, just intuitively or reflexively if you will. So that's why why Robert Jean Ock just says decisions are actually made with little to no cognitive process, meaning we don't actually rationalize anything, we just do instinctively do things. And I was saying like, is that not a problem for secular humanism. Yeah, I'm saying say the person didn't commit any crime then chopping off their leg is wrong. Yeah, it's immoral. Yeah, because that's the intuition. The person I was talking about had gangrene in their leg and they just died. Congratulations. Okay, you hit facts though. What what facts that I had. Look, even doctors have to be. No, no, no, no, no, even doctors have to be trained to overcome their moral intuitions because we automatically think that is wrong to do to somebody. And a lot of people cannot handle things like amputation and things that we have to do in emergency rooms. They have to be trained to do so because their moral intuition tells them that it's wrong to do it. Our moral intuition is not particularly accurate when it comes to what we should and should not do. Most soldiers shoot to miss.  They have to be trained to overcome that. And I'm not saying that all soldiers are moral, but sometimes the necessary application of force can be a, you know, an ethical decision, like, you know, the wars in Rwanda and things like that. Yeah, so if a ruler in Islamic country wants to chop off in hand, then, you know, that could be justified for the greater good if the consequence by the way again if you only care about consequences. And then within a generation or two, again, go back to the El Salvador, El Salvador president. It is showing that his quote unquote totalitarian method is decreasing crime. So if you only care about consequences, then he's actually doing a moral good. But I also care about any innocent people that's been swept up and he's absolutely unethical.  You have admitted that that is unethical, that people are being killed who are innocent. So how this is the thing. Your stance is it's ethical when it's not happening to you. That's your stance. That was never my stance. I just said it would be a problem. You seem to have a problem when it's some yourself, but you have no, I said, no, I said that's unfortunate. Anyone who's accused or has something undone unjustly. And then they get. So again, if someone gots acute against accused of murder, and then they put on death row and killed right. And it turns out they're innocent. Right. That is a tragedy. It is, but it doesn't make the court system or our judicial system now somehow immoral. Okay.  It makes the individuals few things to say about that. The death penalty is the number one, it's ineffective for deterring crime. I can produce lots of studies that say it is ineffective for deterring crime. Number two, basically the amount of people on death row is surprisingly high that should not be there in unjustly convicted people. Number three, it's absolutely humane. It usually involves a lot of pain and horrendous agony as they do die. There is no reason for the death penalty. People, other countries have gotten much better results without the death penalty than America has with it. And I might add crime rates are higher in those states with the death penalty than without it. So congratulate. You've just proved my point. There is no reason for the death penalty. I mean, I'll have a debate on this as well. I can show you lots and lots of data that says that the death penalty is useless. In fact, it's kind of, it doesn't achieve what it's supposed to achieve. And that's at the cost of human life, which secular humanist thinker is precious and people should have rights. The right to live being based upon one of them. We don't seem to care about. What do you think? If you intuitively people do recognize that people have the right to life. So, but when they commit crime, they forfeit that. That's the whole point. In a war, people are willingly engaging in a war. They understand that they can die. Right. Like you're like, you're essentially, you're taking something that's very normal and that people understand. Like, yeah, intuitively, all people understand that. Islamically, we do talk about that. Like no one's saying, Mark, that you're not a human being and that you don't have the right to life. Right. The point is, is when you do something that is a crime, you are forfeiting that right. That's why, for example, there were tons of liberal philosophers. Who literally said, oh, if you insult the French, the French philosophy, liberalism, all these things, then, you know, all these Algerians can die. Look, that's, that's, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, hold on. Let me, let me finish.  But I'm talking about the unjustly executed, the people that didn't commit a crime and are still executed. Like, this is the thing. You're not hearing what you're saying.  These people that are being executed. Yes, some of them committed crimes. Did it worry the death, warrant the death penalty? Probably not. But, you know, I get what you're saying. But even that point falls flat because there are people among them who didn't commit the crime who's saying. And that's the whole point. Yes. So if we're talking about how many innocent lives, how many innocent lives are worth putting, putting. Guilty people to death. How many? How many are worth it? A thousand? Ten thousand? I mean, if you're following it purely. No, no, no. Give me a number. Give me a number. How many innocent lives are worth it? Then as long as it's, you could be as long as you're at 51% because this is again how stupid utilitarianism is. As long as you're at 51%, then technically it's justified. No, no. Because that's how it works. No, no, no. No, no, no. That is not a principle of secular humanism. You're just straw manning secular humanism. Because as I pointed out, because you weren't listening over it again, we believe that humans have natural inalienable rights. Where do they come from? They come from humans. Wait, why? They come from humans. We're just meaningless, evolved space stuff. Okay, that's a completely straw man. No, it's not. It is. I do not believe that. The whole point. There's no reason to accept your proposition is true. So if we all just evolved meaninglessly and randomly, like all existentialist philosophers say. Who said meaninglessly? Who said meaninglessly? Who said meaninglessly? My life has meaning and so do other people's lives. What now? It's not meaningless. What now? Well, of course, people perceive meaning. That's why I'm, that's my whole point about it. They don't just perceive it. Existentialism is wrong, but I'm just saying. Look, don't try to apply existentialism to me when I'm not an existentialist. That's my whole point. No, my point is that you're wrong.  I don't. Because if you are just a meaningless, evolved ape. I never said it was meaningless. No, no, no, wait, wait, wait. And your choices don't matter because the consequence. Who said my choices don't matter? Okay. So what's my choices matter? Why do your choices matter?  I believe in certain things. So secular humanism, right? So again, you're going back to in a way like what I asked about with tribalism, right? No, no.  Why is that? I really want to know because I've heard this before and it battles me completely. Why is atheism suddenly nihilism in your opinion? So in my opinion, it's the logical conclusion. So I respect Camus because he went the wholenesses of his atheism. Why? Why? It's absurd then. It's absurdism. Why? Yeah, I'm not hearing a why. I'm just hearing again, a statement again and again. So his argument is that basically, sorry, like the prayer thing went off. So I'll have to pray after this. Okay, so basically Camus theory is that if there's no God, there's no morality and there's no values, right? Nothing matters because of that, right? So you being moral or immoral wouldn't matter. And in fact, you're actually just making up your interest. So Jean-Paul Sartre says, yeah, exactly. We're making it up, right? So you mark as an individual are deciding what gives your life meaning and then say Justin can decide something else, right? And you actually, because of moral relativism, have no right to say anything against him. Okay. And then you get into Nietzsche, which is like good and bad. And then there's no, it's beyond morality. And then you have Camus who says, well, actually they're all lying. The truth is, if there is no God, life is meaningless. Okay, I want to address all of that. I want to address all of that. Yeah. So you've got it completely wrong. And it's interesting that you're sort of saying, hey, you've got ethics, but no morality. Like you said at the start, well, atheists can have ethics.  But now here you are saying that we don't have any, which is a contradiction to make. No, no, no, no. I've got to finish now. No, no, no, no, no, you're not interrupting me at this point. Okay. So moral relativism. I'm not, like, there's different types of moral relativism. And I'm a metahethical relativism, which means as long as we can agree on a goal to reach in this case, human well-being, there's no problem having morals in order to reach that goal. So your whole idea that, well, it's completely meaningless. It just, it's just an assertion. Of course my life has meaning. meaning. And just because we decide on the meaning of our life doesn't mean there is no meaning. Like you're sort of saying, well, there's nothing if you don't have some sort of objective morality, and you're just playing wrong. Laws are not objective either. They're completely subjective. But one wouldn't say there is no laws and then go out and, I don't know, be a sovereign citizen. No, I would. I would say no. Because laws clearly know you are not interrupting me right now, Hussain. It's not going to happen. So forget it.  The morals that we have are sociological in nature. They are for societies, but they do exist and they are applicable. And that does not make me a nihilist as much as you want to say it does. It doesn't. And you are wrong. So I'm not, I'm not saying you're a nihilist. I'm saying that is the logical conclusion of an, of an atheist worldview. Okay. However, many atheists can be moral and they don't, they don't believe that. And that's why in our first debate, I said secular humanism is basically a religion.  Well, why, if we're just the same, like monkeys and evolved, and you know, we only act on impulses and everything is deterministic anyways. Well, like, I don't really know, but I just believe it. And we're going to go with that. There's no reason to accept any of like the, the presumptions. And then I was going to, that's why I was going to say or ask when you talk about, we should care about our fellow human beings or human flourishing and things like that. Well, someone who is like an atheist, but more right wing, maybe, like grippy or Jeffrey grippy or whatever his name was, he would obviously so say, well, the intuitive, normal thing, or the truth, right, when it comes to human beings is to only care about your tribe.  So he's come to the conclusion, well, I should be a white nationalist.  Is that right now? So I feel like I'm being leveraged, like all these people I've never even heard of, to be honest with you. So it's all right. We've gone way over time at this point, but you guys are on a topic at one point. I wanted to see resolve and now it's shifted gears into something else. It's fine. It's fine. Yeah. So excellent, excellent debate so far. Really, really interesting. So with that, we're going to jump into our Q&A here in a moment. But first, I want to allow you gentlemen to have some final words, a closing statement, if you will. I think that's what we should call that. That's a pretty cool idea. Who would like to go first? I'll go. All right. So how much time we think we need, what, three minutes? No, yeah, like, I mean, it's not gonna be much. So, okay, like I've said in this debate and last debate, basically, human specular, human secularism doesn't really seem to have any boundaries or a way to behave or even imply like a virtues that you should mostly just boils down to like liberalism and maximizing freedom and happiness, which isn't actually true. You know, there's things that can deprive you of happiness but actually make you, you know, better for it. So like marriage, if you will, in a sense, deprives you of freedom to sleep with whoever you want. But it can be a more rewarding experience in life because of it. So actually, just maximizing freedom and quote unquote, hedonistic pleasures is not always the pursuit of humanity or should be Islam prefaces this and preserves this with its code of ethics. And it explaining to you how to behave, how to cultivate good virtue, how to be humble and focusing on your inner self. And yeah, has rules for how you treat people. So hopefully, people can see that and look into that and reflect. All right. Thank you very much. Mark, with your closing remarks. Yeah. So secular humanism, it doesn't just focus on outcomes. That's not the only focus and it doesn't just focus on personal freedoms. It's kind of weird throughout this debate to hear that we focus on personal freedoms exclusively and we focus on outcomes exclusively, which is kind of incompatible with one another. In fact, there's been a lot of contradictory information coming about out of who's saying, like that we can be moral people yet we atheists have no morals, which is a really strange thing to say. So I think it's just a misunderstanding of thinking that atheists don't have any beliefs in anything. We do have beliefs in things. I believe in social structure. I believe in social cohesion. I believe in freedom of the individual. I believe in a lot of things. And just because we don't have a God belief doesn't mean we don't have any belief. And it doesn't mean that we don't have a belief that we can live a good and productive life and pass down a better world for our descendants because sexual humanism is forward facing. It's basically saying the humanity to come afterwards should have a good world to live in. We believe it's our responsibility. And we believe in these things, but we don't believe in a God. So it has been described as a religion. I think that's a little bit flawed. It's not how I would define a religion. But if you mean a religion to be a set of beliefs, then perhaps you're correct that it's a religion. But I don't think that's really an accurate qualifier for it. It's interesting some of the information we've heard. We've heard that Middle Eastern countries have better crime rates even though upon checking the statistics, they don't. Places like Japan, places like Australia, places like the Scandinavian countries actually have better crime rates. It's interesting to hear that it's unfair if I get my hand chopped off, but it's fair if somebody else gets theirs chopped off. It's very, very odd to hear this intellectual inequality where it's fine for other people to have these things happen to me, but not fine for it to happen to me. So this complete lack of looking at consequence only applies to the consequences for others and not the consequence for yourself. Living the rest of your life with no hands because the government made an error. It's obviously something that's unfair if it happens to Hussain, but it's perfectly fine if it happens to somebody else. So I think we've got a lot of problems with the Islamic kind of principles here. The idea that if you're just honest and brave and all of these things, then things will just work out for the best no matter what actions you take. I think that's incredibly short-sighted. I think that that's not the way through. And even strangely enough, Hussain sort of said, well, it relies also on consequentialism and utilitarianism, and then went to say, hey, but the consequentialism is nonsense. It just seems like he wants it both ways. But I'll leave it there. Thank you for listening, and yeah, I'll hand it back over to Justin, I guess. All right, good times. Once again, everybody, if you haven't hit like or subscribe, feel free to do so. I'm giving them away right now. The like button is free to hit for anybody, all you want, no extra charge. Okay? Moderate debate hitting 181,000 subscribers, which is absolutely amazing. I mean, James does the amazing much, much better than I do. But I promise you guys that I know we all along for James to come on and talk to us and moderate debates. I promise very, very soon he will be back in full swing when he, but he'll be coming back as Dr. James, which will be fantastic. With that, we'll get into our super chats, which we have lots of room for. So if anybody has any other super chats you want to add, feel free to do so. With our first super chat, Robin Webster sends $10. Oh, hey, wait a minute, just remembered. Yep, I got glasses now. So I'll be able to read these without too much trouble for once. Here we go. The debut. All right. It looks so much smarter. I should have not put my finger on the lens because now it's a little smudge. Anyways, Robin Webster, Islam is intolerant of other religions and non believers. We know since the enlightenment that more secular nations provide a more safe and peaceful society, you are simply straw manning humanism. Clearly, they're talking to you. Hussain, did you have any comments to return? Yeah, sure. So much like the French and British, they use what you're justifying as civilizing the savage. So secular humanists like to just quote unquote, disavow from that, but basically their tradition is that, well, with religion, you have, quote unquote, barbarity and intolerance. And then meanwhile, they're just as intolerant. So they go out of their way to invade other nations and promote, quote unquote, tolerance and the liberalization from our quote unquote oppressive religion. So basically, white Europeans or Western Europeans have just done the same thing that they did under Christianity. You just now wrap it in an atheistic bubble and bubble wrap or gift wrap, and then repackage it and then try and invade others. Yeah, Hussain could be more wrong, actually. The monarchies of France and England were not secular humanists, in fact, the furthest from the feudalist and then monarchist or sort of totalitarianism under a different name. And in fact, they had divine right to rule. So talking about French, excuse me, excuse me, Hussain, talking about sort of that they're humanist in nature is completely incorrect. And this is what Robin means when she's talking about the straw man of sort of saying that any secular nation is suddenly a secular humanist nation. It's a straw man. I mean, they love to bandit about France and England have never been secular humanist nations. You can respond if you want. My turn now. Okay, cool. So the French elite did consider themselves like, sorry, I hate to break it to you. And what I'm talking about is the Enlightenment era, Enlightenment thinkers. So like John Stuart Mill and those kind of people did use that. You have Simone de Beauvoir and Jean Paul Sartre and they're all basically, you know, John Paul Sartre specifically said he was a secular humanist as well. And they basically did justify certain horrible actions. So as well as pedophilia and some other stuff, but whatever it's besides the point. All right, our next super chat from Robin Webster again, $5 Nordic countries in the top in the top 25 safest and top 10 happiest low crime rates. Yeah, that's I mean, I'm not saying that there can't be happy nations, right? So I would like to see them pulled when they're older. If they considered, you know, a quote, unquote, meaningless, meaningless consumerist culture as happy. You know, obviously when they're younger and they're basically being fostered by the Western like empire. And they have like this social safety net because America basically takes care of their defense. They don't have to do any defense. They do everything through social safety nets. They have a good economy because they're not permit invaded like Muslim nations. Yeah, I wonder why they're happy guys and they have so much opportunity that they can like what world do you guys live in that you think it's a equivocal statement to be like, Hey, Palestine's being currently bombed has no control over their own economy. Saddam Hussein was like a brutal secular dictator installed by the US and then disposed.  Like, how is that even the same? Okay, so we see a lot of the intellectual bankruptcy from from Hussein here because he's basically saying, Hey, pay attention to the happiness index, pay attention to the, you know, the satisfaction scores in countries. When it's in my favor, but when somebody points out, hey, there's these other countries that have not the same things that are actually happier, then the statistics are skewed, then the statistics don't apply. I'm just looking at the happiness rankings here and yet places like Saudi Arabia are happy, but a lot of middle eastern countries are not. So this this sort of just trying to skew the statistics and ignore the statistics that prove him wrong. Suddenly, then these are these other conflating factors that he wants to bring in for why they're skewed happy and the others aren't. So, you know, it's nice to know that the statistics when they support him are completely accurate when they don't support him. Well, they can't be trusted. I never said that they're completely accurate or that I believe them all. And I did say that, of course, those countries are going to be happy. I said, like, it would be nice if we had something that compared life satisfaction. Again, like these words matter, right? So when you pull religious people, they have higher life satisfaction than liberal people. Okay, for example, right? That's a stat. And that's what I'm saying. So that's at the end of the life tail end. Okay. And of course, like people can be happy at different stages in life, like people can be happy at different like poverty levels or whatever economic levels. So I'm not disagreeing. I'm sure it would be great to live in Denmark and Scandinavian stuff. All right. Thank you. Our next super chat comes from bitter truth with $5 who's saying what is the reason of Muhammad attack Jew tribes? Soon he got in majority in Medina. Sorry if that didn't make sense. Yeah, they're talking about a historical event where they had a treaty with the Jewish tribes of Medina and then one of them broke the treaty. And so then they went to battle against the tribe that broke the treaty. There were still Jewish tribes after that, that these people who are Islamophobes conveniently like to ignore for some reason. It's the same guy by the way as last time, of course.  I'm not sort of using presentism to say, hey, they're wrong. But what what I am saying is that these standards garnered from this book just cannot be applied to modern life. It works out incredibly terribly, as we've seen from from all the statistics and all the things that I've brought up. This this medieval thinking, we have to draw away from it and come into the modern world where we do have technology to take actions against people who train wrestle law, but don't include these barbaric punishments. I think it's time that we evolved a little beyond this horrible thinking, including the horrible thinking of thinking that we can, you know, create an empire throughout the entire world. I don't support that either. So I'm not sure why that's been particularly leveraged against me, to be honest with you. No, I don't think you personally, Mark, believe that. So just to be fair, so okay. So with that, we got just one more super chat left. But before I read that one, real quick, I just want to thank you guys both for coming out and having this debate for all of us. It was really good, actually, and thought provoking saying where can people find you on the internet at any given day? So, yeah, it's a Hussein polypheo. It's supposed to be like politics and philosophy, but I haven't really thought polypheism. Yeah, I know. Those are some branding to be worked out there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I also need to make some videos. So hopefully I'll do more with like, I have some ideas and I want to do some with Issa and I'd like to do more with Mark. So do you have any, do you have any channels you're visiting soon or you got any other debates elsewhere that you're going to be? Nothing plain right now. I'm in like the process of moving and stuff. Like I said, so it may be a bit, but it would be cool if we could do one on maybe I'll defend existentialism versus Mark. Well, with that, Mark, what do you got going on in your life and where can people find you? Yeah, you can find me at Mark Reid Atheism, REID Atheism. And yeah, I've got also a gaming channel starting up with some Canadian guy called Beast of the Mark. So if you want to, that's on my main channel. You can find a link to it if you want to see people play Baldur's Gate very, very, very badly. Yeah, I've got a few things coming up. I've got open room on evolution coming up. If people want to ask questions, I'll have a few people on who are very knowledgeable about evolution and the evolutionary process. I'll be interested in that at all. Come along to my channel. I will be doing open rooms, got a great community, really fun people, really cool people. Yeah, it's absolutely fantastic looking forward. So but thank you for having me on. I really enjoyed it even though, you know, saying and I disagree, but no, I don't have anything. Well, what a lame debate it would have been if you guys were both here to agree. I mean, honestly, no, it was it was, I found it actually quite good. Nice change of pace. And interesting, definitely interesting. With that, let's get back to our final super chat here of the evening from Robin Webster again, another $5 2017. You have Washington 25 year study shows Islamic nations have higher rate of homicide, suicide and mental health issues. Facts matter. Wait, wait, wait, that is okay. I need to check that study out. But every study I've seen is said South Korea and Japan, which like to like some of the two most like spiritually dead nations, coupled obviously with like, to be fair, if I if we pick apart the question, she claims to have a higher rate of homicide, suicide, not the highest. Yeah, but higher in relative to what like Scandinavia or Germany, where they're like all one only extract so much US, you know what I mean? Like that's, I mean, again, this is my whole point with like statistics are very flawed, like in general. And that's why I said, when we get into imperialism, I mean, there was an empirical study that said people had intuitive disgust for like homosexuals. For example, I doubt people like Mark would be like, Oh, all of a sudden, like, Oh, because the study says that people naturally get disgusted by it, we need to, you know what I mean? Like he wouldn't think that, right? So that's why I'm saying like studies obviously like need to be looked into. So I know, I know, I think intuition is very poorly defined. And it kind of I don't think it's in an innate sense. I don't think we have innate sense judgments. Generally, I think that it is influenced by your cultural upbringing. So if you're raised in a culture that sees homosexuality is bad, you're going to have an intuition that says home. And but I think if you're raised in a culture that says homosexuality is homosexuality is fine. I think you won't have that intuition. I think that intuition isn't just a sense that you're born with, I think it does like a lot of things play into it. And yeah, there may be some things that are biologically rooted in the evolutionary process, like the intuition to recoil from rotten meat and things like that. Sure. But I think there's other things which have been taught through a cultural mechanism that plays into intuition that we think is just an innate thing, but it's not. Do you have any final words there about that? Who's saying you're good? I mean, so for example, like the one on BC ality and incest like and cannibalism, those were like cross cultural. And I think the one on homosexuality was as well. But I mean, I'm sure there is you could argue right that people could be in a way for lack of a better word, like groomed into it in a like, you know, like culturally being okay with it, you know what I mean? Like if you beat it into them like reflexively, they're not going to have a problem with it, I guess.  So. All right, well, with that, hey, for modern day debate, this was a bite-sized discussion, but I think it's really good. And I'd like to have everyone here share and like and subscribe this particular debate to anyone who might be interested in discussing it more. And yeah, with that, thank you very much, gentlemen for coming out just quickly. So just just quickly, there is an aftershow on my channel. Okay. Mark, Mark Reed atheism, I believe. Yeah, as I pretend like I didn't know what it was. Aftershow. I'm doing that with Max, who I think you're familiar with. If you want, can you link it or maybe hand off to it is a good idea. If you want, and you're welcome to come in, Hussain, we can continue the conversation if you want. Yeah, I'll go pray and I'll come. Oh, you have to pray. Yeah, sorry, I apologize. It's fine. Yeah, no worries, no worries. But yeah, so if you are interested in having more of a conversation and maybe a wrap up, yeah, more than happy to you. More than happy to have you. All right. And with that, we'll get to our closing screen. Thank you, everyone. See you next time on modern debate.


So, what I'm doing here today is Governor Brown's Emergency Manager coming down here to get on the ground assessment of the complexity, the scope and the character of this particular fire situation and how much of the community has been impacted and really making sure that we fill any gaps that the county can to be able to support them to get themselves back up online, make sure there's enough firefighting resources, that the strategies are in place and that they're working optimally and that we're making sure that any resources that are needed to not only suppress the fire, but begin the recovery processes are underway. What's this? Four weeks ago. There's nothing. It was a regular walk across, straight across that. Where's this water coming from? That comes from the watershed. All the rain. This is all the Sierra. What is snowpack? Why is there snowpack? Snowpack is the good stuff. The number of homes on the ground was pretty extensive. Clearly, the fire burned very, very rapidly and very hot coming down off of the mountains. There's a tremendous amount of watershed damage. I mean, it's an incredible amount of area that burned and you could see through the aerial survey how hot the fire burned and then, of course, when it came down into these communities, you could see not only concentrations of multiple structures that were burned, homes that were burned, but also you could see the spotting of the fire. As the winds pushed the embers and the fire way out in front, you could see other parts of the subdivision that burned homes. One home would be saved and a couple other ones down the road would be lost. So you could see that the winds were erratic and the fire conditions were very, very critical. Does this tell you, so this obviously gives you an indication about the challenges ahead? Yeah, there's no question. This is a very austere area of our state.  We've got, on that note, we're standing the fifth year of drought. We have a water table that's very low. Most of these homes are on wells and between the power being out, the impact, one of the first things that burned was the only cell site and communication system that monitors this area. So we've really been working to pull all that back together again. So this is really going to be a marathon, not a sprint. It's going to take a while to get this community recovered with a lot of debris. We're going to have to come in and work with the county to help to identify all of the material sorted out by hazardous materials and then clear those lots and clear the debris out of here so we can begin the rebuilding process. But it's not just the homes. It's the infrastructure that's going to have to be rebuilt, communications, power, water supply systems, all of those things are damaged currently.


The Ministry of Health and Wellness has received confirmation from the Pan-American Health Organization PAHO of the allocation of 74,400 doses of the Oxford AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine. This will be received through the COVAX facility, which allows for the equitable distribution of the vaccine in a manner that is fair across all countries, irrespective of size or developmental status. Speaking on the national television network on Monday, Medical Officer of Health Dr. Glensford Joseph explained that St. Lucia will be undertaking the COVID-19 vaccination in a phased approach with the first phase focusing on high-risk individuals. That moderate-risk group, which we have placed into phase two, would now incorporate also health care workers, fire officers, police officers, we have customs, immigration, that are really not in the front line, and so their risk of exposure is moderate, so we bring them into phase two. But by the time we go through that phase, and we are now having vaccines in abundance more than our demand, then we moved into phase three, which now caters for all those who may not have been covered in phase one and phase two for whatever reason, and the general population. So we are looking at phase one, to be about two months, phase two, two to three months, and phase four, sorry phase three, four to six months. One of the greatest advantages of the AstraZeneca vaccine is it does not require ultra-cold storage. Rather, it can be stored within the current storage facility used for vaccine storage in the national healthcare system. In addition, the rollout of the vaccination program can be conducted in a similar manner to how vaccines are presently administered to the population. Assistant Principal Nursing Officer and Immunization Manager, Techleger Baptiste, assured that no severe adverse effects have been recorded with the vaccine. However, if recipients experience any difficulty, there is a process to address it. Before vaccination of any type, the nurse must provide information to the client about the vaccine. The nurse must tell the client what to expect after immunization and what should be done. Even at the point of vaccination, the nurse must brief the client on what type of adverse events to expect and what to do if they occur. In the adverse event occurs, it must be reported. First of all, it has to be detected and reported. Once reported, either by the client, a family member, or the nurse, once it is reported, sorry, it is investigated. And of course, after reporting an investigation and a causality assessment is done. And finally, the findings of the investigation is normally provided as feedback to all relevant persons in the program. That is, from the client to the national level. The projected timeline for receiving this batch of vaccines is the end of February or first week in March. It is estimated that this initial allocation will allow for the vaccination of 20% of the population.