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Grid Jumped in Last Min to Save Debate: Secular Humanism Vs Christianity, Which Is Best for Society? Mark Reid Vs Grid

2025/4/24

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Hey everybody, tonight we're debating Christianity versus secular humanism, which is better for society, and we are starting right now with Mark's opening statement. Thanks for being with us. Mark, the floor is all yours for your opening.

Thank you very much, James, and thank you to Modern Bad Day Debate for hosting this, and thank you to my opponent, Grid, who is very, very nobly filled in for Andrew, who could not make it today. So secular humanism versus Christianity is the topic that we're looking at today. Which one is actually better for society?

And I think that a lot of the time secular humanism is misrepresented in sort of some of these debates. Really, when you really drill down to it, secular humanism is all about human well-being. So I want to make sort of a very, very definitive statement that if you're not talking about things in the context of is it good for human well-being or bad for human well-being, then you aren't talking about secular humanism. You're really talking about something else.

Now, this sort of metaethical goal of human well-being applies to multiple things. Obviously, with the individual applies to your just physical well-being, how you can get enough water, food, all of your physiological needs. It applies to your psychological well-being, how happy or contented you are with the way that things are going in your life. And it also applies to society as

Just basically how overall content society is, that's measured on something called the happiness index. And by happiness, and one of the principles of secular humanism is the greatest happiness principle, isn't really about sort of temporary happiness, like you win something and you're happy about it. It's very fleeting. It's a very temporary emotion. And that's really not what it's talking about. What we're talking about is sort of overall life satisfaction when we say that. So don't be mistaken that it's placid.

pleasure or that fleeting feeling of happiness when you get something or enjoy something. It really is overall life satisfaction and lifelong contentness. Now, we can measure this in multiple countries. And what shows is that some of the more secular countries like the Scandinavian countries, Sweden, Norway, Finland, they also have the highest happiness rating as well as a lot of other secular countries.

Now, this can be misleading because, of course, they are developed countries, so it can be a number of things due to how much technology they have and things like this. But it really shows that it isn't required to be Christian to be happy and that secular countries can generate happiness significantly without any large religious movement.

So how do we do this? Well, it's basically a utilitarian philosophy. Some people call it a religion. I don't think that's accurate. There's no worship involved, so I don't think it qualifies. Some people would disagree. But it really talks about how we get the utility of well-being for the most people and of society. And it's a balancing act. We have to balance society's needs of well-being with individual well-being, like how happy we are, how comfortable we are. Now, in...

Christianity really goes in for authority from, um, some kind of deity. And this becomes a problem, um, because whenever that is applied to a society and don't forget, we're talking about whether it's good for society, not part of the society, not good for Christians, but all of society, when that gets applied to society, um, that authority is rejected by a whole load of other religions. For instance, the, um,

Even the same religion, different denominations. For instance, if the Catholics put their religion in, the Protestants all dislike it and will not follow them because they insist upon a papal authority where the Protestants have more a personal authority with their relationship with God.

And then you have these problems of even other religions. You know, we had Muslims being persecuted. We had all kinds of other people being persecuted. And this persecution is generally what authority with Christianity will lead to. Because while there is a claim of absolute authority, there is no real way to validate either empirically or it seems to be otherwise, which one in fact has the authority and which one is true Christianity.

So what secularism does, and secular humanism specifically, is that it distributes the same rights and the same obligations to all religions and non-religious people. So it essentially treats everybody the same.

This is based upon something called the veil of ignorance by John Rawls, who says that if you're to design a healthy society, you really want to design it so you're relatively satisfied no matter what part of that society you're born into. So you're pretty satisfied born into, you know, being a servant and, you know, a cleaner as well as satisfied coming in in some kind of upper class.

But essentially, that's how it works. And so secular humanism doesn't make this assertion of authority. It doesn't say your religion needs to be persecuted because we have the authority over you. Rather, what it does is simply looks at whether actions are harmful to people in that society. So if there is a religion that's a cult,

that is literally harming people as it goes, then secular humanism will say, well, that is a bad thing towards, in virtue of that utility of wellbeing. So in this way, it doesn't make any overarching sense

assertions. And also the big thing is that secular humanism does not impose itself on other people. It doesn't say you have to believe this. It simply says this is how we evaluate it. And if you wonder how we evaluate it, generally secular humanists use science. Science is the best way that we can find out what

what the world around us is and facts do with the world. Even if, look, you may think that a god is responsible for science, okay, I disagree, but you, you know, we still know that science is the best way to evaluate the reality around us, regardless of where it comes from. So that's really where we base our estimation of how something is good and how something is bad. Now, science doesn't

tell us how we ought to use it, doesn't tell us whether we should build a nuclear plant or a atom bomb. That's where we need something else. We need to look at philosophies where we can say, what should we use this for? And that's where secular humanism says, well, we can use it for the well-being of people, and that's how we should use it, because we are interested in the well-being. Just on the last thing, I really want to point out, and I really want to make it

clear that as time has gone on and humanity has discovered that it's sort of sitting precariously on earth, this floating in space, one of the most hostile environments around us, it really behooves us to work together and cooperate. These pro-social behaviors are emphasized by secular humanity because

We don't think there's anyone coming to save us. We don't think there's any rescue from any deity or power or any authority. We think that humans will be the creators of their own success or the instruments of their own destruction. So this is why secular humanists believe that we have to cooperate because on this earth,

It may just take all of us working together in order to survive and thrive in a hostile environment. Thank you. Thank you very much for that opening statement, Mark. We are going to kick it over to Don Walker. And I have not gotten to update the name tag on the screen, as you guys have probably noticed. Don is subbing in for Andrew. Thanks for being with us. Don, the floor is all yours for your opening. Yeah, Walker, Wilson, it's all good.

British names. I really appreciate my opponent. I appreciate your point of view. However...

I don't think we're going to find, I mean, we'll find some common ground, but I don't think we're going to be able to agree very much. And the reason for that is while everything you said at base has some measure of truth to it, the reality is, is that there's nothing in secular humanism that calls for you to be a good person. There's nothing in secular humanism that calls for you to do anything other than basically do no harm.

to anyone else. But that doesn't mean that you have a calling or a need or some virtue that is required to be a part of being a good person. There's no morality there. You can't appeal to any form of morality. And at the end of the day, I think that while it was a very good speech, it's a bunch of nothing, really. And I look forward to going forward with this

because, sure, horrible things have been done in the name of religion, right? We can agree with that. I don't disagree with that. I think that there are bad things that happen in every aspect of the world, but I think overall, Christianity is the motivation and the foundation of all modernity, and I don't think that you can prove otherwise. As a matter of fact, I know you can't prove otherwise, and so...

I look forward to this back and forth. I really can't wait to because I think that you think that you were debating Andrew Wilson, who's going to take you down a logic train. And I'm not going to do that. I'm just going to I'm more of a brute force sort of person. So we'll just we'll get into it. And that's basically my opening.

Thank you very much for that opening as well. We'll jump right into the open dialogue. Folks, this is going to be an abbreviated debate where we've got about maybe like 50, let's say 45 minutes of open dialogue, and then we'll have maybe like 10 to 15 minutes of Q&A, and then we've got to let Mark go because it is going on one in the morning at that point. Please, yeah. Okay, so...

Yeah, thanks for that intro, Don. And, you know, I don't, you know, not being able to find common ground, I hear you with that. I don't think do no harm is correct. Do no harm was the Hippocratic Oath, right? It was basically the Hippocratic Oath. Now, doctors don't use the Hippocratic Oath anymore. They use the Oath of Geneva. And the reason why, part of the Geneva Convention, the reason why is because sometimes you have to do harm in order to

for the person's wellbeing. Like if someone has an infected leg, you have to do harm in order to help them kind of thing. So do no harm isn't really a correct stance. It's really looking up, well, is this in the person's best interest? Can we increase the wellbeing of this person by doing this is really what we're looking at. So I feel that that's sort of a straw man that it isn't necessarily do no harm.

it's taking the best option for the most amount of well-being we can. Okay. I mean, sure, the least amount of harm, but there's nothing that calls you to do good, right? The reality is Christianity has a mandate to do good, right? There's nothing in secular humanism that

makes you, that calls you to do anything other than exist. And, and that is, that's the reason why it is always going to be not the best option for humanity. It can't be because you, to, in order for us to grow, people need, need to be, um,

I'm not really super prepared here. I'm searching for the right word. Need to be motivated, need to be grounded with the desire to do good. And there's a morality that makes it something that is desirable and nothing in secular humanism. You can't point to anything in secular humanism that says go forth and do good. All it is is go forth and don't be an asshole.

I don't see that as the case because there's, you know, so there is a humanist manifesto and there is a certain level of, well, what we ought to do. And secular humanism is kind of a moral system and will tell you what you ought to do and what not to do based upon human well-being. Now, I agree there's nothing that says you have to care about human well-being, that you have to care about society or society.

fellow humans around you. I think that at a base level that we all feel empathy. That's a fact. We have mirror neurons that allow us to feel empathy unless somebody's a psychopath or sociopath. But I think that guides us in what we want to see. I still don't think that caring about human well-being is objectively something you have to do, but a lot of the time it's in your own interest to do. And through empathy, most people do care about human well-being.

Do you care about human well-being? Okay, sure. But I care about human well-being because I'm a Christian and I have a moral grounding for that.

Secular humanists have no moral grounding whatsoever. Even your ought claim can't be substantiated. And I could take you down the path that you know well that Andrew would take you down to prove out that you can't make an ought claim because logically you can't appeal to anything but your preferences and your wants and needs and desires. And anybody else's wants, needs, and desires can and will be different than yours. And while I'd love to waste 30 minutes of our 45 minutes

talking about that, we already understand where that argument is going to go. I would much rather just continue forward with the absolute fact that you can't give anything, any basis for your morality except your preferences over someone else's.

Okay, so you can't appeal to objective morality. I mean, the minute you do that, then I have to do the whole argument. And we already know where that's going to go. And again, we're on a truncated timetable. And I'd love to do the Andrew Wilson thing of beat you down with logic. Well, let me reply because I don't claim objective morality. I think sort of these frameworks that we have that, you know, what I care about human well-being, that's intersubjective.

It's like something that is subjective but agreed upon by a whole bunch of people. And you've said basically you care about human well-being because you're a Christian. But I think that even if you weren't a Christian, you would still care about human well-being. And I've met many ex-Christians that do care about human well-being. And there's many societies that are secular and non-religious that still care about human well-being. So how would you explain those countries that are sort of areligious that still care about people?

I'm sorry. I'm being asked to raise the audio. My, my audience is, uh, okay. I'm sorry. Um, yeah, they were saying I'm having a hard time hearing you. I apologize. I apologize to my chat and I apologize for getting distracted. Um, so as far as, uh,

Sorry, walk me just really quickly through that one more time. Okay, so you've said that you care about human well-being because you're a Christian, which kind of implies that you wouldn't if you weren't a Christian. But a lot of people who used to be Christians still care about human well-being. And there's a lot of countries without Christians that care about human well-being as well. So I don't know how you explain all of these non-Christians that still care about human well-being through societies all over the planet.

I mean, people can care about those things, but there's no reason. There's no driving force. I care about people because I'm a Christian, because otherwise I would be a pirate slitting throats. I know myself. I'm literally not a good person. I'm a really bad person. I'm a mean, angry individual. I know that about myself. Christianity tempers that and forges me into something that makes me want to be a better man.

And it's interesting that you can't understand that, but I'm just, as a man, as a human male, I endeavor to do violence, and the only thing that restrains me is my good grounding in Christianity.

Okay, well, that's horrifying. But don't you have any empathy towards other people? Like, don't you understand when someone gets hurt, you feel for them and say, hey, they're hurt. That must suck. Don't you have that empathy for other people? Sure, I can understand that people are hurting. That doesn't mean understanding it and caring about it are two entirely different things. So you just don't care if they're hurt? Why would I care? Why would you care?

Well, usually what happens is in the brain, your mirror neurons will actually signal to you saying, hey, you know, somebody is hurt or something's happened to them. I don't think the science is conclusive on that. I think that it's, I think that's something. Absolutely conclusive. A peel of technology that is not necessarily proven out. And we know that because literally people do bad things every day en masse.

I mean, look at the Middle East. If you want to talk about any kind of humanism, look at all of the godless people in Africa that kill each other. I mean, you have to understand that I don't believe in secular humanism as anything other than an excuse to act like a Christian without actually believing in God.

Can you explain that? Don, no. I want to address what you said because those people in Africa, they're not secular humanists to begin with. And a lot of them are Christians. In fact, a lot of the people killing young girls as witches over there are Christian. And it doesn't seem to temper them any. And, you know, I can regale you with the amount of atrocities that the Christian church has, you know, not only –

you know, just allowed, but also commanded people to do throughout the years. So it doesn't seem like these people, and I'm sort of explaining to you how the brain works with empathy, and it sort of shows why people in other countries can have empathy and can still, you know, not slaughter everybody around you, which apparently you want to do, just by using empathy. Do you believe that violence is a natural?

Well, just one second on, but you didn't answer my question with how those people in those other countries have very stable and very like most crime is lower than in the Christian majority country. So how do you explain that if without Christianity, you're immediately drawn to violence? Hold on. So that's that's an interesting argument. Yeah. So in most Christian countries, right, are Christians committing the crimes or non-Christians committing the crimes?

Well, the incarceration rate of Christians versus, say, atheists is incredible in the U.S. It's highly proportional. Well, they come to Christ after they go to prison because they see what actual horrible things are. And as a matter of fact, some of the most devout Christians come out of our prison system because they go in as horrible people and they become good people. And this actually proves my point. Yeah, I don't think it accounts for the disparity. I'm sorry? It does not account for the disparity. How does it not? Enough people...

Well, because enough people go in there, then the atheist is very, very low on that metric. And don't get me wrong. Some Christian denominations are very low on that metric as well. I believe there's a couple of them that are pretty low. But all in all, it doesn't show that Christians have any propensity to be law-abiding or show pro-social behaviors.

I think you're being purposefully obtuse and you understand exactly what I'm saying. What I'm saying is, is that people, people are, especially as young people or people who are born into less than desirable situations, they bend to the easy path. Correct. Can we agree on that? I think they have a life of crime. Correct.

Yeah, I think I would agree that there is a preponderance of people in lower socioeconomic classes to commit crimes. Sure. Yeah. Well, even even very wealthy people commit crimes. But that's OK. We'll just work with what we got.

So if that's the case and they're not Christians and they go to prison and they find God, that supports my case and not yours. Because what you're saying is that, well, everybody, you know, everybody, you have this empathy in your brain and then that's what makes you do great things. And however, these are criminals that go in as atheists and come out as Christians.

So you still haven't addressed why the crime rates and things are much lower in these, say, Scandinavian countries than in Christian countries. Well, I mean, I can address crime rates in the way that they're accounted for. Please do so. In the United States, you know, I don't know about other countries. I can't talk about Scandinavia. I can tell you about...

The United States, our crime rate is based on the amount of crime that's reported and documented. The actual number of crimes is much higher. So I can't really answer your question as far as crime rate because we don't know what it truly is.

Well, I think the whole suggestion that you need Christianity to be somehow moral is sort of thrown on the bonfire when you look at these secular countries. And so the whole thing about your claim, it really hasn't accounted for whatsoever. I understand that you don't understand that it's moral, but it is in fact moral. That's a fact. You can't argue that fact. That's just a fact. Christianity is moral. What's a fact?

It is moral. So any Christianity is moral. So all of these atrocities done in the past, they're all moral, are they? They were done under a moral compass. I agree that there are atrocities committed. However, when we look at what the church has done, and very specifically one church in particular, those churches have, if they do commit immoral acts, they pay for that. They have a hard time.

So, but moral. So, hold on. And that's actually brings up a good point. Immoral secular and moral secularist. What's what keeps you moral. It is the virtue of caring about human well being. Just that. So if you decide not to care tomorrow that's your what if you decided to worship the devil tomorrow. Well, that would be that would be like an about face and I wouldn't be a Christian anymore.

Yeah, and I wouldn't be a secular humanist anymore. See the ridiculousness of what you've said? Like you basically said, well, what happens if you decided not to be a secular humanist? Well, yeah, I wouldn't be a secular humanist. There's nothing stopping me. I don't actually don't understand. Hang on, let me finish. Let me finish. There's nothing stopping you from stopping being a Christian either. It's ridiculous to say, hey, you could stop being what you are. Yeah, then we wouldn't be like, then what connection does it have? I guess what I'm saying is, and I shouldn't have said it in that way. You're right. I should have phrased it better.

What's to stop a secular humanist from going out and committing horrible acts and still claiming to be a secular humanist by doing good, the acts that they feel are good? Because it's all based on your feelings. And I'm not hearing anything where your soul is damned to hell or there's any repercussions other than, well, you just don't get to call yourself a secular humanist anymore.

Okay. Well, basically it's that secular humanists adhere to what scientific evaluation is. So that's essentially what we try to pay attention to when evaluating these things. At least we have an evaluation standard. So if we go out and do something secular humanists. I mean, do you have meetings? What do you mean? Do you talk about it? Yeah. There's a secular humanist associations for the Australian one. Yeah. There's an Australian one. Do you meet every day? There's an American one. Is it like a Saturday night? Do we have to? Yeah.

Okay. All right. I'm just curious. Do we have to? Yeah, yeah. It's definitely a community. Well, religion, I don't think so, because religion, my definition of religion or, you know, the usual definition would be that you have a, you know, a frame of worship, something to worship, and we don't really worship anything. Some have called it a religion, but I think it's sort of misguided because a religion suggests that. Yeah, I do too. I think it's more of a cult.

It's a philosophy. It would be the most accurate term. So it's a philosophy of how to live your life, which is entirely accurate. The idea of a cult, I think that that's ridiculous. We're not

If you've ever looked at the BITE model of cult Christianity and some of the Christian sects really fit that model, secular humanism definitely does not. You know, information control, restriction of social interactions, freedom of information, none of it applies to secular humanism. So that's just ignorant and, you know, you have no idea what constitutes a cult at all. Okay. So...

The whole thing is that, yeah, I could go out and do all of these horrible things, but I don't want to because I care about human well-being and I interact with it. So when you're talking about morality, I can say, well, whatever draws us towards human well-being is moral and whatever draws us away is immoral, essentially. So when you say there's nothing... You get to decide what's moral and I can decide what's moral. No, I don't. And I can decide what you are thinking is immoral.

No, I don't. Let's just take for example... Well, let me address that. You've just gone on. No, no, no. Don't just say something and then run away from it. Hold on, gentlemen. One second. Just let me interrupt because I need to break it into one-minute segments if there's too much talking over each other. Okay. Is there any final point that the last person speaking wanted to make? I couldn't even tell who it was that was making their point before we went into the...

Mark was making a point, and I started making a counterpoint, but he was... Finish off, finish off, and I will hold my tongue. Go for it, Don. All right, yeah, so the...

So you get to decide what's moral. There's nothing that tells you what is moral in secular humanism. So just for example, if I wanted to sit around and do heroin all day, if I decided that was moral, then that would be moral. If you decided that it wasn't, then it's not. This is just a... Honestly, it's the craziest thing I've actually... Now that I'm really considering it, it's actually really insane. Because you get to decide what is good or bad. There is no, like...

Ten Commandments, there's no consequence if you don't do it this way. There's nothing except, well, I'm no longer – I don't get to call myself a secular humanist anymore, and I just – I don't see how that's good for society. Now, since the debate – and I've got to move it back a little bit, and I'm sorry for doing so. I'll let you answer that. It's sort of gish-galloping right now.

I'm sorry? I want to address that. Yeah, yeah, go ahead. You're sort of pish galloping at the moment. Okay, so basically you're saying I can decide what is moral, good or bad, but I can't. I can't decide that doing a substance is good for my well-being. Unless that actually changes somehow in reality, that is not a thing because somebody that uses substance is...

Yeah, they might be blissful for a while, but they're not well. Okay, that scientifically they are not well. So I can't just say, hey, that is moral because that's good for their well-being when as a matter of fact, it is. The only thing that I decide is that human well-being is important, which I have done, which is the thing that makes me a secular humanist.

From there, once you have established that is your goal, there are certain things you ought to do empirically that will get you to human wellbeing and certain things that won't. And I can't just decide, hey, you know, um, um,

you know, cutting myself is going to be good for my well-being because that is not, that does not follow. So you're sort of going, well, you choose what your metaethical goal is, therefore you choose within it what is good and bad for it. And that is not the case.

Once you have the meta ethical goal, then it becomes a matter of I won't say objective, but it comes a matter of sort of almost objective things where, you know, it is objectively true that heroin is bad for you. Would you agree with that? I mean, I can agree that it's objectively bad. I just don't believe that everyone else agrees that it's objectively bad. You and I can agree on it, but not everyone does. And what you're is there a sign? Hold on. Hold on.

You're saying that there's this guideline, and if it's good, it's good. If it's bad, it's bad. But you have not defined who gets to say it's good or bad. There are people that believe that doing heroin is good for them. And if that's the case, then they are just as secular or humanist as you are. Is there a written rule that says doing heroin is bad? Does science say it's good for you? How do you know that it's good?

Does science say that it's good for you? The scientists say heroin is good for you? I can be a science denier and still be a secular humanist. Well, no, no. If you've actually read about secular humanism, in it, it says, as in my introduction, science is the best way we can evaluate the world around us. So if we want to know if something works, and keep in mind, we're talking by virtue of science deniers.

discovering things today on, you know, presumably opposite ends of the world. You know, we listen to the scientific consensus and scientific evaluations of the world around us. So we evaluate that in light of what science tells us about it. I made that abundantly clear.

And science would not say that heroin is good for you. I think you understand that doctors would say, no, that's really bad for you. Well, I understand doctors say a lot of things. But however, do you know, have you ever heard of Arthur Conan Doyle? So who do you listen to apart from doctors?

Who? Well, I listen to many people, but out of curiosity, have you ever heard of a man named Arthur Conan Doyle? Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Yeah, yeah. He wrote Sherlock Holmes and has no understanding of what deduction is. Sure. Do you know that he used heroin and cocaine his entire career? Sure. Was that bad for him? Yes. How do you know?

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Well, you have no proof that he suffered, though. But I have proof that he was a brilliant author. And I know that he used heroin. Okay. So can we reasonably infer from the data that we have that using heroin will make you an awesome author? Or can we reasonably infer from the data that we have that heroin will make you have a really crappy life? That's not what you just said. You're avoiding the question. What you said was...

It's inherently harmful and science tells us that. And I'm saying, sure, science tells us many things that may or may not be true. Science, by the way, is not law. Science is a bunch of theories that are continuously tested or therefore they're not science. So I'm going to just discount all of that. And I'm just going to keep coming back to if someone is a high functioning addict, which we know exist, can they not also be secular humanists at the same time?

Okay. So as you said, I said it was inherently harmful. I didn't say that. I just said that doctors... Well, you said it's objectively... Tell us the heroin side. I said it inherently. Correct. Yeah. I never said inherently. I said it's objectively harmful. And it is. If you look at...

at what it does to people, it is objectively harmful. It does to most people. So even if somebody is a functional addict, they are still an addict. And so this idea that an addict has got their psychological health is in good working order is usually not the case. So usually what we're doing is we're saying, can we reasonably- You keep using these terms usually and not

Could you not interrupt me, please? Could you not interrupt me? Well, when looking in things, we have to say, can we reasonably have the expectation that this will lead to well-being when we're sort of looking at actions and leading to consequences? I mean, I'm not the one saying that they want to brutally murder everybody around them and basically is saying, well, ain't heroin great.

I'm not sure that that follows. I think that you're trying to kind of move out of this. Look, the reality is that secular humanism is nothing but your preferences. You can't appeal to anything. You can't appeal to anything that I can't just say that's your preferences. It was Conan Doyle's preference to use heroin. He wasn't a secular humanist as far as I know because they didn't exist. Yeah, so I don't know why you're bringing him up. Because it didn't exist back then.

But I do believe that he was not a devout Christian. He was probably an atheist, and he would probably consider himself a secular humanist who thought that he was doing great things for humanity. I just don't get...

how you keep trying to appeal to objectivity when there is no objectivity that you can put out that I can't say that is just your preferences. It's just your little group's preferences. It's not even somebody that the entire, it's not even things that the entire world holds to be true. If you say, for example, that if you go to, I don't know, India and you say that riding cows is

or eating cow is good, they're going to say it's bad because that's part of their religion. And I personally love to eat meat. I don't know. This is all very interesting to me that you keep coming back to your preferences and they're somehow morally right. And I don't agree with you. Maybe I'm wrong. I can be wrong. I've been wrong before. But you haven't convinced me at all. And I don't think you've been able to move the needle.

Well, you have not in any way shown that in light, in virtue of human well-being, that using opioids or any kind of substance is good for human well-being. And I would disagree. But I want to ask you. Okay, stop. No. Every day opioids help humanity. Every single day. Doctors prescribe them every single day. So come on. Yes.

Yes, but you're talking about somebody addicted to opioids. I didn't say addicted. You inferred addicted. Okay, I'm pretty sure you did. I said, does someone that uses heroin, is that morally wrong? Of course not.

according to your second if it's bad for their well-being yes if it is to like stop pain or stop suffering it may be um it may be okay for their well-being as like the minimum amount of suffering but you know this whole thing about well you know why is just using using uh heroin just just not fantastic in your worldview it's because usually reasonably can i please finish

Reasonably, we can expect very harmful things to happen. And considering America is in the middle of an opioid crisis at the moment and you're sort of going, well, it can be fantastic, is not a very reasonable way to address whether something ought to be done or ought not to be done. But I'd like to look at your worldview at the moment because I feel like you're just grilling me on mine. If God says or just say...

You know, we're talking about morality. Where does morality come from? Is it just what God wants or is it taken from some other place? So morality is within the scriptures. Have you read the Bible? I have. Okay. So my morality is based on the scriptures. My worldview is created by the scriptures. I will tell you that, first of all, I'm a Southern Baptist. So I believe that if you sin, you go to hell.

And I tell people that all the time. I believe that unless you seek redemption for your sins, then you're probably not going to do well in the afterlife. And there are many other things that are unique to Southern Baptists that you may or may not be aware of. So I won't go too far down those specific routes unless we need to, which I don't think we have time for anyway.

Well, how do you know that the Bible reflects morality? How do you know that that's actually, you know, how do you believe in an objective morality? Rather than it just being a great storybook that somebody wrote down and everybody just believes in. Yeah. Well, so we, what we have is we have a succession from the earliest days and we can now prove out most of it, right? Like obviously you can't prove out all of history. We don't, we don't, we still don't even really know, um,

You know, but therefore, well, I shouldn't say we don't really know. There for decades, we believed that Christopher Columbus was the first in the new world. And now we know it was the Vikings. And there's evidence that maybe the Phoenicians were actually the first to America. So who knows? Science evolves daily, which is why we can't use it for morality. However, I digress. And again, I'm not the best person to argue the continuity of the Bible. I'm not an orthodox. You know, I'm a sola scriptura person.

person. I believe in the text and I believe that it has remained unchanged because God wills it that way. Well, I'm not really asking that. I'm asking how you know that it does actually reflect accurately the objective morality that you believe in. It does. That's not what I asked. I asked how you know that. Its teachings and morality actually have taught me to... Sorry. Something go on here. Sorry.

That was on my bed. My teachings and morality come from the Bible and the teachings, which came from God, and that's what I adhere to. I don't know that I'm qualified. I don't normally go too far down this path because I don't really feel like I'm qualified. I'm not a priest. I'm not –

Well, it sounds like you're saying that God sort of imparted, told what morality is to these people, and then they wrote it down. So is morality what God tells us is moral and immoral as through the Bible?

Yeah, I get my morality through the teachings of the Bible. You know, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not commit adultery. If we get into the New Testament, you know, marriage is between one man and one woman. Men should not lie down together. I mean, we could go through that, but I don't know. Again, I don't know that you're asking me to go through the entire thing. But yes, my morality comes through the teachings of the Bible. Okay, so two points. Which are time-tested.

Two points, right? Number one, if morality comes through the Bible from God telling what it is, basically saying what it is, then your morality is subjective as well, with the subject being a God, but it is still subjective. Number two, if God relates, like basically says what morality is and puts that in the Bible, he could quite easily just change that morality and tell you that it is now moral to slaughter hundreds and thousands of people, go out and do it, sir. What would prevent

anything that from happening if God decides what morality is. So that's an interesting argument. It's one that I hear used a lot. And I have a little bit different take on this. So God, are you, did you, man, I don't know if we have time. Do you remember in your reading of the Bible, the story of the Canaanites?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. And the Amalekites and the Edomites, again, were slaughtered as well. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Do you know why he did that? Well, I mean...

In the text, it says that they were doing religious practices that they didn't like. They were sacrificing babies to Moloch. Well, yeah, but you've just referenced the Old Testament in your morality, thou shalt not, et cetera, et cetera. So I didn't see that as off the table. But the whole point was that we don't know that was the case. And killing people to stop them from killing children, including the children,

isn't really solving the problem for me. But it doesn't address my question, which is why couldn't God just say... No, no, I'm getting to that. I just wanted you to understand. Okay, sure. I just wanted to make sure that you understood the story. So God has changed the morality. He didn't really change morality. He changed the law. You understand that in the Old Testament, he gave the law.

The law was to be in place until it was fulfilled. The coming of Christ fulfilled the law. Now we have, now that while it didn't change the morality, it did change the law.

Morality is divine and comes from God. If you don't believe that, then I can't help you. I can't get you there. I can't reach into your brain and flip a switch that says, believe in God. I'm not capable of doing such things. All I can tell you is that when I appeal to something, I'm not appealing to my preferences. I'm appealing to a divine authority.

Yeah, so that's not an argument as why I should believe you as a dogmatic assertion that you're basically right no matter what. And that doesn't really fly with argumentation. You haven't explained why God couldn't just change his mind and say, hey, you know, I'm the master of the universe. I could just change things. So, you know, all you people go wipe out another people. And considering we've seen a lot of that from Christianity, I mean, I don't you haven't actually given any reason why that couldn't be the case.

You claim objective morality, but it's not objective because God has put it in the Bible. It's subjective. Subjective means stance dependent. In this case, it is God's stance that basically makes it. But then it's just as rocky as anybody else's. So it is 100% subjective.

And God could bring out another book like, I don't know, maybe the Quran is true. And so now he's changed his morality again. But you don't recognize that one. But all I'm saying is you cannot explain sufficiently why your morality can't change.

That's another great argument, because in theory, the Quran is an extension of the Bible, a new book that is not accepted, which, and I agree, I don't accept it either. But it's interesting, because you know that you can, someone that does not have to believe in God in and of itself to gain morality from reading the Bible,

So the two are, and basically referencing it, right? Like say I've referenced this Bible as a divine authority. You don't have to necessarily believe that God exists. You can just say, well, it came from someplace other than my understanding, and this is what we should do. So I don't understand, I guess, kind of, I know you're trying to push all of this scientific law and the idea of,

So what's to keep God from changing? Well, he could. He's God. He could do that, but he hasn't. And if he did, then that would be the new word, correct? But that would be a higher power, not a human being.

So what you're asking me is if Jim Bridger came out and said, you can all be Mormons now and have multiple wives, and here's my new book of Mormon, that I as a Christian would follow that blindly, and I wouldn't because I don't have any proof that he spoke to God.

Some people did, though. It would have to be revelation. I mean, I'm wondering if you actually have read the Bible, because I don't think that you actually understand it in a layman's terms, because I'm a layman. I'm not a priest. I stumble a lot with Scripture. I'm not a particularly good... But some people did follow him, right? I'm not Andrew Wilson, so I'm not going to beat you down in that same regard. But I'm just going to tell you over and over again that it is divine, and therefore it could change. That's absolutely accurate. However, it hasn't.

And by the way, it references in the Bible exactly how, when, and why it might change in the book of Revelations. Okay. Well, I don't think it's divine. I think it's really human-made. But you can believe that if you want. I don't, you know, that's fine. I just think that you've sort of said a lot of things that sort of say, well, it won't. But, you know, that sort of presupposes that you know what God will do in the future. But I have another question for you. No, I didn't. I specifically said it could.

But it hasn't. Right. If God commands a Jew... Don't do that. Don't say things that I didn't say. I didn't say that. I was very clear in my meaning. I did say that it could, in fact, change. And there is an outline in the Bible about why and how it might change in Revelations. You should go read it again. How do you know it hasn't changed? I'm sorry? How do you know it hasn't changed? How do you know that the Quran isn't the correct one?

Well, there's a, I'm not, again, I'm not up on the exact science of the Quran. I haven't read it since I was in college, and that was 20-odd years ago. Actually, almost 30 years now. I'm old. But my understanding is that God will make it known when the new book is passed out, Revelations covers that. He did not make the Quran known. The Quran was given to a prophet that we believe is a false prophet.

not revealed to the people. So that's what I believe. So I don't, I know you believe that. Yeah. I believe that. I believe that, uh, um, Muhammad was a false prophet. So yeah, yeah. Fair enough. Um, if you had, if you had Jesus come down and like, or God come down and command you to, you know, wipe out an entire group of people, would you do it? Is that moral? I'm sorry. If he command, so hold on.

You're asking me if someone told me to go kill these people because they need to be killed, would I do it? Yeah, absolutely. We have wars every day. Okay. And I just want to point out that that doesn't need to happen. All that has to happen is you believe you've been told by a God, right? I don't need to be told by God. I can simply be told by the President of the United States, go kill these people. I'll go kill them right now today.

Really? Sure. No matter who they are? If we're at war, we're at war. What if it's U.S. citizens? I'm sorry? What if it's U.S. citizens? I would have to see some proof that there is a reason, but sure. Okay. You seem to have a very interesting idea of how the world works. I can't wait to understand it, but I'm going to have to do some reading on this particular issue.

It's just you seem to... You live by a non-aggression principle, right? You're basically in the United States, you'd be considered libertarian probably. I'm not sure like non-aggression. I think that I would certainly self-defend myself. I don't think I would sort of say, well, I'm not going to use aggression if it's used against me. But I do have a problem with the churches trying to...

persecute other people in society and thereby breach the social contract that we all have to be treated equally. It is incredibly bad for society when one segment of it is treated badly because usually they fight back. There's a long history of that happening. So as I said, the problem is that when you start to go- I want to explore that a minute. Do you believe that violence is inherent in human beings?

Do I think the violence is inherent? It's just part of who we are? No, no, I don't. Really?

Interesting. No, I think that survival mechanisms are inherent in human beings. One of those can be violence, but that has caused a lot of problems from when we first evolved and having survival mechanisms to today, where if you think you're being attacked and not really being attacked, you can actually create that problem out of nowhere. And we see it a lot in these escalating situations.

That's why we teach the police to de-escalate and not like shoot everybody involved and then sort it out later. That's why they do that. It's because we have to override that aggression principle in order to have a functioning society or else there's just

violence everywhere. My problem with Christianity is it sort of has an assertion that they can use violence against others in order because they have a divine right to do so. Things like, you know, divine holy wars and divine right of rule and things has not particularly been successful in history. Mm hmm.

Because the oppressed people fight back. I think you need to look into inhumanity more. We are a violent species. Most species are violent. We are exceptionally violent. You can't name one point in history where we have not been violent. You cannot point in it to me. As a matter of fact, if you can, please do so. A society in the world that lives without aggression.

I think it is something that humans have, but I don't see why we need to be beholden to it, why we have to sort of give in to base instincts and fight all the time. You have that luxury because you live in a first world country. Not being violent is a luxury. Not being violent is a luxury. It's not a right. It's not something that is just is.

Well, sure. I'm aware of that. Do you believe that you have the capability of great violence? Yes. Okay. What keeps you from it? That I have empathy for other people. Okay.

I understand what it's like to be subject to violence. And as I understand that, I understand that in order for our society to function, I've got to restrain and not do violence to other people. Because if I do that, they're going to do violence to me and our entire society will be garbage, absolute garbage. So...

This is the whole social contract. We basically say, well, each of us have the right to live as free humans. Well, that's not libertarian. It is actually exactly libertarian. It's a social contract. It's the NAP, non-aggression principle, all of that. No, no, no, no. It's constitutionalism is what it is.

No, I'm constitutionally concerned. One thing is, I hate to do this, but just because Mark, the reason that we can't go longer is that Mark actually has to take off. Oh, I'm sorry. It's going on one in the morning, and so in Mark's time zone, we do have to jump into the Q&A. Sorry for doing this so abruptly. But we could always host you guys in another 1v1. Yeah, when I'm actually awake...

And dressed in something other than a t-shirt and sweatpants will do that. That's totally work. That's 100%. So we're going to jump into these questions that we have had. And we want to say thank you again, Sarah, the raging tomato for helping us find grid. Thank you for a grid jumping in last minute. And then folks, the reason Andrew Wilson is on the thumbnail is he was scheduled to debate. And then grid was, we are, we are grateful that grid was willing to sub in for Andrew and,

raging tomato says grid said he thanks for that and hank o'flamio says why isn't sarah coming up herself i think they're just teasing sarah leave sarah alone come on now come on then is but yeah huge thanks to raging tomato she's linked in the description as well as grid and mark robin webster says people who don't care about others are psychopaths or sociopaths yes you guys agree

Well, I think that sort of psychopaths and sociopaths get a bad rap. So through either, you know, neurology, how they're born with it, their mirror neurons don't work in the case of psychopaths. Sociopaths, usually it's through trauma or some event that has, you know, caused them not to feel empathy towards others, but they get sort of a bad rap. They're usually very transactional, but they don't have to be violent and things like this. They can understand the benefit of cooperating with others.

And we can help them because we understand how this disorder works. But she's absolutely correct. People with no sense of empathy are sociopaths or psychopaths. That's what we call them. This one coming in from, do appreciate it. Her nublet says, quote,

Secular humanism is not a cult. We don't do information control, restriction of social interactions, etc. And then they said, bro. So I think they're quoting you, Mark. They say, bro, have you heard of COVID? I mean, what I meant to say is the virus that shall not be named in 2020. Yeah.

Yeah, so when we got lockdowns in Australia and we tried to halt the spread of a disease, we had a lot of interactions. News was fairly broad. The idea was that what people were saying were actively causing harm and causing people to die. So, you know, some of that has to be restricted when you're basically giving medical information and you're not a doctor or somebody who has any proficiency in understanding virology or epidemiology or anything like that. So...

You know, I think that sort of saying that this is a cult because they don't allow people to masquerade giving medical advice and, you know, a actual cult stopping any information coming in from outside and only allowing them to hear the echo chamber of the cult. I think that's a bit disingenuous to equate the two things. You could still talk to your friends. You could still talk to everybody else. Seriously. Any thoughts, Don?

No, I don't have any thoughts on that. I'm not really, I mean, to me, it seems like just another made-up philosophy trying to avoid the idea of organized religion. You got it. Gabriel Valencia says, even if science says it's quote-unquote good, what is the obligation to follow that quote-unquote good?

Well-being of humanity? Why should we care about humanity?

you don't have to care about humanity, you don't have to care about, you don't have to be a secular humanist, you may have other goals in mind. Generally though even somebody that's completely selfish they can see the benefit of cooperation within society. So generally when you have these societies that have pro-social behaviours that are working well together you will find that everybody in the society benefits so it may be in your best interest to cooperate with that society.

But why do we have to follow science? Well, I didn't say we did. And science doesn't prescribe you to do anything. All it does is tell you about how the world works. So like my example that I gave was you discover nuclear fission. Science doesn't tell you whether you should build a nuclear plant to help people get power or you should build an atomic bomb and commit atrocities.

We need something else to guide us in that. And secular humanism is one of the things that guide us, saying, hey, these fruits of science that we've discovered, will we use it towards the benefit of humanity in general? So that means Christians, Muslims, everybody. We don't say, hey, those Muslims aren't our people. We don't want to help them.

No, we help everybody. And there's a lot of organizations that do that, you know, like Médecins Sans Frontières, the French Doctors Without Borders. They're a secular organization that will help anybody. So there's a lot of organizations like this out there.

You got it. Thanks for your question. From Andreas Whalen, parentheses Whalen88, says, If you're good, you're going to do good. If you're bad, you're going to do bad. Being religious doesn't change that. Perfect example, just look at what the Catholic Church has done to many, many children.

Yeah, the Catholic Church has done horrible atrocities, including not only what they've done to a child, but also they've basically tried to stop condoms going into Africa and caused the AIDS epidemic in the 80s, essentially, as well as, you know, missionaries have gone in and taught them to kill witches and things. Absolutely horrible. But I'm not sure I would agree, like sort of good and bad people. I don't think people are good and bad. I think that

actions and, you know, sort of things that people do are good and bad. And yeah, we sort of say, hey, it's a bad person if generally all of the stuff they do is bad. But I don't think there's an inherent goodness and badness about people. I think people can do really wrong things and absolutely horrendous things. But, you know, I think it was Noam Chomsky that once said, we each have the capacity to be a saint and a gas chamber attendant. And I do agree with that quote.

You got it? Don, did you have anything? Yeah, I have something on that. Just read it to me, so I'll make sure I have the exact quote. Yeah, so they said, if you're good, you're going to do good. If you're bad, you're going to do bad. Being religious doesn't change that. Perfect example, look at some of the atrocities of the Catholic Church and children.

Yeah. So since we've taken religion out of schools more, I know they're obviously insinuating the, you know, the problem the Catholic Church has had over the past decade or so.

you know, priests and children, but you're more apt to be, your children are more apt to be assaulted by teachers or other staff in public school system in America than they are in any Catholic church, and the numbers bear that out. Being mad at religion for something that humans do is the retreat of the weak, and just keep retreating there, because we don't want you.

You got it. And anybody that just tuned in, the reason grid is here is because we have people constantly logging in and they're like, what's going on? Is Andrew didn't make it 30 minutes before he said he can't make it. Grid jumped in for him. And so we do appreciate that grid. And Sarah helped us connect with grid. And we want to say a huge thank you to Mark. So, yeah,

The reason that I know that I probably sound like I was furious at the start of this stream because Andrew said he was too tired and he was not going to make it and he's going to go back to sleep instead of coming to the debate is that it not only is...

kind of a slap in the face of me, but also it's kind of a slap in the face of Mark. So it is kind of like, yeah, it's like... I'll turn the other cheek, James. There you go. There you go. No, I do want to... The last question, though, I want to ask... So since... Let's see.

Just out of curiosity, what are your thoughts on this, Mark? Because I'm just like, oh, this is interesting because the Raging Tomato, thanks for your super chat. Says, thanks for hosting, James. Mark, appreciate your willingness to adjust. And Grid, thanks for jumping on last minute. I vote for a round two with better prep time. Oh, yeah. And that's the thing, too, is that thank you, Grid, for jumping in with like very basically no prep. And yeah, I don't normally debate religious topics at all.

Yeah. And also, for me, I don't know if you're like me, but my body, the older I get, the longer it takes for my body to like,

be awake. When I wake up, I just, my brain is not working nearly as well as like the evening. For some reason, the evening time, my brain is like, it's sharp. But in the early part of the day, I'm usually like slow and groggy. And I also, yeah, so I appreciate you doing it early in the morning, because if you're like me, at least, it's tougher. I was up to one o'clock this morning.

I did two streams yesterday. Well, three technically. That's yeah. So you're well, thanks again for doing it extra busy when it's just, you've been basically streamed out already. So what we're going to do. Wow. You're cooking. You're doing a lot here.

But I want to say a huge thank you to both of our guests. What we're going to do is we actually have a third guest that's just going to jump on any minute. But this is actually maybe a good opportunity. Grid, if you're willing to stay just a few minutes until our third guest arrives, we can talk about like debate con stuff as we've been talking about that. And then Mark, I will let you get some sleep though. Bro, I appreciate you. And thank you so much for staying up late with us.

All right. No worries. Is that the end of the questions? Is that all? That is actually all for our questions. All right. No worries. Yeah. Sorry, mate. Yeah. I will duck out. Thank you so much. And yeah, thank you so much. I know jumping in last minute is really intimidating and really, really tough to do. I've been there, mate. So yeah, absolutely. Thank you. I really appreciate it. But James, always a pleasure. And yeah, I will see you in the next one, I guess.

You betcha. Thank you again, Mark. Take care, brother. See you, mate.

With that, folks, we are just thrilled. We want to say a huge thank you again to our guests. Your child has so much potential, but your local schools may not be right for them. Check out K-12. K-12 powered schools are accredited tuition-free online public schools for students in kindergarten through 12th grade. This is not your typical homeschooling. With state-certified teachers specially trained to teach online, your child will learn at their speed at home with innovative, engaging technology.

Grid Jumped in Last Min to Save Debate: Secular Humanism Vs Christianity, Which Is Best for Society? Mark Reid Vs Grid

Modern-Day Debate

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Grid Jumped in Last Min to Save Debate: Secular Humanism Vs Christianity, Which Is Best for Society? Mark Reid Vs Grid 01:10:05 Share

Modern-Day Debate

Shownotes Transcript

Grid Jumped in Last Min to Save Debate: Secular Humanism Vs Christianity, Which Is Best for Society? Mark Reid Vs Grid