We have another discussion tonight. We're gonna be having a debate between Sir Tom Jump and Ms. Sybil. We're gonna be talking about Christianity. Is it reasonable? And I just wanna start though by saying thanks for being here. We appreciate all the support. And we're going to have a, all the super chats tonight are gonna be going to a charity for Ben Arbor's family. It's very unfortunate what happened to Ben. By the way, please let us know if the audio and everything's good. But Ben Arbor and his wife both passed and it's really sad for those of us who know him. He's been quite a, an inspiration to a lot of us and a formidable opponent for others of us. But all the super chats tonight will go toward the fund for Ben Arbor's family. He, I believe he had four kids. So him and his wife to both sides. It was just so tragic and I loved Ben. So with that being said, all the super chats will go to that fund and thanks so much ahead of time for that support. And Ben will definitely be missed. Now with that said, we're gonna move into a format of two minute openings per each guest. And then after the two minute openings, we're gonna do between 35 to 45 minutes of open discussion. And then at the end is when I'll get to your questions in the Q and A. So I'll get to the super chats first obviously because they paid. So we'll go ahead and ask us, we'll ask those questions first. Then we will do the questions from the audience. And also we just wanna thank everybody again for being here. We wanna make sure that this is a place everybody has an equal footing or an even playing field so that we can all come here and express our ideas. We let everything go here except for a hate speech, anything that could be trouble for us. So just be friendly in the live chat. And with that said, I guess we'll kick it over to T-Jump. You wanna start us off or civil? Go ahead. Sure. So I wanted to thank James for being willing to host this charity stream for Ben Arbor's family. He was a friend of mine. We did a few debates and it's really sad that he and his wife died in a car crash. And yeah, he had four kids. So it'd be nice if you could support his family. I don't really remember what we were talking about. Something about Christian morality. Can morality explain Christianity? My answer is no. Christianity can explain nothing better than nationalism, nationalism explains everything, every fact about reality better. Particularly morality under Christianity doesn't work at all. It's inherently subjective. Like God can't account for objective morality by definition because when we're asking if morality is objective, it's like it has to be objective for everyone, not just for some people. For example, if one of the examples used in the last stream was if God created an ant tank and we were just ants in the tank and the ant tank was morality, well then morality only applied to the ants inside of the tank. Even though morality exists objectively for both the ants and God, it only applies to the ants. Well, that kind of means morality is subjective because we're asking if morality is objective, we wanna know not that it exists like an ant tank, but if killing babies is wrong, for example, that statement would have to be wrong in all cases without exception for it to be objectively wrong. If it's only wrong for some people and not wrong for other people, then it's subjectively and so it's not an objective basis of morality. So something can't be objectively wrong for some people but not objectively wrong for others. And just like an object can't objectively exist for some people but not objectively exist for others. And so any God-based morality, if it doesn't apply to God himself would be subjective by definition. So Christianity doesn't work for a basis of morality, it doesn't account for any of the evidence of reality and naturalism explains everything better and I'll conclude there. All right, thanks so much. We'll kick it over to Sibyl. Sorry about the static noise. I think it's my laptop's got a fan going so I'll try and work on that and yeah, we'll kick it right over to you Sibyl. Thank you. So I want to mirror the sentiment that it is always a good thing to support people who have lost someone, especially children. So yes, get your super chats in, that would be great. Yeah, I didn't really plan for a morality debate but that is good for me, objective morality. So the basis I would say is that if God is the source of morality, if he exists as morality, then there is no morality outside of him, therefore it is objective because he exists. He is the morality itself. As far as any of the other things, I'm happy to wait until we get into the open discussion for that, I didn't really have much. There's a few of your previous arguments that I would love to go over some of your ideas about the white goose and the rabbit in the box and your best of all worlds but let's get to the discussion. All right, thanks so much for that. With that being said, let me just say real quick, tag me with your questions in the live chat. I'm at Converse Contender. You'll see me in there posting and replying. And yeah, if there's anything to do for you guys, let me know and just tag me through questions and I'll ask them at the end. With that being said, let's jump straight into the open discussion. Sounds good, you said you had, you wanted to talk about a few of my arguments. Yeah, sure. Well, I mean, are we going down the morality track first or something else first? Okay, so kind of what I was planning for was whether or not it was reasonable to believe in Christianity and some of your ideas, I just wanted to kind of touch on as far as evidence being for Christianity or for God itself. Your rabbit in the box, I like that one. Can you explain the premise of that one more time? Yeah, so if we see a two pound box and you say, well, the fact that it's two pounds means it's evidence of a rabbit inside of the box. Well, not really because there's many different things that could be two pounds, a coffee mug, a lizard, a toy, Legos, weight, lots of different things could be two pounds. So the fact that it's two pounds doesn't indicate a rabbit. It's not evidence that it is a rabbit inside of the box. So the same thing applies to arguments and evidence for the existence of God, saying the universe had a beginning isn't evidence for a God because it just means something created the universe or our universe, not all natural stuff. So it isn't evidence of a God that the universe had a beginning. It's just evidence the universe had a beginning. So you can't say that just because some event occurred that that is inherently evidence for God when it can be explained by infinitely other things, you need something that actually indicates the God as opposed to it being imaginary. And what if I were to suggest though that the two pounds is merely one piece of evidence that I have among others? Well, again, it would have to indicate that the God is not imaginary. So the two pounds is just an example. You could say it's two pounds, it shakes a bit, it's brown, it smells. You could add a whole bunch of different things there but they can all be undetermined to not tell you anything about what the contents of the box are. So as long as whatever evidence you're presenting you don't need a cumulative case, just one example of something that indicates a God over not God and that would be evidence. So I would suggest in that matter though that if I saw a brown fur and it shakes around and it, I don't know, ate the berry that I put in there and it was also two pounds and I'm standing in a line where only one person can go into a room and 10 people come out in front of me and say I'm pretty sure it's a rabbit that I would have a good reason to believe. It would be reasonable for me to believe it whether or not I had evidentiary proof. Well, anything that is actually evidence for a rabbit would be evidence of a rabbit. So that wouldn't be the point of the analogy. The analogy is something saying like the box weighs two pounds obviously isn't evidence of a rabbit because it applies too many for things. If you saw there is a thing with fur that eats berries and has like eats carrots or whatever then yes, that would be more evidence of a rabbit than a lizard or whatever. So that would qualify as more evidence of a rabbit to not rabbit. The problem is things for a God if you say the universe had a beginning that does not indicate a God. That's just like saying the box weighs two pounds. It does nothing to indicate that it's actually a rabbit. So the point of the rabbit in the box analogy is that the evidence being presented has to actually indicate a God and it can't be ambiguous like the universe had a beginning. But I would argue that having a beginning and suggesting that this kind of ties in perfectly with your white goose theory that if everything that I see previously to this if I see white goose, white goose, white goose, white goose and then there's a blank. If I say was created, was created, was created, was created, what would make me suggest that the universe itself was not created? I'm not sure what you mean. So if you're saying that everything we see was contingently like composed, like nothing we see was actually created. It's all the same matter stuff that's always been there. But if you wanna say everything we see is a composition of other stuff that's already preexisting, well that would apply to God too. So if you wanna, the goose thing is the argument from induction saying if you see something happen like the sunrise over and over again, it's reasonable to infer it's always risen. That would be inductively valid. But to say that there is something that's outside of that, like a God who was the initial creator would not follow from induction. You need a different argument. You'd say, well, this needs some additional thing outside of the inductive argument to conclude that it began the thing without itself being created because otherwise it's just another created thing. And so using the argument that everything you've seen has been created would mean that if there's a God, it would also have to have been created. And any reason you would have to think God was not created would also apply to the universe. You would say the universe was not created for the same reason you would think the God was not created. And so that argument doesn't actually indicate a God at all. It's just a tentative regression, infinite regression of how we see things currently and how we imply those two things in the past so it doesn't tell us anything about what the fundamental nature of reality is that wasn't created. Okay, so I'll just explain my position slightly more since I think that I am not being very clear at the moment, I'm using more of an abductive idea here and using all of these as pieces of evidence to suggest to me that the strongest possibility is therefore a God. And there has to come some point where something is at the beginning that is not, you know, otherwise, like you said, we get into the infinite regress. And yes, I do use layman's words, you know, one time my dad told me a long time ago, if you can't explain it to a sixth grader then you really don't know what you're talking about. So I tend not to use very advanced terminology. I can if we want to, but I'm trying to show that it would be reasonable for someone to come to the conclusion of God based off of the plethora of evidence. Okay, well, that's was your dad Einstein because that's a quote from Einstein, but... Okay.  Anyway, the abduction is kind of affirming the consequent fallacy. So it's good for coming to hypotheses that can't ever justify a hypothesis is actually being true rather than imaginary. So it's just like you can use any method you want to come up with the hypotheses but you need some secondary form of evidence to show that the hypothesis is true. And so just abduction doesn't work at all. It's just a way of forming hypotheses. And it doesn't matter how much different lines of evidence you have, all you need is one. If you have one thing that indicates God more than not God, then that is good evidence. And I don't think there's any of those. So just taking a whole bunch of things, none of which indicate a God doesn't actually work as evidence. I mean, I'm totally fine with you using an abductive way to form a hypothesis but again, it doesn't count as evidence. Because abduction was formally introduced by logic by Charles S. Pierce and he specifically outlined that its formal structure is the exact same as affirming the consequent fallacy. So it can't actually work as evidence to use abduction. It's only good for forming hypotheses which didn't need to be independently verified by some other method. So I don't know, two things there. I don't know why you're using abduction. Secondly, I don't see, you didn't present any of a cumulative case of different arguments that actually were indicated to God because none of the things you presented actually do indicate to God as far as I can tell. No, of course not, not yet because I'm kind of laying the foundation at the moment. And what I'm suggesting is not necessarily that any of these pieces because I don't believe that I can give you the solid piece of evidence that's actually going to prove that you're God. I don't actually believe that we as sinful creatures are in a position to have or understand that we're not going to have definitive proof until that time that prophecy says when God comes again to judge people. So there's not going to be, I can't convince you of that. What I can say is that it's reasonable for someone to come to that conclusion. It's reasonable for them to have the hypothesis. I believe that there is a God. Okay, that's what I'm asking for. I don't care about proof. I don't need proof. I just need any evidence of any kind right now. As far as I know Christianity has zero of any kind. I don't need proof at all. Like I have a very low burden of proof. If you have any evidence, I'm happy to admit that my atheism is false because my definition of atheism is that there is no evidence of a God. So if you present any, that'll be good enough for me. I don't need proof. Well, I don't think you should consider. I don't think you can suggest that there's no evidence. It may not be what you would consider good evidence, but it's not no evidence. As far as I know, there's no evidence. Could you present an example of some? I mean, testimony is evidence. It's not necessarily good or highly reliable evidence, but it is evidence. It is testimony evidence of the spying spaghetti monster. I don't know. If someone said they saw it, yeah. I would have to take a look at the fact of how many people are saying they saw this, what kind of qualities they're suggesting that the flying spaghetti monster has. Okay, then I think that your bar for evidence is way too low and you may need to reevaluate what you consider to be evidence, because I don't. The fact that people have testimony of something isn't evidence that the thing is true at all. Not the case. The fact that the vast majority of things that people think they see is false. It has been false throughout history. There's so many of them that no, testimony isn't evidence at all. It's essentially just, again, a basis to come up with a hypothesis, but doesn't actually count as evidence. A hypothesis is true. So no, testimony doesn't count as evidence of any kind. Okay. So what kind of evidence would you suggest that God provide us? Well, I'm asking for evidence that the Christians can provide us, not the God, but God could do it too, I guess. Novel testable predictions, any kind of novel testable predictions would work from my worldview, but you can make up whatever method you want. If you have any method that can differentiate imagination from reality, that counts as evidence, whatever it is. The way I use is novel testable predictions, the way science uses is novel testable predictions, but you don't need that. You can use whatever method you want as long as you can show it works, and it can accurately differentiate imagination from reality, and that's evidence, whatever it is. Okay. So to the idea of testimony not being evidence of any kind, as an analogy, consider a future without shoes. Now, one time, a long time ago, I had a pretty pair of shoes with pink bows on them. If I tell my children that, and they tell their children that, and we get to 3,000 years in the future where shoes no longer exist because we've come up with a way to never have to use our feet, does sharing that story down the line mean that the shoes didn't exist? Is that not a piece of evidence for the fact that historically, shoes may have existed? On its own, no, it would not be evidence, but it is evidence in combination with the empirical evidence of shoes. So testimony can be evidence of certain things. It's not no evidence of just anything, but in order for testimony to be evidence, you have to also have an empirical basis of evidence besides just the testimony. So for example, if someone says, I saw a dog, that would be reasonable evidence that they did see a dog. It would be reasonable to consider that evidence that the dog existed when they did see it because dogs have an implicit empirical basis. There's lots of stuff we know about dogs that have been demonstrated to not be imaginary, like their taxonomy, their phylogeny, genetic makeup, chemical composition, what they're allergic to, how to train them, blah, blah, blah, blah. There's lots of empirical evidence of dogs that has been shown to not be imaginary in addition to this testimony that the person said they saw a dog. So if you have those two things, then testimony is reasonable evidence. But if someone said I saw a unicorn, then it would not be because the unicorn does not have that empirical basis. There's nothing about a unicorn that's ever been shown to not be imaginary. So if someone says they saw a unicorn, then it's not reasonable to accept that as evidence that there is actually a unicorn until there is some independent verification of that or independent basis of evidence to differentiate it from just being imaginary. So testimony, it can be evidence in cases that have an empirical basis for things that have been shown to not be imaginary independently of the testimony. But on its own testimony counts as nothing. So there has to be a combination of the conceptual testimony evidence and some empirical evidence for the testimony to be reasonable as evidence of any kind. I'd actually disagree about your unicorn analogy simply because the body of a unicorn is a horse. Therefore, there is something empirical that would suggest that what they saw may be related to reality. The point isn't that they could have mistaken. No, no, I understand that. But what I'm saying is that there are things in the Christian story and the Christian worldview that are obviously related to reality. Sure, I don't think that everything in the Bible was made up. Sure, but that's not the point of the analogy. So if someone says I saw a unicorn, like it would be reasonable for you to say, you actually just saw a horse and you thought it was a unicorn. That's perfectly fine. That would be using their conceptual evidence of testimony and saying that it was a delusion or hallucination that they came to the conclusion of a unicorn because there is no evidence of unicorn. That's perfectly reasonable. You could say like take the Bible miracles. You could say, oh, they thought they did a miracle but it was just a delusion. That's perfectly reasonable. That would be good evidence. Their testimony of the miracles is good evidence that they had a delusion, perfectly fine. But it wouldn't be good evidence the miracle actually occurred. That would be like the unicorn actually existing. So the testimony is perfectly good for evidence that they had a delusion because we already have an empirical basis for delusions, hallucinations, misconceptions, all those things. And so their testimony would be good evidence of those things, but it would not be evidence of the miracle actually occurring or a God actually existing or any supernatural things in those situations. That would be like if someone say, and I saw a unicorn and considering that evidence that they actually saw a real living mythical pink unicorn. So I'm happy to grant that many things in Christianity are true. They got many historical facts correct. Jesus existed, but none of that's actually evidence of a God. At what point of people coming out of the same forest perhaps or various forests around the world saying that they saw a unicorn, does this become more probable that this may actually just be a new species that we're unaware of, not necessarily a magical imaginary thing, mythical creature, whatever. The testimony, no amount of testimony would ever count as evidence until you have that independent line of evidence. So for example, we have hundreds of people who claim to see the Lagras Monster, thousands who claim to see Bigfoot, tens of thousands who claim to be UFOs, hundreds of thousands who claim to be a homeopathy works, millions who claim that they see magic and spirits and Hindu miracles.  So I can show seven billion people the same picture and they'll all come out of the forest saying, oh, I saw this thing moving and they'd all be wrong. So the number of people who claim to see this is irrelevant. You need something independent of the testimony exactly for this reason. People's minds are easily deceived and we know they're easily deceived by things we have very good evidence for. So that's always going to be a better explanation than actual living unicorn until you have some independent line of evidence that can show the unicorn exists outside of our imagination other than the testimony. The testimony is never gonna be good enough for things that have no empirical basis. Except I think that you're setting the bar too high for what's reasonable to believe. If everyone that I know and trust, if so many people come out of these forests saying that they saw a unicorn, I may believe that it's implausible or even improbable, but I may think still that they saw something that wasn't previously discovered, previously known, that they may be seeing a unicorn that I'm not aware of. It's still reasonable for me to believe you know, a mass movement of testimony. Well, it'd be reasonable to believe they saw something. Yes, it would not be reasonable to believe they saw a unicorn. Like it's not reasonable to believe the fact that UFOs actually exist in the duct people just because lots of people you know said they were abducted by aliens. That would not be reasonable. It would not be reasonable to believe that miracles exist because you live in the middle of India and many people say they've experienced miracles. It would not be reasonable to believe that homeopathy works if you live in the UK and you are in a community of people who think who practice homeopathy. Like the fact that people practice it and think it works isn't evidence that it actually works. That's why you need that independent line of evidence because it's very easy for people to be deluded into thinking things work or are real that don't. It's literally the common practice in human history. We always tend to think things work when they don't. You're very gullible because of type one and type two errors. So that's why you require that second line of evidence. Like I don't think, would you consider it reasonable for someone in the middle of the UK to think homeopathy works just because everyone around them is saying homeopathy works? I think it would be reasonable for them to consider it as worthy of further research or interest or any of those other things. But that was part of the reason that I said that testimony wasn't the only sense of evidence that one could have about God. But I think that it is a reasonable one to aid in that belief. Well, I would agree with what you said. Like I think that it's fine to want to further investigate something. Like I never disagreed with that. I just said that testimony isn't evidence of it being true. Like is the testimony a reason to look into it more? Yeah, it's a great way to build a hypothesis just like abductive reasoning, but it isn't actually evidence the hypothesis is true. That's what the further investigation is for. And so what I'm looking for with the asking for evidence is, okay, well, after you look into it, whatever method you're using to look into it, what is that other thing? Because we know the testimony doesn't really work. It's the further looking into it that is required. And that's kind of what I'm looking for when I'm asking for evidence. Okay, and what kind of evidence do you think that humans would be able to actually comprehend? Novel testable predictions would work fine for me. But again, you could come up with any methods you want if it can differentiate imagination from reality. Like if I prayed to God and like, if I believe there was God named Bob who exists and Bob will give me a gold brick every time I pray to him. And if I pray to Bob and I get a gold brick every time, that would be great evidence of a supernatural being named Bob. That I can comprehend that. It's not gonna get time for me to, oh, I'm sorry, I hit dinner already. I was just gonna say there's been myself and a couple other people have been having an issue with super chatting. Let me know if you have an issue. What I did was refresh the stream and it worked after that. So if you have any problems with that and I'm keeping track of the questions, so we'll ask at the end. So yeah, let me know in the comments if you guys need anything else out of me. Go ahead. So just so I understand, you're requiring novel testable predictions. You're requiring a personal God bell boy to bring you gold bricks in order to think that it's reasonable to make the jump into faith. No, that was an example of a single kind of novel testable prediction. Like any kind of novel testable prediction works. That's just the first one that's an easy example to explain. So nowhere did I say it requires gold bricks. It does require some way to differentiate imagination from reality. And the way I use that I know works is novel testable predictions. But again, you can make up whatever methods you want if it can differentiate imagination from reality that it qualifies as evidence. Right, but I was just using your analogy in the same thing. I do understand that that was an analogy. What I'm trying to say is that you're requiring hard evidence of something that would be in essence provable to suggest that people should make the jump into a faith. That doesn't seem to make sense to me. What we're saying is, is it reasonable to get to the point of faith? Is it reasonable to get to the point of, okay, I've gotten as far as I can go and I know that there's no way for me to cross the chasm because there is no foundational evidence. There is no solid proof that I can have while I exist as a mortal human on earth. What brings somebody to that point? What would be enough for you to bring somebody to that point? Well, reasonable faith seems like an oxymoron to me. It's like faith is a belief without evidence. So it can't be reasonable to have faith. I have faith in nothing. I have to stop you for just a second right there because even in the Bible it tells us to reason. It tells us to test things. It tells us to reason things. So it's not faith without evidence. It's faith is belief unlimited evidence. Well, again, for it to be evidence is actually I indicate to God. You can't just say, oh, there's a rock there for God. Clearly that doesn't work. The conclusion does not follow. There is a rock there for God. It does not make evidence. So just saying that, oh, look, a rock and now I have faith in God also doesn't qualify as evidence. So further to actually be evidence, again, you have to have something to actually indicate to the God not just point to some fact about reality and then say, added there for God after it. And then I don't see any difference between the arguments you've made and just saying, oh, look, a rock there for God or look at the trees there for God. It seems to me just you're pointing out facts of reality and then saying, we don't know what caused those therefore God and you count that as evidence. I definitely count that as faith and belief without evidence and you're just attributing it to God. No, not at all because this goes back to the whole rabbit in the box. A brown tuft of fur doesn't mean it's a rabbit. It could be any number of animals but it does limit my focus to things that have brown fur, something that eats berries not proof that it's a rabbit. There's a lot of things that eat berries but it limits my focus again. Saying that it's two pounds is not proof that it's a rabbit but it limits my focus again. Now, if I take all of these different things if I take the fact that, you know- Can you use the actual evidence that actually is those things? Cause you haven't presented any of those in the case of a God. I mean, that makes perfect sense for the rabbit analogy. Yes, fur and rabbit go together. There is no fur for the evidence of God. It's just nothing. Well, I mean, some of those you've already brought up and I didn't want to get into the weeds on a lot of these because you've already had these discussions and I know I'm not going to convince you, you know I'm not going to convince you that there requires a first move. You know, I was combining my phrases here a first cause or an unmoved mover. I'm not going to convince you that there needs to be a source of objective morality or that, you know, any of these other tidbits but these are all things that can be seen together as evidence towards something that exists with outside of our human understanding which I would call God. Right. So that's the Neil deGrasse Tyson makes this really great analogy of saying, oh, look at UFO, it must be aliens. UFO means it's an unidentified flying object. So it's an oxymoron and say, oh, it's an unidentified flying object and then to identify it as aliens. Clearly that's a contradiction. So if you're saying there's this thing that's outside of human understanding and then you're trying to use human understanding to understand it, that again is a contradiction. So if you just mean, if you want to say that here's a fact about reality that there's a rock and then say therefore God that would make about as much sense as you saying, oh, look, there's this thing outside of human understanding we're going to try and use on a human understanding to get it. Like it doesn't quite work that way. So it seems like you are using faith as a belief without evidence by admitting there's this thing outside of our understanding and we can't get to it and you're just going to label it as a God. That's not actually evidence. That's just an argument from ignorance. We don't know something, therefore God. No, not exactly because what I'm trying to talk about is not necessarily proving that God is there but showing that it's reasonable for someone to get to that conclusion as a likely or a probable option saying that anywhere from a quarter to a third of the planet believe in the same God that I do whether or not you find testimony convincing that is somewhat convincing. That does mean that it's reasonable. Why? Because that's a lot of people who believe the same thing. They must have something that's there to believe it if that makes sense. I didn't word that correctly. Well, I would be the something. Something is what would make it reasonable not the number of people who believe it. The fact that there's an ad-popular fallacy in philosophy. No, I'm aware of it, yeah. So lots of people believe something isn't actually evidence that the thing they believe is true at all. I mean, literally the vast majority of humans have believed lots of things and they've all been wrong. So the fact that they believe it isn't evidence unless they do have good reason. Like saying the consensus of X versus this field believes X, that's pretty good evidence because their belief is purely based on evidence. Just saying lots of people believe this, well, that's not good evidence because their beliefs isn't based on evidence. So it's the evidence that matters, not the number of people who believe. Right, but again, you're trying to get to that proof point to that factor of truth. I've never asked for proof. What I'm saying is that, yeah, because you're trying to get to the evidence that would show you, I'm saying that it's reasonable without that little piece of evidence, without that linchpin, to still suggest that this outcome is probable. And I mean, we wanna talk about consensus of experts in the field suggesting one thing or another. The consensus of theologians and pastors and preachers and cardinals and popes all have come to that conclusion too, so. They're not actual experts in any field though, other than theology. So if they were experts in like metaphysics who came to that conclusion or experts in physics or cosmology or experts in some aspect of reality who said reality has evidence of a God, that would be a decent consensus. Saying people who study the Bible conclude that isn't relevant, they're not experts in reality, they're experts in the Bible. So again, I'm not asking for any kind of proof, any kind of linchpin. I'm asking for just any evidence of any kind at all. And that's the linchpin. But you haven't visited any. You just said people believe, lots of people believe, lots of people think they imagine. But okay, so in what way do you have to differentiate the imagination from reality and with any higher level probability than random chance? And if you can do that, that's evidence. But you haven't visited anything that can do that. And I think that comes down to a fundamental disagreement about the nature of testimony and the reliability of witnesses. I mean, if I suggest that this person is legitimate and reliable and can be trusted and has shown to be trusted in other matters in the past, then suggesting that they're being trustworthy on this matter is not a far stretch. If I say that now about 10 people, 100 people, 1,000 people, that builds the evidence that the thing that they're all being trustworthy about has a higher likeliness and is more reasonable for me to believe. Yeah, I'm gonna go with sociology and history where they reject that argument completely because we know that Homer was extremely reliable on many things, but he just made up a bunch of stuff about myths and legends. Like every historian during Jesus' time were excellent at recording history in many cases, but they all had mythology, like the foundation of Rome being from Romulus and Remus in their history. And so, no, the fact that they're reliable in many cases doesn't mean that they're reliable in all cases. The fact that someone who worked for NASA, saw UFOs doesn't mean you should believe them about UFOs. The fact that there's a doctor who got a PhD and who actually treats in neurology doesn't mean you should believe them about homeopathy. No, the fact that they are reliable in some field does not mean that they are reasonable to believe in a different unrelated field. And that's why I said it comes down to our fundamental disagreement on that. All the examples that you pointed out were individuals. So an individual, probably not the best source for, oh yes, I just fully believe this one individual. When you're talking two to three billion people, that might lend more credence to the story. Okay, so if two to three billion people said homeopathy worked, is that reasonable to believe homeopathy works? Yeah, probably. Yeah, that's definitely a disagreement about how evidence works. Okay, well, you started this, you wanted to talk about morality and you were suggesting that God can't be the source of morality. Can you enlighten me again as to that? I forgot your argument. Sure, so it's something good because God said it's good, in which case it's arbitrary. There's no such thing as objective goodness. Or did God say it's good because it's good based off of an independent standard, in which case the morality is objective, but you don't need the God. But what if he is the independent standard? Not what he says, what he is. Then you don't need the God. You can just understand his nature and usually get rid of the consciousness and you can still objective morality. So you don't need a God to have objective morality. How can you understand his nature if he doesn't exist? Like remove the consciousness, keep the moral nature. So you have naturalistic pantheism, which is just eternal, all powerful, all good nature with no consciousness. You can still have the nature of morality without any kind of conscious being there. But the consciousness is part of his nature.  Like you said, that wasn't required. So either either- No, I didn't, I asked you a question about how you said that it could exist without the God. I said the consciousness is part of his nature. You said it's not because of what he said, that that's the consciousness. So either something is good because of his consciousness, his consciousness is required in there because of what he said. And so it's arbitrary or it's good without his consciousness and you don't need consciousness. Okay, I think I'm misunderstanding what you mean by said. Because I can be conscious without speaking. So I'm not sure what you mean by that. Will, it's like, is something good because he wills it to be good or is it good because it's good based off some independent standard of what his will is. Okay, that word is more clear. Yeah, it's only good because he wills it to be good, then it's arbitrary. If he wills it to be good because it's good based off from the independent standard, then we have objective morality of this independent standard without God's will. But it wasn't good unless he created it good. That doesn't make any sense. Well, if he created all things and nothing exists without him, it wouldn't be good, it wouldn't exist without his, him there to create it. Therefore it can't be good unless he created it good. Again, that doesn't make any sense. That just makes goodness arbitrary. There is no goodness. If it's only good just because he creates it. So there is no such thing as goodness, it's just an arbitrary whim. But the standard is that which, I mean, even if we go down this with his will being the standard, how is that contradictory? How is that not work? It's arbitrary. It means that there is no such thing as objective goodness. There is no independent standard of goodness that makes it objective. It's a subjective definition of goodness. And so there is no such thing as objective right and wrong. It's only subjectively right and wrong to this thing that willed it to be this way. But it can't be subjective because that would assume that there were other things outside of him in order to have that judged against. But if he is the only thing outside, then there is no subjectivity. It is the only thing. No, that's not what it means. Like for example, if I'm the only thing that exists in the universe and I like ice cream, that's still my subjective opinion. The fact that I'm the only thing that exists doesn't make it not subjective. So objective means true independent of mind's opinions, feelings, intuitions. Subjective means true contingent on mind's opinions, intuitions and feelings. No, I understand that, but... So for something to be objectively moral, that means it has to be wrong independent of God's will. If it's only wrong because God wills it, that means it's not objective. But if there is no morality without his will, then it can't be subjective to him. That's what subjective means. So if morality can't exist without God's will, that means morality is inherently subjective. But that would be irrelevant to the argument. So I think that morality can definitely exist without God. Most moral philosophers do. Morality can't be grounded into God in the first place. But even if morality could only be grounded into God, that wouldn't tell us whether or not it's subjective or objective. That's irrelevant. What tells us whether or not it's subjective or objective is, is it contingent on a will? Or is it not contingent on a will? That's the only relevant question. Like whether or not something else could exist independent of the will, it doesn't, isn't relevant to the question of whether or not it's subjective or objective. But that assumes that the definition of morality is separate from God itself. In the Christian worldview, the definition of morality is that which is against God. That would be by definition the arbitrary version that would make morality arbitrary. So that's kind of the question. It's asking, is there an independent definition of morality that is not contingent on a will than it's objective? If is there not than it's subjective? So that would just be admitting that it's subjective by that definition. So again, if we're asking, is morality objective, we want to know, is it objectively wrong to drown babies? That is the question essentially, we're one of them. And if the answer is yes, then it's objective. If it's yes in all the cases, no matter what in all worlds, regardless of God, regardless of anything, then the answer is yes, it's objective. If it's saying, no, it's only wrong because God wills it. And if he didn't will it, it wouldn't be wrong anymore than it's subjective. So the question is, is would it be wrong regardless of what God's opinion on it was, or is it only wrong because God perceives it this way? Right, and then it's not about God's perception though. It's about his nature as far as, is it in favor of what God has decreed for that or has not decreed for that? It's not a perception matter. Decree and perception are synonyms. So those would be the same thing. They're similar, but not synonyms. They're synonyms because it's still a thing done, a decision, a conscious decision done by mind. It's not independent of will there. So either it's, his nature is possible. His consciousness and his nature are two different things. Like obviously, does his consciousness determine his nature? Did he choose his own nature? No. So obviously his nature is something separate from his consciousness. So it can be grounded in one or the other, it can't be both. And if it's grounded in his consciousness, if he chose something as moral, then it's not objectively moral, not to drown babies or to drown babies. It's only subjectively immoral because God wills it to be the case. So if either it's contingent on consciousness and he wills it, perceives it, decrees it, whatever verb you want to use and it's subjective, or it's independent of his consciousness and his consciousness doesn't matter to morality and it can be objective, but then you don't need the consciousness for morality. All right guys, we're gonna go about 10 more minutes or so and then we'll kick it over to the Q and A session. Okay, that did not, I'm trying to find the right words here because what you're saying isn't fully making sense simply because whether or not we need the consciousness has nothing to do with it. Well, that's the reason God can't ground objective morality is because the consciousness part makes it subjective. So if you don't have the consciousness part, you can have objective morality. I'm happy to grant that, but the consciousness part that's added into God isn't required, that's completely irrelevant. You don't need that, get rid of that and you can have objective morality. So that's the reason that part of God, the consciousness cannot in God cannot ground morality which means it has to be grounded in some non-conscious thing like a law of nature. And so if we can have that law of nature or whatever it is, then we can know morality without the conscious God thing. We don't need the consciousness to know morality. It's we don't need a God to have morality. No, because as you said before, if there's God's consciousness and God's nature, if the morality is rooted in his nature that doesn't eliminate his consciousness. You're saying it's not needed for understanding morality, which is neither here nor there, but that doesn't eliminate the consciousness from his being. Right, so the argument there is that if you don't need consciousness for morality and then it's only moral based off of some law, some fact, some part of nature, some part of reality, God's nature, that means you don't need the consciousness at all and morality itself can be grounded in something non-conscious, which means it can just be grounded in nature and you don't need the God to explain morality at all. Except if it's grounded in his nature specifically, then you would still need the God. So the argument there is to say that that conclusion isn't supported by the evidence. So if you say there is objective morality, you don't need a conscious being, because even the theist model, it requires it to be grounded in something non-conscious. So to come to the conclusion that it's a conscious being would not be supported anymore because the whole point that theists usually make is that consciousness is grounded in a mind of some kind. So if you can show it's not grounded in a mind of some kind, then you can infer it's actually just a law of nature and that's the better explanation of morality. But that doesn't adjust why you would or would not need, why you would or would not have a conscious and personal God, whether or not objective morals were based in the conscious part of him or the nature part of him. Oh, so my objection is just the conscious part. So I'm saying it can't be grounded in the conscious part. Like I'm okay with just, if you want to just say it's some part of his nature and it has nothing to do with the consciousness part, that's fine with P2, but that wouldn't be that the God part, the God part is the consciousness part. That's the only part I'm objecting to. I don't think you could separate God's nature from his consciousness. So I don't see how you would say that that would not be the God part. Did God consciously determine his nature or did his nature determine his consciousness? Neither. Well, you did answer this like 10 minutes ago and you admitted that God doesn't consciously choose his nature, right? As far as I understand, no. Yeah, so I mean, I would agree with that. I think that's perfectly sensible. So his nature determines his consciousness. Like he can't think evil thoughts because it's not a part of his nature. So his consciousness is determined by his nature. Okay. Okay, so then that's admitting that the consciousness part of the God isn't really meaningful to the morality. The morality is just in the nature part, which means the conscious part isn't required. And if you're willing to grant that, that's perfectly fine. That's the whole point of my argument is that the consciousness part can't be what grounds the morality. Oh, okay. And yeah, no, I agree on that. Cool. Cool. It's probably a good time to go to questions then. Yeah, so with that, we will go ahead and kick it over to the Q and A. I wanna thanks everybody so much for all of your questions. Sorry about that. We have a mic here so I can see the questions better. If you just joining us or recently joining us, all of the Super Chats are going to a fund to help Ben Arbor's family after a tragic accident. He's left with four children that have to, need your support. So thank you for all the Super Chats that came in. I'm gonna go ahead and start with those and then I'll get to the other questions. Also, there was a problem with Super Chatting at some point, a few people had issues. So I just refreshed and it worked again. So if you have a problem do that. Somebody also asked me, it was I Super Chatting to myself or paying myself. I don't own this channel, I just volunteer to help out on the channel. So, and then also all of the Super Chats are going to charity. So just so everybody knows. All right, so our first Super Chat came in from Tony B. Five, whatever the A currency is. I'm not sure, he didn't put a comment in there. Just thanks for your donation. Next we had a Super Chat from Stupid Horror Energy for $5 says Problems Super Chatting. Looks like she got the fix though because she sent in some more. $5 Super Chat from General Balzac said, the chat is really interested in the ants in tank theory. Are these ants large or tiny? What kind of tank? Ant Built or Abrams T90 Tiger? It's of the T-Jump chair variety. We sell them at my Discord. It's World War Two Ant Tank. Next Super Chat from Stupid Horror Energy, another $5 Super Chat. Thank you so much says, is it reasonable to believe that an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipinevolent God would allow or even cause pointless evil? That's only pointless to you. I don't understand the question. You can't suggest that he's omnipotent, omniscient, et cetera, et cetera, and then suggest that what he did, it was pointless. I think that was the question, was like, would that be contradictory for an omniscient, omnipinevolent being to do suffering pointlessly? All right, you want another response or are you good with that? I mean, I would just suggest that it's not pointless. It's never pointless. All right, thanks so much for that. Our next Super Chat comes from, Cider and Port says, five euros for civil. If you agree that if two to three billion people in homeopathy, then it's true. If two to three billion people believe that the earth is flat, does it make it true? I never said two to three billion people believing in homeopathy made it true. I said that two to three billion people believing in homeopathy makes it reasonable for me to suggest that this is something worth looking into. All right, thanks so much. The same person, Cider and Port, another two dollars Super Chat or not two dollars, two euros says, forgot to say, of course, RIP Ben. Thanks so much for that. Next Super Chat, two dollars comes from OP says, make a compilation of Tom's confused looks. That is definitely in the works. We are almost actually done with that. We've been editing it for about a year. So it's eight and a half hours long, but. All right, next Super Chat from Stupid Horror Energy, five dollars Super Chat says, if we lived in a world where God's nature happened to be different, e.g. that worshiping idols is okay, wouldn't that still make morality subjective? No, because like I said, from our worldview, the definition of morality is based in his nature. So it's not subjective, it's what it is. All right, thanks so much for that. Our next Super Chat comes from Sunday Worship for two dollars says, Plato, Youth Afro, 2020. Sounds like a popular ticket. We just had a Super Chat come in from Pants L. Jones for 499 says, T-Jump. How could NP have a moral nature without consciousness? I guess he means naturalistic pantheism, is that right? I would guess. Yeah, yeah. There's another part of it, he says, I think this is an example. How could NP be honest, trustworthy, or faithful without consciousness? So honestly, trustworthyness and faithfulness are emergent properties of something more fundamental. It isn't honest, trustworthy, or faithful. So for example, morality is a higher order, emergent property like fitness. Fitness is an interaction between an organism and the environment in which it lives. Obviously, the environment doesn't have the property of fitness anywhere in it. It's just a description of how the physical properties of the animal are going to exist in the environment. So the same thing applies to honesty and moral properties. They aren't actually in the moral law anywhere. They're an emergent property of the interaction between moral agents in an environment. So you don't actually need those things to be in the law at all, to have them be a part of morality. They're just emergent properties of the moral law, which is just a law of nature like gravity, essentially. All right, thanks so much for that. I had somebody comment that I have some static noise on my microphone. Yeah, I know that. Thanks so much for letting me know, but I have a fan running on my computer and I forgot to turn off the turbo fan or whatever before I started and I don't wanna get out of this program because of the chance that it might freeze up or something, so anyway, we're just gonna go with it for now. We're almost finished up here. S.J. Thomas, and thank you so much for a $20 Super Chat. Dropping the 20 bomb says, Peter denied Jesus, Saul persecuted early believers, James tried to stop his ministry. Then they experienced the risen Christ and preached for him for decades, despite beatings, imprisonments, et cetera. Tom, what's your best explanation? Breedment delusion, actually, I'm gonna do a response to Braxton's 110 questions and I have a clip from this regarding this question, so yeah, it's just common human nature. There's absolutely nothing special in that whatsoever.  There's absolutely nothing special about that whatsoever. It's just human nature. All right, thanks so much for that. We had a Super Chat just come in from Decepticons Forever, two CAs, says, why the Christian God and not say, I'm in awe? So, I mean, there's a lot of reasons for that and again, it comes down to is it reasonable to believe and that's where we came to our disagreement on what kind of evidence makes it reasonable. There's a lot of reasons that the Christian God is historically relevant. There's reasons because of the spread of Christianity, the sheer number of people who believe in Christianity and most importantly, just because it's true. All right, thanks so much for that. We just had another Super Chat come in, a tin bomb from Daniel Conley says, Sybil, can you name one moral act that a Christian can do that a non-Christian cannot? Believe in God. All right, thanks so much for that. Now we will move out of the Super Chat. If you have another Super Chat or you just wanna donate for Ben's family, it all goes to charity except for what YouTube takes as their cut, I'm sure. Just go ahead and send it in while I'm reading these other questions and I will try and get to it. We only have about five more questions so we'll be through this pretty quickly. The first question came in from Kudos and the executioners. There might be Kodos, I'm not sure how they pronounce that, but it says, Converse, why does Christianity need to be reasonable? Isn't faith enough? Thanks, CC, great to see you again. Tom, what do you think? Yeah, I don't have any problem with people just saying they believe on pure faith with no reason. That's perfectly fine. I don't have an issue with that. As long as you don't claim that it's reasonable or based on evidence, then it's fine just to say you believe on faith. I don't see, there's nothing wrong with that. I would actually say, can I answer that real quick too? I would just say that it ought to be reasonable to an extent, obviously there is an element of faith in it to where you're gonna go beyond reason. But it needs to be reasonable simply because the Bible also tells us to be reasonable. It asks us to come let us reason together. It tells you to test the spirits. It tells you to test the things that you're seeing and hearing from the people around you and from the world around you. So yes, there has to be an element of being reasonable. Thanks so much for that. Just had a super chat come in from Jay Richie. 499 says, if it was possible for God's nature to change, then would you adjust your morality with his nature's whims? If that was possible? Yep. I mean, it's a non-starter, but if it was possible, then yes. All right, thanks so much for that. Next question comes in from Tuss Beatbox says, Converse, question for Sybil, if X amount of people can give testimony for you to believe it, how many would you need who claims to have falsified God to believe it? Well, that's cute. No, you're not going to make me not believe in God because of evidence and my own testimony in my own life. But as I said, it wasn't necessarily just the number of people. There are other elements that included in that, but the number of people is something that helps lean you in the right direction. All right, thanks so much for that. Answer there. We had three superchats coming in right there. The same time, Christine Garum with the tin bomb. Thanks so much. Christine says, if I was alive in ancient Egypt, it would appear to me that everyone alive believed in Ra. Did that make Ra's existence reasonable? How about now? Yeah, it probably would have been reasonable for you to believe that, having grown up in ancient Egypt, where that was the thing that everybody believed. All right, thanks so much for that. Next, another tin bomb from Daniel Conley, dropping bombs here says, theocrats get crushed under the heel of little professors. I don't know if that's more of a statement than a question, unless you wanted to say something about it. All right, we'll move on. Neon Noor says, five euros says, why did Jesus call Decanonite's dogs? I have prefaced this, I hope that I prefaced this with saying that I am not a biblical scholar. Anything that I say is a layman's opinion. From what I understand from the research and study that I've done of the Bible, a lot of this has to do with illustrating a point. It has to do with making his point and using the vernacular of the time to speak and make clear what it was that he wanted to say to the people he was speaking with. All right, thanks so much for that. While you're speaking, Charles in solo dropped a five bomb, says, does Sybil believe in free will quotation marks? If so, how does she break the determination versus randomness dichotomy? Yes, I believe in free will. I believe that we all have free will. I'm not sure what you mean about the dichotomy of determination versus randomness exactly. I can just, if you do any action, either you do it for reasons and it's determined by those reasons or you do it for no reason in which it's by definition random. So either anything you do is either going to be determined by reasons or done for literally no reason in which case it's random and that's the dichotomy. How do you get out of that? Okay, is this saying that God is the one who has determined what I'm going to do or is that saying that my own fallible human understanding has made a determination of what I should do? It's saying free will is impossible because everything you make a choice for is either going to be determined by prior reasons like your brain or by like quantum states of random fluctuation that you had no control over. Oh, okay. So we're going that route. Yeah, okay. Well, I believe in free will as far as God giving us free will as agents on this earth, whether or not my actions were determined by nature, nurture, and all of my previous experiences. That's a whole separate question. I'm not prepared to answer. All right. Thanks so much for that. Very, very great job tonight by Sybil. I got to say because this is Sybil's first debate ever. I think we can all agree that Sybil's done pretty well tonight for her first debate ever. Doesn't sound like you're nervous at all. So, that just makes me a good actress. And of course, Tom did a great job tonight as well. Tom is experienced. He's like a veteran. So we've all debated with Tom. I think that's our last question. Well, actually we just had one come in from NeonNor for five euros. Thank you for your super chat. Says Sybil should read a book called The Curse of Canaan. A Demonology of History. Well, I will check it out. We'll see if I read it, but thanks for the suggestion. All right, thanks so much for that. And thanks everybody for your super chats tonight and all the questions. I'm happy that we got a good amount of super chats for Ben's family. And just a quick thing before we go here. I think that I love Ben. And when I heard the news about Ben and his family, it really upset me because Ben was such a great guy. I interviewed Ben about a year ago on my channel and just talking to him, like he's so humble.  And just knowing Ben and how humble he was, you know, I talked to him about him having a PhD in philosophy and he's just like, man, that doesn't matter. I know people who don't have a degree in anything and they're way smarter than a lot of people who's got a PhD in a subject. And I'm like, he just didn't look at things like that as being very important. He looked at like personal, like he wanna talk to the person. In fact, he gave, he told me by this book, analytic Christian theology and I was talking to him on Facebook and he said, look, man, by that book and the college course that I'm teaching, I'll just send you all my lecture notes and all my courses and stuff and I'll let you take the class for free. I'll just send it all to you. And I just was like blown away because it's gonna cost me nothing and just, the guy was just amazing. And so anyway, I just wanna say that. So thanks for all the super chats and I'm happy that we got some of that tonight. And I believe Josh Rasmussen is the person that set up the, I'm not sure if it's a good fund me. Yeah, okay. So the good fund me and if you wanna donate after this, if you get paid tomorrow or anything like that, I see Josh Rasmussen's page and I'm sure James will add this after the fact. And anyway, with that being said, I thought we had a great debate tonight. I love these types of discussions where we just talk. I've seen a lot of people in the chat saying, I love the pace of this, where they're just talking back and forth and being honest and it's not like a gotcha here, gotcha there. So that was great. Any last words from me today, you guys? Thanks for coming on. Thanks, Sybil, for participating. Thanks for James for hosting it. And thanks for the people for super chatting to support Ben's family. Appreciate it. Ditto. All right, thanks so much. And with that being said, thanks everybody for being here. And we've got a lot of good debates coming up this month. Please like this video if this is the type of debate you'd like to see or let us know in the comments what you would like to see coming up. All right, everybody have a great night.


From VOA Learning English, this is the agriculture report in special English. A small non-profit company in Cambodia is turning used cooking oil into high-quality biodiesel fuel. The idea is to reduce air pollution caused by low-quality diesel made from petroleum. In Cambodia, heavy trucks usually use petroleum diesel. So do many older cars. The diesel sold in Cambodia is a high sulfur fuel. It is banned in more developed countries. Experts say diesel exhaust is a big part of air pollution in the country. And air pollution causes lung disease and other respiratory problems. Naga biodiesel was set up in 2008 to provide a cleaner fuel choice. The company produces high-quality biodiesel at a small factory in northwest Cambodia. Most of the oil is supplied by local restaurants at no cost. The restaurants then buy back the biodiesel at a 40% discount or reduced price. The cooking oil is washed and cleaned to remove contaminants before being processed into diesel. And the process of making biodiesel has a useful by-product, glycerin, which can be used as a cleaner. The founder of Naga Biofuels says biodiesel burns cleaner in engines and helps improve the air quality in the fast-growing city of Siam Riyadh. Providing used cooking oil to biodiesel producers makes sense to restaurants, too. The manager of a restaurant in Siam Riyadh called the Blue Pumpkin says he does not have to worry about what to do with used cooking oil anymore. He adds, the whole service is very clean and professional. Naga Biofuels wants to increase production to 10,000 liters by 2013. The business plans to provide its service in environmentally sensitive areas where low-quality diesel can cause damage. For VOA Learning English, I'm Laurel Bowman.