DEBATE: Objective morality is objectively cope (Ft. Robotgoat)

Added: 2026-05-23

[00:00:00]Editing Maffy here, just popping in to apologize in advance. I had some audio issues during this live stream and as a result my audio is a bit low quality.

[00:00:08]So, the clips from this live stream on May 14th are going to have my voice at a bit low quality, although Robot Goat and the callers are still at their usual quality. Thank you again to Robot Goat for doing this collaboration with me and I hope y'all enjoy the video.

[00:00:24]So, which which topic number did you want to talk about?

[00:00:27]Uh one and two interest me a little bit.

[00:00:32]Which one?

[00:00:34]So, mostly I would like to know why you think there's no reason to believe in God.

[00:00:40]Because I haven't been presented with any compelling evidence to believe that there is one.

[00:00:44]Okay. And then the Christian God is evil.

[00:00:50]My main question would be what is evil?

[00:00:54]Sure. That which goes against what we consider to be good.

[00:00:58]What who considers to be good?

[00:01:01]Whoever's moral framework you're using, but we can use what your religion's moral framework or your moral framework and find a way for God to be evil within it.

[00:01:11]Mhm.

[00:01:12]Well, I mean Unless you're like in favor of genocide or rape or slavery.

[00:01:22]I don't I don't fully understand what you mean by any framework could consider God evil.

[00:01:29]Sure. God is has a whole bunch of different contradicting abilities and the fact is that as long as there is the existence of anything that anybody considers evil, God is creating the evil.

[00:01:43]So, it's all subjective.

[00:01:47]There is no evidence that there is any objective morality. Subjective morality is the only morality that we have access to. Even if you claim that there there an objective morality, it's clear that Christians don't have access to it or any religion because of the many myriad religions and denominations, along with the fact that y'all just can't agree on what is and is not moral.

[00:02:08]So, it's clearly just a interpretation of what you believe are objective morals that do in fact within uh most religions end up coming from a subject anyway, which would be God.

[00:02:22]Okay, I agree.

[00:02:24]Um the thing is, most of these religions contradict each other.

[00:02:31]So, are all religions false?

[00:02:35]Uh any theistic ones I would say are.

[00:02:39]>> One more time, I'm sorry.

[00:02:41]Uh any theistic ones I would say are.

[00:02:44]Why specifically theistic ones? Well, because there's no good reason to believe a God exists, so I lack a belief in God. So, I would say any belief system that includes a God would in fact be false.

[00:02:56]Hm.

[00:02:57]Well, I mean, the reason that I believe it is because I believe that it's the only adequate explanation of the beginning of space and time and morality, love, because if we use someone like Tyler, Tyler claimed that his his moral code, if it's all subjective, is that you guys are wrong.

[00:03:24]But, you guys disagree.

[00:03:27]But, there has to be there has to be something outside of both of your experiences, Tyler's and y'alls, that is objective.

[00:03:38]No, there doesn't have to be.

[00:03:41]Um I love this like slightly augmented tag that you're running here. It's interesting. Um but, the problem with any sort of like tag argument is um you would have to disprove a potentially infinite number of worldviews to claim that the one you believe in is the only way that you can ground those things.

[00:04:02]Mhm.

[00:04:03]Okay.

[00:04:06]The problem is you still can't decide which one is the superior superior moral code.

[00:04:15]Because if Tyler's >> to do an objective morality argument or are you trying to prove that God exists?

[00:04:21]I mean, I think that both go hand in hand.

[00:04:24]Then you have to demonstrate objective morality.

[00:04:28]Well, there has to be objective morality unless >> No, there doesn't.

[00:04:31]>> no objective reality, then which reality or sorry, which morality wins out?

[00:04:37]Uh, my bad.

[00:04:39]Which morality wins out? Cuz if we'll we'll do subject A disagrees with you guys.

[00:04:47]If subject A disagrees with you guys on morality and he is stronger then does subject A's morality win?

[00:05:00]No, cuz I brought a harpoon.

[00:05:02]Mhm. That's not a fair That's not a fair response.

[00:05:07]I have to break it to you every time, Okay, and then The only morality that we can demonstrate actually exists is the subjective morality invented by living things that exist here on this planet.

[00:05:22]There's no laws of morality that can be demonstrated to be intrinsic to the universe. There's no way to go get a teaspoon of morality. It's not something that exists objectively. So, yeah, it's an ongoing conversation that we all have to have and people disagree and some people disagree in some wild ways. But, most humans at the end of the day tend to be empathetic because it's a widespread trait that humans have to be empathetic as we are cooperative species. So, it ends up most of the time that we end up doing what is best for the most people because we can empathize with each other and want for everyone else the same things that we want for ourselves that golden rule that predates most religions as well.

[00:06:09]And uh when people go too crazy outside of that like they're serial killer or psychopath or something like that, they tend to uh have a lot of people to go through to try and enforce that on the world. But, sometimes hey, sometimes they succeed.

[00:06:25]That's why it's an ongoing fight forever.

[00:06:28]And there is no amount of claiming that your religion's morality is objective that will make anything that you bring to the table more solid than anyone else's arguments for morality.

[00:06:40]And so, at the end of the day, we're all just trying to create the most cohesive society possible where where reaching the least amount of harm and the most amount of happiness.

[00:06:53]Well, I wouldn't say that that's very true for the Nazis.

[00:06:59]Yeah, the Nazis had some stupid ideas about what their morality was and there was a whole war fought over it. But, if morality was objective, either humans don't have access to it or what? You think that people are just denying things that they inherently know to be moral? That is quite silly. People don't act against their own beliefs like that.

[00:07:21]I think people definitely do act against their own beliefs. I mean, No.

[00:07:25]there are many people that smoke cigarettes and they still know that they're bad for them, you know?

[00:07:31]You're not talking about somebody like smoking a cigarette even though they know it's bad for them. Like, that's completely For one thing, that's not even a moral thing. But, let's take a Let's take a moral thing, right? Like uh like stealing, okay? There's a Let's say that it's just a out and out like no moral gray area stealing something to benefit yourself and uh at the detriment of someone else, right? There's that competing motivation. Thing is, a lot of folks just don't think that it's wrong.

[00:08:04]Like, if somebody just doesn't think that it's wrong to do that, then that moral isn't written on their heart or whatever like way that you're going with that. There's no like intrinsic morality that's that specific and objective.

[00:08:19]There are only trends across subjective morality.

[00:08:24]Okay. So, if I walk into a store and I steal a bag of chips, then I claim that this is my subjective morality, that it's okay for me to steal a bag of chips.

[00:08:36]Does it make it right?

[00:08:38]And if not, Well, you're asking You're asking if it's right as if there >> [laughter] >> Sorry. You're asking if it's right as if there is an objective standard to determine whether or not something is right or wrong. Uh right or wrong is going to be based off of like qualities that we attribute to certain actions. That is always going to be subjective.

[00:09:06]But, I don't think you understand. If if it's my subjective decision that it's okay to steal, then why are we punishing people for stealing?

[00:09:19]Is it because other people don't like stealing? Because we as a society Yeah, other people have morals, too, and we came together and we're like, "Hey, these are the things that we think are going to be best for our society." And then we wrote laws. And laws, you might notice, change a lot over time. It's a based on what subjective subjective people subjectively input into a system that is full of subjects. And and sometimes laws will go against like the the quote-unquote objective morality found in Christianity. For example, slavery's not generally legal anymore.

[00:09:54]Um I mean it still is in the prison systems, but if we were going off of the objective Christian morality, then slavery chattel slavery would still be fully legal, and so would be physically abusing those slaves to the point of near death.

[00:10:06]Uh but we don't do that. So we go against the the Christian morality in our laws. You're saying that the Bible claims that it's okay to beat slaves?

[00:10:15]Oh, yes. As long as they don't immediately die.

[00:10:18]Mhm. Where Where would you say it claims that? Exodus 21:20-21, where it says if you beat a male or female slave with a rod and they die immediately, then you shall be punished. But if they survive a day or two, then the owner will not be punished because the slave is their property.

[00:10:32]You said Exodus 21?

[00:10:35]21:20-21.

[00:10:38]Okay.

[00:10:39]Let me add that.

[00:10:40]>> out loud just to share it with all of us. Yeah.

[00:10:43]You said 21: verse 20-21.

[00:10:47]20-21.

[00:10:58]They're not to be punished, but if the slave recovers after a day or two since the slave is their property.

[00:11:04]So You It's the verse before that as well. You you missed out on verse 20.

[00:11:21]Hayden? Yeah. Yeah, I'm sorry. Can you read it [clears throat] out for us?

[00:11:25]Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result.

[00:11:32]But they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two since the slave is their property.

[00:11:41]The other part, which I'm not able to pull up right now.

[00:11:48]Hold up just a second. I'm trying not to disconnect.

[00:12:03]I don't think he has >> Yeah. If morality were objective and something that we all had access to, then we wouldn't see morality changing over time.

[00:12:18]I don't think that morality changes over time. I think that people's interpretation changes over time. And >> No, there's a heavy amount of contextual and cultural influence, the time that you're born, the family you're born into, the community that you grow up in, and then what you do and then what you do in terms of developing your morals and what principles you base it on as you get older.

[00:12:50]So, the the difference is I believe that there is an objective morality.

[00:12:55]You can believe that all the livelong day. That's still a subjective morality.

[00:12:58]You're just erroneously thinking that it's based on something objective, but ultimately it's still your subjective interpretation of a subject. And the god that you think you're getting it from is is the one who said you could beat your slaves as long as they didn't immediately die.

[00:13:14]Are you a fan of slavery? Do you think that that's good? No, I do not.

[00:13:19]Okay. Cuz sometimes we get Christians in here, believe it or not, who are like, "Go slavery." Yeah. But, there is a uh there is a there are a lot of details to that that I'm not an expert in, but the old definition of slavery that's in the Bible is more like indentured servitude or >> No. Oh my gosh. No, I hear that apologetic a lot and it's not quite right because there's two separate words to define um indentured servants and chattel slaves. Um and consistently when it's describing like non-Israelite slaves, it uses the word aved rather than sakir um which they're they're two separate concepts.

[00:13:59]So, those who were the Israelite slaves who were to be treated more fairly with less physical violence and to be released after a set period of time or during the the year of Jubilee, um they're going to be referred to by sakir um whereas the chattel slaves who were able to be kept as property, given to children as inheritance, and could be beaten. Um those were referred to as aved. Uh so, this is referring to aved, the latter type, the non-Israelite type of slave.

[00:14:29]Um so, while there is the concept of indentured servitude in the Old Testament there is also chattel slavery.

[00:14:40]What do you mean by ex- explain the chattel slavery again? Yeah, chattel slavery is when a person is property.

[00:14:45]>> [clears throat] >> Yeah, people are kept as property. It It's basically comes from the word for capital or like money. Um and in some translations of the verse that we just had you read, the Exodus 21 verses, it says like instead of property, it says "For they are his money."

[00:15:01]Um because they were treated as a form of capital.

[00:15:05]Okay. Okay.

[00:15:11]So, my problem is why why does the claim the Christian God is of it I'm sorry. The Christian God is evil.

[00:15:21]Why does that count if there's a large majority of people that don't think that the Christian God is evil?

[00:15:30]But morality is only subjective.

[00:15:36]Hang on a sec.

[00:15:38]Yeah, we lost your camera.

[00:15:42]Mine?

[00:15:43]No, uh robots.

[00:15:46]Oh.

[00:15:48]It's weird.

[00:15:53]Um try restarting your webcam.

[00:15:59]Oh.

[00:16:01]Uh I'm here. Hold on.

[00:16:06]Who is this?

[00:16:08]I'm here. I don't know what just happened. Um >> It swapped us around.

[00:16:15]Um >> Until to answer your question, Hayden, um Oh, did we lose him?

[00:16:22]No, it just we swapped pronouns.

[00:16:24]>> I was just waiting for them.

[00:16:26]>> [laughter] >> Let me reorder us.

[00:16:29]Yeah.

[00:16:32]All right. Um Hayden, could you repeat your question?

[00:16:38]Oh, so >> I get it right. I was I was asking, um the claim that the Christian God is evil.

[00:16:45]Why is that a valid claim if there's a large majority of Christians that agree that the Christian God is not evil?

[00:16:52]Is it just >> a lot of them don't read their book and don't know that he endorses slavery and a lot of them also don't understand that an all-knowing, all-powerful God is also all responsible because they have a bunch of thought-terminating clichés and pretzel logic to get them out of it.

[00:17:12]Well, I wouldn't say he's all responsible.

[00:17:14]He's not responsible for our individual decisions.

[00:17:18]Is he all-knowing and all-powerful?

[00:17:20]Yes.

[00:17:21]Then he knows absolutely every single thing that will ever will happen, ever has happened, and he set it all in motion deliberately on purpose knowing every single consequence of every single thing. So, yes, he is absolutely all responsible.

[00:17:35]That still doesn't make him all responsible. Just because he knows that something is going to happen, who's to say that he has a choice in the matter?

[00:17:42]>> made it happen fully knowing the consequences. That's called being responsible.

[00:17:47]Well, do you believe in free will?

[00:17:51]Does God know exactly everything that I'm going to do with my free will?

[00:17:56]Yes.

[00:17:58]And he made me anyway. Therefore, he is responsible for every single thing that anybody does with their free will.

[00:18:05]Well, it wouldn't be free will if he just didn't make people because he didn't like what they did.

[00:18:09]Well, let me let me ask you this.

[00:18:11]Um did God create the universe? Hello?

[00:18:17]Oh, can you hear me?

[00:18:21]Short Oh, don't tell me you can't hear me now.

[00:18:25]>> Can you hear me, Muffy?

[00:18:27]I can hear you.

[00:18:30]Hayden >> Hayden, did you lose him?

[00:18:31]>> Hello?

[00:18:32]Hello?

[00:18:33]>> there?

[00:18:34]You hear me?

[00:18:34]>> Hello?

[00:18:35]Yeah, I can hear you. Oh, okay.

[00:18:37]I'm not sure what happened.

[00:18:38]>> Can you hear him?

[00:18:39]I hear him, but he can Hayden can't hear me.

[00:18:42]I can hear you.

[00:18:44]Okay.

[00:18:44]>> Oh, all right, we can all hear each other. Great. Um so, did God create the universe in a very specific way with the knowledge that it would result in every action that we would ever do?

[00:18:58]I mean, he claims to, yes.

[00:19:01]Could he have made the universe in a different way where our actions would have been different?

[00:19:08]Mm.

[00:19:10]If he did make it in a certain way so that we made a certain choice or had to make a certain choice.

[00:19:17]>> Okay.

[00:19:19]Oh, yeah.

[00:19:19]>> The question is could he?

[00:19:21]Technically, yes. But if he did, we wouldn't have free will.

[00:19:27]Well, anyway he creates the universe, he he knows every single outcome. So, technically he is creating it a certain way to influence every outcome. So, I would say under the Christian worldview there is no free will.

[00:19:40]Yeah. Also, quick thought exercise.

[00:19:42]Quick thought exercise here, Hayden.

[00:19:45]Yeah. Is it So, imagine a room. You've got 50 people and they're all offered the choice between cake and pie.

[00:19:55]Is it logically possible that every single person in that room chooses cake?

[00:20:04]Possible, yes.

[00:20:06]Okay.

[00:20:08]So, do people choose between good and evil?

[00:20:15]Well, I'm not fully understanding where you're going with this.

[00:20:20]It's simple.

[00:20:21]If God could create any possible universe and it's entirely possible that there's a universe where all of us choose good through our own free will, then God could create a universe where there is only good and there is free will.

[00:20:39]Yet he didn't make that universe.

[00:20:43]Well, I don't think that if there's only good, then there can even be free will.

[00:20:48]So, there's no free will.

[00:20:48]>> demonstrated that there can. Because God could create the universe, right? It's very unlikely that all 50 people in that room choose cake, but God could create the universe where all 50 of those people through their own free will choose cake.

[00:21:04]Wouldn't that be tampering with people's free will though? Okay, can I Creating any universe is equivalent to creating Creating the universe where 25 people choose cake and 25 people choose pie or 30 20 or whatever split you can think of. All of these are equally valid choices for God. He chooses which universe is going to play out exactly what way. So he could choose to create the universe where everyone chooses good of their own free will, but he didn't.

[00:21:35]He chose this one.

[00:21:36]>> We could take this analogy and overlay Christianity onto it.

[00:21:41]You know, if if you take the room and you have let's say two people in the room and there's cake and there's pie, but there's a piece of paper in front of the pie and you create these two people they have a choice between the cake or the pie, but they don't see the pie.

[00:22:02]And they're told don't remove that piece of paper because the pie is bad and the cake is good.

[00:22:10]If they choose to remove the piece of paper and they see the pie and they eat the pie Yeah, the garden doesn't really map onto this analogy very well.

[00:22:23]>> Yeah, that did not work whatsoever.

[00:22:26]Okay. But here's the thing.

[00:22:29]If God didn't want people to If God didn't want Adam and Eve to eat from the tree uh of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil, then he should have just not put the tree there.

[00:22:41]Well, if he put he If he didn't put the tree, they wouldn't have a chance to not love him.

[00:22:48]You know, they were created to love him.

[00:22:51]And to love, you have to choose to love.

[00:22:54]You can't love forcefully.

[00:22:57]That would be considered as bad as rape.

[00:23:05]>> So there still has to be a choice not to love. Yeah, what you just said was just really gross.

[00:23:12]Well, I agree. It's very gross. No, you saying that was really gross. Like the opinion that you have is nasty.

[00:23:19]Like straight up ew.

[00:23:22]>> Um God making a world without suffering is not equivalent to someone being raped.

[00:23:28]Um just using that as a comparison is just like really really gross.

[00:23:33]>> the problem is free will, right? If if anyone forces you to do something against your free will such as >> We've already established that you can have free will and God can create a universe where everyone has free will and chooses good every time. Yes, we have.

[00:23:52]I don't I don't agree because Can God create [clears throat] the universe where everyone uses their own free will to choose good?

[00:24:01]No, I don't I don't think that that would logically be possible.

[00:24:05]Because >> free will and a version of reality that forces you to choose one thing whether you want to or not >> force you. It doesn't force you. God is just creating it so that every person who happens to be born in this universe is the kind of person who will choose good.

[00:24:28]In a way, isn't he forcing us to not always choose good by deliberately creating a a universe in which we don't always choose good?

[00:24:36]No.

[00:24:37]Because the >> Okay, so it only counts when we do good things, not bad things.

[00:24:42]Well, it wouldn't be free will if you could only choose one thing.

[00:24:46]There would be no choice. It would only be I'm telling you, there's the universe where everybody can choose good or evil, the cake or the pie. Everybody can, they have the option, but they simply don't want the pie. They don't want the evil. They only want the cake. They only want the good. God could create that universe.

[00:25:09]It is entirely logically possible, but he created this one. This universe is exactly as likely as every other possible universe that you could think of under this framework. God could choose the one where eight where out of the 8.3 billion people on this planet, 4.21 billion of them are going to choose good, and the rest are going to choose evil. And you can slide that number from end to end on that distribution, and every single one of those configurations is going to be equally likely, equally valid for God, because they are all logically possible to exist. God chose this one instead of the one where 100% of people are using their free will to choose good.

[00:25:57]I still don't think that that logically makes sense. Okay, Hayden. Um we have guests who are waiting. I'm going to go ahead and let you go cuz it seems like we're just not going to get anywhere.

[00:26:06]>> Yeah.

[00:26:08]I'm sorry. I really can't make it simpler than that.

[00:26:11]All right. Well, I will be praying for you guys.

[00:26:14]Oh, gross.

[00:26:15]>> I'll think for you.

[00:26:19]Let's see.

[00:26:20]>> about when they say, "I'll pray for you," is that it's always like against consent, you know? It's always an anti-consent thing.

[00:26:27]Yeah. It's It's also just a like It's a show of power thing. Yeah. I'm going to go cast a spell for your free will to be overridden by God because I commanded him to with my spell.