everybody tonight we're debating whether or not atheism is immoral and we are starting righties and gentlemen thrilled to have you here for another epic debate and want to let you know if it's a first time here at modern-day debates we are a neutral platform hosting debates on science religion and politics and we want to let you know no matter what walk of life you were from folks we really do hope you feel welcome we're glad you're here and also want to let you know folks we are thrilled for an upcoming debate as friend Samuel Nassan and other friend of the channel Matt Dillahunty will be on debating next month on whether or not Jesus fulfilled prophecy so that is one you don't want to miss folks so hit that subscribe button and that little notification bell to be sure you don't miss it as it's going to be a good one and also folks really excited want to remind you as you have these debates our goal is to both create a neutral platform but also we want to encourage you to focus on kind of narrowing your critiques on the arguments rather than the people we really do appreciate our guests we're super thankful that they're with us today and so please do keep your criticisms aimed at the arguments rather than at the person and so with that what we're going to do is introduce our guests and give them a chance I want to let you know folks their links are in the description right now at the very top of the description so if you want to hear more from our guests during this debate they're waiting for you right now you can click on those links in the description box below so we are thrilled to have our guests so and so we want to say thanks so much we'll start with Doug and just say Doug thanks so much it's a true pleasure to have you back and if you'd be willing to share what people can expect to find at your links we're thrilled to have you here okay well thanks for the opportunity basically if you go to Doug wills.com which is my blog blog and may blog on the landing page there you can find a link or a connection to pretty much everything that I'm involved with so on the front page of blog and may blog which is Doug wills.com you can connect the new St. Andrews College or logo school Christchurch the whole shoot match absolutely well thanks so much Doug we're thrilled to have you back and Ben glad to have you back as well what can people expect to find at your link in the description yeah so they can they can find well there's a link to my Twitter and they can find the YouTube channel and podcast that I host which is called give them an argument and pretty much everything else the columns I write for Jack and Ben and all of that you can find at Benburges.com absolutely well thanks both gentlemen this is a true pleasure so what we're gonna do is we're gonna jump right into it folks and we're going to we're going to do basically a pretty you say hybrid format where we do have openings at the start which would be about 12 minutes and then we'll have that open discussion portion followed by Q&A so Ben is actually going to start us off with the openings and so Ben I've got the timer set for you it's ready to go and so on your first word I'll start it thanks so much and the floor is yours. Alright thank you James thank you Pastor Douglas for doing this before I start with the main line of argument I want to clear up one possible source of confusion I'm an atheist obviously and I'm here to defend the moral honor of atheism but what I'm not is an anti-theist I'm not here to besmirch the moral honor of theism in fact even though I'm an atheist and more than enough of a philosophy nerd to thoroughly enjoy arguing about topics like theism versus atheism in the past I've largely avoided this topic in public debates like this for the simple reason that I spend most of my time arguing about politics and I don't want to give anyone who knows me from those contexts the impression that there's an anti-theistic component to what I advocate politically there isn't while I'm an atheist and I clearly don't think that my being an atheist puts me at any sort of disadvantage in talking about morality which is what we'll be discussing tonight I deeply admire the Christian left figures like Tony Bann or Cornell West or just to pick a third progressive Christian at random my wife Jennifer Burgess so that's not the point right I think that like people like Robert E. Lee who fought for what I regard as the most evil caused in human history was a Christian but so is John Brown so it's clearly possible to be on the right side of history and disagree with me about metaphysics all I need from anyone politically is that they don't have any interest in trying to impose their religious beliefs on others all right that extended bit of throat clearing out of the way let's get to the main event I became interested in doing this debate because I have read and watched Pastor Douglas say that without theism it's impossible to have what he will call authoritative morality as opposed to just statements of preference sometimes this seems to be a claim about moral motivation that without a divine enforcer to reward or punish people they don't have a reason to act morally to the extent that this is the claim I think that's wrong in multiple very deep ways and I'm sure we'll get to that later on but in limited time I have for this opening statement I want to focus on what I think is the main claim being made so pastor Douglas is a presuppositionalist meaning he thinks it's impossible for theists and atheists to debate on neutral ground you have to assume something to about the existence or non-existence of God to get started on the face of it you think that this would make debates like this one impossible the reason it doesn't is that as any good philosopher or logician should be able to tell you one of the best ways to argue against any position is to assume it's presuppositions for the sake of argument and derive unsavory conclusions from them that don't follow from your view that this I take it is what pastor Douglas is doing when he criticizes atheists as being unable to make sense of the idea of authoritative morality by which he usually seems to me and I'm sure we'll get into this you know later objective morality and while I do think it's entirely possible to have an argument between atheists and atheists on neutral ground certainly on many subjects that way of framing it is one that I'm perfectly happy to use as far as we conduct tonight's debate and I want to make two very simple points here these are going to be my two big claims the first is that on the presupposition that there is no god there are plenty of philosophical options for making sense of the idea that morality is not relative to time place or culture or relative to individual preferences but that right things would be right even if no one ever knew that they were right and wrong things would be wrong even if no one ever knew that they would be wrong so for example you could be an atheist utilitarian and believe that whatever maximizes well-being and minimizes suffering is objectively right no matter who does or doesn't think it's right you could be an atheist Kantian and believe that treating other people as mere means to your ends is objectively morally wrong no matter who does or doesn't think it's morally wrong you could be an atheist Rawlsian and believe that whatever society perfectly rational people would decide if they had to do they had to live in it but they didn't know whether they were going to be born black or white male or female rich or poor is objectively a just society even if no one considers it just so that's the first point now maybe you don't find any of these options plausible maybe you think as many philosophers including some atheist ones have that there's a deep philosophical problem with making sense of the idea of objective morality of what would that even mean for morality to be objective well if you think so that brings us to the second point which is this one if it's a big philosophical problem how to make sense of objective morality except in for the sake of argument the presupposition of theism does literally nothing to solve that problem it doesn't help in any way the view that it would help at least its purest form is called divine command ethics the divine command ethicist says that morality isn't about what the utilitarian thinks it's about you know maximized and well-being and ismized and suffering it's not about not treating people's mere means like the Kantian things it's not about what the Rawlsian thinks it's about it's about doing whatever god commands and there's a very simple and totally unsolvable problem with this moral framework one that has been well known philosophically for thousands of years and one which has convinced even many thoughtful Christian philosophers who know about it the divine command ethics must be the wrong way to think about morality now I could see somebody watching this and say how can you be a Christian and not be a divine command ethicist we'll get to that but the just let's talk about the argument itself it's called the euthyphro objection euthyphro I never trust my Greek pronunciation which to divine command ethics that comes from a dialogue written by Plato a little over 23 centuries ago in the dialogue Socrates is arguing with a character named euthyphro about whether holiness can be defined as that which the gods love Socrates asks him whether the gods love what they love because it is holy or whether the holy is holy because gods love it because the gods love it translated Socrates' challenge into the terms of tonight's debate the question is whether what god commands us to do is morally good because god commands it or whether god commands it because it's good so start with the second option if you say that god commands it because it's morally good then you've just stepped out of divine command ethics you've just accepted that it's good for some reason other than that god commands it if on the other hand it's morally good because god commands it then you have this problem if god hypothetically had commanded you thou shalt kill whosoever shall annoy you and rape whosoever you shall lust after and thou shalt not under any circumstances be kind or charitable or help little old ladies cross the street then you would have to say that murder or rape would be good and charity and kindness and helping little old ladies cross the street would be morally bad that's absurd and note that it's absurd in exactly the same way that moral relativism is absurd it's absurd in exactly the same way that it would be absurd to say that if the Nazis had won world war two and killed everyone who disagreed with their actions or brainwashed everybody who was left to think that exterminating Jews was morally right then it would follow that from that the exterminating Jews would be morally right if you think that's absurd in exactly the same way you should think that embracing that thinking that murder and rape were morally right if they'd been commanded by god would be morally good in fact the more we think about this objection the more that we can see the divine command ethics is a form of relativism it says that morality is relative to god's arbitrary preferences and a quick word to any christian viewers who may be encountering this argument for the first time if what you're thinking right now is oh but god wouldn't command these terrible things because those things are bad and god is good you've just rejected divine command ethics if god wouldn't command them because they're morally bad then their moral badness must be logically independent of god's commands this is why philosophically sophisticated christians understand that to make sense of the idea that god's commands are objectively good they have to give up divine command ethics and say that god commands good things because they're good not the other way around they could still say that reading the bible and praying for guidance is a good way to find out what's good and bad because god on their view is all knowing and so of course he would know all the moral facts as well as all the other kinds of facts but whatever you think of that claim it's a completely different claim than saying that god's will is what makes morally good things morally good and morally bad things morally bad which i think is what um pastor douglas is going to need to say in order to make sense of the idea that it's impossible to make sense of objective morality on the presupposition of atheism now some people who want to hold on to divine command ethics think that it somehow helps to start talking about god's how god's commands aren't arbitrary because they flow from god's nature trust me that won't help the reason it won't help is because it leads to the exact same problem again it just pushes it one link up the chain so the question now if god's nature is kind and merciful uh and steadfast uh is okay what if god's nature had been cruel and capricious and unforgiving uh would that therefore be a morally good nature in other words is what makes kindness and steadfastness and forgiveness good the fact that that happens to be god's nature or is that god's nature because god is a morally good being it's exactly the same problem now uh i think we could we could follow this this thread of argument up a lot more i'm sure that we will we get to the open dialogue portion of the evening i also really hope when we get to the open dialogue we talk about this business about moral motivation because again sometimes it seems to me that that is what pastor douglas seems to we're going to be talking about when he he talk uses this phrase uh authoritative morality uh but if we don't get to those two subjects uh somebody please ask about them in the q and a because i really want to talk about both but right now i've probably been going on long enough for uh the opening statement so pastor douglas the floor is yours thanks so much we'll kick it over floor is all yours Doug all right thanks very much um i want to begin with my gratitude i want to thank the host of this debate the good books modern day debate and a time when many are clamoring for uh actual intellectual interaction about things that actually matter to have them banned and chased off the premises we need to have more exchanges like this not fewer so i'm very very grateful i'm also grateful to ben burges for agreeing to have this discussion i noticed that he naturally received some pressure online encouraging him to pull the skirts away from me with a sneer which he resisted and straight up the middle i'm very grateful for that i really do appreciate it living in cancel culture the way we do we just have to resist every form of shouting people down we need to hear people ask so to the question is atheism immoral as the christian in this debate i naturally have the affirmative and so i want to hasten to clarify what form of this i would want to defend and what form of it i would not defend right so that question is atheism immoral can be construed in in different ways and i am more than eager to defend one form of it and not at all eager to deform to defend forms of it that i would regard as silly or inconsequential of course so a few qualifiers on what i do not mean given of course as a christian given that god exists to deny that he does would be a sin and hence an immoral position right so if it's true that god exists and we owe everything to him and he loves us and we're saying i don't think you're there of course that's a sin and hence immoral but i'm not taking our question in that sense because that's at one level that would be like asking is atheism atheistic that's it'd be tautological it'd be a debate about nothing so i don't take the question in that way rather i believe the question has to do with whether atheism is a greenhouse that grows levels of accepted immorality that surpass the levels that the human race has always been able to produce so whatever wherever the human race goes you're going to find all kinds of gaudy misbehavior and it's you're going to find a sort of baseline of human sinfulness human wickedness human iniquity and you're going to find it among buddhist and among hindus and among muslims and among christians every every culture under the sun including the christian ones has had has had to grapple with and deal with the fact of human frailty human sinfulness human problems so i i'm taking this as is atheism something that takes it to the next level you know i can't i can't argue that atheism is immoral because atheists have been known to sin because everybody does right that's a that wouldn't prove anything so is it is is atheism a greenhouse that grows grows these things to a level that is out of the ordinary if sins were pumpkins does atheism produce prize winners for the state fair you know does atheism produce really big pumpkins and i believe actually the answer to that question is yes but i think you have to zoom out and look at the big picture and that leads to the next qualifier i'm not maintaining for example that if i live next door to ben and my wife and i were going on vacation that his atheism would somehow require him as soon as we disappeared around the corner to run over and burn down my house i don't believe that that is what we're discussing i don't think that i don't believe that no i'm sure we get along fine and that he would be happy to take in our mail and so on and i can i can also in my thought experiment come up with certain christians that i wouldn't want to ask to take in my mail that that i that i wouldn't get along with as as well so in certain respects when we're talking about public morality or how you behave in your interactions with other people we also have to reckon with the bell curve which is the which is the you know the fact if i say something like men are taller than women i'm dealing with two bell curves and i can easily produce certain women who are taller than certain men and thus my generalization is falsified but it's not really falsified because it was a generalization so i believe that atheistic cultures atheistic societies do get to hellish levels of immorality but i don't believe that that's the case for individual atheists necessarily at all so i'm not maintaining that so in what sense would i want to argue that atheism is immoral there are three things that i would like to mention and to anticipate ben's reference to motivation is my third one so there's two things that i want to tag first as more important but motivation is my third point and it i think is a an important one but just not the most important one the first thing i want to mention is that we have a need for god in order to have a fixed definition of morality a fixed definition of morality if there is no god and darwin is right then morality must evolve right along with us there were things that we used to be able to do back when we were eels there are things we used to be able to do when we were crustaceans there were things that we could do that we can't do now because the species evolves and the morality the accepted cannons of behavior evolve right along with us what we currently call moral and i put that in scare quotes what we currently call moral is is no more fixed than the fins that we used to have or the antenna that we will have someday the the fins that we used to have are all gone now and our morality that we had back then is gone also and the morality that we currently have is going to be gone when we get to the antenna stage so the need for a shared definition of morality is crucial in a debate like this because what will happen at some point if i point to abortion or to same-sex marriage or to status feverish you know and i say well of course of course atheism produces produces pro-abortion legislation and produces openness to any kind of marriage you want to have and it produces you know i'm sure i could develop my list or extend my list of immoral offenses and if i get it long enough then ben's going to interrupt and say something like those things aren't immoral what would what are you talking about well clearly what i'm talking about at that point is we have different definitions of morality so our our understanding of morality might overlap somewhat but you you have to start with definitions and i think definitions come back to on things like morality come back to the two great playground questions of why and who says right why and who says so next the second thing that i want to get to is the need for a rationale so the first the first is the definition how do we define what is moral and immoral the second is the need for a rationale for morality and in this case um for any kind of morality at all whether it's ben's or minds or somebody else by this i mean any system that says to an individual you ought to do thus and such if there's a thou shalt not if uh you're out of line for doing this you ought to have done otherwise if a system comes from outside the individual and says you ought to do this then somebody's going to say why um who says why and who says where does that ought come from where does that ought come from where do we get obligation what um what does what produces obligation moral and specifically moral obligation what is what it's what is its basis so let us postulate that ben and i have a friend in common okay we have a friend in common and he is a man who's a dedicated atheist he's on his deathbed and ben and i arrive at the same time to say our farewells to him this friend takes the opportunity to tell the two of us that he lived is he pleased and that's speaking quite frankly now since he's going to die later that day he has gotten away with a bunch of stuff let's say that he then mentions a line of atrocities that he's committed and that ben and i both are both appalled by the things he's done all right so ben and i don't have any difference at all about our disapproval of what this guy's behavior has been we both disapprove of it the issue of the rationale comes in when uh our friend passes away and ben and i are standing out on his front lawn uh about to go our our respective ways and we get to talking about why we disapprove okay why do we disapprove what is why was this guy wrong all right so so the issue is not whether um it's possible and this is something that ben alluded to in his opening statement the issue is not whether it's possible for this friend to have been a Comteon or to have been a utilitarian that's true he could have been those things uh just as ben can be those things but as it turned out as it happened what he actually was was a nihilist what he actually was was someone who said i'm going to do absolutely whatever i want to uh imagine there's no heaven it's easy if you try no hell below us you know i'm gonna and i'm going to do as i please my question is not whether ben makes room for the Comteon and the utilitarian and other forms of atheism that hold to an objective morality my question is whether he has room for the nihilist the nihilist who lives that way is that consistent also okay now then that leads to the third thing the and the third thing has to do with the motivation so the first is how do we define morality and i think we can realize that on the number of fundamental issues the christian and the atheists would define it very very differently the second thing is how if we have an area of shared agreement on these things our deceased friend did that we both disapprove of what is our rationale for disapproving of it and can we say that this selfish man who just passed away was in any way wrong who did he sin against who did he what did he violate he did get away with it he got clean away with it well then third is motivation for living morally and this is reflected a little bit in my scenario of the of the narrow on the deathbed the human race is a piece of work we do all kinds of awful things to one another and because we do awful things to one another we need encouragement we need help we need to we need to realize that we are not at the the fine beings that we like to flatter ourselves that we are and one of the things that is a motivating factor is the reality of justice not justice as an abstraction but justice as in judgment coming so when a person lives his life in the in the fear of god not not fear in the sense of scared but fear in the sense of an awesome respect for who god is and the realization that we are all going to appear before the judgment seat of god and we're going to answer for how we live we're going to this is not a this is a graded course now oftentimes anybody who wants to tell you that students behave in exactly the same way in past failed courses that they do in graded courses hasn't been teaching very long people behave differently and if you convince the population if you convince the entire population that there is no accountability there are no final grades there is no day of judgment there are many people who have lived lives of unbridled selfishness and who've got clean away with it if you convince them that that's the way it is there will be a number of people who will aspire to that and when they aspire to that um the atheist is not in a position to say you're making a wrong choice says who why is that a long time fine i'm good there thank you very much we'll jump into the open conversation want to let you know folks we are on podcast if you didn't know we're really excited about it we've gotten a lot of positive feedback and so pull out your favorite podcast app and see if you can find us and also want to let you know if you're listening via podcast right now our guests are linked in the description of the podcast as well and so you can hear plenty more from our guests by clicking on those links in the description and with that we'll kick it over to the open discussion portion and so thanks gentlemen the floor is all yours yeah so uh there's a lot going on there uh they so one of the first claims was that um there's going to be a certain amount of immorality and in any in any human society uh but that you're going to uh that you're going to get more immorality uh given uh given widespread atheism now that's an empirical claim so uh that's actually testable we don't just have to speculate about it uh and granted uh the the experiments that we have are not you know laboratory you know pristine uh because you know because there are other factors that confound it but it is striking that they don't seem to bear out what Pastor Douglas is uh is predicting here that so if you look at the uh the countries in the world with the the highest rate of of your religion uh you'll uh you'll see places uh you know like Sweden and Denmark uh that that also have you know much lower uh rates of things like murder and rape uh than the United States which is one of the most religious countries in the first world of course as I said that's not why do you leave out the Soviet Union well we can talk about the Soviet Union too but they uh but first let's talk about Sweden and Denmark uh and of course um I think that uh this is not a pristine laboratory experiment because they have uh because they have a lot more a religion than we do but they also have more of what you referred to earlier as a status thievery which I take it means uh redistributive taxation welfare state stuff like that uh all that all that bad stuff yeah uh well you know I I tend to uh I you know I won't blame your Christianity for your having that opinion there is a long and honorable list of uh of Christians who disagree with you but uh and uh but so at the very least we can say that uh if it is a great how you know if it is a greenhouse of immorality I don't think that there's any evidence that it is but if it is a greenhouse uh of of immorality uh then it least the the version of that greenhouse that's uh that's combined with lots of status thievery and social welfare seems to be one that grows much smaller pumpkins uh than uh than we get uh in countries like the United States and I'd also point out that if we're gonna talk about the state fair winners uh I mean this is you know obviously the list of uh of state of religious immoral you know uh winners of the state fair of immorality is very long and presumably doesn't need to be recited here so so let me let me start with that and then work back to sure the Denmark and Sweden and so on um let's let's take uh a famous Christian atrocity that really was an atrocity uh the Spanish inquisition okay take something on the Spanish inquisition which was horrible offensive to god bad wicked you know I'll call it every name you want me to call it uh but the Spanish inquisition over the course of its history was responsible for about 2000 executions about 2000 executions that was stolen on a slow afternoon okay so basically when we're when we're looking at uh the iniquity of atheistic regimes I'm thinking of places like North Korea um Soviet Union godless places and when I go to places like Scandinavia this is where my my point about the definition of morality uh comes into play because the Scandinavians are immoral in a different way than the than the Soviets were so uh you're likely if if I went to Scandinavia and said um does their godlessness have anything to do with pornography use okay the answer is yes but I think it would be much much less likely that this a swede would run over and burn down my house the Soviets would take me out of my house burn down my house and send me off to the gulag because I was thinking you know thoughts that I ought not to think so there's uh there's oppressive violent iniquity but there are also forms of immorality that are not rapacious that are not violent um Sweden it hasn't invaded anybody lately they're not running concentration camps but that doesn't mean that there's no uh immorality there right so uh this goes back to the question of definition your additional example about the kind of immorality you're most likely to get in uh in Sweden and you brought up use of pornography and said that we can attribute that to their atheism again I think the empirical data doesn't really back that up the two states in the United States that have the highest rates of porn download are Mississippi and Utah so and I don't think that those are the two states with the highest rate of atheists so I think that again whether the the state fair results actually correlate with your prediction I'm not convinced of now we could talk about the Soviet Union and the the atrocities you know that were that were committed uh that were committed under Stalin uh which are you know are certainly are certainly very real uh but one problem with that is that if the if what we're going to focus on there uh as the as as the problem is the uh the fact that uh that's you know that Stalin's particular ideology wasn't sure yeah wasn't a religious ideology that you know that the that the governing party uh was uh was atheistic uh then you have a problem because you know Nazi Germany committed much worse atrocities and their governing ideology was uh was not atheistic the most evil system that's ever existed in the history of the human race chattel slavery of the american south was one that was overseen uh by people who certainly saw themselves as you know as as bible uh you know bible believing uh christians so I think that uh I think that this claim that you know like just even in terms of correlation I think that this uh I think that this claim that we could say where there's atheism uh then you're going to see you know more atrocities or you know worse morality I think certainly at least given that fragment of morality that we agree on I think is going to be pretty dubious I think that the problem with Stalin's Russia uh was not the fact that the governing party happened to be atheistic it was the lack of political democracy and legal institutions that would stop the governing party from doing those things which is not something that's a product of uh of atheism I mean if anything the struggle for democracy globally uh is something that had to contend against many centuries of christian theology uh justifying you know absolute absolute monarchy but I don't want to spend too long on this because you mentioned three points and I think they're all they're all important so uh I mean unless you have more you want to say about this I would like to well let me let me ask you one question about it one question then we can go to back to my three points and I want to get to your youth of pro um uh issue also um let's say you and I let's say our deathbed friend not that you and I would be friends with him but let's say our deathbed friend was stoned and he's gonna die in 15 and he's gonna die in 15 minutes and we're talking to him and he says to us well I got away with it how is he wrong he's not wrong he got away with it he is wrong if he he thinks that that means uh that means that it's fine I think a a really useful uh you know way to to think about this you know because those seems like there are two very different issues that are being conflated here whether he had a self-interested reason not to do what he did and whether he had a moral reason not to do what he did in fact normally we think like like I think why did he have a why did he have a moral obligation to be a Kantian or a utilitarian why can't he be what he was why isn't that one of the options well sure it's uh to the extent that it's an option uh it's an equally an option if you're a theist that there is there's absolutely nothing about theism uh that uh that makes that any less of an option the argument any argument that I can give for Kantianism, utilitarianism, Rawlsianism and any of those options any argument I can give if it gets moral nihilism doesn't gain anything if you say oh and also God exists if somebody says uh oh I think God exists uh I think that God has very specific things that he commands me to do he commands me not to do uh but I don't think that that gives me any sort of moral obligation I think that maybe it gives me a self-interested reason to do these things because God might reward me for doing them or punish me for not doing them but I don't think it gives them many moral reasons I'm a nihilist about morality then any argument you could give against that would be exactly the same as an argument that an atheist could could could give against they're just separate questions like I think a really useful way of seeing that they're separate questions is to think about uh like borrow a thought experiment from Rene Descartes in his meditations a few hundred years ago where he says imagine that the world was created and was ruled over not by a kind and loving God but by a wicked and cruel but all-powerful demon and Descartes was making a point about knowledge but we could run within a slightly different way and say imagine that this all-powerful demon had created all the things that you think that God created a physical world a bunch of people to populate it uh and an afterlife and that the uh the demon uh had was going to reward people who tortured and killed innocents uh by sending them to heaven he was going to punish uh people who had maybe you know helps try to save people from being tortured and killed by sending them to hell now certainly in this you know world I'm describing you would have a self interested reason uh to to torture and kill and all that but I hope we agree that it wouldn't be a moral reason we wouldn't morally admire people who uh tortured and killed uh in order to get on the good side of the all-powerful demon we wouldn't morally condemn people who why not uh well again any possible answer to that why not that you could give I can give there's nothing that theism adds to it in fact I would say we would morally admire people who knew about the demon much more if they were protecting innocents from being tortured and killed knowing full well that this meant that they were you know they were engaged in the ultimate act of self-sacrifice that they were leaping into the eternal lake of fire uh and and it again this seems like if you think that relativism is a problem if you think that it's bad to think that that morality is just up to you know the whims of a person I don't see why it's it's any better to say that it's up to the whims of a different kind of being if indeed it is up to their whims if it's not up to their whims then we seem to be in the other fork of the euthyphro dilemma and say that there's something else that makes it good which is the reason that god commands you to do it okay so I promise I promise to jump over to the euthyphro issue in 30 seconds but I want to make one final point about our friend Stalin yeah so if I'm talking to Stalin on his deathbed and I'm talking to the grand inquisitor on his deathbed and I step into their respective worlds I say Stalin given your atheism let's assume your atheism is correct well played man you got away with it all right if your atheism is correct you pulled it off if I if I'm on by the deathbed of the grand inquisitor and I step into his worldview there is a god who is ultimate justice I step into that worldview what I say to the grand inquisitor is boy are you in trouble man okay sure but if uh but let's say the grand let's make a third hypothetical that the grand inquisitor is right about what god wants I would say what he's doing is no less morally loathsome because he happens to be right about what god wants that would just make god not morally good that wouldn't make them the grand inquisitor okay okay so this this gets us full tilt into the euthyphro thing so I'm I'm there now happy to talk about it awesome so if if god's command if something is only right because god commands it then you've got the problem of god commanding evil and wickedness and and so on which you're describing right there but if god is commanding things because they're good then that standard of goodness is outside god and he is submitting to it and that standard of goodness is the word of the true god there's a god above a god uh in other words god is answerable to someone or something if god is answerable to someone or something then he's not god well okay but but but hold on uh note that the response just assumes that morality must be god commanded that the only place that morality can come from is being commanded by a god which is exactly the issue in dispute right now I mean it just it's just right so I wanted a question you anticipated this at the tail end of your comments I would want to say that god does that righteousness holiness goodness is these are all attributes of god they're simply descriptive of the way he is so it's not something that he he could have created maple trees with pink bark he could have done something different there but he couldn't have created a world in which squares were round or in which righteousness was unrighteous because that would violate his own nature and character god can do anything consistent with his own nature and character and his own nature and character as a necessary being means that he does not submit to outside authority he's not he's not bound to a standard of good outside of himself and he can't create a standard of good that's contrary to the way he is so these things are and the other thing is that god is not a contingent being so he is what he is necessarily that means god is not just holy he is necessarily holy it could not be otherwise that that means because christians confess that god isn't is an absolute being not a contingent being he's absolutely a necessary being and his attributes of justice and righteousness and kindness and love are eternal just as he is all that is in god is god and so consequently it's like uh for for me to try to imagine Descartes demoniac god is like trying to imagine a platonic form a platonic realm of the forms where all the squares were circular it just doesn't work i can't get my mind around it because god confesses i am that i am god is the way he is and so consequently morality is simply a reflection of his character christians want christians want to conform themselves to the way god is so but again if you say that god can't be other than he is because you know because god has eternally had this character and it would be inconsistent for god not to have the character that he has i don't really see how any of that makes it any harder to imagine uh a alternate world where hey maybe you don't want to call him god anymore because you know because at this point the being that we're imagining uh you know maybe part of the necessary condition for counting as god is that he has that moral character fine call him schmad right so where schmad exists and schmad is like god in every single way except that his moral character is different instead of being steadfast he's capricious instead of being you know kind he's cruel and the question is uh would that mean that those uh like in that world uh would it be the case that cruelty was good because this happened to be the character of the being that created everything and if not why doesn't that mean that uh that what uh that what counts as a morally good quality a morally bad quality a morally good character a morally bad character uh is independent of what character god has right i would say that what you're trying to do is you're you're asking me to visualize as a thought experiment um something that i can't get my brain around i can't imagine if you're saying imagine the world in which it's not that hard but no i it's impossible for me so you're asking me to imagine a world in which all the squares were circular and i can't do it well i mean first of all i think you know i mean hey dick hart was a believe in christian he managed dead i think you should try i think you should believe in yourself and uh and and try a deed to imagine it i think you'll be able to imagine it uh there's there's certainly not there's certainly nothing uh logically inconsistent about saying that you could have a world that was created and is ruled over by a being whose essential nature is to know because what you're asking me to do you're asking me to do is deny an essential attribute of deity so um if you're asking me to defend the christian god by imagining that he's finite well i mean all i'm asking you to do i'm not asking you to revise your view of how god actually is all i'm asking you to do is presumably what you you set out to do in your three points which is to say uh except for the sake of argument something that you don't believe and see what follows from it so that's what you're doing when you imagine that there is no god you you accept my presuppositions for the sake of argument and that's also what you'd be doing uh if you imagined uh this uh this thought experiment you know and and you said that uh rather than me being right that there is neither a kind of loving god nor a cruel omnipotent demon uh or you being right you know about there being a kind of loving god i'm just a mad i'm just asking you to temporarily accept and think about and see what follows from a third possible presupposition which is that the world was created and is ruled by a all-powerful but cruel and capricious demon and you you're telling me that it's impossible but i'm not really hearing it a good reason why it is impossible not a match i will i will give you a fun okay i'll go this far with you okay for the sake of this discussion as as the apostle paul would say i'm out of my mind to talk this way but okay all right you've talked me into it god is the infinite all-powerful omnipotent fiend okay if that's the way the universe is and you take your stand defying this ultimate power like you've postulated doing i can say that given that cosmos that rebellion of yours would be incoherent how to be incoherent you'd have no reason for it okay well i'd have no self-interested reason for it but i think ordinarily we think that moral reasons are deeply and profoundly different than self-interested reasons uh so what can you point to what what what would you you know more like a point yeah like a moral reason is a reason that you're doing something because it's morally right you're not doing something because you're morally wrong so count for example would say that an action has moral worth precisely to the extent that it is not motivated uh by self-interest now he thinks it has to be motivated and the scene the respect and the scene god would say uh you know i would be god to say you i'd say that we cannot listen to come i killed him um well i think that i that i would that i would say that uh that as powerful as this demon is he uh that he's he's not a very clear thinker uh because he's uh he's confusing two different issues the demon is asking me what self-interested reason that i have i'm talking about moral reasons and moral reasons begin precisely where self-interested uh you know reasons end you know that's why like Plato in the republic you know he's asking people to consider to figure out what they really think is morally just to imagine a ring of invisibility so you could do whatever you wanted and get away with it says what would you not do because you think it's morally wrong what he's trying to do is he's trying to separate out the issue of uh of what you're going to be the morally rewarded my question is morally wrong morally wrong by what standard by what morally wrong by the by the standards of objectively correct morality which again you know i think there are arguments for all of the options that i've given for objectively correct morality now if you don't find any of those arguments convincing if you say no i think that uh i think that all of those options are wrong i think that maybe there's a deep philosophical problem with making sense of the very thought of objective morality then all i would say to you is okay but if that's true if there is this big problem with how to make sense of the idea of morality being objective adding on well god exists to your set of assumptions is going to do exactly nothing to alleviate that problem why not well uh we we talked about the the youth for objection earlier but the point but really i think that if you're going to say that it does something the the burden of proof is on you and all you've told me right with all this business about Stalin on his deathbed and all that stuff is about uh that not doing what god says is going to go badly for you which you know look i'm an atheist i believe that not doing what Stalin said and Stalin's Russia was going to go badly for you that doesn't mean that i don't uh admire you know Trotsky and other dissidents you know that that doesn't uh that doesn't mean uh that that that i do admire people who who would you know win along to uh to get along and similarly i'd say on the cosmic scale so all you've given me is a reason to think that it would be if you're that if you if god exists it would be in your interest to agree with god about no that but that's a completely no that's just my third from an argument for god's beliefs about morality being objectively corrects i i do agree with you that i argued that motivation matters and i do agree that self-interest jesus said to fear the one who can throw both body and soul into hell so it's not wrong to to take self-interest into account but that was my third point my second point has to do with the rationale when you when you say things like it's objectively immoral to obey this ultimate demoniac god it's objectively immoral to to obey the the demon who created all things my question to you is why by what standard is it immoral and again i've given you the answer to that several times they have a so i think here are your options that you can think any of these moral theories if any of them is right then you know that demon god Stalin the grand inquisitor are objectively wrong because they're violated if you don't think any of them are right and you're worried that moral nihilism is true you haven't given me a single reason to think that theism is going to be the basis of any sort of antinealistic argument you've just pointed to the existence of a philosophical problem and asserted that in some way or another that we have yet to hear theism is going to help solve that problem you're introducing god into the system as though he's simply a big character in the play instead of the ground of all being the one in whom we live and move and have our being because when you introduce god the necessary absolute into the equation then nihilism is out why not because god says it's out okay well i mean that might be a good reason that it wouldn't be in your interest to be a nihilist but you haven't explained why that means that would actually be objectively incorrect to be a nihilist you've said god is the ground of all being if that includes god being the ground of all morality that this is just a different way of saying well divine command ethics is true so if god exists we can make sense of divine command ethics being true and that's the right answer to to the question of what's objectively morally good now i could pose all the same questions about that you were posing for utilitarianism and contentism and all those other options i could say well wait a second why morally again if we're if we're talking about what's actually true as opposed to talking about what it's in your interest to believe you know if you know what's good for you and if we're talking about what's actually true i should say okay let's assume that god exists why is doing what he says is what's morally right the right answer and utilitarianism and contentism and all these other things because this is my first point and you have my three points my three points where the existence of the christian god provides us with the definition of morality the second is it provides us with the right but but i i want to linger on that first point because nothing about the existence of a christian god logically entails that divine command ethics is right and utilitarianism and contentism and the rest of those are wrong it could be that the christian god exists and of course god being all knowing knows all of the moral truths and you know maybe even a good way of discovering the moral truths is to you know is to read god's word or ask for god's guidance but what those moral truths were are moral truths that are defined by the categorical imperative or defined by no no no well well you haven't given me any reason to think that's not true except the one the one time when you seem to be giving me a reason to think that it wasn't true was when you said well if god is if god in his belief that certain things are morally right and morally wrong is believing in moral facts that aren't defined by him that means that he's submitting to someone or something outside of himself but but that i do want to return i do want to return to dog in just a second so that he has plenty of time to respond as well just because i think that he was on the verge he was starting to make a point and then um you jumped in and so we're about out of time james we're close um for the q and a to fit in as well what i want to do is maybe give dog a chance to respond and then pretty quick i pardon my interruption there ben but just because i do want to respect you guys's time okay so basically coming to the first point the christian position is that god's nature and character by definition by definition is everything it's not the universe is not a place where god fits in the universe is created spoken into existence by him he's not only the source of all our physical being he is also the word he is he is the source and ground of bedrock of every definition so when we define what what righteousness is basically what god says given the fact that it's if it's the christian god exists then by definition his will his character his nature defines the pattern of what is right and holy and and so consequently it it's not possible to imagine the christian god where someone has the right to dissent from that that definition okay i'll i'll leave it to the judgment of viewers whether that that answers my challenge about what is conceptually that makes the existence of a all-powerful god who created the universe incompatible with some moral theory other than divine command theory being true uh or whether any of that challenges the euthyphro objection to divine command theory the divine commands are not wins divine commands proceed from who he is well the only way for divine commands not to be wins is if they're made morally correct by some moral standard that is independent of the will of god just saying that well given god's nature he can only do this okay well given a cruel and capricious nature uh if you're a necessary being you can only act cruelly and capriciously but i think we would still say of a universe with a cruel and capricious god that what that god wanted wasn't morally no so no you only say that you only say that because you're talking about that god's commands or what matters to say that god's nature is what matters looks like it's responsive to the challenge but it just recreates at one level back no you're you're having to live in Descartes demented universe and your valiant resistance of the demoniac god in that universe you're having to borrow moral capital from this universe in order to justify your stand because if you just like fish fish don't know they're wet if you lived in that if you lived in that universe you would have no basis for resisting that you're switching topics because we were talking about moral metaphysics what is it that makes something morally good or morally bad what you're talking about is moral epistemology how we know whether something is morally good or morally bad now i could grant you that it could very well be that in the demon ruled universe uh the demon wouldn't you know wouldn't grant us the knowledge of what was morally good and bad you know that that he might i mean this was Descartes original point about the demon you know that he's introduced to be a source of of ways that we could be wrong about everything the demon is tricking us but that's a completely separate question from whether things actually are morally good or morally bad and i haven't yet gotten the reason to think that the right theory of what makes something morally good or morally bad is divine command ethics rather than continuous own Rawlsianism utilitarianism any of these other options a range of philosophers that you get to pick from is not the standard well no but i'm saying they have it that if any one of those if any one of them are correct if you accept if if any one of those theories is the correct theory then you know if utilitarianism is the correct theory then something being morally something maximizing well-being and minimize and suffered is what makes it objectively correct even if no one thinks so even if god doesn't think so and god what if they're all but but but if you think what if they're all if you're not convinced by any of the arguments for any of these views if you think that there is this big problem about how to make sense of reality being anything but a matter of preference my point is that adding theism into the mix and this is not simply a matter you know i think none of these metaphors about whether god is like a character to play or god is the ground of all things adding the assumption that god is the ground of all things into the mix doesn't actually add up to a reason to think that divine command ethics is the right theory of morality if you want to do that you still have to make that argument so just pointing to oh there's this philosophical problem about how to make sense of objective morality now i'm not necessarily convinced that is a huge problem but let's say for the sake of argument that it is adding theism doesn't make that problem any more tractable james how much time do we have left this is a good time to jump into the q and a if you guys are ready for it i do love the conversation it's been really fun but just because we want to get your basically we won't respect your guys time i want to jump into these and so we have our first one coming in from lab lover chris says ben how do you know on an atheist world view that morality is real versus an illusion e.g. moral nihilism and is it the same way that theists know god exists yeah so i think that the ways that you could know again the question if the question is what's the right argument for moral realism you know why is it that you know why should we think that there are objective moral facts then there are certainly arguments for that you can make within you know the assumption of atheism there are arguments that you could make that those are convincing but i think the larger point that we want to keep our eyes on is that adding the premise that theism is true is going to do absolutely nothing to help defeat you know moral nihilism the same way that if if you think that um that if uh if we uh if we lived in that world that was ruled by an all-powerful demon doing what that demon command that wouldn't make doing what the demon commanded morally good uh then you should be able to say see why just postulating the existence of a god who has certain ideas about morality is not enough to show that those ideas are correct it might be enough to show that that if you know where what's which side your bread is buttered on you'll do what god says but that's a completely different question from why nihilism was morally wrong and theism is just not going to help with that gotcha next one do we both respond to these questions i think so far we can give you guys a couple of those kind of quick rebuttals because we don't have too many questions yet all right so i would i would quickly say that um uh ben keeps talking about bringing god in not fixing the problem but god is not a condiment or an add-on extra or something you bring in at the tail end god is an absolute being and so consequently you don't reason your way to god let's let's figure all the morality stuff out and then bring god in and see what happens i would say that without god i can't make hider i can't make sense out of anything right i can't i don't know which way to go i don't have any standard to follow everything everything is topsy turvy so i begin with the assumption of an absolute being and his nature is fixed and unchangeable and so consequently i don't want to switch out you know suppose suppose we had a mnemonic depressive god suppose we had a bipolar god suppose we had a god who alternated you know basically those to me are nonsensical questions because god is the i am that i am so we start with him and when we start with him we find that he does not just provide us with physical existence his son is the word the lagas that means he brings definition everything that everything that god sustains and created occupies the space within him or it it operates within his universe we are his creatures and so consequently we reckon with him we don't add him we don't add him in trying to flavor our universe to taste but you know but you could just substitute for the quick response ben just because the substitute for the phrase adding god in making the presupposition that and then fill in everything that pastor douglas just said and the challenge the challenge would still stand and i'd also just very quickly point out that there is a bit of a dilemma for him here because he can't really have it both ways he can't say that he is capable of entering in to for the sake of argument to the presupposition that there's no god at all and seeing what follows but he is not capable of entering into the presupposition that instead of the world being created by an eternal and an unchanging you know by a kind and loving god with an eternal unchanging nature the world was created by a by a cruel and wicked guy cruel and wicked being we don't have to call him god with an unchanging nature if you can enter into one presupposition you should be able to enter into both and the fact that one of them would be a profound value in a deviation from his world view if that's a good enough reason that he can't enter into one it should be a good enough reason to say that he can't enter into two and if he can't enter into either one then all of his challenges to atheism tonight just trivially fall by the wayside next i hate to do this but just because we have a number of questions we want to get through skill master asks this is for you pastor Doug said not believing in a god doesn't mean they're and so some of these are comments too because they're super chat so they said not believing in a god doesn't mean there is no morality there does believing in god give me automatically good moral judgment no so there are a lot there are a lot of people who believe there that there is a god the book of james says the devil believes that there's a god and the devil does not have good moral judgment so there are all sorts of people who are theists there are people who are professing christians who are very foolish and simple and wicked and so yeah it's not something that automatically comes with a mental ascent to the to the fact of god's existence i believe that if someone is truly regenerated if they're converted to god if they're given a heart change i believe that makes a difference in their life but i don't believe that simple mental ascent does that you bet and thank you very much for your question this one coming in from want to make sure i read this right and paul crick says i if i were to enjoy stoning an adulterer would i be moral in doing so i think that's for you past your dog well if you were to enjoy that then i would say you need to seek counsel you got it counseling and they also had asked if stallin found jesus and sincerely was repentant for his sins would he be forgiven by god yeah if anybody who repents anyone who repents and calls them the name of the lord would be forgiven yes you got it thank you very much even even moral monsters thank you very much and all over cat well appreciate your question said in the demon ruler analogy for ben if quote unquote evil acts are rewarded or beneficial wouldn't humans evolve to know evil as good instead making the demon benevolent well i think there's a there's a logical slippage at the end of the question so would people believe that torturing and killing innocence was good sure but that's a completely different question from whether evil was benevolent you know this is you know so uh in a debate about a very similar topic um you know with uh i borrowed this in my opening statement actually between you know william lane craig and uh shelly kagan uh craig brought up this idea that well okay if there's not god to define morality then if the nazis of one world war two and just killed everybody who objected to their actions and brainwashed everybody who's left to uh to to think that what they did was morally right uh then if you know some sort of cultural relativism i guess is right then what the nazis were doing is right and of course i agree that's absurd but for exactly the same reason i think that divine command ethics is absurd because it makes morality relative to the will or if you prefer the character uh of one being and i'd say that what any being human or otherwise thinks is morally wrong is just a separate question from what's morally wrong gotcha and this one coming in from negation of p appreciate it said pastor dug joseph stallin has a deathbed conversion to christianity alan touring does not stallin quote gets away with it and gains eternal reward while touring would be tortured for all of eternity is this correct yes you got it and chris gammon thanks for your question said i treat others the way i would want to be treated that's what i would do whether i had ever heard of any god or not what are your thoughts both pastor dug and ben i would say that's a fine statement of the golden rule and you like that you'd like to think that maybe you you could come up with that all by yourself but but jesus taught it and um it's been in our culture for centuries and i believe that we have to ask by what standard treat others as you would be treated makes a whole lot of sense to us but i i want to argue it makes sense to us for a reason we're created in the image of god he gave us a sense of morality it's not uh it's it's in bread we have an understanding of natural law and it's revealed to us in scripture we can't say that independent of all that stuff i would like to think that i would be a good and decent person because i would say by what standard if you're the standard you can alter it at will if you're not the standard then i have to ask where did you get it so if the standard comes from outside where did you get it if it arises from within why can't you change it well so i i think there were three different things going on in that answer the first one was the claim that we believe in the golden rule because it's taught by jesus uh which is clearly falsified by a quick tour through through world history uh that you know they certainly uh in the the same time you know approximately the same time in place but a bit earlier uh in the Babylonian Talmud you know rabbi Halal gives a gives a version of the of the golden rule that's before jesus uh Confucius gives a version of the golden rule that's way before jesus uh so so i think Confucius says don't do to others what you don't want them to do to you and as c.s Lewis points out an abolition of man jesus contributes a great advance due to others which you would have them do to you but ever but i grant the fact that i said i referred to natural law and yeah so that was your second experience much better than your first answer because the first answer again you have certainly very golden rule like statements long before jesus uh and certainly broadening our our horizon behind beyond the rule uh in every human culture that's ever existed i grant that i grant that yes you know christians or atheists or pantheists or polytheists or animus everybody had you know made moral claims uh quite a few of which not all of which but quite a few of which would line up with the the fragment that pastor douglas and i agree on so i think that the natural law claim is better uh that they have a that it's not a matter of a cultural inheritance from christianity it's uh it's a matter of what's inscribed in the human heart uh on your view by god sure uh but then i think the question again is are you going to separate the question of what humans believe is morally right from the question of what is morally right so and again this this is where sure if you had uh that you know that demon ruled universe uh then uh then perhaps the you know the demon would use his power uh to make sure that nobody held uh you know nobody believed in the golden rule or the categorical imperative or anything like that but i would say that that's as as irrelevant to the moral question as the nazis winning world war two and killing everybody who objected to their actions is to the question but then what you're doing what they were doing is wrong what you're doing is you're standing in a bucket and carrying yourself upstairs with it you can't do this what you're doing is you're saying i am going to point to the fact that there is an objective morality that arises from nowhere that comes from nowhere and i'm going to postulate that it's there even though the one who created everything disagrees with it so they have a where you but well again though i have uh who died left you king uh well i don't actually think i'm either king which is why i think that to figure out what's morally right and wrong we have to reason together about it which is what i'm trying to do here which i think which i think by the way is a uh is a much better idea than than deriving morality from a fundamentalist interpretation of christianity because if you want to look at the history of state fair winners that's that's that's where you know that's where you get some of the worst of them but you're helping yourself in this bucket analogy to the assumption that somehow or another making the presupposition of theism rather than this presupposition of atheism helps make sense of objective morality and we have yet to hear an explanation of how that works you've told us that god's ideas about what's moral or immoral uh are essential and unchanging and part of his nature if true flatly irrelevant to the question you've told us that people that you know that the grand inquisitor would have a reason would have a self-interested reason uh to uh to wish that he'd done otherwise because he was about to be punished which again if true is just irrelevant to the philosophical question of what makes something more objectively morally true and if you think that's a big problem then all your work is still ahead of you when you say well theism is true okay fill you know fill in the spaces here how do we get from theism is true to god's nature is objectively morally good this one coming in from appreciate your question it's from tom's chair who asks if god can say that killing babies is morally uh permissible or required then is that god's standard flawed is that the last part is that god's standard flawed correct is that a question for me yes i think so okay and i i assume it's referring to the came tonight um you know what god demanded the israelites to go in and slaughter everybody i think so so all all that is is uh i'd refrain the question can god be pro-choice apparently yes so sorry was was that addressed to to me or james or just no no i was answering the question god the lord gives life the lord takes life he is he is the one who has authority over that so consequently when someone dies of a heart attack god's not guilty of murder you know he's simply taking back what he gave in the first place so god's command to exterminate the canonites was holy righteous and good well that's uh i mean i i think that i think that once you've reached the point in an argument where somebody is justifying genocide uh then that's not you know maybe it's a coincidence uh that they they hold that position and that they uh and that they you know they could also independently have the right idea about what you know the objective foundations of morality but it's certainly not a good it's certainly not a good son we must well here go ahead we must move to the next question this one coming from samuel littleholm and folks we uh will not get to all the questions so just want to give you a heads up that anything that we've gotten in so far uh any new submissions we won't be able to read for sure just because you have limited time but samuel asks if design is undeniable and if design equals morality and in parentheses crooked and straight lines slash harm and health wouldn't atheism be inherently immoral because they deny said design and then they say denying truth is inherently immoral question mark oh i mean this this was the this was one of the first thing that's for you Ben he wasn't gonna uh that he he actually wasn't going to claim but he's he sort of said it be trivially true but he had the question begging to to say it right i mean am i missing something is this question for me um for you i thought yes it definitely you're right it is for you ben i'm frankly i'm still piecing together the question yeah i guess i'm not sure i understand the question because it sounded like what he was asking about was uh one of the first things that pastor Douglas said in his opening statement which is okay given that i'm a theist i think that there's a sense to which atheism is immoral because the atheist is saying something false uh but i'm not going to press that argument because that would just be sort of question begging in a silly way of this context and of course and i guess i would just um you know help myself to to his point here if it is addressed to me and say that uh yeah sure i mean if uh uh if theism was true and i i and i knew it was true and i was denying it that i can really say it's something false and that might be morally wrong but then you can say exactly the same thing in the other direction that if atheism is true and pastor Douglas knew it was true and he was still saying that it was false that he would be knowingly saying something that was false so i mean you could play that game in both directions but i don't really see what it's supposed to prove you got it and this one come this one comes in from ask yourself last one we've got here and they asked or yeah i should say Isaac asked Doug said that the evil god world is impossible like a squared circle to avoid Ben's question what's the contradiction in an evil god idea make sure it's a formal i can't understand the abbreviation uh but so i that's the question though and the the rest of what they said i couldn't understand but i guess they're saying is an evil god a contradiction in what way would it be a contradiction akin to squared circles for pastor dog okay so this goes back to the point i tried to make a number of times god's existence is necessary he's not a contingent being if god exists he exists necessarily god didn't happen one day it wasn't like there was nothing and then one all of a sudden there was god and then he made the world god exists necessarily from everlasting to everlasting he inhabits eternity he identifies himself as i am that i am so god's self-existence his aseity his immutability is um are all characteristics of his unchangeable nature so if you are if you if you're starting from that there's no way to get a contender a contender evil god in there he can't he can't be toppled and you and you don't start with a vacuum and then decide what kind of god are we going to put in there ben is exactly right is that you can for purposes imagine the world that your opponent is talking about and run a reductio and say here's what i think happens there all right you can you can imagine that way i can't i mean i can't imagine an evil god as i told ben i can't get my mind around that and to to an earlier point that i wanted to say where ben made a fair point i honestly can't get my mind atheism either so the absence of a god is just as difficult for me as a malevolent god that i i i can't imagine it but i can put that concept as a placeholder in argument and run it out but i can't really understand it i can't really get i can't really grasp it but i i guess what i don't understand is if you can put that in a placeholder in an argument that you know because yeah if god exists necessarily which um which by the way um you know this is a there's a classic argument for this the ontological argument uh i don't think it's a very good argument but we can have that discussion another time perhaps but if god exists necessarily uh and also has the nature that he has necessarily if both of those things are true then to the extent that that would make uh a god that had a different nature like a square circle it would also make no god like a square circle because you're saying what if something that exists necessarily i agree with that i agree with that so if i i do okay good so if you could still say okay let's assume that this square circle exists now here are all these unsavory consequences of atheism then it seems to me that you should be able to answer questions about if this other square circle the world being created by by a eternally unnecessarily existing cruel being existed uh would it be the case that that means commandments were morally good uh i don't really see what the disanalogy is supposed to be here's how and here's how it works i can't imagine square circles i couldn't go to the to the board and draw one i can't get my mind around square circles but i can't i can't run a reductio on that if someone said imagine a world of square circles i would say well i can't imagine it really but i can tell you this if the world had square circles in it geometry is shocked no more geometry i can't say that right so i can't if you say no more geometry that means that you can in fact reason about what would be true in this world and if you can do that for atheism you should be able to do that uh for the world created by an all powerful demon oh and i got higher order you thief for a problem would that that all powerful demons uh character therefore be morally good let me just throw one quick thing in i hope it's quick about the ontological argument i don't believe the ontological ontological argument proves the existence of god but i do believe the existence of god proves the ontological argument you got it thank you guys want to say folks our guests are linked in the description so if you'd like to hear more it doesn't have to stop you can click on their blinks below which are in the top of the description and if you enjoyed this debate hit that thumbs up we appreciate it i know i sure did thank you very much pastor dug and ben this has been a true pleasure to have you guys we really appreciate you spending your time with us this afternoon thanks thanks very much ben thank you yeah thank you absolutely and so what we're going to do folks is i'll be right back with a post credit scene where i'll just let you know about some of the upcoming debates and with that we'll say keep sifting out the reasonable from the unreasonable folks i'll be back in just a moment and once again huge thank you to our guests i am so excited we really do appreciate our guests and so huge thanks again to pastor dug wilson and dr ben burges is we really do enjoy those guys and it was a little bit of a time crunch it is you know it's just a challenge everybody's busy and so we're just thankful to get these guys on at all it was a blast and so thanks everybody for hanging out with us it's always fun to have you here just keeping it real and also i want to say it's a great opportunity to just quick say hello as i do like to get to say hello to you guys and just say thanks for hanging out you make it fun the more the merrier exponent in the twitch chat you guys we have a twitch did you know that i'm not making this up it's not some sort of tasteless joke to get you all excited and be like oh snap i want to go on the twitch we have a twitch i'm gonna put this in the live chat just so it's convenient for you and we are very excited folks as i had mentioned uh that seems to be people are like hey this is like fun like twitch i'm i'm into it that's uh encouraging and so that's useful that that uh means a lot to me and so thanks for your positive feedback on that thanks for people like tuskbeatbox and dave langer and others who have helped set that up and our twitch i am putting it it is it in the description right now and so want to let you know other upcoming debates you will see see that debate poster right there we are arranging a debate i'm confident we're going to have this uh happen so it's not fully confirmed the date is still in the air but i can tell you this matt dill hunty i've been communicating with him and i am very excited we are that's going to be in march going to host a debate on whether or not jesus fulfilled prophecy with samuel nasan and matt and so that's going to be a lot of fun and want to let you know please do yeah folks thanks for reminding me in the chat i appreciate it as stripper liquor said 480 watching we need 200 likes only 20 to go holy smokes we're almost at all but now we're only five all right so we're at 195 holy smokes great job stripper liquor a lot of people hit like and so thanks everybody for those likes we appreciate it as we do want to keep bringing you epic debates like this and so tokyo loy says thank you sir thank you tokyo loy just for hanging out with us that was a lot of fun and let's see johnny bickle says oh i liked it for you thanks for that like johnny we appreciate your support man we are excited about the future guys a lot of epic debates coming up in fact let me show you some other ones so as you are seeing on the screen here we not only have matt dill hunting next month with samuel nasan on a brand new topic whether or not jesus filled prophecy also this wednesday that should be fun or no wait isn't this tuesday it's this week i know that tom jump will be debating new guest justice walker on homeschool versus public school so that should be juicy you guys brand new topic we're excited to have that new one and so reservoir i'm reading in from the chat reservoir dope reservoir of gore says uh thanks for the debate thank you friend for being so supportive in your positivity we're up to 212 likes that is epic thank you guys mark spends thanks for coming by said thanks james thank you mark seriously you guys make it fun it's always a blast to be with you i told before before we went live with ben and and past drug i said i was like i love this this is going to be such a great mood and it does i just love it it's so fun you guys and so my day is pretty boring what i i'm usually right now reading boring papers to be honest so i uh just appreciate you guys hanging out here and that it's a party uh let's see add the luck and bill said fun for the end fun for the end of times and let's see jason lingle thanks for being with us said how about a debate on the on the death penalty that we are open to we haven't hosted it before but i'm open to it and colin lorenz says that was a good one thanks buddy i'm so glad you enjoyed that and thank you robert bull i think they might he might have been joking at the end on that joke uh about the ontological uh argument but i could be wrong but i think it was it was meant to be a play on words but travis statham thanks for hanging out with us glad you were here friend and yeah just really appreciate you guys hanging out it's always fun to like say hi and let's see we've got jason lingle and we've got mac thanks for being here with us mac we appreciate you gray wolf thanks for being back and moshi and i'm good to see you as always lambi thanks for being with us friend you guys i'm pumped though about the future oh oliver catwell said what side what side is tom taking tom takes the side of public schools so that should be juicy i i'm a little surprised he disagreed because tom sometimes actually has like a surprising take on a lot of views and so i'm kind of not sure what they're exactly going to debate so it should be pretty spontaneous clinton rosh good to see a john smith glad you're here uh let's see but yeah mark spent said when do we get to watch you debate james i the best i can offer you right now is i can throw a link in the chat if you've never seen this is like an old debate it's like seven years ago it was a debate i had with our dear friend and i'm being serious i actually do love august berkshire from the debate um i can post that in the chat if you guys have never seen it it was a debate that i did in person seven years ago is that crazy along that's crazy how long ago that was so but yeah that i can give you but right now we're working on the phd it's honestly it's so exhausting to try to prepare for a debate that i just it's really hard but maybe over a winter break or a summer break or something and uh let's see but yeah we do appreciate you guys danish danish debater thanks for making it truth begets heresy glad you're here and uh yeah we're excited we don't actually have a debate scheduled for tonight we will be back i'm pretty sure we've got one for tomorrow night and every night this week actually and so thank you guys so much of this for the support though uh it's honestly i totally appreciate you bald broke said what happened to the sargon debate the answer is the same i've got to find sargon his uh fake account on twitter is gone so now i'm trying to figure out how to find him again and so that's a work in progress but thank you guys for your your kind support and i want to let you know oh you guys don't miss this bottom right of your screen k and aerial will be debating a controversial very controversial topic this wednesday you don't want to miss it my friend so make sure that you make that one and as mentioned hey hit that subscribe button as you don't want to miss any of these debates as they're live because that's where the uh it's just a total blast just to be there live and get to kind of watch it as people are on their quick on their feet and all that good stuff and so we do appreciate you guys thanks for your support again and we're excited about the future so our goal our vision guys what we are committed to and absolutely determined to do is to create a neutral platform where everybody can make their case on a level playing field we are committed to it and that's something we all have in common folks and we're all excited about and we are 100 percent going to do it in the future and it's going to be a powerful platform where people are like hey they do a great job that actually does really allow people to make their case on a level playing field where people are really treated fairly and a time that is perhaps more you could say perhaps more heated or controversial than ever and so michael migalicuddy thanks for letting me know about that that sargon is uh on gab and then parlor i i can see if i can try to reach him that way because i sure as heck don't understand discord yet but at clutch thanks for subscribing friend we are super encouraged that you have subscribed and we're excited about all the upcoming debates so thanks so much for joining with us and fulfilling that vision of creating a neutral platform so this is something i was thinking about this earlier today like a few hours ago i promise i will never i'm serious i will never turn this channel into like i'm going to start putting out videos on my views no no no like this isn't a like a it's not my channel it's like modern day debate it's a neutral platform the only way you'll ever hear my views is if it's in a debate that i'm in and so we promise to continue that same system you could say where we'll never have like an after show or we like blast one of the guests and be like man you so wrong and don't like it's it's never going to be like that folks it's always going to be a neutral channel as long as this channel exists believe me and so we are excited and we we uh honestly we've got big plans for the future so thanks again for all of you guys hanging out with us thank thank you reza wad of gore thank you for your kind words and again atl clutch thanks for subscribing and uh yeah you guys i'm pumped for it it's going to be epic so thanks for all your support thanks for subscribing liking everything we're planning on big things for the future that are going to be a lot of fun and a lot of fun to watch and just and just hang out just join the party so thanks guys hope you have a great rest of your monday keep sifting out the reasonable from the unreasonable and we'll be back tomorrow oh yeah