Debate Teacher Reacts: Inspiring Philosophy vs. Aron Ra

Wise Disciple

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How is it not dangerous? I think at this point, raw is

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Bill Murray and groundhogs day. And he's just doing the same thing over and over and over again.

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Phil, what is up everybody?

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Welcome back to another debate. Teacher reacts. It's been a few weeks and yeah, sure.

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Yeah. Let's yes, please give yourselves a hand. That's right.

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It's been a few weeks. And as you know, absence makes the heart grow fonder. What can I tell you? Well, anyway, if you are brand new to this particular video and or series, my name is

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Nate. I welcome you to this channel. Uh, we are wise disciple. It's a Christian apologetics ministry dedicated to effectively sharing the

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Christian faith in today's culture. But before I jumped into ministry a hundred percent,

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I actually taught debate at the public high school level. And so what I do with these videos is

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I draw from my background in teaching debate in order to find out who was the better debater. Now, spoiler alert, sometimes the

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Christians win and sometimes the Christians lose. Okay. So it really does boil down to, in my opinion, uh, the arguments, the tactics and the strategy in this particular video, we're gonna be looking at inspiring philosophy versus Aaron raw.

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And, uh, this debate took place in 2019 at what is called the Bible and beer consortium.

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Where is this place? They're, they're, they're doing some stuff down there.

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That's a, that's pretty funny. Well, anyway, as you know, uh, crossfire and we'll cross examination is where it's at.

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In my opinion. Uh, this is where debaters can quickly shine or stink really badly.

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Uh, and so thankfully they set aside in this particular debate, 30 minutes for crossfire, Aaron rockets, 15 minutes, inspiring philosophy gets 15 minutes.

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So let's go there right now. Yeah. Uh -huh.

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I like that. All right. So what I got out of your presentation was that the best that you could offer was a placebo effect that if somebody had this belief that necessary, that having the belief wouldn't necessarily harm them, which

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I have huge issues with. But we know that, uh, the

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Christianity, obviously by my presentation doesn't show that, that, that prevents Christians from behaving badly that clearly that has failed.

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Right. And there's nothing about the value of truth in the belief, right? There's no, there's like, there doesn't have to be any validity yet at all.

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This is really not a big deal in small doses because you know, these kinds of debates are more informal.

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They're not formal, like, you know, public forum, Lincoln Douglas policy debates kind of a thing, but you should understand in true cross examination, there are no speeches.

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Okay. You're not supposed to review your opening statement because you already made your opening statement before.

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You're supposed to ask your opponent leading questions to identify errors in their presentation.

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All right, that's it. I hope Ra gets to a question really soon, which is a huge issue for me.

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I will have to wonder, how is it not dangerous to believe in the concept of a scapegoat or original sin or a global flood that we know never happened?

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Any of that, how is that not dangerous? Well, you'd have to show studies showing those specific beliefs actually cause these dangerous effects.

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I just can't go, Oh, well, your interpretation is enough to show that. I don't know what else to do. I want to go off on what the science says.

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Okay. And of course I do too. I mean, we, and, um, uh, Daniel Dennett, thank you.

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Uh, Daniel Dennett is running the, um, I think maybe it's his wife, Linda La Scola, that's running the clergy project.

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Are you familiar with it? Uh, vaguely. You should probably. Okay. So this is, this is where pastors who have spent their lives making a living as pastors realize that they don't believe their own nonsense anymore.

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And one of the trends that was recognized from that was that they tend to be less when they realize that they no longer believe they come out of belief.

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The trend is that they, they no longer are as judgmental. There are much more tolerant. They're much more liberal.

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They changed the way that they vote. They no longer hate gays, for example. Yeah. So, so how does, uh, how does, um,

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I'm trying to formulate this, this question on the fly. How does believing things that are not evidently true, which is the basis of faith, not dangerous.

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Okay. There are so many more specific questions an interlocutor could ask in cross exam.

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I mean, just try any particular contention that your opponent made and focus on those things.

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He's asked now three different times the same question, by the way, it appears that raw didn't flow.

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I P's inspiring philosophies, opening statement. Remember good debaters flow, a debate and flow is just a, it's a form of note taking by it's like a shorthand wherein you keep track of contentions of arguments made by your opponent so that you can challenge those particular things in cross examination.

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And in other segments of the debate, it looks like raw, he didn't take notes or I don't know.

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He's just not, he doesn't want to use his notes. I don't know what he's doing right now. And he's asked the same question three times, you know, we should do, maybe this should be a drinking game.

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Okay. Just juice though. I need to keep track of how many times he asks this particular same question.

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I don't, I can't psychoanalyze all those pastors. I would need to have a study done. Are they extrinsically religious?

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Are they Christian fundamentalists? I'm sorry. Religious fundamentalists is a term used in the studies. Are they intrinsic? Just saying, look, this is the way it perceives to me, or this is the way it perceives the dentist's wife is not enough to actually show that's what's happening.

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Correlation is not causation. I need to see actual data that intrinsic religiosity increases a bad ethical behavior or lowers intelligence or increases these bad beliefs.

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You think now, how is it not dangerous given that you have to believe this no matter what? Okay. Well, you cited a couple of things in there, a, your interpretation a and your experiences is what you see.

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I would just apply is your experience somehow evidence I need to see actual data, what you think this interpretation, as I noted in my presentation causes is a interpreted that way.

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So you take this Bible verse and you say, well, it means this. And then all Christians also accept this and says dangerous effects. All those are leaps in logic.

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You got to show me your interpretation is the only necessary reading. And then you got to show that most Christians agree with you on this.

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And that has dangerous effects when studied. Well, that's right. That's right. Look, raw has one question. He's going to keep asking this question over and over and over again.

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Again, there were so many things that IP said in his opening statement, by the way, you should definitely take a look at the fuller debate if you have not already.

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And I'll have the link in the notes below. IP is doing a really great job laying a framework to establish a criteria for the audience to judge the debate.

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He's absolutely right. Every step that he lists for raw is absolutely necessary in order for raw to have landed some kind of blow against IP's position in this debate.

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Raw hasn't done that yet. And I'm not sure what he's waiting for. Dan Barker, for example, who was a missionary for many years, uh, you've been traveling internationally, you know, bringing the word of God and so forth.

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He was the one that wrote that, that, that faith is a cop -out that if you have to believe something on faith, it means that you, you did, it's not based on evidence.

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Right. So we've gotten quotes like this from many people who used to believe once they realized how vacuous that actually is.

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And every Christian I've ever debated this with tells me that I'm misdefining faith. And that's why I wouldn't say, well, okay, well, what is the evidence?

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The scientific evidence that, that prompted you to believe was you do never once has any of them ever produced a thing except that question doesn't give you a definition of faith.

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It's a loaded question that presupposes your assumption that the only evidence that counts is scientific, which means that this whole exercise is question begging.

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That's probably why he hasn't gotten a response that he thinks is satisfactory. So where is the, where is the positive attribute since there's no evident truth to the belief system?

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And this goes back to the first question I asked you in this interrogation, where is, where is the value of truth in the belief system?

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Okay. Well, it sounds like it's quite well. And, and yeah, he's going to say it's question begging. Cause it is what raw has done here.

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Instead of going to Christian authorial texts to define faith the way that Christians do. Right.

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Because all you have to do, if you really wanted to see how scientists define the word science, we'll just go to a scientific text that all scientists use as authority.

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Same thing here. Instead of going to the Bible to define faith, raw decides to define faith himself. You know, faith is a belief that is not based on evidence.

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That's why he thinks Christians are idiots. Raw is his own problem here. You're begging, you're assuming, you know, your standard of evidence, you're assuming that somehow that your worldview is already true.

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That's not the debate tonight. The debate is, is Christianity dangerous? So even if Christianity is wrong, that doesn't necessarily mean it manifests in dangerous ways.

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It's not wrong to believe in something that is not evidently true. I didn't say that. So okay, now raw is asking something a little interesting.

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So let's see what IP has to say about that. Are you saying that to tell me yes or no, is that say the question again?

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Is it wrong to believe in something that is not evidently true? Define evidently, because that sounds like an evidence supported by evidence.

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See, I can't believe something unless it is supported by evidence. Right. I would agree. I wouldn't believe something unless I'm convinced by it.

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Right. And then there has to be evidence to convince me. I can't take because I said so, or because you'll go to hell if you don't believe this.

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I would agree. Okay. So with create with Christianity, you are required to believe in a handful of things, just a small number of things that are not supported by any evidence at all.

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And that's the thing that you're being judged for. So how is that not dangerous? Especially when it comes to your evaluation or your analysis of data, if you're not allowed to consider data, you're only allowed to believe what you're told on faith, a couple of things there.

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Oh, it doesn't say we're not allowed to consider data. I don't see a verse indicating that. And again,

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I would send this as sort of question making. You're assuming it's already false. Therefore, it's bad. Therefore, it's dangerous. That's not the debate we're having tonight.

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If it's true or not, we're having a debate. Is it dangerous? So, for example, Ptolemaic astronomy, we both reject.

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It's a bad argument, but it was useful for navigation. So something can be pragmatic and not true. Something is true and not pragmatic.

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Yeah, that's what the debate I was understanding we were having tonight. That's why I focused on the actual studies. I didn't present arguments for Christianity.

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If you don't have that debate, I'm sure James would like to host it in the back. Yeah, I'm not interested in a debate promoting

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Christianity either, but heresy, apostasy, and blasphemy, right?

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These are all variations from what you've been told to believe. If you deviate from that or if you don't buy it at all, these are all damnable, right?

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These are capital crimes for which in many countries and throughout most of history, you could be murdered if you subscribe to any one of them.

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Right. But in the text that all Christians accept as authoritative, which is the

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Bible, where does Jesus teach that Christians must kill heretics? I mean, either Ra is not bringing up the fact, because what he's doing is he's alluding to Catholic history, which is grotesque, and everyone should be offended by that, but Protestants were offended by that, okay?

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I mean, either Ra is not bringing up the fact that Protestants have a huge problem with Catholic church history because of the things that happened in the past, or he's just ignorant of church history.

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I don't know what's going on here. If you had a different opinion or a different interpretation, that's heresy, right?

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If you didn't believe it at all, if you no longer believed it, that was apostasy. And if you decided, you know what?

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I don't buy this anymore. That's blasphemy. You can be killed for any of those. How is that not dangerous?

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I never said it wasn't, but I want to see that intrinsic religiosity is directly causing it. If you want to argue that Christianity is not dangerous, then how is it not dangerous?

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You have a required belief system, and I can go through a list of other things, but you said that none of my examples of what

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Christianity leading to, the teachings of Christianity, the scriptures implying what believers have to do if they believe in the scriptures, you discounted all those because that's just bad people doing bad things.

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But if you have the belief system, what about that is not dangerous? Okay. Well, I didn't just discount it.

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I gave studies showing that the correlations just aren't there. And the causation is not just there. No, you said that all of the people that I had listed, all of the atrocities that have gone down in the name of Christ by Christian leaders and by meaning main denominations and so forth, we're all just, just Christians acting badly.

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At this point, raw is a one trick pony. He's got one question and he just keeps hitting that hammer on the nail.

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The problem is, uh, IP made a positive case. You got to go back and take a look at his opening statement.

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He showed studies. He explained how these studies support his contention. The Christianity is not actually dangerous.

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Raw has not asked anything about, about anything specifically related to IP's case.

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I mean, this is, this is really a huge wasted opportunity in crossfire. And I would say right now, because IP is handling himself very well, that IP has the advantage in crossfire right now.

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So what's the question? Okay. How is it not dangerous to be? All right. Drink.

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I think at this point, raw is Bill Murray in groundhog's day, and he's just doing the same thing over and over and over again.

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Phil, be required to believe something. Even when the evidence says otherwise,

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I would say that's question begging. You're assuming the evidence doesn't lead to Christianity. This is what my whole channel is for, is showing the evidence.

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Now, even if that is false, that doesn't show that it is dangerous. The numerous studies done don't show those results.

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So I don't know where you're getting this again. We're not, we're not getting to the truth of the value of the belief. Okay. You're saying that you have the placebo effect that, that if, and we're just assuming that your studies are true, because the thing that I found interesting about you was that the studies

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I cite show exactly the same, the opposite of the studies that you cite. And the other studies that I didn't cite also show the opposite of what you said.

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What I've read a lot of studies. You cite, like you said, the one on child abuse, that was a self -reported measure of 111 inmates.

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It didn't calculate any sort of data. It didn't have them perform any tests. It didn't, it was a study of 111 inmates that didn't require any data.

14:43

No, it was a survey. Basically. I looked at it. Oops. I saw you cited it in some of your videos, the video.

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So how is that not data? I mean, I'm sorry. That's, that's, that's not even in the line of question measure. Okay. So where is the value?

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Oh my goodness. Right. Because look, self -reported data is in a survey style study. It tends to be biased.

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I mean, this is well known, you know, participants often exaggerate information. They, they will attune their answers to, to make themselves look better.

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Um, what you need in studies are more objective measures, people, you know, studying other groups that don't entail somebody taking a survey about themselves and kudos to IP here for doing his homework.

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He went and actually studied the evidence that raw provided for his own, uh, support.

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And now he's using it against him. This is a huge blow against Ron is credibility, whether raw realizes it or not, if you're going to be, if you're going to be damned on, on what you believe.

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And so we're now we're controlling what people think and the 10 commandments, I'm sure you will agree is all about controlling what people think, because you are going to be damned over, you know, whether you believe something.

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I mean, it doesn't, you know, it doesn't, it doesn't matter what you believe if you're talking to people, but God, God's going to damn you over what you believe, not whether you're a good person or a bad person.

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So that has nothing to do with it. It has nothing to do with our morality. And most people object to the biblical morality.

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Anyway, they would not live out what the Bible says that they're supposed to do. So how is Christianity not dangerous?

16:09

If you're following it to the letter, then you're a fundamentalist and the fundamentalists are the most dangerous form of Christians, right?

16:15

That's not how religious fundamentalism is defined in these studies. It's actually different than intrinsic religiosity. It's defined more as like a radical view.

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You're specifically using a religion for a lot of political type ideas of response to modernism. That's why they distinguish it from between intrinsic religiosity or Christian orthodoxy.

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So these are actually distinct measures. So for example, in the studies, prejudice isn't defined even how we would define it in like the media.

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It's actually a less harsh term. You don't look for terms like discriminatory attitudes from our, the more harsh type thing.

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So let's not commit an etymological fallacy. Fundamentalism doesn't mean you hold to the fundamentals of a religion. That's a cultural term that more or less remains these radicals over there.

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It, we can't just define things based on word parts. We're going to find out actually is defined in psychology or in the dictionary even, and fundamentalism in society does not mean

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I hold to all the fundamentals of Christianity. It's a radical type view that has generally been associated with that.

17:07

One of the strategies that you need going into any debate is you need to know your opponent. Okay. Because you're not just debating the topic.

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You're debating the man or the woman. Okay. And if this person is well -established, uh, like Aaron Raw, I imagine is, well, then he has previous debates and things that he said that you can study.

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This really will take you a far distance in terms of winning against your opponent if you study them.

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IP clearly has done this and it really has given him a big advantage. Interpretation.

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Let's go to IP. I got questions for you. Let's do it. All right. Do you have any scholars that specialize in Koine Greek to say pistis means denying evidence or reason?

17:49

Scholars who say that, that say again, pistis, the Greek word we translate as faith means denying evidence or reason, and we have demonstrations of that.

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Do we have any scholars that say this is how it's defined? I have no idea if we have scholars that say that we, well, I know that we have missionaries who say that that is what it is that we have.

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Well, I'm sorry. Are they the experts though? I don't know. Okay. Fair enough. But as, as I said, what

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I've demonstrated myself is whenever I've talked about, okay, so your, your faith is based on arguments from authority or your faith is based on a subjective impression, but it's, it's based on anything but scientific evidence.

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Cause that's the one thing we never have that supports faith. And I said, well, you're wrong. We have that. Okay. Well, what is your scientific evidence?

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Never once has a Christian ever given that again, this is a change of subject and Ra has made himself now the dictionary of faith, you know, not the authoritative text where Christian faith is defined, which is the

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Bible. Um, Ra is the, the one who defines it, but when he does that, uh,

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Ra fails to provide support in this regard. And so IP has the advantage. He's pushing pretty hard.

18:56

This is good. Okay. Uh, how is the word pistis defined in Aristotle, Antiphon, Diodorus, Plato, have you looked into that at all?

19:03

No, I haven't looked into how Aristotle. Okay. So then have you done a good analysis of what the word actually means in the new

19:10

Testament then, if you don't actually look at the Greek word, right? I've yeah. In the context of the new Testament. Yes.

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How so? No, because it would say Jesus tells his followers that if you had the faith of the mustard seed, that you could tell that mountain to go jump into the sea.

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And it would be done. You would be able to do greater things than I have done if you had any faith at all, but then of course it's an impossible standard, but Jesus is not defining faith at that point.

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Because anytime they can't make, they can't, anytime they can't tell the mountain to jump into the ocean and it jumps into the ocean is because they didn't have enough faith.

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And so this is an impossible marker that they have to live up to, but it still means that they're supposed to believe that.

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And they're supposed to be absolutely convinced of it. And again, it's not about evidence. Blessed is he who has not seen and yet believed.

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Uh, does Jesus always, is he always literal? No. Yeah, exactly.

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So now we have the argument of it's medical, it's metaphorical, except when it's literal and every time you get a challenge on it, well then it's not literal there.

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It's metaphorical. It's called hermeneutics. Another question. Um, so if I was a medical doctor and I told you, you had cancer and you said, well,

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I don't feel any different. I don't look like I have cancer. And I said, walk by faith or trust in the medical advice, not by what you see.

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Would that mean you were denying evidence? If you took, have you put your faith in my medical advice? Don't confuse faith with trust.

20:36

It's an equivocation that is particularly annoying to me because faith means a belief that is not based on evidence and it's does not mean trust.

20:43

We have to, we have two contexts in the dictionary. We have one that is just a synonym of trust. And I don't use that because I don't want to confuse people.

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And then we have the religious context, which is a belief. He goes to the dictionary where the dictionary says that faith is trust, but then he doesn't want to use that particular definition.

20:58

So it's an equivocation. Did he hear himself when he said that? That is not based on evidence. Okay. So where does it define that way?

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And, and even, even, uh, I can't remember the names of that right off the top of my head, uh,

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Martin Luther, for example, went on and on about how reason and faith were at odds with each other.

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So yeah, there's a consistent theme that we don't have scientific evidence that backs up faith.

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You just believe it because you're told to was because you want to, but not because it is not because it is ended to indicate it to you in such a degree that you had to change your mind, even if you didn't want it.

21:32

So going back to my question though, what's that? If I told you going back to my question, if I just told you walk by faith in the medical device, not by what you see, would that mean you were denying evidence?

21:42

If you did, I was denying a claim. Okay. So, so I went and got a second and then a third opinion.

21:49

But does that mean that walk by faith, not by sight means you're denying evidence though, based on that logic.

21:54

No, I'm looking for evidence. I have a claim. I want to check the claim. So I'm getting a second opinion.

22:01

If there, if there's an association there, and I think the two might be working together, I had to go to an independent source who can then show me the data independently of either of the other two to show that, yeah, this is actually the thing.

22:13

Okay. Well, I guess you got me. So you would agree that walking by faith, not by sight does not mean rejecting evidence.

22:18

No, I absolutely would not agree with that. I would completely oppose that. But if I say, just add walk by faith in the medical device, not by what you see, then all of a sudden it just means trust.

22:27

What? I suspect I know what IP is trying to do here. And it goes back to the authority of a person's word.

22:35

If they prove themselves authoritative with their word, then their word then becomes a form of evidence, um, which we get into like eyewitness testimony and stuff in court cases.

22:44

But clearly this is going over Ross head, which is a bad indicator.

22:51

If it's going over Ross head, it might be going over a lot of people in the audience's head as well.

22:56

I wouldn't have ridden this horse for so long. I would have probably tried to either make the point another way, or I would have just gone a completely different direction.

23:04

So hopefully IP can move on and try a different question. Cause I don't think this is really landing. He's not asking me to have trust in the evidence that he can produce.

23:11

If he has evidence that I don't need faith, I can trust, not faith, trust in the evidence produced faith.

23:18

If I'm feeling extra skeptical, I will go to other sources, but I will not have faith slash trust until I can show verification and I don't call trust faith.

23:29

Yeah. But the dictionary calls it that. And so you would need some justification being some guy that just then says, well, this is the, this is the definition that should be used is a belief that is not based on evidence.

23:43

Trust is what I have in evidence. Okay. Well, I don't accept that definition of faith and I don't, then we can talk for a long time about the evidence that didn't drive you to your current conclusion.

23:53

Okay. I'm not sure what you mean by that. Every time I've ever talked to a Christian about what scientific evidence led them to their conclusion, they haven't been able to produce any, you will be no different.

24:03

Okay. Well, that's kind of begging the question, assuming basically a dogmatic, we're going to have a long conversation.

24:08

We've both got YouTube channels. We can arrange this, but you won't have it. It's kind of interesting. There was a study that came out called our atheist on dogmatic and then self reported measures.

24:17

They noted that the atheist claim they were less dogmatic, but when actual studies were done, they were quite biased and closed minded to other beliefs.

24:23

Well, I am not biased and you can test that. Well, I will go on the studies, not your word.

24:29

I'm going on probability. Is your personal experience? I spent 20 years as an atheist activist. I've had this exact argument every week for the last 20 years.

24:38

Not once has it varied. I'm sticking with the probability that you're not going to vary from that either.

24:44

I got a question about some of the studies you said. Okay. So one of the studies you did mention was a paper by Gregory Paul said based on other ones.

24:50

Well, not really. He did a cross. He basically did a univariate analysis, visual inspection, fails, normal probability test.

24:57

And at best, it's one study. Do you think that would counter a meta analysis that incorporates 60 studies?

25:03

I wouldn't say that one study counters multiple studies. No, I wouldn't say that. Okay. So then do you have any evidence in the counters?

25:11

The evidence I presented that intrinsic religiosity leads to like harmful effects. I think I actually do such as what the nations that we know of to be more secular now have higher rates of human rights.

25:22

Whereas the more fundamentalist states, the more invested in their religious or their religiosity are worse.

25:28

And this is this actually is demonstrably true, even in areas of the United States. Look at Mississippi, pull out the study, you know, because now it's time to cite the study.

25:38

If you claim to have studies, this is the time to pull them out and name them the studies in their authors.

25:44

Okay. But can you do that? Florida, right? Those are the only three countries that Texas can point to and say, ha ha.

25:51

You mean States, right? Yeah, you're right. I'm at States. So, but what about when we look in those actual people in them, in those states or in those countries, and it shows their intrinsic religiosity is associated with benefit outcomes.

26:04

Could it be maybe just looking at cross state data is just correlation, not causation. What is the possible benefit of believing something that isn't evidently true?

26:13

Again, you're assuming it's not true. I'm assuming it's not evidently true, but it's not even assuming. I know that it's not evidently true.

26:20

What is the benefit of believing? Okay. You notice he's not answering the question. Okay. Again, you're just question making.

26:25

You're assuming it's not true, and therefore it's bad. I said not evidently true because after 20 years of research,

26:31

I've never seen evidence. You don't have it that we're done. Is your personal experience evidence against the peer reviewed studies that we're talking about probabilities against what you're arguing?

26:42

Yes. So your personal experience with religious people. It's better than the studies I cited.

26:47

So 20 years of not gotten a single Christian to provide scientific evidence for their belief system, and neither can you verifies.

26:57

Yes, you're sticking with the probability. Okay. So your personal experience again, I just want to make sure where is better than the studies

27:03

I've presented that intrinsic religiosity is bad. This is a very foolish strategy here.

27:10

And now raw has done this a few times. He has made himself an expert over and above empirical studies that clearly do not support his contention, and he has no expertise to speak of in these particular areas.

27:25

This is very, very foolish. What this means is that you lose these challenges in cross examination.

27:32

It's as simple as that. I mean, raw doesn't even realize that he just lost his queen and he's about to be made it.

27:38

It's a horrible debate strategy. You lose all credibility when you make yourself the center of the universe with regard to knowledge across different fields.

27:47

Even if you're right in this interpretation, that does not show Christianity is dangerous, though, because it's defying your ability to reason because you have to believe this and you can't counter it.

27:59

What study shows that intrinsic religiosity decreases rationality or analytical intelligence? I'm not aware that there's any study that says that intrinsic religiosity increases rationality.

28:09

I gave one. Okay. You cited one on the fly that I have not seen. So excuse me for not taking your word for it.

28:17

So in your debate. Okay. So in your debate with Ken Hovind in round two, part one at 738, you correctly pointed out that Ken Hovind doesn't understand evolution.

28:25

And then you said, and I quote, being in your career for this long, you have no excuse for not knowing this subject any better.

28:30

How long have you been an atheist activist? And you don't know a lot of these studies that I studied from like the 90s. I've been an atheist activist since before the study you're talking about came out.

28:38

Okay. So, and that's the one that you're citing. The moment that raw made himself an expert in what they're currently talking about.

28:45

IP was given the free reign to destroy his credibility. You ridiculed someone else for not knowing about things in their area of expertise.

28:53

And now you're guilty of the same thing. Look, whatever side of the fence you're on, on this particular topic, we should all agree here.

29:00

It's a horrible strategy to declare yourself to be an expert in an area that you're not.

29:05

If you do what raw is doing, it's not hard to embarrass you and weaken your credibility with the audience or with the judge.

29:12

If, if that's your strategy and look, here's the thing. Ross seems very intelligent, but he just shows no respect to other intelligent people that are doing work that he's completely unaware of.

29:24

Why? Probably because he's so committed to his particular stance. It's causing him to make these kinds of blunders.

29:30

And these are huge. I mean, these are devastating. All of the criminality that I have listed in my system, and I have a lot of lists here where I have a list of a lot of examples, all of this criminality and other sort of distortions, all of this madness and insanity that is based on people's interpretations of scripture.

29:47

This is large groups of Christian denominations and so forth. All of that is based on people acting badly or people misinterpreting scripture.

29:55

Where is there a value in believing in it at all? What data shows that their interpretations causes the bad behavior?

30:02

For example, 20 to 40 % of America's homeless youth were disavowed from their Christian parents because they identified as gay or trans.

30:10

How can we prevent this sort of family division and estrangement based on religious prejudice? For example, I can produce peer -reviewed studies that show 20 to 40 % of America's homeless youth are gay or trans, and that's why they're homeless because their parents were

30:23

Christian. Are you aware of a study called religion, religiosity and the attitudes towards homosexuality, a multi -analysis of 79 countries?

30:30

No, I'm not. Does that alter the fact of what I just said? Yeah, because for example, they say...

30:36

So you're saying that it's not 20 to 40 % of America's youth, nor for that reason?

30:42

I'm arguing there's no evidence there. Intrinsic religiosity is necessarily the cause. 20 to 40 % of people that are estranged from their

30:51

Christian families because they're gay or trans, and you're saying that that's not the reason?

30:56

What data shows it's their religion that causes it, not their misinterpretations or looking for an excuse to do something?

31:03

So this study I was talking about, they note these results on religion and religiosity are in line with a claim of Gordon Alport, who stated that the role of religion is paradoxical when dealing with homosexuals.

31:12

They even noted in communist and post -communist countries, an increase in religiosity led to a less strong rise in homonegativity.

31:19

So if the religiosity is causing these negative results, why is it not correlating with the data done in peer -reviewed literature?

31:26

Isn't it? It's not. There are some studies that do argue that, but they don't ever argue a causal factor.

31:32

I know I've looked. So I watched a few minutes of one of your other presentations.

31:38

Ra doesn't know that he's been cut and he's bleeding, okay? Intellectually, as an interlocutor, his opponent,

31:46

IP, by not only providing numerous solid studies and also citing these and explaining how they disconfirm

31:55

Ra in his particular stance on the debate, has basically pounded this man and his entire face is bleeding profusely.

32:04

And he just keeps going. It's amazing. It's as if he's not listening. Maybe he's just waiting for his turn to speak at this point so that he can just repeat his talking points.

32:13

I mean, Ra needs to deal with the actual evidence IP is citing here, but he's not.

32:19

And this is fatal for him in cross -examination. Wow. This debate was kind of over before it got started.

32:24

There was never really a moment where Ra got an advantage over IP. I mean, what he really wanted to do with his turn of crossfire was just to dangle one question around IP as if the repetitive nature of it had some kind of an effect or something.

32:39

And IP answered his questions particularly. Even at the point where IP started saying,

32:46

I know the studies that you're citing and here they are and here's why they fail. I mean, that was devastating.

32:52

And then IP turned around and asked very specific questions to Ra's contentions, but Ra never quite survived the questions that were being thrown at him.

32:59

And finally, this thing that Ra does where he basically makes himself the arbiter of definitions, the arbiter of certain things that he really has no expertise in.

33:12

That's, to me, the final nail in this coffin. Nobody should do this kind of a thing because you won't survive the debate.

33:19

You really won't. And that's what happened here. Inspiring Philosophy clearly won this debate, hands down.

33:25

And those are my thoughts. Look, if you want to tell me who you think won the debate, especially maybe zooming out and looking at the entire thing, then definitely do that.

33:33

Let me know in the comments below who you think won this debate. And of course, as always, I'm keeping a list of your suggestions.

33:39

If you have a suggestion for me in another debate video that I should do, definitely let me know as well.