DEBATE: Atheism Or Christianity, Which Is True? | PlanetPeterson & Grayson Vs Apollos & Travis
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Good evening, everybody. Welcome to Modern Day Debate. Tonight we're going to be debating atheism or Christianity, which is true. And Grayson is going to start us out while I get the screens all figured out. So, Grayson, thank you so much for coming back to Modern Day Debate. It's been a hot second. Really missed you. So welcome back. And I'll give you the floor. You got up to six minutes.

Thanks, Ryan. Hey, everyone. My name is Grayson Hawk. I debate science, pseudoscience, history and religion on YouTube. Coming up on 5000 subscribers. So if you like the things I have to say here tonight, please do check out my channel. Anyways, I'm going to share my screen here and hopefully let's get started. Everybody can see that. Yep. Yes. I'm running. Okay, perfect. So tonight we're going to be talking about Christianity versus atheism. And the original topic that we agreed to was which has the evidence.

So we're going to have to start by defining some terms. First of all, atheism is the view that there are no gods. There's strong and weak atheism. The soft atheism is merely lacking a belief in gods. Myself and Plant Peterson tonight are

Lacking the belief in any gods is also strong or hard atheism, which is holding the belief that there are no gods. However, for tonight, this distinction doesn't really matter so much as the evidence that I will be offering is evidence for both of these types of atheism. What do we mean by evidence? Well, evidence is information that increases the probability of a five points tonight that are evidence for atheism. Number one.

Various God beliefs arise starting from zero God beliefs among our non human ancestors and these beliefs and religions continuously schism without exception throughout all known history. We see the same patterns of religious beliefs arising and in fragmenting without exception. We would expect this in a world where there are no gods.

But in a world where some gods are true and some gods are false, or a world where gods exist, we wouldn't necessarily expect this at all. We would expect all of our ancestors to have believed in gods of some various kind, or at least that's more likely in a general theistic world, a world with gods. And we would expect that, you know, true gods, we wouldn't accept to see the exact same pattern of arising and schisming of all these various branches of all these religions,

seemingly without any privileged one. And that follows to our number two evidence. This is that God beliefs are probabilistically determined by one's birthplace, which one would expect of cultural norms, not universally accessible truths. So for example, every culture on earth, you know, there's not like one culture has two sons, one has three, one has four. Every culture recognizes one son because it's a universally accessible fact.

However, God beliefs vary and you can be pretty statistically likely to pick what somebody's God belief is if you know where and when they're born and what circumstances.

Number three, none of the major God beliefs today has any evidence to privilege it above and beyond the rest. Like, for example, prayer does not work for any of the religions. It's not like Mormon prayers are answered, but the other ones aren't. None of the prayers or none of the evidence seems to indicate one major religion over the other ones that exist today.

And number 4, all verifiable examples of minds are the causal products of physical systems. I. E. brains in a world that where gods exist, we would expect to see some sort of verifiable minds that are not the products of brains or physical systems. Some non physical minds.

would be evidence that gods are at least more possible. It's evidence making them more likely. And the fact that, you know, we should expect that evidence and we don't is evidence that there are no gods. Each one of these four observable facts about the world around us, and yes, I know that we probably will be debating about whether or not these are facts, but each one of these things is observable, empirically demonstrable,

and is evidence that is more likely favoring a world where no gods exist than a world where gods exist. And the final one is the track record of theism versus naturalism. Originally, back thousands of years ago,

All things were explained with theism. Then in 1800, look at that on the right side. Some things like lightning and rainbows have naturalistic explanations and a little bit more. Just to cue you up, it's not going through the presentation on my end. I'm only seeing still Christianity versus atheism. Is that on your end? This entire time, nobody has been seeing this presentation.

You've been riffing and I've come to the realization, I'm like, I don't think he's, I think he's trying to show us something. Come on now, bud. I really wish that somebody would have said something at some point earlier on in this. It shows the title slide. Yeah. That's great. Can you see this? Now I can. All right. Well then, obviously that's a horrendous opening because everything I was saying was

on the screen for people to read with and extremely confusing for those that couldn't read along with me but the last one really hard on these visuals so thanks for that i'm glad i could be the guinea pig to figure that one out all right i'm gonna give you back another i'll give you back another 45 since we know the other side's gonna take some time so if that's all right with peterson

I had all these fancy visuals and everything worked out, but you can see here at the top, we have, it's even color coded. I mean, come on. So we have all these theistic explanations thousands of years ago. All of these things on screen were explained with theistic explanations. Then as time goes on, we see more and more and more of these things have naturalistic explanations that we discover from rainbows, lightning, diseases, species, the origins of matter, all this stuff. Now we have naturalistic explanations.

explanations for it. We don't have everything. There are still some gaps that people try to put their God in and in arguments, but you can see the track record is over time, all theistic explanations at first. And now we have more and more and more naturalistic.

explanations verified. This track record, this trend would not be expected in a world where gods exist and is expected in a world where gods do not exist. That's why this is evidence for atheism. And so are the other four that I'll just leave on screen now so that people can pause and read them over. Thank you.

All right. Well, thank you so much, Grayson. If you wanted to put up any of the other ones too, if you've gone through them all just so the audience can see what they may have missed. If you want to flick on the second one. I thought that was on my screen right now. Is that not on my screen? Oh, yeah. We're looking at that. Do you want to pop on the second slide too? I don't think we really got to see too much of it. If you want to just pop it on for the audience and then we'll kick it over to Planet Peterson. You still have a minute. So if you want to pop on the second slide as well. Yeah, this is just...

This was just my definitions, basically. I think we can agree on these definitions, hopefully. These were the main points, was points one through four, and then my fifth point was the track record. So I'll just leave these up, and then, yeah, we can go on to Planet Peterson. Thank you. Awesome, awesome. All right, well, thank you so much. We'll end the screen share there and hand it over to Planet Peterson. So, Planet Peterson, thank you so much for coming out to Modern Day Debate.

Yeah, I think this is your debut here, so it's a pleasure to have you here. And without further ado, I'm going to hand you over for six minutes. So, yeah, thanks again. Sure. No, you're welcome, and thanks for having me. Planet Peterson's a mouthful. My name is Eric, and you can just call me Eric. That's so much simpler.

So Christianity being false wouldn't make atheism true. Some other God might exist. So the position for Grayson and I on this debate has been a little awkward, but I think we can navigate this. I think we can still justify our lack of belief if we go with a generic theistic God concept. The classical concept of the theistic God is a personal one who is omnibenevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient.

I think the problem of evil destroys the possibility of this being existing. Now, I'm happy to talk about that when we get to open discussion, but it would take up my entire opening statement. So I first want to talk about what I think are evidences of atheism, and I think religious confusion is an excellent point. Different cultures that did not overlap still were able to simultaneously develop

identical mathematical and grammatical concepts across history. Different people in history also have invented the same technologies and scientific theories independent of one another. And that's because when they try to make sense of things that are real, try to make sense of things that are there, standardized answers come about as would be expected. What would you expect to happen when people are attempting to make sense of things that aren't there? Well,

Well, I would expect complete disunity in those ideas and contradictions. And every culture throughout history around the world that developed God concepts developed non-standardized and contradictory God concepts. I think that moral consistencies and inconsistencies is another piece of

a pretty good piece of advice. For all we can tell, people with intact cognition, they have a pretty consistent reaction to certain stimuli and share attitudes and behaviors about them. For example, we find things like pain and suffering intolerable, we possess a degree of empathy, and we're social creatures who can't function on selfishness alone. And because of this, what we find is group and kin selecting behaviors

those are relatively consistent across every group. That's something anthropologists have noticed. So in other words, we develop social norms, which we can frame as moralistic, that are in line with our well-being and intrinsic nature.

However, ceremonial, ritualistic, purity, and other types of observational norms with regard to religion, which these are also a form of morality, those are wildly different everywhere. So we would have to, the way I see it, our possibilities that we're left with are, are there multiple personal gods?

Are there no personal gods and every norm of this type is culturally structured? Or did somehow the only real god decide to reveal himself just to one particular group? And then why on earth would we privilege one group over the other? What one on earth increases the likelihood that this was the right one and none of the others were?

and then with regard to a being that is you know omniscient omnibenevolent omnipotent um that's the Christian God is clearly none of those things the Christian God doesn't know what's happening in Sodom and Gomorrah and has to go see for himself he lies he causes suffering he forces people to change their minds against their will he regrets things he changes his mind he fails

and is an incoherent mess of three beings, two of which are clearly subordinate to the Father. The Bible is also plainly not monotheistic, at least in terms of the original authors.

So it doesn't support this kind of generic theism that is the accepted definition of God today, because the Bible says things like, let us make man in our image. God says that Adam and Eve have become like one of us. Psalm 82 says God took his stand in the divine council among the gods that he judges.

Yahweh is the storm deity of Israel, is allotted his share by Elyon, and his share was Israel, as the Dead Sea Scrolls have clearly indicated. And Yahweh is defeated in battle after a sacrifice is made to the god Chemosh. So this acknowledgement of other gods is there. And then the final thing is, at least that I'm going to talk about for my opening here, is

Saying is Christianity true is kind of a I feel like it's a non starter. It's the equivalent of saying are multiple contradictions true. That's a ridiculous question. Christianity is a pantheon of religions. It's very likely that our two opponents don't agree on their worldview. One version of Christianity claims.

or sorry, one version of the Christian God claims that you're saved by faith alone. Another says that Joseph Smith was a prophet. Yet another says that you can't be saved without a water baptism. Still another says that somebody who lived a morally righteous life but never heard the Gospels can still inherit heaven. Now, a typical response to that is typically, well, we believe in the crucifixion and resurrection and Trinity, those prerequisites.

But that distinction is no less arbitrary than the distinction between any other monotheistic religion. So they may say, well, you know, we believe in the resurrection and things like this. Okay, well, Christian and Muslims believe there is one God, so they are the same. Well, no, they deny the Trinity and resurrection, so it's not the same. Okay, well, to Christians who will believe those two things,

or those things sorry uh one will say the holy spirit does not guide the pope or the holy spirit doesn't proceed from the father alone or saved by faith alone or and the other will have a different opinion on those things 10 seconds they believe in okay they believe in different gods believing in a resurrection doesn't make two partially overlapping contradictions true nearly any two contradictions overlap to a degree that's it

All right. Well, thank you so much for your introductory statement. And once again, welcome to Modern Day Debate. It's going to be a good one, everybody. So if you haven't already, hit the like button, subscribe to the channel. We appreciate it, everybody. That helps. Well, it helps, honestly. It's great. So I'm going to – I got the screens pretty much ready to go. I'm just getting our fundraising thermometer ready.

up and running and we're going to hand it over to Travis. So if you haven't seen already, we are raising some funds for the upcoming live event that's going to be taking place in Newark. So yeah, if you have the means and you can help us out, we appreciate it. But without further ado, let's get on over to Travis. So Travis has his screen share up. So let's get that up for everyone to see. And ready when you are there, Travis. Thanks for being here.

Okay, yeah, thanks. You know, I love these discussions, you know, I'm a big proponent of, you know, the philosophy of religion and, you know, I just love the value in dialogue. I think it's...

It's so meaningful. And so basically what I'm going to do is I'm going to talk about the nature of explanation in terms of how we do hypotheses within the philosophy of science, utilizing the likelihood principle as well as inference to the best explanation. And that's what we're going to predominantly be using for this discussion.

But I'm going to save the nature of explanation more for the open conversation. And so what I thought I'd start off by doing is highlighting how we can, you know, in the search for understanding the nature of ultimate reality, I propose that we approach theism through the lens of narrative. The value of a story is that it can help organize one's thinking about a lot of data. A story provides context. It provides meaning to events within a larger scope.

And this isn't as controversial as one may initially think. Narratives are very commonly used in fields such as forensics, for example. In legal trials, they often come down, the verdict often comes down to who has the better narrative between the evidence that's been admitted. It's also commonly used in the philosophy of science to make sense of certain observations within a larger hypothesis.

And narratives are the kinds of things that minds produce. They're typical of minds. Moreover, if such a mind is supreme, then it seems reasonable to assume that the story unfolding within creation would be a great story, one that encompasses the journey of theosis for all creatures, guiding all creatures and even creation itself towards participation in the divine life.

We can call this a Christological narrative of redemption and eventual triumphant victory for all creatures. This notion finds resonance in the teachings of Saint Maximus the Confessor, a 7th century Christian monk and philosopher who articulated the view that the many "loquae" which represent divine intentions and purposes of individuals,

ultimately tend towards the divine logos, which is the divine wisdom who imbues creation with rationality and intentionality. It's Christ. And what's interesting is that you'll notice every compelling story contains certain universal elements like characters, intricate plots,

many layers of meaning. The best stories feature plots inside of plots, weaving together universal themes of love, loss, adventure, romance, sadness, tragedy, and triumph, ultimately leading to the development of saintliness. Now, intriguingly, our world resonates with these very elements. We are characters within this narrative, each with their own unique stories, navigating the expansiveness of existence.

which includes things like love, romance, tragedy, adventure, and the potential for personal transformation. If God is perfectly good, He would surely narrate a story that reflects these very aspirations, a story of triumph and redemption and ultimate development of sainthood.

This narrative approach can help us make sense of what we see in the world. For example, by framing the existence of conscious beings endowed with moral awareness as integral to God's unfolding story of redemption, it fits with the data. Here, an orderly universe filled with beauty and purpose serves as the backdrop for the divine drama of salvation. This narrative can not only shed light on the human experiences of suffering

and evil, but posits that these trials are temporary elements within a broader redemptive journey. The eschaton, which is the ultimate fulfillment of God's purpose, emerges as the climax of this narrative where God's goodness and grace triumph over adversary. The Christian story of resurrection and victory over sin and death, where all events are integrated into a redemptive whole, really highlight this well.

Through this narrative lens, we find that core arguments for theism, such as the existence of consciousness, moral agency, the fine-tuning of the cosmos, and the inherent beauty and orderliness of creation, integrate seamlessly into the unfolding story of redemption. These events become unsurprising when viewed in light of a grand narrative.

In fact, this even positions suffering and moral challenges not as contradictions to believe, but as essential components that deepen the richness of our experience and ultimately lead us toward divine communion.

And what's really going to be important here is the axiological theory that we go with. And for this, I draw inspiration from broader schism in the late Marilyn McPhor Adams and their concept of defeat, which suggests that God permits what can be overcome within the lifetime of each creature. What matters most is how one responds in life and in which the events are integrated into an overall good whole that becomes valuable and non-regrettable to the creatures.

This insight encouraged us to shift our focus from hyper isolated instances of suffering to the more holistic narrative that they form. Adams utilizes the analogy that just as seemingly broken pieces can come together to create a beautiful mosaic,

our fragmented experiences are woven together into a coherent and stunning whole that reflects the magnificence of God's creative act. By recognizing the interconnectedness of all creation through this narrative framework, we perceive how every individual plays a crucial role in the grand story of existence. This approach not only offers significant explanatory power regarding the nature of reality, but it also invites us to engage with the unfolding narrative of life.

It affirms that our experiences, both joyful and sorrowful, contribute to a meaningful whole. And so during the conversation, I'm going to go over how ultimate reality can best be understood as a divine narrative of redemption and eventual triumph for all creatures. That's it. Yeah. Okay.

Well, thank you Ryan for the purpose of scoping this debate. We will only be insisting that Christianity is falsified or verified on its quote unquote core beliefs to which we contend are the following belief in the Supreme divinity of a tri omni triadic God, father, son and Holy Spirit. The resurrection of Jesus Christ and eternal life for those who confess his Lordship.

There are some important second order beliefs we exclude from the scope of our investigation of whether Christianity is true or false. Therefore, I encourage our audience to not get bogged down in these listed side issues while adjudicating nevertheless

While adjudicating these beliefs deserves discussion in the overall framework of Christian evidence, nevertheless, differing beliefs on the periphery of any field shouldn't discount the entire enterprise. For example, the debate between string theory and loop quantum gravity doesn't falsify our findings in quantum physics.

To falsify Christianity, we contend that these two issues are challenged, namely the evidence for the existence of God and the bodily resurrection of Jesus as signifying the Christian God's existence. Now on to the resurrection of Jesus. Regardless of whether anyone ascertains to belief in the resurrection, any rational inquirer must explain the data surrounding the early Christianity phenomena.

If it is the case that Jesus rose from the dead, then we are on good grounds to posit a Christian religion as an explanation. Our tested, tried-and-true historical methods must likewise be also applied to early Christianity. Let's start off with the source-critical gospel arguments in order to go over all the relevant data.

The New Testament as historical reported asserts that the Gospels aim to faithfully report historical events, teachings, and actions of Jesus, rooted in eyewitness testimony or reliable secondary sources.

The gospel's authors were serious historians who intended to convey factual accounts with integrity. If it is seriously the case that the gospel authors were in a position to know the truthfulness or falsehood of the events that they attest to, then the probability of the reliability of the New Testament in reporting facts accurately, namely when it pertains to the resurrection and miracles, is raised.

By contrast, we do not claim that the Gospels were merely Greco-Roman biographies with authors who freely fictionalized events, nor do we advocate for wooden literalism that excludes paraphrasing, summarization, and thematic organization. For the New Testament originally circulated independently, without audiences understanding them as some sort of Bible collection or divinely inspired dictation.

These data points are important in assessing whether or not Jesus rose from the dead. We cannot rule out these sources as biased propaganda, similar to how we don't rule out eyewitness accounts of the Holocaust, Greco-Roman history, or the American Revolutionary War as needing to be corroborated by some disconnected third party. All accounts, ancient and modern, have an agenda.

Here are some of the internal and external clues that may indicate the trustworthiness of the Gospels. These are not by any means all exhaustive, but a lot of them have to do with the idea that they have had to have been eyewitnesses close to the events portrayed.

As for the Spider-Man fallacy, unlike in the modern world where we are free to google any fact to our convenience, the ancients had no way of confirming the aforementioned details without having been close to the events at hand, without arguing for a mechanism that rebuts how unreasonable, costly, and inefficient it would have been for the Gospel writers to insert insider knowledge into supposedly historically inspired novels, the fallacy fails as a false analogy.

Now, the minimal facts are not the only facts that demand an explanation. The minimal facts according to Dr. Gary Abermas' latest dissertation and latest critical survey are the list of facts conceded by the overwhelming consensus.

not just majority, but overwhelming consensus of historical critical scholarship pertaining to early Christianity, including unbelieving skeptical academics. While some set this as a necessary criteria, we only say for at least for these core facts, nearly universal scholarly agreement is to be expected under these facts being true.

or under Jesus being resurrected from the dead being true. Utilizing the consensus, therefore, is not a hard deductive appeal to authority, but just a tool to assess where people can find these arguments.

Take, for example, the empty tomb. Although not a unilateral consensus, the growing majority of critical scholars believe that the empty tomb of Jesus was found by the women of Jesus' ministry. Because this number is now at 80% of historical critical academics, according to Abermast's latest survey, it's on its way to becoming a minimal fact.

So we only had short six minute openings for opening time. And so I implore our audience to go and ask their questions in the super chats sincerely, despite the possible intense back and forth that's going to occur. And with that, yeah, I'd like to close out and yield the rest of my time. Thank you.

No worries. Well, thank you so much, Apollos, for being here. So yeah, we are going to get into an open discussion the best that we can. I'm sure it's going to be a lot of fun and unpack some of what we just heard there. So yeah, already I can hear it in your tone. It's going to be fun. If you haven't already, once again, I implore you, smash the like button. It ain't going to hit itself.

uh and also we are going to take super chats at the end of this discussion so if you want to grill a speaker if you just want to say hey great job it was fun seeing you here that's all great put it into a super chat and we'll read them out at the end of the show uh but preferably questions related to the subject so that uh we can maybe unpack some things that uh you know maybe we won't address we'll but we'll see how things go so uh with that with that being said i'm gonna hand it back to the other side and

and let you guys respond to some of what you just heard. So Grayson and Eric, I'll remember that now. - Yeah, Eric, I wanna make sure that we both kind of heard the same thing here because like, for evidence for Christianity, I wrote down the Bible's a really, really good narrative story. And then piece of evidence is that Christianity is true because the New Testament is true history.

Well, that wasn't the argument. Go ahead, Eric, in terms of what you heard. What I wrote down from the first was sort of – I actually wrote some notes, not very many. Narratives are used to explain reality and or increase the likelihood of claims being true, and the Bible is the kind of story that a perfect being would write. That was – I have a couple other things, but that's the gist of what I was getting. So –

And then the second one was the historical consistency and reliability of the Gospels, which I definitely contend. Yeah. Yeah. So do you want to kind of follow up on that or? Go ahead. You went first. Yeah.

Yeah, so thanks. It's kind of hard when it's just I'm trying to pack all this content into six minutes. So I think it's a lot more valuable, you know, to kind of have this in the open conversation. And what I'm doing is, you know, you can see this in the work of, you know, people like Josh Rasmussen, Richard Swinburne. It's the idea of, you know, using a narrative as sort of a theory that explains ultimate reality. So what we're looking at is what explains contingent reality, including the

sets of facts and uh you know observations and various states of affairs that we see in the world and so what we're doing is we're using this as a theory we're saying well hey this theory uh you know can supposedly explain things like awareness it can explain things like you know for the sake of time

I think that both Eric and I agree on your method, your approach to this. We're just disagreeing that the Christian God is the God that's most likely given the universe that we have. Like, in fact, I'd say a perfect Christian conception of a God is probably an impossibility given our universe. And that was Eric's argument in his opening, right? Right.

Yeah, and memory is telling me that there was, I think fine-tuning was brought up at some point. So I just want to have a really concise idea of specifically what direction we're going, because grand narratives is a little too vague. What this can do, what I was going to say just very briefly is what I want to say is that when you have something like a

a grand theory of ultimate reality what it can do in this kind of building off swinburne's work is it raises the prior probability of various evidences like you know for the resurrection and things like that so it can be used as sort of an a priori argument that would increase the the probability yeah and so that was the yeah and earlier yeah earlier you mentioned that um

that the track record for atheism, given things like scientific discoveries, is better than appealing to religious ideas. Can you name me one scientific discovery that's contingent on the non-existence of God?

I don't know that that's necessarily even like a requirement in this instance, right? Because as we clarified about what evidence is and which side has the evidence, evidence is just information that increases the probability of one conjecture relative to others, right? So in such a case, like we have a universe with gods and universe without gods,

and we're just looking at this piece of observational evidence about the track record of just the observation that hey over time we used to explain everything using gods as explanations for things around us in reality and then over time more and more and more of the things that used to be explained using gods are now explained without using gods that scenario is more likely in a world where there are no gods that exist than it is in a world where gods do exist

I got to jump in here because, Apollos, you've misunderstood what Grayson was arguing for. Grayson was explaining to us that historically a great number of things like natural phenomena have been explained as the product of or the workings of a god because they weren't really explainable in any other sort of sense. And science has come up with naturalistic explanations for things

A great many number of those things at no point will Grayson or I ever argue because we don't believe that.

science like proving something naturally means you prove that God doesn't exist a God naturalism doesn't isn't necessarily like proof for atheism even though you define evidence differently well again the point was Grayson never contended that these scientific facts or whatever preclude God existing we don't think that

And that wasn't his argument. I have something that may sort of help the dialectic a little bit is what I was going to say. What I was going to say is that we can we could just do away with this. And in fact, you really don't see this type of discussion too much in the philosophy of religion, because you can just do away with the natural supernatural distinction. And we can posit it in terms of the foundation of existence. And so

We all agree that something exists. And so what we're doing is we're looking at the foundation of existence itself. And we can ask whether it's a supreme foundation that lacks arbitrary limits, which are cutoffs without further explanation, or whether it's, let's say, a mindless cosmos or a principle of indifference.

and so forth. And please, just one second, and I promise I'll let you have it. What I just wanted to add on top of that is that I can grant like, you know, methodological naturalism in its entirety. We can even call this foundation natural if we want to. I'm not, you know, biological evolution, you know, a value of genesis, so on and so forth. I would just concede all natural processing because I don't think that that even matters for this particular discussion.

Okay, so my point was that the overall trend is something that we would have no reason to expect under theism. The overall trend of

God explanations getting less and less and less and less over human history and non-God explanations getting more and more and more as a total share of our total explanations for the world around us. That is something that we would expect under atheism and would not expect under theism. So that's why it's evidence for one over the other. That was the entire point that I was bringing up in that. And then

when you bring up about questions we can ask about the foundation of all things in the universe, the first one we have to ask, which you just seem to have skirted right past is, is it necessary for our universe to have a foundation? And that's the question where people that study metaphysics

that's what they haven't been able to answer. There's three current camps in the metaphysics literature on that. Foundationalism is just one. So you can't just assume that a foundation is even necessary because there's also infinitism and coherentism, which are viewed as being equal in terms of their metaphysical footing. There's not really any arguments that the consensus would agree privileges one over the other. So there's three possibilities here. We can't just all just assume

assume that there has to be some sort of foundation to being an assumption without a good reason. Yeah, yeah. So I can agree with you 100%, although that's not quite the argument I was going with. But I agree that we can't just assume anything. And so when we're looking at the foundation, what I meant here is whether or not there is an explanation that makes sense of the totality of existences.

So it's not necessarily that, you know, a theistic foundation or a natural, you know, what we're saying is that the explanation behind existence itself. And so if you want to push back and say, well, you know, I don't think there needs to be any explanation, then I think that would be a good time to kind of get into the slides where we can start getting into the principle of explanation and so on. Well, I don't know. You want me to share? Yeah, yeah. I think that'll be valuable. All right. Let's kind of look at that.

Whenever you're ready, we can do a screen share. This is going great. Yeah. This is great. Yeah. So, Paul, I guess we'll go in order and kind of run through the first two. Actually, start with the other one first. Yeah. Okay. So, can you kind of blow that up? Let's see. Okay. Okay.

So let me pull it up on my screen here. Okay, so when we're looking at, you know, truth seeking and explanation. So there's an argument here. So I want to say aiming for truth is valuable. If aiming for truth is valuable, then generally speaking, aiming for truth is more likely to lead to true beliefs, for that's what makes it valuable.

If, generally speaking, aiming for truth is more likely to lead to true beliefs, then some explanation of any given data, state of affairs, or fact is more probable than no explanation, other things being. Therefore, given...

Therefore, given the given data probably has some explanation other things being equal. And so then we can use Josh Rasmussen's principle of explanation PE. And so PE merely states that for any data state of affairs or fact D, where there is some conceivable explanation of the data, and there is no reason to think that D is relatively different than explained data, then it is reasonable to

infer yes or it is reasonable to infer or likely that D has an explanation other things being equal. Now to be clear this point is not that there cannot in principle be any brute unexplained facts. This proposal is merely that you know for any given data D the default position is that there is probably some explanation other things being equal. And so this point is highlighting that unless we have some explanation

for why it shouldn't be the case, then the best explanation is more probable than no explanation.

Can I butt in here? Yeah, sure. So what I'm hearing is something to the effect of a more complex framing of the idea that a personal God that created the universe is the best explanation for why the universe is intelligible, because that God would desire for us to have that ability or for the universe to have those kinds of characteristics.

And you say that that's the best inference. However, what I would say is, how is this not also an argument, for example, simulation theory, a grand coder that is not a supernatural being, just a being of kind of unimaginable complexity and technological prowess or whatever? How is this not also an argument for that? And maybe you think that it is an argument for that. And just one real quick thing.

I think the big problem for that is if you think it could be an argument for that, if we are, if we are trying to infer based on priors, if we're trying to do some sort of like inductive reasoning, which inference to the best conclusion is that type of thing. We know that weak simulations exist. We make them right. We don't know that the supernatural exists. It's a possible explanation, but it,

I don't see how that rises above in probability over some sort of non-supernatural cause and explanation and reason behind the universe that we saw.

Okay, yeah, yeah, great. I think that's really valuable. I kind of appreciate these insights here. And so what I would say is that, you know, I would argue we can include simulation theory, but what would make the most sense to me is to appeal to what Josh Raspi's policy argument from arbitrary limits. And so that's going to kind of get into the nature of theoretical virtues, like, you know, the methods we use in theory choice for deciding which would be

would be the better theory between simplicity, explanatory power, depth, unification, and so on. And so I would utilize his argument from arbitrary limits that a supreme foundation would lack arbitrary limits, whereas a simulation theory and these various other naturalistic explanations are going to contain arbitrary limits, which are cutoffs without-- Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. I love that, and I really want to respond to that. Go ahead.

Okay, yeah, sure. No problem. I think that the world that we live in right now is one of arbitrary limits, thus evidence of an atheistic simulation over and above a god. And the quick and easy explanation for that is that there is a resolution to our universe, an all-powerful god.

There's no reason why that they their universe would have arbitrary limits like a resolution Like we cannot resolve anything smaller than a point like it's just like all of our understanding of physics breaks down at that level and like there's Heisenberg's uncertainty principle these are arbitrary limits to our reality that an all

powerful God would have no reason. He could just continuously, like, you know, generating space infinitesimally small. There's no reason why we need these hard resolutions. Whereas, you are correct, an atheistic simulation theory would have these boundaries, which is exactly what we see, because there's a finite computing power. So,

it makes our universe is more evidence of simulation theory than it is that an all powerful God created it. And then really, really quickly, one last thing. I think you confused what I was talking about

When we're talking about foundationalism and the fundamental or whatever, go and look at the Stanford Encyclopedia page for Fundamentality if you want to read more about this. But the three options I went through, it's not like saying, oh, either they have an explanation or they don't have an explanation. It's that either explanation is fundamental, as in foundational, like you're trying to say there's some sort of foundational bedrock explanation.

OK, foundations continue going back infinitely and infinite regress of explanations, which is physically and mathematically possible. Or you have coherentism where there's some sort of level of mutual explanations without this hierarchy, which is a little bit more confusing for me to wrap my head around. But the metaphysicists out there swear to me that these three are at least metaphysically on equal footing.

Okay, so yeah, and I appreciate your kind of feedback there. So let me kind of explain what Josh Rasmussen's argument from arbitrary limits is actually saying.

So what he's doing is, you know, he's looking at, you know, we judge a theory by its simplicity, explanatory power and unification, and also its causal adequacy to bring about the phenomenon in question. Right. And so what Josh is saying is that when it comes to arbitrary limits, that a supreme foundation would be the foundation of all limits itself. And so what these, you know, what?

like you're mentioning with these arbitrary limits. So what he's saying is that a naturalistic explanation would have these where there's no further explanation, whereas a supreme foundation doesn't have these because it's the foundation of all limits itself. And so it's not like what you're thinking. It's more of a stage two contingency argument than necessarily like, you know, looking at some

state of affairs like, you know, Heisenberg uncertainty principle, that's not really relevant to the argument. That makes sense to you, Eric? I...

I stopped paying attention kind of halfway through because I came up with what I wanted to say in response. So I'm not trying to be disrespectful. I was just absorbed in a thought that I had. Part of the value of dialogue is exploring these ideas. Yeah, yeah. Let's let Planet Peterson – sorry, Eric. I just keep looking at your name. But let's let Eric have his injection. So if you had a thought and you wanted to kind of like pull back and give us your two cents there, that would be great.

Yeah, the two problems I see, again, based on the first part of what I heard you say, was you invoked elegance, parsimony, and simplicity.

And an omni being of infinite incomprehensibility is not a simplistic or parsimonious explanation. It's singular and it's satisfactory because it, it plays into sort of like intuitions we have, I suppose, but I don't think it actually gets you there. But the other thing is what I, what I see happening, and this is why I brought up the simulation theory kind of thing is you're,

What I see you kind of doing is looking at the natural world to infer supernaturalism. This is the kind of thing we would expect to see under supernaturalism. But I don't see how naturalism or just the natural world, I should really say, contains nuggets of the supernatural within it over the idea that some other mere kind of naturalism exists.

would be responsible for this. Because I think that a simulation,

Something natural would just beget more natural things. Something supernatural, if it could do anything, it could obviously create a universe like the one we live in. But we would also expect to see, I would feel like we should expect to see miracles. It's kind of weird that they just kind of stopped happening at some point in Earth's history. As soon as they invented cameras. Okay, I know.

Yeah, okay, so let me respond to those two real quick. Okay, so when it comes to simplicity and how we do theory choice, so I mean, this is really prevalent in the works if you read like Swinburne, Rasmussen, that when it comes to simplicity, what we're looking at is a supreme foundation that lacks arbitrary limits. And so there's one thing is when you're talking about all these omni attributes and everything, it's important that we don't,

the consequences of theory against the simplicity of a theory. In other words, so what we're doing is we're positing a supreme or let's say a perfect foundation that's purely actual without any arbitrary limits. Okay. And so it would follow in consequence of that,

that these various theistic attributes may obtain like goodness, justice, love, and so on, that would follow and be entailed from the supremacy of the foundation. But that doesn't count against the initial simplicity of the theory, number one. And number two, when it comes to simulation and so on,

It's perfectly, you know, that's not really an objection because when it comes to naturalism and supernatural, you know, like I said, I'm just looking at the foundation of existence. And I'm saying that, you know, a supreme foundation would make the most sense.

of things like consciousness, moral awareness, and that a narrative of redemption even makes sense of suffering and these bad states of affairs that have pain as well. And so, like I said, we can even call this foundation natural if we want to. Like I'm conceding all processes. That's not what's in question. And so I think that- I understand that those things make sense to you.

to you but if they're not making sense to me what advice would you have to give me to where I can get on your level to where these things because to me like the things we're talking about do not I was not raised Christian it's a totally foreign background to my understanding of the world so I'm like

That stuff that you just said right now did not make sense to me, brother. So I'm just trying to understand. Okay. Yeah. I appreciate it. We're 20 minutes in, like roughly about. So did we want to pivot to like some of more of like the resurrection arguments? Yeah. Like you, yeah, you gave a lot of. Just real quick. Let me give you a quick answer to kind of go with. It's within the philosophy of religion. So if you're, you know, from the atheist side, if you read like Sobel, Apocrypha,

So that's sort of the way they dialogue with each other is in terms of the foundation, how well it explains the states of affairs and what it paints and so on.

All right. Let's try to shift gears there for sure and move into some of the arguments for resurrection and try to tie in some of these broader arguments to the Christianity, well, the worldview there. So let's hand it over to you there, Apollos, and let's talk about the resurrection for a little bit. All right. So I think that – Apollos, you're muted. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There we go.

Go ahead, Grayson. I think that obviously we're going to have issues with the argument that the evidence for the Christian God is the existence of the Gospels. I think that we're going to have obvious issues with if we if we thought that the Gospels were historically reliable, we would already be Christians. Right.

So like how do you support this reliability of the Gospels? Because I think Blaine Peterson and I both consider them to be contradictory both internally and externally with reality. Yeah, I would just say that in addition to the minimal facts, there have been many proponents of more conservative scholarship in terms of trying to harmonize the contradictions.

So I guess like your main issue with the resurrection argument is the gospels being contradictory or? Well, there's that and there's some other things too. I mean...

Okay. I really appreciate that you didn't say the reason we don't believe is because we are lost in our sin or some bullshit like that. So thank you for that. I want to, we'll get to the gospels, but I want to go over something you kind of said earlier.

something else that you said that's really related to this. So you said, no, the gospels don't read as a type of narrative that was constructed to push an agenda, right?

Well, no, no, no. That wasn't what I said. I said that all narratives push an agenda, all history pushes an agenda. But it's a matter of whether or not that agenda would bleed into the facticity of the events portrayed within.

Okay, so I heard you say something. Well, this is probably not super important either here or there. Maybe it can get brought up later. But what I would want to, I want to go into the five minimum facts thing. So, for example, do you guys concede the empty tomb or not? Yeah.

I would not just concede that because I mean, like, I don't have necessarily an issue if that was true, but it just seems to fly in the face of what we would normally know about the way that Romans disposed of crucifixion victims. Like,

throwing them in an unmarked grave, not giving them back to like their followers or whatever. I mean, that's normal. So this would be an exception. It's not like it's a, it's not impossible to think that, Hey, maybe there was somebody that bribed some Romans and got the body or it's not impossible, but it means it's, I would say it strains plausibility, especially thinking that, um,

you know, like Joseph of Arimathea was some wealthy benefactor of Jesus that had never been mentioned previously and even sometimes is... Well, let's let them stand on their own feet for what they're going to claim. I think that'd be probably best to comment on, but... Well, it's on the screen, right? I mean, they have their arguments on the screen. I mean, if I said anything that they don't agree with, I mean, I'm just saying stuff that's in the Bible here. No worries. Okay.

Okay, well, I would just say that while crucified Jews were buried to keep the Torah, we have plenty of historical sources that indicate that this was not just the sometimes, but this was the rule in Judea. So like here, I have many Jewish sources from Judea.

Roughly around the time period that talk about the burial traditions, because the thing was, the Jewish communities had a law in the Torah that basically said that you ought to bury your dead before sunset. And so they even buried the crucified according to Josephus and various

Yeah, I don't think that that is what Josephus is saying. Josephus is bringing up exceptions that were remarkable enough to be noted for their exceptionality. I don't think that he's saying that there's a general practice

where they would-- - So this is the quote here from Jewish War 4.317, "The Jews used to take so much care of the burial of men that they took down those that were condemned and crucified and buried them before the going down of the sun." - Yeah.

Again, the Jews would do this, but the Romans permitting the Jews to do this. We know historically that the Romans did not permit the Jews to practice their religion however they saw fit. In fact, the Romans were notorious for not allowing the Jews to do whatever sort of religious customs that they wanted to. So we can't just take that to say, oh, the Romans allowed this. Yes, I understand it is a Jewish custom to bury the dead.

Before sunset, but whether or not the Romans would permit that as something else. And even if I were to accept that and just say, okay, well then there's this rich guy that just happened to do that. If this Joseph of Arimathea is like a member of the Sanhedrin, then supposedly he's voting to condemn and crucify Jesus just hours before he is then

using his political influence to try to convince him to get the body and it just it doesn't make it trains plausibility or believability just from the actual logistics of that alone before you get to the part which is the reason i don't accept the resurrection which we haven't even touched on yet yeah so two things over there you said that uh there are no cases where uh the romans would allow the jews to practice their uh their religious customs and that um was the other thing

I didn't say that there were no cases. I just said it just strains plausibility or belief. Yeah, it strains plausibility. Yeah, so, like, I have a quote over here, some quotes over here from regarding Pilate backing down under Jewish pressure, you know. So, like, there are many times over here you try to erect aqueducts

I know I've read in shields and then he would back off right? There's a big difference I've read the collection of Josephus too and the difference is is that he backed off then because there was a massive protest and a riot that was threatening his stability to control the city but in this case the followers of Christianity were not

large or like they're not the entire city of jerusalem which he would have been intimidated by this massive mob in this case that you're reading from in this case small number of followers in your own holy text they don't even all show up to try to influence pontius pilate at the crucifixion so this is not plausible either i

All right. Not that I don't enjoy the riffing there, Grayson, but if you can give just a few minutes here for Apollos and for Travis to present their evidence there as they want to present it there and then make some commentary. And also, Planet Peterson, Eric, my goodness, I'm going to get it. I'll get it before the end of the show, I swear. Yeah, I also want to hear from you as well. And they're free to interrupt whenever.

I'm just presenting some slides over here. So yeah, like what do you do, for example, like the archaeological evidence of buried crucified victims under that were given a Roman crucifixion? Like we have Yehohanan. Yeah, so like... That doesn't make it a likely event. Right. Given what we know about Jewish burial practices, given what we know about Pontius Pilate's

basically conceding to the Jewish authorities in many circumstances. And actually one of the quotes I argue for here basically says that in the case of the aqueduct, he actually collaborated with the with the Sanhedrin in order to build the aqueduct. So it's not like he's being forced by like some mob. That's actually why they came out to protest against the aqueduct. But in any case,

Yeah, well, the mob was against the Sanhedrin and Pontius Pilate's decisions about using sacred water. We don't have to get into the details of Josephus in these examples for this point. But if I could talk about the main reason why I don't accept the resurrection. I don't know if you're still trying. Because right now, everyone can just see you looking for your slides and no one can see anyone else. Are you still trying to find them coming in, Puddy?

Well, I do have this on the screen, but yeah, let's, if you don't mind, we'll flick back to our main screen there, Apollos. So when you find the article you're looking for, but yeah, let's. I'm just trying to keep, I'm just, I'm just trying to keep track of like what the main reason is. So let's, let's hear from Grayson. He wants to give you guys his personal reasons for why he does not find this compelling. So go ahead there, Grayson. We'll talk about it. Okay.

Yeah, yeah. So I think that like obviously for supernatural events, testimonial evidence is going to be pretty difficult as being evidence in the first place. If you were going to try to use testimony evidence to believe that some supernatural event occurred, ideally you would want multiple eyewitness examples from differing perspectives and worldviews and differing agendas and stuff, all corroborating that they saw this happen.

We don't have that in the case of the resurrection. We don't have that in the case of any supernatural anything. In fact, like the resurrection, it's not just the case where absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. In this case, we should really, really expect to have some of these testimonies if the Gospels are historical facts, because the Gospels talk about how, like, what, 5%.

500 other saints, their tombs opened up and they walked through the streets of Jerusalem. That is something we should absolutely... Well, they don't say 500. I'm just saying. Any number. I don't care about the specific number. Any number of people getting out of their tombs and walking down the streets of Jerusalem, that is something that we would expect to have from eyewitness testimony from lots and lots of people describing. So, well, my position on that... Just one second there, Apollos. Travis has been trying to jump in for a couple seconds here. Yeah, no worries.

Yeah, thanks, appreciate it. So I was just going to give my thoughts from the Eastern Orthodox perspective on the saints who rose up out of their tombs and walked among the streets of Jerusalem. And so in the early church and in the Orthodox tradition, what that's referring to is

The resurrection, you know, it's symbolic of the resurrection, you know, that the saints, you know, will come out of the grave and it's symbolizing New Jerusalem down, you know, so it's the resurrection of the saints that will walk among New Jerusalem. And so it's more prophetic in that sense. It's giving a metaphorical account rather than the literal wooden description of people coming out of their graves and like walking around physical Jerusalem in 33 A.D.

So that's one option that's on the table. Yeah, and as far as my opinion goes, I actually go back and forth on it being either literal or metaphorical. There are some scholars who say that there is genuine apocalyptic sort of symbolism that's being described there. I sometimes tend to favor the view that there are...

that it's almost like John the Baptist being raised of the dead, or at least people thinking Jesus was John the Baptist being raised from the dead in the sense that he was spiritually resurrected. But in any case, you said something really interesting. You said that testimony is not going to cut it for evidence. Can we all agree, though, that there are qualities of testimony that can be scrutinized for the veracity of whether or not they're true?

I agree. That's actually the next thing I wanted to get into. Yeah. So we're on the record, just clear that I didn't say that I said that

you would want a very specific kind of testimonial evidence, not just like testimonial of some supernatural. You would want a lot of different eyewitness testimonials, and then it would be a stronger and stronger case for me. Well, wouldn't that be the case with, say, for example, the 1 Corinthians 15 Creed where it talks about Paul, Peter groups, like the apostles, the 500, the 12 apostles? Wouldn't that fit the criterion of multiple independent attestation?

Well, okay. So in that case, it doesn't appear. Yeah. So the Corinthian Creed, the oldest version of it just says Jesus appeared first to Peter, then the other 12. It doesn't mention the rest of the 500 in terms of the earliest version. Before you guys bounce again, Eric's been wanting to jump in here. So let's let Eric have a chance to make his point as well.

Sure. It's going to go in a slightly different direction, but we are going to stay on the concept of testimony and miracles. And I'm going to get into these five minimum facts, too. So do either of you believe that the angel Moroni ever appeared to anybody? Nope. No. So the fact that there are affidavits by people does not make that more likely to be true than not true for you?

Yeah, so Mormonism definitely doesn't do the case for me because when we look at a lot of like the historical data concerning Mormonism. So like, yeah, for the three witnesses claimed to have seen both the plates and the angel, by the way, all these three were excommunicated from the church. They never recanted. Even when they were excommunicated, they went to their graves saying they really did saw it and they swore on that.

Well, there's more to it. Well, there's more to it, right? So, like, eight witnesses only reported handling and seeing the golden plates without mentioning a visitation from the angel. With the three witnesses, they said they saw the plates by the power of God in the presence of an angel. So, say, for example, Martin Harris reportedly admits seeing the plates in a visionary or a spiritual sense rather than physically. Yeah.

Hey, Apollo, it's really quick. That was exactly what I was just about to say next about the Corinthian Creed, by the way. Just so you know, I was saying it appeared to Peter and then as well. Appear doesn't necessarily, it doesn't imply physicality. That just is an appearance. Oh, yeah. You have to look at the context. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah, so like we'll get to that. Someone bring it up later in terms of like physical appearance or the resurrection being understood as physical. But yeah, like in terms of Mormonism, the golden plates were evident, were reportedly taken back by the angel Moroni, leaving no physical evidence of their existence. Joseph Smith wasn't martyred, but unwilling to die. He was killed attempting to flee by jumping off a window, crying for help. He shot back.

at the crowd coming after him in self-defense with a pepper pistol. Half of the witnesses, mostly the ones who didn't have familial ties to Joseph Smith, including all the main three witnesses to the alleged Angel Moroni, which is arguably the only supernatural thing here, like a bunch of like rocks covered with like a cloth isn't really anything supernatural, including all the main three witnesses to the alleged Angel Moroni over the course of their ministry, either voluntarily left or excommunicated from the church. But never recanted.

Yeah, well, there's more to it than that. There's also not any actual reliable historical records that the eyewitnesses of Jesus' resurrection were ever martyred for their beliefs. Like, we don't know that. Really? So you don't think, like, Peter or Paul were martyred? We don't have the historical records that would verify that.

No, in terms of the reliable historical record, Peter disappears as soon as he leaves Jerusalem. We don't know what happens to him from there. So in terms of reliable, we have... Let's let Eric out on the end there, guys, as well. He's trying to jump in.

What's different with Mormonism is that we have the actual handwriting of those people that are the people in the story. We don't have anything remotely close to that for what's in the gospel. And with regards to the five minimum facts, these are for the most part literally just claims about what people believe.

Instead of like, I was here and I saw it. They are like reports of what people believed in. And religious people are willing to die for their religious beliefs all the time in every religion. And there's actually also no historical evidence that they were ever given the opportunity to recant their beliefs.

their beliefs to spare their lives they were merely blamed for societal ills and killed for being christians they were not given the opportunity to recant at least that we know well i mean like the very moment they decided to follow jesus like they could have recanted day one because they knew that their leader was executed and given the hostile uh given the hostile uh uh nature of uh a lot of like the basically like the reception of like early christianity um

that doesn't support the veracity of any religion that's ever been under persecution so let's let travis jump in here travis go ahead oh i've had a tip at that as far as you know the ability to uh recant um what about

So you look at like, let's say the martyrdom of Polycarp of Smyrna or Ignatius of Antioch, like would you accept those as being historically valid? Or would you say those accounts just aren't historically valid? Or how would you look at those?

I don't regard personal testimony as being the type of evidence that is extraordinary enough to support miraculous claims for any religion. You guys don't believe it for Mormonism or any other mythology except your own, and I don't see a reason to privilege your own. And if I could just answer the question of what you're asking, like,

Like, sure, it doesn't. I don't know the specifics for those historical, but I don't it doesn't really care because I was talking about eyewitnesses to the resurrection. I know that people are willing to die for their beliefs, and I'm sure that Polycarp and those other early Christian martyrs really, really did believe in the things that they died for. But that doesn't mean eyewitnesses to the resurrection.

No, no, it doesn't logically follow. Yeah, and a lot of like the Ignatian epistles and Polycarp say that the apostles were martyred, but in any case, like first time, like the successor to the Roman church, arguably the eyewitness to these martyrdoms of Peter and Paul, for example, Peter being the chief witness to the group appearance to the 12. And then we also have like in Josephus, it's tested James, the brother of Jesus, who was martyred.

Oh, I accept that one. But that was not because he was martyred necessarily for the belief. That's because there was a local bishop in Jerusalem that was doing a power of the law, right? That was all politics. Josephus explains it. I've read Josephus' Antiquity of the Jews. I know what you're quoting from. That has nothing to do with like... How do you know it has nothing to do with whether or not... How do you know it has nothing to do with the fact that they believed in Jesus? In fact, when it comes to like... Josephus explains politics...

It's a bishop that wanted more power. So he turned against Josephus or James and had him killed. There you go. It's explained in Josephus in the source you're citing from. Yeah. Well, you know, Josephus wasn't a supporter in the truth of the Christian religion. Oh, no, he wasn't. But he was he was he attested the fact that James, the brother of Jesus, was martyred. Now, in the case of I can attest to the fact that

900 people died at Jonestown for what they believed in. But that doesn't mean that what they believed in was true. Yeah, he was bringing it up because James would have been an eyewitness because it would have been his brother. Yeah. And I also have a set of slides for Jonestown regarding his faith healings and stuff like that. I don't believe in Jonestown, so you don't got to tell me that he was full of it.

Yeah, no worries. So let's move on to testimony and miracles. So do you guys preclude the possibility of miracles based on naturalism?

Nope. I mean, they're totally possible for miracles to happen. I just haven't seen one or haven't seen any evidence for one. And I'm very curious about why you guys who are not Catholic, if you're talking about testimonies of miracles, how do you just discount all the Marian appearances and the Virgin Mary doing all these miracles that people like hundreds of people witness? Well, I'm Orthodox, so I do accept it. Oh, great. Great. Okay.

Yeah, so do you guys believe that testimony can ever amount to evidence for a miracle?

It's not that it couldn't be evidence. I just think that because you disbelieve every mythology on earth except your own, despite whatever the people that believe in those mythologies say or despite whatever their oral traditions are, because I think intuitively you also understand that people being mistaken, lied to, misinterpreting things,

seeing things aren't there, et cetera, is more likely than the actual laws of nature being suspended in a particular place.

Okay, good. We're getting somewhere. So, uh, there are five main critiques that I'd like to bring up from Hume's abject failure. Hume, uh, uh, uh, John Ehrman is an agnostic, uh, responding to David Hume. Uh, so the first one deals with the idea that, uh, the laws of nature can never be violated. So, you know, I mean, like me catching a phone doesn't violate the law of gravity. That's just, uh, the descriptive, uh, the laws as a matter of fact, they're just descriptors of what we observe and, uh,

If we observe me catching a phone, it doesn't mean we suspend belief in the law of gravity. It just means that there's another agent that is coming into the system to produce that effect. And likewise, when it comes to the resurrection, there's no like natural law that says like dead people stay dead or anything like that. And in regards to testimony, I mean, like all evidence relates to testimony, right?

So consider that laws have, so like laws wouldn't be like pretty much like a pretty much like our understanding of quote unquote uniform experience. But even that is like built off of testimonies. I mean, think about the way that you've learned science. You hear testimonies about all these experiments and so on and so forth.

Science is reproducible, whereas miracles... I mean, God grant me a McChicken. I mean, yeah, history isn't reproducible, but you wouldn't say history doesn't exist, would you? That's a good point. Well, not exactly, but...

historical claims have, at least in principle, specific types of evidences that could be unearthed to confirm them. And so, you know, you can have a historical hypothesis that can be confirmed with evidence. Yeah, so that...

You could also, by the way, you could also reproduce the test of your historical theories with the evidence. So like, hey, I have an idea that this empire collapsed in this era. Oh, but here's a document from the year after that from that. So there you go. Like that's reproducible. Multiple people could do that exact same test and reproduce that historical evidence flying in the face of my historical ideas. So.

Yeah, so I'm genuinely like, so what's the argument when it comes to like testimony and principle not being able to ascertain to a miracle?

Or is there an argument like that that you guys are all... The fact that you don't believe any testimony of any other mythology would be an excellent starting point. Yeah, and I'm not being a deviant to those mythologies. I would ask, why is it that you disregard these mythologies, given that your worldview allows for the types of events said in those mythologies to take place?

I don't necessarily disagree with them. I hold to what's known as sort of the divine counsel view. That's what people like Michael Heiser advocate is, you know, it's sort of like, you know, the it's an understanding of Deuteronomy where the fallen nations were given over to the sons of God, which, you know, can be seen as sort of fallen angels or spirit beings or the sons of God and different deities. So I think that's a certain. Sorry.

Yeah, well, just I was going to say, I don't, you know, in principle, have too much of a problem, granting that there may be other spiritual entities or things of that nature that, you know, what I'm saying is that I think Christianity contains the fullness of truth.

Travis, quick question. How many sons of God are there? It's the same number as the number of nations, right, which is traditionally held to be 70 in Jewish tradition. Did you know that El, the Canaanite god that served as an inspiration for the God of the Old Testament, had 70 sons? And it's this reason why the God of the Old Testament has 70 sons that are the heads of the nations.

because it's a direct parallel with ancient Canaanite mythology. Like straight up, one-to-one, 70 sons of El, 70 sons for Yahweh. Yeah, I think people like Kaiser and others have addressed this pretty well. I don't even see that as being a problem, especially from something like the Orthodox tradition where they're going to take a more, what's the word? Sort of like where it's not necessarily true. Epistemically humble?

No, not epistemically. Allegorical. Sorry, I couldn't come to that. They take a more allegorical interpretation to the Old Testament and everything. And so what I'm saying is that according to certain renditions of the Bible and certain views, this isn't necessarily a problem for Christianity, that there may be these other spiritual claims and so forth.

and so it is just not really a defeater for christian it really sounds like this and yeah and the other part it sounds like you're just oh you know cherry picking the outlandish stuff in the bible that's allegorical that can't be true the all the saints rising up and going we have methodologies of exegesis but then the other stuff that all has to be true and it just sounds like picking and choosing yeah i understand how you might be not arbitrary at all

Yeah, it's not arbitrary just for myself and then I'll let Paula share. But just for myself, you know, as an Orthodox, you know, that's one of our big concerns is that, you know, that, you know, you're free to interpret the Bible any kind of way and that can lead to these, you know, contradictory claims and everything. And so that's why, you know, the Orthodox hold to holy tradition. And so, you know, what I go by is the way they interpret.

the church has historically interpreted those passages and so that's going to be like you know through the church fathers and and so on and so forth so there's a method it's not arbitrary from from the way i interpret it and from what i understand it's not arbitrary from the way apollos does either yeah i take the hard line and say that uh there is no uh comparable miracle when it comes to the resurrection of jesus what yeah i would agree he's not even the only person that resurrects in the bible

No, I mean like with regards to different religious traditions contrasting against Christianity. Well, let's see. On the other hand, we have examples like Nero's resurrections, which happened multiple times in history. Let's bring that up. We have the evidence of them leading armies. Entire resurrected Nero leading an entire army of followers that the Romans then sent a force to quash. So wait, what?

led by a resurrected man. So where, like, why? And those were some more contemporary sources closer than the gospel. So like, can you give me an example?

You want me to get you an example of a source for Nero's resurrection? I can do that one second. I don't have it ready to go. Eyewitnesses, groups, you know, to Nero's resurrection and that they have no predisposition to the contrary. Because I'm sure you're well aware that the Roman...

there were politically motivated apotheosis rituals with state-sponsored cult-promoted deification. You don't think there's motivated reasoning for the apostles of Jesus? Oh, yeah, I think there's motivated reasonings, but that it would... I think those reasonings are inherently based on truth in the sense that there's no predisposition to the contrary because their lives are being threatened every day. Oh, I disagree. I can tell you exactly the reasons to the contrary.

Okay. Their entire conception of who they are and their place in the universe is all wrapped up in this idea that the person that they're following, their leader, is the Jewish Messiah who was not supposed to die. So either when he died, they have to either jettison all of their beliefs about themselves and the universe and their ultimate meaning and purpose in life. And the entire... When they wake up in the morning, what gives them purpose?

They have to jettison all that and the person they were following for years was not the Messiah and they have to change all their beliefs or they have to somehow rationalize, hey, his death must have some sort of deeper meaning. Let's interpret that. Let's figure out what all this means and preserve all of our identity.

So where in the cultural milieu of Jewish expectation does it say that the Messiah must resurrect? It doesn't. They would not expect the Messiah to resurrect. I actually just got done saying that to you.

Yeah, so how, how was the cognitive dissonance and trying to read jettison back to like their expectations if their expectation there was no expectation for them to believe that Messiah. Well, we're no longer mainstream Jews at this point. They had jettisoned their mainstream Judaism to follow a.

A guy claiming to be the Messiah, right? They were now in a splinter fragmentary called off of the main Judaistic beliefs. Now they could go back to what they believed and just admit that they were wrong for the last years and the person that they were convinced as the Messiah wasn't. That's really, really painful for people to have to come to grips with. So they could just preserve their nice, comfortable identity that they've established for themselves and just figure out what his death means. And they did. And that's how we have, you know, the Christian theology today.

Yeah, let me share my screen real quick. Yeah, if we have time to get around to it too, there was an argument, another argument for Christianity I had based on a supreme foundation, if we want to go that route too. Okay, yeah, I prefer to stick on the resurrection, but my main point is that you need – I think it's very implausible that –

Even within like the diversity of Second Temple Judaism, like where does it say that the Messiah would be killed and resurrected? I just I'm telling you for the second time, it doesn't stop asking. They they know, but but you had to apply it of what happened. But how can they make sense of something that's not within their own like cultural, myogra cognitive framework?

That's why a new religion was born. Yeah, I just explained it to you twice, dude. That's why they were no longer Jews after it, and they made up a new religion. They had to change.

All right. We may be hitting a wall on this one. So what I would do is I'd say let's end the screen share for now. And if we are going to screen share again, let's give it a little bit of time and let the audience have a little break from the screen shares. I'm going to hand it over to you, Travis. You want to take us down into some new territory. So if you don't mind screen share for now there, Apollo. So we'll circle back. Don't worry.

But our side presented arguments and lines of evidence that have so far, we've dealt with some of our opponent's openings, but our openings have gone largely untouched in this discussion. Okay. What would you like me to address? Whatever you want. As far as your arguments. I listed four or five arguments. Would you want me to share my screen so you can see what they are again? Okay.

If you could just tell me, I'm sure I'm aware of them. Okay, well, yeah. I know of them. You can share if you'd like. Sorry, Grayson, to cut you off. But you can. I mean, of course, it's only fair because we've had screen shares on the other side for quite a bit. So if you want to put it up for reference. We can maybe talk about one of these or the last. I guess we did talk about the last one with the track record thing. So these are four points I brought up. Peterson brought up arguments in his as well.

You know, one of the things we talked about... Hold on, we're going to give the floor over to Grayson to outline his arguments and then we'll... If they want to respond to one of them, they can. But I think both of us touched on point number two. I think about how these universally accessible truths, the way they're distributed on the earth, it's not like...

It's not grouped together like geographically like this like everybody sure EPS that there's one son because everybody can accept access that truth and Okay, it tells us that it's supposed to be universally acceptable accessible that God is real. So, okay, so Let me just read this so God beliefs are probabilistically determined that

by one's birthplace, which one would expect of cultural norms, not of universally accessible truth. So there's some different ways you want to go with this. Obviously, we want to avoid the genetic genetic fallacy. But are you saying, you know, because we could say that

For example, Christopher C. Knight, he has a really good work that presents Christ as the divine logos. And so it kind of incorporates these different religious claims, like being in line with Christianity.

Christianity. Now this is a bit controversial. Not everyone's going to, you know, find this plausible. I'm just mentioning a scholar who kind of takes a different kind of route with this. And he will say that, you know, if the divine logos, which is the word, you know, Christ, the divine wisdom of God and so on, if he, you know, created the cosmos and imbued it with divine wisdom, that's sort of like how we see convergence in biology, that these certain more

again a religious type of truths we would see them sort of converge even through through once different a cultural conditioning and so on yeah they would and so they would kind of converge into truth similar to Christianity like okay why don't we see that happening then why is it that you know two thousand years ago this Jesus guy went over here we got this Christian religion and then ever since that happened

It's continued to fragment into smaller and smaller groups. We've got Mormonism spinning off that we've talked about. And that happens in every single religion to the same degree. We don't see any, hey, wait a minute, this religion is behaving differently than all the other ones. Maybe it's true. Like the way that religions develop and change over time are the same for all of religions.

So if you were to ask me that, now, Apollos may have something different, but if you were to ask me that, I would say, well, that kind of highlights the value of being Eastern Orthodox, that holds to, you know, traditions that have continued unbroken since, you know, Christ and the apostles, you know, because in fact, and I could even bring up an argument that like,

a foundational being of a certain nature would have some reason to want to communicate his truths to people of all times and places. And so I think that really makes sense out of something like a holy tradition, which you see in Greek Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism. Now, I think it favors Orthodoxy more than... But there's so little standard... If there's a true personal God out there,

And you who is a revelatory God, then it doesn't really make sense to us that the religious concepts that people have and religious practices and taboos and even the concept of God for all these people all throughout history has been completely contradictory. There's so little standardization behind any of it.

Right. So I think this really gets into a good point too, how we do evidence for our theory and whether or not some, you know, contingent observation is evidence against our theory. And so given this sort of axiological view that I'm going with of an axiologically supreme being who kind of narrates this grand story, what we do is we look at what obtains on the whole. So we don't want to necessarily hyper focus on some temporary time t. We're looking at, you know,

you know, the narrative entails on the whole. And so on this one,

Please, this is important, I promise. And so what, you know, obtains on the whole is that all creatures will come to know Christ or, you know, God has their Redeemer, their Savior, and they will come to look back on their lives and find it non-regrettable. They will come to endorse what they've gone through as being, you know, what formed their identity. And so for some contingent observation, we are not just going to look at what, you know, focuses, you know, what happens over here.

but kind of what obtains on the, what does the narrative entail altogether? So Travis, sort of a teleological perspective. Yeah, I got, I just have a quick question because it sounded to me like you were just saying like that you can't conceive of anything falsifying your idea of a God. Like, is there, you were just saying that like,

you know, this evidence against the existence of your God. So I'm just curious, what would go against your idea of a God, the supreme foundation? What would falsify that for you?

Yeah, so I think that's a good question. And so what, for me, it would be something, you know, because I'm taking a neurological approach to ultimate reality. And so it would be something that doesn't fit in well with that narrative. So, you know, I talked in my opening, like these various things fit in seamlessly, you know, into the narrative of ultimate redemption and triumph. So it would be something that really goes against the grain of an eventual redemption and triumph. So like what, though? What would that be?

For example, if there was some instance of suffering that couldn't even in principle be defeated, by being defeated I mean ultimately redeemed in nature,

you know, there's, you know, if atheism provided a better explanation of reality, you know, it would be evidence against my theory. It's, what I'm doing is I'm putting a supreme foundation out there as a theory. So I'm not asking you to accept it. I'm putting it out there as a theory. And I'm saying, well, hey, let's kind of look at, you know, the principles we use in the philosophy of science. And let's test this theory to see how well it explains various observations.

And so that's when we could get into these theistic arguments and atheological arguments and so on. Okay. So it can be falsified.

I want to run with this. Can we stop sharing the screen? Oh, right, right. No worries. Let's go over to Eric. So the floor is yours. So the idea of there is suffering without redemption or whatever. Now, if you're just going to claim that Jesus really did live and resurrect, and that's true, so ultimately there was a redemption, then the only proof that would –

The only thing that would disprove that is if we can prove that the resurrection didn't really happen. But I don't want to go down that road because we just got done talking about the resurrection for a long time. But I want to talk about what...

what I think the biggest problems with the problem of evil are, are like the pointless suffering. So the key to suffering is, in the natural world that we see, and why I think this is not, that this counts as evidence against an omnibenevolent God, is that the suffering that is inflicted is done by impersonal forces.

And I don't really think that there's room for impersonal forces in the theistic world because you'd have to think that God desires a cosmic ray that strikes somebody and mutates a mole on their arm and gives them cancer. God would desire for that to happen. I don't think that really makes any sense. And there's also the problem that suffering is actually the means of creation in the natural world.

organisms are shaped by this brutal competition in and amongst themselves and within nature to try to exploit species and to try to reproduce. There's other stuff I want to talk about with regard to that, but I don't want to just go on forever. If I could really just quickly, one thing that would

count for you as evidence falsifying God would be if atheism would be a better explanation for our observable reality. Well, I have five aspects of our observable reality that I went through in my opener that I at least would consider atheism to be better at explaining than theism. So I think right there, you've got your sufficient falsifiable...

Okay, so let me come back to that. I'm glad we brought up the problem of evil because that's probably, that's, see, I have a real love for the philosophy of religion. That's like what I've really read the most on is the problem of evil within analytic philosophy of religion. So to kind of start off, you know, start off with like teleological evils, natural evils, and so on.

And so what matters here is going to be our axiology, which means what kind of, because you were talking about, you know, God would have to want this ray to be harmful and so on. And so is our fundamental axiology, which is the God justifying norms of allowing suffering.

And so the kind of actually axiology I was going to go with is, in fact, I mentioned it in my opening is what's highlighted by, you know, thinkers like Roderick Chisholm, Trent Doherty, Marilyn McLeod Adams. And that's what's known as the defeat condition. And so this states that God is permissible and allowing bad states of affairs that are in principle defeasible in the way that they can be defeated.

is by being that piece being integrated into an overall good whole that eventually becomes valuable and non-regrettable to the creature, be it a human or an animal. So I do believe in the animal afterlife. And so the view I--

Just to clarify, you do believe that both Eric and myself, if we do not repent, we will ultimately not have any redemption and that we will just suffer forever, right? No redemption for us? No, I don't believe that at all. No.

Nice. Not at all. That seems to be kind of different than standard Christian belief. Wait, wait. If Eric and I continue being atheists and we don't accept Jesus into our hearts, what is our ultimate redemption then? Since you believe fundamentally that the entire art for all beings is one of ultimate redemption, what is our redemption ultimately?

Well, see, I lean towards Christian universalism when it comes to that. But there's another response I can give to that doesn't have to necessarily grant heaven in order to defeat the suffering. So one way that, you know, in principle, he can defeat the suffering for an agent on the cross.

is to show them that their life is valuable and meaningful, and how they could have participated in an overall good whole had they chose it. And moreover, any rational being would have chosen in their place. And so Trent Doherty, for example, will take that route. Me, I'm sort of a hopeful universalist in that I think, for example, let's say you're atheism now,

Well, I think it's valuable because I think it can be truth tracking. It's a way of, you know, facing reality and trying to see it for what it is. So I think there is some value to it. And I think, you know, at this point, you know, it will become a non-regrettable part of your identity on the whole. I think, you know, you know how I was talking about. You're saying that I'm going to be like suffering in the afterlife, but I'm going to be like, you know what? I don't regret it. I didn't say you would.

All right, guys. Eric's trying to jump in here as well, so let's make some space if we can. Eric, you look like you're trying to jump in. Yeah, I just want to evolve this problem of evil discussion a little bit because what I typically hear and...

I heard a little bit of this response from Travis there is, you know, God allows suffering to happen. And that's part of a workaround for the problem of evil. But one of the big issues I see is that God directly commands and desires for suffering to happen. So, for example, even in a country like the United States, 100 years ago,

one in five children died before the age of five. And that was mostly due to infectious diseases. So

So naturally, yeah. Yes. And what we know is that God commanded that foreskins be removed in an era where infectious diseases would have been a far greater killer of people and causing untold amounts of suffering for peoples afflicted by it and for grieving families who lose a child. So God said, I need you to cut off those foreskins, knowing that that would cause an

Just an immeasurable amount of suffering. And all God, God could choose not to do that, but God desired for that to happen as a selfish means of, we don't have to get into the theological reason for all.

why circumcisions are happening or why they're done, like as a partial flesh sacrifice to discount real human sacrifice. Some people think that's why it is. Some people think it's for other reasons, but that's God commanding that to happen, not sitting back and being, which I think the indifference to allowing suffering is not consistent with omnibenevolence either. But God also does things like command that people be exterminated rather than revealing himself to them.

And we could talk about the story of Job next, but I don't want to ramble too much. I want to let you respond.

Yeah, okay, thanks, and I appreciate that. So, one, when it, you know, when it comes to, you know, like, you know, for some temporary time T in the Old Testament, you know, I would say, you know, number one, the Orthodox Church didn't necessarily take that interpretation of the Old Testament, and we're obviously under, you know, a Christological view now that doesn't entail, you know, the foreskin aspect, and there's a lot of different

ways that that can kind of be dealt with, you know, given ancient Near Eastern literature. Well, you don't do it, but they did do it, and it was under the command of God. Right, okay, so, and you're saying that that's part of the problem of evil, that that's part of suffering, and so here's... It's not God allowing suffering, that is God commanding it to happen. Unnecessarily.

Yeah, well, you'd have to make the case here now that that has any possible point to it other than God's selfishness or God works in mysterious ways we don't understand. God could have just not created us with foreskins, and then all of those children that died from infectious diseases from failed circumcisions would have still been alive. So it seems pretty unnecessary to me. Okay, so, you know, yeah, thank you. So circumcision, you know, it was an ancient Near Eastern way of...

you know there's an ancient Near Eastern motif to this that doesn't have to be taken literal so I don't want to get too far off into this okay so but

Look at what becomes evidence in terms of the problem of evil. Okay, because that's what we're really, you know, trying to decipher here. And what I'm saying is that given my axiology in order, you know, in order for something to count as evidence against theism, it would have to be indefeasible. And then what that means is that it can't even in principle be defeated because I'm applying.

a defeat condition. And so, you know, and I've also talked about the Christological narrative of redemption. And so if there was a story, a grand metaphysical story of how creatures come to overcome, you know, overcome their suffering and eventually become saints and heroes and victorious, well, part of that entails undergoing bad states of affairs. And so what I'm saying is that this, a narrative of eventual triumph and redemption

At the very least, has more explanatory power given the states of affairs like suffering than just the principle of indifference alone. Because naturalism, it doesn't entail that we will come to observe these specific states of affairs as well as a grand narrative of eventual triumph.

And when it comes to, you know, the foreskins and so forth, you could just say that it was part of an ancient Near Eastern motif. It kind of, you know, marked out, you know, for the Israelites that they were shipped to one true God and they weren't part of the Canaanite system. And, you know, as I mentioned, you know, Eastern Orthodoxy takes a lot of the Old Testament allegorical. So they're not even committed to the literal truth of it anyway. And so I think that that kind of answers that.

No. Travis, do you think that God commanded Israelites to remove the foreskin from their children? Yes, I think it's part—it's in Scripture, yes. Why did God do that? Do I think—I think it's an ancient Near Eastern motif against war, that it represents war.

And so, you know, the Near Eastern motifs, but but why would the Old Testament is it's an ancient Near Eastern book. God can do anything and he chose to cause untold infant death and suffering, as well as for for parents, you're an omni benevolent being do that.

Okay, let me explain what's going on here. It doesn't make much sense for an omnibenevolent being to do that. Okay, so let's kind of get this back in gear. What you're doing is you're assuming what's known as a necessity condition. A necessity condition states that a god of a certain moral ethic –

continue so yeah it's just saying we'll understand yeah yeah so so this is important this this i need to highlight the the mistake that's happening here like when it comes to the problem of evil so what's going on is you're you know assuming sort of what's known as a necessity condition and that states that you know a person of a normative moral ethics will do uh you know will only

allow suffering when to not do so would cause some greater suffering to occur. And so I'm rejecting that axiology. What I'm saying, what my axiological approach is, is that for any people to be evidence against theism, it would have to, in principle, be indefeasible. And so what that means is that there is no way that God could redeem that into an overall good whole. Now, if

- Let me finish this. - You need to give the argument and the evidence that there was any point to this then, and that, 'cause you're shifting the burden of proof onto us. You're saying, well-- - No, you didn't even let me finish. - Travis, you have been talking-- - But I've heard the exact same thing like three times in a row is all. I'm trying to be fair here, but it's also a little frustrating.

Well, yeah. Yeah, hold on. Grayson's trying to jump in too, guys, for quite a bit. So yeah, go ahead there, Grayson. I was going to say, I know I wasn't totally fair just because I know you're usually very capable of jumping in. But yeah, I'll let you go ahead. Go ahead, Grayson. Yeah, I'm just saying that there's a disproportionate amount of time here. I think we are being fair in the time. And like, yeah, like personally, I cannot wrap my head around the fact that an all good, all powerful God could create a universe that has any suffering at all.

At all. It seems a perfect being could only make perfect creations. The fact that our universe is fallen means that it couldn't have been created by a perfect being, in my opinion. I'm happy to be honest. But mainly, the point I want to bring up...

is what I see happening here is that I asked you, Travis, what would falsify your belief? And you said it would falsify your belief if you could show that there's unnecessary suffering. But now you're trying to say that it would have to be shown that...

This suffering that we're claiming it to be unnecessary, there is no way that an all-powerful God could make that suffering worth it in the end. It was in my opening statement. It was in my opening statement. Which obviously an all-powerful God could do. So therefore...

It is therefore impossible to prove that an all-powerful, all-good God could not redeem any suffering. Therefore, it's impossible to show you, based on your priors, any unnecessary suffering. Therefore, your beliefs are unfalsifiable. I'd also like to point out that possible and unfalsifiable are two different things. That's all. Yeah, and not only that, but, you know,

If we're going to be anywhere remotely using philosophy here, you have to assume my axiology. The theist chooses their own axiology, and so you have to make objections that fit within that axiology. So let me just grant that on a necessity condition, like you were saying with the foreskins, yeah, that could be evidence against theism, but that's assuming a necessity condition, which I'm not doing.

I'm assuming a defeat condition. So it would have to, in principle, be indefeasible, that God could not, you know. And so what it means to be defeated is that, you know, that agent will see how it was integrated into an overall good whole that becomes valuable and non-regrettable for them. For instance, you know, like let's say a lot of people that suffer. Well, you know, one way that God can defeat that suffering is that they will come to identify it.

Christ and his suffering and that beatific intimacy they form with Christ will become so valuable to them that the suffering becomes non-regrettable because that's what it means for suffering to be defeated is that it becomes a valuable, non-regrettable part of a larger whole.

those parents and children are long dead by the time the the crucifixion and the resurrection happens so i don't see where their redemption ever takes place what by on the whole it means their eternal life all together on that's what on the whole you're trying to tell us travis that eventually in the far far future that if eric and i don't repent and we continue to be atheists and we're burning in hell that eventually we are not going to regret

Our atheism, even when we're burning in hell and suffering eternally, we're going to say, oh, you know what? I don't regret being an atheist because I understand God has told me that it's good. It's served the overall scheme of things. So I don't regret it at all. And I don't regret it even if I'm suffering eternally for it. That's what you're trying to tell me is that one day I'm going to come to that realization.

Well, yeah, I mean, but not the suffering, because like I said, I'm partial to a Christian universalism where all will eventually be saved and that hell is more restorative than punishment. You know, it's punishment, but it's in a restorative manner, not retributive justice, but that it restores life.

Eventually I get paroled from hell and then I get back into heaven. You can look at it like that. I thought you just stayed there until you liked it. I was going to say, this is getting freaky. Okay, hold on. Let's let Apollo back in here too. You got it. You got to learn your

your lessons, but you can think of it as like an extended purgatory of sorts. It's where, you know, the suffering, because in the Orthodox tradition, the suffering of hell is not God putting you in some torturous dungeon. What it is, is God reflects light and love. And so those who can reciprocate his love experience that has warmth and light.

Whereas those who don't reciprocate his love, his holiness is experienced as suffering. It's overwhelming to them and they can't stand it. And so what that does is it can eventually purge away all the sin to where the agent then becomes, gets into heaven. - Right, like a really intensive spa treatment.

I think we hammered this one, so Apollos, if you want to kick us. It's consistent within analytic philosophy of religion. Sure.

It's anthropomorphizing it vastly, but you can look at it like that. I want to hand the floor back over to Apollos to go down some of the roots and arguments that he was getting into there with his screen share before we got all back into Eric's intro with the problem of evil and stuff like that. Yeah, no worries. Nothing in particular.

How late are we going to tonight, by the way? I think we have one over an hour. Yeah, we can get into the Super Chats if you guys feel like that would be more fruitful at this point, if you guys are all done unpacking. I think that we've touched on everybody's openings, so I think we're probably good for Super Chats, right? Yeah. Are we going to do closings? Yeah, I usually like to do them at the end, or if you have to go, if you get to a point where you're like, hey, I've run out of time, whatever's going on. But...

uh, yeah, then I'll just ask for it and I'll let you have a closing, but we'll try to get through the super chats of course. So, uh, yeah, a big round of virtual applause to our speakers tonight. Uh, it's been a lot of fun. Our audience has enjoyed it. We do have a lot of different, uh, I'm used to like more of the analytical philosophy stuff. This is kind of a, like heated, uh, environment is, uh,

It's different, but it's interesting. I don't typically do these type of discussions, so it's been interesting. It's different. Well, before we get into the Q&A, I'll just let you know where we're at on the poll. So right now, who has the truth? We are literally 1.2.

in the difference right now. So 49% have voted for the Christians and 51% say the atheists. So stop the count. Close the poll now. All right. If it goes one point in either direction, I'm going to close it. Uh,

We'll just see where that goes. It's up to you guys in the audience. I'd also encourage you, if you've got the means to vote in the poll, definitely smack that like button. We've had a great turnout for tonight's debate. So once again, thank you so much to our panel. You guys have been very amicable in working with each other to make this conversation happen, so I appreciate it. Let's get right into your questions, though. Keep the super chats coming in, and we'll try to address all your concerns in the live chat there.

i do also want to remind everybody that once again we do have our live event coming up uh you can see beside me right now uh there's the david wood alex o'connor event that is going to be happening in newark new jersey uh it's going to be a lot of fun i'm going to be there uh james of course uh we've got other staff members who haven't been there in a while and censored america is coming out to help as well so it's going to be a big event with a lot of people and we'll be talking about it more and more as the days come up

Yeah, let's get into those questions. Thunderstorm says for $4.99, is atheism an ideology to complain about God and religion since most atheists still have religious based funerals? I can just speak for myself. No, I'm not going to be having a religious based funeral. I have not before, obviously. And no, like atheism is not really an ideology. It's just a

lack of belief in gods, in my opinion at least. So my atheism, I consider the fact that I was always an atheist. I don't think that there was ever a point in my life that I would not consider myself to be an atheist. I think it's just a category based on whether or not you believe in God. I don't think it has anything more attached ideologically than that. I know conservative atheists, liberal atheists, atheists that believe all kinds of different crazy stuff that I don't. There's no uniform consistent ideology with it.

Yeah. Did you want to jump in there as well, Eric, and explain to this person why would we have most atheists still have religious based funerals? I think they're trying to say that it's a new year, 2025. And you're probably thinking, how am I going to make this year different? How can I make this the best year ever? How am I going to build something for myself?

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You're muted. Yeah, your mic's off right now. Sorry about that. Yeah, I don't really get the question. Is atheism an ideology since it borrows from cultural traditions from other groups of people? I don't get that at all. That doesn't really make any sense. You could also make the argument that atheists are compelled to do those kinds of things because of peer pressure. This is the same kind of reasons that people don't come out of the closet, for example. Yeah.

I think something like 40% of homeless children are LGBTQ, right? So there's obviously good reason that kids choose not to come out with their parents because it has a potential to get them, you know, disowned by their own family. So I don't know. I had a secular wedding. So, you know, it's being, well...

I could ramble, but forget it. No worries, no worries. I get in trouble sometimes when I talk about things. People are like... Anyways, go ahead there, Travis. It seems like you could just do a polemic and say, well, why do religious people sometimes do secular things? Does that mean they're getting secular? Good point. You guys are the real atheists, not us. Yeah, we just believe in... You only believe in one less... We believe in one more god or one less god than you or something like that. Yeah.

I've heard that. Did you have any response there, Apollos? Or do you want to carry on? No, we can carry on. All right, no worries. Sometimes we have some back and forth if there's some interest in something somebody might say. So no worries. We'll try to unpack some more there, guys. Thank you so much for your super chats. And definitely keep them rolling in. I see...

Yeah, let's keep keep going even Lord says why be a militant atheist when a religious society is better outcomes than non-religious societies also, which type of Christianity is the best so let's let's ask that around the panel just like a quick if you could choose like one which which Christianity is the best and let's start with the atheist so Eric

Which Christian? I mean, Catholics are so unserious. They're basically secularists, right? Evolution, all that other kind of stuff. They're big bang. They're fine with it, right? But the original question was why be a militant atheist when Christian societies, I mean, that is such an unbelievably flawed question. I've really never met anybody that thinks that, except for psychopaths that think

This country could really use a lot more fundamentalism. We've really strayed from the literalism and fundamentalism. We need to cut back on liberal freedoms and things like that. So, yeah.

Yeah, I also completely reject the premise that religious societies have better outcomes than non-religious societies. I think that it's like you got to be like kind of selective in what outcomes you're looking at. I see a lot of religious societies having really negative outcomes in terms of personal freedoms for different groups of people. And

And yeah, in terms of the best sect of Christianity, I don't remember the name of this. Maybe the Eastern Orthodox guy can help. There's just one like little like specific niche branch of Eastern Orthodox, I think in Greece, where like the monks, like they never talk to anybody. They stay inside all the time and they get their outfits where they look like. I think that the wizard outfits are super cool. Yeah, that's...

Yeah, that's Greek Orthodoxy, and it's Mount Athos, where you're referring to. That's Mount Athos, yeah. Yeah, so specifically what's going on at Mount Athos is super cool because those are like some of the coolest outfits, I think, on Earth. I'm just saying. Actual wizard stuff. You ever see the popes? They got pretty wild outfits. Gandalf the Grey.

off the fool. All right, no, I'm just picking. Yeah, so let's ask the other side too. What type of Christianity is the best? You know, just for the sake of having fun with it.

Yeah, so with the first question, why be a militant atheist, you know, obviously I wouldn't. It's not really applicable. Although there is – what I am very sympathetic to is what they may refer to as strong atheism is philosophical atheism. That's, you know, where atheology like Paul Draper, Graham Moppy –

I think they make some robust arguments for atheism and I'm quite sympathetic to some of the arguments they've presented. And I think it undercuts a lot of the apologetic material, but I think it's answered by people like Swinburne, Rasmussen, and so on. And so that's a form of atheism that I'm sympathetic to, is philosophical atheism.

And when it comes to Christianity, I'm obviously going to go with my tradition, Eastern Orthodox. Awesome. All right. And Apollos, yeah, same question. So, yeah, it seems like you guys are really rocking these ones. You're hammering all the things in the question. I really appreciate you guys being so focused. So militant atheist and which Christianity is the best?

Yeah, so I'm obviously not a Milton atheist, but I belong to a non-denominational church. If I had to pick a denomination, maybe it would be the Lutherans, only because they don't abide by papacy or patriarchs or anything like that, because I don't believe in, I don't take it historical that there ever was a papacy in the first century. And with regards to the Lutherans, yeah.

I don't know if I would call it a literal presence, but maybe a real presence. I'm kind of agnostic on that, so...

There you go. No worries. Yeah, let's just carry on. And thanks to the panel. We'll try to get some questions that we can bounce back and forth and like I say, maybe get some more discussion. But yeah, these are very pointed. So we're trying to trying to get them around the panel and have fun with it. So Steve, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine says, I'm confused. Why should any walking sack of rock Adams be here by pure random luck?

and then care about other sacks of atoms when a godless universe doesn't care? All right. Well, an easy question then. Essentially, you're asking about why life and consciousness exist. So essentially, we know about the sort of physical conditions that give rise to complexity. We know about the sort of

conditions that are necessary for natural selection to kick in. You need self replicating chemical systems, which we have seen naturally come about. I think it should be stated that none of these things are just pure luck. These are just the machinations of our universe according to how we know them and the results of the laws of physics.

acting on the universe or whatever. Like this is not just pure luck as theists often try to straw man. These are, you know, guided by physical forces and the, yeah, natural selection mutations. We have the theory of evolution explaining all the species in terms of consciousness. There are very easily understood reasons about why consciousness, we would expect it to evolve, namely for, um,

the benefits of the most fit behavioral outcomes for novel dynamic stimuli. You would want like basically our brains are creating models of the universe and then testing it with our sense data. And it behooves our brain when you're in these very specific environmental circumstances where you've got a bunch of unique conditions that you can't just do a prepackaged response to.

Being aware of the model that your brain is creating, the brain generating a consciousness of itself is the most advantageous and energy efficient way to have advantageous

fit behaviors in the kind of environments we live in. That's the explanation. Okay. Would you like your beer back? Like, Holy light. I can't hold it. I can't hold it all day. My goodness. He's just riffing fellas. Uh, surely you have, uh, some commentary about, uh, about Grayson's explanation for, uh, you know, why walking sack of rock Adams are treating other pure random. So, Oh, Travis has to run for a few minutes. That's totally about 15 minutes. Yeah. Yeah. No worries. Uh, yeah. Uh,

Yeah, we can have a little break after this one if you can stick around for just a few. But yeah, did you guys have any commentary on the other side or do you want to add to that, Eric? I wanted to add to that. Sure thing. Let's let Eric add here first and then we'll bounce.

Yeah, the really sad thing questioner whoever you were is this would be a straw man but I can kind of tell by the question that you actually do think that the world operates according to random processes which is not the case you should just educate yourself.

But in terms of the thing about why should you do anything, I'm a philosophical freshman, maybe even worse than that. But I thought we weren't – I thought you couldn't derive a not from an is. So go ahead and reject our worldview. Your worldview doesn't get you over that problem either. So double fail. All right. Any thoughts on the other side? And just to confirm, you have to take off in 15 minutes there, Travis? Yes.

Yeah, I do. Okay, that's okay. We'll let you have a close. Sorry, I thought it was only going to be two hours. Sorry, that's okay. So just let me know when you have to take off. I'll give you a one minute closing. But yeah, let's give some thoughts on their explanation for why. Yeah, so I'm not really a big fan of this type of rhetoric that rocks and so on. And

But what I can do is kind of mention how, you know, it's because that's not even in the philosophy of religion. They don't really look at it like that. So unless you get, you know, somebody like William Blank Craig or somebody. But the way, you know, more analytic philosophers are going to look at that is they're going to frame it in terms of epistemic probability. So they're going to just grant that, you know, you know, consciousness and, you know, the fine tuning or, you know,

let's call it the teleological arrow towards complex creatures or what have you, they're going to just grant that that can come about through natural processes. But, you know, what they're going to say is, you know, going back to that, you know, would we more, you know, would we more likely observe this if there was a foundation with intentional powers? Or would we more likely observe this given a mindless foundation? And so they're going to frame it more in terms of epistemic probability rather than kind of the way they were getting at it.

Anything to add there? Sorry, you can wrap it up. Not for me. Not with that question. All right, go ahead on the other side if you'd like to respond. Oh, I said... Or them? No, I mean, I'd asked you. You'd said that you didn't have too much to add. So if Grayson and Eric want to make commentary, we'll probably have another probably 20, 25 minutes. We can get through them if, like I say, if you guys are in a hurry. That's no problem. So...

Yeah, if you do have questions, get them in quickly. We'll try to whack through some of them here. So let's just go down and keep it to one minute. And yeah, if God is real, why does he hide such that it looks the same as non-existence? Why doesn't he provide real evidence like restoring an amputee's limb? That's from Austin Sims. Any thoughts, Apollos?

Yeah, it sort of is related to the problem of suffering and divine hinderness, that is. I would say that given what I've assessed in terms of miracle claims, that God has positioned himself whereby he's not enforcing belief on us, so we still have the freedom to disbelieve, and yet we're still on this epistemic middle ground by which we can ascertain to believe rationally. All right, any thoughts, Travis, before we move on?

Yeah, well, there's quite a few moves that, you know, different branches of Christianity might take. For example, like the apophatic tradition, which you sometimes see in orthodoxy, actually often, they will say that, you know, it's due to God's radical transcendence, that he's eminent through his activities and manifestations, but he's just radically transcendent.

And so he's experienced, you know, through things like, you know, the church and the liturgy, things like that. But I think it just goes back to axiology and what sort of story obtains on the whole, like will God eventually redeem, you know,

Reveal himself to the creatures. I will have to put a bow on it there and carry on Austin Sims follows up and says for the theists Do you understand the concept of ethnocentric viewpoint versus cultural relativism viewpoint? Why is your culture's religion different? Do you know what that means Travis?

From what I understand, the ethnocentrism is where you take a person, you know, it's like directed towards the person that, you know, it's all about me kind of thing. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Ethnocentric perspective would be from the perspective of one particular ethnicity. Oh, ethnicity. That's what you said, right? Ethnocentric? Ethnocentric. And then I didn't hear the second word.

I would definitely be against a certain ethnic group being first or any kind of racial. I would be against that. I think he's saying that the Old Testament is ethnocentrically written from a Jewish-Hebrew perspective. All right, just so that everybody has the full viewpoint here, it was versus cultural relativism.

Well, cultural relatives, it means like these truths, like values and morals are dependent upon the cultural societies that form them, like moral subjectivism.

So I understand what that is. Can I respond to something real quick about divine hiddenness? Yeah, sure. Real quick if we can. Based on everything that I know of the God of the Bible, divine hiddenness is a complete unexpected surprise that the theists just basically have to come up with some sort of post hoc

explanation for going back in the Bible, trying to justify the observation of divine hiddenness, clearly. I mean, everything that we know about the God in the Bible seems like he would indicate himself to us. I mean, he says that, you know, the cosmos declares his existence, that the fool says in his heart there is no God. It's like, well, why would that person be foolish if God

God hasn't presented the evidence for a rational person to conclude that he exists. They're not a fool. So it doesn't make any sense based on the Bible, my point. Let's wrap around up there. Thanks, Austin Sims says, for everybody, I think this will be very quick. Do you want to make society better? Yeah. Yes, obviously, yeah.

Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. I think we're all in agreement there. Most people, I don't know what kind of person's going to say no to that. I mean, I think- Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Who's going to say no to that?

I mean, honestly, I'm not trying to be, I'm not trying to be inflammatory here, but a Christian, I, I don't see why you would want to make the world better if you're a Christian, if you believe that the end of the world is coming any day now. And ultimately all of us will be redeemed with a way better existence in heaven. It's like, why even bother making the world better at that point? So I can't understand why a Christian wouldn't want that. All right.

Let's carry on. I would say through the development of virtues and showcasing love, humility, forgiveness, these virtues and loving one another and being there is valuable.

I agree from the perspective of an atheist. Thank you. Let's carry on. It was a very simple question there from Austin Sims, but yeah, thanks there to our panel. I am trying to whip through them a little bit quicker just because we have some speakers that want to carry on and hang out in their own spaces and have their own parties. So Thunderstorm says, if God is real and watching this, hi God.

Hello, random citizen thunderstorm. You caught me. No, I'm kidding. All right, let's go. Now I have to go in hiding. No, I'm kidding. All right, Isa Kabir. Thank you so much for coming out there, Isa. I appreciate seeing you in the live chat and glad to see you on the VIP list. Yeah, I'll do a little announcement afterwards. We do have a VIP ticket list.

And Ys is on it, so I'm excited. Both teams, steel man your opponent's position. Please give your opponent's best argument and deconstruct why you feel that this argument cannot work. This might take a little time, but let's give it a go. Let's try to be quick about it.

I think you gotta put a one minute timer on everybody. Let's see if we can do it in 45 seconds each. So Grayson, you've been spitting real quick tonight so I'm gonna do you first here so you can set the pace. 45 seconds on the floor.

Okay, my opponent says that when we look around us, we see some sort of arc of redemption in the universe and that this accords with the sort of expectations of the Christian God. The other opponent says that the...

The Gospels of the New Testament have contained certain information that we would expect eyewitnesses to know and not eyewitnesses to not know. Therefore, it is probably reliable, and if the resurrection happened, then the Christian God exists.

I think that the big issue is that these gospels are based on oral traditions, which could have ultimately derived from eyewitness testimony and still contain that information that they're just recording from oral traditions. It doesn't necessarily imply that they were eyewitnesses. And when I look in the universe, I don't see this same redeeming trajectory that my opponent described. So I don't know why he has made this conclusion.

That's time. All right. Yeah, let's hand it over to you, Apollos. Same question. So can you steel man the best argument for the atheist position and why you do not agree? 45 seconds. Yeah, I don't have a lot of notes here, but I know that Grayson brought up the four points for the expectations that are more expected under atheism, such as basically that...

The greater discoveries being attributed less to God, the problem of evil, geographic probabilistic evidence predicting someone's beliefs, which is also like something true for atheism. Ten seconds to explain why you don't agree. Yeah, because it doesn't explain the resurrection. All right. Let's hand it over to Planet Peterson. So steel man the Christians and tell us why you don't agree.

I think Grayson actually kind of took my words on their positions. Travis's grand narrative thing and a redemptive arc explaining the things we see around us, even accounting for the problem of evil. And then Apollo's with the gospels are sufficient to bolster the claim of the resurrection or whatever.

I would say the issues with that is the grand narrative thing. It's like making the argument that, look, there's a hero motif that is a classic, common, widespread belief. So therefore, one of those heroes must exist, and it's Hercules.

There is no privilege to any one particular story from that perspective, I don't think. And then for Apollos, the biggest problem is we don't have the original Gospels. And in fact, the standardization of the Gospels is something that began happening earlier.

hundreds of years after the stories originated because as you go back farther and farther, the stories diverge more and more. Sorry. No worries. It's okay. I didn't want to cut you off, but sorry to do so. We were almost up to a minute. So let's hand it over to Travis and same question, 45 seconds. Yeah, okay. So I think new for air lack theism, I think it has a valuable aspect insofar as it, you know,

encourage us to see the world as it truly is, to embrace science and things of that nature. And I think those things are valuable and meaningful. And the reason I don't subscribe to that worldview is because I think those are compatible with and even better explained by theism. And I would get into the fact that there need not be a natural supernatural distinction, but merely a supreme foundation of existence.

All right. Well, thank you so much to our panel, Travis, Grace, and Eric, and Apollos. We're going to carry into the next question. It's been tremendous, though, fellas. Really, really, like I say, people are hearing you guys. It's great. So it's really, it's nice. I appreciate it. Austin Sims has got another question. Why does the Bible say God's impotent versus iron chariots? Yeah.

Do you want to start us out there, Apollos? So they're asking, why does the Bible say that? Or does it? I believe that's referring to the passage where the Lord couldn't drive out some random army because they had iron chairs or something like that. I haven't looked much into it, but from what I know, that...

You know, this is referring to the angel of the Lord and, you know, that's within the incarnation state. And so he adopts like the limitations of what it means to be incarnated. So, yeah. Let's ask the next one here. Even Lord says, for all, do you believe in empty internet theory? Can you guys raise your hand if you know what this is?

I've heard of it, but I don't remember it. I was going to say, you know, you're just all into it today. That's great. All right, so what's the empty internet theory so we can all understand and say, yes, we believe in it? I mean, as far as I know, it's just like the majority of so-called people that we engage with on the internet are not actually real people. They're just bots. And like, you know, when you go onto just like a random TikTok page of like a person that makes the same kind of AI generated content every single day online,

Like it really is hard to shake the feeling of the empty internet theory. All right. Any thoughts around the panel to answer even Lord's question there with that context? None for me. I can't think of anything though. Anything Apollos? No.

All right, Ethan Lord, I guess it's a little bit of a niche question right now. So who knows? Maybe that'll be something more prevalent in the future. But thank you so much. Captain Obvious had a question. 10th Super Chat on our live stream. We really appreciate it. There wasn't a question attached, but there is to the next one from Captain Obvious. Thanks so much for your support. It says, if Jesus was resurrected, why not see this as an unknown?

excuse me rare biological event worth scientific study instead of a supernatural claim so i think yeah uh so yeah i would say that um oh dang it um so basically like i actually just released the video on this why the resurrection is actually a signifying miracle that would privilege us um

to believe in the Christian God over other causal agents. And I include things such as recursive perspective, social inferences being a method to show that lying and ad hoc sort of like

sort of motives for trying to raise Jesus from the dead are less probable than something more intentional, such as verifying the Christian religion. As far as like a natural law, like, I mean, our scientific understanding doesn't like have us like, it would go against the entire grain of our scientific understanding if the scientific laws were in fact anthropomorphic in the sense that they were, you know,

Basically, given their probabilistic trajectory, would entail something that is causally connected to us humans.

All right. Let's carry on there. Thank you so much for answering the question there, Apollos. Kind of putting you on the spot there. So that's how we do it at Modern Day Debate, though. Yeah, no worries. We really appreciate it. And you guys have all been in, like I say, really good debate spirits. We appreciate it. So Jack Fetter says, personally, to each their own.

unless it interferes with accepting science or denying the shape of the earth or aging of the universe or dot dot dot. So

Yeah, so personally to each their own unless it interferes with accepting science denying the shape of the earth. So you guys yeah, I 13 billion years old Universe and what is the other thing? Yeah, I'm not a flatter. I was just gonna ask you both Are there any like mainstream consensus science positions that you reject? Are you creationist young earthers anything like that? No Oh, sorry

Yeah, I'd speak for myself. I would say that by virtue of me believing in the Christian God, I am by de facto an old earth creationist. That's not to say that I necessarily believe that abiogenesis can account for the, in principle, because it hasn't been demonstrated yet to the best of my knowledge, of the origin of species. But yeah, I digress.

Yeah, I was just going to say I hold a view of theistic evolution, although my view of evolution is I do hold to sort of an intrinsic teleology.

But what I do is, you know, for, you know, like, let's say I'm having a conversation with, you know, an atheist or somebody, I would just grant natural processes to their full extent. And I would just do that as a dialectical move because I don't think it, you know, it doesn't really matter too much. Like I'm willing to just look at the evidence, just granting natural processes in their entirety. Let me just say how refreshing that is. Oh, thank you. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, we won't unpack anymore. Let's ask the next question. Maybe we'll chit-chat afterwards. But you definitely got me thinking here, guys. So the Tanner Nation says to Grayson for Q&A.

No, we're not doing this for Q&A. Just because you told me to do it for Q&A and I'm ornery about that. No, alright. For Q&A, you said that NT writers just rationalized their faith in Jesus after he was killed. This goes against the early creed in 1 Corinthians 15 and mainstream scholarship. How is your explanation not an ad hoc excuse?

Sorry, what about my explanation goes against the first Corinthian Creed, the fact that they had appearances for first to Peter, then to the 12? Is that what they're saying is contradictory? I'm not sure what the contradiction is. Apollos or Travis, do you think that you know what this person is trying to say is contradictory about it?

I'm not sure about the contradiction about mainstream scholarship per se. I guess maybe you might refer to the fact that most critical scholars believe in some sort of Christianity or some sort of miraculous intervention.

I'm pretty sure what he's saying is, Grayson, you're claiming that they rationalized what happened to Jesus based on all these things, but that's contradicted by that Jesus really did reappear because 1 Corinthians 15 says Jesus appeared. Hilariously, it says he reappeared to the 12, which is impossible because Judas was dead. Yeah, right? Good point. Yeah, well...

There are many other apostles who like the Lord Jesus appeared to and that moniker, the 12, someone else was counted in there. There was a replacement for Judas. Wait, where does it say that? Who's the replacement? Oh yeah, there was. Acts 1 somewhere. Hold up.

Okay, yeah, I'm curious. They just swapped them in for somebody else? Yeah, someone who was good. They said that someone specifically who saw the Lord. There are pretty bad contradictions in the reappearance in the gospel narrative too, but we don't really... We're trying to get through the questions, so...

Yeah, if you can give us the reference just for the audience when you find it. Let's ask the next question in the meantime. Lord, I always forget about this name. Lord Luminous Poo says, if born of a virgin, did Jesus have 23 chromosomes without input from a father? He never received the Y chromosome. Does that make Jesus a woman? She's a lady.

He just miracled up a new Y chromosome. I mean, it's a miracle. You can just make all this stuff up if you're just going to say it's a miracle. He can make all the genes. I think the question was for them, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah, the question is for them, Grayson. I mean, I've slid for the virgin birth, but I don't know if we want to get into that.

Once you say it's a miracle, which both of you agree it's a miracle, then everything's out the window. God just did it that way because that's how he did it, because that's how he miracled it. It doesn't need an explanation. In a sense, because you're going to say that it's not necessarily required to fit by the laws of physics as we understand them. Maybe there are higher order laws that God's operating under or something, but it's not in accordance with our scientific understanding, but it's kind of saying that anyway,

by being a virgin bird. But you both do believe that Jesus did have a Y chromosome that was divinely written by God because he could not have inherited from a man. But as a human man, he would have had to have a Y chromosome. So Jesus did belong to a divine haplogroup. You have to admit that, right? Yeah.

I don't understand what the critique is. All right, all right. Let's ask the next question there. I don't even know what that means. Travis does have to take off, and yeah, like I say, there's unpacking on Apollo's end, and now Grayson's trying to open a new can of worms. I'll do this next question, and then one more question if you want me to.

It's totally up to you. I don't want to, like I say, keep you longer than you need to, but we do really appreciate our speakers who are going to hang out. And of course, you know, you for being here as long as you have to have the conversation. It's been a lot of fun. So let's ask these next two questions and you just let me know where you're at. Displaced Gamer says, why did God create an evil being like Satan as John 8, 44 states?

He was a murderer and a liar from the beginning. At no point was he even ever not a murderer and a liar. Why did God author evil? So...

Well, according to Christian tradition, if you're going to go by what Christians have historically believed, Satan was created good as an angelic being, one of the top angelic beings. He was beautiful and the most powerful and so on and so forth, but he got corrupted because of his beauty and fell into pride and so on. That's the...

understanding of at least the orthodox church but wait wait didn't ryan just read an excerpt from the bible describing him as always a murderer and a liar is that not you could say he's from the beginning because that's uh before humanity was here but he was it says in scripture that he was initially created good and that's historically been well i'm telling you it's historically been the understanding of the christian church that satan was created as a good angel

and he fell and when it says from the beginning that's referring to proto-human history just before you jump in i just want to ask just for clarification do you think there is a moral case for lying like the whole anne frank thing like it's it's it's good to lie if anne frank's in your basement is that kind of something that you believe in because i think that would kind of uh put to bed maybe some of those concerns there grayson ryan you have to put your question in the form of a super chat

You don't get to take questions, Ryan. I just was asking for clarification. I get to do what I want. That's the fun part of being me. And that can be interpreted in so many other ways. Like it was always – that pride was always creeping up within him even when he was good, and there are just so many ways you can look at that that don't entail contradiction. See, I was just asking – yes, go ahead.

The problem with that is if the plain sense of the text, which isn't cohesive, is always infinitely reflexively reinterpretable, then it can't be declared as a standard for truth. That's why I think holy tradition is valuable. Okay. I agree. Well, I think that we just collectively found one more contradiction in the Bible. Okay.

I don't see how that was, but okay. Guys, I just closed the poll. It finally moved. I've been checking it periodically and nothing changed and it finally changed. It's 50-50. 50-50. Wow, that is...

This is something else, guys. Yeah, we got a truly split audience. So yeah, definitely try to make it cogent and let the people know where you stand. This is great. So let's read one more.

And then I'll check in with you, Travis, see if you want to do your closing. Lord Luminous Poo says, Yahweh was the war god of a pantheon and found excuses to exterminate the other gods like Malak. He's not the one true. He's the one that survived.

Yeah, so that's really getting into like ancient Near Eastern scholarship, which I'm more of the philosophy of religion department. I'm not really well versed in the ancient Near Eastern texts and polemics, but from what little bit I do know, that

The Orthodox Church just sees a lot of these as being allegorical, and they represent typologies of future Christophanies that were to happen. And so as far as the ancient Near Eastern view of hell and everything, I am sympathetic to someone like Michael Heiser and his camp, but I'm not just terribly well-versed in the Old Testament and ancient Near Eastern scholarship, so I probably can't give you the best answer on that.

All right. Before we carry on, I do want to give you an opportunity to have a closing unless you want to stay for a few more. It's totally up to you, Travis. So if you need to close, it's terrible. I don't want to press you. Yeah, yeah. I really got to get running if that's okay. All right. One minute on the floor there, Travis. Thanks for everything, Travis. And yeah, thank you so much for coming out and partnering with Apollos and having the conversation with Grayson and Eric.

We really appreciate it. Yeah, sure. And yeah, let's give you one minute on the floor and let everybody know where they can find you and also your thoughts about our discussion today. Yeah, so I'm not like an apologist or anything, so I don't really have like that kind of thing going, although you can find me on Facebook, Travis Worth, W-O-R-T-H. I use my Facebook account mainly just for like philosophy and theology stuff because, again, I'm more into like, you know, the philosophy of religion aspect than necessarily apologetic stuff.

encounter apologetics. But that being said, I thought this was a really cool conversation. And as far as you know, like a brief summary, I kind of just say, mentioned what I mentioned in the other thing that I like, you know, the new atheist perspective, you know, that sees reality for what it truly is, embrace the science. And I think that can be explained well through a divine narrative of eventual triumph for all creatures.

All right, excellent. I guess one thing I do want to highlight is if you want to see more about this narrative approach to prove I'm not just making this out of my head, see Josh Rasmussen in his academic book, Is God the Best Explanation of Things? It's called The Great Story Theology.

So if you want a more academic treatment of it, yeah. - There, your timer did go off there a little bit, but I did want you to let that go. - Oh, okay, sorry. - So it's been a pleasure, Travis. Thank you so much for coming out. We'll hopefully see you again for more debates and yeah, cheers for now. - Okay, take care guys, thanks. - All right, awesome possum. Let's get this screen over here while I fix up our speakers.

We're gonna keep asking those super chats everybody so yes a big round of virtual applause to Travis who came out to have the conversation and keeping things Nice and nice and flowing tonight. I've just been really enjoying the the energy on screen tonight You guys have been great binge thinker says there is an after show head to at matters now So yeah after the show you head over to the after show

Probably hosted by MXXD, who has been one of our most loyal mods in the chat, so we really appreciate that.

let's continue on here with some of the questions thank you so much for hanging out Apollos and you know kind of you know fronting the force on your own here all right so we appreciate that too Travis Arnold put in a dollar ninety nine but no question thank you so much for the support Neil Jacko said question for all let's grant crucifixion and body put in tune for the moment

If we had a time machine to travel back to the day, and you could be in the tomb, what do you think you would actually physically see and hear? I'd be pretty weirded out about being in such a closed quarters with a dead body. Just, just, just...

You're in Skyrim, you've got a hundred sneak, you're invisible, right? What do you think is actually happening in that moment? Let's ask Apollo since I think it's better to get a steel man out of this rather than ask the other side right now. So what do you think actually physically would be seen or heard on the day or at the moment, sorry, of resurrection if you were in the tomb? What would be your best interpretation of what happened there?

Yeah, well, I mean, obviously, I believe the tomb was empty and that Jesus was resurrected in a more glorified body. Not ethereal in the sense that it couldn't have physical impact with reality, but glorified in the sense that, you know, he didn't necessarily like, you know, have kidneys or something where he could like get tired or something like that. So, yeah, I believe it was empty. Did he have this hairstyle as before he died?

Don't know. Okay. Just curious. Hopefully you add my hairstyle. Did you have any thoughts, Eric? You know, even something to say to the super chatter and unpack here? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Ask Mark. The tomb wasn't empty. There was a guy in a white robe in there. Ask Matthew or sorry, ask Luke. And then the tomb is empty, but then suddenly two men appear. And if you ask John, the tomb is empty. And then suddenly two angels appear.

Yeah, so if you were there in real life, you would see a superposition of all of those different contradictory narratives. Yeah. Oh, and there was an earthquake. There was an earthquake. That everybody else forgot about. Well, let's get in our time machine. We'll try to report back to Bart Ehrman another day. Hold on here. We've got a screen share. So let's...

Yeah, let's see what's going on. Apollos, you are on your own, so I do want to give you a chance to be your best representative of your side. But I want to ask Grayson and Eric as well, are you guys in a hurry in any type of fashion? I know, Grayson, you were kind of like, you know, is there like a time constraint or are we good to just carry on? I can't speak for others. I was just stupid and...

You're just trying to rush me, Grayson. What kind of friend are you? I made two commitments with my time that were simultaneous. So I was supposed to be two places at once tonight. Some friend of Modern Data Bait, you are trying to make me rush. All right. No, I'm just messing around. All right. Let's just carry on then since it's already too late for Grayson apparently to go have his fun. This is the fun you're having tonight, Grayson. And Eric's not protesting, so...

Yeah, let's just flow along. Go ahead there, Apollos. Tell us what we got on the screen.

Yeah, so the relevant contradiction is whether or not they were angels or two men or like one men. So obviously some literary spotlighting is going on in all four gospels. They're understood to be angels even in Mark by the by the mention of a white cloth, which is typically characteristic of like angels appearing in the form of

in an anthropomorphic form. And yeah, that's all I got to say about that. - This is not obvious. This is just excuse making. In a court of law, if somebody said how many people were in the car, one person said there was one person in the car, another person said there were two guys in the car, and another person said there were two very different guys in the car, angels or whatever.

The reasonable conclusion is these people are making up their story and they're doing it independently. And so the best explanation is that the story is largely made up.

Yeah, and I was just saying that a possible explanation doesn't leap to the most likely explanation. And that's what these apologetic rewrites sort of are. Or not rewrites, but whatever negotiations are. Yeah, Ryan left. We can't read Super Chats.

Yeah. It's a little weird why they would call them angels in one case and men in the other if they're both divinely inspired from the same being. You would expect there to be some sort of consistency of that if they're ultimately coming from the same divine source. And just because you're just pointing out that, oh, well, they wore white clothes. It's like that doesn't mean that they're therefore angels either.

Yeah, well, each one is writing from their own perspective. And even in the case of like Jonin says that...

that the you know Jesus did many other things and many of the things that weren't like all exhaustive so I'll just point out that they're not each writing from their own perspectives because there are many times where they directly quote from other gospel yes this is an optic problem but even this is really just really quickly for instance the Gospel of Matthew which is supposed to be an eyewitness from Matthew has scenes in that gospel where the Apostle Matthew who's supposed to be the author is interacting with Jesus and

And you'd think we'd get a first-person perspective there, but instead, for those parts, he literally just quotes almost word-for-word from Mark. Why would an eyewitness quote from somebody else almost word-for-word for an event where they were actually part of that event? They should describe it from their own perspective if this was an actual eyewitness. Yeah, and I would say that... Am I muted? Okay, never mind. I would say that they wouldn't want to...

they don't want, like, earlier Gospels that they considered authoritative to go to waste, and so they're just reusing a lot of, like, the...

available like reports at the time that they had. That really sounds reasonable to you, like what you just said in response to what I just said, like that sounds like, yep, in your head that that makes sense. That's reasonable. Like that doesn't seem like a stretch. I mean, it's an eyewitness describing an event they were there for. They're one of the two people in the event and they're going to. Yeah. And that's the other thing. Like I with regards to the authorship, I don't necessarily think that, say, for example, that, you know, you know, we like

Peter wrote and Mark with his own hand or something like there are scribes involved. There are other eyewitnesses involved. There are other considerations involved. It's rather the authorship. With regards to the information being given. Well, that seems to contradict your overall point about their reliability being evidence for Christianity. If now all of a sudden you're questioning about the reliability of their authorship to describe specifically.

Events that should have been from all they're all I witnesses, but are quoting from somebody's perspective who was not an eye witness. That is weird. And I witnessed testimony. Well, no, I never said that. I never said no. I said that it's all I wouldn't testimony, but. In that particular scenario, it's not the eyewitness Matthew.

No, and then it's not anybody because they're quoting from Mark who wasn't an eyewitness to those events. Even if it's a scriber describing Mark or whatever, none of them were eyewitnesses. Peter wasn't an eyewitness to that. It was Matthew and Jesus. It should be from Matthew's perspective because he's supposed to be the author, but he's quoting from another dude who wasn't there word for word to describe events he shouldn't be describing himself. It stretches all credulity. I think I've already made my point, so.

All right. Well, I'm sure that the audience will feel that way as well there. Did you have anything to add there, Eric, or would you like to carry on as well? I already made my point with regard to it. All right. Let's carry on then. Thanks to the panel again. It's been a lot of fun. And let's see here. Oh, man. I might have to... I'm going to read this one because there's no punctuation. Sorry. What's up? No, never mind. Continue. No worries. Amin Yaman says, it's... Is it? It's...

Once again, the punctuation here. It isn't interesting how these atheists keep appealing to metaphysical terms that they know they cannot justify any of them. Absolute clowns, they say. All right. So anything to say to Aman Yaman?

This reminds me of the time where I was arguing with a Christian and I used the word "I" and they said, "Oh, oh, oh, you said 'I' you can't justify the existence of the self without a God, therefore I win because you used the word 'I' in your sentence." This is reminding me of that. I'm getting flashbacks. Well, what do you mean by flashback? I'm sorry, I'm just messing around. I can't help myself. But Apollos, do you share that sentiment on your end or do you think that that's not a fair criticism?

I don't really understand the question, so I can't comment. Oh, I meant on... It's presuppositionalist bullshit is what it is. Oh, okay. I don't take the tag argument as necessarily, like, good, so...

Yeah. Well, good. Awesome. Well, I'm liking these, our Christian opponents more and more like the normal Christians I talked to on YouTube because like, they're not young earth creationists. They accept science. They reject presuppositionalism as a stupid argument. Like these guys are, you're all right. Apollos, you, you and Travis not being here, but like, you're one of the good ones. Like,

like that's how you guys are the good ones too right you're an atheist and you use logic didn't you know that god is required for logic so you just proved god and like i'm so freaking tired of the pre-sub argument so yeah and i kind of half expected like planet peterson to pull out his uh spanky bible and i also had like my rhetorical thing in return so

What is this? The Spanky Bible. What is this? I've never... The Spanky Bible. This book is true. There, that proves it. This book is just a testimony to claim there's no way for us to assess... Oh, shoot. My thing's backwards. Oh, you got the New Testament of the Spanky. Yeah. No, no. It's not backwards on our side. I see that. No, no, no. I have the true, uncorrupted, original Spanky Bible, and...

This event was foretold things will happen. Oh, see I actually I actually knew that you would do that See, I thought you were gonna pull out like, you know a ping-pong paddle or something I was gonna say this is getting weird again guys. Holy light in the spanky Bible. What is going on here? Yeah, this is one All right No, I can't I can't I got to behave myself you guys are getting all riled CT Donners 1991 asks

for atheists can you account for logic from your world view if all we are is molecules bouncing around how can we even trust our minds are perceiving the world properly and not schizophrenic because they're reliable enough to survive you're not getting eaten by predators that you just couldn't

freaking see right there okay like it's reliable enough to survive we know that because of evolution this is literally just the presupposition argument we were just freaking complaining about yes i can justify knowledge or logic or whatever stupid thing the presuppers are saying with our own

presuppositions that we all necessarily have to make. I presuppose an objective reality exists and I presuppose a reliability of my senses just like everyone else freaking presupposes. But the presuppositions never get that part.

Yeah, and we continuously make attempts to validate the opinions that we have because the claim was like, how can you even know what you think is true? We have co-referential experiences with other agents. So we are able to assess the validity of our claims by being able to test them in the real world and by having other agents do the same thing and cooperate.

The presupposition typically deals with them saying, well, how can you know about the reliability of your senses? They just say, oh, well, I presuppose that God revealed it to me. So this is the presupposition that is so dumb. Anyways, we can move on. Okay.

And just to throw a monkey wrench in here, just before we do move on, I just want to ask Apollos, just on that same vein, is there a type of what you might call a presupposition that you would find acceptable in this argument? Just to try to poke the bear a little bit and keep the conversation rolling. Yeah.

No, I don't really take the presuppositions. I mean, I think Grayson said enough when it regards to us making our own presuppositions. I mean, why can't I presuppose that Allah gave me the sort of cognitive abilities to go about with reason or something like that? But anyway. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, guys. It's been great. And we'll ask a couple more questions here. We're winding down. I think I've only got about...

five to seven left just depends on how the audience is feeling so uh yeah as these guys are talking you know there's there's questions coming in that are uh of course uh related what's going on there grayson did you need to step out or just uh giving the thumbs up there

I was just itching my face, but we can do a lightning round. Let's go. Yeah, no, no, it's all good. It's all good. I mean, I don't want to rush too much if we don't have to. That's great. Like I say, I appreciate you guys unpacking. Dylan Dishner says, why do you guys keep putting partially filled

Penis on the right side of the screen. Well, I'd like to tell you that is our thermometer, which is actually telling you how much our fundraiser has raised. But yeah, everything longer than it is wide is a penis, Dylan. That might be a you problem. You might need to think about that a little bit. Lord Illuminus Poo says...

Yeah, it's a different question. It's kind of similar. Laura Luminous Poo says, if the Bible defines sex as between a man and a woman, then same sex isn't sex, and therefore not a sin. Yeah, I read that earlier. It's pretty dumb, and I'm pretty sure my opponents can agree. It's not what the Bible defines as sex, but what it defines morally permissible sex, so...

This kind of strikes me as like one of those arguments that's like trying to philosophize God into existence. But this time it's like trying to like philosophize Christians into agreeing with you morally. Like, I don't know if it'll work. I don't think it will. Yeah, it's dumb. Moving on. All right. I'm just going to take one second here, guys, and just pop one last little...

Ryan, we know that you're super chatting a question. What? No. Yeah, yeah. I'm just clapping back at somebody right now. Just give me a second, right? Yeah. All right. And we'll put the full name there, Planet Peterson. That way you get your pitch in the live chat and then Travis who isn't here. So who tore up the house tonight?

And all of our speakers are there in the suggestions for you to vote for. So who did tear up the house tonight? Was it Grayson? Was it Apollos? Planet Peterson? Or Travis? So get your votes in there, guys. We appreciate seeing our audience being engaged with the conversation, letting us know where you stand on all this. This is fun. Let's see. The Tanner Nation.

clarification about my first Corinthians 15 question so let's just we'll just scroll up here so they said to Grayson you said that the New Testament writers just rationalized their faith in Jesus after he was killed this goes against the early Creed in first Corinthians 15 and mainstream scholarship

How is your explanation non-ad hoc excuse? So if you recall answering that question, they're following up on that one. They say, yeah, it doesn't at all. I don't see any contradiction. Like they just repeated themselves. Hold on. I was repeating their question just to remind you that that's where you guys were. So they're adding on here. My point was to name one scholar who,

Bart Ehrman, who thinks the apostles actually had experiences and they truly believed in the resurrection. They didn't just rationalize their dead leader. I never said that they didn't actually see anything. If he thinks that that's what I was saying, that they didn't have any visions or whatever, that's not at all what I was saying or implying. To this person asking if you actually want to know what I think actually happened,

literally just made a video about that i did not know that this was going to be the topic of the debate tonight but i literally my my newest video on my channel is how i think the resurrection happened in a naturalistic atheist world that we live in in like the real naturalistic secular resurrection so i just made a whole video explaining my thoughts about that and post

bereavement, grief-induced hallucinations were part of that. So I do think that they saw something. I just don't think it was a physical resurrection. And I do think that that is not at all mutually exclusive with them rationalizing

what was going on around them to make it still make sense with their identity. I think that there's any contradiction about that with any consensus of scholarship. So see, I'm, I'm just glad that you followed up with that. I just thought you were trying to, uh, pitch your newest video, which, uh, yeah, go check out all of our speakers. Uh, Grayson obviously is making content. Um,

Yeah, Grayson told me earlier Planet Peterson has quite a large TikTok following, so I'm sure there's lots of great content over there. And also on YouTube, I would presume as well, based on our links. Yeah. And also, Apollos is also linked in the live description. So if you like hearing from any of these speakers, definitely go check them out.

But yeah, Grayson did just make a video about it. He's saying so. Yeah, go check that out after we're done having this conversation, of course. Lord Illuminus Poo says, if I read it right, it says, if a man lies with another man, he should smoke pot. Oh, my. Well, gee, I can't think of too many excuses not to, Lord Illuminus Poo, but I don't know if that's quite what it says. It is.

Based. Gay stoner boner. Oh, man. Yeah, no, no. Definitely. It depends on the quality of the man, I guess, that you're with if you need to absolutely get high afterwards. Anyways, Lord Illuminus Pooh says, sorry, be stoned.

Okay, so we knew you knew what the right thing was there, Lord Luminous. So if a man lies with another man, he should be stoned. So this is a whole different can of worms that we can potentially get into. I've, you know, obviously heard...

all kinds of debates on this one, but I don't think we're going to unpack too much. It doesn't look, I will say that, uh, I was at dinner with Kent Hovind and he just out of nowhere during dinner, unprompted told me exactly that he said, you know, actually when the Bible says you should stone gay people, that's based on science because they're unclean. That's what he told me while we were eating Chinese food randomly.

So that happened. So I do know that, and I'm, I don't think Apollos agrees with that at all, but I do know that some crazy Christians do. Yeah. I don't think gay people should be stoned.

Yeah, see, this is why I like Apollo. God does. Oh, snap. Well, yeah, it was basically his allowance of the ancient Near Eastern... No, he told them to do it. He didn't allow them to do it. Well, even Paul says that there's a demiurgical, like the angel of the Lord gave the law, so yeah. So you're thinking all

an all-perfect being would allow that, like an all-good, all-powerful being? You just say, you know what? It's an ancient Near Eastern tradition. Let them have it. I have to admit, this is one that I have not gone down the rabbit hole in, but I did have a conversation. I'm not going to get into too many weeds of it, but, and I remember somebody bringing it up in a debate, and it just kind of all came together, and

where the conversation was around if this was rules for the clergy, not rules for like the everyday person. So is there like any dissection that you guys would have on that to say that that's debunk or is there maybe some merit there? I haven't read into that particular theory specifically, but I would just defer just largely in general to like, I mean, Inspiring Philosophy has like a lot of good videos on the imperfect mosaic law, so.

Yeah. All right. Just trying to do what I can to keep things fair here. Artful Da Jr. says, with there being no proof outside the Bible for Israeli enslavement, where do the pyramids and Sphinx come from? I am just looking for information.

okay well yeah okay ask an Egyptologist maybe or read any historical text like you'll see that the consensus of Egyptologists and historians is not that the Egyptians were built by Hebrew slaves they were built by Egyptians

Many of them volunteering service because there was like immense religious significance to using your labor to build the pyramids. And we also have their receipts of being paid in things like beer. Like they were getting paid in beer. We have their camps. They were even literate. They were writing in Egyptian. Oh, God, they were musicians. Sorry. Keep going.

getting paid in beer my point is that the entire biblical narrative of it's not even a biblical narrative it's just like a common misconception that christians have that the pyramids were built by hebrew slaves it's just like none of the actual historians or experts or egyptologists or even the well-informed christian apologists would ever make that argument

Yeah, I mean, it does say in the Bible that God delivered them out of slavery from Egypt, but not specifically that they had anything to do with pyramid building. But the whole story is completely farcical. Oh, but how are the pyramids built? By Egyptians using mechanical advantage. There you go.

Yeah, we have several techniques like wetting the sand and sliding them up like long ramps using canals and stuff, which we actually did find the artificial canals that lead up to the Giza site that were used to transport the material. So we know the naturalistic way that they did it. They didn't need aliens or whatever.

All right. Grayson is not into the alien theory. So, uh, it sounds like that's something that you, uh, you would delve into. So, uh, maybe we can hammer that one another day. Who tore up the house tonight? Let me just go over the poll there. Fellas. Uh,

We have Planet Peterson ruling on the poll right now at 35%. And then we have 33% for Grayson, 19% for Apollos, and then 13% for Travis. So these polls are just for fun, so don't take them personally. But it gives us a little bit of a feel of where our audience is right now. We have had a rotation of probably over 2,000 people here throughout the night, if not more so.

You know definitely a diverse a group has been through 50 50 percent on the first poll can't ask for better Hey, I'm just saying I'm looking at the poll Ryan. I'm seeing 35 percent for Grayson 34 percent plan Peterson So I don't know what poor you're looking at. I'm seeing some biased moderation Right. I'm so biased. It's because you're not coming to New Jersey and

You know, we did all that fun stuff in Texas, and now you're not going to. No, I'm just kidding. Ryan, you know that New Jersey has always been very high on my bucket list.

But you're, yeah, I was going to say, you're on the other side of America right now. I know. You're further away from New Jersey than I am in Nova Scotia. So I totally get it. But I've got to use it as a free pitch to say DebateCon 5 is coming up. It's going to be February 15th and 16th. Grayson's not going to be there. Boo! But lots of great people are going to be there. And hopefully we'll see Grayson maybe in between then for some other debates. And you can help us promote the event. Yeah.

I'm just picking on you now. But no, it was great meeting you last time. We had a lot of fun and did some things in Texas we're not supposed to do. But it's totally fine in New Jersey. So... No, you're like, get out of here with that, Ryan. I'm from Canada. It's fine across the board. What's going on? Live chat can hate all they want. Yeah, anyway. Dylan Dessner says, go Bills for tomorrow.

I appreciate Ryan and all the speakers. Yes, yes, we appreciate you as well, Dylan Deschner. Go Bills for tomorrow. Tina L says, Mark and another have particularly same words.

and oh sorry is and four different authors have four different perspectives which is the contradiction in the bible see i was reading this one earlier because yeah i i read that earlier and the consensus of the scholarship is that they both use dependent and independent sources so like you know with two source hypothesis you have the q source you have the mark that matthew and luke are both using and their own individual um redactions m and l source so yeah the four gospels are five sources so yeah

See, I just apologize to anybody if I read their Super Chat role, just because if there is like little in-betweens, I might not get the right emphasis on the correct syllables, if you will. But any thoughts on the other side, Eric or Grayson? No, I mean, I don't care about any of that. It's not really an issue. I agree with all of us. All right, no worries. Jason83, what piece of evidence or evidences would change your mind?

So let us, well, there's, yeah, I think, Eric, you haven't started us on too many questions there. So, Eric, what piece of evidence would change your mind? Kind of two different answers. I'm not 100% sure, but God definitely knows and God has chosen not to provide that evidence. The only thing you can do is claim that I'm lying about that.

But you know this question is kind of weird because like I can imagine like some sort of inexplicable event happening before me and me having a conversion. Now theists that try to get at the secularists like us will say like well wouldn't you still say that the better explanation would be that it was some sort of unexplained naturalistic event or you hallucinated?

uh yeah but that's you're you're switching the question that could be the better explanation but i can still see that it would be enough for me to be convinced because i know for a fact that i've believed things that aren't true before because i've changed my mind before so um like in principle i think that if the uni there were aspects about our universe that really actually were just like

too much of a stretch to think of like whatever happened naturalistically. So my example for this would be like with the new recent James Webb Space Telescope, right? If we had used it to see something that we had was too far away, that humanity had never seen anything that far away before. And we saw that like in the shapes of galaxies, it spells out

Hi, I'm God and I made this sign Jesus Christ. I would become a Christian right away. Like, you know, there's no explanation for that in atheism for that you could you could say, Oh, well, maybe you just naturally form that but that is just a bridge too far for me. If that happened, I would convert right away. So there you go.

Yeah, for me, I don't know if it would necessarily change my mind, but it would definitely give me pause in terms of like my confidence in the Christian belief. But basically a miracle that is with evidential weight similar to the resurrection of Jesus. And if there were enough of that, I guess I could find myself becoming an atheist. So cool. We should talk after this, Apollo. So I'm going to try to bring some examples to you. Yeah, for sure.

Awesome. Well, glad we're making good relations here, fellas. Like I said, what a great change of pace. I was very looking forward to hosting something a little outside of the usual ballpark that I've been...

in lately. That means platter. So excited. This is my wheelhouse. Social, political, religious debates. These are the things I... It's my bread and butter. You can't be messing with my bread and butter, guys. Tim Davidson. The Bible has what you need like Brondo. Anything to say to Tim Davidson? It's what place...

It's where it pants creep. It's got electrolytes.

Alright, Sarah Yoon says, Grayson and Peterson, review the alternative hypothesis new video, why you should believe more conspiracy theories. I'm curious about your point of view. So if you haven't seen this video, why you should believe more conspiracy theories, I haven't seen it, but just based on the title, you know, I give it a fair shake, but is there some merit there? Do you think that that's maybe not a great idea?

It's up to you guys. What do you think, Grayson? I'll start with you. What's going on, bud? If they super chat my channel, maybe I'll do it. I don't know. I mean, it sounds like an interesting video. I'll definitely watch it. I don't know if I'll make a video on it, but it sounds like an interesting video that I would like to watch at least.

Any thoughts there, Eric? We're trying to chime in. I mean, I don't even need to watch the video. The more I pay attention, the more I have come to realize that George Carlin was right, that everything is for sale, including this country. So conspiracies definitely happen. Oh, yeah. Well, we love George Carlin. But, yeah, I got to keep my cards close to my chest here. You know how it goes. I love George Carlin.

Did you hear that George Carlin is actually still alive? I heard that he was spotted. So is Michael Jackson. Any thoughts over there, Apollos? Sorry, what is the question again?

Elvis is alive and well. No, I'm just kidding. It was a question asking Planet Peterson and I to review a specific video about why you should believe in Peterson. It wasn't even a question. I haven't seen it. Yeah, I was just saying, unless you've seen it. But yeah, I think they're curious about that perspective. So we'll carry on to the last Super Chat for now. If anybody has a question, this is my last call out. Get your Super Chats in now.

I'm going to comb through them, make sure I didn't forget any, because I do forget some sometimes, and I feel bad about that. But I'll comb through them after this, and we'll make sure. So get your superchats in if you haven't already. Neil Jacko says, For Apollo, what was God doing for 13.799999 billion years?

Well, the Bible says that... Am I muted? No, you're not muted. Okay. Yeah, the Bible says the heavens declare the glory of God. So, I mean, you might try to argue that that's more expected under atheism, but it's not inconsistent with theism. Yeah, I don't know. They weren't very specific, but I think there maybe is a serious problem, especially if you take the theistic evolutionary perspective. That...

that there was untold miserable suffering for life on this planet. And, you know, the redemption to that is supposed to be like the,

Well, it doesn't start until in the garden, but it actually starts way before that if we take this perspective. And so what was the point of all of that before a fall even happened or whatever? But I don't know. Like I said, they weren't very specific with their question. I can answer this question very specifically. What was God doing for 13.799 billion years? He was mad chilling.

Mad chillin'. Most likely. Mad chillin'. Playing Call of Duty. Goofy the Cat put in a dollar, and there's no question attached to this one dollar, but it was the first Super Chat that they ever did, so Goofy the Cat... Ryan can't type. Well, I was going to say, Goofy the Cat, if you want to put your question in the live chat...

Since that was your first Super Chat, maybe you didn't input it properly and that's okay. It happens, but I do want to know what your question was since you felt compelled to put in a first one. But that's just goofy. You're a goofy cat. You know, not putting your Super Chat in. It's literally their name. Okay. I can't be hated on for this. Tame Davidson says, does God have a belly button? In the person of Jesus Christ, he used to, but yeah. Okay. Okay.

We don't even know that. Belly button lint? Wait, by belly button, does he mean like the actual like, like out? A belly button, yeah. Oh, never mind. So the whole doesn't count? No, no, your answer is sufficient. Yeah, like if Jesus was a man who was born of a woman, he had a belly button. It's fair. Does God the Father have a belly button? I mean, if we're made in his image, presumably yes. Did Adam and Eve have them? There's a good question. Yeah. Yeah.

Stay where you're to? What's going on?

Well, the seas come from like ultimately where most of the water would have been coming from, which would be the great bombardment from comets and stuff. So there you go.

Question answered. It was... God, my partner is an idiot. It came from the chaotic waters above and was transported after the firmament ceased. That's if you take it literally, but Genesis 1-11 is actually a polemic against the ancient Near Eastern gods, so...

That's if you take that perspective. Yeah, yeah. The resurrection didn't literally happen. It's just, you know. Oh, well, there are methodologies by which we exegete the text. Well, I'm sure that those are all very consistent and valid.

Yeah. Totally not cherry picking or like me just wanting to confirm my worldview. Wait, what? Why were you being sarcastic just now? We can't end it like that, huh? Yeah, I'm joking. I'm joking. I know you're joking. You were saying that very sarcastically. Yeah.

All right, next one coming in. The audience heard my cry, my plea, and they were like, oh, we got last-minute questions. I do have an Instagram. I'm barely on it, but if you want to get a hold of me, it's under RaichuTheOriginal. Yeah, I'm barely on there, though, so if you message me, there's a good chance that you might not hear for a while. It's like Discord. I'm so sorry to the people that message me on Discord because it's like,

I will get there eventually. There's a lot going on. Tim Davidson says, what if Jesus was a really bad carpenter? Luckily, he had that Messiah thing to fall back on. That's just kind of like a funny... He did get crucified, so there's that. Yeah.

I was going to say, he did not follow code and he got crucified. I actually do have to go pretty soon. All right. Well, that was the last Super Chat beyond... I just can't. So you have to go pretty soon. I'm pretty sure that wasn't you saying you have to go right now. So...

Last super chat, if you can entertain it, Grayson, and let's do those closings. Sarah Yoon says, what's Apollo's opinion that in Genesis 17, the entire Judaic claim to Canaan is literally a trade foreskin for land with the Yahweh entity? I don't know what that refers to, so I'm going to have to look that up. All right. Do you have any thoughts on the other side? Anything that you might know about that one?

So the whole thing is an allegory for circumcision? Okay. Well, I think that somebody ought to tell the Israelis that because they all seem to think that they have a claim to that land today. Somebody should probably tell them that it's actually about cutting your foreskin off. I don't know if that story is the story where... I thought it was Abraham, but I don't remember exactly. They're like, go out and get me 5,000 foreskins and then you can have this thing. I thought it was a very...

What? I think that was a judge, if I remember correctly. Okay, well, I don't know. So I don't have a comment really on it. Just one second. I'm just making sure. So Goofy the Cat had put in that chat there. I'm just checking the chat to make sure they didn't put it in. Mike from 1986 says, thanks for asking a question. We are, we come from. So let me just pad that and make sure we've made sense of it. Where do we come from? I don't see anything in the...

Yeah, where do we come from? We evolved on Earth. I came from my mom's womb in Texas. Alrighty. Yeah. That was almost padding your answer right there. I appreciate that, Greyson. I know how bad that could have gotten, but I'm just padding the chat. I just don't see anything from the super chatter I mentioned earlier. So let's just get into the chat. Sorry I missed your chat, Goofy.

I know, but it was their first SubrChat. You know, we want to do well by our audience and we do appreciate our audience. You've been a lot of great support here from Modern Day to Be. And more importantly, we, of course, appreciate our panel, the ones that are bringing you all the juice tonight. So we're going to go in the reverse order. I do it UK style. So Grayson, hold your horses. You'll get the last word after three minutes. Apollos is going to go first. One minute on the floor. Your final thoughts.

Yeah, so I didn't get a lot of chance to present a lot of slides. I had like objections to say, for example, the hallucination hypothesis or very or like the the the other hypothesis whereby it was like basically post hoc rationalization.

But, yeah, I'm grateful for Modern Day Debate for giving me this opportunity. They start with two V2s, hopefully for a 1v1 in the near future. But, yeah, I was actually surprised that my opponents were actually faithful interlocutors, especially Planet Peterson, since I know, like, a lot of, like, the stuff you do, like, makes you really angry. But, yeah, like... What? What?

Yeah, like with TikTok, but then again, they're flat earthers and stuff. Oh, right, right, right. Okay. But yeah, those are my final thoughts. You can find me on Apollos Christian Apologetics, my YouTube channel, where I try to tackle the research questions that are not talked about enough when it comes to Christian apologetics. So over there, I have a video that talks about Guards of the Empty Tomb, where people

people like actually guarded their graves in general. So yeah, those are five seconds. All right. That is done. But thank you so much, Apollos. I'm muted. I thought you were. Nevermind. I'm muted. Yeah, I'm good. No, it's all good. So yeah. Thanks. Thanks Apollos for coming out to modern day debate. We do appreciate it. We're not taking any more super chat. So we apologize to our audience. We're going to let the speakers out of here.

We're going to hand it over to Eric, but I'm going to ask Eric, Eric, what kind of guitar do you got hanging up in the back there? It looks like it's got a rounded edge, so I can't say if it's a Gibson, but what's, what, what, what am I looking at there? It's a, it's, it's an Epiphone, but it's the, it's a 1959 special edition reissue like Epiphone Les Paul. It has Gibson electronics, but it's an Epiphone body. So it's more economical. It's, I had a Gibson Les Paul and I actually didn't like it, but I love this guitar, but I got, I got like eight others. So.

Well, I bought a Gibson SG just before Christmas. I spent like $2,000 on it, and then I put P90 silencers into it and did all the wiring up, went out, played a show, screamed at a bunch of people with it, and then I came home and the case dropped ever so slightly, and I smashed the headstock off my Gibson SG. Yes, sir. I opened up the case and all my strings were slack, and I...

My wife said I was like Darth Vader when he found out Padme died. My hands were in the air. No!

But, you know, that's definitely the guitar I'm going to take out, I guess, now live because it's been through hell. But I will say my favorite Gibson that I have is a 1954 reissue, gold top with P90s. I'm just a sucker for P90s. So we have to have a little guitar talk. Don't mind us, audience. You know, I got to have fun too. So one minute on the floor. Thanks for coming out here, Eric. We appreciate it. Yeah, your thoughts on the discussion tonight, where everybody can find you.

Yeah, just search up Planet Peterson. I kind of retired from TikTok. I do live streams on there, but I don't post content. But I posted 342 videos to YouTube last year, and I haven't missed a day this year yet. So I got a lot of stuff you can check out there. The debate was really good. Like Apollo said, I didn't get even remotely close to one third of the things that I had prepared for this, but I kind of figured that would happen.

But yeah, I mean, they were good interlocutors. I got to talk about the Spanky Bible for just a second. The Spanky Bible is a stupid argument that I use in response to stupid arguments. So that's why you didn't see it. So, you know, Grayson would say the same thing, but we commend you guys for being reasonable, rational, and emotionally mature and knowledgeable people. So, yeah.

Overall, good experience. This is my debut here, so maybe one of many. I guess we'll see. It was a pleasure hosting you as well. Definitely.

What is it? No, no, don't you do that with me. I'm sorry if I was making the motion when you put up the spanky Bible again. I think that's making me laugh on the inside. I just have to be careful here now. Grayson, we'll give you the last minute on the floor, of course. I mean, it's only fair. And your time's up. All right, thanks everybody for coming out tomorrow. I'm kidding. All right, go ahead. One minute on the floor.

Alright, cool. Well, yeah, I'm Grayson Hawk. You can certainly find my channel by searching Grayson Hawk. I do a bunch of debates against pseudoscientists and theists and flat earthers, young earth creationists, all those kind of stuff. And I make videos about science, history, and religion, so...

Yeah, I mean, if you liked anything that you heard me say today, you're probably going to find more of it on my channel. You should check that out because I'm like almost at 5,000 subscribers and it would mean a lot to me if I could hit that sooner rather than later. So check it out. Subscribe if you like it. It helps the channel out a ton. All right. We would encourage everybody in our live chat to go check out the speakers that they enjoy here on screen. We have them tagged in our live description. So

Yeah, once again, smash the like button if you haven't. Help boost these guys up in the algorithm and get this debate out there. I think this is the type of tone that we're really looking forward to and, you know, going forward with modern day debate. Jeez, I can't speak anymore. I'm at that end of my rope. I did tell the fellas before I've been dealing with a pretty bad virus for like the last week. So, yeah, thanks for keeping it so...

So easy rolling. I really appreciate it. So once again, smash the like button, guys. These guys are legendary on screen. Love it. And we'll see you next time. Cheers.

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