Everybody, tonight we're debating whether or not there is good evidence for God and we're starting right now. Ladies and gentlemen, thrilled to have you here for another epic debate. Very excited folks and want to let you know of a diverse time here at Modern Day Debate. We are a neutral platform focused on hosting debates on science, religion and politics and doing it in a way that is, as I had mentioned, fully neutral. And so we have no positions here at the channel itself. It's just we want to have the speakers come, make their case and then you, the audience, can decide who you find more persuasive or who knows maybe it'll be a tie for the first time. I don't know. But very excited. We really do want to let you know no matter what walk of life you're from. We really hope you feel welcome here. And so with that, I am going to give you a quick layout of the format and then I'm going to ask if the speakers can give a brief introduction as well as share about what you can find at their links in the description, which are already there if you want to check them out. And so for that format, it's going to be pretty short and sweet, pretty simple, basically roughly 15 minutes if the speakers need it for their opening statements followed by 60 minutes of open dialogue and then about 30 minutes of Q&A. So if you have a question, feel free to fire it into the old live chat. We'll get through as many as we can, but no promises as we do want to respect the debaters time as well. So with that, want to say thanks so much to our guests. We really do appreciate you guys being here. And so we'll start with Ben, who is on the left side of your screen folks. And so Ben, thrilled to have you back. It's been quite a while. And so if you'd like to show people can find it, your link as well as about yourself. Thanks for being here with us. Yeah, I appreciate the opportunity to come on to the program. It's been wonderful to get to talk with Matt a little here in the sort of the pre-debate conversation and getting to know you. You can find information about my ministry at benfisheredministries.com. In particular, if you're a skeptic who has questions about epistemology and as well as some of the things that I'll be presenting tonight, you can just visit me online at howtodafitskepticism.com. And I would love to be able to connect you with some of our other resources that our ministry has to offer. Absolutely. Thanks so much, Ben. Pleasure is all ours. And so we'll kick it over to Matt. Glad to have you back, Matt. I think it was back in August maybe when we last had you. So it's a bit chillier now, at least here in Colorado. So thrilled to have you back. I think you'd like to share about your link up to you as well as about yourself. Thanks so much for being back with us. Sure. Yeah. Welcome. I'm glad to be here. I'm glad things worked out. I noticed you have the YouTube link to my personal account, which is going to be for the Atheist Debates Project. I'm Matt Dillardy. I am the host for the past 15-ish years of the Atheist Experience, a live call-in show sponsored by the Atheist Community of Austin. I am a two-time president of the organization. Not that that matters at all. And in addition to hosting the Atheist Experience, I also host a show on the line network called The Hang Up, where because I'm not working for a nonprofit, I get to be as, I don't know, political and outrageous as I might want to be, where I can't when I'm actually working for a nonprofit. So I'm glad we got tech issues sorted. And I'm thrilled to be here to have a conversation with Ben, who, I mean, literally I knew nothing about until we got into the, like the pre-show, but we had a little quick back and forth. And I'm looking forward to seeing how this goes and trying to have a good conversation about, is there really good evidence for a God? Absolutely. I'm optimistic. I think it's going to be a great conversation. And so with that, we will get the ball rolling. I've got the timer set for you, Ben. And the floor is all yours for your opening statement. OK, OK. Well, I first want to start out by saying that I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to come on to the program this evening. So thanks to Modern Day Debate for folding me into their schedule. And as well as special thanks to Matt Dilla-Hunte for being part of tonight's discussion. I'm certainly looking forward to a robust exchange of ideas. Now, in our debate, I'm going to be making two main contentions. Number one, that philosophical, and therefore religious skepticism, is now a soundly defeated argument within secular academia. And that number two, theism, has a number of strong arguments in its favor. So I'm looking forward to presenting both arguments to tonight and offering various reasons in their defense. But for my opening statement, I'm going to be explaining why religious skepticism is now a soundly refuted argument, as this will add strength to my later arguments for God's existence in our open discussion time. So let's first begin by setting the stage on what caused the problem of skepticism to first become such an issue within Western civilization to begin with. Skepticism essentially broke onto the scene of Western history at a time when ancient Greek philosophers were starting to become prolific at asking questions, questions like how do we know anything? Can we know anything? And if we can't know anything, what is the method for knowing it? While other questions were asked, which were aimed at even more fundamental issues such as what is knowledge to begin with? Is it something that we can define? And if we can define it, what are the necessary characteristics of it? Well, amid the sea of swirling questions, there were two main inquiries which emerged that drew the most attention from early Greek philosophers. And they were, one, what is knowledge? And two, how do we get it? Now, the first question was considered for some centuries to have been decisively answered by the early Greek philosopher Plato, who held that knowledge contained three essential ingredients to it. Truth, proof and belief, truth, proof and belief. And so it seems that for Plato, there simply had to be something more to knowledge than a person's mere belief that something was true, joined together with the fact that he was actually right. Instead, there needed to be some sort of proof or justification for that belief. And so thus, according to Plato, justification was the needed ingredient to properly bracket truth and belief together under knowledge. And for centuries, most philosophers just thought that Plato was right. Almost no one questioned his views. But in 1963, there was an American philosopher by the name of Edmund Gettier, who published a brief paper which seemed to challenge Plato's classical definition of knowledge. Using a set of counter examples, Gettier was able to demonstrate that Plato's definition had really been incomplete all along. Instead, it was possible, said Gettier, for a person to believe something which was true and to have a reasonable justification for that belief without that belief necessarily counting as knowledge. And the result of Gettier's paper was a tremendous upheaval amongst modern philosophers to identify what had been missing from Plato's classical definition. Precisely what was it? Was it warrant? Was it vindication? Was it something else no one had ever thought of before? No one was able to say. Now, of course, the reason why this was such a problem for modern philosophers is that unless we could have a working definition for knowledge, we could have no assurance on how to get it. And so it's therefore a somewhat comical joke of Western academia that today no one has ever offered a convincing reply to Edmund Gettier. So in response to our first question, no modern philosophers don't really know how to define knowledge. So then what about the second question? Well, the second question is, how do we get knowledge? Now, for most of us, this is probably the more relevant issue by far to tonight's discussion. How do we decide, for example, that we really know that God exists? Is there some sort of a rational way to settle a question like that? Well, classically, skeptics have argued, again, probably due to Plato's influence, that it's impossible for human beings to know anything. Now, while the mere mention of that idea tends to elicit roaring laughter from some people, this is nevertheless a belief, which has historically been immensely successful. The reason is that it seems to be based on a principle which virtually all philosophers agree is true, called the closure principle. And the closure principle essentially states that in the case of any pair of opposing claims, if we know that one is true, we also know the other is false. And so for this reason, the skeptics argument winds up looking surprisingly good as we go about the business of simply minding our peas and cues. Observe, if I know that pay is true, I also know that kill is false. I cannot know that kill is false. Therefore, I cannot know that pay is true. Now, notice that we're already beginning to see here the very core inspiration for religious skepticism taking shape. So if you don't see it yourself, simply watch what happens when we restate the argument like this. If I know that Christianity is true, I know Hinduism is false. I can't know Hinduism is false. Therefore, I cannot know that Christianity is true. And so for this reason, we can see that skeptics do not succeed in defending their views if they insist on argument that religious skepticism is somehow very different from philosophical skepticism. Obviously, that's not true. The two arguments derive from precisely one and the same basic classical form. Well, moving on, the argument of skepticism has obviously been enormously powerful throughout its time. Almost no one in history has ever been able to sound the refuted, but through an unexpected series of events probably triggered mostly by Edmund Gettier, the chief premise of the argument was actually brought into question and this occurred as another American philosopher by the name of Robert Nozick said about trying to repair Plato's original definition of knowledge. And what happened next inadvertently became the basis for refuting skepticism. So here's how Nozick did it. First, let's look at the most vivid example of skepticism, which has ever been conceived. It's a story film depiction of the now infamous brain in the bad argument. The movie was released in 1999 by the famous film director Dua the Wachowsky brothers and it later went on to become their biggest smash hit. The film was entitled The Matrix and it told the story of a man who was suddenly unplugged from a computer only to discover that up until the present time his entire life had been nothing but a dream. Well, the film portrays the struggles of the character named Neo to adjust to the world as it actually is. His life lived as a brain and a vat had deceived in regard in the true nature of his existence. Sentient machines had cleverly wired a cerebrum to stimulate his brain to accept his false experiences. And of course, this only raised the question for most moviegoers, how can we be certain that The Matrix does not exist? Well, naturally, a few of us tended to be detained by The Matrix question for very long. Most of us probably dealt with it by shrugging our shoulders and simply having a sandwich. But for Nozick's stories like The Matrix proved an extremely invaluable point, namely that the argument of skepticism is baseless. Now, to see why Nozick thought that, try imagining the following fanciful scenario. What would have happened if the machines themselves had decided to tell Neo that his body lay invaded in a tube of biodegradable goop? That's, of course, assuming that machines can decide to do anything. Well, getting back to the point, if this had happened, Neo would immediately be in a position to know that the real world lay somewhere beyond his current empirical borders, correct? But the question which naturally follows is, does this count as knowledge? The problem was that under Plato's classical definition, it did. In fact, this point becomes all too easy for us to see as we simply reconsider Plato's original criterion for knowledge alongside the present case under discussion. Consider, number one, belief. Plato said we need belief to have knowledge. Well, did Neo believe the machine? By supposition, we're saying he did. Number two, truth. We need to have truth to have knowledge. Well, was the machine story true? Yes, Neo was plugged into a computer. Three, justification. Was Neo's belief justified? Well, the machine was the one who told him. But the question which remained is, does that count as knowledge? Does it? Well, our hesitation to answer yes, said Nozick, was to sign that something was wrong here. Recall here that Gettier had argued previously that something was missing from Plato's classical definition of knowledge. Scenarios like this one seem to show that Gettier was right, but that wasn't all that they seem to show. Instead, they also purportedly pointed to the need for a new criterion for knowledge. In other words, it seemed to show that the canonical rule if P not Q is not a reliable method. For Neil could readily affirm that he was in the matrix, that's P, as well as deny the claim that his senses were not deceiving him, that's Q. The problem was that Neil's awareness of this wasn't due to his personally sensing it. Therefore, the rule of P not Q cannot be trusted, so to us supposedly, to lead us to knowledge. Now, at this point, it's probably important for us to note how profoundly similar this is to some of the most common gripes against religious belief. For the atheist as to the Christian, you don't really know that all the other religions in the world are false. So how can you claim to know that Christianity is true? Well, to this, the simple Christian replies, oh, yes, but God told me Christianity is true. Therefore, all religions must be false. Without belaboring the point, notice how similar this is to the very case we decided from the matrix. Consider, in the Christian's case, the Holy Spirit tells the Christian that his faith is true. That's P. While in the matrix case, the computer tells Neil that he is sleeping in the matrix. P. Next, on the basis of this, the Christian concludes that all other faiths are false. That's not Q. While in the matrix case, Neil concludes that his senses are deceiving him. Once again, not Q. Now, in both examples, notice that the test subject has failed to personally sense his knowledge of P. Instead, he's merely been told that P is true. Therefore, even if it is the case that P is true and therefore Q is false, we've nevertheless failed to close the subject's knowledge of P to further questioning. Instead, we've allegedly discovered that P is now unknowable. Unfortunately, this argument has actually aroused deep suspicion from most modern philosophers, for the argument leads to the immediate implosure of the closure principle if P than Q. Because of this, the majority of contemporary epistemologists have concluded that Robert Nozick had committed a critical error. By claiming that our knowledge of P must be personally sensed, Nozick had accidentally eviscerated the closure principle. And the result of this mistake was that it made it impossible to claim that Q could somehow be implied from P. Instead, Nozick had shown that our knowledge of P must be acquired sensitively. Without intending to do so, Nozick had actually undermined the primitive logical basis from evidence of almost any kind. Because without the closure principle, our logical basis for legal evidence, philosophical evidence, and even scientific evidence becomes destroyed. And because of this, most modern philosophers reject Nozick's arguments. Our knowledge of P does not need to be sensitively acquired. Instead, philosophers agree that Nozick's sensitivity requirement is simply false. Therefore, the argument of religious skepticism has been dismantled. So with this in mind, let's view the religious skeptics model argument and see for ourselves how this begins to affect things. If I know that Christianity is true, I know all the religions are false. I can't know all other religions are false. Therefore, I can't know that Christianity is true. Now, if we consider that argument, it's obvious the entire abstraction turns on the second premise. In other words, premise two is the central premise, which directly determines the outcome for the skeptics argument. The question is, is it really true that we can't know that all other religions in the world are false? Well, skeptics who answer yes usually insist the reason we can't know this, that all other religions are false, is because we're not in the position to personally sense it. For example, consider we can't see spiritual things. These sorts of realities are simply not empirically beholden to us. Therefore, we can't know that all religions in the world are false, or so the skeptic claims. But the problem is that we just seen that making sensitivity a requirement for knowledge causes the rule of pity, not give if this, not this to fail to lead us to knowledge. Therefore, by defending the second premise of his argument in this way, the skeptic has actually imploded the first premise, which is just simply an instantiation of the closer principle, which brings about the destruction of the in argument itself, making it invalid. So at this point, if you can't see why this is significant, you're probably just not paying close enough attention. And the reason is that virtually all arguments from religious skepticism tacitly assume that nosic sensitivity requirement is a necessary requirement for religious knowledge. So to see along, compassing at this point really is, let me take my final two minutes to follow up on a few other arguments that are like this. Consider this additional argument on Bible certainty. If I know the Bible is reliable, I know that Constantine never destroyed early editions. I cannot know that Constantine never destroyed early editions. Therefore, I cannot know that the Bible is reliable. Now, atheists often view Emperor Constantine as the one who founded the Catholic Church by forcing its bishops into theological agreement. And it's sometimes alleged that one of the ways that he did this was by burning early editions of the Bible that differed from his theological vision for the church. Sadly, this argument is still widely talked about across the atheist internet, from my understanding. But the problem with this is that the second premise of the argument plainly assumes nosic sensitivity requirement. Once again, it's a necessary condition for religious knowledge. Think about it. Can we sensibly, that is by use of our senses, know that Constantine never burned early editions of the Bible? Of course not. And why not? Because our belief that Constantine didn't do this isn't empirically verifiable. But by making this a requirement for knowing that Bible is reliable, this actually implodes the first premise in the argument of p not q, if this notch this, which also invalidates the conclusion. Therefore, the very basis of the argument is undermined and the conclusion vanquished presto. One more argument, if I know that Jesus was bodily raised, I know that natural explanations to Easter are false. I cannot know that all natural explanations to Easter are false. Therefore, I cannot know that Jesus was bodily raised. Now, atheists often claim that the resurrection of Jesus is naturally explainable. Maybe the Romans tossed the body of Jesus into a mass grave. Maybe the disciples stole the body or maybe even one of a hundred other natural possibilities shows why the body went missing. But because the evidence for the case can't be empirically accessed, we cannot sensibly falsify these numerous counter explanations. And so therefore, we can't know that Jesus was raised. I take it the argument sounds familiar to most of us. But the problem is that once again, that the second premise of the argument plainly assumes no sensitivity requirement has a necessary condition for knowledge. Once again, think about it. Can we sensibly, that is by use of our senses, test every naturalistic alternative? Of course not. And why not? Because we can't empirically access the past, which means that the Christians believe that these naturalistic alternatives are unsatisfactory, isn't sensitive. But by making this a requirement for knowing Jesus was bodily raised, the first premise in the argument, if P not Q is once again invalidated, therefore, the very basis of the argument is destroyed and the argument vanquished. So we see, therefore, that we have three very good reasons. These three models to show that religious skepticism doesn't work. So with that, I'll go ahead and hand the mic over to our moderator to go ahead and take the show from here. Thanks again for having me. Thank you very much, Ben, for that opening statement. We will kick it over to Matt for his opening. Thanks so much, Matt, as well for being here and the floor is all yours. I need to unmute. How you doing? I'm going to set my my little timer here just because I'm kind of free flowing here. And I'll start by saying. Normally, when we talk about presenting an argument or evidence, there's some structure to the argument and there's evidence behind it. And while we're not actually having an actual rebuttal period, to my understanding, it's just going to be 15 minutes openings and then 60 minutes of discussion. I'm going to freeform my opening and include just a little bit of rebuttal, which is that I tried very hard and listened as carefully as I could. And I heard nothing at all in Ben's opening that presented any evidence for the existence of God, good or otherwise. In fact, it seemed to be a dissertation on problems with justified true belief, which I have problems with as well. So, I mean, it might have been nice if we would have just agreed from the outset that, hey, I don't use justified true belief as my definition of knowledge because of various problems might have saved some time. But there's a bunch of objections about religious skepticism, but nothing at all about modern scientific skepticism, which I happen to also apply to religion. So showing that religious skepticism isn't sufficient, which I'm not sure that he did, is irrelevant. Religious skepticism could be complete garbage as an epistemology and literally nothing Ben said goes anywhere close to evidence for God. As a matter of fact, after potentially strawmaning religious skepticism or my position, which isn't what he talked about, we got in the final two minutes some notes on what atheists might say about Constantine enforcing belief and none of those things are evidence for existence of God. And so when I'm talking about this and it's a really difficult thing because people are generally when they're talking about how do we know what we know? I'm more interested in why do we believe what we believe or our beliefs warranted. I don't care if they rise to the level where somebody calls them knowledge. For me, knowledge generally is a belief held to such a high degree of confidence that it would be worldview altering to find that it's wrong. But I don't care about that because we're not here to debate. Do we know that a God exists or do we know that no God exists? What we're asking is, is there a justified evidence based belief that a God exists? And I haven't seen it. When I take a look at what evidence we might consider, if there's good evidence, first of all, I would argue, and this is a really bad argument. I'm saying it's a bad argument at the outset. If there was good evidence for God, I would know. And I don't say that in any sort of arrogance about who I am or anything else. Yes, I've been doing this for 15 years and I've spent the bulk of my life studying it. And I've done countless debates with people and I've had people present arguments and evidence. What I'm saying is if, in fact, there were good evidence for God, we would all know that this would be no apprise worthy. This would be in the news. Hell, the news reports things that they don't even have good evidence for. Certainly, if we had good evidence for something, this would be newsworthy. There would be no more debates. And the truth is we live in a world where we can't get people to agree on things that are actually factual and determined and demonstrable. I mean, like facts about climate change. Do we know all of it? No. But there are some people who pretend that this isn't even happening. What about evolution? Evolution is an observable, demonstrable fact. The theory by which we would explain evolution is a scientific theory, a model. We can talk about the efficacies of vaccines, how they actually do work. And how they don't cause autism. We can't even necessarily convince people that the earth isn't flat and that their experiences that they think are real with regard to ghosts and aliens probably are not that merely their personal experience or their interpretation of events aren't necessarily justified. There are things that we know, there are things that we believe and have strong evidence for. And then there are other things. Now, good evidence can, in fact, lead to a false conclusion. For the longest time, we had good evidence that the sun orbited the earth. We know now that that's not wrong. Did that evidence stop being good? Actually, I'd argue that what happened is that evidence that we would use to reach that conclusion was found to still be good evidence just incomplete. We didn't have a complete model and new information turned it on its head. And until we got better evidence, it was reasonable to conclude that the sun went around the earth. Even though it wasn't true, you can have a reasonably justified belief that's independent of whether it's true. And I'd like, you know, since we spent the entire opening kind of trashing aversion of skepticism that isn't mine and talking about problems with knowledge that isn't relevant to this, I'd really like to find out, is there good evidence for a God, for the existence of God? And if there is, what is that evidence? Because just saying, ah, well, you can't justify knowledge. Is it relevant? I don't care about that. I'm not claiming about knowledge. I don't even wouldn't even expect Ben to say he knows that there's a God. He might know. But what I would expect him to say is that he believes this and that he has good reason for it and what is the good reason? I don't know. So when we gather the available facts for the thing that you're trying to explain and you look at the explanation, the best explanations tend to fit all or as many of the facts as possible and doesn't permit multiple competing explanations with similar conflicting positions. So like if your methodology, if your epistemology, if your test methodology for a question can result in good evidence for gods, universe creating pixies and magic, then you haven't got a methodology that distills things down to the most probable truth here. It's not it's not that you're in that case, your evidence may be decent, but your methodology for assessing it is not particularly good. And this is one thing people will try to say all the time.  Well, the truth is, I'm as open minded as anybody that I've ever met about pretty much anything provided you can actually present evidence for it. The problem is that what some people think is good evidence for a proposition. I don't. And so now you can just say, well, you know, that's just your opinion. And it's all just your opinion. The problem is that with it's only seems to be with claims towards the supernatural and the God and gods that we can't demonstrate that are falsifiable as you acknowledge and we can't test.  You've just set the bar way too high for God. How could I possibly set the bar way too high for the existence of the single most important entity in fact that could possibly exist? How could my bar be set too high? Because I set a really high bar for a girlfriend. Fortunately, she loves me and we interact and I've met her.  I'm kind of speaking generally, but she is to want to tell me that there is a God and he loves me and yet I see no evidence of this. I have done all the things I used to believe. I've done the things that people tell me to do and I've tried. And so all I can do is get to the point where that if in fact there is a God, I have no way of knowing it because the arguments that these give me are things like, look at the trees or how do you how do you ground morality without a God? Well, who said that there was a grounding for morality in the first place? It's not it's not me. All of the arguments for the existence of God that have been presented and argued and debated for thousands of years are flawed. The flaws get pointed out and the theologians go say, well, we know there's a God. So let's massage this argument and come back with an effort version of it. Today, though, I don't even know and this is I'm not faulting Ben. I've never met Ben. He seems really nice. But today, though, we didn't get an argument for the existence of God. We didn't get an argument for the evidence for God, which was what I thought we were here to discuss. Instead, we just got, hey, religious skepticism fails to warrant knowledge.  Well, so what? What is the actual evidence for God? We're looking at things to try to figure out what's the whole picture. Imagine you're putting together a jigsaw puzzle. It's a proper thousand piece, five thousand piece, whatever it is, and you pick up two pieces and your first instinct is that these two pieces seem to fit together. They're a pretty good fit. The colors seem to line up. The pattern seems to line up. It's probably reasonable to assume that these two go together. But for anybody who's done a jigsaw puzzle with a few exceptions, any sizeable jigsaw puzzle, you all know that eventually you're going to get the point where it's like you put two pieces together that really didn't quite go together. But the more pieces you put to the puzzle, the more obvious and easier it becomes to put the final pieces in because there are fewer and fewer options with each and every step. And when it's only when the entirety of the picture is there that you truly can say, yes, this puzzle is done and done correctly. But at 50 percent, you can still say I'm completely confident or 90 percent confident about this and I have a reasonable understanding of this portion of it. It's it's not an all or nothing thing. So we have observations, we gather facts, we build a model, we test the model. Is it falsifiable? Is it replicable? And this represents the best we can do to try to come up with a tentative evidence based understanding of reality. What counts as good evidence, though? What not just what counts as evidence, we can take all the little pieces of the puzzle, all the bits of information that we're trying to explain. What were the facts that we're trying to explain are not the evidence. So there's a fact, which is a change in the Leo frequency over time, that evolution as a as a factual observation occurs, things change. Then the question then becomes, hey, do they change enough to warrant to support speciation? And yes, we see evidence for that. And we start to try and what is the explanation for this? What's the best way to describe this? And for the longest time, we may not know and we may not have a complete model. But what we need to do is if you have a model that is actually the explanation for the observations, it needs to account for all the facts. It needs to be testable, replicable, falsifiable. That's that's science. And before Ben or anybody else tries to say, well, mass advocating for scientism, yeah, I pretty much am, but not necessarily in the way that so many people think so. I'm just at the position that I want to believe as many true things and as few false things as possible. And that means I must have in place the mechanisms that mean I'm most likely to get it right and least likely to get it wrong. It would be an interesting exercise. And maybe this is what we should do instead of a debate at a future time. For Ben and I to list one hundred things we believe in and ensuring that 50 of them are things we're almost we're reasonably confident that the other person also believes and that 50 of them are at least dubious. You know, maybe we don't need a hundred, but that might be a way too much work for either one of us. But if we could list 10 things where there's five things that I'm really confident Ben and I both believes and there's five things that I believe that I think he may not and then look at our processes for reaching the conclusion that we are confident in those beliefs, not that we're no, not that we have knowledge, not that we are certain. I don't think you can be absolutely certain about anything, but to talk about how and why we came to believe those positions and to present the evidence for those positions where we disagree. What I find curious is that any time I've attempted to do this, it's only things like astrology, psychics, lucky socks, where people are saying, these things are real, despite the fact that we don't have good evidence that they are. And they would look at it and say, I read my horoscope in the newspaper today. Clearly, astrology has something to it because that was really impactful for me. When they don't understand that one of the things that we need to do is get away from your personal interpretation and understanding of what your experiences are, while you are the best one to decide whether or not you're hungry right now, you may not be the best one to decide that the experience that you have is best attributed to the divine or to aliens or whatever the explanation is. That explanation needs more. And so if the evidence for God is tends to be anecdotal, unverifiable in conflict with other beliefs, that's a problem. If it's a hearsay account that doesn't give us the possibility of investigating it, when we're deciding like, you know, if you talk to a district attorney, whether or not they're deciding to bring a case, they're going to evaluate the evidence and that are going to decide whether or not they have enough evidence to make the case. And when it comes to something like God, not only do I not think there's enough evidence to convict, I don't think there's enough evidence to even bring the case. What we have are testimonial accounts. I fully acknowledge there's anecdotal evidence in the billions from believers. And I'm a former believer. I used to have a Jesus hat I could put on here around a little bit to swap back and forth and put on my old hat. I used to believe those things. And when I stopped believing, it wasn't because I got mad at God. It wasn't because I decided, oh, I want to go sin. It wasn't for any reason other than I don't see an evidence-based, valid argument for the existence of God. And as I looked around and asked, nobody could give me one. And as I run around doing more and more debates with people, it has yet to materialize. And today, and again, no offense to Ben, we're going to have a conversation and hopefully we get to it. But there was not even an attempt.  I don't know. I don't care. If you're looking at debates as who won, I think you have kind of the wrong look on this. I want to actually have the conversation. Do I think I've won a debate? Sure, under whatever criteria somebody might have, do I think I've lost? Sure. But the important thing is if we're going to have a debate, if this was a collegiate score debate, it would already be over. Because Ben didn't present positive evidence or even an argument for the actual proposition, and I don't care and I don't want anybody in chat to go like, oh, Ben didn't show up with that. That's irrelevant. Ben believes something that I don't. And we're having a conversation for the rest of this time, along with questions about why he believes and why he thinks I should believe. Maybe he doesn't. Maybe Ben does not. I don't want to make any assumptions. Maybe he does not believe that I should be convinced for the reasons that he says, but all I can do when somebody thinks they have good evidence is to say, show me the good evidence, let's have a conversation about the good evidence. And I will tell you why I think it is good evidence or perhaps why I think it's not good evidence and maybe that convinces some people. But as it stands right now, I don't have anything to work with. So you got it. Thank you very much. We will kick it right into open dialogue. So the floor is all yours, gentlemen. OK, OK. Well, Matt, I I agree that we're coming at this from the standpoint more from a discussion standpoint than a collegiate debate. And so my intent, as I stated at the outset of my original opening statement, was twofold. Number one, I believe that there are not good arguments from religious skepticism to show that God doesn't exist. And number two, that I also happened to believe that there are several good arguments and one in particular that I'll employ for this evening to show that God does exist. And so my opening statement merely was for the purpose of setting the first point in that twofold approach. I'm wondering if we could agree that it's not up to anybody to prove that there isn't a God that until such time as there's a good justification, belief in a God isn't warranted. It's not like it's not like you're justified in believing in God until I prove it wrong. Nobody is justified in believing anything, including a God proposition, until they have a good argument for it and evidence. And I'm willing to allow that to be the grounds for discussion, religious discussion and inquiry into the subject of God's existence in the context of this discussion. So I think that that's a good place for us to begin. So how do we how do we start? How do we begin like you say you have one argument? I'm sure you have many and I'm sure you have a lot of reasons, but you have one in particular. I have no idea why it wasn't presented in the opening, but I'm happy for you to present it now so that we can discuss it. Sure, sure. I think that one of the very strong arguments for the existence of God is something that I refer to as the axiomatic argument for God's existence. This is very much like the ontological argument for God's existence, the argument for God from his being. But it's it certs a slightly different point. The purpose of the axiomatic argument for God's existence is to show that God exists in every single world that we might conceive of to exist. And this all would include all possible worlds that we might imagine. And as it turns out, because the concept of God, at least at the conceptual level, is entirely unerasable on strong grounds, I think, that therefore we are not in a position to airbrush a divine causal beginning to any world that we might imagine for the sake of any argument that it's just simply not rational to do so. And so what's the argument argument? Well, the argument, essentially, I might refer to it as the ever pending birth birthday. Imagine that you, Matt Dilla, Hyundai have walked into a room only to encounter an infinite row of tumbling dominoes, each falling tile collapses a subsequent member causing the preceding domino to plummet towards the earth and each successive domino takes all of one second to accomplish its inevitable collision with the floor. And now imagine that the row of dominoes is utterly beginningless, leading to a final domino standing near your foot, bending down. You notice that the domino bears an inscription which reads the exact date of your birth. And so you then begin to wonder if the set of dominoes is infinitely long, how much time will it take for my birthday domino to collapse? And of course, the answer is unavoidable, the tile would never fall. Consequently, that would imply that you could never be born. And so this means that in any world that we imagine, none of these worlds can be eternal in the past. Some initial trigger has to set the world in motion. And so this essentially means that the initial cause that brought this world that we live in into existence, any finite cause itself requires some sort of a causal parent. And so therefore, since the cause that triggered the other causes, we have to inquire into what is the founding reason for this. If the reason is something which lies outside of the cause itself, then it and not the cause is the real reason why the world exists. And so the parent cause of the world necessarily causes itself to cause the other causes to be set in motion. And this seems to imply a conscious will it work in the world of really any world that we might imagine. It seems that this would apply to the world of the Swiss family, Robinson, as well as to the world that we're having this discussion in right now. And so because that concept is seems unerasable to me, it seems to me that we are stuck with God's existence as a matter of a sheer axiom. That is a self evident irreducible prime that we're never justified in questioning. So OK, so convinced. So you started by saying this was a version of the ontological argument. And I don't care what category we put it in, but everything about it. OK, for me reads as a first cause argument and not an ontological argument that this is it has nothing to do with necessarily the characteristics of a God, but instead a fictional one directionally infinite timeline. So first of all, to the extent that we know and understand a time in causality, it seems to be contained within the universe that we inhabit and that universe by the best physics and cosmology that I'm aware of began somewhere around thirteen point seven billion years ago and that time began with that. So talking about time prior to this is already nonsensical. And so if you were to talk about something that stretched infinitely into the past, granted, Carl Sagan pointed out that he had an objection when somebody said, ah, if we don't stop at some point, stop asking what came before this, then we might never stop. And Carl Sagan famously was like, then why stop? But the thing is this set of dominant of infinitism.  All you have to do is say that one minute before I was born, there's an infinite amount of time in between that time and now that you would have to cross and you would have to in order to cross the first half a second. You'd have to first quarter of a second. You'd have to cross the first eighth of a second to the sixteenth. And this goes on that there's an infinity between these. And here's the problem is that every time we're trying, I understand that some math mathematicians will talk about different types of infinities, infinities they can use. But generally speaking, infinity is not a quantity. It is a concept for a lack of a quantity. So when you try to construct this thing and say, well, if if that line of dominoes went on forever into the past, which I don't even know how that's remotely possible because the best of science doesn't say that the past is infinite. I would agree it's not just just that it just that we are one directionally infinite into the future from the from the instant at the beginning. But if what if what you're arguing is true, is God eternal? Well, I think that there are several things that I would like to point out. And that is that in the case of Zeno's paradox, the length of of space, the spatial extent between the one end of the stadium to the other is actually conceptually prior to our subdivisions of it into infinite segments. And so therefore, the point is that the line itself is finite in duration, however, we might divide the actual line itself. And so, yes, of course, I would admit that it's true that you can subdivide any finite space into infinite amounts. Of course, that's true in one sense. But it means you can't get there. So what I'm asking is, is God infinite? Is God, I think that essentially God have a beginning. Yes.  Well, I think that what I'm saying is that I would admit that if it is the case that God himself has persisted through an infinite sequence of atemporal events that God himself falls on the same sword, so to speak, as the universe does, or any world that we might imagine. But I don't think that that's the argument necessarily. I think that the way that Christians typically think of God is existing in a sort of a temporal now. If we could imagine God's thoughts being brought down into a room that you and I are standing in, what we discover is that those thoughts could not be arranged in a chronological sequence. And that's because all of God's thoughts exist to him in a present eternal now. And so God does not experience a temporal sequence of events in himself. Therefore, the problem disappears in the case of a first cause. And so I think that that's a pretty good response to the questions that you raised. Well, I mean, the question I raised, the question I asked is, does God have a beginning and you seem to say yes? No, no, I'm not saying that God has a. That's what confused me, because you went on this thing after after I asked it, you know, because does God have a beginning? So no, I'm not saying that sorry if it drew that impression. Well, I mean, you literally said yes, but I think you were thinking about something else, which is why I wanted to clarify it. So the fact that Christians have a particular notion of God existing outside of time as if our timeline is just a function within God, that's cool. I don't know how you'd prove it. And well, when you when you talk about when you talk about God in the sense that God must exist in all possible worlds, I don't know how you prove that either, because so far. I have yet I have asked a couple times. OK, I'm waiting for the actual. Like, does your argument have premises and conclusion, because I have yet to hear that and I was going to write it down. So I addressed the argument accurately. So what is it? Sure, sure, sure. Well, I would say that the proof that this is true is the fact that it's axiomatic. OK, no, no, no, no, no axioms. You don't the fact that something is axiomatic does not prove that it's true and axiom is something that you assume is true as a matter of necessity, a sort of presupposition or something you assume is true for the sake of argument. What I asked was, does your argument? And does it have a formal structure with premises and conclusion? Well, my understanding is, is that essentially an axiomatic argument is part of a of several types of arguments that essentially issue from an argument called foundationalism. Foundationalism historically has taken on two essential forms, that of presuppositionalism and that of axiomatic arguments, presuppositions are things that we presuppose for the purposes of testing what follows, whether or not certain things follow or not. Well, axioms are things that are self evidently true. In other words, the evidence is in the sheer pronouncement of the proposition itself, two plus two equals four. That's not axiomatic plus a. Now, those these are the axioms of those are not the actual axioms as well. So so the answer to my question that I'm going to assume is that no, your argument does not have set premises and a conclusion for me to write down. Well, I think that I walked out a simple illustration that demonstrates the necessity of there being an axiomatic beginning to any universe that we might possibly imagine. It doesn't matter if you're the guy who's been been sort of computer is stolen, your brain disposed of all the post postcranial content that has inserted into a tube in the matrix, that matrix world necessarily has a first cause, every single world that we imagine has this cause. And this is therefore a matter of an axiom. It's not something that we can airbrush out of our picture of any world that we might imagine. And so it's is it is something that is inescapably to be dealt with as a plus B is B is equal to B plus A or that you and I equal to whether we're standing in heaven, earth or in hell, it doesn't matter. You and I equal to something asking for proof to something like that. It seems like a strange request. It seems no, it doesn't seem a strange request at all. Is there's nothing strange about the request at all? So mathematics is directly derived from the foundations of logic. And it's not two plus two equals four is not an axiom. Two plus two equals four is based on axiomatic foundations of mathematics. And notions of regularity. But those are things that are still regarded as true, but not demonstrated as true. If we could demonstrate they were true, they wouldn't be called axioms. Now, the axioms that are around that that result in two plus two equals four, those the conclusions from those are things that we can demonstrate to consistently be reliably true.  We're probably not going to say that unless we have some really peculiar root based system of math with different operands. But if we're talking about normative, we're talking about quantities, then that's what we're at. However, to say why does one plus one equals two is something that we can actually work towards and demonstrate the found just like. And I would agree with that. The fact that identity, non-construction, excluded middle are presuppositions, which we cannot demonstrate, but which we assume are true and appear to be uniformly absolutely true in the sense that they appear to be inviolate, that you would have to assume they were true to try to prove they weren't true and I don't know how what you would have to assume in order to try to prove them false, but you'd have to come up with some way of justifying that. It's not just that that's precisely my point. That's that's what this argument is like for God's existence. Is that it's not an argument for God's existence? The fact that we assume something to be true is not an argument that it is true. And it's certainly not evidence that it is true. In fact, the argument in this case, hang on. OK, the fact that we assume something as a necessity is because we do not have good evidence for it. If we have good evidence for it, we don't need to assume it. We just demonstrate it. So if your entire case is that God is axiomatic, then you're acknowledging there is no good evidence for God, or at least there's no good evidence going to be presented for God, because if there's good evidence, we don't need to assume. I don't really think that that's true. And let me explain to you why, because essentially my epistemology is founded upon the work of a second century Greek philosopher known as Sextus empiricus, who was an early critic of Plato's teaching. And in Sextus essentially held that there were only one of three possible options whenever trying to settle the contingent status of proposition, call it P, whatever it is. And essentially those three possibilities were the argument of infinitism, the argument of coherentism, and the argument of foundationalism, which axiomatic argument certainly would be a fall under a type of foundationalism. And so if you're saying that that isn't good evidence, well, the other two possibilities aren't good evidence either. Infinitism doesn't work because say that you have proposition A, how is A proven? Well, presumably by B, how's B? Oh, Ben locked up with a very, very powerful question. How do you settle the contingent status of B? Well, yes. Ben, you locked up for about 15, 20 seconds there. So I want to make sure your video is still locked up. We can hear you on audio. So I want to make sure you said that because I couldn't hear what you said. You are back now. What was it again? OK, yes. I was simply pointing out that there were three possible ways to attempt to settle the contingent status of any proposition that we might be discussing. According to the early Greek philosopher, Sextus empiricus, who held the first possibility was infinitism. If we're trying to say, how do we settle the contingent status of proposition A, presumably you say A is proven by B, B is proven by C, C is proven by D and so on and so forth until you reach contingent proposition Z. But what happens when you read Z? How do you settle the contingent status of Z? Well, the infinitist argument essentially says that you prove Z on the basis of contingent proposition A1 and A1 is proven by B1. B1 is proven by C1 and so on and so forth until you read Z1. But now you've got the same problem and it goes back and basically onwards and onwards forever. That doesn't seem to prove anything. And so if you don't like door number one, where do you go? Sextus empiricus said you go to door number two, and that's the argument of coherentism. Coherentism essentially says that we should have perhaps decided to do something different when we reached contingent proposition C. In other words, when we reach Z, we probably should have said something like, well, Z is proven by Y. But how is that different from saying that Z is proven by A? And that raises the question of whether or not circular reasoning is valid. This is often where scientific discussion goes. If we wish to say, well, how do you know that's true to a scientist? The scientist simply takes the warrant for the proof and tosses it back to some previous member of the set, well, at least all the proofs are coherent with one another and that forms a better resolution to our original inquiry into A than the idea that nothing can be proven, which is where infinitism leads you. So if neither of these two options works, well, then you've always got door number three and that's the argument of foundationalism, foundationalism essentially says that Z could have proven by just simply saying, well, Z is settled. Now, there are two historic forms that foundationalism has essentially taken. The first would be that of presuppositionalism. And the second is by axiomatic arguments. And so presuppositions are simply blindly presupposed. But axioms are self evidently true. Take sexist and pure existence argument, for example. Isn't it the case that it's axiomatically true that the only way to settle the contingent status of Z is by either going to a prime Y or Z itself, just simply saying at Z, either you go backward this way or you stay. And so that's axiomatically true. And so therefore it is on the basis of these kinds of demonstrations that we can know whether or not something is settled in a final sense. If you're going to argue for coherentism, that doesn't work because it begs the problem of circular reasoning. And anyway, if you're going to go that direction, coherentism seems to collapse to a form of foundationalism. So the scientist is essentially saying, well, I foundationally believe that all of my empirical deliverances are true. But isn't that just a form of foundationalism? So then what's wrong with the Christian's evidence? So if those are the only three live options we have in terms of what types of evidence we can or not from. Well, certainly I would say that sexist, empiricist arguments are so persuasive that most modern philosophers have essentially said that that they're almost irresistible. Except me, I find that to be true. Well, so this is an interesting topic that I've had lots of conversations with, except it has nothing to do with whether or not there's good evidence for God. And instead of just relying on sexist, I've actually looked into things a little bit further and more modern. I don't know if you're familiar with Susan Hock, who's come up with a thing that she calls found heritism, which is an epistemology that combines principles of foundationalism with coherentism. I don't know what I don't know what the defeater is for that. It seems to be the most consistent of the view that is most consistent with the way that I go about things. However, at the end of the day, I'm a scientific skeptic. And what I want is evidence. I don't want somebody to tell me God is axiomatic because clearly, like, if I were to tell you know God, that the notion that God exists is axiomatic, you would reject that. And so there must be some reason for opting for God is axiomatic. But the second you do that, you're saying there isn't good evidence for God or I'm not aware of good evidence for God, because if there is evidence for it, you don't take it as an axiom. I don't. There's evidence for DNA testing. I don't have to take it as axiomatic that DNA testing works. It is evidence based. And if in fact there is a God, does God let me I'll have questions about God. Does the God that you're advocating, can that God act within the material world in a way that is detectable? I think so. I don't see why not. He's God. I don't see why not either. But if God is detectable, then you don't need an axiom. Here, here, evidence. So yes, what is something that God can do that we can empirically verify? Yeah, I would say that miracles would be an example of this. But getting back to the argument for God's existence, I think that you can easily force any sign, wonder or miracle that you see into an infinite regressive proofs. No reason not to you've got that option or you can just simply try to argue from some other presupposed basis of code. You're really great if you didn't spend nearly so much time trying to anticipate what my objection is going to be and just have the discussion.  It literally had nothing to do with my position or this debate at all. And now I'm asking, can God do something in reality that is detectable? And you say, yes, miracles, but before I can even start to talk about this, you're immediately anticipating what objections are going to be. Please identify. Please identify some miracle that we can reasonably attribute to a God. Well, you're asking for a miracle that you and I can reasonably tribute to God.  I love, I'd love to give any example of any miracle because I hear a lot of things about miracles. I have yet to hear about any miracle that has actually been verified. And it's actually been verified. Yeah. Well, I think that the arguments for the resurrection of Jesus are fairly. The resurrection of Jesus hasn't been verified. That depends on on what you are demanding as a reasonable grounds for verification. So I think that essentially the problem that I see is that in many cases, and I don't know if this is the case with you. So I won't sort of suppose on the front end that this is the way that you see things, but many, many atheists and skeptics seem to suggest that that all these arguments from history, historical debates are based on induction. I promise I'm trying not to I'm trying to be as patient as I can. Please stop debating other atheists that aren't here and have the conversation with the one that's here. I'm not here to defend what other atheists believe. All I've asked is provide the evidence for a miracle and you are now talking about what other atheists believe. How is that relevant to you providing evidence for a miracle? Sure. Well, I think that the evidence for the miracle of the resurrection is fairly strong because it's been historically substantiated and that's good enough. It seems otherwise. It seems seriously serious. Now, I want to make sure we're clear because there's a sound about right there where I asked you for a miracle and your statement is the evidence for the for the resurrection is historical and that's good enough for you. You didn't provide any evidence. You just once again told me what you're convinced of. How can I and I swear I'm not trying to be obtuse. I am here as a lost soul according to your notion. According to your religious view, which I don't really know particularly well, I'm going to guess that I am desperately in need of the truth about Jesus or my soul is damned to elimination or hell. I don't know if you believe in a literal hell or what. And yet when I ask you to provide evidence for a miracle, your answer is the resurrection is historically confirmed enough to suit you. Yes, I think it's I think I don't know what we have to talk about because you're not presenting any evidence in your opening. You're not presenting any evidence in this discussion.  I haven't gotten around to how much particularly what the evidence is. I can we've been debating for almost an hour. The whole purpose of the debate was to present evidence for God. How could you possibly say I haven't gotten around to it yet?  No, no, I do believe that I've gotten around to the notion that I think we have a good reason to suppose on the basis of an axiomatic demonstration that God exists. That's the topic for tonight's discussion. And that's what I've come ready to speak into. But you don't present any evidence and you're wanting to us accept it axiomatically, which means that now we're not even having a debate. Well, I would say that the other two options that we have in the Trialema, I just mentioned are unfavorable. And I think that perhaps you would say that that's true as well. The Trialema you just talked about infinitism, coherentism and foundationism are about epistemology. They are not about a God. Sure, you barely spoken evidence. You have barely spoken about a God. And now when I say where's the evidence, you say, well, there's only those three opposite three possibilities. Well, first of all, I already acknowledge maybe there aren't. I don't care if you see any others. I just pointed you to Susan Hawks, found heritism, but in the end of the day, no matter which yes, which no matter which epistemological model you use, there's either evidence for a God or there's not and there's either good evidence for God or there's not. Are you ever planning to present good evidence for a God, which was the purpose of this debate? I think that essentially what I've come into this discussion to do is to simply show that there are good reasons to believe that God exists and that I think that axiomatic demonstrations are the strongest form of evidence that we would have if somebody we didn't agree on a debate of, hey, can I come up with a good reason to believe in a God? And the only thing that I have to do is say that I'm convinced it's good. The issue here under debate was, is there good evidence for God? If we're not going to talk about evidence on the type of evidence that you're willing doesn't matter what evidence depends on, you have to actually present it. If you're not going to present evidence for the existence of God, then we should have had a debate about epistemology, which I'm happy to do. I just did a couple of weeks ago. But if I would agree to do a debate on epistemology, then we can discuss that. But if you're going to say, I'm going to come in and debate Matt Dillony on whether or not there's good evidence for God, and I'm not going to present any evidence good or otherwise. And I'm just going to say that it's axiomatic and that I don't see anything newer or more found or more reliable than what a second century Greek thought about epistemology. I don't know what to say. There's nothing more to do. My my job here is to point out why I either accept or reject your evidence. But if you're not going to present evidence, then we're wasting time in that as well. Just go to questions. This might be an interesting question to ask is what is the reason to suppose that an axiomatic demonstration is somehow a faulty reason or suspect reason to believe in the existence of God? Because it needs to be supported by evidence. You can't say you could take there's no God belief that one could propose that one couldn't accept axiomatically. I could axiomatically accept Allah, Yahweh, whatever model Scientology is, it doesn't even have to be a God. I could axiomatically accept any one of those. I'm concerned with whether or not there's evidence and whether or not there's good evidence. And I was told that I was coming to a debate about whether or not there's good evidence. And now you're not presenting any good or otherwise and saying that it's unnecessary because it being axiomatic is enough. Now, if something's axiomatic, seems that that's true. If something's axiomatic, there's no debate. Well, I think that you would be in a position to say whether or not you agree that that type of demonstration is good enough to persuade you, Matt Dill Hyundai, for the existence of a God that since it seems that we don't have a good grounds for launching an argument, which says that this isn't true and I don't think that I've heard one, then I would say you don't get to do this. You don't get to say you haven't heard an argument against God when we already established that they outset and you agree that the burden of proof is on you. It's not up to me to prove there is no. I think that it's best to say that in any discussion, one way or the other, I do not view the the standpoint of atheism as being something that is somehow epistemically, well, I'm sorry, I'm defending my position. The debate here is that you either have good evidence for the existence of God, which I then either acknowledges is good evidence or I say it's not good evidence and here's why, but I'm not in any position where I'm required to prove that a God doesn't exist in both in real life with the fact of me being an atheist and putting the burden of proof where it's supposed to be based on proper epistemology. However, in this debate, the debate is, is there good evidence? Now, I'm going to ask this just one last time and then maybe we'll just go on to questions from the audience. Are you going to present actual evidence for either way? I think that I have shown that there are three possibilities, three major possibilities, and I already did mention the combination of coherentism and foundationalism in my explanation. And I think I said that there are these three possibilities that we might entertain on how to establish evidence of any kind or some sort of a demonstration of any kind. I think this is a fairly good one. It seems to me that it's fairly strong. I haven't heard any good arguments against it. And so I think that because it seems to stand up the way that it does to questioning that it's a fairly sturdy grounds for believing that God exists. OK, yeah, congrats, but you presented no evidence. Maybe well, I think the debate is about good evidence. You don't just get to say it's axiomatic. That's not what evidence is. I I think that this is one form of evidence that we have to choose from. We have to choose from one of the three. And we don't have any other options. So you keep going. You're so obsessed. We are so obsessed. You are so obsessed over these three categories of epistemology, despite the fact that they may or may not be exhaustive, that it doesn't matter which one of those is true enough to see. Wow, it doesn't matter which one of those is true, or even if there's another option or not, whatever epistemology that doesn't seem like there is. Am I going to be able to finish? I apologize. Please do finish.  No evidence. Just hey, there's only three ways to look at knowledge. And it can't be this and it can't be this. Therefore, God is axiomatic. Well, first of all, that's not an argument. You've presented no argument with no structure and in a debate about whether or not there's good evidence, you presented no evidence and just asserted it's axiomatic. So I mean, I don't look at debates as when lose, but this is a lose for you under all the criteria of the debate because I came into debate. Is there good evidence for God? And you came in to say there isn't, but it's axiomatic. OK, congrats. I think that this is this is a good and persuasive argument. And I think, as I said at the beginning, as you agreed in your presentation, that we weren't having some sort of a formal debate. We were just two people that were talking about things that we believed. And that's essentially what I'm presenting here. I don't know. But the topic wasn't. Sorry, I interrupted. I apologize. Oh, no, you can go ahead and speak. I'm willing to the debate wasn't. Is there a persuasive argument for God?  Of course, there are persuasive arguments for God. There are persuasive arguments for anything. There's a persuasive argument for the Flat Earth, but we know that's not true. There's a persuasive argument for countless things. I care about what's truth. And truth is based when we have demonstrable, identifiable truth. It is rooted in evidence supporting it. Not is there a persuasive argument? I can make persuasive arguments for almost anything, especially if I find exactly the right audience. But if there's good evidence, that's a different story. Perhaps our discussion could be helped by your saying, what counts as good evidence? I I talked about what do you mean? I will see I address this a little bit in my opening remark about what sort of evidence should be good and that should explain the available facts entirely and that there shouldn't be exceptions for it and that it should not lead to multiple different conclusions that are that are similar, really are equally justified, but that I can't tell you. Here is the standard for good evidence for any individual claim until we've assessed the nature of that claim. And then my job is someone presents evidence and I tell them either. Here's why that is good evidence or here's why I don't consider that good evidence. But if my interlocutor is not going to present any evidence, then I have nothing to work with of the two of us. I'm the only one that actually talked about some criteria for good evidence. I hate to. Yeah, yes. So then I take it that you're saying, oh, yes, please, our moderator, this might be a good chance to move into the Q&A. Otherwise, if we have maybe I'm open to it, if you guys want to have like one last back and forth in the sense of like maybe a minute or two each just to conclude. Do you have a strong opinion either way? I'm good if there's questions. I'm good for moving on to it. I think honestly, and this is no offense to Ben, I don't bury Ben any will. But I think we're going to sit here and keep repeating ourselves over and over again, because Ben's not in a position tonight to come forward with specifically good evidence in a way that could be evaluated. And I'm not ready to this late in the game. Talked about have an epistemology debate. If the evidence is such that it could be, you know, forced into an infinite regressive questions, then I would say that that's bad evidence. This this demonstration I've given is not like this. If it is something that merely is just self-coherent with itself, but pays no attention to iterating questions, then that just seems to be coherentism and that isn't very persuasive evidence either. So it seems that isn't evidence. It's an epistemology. It's like you don't know what evidence is. You say coherentism is our philosophy of knowledge. And certainly it's how we'll process evidence. It processes evidence. It's not the evidence. And you just referred to coherentism saying it's not good evidence or it's not. Yes, if if something of the variety of coherentism, then I don't think that that's very good evidence. I don't think it's evidence at all. But really the argument under discussion. If it somehow is is is playing well as a coherentist argument, if that's what it looks like, then it doesn't matter how persuasive the evidence empirically seems. It's just it's going to lead to more questions. And to me, that the strongest possible evidence that we could have would be axiomatic evidence. Now, on the basis of an axiom, suppose that P is an axiom. And then we build P directly implies Q. Q is not an axiom, but it's rooted. It's the anchoring proposition, so to speak, is an axiom. That's a good argument. I would say that's a good argument. But I don't know that short of something like that, we could say that the evidence for the existence of God would be good evidence. And so that's my point. I simply mentioned these very various competing epistemologies to simply show that the best type of evidence, the strongest type, what we could call good evidence would necessarily have, as its anchoring proposition, something that is axiomatic. I think that that would be important to our discussion. I think that it is relevant. Now, that's my opinion, and I'm certainly willing to discuss it. And I know that we can we can talk about that. I'm willing to to entertain a couple more questions, but if if Matt feels frustrated by all this, you know, I guess I have been accused at times of asking too many questions. Well, it'd be nice if you presented slightly more answers. I mean, if we're going to have a debate about whether or not there's good evidence to simply show up and say that it's self-evident that God exists, that's not good evidence. And for you to claim that something that self-evidence is the best evidence because it's not self-evident that God exists. You and by the way, you presented no argument. You've presented no argument that God is, in fact, self-evident. All you've done is assert that God is self-evident. And by I don't think so. I've shown on the basis of the impossibility of regress. You haven't demonstrated that, though. You haven't demonstrated the possibility of an infinite regress. You didn't even really dig in on it. You didn't show that a God is necessary to get out of it. And we talked about time beginning with the origin of the universe. And all you want to do is then special one or the other, but there's a God case. Whatever, let's go on to questions, I guess. We can jump into questions. Want to say thanks for your questions, folks. We will try to get through every one that we can. Forgive us if we don't get through every single one, but we're going to try to move fast. Marcos McCoy, let me know if I've mispronounced it, friend. Thanks so much for your super sticker. Then Clyde Cicites, thank you for your question, said, Matt, if a biogenesis was ever proven impossible to you, could you see this as proof of a creator God behind the creation of the first biological life? So I don't know how you would prove that a biogenesis is impossible. And it would it would it would need to be that the nature of that disproof or the or showing that a biogenesis impossible necessarily leaves only a God as an option, because the fact that you were somehow able to demonstrate that life can't arise from non-life. That doesn't mean that you can show that life arose from non-life by means of magic. It has to be something else. All of these things that want to appeal to God as if it's the only explanation left is just a failure of human imagination and creativity. It is, I can't think of anything better than a God did it. And science hasn't been able to show us anything better than the God did. As a matter of fact, it doesn't look like this is possible. And since it apparently happened, it must be God. That is actually a fallacious argument. So no, I'm not going to be convinced as God. What will convince me of a God is actual positive evidence for the proposition. It's like if we found out tomorrow that evolution was completely fiction, that doesn't mean that God created life or its diversity. That is a separate proposition that needs evidence for it. I would agree that if we showed that a biogenesis is impossible, that it might make it seem like that there's a God that's more likely. The problem is that to assume that you've demonstrated you have eliminated all possibilities for something like this, something like a biogenesis, would almost require you to be omniscient. That's not the way knowledge and understanding works.  Or if the if something wrote, I am the Lord, that God in the in the in the moon so that everybody could see it. Or if we could prove that a biogenesis can't happen, call me when something like that happens, because I'm not convinced that it's possible to demonstrate that a biogenesis is impossible. Gotcha. Thanks so much. And thanks for your question. This one comes from Stupid Horror Energy strikes again, saying, Gettier wasn't aware that you can get knowledge from falsehood. I think that's for you, Ben. And so what is the question? It sounds like a statement. So. Right. So with the super chats, you also allow like a court, a short comment if they want to make like an objection to it. And then we let the speaker give a response to it. So it's not per se a question, but more like a objection. I see, I see my mistake. So as I understand it, Gettier showed that it's possible to have truth, proof and belief. And yet for that not to account as knowledge. And I would agree that our account of knowledge is presently incomplete. I think that we do minimally have to affirm that truth, proof and belief are constituent to our definition of knowledge. I don't know what else we're supposed to add to it at this point. I think that Peter David Klein, former professor of philosophy at Rutgers University, has done some recent essays inquiring into solutions, novel solutions to the Gettier problems. But there is literally so much literature conjecturing on how to resolve the Gettier objections that I just think that at this point, if we had a good solution, we would all know about it. So my argument essentially leaves that issue aside and just simply moves on to the secondary question, moves on from what knowledge is to how do we get it? And I think that we have to affirm that it has to have this. And what I'm saying is that whatever we add to this list, cannot cause the implosure of the closure principle. If it implodes this, we lose our basis for science. We lose our basis for legal evidence. We lose our basis for philosophical evidence. This implies this. This or this novel prediction implies that my hypothesis is true, that scientific evidence, this body of legal evidence proves that my my my the defendant is innocent, etc. If things can't imply other things, then I would say that there's something wrong with our theory of knowledge. So it has to have these three things. And it cannot implode the closure principle. Thanks so much. And Clyde, the sites appreciate your question said, Matt, do near death experiences where people speak of a world more real than here? And seeing. Sorry, I missed part of that. Can you say it one more time? They let's see. Clyde asks, do near death experiences where people speak of a world more real than here and seeing a God ever make you have doubt in your beliefs? No, I already have doubt in my beliefs. That's the thing is that, you know, is somebody like Ben can talk in about religious skepticism. I'm a science, I'm skeptical of everything. Skepticism doesn't mean that you don't believe anything. It means that you want your internal model of reality to map to reality as best you can, so you seek out the best epistemology to make sure that you aren't fooled and to make sure that you don't know that you're not particularly gullible or whatever else. When we talk about near death experiences, I don't know what the explanation is for all of them. For some of them, it seems reasonable that a brain deprived of oxygen and a terrified in a state where it's shutting down when someone is recovered from that and their brain then says, hey, what's the best way for me to fill in this time that's missing where I can't make sense of it? And we have stories. It's not like people. People tend to have the religious visions in near death experiences that map with largely the religion that they believe in or the one they grew up with or the one that's prominent in their culture. Just the same way that when people are abducted by aliens or claim they are abducted by aliens, they now describe a much more consistent alien than what happened in the thirties, forties and fifties where aliens were big monsters or robots or whatever else. You just watch as the sci-fi changes. Eventually you get to the gray-headed almond-eyed, etc. And that becomes fairly uniform. Does that mean because the tales that people tell of being abducted by aliens have become so consistent now? Does that mean that what they're saying is likely to be true? No. We don't have good evidence for alien abductions either. We have better evidence for alien abductions than I'd say that we do for God, and I don't think aliens are abducted in anybody or come into earth either, but there's nothing about an alien abduction that necessarily violates the laws of physics or is outrageous considering the size of the universe and things like the Drake equation. But yet I do not believe that people are being abducted. I don't believe that people are having near-death experiences that in the way they describe, I think people are accurately trying to describe what they experienced as best they can. I think most people are going to do that. And I think that's how you get to near-death experiences. I think that's how you get to the Holy Spirit spoke to me. I think that's how you get to I was abducted by aliens. There are we are flawed thinkers. We prioritize our understanding and our personal experience with that. And it's not like these things are independently verified. So got you. Thanks so much, and Steven Steen. Thanks so much for your support says James is the cure for loneliness. That's very sweet. Muppet minded, thanks for your question. Said, can Ben restate his opening or best points in only one to two sentences? Sure, sure. I'll do the best that I can. And I'm guessing this is going to take you're going to give me about 10 to 15 seconds or so. I think that I have shown this evening that there are two two main points that I'm coming here to say. I'm coming here to say that I don't think that religious skepticism is a strong proof against God's existence. And I think that the arguments that I've given tonight or the argument, the single one that I have given tonight is that axiomatic evidences of the kind that I described are very strong. Certainly stronger than infinitism or coherentist arguments. You got it. And thank you for your question. This one comes in from Zamboy said, I don't know what this means. Hey, Matt, are you redpilled when it comes to female nature? Let's see. Am I redpilled if it comes to female nature? I'm pretty sure that's the men's rights advocates, men going their own way, anti-feminist douche nozzles and no, I'm actually still in touch with reality and think that women are people and should be considered equal. So sorry, you're not getting any. But next question. Gotcha. Next up, thanks for your question. This one comes from Cystic to Strong says, if everything has a cause and God caused the universe, who caused God? Doesn't somewhere down the line, something have to come from nothing? Well, I don't think it's true that we should feel that we're forced into affirming the spurious notion that something can come from nothing, something always comes from something. And so it seems that we're therefore stuck with that point. And how do we best explain this while also obviating the obvious problem of an infinite regress of some things? I think the best way to do that is to start with a cause, capital C, which is endowed with some sort of conscious freedom so that it and not some other cause outside of itself causes the other causes to be set in motion. That seems to be the best way to deal with the philosophical problems which we become presented with in regards to that question. Gotcha. All right. Thanks for your question. This one comes in from Brandon Ardeline says, how do philosophical arguments for God's existence not also apply to Ra Marduk, Ahura Mazda, Krishna, Zeus Odin, Pangu, and I can't pronounce this last one, but I think you get the idea. Yes. So I assume that that's directed toward me. I think so. Or is it directed toward Matt or would you like to take that, Matt? Or do you want to handle it? I think they're definitely I think they're trying to argue that granting your argument does it not open the door to all of these other gods being just as reasonable to believe in? Yes. Well, I certainly would concur that the the argument that I have given is not necessarily to a unique Christian God. This is just sort of a basic theistic argument, which would get you deism. It would certainly get you any of the classical monotheistic views. I do think that if we're talking about sort of beings endowed with free will that interact with one another, that seems to interact with one another in order to prove the universe. Then that seems to sort of fall on the sort of Occam's erasers. So I think that's how I would answer that objection. Gotcha. And thanks for your question. Ha, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, because I wasn't laughing at Ben. I want to clear that up. So first of all, I do think the question was you and I want to point out that there was a reason that I didn't ask and ask this question or bring it up or raise anything like it, because Ben wasn't here to necessarily defend a specific deity or a specific Christian God. The subject debate was, is there good evidence for God? I would love if there had been decent evidence or discussion about evidence. I would have loved to maybe go on to what Ben specifically believes and whether or not there's good reason for that. But somebody in chat, because I've been engaging with chat, because I, you know, trying to do you can see that. Yeah. And so I respond to somebody in chat. And of course, somebody immediately suggests that you see how mad answers. Chad, have you ever seen anybody else do that? That's a sign of insecurity. And I'm like, yeah, pull the other one. Yeah, I'm sorry, I'm sorry that I tried to interact on multiple levels because I came for a debate about one topic which never came to fruition. So I'm listening to the questions. I'm responding to this and I wanted to make sure that some people in chat got some love too. But you know what, we can keep going. Your chat, by the way, is a toxic cesspool of people that I largely would never interact with. It's embarrassingly bad. But I realize that's not your fault. If we do have some unsavory characters, that's for sure. I did address the. They're really obsessed with me.  Oh, wait, somebody just asked me if I like soy. There we go. Go ahead. I'm sorry, James, I was having fun. I'm so sorry. Well, we have we have next time we appreciate your. Oh, gosh, it's from the. I think this is the same person who I just hid in the chat. We've just had too many trouble, too much trouble from Sunflower. Sunflower, I am not going to read your question. It's just I saw what you said in Discord. And so it's like, man, I really do, folks, we want to ask you. We don't ask for much. We're pretty easy going in terms of like what, you know, we don't. We're very easy going about what people say. But at some point it's like you're pushing too far. And so next up Zulu Zelp. Thanks for Zulu Zet. Thanks for your question. Said I feel like God could put this issue to bed super easily compared to the effort of universe creation and such like. Oh, I'm sure that's for those. I think that would be for Ben. And you broke up for a second. So I didn't hear it, but it bends ready to go. That's fine. I yeah, just go ahead and read the chat one more time. And I'll do the best that I can to respond. I think they're saying like, hey, if God can read the universe, why couldn't he? I think that they're maybe saying like show himself. But they but I might be wrong. They say, I feel like God could put this issue to bed super easily compared to the effort of universe creation and such like. Mm hmm, mm hmm. Yes. And I think that it seems to me that we do have lots of testimonial evidence to the accounts of miracles that have occurred in person's lives. And all of that is certainly open for us to see. I think that if we do getting back to some of what I discuss, if we are going to say that the only kind of proof that we're going to admit for the existence of God has to respect nosic sensitivity requirement, then once again, we've imploded the closure principle and that represents too large an epistemic leap for me to commit to only to prove atheism since it results in the implosure of legal evidence, scientific evidence and philosophical evidence, you've got to have a closure principle. So therefore, I'm quite willing to welcome anecdotal evidence if the testimony seems reasonably sound if that's, of course, to some sort of a miracle that someone has experienced. Gotcha. And thanks for your question. This one's from Pilgrim, who said, when has been actually even going to attempt to provide good evidence for God and stop trying. Tying up the discussion in epistemology. I think we've kind of gotten your your response to that already. If you want to respond, you can. Otherwise. Well, I just simply respond by asking the questioner of the three options, which basically I think most epistemologists agree that they're this list that sexist empiricus came up with is almost irresistible. And so we've got to have a form of evidence that's going to be robust enough to resist infinitism or coherentism such that it can be settled in a foundationally axiomatic point. Gotcha. And I think that this presents that. Gotcha. And this question from Ryuzinski. Thanks for yours. This is more of a compliment. Thanks for your kind words. You said thanks to modern day debate and for Matt and the atheist experience, helping me understand skepticism and epistemology and Ben was a really pleasant fellow. So we appreciate that positivity. That's nice. Thank you. That's so nice because I like Ben and I would like to have more conversations with Ben. It's just that today, whatever the topic was, we don't wouldn't seem to get there. But yeah, respond to my friend request on Facebook. I'd love to stay in touch and just personal contact and whether we don't need to have debates, we could have discussion and I'd love to do that. Radical and want to say absolutely, folks, we couldn't agree more. Basically, no matter what walk of life you're from, atheists, Christian, agnostic, one of the many strange creatures in between. We do really hope you feel welcome. And so this next question comes from Helsoi says, hmm, thank you for that. And then we did have working backwards. You had a recent one from Germania. More positivity. Appreciate it. Said I just want to say I love Matt Dillahunty. Very kind of you. And then Jeff Sol said, steel man, good luck with that one. Matt, well done, Mr. Dillahunty and James, you rock. Let's see you. Let's see you. Maybe a skeptic. The one you nodded and said, mm-hmm, too. Was that somebody just flirting with you and you didn't want to read it out loud? No, no. I'm just trying to judge by your face what they said. They really said, mm-hmm. And I just was going to figure out what it meant. So you were being literal. I appreciate that. Farron say, say, Las, thanks for your question. They asked for Ben, rather than discuss a trilemma and epistemology, it seems like the trilemma should have focused on, in all caps, evidence. Yes, I think that what I've shown is that there are evidences, which will be arguments, which will cohere to one of those three possibilities. And I've shown that my demonstration coheres to the axiomatic foundationalist viewpoint. Gotcha. And what's strange is just for the record, I would recommend everybody go look up found heritism, which is Susan Hawke's attempt to combine elements of coherentism and foundationalism. I'm not going to sit here and pretend that I'm a philosophical expert in epistemology with the ability to actually assess this and say that it's better. I found it compelling as yet another option. I don't know for sure if well, I don't even think that that claiming God is axiomatic is viewed as in an argument or evidence under any of those. But it's at least worth looking into for those people who are interested. If you're legitimately interested in epistemology and you're looking at things like infinitism, foundationalism, coherentism, don't overlook something that's newer than second century. It may or may not be correct, but it can at least encourage additional thoughts on how we how we justify things. But the epistemology is independent from what the actual evidence is. The epistemology may may help us determine whether or not the evidence is good. Well, I'm glad we agree. But if that's the case, then. Anyway, go ahead. Next up, thanks for your question. Rumpley Depew says, I don't know what any of these mean. Says what advice probably not a good idea to read it then. No, no, no, I mean, maybe I should look along here to the names. A lot of the time, I don't know if it's like some sort of innuendo. But so they said, what advice, Ben, would you give to atheists that use arguments such as an all powerful God or Ken and all powerful God to create a rock that that God cannot lift? Yeah, this is this is kind of like, you know, can there be, you know, a married bachelor? Can he create a square circle? I think that these sorts of logically self contradictory things are obviously. They we can't produce this. And let's face it, Mel Gibson can put a picture on a screen using special effects of Jesus Christ rising from the dead. He can't put a picture of a square circle up there. And frankly, neither could God. Gotcha. And thank you for your question. This one. Hey, we agree. Ben and I agree on several things, but we agree on that one for sure. Thank you, Robert Lescombe for your question or statement. A critic of philosophy says philosophy is a tool for people who can't argue. I have a feeling neither of you agree with that. I think that's one of the stupidest things I've heard today, and I had arguments on Twitter with people. So you guys again, finding common ground. And then let's see, Mark Reed, thanks for your question. Ben, is there any belief that you could not support with your axiom argument? If any argument could be supported or any conclusion, then why does it support yours in particular? Very good question. And so I think that why don't you actually just read it one more time? Because something dawned on me. I have a thought on this when you're done, by the way. They said, is there any belief that you could not support with your axiom argument? If any belief could be supported, then why does it support yours? Yeah, the answer is no. That was what dawned on me initially. No, all of my Christian arguments are going to proceed from some anchoring proposition to my evidence chains and that anchoring proposition. I'm insisting that it be an axiomatic argument in order to count as strong evidence for the existence of God per the request for tonight's debate. Yeah, and I pretty much agree. So first of all, I would never say that everything could be axiomatic. And I don't think Ben said that the problem. No, no, the problem that that I have with Ben's thing, which maybe in the reason that the that the person asked this question is that because Ben is debating a very, very, very nonspecific deity, it could be deism, it could be Christianity. So he's he's saying just these bare minimum qualities are axiomatic. And those qualities are consistent with this God and this God and this God. He just happens to believe when not just just happens, but he believes in the Christian God, but that's not the specific proposition that he's defending this evening. You got it. And thank you very much for your question. This one comes in from Marcos McCovey. Thank you. You said much love and respect, James. I think you're the Zen master. I appreciate that because he's just napping through the whole beginning of all these games. Just it's it's peaceful, ironically, and then language and programming. Thanks for your question. Said Agrippa's trilemma is undefeated. Skepticism wins. Yes. And I pointed out that I don't think that that is the case because, yes, it is true that the trilemma, according to Sextus empiricus, resolves in the notion that neither of these three alternatives is as good. It's all irresolvable. But I would say that that is not the case, because we have to admit minimally that it seems to be axiomatically true that in order to prove contingent proposition A, you either do that by Z, A prime or Y. I don't know which one of these three is you're going to name other than that, other than maybe to say that you could prove Z by saying that it's dependent not on Y, but on A. But that just simply begs the question of whether circular reasoning is valid. Gotcha. And this is why, for me, the discussion about epistemologies was a kind of a distraction, especially if you have this, which is what I tried to get to, especially if you have a God that can, in fact, interact with reality in detectable ways, because so, first of all, if God can't manifest in reality in some detectable way, then that God's existence is indistinguishable from its non-existence. If there is no manifestation in reality, then from our perspective, because we're stuck in reality, we don't have the ability to peer outside of reality for any sort of verification, that God's existence is indistinguishable from its non-existence. And so anybody who believes in a God, that they think does not manifest in a detectable way in reality, and I'm happy to see that Ben is one of them, but anybody who does believe in that is saying, I believe in a God that isn't testable, falsifiable, that isn't capable of providing me any evidence for its existence in an epistemic sense. And so you must be talking about a God that manifests in reality, otherwise you're claiming to detect the undetectable. And if you can detect a God that manifests in reality, then now it's now an empirical question of, please show which things are God manifesting and how we can identify that the actual explanation for this thing that we're calling a manifestation is God. That connection between observation and cause for or explanation for that observation is the key to all of this. And yet that's the thing that's missing. And it's the thing I was coming here for was the evidence that connects. Hey, I've observed this in reality, and the best explanation for it is God. And here's why. Yeah, let me say that I think that the response, Ben, and then we must go to the next one. OK, in that case, let's move on. Gotcha. Thanks for your and then Bruce Wayne thinks your question said, I have good evidence for the non-existence of any gods. It's the axiom that gods do not exist. Q. E. D. I don't know what Q. E. D. means, though. Q. E. D. means that proves it. Ben, we'll give you a chance to respond if you want, if you feel like you've already addressed a variation of it. Well, I would simply suggest that unless you could show that there was something wrong with the presentation I gave, which was a demonstration that God in his existence, that he is axiomatically present in any world that we imagine, well, unless you could show that that was somehow wrong, I don't see it seems to me that we're just stuck with the notion that he does. If it can't be conceptionally erased, then it seems to me that we're stuck with him. Alex Gross, thanks for your question said, why would the strongest argument for God be an esoteric appeal to a personally assumed set of epistemological claims? Is God trying to hide from us? It's an interesting question. And I assume that one is for me. Since I'm pretty well known for the argument from Divine hiddenness as an actual argument against the existence of God. And so that's probably why somebody's asking it. Probably why it was brought up. Yeah. And certainly the biblical authors themselves seem to ask that very question, Lord, why hideest thou thy face from me? And I think that that is one of the strongest existential reasons that people rally to the fore to refute the existence of God. But it doesn't seem to me that it has a philosophical rub. It seems to me that it has a more of an existential rub. And that's why I don't find that I am singularly persuaded by this notion. It isn't powerful enough in that sense to overcome the conviction that results from the realization that God's existence may be axiomatically demonstrated. Thank you very much. And Harley Quinn, thanks for your question, said, standards of evidence must be shared to be meaningful, relevant to the discussion. Great. And then say they say standards exclusive to Matt would be meaningless to both parties. It's it's independent verifiability that gives arguments warrant or belief. And then they continue if Matt was somehow being dismissive, which he isn't, it would nevertheless stand separately from the lack of sufficient evidence for God claims. Yeah, this is why I put together, I said, an interesting experiment would be like list 10 things. Five of them, I think we both believe in five of bends. It should be things that he and he thinks we both agree with. And then the other five should be things that we suspect the other person disagrees with. And then when we talk about the evidence that convinced us of the first five, assuming we get it right, compare that to the nature, the quality, quantity, nature and assessment of the evidence for the other five things. And the one whose worldview is the most consistently applying evidence and evaluation of evidence, the one that is less likely to be engaged in special bleeding. The one who doesn't violate the Dockham's razor by not multiplying entities unnecessarily and claiming that, you know, God is an axiom when this is something that we should be able to demonstrate and not have to assume axiomatically. I would argue that that is the better epistemology in practice, irrespective of any philosophical notion that a worldview consistently applied where you're not like, oh, I'll accept this evidence except for that.  I mean, you can't have both Allah in the Muslim sense and Yahweh in the Jewish sense be correct and true. Only one of those two, if either, could be correct. And so this is how we're going to try to drill down. And like I said, I'm not attacking Ben for this because Ben came to defend it, particularly this would be the starting point. Like if we can show there is a God and we get to agree on that, then we start working out what kind of which God is probably the right one. So I'm not I'm not faulting Ben for that, but it's it's a really difficult situation to say, ah, well, yes, there's good evidence and it's because I don't know. Now I'm harping on it again, we'll go into whatever question. I don't need to repeat my objections. You got it. Thanks for your this one is a question from lost my spot. This one Maynard saves. Thanks for your question. Said James James, would you debate Matt on this exact topic? If given the opportunity, that would be juicy. I haven't debated in a long time, maybe someday. And thanks for your question from Dildo Baggins class to see you. Says, I know what that one means. Says, did you screen these interlocutors? That's just an inside joke because we one time, Darth Dawkins, who I think, Matt, you know, Darth Dawkins is called the show. I don't know all that much, despite what people think. I don't hang out and worry about every little YouTuber out there. I think he's called the show. I think he's no longer allowed to call. I don't know. Yeah, we we've had a run in with him as well. So that's an inside joke about Darth Johnny Moe. Thanks for your question said question for Ben. Is there anything that would convince you that God doesn't exist or probably doesn't exist? If so, specifically, what would it take? You know, I've thought about that question a lot. And a lot of my conclusions came out of a season of personal wrestling. As I shared with Matt prior to coming life on modern day debate, that I'd encountered a season of profound existential crisis. And that all of the tenets of my faith were brought into question in that short season. And as I result, how I was going to leave that season or not, I reasoned that I wasn't simply going to allow myself to read the Bible alone, but that if I couldn't find a defeater for the problem of religious skepticism, that I was going to essentially probably cash in my faith, or at least I would have just had to relinquish it on a rational basis. At this point, the reason I'm a Christian is because I feel that these arguments are so strong that I cannot resist the notion that atheism is false. That that because I haven't seen a good argument from propositional atheism to convince me that it's true, the argument of evil, etc. And then the other variety, which is just simply lack theism. Paul Draper refers to this as psychological atheism. There doesn't seem to be a good argument even for psychological atheism. Sure, there is. That is the state of being. Sure, there is. The argument, the argument for all depend on skepticism. And again, this is an argument which is now over the past 40 years been collapsed in secular academia. It's it's weird. So first of all, what you've done and what you've just completely described, I would love to to go through it in detail at some point when we're not in this, is you basically shifted the burden of proof to is there is there a good reason to think people could disprove God? And then when you found what you think is a problem or a defeater for a particular notion that you're calling religious skepticism without looking at actual skepticism, you're like, I don't I think that to share precisely the same canonical form. You know, it just well, well, they don't or we could say we could say charitably, we could say that what about the problem of underdeterminism? But there again, the reason for the underdeterminism becomes the admission to essentially a set to nosic sensitivity requirement. Again, the closure principle collapses and I just can't rationally make that sort of an epistemic commitment, give up. Philosophical, legal, scientific evidence, just to argue that I've got a good reason to psychologically doubt, well, or to philosophically. I'm sorry, but that's that's the way reality goes. See, the thing is, the time to believe something is after there's evidence for it, the time to believe something is not after you've failed to find a defeater for the opposition. Well, again, the evidence, the strong evidence, the strong evidence winds up being something that must be axiomatic. If it isn't that strong, I'm not going to believe it. I don't think axioms aren't evidence. Let's go on to the next one. Shebork, thanks for your question, said to both of our guests, wouldn't a plant based diet be problematic for evolution since we've eaten meat for one for hundreds of thousands of years in science shows? It's still harming us. I love steak. Wouldn't wouldn't a plant based this person seems to suggest that wouldn't a plant based diet be harmful for us? Yeah, that's how the question started. I think that, well, in particular, they say, wouldn't how much do this person to pay to ask such an irrelevant question? See, five dollars. I'd refund that just because clearly they need five dollars to go out and figure out what the sun like I might I might push back on Ben a little bit for for skipping past the subject of this debate, but somebody who donates five dollars to ask about a plant based diet in a debate about good evidence for God. When we didn't even get anything more than an axiom, I'd give them their five bucks back. Matter of fact, if you want me to have them send me a message. No, screw it. I was going to personally refund their five dollars, but I think that people probably deserve to lose it. So next up, thanks for wasting it. Let's see. I don't fully understand it. I'm sorry. I'm a vegan. I need to tell somebody right now. If I don't tell somebody right now, my head will literally explode. I exactly what that was. Matt Wilson thinks your question said, Ben, the fifth axiom of geometry seems arbitrary, but if you remove it, you end up with completely different geometry. If you assume God as an axiom, you can also test by assuming no God, nothing changes unlike geometry. Well, I would just simply say that then how do we resolve the problem of the infinite regressive causes? I don't think there have been any persuasive arguments I've ever heard for this notion, except for a grand cause, capital C, that sets the other causes in motion. So that was a strong argument for me. I think that the reason that it's not strong evidence for met might be due to what I sometimes have referred to as I've lectured on this point. It has something to do with what I call the rule of independence, which is the notion that you need something other than the thing itself to demonstrate that you have evidence for the thing. And I, of course, do not think that that's the case. I think things can be self evident. The word evident is in there. Evidence and evident are cognates. So I think that that might be the difference. Is that for Matt, I think he views. And I understand that I can certainly relate to that. I personally struggle with that notion myself. But I came to believe through the process of my own introspection that that was not the only option, that there were these other two options and the one that seemed the strongest was an axiomatic basis. For believing a proposition. Gotcha. And I'm sure. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. But we have a list. I hate to rush. It's just that we have a good amount yet. Josiah Bradbury, thanks for your question. Ben, you said, quote, if there was a good argument, we'd all know it. And why why not apply that to this the same to God? So that's for me. So if there was a good argument, we'd all know it. I think that. Didn't didn't Matt say that? Yeah, that's actually both said so. I said at the beginning that if there was a good argument, I would know about it. And then I went on to explain it. And then curiously, a little later on, you said almost the exact same thing and that you would know about it. And I think that's what they're asking. I can't remember the context or what it was. Perhaps if I were able to rewind the video, I could more adequately address it. I just can't remember it. It comes to mind. I apologize. The person, if I could refund them their money. Maybe it'll come back up and RT66 drone says to both shouldn't believe the proportional to the amount and quality of supporting evidence. There is no infinite regress necessary in proportional belief or science. Correct. So I as a humist, one of my favorite things that he never said is the wise man proportions is believed to the evidence or your confidence level in something should be proportional to the evidence for it. And so if there's mountains of evidence for it, that's something you should be really confident about, but never absolutely certain. And the other thing from him, of course, is that you reject the greater miracle. Hume does not say except the lesser miracle. He specifically says, reject the greater miracle. And that ties in with a notion of falsification and bird of proof and all that stuff. But yeah, your confidence should be proportional to the evidence. And if you're taking something as axiomatic, axiomatic is the notion that the thing is evidence of itself. I don't know how anybody could ever say God is axiomatic without showing God. That you give me the demonstration of God. And I would agree it is now axiomatic that that demonstration that there is a God. When you when you say we have an axiom that, you know, this quantity plus this quantity results in this quantity, that is demonstrable. I can take. I can take. One rubber band. And a second rubber band and show that when I put them together, I have two rubber bands. It's not just an axiom, this notion of addition. It is something that is practically demonstrable as well. And when you start taking things as axiomatic that have no. Demonstration in reality. I don't I find demonstration demonstration is the the practical example of a proposition being likely true. It is the I'm going to show you the thing that I assert.  Now, obviously, we know that can't happen in reality, but I just provided a demonstration of it. And so the question is, is that good evidence I can pull my finger off? No, we have evidence for other things as well. Yeah, and I would say that when it comes to axioms or like laws of logic or things like this, that here we don't need a single operational instance of these working anywhere in the universe to believe that the proposition under discussion or the law of logic or, you know, at laws of axioms of math, etc., must be true. I don't think that they're dependent upon any empirical operational instance of them to be true. Gosh, that might be a difference between the two of us as well. Thanks so much. And this one comes in from Brian F says, God has promises like draw near to God and God will draw it out near to you in my history of knowing God. It's 100 percent true. Can you relate to this, Ben? And then they say M N T. Oh, Minnesota, Tins, Twin Cities, I think they're saying. Oh, this might actually be one of my students. And yes, for me, this was the censure. This is that I found that experientially, the presence of God was with me in the midst of my doubt, and this also was extremely confirming to everything. So once I came to see that there were really no good philosophical reasons to doubt the existence of God, the persistence of the Holy Spirit's presence with me just overwhelmed me. And I found that this was a tremendous confirming point. All of these discussions aside, they're very complex, especially for those that perhaps consider themselves maybe novices to the subject matter. I can certainly understand that this just seems overly complex. And perhaps that's to my own fault. I just simply asked a lot of questions as I went through my own experience with this. But for me personally, this was a tremendous reason for continuing to rest in the staying power of God in the midst of my life through the worst trial that I'd ever suffered. It really was the worst. Gotcha. Thanks so much. And Taliesin Oberlander says, James, you didn't screen my interlocutors again. So another Darth Dawkins reference. Jay, thanks for your question said this isn't a question for either participant. But I love this channel and thank you for doing what you do. Also, I like this Matt guy. Thanks so much, Jay, for your encouragement. We do love the positivity. It means a lot as it's true. We have some sometimes as a battlefield out there. Jeff Sol, thanks for your question. Oh, we got that one already. And so let me jump up to the next one. We have Bartos Diagos. Appreciate it. Is religion only in this world for philosophy? Is that for matter? I don't even know what it means. Me neither is religion only in this world for philosophy. For the sake of doing philosophy. I think religion exists in this world because people are flawed thinkers. And we'd like to know and understand things and we're terrified of being alone. And so we invent stories and some people are convinced some of the stories are true. Now, whether or not they're true is independent from what we do with respect to religion because there are plenty of there are more religions that exist right now than could possibly be true. I think we're all in agreement on that. They can't all be true. And so in many cases, what we're talking about when we talk about religion is what human beings do to build communities, to pretend that they have answers to things that they don't have answers to and to eliminate their fears of being alone. Gotcha. Let's see. Next, Goman. Thanks for your question said to Ben. Why did it take God 50 years after A.D. to have the first outside source or witness, Thales, who mentioned Christ? Well, I would say that this, quite frankly, seems not this question or seems not to be aware of the fact that the speed at which the gospel at its core was committed to writing and then was copied and spread throughout the ancient world, leading to a tremendous amount of material coming from geographically stranded areas, all independent of each other. For that to have happened as quickly as at 50 AD is actually, I think that one of one of the main New Testament scholars they called it a news flash, comparatively speaking, to the development of historical writing in other contexts and traditions. So. Gotcha. And thank you, Gur, for your question said for for Ben.  Sure. So I think I is just talking sort of about the Canaanite battles and the killing of all of these people that were engaged in all these abominations. I think they mean capital punishment in both cases. Oh, capital punishment, capital punishment. Well, if we go to a theological question like that, I think it's important to answer it theologically and there the Bible speaks for itself, laying out its own theological case. And I think there I would just simply point out that Paul, the apostle, who really is the Rosetta Stone for unlocking the meaning of the rest of scripture, seems to suggest that we need to have a chasm of separation between the two broad locuses of scripture called law and gospel. There can't be any gospel in law and there can't be any law in gospel. These two things need to be kept very, very separate from one another. Or else we wind up with false theologies, according to Paul, the apostle. So it seems to be the case that therefore that we aren't to try to look for some sort of, you know, merciful expressions in the way that God penalizes in an eternal sense human beings who wind up in hell. I think that that's something that is there because the law doesn't contain any grace. But then the opposite turns out to be true, that there's no there's no law in grace either. There's no requirements when it comes to the grace of God, but it's to be freely received. Gotcha. And thanks for your question. This one comes from the quiet gorilla says, let's see, here's your support. M.D.D. Thanks for your support. And they said, and for Ben, there are millions of books that state that the universe was, in fact, sneezed out of the great green arcal seizure. Is that also axiomatic evidence? Well, that would depend. I'm not familiar with the particular case that's being discussed here. I don't recall if this comes from one ancient text or another. I'm not an expert at these texts. Got you. So let me say that. But if the description entails an infinite regress of events such that the deity in question engages in something that sometimes is called discursive thinking, one thought that another thought that another thought and this goes on for eternity, then that description of God is logically incoherent. And I don't think we're stuck with that one. Gotcha. And thanks for your question. This one comes in from YouTube punk says, has been familiar with Alan's proof for God and love you, James. Thanks for that. We love you too. Thanks. Alan's proof for God. What? Who is Alan? I've never heard. I don't know what this is. Oh, I think it might be an inside joke of Alden's. I don't know for sure, but there's just a it's like nothing at all harmful. Like it's all in good fun and it has nothing to do with it. Ting's zing. Thanks for your question. Said question for both granting all the weird space time arguments. Kalam or the uncaused cosmological argument type things. How do people assume consciousness? Why is this taken seriously in debates? I genuinely feel like I'm missing something. They're objecting to people assuming consciousness. I don't assume consciousness. Consciousness is the label that we put on specific interactions between what are assumed to be and are somewhat demonstrably thinking agents. Like, I don't just assume that Ben is conscious. Ben demonstrates his consciousness by interacting. And while we can't be absolutely certain about that or anything else, it is, you know, we have the Turing test for a reason and maybe someday a computer, you know, will will truly be conscious in that sense. But the demonstration of consciousness, which I would hope that Ben would agree, is the fact that we are both sitting here having a conversation and that the bulk of the evidence demonstrates that the thinking agents that are capable of having conversations in this way are what we define as conscious agents. I don't know. I mean, it's not quite axiomatic. We define what a conscious agent looks and is capable of. And Ben and I are both here demonstrating the capabilities that we have defined as a conscious agent. I don't know what more there is to do, say. Yeah, I would only add to that since the question was directed to both of us that we have certainly the great, the great maximum, I think, therefore I am, if there's some possible universe in which that's not true, then we don't know if we're in that universe. So it seems that we have to admit that that's true. I mean, just as axiomatically true as it was originally argued. Appreciate it. Dave Gar, your question. They said my takeaway from the debate, human knowledge is extremely fragile. Especially when we decide what the axioms are. Any thoughts? Appreciate it, Dave Gar. Oh, by the way, a quick quick thing because Anders pointed it out. The Turing test is not a test for consciousness. That's not what I meant to imply. I meant to imply that the Turing test is something that we tried to determine whether or not we're speaking with a consciousness that is that is human like. That's what I meant for the Turing test, not that it proves consciousness. Consciousness is the definition. Anyway, I miss, I'm sorry, I'm not multitasking well. So I was and now I'm not. No problem. And then that last one I am trying to think of. Nobody, if you have a response, otherwise. All good. I don't I don't have a response. Thanks, YouTube punk for your question said, damn it, Alden's proof. Oh, because yeah, they did. They they were trying to say what they meant was not Alan's proof of God. They were trying to say Alden's proof of God. Oh, never mind. OK, so just a goofy one. Grandpa, meet. Thanks for your question said, Ben, what's your best reason to assume God is a good foundation or even a foundation at all? I think it's just exactly what I said is that there has to be this capital C cause has to have a consciousness within itself. Otherwise, the cause of the cause, the cause of the other causes. Is the cause that should be getting the capital C something outside of that? And so if the reason why the cause capital C causes the other causes to be said in motion lies within itself, that implies some sort of a conscious will. God, it seems to me that that's that's the answer to the question. By the way, for the person in chat who says that I have previously said atheism is a religion, that's not true. If you want to send me evidence that I've said that, I will happily correct it. Because every time I've ever been asked or had any I've never thought atheism is a religion, I don't think it qualifies a religion. I think the the accusation that atheism is a religion is monumentally stupid in the sense that it would be it would be more more foundational to say that having a preference for a football team is closer to religion than atheism. Atheism has no tenants, no dogma, no hierarchy, no instruction. It is not even necessarily a positive belief. There's no practices or anything else. At no point would I ever defend the notion that atheism is a religion. And if somebody thinks they've heard me say that, please send me proof. But I probably won't correct it after you send it other than to say, I don't recall ever saying such thing. If I did, I misspoke. If I didn't, you misheard. But it doesn't matter because atheism isn't a religion. Gotcha. And thank you for this one. This one comes in from Bartos Diagos said, what religious people need to understand is that God exists in your head created by your brain. After that, you can live your life however you want. Ben, are you in agreement? I know you sure understood that one. Yes, I when this is interesting. I mean, is there good evidence for the existence of God? If God is just an idea in your head, just think of him and he exists. I just I don't know what else to say. I mean, is it was that for me or was it for Matt? I I think it was definitely for you. I don't even know if I'm answering the question. I don't even know if that's a question. I'm sorry that I apologize to the to the questioner for failing to understand the point. No problem. And Harry Potter 9890 says might be off topic, but I'll ask anyway. Let me see. OK, so say Matt and Ben, are you familiar with Alan Watts? And if so, what do you think about his ideas? I don't have I don't have a whole lot of thoughts on Alan Watts. So I don't have anything particularly. I would want to actually review stuff so that I'm more familiar, more ready. I'm not a big fan or follower of Alan Watts. So I wouldn't want to misrepresent him or say what I agree with or not. You bet. I do. I do a decline to comment as well. It also has nothing to do with this debate. Gotcha. And Pilgrim, thanks for your question. Said, don't worry, we don't have too many more. Thank you guys so much. I hope you had a big dinner. We're going to try to move fast. I didn't actually, but I'll make it. Thank you for your patience. Pilgrim said, can Ben demonstrate how God is self-evident? The idea is controversial and not consensual. So how does this transfer into axiomatic evidence for God? Well, I think it's important that we try to in some way disambiguate what we mean by by axiom, axiomatic demonstrations versus presuppositions, since these are two characteristically different versions of foundationalism in which it has historically been taken up. So if we're to try to sort of disambiguate these two things, a presupposition is just something which is assumed on axiom. Is a self-evident irreducible prime? It's something which we were just really never justified in questioning like A plus B is equal to B plus A. What is the rational basis for questioning that? And so essentially the claim here is that axiomatic versions of foundationalism are self-evidently true, while presuppositions are things that we just assume to be true without there being a self-eventsing quality to it. So I don't know if that helps at all, but I don't know that it does because that's not remotely my understanding of axiom. And don't get me wrong, I'm happy to go through and look up under whatever philosophical dictionaries you want. But if you just go to Wikipedia to start with, it specifically points out that an axiom, postulate or assumption, is a statement that is taken to be true to serve as a premise or starting point for further reasoning and argument. The fact that we're taking something as true is not the same as it is true. And if you have something that is unfalsifiable, I don't know how you can possibly ever hope to to show that it's true. I don't know how there can be a demonstration of the truth. But in like axioms in mathematics are things that we assume what we're assuming is not X is true, but we're assuming it is universally true, that there is a uniformity and that there's no no way in no circumstances ever where mathematics is denied or is wrong. So I mean, granted, that's well, I think that leads to some immediate problems. That leads to me if we say that if we say that there's something out, there's a possibility that outside of the universe, the axioms of mathematics don't apply because we don't know. T