Debate: Does God Exist? # 12

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00:00

Philosophers have, excuse me, you can read, there's books on it, but they put this to bed already and a lot of people just don't know the dog's dead and they're still going, well if I don't get up, it's gone, it doesn't work, sorry.

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Well, it's this la la land reasoning, you know, the chemical processes are going on presumably in your brain as you make those arguments.

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Now, mind is not a thing, mind is a process, like fire is a process, that's what mind is.

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It works on chemicals, that's the nature of life, sorry, get used to it,

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I didn't make the facts. But because that's the way it is does not mean that we can't attempt to rely on it.

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We have changed our stances many, many times, look at the history of religion and what has been considered good and what has been considered bad in the past.

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It's a remarkable difference and then once some enlightened humanist persuades society to change away from slavery, away from all sorts of barbarous things, then the religious start taking credit for it.

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It's amazing. Next question. My question is for Edwin.

01:21

I wanted to ask you a question about historically, I guess you would agree that Isaiah, the

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Hebrew book in the Bible or whatever came before Sir Isaac Newton. And earlier you were discussing how

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God said I create light and darkness and Moses said in Genesis in the beginning

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God created, God said let there be light. And later

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Jesus said I am the light and I just thought it was kind of coincidental that so many places like in that book of Isaiah you mentioned that God said that, or Isaiah said that he was prophesying of Jesus and said that seven,

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Jesus was the seven spirits of God would rest on Jesus. And all throughout the Bible, you know, seven was an important number in the beginning, the middle and the end.

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And I just was wondering, do you feel that logically it is a coincidence that Sir Isaac Newton, when he split the spectrum of white light into seven colors to spite

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Rene Descartes and the Catholic Church on their views of how the nature of light worked, that that was actually a coincidence that God said that his son would be seven and that, you know, hundreds of years later it was discovered that it was seven by science, which has evolved.

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Okay, seven is archetypically a kind of magic number, based on the stars, astrology, all kinds of things.

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A lot of complex reasons, but let's discuss the idea of prophecy is what you're really talking about.

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There are no prophecies anywhere in the

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Bible. The Bible in Isaiah says his name shall be called

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Emmanuel, God with us. Well, his name was not called Emmanuel, his name was called

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Jesus. You know, and if Emmanuel means God with us, that's all well and good, but his name was not called

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Emmanuel, it was called Jesus. Now, if you want a real prophecy, a prophecy might say something like on January 3rd,

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December 25th, the year zero or one, at 666 Stable Avenue in Bethlehem, Judea, a baby will be born at 357, there'll be angels and that sort of thing.

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That'd be a prophecy, but that's not what you get. You get all these vague things like the prophecies of Nostradamus and all kinds of other things that if you want to be in La La Land thinking, you can think maybe those are prophecies.

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Also, while I'm on this, let me inform you that Isaiah and all of the other books, the

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Pentateuch, the books were probably written not at the time that they refer to, which would be about 1200 or so BCE, but really at around the 7th century before the

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Common Era, they were all written down. How do we know that? You don't know this probably and I'm going to tell you.

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The Achilles heel of the authenticity of the Bible is camels. Camels, you know, one or two humped camels.

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It speaks of the patriarchs having camels, Lot, Jacob, and Isaac having herds of camels.

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The camel was not introduced to that part of the world until about 500 years later.

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This is known by very valid archaeological evidence, paleontological evidence, and there are no camels in Egyptian tomb paintings who painted over a period of 3 ,000 years every extant animal on earth and mummified most of them.

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No camels. That shows that it was written at a later time.

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If you're around living in tents in the desert and you see people with camels, you may not know they were introduced to your area 100 years.

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You would have logically thought they were there all along. So when you make up a story about origins of myth, you put in camels 500 years before they were there.

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So you're saying that the coincidence is a prophecy? It's not even an accurate statement because there are an awful lot more colors in a spectrum than seven.

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Well, there are seven distinct frequencies. There are lots of coincidences in life.

05:51

Thank you for your question. Quick response and we'll move on. It might be because there are seven stars in the

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Pleiades and the ancient Greek and Egyptian gods are correct. Makes just as much sense.

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The word camel is an English word and we have to look at the Hebrew and see what it was originally intended to be.

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And I would not judge a book or a writing to be inaccurate because of a translation into a contemporary word.

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So it wouldn't necessitate that. As far as not prophesying the Bible, let me read you guys something. You tell me what it is very quickly.

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I won't tell you where it is until afterwards. Many bulls have surrounded me, strong bulls of Bastion have encircled me.

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They open wide, their mouths at me. I'm poured out like water. All my bones are disjointed.

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My heart is like wax, melted within me. My strength is dried up like a pot shirt. My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth.

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You put me in the dust of death. Dogs have surrounded me. Goes on. I can count all my bones. That just means they're not broken.

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People look and stare at me. They divide my garments among themselves and they cast lots from my clothing.

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Now, this talks about hands and feet being pierced. It talks about clothing being divided up.

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What do you think it is? It could be all kinds of things. What do you think it is?

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Sounds like somebody got beaten up by some thugs in the street. Psalm 22, written 1 ,000 years B .C., 400 years before crucifixion was invented by the

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Phoenicians. Now, how do you count for that? Where does it say crucifixion in there? Crucifixion.

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I can count all my bones. They pierce my hands and my feet. They divide their garments among them. How do they count their bones?

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It doesn't say. There's nothing in the Bible about counting anybody's bones. And it's written 1 ,000 years B .C. What else is there?

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Next question. This is to Edmund. Yes, thank you. I believe it was Aristotle that said it's the mark of an intelligent man who can entertain an idea without accepting it.

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We can entertain the possibility of a God. I'm sure you can. It's a possibility. Absolutely.

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I've never denied that. What's the probability, then, that we came from an explosion, which came from nothing, and through a series of freak random accidents produced structured, ordered information called

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DNA that's inherent to life, or there was an encoder, a designer, and an engineer for all these sophisticated systems that keep us alive?

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Okay, just because somebody can't explain something doesn't mean there's a

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God. What's more probable is my question. It was an accident or it was intended? I think that's a meaningless question.

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It could be either one. You know, I have never said that there is not a

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God. There's just no proof of it. It is perfectly, logically, equally consistent to say that an uncreated creator created things is to say that things came out of what we seem to be nothingness.

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What is the difference? Why do you need a deity or something?

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Nobody really knows, and the trick is to live with uncertainty, but because people don't know, they want absolute answers, and therefore they invent religions that priests can use to control them.

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It may be that religion was invented when the first, or the priesthood was invented when the first con artist met the first fool.

09:25

Zachary, thank you so much for having us. It's been a pleasure, and I assume that you ignore the thing in Corinthians that says it's a shame for a man to have long hair, but never mind.

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You never can tell him. I think we have one more question after me. Is that okay if she goes?

09:40

Yeah, Nick. Okay. My question is going to Edwin Kagan.

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Two -part question. The first part has a yes or no answer, and that is a little simpler than the last guy that was just here, but kind of the same question.

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Can rain on rock for a long period of time, say millions and billions of years, result in Mount Everest?

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I don't have the slightest idea. Well, do you think it's probable that rain can make those faces that resemble the presidents, the four presidents?

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Oh, this is the Mount Rushmore thing, right? If it rained, it can't accidentally create the presence on Mount Rushmore.

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Isn't that where you're getting to, Zach? Right. Okay, go on. Finish it out. So do you think if you're saying that that's impossible, it's just because it is, you can't get that over rain on rock for millions of years?

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Well, it's been said that an infinite number of monkeys and an infinite number of typewriters, one might write King Lear, so I don't know what could happen.

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So my question, my main question is, the second part of it is, do you think that those people that those faces represent, can they be the result of rain on rocks over long periods of time?