Craig Vs Orthodox Luigi |Christianity Or Secular Humanism, Which Has a Better Ethical Foundation?
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Go to shopify.com slash dax to upgrade your selling today. Shopify.com slash dax. Hey, everybody. Tonight we're debating Christianity versus secular humanism. Which has the better foundation for ethics? And we are starting right now with Craig's opening statement. Thanks so much for being with us, Craig. The floor is all yours. Hey, James. Thanks for having me once again. Amazing time at Debacon. Thank you very much for that.

I had prepared slides and stuff, but I'm in the middle of moving home and I'm a dumbass and managed to pack my hard drive. So I'm just going to kind of wing it and waffle for my intro, really. I'm Craig McNeil. You can find me on the YouTube channel FTFE, where I normally talk to flat earthers. But yeah, so I'm doing this today instead.

From the moment that humans learned to walk upright and stopped flinging their own feces at each other, we've been shackled by myth. And of all the myths that have haunted us, the big G in the sky Old Testament tyrant edition has got to be one of the most creatively evil ones. Let's be real: if God were a human leader, he'd make Genghis Khan look like a UNICEF ambassador.

This is a guy who, according to his own fan fiction, sorry, the Bible, flooded the planet because he was in a bad mood, turned a woman into a salt shaker for looking at an explosion and sent bears to more 42 kids for laughing at a bald man. You know, a literal God tier supervillain.

Yet for thousands of years humanity has been expected to kneel before this celestial dictator handing over 10% of their income while being told they're worthless worms. I mean talk about a cosmic scam, it's like a bad multi-level marketing scheme but with eternal damnation instead of Tupperware. For the majority of human history, societies run by religion were brutal, oppressive and deeply allergic to progress.

The Dark Ages? Sponsored by Christianity. The witch trials? Brought to you by religious hysteria. Slavery? Fully endorsed in the Bible. God's apparently a fan of forced labour. Shocker. And let's not forget the Inquisition, where God's most loyal bootlickers decided the best way to spread love was with hot pokers and the good old-fashioned execution. It wasn't until secular humanism started creeping in that things actually began to improve.

You know, little things like science, human rights, not setting people on fire for saying the Earth orbits the sun, because when humans stopped looking to Sky Daddy for the answers and started using logic, reason and actual evidence, suddenly we got medicine, democracy and the concept of human dignity. You know, who knew, right?

The biggest flex that secularism has over Christianity is that it works. Instead of basing morality on a 2,000-year-old book that says mixing fabrics is a sin but selling your daughter is fine, secular ethics use reason, empathy, and evidence to determine right from wrong. You know, things that actually matter like consent, well-being, and fairness. Not whether or not you eat shellfish, which, fun fact, is on God's do-not-eat list, but somehow...

Genocide isn't. Under secular governance, we saw the end of slavery, the rise of democracy, the birth of human rights, women finally being seen as people, and the scientific revolution that gave us medicine, electricity, and...

crucially memes, none of which came from prayer. Because here's a fun fact. Every major advancement in human rights has been opposed by religious institutions. Civil rights fought against by religious conservatives. Women's rights, same story. Gay rights, the church still hasn't caught up and it's 2025. Meanwhile, the only thing Christianity has given the world in the last 500 years is televangelists and scandals.

Secular governments, they like ending slavery, promoting human rights, advancing science, and generally improving human well-being. But God, well, he invented hell, the concept of eternal torture for people who don't kiss his divine feet enough. That's not justice. That's narcissistic cosmic dictator with anger issues.

If a human leader acted like God, they'd be hauled to The Hague for war crimes. But when God does it, oh, he works in mysterious ways. Mate, that's just a fancy way of saying we've no idea why our deity acts like a genocidal maniac asshole.

The bottom line is this: secular humanism is about progress, freedom, treating people decently because it's the right thing to do, not because you're scared of a sky bully with a lightning fetish. It's the reason that we have democracy, vaccines, space travel, and a legal system that doesn't rely on stoning people to death working on a Sunday. Meanwhile, religion clings to the past, desperately trying to keep the world trapped in an era where bleeding people out was considered medical treatment.

So when people ask whether Christianity or secular humanism is better for society, the answer is painfully obvious. One is responsible for everything good in the modern world, and the other is responsible for burning heretics, banning condoms, and guilt-tripping people into submission. If we want a future where people thrive, explore the stars, and actually fix the problems that we face, we need reason, evidence, and compassion, not lies.

Old books, celestial dictators and vague threats of hellfire. Humanity evolves, religion doesn't. And that's why secular humanism isn't just better than Christianity. It's the only reason we're not still living in the dark ages.

Christianity's morality is based on obey or burn, which, let's be honest, is just divine North Korea. It's rule by fear, not ethics. Meanwhile, secular humanism says, don't be a dick because people matter. No hellfire required. Think about it. Would you rather base your morals on reason, empathy, and evidence, or on a book that thinks shellfish is worse than slavery? One gives us human rights, democracy, and Star Trek.

The other gives us the Crusades, televangelists, and people who think the Earth is 6,000 years old. It's not even a contest. Secular ethics, because don't be a knob, is better than obey or burn. And that's all I've got.

Thank you very much for that opening, Craig. We are going to kick it over to Luigi for his opening as well. But before I do, quick housekeeping notes. First, folks, if it's your first time here at Modern Day Debate, I'm your host, Dr. James Coons, and Modern Day Debate is a fully neutral channel. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button as we have plenty of debates coming up. With that, we're going to kick it over to Luigi for his opening statement as well. Thanks for being with us. The floor is all yours.

The topic of today's debate is one that philosophers have argued over for millennia: ethical foundations. I will be asserting four arguments: two positive claims for the case of Christianity and two negative contests against secular humanism. My first claim is that secular humanism cannot justify ethical foundations at all. This argument is best summarized by C.S. Lewis in his book Miracles. "If the solar system was brought about by an accidental collision,

then the appearance of organic life on this planet was also an accident. And the whole evolution of man was an accident too. If so, then all our thought processes are mere accidents, the accidental byproducts of the movement of atoms. But if our thoughts are merely accidental byproducts, why should we believe them to be true? I see no reason for believing that one accident should be able to give a correct account of all the other accidents." This argument can easily be extended to the conscience and thus ethics.

If we are the result of an accidental process, why should we trust our own moral compass, let alone someone else's? My opponent frequently points to the opposition of harm as a guiding factor under the secular humanist framework. Yet what is the justification for why harm is bad? It seems harm in many cases is actually good. As a child receiving a life-saving vaccine certainly perceives the needle poking into their skin to be harmful.

So is harm acceptable if it results in a greater good? What if we are in the midst of a deadly pandemic and the only way to save the masses is to perform dangerous medical experiments on a few victims unaware of the risks? Is this acceptable because there's less harm when it's all said and done? My opponent was left speechless on this point when asked by an audience member how we resolve these conflicting standards. Do we concur with Immanuel Kant who says,

Reason commands us to follow ethics that follow principles, or do we rather side with John Stuart Mill, who says it's based on outcomes? As you can see, when the foundations of secular humanism get called into question, it becomes blatantly clear that it is built on the woeful ambiguity of human feelings, specifically the human feelings of whoever is in charge of a particular nation. Would you trust the fate of a moral dilemma to the personal feelings of a bunch of random secular humanist leaders? I certainly wouldn't.

Which leads me to my second claim, that Christianity can justify its ethical foundation and ground its standards. Unlike a secular paradigm, in Christianity we are not the result of an accidental process, but rather we're designed for the unique purpose of stewardship over this world. Man was created in God's image, and this is why we are granted a conscience, unlike any other creature in the animal kingdom.

Jeremiah 31 and Romans 2 in the Holy Scriptures demonstrate through divine revelation that God has placed his laws on our hearts, which is therefore how we know we can trust our conscience. In addition, when moral dilemmas are presented, the Orthodox Church has a normative method to resolving them that has been granted infallibility by the protection of the Holy Spirit.

You may ask, how can things possibly get worse for a secular humanist if they can't even justify ethical foundations? This leads me to my third claim, that secular humanism does not have the capacity to sustain a society at all. When asked in his debate with Andrew Wilson, my opponent made reference to Scandinavian nations as a good example of secular humanism. So I'll be using Sweden as a case study. A sustainable birth rate must maintain at a bare minimum two children per woman, one to replace each parent. According to Statistics Sweden,

The nation in 2019 had a birth rate of 1.70. This is well below the sustainable rate. However, to make matters worse, as of 2024, it has plummeted down to 1.43 children per woman. How is Sweden compensating for these devastating numbers that will inevitably lead to the death of their nation? They are bringing in substantial numbers of migrants. 30 years ago, less than 1% of Sweden was made up of Muslims. Today, that number is roughly 10%.

So my opponent's poster child of a secular humanist society is not only unsustainable in their birth rates, but they're now outsourcing to religious populations who will inevitably replace them. Eric Kaufman, who is a scholar of demographics and is himself a secularist, has this to say.

One reason for the secular religious fertility gap is that religion's proto-natalist message contrasts with the culture of low fertility now prevalent in the secular individualistic West and secular materialistic East Asia.

End quote. My fourth claim is this, that Christianity...

That Christianity has the birth rate capacity to sustain a society. Now, what I am not saying is that more babies you have, the better your societal model is. I am also not saying that sustainable birth rates make Christianity right. What I am saying is at least we would have a society if everyone became Christian. Based on the above data, my opponent cannot say the same.

Kaufman goes on in the same book to say, quote, secularism, even in small amounts, is associated with population stagnation or even decline absent substantial immigration, whereas highly religious countries have higher fertility rates that promote population growth, end quote.

He even states, quote, if pious children simply assimilate into the secular mainstream, the radical effect of religious fertility quickly dissipates, end quote. Even an ounce of secularism decimates a society's chance at sustainable birth rates. Yet in Christianity, Adam and Eve were commanded prior to the fall of man to be fruitful and multiply.

This means that God created us not only as stewards, but also as sustainers of earth through generation after generation. This explains why scholars like Kaufman have found that Christianity does indeed produce sustainability for future societies. One excellent example of this is

One excellent case study of this is found in the Republic of Georgia in 2007. For decades, world leaders had thrown billions at collapsing birth rates, tax breaks, subsidies, paid leave, only to see birth rates continue falling. But in 2007, one simple initiative from a leader of the Orthodox Christian Church completely shifted the nation's trajectory.

Patriarch Ilya II of Georgia stated that he would personally baptize every third child born to any family. This resulted in a shocking 42% spike in birth rate, substantially outpacing any government program. Marriage rates rose, abortions fell, and the Republic of Georgia sustained above-replacent birth rates for nearly a decade. As is the case in many modern societies, Christianity saved the Republic of Georgia from the fate that Sweden is destined for.

Now that I have demonstrated that secular humanism cannot only justify ethical foundations nor sustain a society with its crumbling birth rates, I want to build on the positive case for Christianity beyond simply satisfying these basic two requirements.

Not only can Christianity justify its ethical foundations and offer sustainable birth rates, but Christianity is simply better for almost every society that it touches. I want to point out this portion of my opening statement is supplemental to my previous four claims, and that even if it is false that Christianity is beneficial to society, my previous four claims would still sufficiently uphold Christianity as a superior ethical foundation over secular humanism.

An excellent summary of the undeniable positive impact that Christianity has had on humanity comes from Phil Zuckerman, who is himself a secular humanist. He states, quote, religiously involved individuals also exhibit greater manifestations of pro-sociality than those who are not religiously involved. Several studies have found that religious people tend to be more charitable, more generous, and more likely to volunteer and donate blood than their secular peers are.

Furthermore, a proliferation of religious devotion, faith in God, reliance on the Bible has historically been a determining factor in establishing schools for children, creating universities, building hospitals for the sick and homes for the homeless, taking care of orphans and the elderly, resisting oppression, establishing law and order and developing democracy. End quote. Again, this is a secular humanist scholar who is admitting this now.

There are, of course, many exceptions to these general rules. There are bad Christians who do bad things, but this does not disprove Christian ethics any more than a bad doctor practicing medicine improperly disproves medical practice as a whole. Christianity, very similarly, is a medicine for a sick society, and Christ is our doctor. I will end with this quote from St. Ignatius of Antioch, who was eventually brutally martyred for the sake of his faith. Quote,

There is one physician who is possessed both of flesh and spirit, both made and not made, God existing in flesh, true life in death, both of Mary and of God, first passable, then impassable. That is Jesus Christ, our Lord. Thank you.

Thank you very much for that opening. We are going to kick it into, I want to say a couple of quick housekeeping things before we do kick it into the next section. First, folks, if you happen to have questions, please fire them into the old live chat. If you tag me with at modern day debate, that's one way to submit your question for the Q&A. Another way is via the super chat as we push those questions to the top of the list for the Q&A. Also, we are very excited about a number of different things.

But first, let me give you the format. We have 10-minute cross-exams. So this is first where Craig will be cross-examining Luigi for 10 minutes straight. And then Luigi will get the chance to cross-examine Craig. So first, Craig, the floor is all yours for 10 minutes to interrogate our new guest, Luigi.

Thank you very much. I appreciate that, Luigi. It's nice for someone to actually come with a presentation and stuff. I apologise that I didn't this time because of my issues. Okay, so you started with saying that basically, how do we know what's more? We're just a collection of atoms and everything is just by an accident. Could you tell me why, even if we are...

Or why you think, even if we are just a collection of atoms and that's an accident, why that would be something that is incapable of then developing morals and ethics? You didn't really explain why.

The possibility of morals and ethics becoming a thing. It could be, it becomes completely reliant on just human inclination, which is the result of simply an accidental process that can't be trusted. So like I brought up several examples where to a child, their inclination is that that needle is harming them, but it's a life-saving vaccine. So do we get, should we trust our feelings or should we not trust our feelings?

Well, it's not just all about feelings. It's about what is going to help humanity thrive. And I could counter that with the fact that I go to the gym five days a week and it hurts me every single time. But I know it's for the greater good of improving my overall fitness and health. And the secular humanism is about reducing overall harm. Yeah, vaccine might hurt because it stabs you, but

it's going to give you a better chance to go on in the future and be better but then when you're able to make your own decisions you don't have to get a vaccine and no one's going to force code we have to use a code word instead of that word that starts with a v we have to use serum sorry that was me brought it up i'll take i'll take the bullet i want to

No, you're right. My bad. I talk about I do try and forget saying that word. Yes. So, you know, all right. But then you made the you you did the same thing that Andrew did when I spoke to him. And you said, well, what if we take someone and experiment on them to help everybody else?

You do realize that goes against one of the tenets of secular humanism, which is about personal autonomy. So it would be something that would be – that secular humanists wouldn't do. We wouldn't take people prisoner to experiment on them. Couldn't you make an argument that that could be – doesn't a child have personal autonomy to decide whether or not they want to receive a vaccine?

No, a child doesn't have the personal autonomy because they don't have the cognitive functions to have that personal autonomy. They don't know what is good or not for them. However, once an adult is an adult, they can make those decisions for themselves.

As parents, we take on the responsibility of our children's health until they are capable of doing that themselves. Childhood children have the cognitive functions to decide if that is good or not. I understand that there's an answer to it. What I'm saying is these are ambiguous answers that are a result of an accidental process. So what I'm trying to expose is how ambiguous it is. Right.

But why is ambiguity a bad thing when there's so many people and so many things to consider? There's no one overreaching voice saying this is what you do. It is humanity getting together and seeing what has happened to us and what we can learn from that to then be better in the future. But better is itself a value statement. That is itself a value statement. So what do you mean by better?

To be able to thrive more, to be able to be in a position where you can increase birth rates when it is appropriate, when there is enough resources and things like that. Secular humanism is about humanity thriving.

And the thing that you put forward in your intro was about taking away that thriving ability and saying, well, that's also secular humanism because it goes against what religion says. You kind of missed the point of secular humanism being about

making humanity, giving it the ability to thrive in the best way that it can without having to rely on one voice from a deity that possibly doesn't exist. But I don't know what thrive means because now you're saying that the experiments, that's actually against a tenet of

of secular humanism, but it would result in quote unquote thriving because it would save the masses from dying from this pandemic. So I don't know what you mean by thrive.

But that's why there's the tenants there. That's why there's the guidance of, yes, we want humanity to be able to advance and, you know, people be, you know, thrive, be more happy, be more, be more healthy. You will know what thrive means. You don't need to get bogged down in semantics, what words means.

We can't do that. We're taking away people's personal autonomy, which is one of the tenets of secular humanism. So we can't do that. We're not going to try and say, oh, well, this could be better at that person's harm. We take away that one person's autonomy to make sure everyone else is better. That goes against the tenets of secular humanism. Okay. I mean, this is your cross-exam, so I don't want to push too much on these arguments. Yeah.

Right. OK, so the other thing you went on to really was about the Christian, about birth rates. Right. And here's the thing. No one's going to disagree. The secular countries overall, the countries that are more secular, because there's no secular governments, there's no Christian governments, it's governments elected by people, whatever, or dictators. But the countries that are more secular do tend to have at the moment lower birth rates.

Are you aware of any of the things that are in place to change that is my question because it's something that you and a lot of other Christians bring up as something against secular humanism and although I can agree that that is the case, are you aware of the measures in place to try and change that? Well there's currently, the issue is that it's going down at an increasing rate so like

From 2019 to 2024, it's gone from 1.70 to 1.43. So whatever we're doing isn't working. Yeah, that's why there's more things in more recent times. Like if you look at secular countries like Japan and France trying to put forward a four-day week work, so the four-day work...

so that there's more time at home to make babies. There's a lot of countries that are literally secular countries like Scandinavia and stuff that are now literally throwing money at parents to have more children because they have taken note that the birth rate has fallen and even more significantly over more recent years. So the past two to three years since COVID has moved away, there's been a lot of work

within a lot of the secular countries to try and increase the birth rate in natural ways by making more time for couples to be together uh giving tax breaks to couples saying if you have more babies you we will give you more money to look after them making child care easier um

So the fact that you keep going back to you, not just you, but other Christians, you keep going back to the birth rate thing. It means that you haven't really looked into what is happening now in the secular countries. Yeah.

Well, you brought up in your debate with Jim Bob that if a man wanted to leave his family because that was what was going to make him happy, that under the secular humanist framework, there was nothing wrong with that. So if people are just having children because they like the idea of having a kid and not for the sake of future society, then that itself is problematic. Adit didn't say that, though.

My point was that secular countries are putting in place measures for couples to have more babies and to have more time for couples to be in place. And there is...

tax breaks for being married and having you know a family and allowing that to be a thing but at the same time secular humanists um allow for things like adoption um and you know non-standard families that deal with the people that don't want the babies which studies show the majority of children that end up being orphaned actually come from christian parents so how do you feel about that

That what studies say, what that they come from more, more, more orphan children come from Christian or religious families. What studies say that?

I don't have my notes with me I wanted to present a bunch of this but I was reading a bunch of studies that show that adoption rates from non-standard families like gay couples and stuff like that the children that they're adopting the children themselves came from Christian parents who then put the children up for adoption for whatever reason and that seemed to be the higher amount of children up for adoption was from Christian or religious families

I mean, I presented several quotes from secular scholars that say the opposite about Christians. Secular scholars versus actual studies? No, they're citing studies. They're citing studies. In the book, they're talking about studies. What's that? When were these from? These were from... I'm citing, like, the...

I wish I had my stuff with me instead of packing it away. But the things that I've been looking at are the recent years, the past two to five years, the majority of orphaned children come from religious families and then picked up by non-religious and non-standard families. So...

I don't think that's true. But regardless, like I pointed out at the end of my opening statement, like there's bad Christians who do bad things. So that doesn't disprove Christian ethics any more than a bad doctor disproves medical practice as a whole. So. OK, so the one thing I wanted to ask you really was, do you agree that Christian ethics comes from God? Yes. Yeah, I believe it comes from God. Yes.

And this is the same God that, you know, drowned the entire world when he was in a bad mood, right?

Well, that's not what occurred. The great... There was a flood that killed everyone because he didn't like something that happened, right? I mean, we're talking about... Do you realize how much time people had to repent and how many opportunities God gave them to repent? It doesn't matter. None of that matters. It does matter. It doesn't matter how much time people had to repent or whatever. The fact is that you're God, which you are... I do have to wrap up. So we did run out of time on that first cross-exam.

We have to move into the next section. Okay, sorry. I didn't realize I was going to... We're going to have 30 minutes of open dialogue after this, Craig, so we're going to have time to talk about some of this stuff. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Kick into the 10 minutes where Luigi will now cross-examine Craig. The floor is all yours. Okay, can you define harm? Can I define harm? Mm-hmm. Harm is something that causes unhappiness. Causes unhappiness. Causes pain. I mean, again, the...

Arguing semantics of words is irrelevant. We all know what harm means. Would you define harm as something different to me? That's an ad populum fallacy. Actually, people do perceive harm differently.

I mean, I already gave the example of the child. And I don't think you have a sufficient answer for, I mean, if the ultimate goal is thriving society, you can't have a thriving society if everyone's going to be wiped out by a pandemic. So you have to perform these experience on these people.

So that's an ambiguous standard. There's no standard there. That's not true. We have other ways of surviving pandemics without it performing...

experiments on people. You and Jim, Bob, and Andrew keep asking for the definition of simple words like harm. We all know what harm is. It's an ad hoc human fallacy. Do you realize that's a logical fallacy? It doesn't matter if it's a fallacy. When you do that, you're simply committing the fallacy fallacy. You're saying because I've said something that you consider to be fallacious, therefore the argument is incorrect.

Appulence is not something I consider to be fallacious. It is a logical fallacy. No, no, no. What I'm saying is you are considering what I've said to be fallacious, and therefore you are considering the argument incorrect, whereas that is in itself fallacious. Just because an argument may contain some fallacious bits, it does not mean the argument in itself is incorrect. So I would appreciate it if you allow me to finish my argument before you try to cut me off by claiming it's a fallacy. Okay. We all know what...

We all know what harm means. We are all aware of what harm is. It's something that causes physical, emotional, psychological, social, or financial damage to you or a group. Simple. We all know what harm is and how to reduce harm. You don't stick your hand in a fire because that will reduce the harm.

Getting down to the semantics of define harm doesn't get to the answer of what is better for an ethical foundation. Is it not harming a prisoner to put them into a prison? Does that not remove their happiness?

There is prisons are places where last resort. Right. There always has to be a last resort. However, prisons are not a place to at least in the UK. They are not a place designed for harm. Prisons are a place designed for rehabilitation.

At least they should be until they became financial institutions across most of the Western world. Do you not agree that –

And that's in many ways, it's violating their autonomy because you're taking them and you're putting them in a place they don't want to be. So in that case, it is acceptable. Hang on a second. Is it then acceptable in some cases under secular humanism to violate bodily autonomy? As a last resort to prevent harm.

to other people but again a prison is not a place for harm we're not putting there someone there to harm them they may not like it but we are putting a prisoner in prison to rehabilitate them which in the long run will actually make them a better person and reduce the harm that they have to themselves reduce the mental health that the things that they suffer reduce the the problems that they have they undergo therapy they undergo training for a new job to become a

beneficial and useful member of society. We don't put people in prison to harm them. We put people in prison to stop harm happening and to help that person become a useful member of society. It's an incorrect thing to say that this is why the definitions of these words matter, because you just made all these exceptions.

For all the terminology you used to define harm earlier. Yes, you did. It violates their autonomy to put them in a place they don't want to be. I didn't say harm is autonomy. Nobody can argue that. You're mixing up things. Let me finish. Let me finish. Nobody would be able to argue that putting a prisoner in a prison is something that they want to happen. Okay, you are taking away their happiness. Therefore, you are harming them based on your own definition of harm.

Do you see why the definitions of words matter and it's not just semantics? Again, we all know what it means, though. But again, you are missing the point of what a prison is for. It is to rehabilitate someone and to stop harm happening. That person's autonomy will be returned to them once they are rehabilitated, once they are able to use that autonomy.

You could say humanism also has to defend other people, but you're completely missing the point of what a prison is for, and you're saying, well, you're also conflating the tenets of secular humanism with my definition of harm. I didn't say harm had anything to do with autonomy. I said one of the tenets of secular humanism is to protect individuals.

I'm pointing out that that was the standard you gave for me for why the medical experiments were wrong. But now you're saying there are examples where we can, in fact, violate someone's autonomy, at least for a time period. So why couldn't we do the same for a highly dangerous medical experiment? We can give them their autonomy back after the experiment because it's for the good of the environment. How do you know they're going to get their autonomy back after the experiment? Maybe they will, maybe they won't. If you want to get out of the place just for...

I'm going to go on the fallacious route. You're taking us to the ad, you know, the fantasy of ad insurdium, where you're taking a simple statement to the ridiculous extremes. You know, we can push things with Christianity, you know, with all the ridiculous things they've done, saying it's okay to do a lot of things, like keep a slave and things like that, because Jesus said that, you know, the slave should...

do as they're told and things like that. So we can't use these ridiculous examples way out of the purviews of secular humanism. A prison isn't designed to harm people. A prison is designed to reduce harm overall.

and rehabilitate people. Based on your definition of harm? They gave up their right. They gave up their right. You want to redefine what harm means? Okay, do you want to redefine harm? Do you want, okay, do you, let's just, let's just go down the line. Gentlemen, I hate to interrupt, but just because we, hold on, just gentlemen, I have to interrupt just because we're not able to hear otherwise. Okay, take one deep breath.

you yeah so you did hold on hold on you didn't take a deep breath okay craig okay yeah okay luigi i need you give craig i'm sorry i put you finished i apologize luigi i need you give craig a chance to finish answering and then i promise we'll give you the next chance to ask your question and then craig i just needed to be pithy so that luigi can ask his next question yeah

So the question was, do we want to change the definition of harm? No, I told you what my definition of harm is. Harm is any action, inaction, or condition that causes physical, emotional, psychological, social, or financial damage to an individual group or society. That is what harm is, and that is the definition that we're going to go with. That's not what you said initially. You said happiness. So are you removing happiness from part of your definition of harm? When you take away happiness, is that no longer part of harm?

The words that I've just said, that is what we're going to go with. Okay, so you're backtracking on the word happiness. I would personally put happiness in there, but if you want a hard definition of harm, I have just given it to you. Would you like me to answer the question again? Read the definition off the screen one more time. So you do want me to answer the question? Read the definition. You changed it from happiness. Now I want to hear the new definition.

It's not a new definition. I'm going to move on to a different question because the audience has seen what they needed to see from you. In your debate with Jim Bob, I do want to give Luigi a chance to ask this question. In your debate with Jim Bob, you said if Christians want to vote for Christians in office who implement Christian laws, they cannot. Do you still agree with this or do you want to backtrack from that too?

I didn't say that at all. You did. Everybody can go watch with Jim Bob. He said that... I didn't say they couldn't. Anyone can be voted in. Okay, so you want to backtrack from that too. So wait a minute. I probably said that they shouldn't. Would you like me to answer? No, I probably said they shouldn't. I didn't say that they couldn't because they can't be voted in and put in whatever laws they want.

You did say that. I can't decide what laws are put in. Okay, let me make sure I'm making the question really specific. I'm saying those Christian bureaucrats, can they implement Christian laws if they are elected by Christian people?

If they are in a position to change laws and that everyone votes on, then yes, they can. Okay, then you definitely didn't say, you said no in the debate with Jim Bob, but I appreciate you backtracking on that. You probably misunderstood what I said. You probably misunderstood. Nobody can decide what laws are made apart from the people in the position to do that. And if the people in the position that are voted in that position happen to be Christian and

put a bunch of Christian values in their laws, and then that's ratified by whatever process, then that can happen and nobody can stop that. I never said that, no, that can't happen. We are at the end of the cross-exam where Luigi's asking questions. We're going to jump into the open dialogue. Gentlemen, the floor is all yours for open dialogue. I'd love to go back to just the base of the... This is about a foundation for ethics, and the foundation for ethics on your side, Luigi, is God. And God is...

if real, not a very nice deity. By your standard. Let's be honest about it. By whose standard? By whose standard? By any person's standard. No, by any person. God is by nature good, so anything that he does is good. I would disagree with that. I would very much disagree with the assumption that God by his nature is good, because God has...

on a whim, wiped out humanity, sent people to pillage and rape and destroy other people, told somebody to sacrifice his own stuff. That's incorrect. What are you even referring to? What are you even referring to? I mean, I'm trying to say a bunch of stuff that happened in the Old Testament.

They were not told the rape and pillage. God told somebody to murder their own son as a test of faith. Did he say God provide? Do you understand the story of that? It's a foretelling of Christ. Did God tell somebody to murder their own son? Hold on. The question is, did God tell somebody to murder their own son, yes or no?

That's, oh my goodness. Do you understand that? It is a foretelling. I would like you to answer a simple yes or no question. Did God tell somebody to murder their own son? Yes or no? As a type of Christ who would eventually, God himself who would be sacrificed for us as a type of that? Yes.

So what you're saying is, yes, God told somebody to murder their own son. As a type of God's son, as a type, as a type of God's son. We can't have both people talking at the same time. Yeah, I finished the question. He was still answering the last one. So the answer is yes, God told somebody to kill their own son. Second question, did God wipe out most of humanity because he didn't like what was happening?

Okay, I'm not giving, these are literally complicated questions that can't just be answered yes or no. I have to be able to expand on the answer. We have to give him a chance to answer. I have to be able to expand on the answer than just yes or no. I already said yes, and because God's nature is good, if he had not done that, it would have been not good. And again, all those years for those people to repent, and they did not.

So because they didn't do what God said, God was allowed to kill them. By what standard are you even saying it's wrong? Can you actually tell me by what standard you're saying it's wrong? Yeah, I'll tell you what. I murder and rape as much as I want. Are you God? Are you the author of life? Yes, I am actually. You're the author of life. Yeah, in about 50 years, I invent a time machine. I go back in time and I start the Big Bang and create all life in the universe as I like. Can you disprove that? Are you omnipotent?

Yes. Can you disprove this? You're omnipotent. Yes. Okay. Then I don't know. Give me a cheeseburger right now. I want a cheeseburger since you're omnipotent. No, you don't deserve it. I don't deserve my cheeseburger? Why not? No, absolutely not. See, this is ridiculous. You just said God by its nature is good. I dispute that fact because a good person- By what standard? By what standard?

I was about to say by what standard? By the standard that wiping out all of humanity because you don't like what they are doing is not good.

So do you realize what humanity was doing? Practicing cannibalism, all the things. Here's what's funny about this. Here's what's funny about this. You complain. You complain about all the evil in the world. And then when God wipes out all the evil in the world, then you complain that God wiped out all the evil in the world. Was everyone evil? Was everybody in the world? Yes. Yes. Every single person being born was not evil.

Not every person in the world was evil, right? And here's the thing. Your God planned that to happen because your God is the one that created everything and knew everything that was going to happen. So your God knew that the result of Eve eating that apple would be that lots of people in the world were evil and would not repent. Your God knew that would happen. So your God knew that he would have to wipe out all of humanity. So your God, in fact, planned for people to become evil and then get wiped out

Meaning that your God planned to kill all humanity, no matter what. I'm still waiting on a standard. I'm still waiting on a standard for why any of this is bad. I'm still waiting on a standard. You just keep asserting it. Are you saying that wiping out people isn't bad? I am asking you. I'm asking you a very... My standard is that I think genocide is bad. Do you think genocide is bad? What standard are you saying that? Just your opinion? Lots of people have... My opinion is genocide is bad. What is your opinion on genocide? Oh my goodness.

By what standard? Do you think genocide is bad or not? By what standard? And how are you even defining genocide? By what standard? Well, the entire, everyone in humanity was wiped out. Notice how you don't answer the question. You just say it's my opinion. I just did. I just answered the question, Luigi. Did you not hear the word come out of my mouth? Greg, can you tell me why we should listen to you? Why should we listen to your opinion? Because I don't want to genocide people because I never murdered anyone unlike your God. Okay. That's...

You've never done it. It's wrong. What? What kind of logic is that? Yeah, well, here's like I said earlier, I murder as much as I want. Whenever I feel like it, Luigi, I go out and murder. OK. Right.

Right. I don't because I don't want to murder because I know that is a bad thing to do. I do not need the threat of hellfire and instructions from somebody that doesn't exist to know that murdering is bad. This is actually a great point. Do you think that like pretty much everybody knows that murder is wrong? Yes. OK, where does that come from?

By causing harm to people, knowing that taking away people's suffering, causing pain and suffering to someone is bad. It is bad. Are you really... Wait, wait, wait. One second. One second. One second. Are you really trying to say...

Oh, we don't know if murder is good or bad. No, there has to be something to tell us if that is good or bad. Is that what you're doing? In my opening statement, through divine revelation, we know that God's laws have been written on our hearts. That's why we generally agree on the basic standards of morality. You, on the other hand, cannot give an account for where that comes from, why that's even here. Yes, I can. How? Absolutely, I can. Evolution. Evolution.

Yeah, no, based on the experiments earlier, the case studies, your evolutionary process is actually not sufficient for having a prosperous society. Or you can't even tell me what a prosperous society is. No, no, I'm sorry, but that's completely incorrect. Evolution, part of evolution is having a prosperous society. It's secular humanism. Wait, hold on. I'm answering the question. Evolution is about the...

surviving through the harshness of your environment. And having a prosperous society is one of the things that helps us evolve through the harshness of our society. So evolution is where society comes from. Okay, if having a prosperous society, even if I grant you whatever prosperous means, let's say I just don't press you on that. We've already established. Hang on a second. Hang on a second. Hang on a second.

I can send you a link to fix me up. I do want to give Luigi a chance to finish that sentence. If secular humanism is the peak of human evolution, then it's going to wipe us out based on the data right now of the birth rates. So even if I granted every single one of those points, even if I said, you're right, Craig, which you're not, it

It would mean that the peak of humanity, we're going to wipe ourselves out and be replaced by Muslims in the West. That's what it would mean because that's what's happening in your poster child countries in Scandinavia.

Okay, so I guess you didn't listen to what I said earlier about how the countries that have realized that their birth rates are falling have put in place measures for that to stop. And the studies show that thanks to the measures, they expect the birth rate in all of these countries to increase, especially in France and Scandinavia and many other secular countries. What studies show that? The studies, again, I don't have anything with me. There's no studies that show that.

The data is... Right, okay, I can talk to you about... Have these not been... Do you want me to answer it? If you give me one sec. Because I did have some of my notes here with me.

Right, so, uh, second-native, uh, second nations are rolling out the red carpet with parents with cold hard cash. Hungary, for example, uh, gone all in with tax breaks, loan forgiveness, and even straight up cash bonuses for families to have multiple children. Nothing to do with religion there. A way to increase, um... Where's the data showing it's... Where's the data showing it's succeeding?

And is Hungary... It hasn't happened yet. Studies show that the amount... Studies show that when these things are put in place, like in previous years, it increases birth rates. Having tax breaks for couples, reducing the works week and things like that actually allows for increased birth rates. Those are the studies I'm talking about. But I can link you to the articles that these come from because I at least have those...

So parental leave policies, countries like Germany and Sweden are champions of parental leave, aiming to increase the amount of...

paid time off for parents to have to allow them to have more children. This expects the birth rate to increase because parents are more likely to have time off whilst being still paid. Japan's metropolitan government is implementing the four-day work week to specifically increase family time and increase the birth rate. This is expected by 2030 to bring the birth rate back well above the 2.0 limit. So there is many... There's no data. ...in our country...

There's absolutely no data. The data is to come once they see what happened, right? What secular humanists do is they will look at what's happening and then try to find a way to fix it. Yes, we've noticed that there's a lack in birth rates. We know that's a problem. We agree. Nobody's saying that that's not a thing. What we are doing as secular humanists and secular nations is putting in place measures to help

hopefully increase the birth rate. And what we can do is we can look in a few years time and go, has the birth rate increased as much as the studies thought that they would? No. Well, let's tweak some things, give some more time off, give some more cash breaks, and then see what happens again.

We don't expect an immediate fix. We don't expect within the next five years there to be a billion more babies. We expect the birth rate to slowly increase to the point it is without having to rely on a magical deity that says murdering the entire world because it's in a bad mood is okay.

It's a non sequitur, has nothing to do with what we're talking about. It does have everything to do with what we're talking about. It's basically already too late for Sweden anyway. They're so far below the... And that's including all the Muslims that are there. All the Muslims that are having babies. Whatever you have, it's too late. You've just made a very big claim there. Whatever you have, it's too late for Sweden because they're... You realize 1.43...

Versus 2.1 is what you need. 2.1 to replace each one of the parents. 2.1. Actually, a lot of sociologists say 2.5. But whatever. It doesn't matter. 1.43, including all the Muslims that are now 10% of the population, they're having all these babies. Like I said, in 30 years, they've gone from 1% Muslim to 10% Muslim.

So by the time 2030 comes around, they're going to be 15-20% Muslim. So it's already too late. They're already being replaced. The peak of human development, secular humanism, is already being replaced by religious populations.

Okay, it's like you're not hearing the words that I'm saying. You just made a massive claim that it's too late when it's not, when the Scandinavian government disagree with you. Well, of course they're going to say they disagree. The Scandinavian governments, all the Scandinavian countries, have literally put in place measures to increase birth rates that doesn't involve just bringing in a bunch of religious people. They've done that. It's too late.

It's just false. They've done that in Japan and it didn't work. They've done that in Japan. It is working in Japan. It actually is working in Japan. I just read to you earlier what Japan is doing and how it is working in Japan. Where is the data that says that it's working in Japan? I can link you the article from the Times. It's actually what I've got a lot of this stuff from. They've been studying it. And the birth rate in Japan has actually been going up in the past few years compared to what it was. Probably because of increased immigration. No, actually it's not.

It's because of the initiatives put in place to increase birth rates. Here's the thing. There's a low birth rate and it's because of secular humanism. Well, maybe it is because of the influence of secular humanism, but they've noticed there's a problem. And we've noticed that that might not help humans flourish as much as we want. And they are doing things to make it better. So attacking a point that is in the process of being improved is ridiculous ways to go.

Again, there's no data to support it. This is alternative. He's just asserting things. Of course, the nations are going to make efforts to try to stop their inevitable demise. Of course, the nations are going to try to stop it. Can you please prove that that's an inevitable demise? Because you keep making the claims that it's going to happen. You need to have at least two babies. As we established earlier, I'm the only

one that has the powers to time travel. It is currently decreasing at an increasing rate. Last year, it was 1.45. It's down to 1.43. It's still decreasing. It's still decreasing. Next year, it might go up because they have put in place things to happen. Here's the thing. Having babies takes time.

Yeah, it doesn't just take nine months because a lot of people won't get pregnant in nine months. All right. Sometimes it can take years for couples to have babies. But the things that have been put in place are have been put in place. There is more time off for parents. There is more paid paternity leave for parents. There is more help, more tax breaks. There is more reasons for people to have babies. And that is what they are doing.

We have to look again in five years. But we have to look again in five years once these things that have been put in place have been tested to see, right, has the birth rate increased? Do we need to do other things?

Is there anything else we can do to help increase the birth rate that doesn't involve bringing in religious zealots? Even if all of this starts to bring the birth rates up, you said in your debate with Jim Bob that if a man wants to leave his family, as a secular humanist, you have no leg to stand on to tell him that he shouldn't do that because it's going to make him happy to leave his family. Do you still stand by that? You know, the...

Yeah, no one can stop a man doing what he wants. But did you know that the highest rate of divorce is actually in Christian families?

That's not true. And it's especially not true. It's especially not true. Hang on a second. Hang on a second. There's a difference between being nominally Christian and actually being Christian. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. We don't get to do the true Scotsman fallacy. It's not no true Scotsman. It's not no true Scotsman. Hang on a second. You're here to defend Christians. Hang on a second. Hang on a second. That includes Christians in Africa. Hold on. That includes the Christians in Africa. I do need to... All right, just...

Just need to reset it here just so that people want to be able to hear you guys. But if we're talking over each other, they won't be able to hear either of you. Yeah. I want to point out that it's not a no true Scotsman. Hang on a second. It's not a no true Scotsman. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Okay. Hold on. I think. Thank you.

So if it's on the no true Scotsman statement, if you want to wrap that up, but otherwise, if you say he used that fallacy and he wants to address it before you move to a new point, then I want to go to Luigi. Yeah, my point is that you're not here to just defend one bit. You're here to defend every single Christian in the world. That includes the Christians in Africa. Is this about the no true Scotsman fallacy? Yes.

Yeah, yes, that is. So if someone calls you women...

It's every single Christian in the world, regardless of the denomination, is who you are here to defend. So by this logic, if you call yourself a secular humanist, but you don't subscribe to any of the tenets of secular humanism, then by Craig's standard, he has to defend that person based on what he just said. Because he said if you call yourself a Christian, but you don't subscribe to Christian values, then I still have to defend that person. The reason why it's not a no-truth, true Scotsman philosophy—

That's not what I said. That is what you just said. Well, okay, then say it again. That's not completely what I said. Okay, go ahead. Try again. I've said you don't get to pick and choose which version of Christianity you're here to defend. It's not a version. You have to defend all of them. I'm not defending a version of Christianity. I'm defending Christianity. If you call yourself a Christian, but you do things that are not Christian...

then you're not a Christian. Just like if you call yourself, hang on a second, just like if you call yourself a secular humanist, but you don't subscribe to secular humanism, you're not a secular humanist. Okay. Let me finish. The same studies that talk about Christian divorces, which when we're talking about nominal Christians, yes, it is about on par with the rest of the world. However,

The same studies show that the couples who pray together every single day, their divorce rate is less than 1%. Less than 1% for the couples that actually practice Christianity. Less than 1%. But overall, Christians have a higher rate of divorce.

That's, first of all, that's not true. And second of all, it's 100% true. You can't deny this. This is a fact. The highest rate of Christian divorces comes from Christians. That's a fact. It's not a fact. Especially in America. It's 100% a fact. It's not a fact. And again, what do you mean by nominal Christians? Yeah, people who say they're Christians who don't follow any Christian values.

There's a bunch of different sects that say different things about Christian values. So you might think Christian values are different to a different sect of Christianity that thinks different Christian values. The definition of a Christian has been the same for roughly about 70,

1600 years at the Council of Constantinople in 381 when we established the Nicene Creed that every single Christian subscribed to. If you do not subscribe to that, then you are not a Christian. No, there's many Christian sects that don't subscribe to Nicene Creed. That's not, that's not. I didn't say Nicene Creed. I didn't say Nicene Creed. I said Constantinople in 381. And then you said Nicene Creed. No, okay. There are no Christians who don't, if you do not subscribe to the Nicene Creed, you are not a Christian.

There is Christians that disagree with you. They're not Christians. They're not Christians, Greg. According to you. According to historical Christianity. They think they're Christians. They think they're Christians, though. They're not Christians.

But they think they're Christians, so you don't get to say that. I do want to get us off this topic just because it kind of feels like we have more material to cover and we've already spent a good amount of time on this. Is there another topic that you guys would like to address? We only have about nine minutes left during the open dialogue. How much time do we have left?

We only have about nine minutes left before we wrap up the open dialogue. I want to go back to understanding Craig's standard for why he's calling God a moral monster. I want him to give me an actual other than just, like, so far all we've gotten is that it's a- Because he's killed a bunch of people, murdered a bunch of people, said it's okay to murder. I still haven't, that's not answering the objection, Craig. What is the reason why- Because that is bad. Murder is bad. Genocide is bad. Is it bad when a animal, when a tiger feeds on a tree?

Is that bad? No, I'm asking you if that's bad. I'm trying to nail down your standard, Craig. I'm trying to nail down your standards, Craig. My standard is very simple. Murder and genocide is bad. All right, gentlemen, if we have everybody speaking at once, people aren't able to hear either of your points. Craig, I'm trying to nail down your standards. I'm just going to kick it over.

What was the question that you asked Luigi?

No, he was asking me a question. I asked him, I asked him, what was the question he asked? Yes. I asked him if it was wrong for a tiger to feed on his prey. And then he ran from the question to say, I'm calling God an animal. I'm asking him his standard of morality. Let's give him, okay, let's give him 30 seconds to answer it. And then if he doesn't answer it within that 30 seconds at the end of it, you can say, Hey, here's why you didn't answer it. But I do. Taxes was taxing. Now taxes is relaxing when you file for free. I can file for free.

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You need to give him 30 seconds uninterrupted. Go ahead. An animal eating its prey is just nature. It's what happens. There's nothing wrong with it. But God has the, according to you, the ability to choose to do things. And God chose to murder everyone, even though he could not do that.

God chose genocide. God chose murder. And you think that is a place for a basis, a foundation for ethics from an evil deity that murders and causes and does genocide.

No, God did not murder. God did not murder. God did not murder. Again, atheists love to, they love to complain about God not taking care of evil in the world. And then when God wipes out the evil in the world, then they start complaining. Now he said to answer to my question, he didn't actually answer. He said, oh, it's just nature. Hang on a second, Craig.

Craig, I know that you think that you did answer and I'm not saying that you're not correct, but I am saying that we give you 30 seconds. And so now he's going to say what he thinks and we have to give him 30 seconds too, to be fair. Okay. Just because just saying that, Oh, it's just nature. Humans are nature to you. How are humans transcendent of nature? And if so, you need to justify that. Tell me why humans are transcendent of nature.

Evolution is an, that's a natural process to you. Never said that, but we have the ability to choose. That's unique for us. What is that? I choose not to murder, right? Does God, it's a very simple question here. Does God have the ability to choose yes or no?

That is not relevant to the standard of morality. Excuse me, I have asked your questions. I've answered your questions. I'd like you to answer my question with a very simple yes or no. Does God have the ability to choose yes or no? I don't even know what you, like, yes? I don't know what you mean. What are you asking? God has the ability to choose. So therefore, God chose for evil to exist in this world. So?

So then God chose to kill the evil that he himself created. He did not create evil. He allows evil to exist, which he uses eventually for good. No, no, he created everything in the universe. Therefore, he created evil. We see, no, okay. Evil does not have an ontological status. Evil is like darkness, okay? It is in the non-existence of light is darkness. In the same sense, the non-existence of good is evil. So what? What?

Where did evil come from? What do you mean? Evil is not a thing. It doesn't have an ontological status. Evil is not a thing. It's the absence of good. Evil is just the absence of good. Right, so what's good? God. God is good. No, again, God murders because of genocide. No, God does not murder people. Murder is unjustified killing. God does not murder. Oh, no, it's not justified to kill a baby. I'm asking for your standard, Craig. You keep asserting these values. I've given you my standard. Murder is bad. By what standard are you saying is that bad?

By the fact that I don't need to know going to hell means that it's bad. I know that it's bad because I know it will cause suffering to other people. I know that it's bad because I am not evil. If you have to wonder why murder is bad, then that is a problem with you and the fact that you like to follow an evil day. God does murder. He murdered babies. God murdered babies.

God murdered babies. God murdered babies. You can't deny this. God murdered babies. Hold on. Okay. Craig, one second. I think you said it three times in a row, Craig, that God murdered babies. But we've got to be able to hear what your opponent is saying. If you just keep shouting God murdered babies, you can't hear his rebuttal. He didn't murder.

Yeah. Well, we can't, if you just keep shouting over and we can't hear him. So we need to hear from Luigi for about 30 seconds, and then we'll come back to you, Craig, for 30 seconds as well. Okay. I keep asking Craig for his standard of why any of this is wrong. Who is he to say that this is a unjustified killing that God is committing? Who is he to say that? And how is it any different in his paradigm than a tiger eating his prey? He said, oh, that's...

A tiger doesn't have the ability to choose? Like, what are these ambiguous standards that he's just making up? Who determines that, oh, the ability to choose is what makes killing justified or unjustified? Who makes these rules? Is it just Craig? Who makes these rules? Yes, it is me. I made the rule, but...

Again, we all know what good and the killing is bad. But I just, I want to push back on something you said. You said that God didn't create evil. Could you, do you know Isaiah 45, 7? Yeah, it's, he brings up, he, read the verse again. It's the Hebrew and the Septuagint in the Greek. I from the light and create darkness. I make peace and create evil. No, it's calamity. The word is calamity. It's improperly translated.

Not according to the original translation. What is the original translation? Do you even know? What's the oldest translation of the Old Testament? I'm getting the translation from the Hebrew. What's the oldest translation of the Old Testament? It would be the Hebrew translations, right? What Hebrew translation? I don't know the exact one.

Some argue here that evil is actually calamity or disaster. In Hebrew, the word is ra'ah. They claim it refers to things like war and natural disasters, not moral evil. But, you know, that's still bad, right? God's basically saying, yeah, I unleash plagues and destruction on you. Deal with it. After the fall. So God has the right... Either way, it's bad, right? Either God created evil or God created the things that bring evil. So it's one of the two.

It's not bad. What man, we see this again and again, we see it again and again in scripture where God uses the evil of man for good. So God has the right to use those natural disasters, which are the result of mankind falling into sin. He has the right to use those things as the author of life, just as the author of a book has the right. He has the right as the author of life to use those things for good.

But he didn't use it for good. Killing babies isn't good. By what standard?

By what standard? You want me to tell you by what standard killing babies isn't good? Is that really a question that you have to ask? It is a question I've continued to ask that you have ran away from. I think my Christians need the fear of hellfire to be good people. No, and that's not even the Orthodox view. Jim Bob already educated you on this. I don't care if it's the Orthodox view. You're here for Christianity. In the Orthodox view. Okay, I'm an Orthodox Christian. It doesn't matter what the Orthodox view is. It does matter what the Orthodox view is.

And for us, what's the title of the debate? And could you point out in the title of the debate where it says Orthodox Christianity? Yeah. And I already told you how I define it, which is going to be the patristic view of Christianity, which is going to be the Orthodox view.

And it's still a bad word. I want to be able to tell people, Craig wants me to not say this because he knows it's a really good explanation of hell, so he wants me to not say this. In the orthodox view of hell, it's a state of being. So all of us will be exposed to God and his glory, and those of us who hate God will experience it as burning. Those of us who love God will experience it as blessed. That is the orthodox view. So hellfire by another name, basically. It's God is giving you what you want. You hate God, Craig.

That's what God's going to do. No, I don't hate God. God isn't real. I hate something that isn't real. Yes, I would hate him. And when we met at the pearly gates, we would be fighting and I would be thrown the first punch. Exactly. And so all God is going to say, I can't hate something that isn't real. Let me be clear. To claim I hate God is a falsity because I don't think God is real.

Okay? So I cannot hate something that isn't real. There is no hate involved. What I hate is apologists saying that the evil things God did are for good. According to you, genocide and murdering babies is okay. It's not unjustified killing again. Wait, wait. Where is genocide saying it's justified or not?

Oh my gosh. That is the definition of murder, which is what genocide is. Did I say murder or genocide? Okay, what is genocide, Craig? It's mass murder. Is it not? It's wiping out an entire populace. So could you explain to me how murdering babies is justified? Oh my goodness.

Could you explain to me how murder is justified, please? This is a loaded question. It's not a loaded question. Hey, hold on. No, wait. You don't get run over from this. You've just said all the murder that God did is justified. There's no murder. God didn't do any murder. God didn't do any murder. He killed people. That's murder. That's... Killing is not... Okay, so when you go... If you shoot a Nazi in World War II, that's murder? Yeah. It's legal murder. Okay.

Oh my gosh. Right. But the fact is to go to the Q and a one sec. I just didn't want to finish this one point, whether you call it murder or not. God on a live babies. Could you please explain how that is justified? I've already explained it and you have yet to give a standard for why it's wrong. I've

I've already explained it. I've given my standard. I've given my standard. Other than your opinion. Other than your opinion. But you haven't answered my question. Your standard is your opinion. Who cares about your opinion? Could you please explain why it is justified to unalienate? I've already explained all this probably 10 times and you have yet to give a... No, you haven't. Everyone can see him running away from the simple question. I hate to do it, but we do have to jump into the Q&A. We do have a lot of questions to get through. Folks do want to say thank you very much for your questions. We...

I don't know for sure. Any questions that come in from here, I don't know if we'll get to them because we do have such a long list. And I do want to make sure that we get these guys out of here about an hour from now, hour and 15 at the very most. We're going to jump right into them. Thank you very much for your first question. This one coming in from Barry says, Craig, I have a feeling you disagree.

Yeah, the Christian philosophical arguments really aren't important here. It was about a foundation for ethics and morality. And the foundation comes from God. And the fact is that God is, if real, an evil, petty, narcissistic, genocidal, psychopathic maniac.

This one coming in from, do appreciate your question as well. Oh, that's right. I forgot to remind you folks. Uh, we did mention that there is a housekeeping thing, a couple of quick ones that I mentioned earlier, but had not gotten to one. If you have not subscribed yet, you hit that subscribe button because we have many more debates coming up, including this fall at debate con six, which is going to be in Nashville, Tennessee. We finally made a decision on the city. It will be in Nashville. We're very excited about that. So we'll be in the, uh,

kind of quasi southeast of the u.s you don't want to miss it it's going to be huge and that's this fall so keep your eyes peeled for upcoming updates nuts much gum says says here to support craig just not his position sorry man you know i love you but you made the same mistake andrew made in your debate it's not about what you don't like about the opposing position oh no i i'm

I made my position clear that secular humanism is about human flourishing and stuff. And I just also pointed out that the ethical foundations, that's what we're here to discuss, the foundations. The foundations comes from God. And it's not that I don't like God. It's that God has objectively, if real, done horrific things. Objectively, by your opinion.

Which is subjective. Objectively by everybody. No, I've pressed you on this and you continue to say it's your opinion. It's you that's saying it. So no. Objectively, murder is bad. By what standard? By what standard? By the fact it outlives people. That's circular. That's circular reasoning.

That's a bad thing. That's just the definition of murder. I hate to do it, guys. I'm not your buddy, guy, says a secularist admin with Biden put a, quote, moderate, unquote, group in charge in Syria. As we speak, all the minorities, such as Christians, are being hunted and executed. I think they're saying that.

This is for you, Craig. As they say, quote, a secularist admin with Biden put a moderate, quote unquote, group in charge in Syria. And this is what happened. Cool. American foreign policies aren't really the topic of this debate. And whether that person was secular, secularist or not, is irrelevant to the policies they put in place that would have been put down to them from the Biden administration, I imagine.

This one from Emperor Fatass Dog says, Craig, you do realize without Christianity, science wouldn't be a thing because the first scientists claimed that science was created on the foundation to discover the mysteries of God or God's laws. Well, that's a lovely assumption there that if Christianity, um,

is the only thing that could ever have made science. Let's make the assumption that Christianity never existed. Are you saying that you are 100% certain that science could never have come around by any other means? That's just not true. It is just an assumption that Christianity is the only way that the science could have appeared.

You got it. And this one coming in from, do appreciate it, Emperor Fatass Dog Strikes Again says, Whale fossils have been discovered in desert areas around the world. If the Bible is rubbish, then how are there whale fossils in a desert? Doesn't this prove the global flood did in fact happen how the Bible says it happened?

No, Pangea was a thing and continents have moved for many, many years. Ocean beds are, well, things that were ocean beds are now deserts. And those were ocean beds as little as 50,000 years ago. So it doesn't necessarily have to be a global flood, just the changing in the lands.

This one coming in from ZB says, Dr. Crispy, we don't like your name either. I don't know what that's about. Justin Henley says, Greg, you say everyone knows what harm means. I don't know what it means. Explain to me in the way everyone listening to this agrees with. And then they say, let's have a poll to see if they agree. James, I think they're saying, let's have a poll of people to see if they agree with Craig's definition.

Well, I already defined harm literally by reading out the definition because people were getting silly about it. Harm is any action, inaction, or condition that causes physical, emotional, psychological, social, or financial damage to an individual, group, or society. Emotional, Luigi, just in case you're wondering, includes happiness. Yeah, so, yeah. Okay, then putting people in prisons, it violates, it's harmful then?

So harm is okay as long as it's in certain context. It's a reduction of harm overall, and the person being in prison overall will reduce their harm. Medical experiment is all portion of harm overall. So is the medical experiment. Not for that person. Same with the prisoner. Same with the prisoner. The prisoner is being rehabilitated, not experimented on. The prisoner certainly does not want, it's not increasing his happiness to go to prison.

Many prisoners that come out of prison say they are glad they were in prison because it allowed them to be rehabilitated. Your standard would have to be every single one. Some people were evil. Some people were evil thanks to your God. Then you're still violating their happiness and therefore harming them. Yeah. Again, it's not about getting rid of harm completely. It's about reducing harm as much as we possibly can. This one coming in from, do appreciate your question. Alejandro Valerio says, Craig, regardless...

of whether harm is subjective on our framework, so is subjective on theirs. Their definition of harm depends on God. If it depends on something, then it means it's subjective.

Yeah, no, they're absolutely correct. Their definition of God comes, their definition of harm comes from God. And God is a single entity. That means it is a God's subjective version of what harm is. No, it's objective, objective, meaning it transcends human subjects. God is a single entity. That would mean that God's version of harm is subjective to God.

It's objective to humanity, to human subject. It's transcendent of human subject. We don't have to choose that, so it's subjective. The fact is it comes from a single entity that makes it subjective. Just because some people choose to believe that entity doesn't then make it magically objective. It's still a subjective thing that is a choice that you have made to believe.

No, it's an objective standard that transcends me as a human subject, which is actually why we generally agree on things like murder being wrong. That actually explains why we agree with that, whereas you have no justification other than evolutionary process, which is itself an impigment. It's a much better one.

No, it's not. It's completely ambiguous. Genghis Khan was great via the Darwinian evolutionary process because he extended his seed as far as possible. So no, it's completely ambiguous. No, that's a complete misinterpretation of evolution. Genghis Khan actually went against evolution by not allowing humans to increase against the...

environment in the way that they naturally would. No, it's like one out of every six people today is a descendant of Genghis Khan. He did a phenomenal job. Under an evolutionary process, he did a phenomenal job. Again, you don't understand what evolution means. Evolution isn't just having more babies. Evolution is about whatever is good for the species as a whole. I hate to do this, but just because...

We could have a whole debate on evolution at a different time. I do have to move to the next one. Biscuit Bro says, this is a stupid argument. Secular humanism and harm reduction are not focused on pure individual autonomy. I don't know who that's... No, I didn't say they are pure individual autonomy. I say that's one of the things we take into consideration. This one from Yalda Boath says, was Jesus using Christian ethics when he commended the genocide of Amalek?

The Amalekites? Yes. So in those passages in the Old Testament, it was very common in the ancient Near East,

to use hyperbole when discussing an event. So an example in the modern times is we might say that the Eagles annihilated the Chiefs in the Super Bowl, which obviously does not mean that all the Chiefs are dead. That's not what it means. So those pastors are using hyperbole to wiping out the majority of the nation. And we know this because the descendants of the amount

Show up later in scripture in first Samuel 30 and in Esther. Hey, tell people to abandon their families. That's weird. What? Why did Jesus tell people to abandon their families?

No, Jesus is – Jesus again is – ironically, he's using hyperbole again. And in fact, that was specifically a Jewish idiom. And what he's specifically referring to in that particular passage is placing God above your family. Which passage?

Are you talking about where he says to sell all your belongings and leave your father and mother to follow him? No, Luke 14, 26. If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, even their own life, such a person cannot be my disciple. Yes, hate in the sense of compared to their love for God.

Not what it says. That is what it says. And by the way, I'm not sola scriptura. I'm an Orthodox Christian. So I have the church father commentary that gives me who knew the apostles, who knew Jesus. So I have, I have four further clarification for what these passages mean. This, these kinds of arguments work on Protestants. They don't work on us.

And they do because it still says that hate. No, we know from— Hate doesn't mean less liking. That's not what that word means. Actually, it does in Greek. It actually does mean that in Greek. And we know again from the Church Father commentary on these passages and the interpretation from the Orthodox Church that that is what Jesus is referring to. Obviously, Jesus is not— According to you. Think about how ridiculous this is. Craig, this—

Jesus says to love your neighbor as yourself. You think he's actually saying, like, hate your father and mother? Like, you should just... There's a lot of contradictions in the Bible. Jesus does a lot of things. Jesus does a lot of bad things to contradict the things that happen. Basically, all of your standards of morality, you are borrowing from Jesus. No, that's not true.

So biscuit bro says prisons are a consequence of social structure. They are subjective. This is dumb. I don't understand what they mean. Wait, wait, can you read it again? They say prisons are a consequence of social structure. They are subjective. This is dumb. It's a big brain comment there. I don't know what that means. He doesn't like prisons, I guess. ZB says, Ray, everyone rate Dr. Crispy's name out of 10.

You can put that in live chat, folks. Richie says, Craig, do you think religious people are more likely to give kids up for adoption because they don't believe in abortion? Atheists just have abortions.

Yeah, actually, a lot of, but there's a big TV show about it, about some religious families that have lots and lots and lots of children and one religious family that had four children and then got pregnant three more times each time, gave the baby up for adoption because they physically couldn't afford it. Instead, you have them putting that child into a life in the adoption system, whereas if they had the medical support,

care and the abortion and stuff, then that child wouldn't have ended up in adoption. So yeah, the fact that you force people to have babies that they might not want to causes a lot of problems. It's like, we care about the fetus, but fuck it after it's born. This one coming in from, oh yeah, chat, do want to, as long as you're within YouTube terms of service. So I know that the live chat sometimes is lively. I

Same as always. Like you can't say like, I can't say it on, but you know, you can't say N I G G E R. You can't say that you, you, uh, you know, we ought not probably talk about the, uh, serum in the live chat either, but otherwise, you know, it is a major, the country in Africa, right? That's right. We, you know, we got to follow YouTube terms of the service. Uh, we don't want that stuff, but we, uh,

Otherwise, it's pretty flexible in chat. So if you want to make fun of my haircut, whatever, it's a fair game. It's a free country. This one from ZB says... We got that one. Richie says, Craig, do you think religious people are more... We got that one. Diskin Rowe says, his can make exceptions based on abstract post hoc apology. It just starts with his. Just his...

Can make exceptions based on abstract. Is it possible that his is a typo of Luigi? Luigi can make exceptions based on abstract post hoc apology. Maybe. I don't know if that makes sense to anybody. They want to explain what their point is.

I don't know. Biscuit bro, you gotta give me more words. I don't know what you're saying. ZB says low taper fade, low IQ arguments, shaking my head. What is low taper fade? Do I have a low taper fade? Probably me. He's powerful to me.

But you don't have a low taper fade, do you? People are saying about your hair, Luigi. What's wrong with your hair? I don't know. We can't see because Luigi's in the dark. What are you doing over there in the dark by yourself, Luigi? I need to get one of those ring lights, one of those fancy ring lights. This one from Calvin says, don't worry, Craig, you can still ask Jesus for forgiveness still. No, thank you. I don't want a racist to give me forgiveness.

Biscuit Bro says, it's pronounced Gordon Peterson. That's the same guy where I don't understand why he says what he says. This one from Jesus Eber Martinez says, my girlfriend said, quote, if you love me, smash your PlayStation, unquote. I picked up a hammer and swung. Mid-swing, she stopped me and I was happy. I proved my love. Should I stay or should I leave her? I think they're drawing an analogy between...

God telling Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. I'll give you a chance, Luigi. Can you read it one more time? Now that I'm thinking about it in that context. It said, my girlfriend said, if you love me, smash your PlayStation. I picked up a hammer and I swung. Mid-swing, she stopped me and I was happy. And she was happy that I had proved my love. Should I stay or should I leave her? That's a toxic relationship.

Yeah, so again, this is why I brought up, it's very important in the story of Abraham and Isaac to understand it's a type of God's son going up the hill to be sacrificed for our sake. So the story is not only testing Abraham's faith, it's also a type of God himself sacrificing for all of humanity. So it's not just a test of Abraham's faith. That is one portion of the story, but that's not all of it.

You got it. If your girlfriend is telling you to choose between her or the PlayStation, then the God of War Advanced Edition comes out in a few months and you should probably go with that. This one coming in from Adam Dole says, does putting people in prison cause social damage? Who's that to? I don't know. You can each have a crack at it if you'd like.

Right. So here's the thing. The prison system sucks. It doesn't work because it's not run very well. Let's look for Scott in Scotland, for instance. There's so many people crammed into prisons that last year they had to release 425 violent or sexual offenders early just to make space in prison. Prisons are not effective in America. Prisons are just a money making place. They don't care about the people and rehabilitation.

Prisons are supposed to be something to help society, to help rehabilitate someone so they can be a useful member of society. But unfortunately, the prison systems in both America and the UK are run by incompetent dickheads. I generally agree. So I won't answer that. You agree that the prisons in the US, you guys both agree that generally or at least large swaths of the prison system in each of your countries are corrupt, basically? Yeah.

I don't know if cruft is the right word. I don't think cruft is the right word. In America, they're privately owned things, right? They're there to make money, which changes what the purpose for it is. Whereas in the UK, it is run by the government, but they're just ridiculously inefficient and overcrowded. And I don't think either way works. I would especially agree with the point about inefficiency, and I would extend that to the legal system itself.

You got it. This one from Adam. Justin Henley says, Craig, define a Christian. Let's have a poll to see if the audience agrees with you. If they do not, you are a cow's udder because I said so. Christian is someone that follows Jesus. Muslims follow Jesus. No, they don't. Yes, they do. They consider him to be a greater prophet than even Muhammad. No, they don't. Yes, they do. The Muslims would disagree.

There are some Muslims who disagree, but all of them consider him to be a highly esteemed prophet. They follow Jesus. So Muslims are Christians based on your definition. They don't follow Jesus, though. They follow Muhammad. They claim to follow Jesus. Muslims follow the teachings of Muhammad, not the teachings of Jesus. They claim to follow Jesus. If you ask a Muslim if they follow Jesus... Muslims do not claim to follow Jesus. Yes, they do. Yes, they do. Muslims do not follow the word of Jesus. They follow the word of Muhammad.

This one coming in from Megan Marie says, God unjustly killed people in the story of Noah's Ark and orders his followers to unjustly kill through genocide. God does murder Luigi.

Okay, I mean, I've addressed this multiple times. I addressed the second part earlier with the hyperbole and the fact that, again, the Amalekites show up later in Old Testament passages. And I again would ask, by what standard are you giving God this? Your distaste in your mouth that God did something wrong is not a standard of morality. I need something more than just you don't like it. From?

Adam Dole says all Craig knows how to do is filibuster. Craig, I have a feeling you disagree. Yeah, I don't know if any of these people know what filibuster means. Succinctly explaining your point and rebutting the opponent's point is not filibustering. It is doing what you're supposed to do in a debate. I understand that your short attention span has been created by you constantly watching TikToks of Subway Surfer, but that is not my problem.

Wow. I don't know what subway surfer is. It must be a young people thing. No, it's not. That was like a 10 years ago thing. Subway surfer. Artful Dot Jr. says, Isaiah 45, seven states.

Quote, I form the light and create darkness. I make well-being and create calamity. I am the Lord who does all these things. They don't say the translation. They don't say if it's like ESV or NIV or et cetera. That was my point earlier. That was my point earlier that it's correctly translated as calamity. Gotcha. This one coming in from, do appreciate. Forgive me. Lost my spot here. Let me just find that.

Like a boomer over here. Isaiah. Thank you for your patience. ZB says when Craig passes and sees God, he's going to start crying about how he was murdered. Laughing my butt off. That's not something to LMAO about. Am I going to get murdered? I mean, I doubt it.

Richie says, Craig, you keep bringing up murdering babies being wrong, but secular humanism says it's okay to kill babies in the womb. Can you explain? Yeah, that defeats us. No, no, baby. This one coming in from Artful Dot Jr. says, God supports abortion. The Bible has proof. The Bible supports abortion? This, like, this one from...

Oh, okay. Sorry. Again, like whatever passage they're bringing up, that their interpretation is that the Bible supports abortion. We, again, don't, we're not going to take some random person's interpretation. We're going to take the Orthodox Church's interpretation of that passage. And obviously the Orthodox Church's stance is against abortion. So this one coming in from Justin Henley says, God made the law, then murdered legal murder.

Justin, please, why did you do this to me? Jack Attack MMA. I'll figure out what that one meant soon. Jack Attack says, UK number one name is Muhammad, plus 25% first generation migrants by 2035. First, all right, let's break this down. Because, Craig, you might know about this because you're way closer than we are. We are all the way over here in the western part of the US. Is it true that...

UK, the number one name is Muhammad. Not that that would show that secular humanism is false. The world, the most popular name in the world. Let me check. Muhammad is the most popular name in the world. Again, no offense to Jack Attack for asking this question. It obviously doesn't really show that secular humanism or Christianity is a better foundation for ethics. Maybe they're trying to argue. I'm going to read between the lines for them. Maybe they're...

So they say, and then they say 25% of first-generation migrants by 2035. That'd still be a minority, though. So they say, so of course Craig brings up Hungary, which is massively anti-immigration. So they're saying, okay, I think they're saying, like, Craig, secular humanist immigration policies are, like, too open. And he's saying, like, Craig, you're...

purposely picking secular humanist countries that just so happen to have like tight immigration policies so that you can avoid addressing the implied, I guess, idea that secular humanism is

No, I didn't. I mentioned France, Germany, the Scandinavian countries, Hungary. I mentioned a bunch of different countries and some have stronger immigration policies than other. That doesn't change the fact that they all have in place measures to potentially increase the birth rate, which will be looked at in a few years and see where we are. They also call... Sorry.

They also called you a dingbat. All right, this next one, paleolongaro. I like dingbat. It's like a term of endearment. It's like a love language. I've been called worse, James. That's for sure. Like when Austin Whitson would be a chubby cripple. Paleolongaro. Did he really say that? Yikes. Oh, yeah, he did. It's in my face just outside the VIP dinner area. Oh, wow.

Paulo Longaro says, I'm a Christian, but Craig brings up a good point about God himself. Said he's going to wipe out S and G, not evil. S as in, I was just like, is it like, I'm a Christian, but Craig brings up a good point. God himself said he is going to wipe out evil.

I could think like S would maybe be like sin, but the G, I don't know. S and G, like a G as in Gerard. And that's where I'm like, I don't know what that was supposed to be. Writing, we'll come back to that one. Let me know in chat, Paolo, and I'll try to reread it. Writing Jake says, Luigi, you said God doesn't murder, but he killed 42 kids for making fun of a bald guy and Uza for protecting a sacred item.

Yeah, the story of Elisha, they were not kids. They were young men who were mocking the prophet of God and therefore mocking God. So that is – in that context, it was justified. And again, you have no – Hold on. Hold on. Let me just clarify. You're saying it's justified to kill somebody because they mocked them.

If, to God, yes, your creator, yes, your creator has the authority. What a petty asshole your God is. You have no leg to stand on, Craig, to say it's unjustified. You're just asserting it. That's mean. You know I'm gathering an amputation. I take offense to that. You can take all the offense you want. Like, you feeling uneasy about it does not mean it's wrong. Push it over your head. Dude, it's not okay to kill somebody because they got mocked.

That's not cool. Okay. What you do is you go, oh, but you're an asshole. Okay, Greg, your opinion... I'm going to murder you. Your opinion is that's wrong. My opinion is it's not. So how do we break the tie? That means that you like murder as well as murdering babies. It's not murder. It's not unjustified. You have to demonstrate that it's unjustified. It is unjustified. Mocking somebody is not a justified reason. You have to. Mocking somebody is not a justified reason to kill them. Okay, now I'll...

I do want to, so the question is originally for Luigi, so I want to give you the last word on this Luigi, because they, so they originally, so basically they brought up, they said, hey, it's murder, because, for example, the 42 children killed for mocking the bald person. They're not children. So I just want to emphasize the Hebrew word there is referring, they're young men who are making a mockery of God. And so that's why they were killed. Hey guys, if you mock God, it's to murder them. In that particular context, Craig, yes.

In no context. And you have no justification for saying that's wrong. You have zero other than that you don't like it. Yeah, because it's wrong.

But based on what? Based on the fact that you don't like it. Based on you trying to life somebody and they stop existing. That's just what happened. That's just what happened. Yeah, which is wrong. You have to... Based on what, Craig? How is it any... The fact that they then stop existing... From your perspective, it's wrong. But it was hate and suffering to other people. The fact that you think that you have to... Hold on, gentlemen. All right, hold on. We do... I do...

I do have to, like I said, I did want to give, so the original question was meant to challenge Luigi. And so given that the questioner is challenging him, and then Craig, I know that you want to challenge him too, but I don't want it to be like, as if it's like ganging up. So I do want to give Luigi the last word. Sorry.

I've already stated my response. Under his framework, he has no justification to say it's wrong any more than a tiger eating its prey.

This is, hold on. We're going to go back to a question that came in because he's right. I am kind of, I like your sassiness, Justin. He, so Justin earlier said he had the question where, oh gosh, where'd it go? Remember when I was talking about S and G? Oh yeah. He was asking about like potentially, potentially innocent life that was, was,

I'm guessing that's what he's asking about. Okay. I loved his most recent... Oh, it wasn't even him. It was actually... He answered on behalf of Paolo. Thank you, Justin Henley. He said, Sodom and Gomorrah, you illiterates. That's good. Paolo's question was, I'm a Christian, but Craig brings up a good point. God himself said he was going to wipe out S&G...

Sodom and Gomorrah, not evil. So Sodom and Gomorrah specifically, specifically we know for a fact there was not a single righteous person in Sodom and Gomorrah. So the entire city was full of unlimited degeneracy and all kinds of disgusting practices. So again, this is another example of God wiping out evil and people are complaining about it when they complain that God doesn't wipe out evil.

Or, or someone told somebody that there was stuff going on in that that wasn't true. And they wiped it out because God said so. Cool. This one from, let's see, MangaFanDan says, Craig, do you think Akuma or M. Bison would win in a slapping contest? Ah, well...

I would probably say Akuma because, I mean, look at the guns on the guy. He trained Ken and Ryo, frankly, and Dan, to be fair, although we don't talk about Dan. But Akuma's got those guns. Bison, he's just got his, like, military and his powers. So I reckon Akuma would win, to be fair. These are some of your friends in Scotland, Craig? No, I just, I played a lot of Street Fighter. Oh, okay. Adam Dole says, in the...

BPF debate. Oh, okay. So the big Papa fascist as Andrew Wilson used to be called, which by the way, I'm not defending Andrew because I'm kind of empathetic towards Andrew and like, yeah, okay. We get along well enough.

But when he says he's like big Papa fascist, I think some people don't realize that he's trolling. I do want to clarify that because then there's a, you're like, James, are you platforming a, a self-proclaimed fascist? And it's like, well, he's trolling by calling himself that. Anyway, they say in that debate,

Craig said that secularists don't do things that cause harm. He has now changed standards again on another topic. Okay, but what did he change? No, my point has always been that secularists do whatever is there to make the least harm.

I want to be clear in my debate against Andrew, I was very, very nervous and slipped up many of my words and stuff. And I was, you know, I was in a very hostile environment. 90% of the audience were his and I, some words slipped. But what I always mean is that, you know, it's about reducing harm. We can't do no harm all of the time. It's about harm reduction. I just want to say, I do, I do think you, you, this has been your best out of the three debates for sure.

Oh, thank you. And sorry for going a bit FCF-y on you, but I'm tired. It's debate. That's what happens. It's fun. It's lively. I know sometimes I seem cranky, but I like a passionate debate like this way more than a boring debate. It's honestly so demoralizing to host a boring debate. I do want to say about Andrew James that a lot of people dunk on him, and he's got a character which can seem quite...

Not for a lot of people, but I spent a lot of time with Andrew at DebateCon and he was nothing but an absolute gentleman to me. And not just him, but his wife and the entire Crucible crew were incredibly nice to me and it made the weekend even better for me.

Yeah, I like Rachel. I'm fine with Andrew. But a pseudonym says, Luigi, if God told you to harm someone, would you do it? If no, are you a secularist against the Bible version, parentheses Moabites? If yes, are you being a good, fruitful Christian? No.

No, so this is a common gotcha question from atheists, but what's interesting about the Orthodox perspective is since we believe that divine public revelation has ceased, we do not trust anything that comes to us and says it's God, because it can always be some sort of demonic force.

So we're told in the Orthodox Church, it always needs to be interpreted through, like anytime we have a dream or any sort of vision, it always must be interpreted through the Orthodox Church. And if it's someone that's telling me to do something like that, then it's certainly, almost certainly probably a demon, especially in this context. You know dreams are just your brain defragging, right? The nature of dreams, I'm not sure why that's relevant. Dreams. What was the last dream you had, Craig?

The last dream I had was actually a packing dream because I'm moving home. And here's the thing. I hate these packing dreams because no matter how much you pack, you're never finished and no one else is ever helping. And you're always late for what you need to be doing. I hate packing dreams. Wow. I've never even had a packing dream in my whole life. It sounds like you've had more than one. Yeah. Whenever I get stressed, I have packing dreams. It's like an anxiety thing, I think.

Wow. You know what my anxiety dream is? I'm like going to play a football game because I used to play football in college and I am like, I show up first, I'm late. And then I forgot my helmet or something. And by that I mean...

American football, if you're confused. Y'all know it's creepy, though? Like, we're on our phones for hours a day. I've never had my phone show up in a dream. Never once. No, you're right. You're right. I've had other people have their phones in a dream. And then it was a dream, and I woke up. But, yeah. Oh, that is weird, though, that we don't have... I've never had a dream where I was, yeah, like in my...

This is weird. This one from, Oh, iron horse. Craig's buddy is in the live chat. He's talking about his inappropriate dreams. He's talking about his adult dreams. This one from buff hardback says he doesn't even know what evolution is. Evolution isn't only passing down things that are good traits. It's just altering traits randomly. It isn't conscious evolution.

It doesn't know, quote, what's good or bad, unquote. I think that's for you, Luigi. Oh, yeah. Okay. No, that's definitely for Craig. I mean, that's exactly what my point was initially when I read the C.S. Lewis quote where he's talking about how if it's an accidental process, why are we trusting it for value statements? That was exactly my point. I think the question is for Craig, but I could be wrong. Maybe you're right. Sorry about that. Craig, go ahead. Yeah.

Like I said, evolution isn't just about passing down genes and having more babies. Evolution is random mutations that then, whichever is the mutation that adapts to the environment the best is the one that increases. So when Luigi was saying that evolution, oh, it's an evolution imperative to have babies and stuff, that's kind of not what evolution is. That was the point.

You got it. This one coming in from Hallie says, Craig's epistemic justification. So if you want to explain what that I'll just epistemic justification would be like, how do you know what is the truth? Folks is what they're saying. They say Craig's epistemic justification for what harm is, is about as non existent as his, uh,

wiener. W. Luigi Total Orthodox. If they want to check out my OnlyFans, they can definitely get Humongous Wiener. Lord have mercy. Little OnlyCraig. That's the name of my OnlyFans page. Lord have mercy. This one from JackAttackMD.

By the way, I actually changed that super chat. But it was like it was still approximately the same. Jack Attack MMA says, Craig, you advocate for saving unborn children from the adoption system by literally ending them. So why not suggest the same for the prison system?

OK, I didn't say you should abort instead of let them go into the adoption system. That wasn't the thing that I was saying. I'm saying that one of the results of people not being allowed to abort children that might not be in a situation to have a baby, the result of that is then the child can end up in abortion.

in the adoption system. And because the majority of the children that go into adoption come from Christian families, then it shows that just having a bunch of babies isn't necessarily just the best thing. What is important is

education around sex and sex protection and contraception. We shouldn't be in a place where we have to have abortions. And I don't think that anyone should just be able to get an abortion because they've had a baby they don't want. But I do think that abortion is something that's necessary. Why not, though, if you said earlier that a child doesn't have bodily autonomy? So why not?

If it makes you happy, why not? I just don't think that if you have a baby, oh, I wish I hadn't had that, then that's a reason for abortion. But that's just a personal opinion. It's not your happiness? It's not my body. It's a woman's body, and she should be the one to decide what she does with her body. My opinion as to whether I agree with their reason for getting an abortion is irrelevant. But your standard earlier was happiness, and it would make that person happy to eliminate that child, so...

Happiness is one thing. You pick up on one word. I said many other things than just happiness. This one coming in from... Okay, go ahead. This one from... Jume says, Luigi, Eve didn't know right and wrong until the apple came into play or the fruit. They say animals never got the opportunity to know right and wrong. Therefore, animals are irrelevant to use.

No, they're not irrelevant to you as if I'm – what I'm doing is I'm trying to narrow down his standard. Of course I have a standard for why animals don't have morality like humans do. But what I'm doing is I'm pressing him on his standard because humans are just animals to him. They're just highly developed animals in his paradigm. Yeah, yeah.

Okay, well then it's no different than killing a human being in your paradigm is no different than a tiger killing its prey. And there's lots of animals that they don't have consciousness like us we don't have they don't have the ability to choose like us. That's not in a position, thanks to evolution, that we can now choose that you do.

Or not. That's not because what's in question is the value of the life being taken. And if it's, if an animal or if a human is just an animal, then the value of the animal's life being taken is the same as the value of the human being taken. No.

Yes. Because humans have the ability to choose. That's not relevant to the value of the animal and the value of the human. Yes, it is. The ability to choose is not relevant. Intelligence is what makes a, you know, whether you should kill a creature or not. We shouldn't eat dolphins and octopus because they're really smart. You know? So wait a minute. So if you have a really dumb human being, we can kill them because they're super, they're dumber than, what if you have a human that has a lower IQ than a dolphin? We can kill them? They don't exist.

I never- I didn't say you should kill dolphins either. You're just making up- But if you have a human that has a super low IQ, you can kill them because value is based on intelligence according to you. No, they're still way more intelligent than any animal or Christian. But you just said the intelligence was your standard for value. So if you have a really, really young person-

But the question was... It's not one of your, like, skills. What was in question was the value of an animal versus the value of a human since they are... And that then led to another topic of conversation, which I said I wouldn't eat something if it was intelligent.

So you still haven't answered the objection then of how do we figure out that humans are more valuable than animals? Because we can choose. That's not an answer. That's not relevant to the value of a human. If you don't like the answer, that's your problem. It's not relevant to value. You must move forward.

This one from ZB says, Craig, bruh, what is you talking about? This is all in caps. How you don't know Muslims believe Jesus is the Messiah. OMG. Well, Muslims don't think Jesus is the... He's obviously being sarcastic. Yeah, Muslims don't think Jesus is the Messiah or the son of God. Yes, they do. They do think he's the Messiah. It's in the Quran. Muslims do not think Jesus was the son of God. No, but they believe he's the Messiah.

They believe he's the Messiah. That's in the Quran. They do not believe he is the son of God. They do not believe he was the magical savior of everybody. What they're referencing is your definition of Christian was someone who follows Jesus. Muslims do not follow Jesus. They follow Muhammad. They claim to. They follow Muhammad. They don't follow Jesus. Jesus is a prophet, not the one, not the word of God.

Chapter 3, verse 45 of the Quran. Remember when the angels proclaimed, O Mary, Allah gives you good news of a word from him. His name will be the Messiah, Jesus. Yeah, they don't follow him, though. Yes, they do. Follow Muhammad. They claim to follow Jesus. They follow Muhammad. This one from Cool V1C. Can we get a real applause for Craig?

Come on, James, clap. My hands are occupied. This one from Aisha. I will say this. Folks, our guests, we have more questions, so stick around. Don't leave. Our guests are in the description box. Their links lie waiting for you.

We really do appreciate our guests. In fact, I mean, that's like an understatement. They are the lifeblood of the channel. So we are eternally grateful for them. I do have to say, Craig has been such a good sport lately with these. Craig usually debates Flat Earth. That's not to say that he hasn't done any reading on religion topics, but it's obviously relative to his like massive specialization in Flat Earth versus Globe Earth.

It is nonetheless like a new topic area, despite having done some reading. So I do want to say we appreciate Craig always being a good sport that way. And we also appreciate Luigi. It's the first time. And I know that Luigi, I could tell while setting up this debate was the kind of guy that really likes to prepare for debates, which I actually like from debaters because it means like it's going to be a higher quality debate. So I do want to say we appreciate Luigi coming on, especially with my like informal way of setting up debates of just like, Hey, yeah, like,

you know you know this time today so we do appreciate both of our guests check out their links in the description and steve from whim haven says you lost me with the justified children's sacrifice the justification of it being wrong is the feeling god put in our hearts telling us it's wrong except for me can you read it one more time the wording was weird can you read it one more time

They say you lost me with the justified children's sacrifice idea. They say the justification of it being wrong is the feeling God put in our hearts telling us that it's wrong. I don't justify child sacrifice. But what I'm saying is that I don't see how anybody who subscribes to something other than God, who is the definition of good, has a leg to stand on to say it's bad. That's my point.

God is not the definition of good. Yes, he is. Can you point to the dictionary where good God is included? It's the grounding for goodness, which we've shown throughout this evening. God kills children. Can't be good. And I'm saying even if that were true, you have no leg to stand on to say it's wrong. No. I can absolutely say that killing children is wrong.

By what standard? And that's if I grant that that's even what happened, which I don't. But God killed everybody. That includes the children. Doesn't say that in the text. So you're asserting that. There was no children on earth when he made the flood, was there? Well, I've already given the example of the hyperbole with the Amalekites. We've been through this with the Great Flood. Did God kill everybody with the flood, yes or no?

That's not a yes or no question because there are different views on that question. There are different views. There are people. Yes. There are plenty of people who do believe in a local flood. There are plenty of people who believe in that local flood. What does that mean? Yes. Meaning what, like it didn't cover like every single space in the earth. It didn't wipe out every single person. We do know what we do know is it wiped out an evil society. That's what we know.

And was there children in that society? Doesn't say that in the text. It's not relevant. It's not relevant to your standard of morality. In your opinion, it is. This one from Jack Attack MMA says, they say, they're quoting you, Craig. I mean, according to them, they say, Craig, colon, babies could be harmed in adoption care. So we should harm them before they get there.

Did I mention that God is evil? Yeah, I get their argument, but it's a straw man of what I'm saying. I'm not saying we should abort all babies so they don't go into adoption. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that proper health care...

can stop these things happening. And abortion can be there for the reasons that it needs to be. But the fact that we just, you know, that religion just stops protection and contraception and forces people to have babies when, you know, they're victims of rape and stuff like that. And or, you know, too young to have the baby can cause problems. And that's when abortion can be something that can be used. And to take that away is just wrong.

Aisha's goat says to the live chat crew. I want to post a question. Someone give me a recommendation. All right. Paulo Longaro says Craig's right. Muslims follow the teaching of Muhammad, but they recognize Jesus as a prophet. So I think that Paulo is trying to say that like the same way Christians might recognize that Moses was a prophet, but they would say that they follow Jesus rather than Moses or

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Just because they recognize an additional prophet does not mean they don't claim to follow Jesus. That's like saying me saying I follow Jesus means I don't follow Abraham. That's like what that's saying. This one from Justin Henley. It says, Sodom and Gomorrah. Oh, we got that one. Thanks, brother. Aisha's Goat says, Craig, do you recognize denial when it happens to you?

Do I recognize denial when it happens to me? Yeah, I've seen many flat earthers in denial that the earth isn't flat until I beat the stupid out of them with facts.

Wow. Facts and logic beat down. Cool V1C says, can we get... We got that one. I'm just having... This is like the most fun Friday night for me is being here with these guys. I like these guys. Steve from Wim... Wimhaven says... Wimhaven. Thank you. We got... Actually, I just realized we got that question. I like jumped over a few. This one from...

Richie says, did we ask this one? Why is murdering someone in the womb okay, Craig? We had one like it.

It can't be classed as murder. I feel like a lot of these questions are repeat. It's like the same thing five times over. We're almost at the end, I promise. Justin Henley says, Goken trained Ryu and Ken. I remember Ryu and Ken. Oh, no, you're right. Sorry, I said Akuma trained. It was Goku, wasn't it? Akuma. Yeah.

Because a kumar can do that as well. Paulo Longaro says, Sodom and Gomorrah, you can also include the flood. God did that, not evil. Yeah, they're basically saying God evil.

This is Richie. We got that one. This one from ZB. They say,

This whole different Christian structures, I don't buy, but you're Christian, you're Christian, and you don't get to claim that someone else isn't Christian because you have a particular definition of Christian. Anyone that follows Jesus, the Bible,

The Bible, in the way that Christians do, is a Christian. If you don't follow the Bible and the teachings of Jesus, then you're not a Christian. Well, so Roman Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants have a different canon of Scripture. So which Bible are you talking about? Well, there's lots of different versions of the Bible. No, I'm not talking about versions. I'm talking about the books of the Bible.

Yeah, there's lots of different ones. There's many different versions of Christianity. Which one are you referring to? Because you're saying they follow the Bible. Okay, which one? The Bibles, because there's multiple of them. Okay, so the Mormons added a bunch of verses in Genesis. So you think Mormons are... That's just as legit as the rest of your Bible. How is that any different than the Muslims just adding an additional book?

The Quran. How is that any different? Because the Mormons still say they follow Jesus and the Bible, not the Quran. Depends on the Mormon, to be honest. This one coming in from Bernham says, you can use intuition alone to refrain from murdering someone to keep your freedom. For example, right and wrong aren't the only tool to make choices.

I don't understand that. Bernham also says, Luigi, will abortion be okay in the future if people just say the phrasing of the killing was hyperbolic and it was God's plan? Yeah, this is just making a mockery of hyperbole of ancient Near Eastern cultures. And again, we know for a fact it was hyperbole because the descendants of the Amalekites show up later in the scriptures. But remember, guys, it's fine to murder people if they mock you. Not murder. It's not murder. This one from Justin Henley.

It says, animals cannot choose? Isn't choosing just a chemical reaction and thus subject to physics? Can chemical reactions choose to not obey physics? Okay, so the difference between humans choosing and animals choosing is we have more than just our instincts to go on. We have our intuition. We have our experiences.

We have our intelligence and empathy. Animals don't have that. Oh, maybe my dog does, the way he looks at me after he slaps me in the morning. But animals in general work on instinct. They don't choose in the same way that humans do. Yes, it's all, both in humans and animals, simply chemical and electrical reactions in the brain. However, our brain is much more developed and allows us to have such things as empathy. This one from...

Dano says for both of our speakers, if aborting babies with mental or physical disabilities would lead to more flourishing population in the future, what's wrong with that? Well, my goal is they ask Craig, they say, Craig, can we hear from you first? And then Luigi. Okay. Sorry. Um, it's a difficult question. Um,

Should you if you know that the baby's got an issue in the womb, would it be better for that baby and the parents if that baby was aborted? Possibly. But does that mean abortion?

That baby couldn't have a decent life. For instance, my uncle who had Down syndrome when he was born, well, before he was born, my gran was told to abort him, but my gran chose not to. And he had an amazing life. And in fact, I would say that his life made humanity better because he made so many other people happy. So it's a hard question with more than one answer. And, you know,

I don't really want to. Yeah, and I would, I actually appreciate Craig's perspective on this. I think the same question was asked with a similar question was asked at Andrew Wilson's debate with with you.

And yeah, I mean, it's obviously wrong. And also I would say that a flourishing society is an ambiguous term, and I don't know in what way would murdering a child with Down syndrome bring a flourishing society anyway. But I think it's a travesty that some of these nations have eliminated Down syndrome because they detect it in the womb and then they abort every single one of those babies.

And to Craig's point, there are... I think Down syndrome... There's, like, studies on this. People with Down syndrome are, like, some of the happiest people in the world. They're, like, super happy. Oh, yeah. My uncle never, ever had a cramp on his face. He was the happiest...

strongest person in the world oh my god me and him would arm wrestle uh and like he nearly snapped my shoulder off it was crazy have you seen i don't know if you guys have seen the shane gillis like piece on this where he talked about his uncle who had who had down syndrome and he's like sneaking grilled cheeses into like restaurants and stuff he's like just living life yeah living the dream we want to say thank you to our guests they are tremendous uh

They have snuck themselves into our hearts. We love them very much. Tremendous guests. I want to say thank you, Craig and Luigi. Seriously, it's been a fun time, you guys. You guys make this fun. Folks, check out their links in the description box. That includes the podcast. So...

Within 24 hours of every debate being live on Moderate Debate, we put it on the podcast, which you can find on Apple Podcasts. You can find it on Spotify. Bottom right of your screen right now, you can see Stitcher, you name it. We're on every podcast app there is. How do your podcasts do, James, just out of interest? Do they do quite well? I think it's like an average of like 2,400 downloads per show. So it's...

Thousands, but not many more thousands compared to the YouTube. And I frankly probably wouldn't recommend it if a person were considering going onto a podcast format now. I think I could be wrong. I was just wondering if it's worth... How do you do it? Do you just take the audio and just upload it? Yeah, I used a website called Red Circle, which we do. I love them. But...

It's just, I think that podcast is going to lose to YouTube. I think that the podcast format is going to die away slowly. And I think it's shrinking. And I know that there are some boomers out there that still use it.

uh, not even I use it and I'm like the most boomer of all. It's just that, you know, I used to, I used to download podcasts like unbelievable and things like that. But now it's just, uh, you know, I use YouTube for everything because data is just so easy. You know, it's so cheap to listen to YouTube wherever you are. So I don't know. I,

I don't know if I'd recommend it. It's just like, man, I think it's kind of going downhill. I think, you know, YouTube even has like now, like they try to like, they've purposely moved into that space where they have like, you can make your YouTube videos like podcast content, which is basically, I think it just means it's available in the YouTube music app. Uh, I think that's basically the difference. But anyway, yeah.

I'm so glad someone asked. I still can't believe you didn't know what Subway Surfers was, James. That's insane. You've got to download it and play it now. What was the phrase? I played it in Subway Surfers. I played it all in high school. I used to play that game. Really? Subway Surfers? Let me look this up. Jetpack Joyride. That was also a super fun one. Zombieland. Those were all banging back in high school. It's like Subway, the underground train, not the restaurant.

Yeah. Yes. Well, it's still cool. OK. It's like-- what's the one? Temple Run? I like that one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Really? This is a game that has been popular for a decade, you say. The way that you're wearing these glasses is just like-- it's even more boomer. It's like, what is this game here? I've never even heard of this game. People in chat, have you heard of this Subway Surfers?

I'm just, I've heard of Candy Crush. Is that, people still play that? Not really. I actually don't know what kids play these days. I'm completely disconnected. But check out our links of our guests in the description box. We really do appreciate them. We're going to let our guys go. It's, we've got a lot of stuff they've got on their plate. So I want to say thank you to them one last time. I'll be back in just a moment with a post-credit scene. Thank you, Craig. And thank you, Luigi.

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