The debate explores whether the universe had a beginning, examining arguments from cosmology, physics, and philosophy. Key scientific arguments for a cosmic beginning include observations of a low entropy state in the early universe and the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin (BGV) theorem, which suggests that any universe that has been expanding on average must have had a beginning. However, counterarguments challenge these claims: the BGV theorem has known counterexamples in classical spacetime geometries, and most cosmologists believe classical general relativity breaks down at quantum scales near the universe's origin, making it unclear whether a singularity actually existed. The debate also examines philosophical questions about whether a timeless mind or creator can exist, and whether personal religious experiences constitute valid evidence for God's existence.
GOD vs. PHYSICIST - Debate Dr. Blitz [5/26/2026] [H]Added:
Let me take you on a little trip. My supersonic ship.
Howdy, howdy everybody. Hope everybody's having a good day.
Morning. Morning.
Yeah. Remember to hydrate.
Hydration is Hydration is life.
In all things, we serve the founders.
Just a little gemin motivation for you guys.
All right, let's bring up our first guest.
Welcome. Welcome. We have our first guest deleted.
>> Hello.
>> Deleted. How's it going?
>> I'm good. How are you?
>> I'm doing all right. Deleted. Do you believe in a god?
>> Can I have some money?
>> No.
>> Please.
>> You're going to ask for money. At least like, you know, do a better job.
What >> from All right, let's bring up our next guest.
>> Mouse edits. How's it going?
>> Good. How are you >> doing? All right. Mouse edits, do you believe in God?
>> Uh, I do, but I have a I have a different question if you don't mind.
Just really quick.
>> As long as it's on topic. Go ahead.
>> Oh, okay. Yesterday, I'm an astrophotographer and so um I was just wondering. I could have helped you out with like photos and stuff, so but >> I usually don't bring on friendlies. Um >> Oh, okay.
>> No, no, you're good. You're good. Take care.
>> There's two exceptions. two friendly exceptions that I've in fact I think two friendly exceptions that I've ever brought on. One is M's because I don't know the Quran very well and M does and I trust M's and one is Prooto Josh also known as Hasselblad.
Um who again is a professional photographer has been for decades and also I trust Profoto Josh. I know that he has good rhetorical skills and he has good knowledge and I know that you know that whole thing. So the only those are the only people I will ever bring up um at least at the moment because I know them, I trust them, you know, is is very very very very exclusive club if you will. I don't think I I don't know if I've had Ian up before. I mean I maybe I have um but not as like an expert witness if you will.
I don't Yeah, I don't know if I've had you know Convinced to believe is a bit of a paradox. No, that's exactly how beliefs are formed. You're convinced of something and so you are led to believe it. I know Ian has you up. Yeah, Ian brings me up all the time. Ian has no problem bringing up friendlies. Um, I just never have YouTube audio might be weird or choppy.
Is YouTube audio weird?
Um, let me check on my end.
It says that everything's excellent.
I may have brought Danny up once. The the thing is is like these these are very very you know those are perhaps exceptions rather than the rules. Um, no. Yeah, there's no ask of physicists today. I basically need to get more debate content so that then I can fill out the schedule because I'm going to be gone for the next two weeks and so I want to make sure that I have stuff for you guys to watch over the next two weeks while I'm not live streaming.
When you're playing KSP again, it won't be until after um it won't be until after I'm back. Yeah, sorry about that.
Someone could convince you to believe in their god. Would it still be belief or knowledge? Knowledge is a kind of belief.
Not all beliefs are knowledge.
Sorry. Yeah. Not all beliefs are knowledge. All knowledge is belief.
What's the point if you're not going to believe anyway? Well, I will believe if somebody can convince me. Why ask to convince you if you won't be convinced if you're already convinced there's no God? Look, I'm convinced there's no God because the arguments I've been offered are not good. the evidence I've been offered are not good. Um, but if you have good arguments, if you have good evidence, I'm happy to be convinced.
Yeah, Danny is very, very good. Danny's a teacher. Like, that's his day job.
He's very, very good at this.
Let's bring up Lammy supporter.
>> Lammy supporter. How's it going?
>> I have a question. Sure. Go ahead.
>> Uh, can you help me study for my biology exam?
>> Nope. Not today. Also, I'm not a biologist.
>> I'm not a biologist. What?
What do you think of the low prior argument? I think it's it's not very convincing to other people, but it is a good it is like we're trying to understand why people don't have belief.
It's a plausible explanation.
Our debate proves that even with God, you still reject God already. God already. Oh, reflect king. Oh, you sweet summer child.
Also, I heard that you're like a neonazi or something. Be rad. How's it going?
>> Going good. I I would argue though that uh from a sec between secularists and religion at this point I think I am more on board with uh Christianity being our foundation as opposed to people's feelings.
>> Why should I believe in Christianity?
>> More structure for society.
>> There's more structure for society.
Okay. But that doesn't say anything about the truth of Christianity, right?
>> Uh I think it does. I think when you look at a society run with a religious foundation versus what we have today, the fact that people are questioning the use of the word gender versus sex is I mean it it's just as far as I'm concerned the secularist uh thought process viewpoint it's uh unraveling society.
>> To be clear, none of that has anything to do with the truth of Christianity.
Whether or not it's true that having Christianity as a you know a national religion or whatever would be a good thing is completely unrelated to whether or not have whether or not Christianity the claims that Christianity makes are true.
>> These are distinct propositions.
>> You understand the difference?
>> Yeah. And what I'm trying to do is think where I can start seeing the structure the utility of it. So damn it, >> you see the utility of it because it has because it's authoritarian and so it grants certain cultural and social requirements that if you don't obey them, you're either socially ostracized or you're, you know, sentenced to some sort of or you're given some sort of sentence by the authoritarian government that's in place that obeys the Christian tradition. This is what happened during the uh you know this is what happened up until really the uh like the French Revolution, this kind of enlightenment period. We have examples of people like Galileo who were put in a house arrest by the Catholic Church because he dared propose that the earth goes around the sun.
>> Right. But >> that's theor that's the authoritarian social structure that you're yearning for. And it doesn't say anything about how true the claims of Christianity are.
Well, the way I see it is the only way something of this nature could have even have gained influence is if the structure of society was in fact in decline or needed instruction. I.e., it's hard for you to convince me before the Bible that everything was hunky dory. The way they were handling slavery in those days was probably better.
>> Are you familiar with the Roman Republic period?
>> Uh, to a degree. So it ended before Jesus was born. This was genuinely a republic. This was arguably the golden era of Rome. After the republic period when uh I guess Caesar took over um and the republic fell and it became the Roman Empire. This is when Christianity blossomed actually >> and then how much further until the fall of Rome?
>> It depends on what you count as Rome. If you count the Byzantine Empire as Rome then it was like the 1400s. If you count the if you're talking about the Western Roman Empire it's like 500 or something years. But the point is is the reason why Christianity spread so much was because the Roman Empire was authoritarian and enforced it on their population. They spread it through the sword the same way that the Spanish concistadors did. The same way that the British and the you know the you know the French did in Africa, North America like that's that's why Christianity spread. Do you think it spread? This what I would argue might be one of the truths that we can look into. By doing regardless of how the method of doing so, it built up the nation. It gave them >> you can you can justify that this you can say that this granted some sort of good features for society because maybe you're in favor of like authoritarian authoritarianism or whatever. It's just not the case that you needed Christianity in order to have a reasonably a reasonably well structured society. Look to the Roman Republic for this example. Secondly, we know that there are flourishing societies that don't have Christianity as their foundation. And we know that there are societies that are not flourishing that do have um society at their foundation.
So, it seems like this is more of a question about whether or not you like authoritarianism rather than freedom.
I'm I happen to be in favor of freedom, but like man, if you if you like the authority, more power to you. But it says nothing about the truth of Christianity. We disagree with the whole idea though that these countries were able to flourish without it. I I think because now we live in a more civilized world. Granted, we're seeing some chaos right now. Yeah. When you don't have to actually worry about who your neighbor is that you're having to fight, who you're having to combat.
>> Are you familiar? Are you familiar with like the Egyptian civilization?
>> Again, no. So Egypt has never been like dominantly Christian except for a short period of time. I think between like the 200s and the 400s maybe.
There's like a small population of Christians in Egypt. But like Egypt is a functioning state. Now in the last 50 years or so they haven't been doing great.
>> Uh and there perhaps social reasons for that. But they've been a they've been a uh a fairly stable nation. not a state, a fairly stable nation for thousands of years with no Christianity at their bedrock. We can also look at China.
Again, perhaps you disagree with communism or whatever, but even before communism, they never had a Christian foundation and they were one of the most stable nations in >> but I was being more broad with religion and I was being more broad by saying religion in general, I think, gives your society more of a foundational.
>> Okay, sure. Right?
>> What does that have to do with I mean so that that may be the case because religion is a good way of enforcing power structures >> right >> and power structures are a good way to you know run a society but like that doesn't say anything about the truth of those claims also to be clear you specifically said Christianity >> right right but once you start jumping to those other regions obviously then it's whatever their religion is that kept them glued together especially when it came to having to deal with opponents.
>> Okay. Okay. So, is your claim that religion is good and therefore it's true?
>> No. My uh my point would be that uh the utility of religion in general assuming assuming you actually have adversity, adversaries, things of that nature is kind of a necessity.
>> Well, I mean a necessity maybe, maybe not. But like I said, as I'm seeing now topic, >> as I'm looking at America right now, uh I see what the secularist values are and how they come to their conclusions. I I'm starting to see now why people need a foundation like Christianity.
>> So you're So you're talking about like the secular like the secularist kind of um neoliberal power structures that have been dominant since like the 50s.
Not so much. As a matter of fact, I would actually argue it's around after World War II.
That's the 50s, my guy.
>> Yeah, I know. And I guess you're right.
I guess you're right.
>> The golden era, the golden era of the United States. In fact, the United States is richer than it ever has been.
It people have a higher quality of life than they ever have. Except I think that there's actually a decline around CO, but that's neither here nor there. Um, >> right. And I guess I just never thought about it in those terms. When I hear things like neoliberal, I don't think much of them, but now I see exactly what you're saying. Like I never realized neoliberalism would literally be tied to the war machine, you know, and obviously that is when we had that kind of >> US imperialism and all these things, but all these things have been very very good through the United States, >> right? But that was obviously just luck.
>> Oh, I mean, not really.
>> I mean, there were consequences as a result of the Second World War essentially. To say that that was a luck story, but >> but America profited the most out of the that sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And we also invested heavily in sciences because, you know, we recognized that we could take advantage of the science of the scientists. We could bring the scientists over from countries that were devastated by the war and we invested in that rather than bringing rather than bringing over the priests, we brought over the scientists, right? Keep that in mind. Um, and that's what made her that that's what led to the, you know, economic powerhouse that is the United States. But anyway, um, it sounds like that you're not here to actually disagree about or to actually talk about the truth of the religious claims. you rather want to say that there that authoritarian structures are beneficial for keeping a society orderly, which perhaps is true. Um, so if there's nothing else you want to talk about that's actually on topic, I'm going to let you go. Is that fair?
>> Yeah, that's fine.
>> All right, take care of your rat.
>> How much you guys want to bet that he is super buttthurt about I I shouldn't use the word butt hurt, but it's just the money. He's super mad about the uh about trans people. like how much you want to bet.
Like it's it's definitely it's definitely the trans folks, right? That that that are the origin of that cla of um these complaints. All right, let's bring up uh a guest.
Let's bring up Nathan.
Nathan, how's it going?
>> All right, I have a question.
Okay. Before you ask your question, do you mind if I ask a quick question? Do you believe in God?
>> Uh, not really.
>> Okay. Uh, well, so the live stream is about theists convincing me to believe that their god is real. So, if you're not that, then I feel like I should probably move on.
>> Okay. It's just real quick if you have like two seconds.
>> Did you Did you ever rescue Valentina from the >> I did. Valentina has been saved.
>> Okay. That's all I wanted to know.
>> Yeah, it's all you can go watch the live stream. It's on It's on my YouTube channel.
>> Okay. I was watching that stream. was like, I got to see this.
>> Yep, it happened.
>> Okay.
>> All right. Take care.
>> Uh, sorry. I have to respond to MC Tuning.
>> Um, >> uh, sorry, I'm just checking some stuff.
Oh, we have Okay, let's bring up Peter.
No, Valentina. Valentina Kerman.
>> Peter, how's it going?
>> Hey, how you doing?
>> I'm doing all right. Peter, do you believe in God?
>> I believe in a god.
>> Okay, cool. Um, which god would that be?
Just that way then I don't make any incorrect assumptions about you. Uh so it would be like the not like the god of spinosa as described by um mikotaku the rule of >> is this do you have any substantial disagreements with atheists?
>> I do.
>> Okay. What is the substantial disagreement >> when you're traveling? that agnosticism is kind of impossible to ignore.
>> Atheists can be agnostics as well, >> right? But denying a god entirely is part of being like not denying a a god entirely because of the possibility of it being a possibility. You know what I'm saying? Like is a part of being an atheist.
>> I'm I'm ask I'm I'm asking you whether or not there's a substantial substantive disagreement about world views. not about like meta worldviews, but a substantive disagreement about world views between you, somebody who believes in Spinosa's god and an atheist who doesn't believe in any gods. What's the actual like difference in worldview?
>> That there is some type of creator that that there's like a >> Okay. What is this creator that you think exists? What is it? I think it's it's really tough for me to describe because I think it it is and it sucks to have to say like kind of be beyond comprehension in some ways. Um but the description that I've heard or read about and can somewhat agree with is that it's some sort of like grand watch maker, time time clock maker. Um >> so to be clear that's very much not Spinosa's god.
Okay.
>> Spinosa's god is spinosa's god is a >> the best way to put it is that it's a it's making the it's making nature divine.
>> Spinosa's god is the view that nature itself is the is the divine that nature is the thing that uh is in some sense the ultimate foundation of reality etc. uh which is a hair's breath away from atheism, but you're making the claim that there is a divine watchmaker, which is just garden variety theism.
>> Okay. I'm supposing that there is because I can't personally like it. it the whole conversation I'm I'm a little out of practice but um yeah it what's your question?
>> Well look it seems like you just believe in garden variety theism or perhaps theism um where there's like some entity some being with a mind that kind of created the universe in a create in like a creative act. Um, and so I just want to know why should I think that that's true?
>> It's hard to argue against the idea that there wouldn't be >> some some higher power that created what we know as reality.
>> So, hold on. I just want to I just want to parse what you said because you used the triple negative there. So, you said it's hard to argue that there wouldn't be uh wait, what what exactly was it that you said? Just say say the thing directly rather than using a triple negative. That'd be very much appreciated.
>> Uh okay. Um >> like I I was just heart to follow.
That's all.
>> Yeah, that's fair. Uh so arguing against a creator in general is super difficult for me to do as someone who has been atheist most of my life. Um, so finding that the possibility of there being some higher existence beyond our consciousness that may have created our consciousness. Maybe I don't want to like throw some crazy [ __ ] in here, but maybe even like an alien that's like uh on some computer somewhere simulating reality like in simulation the theory. Not saying that's what I'm saying entirely, but that's one example. Um, so it's hard to argue against reality not having some sort of creation aspect to it because of its complexity and because of its design and because of how much is possible with what we have in science.
>> So I mean, look, it sounds like you're saying that you can't come up with good arguments against this, so you believe it. Is that roughly it?
to some degree. Yes.
>> Okay. So, I mean, look, there there are good arguments against it. Um, against just creators in general, against the simulation, against fine-tuning, against design. Um, I mean, for example, we can take a look at what it would mean for a being. Let's say, let's kind of separate the views. There's there's two possible views here. One is that there's like some alien living in his mom's basement who is simulating our universe.
We'll call that like >> we're or our direct consciousness in each individually within our reality.
It's like simulated. It's like simulated by like some guy rather than like some all powerful thing, right? So simulated by some guy and we'll call that like non omniod. And then there's like omniod which is like it's actually not just like some guy. It's like some metaphysical entity that is like responsible for all of reality. Not just like our particular little like universe, right? or our particular >> like alien alien AI technology or something to it so that they're using something that is like more powerful than themselves or that's more powerful than us that like it's I don't know.
>> But my point is is that is that there's two different versions of the theism that you're proposing. One is kind of like non omnitheism where you just have like something that's just like responsible for us but it itself like maybe it was born, maybe it'll die, maybe it obeys its own laws of physics, whatever. And then there's like traditional theism where there's something that's like ultimate. it's like the ultimate foundation for reality, whatever it might be. And that's like regular theism. So, there's arguments against both of those. Um, the arguments for like against like ultimate kind of like ultimate theism, those are pretty standard. Um, there's arguments against uh this thing existing because or this thing being the origins of our universe from the fact that this thing would have to be non-temporal.
Time is an aspect of our universe. So, if it is the foundation of these things, it couldn't be it couldn't be within time itself.
I was hearing a little bit from a couple days ago that yeah, you were talking about that. It interested me.
>> That's that's certainly a problem. It's hard to make sense of what it would mean for something to take actions, for something to do something if it doesn't exist in time. It it's even hard to make sense of what it would mean for something to have a mind if it didn't exist in time. As far as we can tell, minds are like basically strings of processes that happen. Like a mind isn't a thing, it's a process. Um, so it's hard to say what it would even mean for this thing to have thoughts or this thing to have desires or wills if it doesn't have a mind or if it doesn't exist in time. There's also questions about like inductive inductive reasoning questions, namely that we talk about this idea that um, you know, generally we can go from the specific to the general if we see enough specifics. This is kind of how we do science in some sense. And when we look around us, the only things that we can ever see that have a mind are things that have bodies.
They're they're attached to bodies, right? whatever the body might be. If you think that computers have a mind, they're still attached to some physical body, it's just like silicon rather than carbon. But so it seems like we have good reason to think that there are no minds without bodies, right? Of some kind.
>> There is some thought that consciousness can be everywhere in some arguments.
>> Well, that that's an that's a claim, but it seem but all of the inductive evidence seems to go against that, right?
>> I would agree. So we we have good reason to think that minds can't be disconnected from bodies. We have good reason to think that minds cannot exist timelessly.
There's deeper questions about um there's kind of ways of countering claims of fine-tuning of design. Like we can talk about all the things that are clearly not designed in this universe.
Like if you go look at all of the kind of amorphous structures that are not uh that are not particularly organized, just kind of big blobs. Like if you look at most elliptical or ellypoidal galaxies, these are just big blobs of stars. They don't have like these grand design spirals. Um and then we can go look at arguments against fine-tuning.
Fine-tuning being like this whole like the constants of nature a certain way.
There are plenty of arguments against that. Probably the most popular multiverse arguments. But the point is there there are so many arguments against that that either counter the arguments for or are explicit arguments against the existence of this kind of foundational ultimate god version. Um that it's just a little bit surprising to me that you haven't heard these.
I'm not entirely for an ultimate uh god version.
>> Okay. So, then we can talk about like the the non-ultimate god version. Um yeah, >> the the origins of the simulation hypothesis come from a fellow named >> oh what was his name? It starts with a B uh or the popularization. It was by Nick Bostonramm. That's who it was. uh Nick Bostonramm's original paper came out 20 years ago or so. Um he makes this he comes up with this idea that says well look if it's possible for us to create a simulation of our own universe or for or for us to he called them ancestor simulations where like at some point in like 10,000 years we simulate what we simulate the exact reality that our ancestors would have experienced to see what they were like. If it's possible that we could simulate a reality like our own, then it is reasonable to conclude that there would be more simulations of realities like our own than there would be base realities. And so we would then we therefore come to the conclusion that um it's more likely that we are in a simulation because it's possible for us to simulator it's because it's possible for us to simulate our own reality. The the unfortunate truth of the matter though and this is a physics constraint is that we can't simulate our reality. the laws of physics basically forbid it. Um, >> yeah, I'm totally okay with ruling out simulation theory as well.
>> And so, so it seems like that there's not really it seems like the kind of non-ultimate the kind of nonomni god version they proposing is also not particularly well substantiated. We have good arguments against it. So, what's the what's what's keeping you stuck?
There are plenty of arguments I'm sure that could be for and I just from my own perspective the Okay, I'm kind of losing my train of thought. Give me a second.
the evolution of consciousness over millions of years, if not billions, you know, that has to be more than just a human mind being able to exist. Like there's got to be more and higher and lower like like >> there can be there can be aliens that are that have conscious experience.
Sure.
>> Yeah. Yeah. And I believe that from the fact that we are evolved over that much time, there's got to have been different species that have existed before us and like minds that have been able to exist, consciousness able to exist. And I'm just arguing that there has with the design of well I say design but with the science and the laws of science and um having kind of been argued against by AI about why I could have more belief in the idea that there's uh some sort of design to reality.
That's what I argue. um designed to reality from a source other than human uh ability.
>> Well, look, if we're talking about designs of reality or designed reality, then it's designed either by a non omniod, which is the simul which is a simulator, or it's designed by an omniod. And it seems like >> why is there not why can't we have a different >> what what are the other what are the other options? I mean, like either either the omniod is either the designer is omni or it's not. If it's not, then we would just call it a simulator. Even if it's not literally using a computer, it would be something that is like somehow, >> you know, running uh running some sort of uh creating the world in a particular way.
All of the arguments against the simulation do the apply the exact same way for the arguments against some sort of nonomni creator.
They all work the same.
Okay, for the sake of argument, I'll say we could be powered by like behind our eyes could be like dark matter that is somehow powering us that's from stars from light years away that >> what does that have to do with God though?
>> No, that would be like how the source of our consciousness is from somewhere else and that that would be some way of being simulated or >> what would that what would that have to do?
>> It wouldn't be a computer. But >> but what would that have to do with a god existing? You're just talking about like aliens that exist a few hundred thousand lighty years away doing something that's that's not in any sense of the word.
>> The star could be energy that is just within us that is part of us and that like I'm just doing it for the sake of argument but um there's there's definitely tons of things we don't know.
>> Yeah. There's also tons of stuff that we do know.
>> Yeah. Based on what we do know and how precise science is, like it's kind of hard not to say there's so many different forces that can that can be enacted together to create different things. And we can create buildings and >> crazy [ __ ] like >> satellites send out stuff out to space.
Like obviously stuff can go to different planets and >> but what does this have to do with a god?
>> The word god is really tough for me.
>> Uh so it's it's it's definitely not a god if it exists within our universe. If it's just made of stuff within our universe we would call that an alien otherwise >> or a source of life maybe like consciousness.
from our universe.
>> If it originates from within our universe, then >> it's either a natural process or there's an alien, >> right?
>> We be able to like describe the alien as without calling it an alien because it would be better to >> the better word to describe it is an alien.
like like that's that's the word like just because there's a super intelligent alien that lives on the planet Glee glor and doesn't make that alien a god in any sense the word >> okay how about like collective consciousness um >> um without like we're born into a world that uh already has a ton of other living conscious beings and okay >> the idea that our uh mind is living in kind of an organism in it in and of itself. And >> why would anybody believe this >> as a higher power?
>> No. What but like what reason do we have for believing that this is true?
I would from my own perspective probably like thinking about the SA from uh Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism I think and uh uh uh mushroom experiences like collect like uh ego dissolution stuff like that like being part of everyone. Um >> I think that I probably have good reason to think that any experiences that result from psychedelics or psychotropic compounds are probably not trustworthy.
So I at least personally I wouldn't put too much stock in you know the conclusions that you come to as a result of these compounds.
I wouldn't call them complete con conclusions and I would probably agree with you like I'm I just think that if mushrooms can live underground and there's an entire like you know micology like uh what is it called? You know what I'm talking about when there's a huge organism underground it's entirely made of mushrooms. It's almost like it has a its mind and it's part of the forest.
Like it feels like if humans are born into a world where this is all for the sake of argument, my friend. Um like that's that's a plausible thing too, plausible theory, >> but we're not we're not mushrooms. We're not one organism connected by myial bycelium, right?
We are separate organisms that don't depend on one another for nutrients or for you know I mean we we we indirectly depend on each other but we're not like literally attached to each other.
>> Yeah. like it's just the like it's a cute analogy but it doesn't it's not really relevant to our to like >> around the the idea of consciousness because it feels like it has to be born from something and >> seems like it's born from brains >> evolution and the ability to understand things I mean a lot of that there's like stone date theory some of it did come from mushrooms too so >> yeah I don't I don't know how seriously that's taken in the evolutionary biology community but look like it it seems like there's a you a lot of questions about like psychology and neurology and consciousness and these are all good questions, but I don't see how they get you to God. Um, but that said, it's it seems like that this is, you know, I would suggest I don't know I don't know how frequently you partake, but I would suggest if you partake frequently, partake less frequently, instead read academic philosophers.
>> I'm not even I'm not even like trying to argue that for my own like it's it's honestly Can I tell you the truth? You can, but I might kick you.
>> That's totally fine. Well, I would like to believe in a god, but it's almost impossible for me to see myself doing it. And I'm arguing purely for the sake of trying to.
>> Yep. Okay. That means I'll kick you.
You're a nice guy, but I don't I I don't like um devil's advocates. I don't like it at all. If you don't want to convince me, if you want to convince yourself, this is not the place.
Let's talk to Jamie Leanne.
So Jamie Leanne, how's it going?
>> Good. How are you?
>> I'm doing all right. Uh Jamie, do you believe in a god?
>> Yes, I do.
>> Okay. And what god would that be?
>> Um so I'm very open-minded to a god. I don't have a specific god. My uh idea of god is always evolving. So I'm just very open-minded to it.
>> Okay. But so like what is the conception of God that you currently have that you believe in?
>> So my conception of God well I guess it would be omnipoticent >> knows everything knows everything can do can do everything that a god can do.
>> Everything all things >> is everything.
>> Yes.
>> Is it me?
>> Yes.
>> Is it like a piece of camel dung lying in the desert?
>> I is >> Oh, you're cutting out.
Go ahead.
>> Understand it or put it in a box.
>> Sorry, one more time. You were cutting up.
>> I said that I believe God is so powerful, all knowing, that we can't really decipher it or put it into a box.
It's something that we'll never be able to comprehend, that science would never be able to explain. That's the God I believe in.
>> You believe in something that you can't comprehend?
>> Yes.
>> What is there to believe in then?
There's nothing about it that you can comprehend. What are you believing in?
>> Well, because I it's nothing that I can explain to you. My relationship with God is eternal. I feel it. I felt his presence. And I was an atheist for years.
>> What kind >> for >> Why were you atheist? Go ahead.
>> Um well, my whole life growing up, uh I was never around religion. Um, I was >> What in the world did you grow up in?
>> Oh, United States, Texas. Republican state.
>> There's no way in hell you were not around religion. No way in hell.
>> Did you go Did you go to public?
>> Did you go to public school?
>> I did.
>> Then you went then you were around religion.
>> Well, I I mean, I didn't follow religion if that's what you mean.
>> No, I was asking if you were around religion.
>> Well, I knew of it. Yes. But I never followed it. I just thought it was hokey.
>> Sure.
But I have a personal relationship with God. And I'll tell you one of the things that changed my mind.
>> Just a question. Do you think that Jesus rose from the dead?
>> I'm sorry.
>> Um that I don't know. I can't I can't say that. Like I said, I'm openminded.
I'm never going to turn down anything.
Um because I don't know.
>> Okay. So what's So So you look So it sounds like >> And here's the issue. If you can't tell me what this god is that you believe in >> because you don't know what the god is that you believe in.
>> And if the god that you believe in comes about as a result of personal experience, >> how could you ever hope to convince me to believe in the god that you believe in when you don't even know what the god that you believe in is?
>> Can I give you an example?
>> I suppose it depends what it's an example of.
If it's an example of a personal experience, it won't be particularly compelling to me.
>> Okay. Well, just hear me out and listen because that's what this is about.
>> Are you going to tell me? Are you going to tell me a personal experience?
>> I'm going to tell you an experience that I had and that somebody told me what changed my mind when I was an atheist.
>> Okay. Something some So, you're going to tell me what somebody told you that changed your mind? Sure. I'll hear what somebody told you.
>> Okay. Just listen to me for a second.
Okay. So, have you ever been in a situation where I don't know, in my case, it was like I was about to get pulled over by the cops, maybe I had something on me. I don't know. This is a long time ago. But anytime I was in some trouble or I was about to get in trouble, for some reason, I would just start talking to something that wasn't there. I'd say, "Get me out of this, please." I had never prayed before. I had never tried to reach out to a God.
I'd never believed in a God. But innately deep down inside me, there was something that knew to reach out for something bigger.
>> That was my idea.
>> Did somebody I thought somebody told >> all of us there is a conception of God.
Even you say there's no God. I don't believe that because we still deep down dig for something.
>> I thought you said that somebody told you something.
>> After that, I started to look more into it. I prayed for the first time. I had no idea what I was doing. But I was in such a desperation in my life of depression, anxiety. Can you hear me?
>> Um, I was on point. Yeah. Can you hear me?
>> Yeah, I can. Uh, I thought that you said that somebody told you something that convinced you to believe in God.
I thought you were going to tell me that.
>> Wait, say that one more time. You cut out.
>> You said you were going to tell me what it is that somebody else told you that convinced you to believe in God.
>> Yes.
>> So, what's the thing that somebody else told you? It sounds like it sounds like you're telling me about your personal experience, which I'm not interested in.
I want to hear what somebody else told you that convinced you.
>> Listen, I'm just trying to Okay, listen.
What they told me is, have you ever been in a situation where you have been in trouble? Did you ever reach out to something?
>> So, they asked, so they asked the question >> and then you said >> yes.
>> Yes. And then they said, well, that's God.
>> No, they said look into that. What is that?
>> Okay.
it was looking into a higher power.
>> I think that people like we know that there are parts of the brain that are definitely um >> associated with religiosity.
Um and so this is not so surprising that people could some sometimes do things that seem religious that seem uh like they involve the divine, but that doesn't say anything about whether or not those things are real.
>> Okay, I'm getting to a point if you just give me a chance. Um, all your people in your chat are asking to listen to me.
So, >> well, I don't I don't think that they are. I'm looking at the chat.
>> I'm literally reading it.
>> Here's the thing is like, you're never going to be open to a higher power, a god. If you think you are a god, and that's what it seems like you do.
>> I definitely don't think I am God. I don't believe in a god. So, how can I think I am God?
>> Cuz you never felt or experienced God.
And you're not going to until you do.
And I have.
>> Hold on. not going to experience or believe in God until I experience or believe in God.
>> Until you experience God.
>> How am I going to experience God?
>> How how do I make that happen? Tell me.
>> So explain Let me explain my situation because obviously it doesn't happen to a lot of people. I've met some people that it has.
>> Jamie, the only reason why I'm cutting you off regarding your personal experience is that personal experiences are as convincing as dreams.
>> They might be very compelling to you.
>> I'm I'm I'll I'll make my point then.
They personal experiences just like dreams can be very meaningful to the person who has them but they are almost always completely meaningless and completely unconvincing to anybody else.
>> So like in the same way that >> I don't believe in that.
>> Okay. Well, in the same way I wouldn't care if you wanted to tell me about what dream you had last night. Like you'd be like, "Oh, it was so cool." I'm like, "Okay, I don't care." I also >> But this isn't a dream. This is my reality of a whole different thing. And I'm sure a lot of science folks have done that experience. I don't I don't really care about your personal experience that led you to God because I didn't have that experience. So, I can't I can't accept that experience as something that happened to me. It won't apply to me. So, you got to give me something that I can access rather than just something that happened to you.
>> Yes. And I just said that. I said, "Is there any time that you have ever sought for something bigger when you're in?"
>> And the answer is no.
>> Okay. So, you've always just had it together. You've never reached out for anything? I mean, I've reached out to friends and family.
>> Yeah. And they can't do [ __ ] for you, right?
>> Sometimes they can, sometimes they can't. And when they can't, things just suck for a little bit. And sometimes they suck for for a long time. And that just happens. It's life.
>> Okay. Well, after I prayed, I had an experience of God coming to me.
>> Okay. Well, I've I've spoken with a lot of people who have prayed and they haven't had that experience. So, what do we make of that?
>> And I agree. Like, that's it's weird. I don't understand it and I won't be able to. I've met some people that have and a lot of people that haven't.
>> So, can I run you a uh something to think about, thought experiment, if you will.
>> Suppose that you have suppose that God isn't real. Just, you know, put on your hypothetical atheist hat. Suppose that God isn't real. And suppose they have a 100 people who are all in bad situations. These are situations that are almost guaranteed to turn out badly.
Maybe there's maybe you get some test back from the hospital and they say there's a 99% chance that you have XYZ disease, right? you have 100 people, they get the positive. They get the positive for that test. Right? And that test is 99% accurate. Well, that that test, if you get a positive on that test, there's a 99% chance that you have the disease. Right? Now, let's say all 100 let's say all 100 of those people, they pray and they're like, "Please don't let me have the disease. Please don't let me have the disease." And keep in mind, God isn't real in this scenario, in this hypothetical world.
Um, now of those 100 people, the statistics say one of those people will end up not having the disease even though the test came back positive because it's only only accurate 99% of the time. 99 of those people of those 100 people will end up with the disease and their prayers won't be answered. But the lucky one, >> the lucky one will think that their prayer was answered even though God didn't exist. So my question to you is how do you know that this is a God existing or some sort of divine being existing rather than you happen to be?
you happening to be the lucky one >> because I there was no prayer that was answered.
>> I just felt a presence.
>> So, >> and in my mind 20 seconds before I believed in no God and 20 seconds after that >> there was this >> unfathomable idea that this is actually reality. It is.
>> So, are we not talking about the scenario? Are we not talking about the scenario where you said >> Well, I'll tell you the scenario is because like that's life. We're in a false.
>> Sorry. I don't know why why you wouldn't let me finish my question. Are we not talking about the scenario where you said that you were in a bad place or you or things were hard and then you reached out to something, you talked to somebody that wasn't there?
>> Yes.
>> Okay. So then that sounds like a prayer.
>> Reaching out to God.
>> Sounds like that's a prayer, not just like a sudden realization that something happened.
>> Okay. It was after the prayer. That wasn't when that happened.
>> And what happened as a result? So you just had a good feeling and then the bad thing happened anyway.
There wasn't a bad thing. I was sitting amongst a group of people.
>> Now listen, so I was in a bad place.
There wasn't anything worse or anything better that happened after that. Okay?
>> The experience was I felt the presence of God and it felt like an enormous warm hug come over me. And when I felt that, I cried. And I've never experienced that before. I was completely sober. Um, and there was nothing like I can't explain to anybody what I experienced. Um because you just don't get it. Like you have to feel it. And like I said, like this is an internal thing for me and there's nothing that can change my mind or prove me that God doesn't exist after experiencing that.
>> Okay. Look, it it seems like this is something that's really important to you and like it maybe it doesn't matter whether or not you can convince me. If this is something that you need for yourself, by all means, um I'm not here to tell you that you're wrong.
Let's read some super chats and we'll move bring on our next guest from Grimmie with the $5. If my salvation is conditional, so shall be my worship. No magic, no worship. Ah, there you go.
There you go.
Um, all right. We have a guest from Discord, doubting Thomas.
Why can't I bring down Dhing Thomas, how's it going? You got to unmute yourself.
>> Hey, hello. Can you hear me?
>> Yeah, I can hear you. Ding Thomas, do you believe in a god?
>> Uh, I we can say yes.
>> Okay.
>> Uh, in the sense Okay, go ahead.
>> Well, I was just going to ask which god.
>> Um, given that I only know of a uh since I was raised Catholic, we can say Catholic.
>> Okay. Now, your name is Doubting Thomas.
It sounds like you're doubting. Yeah.
>> Oh. Uh, it's a uh uh it's an it's a um >> I know in reference to Okay. Okay.
>> I know.
>> But you know, usually people wouldn't you wouldn't uh name themselves after a person who was famously doubtful.
>> Um I >> But maybe they would have.
>> I I I would No, it's it's a good question. I would put I would put uh I I I I call my I call it in sense because I look at Thomas that that story as like the ultimate uh if if there's any sort of thing that like remotely reme resembles a scientist in the in the New Testament, it would be uh uh Thomas trying to uh uh uh stab his finger into to Christ. But yes, >> sure. So look, I don't believe in God.
Why should I?
Um, okay. So, you know, we'll we'll uh So, yeah, I Yeah, convincing you of believing God.
>> One sec, Tik Tok. What the [ __ ] are you doing? Be chill. Anyway, go ahead.
>> Okay, no problem. Um, so let let's let's uh uh uh so so how I'm so I wanted to get like a sort of a survey and then of what your belief is uh before we I can start to convince you. Um so, first question. So uh first question is like let's say let's let's think epistemically from uh absolutely no chance to uh highly improbable to 50/50 we have no way of knowing probable to certainty. That's that's sort of the spectrum that I'm thinking of if that's fair.
>> Yeah. So like as far as my belief in like Christianity I'm like 99.9% certain that it's false in terms of just kind of general theism like kind of classical theism like a classical conception let's put it at 99%.
And in terms of like disism or some kind of you know platonic stuff well yeah like disism let's put it at like 98%.
Okay. So, yeah, that that so so all right, good. So, uh it's all pretty much at the far end of 98% of you think it's like the towards the uh completely uh uh no chance. Got it.
>> Um so, let's begin. So, let's begin with ask the same question about um uh um a creation of a universe. Did was the universe created? But let's be more specific. uh if the universe uh this is of course the the colum but we'll just uh uh uh flow through it. The question of first uh uh did is there uh did the universe was it created? Where would you put yourself on that spectrum of the >> Sorry, not creation. Sorry. No, no, sorry. When if did the universe have a beginning? Sorry, my apologies.
>> I am completely agnostic on the question.
>> So you're 50/50 that you think there's no >> 50 maybe 40 60 or 6040. It depends on the day. But I I I don't take a firm stance.
Okay. Yeah. Okay. That's then then then you're a moving target there. It's hard to to put that then it's hard to to to to to move on on from that. So then we can we could then you know Okay. So we can we can uh or we can maybe I could push you at least in that direction. Um uh to begin with. Um >> keep in mind keep in mind I think that if the universe did have a first moment I think it's still compatible with there not existing a god.
That might be the case, but we we but we I don't think that's the case, but or or uh or probably not, but let's let's move let's let's let's try to push that.
Sure. Um so so um let's let's you know um so the three pillars uh that I would say are and there probably more but three pillars that I would say that like put me a little bit more towards the 51% to higher percent that the universe uh uh started. So um we'll start with you know that observations tell us that there was a extraordinarily rare low entropy state uh uh in the distant past.
Number two um >> write these down so we can talk about them in a minute. Go ahead.
>> Sure. No problem. Yeah. And number two is going to be that um uh how do you say um uh you know uh uh you know tentatively we can put something about about the idea that um uh our uh current knowledge of physics uh supports the idea that um that um I'm I'm I'm going to just throw out the word BVG theorem.
And of course, you know, I know you know what that is and we'll have to maybe unpack that a bit more, but the idea that uh PVG theorem seems to suggest more that there was a beginning. But I could I could be wrong about that.
>> Okay.
>> Um uh number three is that uh um uh we have um how you say um uh or or at the very least I I'm still thinking that eternal inflation is less likely. We can get into that. Number three is that um uh uh is um I would say uh the fact that we don't see any Boltzman brains in the universe uh uh seems to uh discourage the idea of an internal inflation.
>> Okay. So I'm not an inflationist. Um I'm you know I'm like inflation is a nice idea. Um I'm not convinced that we have compelling evidence for it yet. Um I'm not particularly attached to inflation as an idea whether whether eternal or otherwise. I think that there are potentially other solutions. I think inflation is just one of the possible solutions for the homogeneity that we see in the universe.
>> Um >> right.
>> So I'm like I mean even just for the sake of argument I could grant the third one that if that if you if you have eternal inflation that it therefore follows that there should be bolt brains. That's that doesn't necessarily follow but perhaps that's true. Um I can just grant that for the sake of argument. Uh, by the way, I'm working backwards just so that way than me. It's >> probably the more interesting route. Uh, regarding the BGV theorem, uh, I it's interesting to me that two of the three letters in BGV, both Borta and Goth, both think that the universe is eternal.
Um, >> yeah, >> it's also interesting to me that people cite the BGV theorem as if it's a mathematically proven theorem when it's known to have counter examples. There was a paper that came out a few years ago um one of whom was or one of the authors of the paper is a former professor of mine um who they they wrote a paper and they found counter examples to the BGV theorem in completely classical uh completely standard GR spaceimes um and so like it's just not a theorem the the proof had at least one hole in it which is how they didn't get around the statement that or how they didn't get around these counter examples. Um and so and and furthermore, even if the BGD theorem is true, it's a statement about classical spaceimes. And I think that basically every every cosmologist alive today doesn't think that the universe was classically evolving when the universe was very very small. Um it's like it's it's not even clear how you can talk about classical spacetime at the uh scales required during a singularity if there was such a thing.
So, I'm I'm just not convinced that the BG like the BGB theorem is a like if it were true, it'd be a nice result about classical differential geometry. Um, it doesn't seem like it's true, nor does it seem like it's relevant for the origins of a universe because the origins of a universe would involve uh if the BGV theorem was true, it would imply a singularity. Most cosmologists don't think there was a singularity because of quantum gravitational effects. So, it it just seems super unreliable to me. Um now the question about low entropy state in the past that's an interesting question. I think it's possible that there's a low entropy state. I think that we currently have an issue with defining entropy to begin with in our universe. Uh there's not like a well- definfined way of defining gravitational entropy.
>> Um >> absolutely >> there's there's ways that you can speculate about this. Penrose proposed something called the vile conjecture. Um and he says that well the low entropy was captured by the fact that the vile tensor was very very close to zero. And uh since the universe has been evolving from this uh near conformally flat, that's what vile being zero means. It means it's conformally flat. The universe has evolved since then and the vile tensor has grown and that captures the entropy of our universe. It's not clear to me how we would even talk about the total entropy of the universe to say that the universe was in low was in a low entropy state in the past. But even if it were, supposing that it were, because you know, it's perhaps plausible, even if we could talk about the entry of the universe in some way, um it's not clear to me that this is something that is particularly requiring a beginning. Uh for example, if you put a an apple in a box um for I don't know a trillion trillion trillion years with a trillion trillions, um it'll rot away and decay.
And then if you wait long enough eventually an apple will reassemble itself. This is called point grade recurrence. Um so long as it's energetically allowed it will happen.
And so you could imagine that you have a very very high entropy state uh in a confined and say a fixed volume for a very very very long period of time that occasionally bumps into a low entropy state and from there you get a universe.
So it's just not it's not doesn't seem like that we have we have particularly good reason to think that all of this gets us to a beginning.
Okay. Um, so let's I want to unpack a little bit of that. Um, so we can uh regarding the uh the theorem uh um because that that's probably you know I I'm going to defer quite a bit to to your knowledge, but I I want to push back a few on a few pressure points there. Um what what I I would claim is that there are going to be counter examples and they're going to be perhaps uh ways that you can get around it. But I guess the the more refined point that I was going to make is that it puts at least in the w in the way that it is framed, it does put uh and we can talk about say uh uh ones with classical spaceimes, it puts serious constraints on cosmological models and I would say or at least substantial constraints.
>> What constraints does it put on it if the theorem is false?
>> If the theorem Oh, no. If the theorem is false, of course it puts no constraints, >> right? The theorem is false as as originally expressed. The theorem is false because there are counter examples.
Um are those counterexamples I guess question is are those uh uh counter examples uh um uh substantiably uh um uh uh are are are these are these I don't want to say you know are these are these uh very uh uh um commonplace counter examples or >> for the theorem to be false and so a theorem is supposed to be if the if the hypothesis are true then it necessarily follows that the conclusion is true.
>> But here there are counter examples.
Yes.
>> Yeah. Yeah. There are counter examples where you have the hypotheses are true but the conclusion fails.
>> So that means that the theorem the theorem as expressed as false.
>> No absolutely. And so I I guess I guess the point is if we treat BBG theorem more as a a physical constraint than a mathematical constraint. The question becomes >> what's the physical?
So the the point the point being that does it say uh uh say you have those counter examples do those counter examples are those counter examples ones in which we can uh uh say okay these are viable and uh uh so so you you so ma mathematically you can always come up with very uh uh interesting uh uh paradoxical uh uh or or uh counterexample of things but then if by other means you can kind of uh rule out those I'm not going I'm not going to be particularly convinced even If the theorem is quote unquote false, I I can still say, okay, this is still a useful theorem in terms of restricting possible models. Does that kind of make sense?
Even if the the theorem itself is false.
>> So, so I I'm I'm on board with what you're saying. Um, but what I think is what I think is important here is that unless so, so the burden is now on the person to show that ah well, if we impose even more physically reasonable constraints, then it rules out these uh these counter examples.
If if that if that hasn't been done, and as far as I can tell, it hasn't. Uh and perhaps in part because the paper's fairly new. Um >> yeah, >> if that hasn't been done, then there's just no reason to think that there's any sort of that there's no reason to think that any of the conclusions arrived at by the by the so-called theorem are true.
>> Yeah.
>> Provides any sort of constraining power.
I I I yeah I mean and and I mean fair enough you know given that the paper is fairly new and I haven't you know I'd love to >> 24 I think or 2023 so it's not it's not like so so new but it is you know >> it's recent >> yeah in in the in the timeline of it being accepted uh uh you know we're still trying to fight py from the 19 from the early 2000s but yes yes um in any case okay yeah I mean fair enough I'll I'll I'll have to uh you know brow you'll have to share that but um uh in uh putting putting that to the side um uh yeah and you know so that yeah the burden might be on me to to go ahead and uh do that. Uh I would say though um one more thing I'll just uh uh add to to this is that um uh you know um with regards to you saying classical but most people think that that that we have only uh quantum uh spaceimes or non-classical spacetimes. I would say, you know, the only problem I the question or or problem I have with this is that so far as we know, we don't have a viable quantum theory of of of gravity. So, you know, it it there there's no reason to presume that in the first place that that that that >> so there is reason to presume that classical GR breaks down. We have very good reason to presume that um singularities are a sign of a classical theory not spitting out >> physical uh data, right? And we saw this with electromagnetism in the 1800s. Um you know, we like this is a a well well doumented phenomenon that when you have a theory that spits out singularities, then this is probably a case where the um the theory needs improvement. You got to do more. You have to add something.
You have to quantize it. At least historically, that's how you solve these issues. Um, and we don't even have to look for we don't even like have to look to the beginning of the universe. We there black holes exist, right? Black holes exist and black holes are supposed to be physical things that you could in principle go inside and you could poke around at. And so this is a real problem with GR. Most people ignore it because, you know, uh, the singularities at the center of a black hole are, you know, nonaccible to people on the outside. So fine, maybe maybe we should don't need to worry about what's going on there. at the at the level of like um foundational behavior of reality, this is something that needs to be addressed and it can't be addressed classically. I mean, well, okay, I shouldn't say that. There are efforts to address it classically, but these change the these change the behavior of the system so that it's no longer um standard classical GR if you want to address it classically. And most physicists take the view that this is probably better understood from a uh from some sort of quantum gravity description despite not knowing what that quantum gravity description would be in its entirety.
>> Yeah. And and and fair enough. Although I one thing I would say in the in the classical GR camp would be something along the lines of or or you can semi-class whatever you like to to to put in terms of GR if it's not quantum.
uh in in that camp I would uh put up the uh notion that uh you know we should not uh overliteralize mathematical models uh um in terms of you know them being you know like quite you know those that is truly reality and it it could just as easily be the case that you know there is some sort of smoothing that goes on at black holes and whatnot and that we just don't have we have not you know fully developed or perhaps there are viable models >> but whatever that smoothing is it's not GR, right?
>> Yeah.
>> And furthermore, there there are like there are like real questions, right?
Like we have um if if this if spacetime is supposed to be classical, right? Then we have to confront this idea that like say you have two electrons, electrons have mass, you have two electron or sorry, you have one electron, it's in a superp position of position say so it's uh it's it's in some super position of states. So what's the gravitational field for that electron? That's a question that like I mean obviously it's very very small because electrons have very very little mass and gravity is weak but that's a question that is in principle uh like investigable and so if there's no like we need some way of answering that question and it seems like there's not a way to answer that question without um and there there's something called stochastic uh stochastic geometry >> it's sd yep you're talking about >> yeah yeah so maybe you can maybe you can do some sort of like mixed classical quantum uh quantum dynamics using some sort stochastic stuff but >> I I I I would even go further than that.
I would say uh uh you know uh any sort of pilot wave theory principle resolves it. I would say multi a multiverse theory of quantum mechanics might resolve it. I think there are are viable >> multiverse multiverse model doesn't resolve it. Um >> oh pilot yeah no because multiverse the multiverse makes it so much worse actually. Um >> Oh really? I didn't know that. Okay interesting.
>> Yeah. Yeah. But um pilot wave Yeah.
Yeah. So, so the pilot wave might, but then if it's the case that that a pilot wave interpretation of quantum mechanics resolves it, then that means that in fact actually the pilot or the the underlying particle which is supposed to be nonobservable like like the behavior of the underlying particle is um you can just measure where it is at all times without without touching it, right? You can just like look at what the gravitational field is.
So that would be very weird. Um and so look so all I'm saying is that we have very very compelling I should say huristics for why gravity is reasonably yeah that gravity is reasonably believed to be like we reasonably require a quantum theory of gravity. Um >> I I I I I we we let let's let's we we've gotten to an interesting tent. Although I I'll just close I'll I'll just I'll just uh uh uh close the the I'll just make a closing statement on that particular front is that uh you know um >> because we we've worked so hard to find a model and we we've been successful that that that's why I would say we should revisit the uh that story uh uh uh at least uh uh uh uh you know that's not a great argument but you know uh that we we've been working on it for for how long so many great minds have been working on it and they've did so far unsuccessful kind of uh uh uh makes me uh uh uh uh lean towards uh uh uh skepticism of it, but you know, fair enough.
>> Well, okay. Yeah, sure. Anyway, so so this is all to say it's not clear to me that there are and and by the way, like it's it's even if you don't even if you don't have a um like a quantum theory of gravity, even semi-classical gravity, which is like it that's just that is just um quantum field theory on a curved background. like there's no there's nothing super fancy going on here. Even uh like a semic-classical gravity, you can get cyclic universes that have entropy reversals. This is like, you know, there there's all sorts of different ways that you can make this happen without going into a quantum gravity regime at all. And so it just seems like that it's that there's not really a guarantee that this is indeed uh that you know the low entropy state that you know the B BGV theorem that these speak to a beginning.
>> Okay. You know you >> and by the way this is so so what I'm so it sounds like I'm arguing for an eternal past or something. I'm not. What I'm saying is that there are very compelling reasons to think that it's physically consistent for such a thing to be the case. Now, depending on what the evidence will come out to be, um we'll either get evidence for an eternal past or we won't, if that evidence is available at all. Uh meaning we'll we'll either get evidence for a finite past or an eternal past. As far as I'm concerned, those are both live options.
But I don't think that we can dismiss an eternal past until we have data that supports it. And I don't think that the arguments involving low entropy or involving the BGV theorem are particularly compelling or breaks.
>> I just I just don't think that they do it.
Okay. You know, this is fair. This is this is really fair enough. Um, you know, that that that makes, you know, that makes, you know, even, you know, step one, you know, let's say tentatively hard. Although you said 40 to 60%, but, you know, >> it just depends on the day which way which one's 40 and which one's 60.
>> Which way the flows? Yes.
>> But but just to be clear, just to be clear, I I I think that it's probably a mistake to try to make >> like Okay, so you can you can like make make mathematical statements to come to conclusions, but like physics is an empirical science, right? And so >> if we're going to say if we're going to make claims about the universe having a first moment, this is an empirical question. So in principle, we shouldn't come to conclusions about this until we have data that supports that that supports that, right?
>> Yeah. Well, I would say the way you're framing it is is is is a little bit uh I would say I'm not trying to so in terms of what we mean by making claims. So we're talking more on the level of belief, epistemic belief here, not claims. We're not we're not making truth claims of this is absolutely true because you can never tr you could never prove anything to >> ask truth. I'm just asking for like if we're going to make claims about the natural world which is what we are when we say the universe has a beginning that's a claim about the natural world.
Um >> then we should use our best tools to evaluate those claims and currently our best tools say I don't know >> and so it seems like being agnostic on on this particular issue is the reasonable thing.
>> Okay. You know fair enough. Um okay.
Yeah. No, that that I I would I I would still say, you know, you know, you look at like up until, you know, maybe like a lot of those evidences you're talking about are less on the empirical side, I would say, and more on the uh um uh uh theoretical modeling side. Uh I would say that the we can we can look at of course the the evidence that we're seeing that we have at least some level of low entropy state in the past. Even if you don't go to the beginning of the universe, but let's say an extraordinarily rare even just like a few billion years ago uh past and you know you just follow that that let's say uh that um that uh that curve down toward uh lower and lower I mean you could look at the cosmic microwave background you can look at other evidences uh the arrow of time that you know uh and you know you can look at things like you know you have uh you know the these point to something that is not an eternal past that's that's only that's you know but But but okay.
So and though I would say those are empirical uh pushing me in in the direction of saying yeah it's probably more likely that there's a uh uh I'll be getting uh I'd said 51 plus that's where I would put myself.
>> So I I'm hesitant to say that like okay so I agree that we can wind the clock back and the universe gets smaller and perhaps the entropy in some sense of the word gets lower or something like this.
But then for some reason we say ah this is this is the point where we should stop winding the clock back rather than this earlier point or this later point.
And the reason we do that is because we run into a singularity, right? We run into a singularity in classical GR and we say, "Ah, well, you know, the scale factor goes to zero and um the curvatures diverge." And so we say, "Ah, that's the place to cut it off." But if we're a little bit more careful when we wind the clock back, we pay attention to the uh you know, the the matter fields that are present and we pay attention to like electrons and the hig bzon and all these lovely things and we see ah well actually we run into singularities earlier than we thought. we actually run into singularities once you get to I don't know roughly the plunk time.
>> Um that's when reormalizability and all this stuff starts to fail.
>> And so it seems like that if we follow those instructions we would say that actually there was no singularity we run into a problem. There was no space-time singularity rather there was never a there was never a moment of time where there was where the size was zero.
rather there is some sort of other like kind of quantum singularity happening a little bit before the puditive t equals0 moment or a little bit after I suppose the t equals z moment >> and it so it seems like that and that certainly isn't a uh like time doesn't need to begin there right the the quantum fields diverging doesn't say anything about time >> um and so it's just it seems like it's an arbitrary choice as to when we're deciding to stop winding the clock back right I mean like in principle you could just say Well, okay. If we're allowed to wind the clock back past the quantum singularities, like the the quantum field theory singularities, why don't we just wind the clock back past the GR singular just say, "Okay, well, time keeps going past these curvature these curvature invariants and the scale factor becomes negative because why not, right?" Like, >> possibly like possibly. But I this is a modeling thing. Again, keep in mind the winding the clock back stuff that is cosmological modeling.
>> I like Yeah, absolutely. Although I would put here that again I I I would still you know all those examples that you just gave we are still having a finite beginning of some sort not an infinite uh uh uh past >> but that's not not if you keep winding the clock back past the t equals z mark like why do you have to stop at singularity? Yeah like like look if we're allowed to wind the clock past one singularity why can't we wind back past all of them? Do we have any empirical evidence that that that that that that support that we there there's good reason to go back to negative infinity?
I guess that would be >> we don't have any empirical evidence to support going back to zero.
>> But we but but well we just we just we're we just talking about the some some of the empirical evidences in the past of like you know you're talking about the Higs you're talking about or or and or and matter uh uh uh in terms of when uh uh comes things come back in terms of singularities. Those are those are empirical observations, >> right? But those aren't at t equals 0.
Those are after t equals 0.
>> t equals t equals finite.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Well, so right. Right. And so but the point is is if you're going to make the claim that we can go back to to a gravitational singularity where time begins because the to be clear the the place where the quantum field theory stuff happens, time is still totally well defined in that in that setting, right? Time is to totally well defined.
But so so you if you wind the clock back to where the first singularities appear >> in the models, >> time still exists and in fact time exists before that.
So do you just stop do your do you say okay our models stop at t equals one plunk time >> and time exists before that but we can't say anything about it because that's where the singularities happen >> because that's not a >> your your problem is okay put give me a time and that that's what you're you're trying to get at and I would say you know you know it is also very possible that you know our model suggests that you know there are there could be multiple times or there's a cloud of times perhaps for example What what I'm saying is that and just to clarify what I'm saying is that there is no empirical there there's no um empirical evidence that is consistent. Actually I should there there's no empirical evidence that there's a beginning at all. Right? We have models and those models are based off of current empirical data. those models if you wind the clock back a certain amount you run into singularities at certain points as you wind as you keep winding the clock as you keep plugging in smaller and smaller numbers of t you run into singularities right um and so the point is is that some of those singularities if if if we take it to be that a singularity is when you can't do physics anymore once you run into your first singularity you stop doing physics and you throw up your hands and you say I don't know um well then the first singularity that we run into is not a singularity that happens and or that prevents time from existing before So >> it seems like that the best thing that we should do is we should wind that like it's we can trust all of our physics up until we get to shortly after t equals z then we throw up our hands and we say I don't know what's going on here. I think that that's probably the reasonable thing to do. I think coming to any other conclusions we to be clear we have no empirical data about anything that happens before then. Absolutely none.
>> Yep.
>> Fair enough. Yeah. like all of the you know all of the empirical data relies on our understanding of quantum field theory functioning and we know that the quantum field theory stops functioning after t equals z. So it just seems like that we can't get to a beginning. What we can get what we can say is that some of our models get us to a singularity at certain moments of time. What what what that means is to be determined.
I I I I would I would I I guess you know I think we're we're getting clo where I would have Okay, so two things I'll I'll just uh close out on is you know one is I would say you know unless we have very good empirical very good models supported by empirical evidence that that uh that that are uh that put us to a hey there is definitely a t minus infinity uh uh uh uh beginning then I I I'm I'm skept I'm I'm closer to the 51%.
I I guess I have to like it's just a matter of weighing the evidence. I I I take I don't take that view. But again, like sometimes I hear good arguments for the beginning and sometimes I hear good arguments for a non- beginning. And so it depends. But like, you know, I'm not I'm even if I were at 51%, I don't think that that would make that that would be enough for me to be like, "Yeah, I think that the first premise of the column is true."
>> Yep. Okay. Um Okay. Okay. Sure. Um, >> you'd have to get me to like 80 to like 8020 or something for me to be like, "Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's true."
>> Yeah. Okay. All right. Um, no, fair enough. I I Yes. Uh, I Yes, it become it's But you could appre Yeah, you're probably around more circles who who have, you know, more convincing uh uh tus infinity models uh internal inflation models. But um >> by the way, I like I'm I'm not like pro-inflation um at all really. like it's just not um Yep.
>> I mean like it's it's a fine idea. Um maybe I'm just a uh maybe I'm a rebel.
Maybe I'm a maverick, but like I just am interested in other models. So >> yeah. Okay. And Okay. And then the regard to the second uh we're not going to we're not I I can get maybe I'll come call back for next the time for the second step of the club for for for uh uh uh every change has a clause because I think I have some good arguments for that as well. Um, one thing I'll just point out to is like, you know, even if we accept the collab of there being a uh uh uh a creating uh uh let's say there is a creating entity of sorts, you know, like if we could somehow say like uh if we we we if I if I could somehow get you to a creating entity, I'll I'll uh I'll then you know sort of uh tantalize the point that you know the question then becomes in terms of okay, does that entity have a bind? Uh one thing that I find very interesting is that you know what what are you know the uh uh uh uh solid properties of it's something having a mind uh and one I would say is something of uh having reflexivity um if you're familiar with what reflexivity is uh where you >> uh sort of uh uh ability to sort of uh uh uh uh reflect or uh um conceive of oneself in some sort of sense. But, you know, you could think of it more abstractly than that.
>> But, so I'm I'm a little bit dubious and we can push this off to a later conversation, but I'm a little bit dubious dubious of that because it just seems like if we say, you know, having a mind is having the ability to to reflect, to have a self-conception.
Well, now we're just saying is to have a mind, you have you have to be able to have a conception. And so, like it seems like we can just do it easier. We could be like, look, a mind is a thing that has mental states. and then we can just talk about what kinds of mental states there are. Uh, and like I don't know, I I think that there's I think that there are serious issues and it's hard to put my finger on them, but I think that there are serious issues with talking about a mind that exists timelessly. Um, and the only reason I say that is because the way that we think of minds is it's always in a process. It's always a thing that's happening, not a thing that just exists statically.
Um you know we talk about uh thinking thinking is a process not just it's not just a a static a static phenomenon you know y >> and so and same same with like desires desires are like you have desires when there's something you want but you don't have right um and so that that's like a state of affairs that changes or can change anyway um and so if we're talking about something that can't even in principle change because it's timeless I'm just not sure what features it would have that it has in common with the features that we typically associate with minds.
Well, I I I I I would point out, you know, even if we talk about something like a t uh you know, if we if we were talking about something that's timeless, like a a timeless uh uh entity of sorts, you know, you could think about uh something with a mind that, you know, does uh not change in time, but say change in some sort of causal chain that is uh uh that is timeless itself. So from one state of the co of a causal change to another state of the causal change that is not time like but is some other sort of uh uh uh uh um construction. Uh uh uh you could have something like a bite in that causal chain that does >> it's just not clear to me what a causal chain is without some sort of temporal origin.
>> And that that goes back to our the second point of the collab. Um, one one last thing I'll before I I jump off is um is uh um you know what what I was getting at with this sort of reflexivity part part is are you familiar with John Wheeler's uh uh participatory universe?
>> Uh I've heard of it. I don't know much about it. So this is I would say you know and this is um you know it's becomes like the extential existential realization of all of decoherence theory uh which is you know it's quite powerful or at least the the the canonical version that we have by war Zurich and whatnot >> um and I would say that you know it is um the idea that uh uh uh I I would look into it we can we could and that that would be something to discuss >> universe >> yeah yeah you the the picture you always see is the universe and then there's an eye looking back on the universe and whatnot. Uh that that's sort of the picture the the sort of uh uh uh a cartoon that you see about about it. Um >> sure something more than just like I guess I could go read read a read like an original paper or something, but I wish that there was more. I I I I I could give you um I could give you uh uh I I would say Zurk's physics today the 2003 uh uh uh revised uh edition uh where he uh starts he has a whole theory he has a whole uh uh section on the existential question of the participatory universe based on uh uh uh obser observation of decoherence theory.
>> How do you spell the last name?
>> Uh Zerk Z.
I think he has a a Zurk kibble model uh and whatnot he's famous for as well in cosmology.
>> Oh, sure, sure, sure. Okay. Oh, I guess I guess that he had a I'm just like, wait a minute, there's a there's a Physics Today article because Physics Today is like it's like a popular but I guess I guess he Okay. Um >> a lot of I think you kind of you know the top and at least in in uh quantum mechanics, you know, the top uh scientists end up uh getting a physics journal. It's not those aren't I wouldn't say those aren't the those aren't those are the the the the popular versions of you know a uh a collection of you know solid >> sure like look I'm generally happy to read physics today or like pop science articles as long as they're written by people who are you know working on the working in the area yeah so that's that's fair I'll take a look uh thank you so much for being here I'm going to let you go and bring on another guest but thanks for being here Thomas >> yeah this this was this was very productive I I enjoyed the conversation thank you so much >> likewise take care >> take care So, all of you guys in the comments who are being horrible to Thomas for or just being horrible because Thomas had a stutter or whatever was going on.
[ __ ] quit it. It's not the kind of stuff that we want here.
I was a really good guest, so quit it. Okay.
If you want to make fun of someone for stuttering because they're nervous or maybe because they have a stutter, >> this is not the place for you. Okay.
>> Uh from Gain with the $5. I thought this was supposed to be the convince an atheist dream, not ask a physicist. No, he was he was it was a good conversation. I mean, like it was a physics it was a physics conversation because a lot of and this is why I I actually like these conversations, especially when they can go well. um is uh a lot of these questions are physics questions and they're worth talking about.
You can make fun of people if they're bad people. He's not a bad person. He had good questions. He was well informed on the on the subject.
Like make fun of people who are bad people.
Don't make fun of people who are good people.
Wrong with you. And this obviously wasn't everybody, but it was definitely enough people that it was worth pointing out. Like, it's crazy.
>> Gorgeous Joe, how's it going?
>> How you doing, buddy? I'm good. I'm good.
>> I'm doing all right. Gorgeous. Can you hear me?
>> Yeah, I can. Do you believe in a god?
>> Yes, absolutely. I do. I do.
>> Okay. Now, why should I believe in a god?
>> All right. I've been I've been waiting all about a good 30 minutes for this one. Um, >> hope it's good.
>> Now, before I get into this uh this quick conversation, I want to ask you one question as well.
>> Sure.
>> Do you believe as of right now, do you believe that you are in full control of yourself and what you're saying?
>> In full control? I mean, I'm mostly in control. There are definitely things outside of my control like my if I just had like a stroke right now, I wouldn't have control of that.
>> No, no, no, no. Not in that. Not in that manner. I mean, as in you're able to move your fingers, you're able to talk, you know, you're full control of your breathing, all that good stuff, the physical.
>> Sure.
>> So, now to get into my question about me trying to share my God and maybe you might believe it.
>> Okay. Yeah, sure. Please.
>> In that manner, uh, you know, do you are you able to control your heartbeat or your breathing throughout the day or is that, uh, natural?
>> I mean, like I So, I can definitely So, okay. To an extent I can control my breathing. I mean we can all choose to hold our breath or whatever. And to an even lesser lesser extent but still somewhat possible. You can in some sense control your heart rate by choosing to do activities that you know will raise your heart rate or choosing to do activities that you know will lower your heart rate and so on. But um the heart rate is is in principle is autonomous.
It's not controlled um consciously and breathing is mostly autonomous.
>> Okay, good. I'm glad you use that word autonomous. But now I want to say and when you're sleeping all of those same functions go on. Correct.
>> Yep.
>> into >> autonomously. Correct.
>> Yeah. They Yeah, they're autonomous >> because you have no control over it, right? But yet you are still living.
Correct.
>> Yeah.
>> All right. So, with just those simple things in the air, what can you tell me in your mind? Because I to me I'm going to say God controls all that. Like basically like an autopilot. He puts me in autopilot, I go to sleep, I start my day the next day. Not guaranteed, but if I it is guaranteed, then I'll start my day the next day. Now for you, what what is controlling that for you?
>> I'm pretty sure it's like the cerebellum or the brain stem.
>> Uh I guess it's the medulla the whole process.
>> It's the medulla oblangata apparently.
>> Is that your that's your >> part of the brain? It's the part of the brain. I guess it's part of the brain stem that controls your heartbeat uh and breathing.
>> Mhm. Your engine basically. Correct.
>> And also blood pressure. Um >> Uhhuh.
>> Yeah. Okay. Um, so that's what I would say is the part that's controlling those things.
>> But what is controlling that? That's what I'm trying to say. What what is who's who's driving that? The medulla.
>> I don't know what you mean by who. It's uh >> when I say as in right now when I asked you when I asked you at the beginning, I said, do you believe you're in control of yourself and your body, right? You said yes with, you know, motor functions. Correct.
>> Yeah.
>> Cuz you're doing it when you're awake.
Your motor function.
>> So me is like, >> not the mandulla. My my the medulla oblangata is part of me.
>> Okay. So you're controlling your medulla ablangata while you're awake.
>> No. Okay. So >> that's where I'm getting.
>> Okay. So then then I I can clarify. So when I say I'm in control, this is like a colloquial statement. Um like we would say that it is the prefrontal cortex that is making all of the that is responsible for these kind of complex decision-m processes. And then it sends those messages down further to like what to do with your hands and what to do with your mouth and how to talk and all these kinds of things.
>> So when I talk about me, I'm talking about like my whole being, my whole like conscious awareness and the whole the whole the conscious awareness part the conscious awareness part basically turns off. But there's other stuff in you that happens without that conscious awareness.
>> That conscious awareness part that's what I'm trying to say. Who's controlling that? Cuz right now while we're talking >> these are autonomous functions. These are natural. These are natural body process functions that just happen.
>> An autonomous function that has forever been there or has been created.
>> This is evolved.
>> Okay. But you're using the word evolved.
But as as I'm saying, prior to it, it has to be created to be evolved.
Correct.
>> Oh, sorry. Hold on. Apparently, you're blown out. Uh, sorry. It has to be created to be evolved. No, that doesn't follow.
>> Okay. So, what I mean is, uh, for something to evolve, does it not have to be there? Does it not have to be created or made?
>> A human being has to be made or created.
>> Evolution is the process by which >> the old things like old you know less evolved in big air quotes less evolved features become new features >> and an example of that would be >> uh an example would be the evolution of the eyes >> okay so >> you can have uh simpler eyes that evolve into be more complex eyes the origin of the human eye is from evolution there wasn't an eye that just into existence So it wouldn't be we wouldn't consider that similar differences. That would just be an evolution of the eye or not similar or anything like like that.
Correct.
>> I don't know what you mean by similar differences.
>> Okay. Like you know how somebody like if I'm I'm born and I have eye issues that's not an involved eye. It's a disease of the eye. Correct.
>> It's not a disease either. Um but look >> if you have normal Okay. Abnormal.
>> So there there's typical eyes and then there's nontypical eyes. They still function. Some of them. So that's what I'm trying to say cuz you're saying >> it doesn't have to be made to evolve. So I'm I just want to make sure I'm clarifying these things that happen every >> day.
>> People are different. I'm not saying that they're not evolved or not.
>> But you're saying it's just evolution.
I'm I was just confused on that.
Everything would be evolution.
>> So evolution is responsible for large scale population features. It's not in not intrinsically responsible necessarily for individual features that are perhaps different from the population norm >> at large.
>> Yeah. Yeah. So like if you have one person who's nearsighted and 99% of the rest this is this isn't a true statistic but I'm just giving an example. Suppose suppose you have one person who's nearsighted and 99% of the rest of the population has has typical vision. Then that nearsighted person that's not an example of evolution. And that would be an example of say a mutation.
>> That's what I That's what I was saying.
That's what I was saying. So I I you were you at the beginning you were saying that it was all just evolution. I said something has to be created or made so it can evolve like a tree. You start at a seed and it evolves into a tree.
Correct.
>> Seeds don't evolve into trees. Seeds grow into trees.
>> Um okay.
Maybe I'm using the wrong terminology in that manner then. Um, but the matter of fact was that for me to get you to say about believing in my God, >> I can't really make you believe. I just can give you instances of life in general.
>> I'm hoping that you can give me >> Yeah, I can give you Yeah, I can give you evidence of life in general like um >> the sun, the moon, that stuff. You might I don't think you guys have the correct mathematical terms cuz you and your friend were just talking about that prior about the beginning of things. But we do know it's there. It is up there.
>> Yeah. You don't know exist for sure because it's a theory or theory.
>> Gorgeous. Joe, what shape do you think the earth is?
>> I believe that it's a half sphere.
>> Okay.
>> So, you think that the part that we walk on is flat. Got it.
>> Mhm. Mhm.
>> Okay. Anyway, you were saying why should I believe in this god?
>> I believe I'm just saying the reason why I say that you believe you should not saying that you should believe. I'm just giving instances. I'm only giving my instances and whatever.
>> I'm not this isn't a normative claim that I'm making. I'm just asking like look I like to believe true things. I'm asking you can you convince me that there are true things that that the God that you believe in is true. If if it's true >> I can only I can only give I can only give my facts and my facts that may share over to you I don't know how you might take them but my facts is that the autonomous that everything that you consider autonomous I consider my God.
>> Okay. So like >> because my God will be I am which is all creation.
>> Okay. So, >> some people call him Yosua, you know, whatever.
>> Do you believe that?
>> Um, a Jewish man 2,000 years ago rose from the dead.
>> A Jewish man. I believe a creature did rise of all creation. Yes. I believe that he was able to use his uh creation, which is the host body, which is us, which we do. You know, we're a soul and then there's a body. He was able to manipulate the body into rising up.
People do that with voodoo. I don't know how they do it, but they do that.
>> Do you think that there was like a guy?
>> I believe that can happen.
>> As far as anybody could tell, there was a guy around 2,000 years ago.
>> He was killed, crucified for whatever reason. Maybe we don't >> have murdered. Yeah.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Maybe we know why he was murdered. Maybe maybe we don't know why, but regardless, he was murdered. Um and then that that body a few days later got up and walked around again.
>> That's your view. Okay. Why should I believe that that happened?
Why shouldn't you? I mean, I don't want to give that because that's just back and forth, but I know that's a normal response for me, but in in essence is that you don't have to believe that in par like religion, you don't have to follow that to the beat. You know what I mean? Religion eh that's black and white text that can be that's written by man.
>> What I'm talking about is real life experiences as in you're breathing right now, but you're not controlling your your blood pressure, your heart rate.
You're saying it's a >> I get it. No, no, no. I'm just I'm reiterating what you said. I'm just saying that >> you the things that you consider autonomous I consider my God. That everything that goes on that it's out of my control is my God. Either it's a lesson that I needed to learn or it's something that I needed to avoid to become a better person. Because in your words of evolution, my words of evolution with my God is to become a perfect being because I'm created after him. He's trying to I say he any type of term. Why do we need some sort of supernatural anything to explain why like your colon pushes poop around or why like your med why do we need why do okay I >> these are perfectly natural these are perfectly natural entirely explained biological mechanisms right >> may I may I give may I give a counter a counter comment to that >> I would just like you to answer the question like why do we need the supernatural to explain why your colon push or how your colon pushes poop around >> because men men is curious isn't man curious >> look I I the question is not why do we need an explanation at all. The question is why does the explanation have to be supernatural?
>> Why does it have Oh, okay. Okay. That's just a way of describing it. It doesn't have to be a supernatural way of describing cuz a lot of supernatural things that we describe as described in science terms. So it doesn't have to be supernatural. Doesn't have to be described in biblical terms.
>> If there's not a supernatural explanation, if you if it doesn't require a supernatural explanation, then why should I think that there's a supernatural being that we call God?
Okay, say that one more time because I did have an answer, but I just want to make sure I clarify my answer for you.
>> If we don't need a supernatural explanation for how the colon functions, we don't need a super or for how the medulla functions. If you don't if we don't need a supernatural explanation for this, why do we need a supernatural being?
>> That is the supernatural explanation for those things. Why why should we believe that such thing exists?
Because the reason why I'm going to say it as in a in a hive mind response. If I am him, he is me and I am living the experiences. I technically don't need to explain anything. I'm just living the experience. I am experienced for I'm doing the experiencing for him. A being that's outside of time and space that has created everything within time and space that it wants to experience his own.
>> I'm sorry. Let me let me finish.
>> I thought we were talking about like some I thought that your god was your medulla.
>> Controlled I thought that that your god was whatever controlled the autonomous >> things. No, I said I said my god. My god. Let me you got to listen to me.
When I said my god I said my god is the god of all creation.
>> Okay. So now we believe in like some sort of being that's outside of time and space and all of this stuff. So like >> no that is that is my god. That is okay.
Even in biblical terms, right? If you want to let me I don't want you to think it's supernatural. I'm pulling this out of my butt. I don't want you thinking that. If a if a being if in the Bible, we go by the Bible, a being that created the the lands, everything was dark. He created everything. Every single thing, he cannot live in a place that he created because he is the creator. It's like you're you're you have a whole bunch of Legos, right? Building a world out of Legos. You can build a house and then live in that house. I'm just No, no, no. I'm just give a little explanation of my theory.
>> You can live in You can build a house and then live in it, right?
>> Okay. Hold on. Hold on a sec.
What I'm trying to tell you is if you are a maleficent being not a not a human being I'm get the way I was going to create that to from manif manif I'm sorry I can't even get the word out um an omniresent being right doing a creation now to make that into our terms it would be to make that into our terms into our realization so you can understand that would be a man you and me using legos >> that's fine >> we cannot be in He's omnipresent. You said he's omnipresent. Where was where is he?
>> He is everywhere. He lives outside of space and time.
>> Where is everywhere?
>> Okay. Everywhere is where were you breathing space and time ether?
>> Okay. So, he's in space. He's in space.
Then he's not outside if he's everywhere.
>> Okay. Okay. All right. If you're everywhere, right? You're enveloped in it, right? If you're a bubble, everything inside the bubble and everything outside the bubble omniresent. He's the the full circle.
>> So, is he is he in space or is he is he not in space?
>> You're saying space in terms Okay.
You're trying to use terms to make it smaller. Try to think bigger than space.
>> I don't think I don't think that there's anything outside of space.
>> See, that's the problem. That's what I'm trying to tell you. That's where I am.
I'm outside of where your thought is in space.
Why should I think that there's anything that is that that is outside of space.
Why should I think that that even makes sense to talk about >> because if you're going to Okay. And the reason why you should the reason why you should think that is if you want to understand God in a basic level, you have to think beyond man terms. If you're using man terms, you'll never understand something that created man.
>> Okay. So, you're you're not understanding my objection here. And I can clarify my my objection here is merely >> we so we >> people say things like outside of space like it's the same thing as outside of a box or outside of a house.
>> These are and and we say these because they because we think of space as like a box that has all of us in it.
>> But space is all of the possible places things can be. So how can something be >> understand that's why are you cutting me off in the middle of my sentence? Why are you cutting me off in the middle of my sentence?
>> No, I'm I just want to throw that in there.
>> Okay. Well, then don't cut me off and let me finish. Why? What does it even mean? How could it even be possible for something to be somewhere that is not included in all of the places that things can be? It's nonsense. Space is all the places things can be. So, if something is not in one of those places, then it's nowhere. It doesn't exist.
If it's somewhere else, then that's one of the possible places that spa that things can be. And hence, it's part of space.
>> Okay. Then that's you using what? The terminology they're using and the thinking processes that you're using are what? Something you learned. Correct.
>> They are words.
>> No, no, no. You learned the words though. Correct. You weren't born with these words. Learn these words.
>> Obviously, people learn words.
>> And that look, look, I'm not trying to be a smart behind or anything like that.
I just want you to try to see. It's almost like uh how can I say?
>> Yeah. It's basically Yeah. It's like I'm using religion against a scientist. And it's like a it's a a give and take because you're going to use you're going to try to use terms that you learned and I'm trying to say God is >> are you using word? Are you using terms that you learned or did you come into this world with all of the knowledge of language >> explain with the terms that I learned God? Yes. I'm trying to explain the terms that I learned with God but it's not too many that match because like I said he is everywhere and everything and also living outside of time and space.
It may sound like sounds contradictory is what it sounds like.
>> What he make? Listen, I didn't finish.
Remember, you said you didn't want me to cut you off. I didn't cut you off the cut off.
>> Yes, you did. You cut me off twice.
>> And I apologize.
And then I I shut the heck up and I let you talk. Right.
>> Go ahead.
>> That's my bad. And I'm just asking for the same, you know, that's all. But what I'm trying to say is is that using those using the terms to explain something that's impossible to make it possible is what science does. Scientists try to find out something that they don't know and give it some type of theory or theorem which is not actual fact but it's the best thing that they can use to explain gravity or any other thing that we might physics or stuff like that.
Correct?
I'm just trying to do the same thing in the opposite direction to explain the impossible which is the person or the being or the entity or the omnipresent that is everywhere and everything experiencing everything while living outside of time and space.
>> I mean you're just affirming a true you're just affirming a contradiction.
>> I know that it may not line up with what you're thinking but that's what it is.
>> Well no you're just affirming a contradiction. On the one hand you're saying that it's outside of space meaning that it's not in space. On the other hand, you're saying that it's everywhere in space, which means that it is in space. So, it's both in space and not in space.
>> It can't. It can't be both. That's just an affirmed contradiction.
>> No, no, no. You're you didn't catch what I was saying prior. You're not linking the two. Now, what I'm saying is we are what's in space. We're the ones that me and you, we're here in time and space because we have to live by the guidelines of time and space, you know, matter, all of that. We have to live by these by these restraints. He does not.
So he's using us to witness everything going on in his creation. These trucks, these gasoline prices, us complaining, us loving weather, us going to the beach. We experience that for him. So when we die, we bring that experience back to source, which he's source. And then, you know, you either come back, you don't come back, or you chilling. I don't know. I didn't get to that part yet.
>> This seems like it's like it seems incoherent.
>> I >> It is.
>> Okay. Well, I I don't want to believe in coherent things. So, >> you know, I and that's >> I'm not going to because I think believing incoherent things is probably a way that you it's probably not a reliable way of coming to conclusions about the world.
>> Um, >> I mean, hey, >> but man, if you want to believe in say that about a lot of >> if you want to believe in coherent things, like you want to believe that like the earth is flat, you want to believe that there's a a god that exists outside of space but is omnipresent, by all means, um, it's just not going to do much for me.
And that's and that's okay. That's why I wanted to make sure we understood that at the beginning. And I just love listening to your stories, man. Keep going, man. Keep going with this. I love it.
>> All right. Thanks for being here, gorgeous Joe.
>> All right, let's read some super chats.
Uh, from Grimmie with the $5, your inability to control your bodily functions are a prime example of the lack of true free will. That's a that's a fair point. It's a true fair evaluation. Uh, Grimlock sent also sent $10 on Cash App, which is a thing that you can do by the way. Um, for a promotion for my hydration, Wimlock as always. Um, now, if you guys don't know, uh, I'm going on vacation in a few weeks or not in a few weeks. In a few weeks, I'm going on a on vacation for two weeks, um, tomorrow. So, I won't be around, um, after today. Um, however, there are still ways, even if I'm not live, there's still ways to support me.
If you go to my website, which has, you know, detailed descriptions of my research and of the science communication efforts and the debate efforts that I do. Uh, if you go to my website, there's like a little thing at the bottom right that will say like, you know, there's like Patreon and there's like buy me a coffee. If you want to buy me Italian coffee, I will be in Italy.
So, like if you want to send that, that will very much be appreciated. Um, you know, these kinds of things. So, if you want to support me, there are ways to do that. Even if I'm not live streaming, of course, if you just watch my old videos, that supports me, too. So, until then, until uh until the live is over and I'm gone for 2 weeks. Let's bring up another guest.
Why not go live in Italy? I will be on a ship.
I'm I'm going to be in Italy for a few days. Then, I'm going to be in Greece for a few days. Then, I'm going to be in Turkey for a few days. Then, I'm going to be in Italy again for a few days. All right, let's bring up Noetic Cosmos. I feel like I've spoken with Noetic Cosmos before, but I don't remember.
No, we haven't.
>> We haven't.
>> Feeling.
>> It might just be the name. Seems similar to something else. So, Noatic Cosmos, do you believe in God?
>> Yes. And I believe I'm about to test a high performance sports car. So, I've got that kind of adrenaly feeling cuz I've seen how you perform.
>> Okay. Quick one.
>> Why should I believe in a god?
So should I say the categories of my beliefs so that we know the >> if you want if you want to tell me what god it is that you believe in that would be good.
>> So no personal god like a religious type right. It it's kind of like the last guy but a lot deeper and and I'll try my best to stay coh >> I would appreciate that.
>> So um so the categories it takes stuff from quite a few like about four or five different categories. So, non-dualism because I don't believe there's a god outside of time and space. Now, you might say, well, what's different if it's just natural? I get that right. And I will address that. Next is uh most of analytical idealism, although I wouldn't say I'm a a strict antiaterialist because there are underlying quantum fields that are real things that can be measured. And I believe that the the everything in existence is basically a reconfiguration from within those fields that never truly breaks.
>> Next is >> psychism. So >> go seems like I'm still not sure where we're getting the uh the god claim.
>> I know it's quite big I think but I'll try condense it as much as possible. I thought about how I'll try and condense it right. So the next one is cosmos psychism where I believe the universe is fundamentally conscious. Just a quick one is that absolutely everything in existence is made of the quantum fields that we've at least discovered thus far and that there is never a break in those quantum fields. They're basically continuous strings or frequencies or oscillations of energy that reconfigure into the complex forms that we can see like you and I. Right? So the the reason I think the universe is underlying consciousness at least at the local level is because since there is no break in those fields and it's essentially uh a a bunch of oscillating frequencies of varying degrees of complexity that all have their own responsibilities and come together in a is basically a unified quantum field that never breaks then is a reconfiguration of the field. I am the universe taking conscious form. Okay.
>> Yes.
>> Now, what does this have to do with the what does this have to do with the divine?
>> So, if you're talking about supernatural deity, I don't think there is a requirement for it to be supernatural, but I can address the points of how it's a creator, how it's conscious.
>> Let me just give you a definition. How it can do all the other things of God.
>> Let me just give you a definition of what I mean by God. I mean some sort of entity that is uh perhaps the the word that's often used is personal meaning it has a mind of some kind.
>> Um >> it is responsible for is responsible for being the foundation >> of the universe or perhaps the origin of the universe or the creation of the universe whatever it might be >> if you want.
>> Um and it's also capable of existing without the universe. It is independent of the universe. It doesn't depend on the universe for its existence.
Well, then we may as well talk about unicorns and flying spaghetti monsters.
But I do believe a god exists in a different way from >> if it sounds like your view is consistent with atheism then in the way that I'm thinking of it.
>> No. No. Because I believe that the universe is fundamentally conscious and >> that's fine. That's consistent with atheism.
>> That the you think so?
>> Yeah. It's just like analytic idealism.
You can be an analytic idealist and be an atheist.
Yeah. No, I would say that because it meets every definition apart from the unicorn part. Basically, it's God.
>> Well, yeah. The unicorn particular the unicorn part as you define it is like >> intrinsic to it being a god.
>> No, that's just that's how the word is used.
>> Sticking with religion.
>> That's how the word is used by people.
Like if you are general look, if you're just an general consensus.
>> Okay. Well, I'm just using I'm just using words the way that they're used by people.
>> I promise you I'm deeper than that.
Well, I don't care. You're an analytic idealist. I I I'm not an analytic idealist. But that's not the conversation. The conversation is about a thing that is supernatural, right? You can't be a naturalist and also believe in God. Those things are in direct conflict, right?
Um so that was uh not a good use of time.
>> You can even be a pan psychist and still not believe in God. You can be an atheist panchist.
No, I dropped him. Um, I dropped him because there wasn't a conversation to be had there. Like, we we weren't disagreeing on the subject matter. Um, all right. I think have I spoken with Harley Quinn before? Let me just double check something because I have some guests that um in Discord that I'd like to bring in, but I wanted to make sure that I had spoken. Have I spoken with Harley? Okay, I haven't spoken with Harley Quinn. So, let's bring on Harley Quinn.
Harley Quinn, you are now on the live stream. You got to unmute yourself though.
>> Hey there, >> Harley. How's it going?
>> Hi there, >> Harley. Do you believe in a god?
>> Uh, well, actually I I am actually I am an artist, but uh sorry for for what? Sorry for for my English, but uh it's not my my main language.
>> So, >> are you Finnish or Estonian?
>> Uh, what I want >> are you from Finland or Estonia?
>> No, I'm from Italy.
>> Italy. Okay. Sorry, I'm bad with accents. But look, Harley, since we are uh in agreement on whether or not a god exists, I got to let you go. No.
Let's bring up Mark.
I'm so bad with accents. I can vis Yeah, I can go visit him. Mark, you're on the live.
>> Mark, >> can you hear me?
>> I can. Howdy.
>> Hello, >> Mark. Do you believe in God?
>> So, yeah. Yeah, sure.
>> And which cup would that be?
I believe in Yri, the god of the juice.
>> Okay. And Mark, how old are you?
>> Um, 17.
>> Unfortunately, you got to be 18 plus to be here.
>> Sorry about that, bud. All right, let's bring up a guest from Tik Tok. Let's bring up Zid.
Zid, how's it going?
>> Oh, he's not here yet. Howdy.
>> How are you?
>> I'm doing okay. Zid, do you believe in a god?
Yeah.
>> All right. Which god would that be?
>> Of Islam. But I have a quick question.
>> Sure.
>> See, um there's like this um atheist argument.
>> Wait, hold on. Zid, how old are you?
>> 18.
>> Okay. And what year were you born?
>> 2007.
>> Okay, that's fine. So, go ahead.
So there's this atheist argument um and it's called um beesian reasoning and they do this thing where they have these like super low prior for theism. Do you think that argument is successful?
>> I think that if you have low prior for theism then of course it's successful.
>> Do you think that it could be reversed to favor theism? If you have low prior for naturalism, sure.
>> Because um when I see atheists um use it, they tend to like split theism into multiple independent categories like for example material, immaterial, causally um efficacious and stuff like that.
Look, so the low like the the simplest version of the low prior argument is just that if you have sufficiently low prior for some position, it doesn't matter how much evidence I the amount of evidence that you need to come to that conclusion is overwhelming and like that that's all the low prior argument really is. I mean there's there's a there's another version or there's a there's more aspects of the low prior argument namely that like bartheism is you if you have low prior for theism then you'll have even lower prior for Christianity and so on and so forth. But um or for Islam or whatever it is, but like I mean that's what it that's what it boils down to. Um now I mean sure like an argument is only as convincing as the premises are. And if the one of the initial premises for uh the reversal of the low prior argument is that you have a low low prior for not or for super or you have low prior for naturalism or you have high prior for supernaturalism then like yeah it'll work both ways. I just won't accept that first premise because I don't have high prior for supernaturalism.
>> No. So, you think it can actually turn out to favor theism as well?
>> It just depends on what your initial like like of course it can. Obviously, if you're if you have low prior uh if you have low priors for naturalism, then yeah, of course you're going to you're going to be convinced by a low prior argument for theism.
>> No, no, sorry. I meant the the um the prior itself. Do you think that um do you think that it can be reversed to favor theism as um a higher prior?
>> I look so priors are not argued for.
Priors are they're your incoming starting they're they're in some sense like your starting assumptions right your starting views.
>> So like if you can like you can change them by data perhaps or by perhaps by an argument and then you can have those posteriors which come from your priors and then are modifi mod modified. You can have those posterior posteriors be priors for some other argument for some other position but like >> it just depends on what your uh you know what your starting credences are and like if you can convince somebody to change their starting credences so that their starting credences are somewhere else fine. I think that generally personal experiences are really good at doing that, but I don't know how you're going to actually reverse it for somebody who already has low prior uh, you know, for theism.
>> All right, thanks. That's all.
>> Okay, thanks for being here.
>> All right, let's talk to Tom. Share your faith.
>> Tom, share your faith. How's it going?
>> Thank you. Yeah, thanks for having me on today.
>> Yeah, of course. Tom, do you believe in a god?
>> Yeah, I really Yeah. Well, go ahead. I'm sorry.
>> Do you believe in a god?
>> Yes, I do.
>> Okay. And I'm just going to take a wild guess that it's Shiva.
>> No. Christianity >> rats. You know, I I'll get it right sometime. Um, >> the Bible.
>> Okay. So, why should I believe that the God of Christianity is real?
Um well, you know, one thing I would have to say is the reason I think you you there's evidence is because of yourself. I listen to you a lot. I mean, I listen to, you know, talking about, you know, flat earth and round earth and, you know, on a and all all your different programs. I see a very intellectual person that is super smart.
I mean, I >> I appreciate the glazing.
>> Yeah. And you you're really um you're really on top of your game. I mean you can really really really you know produce your point of view very very delicately but very clearly and very powerfully and very you know you really make a good case basically. So my case would be >> so what's the case? Yeah. What's the case?
>> Yeah that's an honest that's an honest observation. So my case would be you yourself. You know, when I look at Tik Tok and the program and how it works, I know there's an intelligent designer because Tik Tok, you know, with the technology of being able to talk, communicate, see your expressions on your face, you yourself are much more supreme being as far as knowledge than a Tik Tok program or >> Sure. Yeah. Well, yeah, my brain is probably more sophisticated than the software that is Tik Tok. I agree with that. That's probably true about everybody, actually.
>> Yeah. Exactly. Everybody has, but you are you use your brain in a very intellectual appropriate way.
>> If you keep glazing me, I'm going to become a donut. So, let's let's just let's just turn that down.
>> Well, okay, I'll turn it down. But you do have a lot of views and you do have a lot of followers. So, I mean, credit is actually true. But the point being is we all have faith in something. You have faith in time. You know, >> I don't know what that means. Okay, for example, your your brain, your knowledge, your intellectual ability is because of the way you reason as far as evolution. You know, basically evolution is your way of being, you know, like I would I would say from a Christian point of view that we are uh created by God obviously that loves us and he created us amazing. I mean, the Bible tells us and and I'm not going to go on to the Bible thing, but I'm just going to say he he says in the Bible that we're fearfully and wonderfully made.
>> Can you elaborate a little bit more about what you mean by I have faith in time? I have no idea what that means.
>> Well, yeah. So, in other words, evolution has a religion. It's called faith in time. You know, >> evolution has a religion. What do you think a religion is?
>> A faith. A belief system.
>> So, do you think that all beliefs are faiths?
Well, it's a belief in something. So, for example, >> look, look, I believe that my wife is uh in the next room over, but that's not faith.
>> Well, you believe in that you have a wife, don't you?
>> Yes. And that's not faith either.
>> Okay. Faith is belief in something.
>> No, that's not what faith is. Faith is belief. I mean, we can even go look in the Bible. The Bible tells us what faith is. It's belief in things unseen.
>> Correct. So like it's it's it's not the case that my wife is unseen. She's in the next room over. Uh I can go see her right now. So that's not faith.
>> Okay. So your interpretation of faith is something that is not seen that you would take.
>> I mean that's what the Bible says, right?
>> Well, yeah. In the Hebrews it says that faith.
>> So like why are so like that that's the definition? Like if we're going to talk about faith, why don't we use the definition that we both agree on? Well, the reason I say that is because neither one of us believe that for example time.
Okay. What would you say in like your creation of your body over billions of years?
>> My body was created over well as it currently is over 32 years, >> right? But I'm evolution shows a process. So for example, if what would you say you believe in more of or >> and I'm not going to use the word faith, but what do you believe in? Say if, let me give you two examples. Say you have a junkyard with a bunch of scrap, and you've probably heard this illustration before >> and then a tornado comes through. And how how many tornadoes to assemble that into a 747, right?
>> Well, yeah, but I twist it around a little bit. I say out of that out of that tornado comes two airplanes. And out of those two airplanes, all of a sudden, there's one rudder that's missing on one of them. And all of a sudden drones start coming out of this other airplane that doesn't have the rudder.
>> Yeah, sure.
>> Now that's kind of a a silly story. You would agree with me that all of a sudden drones are being >> unfortunately that's not particularly analogous to evolution.
>> Well, see the the point being is faith or in your situation belief. You believe that you know we as a husband and wife and having babies is a matter of time because we evolved. So basically >> we have evidence that we evolved. So it's not it's not a faith. It's it's an evidence-based belief which is >> yeah just believe the same >> the kind of thing that we do to come to conclusions about the world. We form beliefs based off of evidence.
>> Right. So on a lesser scale you would believe that drones would fly out of that plane over time.
>> No because we don't have evidence of that.
>> Okay. But but I'm saying a human baby is more complex than drones.
>> But we have evidence of human evolution.
We don't have evidence of you know aircraft evolution. Well, we have no evidence of major transitions, only minor transition.
>> What do you think a major transition is?
Sorry. Can you give me an example of what what you think a major transition would be?
>> Like a banana would turn into, you know, an elephant or a rock.
>> You think that that's a claim made by those who take evolution seriously, that they think that a banana turns into an an elephant?
>> Well, that's a belief system.
>> That's not the belief system of people who believe in evolution. Nobody, no single person who's ever >> taken evolution seriously has believed that a banana at some point turned into an elephant.
>> Well, they believe a rock has exploded and then turned into all this.
>> That's No, it's a straw man. It's not a not an accurate representation of the belief system, >> right? Like time.
>> It's It just seems like that you don't know what it is you are accusing me of.
So rather than accusing me of believing things that you think I believe, which are straw mans, you could just ask me what I think is the case.
>> Okay. So, so basically you have and you're going to be a powerhouse one day when you come to understand the Bible and Christ and you accept them and receive them. What is your understanding about Christianity? I mean, what is so hard to understand about that?
>> It's very easy to understand. It's a early Iron Age myth or perhaps late late Iron Age myth. um a man who existed in a world uh at least at the time the people existed in a world where supernatural events were pretty ordinary. There were wizards and sorcerers and magic and miracles. These were pretty ordinary things. Uh and one of the men rose from the dead and he established a following before obviously before rising from the dead he established a following then he was you know uh killed for whatever reason. We could argue about that but it's probably not worth it. He was killed for whatever reason and then miraculously he rose from the dead and that spun off into a whole new branch of Judaism that's now called Christianity >> which is a large group of people on this planet.
>> It is.
>> So with that percentage of people and people have lives that have been transformed by that faith by their belief in that you know um a lot of good obviously because mankind is sinful. We all have flaws, but an overall love story of what the Bible says actually makes pretty clear sense that it's a gift. Eternal life is a gift.
>> Well, that's the claim. I don't think that eternal life exists. And I'm wondering why I should think it like what what evidence do is there for that I should appeal to to think that it exists.
>> Well, for me personally, I've got first of all, I would say at at three things.
One is my self-existence. Uh, I look at my creator and I look at my fingerprints in my hand. I look at, you know, kind of like you and I look at my body house and intriguably design to where I could actually have children and grandchildren. That would be my number one go-to is that what's the connection between our bodies are complicated things to therefore God exists. How does how does that work? What's the connection? bec because we're a miracle.
And if if if we were just >> people say, look, people say that like birth is a miracle, but it's not literally a miracle. We understand how it works. It's not like supernatural, right?
>> Yeah. It takes two people and you can't >> Yeah. So So like it's pretty it's pretty straightforward. Like we understand how human reproduction works. There's nothing miraculous here. It's entirely It's entirely natural.
>> Well, I think it's an intelligent designer who has done an >> I understand that. My question is is what is it about humans being complicated that leads you to the conclusion that a god exists?
>> Well, number one is our in our amazing design. Second thing would be that he had a >> you're just reasserting the thing, right? So, you said our amazing design.
I'm asking what is it about the intricacy of the human body that leads you to think that there is a god?
>> Because there's no agree that Okay.
Well, yeah. There's no human being that could do something like this.
>> Human beings do it. So, nobody's claiming that there's a human that designed humans. That's not the claim.
>> Okay. It's like a computer. I could look at a computer and say there's an intelligent designer. The designer is not in the computer. The designer is outside the computer.
>> So, is it your claim that if you have some kind of complicated thing, therefore there must be something more complicated that designed it?
>> Well, the designer is obviously God. And >> sorry, can you answer my question?
Yeah.
>> So if you have something complicated, does it therefore follow that there's something more complicated that designed it?
>> I wouldn't say complicated. I would say um >> intricate something. If you have something intricate, there's something more intricate that that designed it.
>> I have faith in a god that's supreme, all knowledgeable, all powerful. You know, you know, omnipotent, omniscient, omnip.
>> Yeah. Yeah. So it follows then that So is it your view that god is more intricate than we are?
>> Absolutely. Because if that's the case, then under your view, >> if I'm understanding you properly, under your view, >> God is an intricate being, and therefore God must have been designed.
>> Well, yeah. I And I He He says, >> "So God must So God was designed." So there's something more intricate than God that designed God.
>> Yeah. Where did God come from? That's a great question.
>> And it must be something more intricate than God, right?
>> When When I get to heaven, when you get to heaven to find out where you're going, >> you believe that God was created, right?
>> Yeah. God has a a a creation called I am.
>> No, no, no. God God didn't exist and then something created God, right?
>> Well, well, that's that's a great point.
You know, I've often thought about that.
I believe what the Bible says. God's given a certain amount of knowledge and that's it.
>> I don't know where God was created. Alls I know is that he said, "I am." So, he's always been there. That's that's basically >> So, you do believe So, so you do believe that? I mean, to be consistent, you have to believe that God was created as well.
And then that the thing that created God was also created. And the thing that created that thing was also created, right? And there's just an infinite chain of creators that are more and more complicated, more and more intricate than the ones that they created.
>> Well, I'll even agree and add to your point. You know, if God is so amazing to design us, he would have to be uh someone who designed him would have to even be more creative.
>> Yeah. So, I mean, >> and it just has to go all the way back, right?
>> Yeah. How many like we have?
>> There's just an infinite series of gods that make that make smaller gods. Your god is just the bottom. The god that you believe in is just the bottom god.
>> You would assume that in your mind, but in reality it could be one god.
>> Well, so an intricate thing can't create itself.
>> Well, just like us.
>> What do you What do you mean an intricate thing? What do you mean an intricate thing can create itself? It's that that have you heard about um junkyards? What if a tornado went through a junkyard and out popped two uh two airplanes and one of them had a rudder and the other one spewed drones?
>> That's unlikely.
>> But according to atheism, according to evolutionists, they would say that would happen eventually because time is their god. Because >> no, that's so so look the position of the atheist. So you're stating me right now by the way.
>> So >> no, an explosion happened.
>> Do you want me to tell you what my position is or do you just want to assume it incorrectly?
Okay, tell me your position.
>> My position is that if there is evidence for a thing, then we are we have reason to believe in the thing. So there's evidence for human evolution. So we have reason to believe in human evolution. There's not evidence for two airplanes spontaneously forming from a tornado in a junkyard. So there's not good reason to think that that's a thing that happens or can happen.
>> So you've observed a banana turning into an elephant.
>> That's not my claim. That's not my belief system. Okay, that's not part of evolution.
>> Transitions. Bones don't tell you anything about transitions. Bones don't obvious transitions don't happen while the thing is alive. Transitions happen over generations.
>> Yeah, that's your god. Fine. T. That's why I keep saying you have a belief.
>> You're right. You're right. I I believe if there is a god, he is evil for punishing me for this conversation. Um for punishing me with this with this conversation. I mean like look look have you studied evolution at all?
>> Well, you know, >> are you are you because it it just sounds like you haven't you don't actually know what the evolutionary claim is.
>> Okay. Yeah. And they teach it in school.
You know what they teach in school? You know how a big bang exploded over billions of years. It actually turned into us. It's the short version. So >> big the big bang wasn't the explosion.
That's the first thing they teach you in school.
>> Yes. It wasn't No, it wasn't an explosion. And it wasn't a rock.
>> Great great great great great great great great go on billions of years was a rock that Okay. Not even a rock. It could be a pin the size of a pin that just exploded.
>> The Big Bang wasn't a wasn't an object that exploded.
>> It's like it's like you're taking all of the bad apologetics from like the 1980s and regurgitating them 40 years later.
>> No, but this is >> that's not what the Big Bang is.
>> That's more of a faith in Christianity.
We have evidence for it. It's not a faith at all.
>> It's belief in the things seen and not things unseen.
>> Your faith, >> we can literally see We can literally see the residue left over from the Big Bang. It's like we can see the smoke left over after the after the gun fired.
>> Well, I mean, your faith is uh more than my faith, obviously, because >> Can you give me an example of something that I believe in that I don't have evidence for?
>> You have nothing. That blew up into everything. Give me an example of something that I believe that I don't have evidence for.
>> You don't have evidence over where creation started. So >> I don't believe that creation started.
>> Well, you >> I don't I don't have beliefs about where create about creation starting.
>> Okay. So your creation started at the big bang, right?
>> No, I don't believe that.
>> So how do you believe that the evolutionary process started? Well, ev evolution is a process that started like 3 to four billion years ago on Earth.
It's not a thing that happened like the Big Bang is not related to that. Um, >> so do you want to ask about the Big Bang or do you want to ask about evolution?
>> No, there's there's different stages of evolution.
>> No, it's just not called evolution.
>> Okay. What you believe where it all started then?
>> Well, I don't know if the universe had a start.
I'm pretty agnostic about that.
>> So, you'd think we were just boom here an Earth? No, it's not what I think.
>> You can ask me what I think.
>> Well, what do you think?
>> Well, I I'm not sure if there was a first moment of time or if there wasn't a first moment of time. Perhaps there's ne perhaps every every moment of time has a moment before it, meaning that perhaps the universe goes back forever.
Or perhaps there was a first moment of time and there's just no time before that. I don't know. Um I'm hoping that we will know eventually, but I don't think that anybody knows at this point.
>> Yeah, I agree with you.
So >> the big I I don't hold the view and nobody holds the view that the big bang is like some object exploding. It's not what the big bang is. The big bang is a rapid expansion of the universe from a small state of affairs, small region to a large region. There's not there's not like a single object in the universe that explodes. It's the universe as a whole was smaller and now it's bigger.
Um, I don't think that I don't think that bananas turned into elephants. I think that bananas and elephants have a common ancestor probably billions of years ago and they diverged billions of years ago.
>> They're they they share a great great great great great with a a million greats grand papy.
>> And that's why I say you have a faith.
>> No, these are all things with evidence.
I can provide you the evidence for all these claims.
>> You don't have anything billions of years ago. You got we have plenty of evidence for billions of years ago.
>> Minor transitions. You got minor transitions that we can see and observe today.
>> So, hold on. Why are we why are we talking about transitions when you were just a second ago talking about not having evidence for billions of years ago? Because we have plenty of evidence for billions of years ago.
>> I can give you plenty of evidence for that. Uh zirkon crystals that contain uranium and lead.
>> How can you prove that? You can take a zircon crystal and you can put it in a machine called a mass spectrometer and then you can measure the amount of ziron the amount of lead in it. You can measure the amount of uh uranium in it.
That's those are just that's just observable that zircon crystals have both of these things in them.
>> Yeah. And a meter pops out and says it's 1 billion years old.
>> No. No. Then you do then you do a calculation because you know we know stuff about how uranium behaves. Like uranium is radioactive so it decays over time. And so based off of how much uranium there is and based off of how much lead there is, you can conclude that the uranium decayed into the lead because of the chemistry of a zirkon, the lead can't get in any other way. And so the lead came must have come from the uranium. And we can figure out how long it took for that uh for that lead to form from the uranium. That's that's science.
>> That's that's a flaw in the system because you can't prove that it went back that far.
>> Nobody's talking about proof. We're talking about evidence.
>> Like for example, >> we're not talking about proof. We're talking about evidence. Okay, we're not you can't use that as evidence because >> you can absolutely use it as evidence, but go ahead.
>> God, God could create the heaven and the earth in seven days and he could use time involved in that. So when he >> I have no idea what that means. What do you mean use time involved in that? Can you explain?
>> So when he had created Adam and Eve and there was trees there, he could have put trees that are, you know, a thousand years old. He could have put >> but they wouldn't be a thousand years old, right? They would only be a day old. He could put uranium with age built in it. There's nothing.
>> Yeah. But the thing is is there's no evidence for this claim. We do have evidence for the claim that uranium under goes radioactive decay and it turns into lead over time. We have evidence for that. You don't have any evidence that God made the world with uh apparent age. There's no evidence for that. So why would I believe it?
>> Well, again, because I go back to looking at what the Bible says, and it's clear. You're making you're making the assertion that I I have more faith than you that I I have I don't have any evidence, but I just told you about the evidence. This is like a well this is well established scientific evidence like it exists. Sorry.
>> There's no evidence that you could go back and point to this was made a billion years ago.
>> Sure, I can. I just told you about it.
>> I know you told me about it, but it's evidence >> in that your faith.
>> Where's the faith? Your belief in that equation is obviously we have evidence that supports it.
>> You cannot go back and pull one back from that time. We have evidence that supports it.
>> And well, you don't because you can't.
>> Yeah. The evidence that supports it is the laboratory experiments measuring the radioactive halflife of uranium 235 and uranium 238. That's evidence.
>> Here's the one. Yeah. Here's the one a billion years ago and here's the one today. And this study proves it that this is a billion years old. You go back in a billion years.
>> Well, it doesn't prove it. We have evides evidence that it's a billion years old.
>> You can't you can't prove it.
>> Nobody's asking for proof. We're talking about evidence.
>> Okay. You can't show the evidence to make your point.
>> Yeah. I just told you about the evidence.
>> The evidence is man-made.
>> No, it's not. It's made. The zirkon crystals are not man-made. Zirkon crystals are found in the ground.
>> The the results of what you're saying, >> the result. So, so look, we examine a zircon crystal. We use what we know about the natural world that we the conclusions that we come to via evidence like uranium is radioactive. It decays.
We know how quickly it decays. So we examine the ziron crystals and we examine the chemistry that's involved there and we find oh hey look there's uranium and lead in these zirkone crystals. But the chemistry of zirkone crystals doesn't allow for lead to enter them. Therefore we come to the only reasonable conclusion which is that the uranium which is known to decay into lead did decay into lead. And then we ask well okay so the uranium decayed into lead. How long did that take? Well, we know how long it takes. We know how long how quickly uranium decays. So, we can then extrapolate using the data that we have how long ago that zircon crystal formed. And lo and behold, we get billions of years.
>> Well, yeah. And I get it. You're very intellectual. And again, that's why I'm calling to say you're you're the proof of creation because you are intelligent to a degree.
>> Do we just reset?
>> Okay. So, let's go to the Bible. Okay.
>> So, the the Bible is obviously why I believe in Christianity. So, you know, as an atheist, you don't obviously you read the Bible many times. My guess, how many times would you say?
>> I have not read the entirety of the Christian Bible.
>> Well, at at this point, I may have because I've read enough snippets, but honestly, I've tried to sit down and read it. It is so boring.
>> I tried to sit down and read it front to back, but it's just it's so boring.
>> Yeah. And I I always tell people to start in the Gospel of John because Jesus was John's closest friend and and John uh was very clear on the gospel what the good news is. So getting back to a creator in in you know is there one? If there is a creator and this is my logic if there is a creator who created us with fingerprints and eyes and nose and senses that we just can't even imagine. If there is a creator that could do this isn't this obviously he could give us a book. Wouldn't you agree with that?
>> Yeah. And you would think that the book would be filled with things that allow for the verification of the truth of the book.
>> Right. So basically, you know, the Bible says by many infallible proofs, Christ showed himself alive by, you know, >> so one would expect that though that there would be those infallible proofs to be found, but I can't find any.
>> Yeah. So if like Dr. Simon Greenleaf was a royal professor at Harvard University.
You've probably never heard of him, but his classmates and he wrote a book on uh he was an atheist and he his classmates challenged him to study the Bible and see if the resurrection was true. And he concluded in his book that he wrote, Simon Greenleaf, you can go look it up, that if the evidence was to be brought forth in any unbiased courtroom, the evidence would be known as historical fact. And that was an atheist who became a believer because >> that's a wild claim. I mean like maybe that was his position. I don't think that that's a good position to hold. I don't think that that's true.
>> Well, he looked at the evidence and and the point I'm saying >> I'm familiar with the evidence. The evidence is so the evidence that we have is at best 30 yearsish 40 yearsish uh texts written after the fact um by people that we don't know uh and in contradictory perhaps contradictory ways like the story is has incompatibilities amongst the people who are writing about this. Um, and even setting aside the quality of evidence, you would never find any claims of supernatural stuff being being uh verified in a courtroom because it turns out that verifying the supernatural happened is n impossible.
>> Yeah.
>> Well, if you look at the evidence, it's there. Just like you look at the evidence.
>> Do you want to talk about the evidence?
>> We can talk about the evidence if you want. I mean, I I went over my evidence, so surely it'd be only fair for to let you go over your evidence.
Well, I mean, >> what's the evidence?
>> Well, first thing is the disciples, they gave their lives not for a lie, but for something that was truth.
>> Are you sure? How do you know that they gave their lives?
>> Well, we all know that 11 out of the 12.
>> We all know.
>> How do we know that that's true?
>> We're martyed.
>> How do we know that that's true?
>> Well, you know, you >> where's the accounts of this?
>> Because it's all >> we know that James was executed. You have you haven't studied obviously >> and >> I haven't studied. Okay. So, >> okay. Can you provide can you provide for me a source that is not within the Bible itself >> that makes the claim once and you said it a few things. My point is if you open up the Bible and if there is a guide >> and you ask him to reveal yourself to him >> God can you reveal yourself to me?
>> Yeah.
>> The Bible says you shall seek me and find me when you search for me with all your heart. You will be a powerhouse one day. Where is he? I just did it.
>> Yeah. Well, you know, the Bible also says he's not revealed himself to the wise and prudent, but unto babes. So, basically, >> you have to be you have to be ignorant in order to believe.
>> No, you have to have a childlike faith in what >> why do I have why >> look, God gave us these big old brains to do these big old thinking bits. Why would he want us to be ignorant and naive in order to come to believe in him? be ignorant. You look at the truth in the Bible and you come with all these prophecies and you see that God is truly >> You just told me that you have to be you have to have childlike faith. You have to have the uh look when we talk about childlike faith, this is usually something that's naive. Like children have a childlike faith in Santa Claus, right? And obviously Santa Claus isn't real. We're they're just naive, right?
They just don't know better. Why do you want me to be naive? Because we have a childlike faith and evidence. So in other words, say a childlike faith, we have evidence of a savior, not in the grave. So what's the evidence? In the grave, we got witnesses. We've got Bible prophets.
>> Who are the witnesses?
>> So all throughout history, people have talked about they've seen Jesus even.
>> Well, look, look, lots of people lots of people see Jesus. That's not that's not particularly compelling evidence that Jesus rose from the dead.
>> Well, I'm talking about Okay. 500 people during his time.
>> Sorry. Who are these people?
>> Not only that, >> who are these people?
>> Who are they?
>> Yeah, >> they're read history books.
>> Wait, so so we don't know who they were.
So just to be clear, saying that 500 people saw something would not fly in a courtroom. It wouldn't fly in a courtroom as evidence. So who are these people?
>> Well, I examine every thread of all the evidence and you'll come.
>> So what's the evidence then?
>> This is a fact. I didn't have to go through all the evidence.
>> Okay.
Apparently evidence is not something that's important for you to form beliefs, but it is for me. So like what's the evidence?
>> Yeah, it's kind of like evolution. I don't have to go back a billion years. I just >> What's the What's the evidence?
>> So the second point would be prophecy.
There's a lot of the Bible.
>> Well, I mean there's over 300 scriptures that talk about the resurrection of Christ.
>> Can you give me an example?
>> Actually rose from the grave.
>> Can you give me Can you give me an example of say three? the Old Testament talked about.
>> I I want examples, not just like the Old Testament. Can you give me examples?
>> Okay. Yeah. He would be betrayed for 33 30 pieces. He would be uh his beard would be plucked.
>> Okay. So, where are the We can go look at these verses if you want.
>> Well, sure. I mean, there I got 300 of them.
>> Let's do it. Just pick three. Pick your favorite three.
>> Okay. Let's pick three. Okay. The first I would say is out of the 300, let's go with this one. This one is found in the They mocked him >> in the >> um Psalms. They mocked him.
>> Okay. So, what's the verse?
>> Well, I tell you what, you you pick three um that you think would be good.
>> I don't think that there are any. So, I'd love you to just tell me the ones that you think are true.
>> Sold for 30 pieces of >> What's the verse?
>> What's the verse?
>> Zechariah 11, >> verse 12. That was in 487 BC. It was written >> Zechariah. Well, I I I don't know if that's true, but sure. Uh we can look we can look here. Uh we'll look for Zechariah 11:12.
Um so we have uh hold on. I'm pulling it up for you for everybody even. So um we have Zechariah 11:12. I'm going to pull up the whole thing. Um so verse 12 is here. Then I took my I'm just going to read some context beforehand. Okay. Uh hopefully that's fair.
Yep. I just want to put this here. Then I took my staff called favor and broke it, revoking the covenant I had made with all the nations. It was revoked on that day. So and so the oppressed of the flock who were watching me knew it was the word of the Lord. I told them, "If you think it best, give me my pay, but if not, keep it." So they paid me 30 pieces of silver. So, it seems like that what we're talking about is this is 30 pieces of silver that's taken by the prophet, not by the betrayer.
So, what is how is this a prophecy about Jesus being betrayed for 30 pieces of silver?
>> It correlates with Matthew 26:15.
>> Well, right. But this is 30 pieces of silver taken by the prophet. It's not taken by the betrayer.
>> Yeah. So this isn't so this prophecy didn't come true. Jesus the prophet didn't take the 30 pieces of silver.
This prophecy failed.
>> Well, I wouldn't say it failed. It's >> Well, yeah. I mean, it's definitely not about Jesus because Jesus the prophet didn't take 30 pieces of silver.
>> Nailed to a cross.
>> But that's not what the prophecy says.
>> Well, the alleged prophecy anyway.
>> Give me my price. Give me my price. So, they weighed and it was 30 pieces of silver.
>> Yeah. They they gave 30 pieces of silver to the prophet and that's not what happened to Jesus. That was that was the price.
>> But Jesus So wait. So so in in Zechariah >> the prophet >> is given 30 pieces of silver, >> right?
>> Mhm.
>> But that didn't happen to Jesus. Jesus wasn't given 30 pieces of silver.
>> Well, it's symbolic obviously.
>> Okay. So the prophecy So the prophecy fails, right? This is not this is not a prophecy of anything that have to do with Jesus.
>> Okay. What's the next best one? uh nailed to a cross.
>> Okay. Where where is that? Where uh what verse is that?
>> Psalms 22:16.
>> Okay. Let's pull that up.
One sec. Um Oh, is this the one that I think it is? Yeah. Okay. This is the one that I think it is. This is the one with a contentious translation. So here we have Psalms 22. So this is the dogs surround me. A pack of villains encircle me. They pierce. That's the questionable thing. They pierce my hands and my feet.
All my bones are on display. People spare stare and gloat over me. They divide my clothes among them and cast lots for my garment. So okay, there's a few things to talk about here. First, this ver this word pierce um is contentiously translated. The earliest source that we have uh is not the word pierce. It's not even the word it's not even the word close to pierce.
Um, at best what you're going to get is you're going to get um, sorry, at at best you're going to get they dug at my hands and my feet. Um, but the early the earliest text that we have, it's it's actually not even a Hebrew word. It's found in the uh, the Dead Sea Scrolls the for this particular verse. Um, there's two different translations that you can make. One of them is at my or at my or what is it?
It's they are they are like lions at my hands and my feet or they dug my hands and my feet. So the question is is this actually even talking about piercing?
Probably not. More likely they're talking about using an analogy like the the lions are at my hands and my feet because throughout the rest of the psalm they are they use the language of animals to describe the foes of the person. We talk about dogs. We talk about uh the mouth of lions, the horns of wild oxen. So, it seems plausible that this is probably incorrectly translated. This is the Christian translation, by the way. Uh not the Jewish translation. The Jewish translation has like a lion there at my hands, my feet. But even if I grant that this says they pierce, this is not a prophecy. This is something that's taking place in the present.
David is complaining about how everybody's attacking him metaphorically, of course. So, this is not a prophecy about something that will happen in the future. It's David complaining.
So, how how is this a prophecy at all?
>> Well, you know, John 19 says they crucified him, which is >> right. But this is this isn't about the future, right?
>> Well, that's your interpretation. That's >> No, I mean, it's not written in future tense. It's describe it's just written about as as David. It's written, you know, presumably by David, but who knows? Um, it's written as if David is just being attacked. So, this David lived hundreds of years before Jesus.
So, this is not this can't be about Jesus if this is about something that is happening to David.
>> Well, if you look a few verses before that, in verse one, Psalms 21, it says, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"
>> Oh, that's a different psalm, though.
>> Revelation.
>> Well, no, it's the same same chapter. 22 verse one. You're looking at 22.
>> Oh, you said 20. You said 21. Yeah.
Yeah. So Jesus quotes this. That's not a prophecy.
>> Well, on Matthew 27, Jesus cried out, "My God, my God, why I have thousands?"
>> Yeah. Jesus was quoting the psalm.
>> Obviously, >> that's not a prophecy.
>> Well, Jesus is fulfilling the the prophecy.
>> What's the What's the prophecy? What's the prophecy? Where does it say in the future this will happen? Where does it say that?
>> Well, it doesn't say it.
>> So, then it's not a prophecy.
>> Well, you got to read between the lines.
You mean you have you mean you have to infer your dogma from from the text that it doesn't say?
>> Yeah, but you've already you've already come to your conclusion on these verses because you've already gone through them.
>> Yeah, I'm familiar with these. And as far as I know, there are no prophecies that have come true about Jesus. In fact, there are prophecies that Jesus has failed. Um like for example, um >> why did why was Jesus riding uh a full and a mother donkey? Why was Why were there two donkeys that Jesus was writing?
>> Shoot, I don't know. Tell me.
>> Because they misread because the authors who were writing the uh the Christian Bible misread the Hebrew and they thought that the that they were describing two donkeys when rather they were describing a single donkey.
>> And so that's why Jesus is apparently riding two donkeys into town rather than just one like a normal person.
So, so basically your take on scriptures is man-made and not god breathed. For example, I believe you know that this was an intelligent designer that created >> Can I show you Zechariah 9? Can I show you Zechariah 9?
>> Sure.
>> Okay, one sec. Um, sorry it's not refreshing. Okay, we want Zechariah 999 and then we can look at the whole thing.
So, here's the ver. So, so this is the part that um that uh Jesus allegedly fulfilled. Rejoice greatly, daughter Zion. Shout, daughter Jerusalem. See your king comes to you righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a cult, the f of a donkey.
Right. So, would you interpret this to mean that this donkey is a cult, which is the full of a donkey that that this uh that that the uh the king will ride in on a single donkey? Or do you think that this is meant to meant to read as the king will ride in on two donkeys?
>> Are are you looking at uh what version there?
>> Uh this is the NIV, but we can use whatever version you want.
>> Yeah, King James version is the I prefer, >> of course.
>> But by the way, the King James version is the worst version, but go up, King.
>> To me, it's like Yeah, there's >> Yeah, it's the same thing. See, your king comes to you righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a cult, the f of a donkey.
It's the same thing. So, is this talking about does the does the king come in riding on one donkey or on two donkeys?
>> I'm riding on a donkey.
>> Okay.
>> Now, do you want to go look at the uh the bit in Matthew 21?
>> Sure.
>> Um Okay, let's go talk about Matthew 21.
Okay. So now here's um here's Jesus talking. Jesus sent then Jesus sent two disciples saying unto them go into the village over against you and straight away straightway you shall find an a tide and a cult with her. Loose them and bring them unto me.
So he's bringing two donkeys with him.
Why is he bringing two donkeys and brought the ass and the cult and put them on their clothes and they set him thereon. So now he's riding on two donkeys.
Why is he riding on two donkeys?
>> I don't know.
>> Because they because they misread the uh the prophecy in Zechariah.
>> So I'm sure you got like 300 more like scripture.
>> This is this is just the funny one. So like why is it that so so the one pro so this is an example of a prophecy that like could have been like could have been fulfilled. And by the way, the people like fulfilling a prophecy just means that people knew about the prophecies and so when they wrote the book, they wrote the book so that it seemed like he was fulfilling them. It didn't even have to happen. But this could have been easily done except they obviously screwed it up when they wrote it down. They obviously didn't understand what the what the Zechariah prophecy was about. Um, and so they thought that it meant that he's supposed to ride in on two donkeys rather than one.
>> Isn't that a little concerning? Well, I adm I admire your great knowledge on the scriptures and looking up flaws that seem to be. However, I don't I don't think they're flaws.
>> Okay. So, then why why was Jesus riding it on two donkeys?
>> Well, I don't have the answers for everything. Oh, maybe it's because >> because I have faith in the things that I don't understand that God's got a So, for example, the Bible actually says we see through a mirror dimly. You know, the Bible says that, you know, God is we can't understand obviously and that's why we have to take it by faith like a a faith in as a a child. And you know, the Bible says the secret things belong to the Lord. There are things that we will never know until we get to heaven. So, for example, I don't have all the answers, but that's okay because I got enough answers that give me enough faith and belief that there is a God. So, in other words, there's enough in the Bible that makes it clear to me.
>> But the the prophecies which you were providing as evidence because look, if prophecies were actually fulfilled, that would be evidence, right? That would be evidence of something supernatural happening. Um, but the prophecies, the example prophecies that you gave me, they weren't fulfilled or they weren't prophecies.
>> All three of them, all 300 that I have.
>> The third one that I gave you, you only gave me two, by the way, not three. The third one that I gave you, the one from Zechariah 9:9 and 9:10, >> that was an explicit prophecy that wasn't fulfilled. It was incorrectly fulfilled.
>> Well, the third one was in the beginning of Psalms 22. So, you know, >> but that's not a prophecy. That's just David talking and then Jesus quoting David. That's there's no prophecy there.
>> Yeah, but but there's a lot of similarities like 300 of them throughout the Bible.
>> You keep saying that, but of the three that you offered me, none of them are prophecies that were fulfilled.
>> Well, yeah, according to your interpretation. That's fine.
>> According to the plain text reading of the uh of the text, right?
>> Well, yeah. I mean, I I take it a little more faith-based and you take it a little more >> I'm looking for evidence >> evidence, you know, which is fine. And again to me you your brain and your knowledge is based on what God has given you and that is a creation that there's a creator because you are intelligent.
So again my evidence for a god would be you because and again >> and we've circled back the third time I guess.
>> Okay. Well it takes a lot more faith to believe in no god than to believe in a god. So, you do have faith. It just know God.
>> Okay. Uh I don't I don't think that it's faith to rely on evidence. Um >> well, I mean, you're the evidence that I'm using because creation is the evidence of a god.
>> You haven't drawn the connecting line between I exist to therefore god exists.
There's no >> because >> evidence has to have some sort of like you have to be able to logically link the data >> to the conclusion. So, what's the logical link there? You're an intelligent. You're an intelligent design. You have a wife that is intelligently designed.
>> Well, I I don't think that we're designed at all.
>> Any children?
>> What's the evidence for that? No, I don't have any children.
>> Well, one day you will and you'll hold a baby and you might come to the conclusion that wow, this is an amazing creation.
>> And one day, do you have any children?
>> Yes, I do. I got two and I got four grandchildren.
>> How old are your grandchildren, if you don't mind me asking?
>> Well, actually, one just got home and he's standing in front of me. He's uh How old are you now, Dylan? He's 8 years old.
>> Well, maybe one day you'll have great grandchildren, >> you know, God willing, right? And uh you you'll look at those great grandchildren and be like, "Man, these guys are such [ __ ] Maybe there isn't a God after all."
>> Well, you know what? Time will tell. But the thing of it is is the Bible says, "Train up a child in the way he should go." And then when they were old, they will not depart because they've been given.
>> Why do you have to indoctrinate children in order to come to the correct conclusion?
>> Because that's what he's called us to do. And that's why my name says not share your faith because share faith.
>> Doesn't that seem kind of suspicious though? Like it seems a little bit suspicious that you have to teach someone something while they're a child and still cuz children are stupid, right? Like we understand that children are dumb. Um they believe everything that they believe basically anything that you tell them.
>> They're learning.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Of course. They they just don't know a lot cuz they're children and >> and we're learning too as adults, >> right? But but we know more. We have we have developed prefrontal cortexes and you know we have experience as adults that we're learning too.
>> Of course we of course we're learning but we're not naive anymore right we're not children. So it seems a little bit unusual that we h that that the goal of your or the the method of spreading your religion is >> teach it to the children >> so that they don't question it like why >> Jesus said let the children come unto me for such >> God that is really suspicious that the that the best way to spread the truth is to teach it to people who don't know better than to question >> and then when they grow old they can study it for themselves and that's why >> yeah but they've already been indoctrinated They've already been indoctrinated when they were when they were children.
>> Jesus said make disciples.
>> Yeah. So, so you're just suggesting that indoctrination is a good thing that we shouldn't let people >> analyze the claims >> should be propagated to be truth. And when when an individual examines a truth for themselves, >> so then let them examine it themselves rather than forcing it on children.
>> I'm not forced. No. But you convince a man against his will and nevertheless he's the same. Still obviously men men and children are different. Right? If you tell a kid that Santa Claus exists, they will believe you. They won't investigate it. They'll just believe you.
>> Correct?
>> That's what you're doing with Jesus.
You're saying, "Well, Jesus exists and Jesus died for your sins. And if you don't believe, then you go to hell." And that's indoctrination.
>> They don't get to go to heaven based on mom and dad's belief. And what what I thought indoctrination go to heaven.
>> They're not they're not analyzing they're not analyzing the claims critically. They're just believing what their parents told them when they were kids. And that's what happened to you, too. I suspect >> when they get older, they can confirm that Santa Claus was a lie and the Bible is the truth.
>> That is that that only happens after they've been indoctrinated. Do you know how easy it is to convince yourself that something is true when you were already indoctrinated to believe it?
>> No, because I found out to be truth for myself as I grew older. It confirmed the Bible confirmed.
>> It confirmed itself. Yeah. You you were already you were indoctrinated in it as a child and then you confirmed your belief.
Were your parents Christian?
>> I was shared as a truth when I was 7 years old.
>> Okay. And did you go did you go to did you go to church when you were younger?
>> Yes.
>> Okay. That's indoctrination.
>> No, it's it's learning the truth.
>> Every Sunday you would show up at a you would show up in a building where a guy would tell you that Jesus died for your sins. That's indoctrination.
>> That's called truth.
>> It might look whether or not it's true.
Look, Tom, I'm trying to be I'm trying to be charitable here. Maybe it's true.
Maybe it's not. But just telling kids that is indoctrination whether or not it's true because they're not critically analyzing it. They're not evaluating it for themselves. They're just believing you because a big person told them it.
That's how children work. So if you want people to actually come to the truth, like maybe this is true. If you want people to come to the truth, then what you should do is you should not teach it to them when they're still naive children and let them come to the truth by evaluating the claims critically.
>> Well, I do both. I teach adults and I teach children.
>> No, you should. What I'm saying is you shouldn't teach children. That is >> indoctrination. They shouldn't go to school. Why do they go to school? They go to school to learn the truth.
>> They they go to school to learn facts about the world. And these are verifiable facts. But you're saying that these are not verifiable. You can't you you have to come through faith. So let them come through faith once they're old enough to come to that decision on their own rather than forcing it on them.
Well, they teach these fairy tale lies by indoctrinating them in the school system about evolution.
>> Except evolution is like something that you can verify yourself. It's scientific. There's scientific evidence for doing the same thing. An explosion happened billions of years ago. They're indoctrinating lies to children. And you're telling me, let's use the word indoc instead of teaching. You're you're indoctrinating. I'm indoctrinating when I Yeah. So, so let's say >> but when you do the same thing in public schools, they're not indoctrinated.
>> Yeah. Because what what's happening in public schools evidence?
>> There is no evidence.
>> What's happening in schools is that there absolutely is and we can talk about that. But what's happening in schools is that we're is that facts of the world facts of the world are being described. And at least in a good school, I I can't speak for all public schools, you know, obviously some public schools are going to be shitty, but at least in a good school, they will explain how we know that this is true, right? Right? They'll say, "Here's the evidence for why we think that, you know, uh, plants have cell walls."
That's a fact that you learn in biology class, right?
>> I'm not talking about minor transitions.
I'm talking about >> I wasn't talking about transitions either. I was just talking about some random scientific fact like plants have cell walls.
>> Or that or that the moon is made of the same stuff that the Earth is made out of. That's a fact. And then you can explain why it's a fact.
>> Yeah. But use the lies that the textbooks say. What these bones prove?
>> What lies are we talking about? prove.
Well, these bones prove that major.
>> These bones provide evidence for major transitions. Yeah, >> there's no evidence.
>> You keep saying there's no evidence, but you just told me what the evidence is.
Bones are bones are evidence.
>> Just bones. Bones don't prove anything.
>> You You think that bones can't provide evidence for anything? I mean, like, we use bones when we do forensic analysis all the time.
>> To provide a transition of something major.
>> The transition does Okay, hold on. So, Tom, and like let's we can just turn this down because that's totally fine.
We were, you know, things were getting heated. Um, so just to be clear, nobody's ever claiming that the bones show evidence of the bones transitioning. What the claim is is that you see bones from this time period and then on top of them bones from a later time period and you can see a transition between those two. There's a there's a gradual diff or there's a a slight difference between those two sets of bones. That's the transition that's being talked about. It's not a transition in a in an individual set of bones. It's a transition between sets of bones. Does that make sense?
>> And that's the lie in the textbooks. So, for example, >> do you not agree that they're that we can see gradual differences in sets of bones across different layers?
>> Yeah, but they're observed of being bones. They're not transition. Nobody's ever >> Nobody's ever making the claim, and it's like you didn't listen to me.
>> Well, they're in the textbooks.
>> Nobody's ever making the claim. They're they're absolutely not. Nobody's ever making the claim that the bones show evidence of the individual creature that died was transitioning. It's not the claim.
>> No, the claim is that it transitioned from this type. The transa from a monkey going up to a human being.
You've seen those pictures. The claim is that you have one set of organisms, a population of organisms, call them, I don't know, elephant rats or whatever.
And we see the bones for the elephant rats in one layer of dirt. And then slightly above in that layer of dirt, you know, maybe 6 in or a foot or whatever it is, layer of rock, we see different bones that aren't quite the same as the bones lower down, but they're fairly similar. That's the transition that's being discussed.
And so what this is describing is you have a whole population of these elephant rats and over the course of a long period of time, not individual elephant rats, but each subsequent generation of elephant rats is slightly different relative to the previous generation. So no one individual is changing. It's that each next generation is a little bit different than the generation before it.
That's the transition that we're talking about. Well, the transition is kind of skewed when you look at what's being indoctrinated in the school system to show this is evidence of transitions when it's not. There is no evidence.
They're just bones is my point.
>> Okay. So, what do you how would you describe it if you saw Okay. So, do we agree that the bones on top were put there put there however they got there were put there after the bones below them? Would you agree on that?
Well, it depends on the facts of seeing bones and bones. It could be in most Let's say in most cases the bones below are older than the bones above.
>> Well, that means there is bones below in a certain type of species that were older. Yes, I would agree with that.
>> Okay. So, if you see bones below and then similar but different bones above and you check all across like an entire area, you see one kind of bones at one layer and then slightly above it, you have a different kind of bone, slightly different kind of bone above it.
What would be the what would be a reasonable inference that you could conclude from that >> set of data?
>> You have a different species.
>> So where did the where did the where did the first lay where did the first layer species go and where did the second layer species come from? Well, that's part of where the evidence is flawed because they're making it appear like there's different levels of sand and there's bones that are continually changing in the depth of the sand where that's not the case.
>> What I'm asking is if this was the case, if this was found, >> it's not the case.
>> Please, I'm asking you to engage in a hypothetical. If this was the case, >> what would be the reasonable conclusion?
Well, obviously the reasonable conclusion is there's different species at different times at different time periods, you know.
>> So, where did the old species go and where did the new species come from?
>> Well, they're finding old species on the top of the levels. They don't got to go down.
>> Look, look, this is a hypothetical. I don't like just engage with the hypothetical.
>> So, if you let's say you investigated all of Wyoming and everywhere in Wyoming, if you dug 6 ft down, you found one kind of bones. And if you dug 5 and 1/2 ft down, you found a different kind of bones.
>> What would be a >> hypothetical? Yes.
>> Yes. Hypothetical. What would be the reasonable conclusion?
>> The reasonable conclusion is there's obviously different species at different times in different parts of >> So So what would be the reasonable explanation for where the lower species went and where the upper species came from?
>> Yeah, but you're talking about a fairy trail. That's not true.
>> It's a hypothetical. Please engage with the hypothetical. You would say yes, there's different species just like >> I'm asking where I'm asking where they came from, right? Did they just like spontaneously appear up nowhere? Like what's the reasonable conclusion that you can come from?
>> God created them all in one week. So hypothetically, if God created all the animals in one week, u and there's different things like a flood that happened. Obviously, there's going to be, you know, different layers of animals at different times, you know, like dinosaurs. You know, you got transitions of dinosaurs. Well, does that mean there's never a dinosaur? No, there are dinosaurs.
>> I don't know why you're not engaging with the hypothetical.
>> Well, the hypothetical, I understand what you're saying. I agree with what you're saying.
>> So, the hypothetical So, so we have So, in this hypothetical, all of Wyoming, if you dig six feet down, you find one, you find an elephant rat. You dig 5 and 1/2 ft down, you find an elephant rat.
That's slightly different, right? So, and we agreed that the ones that are lower down, they were put there earlier.
Regardless of how they got there is definitely earlier, >> at least in most cases.
>> So, what is the conclude? So, we have So, let's say um let's say I don't know the amount of time is X.
>> As a hypothetical, you could say a dinosaur is on the bottom, an elephant was in the mid-range, and goes on top.
>> Why are you changing my hypothetical?
Why are you changing my hypothetical? My hypothetical is an elephant rat and then a slightly different thing that's almost an elephant rat but not quite.
So what's the reasonable conclusion about where the elephant rats went and where the slightly different elephant rats came from?
>> Well, the elephant rats obviously were different species.
>> So they're they're a different species.
What is the ex do you have any sort of inference that you can draw about why we don't see the bones of the slightly different elephant rats in lower layers?
Well, because they weren't there at that time. So, so where did they come from?
>> We we would have to say there were none over there because you haven't dung up the same depth at some other location where they were.
>> So, we checked all of Wyoming and this is true across the entirety of Wyoming.
>> Might be over in China and they they moved over here, thousand years later. If you stumbled upon this, if you stumbled upon this, you know, this data that across all of Wyoming, 6 ft down you see elephant rats and 5 1/2 ft down you see the bones of slightly modified elephant rats, but you don't see any more bones of elephant rats anymore. Um, you would say, well, there's nothing we can learn from this.
>> Well, what do you mean by elephant rats and slightly different elephant rats?
>> So, think of like the bones of like an elephant rat is like a madeup thing.
Maybe it's a real thing, but I'm just imagine it's like some madeup like funny looking rat thing. And then we can tell what it is from its bones because you know bones tell you a lot about an animal. And then in the slightly higher layer the bones are just like a little bit different but uniformly different.
So like um you know maybe maybe like the maybe like the snout is like longer like the sn or the skull is like longer in one way or maybe it has maybe its arms are like shorter in a different way or maybe it has like an extra vertebrate on the tail or whatever it might be. But initially you have all of these elephant rat fossils that are basically all the same. Slightly different sizes of course because populations vary. But then in the next layer you have all of these modified elephant rats that are all the same but they're all different from the ones below them.
>> Well, I would say minor transitions. You would have major transitions would be like what >> Okay. So you would say that this you would say that these fossils would be an example of transition. Well, the hypothetical story that you're using is I would say on the very top you have humans walking around and the transitions basically evolved from the elephant rat all the way to humans and that's the fairy tale they're telling.
>> Well, wait a minute. So, you just agreed and I just want to I just want to clarify. You just agreed that in the hypothetical this would be evidence of a transition from the elephant rats to the slightly different elephant rats.
>> I I would agree with minor transitions like a big dog and a little dog.
>> Okay. Now, what's the difference between a minor transition and a major transition?
So, for example, a major transition would be an elephant, you know, having a baby that pops out a bobcat.
>> Well, so hear me out. What if what if >> that's a major transition.
>> So, hear me out, Tom. What if you had a an elephant rat that in the next transition, minor transition, its arms got a little strong, a little a little longer. Uh, and then in the next transition, the hips rotated a little bit. And then in the next transition, the skull was a little bigger. And then in the next transition the uh the spine straightened out a little bit. And then in the next transition the fingers became more adept. And then in the next transition the uh the feet different the like the the the back feet differentiated a little bit from the front feet. And after a hundred transitions like this you wind up with something that looks like an ape rather than an elephant rat.
What's so farfetched about that? Well, because like I said earlier, I admire your faith in time.
>> You just can't engage with the hypothetical.
>> No, no, you're using a hypothetical.
>> You agree that you can have small transitions. What if you have a bunch of small transitions in a row?
>> I agree. You could have small transitions, but you cannot have major transition.
>> What if you have what if you have a lot of small transitions in a row? What would you call that?
>> We've never observed a major transition.
>> Why can't you answer my question?
>> If you have a hundred minor transitions in a row, what would you call that?
Well, we see that in dogs and we see a lot of minor transitions in dogs. No, you don't. Dogs, little dogs, Chihuahua, Great Danes, they're all minor transition. It's still a dog. We don't see a dog.
>> I'm talking about 100 sequential minor transitions. Not 100 different not not like a branching out, but sequential minor transitions.
>> Not seen 100 transition.
>> I'm asking you hypothetically if we had >> what would that what would you call that? evolution because we could observe it if you so fortunately we do have evidence of sequential evolution. We have so many ev fossils that demonstrate this >> transition. Those are bones.
>> No, what I'm describing is sequential minor transitions leading to major transitions.
>> There's no transition that we have ever observed. That's fake.
>> We absolutely have and you can go look at the fossil record. Tom, it's been a delight, but I have to let you go because the live stream has to end. Um, but he did agree to minor transitions, which is good. Uh, it's just for some reason the anti-evolution crowd, they have a really hard time understanding that if you put a whole bunch of minor transitions, if you line them all up, they look a lot like a major transition, right? Uh, so let's read some super chats and then uh we'll call it there from Dr. Fudge with the $10.
Look at the trees. Weak. Look at the blitz based. Honestly, honestly from Grimmie with the $5, eternal life cheapens the value of the limited time we have on this on this planet. I agree.
Like if if you think that you're going to have an eternal eternal paradise, why bother taking care of the planet?
Uh from Dr. Fudge. Again, this isn't debate. This is youth pastor level preaching. Yeah, I kind of expected that going in. Um, but it was, you know, it was hopefully a worthwhile uh worthwhile conversation from Carl Grimes at the $5.
I have perfect intelligent design. I swallow and breathe through the same hole and can choke to death from eating which is required to live. That's true.
Um, that does happen from Grimmie with the $2. Yes, God is a bottom. You heard it here. God is a bottom from Echapo with the 250 euros.
Ray Comfort sounds different today.
Yeah, he definitely listened to Ray Comfort a lot. That's true. From Adam Hurst with the $12. keep up the good work. You make work tolerable most days.
I appreciate that. Unfortunately, I won't be available for the next two weeks. Uh to keep work tolerable, but I'm going to try to make sure that there's content for you guys to watch at least every other day on YouTube for debate content.
From Jack Feder with the $2. Wow. And that call started so promising, too. I you know, if a call starts with glazing, it almost always ends that way. From keys plays games with the $5. So, DNA evidence used to solve cold cases is considered faith. Got it. Yep. Yes, it is. You heard it here first, folks.
from Jack better again with the $2. Gez Blitz, turns out you debunk your own.
It's true. I do from Grimmie again with the $10.
Actually, the individual who would probably want to be part of one of the most manipulative pieces of literature would probably be the great deceiver in said literature rather than your all good God. That's true.
That's a fair point. Yeah. I mean, like God does kind of act like a deceiver. If your goal is to like teach them to children rather than to well-informed adults, then I don't know. That seems kind of deceptive, kind of nefarious.
From Super Pizza with the $5 book, but Blitz, Santa is real. The proof is in The Nightmare Before Christmas, and obviously that book is accurate because it's inspired by Santa and he's real.
There you go.
Uh, from Carl Grimes with the $5. I have faith in things I don't understand. Now, let me vote to force these beliefs that I don't understand onto you, too. Yeah, I don't like that at all. I don't like that at all. From Chase with the $5. Can I pay for a title request for this caller's video? Creationist jukebox plays all the greatest hits. That's a good one. Uh, yep.
Creationist jukebox plays all of the greatest hits. Um, so I would The only thing is is I need to figure out which which word to make it all capitals because apparently if you make one of the words all capitals in a YouTube title, it grabs people's attention more. And I hate that that's the reality, but that is the reality.
I'll figure it out. Uh, from Super Pizza with the $2, but the explosion. I know, right? But the explosion from Relax with Russell with the $5. I wonder if Tom teaches adults and gets new believers or just reinforces the beliefs of adults who had already been indoctrinated as children. Yeah, I suspect as much. Yeah, I think I think jukebox is the is the word to make uh make capitalize caps every third word.
Um, yeah, it's definitely jukebox from CSS with the $20. So very generous of you. Very much appreciated. Uh, the beauty of science and history is the intersection of anomalous circumstance.
Great floods in Idaho caused inversion of local fossil records due to ruptures and crustal overturn. Absolution is the enemy of logical conclusion. Okay. Well, I appreciate the $20. Not really sure what you're trying to say, but thank you from Gain with the $2. I believe in inches, but miles are fake. Indeed, miles are fake.
Um, and uh, from Pensive with the $20, have a great vacation, doctor. I appreciate you, Pensive. Always good to see you here. Very, very much appreciated.
Um, and we will uh, All right. So, let me just double check, make sure I didn't miss anything else.
Uh, actually, I got to grab this.
By the way, shout out to Justin for his bad Bible spreadsheet. So, if you don't know, Justin has a spreadsheet for all of Justin's arguments, just like how I have a note file for all of my arguments. Um, and so if you want access to my notes, it's like four or five bucks a month on YouTube. You can also join via Patreon. You can join via Tik Tok or via Twitch. You'll get access to the same stuff as long as you get access to the Discord roll. So, if you if you become a paying member anywhere, just DM one of the uh or uh open a ticket on the Discord server and you can get access to the notes that way. But Justin also has a membership and one of Justin's membership perks is his uh bad Bible spreadsheet which has a whole bunch of information on the Bible which I like to use from time to time. So, shout out to Justin for that. Um and uh I'm going to check for some super chats for some cash apps and things like that. But also, we have another super chat from Dr. Ria, which is hilarious. Dr. Dr. Blitz, is there evidence to believe in free will, safe travels? I suspect not, but you know, other people would disagree. Um, let me just double check and make sure that there aren't any coffees that have been bought. Uh, just one from Grimlock from a while ago. And, um, yeah, that should be everything. So, thank you guys so much for watching.
Uh, I will see you guys in a few weeks.
Make sure to pay attention to the Dr. Blissy Bunks YouTube channel. I will also be posting science content, trying to send science content on the regular when I'm on vacation, but we'll see. And uh yeah, until then, I'll see you in June. Take care.
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