Hey everybody, today we're debating whether or not God created the universe and we are starting right now with Ronnie's opening statement Thanks so much for being with us Ronnie. The floor is all yours All right, thank you James. So, um, yeah, I believe atheists are they're in a tough spot when it comes to explaining the origins of everything because Atheists only have two options to work with really so option one Something came from nothing or option two something simply always existed infinitely into the past But both of these options are illogical as something forming from absolute nothing is Impossible and as well something eternally existing without an initial cause is just illogical It's unscientific. It's unscientific and philosophically unsound When properly examined we realize the ultimate origins of everything is simply beyond a raw scientific explanation Therefore a supernatural explanation or God is the only plausible one Science also can't explain the fine-tuning of the fundamental properties of the universe without resorting to multiverse theory Which can't be proven or disproven and essentially it's not science and As well the multiverse theory to me and to many just intuitively doesn't make sense when broken down and fleshed out As I'm sure we're going to do Only the existence of God can explain why the universe is tuned for order in life I don't want to get into all the aspects of fine-tuning in my opening But for now, I'll just say that if say for instance the cosmological concept were to be changed just one part in 10 to the power of 120 the universe would either fly away or collapse and if we increase the strength of gravity by just one part in 10 to the power of 34 the universe couldn't have life sustaining planets So the universe could have been made an infinite lead an infinite amount of different ways, right? But we do have a finely tuned universe And in that universe that we see before us could have either it came about through random chance or Through some sort of fine-tuning what makes more sense to you is the question that I asked could randomness produce such a perfect tune I think no, I think clearly intelligence was behind the creation The second thing I want to get into is the existence of God also explaining why there is a universe instead of absolute nothingness Science can't even offer a reason for why there's a universe instead of nothingness If you think about it, the universe would actually make more sense and be easier to explain if it never existed Non-existence continuing to not exist is an easy concept to imagine eternal nothingness and nothing ever happening But the fact that something happened and we do have a universe begs the question why why is there universe instead of nothingness Nothingness could easily be the state of a godless realm So why would there even be a universe if a non-universe is an easier task to do? But if God exists we would he would surely create a realm in which life can exist aka a universe or multiverse God is viewed in all belief systems Wants there to be life and believers in God see life as a gift because if not for God there would be no existence at all So a belief in God helps not only offer a spiritual existence beyond the material But can answer the question why there's something instead of nothing from I guess a more cerebral point of investigation So yeah, I think I'm gonna leave it at that and I'm gonna pass it on over to mark for his opening statement You got it. Thank you very much for that opening statement Ronnie and want to let you know folks It's your first time here at modern-day debate. We are a neutral platform Hosting debates on science religion and politics We hope you feel welcome no matter what walk of life you were from and we have many juicy debates coming up for example at the bottom right of your screen Muslim Kenny Bomer and Matt Dillahunty will be debating in person Livestreamed for the public on whether or not Islam is true You don't want to miss this one if you haven't yet hit that subscribe button So you don't see all of the public live debates from our in-person conference in Plano, Texas on Saturday November 19th, that's coming up fast folks So as I mentioned hit that subscribe button so you don't miss that epic party and with that Thanks very much mark for being with us. The floor is all yours Thank you so much James, and I'll just share my screen there May just tell me when it is on and I will get started. Thank you Do you need a drumroll? Okay, fantastic. Thanks James. My name is Mark Reid and I have the pleasure of taking the negative position for did God create the Universe I want to thank modern-day debate for hosting this topic as well as my opponent Ronnie for joining me in this debate This is a tremendously important topic and one we ought not to take frivolously It's only by Understanding the universe can be understand our place in it and furthermore, it's important It is important to understand our universe to possibly move beyond it to the greater cosmos if one exists So let's get down to it. Let's find out These are the requirements for my opponent and it seems obvious and and these are the requirements because he is taking The affirmative of course It seems obvious, but it's important to understand why it's it's crucial to demonstrate these concepts is true rather than assert The truth with any kind of justification Hopefully we will see consistent and detailed evidence for the claims that are being made Firstly a God must exist to create anything if that's not demonstrated then A God that doesn't exist can't create anything The universe cannot be the necessary state of being or the initial conditions as it would not need a God To create it at all and the universe must be demonstrated that it has been created by the aforementioned God It seems odd, but a God could be proven to exist But that does not necessarily mean that the God created the universe Of course, it does depend on the definition of a God and the attributes it possesses Which is vitally important and i'd like that to be the first topic of the open discussion So i want to talk about the burden of proof and i'm taking the negative Which is the easier position of course my opponent is the one making the positive knowledge claim And therefore taking on the burden of proof to demonstrate that in fact God did create the universe I would be taking the position that God has not met this burden of proof and Challenge my opponent to provide justification for believing the universe was created by deity It would have been the interest of fairness I will be discussing some of the reasons I believe that no God was involved in the formation of the universe And it is unreasonable to believe that a God was involved I do want to mention though that reclining to disprove the existence of a God is shifting the burden of proof There's a there's a million things I could come up with that are completely Unfalsifiable you could never disprove them. I could suggest interdimensional aliens magic energy Waves outside the universe in the cosmos millions of other explanations It is not the reclamation of those who hear the claim to disprove them as hitchens razor says That which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence If you were to believe every claim until it has been completely disproven to maintain intellectual consistency You would have to believe every religion conspiracy theory and outlandish claim ever made. This is completely and utterly unreasonable This is the example Russell's teapot our philosopher here has a Invisible and tangible teapot in orbit around Jupiter claims that it is there The burden of proof is on the philosopher making the claim to prove it exists Not for anybody else hearing the claim to disprove it without any evidence a claim like this can be dismissed as unwarranted That does not necessarily mean is that it is untrue But it is not rational to believe it and to prevent it with evidence that it actually in fact exists um the other problem we run into a lot and I do not claim to know where the universe originated from that doesn't mean any other explanation given Um is given credibility by lack of explanation need for evidence for your explanation that it's independent from any other possible explanation If you claim a god made the universe you have to provide the evidence for this claim Not evidence against any other claim disproving any scientific hypothesis gets you no closer to a god explanation being true and trying to do so is God of the gaps So these are two philosophers in ancient Greeks that are asked where earthquakes come from one philosopher says I don't know and the other says Poseidon now um The just because one philosopher does not know does not make the god explanation any more likely or correct Even though we know the opposition is not providing an explanation Although we know now that earthquakes were caused by geological forces even though people in the time believed it was the the seagod Religions have been doing this since the dawn of time have been wrong on the god explanation for absolutely everything bar none Lightning caused by god's disease crop growth caused by god the star movements cause The list goes on and on and on In fact, one of the reasons why the god hypothesis for the universe is Unlikely is because they think god or gods have caused almost every natural phenomenon at some point in the past And they have been wrong every single time without fail And I want to clarify what I mean by evidence It's a body of facts that is are Exclusively indicative of one conclusion evidence is only as good as the methods used to gather it And we must avoid bias and objectively gather evidence for the origin of the universe A reliable method would be repeatable by anybody take all conclusions into account Um, I won't dwell on this but I'd like to examine my opponents methods when it comes to the open open dialogue Um, this is a major problem. I foresee happening You cannot call a universe a creation without first demonstrating the creator I already went over this in the requirements section. So I won't spend too long on it I wish to focus briefly on the idea that appealing to something like a god Uh, we have less knowledge of the natural world does not solve the problem I can insert a million things that could create the universe but making it more vague doesn't improve my argument Um, I cannot presuppose the origin of the universe just because my explanation relies on it Here's an example. Okay, because I realize that's a bit wordy I could say the universe was formed magically by a blarney stone and assume the universe has a magical origin Now that's begging the question as I would not have demonstrated the universe has a magical origin And and even if I said the magical universe, I would have to demonstrate that is in fact the case Um, so I want to go through some of the hypothesis posed by a scientist Now I do want to make a disclaimer that I'm not a cosmological physicist So my understanding of these models are basic at best All of the models are similar and physicists do not claim to know exactly which one is right If any of these at all It seems to be related to quantum field theory with the universe forming from a quantum field In the case of m theory the mathematical models fit what we expect to see very accurately However, we don't know exactly how the universe formed So I want to refer back to this point as god of the gaps argument I was discussing earlier just before because scientists don't know exactly how Doesn't mean a god explanation holds any credence whatsoever. It needs its own evidence Um, one of the reasons I think we've got explanation is unlikely is because the universe is vast doesn't seem to have any significance to us Or any other entity there are a lot of naturalistic destruction and chaos happening for no apparent reason at all Why are there stars going supernova on the other side of the universe our milky wave will eventually collide with andromeda and you know be destroyed Why is the vacuum of space not actually stable and in a meta stable state? Having quantum fields rather than being a stable vacuum No one seems to know and there seems no good explanations aside from natural processes Which as I pointed out earlier has been the explanation we have found every single time we have investigated any phenomenon Um, this is the main reason I don't believe a god exists as our understanding of neurology has developed We understand the mind seems to be an emergent property of brain states Now jewelers want to claim that the mind exists somewhere outside the brain But there's no evidence to support this Consider for example split brain patients that have two hemispheres of their their brain split These two hemispheres are bound to have different personalities and different consciousness Even different likes and dislikes and and one patient was even found to have one hemisphere That was a feast and one hemisphere that was an atheist Um study of this is advanced neuroscience, especially in the field of interpersonal theory of mind And suggests that mind and consciousness is an emergent property of the brain's neurological functions and not a separate entity of itself Um, so that concludes my presentation and I do want to thank you for your time and um, I'll send it back to james Thank you very much for that opening mark and well, as you know folks We are thrilled to have you here no matter what walk of life you were from Thanks for being with us as well as i'm going to get us into the open discussion But before I do want to mention a couple of quick little housekeeping things in particular Folks if you have been living in a cave on mars with your fingers in your ears Our second conference which is going to have seven different debates over the course of the entire day on saturday november 19th In plano texas is nearly upon us. This one's going to be epic I've got to tell you folks seriously if you haven't yet check out the links in the description box in particular You can find a link for the actual in-person tickets as well as the link for the crowd fund Which you can see the crowd fund meter for this event as we were trying to raise funds for the venue We are going to make it to our goal. We're 57 of the way there We're thrilled about that and that's important because we are striving to provide a neutral platform So that everybody has their chance to make their case on a level playing field Including as you can see on the bottom right one of the debates that'll happen at that conference Is arin raw versus daniel hikikachu? It is going to be absolutely bonkers my friends with that Thank you very much gentlemen. The floor is yours for that roughly 50 minutes of open dialogue Thank you so much james. Um, I think the first thing that I brought up that we should probably get pinned down Ronnie is is what the actual definition of your god or the attributes associated with your god is whether it is a necessary being or or what kind of Agents we're actually dealing with here I'd actually like to tackle a few things before we get into that because it just to kind of set up That's important. No, I do think it's important. Um, I just don't think that's necessarily a good Place for us to start right now. You said something earlier. Um, well in your in your opening about um The needing to provide proof of god evidence not proof Yeah, proof would be like a a Sort of like what you would call sort of overwhelming evidence, I guess beyond like a reasonable doubt Right, right, but but sort of what i'm talking about is sort of a as I said a body of facts that would be conclusively indicative of one Conclusion over any other conclusion and and is supported by sort of multiple lines that all show that that called conclusion is correct Well, I'm sort of using a process of elimination to show that god is the only option Regardless of what his attributes are or his is uh, you know, all of his defining features Um, I want to ask you a question. Do you agree that the universe is either created by god or it wasn't? Well Let's just go back one step because deductively if if I can suggest millions upon millions of possible explanations How are you eliminating all of them one by one? They will fall into either one of two categories They will fall into either yes, there is a god or no, there is no god and we can do that if you'd like But i'm sure you would actually agree with me that Well, yeah, let's let's I guess run that through Because I believe firmly that there is either God is either responsible for the universe or or he's not there is no real in between Right. So what you're talking about now is ontology like whether metaphysically there is a god or not a god, right? So yes, it is true and it is a true dichotomy that there either is a god in actuality or not a god in actuality But further than that that's not enough as I pointed out you not only have to demonstrate a god You have to demonstrate that the god did in fact create the universe You could demonstrate a god all live long day But unless that god is demonstrated to have created the universe you still haven't you still haven't met your burden of proof So you you do agree fundamentally either god created the universe or he didn't So if if if I can prove That there is no other explanation Then by default god would have to be responsible because there is no other explanation So I don't necessarily have to prove that god did create the universe I can prove that there is no other way for the universe to have been formed. It is true that There it is a true dichotomy that either god did create the universe or did not create the universe that that is a true dichotomy And it's a true dichotomy that the universe was either created by god or it wasn't Well, yeah, that's exactly what I said Well, it's it's slightly different wording, but yeah, I just I was hoping that you weren't playing a word game on me. So, yeah, basically Specific in my language. So we have behind door number one We'll say all natural causes in science behind door number two is the supernatural and god Yeah, sorry, I just I just want to want to say that you've changed the dichotomy now Because you've changed the dichotomy from god not god to god and natural Right. Well, natural would be meaning not god. So I don't know a word game No, as I brought up I brought up a magical blarney stone that's supernatural that created the universe Which is not god and it is not natural or science. So that I can show you. Yeah, let's explore that because I think that's very important Yeah, yeah, I can show you by using that example that what you've just proposed not the earlier one Which is a true dichotomy the one you just proposed is a false dichotomy because something could have created I know what you're saying can god by god and not natural if god exists by definition Is he capable of creating a universe? Yes or no, nothing nothing exists by definition That's a terrible way to no. No. No. I'm saying if god exists comma by definition comma He would therefore be capable of creating a universe if god exists Yes, he would be capable of creating a universe. This is this is the problem ronnie. You don't assume, you know No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Let me finish. Let me finish. No ronnie. Let me finish because You haven't even let me finish because you're basically saying that god question. No, no, no, runnie. Come on. Let me finish, mate Come on. Be come on. I am I'm I'm basically saying that you're providing hypotheticals when you won't even Determine the type of god that you're talking about remember earlier when I said we've got to define the god and you said no I want to do this first this is exactly the reason why we've got to define the God that you're talking about. I don't need to do that in order to prove that God is responsible for the creation of the universe. Then I can't answer your question because you're asking a question whether God could do something or couldn't do something on the basis of whether that God is capable of doing something you have not defined at Cape Blob. If it is a necessary being, then yes, it could create a universe, but you haven't defined your God. Okay, so I'm not trying to define a specific God. What I'm saying is that God, the Almighty Creator, an omnipotent being, what people recognize as the definition of God being the Creator of everything, if he exists, then he is capable of creating a universe. I'm just trying to establish something that I think is obvious that most people would agree so that I can carry it forward in the little thought experiment. Again, I'll ask you the question. If God exists, would he be capable of creating a universe? If a God exists that is an Almighty Creator and an omnipotent being, then yes. Okay, so is a piece of limestone capable of creating a universe? No. Okay, so that's why your analogy or what you propose is responsible for the creation of the universe doesn't make sense because you said I could say a little piece of limestone is responsible for the creation of the universe, but you can't because the definition and the features of a limestone are incapable of creating a universe, but the definitions and features of God are capable of creating a universe. So the only thing beyond the natural that's capable of creating the universe is God. Do you accept that? I said it was no because I said it was the Blarney stone. I never said it was limestone. Sorry, whatever. This Blarney stone is magical and magic is capable of creating the universe by definition because magic is capable of anything by definition. So this particular stone, even though it is not natural on a supernatural stone, has all the magic properties in order to be able to do anything. It just doesn't have a mind to be able to want to do anything. Does it have all the powers and capabilities that God would have? I don't know. I don't know which I'm asking you. You're the one suggesting this. It has the power to create a universe. Then I would say that would be God. So if you're saying that that is a possible explanation for the universe, that just fits into the category of God because it has all the features that God would have.  So it would essentially be God. You're just choosing to call it something else. So God doesn't have a mind? Well, I'm saying if it's responsible for the creation of the universe, I actually don't need to ask specifically how to answer the question of does God have a mind? Does it operate as some sort of energy? Does it operate as some sort of entity? Are there angels? I don't want to get into all of that. What I'm trying to suggest is that atheism does not have an answer for how the universe formed. No, no, no. Science doesn't have an answer. This Blarney stone is definitely not God, but it is capable of doing anything that creates the universe. So it's purely a supernatural thing. It's definitely not God that can create the universe. So this is all just Is it responsible for the creation of itself? Is this stone responsible for the creation of itself? Let me finish. So your your onus is on to disprove that this thing in fact exists. So disprove it. No, it's not. Right now, I'm trying to establish that anything that is responsible for the creation of the universe that has no ultimate origins, I can't disprove this thing because it might in fact be God. What you're describing is literally God. So if it exists, then you'd be proving my point. Yeah, it's definitely not God. But it's responsible for its own creation. It's responsible for the formation of the universe. That would be God. Definitely, it's not. So can you disprove that that is the creator of the universe or that is the origin point of the universe? Can you ask a question one more time? Can you prove that that is not the origin of the universe, the Blanny Stone? If the Blanny Stone has features that are beyond an actual stone and it now becomes God, then yes, it is capable. It's not God, it's magic. Okay, you're just calling it magic. But if it has all the features that it has, then it would be God. It's definitely not God. It's magic. It's completely different. Can you prove that that doesn't exist? Okay, but it doesn't exist. It's unreasonable, right? No, no, no, Ronnie, Ronnie, it's you're getting very, very aggressive. No, no, no, it's fine. So we can actually hear one person at a time because if people are speaking over each other, they can't hear either side. Yeah, sure. I'll get to my point in a second. Ronnie, go and then I'll sort of point out what I'm getting at through this sort of exercise in thought. Okay, it's kind of like this. If I say, can a stone walk and talk and throw a football? But what if this stone has arms? What if this is a magical stone? I mean, what is it that you're really even asking me here? You're now going to give the stone all the features that a human has, and no longer becomes a stone. It becomes a human. So that's exactly what you've done here with your stone. It's responsible for the formation of the universe. It created a tuned universe in which me and you are sitting here talking. It's responsible for the formation of itself. I wouldn't call it a stone. I would say what you're describing here is God. Okay. Okay, so the reason why I'm doing this is to show you that sort of me claiming something is the origin of the universe isn't enough. I should have to provide evidence that this exists. But this is exactly what you are doing. You are claiming that God is the origin of the universe. But yet you're not in any way providing any evidence to be the case. You are simply saying that no one else gets to put an explanation there when there are infinite explanations. I could just say a magical field. And you have nothing to say about what this magical field can or cannot do to be the origin of the universe. You are doing the same thing that I'm doing.  You've just said, hey, I've deduced that there is no other explanation when you have not in fact done that. Okay. Well, I agree with the first part of that last little segment that I have improved that God exists. But what I'm attempting to prove is that there is no other way for the universe to have been formed because science is essentially handcuffed. It has no way of getting to ultimate origins because it's left with only two options, which is something existing infinitely into the past, which doesn't make sense. Or something coming from nothing, which doesn't make sense. If you can provide a third scenario in which the universe could have come about or something could have come about, I'd like to hear it. But I believe you are handcuffed to those two illogical positions. So if science basically says, hey, listen, all we have to offer is something illogical, then what are you left with? You're left with God. It's the only other option because we know magical stones didn't create the universe. We know none of these hypotheticals that you could bring up didn't create the universe. It could only be God or wasn't God. And I think it's actually immature of you to suggest that there could be these special little things that could or magical little leprechauns living in some weird dimension that created the universe. I mean, this is just absolutely insane because we can break down all of those things that you're describing and either prove how, A, they aren't God. And then if you switch their features so that they act like God, well, then they're just becoming God. And you're just choosing to call God a leprechaun instead of calling him what he is, which would be God, the creator of all that is. Yeah, so you just got a little bit there. So I'll go over every single point. You're basically saying that science is constrained by these two things, but it's not. And your idea of something from nothing, nothing is actually a quantum field when Lawrence Krause used it. You're misrepresenting what nothing is.  You said it's childish for me to bring up these examples. Well, I could throw it back at you. I think it's childish for you to make up a magic man to solve the problem that you don't know where the universe came from.  It's just you don't see it that way, even though you cannot provide any evidence for your claim. What you are in fact doing is basically saying, I'm going to claim there is a God, not provide evidence for it and then say, you've got to disprove it in order for it to be correct. And that is not how the burden of proof works. You have done nothing to address your burden of proof and you don't seem interested in doing so, which is incredible. Okay, if we're talking about burden of proof, like actually revealing and showing God, that's just ridiculous. I want to I want to address every point you make because you've got up down a number. Now, you provide another explanation, then that would be fine. A cyclic recursive universe would solve that problem. And there is no problem with infinite regress in a naturalistic universe. There's no problem with that. I'm done. Thank you. Okay. So do you agree that infinity can't actually exist as a thing? It can only exist as a potential? Or do you think infinity can exist as an actual state? It depends on what you're talking about. Anything at all. Well, if you're talking about time, no, anything at all, Mark, do you think infinity can actually exist as a state or does it only exist as a potential? Because I think this is just a clear like answer. It only exists as a potential. It doesn't exist as a state.  Is there anything that's actually infinite? Or is this only is this only expressed as a potential? I think I think it is possible for things to be eternal. I think that is possible. Do you think it's impossible for things to be eternal? It's impossible for there to be an infinite state of anything. Because like God, don't jump beyond that. Because what I'm going to do is extend beyond what? Okay, don't don't assume you know what I'm going to say or just jump the train of thought. Okay, because I didn't say that.  You're going to get into the whole special power. If you say things can be infinite and something can be omnipotent, then things can be infinite. And you've just conceded that point. Okay, so I'm going to attempt to establish something here. There is no such thing as an infinite state of anything. Therefore, the past cannot be infinite, because the past has already happened. So it can be quantified. It's not continuing to grow into the past. So the past is not infinite. It is actually finite. Do you agree with this? For what you said about the past, no, you're talking about the theory of time, the past has already happened. B theory is probably the one I would subscribe to. And that sort of says that all events are happening concurrently. And we just happen to flow with the direction of entropy. If you consider the beginning one second there, because you said something very important, you said that essentially all time is happening at once, correct? So the past is happening right now. And the future is happening right now. Well, it's your understanding of time that seems to be no, no, I'm just asking. No, no, I understand these theories. Don't assume that I don't. So if this is what you believe in, I just want to make sure that that we're getting everything clear here. You believe that the future is happening right now, and the past is happening right now. Yes, or no, that's a that's a malformed question. Because when you say no, you're, you're placing upon time, you're placing a certain point in time along that, that that time, right? You're making it now. So I think that's a malformed question. Do you believe yesterday happened yesterday and tomorrow is going to happen tomorrow? Okay, so then there is a place on the timeline time does move forward, right? Well, to us, yes, it does move forward with entropy. Yes. Okay. But but I want to get to this point. I want to get to this point. Yeah, this isn't this isn't interrogation. I want to get to this point. The point is that if you go back to the origins of the universe, and don't forget, space time is local to our universe, right? It is 100%. No, I'm not. This is the original point I wanted to get out from where we are right now, because you don't want to hammer down where you what you believe. Do you believe the past and the future and the present are all happening at once? You have to do this just because I got to mute you both. So just to be sure that we're all on the same page, people aren't able to hear you guys. So I'm going to put it into one minute responses from each of you. And then we'll go from there to where each of you will be able to respond in that 60 seconds each. Thank you very much. Yeah, I was talking about something on what you said where you said, well past, but if you go back to the beginning of the universe and space time is local to this universe, saying before the universe started is a nonsensical thing. So it could be that the universe was in a certain state for an infinite amount of time, because as you go back in time, time does not exist and start rolling. It is very possible for that to be true and nothing about that contravenes the physics if it is true. Okay, so I'm going to ask my question again. Do you believe that all time is happening at once, the future, the past and the present, it's all happening at once? That seems to be the best theory of time, yes, in my opinion. Okay, so when I was asking you that before, why didn't you just say that instead of trying to complicate things and say, well, that's not really a good way to ask the question. I don't really like this. And you started yelling. Why not just say what you just said there? I didn't yell. I just was trying to get my words out because you keep interrupting me. Now, it's because you said the whole point is that you said now. But that's just one question and a train of thought. Now I can't get to that because I'm going to do real and pivot. I can't even talk. Ronnie, you're terrible. I can't even talk. If I ask you a question and obviously I'm aiming that to go somewhere. So if you just answer and then ramble on, you're not allowing me a chance to flesh out my view. You're just hijacking the conversation, which isn't fair. I think what we're going to do here is, if a person asks a question and they're pulling a second, please let me... Sorry, Jen. If you ask a question, we've got to give them the full minute to respond. They may in turn say, here's the answer to your question. Ask. And then they might say, now I'm going to ask you my question and they set it up and maybe it takes 20 seconds to set it up. I've got to allow that because each side wants to ask questions. And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to give a minute for response. And if a person does ask a question though, like they're turning it over to the other person for a minute, it's not like you can... We're not going to have you guys or if you're like one person is asking eight questions in a row. The other person is asking eight questions in a row. It's just... It's very difficult. Well, it's very common-ended. You ask the person a question, they say, okay, fair enough, this, this, and that. But if you ask them a question, they say, okay, now bam, bam, bam, and they shoot back. It's really hard to progress in the conversation. I would recommend writing down or even... That's what I'm going to do. Yeah. Even just typing what it is that you were asking them. And then what you could do is with your free minute and the next one, you could just go, last time I asked you, blah, blah, blah, and you said X. Here's my follow-up question. So blah, blah, blah, blah. That way it kind of refreshes the audience because for the audience, there's so much information flying around. It's hard to keep track. So give you a chance to whoever it was that was asking the last question. Can you guys remind me who it was? Well, I didn't get a chance to ask a question on the end of my answer. I want to ask Ronnie how he knows that there was some sort of... Well, there was not an infinite time at the beginnings of the universe. How did he determine that? I don't. But what I do look at is what science says about, I guess, the nature of reality, cause and effects, and you need to have an explanation. And infinite... Sorry, my cat is...  Infinity cannot extend into the past from a purely scientific standpoint. You need something, I'll use your words, magical in order to get beyond this problem. So that magic that we use to get beyond the problem of how something can't exist eternally into the past is God. So I'm going to now ask you a quick question, since we're going in this weird way. Is there a beginning to the universe, since you believe that the future, the past and the present are all happening at once, wouldn't a future moment have to take place simultaneously as the initial point of the universe, making the initial origin point of the universe nonsensical? I don't know if there is an origin event to the universe or whether it has eternally existed. I don't know. But going back to your answer, why did you say that you don't know if infinity cannot extend to the past and then claim that infinity cannot extend to the past? And you basically said you have no evidence for this. Do you have any evidence to back this up? I think infinity can extend into the past if we're talking about God and you're going to say this is special pleading. But what I'm going to say in response to that is that God, by definition, requires special pleading. He is beyond the universe. He is beyond nature. If he were to not have required special pleading, he wouldn't be God because then there would be a natural explanation for him and he wouldn't be God. This is something very easily understood by a lot of philosophers. I've been in plenty of chat rooms. I've been in plenty of discussions where even atheists will fully admit this. You have to be consistent with what you're saying. If you believe in God, you're saying that you believe in something that's beyond nature, that's beyond scientific explanation. But if you're an atheist, you cannot do that. By definition, you are not allowed to say that. But by definition, a believer in God is. So this is a situation where special pleading is permitted.  In, I guess, most scenarios, you're going to have, well, I guess all other scenarios, you're going to have two natural beings. You're not allowed to have special beings because they're both products of this universe. But when you're saying that one being is beyond this universe, then of course, the same, I guess, restraints are not going to be attached to that. If you find that funny, if you find that hard to believe, you're just not as smart as what you think you are. No, I find that hilarious because you've basically said you've got to be consistent in what you're saying and then go on to make the logical fallacy of special pleading, which is an inconsistency fallacy. It's basically saying that my explanation has a exception and is therefore, by definition, is absolutely inconsistent. To have intellectual inconsistency, you have to basically say that either some things, everything can do this or everything can't do this. Then how do we have believers in God? Yeah, James, could you mute Ronnie? That was just a quick question. I'm not going to mute it. That was just a quick question, man. Yeah, I do want to say, Ronnie, you do have to give them a chance to finish. To be fair, there was a point early in the debate where Ronnie said, can I finish and then Mark, you continue. So I do want it, it's going both ways. Okay, well, I mean, I thought we were doing minute responses. Yeah, I know. I just said, Ronnie, you do have to let them finish, but I was just explaining that both sides are extra passionate tonight. So Ronnie, you do have to let them finish.  Okay, excellent. This whole special pleading is not being consistent. It's intellectual inconsistency. It is creating exemption for that which you wish were true. That can be done for literally anything. It can be done for the magical field that I was talking about earlier. It can be done for a unicorn that it can be done for just about anything. What this leads to is basically a cognitive dissonance between what you want to be true and what is actually true. Because if you're using special pleading, you can always make exceptions to logic and rationality to get around that.  So you're basically saying that physics could not have done this, but you're going on to say physics or the universe is random. And I want to know why you think it's random and not a deterministic system, like most businesses would say. Okay, first off, you laugh at the special pleading, but would you not agree that every person who believes in God is using some sort of special pleading in order to explain God's existence? Well, that doesn't answer my question. We can come back to my question in a sec. I think that most theists would say they're not using special pleading because they are aware that it's a logical fallacy and sort of intellectual inconsistency. Okay, so all theists that I talk to say that God has no creation. God didn't create himself and there is no cause for God's existence. That's right. But they do say that the universe requires a creation. So that is special pleading. I put forth that all believers in God use some form of special pleading. They just don't like to use the term because in 99% of the cases, it's something that you shouldn't do. But if we want to be consistent, God is beyond nature. He's beyond science. So we are permitted to use special pleading for this being that is beyond your rules. He's not. Yes, it's the only circumstance, maybe the only circumstance. If we weren't to use special pleading, we would no longer be describing God. We would be describing a natural being. Okay, so what they're actually doing, and I'm not sure why you don't understand this, is that basically we're separating things into necessary and contingent states of being, necessary beings and not contingent beings. So we're separating things into things that don't require an explanation and things that do require an explanation. And that isn't just theists, it's also other philosophers kind of thing. So some will argue that the universe or the cosmos around it is a necessary state of being kind of thing. Okay, so that is special pleading is not what they're doing. They're being consistent with everybody else. And everybody, some other person may say, hey, the universe is a necessary state of being. They're not using special pleading. Just as if a theist says, hey, God doesn't require an explanation, isn't special pleading. And I'm sorry you don't understand. No, no, no, that's not what I'm saying. God doesn't require an explanation. What every theist would say is that the universe requires an explanation. The universe can't just come about randomly. It was formed by God. But then if you ask that same theist, well, what created God, he's going to say God always existed. And then you could say that's special pleading, right? Well, if you're saying that everything requires an explanation, then yes, that is special pleading. But if you're saying that there are necessary states of being, then that's not special pleading. Because you're saying that there are two categories of things necessary and contingent things. Okay, so here's where it differs. A special pleading would be me saying, everything requires an explanation of where it came from, except for God. And that one thing alone, right? That is special pleading. If you're saying there's two categories of things necessary and contingent things, God is a necessary thing. That is not special pleading, because you are not saying that everything requires an explanation, except for this one thing. But how could one say that God is necessary and the universe is necessary? That becomes contradictory. So what I'm saying is in order for a theist to be consistent, he is using some form of special pleading. So if the universe is in fact infinite time, as I described at the start of universe, like if the singularity is that dense and supergravity occurs, we have infinite amount of time, or time slows rather under the hypothetical physics, down to a point where there is no actual beginning, like t equals zero, for an infinite... I mean, using time is a really bad example because you're talking about a period where there is no time progressing. So if that is the case, and it's all hypothetical, then that would not need... That would not be contingent on anything. It would be a necessary state of affairs. How can you have God and the universe both being necessary and the universe not exactly? So if somebody says, I believe God is necessary, they would then say the universe is contingent. But then you could just ask the person who believes in God, well, what created God? And they would say, well, God just always existed. And you'd say, well, that's special pleading. Okay, you're too smart not to get this, Mark. You're too smart not to get this. No, what I'm talking about is if you talk to other people, you're talking to, say, an atheist who says the universe is necessary. Right? Hold on, let me finish. You say the universe is necessary. If that theist says, hey, the universe can't be necessary, only God can be necessary, a necessary being, that is special pleading. However, if that theist says, well, you think the universe is necessary, you've got no evidence for it, but you can believe that if you want. That's not special pleading because you've separated the categories of necessary and contingent and the atheist has put the universe in that necessary category. The theist... Yes, in terms of God... ...in that necessary... Can I attempt to find the ground?  Like, there's got to be a point where I can say yes. It does seem like you are interrupting me.  To be fair, both of you guys have been... I feel like it's been fairly smooth the last year, but you just kind of got a little debut there. Like, Mark, earlier in the debate, this is early in the debate, Ronnie said, excuse me, can I finish? And then you said, there's one thing I want to say, though, and you spoke, I wouldn't have... If I was the debater, I would have said, like, no, no, no, hold on. Like, what I want to finish, but to be fair, I want to... Ronnie, I do want to... Like, I was siding with you, Mark, originally. Ronnie, I do want to give them just... Let's just give them 20, 30 seconds, and then we'll get over to you. I'm almost done. I'm almost done. So what was I saying? An atheist would put the universe in that category of necessary, a theist would put God in that category of necessary. That is not special pleading. Okay, that's not. Okay, what you're doing right now is talking about categorization, but you're losing sight of what the actual discussion is. So what the theist says is that it's impossible for the universe to exist eternally. It was created by God, right? That's what they say. And then your response, or what the atheist's response to them typically is, well, that's special pleading because you're saying that it's possible for God to exist eternally, but what you're saying is that the universe needs an explanation. So it always comes down to this. I don't want to exhaust this topic anymore because it's actually not really getting to the heart of anything. And I don't think anybody listening to this particular segment of the debate is going to be swayed either way, listening to us, discuss whether or not something is special pleading. Let's actually get to the meat and the bones of what we're talking about. And that is how did the universe come about? I am going to repeat myself here that I believe you guys only have two options. The universe existed infinitely into the past, which I have attempted to explain how that's impossible because infinite cannot exist. The infinite cannot exist as a state. And since the past already happened, it cannot be considered infinite. Infinite can only exist as a potential. So as time moves forward, we could say time can progress into the future infinitely potentially. There's no limit, but in terms of the time that has already happened, that is finite. So the origins of the universe can't stretch infinitely into the past. And whatever is responsible for, I guess, the Big Bang or the Quantum Field or whatever, that can't extend infinitely into the past because there is no infinite past to extend into. There has to be a point of beginning. So if there's a point of beginning, which is beyond science, which is beyond natural explanation, I don't have to show you what that is. I don't have to prove to you what that is. I don't have to show you any of its features. We know what it is. It's God. That's the only thing that it can be. Okay, so it's sort of devolved into preaching in the back, but basically not all theists would say the universe is not necessary. They may disagree. They may have different opinions on it. It depends on the theist, really. They may think that God is necessary. They may have different opinions on it. So I wouldn't presume to know everything. I've never met a theist who says that both theist and the universe is necessary. Well, I mean, unless Mark was already finished, I want to give Mark a chance to finish. I was not finished. So not all theists think all the same. The two options, infinite into the past, is impossible. As Ronnie said earlier, he doesn't know how to demonstrate this, can't demonstrate this. Basically said, I don't know that that is the case, but it is the case. That's completely an unsupported claim, vacuous and empty. The past already happened. That is A theory of time, not B theory of time is completely wrong on that and wrong what science says about that. The origin of the universe cannot extend into the past. And then he was talking about what's beyond the universe like the cosmos. And what he's failing to understand is that space time is local to this universe. So if he's talking about into the past beyond the universe, he is absolutely, there is no past to extend into. The past is a part of the universe's space time. When you get outside the universe, there is no past. There is no future because that requires time. So he's basically making a whole bunch of unsupported claims he's basically said, oh, we know it's good, but what he's not doing is actually providing any evidence whatsoever for God. He's basically making a bold assertion with absolutely vacuous, no evidence, no argumentation. Just I don't think it can be anything else. It is an argument from incredulity. His personal incredulity says, I don't believe it can be anything else, which is a logical fallacy, one of the many that he's made tonight. Okay, so my opponent says that the future, the past, and the present all exist at once. But then he also claims that there was a point where there was no time. How do you reconcile this? Well, we don't exist outside the universe, Ronnie. We exist in the local presentation of the universe, which does have space time. Okay, so do you believe that the past extends infinitely? Or do you believe that it has a point where it stops? I don't know. Oh, you don't know. It's because you can't make sense of that, is why you say you don't know. It's not that you don't know, is you literally can't make sense of it. You can even offer an explanation to how that could make sense, because it literally is illogical. I can make sense of it. I can look at the two options that you said and make sense of either of them. Please attempt to make sense of either one of them or exist eternally. Please make sense of one of them. It is completely understandable. It is completely understandable by physics how these two options work. It's just that I don't know which one of them is in fact true. But as I said before my presentation, just because I don't know an answer doesn't mean that you get to say that. I need to know what I'm debating against, which one do you think is true? So that is called God of the Gaps, and I already went over this in my presentation. Another logical fallacy.  Yeah, the burden of proof is on you to show that the God actually in fact exists. Oh, see that's where you're wrong. Just to be sure that we hear each of you one at a time. Okay, so that's where you're wrong, because neither one of us are actually going to be able to prove that, right? Basically what I feel is the best job that a theist, a true believer in God, can do is provide a situation in which it's 50% logical to believe in God. If we strip away all faith and we just look at the universe from a purely logical standpoint, you have to make a gut decision one way or the other, because we are left with the problem of, yeah, you know what? I can't actually explain how the universe came about without God, but I can't prove where God is. I don't see him. I can't call him out and tell him to reveal himself. So you're never going to be able to prove either way. So I think it's hilarious that you actually think it's my job to be able to prove to people God. It's my job to be able to prove that atheism doesn't have a reasonable explanation for the universe. You're the atheist. You're the one who's so firm in science. Yet you can't even say what your opinion is, and you can't even explain how either one of those two options, something coming from nothing or something existing eternally, can actually make sense. You just go on about categorization and special pleading, but you don't actually get to the meat and potatoes of the argument. And it's because you haven't thought about it enough or you're sorry, no, no, I'll finish there. I was piling on my bed. Okay, so you said provide 50% logical to believe this, but you've provided 0% evidence.  So, and plus, if you take into account what God is only one explanation among an infinite amount of other explanations, like magic and like these physical naturalistic theories on the naturalistic hypothesis, I should say, that there's 0% to believe that God is the origin of the universe at all. And you're saying make a gut decision. That's a terrible way to find out what is true. A gut decision has no rationality, no kind of logic. It is just your feelings. And as you mentioned in your intro, your intuition that sort of says that this thing could be true or not true, which is a terrible way to go through life. So, you also said, so I actually brought up a whole bunch of things that were because, you know, sort of what we understand about the mind and how can God be in mind without a body. And I also brought up the vastness, emptiness and chaoticness of space, like why is it there? If a God didn't create it to something, why is it being destroyed so arbitrarily through supernova black holes and other cosmological events, it doesn't seem like it's a very efficient design or creation, if you will, to be able to put into place. So I did bring up a few things that would lead me to believe that God isn't real.  Okay, well, we're not getting into final statements here. So I don't want to get into summarizing everything that we've said before. I'd like to keep things point by point, if that's all right with you. Well, I just brought up what you said and then added a question on the end of it. Okay, so. That's a final statement. With respect to faith, I find it hilarious that you would think most theists or deists or believers in God think that there is ultimate proof of God, and that's what we should be using in order to justify our beliefs. Faith is very important. We are tested faith on our faith, based on our faith in all religions. If God wanted it to be as simple as us just knowing, he would come down from the sky every single day. So all believers in God understand that a certain element of faith is required in order to believe in God. However, our faith should not defy our logic. My understanding of the universe and my faith are not at odds with each other. There is nothing about science or about the universe, and what happens within the universe that is running a pose or in contradiction to my belief in God. I guess the only point, the only point is when we get beyond the universe, because universal natural explanations cannot explain how the universe got here. We need something beyond that. So that's my core reasoning for believing in God. And I think anybody who believes in God from a non-religious or non-cultural standpoint, that's why they believe in God. They've thought about something from nothing. They've thought about infinite past existence, and they realize it doesn't make sense. It doesn't satisfy them. And yes, although we can't be sure that God exists from a tangible material, proven in core type of standpoint, there are, I guess, signs in the universe that point to his direction, like the fine-tuning. We didn't really get into fine-tuning at all. Perhaps that's something that we could get into, but I don't want to just jump ahead into that if you have something to respond to what I just said. Go for it. Yeah, that's a lot of subjects you brought up there. So I never mentioned faith. I'm not sure why you brought it up, but I'll sort of say that. No, you just laughed at it. You said you shouldn't require faith, but all believers in God do, so it shouldn't be something that you find funny. Ronny, please have some decorum and control.  When I say something quickly, just go on with what you're saying. I'm not going to hijack and just relax. Wow, I don't know what's wrong with you. I never mentioned faith at all. I never brought up the word. I'm not sure why you're pivoting to it. I'm happy to talk about faith, but it's not a very good way to assess the reality either. Ultimate proof of God, I never said that. So nice straw man, but that's not something I said. I said I required sufficient evidence, not ultimate proof. So that's just a non-statement, really. Naturalistic explanations cannot solve the origin of the universe is what you said. And the problem is that Ronny doesn't know that we can't solve it in the future. It's just that we don't know it now. He's basically making this assertion that he knows the limits of science going into the future, and I'll frame a question around that. You also said that people don't get proper satisfaction out of that. It doesn't matter what people get satisfaction out of. Something is either true or not true. It may be very dissatisfactory that you can make nuclear weapons, but that doesn't make it untrue. That has nothing to do with the truth of whether the God created the universe or not. Nothing to do with it. I have no idea why you brought it up. And the fine-tuning algorithm, I'm more than happy to discuss that one. But I would like to ask, how do you know that science won't have a demonstrable answer like we have for every other single phenomenon in the past that we have determined that has naturalistic causes? Quite simple. The brilliant minds and philosophers that pondered this problem, they were just as close to answering these questions as we are. Science does nothing to get us any closer to how does something come from nothing? Aristotle and the boys, Plato, all the ancient philosophers, they didn't need to have the same tools that we have today in order to think about these things. Anybody from any time frame, if they have a smart enough brain, they can think about how did all of this come about? Well, everything needs an explanation. This comes from that. This comes from that. Well, we can't just follow that infinitely. Somehow that doesn't make sense. Infinite regression on an intuitive level doesn't make sense. People came about, I guess, these dilemmas long before we had all of these scientific breakthroughs. So it's not a God of the gaps problem. I don't really think intelligent people back in the day, even Newton and Galileo, they didn't actually believe God was holding up the planets. They just talked about God doing that in a poetic way Einstein would say God rolling the dice and things like that. They didn't actually believe gods that they're pulling levers, making sure the universe stays in place. They just believe that at the core level of creation lies a God. And so scientific discoveries basically reveal God's working. They don't disprove God, because it's not at a fundamental level. People are just like, oh, why is there sand? God must have done it. Why is there water? God must have done it.  The original people who were pondering these things were just asking metaphysical questions. Why is there a universe instead of they're not being universe? How can something come from nothing or exist infinitely into the past? And it's always been divided on two lines. Some people say, well, you know what? I just believe there was something or we'll find something in the future that just always existed and science will eventually explain it. And then you have people on the other side who say, no, science can explain it. It's beyond science. You need to have faith in God. And we've been in that same position for I don't know how long. Do you disagree with that? I don't. I don't. I think that our scientific knowledge has explained things that people have said would never be explained. People would say that certain things in the evolutionary model would never be explained. And they have been things like the formation of the eyeball and stuff like that. People said they'd never be able to explain. Although autoimmune system for mammals, people said, you'd never be able to explain that. It has to be God. And we've explained it. We've actually come up with it. And that was a lot you went through. That was incredibly a lot that you went through. Now we already agreed and we've already discussed that something come from nothing. Nothing is a quantum field. So this whole idea that your intuition says that something can't come from a quantum field is demonstrably wrong. No, no, no, no. So you said that brilliant minds and philosophers sort of have been working on this and our knowledge has progressed. The scope of the problem we are looking at with the formation of the universe is such a large problem and so vast. But you're without merit and without claim saying, oh, you're never going to solve that problem. You never will. And lots of people have said that in the past and every single one has been wrong about that. When you said Einstein doesn't roll dice. He was talking simply of the laws of physics, didn't believe in a God. And anyway, what people historically believe in has nothing to do with it. So you're bringing up philosophers that believed in God and this person that believes in God. It's just an appeal to authority. There's no reason why people believed in the past got anything to do with what is accurately true. Now you said science doesn't disprove a God but science doesn't disprove unicorns either. There's a lot that science doesn't disprove. And the burden of proof is on you to prove the thing that you claim is true. You can say, hey, that's not my burden all you want. But until you do, it is God of the gaps. You can claim it's not all you want. But that's exactly what it is. You are using an argument saying that if we can't prove what it is, you get to insert God. And that is not the case because there are millions of things that could be inserted instead of God with just as little justification as you're using now. Now because you brought up faith again, I'm going to touch on faith and whether that's a reliable method in which to be sure there's a little bit over a minute but we'll let you keep going, Mark. Yeah, dude, it's just possible to have. I'll get to my question, question. So what is what could you not believe on faith? Name something you couldn't believe on faith? I don't know who's going to win a football game. You couldn't have faith. Oh, it's something that you. Oh, you're saying that it's impossible to have faith. I thought you were saying that you could believe in without faith but you're saying that you could believe in and not have faith in? Is that what you're saying? Something it is impossible to believe when you're using faith as a metric. Something you say, hey, I can't use faith to justify them. I'm having a really difficult time understanding what you're asking me. Well, I mean, I put it as simply as I can. So if I'm using faith as my criteria for believing something, what is something, anything at all, that I could not take faith and say, I have faith that that is true? I'm not sure. I would put it to you, nothing. You could literally, there is nothing you could not believe in on faith. I could believe that anything on faith. Oh, okay. I see what I see what you're saying right now. No, so you want to pin. It's funny. You really want to pinpoint right now the relevance of faith or the importance of faith? You brought it up. Well, it's one of many things that I brought up. So I just find it interesting. Yeah. Yeah, you did tish kalapaya gray. Yeah. So I don't know if this is necessary. I'll just be really quick then. All I meant to say is that when I mentioned faith, how you have to plug in faith at a certain level, you went and you laughed as if you didn't already know that all theists and deists require faith in their belief system.  It should have been like, yes, this is reasonable. This is very consistent coming from a deist. That's all I meant by that. So I don't want to get into the importance of faith right now beyond that, that it is obvious to assume that any deists or theists is going to recognize that faith, that faith on some level is required in order to believe in God because God doesn't just want to reveal himself every day in like a physical way to remove all faith. No, faith has to be required. He does reveal himself to us, but in a way that faith is still part of the equation. So can we just put that to rest? Or do you have something to respond to that? Yeah, I have something to respond.  That is not what is going through my mind and I'd advise you to sort of stop trying to mind read what I actually think and then insert your perception of it because what I find as brings a smile to my face is because I've heard this argument before like so many times and it always comes down to there is nothing you can't believe in faith. So as a consequence, faith is a metric for believing things is absolutely useless. Sure, whatever. I don't want to beat a dead horse. You can have the final word on that one. So do you want to talk about fine tuning? Yeah, sure. Okay, so do you agree that multiverse is the only way to dismiss fine tuning? Or do you think there's another way to dismiss fine tuning? Yeah, so there's really two major ways to dismiss fine tuning. The first one is of course multiverse and we do have maths in sort of M theory that suggests that that could be very possible. The Mathematic Equations do line up, but I don't think it's proven yet. I just make that clear because I'm not saying that I definitely believe that is true. But the other way is that the universe is deterministic and this is the only way the universe could have formed. So if you think about it and you roll a pebble down a hill, it seems random. It seems like it's a random thing, but there's only one way that pebble will go, determined by the physics that actually make it roll down the hill. If the physics are exactly the same, it will always come out the same. Now, it may be that the only way a universe can form is under certain conditions and therefore those conditions were met and the universe formed. But it may be the case that in the origin of the universe, those are the only physics that emerged. Does that make sense that those were determined by physics ahead of time? No, because it just begs the question, what determines the physics? Why are the physics even there? So properties of the cosmos around it. Okay, but those properties could amalgamate, they can form, they can express themselves in so many different ways. Of course they can. Gravity can be set. I'm assuming that you've gone through this before, the list of fine-tuning parameters. But in case you haven't, I do have them up here. Like we have the gravitational force constant, we have the electromagnetic force, strong nuclear force, the weak cosmological constant, the initial conditions, the brute facts. I mean, I don't want to go through them all because it takes a long time and it could just make for a boring conversation. So I assume that you just agree, okay, there are some fine-tuned features to the universe. And yeah, we could have had the fundamental forces be set to fricking anything. Why are they set the way that they are? Well, multiverse theory can explain this. If there's a quadrillion, bazillion, infinite amount of universes, then it makes sense as to why we would have one that is perfectly tuned. But without multiverse theory, how do you possibly explain why the fundamental forces are set the way that they are? Well, multiverse theory is there for a reason. Okay, so that's literally the only thing then, right? That's the only way to get away from fine-tuning. That's not what I said, and if I could just finish. So you basically went on to say that gravity in the cosmos, that gravity is in our local universe. When we know nothing about the greater cosmos around the universe, nobody's ever been able to breach that origin point of the universe to see if there is a cosmos, much less what the properties of it are. I'm just saying it is possible that- What are you saying? ...of the cosmos. I'm telling you, Ronnie, to hold on. I just want to hear Mark finish. Yeah, so it could be that the properties would lead to this universe under all conditions, all possible worlds that would lead there. Bipossible worlds mean the philosophical idea of multiple different probabilities. But the fact that multiverse does account for this is the other side of the coin. It's basically something that you've already said, multiverse accounts for it. So why go beyond that? First of all, I need to know what exactly that I'm arguing against, right? If you were to be debating a Christian who pivots back and forth between Hinduism and Islam, it would be very difficult for you, and it wouldn't be fair for you. So if you pivot back and forth between different possibilities, if you don't even believe in one, it makes it difficult for me. So I'm assuming why you believe the universe is fine-tuned is because we live in a multiverse. Am I correct? Do you believe we live in a multiverse? Okay, so if you're unclear about the topic of the debate, the debate is, did God create the universe? That is the topic. Why are you pivoting? So I'm just asking you, do you believe in multiverse or not? But he's not even answering my question, James. I'm asking you, do you believe in multiverse? Do you think we live in one? Yes or no? It's not that you don't have to do this, Mark. Just answer the question. A person doesn't have to, if they don't want to respond to this or no, like I do want to give them a chance to say where they're coming from. So if you, like for example, a person obviously can say let's see where he's coming from then, James. Let's see it. Okay. So I'm actually addressing where you said when a person goes into the debate, they'll be arguing one subject. So I'm reminding you that the subject is actually God. Did God create the universe? Not what is the scientific explanation for the creation of the universe? I'll just remind you of that. So you're basically saying you have to believe in one. No, I don't. I can say I don't know which one of these is true. I don't know if there's another explanation. I may be unaware of. As I said, I'm not a physicist. So the idea that I have to believe in one for it to be true is complete nonsense. Something could be true that I don't believe in. So it makes no difference to whether it's true or not. But you are saying, you are claiming with no evidence that it's necessarily the case that it can't be multiverse and it can't be the other explanation I've posited. I never said that. You have to demonstrate that. First of all, I never said that. I'm just trying to establish where you stand. And I feel like you're like a pit bull. Your natural inclination is to just fight and attack as opposed to just answering a question honestly and moving forward in a bit more of a conversation format as opposed to a dog fight. So when I ask you, do you believe in multiverse? Well, it doesn't matter what I believe in. It could be this, it could be that, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you don't actually want to have a conversation. What is it that Mark believes? And if you don't actually believe in anything, you don't actually have your own personal thought as to why the universe is finely tuned. It does matter in the context of a debate because you can bring up all these different potentials or possibilities that you don't necessarily even favor. So it does make it difficult. Does it make it impossible to have the debate? No. But I think you should answer the question honestly. Do you believe in the multiverse theory? I think that is what you believe in and it helps for the debate. So that's frustrating. You attempted to explain how there could be an explanation for fine-tuning without a multiverse. And if I'm getting you clear, you said that there could be conditions or parameters outside of our universe which inevitably would lead to the fine-tuning of our universe, correct? Yeah. I'll just address a couple of the things that you said. So who's going into the past, man? Well, the problem is, Ronnie, that you're sort of gish-galloping along subjects and then want to ask a question and leave those things behind, like just say, hey, just let me say this. I think we're both doing that to be fair. Not address it. Well, no, I'm talking about the things that you bring up. And you're more than welcome to talk about the things that I bring up. It's just that you seem to want to bring up things, move onwards, and not let me address them, which is gish-galloping. You know, that is what it is. So you said, I don't believe in anything I do. The why is the universe finally tuned? I don't know. That's the whole point. And I'm trying to be clear in my answer. But what you're doing is you're bringing up a possibility of God and saying, I believe this possibility is true. Prove me otherwise. I bring up alternate possibilities and you say, unless you believe them, they can't be considered possibilities, which is nonsensical. It's a nonsense. Whether or not I believe in these possibilities doesn't exclude them from being possibilities. You're trying to say, and you have said multiple times, the only possibility is God. And when I bring up other possibilities and say, how do you disprove these ones? You say, you've got to believe in them or else they're not a possibility. It's absurd.  So you also said that for the multiverse, I believe in that. No, I'm reserving judgment because that is not scientific theory. We think there's a multiverse or the scientists working on M theory think there is a multiverse because of the math and the way that it is working it seems to lead to a multiverse. But that hasn't been sufficient evidence to demonstrate that that is in fact the case. Do I believe that is the most likely explanation? Yes. Do I believe it to be true? I don't know. Okay, so at least we got a decent response. That would have been great for you. Yeah, I believe multiverse is most likely. I'm not 100% sure if it's true. So I want to respond to things that you just said but we got to move forward with the conversation. So keeping with multiverse, you would say that that is the most likely scenario that we're living in basically an infinite amount of universes. Or sorry, there exists essentially an infinite amount of universes. I would think. I mean, there are multiple different physicists with multiple different ideas. So I kind of reserve judgment until there is a scientific consensus and enough evidence to determine one is actually the case. I would tentatively say, hey, there's math pointing at a multiverse but I can't even understand the math. So how would I say I believe this to be true? When even scientists don't agree that it's true. I think that you are expecting a whole load of stuff from me that I'm not comfortable with saying, hey, this is what I absolutely believe. I reserve judgment and that's the difference. And I think you should reserve judgment about God because there's been no evidence this debate whatsoever. There's no, I don't think you would agree that there's ever been any evidence put forth by a deus or a theus that God exists, right? It's... Sure there has. You think deus and theus have put forth evidence that God exists? Can you give me an example? Yeah. Sure, give me an example. I mean, most Christian theists will point to the Bible. Oh my God. It's no evidence that you actually take as legitimate evidence. I do take that as evidence. I just don't think it's very compelling evidence. Okay, so compelling evidence. Do you think there's been any compelling evidence put forth by a Christian or theist? So you'd probably say no, right? No, I don't. No, I don't. Okay, so when you say like during this debate, I've heard nothing, blah, blah, blah. So to me, those are like little digs and insults. I'm not going to say that to an atheist because I realize there are millions of you. I respect your position because I can't prove it wrong and you can't prove my position wrong. We can only offer basically insight and arguments as to why which side may be more likely. So I think I'm providing argumentation to suggest that God is more likely to have created the universe than to not have. And you think that you're providing more evidence and argumentation that there is no God. But neither one of us can actually sit here and look each other in the eye and say that we're attempting to prove God or disprove God because neither one of us can do that. Yeah, but the difference here is that somebody using the Bible, I would say they presented poor evidence. And I want to clarify that when I say you have presented no evidence, like not even poor evidence. You've presented like sort of logically fallacious arguments, basically. You haven't presented any evidence whatsoever. I want to bring up a scenario. No evidence. And when we're talking about whether somebody has or has not proved God, when the question is, has it was the universe created by a God, you're sort of trying to demonstrate that it was a God. As I said earlier, if you basically claim it's a God and you present no evidence whatsoever and logically fallacious arguments, then it is completely reasonable and rational to dismiss that claim as an unwarranted baseless claim. Okay, so we are getting into fine tuning, which you can't possibly argue isn't a form of evidence. Maybe you'll say that it isn't compelling evidence, but I mean, so many people have built their careers off of putting forth intelligent design and fine tuning that if you're going to take the Bible as a form of evidence, I think it's pretty ridiculous that you wouldn't take fine tuning. So we're literally getting into that evidence. However, I want to remind people again that if there's only two possibilities, if there's only two potential answers to a question, and I can prove that one of them is false, by process of elimination, the other one has to be true. So if there's two doors and behind one of those doors, we know for sure lies the answer. So we'll put a big golden A, there's a big golden A behind door number one and door number two. If I can open door number one and say, hey, big golden A isn't here, then we have to assume, we know it's reasonable to believe. I guess we won't know because we can unless we open the door, but it is reasonable to believe that the A is behind door number two. So you may not respect that line of thinking. You may not think that that is a form of evidence, but most people do. If there's only two explanations, two possible explanations, and the person can show that one of those explanations isn't true, the other one has to be true. So now you're going to argue that there's more than just two explanations, and we're going to go back to whether or not it comes down to whether or not the universe is either created by God or it wasn't created by God. I hope we don't loop back to that, but I have a feeling that that's what you're going to do to get out of this hole. There's only two possible explanations. What I've got to do is I've got to mention we're going to go into the Q&A soon. So I want to give you gentlemen time to draw together the threads from this debate. What it'll do is maybe about two minutes each of you. We'll start with Mark. We'll finish with Ronnie, and then we'll go into the Q&A. Or in fact, I think we started with Ronnie. So why don't we do... We'll give Mark a chance, a quick response to that last question you asked Ronnie. And then right after that, Ronnie, we'll give you your two-minute closing followed by Mark's two-minute closing before we go into Q&A. Yeah, so the whole idea of the two doors is the false dichotomy that Ronnie brought up earlier. He hasn't actually demonstrated that it isn't possible for a universe to be naturalistically formed. He's just asserted it and said, because his intuition believes it, that that's enough for him. And that is an argument from incredulity. Your intuition isn't a good way to determine whether something is ontologically true or false. It's just a terrible way to do that. And like I talked earlier about his methodology, his methodology is if its intuition is terrible. So you don't respect that way of thinking, no, it's irrational. I'm really sorry, but there's no other word for it. It's unreasonable, irrational. That's all it is. Most people do think this way. Regardless, you're really racking up the fallacies. That's sort of an appeal for popularity because most people think like I do, it must be true, which is not the case. That's just an appeal to the popular idea, which if you haven't been paying attention, the popular idea hasn't always been the right one. It's not reliable. And that's the whole point. And that's all I'll say on that. And then I'll let Ronnie do his wrap up. All right. Well, first I want to say this has been the second debate that I've had on this channel. And I've enjoyed both of these debates. However, it seems like we have a really hard time sticking to one topic, fleshing it out and then moving on. It seems like it bounces back and forth. And I notice a similarity between both you and T-Jump. You guys get really hostile when I suggest that science cannot explain how the universe came to be. You immediately want to jump and say, you prove to me God, show me God. Well, I mean, the burden of proof is on you here. And same thing with T-Jump, same thing with you. When I started laying out that this is my line of thinking, you know, if I'm a lawyer or whatever, this is how I'm going about it. I'm going to prove that option A is not an option. Therefore, it has to be option B. My strategy is not to prove that option B is correct, but to prove that option A is incorrect. It has no way of being true. This really pisses off the atheists because they know that this is a frustrating point for them as well. They can't, in their brains, wrap their mind around how something can come from nothing or exist eternally forever. They know it doesn't make sense. So they just avoid it completely. And they just say, well, I also know there's no God. So you know what, I'm just going to continue to be an atheist. But they realize that there is this big problem at the foundation of atheism, which is the inability to explain again how something can come from nothing or explain eternally into the past. They want to just stray away from that and go on the attack. So during this debate, I have not heard anything from Mark to explain reasonably how something can exist forever. He basically agreed that infinity can only exist as a potential. It can exist as a state. But yet he also wants to believe that something can exist forever or exist eternally into the past. This is contradiction. This is not consistent. So in terms of who's being more consistent and who's being more self-contradictive, I think it's fairly obvious. And I'll leave it at that. We'll go into the Q&A. I want to say, folks, if you happen to have a question, we've got a shorter... Then I get a wrap up?  You do. Well, what I said is for the last question that you asked, I said I'd give Mark a chance to respond. And then I said I'd give you, Ronnie, a closing as well as Mark then. And so because we had you start, Ronnie. So I want to mention, folks, if you happen to have a question for the Q&A, do fire that into the old live chat. And we're going to go into that last two-minute closing from Mark for us all yours. Yeah, so we're not getting aggressive. And Ronnie's sort of doing another mind-reading episode where he thinks he knows what we're thinking or what we're doing. It's basically that Ronnie's sort of violating logical fallacies that are evident to most philosophers and really any rational thinking people. It sort of says that science can't demonstrate the origin of the universe. He's basically saying that science can't demonstrate in the future. We know that this is not the case. And Ronnie has no evidence to back this up. He's just claiming it in a vacuum. So you keep saying something came from nothing. You can't explain that. But when nothing is a quantum vacuum, we can explain that. And that's the thing he's misrepresenting and straw manning what the actual something from nothing is, which was only said by Lawrence Krauss and only a title for his book because he wanted to sell books. And he basically, we've got a guy who happily sit down and say, yes, I do the logical fallacy of special pleading and I believe I'm entitled to do so. I mean, what a sad state of affairs we have here, ladies and gentlemen, where a man can basically say, I'm happy to do special pleading even though if you do special pleading, you can do special pleading for anything. I can do it for unicorns. I can do it for magic. I can do it for gremlins and I can do it for anything. It's irrational, illogical thinking that this person is engaged in. All throughout this, he's made logical fallacies and I need to remind you, he's made this claim that God did create the universe and not justified it in any way whatsoever. He's just basically said, I don't think it can be any other explanation. Therefore, it has to be God. I've already outlined all of this in my introduction. That is God of the gaps. Or actually, that one's an argument from intradulity, but basically saying, well, you don't know. Science doesn't know. Therefore, God is a God of the gaps and he's probably proud to do that logical fallacy as well. So, we've got logical fallacy after logical fallacy, misrepresentation at terrible arguments, no evidence whatsoever. Just an assertion that is hollow, empty, baseless, nothing to back it up. Just shifting the burden of proof to say, prove my God is not there. I don't have to. You have to prove it is actually the creator of the universe, not the other way around. Thank you. We're going to start with the Q&A and want to remind you folks, our guests are linked in the description. If you'd like to hear more from them, you certainly can. This one coming in from Dave Gar, says, in your best Aussie accent, please say, good day, Mark. Oh, yes. And. Good day, Mark. Thank you very much, Mark. It was, oh, flaming. It says, if you define nothing as the object that doesn't exist that we do science on, there can still be nothing and there is no dependency on God, parentheses Yahweh. Any thoughts on that, Ronnie? Not in particular, but I do want to say that special pleading, as defined, it's defined as an informal fallacy where in one sight something as an exception to a general universal principle without justifying the special exception. I have justified it. What better justification could there be than to say it's God? He's exempt from the same rules. I mean, I don't know what else to say here, guys. What was it just so I can remember? Because it might come up during the Q&A. What was the rule in particular that you mentioned that you had said God is exempt from? Because I have a feeling this is in the Q&A coming up. Yeah, he does not need to have a cause. Everything else needs to have a cause, but God does not. He's beyond cause. He's also beyond time and everything else is within time. So I guess those would be the two main rules, but there's probably more, but those are really what I'm focusing on. Is the cosmos within time? Pardon me? Is the cosmos within time? It's so hard to hear you up. Yeah, you backed up there. For the audience? Yeah. Yeah, sorry. That's just special pleading. I'm sorry. It just it just is. There's no justification. I don't know if the audience heard you, Mark. It was the microphone. Oh, does the cosmos exist in time? And the cosmos is outside the universe. Space time is part of the local presentation of the universe. It's impossible for it to be within time. It makes no sense.  I mean, very specific definitions. What I'm saying is God is beyond the universe. Everything else is essentially within it. He's the only thing that's allowed to have exception to the rule. And if he didn't, he wouldn't be God. We couldn't define this thing as God if it wasn't that way. So I'm definitely meeting the criteria of justification. And yeah. So when I say it's a form of special pleading, I'm trying to be very generous. I'm trying to say I get where you're coming from here. You're saying that God is free from these rules that you're attaching to everything else. But then I'm coming back with saying that, yes, deus and deus should be honest and say we are. Otherwise, it wouldn't be God. This one coming in from, do appreciate your question. Cameron Hall says, Ronny, if the universe was really fine tuned for life, wouldn't it look very different? Why can humans only live on a minuscule fraction of our planet? Well, when we talk about tuned for life, we're talking about tuned so that life could even exist potentially, not just for it to be prevalent everywhere. But if you were to change, if you were to tweak the settings of the universe in just a small way, we're talking about the universe just flying away or collapsing in on itself. We're talking about planets never even forming. We're talking about DNA never even having a chance to form. I believe that the massive protons in relation to electrons, if they were any different, DNA wouldn't be able to form. So yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Got you. This one coming in from, do appreciate your question. Who's Rich Pernell says, love the channel and big thanks to both of the debaters, Mark and Ronny. I said, for Mark, what is your, by the way, our guests are linked in the description folks. If you haven't already, this is a great opportunity. You can open multiple windows. You can click on their links right now. And that includes if you're listening via the podcast, we put Mark's and Ronny's podcast, or I should say link in the description box for this podcast episode as well. So if you're listening via the podcast, check them out there too. This one from, who's Rich Pernell, as I've said, says for Mark, what is your approach to epistemology and what do you think directs the human intellect? What is my approach to epistemology? Well, epistemology is sort of knowledge and belief. So I think I take an evidentiary basis. I mean, arguments are good, but unless you can sort of back up the premises of the arguments, you're really dealing with ifs in that case. So I would probably adhere to methodological naturalism for the most part. But I don't rule out supernatural basis, even though methodological naturalism sort of prevents it being used as a method of finding out what is true and what is not. Sorry, what was the second part of that question? No problem. They said, Anne, what do you think directs the human intellect? What do I think? I think the brain directs the human intellect. I think that sort of consciousness in the mind, brain states are responsible for that. And I use my split brain evidence to show that the brain, when split, two consciousnesses arise. And in fact, two intellects arise. Like this split brain patient, it's split down the corpus colsen down the middle. One side was actually a theist. One side was a atheist. When it can run, when he wrote in both hands, it shows each personality as it's fascinating stuff. I talk for ages, but I think that answers your question. You got it. And thank you very much for this question coming in from to appreciate it. Farron Salas, good to see you says, Ronnie, why insist on using a term like supernatural when we haven't substantiated that supernatural causes or beings exist? Well, what I'm suggesting, what I'm arguing is that natural causes, the natural universe, what we see within nature, can't explain the origins of everything. So therefore we need a supernatural, something that's beyond nature in order to explain this. If the thing was within nature, then it itself would require an explanation. And then whatever is responsible for that thing would require an explanation. And we just keep going infinitely into the past. So the only way to escape this problem, believe me, I used to be an atheist too. The only way to escape this problem is to say that, you know, what the only thing beyond logic, the only thing beyond this universe that can possibly exist is God. So it's just more likely that God did it. Then, well, I, it's just the. Who is Rich Pranell strikes again, says for both parties from an evolutionary perspective, namely bottom up, how would you, how would man begin to conceive of a top down understanding of the universe? Do you want to take that first, Ronnie? Yeah, well, I mean, you just ultimate knowledge, beauty, etc. exists in some sort of concentrated form and then expresses itself and various ways when divided. I mean, you could say this is a poetic way of describing it or whatever. But yeah, essentially, knowledge, intelligence, beauty is the starting point. And we have a breakup of that as opposed to just random and chaos being the starting point and beauty and intelligence and math and whatever emerging out of it. I'll just sort of describe what top top down bottom up basically. So bottom up is evolution. Basically, you have multiple systems that form together emergent properties evolve and emergent things involve out of the top down is that it's designed. And it's basically designed downwards to make sense and fit because all of those different parts and systems are designed to work together. So I think that as a bottom up, we sort of, I'm not sure how we could determine that the universe, even as a bottom up evolutionary process, we could determine that the universe was done in a top down way. It would have those elements of design systems that are integrated to work together. It would have a system of order to it that currently the universe does not have. As I said, it might have a stable vacuum, for instance, that seems to suggest that it sort of bottom up. But it's incredibly difficult to tell because if you want to posit a God, you could say, hey, God made it to look like that. And then you're sort of going, well, how would we tell the difference? It doesn't appear to be top down design. But how would we tell us bottom up? But by the way that the systems interact with one another. You got it. Thank you very much for this question from Leo Whitmer says, Ronnie, how can a God that has no beginning and that came from nothing makes sense? Didn't you say those two things were impossible earlier in the debate? Yeah, this is, I don't mean to be insulting to the person, but they either haven't thought hard enough about this or they're not that smart. So I'm literally saying that this is a problem science and atheism has, but God is free from this problem. I understand what the person's saying. It's not like I'm sitting here not realizing that I'm giving this form of special pleading for God that I'm not assigning to the rest of the universe. All theists and deists are completely aware of this because we all say, where did the universe come from? Came from God. Where did God come from then? We say God always existed. It's not like we're unaware of the fact that these things don't match up. That we're saying one has this special, it means it's God. I find it hilarious that atheists literally think they're making a point when they say to us, well, why is it that God can always exist, but the universe can't? Because the universe requires an explanation. It's part of the natural realm. And if all you're using is science to explain it and science can't explain it, then it requires something beyond. So for atheists continuing to make that point of, oh, well, where did God come from then? I mean, it's just, it's pretty juvenile. This one coming in from, do appreciate it. Samir Varsane says, if you discover a new island and in it you find log cabins, would you conclude you discovered wild houses? If not, why deny a creator of infinitely more complex things? Because that's me, right? I think so. Yeah, so complexity isn't a hallmark of design. We know that there are complex things that are not designed like weather patterns, for instance. They are chaotic elements. Chaotic elements do have a sense of order underlying them as per chaos theory. So the weather falls into ordered patterns, but still is a chaotic system. So there's no reason to think that the disorder of the universe is in some way designed to be like that. There is order that arises from the physics, like when the planets line up and things like that. But that doesn't mean that that spontaneous synchronization of elements of the system has been designed to work like that. It's just that chaotic patterns fall into order. That's a really bad analogy, saying there's a cabin in the woods kind of thing made of wood. So why wouldn't you consider that design? I would say, hey, there's a dam across the river, a bundle of sticks. Is that design? Did beavers design that, or was it just a natural occurrence? Until you go and get, like, buying the beavers, you won't know. You won't know if those sticks piled up or whether it was actually a creature that did it. You got it. Thank you very much for this question. Beams, he says.  Well, this is another one where they're talking underneath me. They think that I don't realize that nothing actually has a weight to it. And we can measure this nothingness. I know all about Kroos and his nothingness and I know that that was just a title used to sell books. I think it's quite hilarious that he would use that title because it satisfies the low IQ atheist that believes something can actually come from nothing and Kroos proved it. And it also draws in the higher IQ atheist who really wants to know more about what this nothingness is. So what Kroos means by the nothingness is basically just a quantum field. So this this this quantum field existed and it created the universe. And this quantum field has features to it. It even has a mass. So then it just begs the question. Where did the quantum field come from? And this is I want to say this because this addresses so many people in the chat. They say Ronnie doesn't know what created the universe. And you know, scientists don't know. But what he doesn't accept is that science may one day figure out what created the universe. Here's the problem. Science is always going to be in the same situation it's in right now. Say we find something that that's responsible for the formation of the quantum field. We're going to be in the same position because we'll just ask, well, where did that come from? And there's going to be two options. It either always existed or it has an explanation. If it has an explanation, we're now regressing infinitely into the past. Because again, you're always going to have those two options. No matter what science discovers, what created it. And if nothing created it existed forever. So it doesn't matter what scientific revelations come about. It doesn't matter that science doesn't know it now. Science will never be able to answer the question. What was the original thing that created the universe and how did it get there? It's science is literally incapable of answering that question. This one coming in. I'm sorry, James. Sorry to interrupt. I'm just going to be fair to the person asking the question. They actually asked if you talked to a scientist. You didn't actually answer the question. Okay. I've talked to scientists online, like people who you would consider to be scientists, whether they're biologists, physicists, etc. But I'm trying to think of right now in my personal life. No, no, I haven't. To be really specific, they asked if you talked to scientists about the definition of nothing. I don't know if they mean whether or not Lawrence Krause's definition is correct or not. Or if they mean your why they asked whether yours is. But I'm trying to consider. Yes, I've talked to scientists online about this. I have not talked to a scientist in person about that specific question. You got it. This one coming in from do appreciate it. Dow happy DA says answer your emails, James. Forgive me for that. Please do ping it. If you just ping me to the top, I'll check that email. Clarence Tompkins says if time started at the quote unquote big bang, how was it illogical to think the singularity existed infinitely since the singularity is beyond quote unquote the universe? So I can repeat that. So if time started at the big bang, how is it illogical to think that the singularity existed infinitely since the singularity is beyond the universe? The singularity, what would they be saying would be the quantum field then? I'm not sure what the or they talking about the moment in which everything was kind of one as the big bang, because it's a really kind of wacky world when we go before the point of the big bang, right? Because everything was condensed into a single point, if that's what they're talking about the singularity. And then there's also the quantum field that we can talk about, which exists before that. The problem with the quantum field ever doing anything is because scientists will say, well, this is before time. And then it begs the question, well, then why did anything happen? If there's no time to facilitate any action, why didn't the quantum bang go off a moment before or a moment after? There was no time, right? It becomes this weird wacky world, which is all just theory. It's not actually provable. We can't investigate it. And it's just as much as a faith based belief system as believing in God, in my opinion. Wait, Mark, do you have anything to respond to that? Because I actually would be interested if you do have anything. Sorry to cut in there, James, just no problem. Yeah, yeah. So the whole idea is that space time, it's related to gravity and gravity distorts a lot, actually. So when you're talking about a singularity where everything in the universe is compressed down into a single point, you're talking about a complete distortion of space time. And we can't seem to see beyond one plank, plank second, after where we think the initial conditions of the Bing Bang were. But I think we're pointing out that when you're talking about origin points, it's kind of before space time actually got running. But we don't know the conditions in there. So when you're saying, oh, how can there be an event? It's like, well, there may have been something to facilitate that event, which is not our local presentation of space time. So when we're thinking about time, like we consider time, like it's this time running, we're only talking about our local universe instead of any externality that may be there. So the whole idea of before, because when you're using before, you're using our local presentation of space time, it may be completely the wrong word to use about anything prior to the singularity. This one coming in from, do appreciate your question. Meredith on says, Ronnie, you admit to the use of special pleading to justify that God to justify God and believe that it's okay. Is special pleading acceptable when justifying other things outside of God? Okay, I said that it's a form of special pleading because I can justify it. And I've said this from the beginning, it's God. It's the one thing in the universe that can be beyond the same restraints as something else or should be, you know, the same rules should not apply to God is that they apply to everything else. So in 99% of cases, you don't want to be guilty of special pleading. This is why Mark laughs. This is why the audience laughs. Oh my God, he actually admitted that he's using some form of special pleading. It's kind of like this autistic, let's get over her.  Like they talk about the word, the title instead of the actual meaning beyond it. So I concede some ground and say it's a form of special pleading. But if you look at the actual definition of special pleading, the person doesn't have justification for it. So special pleading should not be this big thing that everybody gets all up in arms about because obviously whoever's using the special pleading is going to say that they have justification for it. So I hate when terms outweigh the actual meaning and context of the conversation. Can I just add something? I find it kind of offensive as somebody on the autism spectrum for you to refer to. I knew it. Well, I mean, that's basically just an ad hominem. It's got nothing to do with your arguments. It's just atheists and autism. I don't know what it is. Yeah, so I just think that that's got nothing to do with it. And this is a logical fallacy that's been in philosophy for a while. It doesn't need any kind of neuro atypicality to be a thing. Most theist philosophers do acknowledge special pleading as a logical fallacy. Actually all of them do. I don't know any of it though. Sorry, James. Go ahead. No problem. This one coming in from, do appreciate your question. Clarence Tompkins says, if time started at the Big Bang. Oh, we got that one. So sofa, King Titan Uranus. So they had a question for you, Ronnie. They say, so atheists can't explain how something came from nothing, but God literally created man from dust. Do you know what logic is, Ronnie? Yeah, it's comical. It's like, oh my God. So you're saying that the universe kind of possibly created everything on its own, but you believe God is. Don't you see how that's special pleading? It's hilarious. It's really funny. This one coming in from, do appreciate your question. Lucas says, Ronnie, how do you make a difference between something outside of time and space and something that does not exist? That's an interesting question. I want to make sure, repeat that one more time, James. They said, Ronnie, how do you make a difference between something outside of time and space and something that simply doesn't exist? Well, something that doesn't exist would not do anything. It would have no features, or it did have features and it died, right? Like, I don't believe my great-grandmother is within space time or whatever, but she did exist. So yeah, I mean, what's the person trying to get to there? Hillhugger says, before time, there's no space, but there was stuff. That's a mirror to mark. Can you repeat it, James? They said, before time, there was no space, but there was stuff. Like, matter. I'm not sure it's to me because I agree with it. I mean, before space time, so before time and space, there was still quantum field or stuff. There was still things there. So I agree with that 100%.  But if there is no time and space, where was the quantum field? And why did anything happen if there was no time to facilitate an event? We don't know the exact answer to that, but we do know that. Does anybody have even an attempt at answering that question that I could find? Oh, yeah, yeah. So M-theories basically says that membranes collide to... Where did the membranes come from? I'm talking about a 0.0. Is there anybody that could possibly give me any theory as to how like the first thing came about without requiring there being something else to explain it? Because obviously, I'm just going to ask, where did that thing come from? And this is the whole problem with atheism. Yeah. So just because we can't explain where something comes from doesn't give anybody justification to insert a God as an explanation. Well, because it's the only other explanation as we went through at the beginning of the debate. Thanks. Yes. Or sorry, magical limestones could have done it too, guys. There's a Blarney stone, but thanks. Blarney stone, God and science. Yeah, yeah. So there was stuff there, whether that stuff was sort of eternal because there is no time, is completely possible. And the membranes may very well be eternal when we're talking about no time or time less, basically. And that a physicality that we don't understand caused the membranes to collide. Do you think Einstein's theory of a static state universe is silly because of scientific explanation or because of a philosophical problem with it?  I don't know how Einstein could have possibly believed the universe just always existed without there being a beginning. But that's literally what you suggest about whatever it is that created the quantum field. You say, well, there was just the static state of eternalness and it just always was. That's literally what Einstein believed about the universe. But the inquisitive mind says, no, there must be a cause. There must be an explanation. What you don't realize is that's either going to eternally be the problem for atheists, is, well, what caused this thing that we now think is the beginning thing? Or you're going to have to accept that there is this thing beyond space and time that decided to create the universe and that's God. So the membranes collide in 11 dimensional space and there's tons of these things happening, leading to them. The math suggests that is a many worlds theory. And where did the membranes come from? Creating universes all the time in this cosmos with membranes. Where did the membranes come from? Why are they there? Thank you. That's my answer. Okay. This one coming in from, do appreciate it. Coffee mom says, Ronnie, not knowing the answer doesn't equal God. No, it's not that we don't know the answer. The answer could be anything. We could find element X. We could find quantum field Zargeblon. We could go 3,000 million years into the future and realize that there is a million causes for our current understanding of what we think is the first thing. So I'm totally, totally open-minded to science finding out tons of things that my little brain can't understand. I don't even understand fully how I'm talking to you right now, James, because I don't get electronics and telecommunication. So there's a lot of things that we don't fully understand, but we can still have a general idea of how they work. So again, this is a philosophical problem dating back to Aristotle and the boys. It didn't matter that they didn't have the scientific tools at their disposal. They were still at the same point that we are today. How does something come from nothing? How do we avoid the problem of an infinite past when we know that can't exist? You've got it. This one coming in from, do appreciate it. I just want to add that my education is in networking and distributed systems. So I do understand how we're talking right now. Oh, great. That's awesome, man. You're so smart. Thanks for your sharing that with us. I'm sure that had nothing to do with your ego. This one coming in from, do appreciate your question. Some of you are far sains as Ronnie is right. It's called proof by contradiction. Do you remember what this is referring to? I can't remember that. I don't know. Oh, I don't know. That's all they say. Ronnie, do you know what they're saying? Oh, I'm basically saying that at some point, the atheists is going to contradict themselves. I think that's what I was saying before. There's going to be some sort of contradiction. I can't remember specifically. It just kind of rang a bell there. I don't know. Mark, do you remember what I was saying? No. I don't think you can prove stuff by having contradictory. You can disprove somebody's argument by having a contradiction, but I don't think you can prove another argument by having a contradiction in somebody else's. That argument has to stand on its own merits rather than be based upon what somebody else believes or what somebody else argues. I think we can if we know enough about the circumstance. So if there's two people in the room and an object goes missing, and it could have only been one of those two people, if I can prove that person A didn't steal the object, then we know it's person B. But you could always argue, well, we don't know all the circumstances. Maybe there was another possibility and now we're blaming this person because we think there's only two possibilities. But like I said, if we know enough about the circumstances, like we have a camera in the room showing nobody else entered around the premises, there's alarms, we don't actually have to prove who stole or who took the object in order to know who took the object, right? Would you agree with that, Mark? No, no, that's a dichotomy. Well, then that is the fundamental difference here. Let me finish. Let me finish. I just want to point it out. That is the fundamental thing with this agreement. Let me run it. Come on, man, like seriously. I'm done. That's not a contradiction. That is a dichotomy, what you're describing. So if you've got two people and only being one of those two people, if it can only be one of those two people and you eliminate one, the dichotomy says it must be the other. A contradiction is when you have an explanation that has internal details that do not equate to the same thing. So if you've got two people and one person's story is, say, contradictory, you cannot assume it's the other person's story that is correct. Both can still be wrong. This one, coming in. Do you want to say something, Ronnie?  Oh, no, no, I just said yes. You got it. Let me just double check. Oh, this one from... Delaney says, if there are an infinite number of alternative hypotheses, is the percentage chance of our hypothesis infinitely small? Oh, is that to me? I don't even know how to... I think it is, because I would 100% agree with them. Sorry, James. I got to ask you to repeat that again. I know I've asked you a few times here, but... No, it's all right. Can you remind me, either of you, what the hypothesis was referring to? Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, it was basically Ronnie saying that, you know, I just want to get it to 50% either way, God or sort of another explanation kind of thing. The problem is that those aren't the only explanations that exist. So, if we have infinite hypotheses, how do you get 50% out of that when each of these unsupported hypotheses has an equal chance of... I can answer that perfectly. Thank you for... I really appreciate you clarifying that, Mark. I really do. Because I was... I've asked James a couple of times to repeat the question. I thought for sure that one was for you, and my mind kind of wandered halfway through James. Bring that up. Okay. So, I've had this conversation with a lot of atheists. I've had this conversation with a lot of philosophers and whatnot. And at the end of it, they do agree. You only have two options. Either God created the universe, or God didn't create the universe. We could create some sort of hybrid, where you have this little leprechaun type thing, or this magic stone. But essentially, it's going to be so much more closer to God than it would be any sort of atheist explanation for how the universe came about, because no atheist is going to, in good faith, suggest that such a thing could actually be responsible for the universe. An atheist, only in good faith, actually believes that a science... scientific explanation, a natural explanation. So when they say, oh, there could be these other ones, that's just a debate game that they're playing. First of all, they don't actually believe that any of those possibilities are true. And secondly, you can actually show how any of those examples they could bring up from magic stones to leprechauns to spaghetti monsters in the sky. If those things actually are responsible for the creation of the universe, if they have no cause, they are the prime originator of all that is, then that would be God. But of course, this plate of spaghetti can't create the universe. Of course, a stone can't create the universe. Of course, even Superman himself can't create the universe. Only God can. So there is only two explanations, or two possible options. God created the universe, or the universe just came about on its own. I think I've demonstrated how the universe cannot just come about on its own. Therefore, God must have done it. This one coming in from, do appreciate it. Clarence Tompkins says, if the quantum field is beyond the cosmos, why does there need to be a, quote, where did that come from? Since it's beyond space, time, like your God. And you get to say, God doesn't need an explanation. God would be the only thing beyond an explanation. See, what people have to understand here is respecting that if one thing is true, then the next thing must be true. If a Muslim asks me, if Allah is true, if Allah exists, do you think it's reasonable that he would want people to wear, or women to wear head coverings, or something like that? I'm not going to start arguing whether or not women should wear head coverings. I'm going to be honest and say, well, yeah, if Allah is true, then the Muslim faith should be followed, et cetera. But it seems very difficult for the atheist to do this. When I say, if a being created the universe, that being must be God, they don't want to say, yeah, they want to play this really shitty game of a bad faith where they say, no, how do I know a leprechaun didn't create the universe? Mark doesn't believe anything, but the universe created itself. He doesn't believe in anything magical. So whatever other option he brings up would be a bad faith argument or it could be an argument that I could easily show is just bullshit. Mark, do you have anything to say to that? Oh, sure, yeah. So what we're doing is making an analogy to Ronny's argument. So when I bring up these things, it's basically demonstrating that if you do use special pleading as part of your rationale and your logic, you could do that for literally anything. You could assign that special pleading to whatever creature or whatever thing that you wish to. The real funny thing about this is that Ronny's basically stating what a terrible thing that I'm doing to provide these exceptions for the magic and the things that I'm suggesting while he is doing exactly the same logic to his own God. And that's the hilarious thing. I know it's a terrible argument that shouldn't be. I actually believe in God. You don't believe in any of those things. If you believed in that a magical stone, if you actually believed that it's possible for a magic stone or a plate of spaghetti to create the universe, then you'd be making a good faith argument. I'd be saying, okay, you know what? I could take this guy seriously, but you don't, right? You don't.  I give you an example of what I truly believe. You don't believe in anything. That's why you can't bring anything to the table. You're an atheist. You don't believe in anything. I believe in lots of stuff. Like an atheist just doesn't believe in God. It doesn't mean we don't believe in anything. I believe that this world is real. This copy cup is real. That I'm talking to you. That social justice is a good thing. You're going on a real deep faith there, buddy, to believe that that coffee cup is real. If I could just finish, Ronny, if you could stop interrupting for once. The whole idea that it has to be believed in order for it to be true is absolute nonsense. What we have here is ontology, whether something exists, it's basically, is it metaphysically true? Whether you believe it or not has no effect on whether something is true or not. I could disbelieve in this coffee cup. It doesn't make the coffee cup wink out. You're making such a non-point here, right? I could believe that a unicorn is on my desk. It doesn't make any more credible that that is actually the case. Great. So whether or not I believe in the things that I postulate to basically make an analogy to Ronny's argument has no effect on whether the argument is has a bang on whether or not it is a good faith or a bad faith argument. Logically valid, sorry. Logically valid or not. I'm talking specifically about good faith here. So a good faith argument is somebody who, when they bring up a hypothetical, it's something that they themselves could actually believe in or support. Since you don't actually believe that anything else could have created the universe other than a natural explanation, no magical space monster, no God, no nothing like that. You don't believe in any of that. You're just bringing that up as a way to say, well, there's no way you could disprove it, even though you yourself don't believe it. You get that, Mark? Does the audience get it? James, do you get it? I mean, that's the difference between a good faith and a bad faith argument. If I could just address it. If I could just address it. So when basically Ronny just said is you've got to believe in the hypothetical in order to bring it up, which is one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard in my life. We bring up plenty of hypotheticals that are not real. That's the whole idea of a hypothetical as we bring up something that A did not happen and B is not real. But you don't believe any of these hypotheticals are possible. Ronny, come on, man. You don't believe any of them are possible. You literally don't. So that's why I don't take it seriously, mate. I think it's possible. I think it is a very, very long. No, you don't think a plate of spaghetti could have created the universe. You literally don't.  James, we can move on entirely here in this. Yeah, so regardless of a hypothetical I might think that bring up a hypothetical about God writing my name. You only bring that up as an attempt to try to break down what I'm saying. You don't actually think it's a bad faith argument. I want to move on. You can't just talk over the top of me. Come on, you're just repeating yourself now. And there's other questions. We've both responded to it. We can move on. I can bring up a hypothetical about God writing my name in the sky in order to convince me he exists. That does not mean I believe that. Okay, so then, Mark, I'm going to ask you again. What options do you think are there? God did it. The universe did it. Give me a third option that you actually take seriously. That you actually take seriously. Don't tell me to stop.  I want to move on.  I would like to move on. Talking over someone does not improve your position. So I may not believe that this occurs, right? I've completely lost my train of thought because of Ronnie's little tactics here. I might not believe that occurs, but that's still a very valid one. You don't even think it's possible. That's the difference. I would like to just hear one at a time. Wow. Brian, then I'm going to say something after he talks because this is just ridiculous. You want this to continue. Obviously, I'm not just going to shut up and let you say all these points and not have anything to say back. We're now repeating ourselves.  Now I'm going to throw a chair on top of what I said. We're just going to keep building up our cakes. Could I please talk? So just because that hypothetical, I don't believe it can happen, doesn't mean I'm arguing in bad faith because it is a hypothetical that I'm actually putting forward. So let me explain to you how it is. Hold on. Just for the love of Ronnie, you do have to let him finish. He's saying the same thing. Listen, this reminds me. I've had another guest who sometimes will say, but he's misrepresenting me. And I have to tell him the same time. You can point that out right after, but when you jump in so early, it's like, well, just let him finish.  He just said, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. He just said that about five minutes ago. It was the exact same thing. It was in different words. So I'll say it wasn't those words. And I told you, I already gave the response of this. If you have that meta kind of leading the conversation. It's already for the Q&A section.  I don't interrupt you, Ronnie. Why are you interrupting me? I'm just saying, here's one way you can handle this. Even me, you interrupt. I'm just like, geez. Does it make sense you can do that? Just want to give him a chance to finish. Okay, right there. It was like you were asking a question as you were talking. So that's why I was saying when I jumped in there, I wasn't trying to interrupt you. I'm just saying it's during the Q&A session. So it's kind of hard to expect that this is going to go on for a lot of different back and forths. So I'm like, okay, we can move on to the next one. He's like, but no, no, no, I still want to say this. So I'm just kind of frustrated. Okay, I'm almost finished. I'm almost finished. Almost finished. Sorry, Jen. It is true. We've been on this one for a while. And there are a couple more questions. And pardon me, if I did ask a question, I'll trust you on that, Ronnie, that I must have asked a question. I think it was meant to be rhetorical, but frankly, it happens all the time where people interpret rhetorical questions as literal questions. So not a problem. Sorry for telling you to shut up, because if you were just answering a question, then I'd get it. So go ahead, Mark. Yeah, I just want to finish and I'm almost done. It's not arguing in bad faith if you bring up a hypothetical that you do not believe in or you do not think could happen as an analogy to someone else's argument. That is not bad faith arguing at all. That's all I want to say. Okay, and I want to explain how it is. If say I'm defending somebody in a murder trial, or not even a murder trial, that's too technical. I'm just defending somebody. And they say, well, how do you know this happened? And my response is, well, it could be this guy. It could be this guy. It could be this. It could be that. If I don't even think any of what I'm suggesting is possible, they're bad faith arguments. It's not that I don't think any one of them specifically happened because it's true. I could bring up a multitude of scenarios which one of them could be potentially true and I don't know which one. But if I don't think any of them are possible, then it is a bad faith argument that I don't even believe in. So because Mark can't even bring up one example of how the universe could be created that he actually thinks is possible beyond a natural e