Can One Question 🔥DESTROY🔥 an Argument? | Debate Teacher Reacts

Lyle Rose destroys a pro-lifer with just one question, and this conversation actually got pretty spicy. Watch what happens when a college student says it's okay to end anybody's life.

No, I think in some cases it's good to kill people.

In some places it's good to kill innocent people.

No.

Rights, Humanity, and the Source of Moral Authority

How did the discussion even get to this point? What's going to happen when this guy regains his senses? And how can you do the same thing that Rose is doing on stage right now? I'm going to answer all of those questions and more in this video.

So let's get right into it. Welcome back to Wise Disciple. My name is Nate Sala, and I'm helping you become the effective Christian that you were meant to be. Before I jumped into this ministry full-time, I was a pastor and a debate teacher, and so I put these two backgrounds together to form Voltron.

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I'm a liberal in the classical definition of the term, and one topic that comes to question is where do our rights originate? It doesn't seem to stem from our status as living beings, as we don't balk at, you know, killing cows for beef or cutting down trees.

It can't be from our status as humans, because we incarcerate our fellow humans, and we are often willing to sacrifice the lives of our fellow humans for, you know, broader concepts like national sovereignty, you know, in the case of a war for independence or something like that.

It seems descriptively what gives someone rights is their level of consciousness. People with lower levels of consciousness are not afforded the same rights as those with more consciousness. We don't allow, for example, underage people to consent to contracts, to live independently, or even to own property, likewise, or even consent to, like, you know, sexual interactions.

Likewise, someone with a profoundly reduced mental capacity may be placed under conservatorship, removing their agency and placing it in the hands of someone else. We also allow in certain cases for the killing of people who are permanently brain dead.

However, it seems like you heavily imply that rights must be afforded to people by dint of their humanity and their human DNA. Is the description accurate? And if so, how do you reconcile this belief with basically the rest of our Western canon, moral canon?

Thank you.

So, no, I did not speed up the speed on this one. I normally do. But for this young man, I had to play it at normal speed. That was just him talking at normal speed. Second of all, this question was way too long.

So, you know, though, in another sense, it was helpful to hear the thought process for the student, right? Because he's clearly asking the question based on certain presuppositions that he's bringing to the table.

These are assumptions that he's bringing to the discussion. And so the sort of the lengthy way that he gets to the question, it actually helps us to identify those assumptions at base. What he's asking is, why do you say that our rights stem from our humanity and not from our consciousness?

Right. Even that there requires certain clarification, but that's essentially the gist. Now, Rose is going to give an answer, but I should remind us all this student is ignoring how we used to answer this question historically.

Which is interesting because I think he referenced at the end there, like how we have come to understand morality in the West. Well, if you remember our declaration of independence, our founding fathers gave us an answer as to where our rights come from.

And it's not consciousness and it's not King George. It's God. Now, isn't that interesting? Right. The moment you get rid of God, you get into these endless debates about where our rights come from, right?

Oh, it comes from our capacity to be conscious or, oh, it comes from kings and other governments or, oh, it's something else. This is what happens, ladies and gentlemen. Here's what I, I just want to point this out right now.

This student made some assumptions that informed his question. He also made some leaps in his thinking. So we just talked about this in the previous video, right? Your job, if you're going to get up and engage folks on behalf of Christ and on behalf of the unborn is to identify those assumptions.

Because if you simply answer the question, you implicitly concede the framework within which this question sits. I don't know if you caught the assumptions, but hopefully Rose did. So let's see what happens.

Inherent Human Rights, Incarceration, and War

You had a lot in there and I want to address it because there's a few things in sort of the question already that I think there's, I would call them mistakes that you're making and how you're thinking about it, which tie back to why I think it is difficult for you to assent to this idea that all humans have human rights.

So first of all, you mentioned, if I heard you correctly, you were talking about how in the cases of war or certain cases, it must be clear that, you know, they, the government can, you know, I don't believe all humans have human rights because in the case of war, some humans are being killed.

Is that kind of the one part of the original.

Statement you made? Did I, did I hear that? Yeah, that's correct. Right. By the way, what she's doing is exactly what you should do in this situation, right? Rose is putting it back on the students to ask clarification questions.

And that's precisely what you need to do. Part of that is because the way that the student asked the question was a little muddled and unclear, you know? And I mean, Hey, it happens to the best of us.

You know, you're in the moment, you're riffing, right? That's why clarification is important, but it appears that the students suggesting, you know, that because some people's lives are taken in battle, which by the way, you know, like you have to think those are unique circumstances, right?

That are not typical of all people, the scenario that he presented in conversation. Right. And also because some people go to prison, well, then therefore this means that our rights cannot stem from the fact that we're human.

That's actually sloppy. Uh, there's multiple logical errors there. One of them is, I mean, this is what's called a non sequitur, you know, just because some situational circumstances limit the rights of certain individuals.

It does not follow that there can be no basis of grounding rights in our humanity. You tracking with me now, again, I want to be careful as a Christian, I would say that rights originate from God, but the reason they are grounded in our being human is because God has made us human beings uniquely.

We all have the image of God inside of us. That means inherently we are all imagers of God by very nature of who we are. And that is the foundation of our rights. That's what the founding father said.

That's essentially the Christian position.

That correctly. Yeah. More like, um, or incarcerated price, like a human life. Okay.

Like the value of the human life. So in the case of, let's start with incarceration. In the case of incarceration, the incarcerated criminal has the same human value as the non-criminal. Okay. And they have the same human rights.

They have given up certain rights to freedom, freely operating within society because of wrongs that they've committed. They have failed on some of their responsibilities. So everybody has rights and responsibilities.

They have failed on certain responsibilities of treating other people in a particular manner. That's moral. They have, you know, raped, killed, theft, you know, committed theft, whatever it is. And so they are behind bars, not because they don't have human value, but because they have ultimately given up some of their rights by not fulfilling their responsibilities.

And that happens frequently.

In society. Right. And that's it because some people decided to violate the inherent human rights of another person in society. We Americans have, um, socially contracted to behave in civil ways with each other.

Right. But the consequence of violating that social contract does not negate inherent human rights that does not follow. And Rose is pointing this out in the case of war.

Certainly individuals who might die in war have the same human value and the same human rights as individuals in any other time. Right. And there are such a thing as war crimes where you are targeting as an example, noncombatants, if you're targeting civilians in a war, those would be war crimes that would be unjust killing, and it would be wrong just like abortion is wrong.

So I think the framework, which is the reality of that, there is a certain natural order that there are certain absolute rights and wrongs, um, and that there are certain absolute human rights that we possess as well as human responsibilities that we, that we owe.

Um, I think it works with your, some of your concerns or sort of your objections to why, oh, this order can't work because what.

About war criminal? What about war? What about human incarceration? Um, yeah, it actually explains why certain people will give up their lives in battle or why, uh, certain people will go to prison because of what they do.

It's because of the existence of God-given inherent human rights. The fathers called them inalienable rights. I mean, that's, that's the basis for the scenarios that the student originally provided. You know, I think there was a third one though, that you.

Had besides incarceration and war. Was there a third one? Um, like killing brain dead people or even like killing brain? Yeah. So in a, in a matter of a brain dead person. So if you're, if you are truly brain dead, right, you cannot operate your body.

You can't, um, you know, process food. You cannot operate your body without being on life support. So you're not killing a brain dead person by removing them from life support. Life support would be extraordinary care that is being offered to that individual to maybe keep them alive in hopes that they might recover, or maybe they're going to try some lifesaving measure to try to resuscitate them in some way.

But removing extraordinary care in a medical setting is not killing the patient. Now it could be killing the patient to remove what is called ordinary care, right? So if I'm like a patient, you know, I'm in a hospital, I'm, you know, I don't know, recovering from open heart surgery, and then they refuse to feed me or to give me hydration, right?

And I die from neglect. That would be not just medical neglect. That would be killing me, right? But unplugging someone on life support, especially in a circumstances of brain death, that is not killing.

So there's a very important distinctions that need to be made to show or to, you know, to show what is right,.

And what would be right and what would be wrong. And it all trades on inherent human rights that are God given. You see what I mean? You can walk through various scenarios. But if you bear in mind the proper framework for the pro-life position, well, then you quickly realize that any scenario that somebody throws at you, they're not challenges to our position.

They, well, at least not substantive challenges. They are scenarios built upon incorrect assumptions, and it's precisely those assumptions that must be engaged for productive conversation. You see that?

By the way, Rose is doing an amazing job up there. She's done this once or twice before, I'm sure.

And I would also say you said you were a liberal. There's a lot of liberals who are pro-life. Oh, yeah. So you don't have to be one political identity or another.

I mean, I'm like liberal in the sense that like, you know, like the European sense, like the moral foundation or like moral philosophy instead of like.

So where do you get your moral foundation from?

My, how the turntables have turned. So watch the moment where Rose completely dismantles the student's position. Right before the student was asking a question, now Rose has flipped it around and she's asking a question.

And by the way, not to destroy this young man as a person, but to help him to see the futility of his position. The person is not the position. Again, I'm speaking to those of you that want to get out and do the same thing that Rose is doing.

I promise you, if you do this with most people. Which, by the way, so that's not everybody, right? Not everybody is going to intellectually honest. You know what I mean? But if you get out there and you do this kind of a thing with those who are genuinely seeking the truth, you will help them to see the futility.

Of their position. Watch this. Is there is there is there absolute morality? Well, personally, no, I'm anti-realist. So would you say that in some cases rape could be fine? I mean, is rape always wrong?

I.

Yes. Wait, hold on. Is it? Yes. That sounds like. No. When I when I say rape, I have my own morality. And but then I also acknowledge that other people may. Would it be OK? So OK. It sounds like you're.

Saying it would be wrong for you to you in your view. It would be wrong for you to rape someone. Would it be wrong for someone else to rape? I will kill anyone that rapes anyone. That's my. But you just said morals are not absolute.

So why would it be wrong for someone else.

Who thinks that rape is OK to rape someone? The idea is. This is what happens, ladies and gentlemen. This is so good because it's a good model for how to walk somebody through the mistakes that they're making in their thinking, you know, and again, not to belittle them or to make them feel bad or anything like that.

That's not that's not the point of this particular exercise. But this is what happens. How do you help someone who clearly wants to escape the responsibility of objective moral values and duties while at the same time doesn't want to fully commit to complete chaos is basically flirting with the seeds for complete chaos, but doesn't want to go the full hog.

Right. And let's face it, I mean, that is the end result of where moral relativism takes you. He just said he's an anti realist. In other words, there is no such thing as objective moral facts or truths, right?

Everything with regard to morality is subjective and based on human convention. OK, and then also no one should force themselves upon another. You know what I mean? Like like and he'll end anyone's life who tries to force themselves upon another.

Right. Well, hey, which is it from there for me? I can't make the justification,.

Right, because, you know, they have different morality and like. So why would you judge them.

By killing them? Because, well, I think my morals are better. So you do think there's moral hierarchy?

Well, I think my morals should be superior. Right. So why are you so you do think some morals are.

Superior to others? It sounds like you think that there is an objective order to the world.

I know this is a I haven't thought this deep about it, you know? Yeah. But so I'm sorry. No, it's good. I appreciate you having a conversation. When I say I'm an anti realist,.

I just mean like, you know, I think you're more of a realist and you give yourself credit for.

Sure. I just think that there's just not a good way to argue. Like, you know, it's very hard to convince someone out of like their morality, especially this whole like other like, you know, kind of network of.

I mean, so I'll try to argue them out of like if they just believe that rape is good. I mean, at the end of the day, I'll just have their savages. I'll have.

To kill them, you know. So wait, huh? OK, what? What was that last thing you just said? OK. What I was going to say was, do you see the problem here? The student is pointing out that it's very difficult to argue for morality, objective moral truths, right?

You want to know why that is, because people reject God. The moment that you reject God, you remove in your own mind the objective moral standard by which you should align your life to, by which everyone should align their lives to.

In your mind now, all of a sudden it's gone. Now, is is it really gone? Is God really gone? No. But what you've done to yourself is is plunge yourself into the darkness of moral ambiguity, because now you make yourself judge over morality.

But wait a second. Wait a second. If you become the judge over morality, right? Your own. What does everyone else in the world become as well? Is it not their own judge? OK, great. Now, what do we do when everyone's the judge of morality and they're all walking around, right?

What do we do? Argue over what should be considered the new moral standard. And isn't that precisely what we see from nonbelievers, you know, and skeptics and atheists? That's precisely the struggle that this particular student just identified.

But that's not even that's not even it. This is not the moment that I wanted to show you. Rose has got some more cooking to do, and this student is not ready for it. Watch this.

Abortion, Utilitarianism, and War Crimes

Like when it comes to it. Yeah, I think you believe in a moral order and you believe in some moral absolutes, but you just don't want to agree that it's morally wrong to kill a baby in the womb. Do you think that's the case?

Oh, you're saying rape is wrong, but abortion's OK. Yeah. I mean, I can be convinced of it. Yeah. Oh, that's good. Well, I hope that we make progress on that. I mean, the pro-life case is very simple.

It's always wrong to kill an innocent human being. And that's what abortion is by definition. And that's why we oppose it.

I don't agree with that. I think that's very. No, I think in some cases it's good to kill people.

In some places, it's good to kill innocent people. No. Well, it depends. Yes, actually. When is it good to kill innocent people? Yeah. Yeah.

When is it good to kill innocent people? I mean, it depends on your definition of.

Innocent. Yeah. But sure. Yeah. When is it when is it good to kill an innocent person?

Do you think it would be acceptable? I mean, I think, for example, in service of a higher.

Goal. So you're a utilitarian? Yeah. You're a moral utilitarian. If it would serve some other people in some way, maybe a material way or some other way, it's OK to kill the baby. It's OK to.

Kill the two-year-old. Well, so for example, I think. I mean, I'm just curious. Is that your position? I think you can make a case for firebombing Dresden. I think people in Dresden might have been innocent.

But I think for the overall goal of ending Nazism, I think that.

Could have been like, yeah, that could probably be justified. Right. So in that case, so you don't believe that there's such a thing as a war crime against non-civilian combat, against noncombatant civilians?

Because I would say if you're targeting civilians, whether it's in Dresden or it's in Gaza or wherever it is, if you are doing that and I'm not accusing someone right now of doing that, but if you were doing that, that would be a war crime, an immoral to target civilians.

Ding, ding, ding, ding. Take him out of the oven. He's cooked. Notice what just happened, ladies and gentlemen, which is which is actually just as important in this moment. Right. Rose maintained her witness.

She continued to remain calm and Christlike on stage, while at the same time she completely obliterated this student's arguments. This lady right here, my friends, is a wonderful example of what the apostle Paul was getting at in second Corinthians, 10, 5.

Look at this. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey Christ. Right. Notice the distinction here that Paul makes. Notice who he's not listing in terms of the destruction that Christians try to bring.

People. Right. We're not supposed to be destroying people. We're destroying arguments. We're destroying every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God. Right. Rose never sought to belittle or mock the student or make him embarrassed for having an opinion.

Right. I mean, obviously, look, this is college. I forget where this is. UC Irvine. Right. So like, yeah, you're going to go to college because you're formulating opinions that should guide you for the rest of your life.

Right. That's why you matriculate in the first place. Presumably. I don't know why I'm too old. I don't know why students go to college anymore. But college is meant to be a kind of space where you wrestle with the good ideas and you wrestle with the bad ideas.

Right. In an ideal world. Hold on to the good ideas. Get rid of the bad ones. Okay. Rose is purely engaging the arguments. That's what you need to do, friends. No matter how crazy conversations get, which, by the way, if a conversation is getting crazy, that's a good indication that you shouldn't be in it.

Amen. But no matter where the conversation goes or what it touches on, you show them Christ while also showing them the insufficiency of their worldview. What what they should be feeling in terms of a real sting is not your sarcastic mocking attitude, but the total collapse of their argument.

Amen. Love the entire video. Love the conversation. There's some great arguments in there to support the pro-life position. So I encourage you to check it out. I'll leave a link for that in the notes below.

Hey, this might be a good time to remind you. My debate masterclass series is finally live. If you are someone who desires to understand arguments and navigate difficult conversations right to get better at identifying flawed assumptions like the ones that we saw in this video, then my debate masterclass is for you.

In this particular series, I'm going to go over each segment of debate. I talk about philosophy of winning. I teach you how to deconstruct arguments on the fly, right? I even give you my three-step method for asking cross-examination questions.

So I encourage you to check out the entire series, go to wisedisciple .org forward slash masterclass and sign up today. Hey, if you enjoyed the insights here, why don't you go check out my Patreon community?

I'm doing a Bible study over there. You can get these videos ahead of time. You can meet up with me one-on-one on zoom and more. So go check it out. The link for the Patreon is below. If you're into deep Bible study, I encourage you to check out Logos as well as Biblingo.

I've partnered with both of them, and I think that they are going to be game changers for you, whether you're studying the scripture or you're trying to learn the original biblical languages. For those particular links as well, check out the notes.

Hey guys, I will return soon with more videos. Thanks for joining me in this one. In the meantime, I'll say bye for now.