Militant Atheist vs. Jeff Durbin at the Reason Rally

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00:00

that lens, so you don't know. And all the reasoning you're doing right now, you're appealing to a universe that's uniform and that can be studied and investigated, and yet you told me that you believe you're just stardust, there's no sovereign governance of the universe, so how are you making an appeal to uniformity when you don't know that the next ten seconds will be like the past?

00:19

Because you don't have, you have no certainty that the next ten minutes, next twenty minutes will be like the past.

00:25

Inoperability, the same physical laws that govern the last ten seconds will govern the next ten seconds. It's a gamble, really.

00:31

You don't know that it will be. Yes. It's a gamble. Actually, it would be great if you - And you believe that it gives you a solid foundation for science, that the future is a gamble?

00:37

No, it's not a gamble. Because as a Christian, I believe, I have a justification that satisfies the preconditions of intelligibility for the uniformity in nature.

00:46

Let me tell you what this Christianity is, besides being a doomsday fertility cult. Well that's okay though, because I'm stardust.

00:53

You are - You're stardust. Yeah. So doomsday cults and arrogance and nastiness really is meaningless though, isn't it, ultimately?

01:02

So now you're going to tell me I'm, after poking at me long enough, you've decided I'm arrogant.

01:08

No, no, no, no. Him, he's arrogant. He's arrogant. Not you. He is. You were bothered by his arrogance.

01:14

I'm saying, but he's stardust. I'm bothered by the fact that I'm a homosexual and have been being oppressed by jerks like that for as far back as I can remember.

01:25

So I get very angry when - I would want you to know, you're not going to get that kind of treatment from me. I'm going to love you. But just with that as a question, if you were stardust, why would it matter that someone's oppressing you?

01:35

Why would it matter that stardust is bumping into stardust? Who cares? You see, what I think you're showing is this.

01:41

I think you're showing that you, deep within you, you know you have the image of God that stands. You have value and worth.

01:46

And it is wrong for a man to oppress you and be nasty to you. That is wrong. I agree with you. But see,

01:52

I have a basis as a Christian to say that's wrong. You believe you're stardust. I believe I'm stardust and -

01:57

So what's wrong with stardust oppressing stardust? You're making questions out of -

02:07

Well, that's what you said you believe you are. And I don't believe that about you. I refuse to accept what you say about yourself.

02:13

After all these years of evolution, through our - That's a presupposition. But you believe ultimately that you're just matter.

02:20

Ultimately stardust. Yes. Okay. So here you would say that non -material things do not exist.

02:26

Non -material things do not exist. So what are you - So you're getting about this - Laws of logic. Laws of logic. This separable soul thing.

02:32

There's no evidence of it. We're not talking about souls. Laws of logic. Laws of logic. Are they material? They're a program running on the human mind.

02:41

So it's happening in your brain right now. There is a bunch of chemical reactions. So you're not even thinking right now.

02:46

You're just fizzing. I'm a state machine. Okay. So you're not - You can't help a thing to thought you are because your brain is just functioning that way.

02:54

You're fizzing atheistically. I'm fizzing Christian -theistically. And you're fizzing because the religions have -

03:00

I don't have to listen to you right now, though, because you're fizzing. Do chemical processes produce truth?

03:06

Yes. They do. Show me a chemical process - Well, they don't produce truth, but they can certainly analyze it.

03:13

Let me ask you this. Is truth matter? Is truth material? It's a state.

03:19

Okay. It's a state. Is there an absolute truth? A state of the mind machine. Is there an absolute truth?

03:28

There's a whole bunch of them, I would imagine. So there's no absolute truth. So we could have - I think he said he does believe in absolute truth.

03:34

Oh, you do? You do believe in absolute truth? Well, as long as we're going to define that as something rational.

03:40

Okay. Physics. Now we're on an important point. Rationality. Rationality would depend on laws of logic.

03:46

Being universal. Unchanging. In other words, rationality doesn't just exist in your mind.

03:54

It has to also be something that I'm holding to, and someone in Iceland is. Well, I would like to hold you to it, but as I was about to say, religion has acted on the gene pool to make people more and more susceptible -

04:08

They're just fizzing, though. It's stardust fizzing. Why are you bothered? As one bit of stardust that's fizzing, why are you bothered about what other bags of stardust are fizzing?

04:18

You said it's chemical reactions happening in the brain. You said you're stardust. Why are you worried about what's stardust?

04:24

See, I think, Wayne, you're showing that you have the image of God all over you because you're living like a Christian but denying God's existence.

04:30

Because there is no evidence of God. Again, you're - But I can tell what he is because I look in all the history books.

04:37

I can see the evolution of the belief in God. Well, I've already shown you that I reject that claim, and if you would study the actual sources yourself, you wouldn't make any connection between the story in the

04:46

Bible of the one and only, true and living, self -existing God who enters into his own creation to rescue the rebels.

04:53

There is nothing in history that's parallel to that. Nothing. Nothing in history. And so what

04:59

I would show you, what I would encourage you to see - Osiris, virgin birth. You even see -

05:04

All I would say to you is study the original Osiris and don't depend on what someone else tells you, it says.

05:11

Read it yourself and see if you can find parallels between the virgin birth of Christ that's predicted in Genesis and in Isaiah, hundreds and hundreds of years before Jesus comes, between a woman having a virgin birth and then a woman getting pregnant and giving birth to an elephant.

05:27

Tell me if that's a virgin birth narrative. It's just not, Wayne. And I would just say this to you -

05:33

But that's not the same story that I'm trying to compare. We can wrap this up with just this because I know you're here for this rally.

05:39

My contention respectfully to you is this, and I mean this with love, Wayne, is that you're not just stardust and you know it.

05:47

I do not know that. You know that there's more, well, that you're living as though you believe there is. You say you're stardust, but you're complaining about people hurting you, you're complaining about -

05:56

And hurting everyone else. They're stardust. And dragging humanity back into the primordial ooze.

06:02

Wayne, when you elevate stardust above other matter, you're internally inconsistent. What's this arbitrary decree you've made that this stardust is more important than this?

06:13

That's not a state machine. But the point is, what you're saying then is if it fizzes better, it's more important?

06:21

So if you get a bag of stardust that fizzes better than you, can he off you? I'm sure he will.

06:28

Okay, but would that be a good thing, a healthy thing you'd want him to do? As long as it didn't hurt.

06:34

So he can kill you as long as it doesn't hurt you? Well - I thought you were complaining a little bit ago about people oppressing you because you're homosexual.

06:42

Yeah, it gets tiresome. But why would it bother you? It's just stardust doing what stardust does in these conditions.

06:50

Well, because if they got control of the building on the other end of the mall here, that kind of person would put me in a concentration camp, subject -

07:05

I didn't even know that. Yeah, well, there's a lot of stuff that you don't know. Mormonism is a big aspect of our ministry.

07:12

We reach out to them a lot. But using your foundations, though, Wayne, I just don't understand why you care what Mormons are doing.

07:17

I don't see a difference between - My foundations, I have a justification for logic, science, and morality. They would claim the same thing.

07:24

Well, they borrow from the Bible, then they distort its message. It's internally inconsistent, and I would argue the same about you.

07:31

I mean that lovingly, of course. That you're internally inconsistent because you act like you're valuable, and I believe you are, by the way,

07:37

Wayne. You certainly are. But yet you say out of your mouth, I'm stardust, the universe is unguided, and all these things.

07:44

But then you stand on the same worldview I ultimately am, that you have value and dignity and meaning, that there's laws of logic we must all hold to.

07:52

But you see, in your worldview, Wayne, you shouldn't need to. You're stardust. Here's a collective bag of meaty protoplasm right here, all gathering to talk about reason, and Dan Barker agrees with you, by the way,

08:04

I interviewed him this week, that ultimately laws of logic is just what your brain is doing. So here you have chemical processes fizzing.

08:12

Who cares? Who cares? There's no truth being produced here. Sure there is.

08:17

And ultimately, if you believe what they say about yourself, then you don't have any value, or meaning, or dignity.

08:23

And I refuse to believe that about you, Wayne. I believe you do have value and dignity and meaning, and I believe that you show deep down that you know them.

08:31

Because you're living like a Christian. Actually, in a way, that's insulting, because in a lot of ways, if you just look at the essential right and wrong, the golden rule...

08:43

What's right and what's wrong with stardust? Then I behave a hell of a lot better than a lot of Christians out there.

08:51

Well, on a scale, and I'm hearing you, on a scale, here you're calling this better, but you've got two values.

08:58

Love people, treat them well, hate people, kill them. Why are you choosing one over the other as moral, as stardust?

09:07

Why have you arbitrarily chosen this is better over genocide? Why isn't genocide the happy, healthy thing to do?

09:16

Because it's the only way that humanity can go ahead. But who cares about humanity? Who cares about stardust producing more stardust?

09:22

It's complete waste for all the stuff that has happened, all the little rolls of the dice that have led us to where we're at today.

09:32

Stardust. And humanity is going to destroy itself and much everything else on the cool little planet that we're on.

09:40

So it doesn't really matter, ultimately, does it? Ultimately, everything adds up to zero, don't you know that? Right, see, and that is how you're not living, though.

09:48

You're not living like everything ultimately adds up to zero. You're living as though there's meaning and truth and goodness and beauty, and I agree with you.

09:54

But what I'm saying is that it shows that you know them. You know them. Absolutely not. Well, what

09:59

I'm saying is I'll believe that about you when you stop living according to his revelation. You're living like science and reason and ethics is important, and then you're denying it with your profession of faith and atheism.

10:12

I'm going to have to disagree with that statement. Well, I appreciate you being here and talking to me. Thank you, Wayne, very much. Can I just ask you one more question real quick?

10:18

You just did. You want to ask another one? I would. Can I get three, because I just asked you another one. You're sure? He says militant.

10:24

Let me ask you this. Is the idea of militancy, the idea of militancy, is that a material thing made of matter that you can grasp, that you can touch, that you can feel, that you can test?

10:37

Again, it's a... I just want you to think about that. It's a state of the state machine, if you want to consider the human mind as a state machine.