DEBATE: RedeemedZoomer Vs MadeByJimBob | Does Evolution Fit with Christianity?
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Good evening, everybody. Welcome to Modern Day Debate. I'm your host, Ryan. And tonight we're going to be debating, does evolution fit with Christianity? And to get us started, we have redeemed Zoomer. So whenever you're ready, I will start the timer here.

Alright, thanks. So when we're talking about scientific theories, we can't just accept whatever is popular. We have to use God-given wisdom to discern which scientific theories fit a Christian worldview and which don't. We need to look at science through a Christ-centered lens, not a supposedly neutral blank slate. I'm happy to say my opponent agrees with me here, but the thing is, evolution is the theory of creation that best fits a Christian worldview. Every time God creates a new kind of thing in scripture, he does it by a gradual evolutionary process.

God could have snapped his fingers and made all humans at once, but instead, God made all humans from a single man, Adam, from whom came many races.

So why is it so hard to believe that God would make all life from a single cell, from which came all the different species? It simply fits the biblical worldview and the biblical pattern: all Israel from one Israelite, all men

The fundamental question behind this debate is, can one accept the mainstream scientific theories of evolution and the age of the earth without compromising the authority of scripture? Yes, the father of biblical inerrancy, B.B. Warfield, famously accepted evolution. Moreover, St. Augustine and many other church fathers did not believe in a literal six-day creation. It's not like he believed in evolution either, but he did employ a metaphorical interpretation of many parts of Genesis.

Genesis 1 says that creation took six days. However, we know from both scripture and science that time is relative. Moses, who wrote Genesis, also writes in Psalm 90 that, Furthermore, Peter quotes this psalm when he assures his readers that the Lord is not taking a long time to come, just long from their perspective. Which

With the Lord, one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day. The Lord is not slow about his promise. Since the sun and moon were not in the sky until the fourth day, and since days are determined by the sun, it makes sense to suggest that these days were from God's perspective, not from a human perspective.

Also, Jesus said, "Look, I am coming soon" . So far it's been 2,000 years. If the world really is 6,000 years old, then that would not qualify as "soon." However, if the universe is billions of years old and humans have been around for over 100,000 years, then it makes sense that Jesus came at the very end of history and is indeed coming very soon, if you look at the big picture. That's why Scripture says we are in the last days and have been ever since the first advent of Christ.

If we don't limit ourselves to six 24-hour Earth days, then science actually verifies Genesis 1 rather than contradicting it. Scientists have a timeline of when each life form developed, and it beautifully matches Genesis 1. Genesis 1:1-2 says that when God began creating the world, the earth was formless, void, and dark. We know from science that when the earth was first created, it was void of all life. It was dark and chaotic.

When God says, let there be light, that probably refers to when the atmosphere cleared enough so that light could be seen, but not enough that the sun, moon, and stars could be seen, like a gray fog. You might say, wait, the sun, moon, and stars were created on day four. I'm getting to that.

On day two, God uses the sky to separate the water above from the water below. Science has confirmed that in the early days of the earth, all the water existed as steam in the atmosphere, and when temperatures cooled, liquid water collected on the ground and the water vapor stayed in the atmosphere as clouds. On day three, God gathered the waters letting the dry land appear.

Again, science has confirmed that the entire world used to be covered by water until geothermal activity made the first dry land appear. Then God makes plants, which may seem impossible if there's no sun. Day 4 seems to present a challenge since the sun and moon existed far before plants did. But notice that it doesn't say the sun and moon were created on day 4.

It says "Let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separate the day from the night." The atmosphere used to be too thick to see the sun, moon, and stars, but once the first plant life developed, they were able to clear the sky through photosynthesis, which is why it says the sun, moon, and stars were put in the sky after plants were made.

The creatures created after that are all in the same order in Genesis 1 as they are according to the biological timeline. Fish, then birds, then mammals, and finally humans. There is an important detail regarding the creation of humans. First it says, God let us make man, but then it says God made the man. First it's man, Adam, then it's the man, Ha Adam.

This suggests that there is a general creation of human creatures, and then a specific creation of Adam, the first creature who was set apart to receive the breath of life, which is traditionally interpreted as a human soul. Another problem many Christians have with evolution is that the Bible says God made Adam specifically from the dust, and supposedly that means he didn't have parents.

However, several passages, including 1 Corinthians 15:47-48, say we are all made from the dust, yet we still had parents. Just because God created Adam doesn't mean he appeared fully formed and did not develop naturally. We would say God created you and me, but we had parents. We developed by a natural process. Those don't contradict. God created you and me providentially, just the same way God created Adam. Adam and Eve were set apart to be the first humans with a human soul, and all of their descendants therefore had a human soul as well.

Another reason why this interpretation works better than the Young Earth Creationist interpretation is it requires more mental gymnastics to say that Cain's children were with Adam and Eve's daughters, therefore he committed incest, than to say that Cain had children with other humans who were around at that time, since Adam and Eve's other sons and daughters are not mentioned until after it speaks of the birth of Seth.

It mentions that Cain had children with his wife without speaking of the creation of any other people. This can be true while still maintaining that Adam and Eve are the parents of all who have human souls. In Genesis 4:14, Cain is worried that people will kill him. If Adam, Eve, and Cain are the only humans at that point, who is he worried about?

The biggest theological problem Christians have with Darwinian evolution is that it requires death before the fall. I would respond by saying the Bible never claims there was no sin, evil, or death before the fall. In fact, it states the opposite. Genesis 1.3 says God saw the light was good and separated it from the darkness, which implies that there was evil and darkness from the beginning. We know that there was evil before the fall of Adam and Eve because Satan was already there tempting them.

The fall of Satan must have been before the fall of Adam and Eve. Furthermore, God gives Adam and Eve the tree of life that grants them immortality. There's no need for the tree of life if death did not exist in their world yet.

The most common passage used to claim that there was no evil or death before the fall of Adam is Romans 5.12, where Paul says sin entered the world through one man and death through sin. It is absolutely correct to say that death and sin were permitted to enter the world because of Adam, but it does not say that the point of Adam's fall was when sin chronologically entered the world. We know from Job that God allows Satan to sow evil into the world in order to test man.

Theologians have always noted the difference between human evil and cosmic evil. Cosmic evil has existed since the beginning of the physical universe, but the Fall was the beginning of human evil since it was when man sided with Satan and the cosmic forces of evil rather than God. Romans 5:12 says sin entered the world through one man, but that sin can apply to times before Adam, just as grace entered the world through Christ, but that grace applies to times before Christ.

Some ask if evolution is true, why didn't God include it in his word? Well, we need to look at what the Bible claims its purpose is. 2 Timothy 3:16 says, "All scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness." The creation of the universe from a scientific perspective was incredibly complex and is not something that the biblical authors, as well as the vast majority of peoples throughout history whom the Bible was intended to reach,

would have understood. Rather than giving a detailed explanation of what happens, God gives us a simplified narrative that doesn't include all the scientific facts of what happens, but tells us everything we need to know theologically. Genesis 1 is not about how the world is created, but who created it and why. Everyone else at that time thought the sun, stars, and creatures were gods. Genesis is saying those are not gods. God created all those things. God is sovereign all those things.

Another objection to the idea of Adam having lived hundreds of thousands of years ago is if you add up the ages of the patriarchs, they add up to 6,000 years. There's a video by Inspiring Philosophy that does a good job explaining how the ages of the patriarchs were most likely symbolic numbers, not literal, and that they also likely skipped many generations, and we know from other parts of scripture that generations are often modified to fit certain ideal numbers.

What probably happened is this. About 100,000 years ago, the earth was filled with early Homo sapiens, creatures that were nearly human in structure and genetically similar enough to mate with humans, but did not have a human mind or soul. Archaeology reveals that the earliest Homo sapiens were genetically human, but did not have large enough brains to have a complex human mind like we do today. At some point, God made a garden in the Middle East and set apart one of these humans to live in it, one of these human creatures.

Then he gave this man the breath of life, aka a human soul, making him the first real person. Then he realized the man needed another like him, so God took another human from his side, meaning from those around him, a woman whom he gave a human soul as well. When Eve sinned, God said her pains in childbirth would greatly increase. Scientifically, we know that as humans got larger brains, childbirth became more painful for women.

We should also accept evolution because it's a beautiful picture of the gospel. The whole theme of scripture is God bringing good out of evil, life out of death, light out of darkness. Genesis 50, 20, one of my favorite verses in scripture says, you meant it for evil, but God meant it for good. Satan intended death in the world for evil, but God marvelously brought creative life out of it.

Satan intended the fall for evil, but God brought redemption out of it. Satan intended the crucifixion, the worst event in history for evil, but out of it, God brought the best event in history, the resurrection. Thank you.

All right, you got it. Well, thank you so much, Radim Zumer, for your introductory statement. We appreciate you. Let me just adjust this here. We appreciate you coming out to Modern Day Debate to have the discussion. And we are going to kick it over to Jim Bob in just one second. So if this is your first time here at Modern Day Debate, we'd appreciate it if you hit the subscribe button. And while you're at it, smash the like button. Help boost us up in the algorithm. We are live right now. So the more of you hit that like button, the more we get this out.

Of course, you guys know all about it. We have our DebateCon 5 coming up. There's going to be a lot of epic speakers there, along with, as you can see, our crowdfund has been burst out. It's over 100%. I think it's actually at 117%. So big thank you to all the people that help support the channel.

But yeah, before I start grabbing at all the directions in which we've been busy here at the channel, let's get over to Made by Jim Bob's introduction. So thanks for coming back to the channel. Our tech is working a lot better this time. So thanks for coming, Jim. Yeah, no problem. Can I start?

Yep, ready when you are. All right, cool. The topic of the debate is whether evolution is compatible with Christianity. The topic of the debate isn't whether or not you can interpret Genesis poetically and match it to another poetic account of evolution. The question at hand is, what is evolution and what is Christianity? In order to know if they're compatible, you need to know what each of them are. So in order to know what evolution is—

We would just look to a basic definition. Evolution is a process by which different kinds of living organisms are thought to have developed and diversified from early forms during the history of the Earth.

So that is to say, the human beings we see today are the result of a process which necessitates an ancestor that isn't the human we see today. Under the Christian worldview, humans and humans alone hold the image-bearer status of God. Now, given that my opponent is defending both evolution and Christianity, he will be forced to present a moment in the evolutionary process in which beasts take on the image-bearer status of God,

What this means is that there's a necessary threshold within the naturalistic process of change

that the non-human must pass in order to obtain this new metaphysical status of image-bearer status. The problem is, if evolution is a continuous process of change, then the current human status could actually devolve, based on my opponent's view, to the status behind that threshold, losing our image-bearer status. So the necessity is really a naturalistic necessity under this view. The nature of humanity is now in question.

As a consequence, so is the fall. Now, he did, I think he did mention Romans 5, verse 12, as one man sin entered the world and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men for that all have sinned. In this phrase, it's saying that through sin,

Through a man, one man, sin entered into reality. If it's the case that sin already exists and death already exists, my opponent actually has to take the affirmative that death is good.

Sin is good because it was already there. It was already there from creation, because God created and it was all good. Now if my opponent holds to death and sin existing before the fall, he not only has to do exegesis gymnastics, which he already has done in his opening, but he now has a meaningless fall of man. What is this fall of man if there is no such thing as fall? Fall already exists. Sin already exists.

if sin and death existed in a pre-fall realm, what does it mean for humanity to fall under a Christian view? Now, there is no meaning to humanity's fall now under this view. There is no meaning to humanity's redemption or healing. Without the fall, there's no healing anyway. So what is it we're actually referring to? Now, the view gets even worse.

If death existed before the fall, then death was a creation, as I said. And if death was a creation before the fall, then death is good. If death is good, then Christ defeating death simply translates, quite literally, to Christ defeating good. What is Christianity if the peak theosis for man is defeating something that is actually good? Now, here is the...

That's one defeater. Here's another defeater, the argument my opponent's position is trying to present here. Premise one, it is absolutely a necessity, a necessary antecedent. Okay, premise one, it is an absolutely necessary antecedent for salvation, for Christ to incarnate in human nature. Okay, he must incarnate in human nature. Premise two,

For premise one to be true, there must be a universal human nature. There has to be a human nature for Christ to incarnate into. Premise three: Under the evolutionary view, there is no static universal nature. there is no universal nature for Christ to take on. Ergo, there is no human nature to heal. Christianity is not compatible with evolution for this reason.

To summarize the argument I've just presented, evolution reduces organisms to particular transient forms. Under that view, Christ could only take on a particular nature, his own and very own human nature, not like any other human nature, because human nature exists.

under the evolutionary view, is changing. It's not a universal nature. Christ could only overcome his own particular naturalistic status. So it's logically possible, under my opponent's view, that Christ could have incarnated as a particular individual creature, because there is no universal nature, he assumed anyway. It's always in flux, it's always developing, it's devolving, it's doing all this stuff. There's no set thing, just as many evolution proponents would admit.

when they're honest, is that there is no such thing really as species. That is an arbitrary, arbitrarily defined segment, time dependent segment. There is no real species under this view. The same way that there would be no nature, true human nature under this view.

Now, the only thing my opponent can really do, which he's already demonstrated some of, is invert, subvert some of the Christianity to fit his own creation event, or invert evolution to match Christianity to evolution. I assume he will continue to do both, but the key point here is that central to the gospel is Christ's assumption of the universal human nature in the incarnation, which under the evolutionary view, there is no static universal nature.

human nature to take on. It's purely nominal. It's a transient, unfixed process that's always changing. In fact, it could be the case that many, many millions of years could still pass from now, and we could actually evolve away from having

the mind capacity we have and the ability to do logic and reasoning and philosophy from this view. So do we lose the breath of life? Do we lose the image-bearer status? If it's the case that Christ came from a Christian view and could only take on a nominal role

nature, only his own, not like any other human, because human nature doesn't exist. There's just a transient form. There's just a continued changing process, right? Completely evolving and changing, right? If this is the case, there's nothing to heal, because the healing, under a Christian view, would be referring to the humanity, humanity healing. So there's another problem under this view. How many minutes, Ryan? Okay.

Three minutes. Three. Okay. The other problem here is that from an evolutionary view, everything becomes mechanistic anyway. So he has to – my opponent actually has to create this arbitrary moment where the mechanistic biological machine that keeps its processes going straight out of involuntary responses to stimuli –

has to now grant human beings at some arbitrary point in this process, this higher state of godliness. Uh,

This image-bearer problem for my opponent is pretty massive because if it's the case that man was given the image-bearer status, my opponent has to say evolution is no longer true now. It has to stop because now we have a fixed humanity. From that view, he has to now deny evolution, making it incompatible with his own Christian view.

That's all for me. Awesome. Thank you so much for the introductory statement there, Jim. Bob, we are going to get into an open discussion in just a moment here. So once again, yeah, if you still want to help us out, you can still check out our Indiegogo link. But like I said, we are blowing it out of the water, but it all helps so that maybe we can do a little bit better. That's great. We also still have tickets available for the live event, the DebateCon event.

Don't mind my microphone thing. I'm going to screw it in. It's being a little bit finicky. But yeah, on top of that, we are going to get into the open discussion. I'll remind our live chat, though, we are going to take questions at the end of the discussion. So if you have questions, like so many of you already have,

Yeah, get it into a super chat and we will read it at the end of this open discussion. In the meantime, use those thumbs to keep chatting it up in the live chat and smash that like button. We really appreciate it, guys. Love seeing the numbers shoot up there. So let's get into the open discussion, guys. I'll set the timer and I'm going to hand it over to you, redeemed Zoomer, to respond to some of what you just heard. Okay, great. Thank you. So a lot of your argument centers around the image of God. Like that's a big thing for you, right?

Well, not necessarily. One argument, you went to the bathroom when I laid out my premised argument, which I'd really like you to respond to. So your premised argument about the universal human nature, that one? Yes. Yeah, so I do affirm a universal human nature. I'm not a nominalist. I don't think Jesus assumed just a particular human nature. Okay, so under the evolutionary view, is evolution still happen when Christ comes? There's not much human evolution because now humans have technology. But the point is that I don't- Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

How can technology, which would be an effective evolution, stop evolution?

Well, humans don't evolve as much. We perceive evolution with other species, especially microorganisms. But because humans have technology to keep us alive, we don't need natural selection to respond to problems. We have technology. But I think that's a bit beside the point. Well, no, it's not actually beside the point because if you're assuming evolution is this process we have no real control over, you're basically begging the question and saying, well, now that we have cool stuff,

we're not evolving because we don't need to, right? We're not evolving as much. There's a little of evolutions here and there. How did you determine how much we're evolving and how much we're not evolving? I don't think we need to determine exactly how much. Well, to make the statement we're not evolving much actually assumes that you can measure how much we're evolving. So I'm asking you, how did you determine how much we're evolving right now?

what is in the past hundred hundred thousand years so there haven't been any major changes to the human structure so wait a second you're using just a small amount of time which uh according in reference to in contrast to millions of years of evolution you're saying well we don't seem to have that much change in the last a couple hundred whatever thousand years you're saying that you're saying anatomical

Look, it's possible that evolution theoretically could continue, but I'm saying it's unlikely that any substantial changes will happen based on purely naturalistic evolution due to the fact that we have technology. Why does evolution only count if it's substantial? Why do you think that any evolution at all is a problem? I'm saying there is evolution. No, no, no. You just said substantial. I'm saying why did you just assume evolution only occurs if it's substantial?

i didn't say evolution only occurs if it's substantial so are we evolving right now yes or no a little bit okay so is the human nature static right now the human nature mainly consists of the human soul is the image of god physical or spiritual um it's spiritual but the thing is if you're going to note does that require a certain kind of under your evolutionary view does the uh the ability to hold the image bearer status a crab doesn't have it right

A crab doesn't have a human soul. That's why it does a Neanderthal. The Neanderthal was never given a human soul. So what is the arbitrary point at which you give pre-Caveman switch in the evolutionary view to human? When in the chronological anthropological storyline did the humans receive the image bearer status of God?

When in the chronological timeline? The Garden of Eden. The Garden of Eden? Yes. Okay, so the Garden of Eden, man was fully formed? Man was fully formed structurally, and he received the spiritual status of image-bearer by receiving a human soul when God breathed the breath of life. So when was Eden then under your timeline?

I said it was about 100,000 years ago, maybe more, maybe less. That's approximately when scientists think human life developed. My theory is not beholden to that exact number. Maybe it's 50,000, maybe it's 20,000, maybe it's 200,000. I don't know. But let's just say it's about 100,000. I'm willing to estimate that. Okay. So was there a group of people that got image bearer status and the exact similar anatomical humans were

were just beneath them didn't get the image bearer status perhaps i mean that would be necessary right couldn't because because under evolution even the people perhaps watching in the chat

would argue there isn't an actual moment where humans became human. The process of evolution, you're actually in disagreement with evolution right now because this long gradual timeline is this constant slow splintering of beasts, right? But under your view, you're saying there's this moment 100,000 years ago where atoms created even though other humans existed, right?

Yes, Adam was originally one of them and then was set apart by God. So was Adam a mindless beast? He was as mindless as the other hominids, maybe similar to Neanderthals. Did they sin? They didn't sin because no animals are guilty of sin.

Okay. And so from your view, evolution could continue hypothetically, right? In a physical manner, yes. So in a physical manner, could we devolve and have smaller brains and no longer use reasoning and do philosophy? It's possible. That doesn't mean it's going to happen, but yeah, it's theoretically possible. Okay. The way it's theoretically, people could get brain implants and become superhuman. Can someone...

Okay, can someone today be born and not have the image-bearer status of God? If they're born from two human parents, they will have the image-bearer status of God. Even if they have almost no brain? Even if they have almost no brain. There are humans like that. Do you know about that?

Well, I know there's humans born without brains. I'm asking what under your metaphysics gives them, right? Because if you think evolution in your opener was a very beautiful story of man evolving out of darkness, God could have given a crab the breath of life. It wouldn't have mattered. It wouldn't have mattered. If the brain isn't necessary for image-bearer status from your view—

Isn't it possible from your view that God could have just given any beast, mindless beast, the image-bearer status? Yes, God could have, but the reason God gave humans the image-bearer status, the reason God gave humans who have these big brains image-bearer status is because we are to be God's priests on earth. God has a purpose for us. God wants us to build things. God wants us to name things. Priests of evolution? Yeah.

priests of god well i mean of evolution too we're going to be because if you're the father if you're the priest of your home you should teach your kid evolution i mean sure i teach your kids lots of things so you should teach them we came from beasts yes that's what we teach in science so we science okay so are you saying evolution is a is a scientific theory too evolution is a scientific theory is there anything required for something to be a scientific theory

So scientific theory is not just a hypothesis. It's a hypothesis that's pretty well agreed upon that there's lots of evidence for. Is there anything necessary as a prerequisite for something to be a scientific theory? I'm not sure what you're asking, but what would you say? Well, I would say for something to be a scientific theory in natural science, would you agree that evolution is a claim about natural science?

It's a claim about the natural world and natural science studies, the natural world. Okay. Is there, so can you have a scientific theory without going through the scientific method?

The scientific method is used to test scientific theories, but it's a bit different for evolution because it's a past thing. Oh, okay. You could argue about what to classify evolution as, whether it's a scientific theory. Well, I think it's relevant. The reason I think it's relevant is if you're holding the view that Christianity is true from your view and evolution is true and you think it's just as priestly to teach evolution, you should probably be able to— No, I never said it's just as priestly to teach evolution than to teach evolution.

I would teach evolution the same way I teach like the American Revolution or the way I teach about the Mongolian. Well, I understand. I understand. But that the that category is history and science is more rigorous than history. Right. So I was wondering, did you do you know what the scientific method is?

Well, yeah, it requires experimenting. So that's why you can't exactly use the scientific method to test evolution. We can test evolution on a small scale with like... So would you agree that experiment is necessary for scientific theory?

Well, it really depends on how you're defining it. I mean, I'm not scientific theory. I'm saying scientific theory is always at the tail end of an experiment. It sounds like you conceded that you really can't do an experiment on evolution. Therefore, it's not a scientific theory. So if you're going to teach your kids, at least teach them correctly and rigorously. That's actually not a scientific theory. It's a post-diction narrative about it's basically an origin story.

Well, it depends on how you define a scientific theory. Like people were doing science before Francis Bacon thought of the scientific method with experiment. Okay. It really depends on how you define it. All right. So let's just say for the sake of argument, let's just say that we'll teach evolution as history, as natural history. That's how people often classify it. It's natural history. Okay. And you believe that when God created, he included sin? So did God create darkness? Yes or no?

God created, well, light, darkness would be the absence of light. Yes. An effect of good. Sin is the absence of goodness. Just speak just the way God created light and darkness. God created good. And there's also God created. So from your view, God created evil. Nope. Well, I mean, wouldn't darkness be evil under your view? Dark. It's implied because Genesis says God saw the light was good and separated from the darkness. So it was a darkness. Good.

Not good the way the light is. Not good the way the light is. It's not if the light is good. Does it have its own ontology? Like, are you a dualist? No. Well, evil doesn't have its own ontology either. So that's why God can't create evil. And sin? And because you argue that because lyrically, I would say, that you said darkness exists, which you say, I heard you say in a debate that Satan, because Satan could fall, you're saying sin already exists. Is that correct?

The fall of Satan occurred before the fall of Adam. I'm saying, are you saying the fall of Satan was sin itself? The fall of Satan was sin against God, yes. No, okay, so you're calling the rebellion against God sin, right? Sure. Okay, and would you say, are you saying that the fall of Satan had an effect on other angelic beings the same way the fall of Adam had an effect on man?

I'm not sure how that works exactly. I'm not sure if there was like, if he was like the federal head of some of the angels, the way Adam's the federal head of all humanity. It seems like the angels just willingly decided to side with Satan. But the point is that before the fall of Adam, there were evil beings. There were the fallen angels who are evil spiritual beings. So in that sense, evil existed in the world before Adam. Evil has no ontology of its own.

But there were still evil forces. There were still forces. So what's the fall of Adam then under your view then?

What's falling? I'll explain. So God offered Adam the tree of life. Historically, the tree of life has been interpreted to be Christ. If Adam had taken up the tree of life, he would have achieved theosis right then and there, and he would have achieved eternal life then and now, and then there would be – all evil could be defeated right then and there, right? Yeah.

But instead, God sided with evil over God. God, Adam forsook eternal life and chose to rebel against God instead. That's what the fall was. The fall wasn't the first instance of evil. The fall was...

Humanity, God's greatest... Well, hold on, but you just said, you just, I just brought you through humanity doesn't have a static ontology under this evolutionary view. The human soul is static. Right, so the human soul could exist in a beast that's not human.

It theoretically could. Right. So God, from your view, God, Christ himself, right, could have just as well, totally just as well. It wouldn't change anything under your theological view. Christ himself could have incarnated as a donkey. Well, that depends what makes us human. Does our physical structure make us human?

Well, human under the evolutionary view is in transient form, so there is no human. It's just a temporary form right now. My idea of what a human is is not from evolution. Well, biologically it is because if – Biologically, that's – Biologically, we're 98% the same as apes or as chimpanzees. I understand. 98%. Could God have incarnated as an ape?

He could have, but he chose not to. That wasn't the plan. There's a lot of things God could have done. Right, but there's no problem with Christ incarnating as any given arbitrary beast because from your view, it's not which beast. It's not which beast. It's that he could have just incarnated in any beast. It was that God breathed life in an arbitrary beast called a human being at the time, right?

It's not arbitrary because humans are the most developed life form. It's the beast that God providentially intended to have the human soul. Okay, but if he used evolution, God is currently using evolution that it's logically possible for us, right? It's actually necessarily the case that we are still evolving right now

in some sort of micro and unknown macro way. So it could be the case under your theology that you call Christianity here, that if it took, from your view, it took Christ another 500,000 to a million years to come back, right? Theoretically, we could physically evolve out of this skin suit, and you would say a hunched-over,

snarling beast, right, who's at the will of nature would still hold the image-bearer status of God, right? From a purely logical perspective, it's possible, but do you think God would allow that in his providence? Well, it's not a matter of what he would allow because under your view, it doesn't even matter. What matters, this is the problem here. If evolution were true and was still in effect...

And hypothetically, you agree that we can devolve in a sense to a hunched over snarling beast, right? And back to the nature of animal nature. What would stop – here's the question. What would stop from your theology, from your theological view, what would stop –

the beast man right now, devolving into a hunched over creature and going back to the wilderness and being animalistic, where would he lose the image bearer status in that process? Well, I'll answer that. So the image bearer status is not the reason why that wouldn't happen. I think there's a different reason. It's so that we could still relate to our first parents, Adam and Eve. So if we were so different, if we evolved to be so different that we could not relate to them,

that would be problematic because then we couldn't understand the message of salvation. For example, it's theoretically possible that human society could evolve, devolve so far that marriage doesn't exist anymore. And then we wouldn't understand most of the stories in the Bible that are based on these concepts like law, marriage, and kings and all that. Like Jesus, Jesus is described as a king. Isn't it theoretically possible that human society could evolve such that we no longer have kings or marriages? Is that possible?

Yeah, king would be some sort of hierarchical representation or extension of the church itself, but we're talking about nature here. I'm talking about biology, not social. You don't believe in biological evolution, but obviously social structures change over time. We've seen lots of that happening in our culture. Is it possible humanity could devolve socially so much that we have no concept of a king, no concept of hierarchy, no concept of marriage? No.

Let's say it's not. No, it's not. It's not possible. From my view, anyway, it's not possible that reality could ever be structured in a way that somehow avoids hierarchy. What if there's what if some people what if the leftists get their way? They make a commune requires hierarchy to defend. What if they think of some what if they make some supercomputer that makes everything be perfectly in order? Requires force to keep it in order from bad actors.

What if the supercomputer is the force? What if the supercomputer keeps everyone in line? Requires maintenance, which requires protection of force from bad actors. We already have AI that can do a lot of things. We don't have AI. We have augmented intelligence, but it's irrelevant to the point that hierarchy, the nature of reality, in nature especially, is definitely hierarchical regardless of the social paradigms. For instance, feminism, maybe you agree with me, RedeemZoomer? Yes, probably. Feminism sits on top of a basically –

It's basically we built a stage for people to believe that feminism is a real thing. And really it's completely undergirded by the force of men. So they get to play like there's some Liberty, but it is the, but it is the case at any given point, men could just take it over and just get rid of not only their rights, but other people's rights. They could just do it with force. Right. Okay. So I'm saying that that's the, that's the brutality I'm referring to, to tie it back to evolution. I'm saying from your perspective, like,

It's totally logically consistent that evolution is still happening and it's potentially could continue to happen, producing more of a beast like man than an elevated man. And that's totally logically possible.

It's evolutionarily, from your view, practically possible too. It's physically possible, but God's not going to let – why do you think that's possible? Well, saying God won't let it is not what's testing your theology and your compatibility with evolution. What's testing is you have this thing called image-bearer, and you call the nature of man –

the image bearer, right? So when I say premise one, is it absolutely necessary as an antecedent of salvation for Christ to incarnate as a human nature? You actually disagree with premise one. You know why? Because you just admitted that Christ could have incarnated as non-human nature, and it would have been just as well.

Well, I think the physical characteristics of humans are accidental to human nature because humans don't all have the same DNA. They don't all have the same physical characteristics. No two humans have the same physical characteristics. So where is this mythical Platonist form of a human structure? Where is it? Are you talking about the universal of a human nature? Yeah, where is that universal?

Well, it doesn't exist as a single object, right? Because if you're going to appeal to… Is it okay for the particulars of that universal to deviate from that universal in some sense? Well, I would say in the mind of God. What would you say? I would also say in the mind of God. But is it okay for the particulars of that universal to somewhat deviate from that universal?

Um, well, I can't deviate from the universal because that would be a contradiction. But if the universal includes the physical structure, then all the particulars would deviate from that in some way, or at least most of them, because none of us have identical physical structure. You're actually proving my point. Evolution...

There can be no universals under evolution. So you trying to tie the universals that exist in the mind of God and the reality that he created is reflective of the mind of God. Evolution actually denies the universal and consequently produces nominalism. There's no escaping the nominalistic reality of evolution. Why? Because even things like species, dude, RedeemZoomer, even things like species from the evolution proponent himself,

would say that is just arbitrary. There is no real thing called the species. That changes. That is not a fixed universal category as well, because these things die off or change. They don't maintain their identity over time, which brings me back to this premise. Premise one, is it an absolutely necessary antecedent of salvation for Christ to incarnate in human nature? You have to say, no, it could have been donkey nature.

So are you willing to say that today? No, because the human nature is the human soul. Christ needs to. No, no, there's yeah, there's human nature. But you're saying the human nature now could have been embodied in a donkey. Then if the human nature is purely soul, is it possible under your theology that a human nature could be embodied in a donkey? I already said yes. OK, I'm not going to do that. It's possible. Well, no, not that he can do it. It's like it's irrelevant. The creature is irrelevant, right?

The physical, it's not irrelevant. It's just not absolutely. So, so God could have chose, right? Instead of Adam, he could have chose Adam's dog. And from your view, Christianity would still be fully intact, right? That's an appeal to absurdity. No, it's a, it's a logical consequence. You got to bite the bullet on it.

God could have incarnated into a banana. God could have tied our sins to a cake. And so what would be the healing, right? Because you also, being a Christian, right, even with your, what I would call perverse Christian paradigm here, is that if P1 is true, or is...

is no longer true. So if P1, how would you restructure that under your Christian paradigm? It is an absolute necessary antecedent of salvation for Christ to incarnate in

What nature? Any nature. I said a human nature. Well, what's a human? That's a category that's in transient form. What is human nature? I already said the essence of a human nature is a human soul. The soul correlates with the body. I know, but when you say human, this is your hypotheticals in the real world. A human soul always. What are you referring to as a human?

I'm referring to a human soul. No, human, this is like the gender debates. What are you referring to when you say human? When I debate a Muslim and they say Allah has a foot, and I go, what's a foot? And they say, nothing like Allah's foot. And I go, well, how do you know what a foot is? You're doing the same thing right now, okay? When you agree with premise one, it is absolutely necessary an antecedent of salvation for Christ to incarnate in human nature. I ask you, what does human mean?

It's a descendant of Adam. Christ would have been a descendant of Adam. Human, but you just said it could have been a donkey. If Adam had been a donkey, Christ would have incarnated as a donkey. But it would have still been human nature from your view.

Now, you said, is it possible for Christ to have been a human if he incarnated into a donkey? He could have been a human, but he also had to incarnate into one of the sons of Adam to redeem Adam. At first, you just asked, could he have been a human if he incarnated into a donkey? I'm not sure you know what the problem is here. You have a problem here.

right now because the thing we call human, you're making a reference to human, right? If premise one is true, that the necessary antecedent for salvation is for Christ to incarnate in human nature, but you're arguing human nature could just as well exist in a donkey, what is it you're recalling human? Well, I'm calling human anyone who's descended from Adam. And all the people who are descended from Adam have a human soul. And Adam was a human? Yes.

He was a human once he was a human person once he received the human soul. Okay, so like the rest of us once you receive the human soul before that he was a homo sapien you could apply scientific labels that doesn't really matter before that yes he was a beast before that he was a beast then he received a human soul he became human everyone who's descended from Adam is human in the same sense that Adam was. So it's it has nothing to do with the form of the being at all human from your view

It has nothing to do with our form or how we do with it. The form is not the physical matter is not essential to what it is to be. So it could have been the case that a donkey was crucified and your Christianity wouldn't wouldn't change a bit. Again, if Adam had been a donkey, if for whatever reason God chose to give donkeys the Imago Dei, then the entire story of redemption would have taken place with donkeys.

Right, and that would be consistent under your Christian view, right? Yes, but God had his reasons for choosing humans instead. Why do you think God chose humans instead of donkeys to bear the image of God? Why do you think that was? Well, I think we have a different –

view of Genesis. So I'm not going to go into exegesis and hermeneutics with you, but I would say that if you go to creation, God created man with specifically, not to evolve, but specifically to embody and to hold his image-bearer status and gives him free will to do so, as well as the faculties. I don't know, Redeemed Zoomer, are you a Calvinist? Yes. Yes.

So he gives us free will. You don't even believe in free will, which is... Yes, we do. We believe in free will. Okay, so... Wait a second, really? We believe in free will, yeah. Okay, so does an animal, a beast, pre-breath of life have free will? No. Okay, so they just do stuff, right? They're enslaved to their passions. They're enslaved to their passions, right? But under your view, a human who has free will can do evil and good?

We have the ability because we have free will to do evil or good, yes. Can we evolve to not do evil or good? No, because the will comes from the soul, not from our physical flesh. Okay, so right now, human beings with a will could either choose to do good or evil, but they're still evolving, so they're actually superseding their physical dominoes, if you will, correct? Correct.

Yeah, if we evolved into something else, we would still have the faculties of the soul. We would still have a mind. We would still have a will. We would still have free will. So we wouldn't be like crabs are today. If we somehow evolved into crabs, I saw this one video about how things keep evolving into crabs. If we somehow evolved into crabs, we'd be very smart crabs. We'd be crabs that sin and crabs that worship God. Now, this is not going to happen, but...

Logically, it could. Yeah, logically, it could. I don't see the problem with that. Right. Okay. But this is the thing is that you really have no distinction between any of the beasts and man aside from just that. So it's like I'm not sure. I'm still not sure, though, what is being healed ultimately if there's no universal human healing.

Being healed is the human soul and the creation universal. Again, we'll probably loop here. When I ask a Troon defender what a woman is, what are they referring to? They just say the person who says they're a woman. And I go, what are you referring to? You're doing this with –

With human nature right now, where there is no real knowable category of human nature. Yes, a human – no, there is. It's a rational animal. A man is a rational animal, an animal with a rational soul. Okay, but rational – there are other animals like crows and corvids. They don't have rational souls. They don't have rational souls. They have relatively big brains compared to some other animals. Okay.

They don't have rational souls. Okay, but you're saying we evolved, right? So it's possible that a bird who gets smarter could meet, like I said in my opener, the threshold, the naturalistic... No, they can't. God needs to implant a rational soul in a crow for that crow to become human, to become a... Human. So a crow could become human, though. If God wants to make a crow human, can God make a crow human? So God can make contradictions, right?

That's not a contradiction because you're not defining human in the sense – Is a crow a human? Well, are you defining human as a person, as like a rational person, or are you defining human purely structurally? Are you defining human structurally or spiritually? Well – Because those get equivocated. Are you defining human structurally or spiritually? Well, let's do structurally first. What is a – is a crow the same as a human?

Structurally, a crow is not the same as a human. Under evolution, is it possible in a million, million, kajillion, 4,000 million years for a crow to evolve to take the form of a human? Yes, that happens sometimes. It's called analogous structures.

No, I mean like standing and debating. Yes, it's possible. So under your theological view, beasts could evolve to walk and do debates. Let's say there's another debate channel. Hold on, with a me and a type of you, but it's a crow.

They could actually be doing rational debates that's strictly given by their brain power, not by the rational soul, by just strict brain power, right? No, because we are self-conscious. Brain power is not strong enough to produce self-consciousness. The most the crow could evolve into is a type of ape, a type of Neanderthal. Neanderthals don't do debates.

Okay, but if evolution was true, you're saying there's no threshold at which the brainpower could produce a debating monkey.

No, because debates require self-consciousness and they require free will. Well, then now your Christian view is incompatible with evolution because evolution says that we evolved and produced our consciousness out of an emerging property system. No, that's not what I believe. Maybe some people who believe in evolution believe in that, but that idea is not essential to evolution. Evolution is descent with modification. I believe in descent with modification.

Well, what other understanding, what other account for reasoning and the capability of debating and doing metaphysics and math and engineering would the evolution proponent have other than a naturalistic explanation? They have a natural explanation. There's a lot of evolution proponents who would say that the brain alone is capable of doing debates and having the self-consciousness. Like, do you believe self-consciousness can arise purely from matter?

No, I don't believe any of that. Neither do I. But I'm saying your view is actually incompatible with the entailments of evolution, though.

well why because the entailments of evolution is strict biological mechanistic reality which means wait no evolution has an entailment right if evolution was true without without your you introducing the ingredients of theism and re-establishing what you think evolution is and making it um uh compatible forcing its compatibility with theism evolution on its face is purely naturalistic correct

No. It's not? You defined evolution earlier. You didn't include naturalism anywhere in that definition. I just asked you, what else is evolution other than pure natural events occurring, biological events occurring, neurological events unfolding? Evolution is descent with modification. That's the definition of evolution. Is descent with modification purely material and naturalistic? Not necessarily. How is it not?

If you could believe in descent with modification, I didn't ask what you can believe. I said, how is evolution a naturalistic account of matter in motion?

Whatever you want to give it, what it's doing, it's splintering, it's changing, whatever. I'll grant you all of the things, right? I'm saying if it's not purely mechanistic and determined by physical forces, laws of physics, laws of nature, thermodynamics, laws of chemistry, I'm asking you, what else is influencing pure evolution? Yeah.

Now, I want to clarify what I'm arguing for here. I'm not claiming that everything we are today is the product of evolution. I know you don't believe that. I'm saying under evolution, for evolution to be true without any theism involved. What else is evolution other than strict mechanistic determinism?

If you are presupposing that there is no theism evolved, that would be the logical conclusion of what evolution is. But evolution does not require you to presuppose there is no theism evolved. Where are you getting that from? Well, I'm saying evolution, if it were true, what else would you what else could you use scientifically? Right. Not not that evolution is a scientific theory. I think we established that's not the case. Is that what else would you be?

looking at other than purely naturalistic physical events unfolding. Well, I'm still asking you to define where evolution requires a naturalistic world, but you haven't done that. Where it requires it? Yeah, why does evolution require naturalistic world? Because evolution, how it's defined, doesn't necessitate anything extra, right?

It doesn't necessitate it, but it doesn't forbid it either. Well, I didn't ask if it forbid it. If evolution doesn't need your theistic view, I'm asking if it's not purely determined, how are you going to possibly argue with current evolution proponents arguing that it's purely determined?

Well, there's multiple theories specifically of how evolution works. Not every evolutionist has the exact same idea of how things work. Okay, let me do it another way, dude. Do you believe from your own view, which is trying to hold an evolutionary view and a theistic view, can you tell me which events in humanity were biologically determined and which were determined by the human soul?

What are you talking about? Like, which events are you talking about? Human events. Any events. List an event, and I'll tell you whether it's biological or... The annihilating of the Canaanites. The annihilating of the Canaanites was human souls making free will choices and using their human bodies to carry out those free will choices that the human souls made. Okay, and how would you know to what extent evolution wasn't at play? What are you talking about? How would you know to what extent pure Darwinian takeover wasn't at play?

Why would pure, what do you mean by pure Darwinian? If you believe in evolution, then some type of evolution reaction to stimuli was occurring in that time period. Are you saying that the conquest of Canaan had something to do with our physical features that arose out of evolution? No, I'm saying if evolution was true and that humans were still at the effect of biological causes, then

And if you still believe that's the case, I'm asking you to decipher and distinguish between how much of humans at any given moment in time are at the effect of pure biological forces and how much are they at the effect of their own free will.

Well, I would say with the conquest of Canaan or any other human event that you propose, how much of it is the body and how much of it is the soul? And if however you would answer that, I would say that's the same thing. Insofar as it's the body, it's the product of evolution. And insofar as it's the soul, it's the product of the breath of life supernaturally implanted by God. Okay. So then you're holding to free will, but you're simultaneously holding to a deterministic worldview. Yeah.

I mean, I don't know where you got that from what I said, but I do hold to a determinism, yeah. Okay, so if you hold to determinism, how can you defend free will if whatever we choose, if we choose God, is already determined and God caused it? That's just divine compatibilism. Okay, hold on. Here we go. Let me ask you a question. When you do a good thing— Yes.

Did you do a good thing or did God supersede your faculties, give you irresistible grace, and then you just did whatever the marionette machine did?

Well, just because God foreknows and predestines everything in some sense, and by the way, this is a standard Christian view in many Christian theologians since the beginning of the church, by the way. I agree with you that knowledge and cause are not the same, but I ask you a very direct question. When you do something good in your Christian worldview, are you at the effect of irresistible grace? Yes.

Not every good thing we do is due to irresistible grace. You can really say it's us doing it and there was no force compelling us to do it, but God's still playing it out as part of his providence. There's a difference between God doing something providentially and God doing something supernaturally. Only some of the events are done by God supernaturally. Every event in the universe is part of God's providence and it can be said to be caused by God, but not everything can be said to be caused by God in the same sense.

That's standard Augustinianism, by the way. Okay, because I'm just wondering, because free will is definitely related to this topic, because to hold a Christian view, in addition to the antecedent of salvation, that Christ must incarnate in human nature, which you said human nature could possibly incarnate into a donkey, which means the donkey no longer has a donkey nature, and you basically are just a nominalist at that point. But in addition to that, you would need mind—

You would need some sort of rational experience evaluation process. This is why I brought up the evolutionary view from their view,

Our evaluation is reduced to chemical reactions. Do you hold that view or do you reject that view? I don't think it's purely reduced to chemical reactions. I think it's correlated with chemical reactions. But once again, it's the same as body and soul. I am a substance dualist in that I think we have both body and soul. I assume you believe that too because Christ himself said that fear not the one who can destroy the body but fear the one who can destroy the body and the soul. I'm assuming you believe that we are body and soul, right?

Yeah, I think there has to be a metaphysical aspect to us. Otherwise, determinism, we can't know anything. That's why I'm concerned and confused that you hold a determinist view because

So how is it you can hold a determinist view and an evolutionary view, which is just extra determinism, and think that you have the capacity or faculties to know things if any conclusion you're coming to is either biologically determined or theologically determined? I'm not sure how you know anything to be true. Not everything has to be either biologically or theologically determined. The fact that God in some way –

includes everything in his providence doesn't mean that he is sort of intervening in the universe and like pushing people in certain directions. It's sort of like God is the author of the story and we are the characters in the story. It's not as though God has to give irresistible grace every time someone does a good thing, nor is it that God puts evil in the hearts of someone when they do a bad thing.

Okay, so— That's standard compatibilism, by the way. Okay, so I think what we got so far is, from your Christian view, to make it compatible with Christianity, that Christ didn't really need to incarnate in any given form, that human nature could have been placed into donkey, which in case there's no donkey nature anymore. Well, no, because he needs to incarnate into a descendant of Adam.

So if somehow, like, if somehow the evolution happened between Adam and Christ so much that humans greatly changed, then he could have incarnated into whatever humanity looked like at that time. I understand, but I'm not— He looks like the son of Mary. I understand. He looks like the son of Mary. I know, but from your view, dude, that—from your view, Adam, even the first man, like, there's a bunch of—it sounds like this is—correct me if I'm wrong, Richard, is that your chronology is God created—

There was already sin and evil in the world and death and decay. Then thousands, millions of years later, when we started walking upright, he breathed life into Adam, right? And gave him the choice to act on his will or align himself with God's will, right?

Pretty much. So then there was the fall, right? So you're saying the fall happened millions of years later after the humans evolved, right? Maybe not millions or whatever amount you guys say, right? You just, there's obviously it requires a lot of time because you believe God created basically pond scum and then it got up on its legs and then it figured out how to think a little bit. And then it got to the point where as a human, this is what's interesting is that you have this view that, um,

That God chose Adam, but it was arbitrary. It didn't have to be Adam. It's not arbitrary. Well, you're saying that the development of man toward an end where he had a big enough brain, then he earned –

the breath of life image bearer status. Well, no, because even though I believe in evolution, I still believe God was superintending all of it because God's providence includes everything. So we still evolved exactly as God wanted us to. So I said the image of God is not structural in its essence.

But before God actually created anything physical, in God's mind, he conceived of what he wanted humans to look like. So he willed that evolution should happen such that we would evolve exactly as God wanted us to. So just because the physical structure is not part of the essence of our human nature, God still willed that evolution should happen such that we would look and talk and walk exactly as he wanted us to. So no, it was absolutely not arbitrary. Right.

So he just wanted Adam to look like Adam, and then he created – there were other people that you would call not human, right? They are human structurally or near human structurally, basically identical to Adam structurally. They were not given the breath of life. So are you asking why – So they had the – hold on. So they had a big – as big a brain as Adam? Possibly. Possibly.

Well, they would because if Adam was a part and Adam had parents, he would be the nature of his predecessor, his parents. It is possible that the giving of the human soul did actually alter Adam's physiology in some way. I'm open to that possibility. But for the sake of argument, let's assume they had the same. So Adam had parents. Yes. Would it be wrong for Adam to kill his parents? It would. Well, that's a good question, actually. It is a good question.

I think it's wrong to kill an animal if you don't feel the need to like generally like we would feel weird killing a chimpanzee and grilling it for dinner, because they are somewhat similar to us. It is a good question.

I mean, if you were to bite the bullet here, you would have to say it actually wouldn't be whether we need it or not is irrelevant to whether it's immoral, because now you're just determining arbitrarily what need is. Right. I ask the vegan this. Is it OK to kill the animal? They say, well, we don't need to. And I say, what if you're starving? And then they're like, yeah, we needed to. Right.

I'm asking a pretty... I guess, yeah, sure. I guess because Adam's parents... So Adam could kill his parents. It wouldn't be wrong in the same sense that it's wrong to kill other humans. Got you. So in your view, if it just was added in to...

to Romans that through Adam sin was created and that he could have just added that Adam completely murdered his family and the entire quote society of beasts that look exactly like him simply because he's not of their nature. But you can't tell me what nature they are, right?

Well, they are structurally human. They're the same nature that like, or at least a similar nature, I guess, homoousios with a gorilla or a chimpanzee. Yeah. Yeah, the thing is... Like you keep asking me all these weird hypotheticals. No, no, no, no. These are hypotheticals to test your consistency. They're not, they might be weird to your view, but it's a fair question to ask if you, if there's an arbitrary, or let's say not arbitrary, you're saying God at some point created humans

evolutionary process that produced a bunch of beasts to the extent where they had the brain capacity to do things, but you're saying, well, Adam existed and before God gave him the breath of life in his creating him from the dust, he actually right next to Adam could have been Adam's beast girlfriend and she just didn't get involved, right? And so what nature is she?

I'm not sure what nature she is. All right. It's five minutes. And five minutes we'll get to the audience questions. I think we can say Adam's life dramatically changed after being given the breath of life. I'm not sure if he even remembered any of his life before that as an animal. Like if you used to be a chimpanzee, then you became a human, you wouldn't really think of –

your younger chimpanzee days is like the good old days as being a child. You wouldn't really think of that. I'm not sure if Adam had any memory of his previous life at all. So then I would ask you if you think there's some metaphysical thing that distinguishes Adam and everyone who came from him,

that's different than every other nearly identical structural beast. What I'm confused about is, what is it you think Adam, before he was Adam, because he wouldn't have a name, because he wouldn't be human nature, what is it a near identical beast would be doing from an evolutionary view with the same exact brain power that Adam suddenly has the capability of doing? What's different about the...

Because you would have to actually say that two beasts with the same exact brain size and capacity to know things, you're taking Adam and saying this one is now earned God's breath of life because of his brain faculty. Hold on. Well, I'm just saying I'm being rhetorical here. Okay. I'm saying that Adam –

God wanted us to evolve and he got humans to a certain place where they evolved, right? And that's what justifies then giving the breath of life because now we have the brain power to manage the stewardship, right? Yes. I'm saying that these other beasts have...

have the same exact standard of a brain, same exact capacity, same exact ability to obtain knowledge and navigate in the world and do things. Let's say they were all hunting. Let's say they can communicate with each other, right? Maybe. I'm just wondering what is it, because it sounds like a contradiction here, is that you're saying the necessary precondition for the breath of life is an evolutionary threshold of brain power, right?

I didn't say it's necessary, but I think it was according to God's good pleasure that it would be that way. So it's not necessary that we have the brain capacity to then do complex thinking thoughts about thoughts and so forth. It depends on what you mean by necessary. Is it absolutely necessary for holding the human soul? No. Is it what God chose to do to accomplish his purposes? Yes. Okay. But I'm asking you, from your view—

A beast who doesn't have the capacity to do philosophy based on its brain power could hypothetically hold the image-bearer status of God. They can. Yes, they can be imbued with the human soul. Just the same way – okay, a kid who's born retarded, a kid who's born with basically no brain power, is that kid a person? Yes. There you go.

No, I know, but I'm saying if a beast – that's exactly my argument against you is that what's – you're basically just saying the brain power of a human being had nothing to do with God's – God didn't actually – you're saying God basically needed –

the beast to evolve into a brain level where he can then endow them with this culpability. Right. I didn't say God needed to, God could have done that with some other beasts, some beasts with less brain power, because there are humans that have basically no brain power and are still humans. So even you're admitting God could have done that. You're even, you're admitting that someone with basically no brain power can hold a human soul. Even you're admitting that. Well, I'm saying, yeah, I'm saying that for my view, um, it has nothing to do with, um,

the particular, which you, it sounds like you're stuck in particulars, whereas I'm saying, well, no, you actually have to have a universal, and back to premise one, it's an absolute necessary antecedent of salvation for Christ to incarnate in a human nature. But you actually deny that. I would say premise one is one of the clearest, most wildly held Christian

dogmatic beliefs, and you are—this is why I said in the opening, the only way you could make evolution compatible is to pervert evolution, first of all, but also pervert Christianity such that premise one could read as this, it is absolutely necessary for an antecedent for salvation for Christ to incarnate in any animal, any animal.

Any animal, not just any animal. Because, because. Any animal with a human soul is descended from Adam. Because human nature, right? Human nature. How do you define human nature? Define human nature? It's a universal. I would say human nature is the image bearer status of God. Which is a human soul. There we go. Yeah, it has a soul. But the thing is, your view, right, is that that.

human nature is not particular to any sort of universal category. Is the image of God physical or spiritual? No, I'm saying, listen, you're saying that human nature has nothing to do with the human. It has nothing— I don't think it has— The creature. The creature or the human. You're saying it has nothing to do with the human creature. I'm wondering what other word you're going to try to use to try to defend this sort of like—

really it's like a dualistic Christianity view, is that human is actually a meaningless term. It just happens to be human, but because you define Adam to be human because that's who he chose, but it's really not

a particular created category of creature. It's not a created creature, it's an evolved creature. This is the key here, is that from your view, the creature human is an evolved creature and has no other static universal other than image-bearer status. And because of that, the entailment is that it could actually evolve into a completely different creature with even a smaller brain size

And from your Christian view, a bunch of tiny brained monkeys would still be the image bearers of God. And yet they would be ripping each other's arms off. It's possible. I mean, whether they would be ripping each other's arms off, they would still have free will by virtue of having the soul. No, they wouldn't have any moral culpability if they were at the effect of their their animalistic nature purely.

Well, once again, what about a bunch of kids born with like no brain stems and they're ripping each other? They're in a cat. They're in a category of humans, of humanity that has a static. How do you define the category of human? Well, it has a biological category, and I agree with you that it has a metaphysical category.

Both. Under evolution, under evolution, see, my view, which mine isn't under investigation now, but just to, if you wanted to look at it for a second, is that my view has both, that you have the created world with necessary universals and things that have names and objects that are part of categories. Why? Because...

That is reflective of God's ordered mind. There's a reason it's ordered. Under your view, you hold to evolution, which means that God's mind is completely not universally set. It's changing. So evolution existing. Hold on a second. Evolution happening is the rejection of universals in real time, which is you have to say is reflective of God's mind.

Were you going to say something? No, I was just going to try to ask Jim Bob if he can summarize just so that we can get your final thoughts out there. I know that there was quite a bit put out there, and I know that Jim Bob's been pretty on it tonight, so don't feel bad if you have to push a little bit. There are a lot of questions for you here. I know Jim Bob's good for it.

it's good sport for this stuff so um but yeah i'd like to yeah give you a chance to respond there and uh we are going to jump into that q a can i just uh summarize that because i said a lot i apologize but let me just i'll richard i want you to respond to this sure if it's the case that evolution in progress currently right post adam from your view is still underway yes

Isn't it the case that even for animals and things out there in the world that they don't really have a static universal life?

uh, uh, static, uh, status that those things can actually change over time. There can be the static universals in the mind of God and evolution causes the physical creatures to gradually conform to that and maybe even drift away from that. But the static universal can still exist in the mind of God, even if there are, even if there's like a gradual asymptote asymptotic approaching of those static universals. Okay. Cause that's the, the,

what I'm saying is that in your view, if creation itself is reflective of the mind of God, the fact that it's intelligible for our minds, which your view and my view holds that we, we are image bearers of God and we can actually access these transcendental non-material aspects of reality. They're not identical to things, right? We don't hold, we don't hold categories in our hand. Right. Right. Yeah.

I agree that there are universals. So I guess I'll answer this. But they're in flux. If evolution is true, they're in flux. That's a contradiction. Let's give a space answer. What I'll say is

Is that however things look at the parousia, at the second coming of Christ, at the end of history, those are the static universals. So whatever human nature looks like then, which is presumably going to be pretty similar to now, whatever the nature of a crab looks like then, or a finch, that is going to be, I think, most conformed to the mind of God. Because evolution is reaching a certain point. I don't think it's an aimless flux. A naturalist might think it's an aimless flux. I don't think it's an aimless flux.

Okay. Yeah, but the thing is a viewer, let's say there's a viewer and we're not fully a viewer, an angelic being who's there, not fully in the eschaton, watching your reality, your account of reality pass. Isn't it possible from their view, and they exist at a different timeline than us, isn't it possible from their view where they don't even recognize what an animal is anymore if evolution was true? Yeah.

Why wouldn't they recognize what an animal is? Because the universal thing, thingness, the set of what an animal is under evolution is always in flux. So it's no longer itself. So that's why I'm saying evolution, even from a philosophical standpoint, if we both agree that creation is reflective of God's mind and universals and particulars are grounded and affirmed and stable in an unchanging mind,

You're basically saying the world isn't actually reflective of God's mind because these universals can actually change over time. I think the world starts to reflect God's mind more and more as more things develop. So then evolution—then you have to say evolution just basically stopped and you have no criteria for saying evolution stops. Evolution will stop eventually.

No, right now. No, I'm saying right now it has to be in motion right now. And I'm saying that if that's the case, reality and truth itself, even if you took a descriptive, a correspondence, it just it corresponds to the world out there. The truth in one era of evolution from your God given evolution system, the truth in one scenario is not the truth a million years later.

Is the world a perfect or an imperfect reflection of God's mind? I would say it's not identical. Is it a perfect or imperfect reflection? Imperfect. Yeah, so if it's imperfect, that means it can get more perfect over time, right? Well, I don't know if it gets perfect or more perfect. I wouldn't equate the world itself with God's mind. I would say that if it's reflective, it would be...

intelligible. If it's intelligible, it needs to appeal to unchanging universals, invariant things. Now, under evolution, is there anything under your evolutionary view that you're trying to bind to Christianity? Is there anything that's invariant?

Well, there's the human soul is invariant. Physical things are always in motion. Matter always changes. Okay. Matter is imperfect and the spiritual is, and God is perfect. So, so a tree, so trees aren't universally trees then because they're matter.

Well, there is a platonic universal of a tree that real trees are conforming to, I think. But trees could eventually not be trees, right? Under your view. It could eventually not be trees, but eventually there's going to be an end to history. So whatever it looks like at that point. I understand. So it's totally possible in review. Like, I'll just say this before we, I guess we're getting close to the end here, is that from your view,

Christ comes and incarnates human nature, and human nature has nothing to do with the form. It's just a lucky derivative of Adam in its form. I do think there's a platonic universal of a human form, but that's what we look like at the end of history, basically. Okay, and so—

In time, let's just push the end times, the return of Christ to judge the living and the dead, a million and a half years in the future. From your view, it's quite possible that humans could, at that point, could be hunched over drooling beasts with tiny minds akin to...

a Wolverine or something like this. I gotta say this. Based on how people are these days, that's not a million years in the future. That's 2024. Well, I'm just saying I can see the hyperbole and I agree with the hyperbole, but I'm talking about actual naturalism unfolding. Is it possible for a Wolverine-looking thing

with like a beastly, scaly tail. Let's just say that evolution's kept going and produced... I've seen some trans people that look kind of beastly. I understand. I get the jokes, but I'm just asking. Is it possible, under your view, when God comes to judge the living and the dead, that the living look no different than Wolverines? It's possible. It's not probable. I don't think that's going to happen. But it could, under your theistic view.

Based on my model of evolution alone without regard to God's covenant promises. It's possible. Yes So if you want to end with that shirt, okay, I think that is a good place to end off their fellows So yeah, thanks for having a great back and forth You know not to not too much bellyache in the night. It was really good Appreciate you guys and your dialogue. I'm gonna let our audience know really important if you can make it to the Newark area and

We are having a live event, DebateCon 5. Those tickets are still available in the description in the video right now. So, you know, even just go ahead and do a little Google Map and see how far away you are from the venue. And I bet you're not as far as what you think you are. And, you know, looking at the event, you know, we've got all kinds of great speakers coming out today.

of course, uh, the two main events, of course, well, I shouldn't say the two main events, uh, but, uh, Andrew Wilson versus fight the flat earth. Uh, so that's, um, Craig, uh, oh man, I just, I just forgot your name. Uh, last name there, uh, Craig, maybe that's for the better. Uh, I'm just,

I'm just joking. So they're going to be doing a secular humanism debate. And then Craig is also going to be debating a second time against Alex Stein on are the governments covering up the moon landing. And then the other one that we have lined up for Andrew Wilson is the separation of church and state, also against Alex Stein. So...

I guess you could say these three are going to really be in the light here for our debate con. It's going to be a lot of fun. Once again, the tickets are in the description. And if you're hanging out in the live chat, you want to let us know where you'll be for the debate con. Of course, all the debates will be streamed live and posted to our YouTube channel. But yeah, let us know in the live chat where you're going to be for the debate. So I appreciate you all hitting the like button.

hopefully we'll see you all there so let me just get into those super chats we're gonna ask the questions thanks to both of our speakers for being so patient while I remind our audience of the live event coming up of course there's other great debates that are gonna be happening at the live event but you know I got a pitch of the speakers that are putting in the work right now that's what that's what's all about G up says for $2

Does RZ affirm the fifth ecumenical council? Ecumenical. Ecumenical. Sorry. My bad. I did not pronounce it. But yeah, go ahead. Do you affirm this?

Yeah. Now, I'm not sure if any of what the fifth council says specifically is relevant to this debate. The Reformed Confessions affirm the first four councils. I couldn't say a word. But generally, the Reformed Divines, actually not generally, without exception, the Reformed Divines affirm the Christologies of the fifth and sixth councils as well. So yeah, there's that.

Let's ask that next one Doomer doxy and I will remind the live chat. We are asking super chat questions right now after that That great pitch for the debate con 5 once again tickets are in the description in the Newark area Let us know where you're going to be for this great event Doomer doxy says I think Origin call crawled his way out of hell. He would be so proud of our Aziz opening Oregon

Origin. Oh, I said right the first time. Even early church fathers considered heretical by most. See, now I'm doubting myself. Oh, we just had a little screen shift there.

Oh, no, I just tried to make my camera less blurry. Don't worry about it. Oh, no worries here. I'll just get us lined back up here since you're under Jim Bob's name right now. There we go. We're back in line. Thanks for your super chat there, Doomadoxi. We'll keep on asking those super chats. Keep them coming in. Hopefully one of these, you know, we're going to get Jim Bob, you know, sparked up here because a lot of them are for you there, Richard. So let's carry on. G-Up says, can you define pre-academic?

Sorry, pre-edemic man, essentially. So I'm not sure if there needs to be an essence of pre-edemic man, because like I said, I think the platonic universals of the different species are how they are at the end of history, which I think because Jesus did say he's coming soon.

We don't know how soon. It's pretty soon. I think is more or less the same as the different species are now. So the various species that have existed in the past, there might be some platonic universals, but I don't think we need to give a universal for every single one. I have a question, a follow-up on that. Let's go for it. Does your Christian view hold that Christ is eternally uncreated? His hypostasis is, yeah. Okay, and do you hold that he also has a body?

He assumed a human body, yes. Did he assume a human body before he incarnated? No, he didn't. He didn't.

No, that's standard Christology. Okay, I'm just checking. I just want to know if he did. I wanted to know what you thought the body would be. No. Does anyone think he assumed a human body before he incarnated? No, I'm just wondering under the timeline if that was the case. I just wanted to see if that was the case. Okay. Because that would then necessitate that there was a universal form of a body that

But then again, it could have been the case that right now, if God had—if, from your view, the human—God breathed into a donkey, Christ would have been up to heaven as a donkey, right? Let's answer that and move on. If, hypothetically, God chose donkeys to bear his image, then yeah, all the—

Characters in redemptive history would have been donkeys. Yeah. All right. War Thunderers says, why bring up Adam's descendants? Uh, consen, genuine marriages, constant gen, you see, I can't say anything tonight. Marriages being a problem when Abraham Noah's kids and others didn't have this as an issue.

Um, I don't think Abraham's kids committed direct incest. I mean, there was the case of those two daughters raping their father, but that's not seen as like a good thing. Look, I even I don't know for certain who Cain's wife was, whether it was I think it's very unlikely that Cain's wife was his sister.

I also think it's possible that even though Adam was the first human to receive a human soul, God could have independently given some of the other humans around Adam human souls as well. It's making Adam the first in the federal head of all of them, but some of the others could have had human souls as well. Because, you know, I think God gave Eve a human soul independently of Adam, so God could have done that for Cain's wife. Richard, do you hold that – because you hold a –

a pre-addemic position. And I was wondering, you called that the garden, right? You believe there was a garden that was created? The Garden of Eden? Yeah. Yeah. And do you hold that God walked in the garden? Yeah. Now, I think that Christ, the Christophanies in the Old Testament are the incarnate Christ basically going back in time because God's outside of time. We all know that.

We know it's heresy to say that God the Father or God the Holy Spirit or the divine essence has a body. So I think the best explanation from a Christian theological perspective is that all the theophanies in the Old Testament are really incarnate Christophanies. And it would be fine if you had to, for the sake of it, change the word from walked to crawl. It wouldn't change anything from your view, right?

But that's not what happened because if it's the same— No, no, no. I'm asking a hypothetical. If it were the case it was written that he crawled, right? Like, let's say you just changed it to he crawled in the garden. Why would you change the Bible? I'm just saying—well, that's ironic from you. I'm asking you—

It could have been the case that he crawled in the garden because there's no body, right? There's no idea of what walking is without a human body, right? What? Of course there's an idea of what walking is.

But what is walking? This is the all of foot question. What does all of foot look like? Adam and Eve walked on two feet. And when Jesus was on the earth, he walked on two feet. And since the Christophanies in the Old Testament are the same human nature that Christ assumed, we can assume that Christ walked on two feet in the garden. So Christ walked on two feet. Is that pre-incarnate?

Well, I said that God's outside of time. It's a pretty common theological opinion that the Christophanies in the Old Testament are not just some optical illusion that basically Christ went back in time. So it's the human body that Christ assumed is the human body that was generated in Mary's womb, in the mother of God. But Jesus basically went back in time. I believe in a time-traveling God. So thank you. What's the next question? Yeah.

Sure thing. Let's carry on. Thank you so much for the super chats. Keep them coming in guys. Uh, these guys, uh, here you see on screen, we have a redeemed zoomer and made by Jim Bob. Both of them are tagged in our description. So, uh, you can see more content from either of our speakers there. If you enjoy what you're hearing, but hang out here at modern day debate. Uh, we're still going to ask some more questions, put in those super chats. We really appreciate it, especially where we're coming up to our live event. Uh,

I can't stress enough. It's going to be a great time in Newark, New Jersey. So if you can make it out, do so. It'd be great. So War Thunderers, I'm going to do that a few times. I'm not going to lie. We're only four days away from the event, so I've got to do my pushing. If not, then my phone will go off and James will say, hey, did you do that pitch for the debate con? And I'll say yes, yes, indeed I have.

Neo-traditional nose says, RZ, did Christ's incarnation unite divinity and germhood the way it did humanity, our missing link people in Jesus's lineage?

No, because mainly I define the essence of humanity as the human soul. Now there is a platonic universal of a human body, but I don't think that that means there can't be any sort of almost human creatures because it's asymptotic. It's asymptotic. No follow up there? Okay, no worries. We can move on to the next question.

Let me just get back into the funding. I do like to pop into the live chat when you guys are answering questions just to make sure everything's going good. At Emory University, we believe in those with the ambition to achieve, the passion to learn, and the optimism to see the possibilities ahead.

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mods have everything under control big thanks to mxxd or sorry well max mxxd for doing a lot of mod work there so justin henley says for our z if jesus is the image of the father collisions uh 115 shouldn't we evolve to that image in other words am i getting less black

So this would be a question for any Christian, even if they don't believe in evolution.

if jesus is the image of if jesus is the image of the father yet jesus does represent the perfect humanity i think that's another argument for not making the human soul and for sorry not making the human essence a physical thing because if the human essence is partly physical and jesus is the ideal human then you have to be like the same race as jesus you have to look like jesus but i think if the human essence is not physical and if it's primarily spiritual and the physical qualities are mainly accidental to what it means to be human

then it's about conformity to the soul of Jesus, which happens in the Holy Eucharist. So that's fine. So wait, I just had a question with that, Radim. You don't hold that humans themselves created in God's image are tripartite necessarily, like that you couldn't remove one aspect of them

Are you asking me if I'm a trichotomist where I think soul and spirit are distinct? Well, like mind, body, and soul, mind, body, and spirit, however you want to say it, because you're saying like, well, the human nature is just its own floating essence that's reflective of God's breath and really could exist in a tree or a twig or a crab. And I'm saying, well,

Isn't from your view what it means to be human reflective of God's very ontology not identical but reflective and if that's the case, it seems like you have a problem here because you kind of split it into like a at minimum a dualistic view or a parts view.

where you have parts, there's a body, but you don't really need the body to be human. You need the soul, but you don't really need any particular body to have the soul, and the soul could reside in a rock or anything else. It's totally fine. When Jesus was dead, was he still human? When he was dead as humanity, when he separated from his human body? Yeah, was he still human? Did Jesus become less human after he died?

Well, he took on the same – a body. He took on a body, so in that sense he's still – On Saturday between Friday and Sunday when Jesus was dead, his human soul was still there, so he was still human.

He just didn't have it. He didn't have a body. He didn't have a physical body. He was still human. Yeah, but you're referencing what he was to even have the term human. So it's like, that's my point, is that the thing you're referring to requires a universal, but under your view, there is no universal human body.

So it's like the term is meaningless the same way the gender proponents say woman, and I go, what? Or the Muslims say Allah's foot, and I go, is it a foot like a human foot? And they go, no, no, there's no universal – it's not like that. We don't know what the foot is. If there's a universal human body, then why shouldn't everyone else try and make their bodies more like that universal human body?

What do you mean by that? So the original question was, okay, if there is a universal human body, or if Jesus is the ideal human, then should I try to become less black to become the race that Jesus was? Like, how would you answer that question?

Well, I mean, I don't hold like that kind of realist approach to humans. Those are just temporal aspects of the human body. The human body has aspects, but the race, let's say, of humanity is one thing. We're all image bearers of God, but that is a universal of humans. But humans need to mean something for that to be a universal of humans. And in this debate—

Your position basically revealed that the only thing that's unifying for humanity, the only thing, there's nothing in the world that also is additive to that unifies humanity. Human is just...

That spirit, just that spirit, just that breath of life. What do you think? Like I said, I think it's three. It's tripartite. You say body, mind, and spirit. Body, mind, and soul or spirit. Yeah, that the three, we need a vehicle and we have an appropriate vehicle. But from your view, it's just a sufficient vehicle. It's nothing, there's nothing unique or it's just like as a skin sack, right? That the brain...

You don't even need the brain from your view. There's no brain needed to develop under your view at all. Like no brain. Hold on. That's why your view, it doesn't even need evolution. This is the killer of your view right here. Your view, your theological view doesn't even need evolution. Why? Because God could have just planted the breath of life in a carrot.

I didn't say it needs evolution. I'm saying evolution is compatible with Christianity. Yeah, but it doesn't matter because you don't even need evolution at all. Obviously the debate is compatibility, but I'm saying that if there's no good argument for evolution being paired into Christianity, why do you even use it? Why do you even appeal to it if you don't even need it?

Why? Why, dude? Why do you even appeal to it? It could be totally false and it wouldn't change your theology. Why? Because you could just have no evolution happen. And if you just say you can just embody a crab, right? Somehow a scientist disproves evolution and evolution is falsifiable. They could disprove it. My theology is not going to change.

I understand that, but I'm saying it's not – if it's just compatible, I'm saying, but it's not essential, why would you – like if it's not even a valid scientific theory, I'm just wondering why other than social – I would assume social pressures, why even toy with it if it's – otherwise, if we had a different debate about what evolution is, it's an embarrassing narrative. Like to tie it to Christianity. I don't think it's –

I don't accept it just on social pressure. It's also what I think is the most convincing historical narrative. Now, we could debate that. It's a separate debate about that. But that's why I don't accept evolution because I need to accept it for my theology. That's what you're wondering. No, I didn't say. I'm actually saying the opposite. I'm just wondering why hold to the view if it's not even –

I mean, basically, what I'm saying, and we can move on, is that any given narrative that's completely false and ridiculous could be compatible with your view anyway because your view holds that God could have just—he could have made a crab and humans have human nature, right? Simultaneously. The reason I accept evolution is because—the same reason I accept the existence of, like, the ancient Han Dynasty. It's just—it's natural history.

And it's like, I don't need to believe in the ancient Han Dynasty. If someone disproves that it existed, I wouldn't have a problem. Yeah, but that's not a good analogy because history and natural science aren't the same thing. Well, you said that evolution falls under the category of history.

No, evolution – yeah, no, though properly history, right, you're telling a tale. I'm saying presenting it as natural science or scientific theory. Maybe at least you can concede to that at some point. You say, okay, well, evolution is really not sufficient as a scientific theory. But I like its narrative. It's a good Marvel story. Anyway, we can move on. Okay, yeah, we can move on.

Let's ask the next one here. Let's see. Sincere hypocrite says, if Genesis was merely a metaphor, what exactly was Christ restoring if death is not only a part of nature, but a necessity in order for humans to exist? So I don't think Genesis is purely metaphorical. I think it's a narrative that has a lot of metaphors within it, which all the Bible does. It runs like a narrative. So Jesus did come to defeat death because I don't think death is good.

Um, just the way it wasn't good for Joseph's brothers to sell them into slavery. Now the Bible says God met that for good, but it wasn't good enough itself. God takes things that are not good and twist them for good. That's basically the whole story of the gospel. God takes the crucifixion, turns it into the resurrection. Yeah. But, but if that was true, if what your view of Genesis is true, every evil itself being, uh,

a created thing would be good. And that means death existing before the fall. Death would be good because it was created good. But that's the question. The question is, is even more

horrific for your view, is that if death is good, definitely because it was created before the fall... Was it good for Joseph's brothers to sell them into slavery? Well, no, don't write a herring. I'm talking about creation before humans. Hold on, hold on. Before slavery, before the temporal realm of the fallen world, I'm saying if sin existed and death existed...

You don't really have, first of all, a definition of the fall. And if you don't have a definition of the fall that's distinct from pre-fall— I gave you a definition of the fall. It was humans siding with evil over God. Yeah, but you're just assuming evil exists, right? How can that be fallen if there's no distinct changes because you just said—

The devil, Satan himself, sided with himself for an evil and not with God. So that means that nothing really changed. And if nothing really changed, like the super chat asked,

What is redemption if Christ defeats death but death is good? It doesn't make sense that Christ defeats good if death is good. Well, death has to be good under your view if it's created in the world from the beginning. Death is the absence of life. You can't create death.

If God created the world and it was all good before the fall, you're saying, no, it wasn't all good before the fall. So you're stuck between two posts. It wasn't perfect because there were still things that were not good in the world because there was darkness in the world, and darkness is not good. Forget perfect. I said good. He says good, right? You're going to have to change the word from good, right? So if he created the world and it included death, then death is good, right? It necessarily follows.

Because death is not a thing. It has no ontology. Everything that has an ontology in the world is death.

If that's the case, if I granted you that, that God created all and it was good and death existed, does it not follow that death is also good regardless of how you call it a privation of something? Isn't it still good? No, because death is not included in what God created. Just because it's there doesn't mean God – That's a contradiction. No, it's not. So there's something that was there that wasn't – God didn't create. God created darkness. So was there something there in creation that God didn't create?

Well, it has no ontology. Darkness, evil, and death has no ontology. I understand. So what is the death the absence of? Life. Okay. So what does death look like before the fall then if death is the absence of life? It looks like animals dying. Okay. So animals dying, okay, is the absence of life. So God didn't create animals dying? God created it. Hold on, hold on. Didn't God create animals so that they could die?

The capability of dying, yes or no? Hold on. Let me answer the question. Hold on.

Did God create animals with the capability of dying? Yes, that doesn't mean he created the death itself. Hold on. If he created the capability of dying, right, he created an animal that includes death in its life. It's totally one and the same. Death and life are all the same. My final answer is just as God created a universe with the capability to have darkness but didn't create the darkness, God created animals with the ability to die but didn't create the death. Okay.

All right, let's move on. A japester said, do pre-humans have souls? If so, when did man transition from animal to proper manhood? No, next question. All right, I wasn't sure if we hit that one already. I feel like I've heard that one before. Justin Henley says, lach, and then a bat with a bottle. Okay, well, you had your moment. Lach. Oh, okay.

She says, RedeemZoomer, what is the specific difference between pre-endemic human soul and endemic human soul?

The specific difference is that the pre-atomite human soul, if you can even call it that, is basically the same type of soul that animals have. Aristotle said there's, I mean, we could debate what kind of soul animals have at all. Aristotle thought there's like three types of souls. There's the nutritive soul that plants have, and the appetitive soul that animals have, and then the rational soul, which humans have.

Um, it's clear that they did not have a rational soul or a reasonable soul, whatever you want to call it. They might've had a different type of soul. They might've had a different type of, um, immaterial consciousness, but they did not have a rational soul. They did not have the thing that makes us, um, rational creatures. All right.

Let's ask the next one. And thank you so much for answering these questions, guys, and unpacking a little bit as well. Once again, to our audience, keep hitting the like button. I see that we are slowly crawling back up in viewership. You know, we are in Q&A, so that's pretty impressive there, fellas. You know, give yourselves a round of virtual applause for being great, palatable speakers.

You know, people are digging it. Neotraditional News says, RZ, I evolved to think orthodoxy is true and reformed. PCUSA Church is wrong. How can you argue against it? Good for you. We evolved to have free will and free freedom of conscience and intellect. So if that's where your intellect leads you, good for you.

I guess you were just predestined to be that way. Any thoughts over there, Jim? Oh, yeah, I would say that from his Calvinist view, that would be the case, that if we come to the rejection of Calvinism, that we would have no way from his view to know whether we came to that conclusion on our own or we were sort of destined to because of our deplorable state.

All right. Oh, sorry. I was going to give Jim the last one on that, but go ahead there, Richard. Yeah. The answer is yes. Like I said, free will does not contradict predestination. Pretty basic divine compatibilism. Anyway. Yeah, we can move on, but yeah, no, I was going to give Jim the last word on that just because there are a lot of questions. But yeah, let's ask the next one. Gia says is a man's posture, an expression of the image of God. Do you want to start us out with that one, Jim?

Like standing up as opposed to crawling? I'm not sure about that. I mean, I'm thoroughly interested in form, symbology, aesthetic. I think we could have a whole debate on aesthetic and why aesthetic included in a reflection of God's mind. Aesthetic is tied to the standard. I think we would both agree, Richard and I, about this, that aesthetic itself and beauty...

is something that was was actually deliberate for us to know about and participate in. And in that beauty, there's form architecture. If our bodies are reflective of beauty, which they are, regardless of how some people look in Portland,

Not all animals have this. So it's a good question because if evolution were the case, we could evolve into a purely ugly asymmetrical form. There's no contradiction there. And we would still be said reflective of God's image, both in form and in spirit. Yeah, and that's true. But remember, I'm a Calvinist. I think all things are predestined. So I think God is not going to let that happen.

But you were predestined to think that, so you don't even know if that's the case. I was predestined to be right.

I know, but that's what material determinists... So you actually don't need... You actually only need evolution for your worldview because if evolution determined mechanistically that you are a Calvinist, you would have no way of discerning between the determined mechanism and the evaluative mechanism. I mean, that's basically Alvin Planting's evolutionary argument against naturalism, right? Yeah.

Yeah, and it gets worse. Planica didn't even reach the tip of the iceberg. It's really bad. Well, yeah. If you think that all mental processes are just emergent from our brain matter, then you do have that problem. But that's not what I believe. I'm not a pure naturalist. Right, but the only intervention would be God tweaking your mind to think a certain way, right?

We're not God tweaking the mind. God gave us a human soul with free will so we can think the way we choose to think. Let's ask the next question there, fellas. Thanks so much for expanding on that one. So yeah, you guys are really unpacking a bit. It's great. Urinating Broom. What a name. Urinating Broom. Evolution is not incompatible with the universal form of humanity.

It is perfectly compatible with forums provided these can give rise to other forums. That's a contradiction. It's literally a contradiction.

If it gives rise to other forms, then it's not maintaining its identity of form. So premise one is this can produce universal forms, except for the production of the universal form is ongoing and not static and changes into other forms. I mean, that was the most idiotic super chat I've ever heard. All right, I'll let you have it. New traditional news says if humans are merely beasts...

widgets that could have been swapped for other animals, why did God make a distinction between Adam and the beasts?

I think I've already answered that. Sounds like a strange Disney film, guys. Not just this beast, but Adam and his parents. Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off. Yeah, I mean, I've already answered this. There's like a structural difference between Adam and like crabs and stuff. But primarily it's the human soul. Primarily it's the rational soul because man is traditionally defined as a rational animal. So even the hominid apes are not rational animals. But Adam is descended of a beast, right?

Yes. Okay. And then Christ born is of a descendant of a beast, right? Yes. Okay. So Christ incarnate taking human nature is actually taking beast nature, correct?

No. Yes, you just said it. It's over. I mean, it's it. Christ is descended in some way from a beast, but at some point... So Christ comes from a beast. The beast was given a rational soul, so it ceased to be a beast. It evolved from...

It includes that, yes. Right, Christ is a beast, right, from your Christian... It doesn't mean he isn't. Well, just because Christ's lineage includes a prostitute doesn't mean... I'm just making sure that you think Christ's lineage is... He comes from a beast. I just want to make sure you know... I mean, Christ's lineage includes a prostitute as well. It doesn't make him one.

Well, prostitute is an activity, not a status, right? So a prostitute is still made in God's image, right? That's the category we're talking about. But beast is a different category, and you hold a view that Christ descended from a beast. Yes, he'd also descended from a single-celled organism. And, you know, St. Maximus the Confessor says Christ came to redeem all creations. That's not that hard a view to hold.

All right, let's move on. I'm just... I'm having a hard time over here because my brain is just going, Damn, it's all this time. Adam and the Beast. Anyways, you can't help it, you know? It's just... I got a stupid brain. I can't... Isn't he brain? Yeah, honestly. Well, I got a... I got an eight... What, a seven and a ten-year-old, see? What, soon eight-year-old. I know. I know. Yeah, so it's...

Yeah, save me. From the Disney. If death is a necessary condition for evolution... Actually, we have one that's very similar above that I brushed over, so maybe we can tie these together. G-Up says, RZ, is death a necessary... Ooh, hold on. Page says it's having a problem. I've got to reload it.

Is death necessary for evolution is what they had said though, but I did lose the other super chat which I can add on with so We can hit these two at the same time if so this from G up So as well if death is a necessary condition for evolution and man was created only after animals and Paul says death Entered only through Adam Romans 5:8 then animals couldn't have evolved before Adam and

I addressed this in my opening statement. Death entered through Adam, but chronologically the results of Adam's fall can apply to those that came before Adam because the very next verse says that grace entered through Christ. But the grace that entered through Christ chronologically applies to those who came before Christ. Do you acknowledge that your view, although novel, contradicts

Basically everyone who's ever existed that that gave you the Bible to even read it I mean there's been lots of views on this especially since the advent of Darwin's theories I'm not the first person to say it. I'm like I'm aware. It's quite a minority. Yeah, okay, so

Because I'm just wondering, like, now you have to hold the belief that you got the Bible through these defined traditions and norms that held these beliefs, but the people who gave you the Bible got it completely wrong in interpreting –

Not only Genesis, but interpreting having a normative authority that interprets Romans 12 and after. Right. So you at least admit that you're you're not only minority, but you're entirely heterodox to the wholeness of of the apostolic traditions. Right. Well, the specific interpretation of Genesis, there's always been diversity on that.

I said the apostolic traditions themselves held to a pretty clear view on God creating man and sin coming into the world through Adam, which allows for a healing for a universal purpose.

category called humanity, and that Christ taking on the nature of that humanity is essential to the doctrine and the practice of the faith. Otherwise, theosis itself, I mean, what is the practice of theosis without—what is needed for—why even practice theosis? Why be God-like? Why be Christ-like if all of the sin already existed and there is no fallen state?

Well, there is a fallen state, so I don't see that. No, but the fallen state existed before Adam, so what's the point? Fallen state of humanity as a— God created humanity in a fallen state, so what's the point in redeeming the fallen state if there's no fall? Before the fall, a human wasn't morally fallen. The human will was not enslaved to sin before the fall.

Let's hammer the next one. Russian Spy says, "If theistic evolution is said to set the path for the image bearers of God to have rationality and consciousness, what's wrong with saying this path is set to continue and that we won't de-evolve?" Well, we talked about this many times in the debate. I said it's theoretically, it's logically possible.

But, again, I don't think that's going to happen because I think God controls all events. I'm not a naturalist. I don't think that we're just in a universe, in an uncontrolled universe where the natural processes that exist can go any which way. So according to the natural processes themselves, it's possible. But because God is in charge of the universe, like theoretically it's possible that all life could be wiped out by nuclear war. But I don't think that's going to happen because I think God's going to prevent that from happening. Yeah.

Yeah, I have to wonder, though, if God, from your view, God allowed and also directed this long process of evolving toward a beast that was no different, really, in any meaningful way from any other beast. He just kind of chose the one with the biggest brain, left his parents out, by the way, but chose that one.

Why do you not believe from your view that God wouldn't allow a devolution into a beast form, given that it wouldn't matter from your view anyway? Because the drooling beast form gnawing on the side of a tree would still hold the human nature image-bearer status, even though it doesn't even look or resemble a human at all.

I guess I'd make a teleological argument because history in a Christian worldview is approaching a particular point. History is pointing in a certain direction. So for the physical structure of humanity to just totally do a 180, that just wouldn't make sense. So you're saying evolution on its own is teleological? Evolution is not on its own. Evolution on its own, if you do not factor God into the picture, then evolution could do anything. But I do think God is in charge of everything. So...

yeah and what is in the direction is toward what the direction is toward the the second coming of christ here here's something i i probably should have said this earlier um

One of the reasons why, as a Christian, I don't think we're going to evolve into crabs is because the second coming is going to happen. And if Christ looks completely different than all the other humans at that point, that's going to make no sense. So that's why— Well, no, actually, you contradicted yourself. It would make sense. Why? Because you don't reduce—

You don't find the form important at all. If, if man, if, if, uh, God's breathing into life, the, the breath of life, giving him image bearer status has nothing to do with the form. There would be no problem with, uh,

a million years from now, the form is just a crab. It would make sense. Why? Because all of those crabs from your view would understand each other are the image bearer statuses of God. I don't understand what the problem is. I didn't say the physical forms. What would be the problem? What would the problem? Why would it make sense though? It would still work. It would just be very absurd. Yeah, but that's not, it's not logically absurd. So I'm asking you what would be, why wouldn't it make sense? Why wouldn't it make sense though? It's not logically impossible. So it would make sense.

It would be highly improbable. Well, no, no, no. No, you're talking about God. We're not talking about probability anymore. We're talking about God having some sort of –

almost like a fetish for transmuting animals into different creatures and then choosing at some timeline in evolution to give man a status that has nothing to do with his form. And it could very well be the case that when God and Christ comes back to judge living and the dead, the living that he's judging just happen to be fucking platypuses.

Well, it would make sense for Christ to generally look like what humans look like at that time when he comes back. I understand, but it's totally consistent from your view that Christ embodied human form because that was the time in which he did it. And he now holds a human form body, a new body. And when he comes back, it's totally possible under your theology that he doesn't match any of the forms, right?

Yeah, you keep talking about what's possible. Yeah, it's possible. It just doesn't... Just making sure. It just contradicts common sense to think that's going to happen. It's not a contradiction. All right. Let's ask the next question there, guys. Thanks for the spirited back and forth. War Thunderers says, what happens, RZ, if human beings in multiple wildly different environments evolve into separate species? Are they still human beings?

So I'm not sure if that whole makes sense, because, I mean, you can't interbreed, but I don't... It makes sense, because generally scientists define species as ability to interbreed. It could happen, yeah. Like, again, logically, it could happen. I don't think it's going to happen, but logically it could.

I think that's kind of why science doesn't make sense without a Christian worldview, because if any of that could happen, then theoretically you could have different races dehumanizing each other if they evolved to the point of not being sexually compatible. Freaky. All right, let's carry on.

Let's see RZ. This is from Brandon. So RZ scripture states beasts also have souls aware given a sola scripture do the scriptures say or even allude to God replacing Adam's beastly soul with a human soul and give Adam the Imago Dei Sorry, I can read the question again. Did he say the scripture says beasts have souls I

Uh, so scripture states beasts also have souls. Beasts. I'm first of all, where does it say that? Even if it does, there is a distinction between an animal soul and a rational soul. As I said, the scripture never says beasts have rational souls and the rational soul is what I was talking about when I was talking about the human soul, because man is defined as a rational animal. Any thoughts over the gym? Uh, yeah, I would, um,

It's a good question because it brings into a little bit of etymology and what's meant by soul or an animated being of sorts. And there would be a distinction between the type of soul that an actor

versus the status of a human. But it's a good question because that wouldn't be static either for animals or humans. Maybe RZ will argue the human, yeah, but what about the animal? I'm not saying animals have image-bearer status. I'm saying that the type of

soul or will that the super chatter is pointing to, I wonder, RZ, from your view, do you have a position on does that thing alter too for the animal? Is it just the human? I'm not sure. I think just the general question of animal and plant souls is kind of a mystery because scripture tells us not much about it and there's lots of different philosophical traditions that speculate on that.

So I would say I don't know. I don't know what the animal soul is like exactly. All right. Let's ask the next one. Thanks, guys, again. I'm just going to scroll down a little bit here. Yaldabaoth. Okay. Quite the name. Sorry if I butchered it. For $5 says, I created everything, and the Monad is jealous. Okay. Do you have a response to this, Jim? No.

It's quite the declaration, I suppose. Yeah, it sounds like someone's just either making a joke or serious that they are God, that everything's one, bro. I think judging on the fact that their other super chat said that only homosexual sinners believe in evolution, that this person is a troll and we have caught you. You grade A troll. All right, Whiskey Jack says,

Well, like I said, I think that the definition of man historically is a rational animal. So yes, there does need to be a body.

What that body looks like specifically, again, I think there is a platonic form of a human, but I don't think that just because of that, it's a problem if you have these almost human creatures, because like I said many times, it's asymptotic.

you get it cyborg big to jim bob they say jim bob l he is not using rational thinking here half the time he's debating a ghost possible equivalent would happen could a crow be a human like bro you know how he defines human ridiculous bad

faith anything to say to cyborg big there jim bob well what i would say is i don't i don't think anything jim bob said is bad faith i don't think it really changes anything but i don't think i don't think jim bob was being bad faith here

No, I actually... First of all, Cyborg, nothing you said is an argument. It sounds like a wimpy Yelp review from some chick who's upset about her nail salon visit. Second, what was important about the crow conversation is that... And it's totally fair to RZ to ask this, is that if RZ says that the human nature has nothing to do with the form, I simply ask, could the human nature exist in a crow? Totally fair. In fact...

if i remember correctly even bit the bullet that it could be the fact that what i call what rz calls the human nature uh the soul the the image bearer status could actually hypothetically exist in a crow and if that was the case you would actually have to call the crow the human nature therefore what are we calling human now if it's not uh includes body by a particular form of body so cyborg um

I don't know what else to tell you. You're dumb and I just embarrassed you. What I would say is that you're Jim Bob is absolutely right that under my system, absurd hypotheticals are indeed possible. So yeah, I grant you that. But the thing is, I'm a determinist. So I think that just because I think hypotheticals are kind of irrelevant because just something can happen doesn't mean it will because I think all of reality is the future is already written. So that'd be my that'd be my response.

All right. You got it. Let's carry on. And thanks again. Slow John Doe says, you guys sound like you both have somewhat unique views. How do you differentiate what is metaphorical and what is literal in spiritual scriptures? You want to ask that first? Sure. Everyone has to do that. So you could ask this question to literally any Christian. Like most...

Most Christians don't believe Jesus literally a door. There are some like Baptists who take Genesis really, really, really literally, but they do not take Jesus literally when he says this is my body. They think that he was just joking about that.

So I would say that that question is a question for any Christian, no matter who you ask. Because there's not a single Christian who takes every single thing the scripture ever says hyperliterally. That's actually impossible. Because Psalm 105 says God is faithful to a thousand generations. So if you're hyperliteralistic about the age of the earth and say it's 6,000 years, that doesn't work with a thousand generations. It's impossible to be literalistic on every single point of scripture. All right, over to you, Jim. I...

Well, first of all, I appeal to the tradition of...

and the hermeneutics of the normative authority, which is the Orthodox Church. But to at least parallel a little bit to what RZ said, is that things can be metaphorical and actual, and some things can be only metaphorical, and some things could be only actual. And the only real question here is if there is a normative authority. If Redeemed Zoomer here agrees with me and says, Scripture can be misinterpreted,

This answer, if it's yes, necessitates a normative authority because to say something can be misinterpreted means that there is a correct interpretation. And so this brings up a question of hermeneutics and authority. And ultimately, I'm not sure, Redeem Zumer, you agree.

This would be obviously a separate debate, but if you do appeal to any normative authority or do you just read the book yourself and try to figure out new decoding? I'm not an autopapist. I appeal to the normative authority of the Presbyterian Church USA. And many, for hundreds of years, theologians of the Presbyterian Church have believed evolution is acceptable interpretation of scripture, so so do I. If my church hypothetically told me to stop believing in evolution, told me it was heresy, I would concede to them.

Alright, let's ask the next one. NeoTraditionalNews says, "Are we creative because of image, DI, and our nature? If humans could be a donkey body with human soul, can they physically create art, music, cathedrals? If no, then humans can't be any physical form."

Wow, okay, I don't know what... They might have stumbled upon a bad patch of mushrooms, I'm not sure. If the donkeys were given a rational soul, like let's say every donkey in the world was like Balaam's donkey, for example. I'm not sure if Balaam's donkey actually was more rational than any other donkeys. Anyway, if donkeys had a rational soul... Of course, the fellow with the name Zoomer wouldn't understand what he's saying. No, I'm just picking. Yeah.

If donkeys had a rational soul, they might have the desire to create beautiful art, but their hooves wouldn't let them hold a paintbrush. So that's why it's fitting that God created humans the way we are to be a proper vehicle for a rational soul. It's not arbitrary that, so it's like, is it metaphysically possible for a rational soul to inhabit a horse?

It's metaphysically possible, but God did not create horses for the purpose of holding a rational soul. God created humans for that purpose. Let's try to carry on because we do have quite a few super chats and we'll try to get things settled up in probably 20, 30 minutes if we can. So let's try to bang some out of the park here. Straight Shot says, well, we do have almost a $50 super chat. So we will have to spend some time with that. And once again, I do have to remind people, tickets in the live description.

check our venue location in Newark, New Jersey. See how far you are away. It's not that far from New York itself. So, you know, I'm getting them all tongue-tied. So, yeah, definitely check out the tickets in the link in the description. If you can help out through the Indiegogo link, you know, it's all appreciated. And, of course, the Super Chats are going a long way as well. But let's steamroll right on into it. Straight Shot says, "'Redeemed Zoomer, how does the snake fit into your Genesis story?'

It seems like you're conflating the two. The snake? The snake. You mean the serpent, like Satan? I think that's what they're... I'm not sure. How does the snake... It's not a fully formed question, so it's hard to... Yeah. Well, that's... I don't believe that that was Satan in the garden. So Satan is a spiritual being, so I don't see why it wouldn't fit.

I mean, was that the $50 super chat? If so, I feel bad about not giving a sufficient. He should write it. He should write, he should write extra and look at his name in the chat. I feel if he gave so much money, I feel bad about that. That wasn't the $50 super chat. Yeah. We're coming. That sounds like a tour. It sounds like a tour to me. No, it wasn't a tour. We're coming up on the $50 one right now. So we'll ask that. But, uh, but no, I'm glad that you answered that. Cause I was going to ask, uh, I was watching, uh,

I think it was Bart Ehrman and he had mentioned about how there was no mention of Satan being the snake in the garden. And I was like, oh, okay, that's interesting. But I haven't heard too much debate about it. It's interesting to hear that. Eamon Yamon

For $49.99, see I lied, it's not $50, it's $49.99. Do you think that if you didn't know of the modern evolutionary theory, you would ever come to the theory of Genesis you came to? I mean, maybe not. I don't really know. I do think that even if I didn't know that evolution was the prevailing theory about how life developed,

I would still think that there was death and evil in some sense before the fall, because I think the tree of life implies that it's like, if Adam was already immortal, then what's the purpose of a tree that grants immortality? Like the direct implication is that there was death before the fall. And given that Satan was already prowling around the garden and Satan was already evil, there was some, something that happened even before the fall of Adam that still needed to be resolved. That's what I would say.

All right. Let's move into the next one. So that was, yeah, their 20th Super Chat as well. Did you have any thoughts on that as well, Jim Bob? No, I was thinking about, I had another question for RZ about what he thought

if he would reject the term like random mutation or errors or, or like, um, good question. I don't reject the term random mutation because, because I believe in divine compatibilism. I think God's providence is compatible with things that seem random from our perspective. You have to remember that true randomness does not exist. True randomness can't account for the barrier. Yeah. I agree that random doesn't exist, but that's why I was like, do you hold that a mutation is an erroneous duplication?

Yes, and a mutation is an erroneous duplication. Okay, but if it's erroneous, you're saying God makes errors. God doesn't make errors. So does God guide evolution? God predestines all things. Okay, if God predestines and governs evolution, but evolution includes errors, how does God make errors?

Well, like I would say God predestined me to, uh, in some way, like make errors on my math test. That doesn't mean God is the author of error. This is the standard problem of predestination and like, take it up with Augustine. If, if you, um, think that those two ideas are incompatible. Okay. I'm just saying that if that's the case, then God also, if he predestined errors inside the microbiological realm, then he also predestined Adam, uh,

Adam didn't have any will because he predestined him to sin, right? So it seems like, from your view, you can't really parse out what's willful and freely chosen from the personhood perspective. But even in the evolutionary sense, anything that seems to be a mutation from the evolutionary perspective, you have to disagree with them and say, no—

I understand you're calling it a mutation and it's an error, but it's actually not an error. So I do believe in evolution, even though it relies on this term error, but I also reject that it's an error.

It's both. Final thoughts there, Richard? It's both in different senses. From an earthly perspective, it's an error. From a heavenly perspective, everything that happens is part of God's providence. Genesis 50, 20. You meant it for evil. God meant it for good. All right. Justin Henley says, if you believe a result of evolution is the sinful, bestial passions or body defects, do you believe they are removed upon grace, undoing the evolution? Sorry, ask that again, please.

If you believe a result of evolution is the sinful slash bestial passions or body defects, do you believe they are removed upon grace? Well, um, like all these passions are present in other animals as well. Uh, but because we have this rational nature, we have this, we have a moral obligation to tame our passions. Uh, St. Augustine said that the, um,

Like a virtuous man, his soul basically knows how to control his body perfectly and is not enslaved to the passions of the body. So it's not inherently bad to have passions. It's bad to be controlled by your passions because we are not animals. We are called to a higher standard. We are called to not be controlled by our passions.

So that's what I would say. I would say grace gives us a greater ability to have mastery over the passions. All right, I'm going to ask this one to Jim Bob. Danny Estrada says, can AI be an image bearer learning good and evil?

No, because AI is programmed to do input-output response, even if it gets complex, which is akin to evolution, if you really think about it. It's just input-output. The fact that the human being, of course, in this context, has a mind and a will and wants AI to do something...

um assumes intent whereas ai itself has no intent without the human so it could never be the human or the human being or the human mind it's a creation and because it's a human creature it can never

obtain the image bearer status because uh that can only be done by god's creation not human creation all right thanks uh for that jim bob we'll move on gabriel valencia says why would god use a mechanism that darwin explicitly developed to explain biology without appeal to supernatural life if he wanted humans to know him example romans one over to you there uh redeemed zoomer

I think this is kind of a silly question. It's not like, um, God got the idea from Darwin. It's just that it's what happened. And Darwin was one of the people who discovered it. And Darwin wasn't the only person to discover any form of evolution whatsoever. What Darwin really discovered was the fact that natural selection drives evolution. There are lots of other, um,

theories of evolution before darwin because there's that guy who thought that um if um giraffes stretch their necks long enough their children will have longer necks um so i i yeah it's like saying why did god uh copy um darwin's theory of evolution that's like asking why did god copy aristotle's laws of logic it's the other way around both of them just made discoveries about the way things were

See you guys. And I would say, based on what I'm seeing right now, that Richard's a helicopter. But I know that that's a light behind him. I'm just picking. But yeah. Oh, yeah. There's a ceiling fan. There's a ceiling fan behind you. The reason I do that is like if I move my head, then it's just like there's a lot of glare. There's a lot of brightness. I don't want that. So the reason I have like a halo is because I don't have to block light with my head. That's why. There you go. There you go. You are Richard the helicopter zoomer. There you go.

I'm sorry. I'm just picking. It's fine. Lots of people say that. I'll pick on Jim Bob too. Are those real guitars, Jim Bob, or you just have a green screen? Okay. I have real guitars. Darn. See, he's, that's actually cool. And now I'm going to, I got to backpedal guys. All right. Let's, let's get back to the super chats. Isa Kabir says, both steel man, your opponent's position. Sure. I'll go first.

I'll say that even if you can twist scripture and Christian theology to fit evolution, you're going against what the scriptures plainly teach and what the vast majority of the church has interpreted them to be. So it's like, if you use mental gymnastics, you can justify all sorts of crazy things. Just because we can doesn't mean we should. And

Like the same logic can be used to justify other things like homosexuality and transgenderism from a Christian worldview if we're willing to twist our concepts that much. That's my steel man. Was that a good steel man, Jim? I mean, it was okay. I mean, you did bring up something that I didn't get to talk about is whether or not you think homosexuality, the impulse, is an evolved thing or is it an effect of sin itself?

Okay, sure, but where's your steel man? Oh, the steel man. Oh, no, I was wondering. You asked me if you properly steal that. Homosexuality is not an evolutionary thing. I mean, people will claim that because there's animals that have homosexual tendencies. No, homosexuality is a demonic rebellion against God, and we are not born gay. So that was possible pre-fall then, right? What do you mean? Homosexuality is logically possible pre-fall, right?

Are you talking about like human or animal homosexuality? Pre-Adam, whatever, just the activity of homosexuality, the act was happening pre-fall, right? I mean, aren't there animals today that have like some homosexual tendencies? Well, I'm just asking you. It's an activity, so I'm wondering if you hold that pre-fall there was homosexual activity.

Do you believe that there's a... I'm not going to answer. It's all right. I'll steal, man. If you don't want to answer, it's fine. It's a fair question because it's talking about actions and you think sin and death occurred before the fall. And so why wouldn't that exist before the fall? Do you believe that there are...

animals who commit homosexual acts like that has been observed do you grant that that's uh no uh well i don't hold that there's such a thing as a homosexual act i know you were using it colloquially maybe you would agree with me that you two of the same sexes can't actually have sex they're doing something else yes okay um but but do you so then if you don't think of a homosexual act as possible then what are you asking

No, I'm asking pre-fall, do you hold that a homosexual, the colloquial sense, sodomy and all of these other things existed pre-fall? Well, do you grant that animals do it today sometimes? Yeah, I'm talking pre-fall. That's what I'm asking. Oh, sorry, pre-fall. Are you asking if Adam could have done it if hypothetically there was another man there?

Yeah, yeah, like did Adam's – if Adam's parent, his dad, his biological dad, Adam's biological dad could have been doing a dude on the side, right? Again, it's because he was a beast, and beasts do that sometimes. It's hypothetically possible. There's no reason to suspect that that actually happened. So Christ is descendant of –

homosexual now. Okay, that's ridiculous. I was just saying, I feel like we're about to go way out. I just want to just make sure you know that. There's no evidence. Okay, straight and still proven gay, okay? There's no evidence. Okay, let me steel man your view then because you steel man mine so I'll just steel man yours. From your view, evolution is entirely compatible with Christianity because

from your view, evolution is scientifically valid and it draws out a, a poetic, if you will, correlation between the creation story and the, would you say the, the,

Development. From your view, it seems like it's consistent with human development itself, the development of the world itself and the world gearing toward Judgment Day becoming more coherent, elevated in its status, and because you take an approach to evolution that the process itself –

elevated man to a certain status and that at that status, God delivered even higher metaphysical status by breathing the the image bearer status, which from there we can now make choices and moral decisions and do debating online. And from now on, we we hold this image bearer status.

And you think that we will continue to hold our current form because Christ already incarnated as our form. But you have no real reason other than your intuition to say that evolution could continue and Christ comes back to judge the living and the dead, and the living could quite be human-natured wolverines.

I think you gotta work on your steelmanning, but sure, I'll take it. It's funny that you'd said the image bearer status, because Spartan up north had said, "RZ, what is the point of the bodily resurrection if the spirit/soul is the only important factor for image bearer status?" Well, like I said, evolution has an end. So there's a certain thing that evolution is moving towards.

So like God intends in the end for us to live with physical bodies so we can do physical things.

But if we say the essence of the image-bearer status, if we say the essence of it is physical, then we would have to say that chimps are 98% in the image of God since they share 98% of our DNA. That's absurd. We would also have to say celery is 50% in the image of God, which is absurd. Because celery has 50% of our DNA. So that's what I would say. I would say just because God intends for us to have physical bodies and do physical things in a physical world doesn't mean we have to define the essence of being an image-bearer as such. Okay.

Okay, next one, Urinating Brooms says, a philosopher, Alex Proust, is currently writing a book defense of Aristotelian, sorry, forums. Aristotelian. Totelian, sorry. Forums and how they can fit with evolution and theism, norms, nature, and God. Also see Orteberg, Real Essentialism. I think...

MXXD is the worst mod, and I think he's hurtful to your channel. That's just my Yelp review. Anyone agree with me in the chat, just leave a why. I'm not sure what's going on there. What is going on? I'm not checking chat. He's just the worst. Go on.

Go on. Well, I was going to say, usually Max is really good, but... Terrible. Terrible. Is there some sort of... He's just biased and snarky and pithy. He's...

Basically, this whole chat, like, he's just calling me out because, like, I did a roast back to someone, and he's all, don't insult people. The whole fucking chat is insulting the entire stream, dude. You're just partial. Get out of here. You're the worst. Look at all the yeses. You're the worst. All right. Get out of here. Let's just try to behave. Fucking loser. All right. Well, either way, yeah.

Max, you have your own ways in which you can challenge Jim Bob. But yeah, let's try to not pay attention too much to those optics when we could be answering the question here from urinating broom. Sorry that we had a sidetrack there. Jim Bob, why would you do that? No.

I don't like that guy. You can wait till the end. I don't like him. You're not going to forget that you don't like him. Okay. All right. Philosopher Alexander Pruse is currently writing a book, Defense of Error. I got to say it again. You read that already. But we didn't get the answer yet. Forms and how they can fit with evolution and theism. Norms, nature, and God also see Odenberg's real essentialism. So any thoughts there, Richard? It's not really a question, but I think thanks for telling me. And once he does, I'll be happy to read it.

let's carry on. Thank you so much for the super chats, guys. We are getting down on them now. We've probably got about 10 more to go. Uh, but you know, I like the way you say a boot, uh, very Canadian. Oh no. It comes out, doesn't it? Uh,

Alter Void says, I'm so confused. Pre-Adam would be many. Then only Adam and Eve. They would be competing at the point for survival. Where is all the fake humans now? We can't test for soul as we are not God. I would say, are you asking why...

Are we asking why Adam and Eve didn't compete with the almost human creatures? The Bible tells us why. The Bible says God made a garden and actually just placed Adam there. So I assume that those other apes were not running around in the garden because God made the garden for Adam and Eve. Richard, I have a question here. Sure. You would say that humans taking on the image bearer of God...

would be an increase of their ontological status, right? Yeah. But then Christ coming as human form, would you call that a decrease of ontological status?

Well, that's just the question of kenosis. It's like Philippians 2 says that he humbled himself by taking on a human form, but he did not give up any of his divinity. That'd be the canonic heresy to say that any of his divinity would diminish. I understand, but if it's the case that God, as God-man Christ, took on human nature by coming as human...

that would mean that the image-bearer status itself, human nature, couldn't be reduced to how you put it. Because God, Christ, reducing himself to human nature means that

It's necessary that human nature includes this temporal state with this bodily nature state. And so he's lowering himself to our state, which has to include the type of body we have and not only reduced to the spiritual universal that you were referring to as human.

What did you say? Like image bearer is like just this transcendental category of being, having the breath of life and having this ability to, to pursue God or something like this. You know what I mean? Yes, sir. So Christ assumes both a universal and a particular human nature, right? Yeah. So if we define the universal human nature as primarily just the human soul, then,

And, of course, we could debate whether there's a platonic form of a human body as well. But we could say that Christ's physical characteristics are his particular human nature. So I think that would solve that problem. I know, but this is what's interesting. I put this in my opening. If Christ comes and only assumes a particular human nature, he can't actually be the— I didn't say only assumes a particular human nature.

What else would it be then? Because it couldn't be the human nature that you're trying to reduce just to image bearer status because God is because Christ is God.

Oh, so you're saying that Christ can't become an image bearer since he already is the real thing itself? No, not necessarily. I'm saying that now what's called the image, what image bearer now points to, it seems to me, I could be wrong about this, it seems to necessitate the bodily human aspect, physical form, in addition to what you're calling those humans having physicality.

in addition to that human form. Why do you think it necessitates that? Why? Because if humans, through God, take on the image-bearer status, and you call that the breath of life, so they have some sort of higher ontological status than just the beast who looks just like them, Adam's dad, right? The only difference there is this spiritual aspect and has nothing to do with his bodily form. Then Christ coming...

Christ coming as a bodily man, a human man, is not necessary from that view. Well, are you an Apollinarian?

No, I don't think so. Good. So the human nature, like, Paul Harris thought that Christ didn't assume a human soul, he just assumed a human body. But Christ assumed a human body and soul. So Christ actually assumed a human soul, which he didn't have before in the Incarnation. But I'm saying it wasn't necessary. It wasn't necessary that it was a human form, I'm saying. It wasn't necessary. But I'm saying under Christianity, it would be necessary. It is necessary.

Whatever is essential to being human, Christ assumed it. Whatever is part of the universal human essence, Christ assumed it. I know, but you're saying human doesn't include the bodily form because Adam's dad wasn't human.

He came from non-human. No, listen. Adam's dad came – Adam came from non-human people or beasts. Even if hypothetically that's what we're going with, that human – that the universal doesn't include the physical and it's just the particulars that include the physical, why would that be a problem for the incarnation? Why can't we just say that Jesus' human body –

It's a problem for the incarnation because the whole purpose of the incarnation and the resurrection is to redeem the universal of humanity. But if the universal of humanity has nothing to do with the bodily form, there's no reason God...

Christ would need to incarnate as a human body because he could just reincarnate as anything so long as he held the breath of life, like you said, in a crow. There's no reason why it's a human form. We went over this. It's because he needs to be descended from Adam. But Adam's from a beast, a non-human form. Christ needs to be descended from Adam and descended from Mary. So...

If you were descended from Adam, that means you're going to be the same. I know, but Adam's not from – he's descended of non-humans. Who cares? But if you're descended from Adam, you're a human.

I just closed the poll there, guys. We've got to ask the next question. We've got so many more to go because they're pouring in still. Does evolution fit with Christianity? So 58% voted no. So that would be the leader of the poll. And then 23% said yes, evolution does fit with Christianity. And then 17% said I'm still trying to sort it out. So...

Let's head back in to your questions there. Thank you guys once again for putting some thoughts out on the table there, getting the audience all stirred up. It's great. Excuse me. Justin Henley says, if evolution existed pre-fall but death didn't, I'll grant you reproduction pre-fall. What was evolution doing? Enhancing survival in a deathless world? Sorry, who was that question for? This would be for you. So what would evolution be doing if...

It would be enhancing survival in a deathless world. So they're saying that this would be contradictory to have something that's aiming for survival if there's no concept of death. Well, there is a concept of death. Is it natural? I didn't understand. Can you read the question again? I'm not sure I understood it. Sure. Justin Henley asks if evolution existed pre-fall, but death didn't. I'll grant you reproduction pre-fall.

What was evolution doing enhancing survival in a deathless world so they're asking about. Yeah, I think, I think this, I think this guy Justin didn't listen to the debate because I very clearly said there was death before the fall so he's saying he's, it seems like he thinks my position is that there was evolution but not death before the fall but that's not my position.

So chat's really funny. This Max guy is special. Your own mods are challenging the debaters on the screen. Yeah, Max, if you want to debate. Tell me what you want to debate me on, Max. I'll debate you on anything, bro. Let me know. Right here. Right here. There you go. Well, as you just heard, I think he was trying to do his best Max. So, Max, you'll have to try to do your best Jim Bob when you come on screen. There you go. We invite it.

Yeah, no, I'm not sure what's going on in live chat. I'll pop over there in a second. I'm going to get another poll going on there, guys. But you guys and your fun. All right. So, yeah, I think we already asked this one, guys. Just hold on a second. There we go. Gia says, RZ, is God's nature absolutely divinely simple? Yes. Okay.

Do you want to leave it at that? Okay. I think that's good. Because we got another one from Gia that says, This is a take it up with Augustine. This is just the standard...

uh debate about divine foreknowledge and determinism and all that so that would be a that'd be a better debate for like predestination than a debate about evolution because that's a problem regardless of if you believe in evolution so my answer is take it up with augustine all right well let us move on and yeah i just uh was perusing in the live chat you guys want to debate you guys got some fire under your heels let's let's uh organize something you've obviously got tell me what you want to debate

All right, we'll figure something out. Urinating.

Oh, what's this name again? I'm going to debate as Max, though. That's the only condition I'll debate you. Oh, my God. Just be yourself. You're fine. Urinating. I can't read the rest of their name because it is blocked out. Just one second. I got to pull my screen over. Broom. That's it. All right. If a form cannot give rise to a different form, then God would not be able to create anything. God's divine nature causes a different form, humanity.

Is that a question or to RZ? I'm not sure. I think it's to Jim Bob because – Say it again then because it's not in question form, but go ahead. Yeah, it's more of a statement, but I think they want you to challenge. He was contesting the idea that a form cannot come from another form. Can you just say it again though? Read it again for me. If a form cannot give rise to a different form, then God would not be able to create anything.

God, no, it's not. It's not. OK, it's just I'm not talking about a form. I'm talking about a universal category. So forms of human beings at the particular level are different. It doesn't follow that. When I had my daughter, that it wasn't wasn't a human being, wasn't a human form is a particular form that's in a category. I'm saying my critique was that if evolution is true, the universals themselves are.

of things, of species, of populations themselves transform like transformers not holding their identity over time. And so if this is the case, we got into a little section there that I thought was the most interesting in the debate is that if...

the world is reflective of God's minds, and we both agree universals and particulars are bound and held and sustained in God's mind, then evolution, if evolution negated that and reduced us to nominalism, if that were the case, then the world wouldn't be reflective of God's mind, and it would be incompatible with Christianity. But

Let's try to move on there. Andy says, RZ, how do you define person? It sounds like you were saying that a person is their soul and their soul is a human nature. Can you clarify? The classic scholastic definition of person is an individual rational nature. So there's your answer. Wait, hold on. Rational, is that an activity?

Rational is a quality. Okay, but aren't there people born without the ability to do any rationalizing as an activity? Those people, do they have rational souls, yes or no? Well, okay, soul itself. Do they have access to this platform? Yeah, I'm just saying that they have souls. I'm not certain. I think it might be a mistake to say rational because doesn't that assume capability?

No. Do they have a rational soul, yes or no? People that are born retarded, do they have a rational soul still? Simple question. Do they have a rational soul?

I would say they have a soul. I'm not sure what you mean by what you're going to be meaning by rational. All humans have a rational soul. That is the standard definition of what the human soul is as opposed to... I guess if you said rational would say they have a type of will, then yeah. But I think the reason I'm getting hung up on rational is that I think from your view, you try to parallel human creation from a God perspective with the developmental...

human from an evolutionary perspective. And then I'm giving the classical definition of the human soul and the definition of person. So this is not like my, like I'll, I'll admit most of my theories are kind of unique to zoomer here, but this is not unique to zoomer.

I understand. I'm just wondering, I just want to make sure because rational from a evolutionary perspective means just the ability to process things. So they would even reject the soul aspect. So that's why I'm asking, are you using the same rational definition as an evolution proponent that rejects soul?

I don't think there's one set definition of rational among evolutionists. I haven't heard any papal statements from the infallible magisterium of the evolutionist society defining what rational means. So until then, I guess I'll go with the classical scholastic definition. Cool. Let's carry on.

Let's see. Lucador says, I pooped my pants. Predetermined. The things you guys make me say, I swear. You guys want clips. Somebody's going to stitch a whole pile of the crazy things you've made me say, I swear. The people's weenus. Sorry.

See, here we go again. It says, what do you make of the two separate creation accounts in Genesis? Genesis 1, 2, 1, 3, and Genesis 2, 4, 25. I think Jim and I would agree here. They don't contradict each other. The first one in Genesis 1 is talking about the creation of the world in general, and the second one sort of zooms in on Adam and Eve in the garden. So, yeah, I don't think that's a problem.

FB says, I was actually never clear if the snake was Satan or just one of Satan's followers. Could you expand on that? I'm almost certain that there's another passage of scripture which clarifies the snake was Satan. Yeah, I think in Revelation it says that ancient serpent who is the devil or Satan. So yeah, that's why I believe it is Satan.

Even if he's not given the name Satan in the text, it's clarified elsewhere that it's Satan. All right. So John Doe, we're banging him out now, guys, says logic is the language of reality. Thoughts? Sure. I mean, Galileo said mathematics is the language with which God used to create the universe, and mathematics is just applied logic. So yeah. All right. Any thoughts there, Jim, or do you want to carry on?

Yeah, I mean, I distinguish doing logic with the laws of logic. And even without us speaking, the laws of logic would still hold and have their own sort of ontology before human minds. So in a sense, yeah, but I wouldn't call the laws of logic language. I would call the act of doing logic in math the language part.

A1. Y'all having fun in the live chat there? I see you. All right. Guys are all at each other. You can't help but stir the pot a little bit and have some fun in the live chat. War Thunder says they are deceived by those highly deceitful writings who profess to give the history of those many 1,000 years, though by the scripture we find that not 6,000 years have yet passed.

Augustine, City of God, BK 12, Chapter 10. I know Augustine believed in an instantaneous creation, but I'm not sure specifically what he's referencing there. And then FB for $4.99 says, Kudos, Jim Bob wins.

There you go. I don't know if you know who FB is, but... FB, thank you so much. Follow Facebook, I guess. Thank you, FB. I appreciate that. Everybody who came over from Jortlandia. We're currently trying to overthrow the mods and get you guys better mods so your channel can grow and you can have better content because your mods are actually making you deficient.

I'm telling you straight up. Your mods are actually limiting your growth and culture here. We do need more help in the live chat. That's for sure. We do have a Discord, Modern Day Debate Discord, which is the best way to reach out if you do want to help out in the moderation chat. Yes, we do always need help. Max needs to be fired.

Wow. I was going to say, I haven't looked at a lot of... Fire Max! Fire Max! I was going to say, I haven't seen what you're talking about that is so egregious that we must... That's my point. Max is very, very loyal to the channel and...

been here a little bit too loyal so i don't yeah i don't i i don't i don't think that that's fire max fire max oh jim bob are there are you he's he's getting yeah there is one more question he's just getting too caught up in the live chat there but i appreciate that you're having fun jim bob that's why we uh we come up to modern day debaters to have some fun but uh

Yeah, though it probably won't get you away on that one. RSE, the full scholastic definition of person comes from Boethius, refined by Aquinas. A person is an individual substance of a rational nature. This is where you actually reject the scholastic idea of substance as body and soul. If...

If that's the definition of person, if the definition of person includes body and soul, then that would mean that each hypostasis of the Trinity has a body. So I'm not sure if that's entirely accurate. Last one. Dumer Doxy says, I read Saints Basil's Hexameron and Nusamenkel. Nusamenkel? Menichel? You guys can correct me. I have read it. I am aware that Saint Basil believed in a literal six-day creation, but not all the church fathers did.

All right. We are going to go in the EU style for the closing statements. So once again, a big thank you, round of virtual applause to both of our speakers at the end of our super chats. Yeah, it's been a lot of fun tonight. And honestly, Jimba, based on what you're saying, why would I ever get rid of somebody who's able to just stir up so much fun?

so much interest. I mean, he's not, I'm the one stirring interest. He's doing nothing. He's just reacting. How long are the closing statements? Trying to appreciate what we got going on. So one minute to give your thoughts on the discussion, but just before we do the closings, I do want to remind the audience that once again, Newark, New Jersey, uh, we have our tickets linked in the live description. Uh,

Of course, all of the debates are going to be hosted by Modern Day Debate and they will be live here exclusively on Modern Day Debate. So definitely check those out and hit the notification bells if you haven't already. But most importantly, if you can be in the area, get the tickets and I hope to see you there.

But yeah, DoomerDoxy followed up and said name one that didn't. Not sure. Justin, anyway. So yeah, go ahead there. We're going to give it over to Jim Bob. One minute on the floor for your closing statement. First of all, thanks for having me again, Ryan, and moderating. And on short notice, I take it. And for Richard, RedeemZoomer, thanks for coming and laying out your...

Christian model and defending the evolutionary model. I think if you look closer with more rigor, you'll see that the evolution perspective itself is no more than a narrative. It's not scientific.

scientifically rigorous. It's not a scientific theory. There are no experiments telling you that these things are happening. You don't have any real reason to hold to the evolutionary view other than it's culturally relevant. If you look further, I promise you won't have any regrets or you won't miss it once you see how truly absurd it is when you look at the granular.

As far as the debate itself, I think my opening statement held all throughout, which I think the best argument I had was the fact that there is no universal nature. And if the universal nature that God takes on as Christ incarnates is simply something that's ever-changing, transient, and nominal, if that's the case, healing that nature is also nominalistic. Right.

Alright, well thank you so much Made by Jim Bob for coming out to Modern Day Debate. If you enjoyed what you heard tonight from Jim Bob, you can find the link in the description and hear more at Made by Jim Bob. So thanks again for coming out to Modern Day Debate and going to hand it over to...

redeemed zoomer so thanks for letting me host you for your debate debut debate on modern day debate it's been a lot of fun uh one minute on the floor you're sorry can i just say to my audience i'm going to do a post uh stream i didn't know if we'll have time to say that i just wanted to sneak in yeah thanks yeah sneaky thing no it's fine all right go ahead one minute on the floor

Alright, well thanks James for moderating on short notice and thanks Jim Bob for being a respectful debater. So I'm a little disappointed that we didn't get to many of the contested issues regarding the evolution debate. I was expecting to be challenged on like the age of the earth, which didn't come up at all. We didn't really get to many exegetical arguments. It was mostly like hypotheticals about the definition of a human nature. But

I still think my opening statement holds that evolution is compatible with the biblical narrative in a biblical worldview. And I think it's a really beautiful thing that God spent millions of years preparing a place for us on earth just the way God has prepared a place for us in heaven. I think it is perfectly consistent and very fitting with the gospel narrative that God brings good out of evil. God brings life out of death. God brings redemption out of sin. Thank you.

All right, you got it. Well, thank you so much, Richard, redeemed Zoomer, for coming out to Modern Day Debate. We'll hopefully see you again for more discussions and more debates. But yeah, Jim Bob's going to be hanging out live. I know some other people are going to be hanging out live in the chat. So yeah. Yeah, all you weakling atheists, come over to my stream. I'll debate you right after this.

There you go. You have five pound weight. All right. Anyway, we'll just close it out before I get myself in trouble. Uh, you know, I get all, I get all into it. Jim Bob, you've, you've seen how it goes. Sometimes I can get out to lunch. So yeah, once again, smash the like button. Uh,

Yeah, if you haven't seen the links in the description, we have our DebateCon 5 crowdfund and of course the tickets in the description. I'm going to let the speakers go. And thanks again, once again, to the panel and our live chat. Have a good night, guys. See you, man. Bye. Cheers. At Emory University, we believe in those with the ambition to achieve, the passion to learn, and the optimism to see the possibilities ahead.

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