Debate: "Is Naturalism or Christianity a better worldview?" Slick vs Neff

All right, welcome. This is Matt Slick. We have David Neff on the screen as well. We're gonna be having a debate.

Is naturalism or Christianity true? And he's gonna be going first.

But you'll find that this is a rather casual disagreement. We're gonna be having probably, we have timed openings, five minute each, and we'll probably stick to it.

Probably not, maybe a little, but we're real casual about it. So it'll be an interesting discussion,

I think. And I think, hopefully, more people will benefit from it. And it'll be that.

So I'm Matt Slick, the founder of Christian Apologetics Research Ministry, CARM .org, and I'm a devout

Christian, and I stand in opposition to things atheistic, materialistic, naturalistic, if they act in a manner that's supposedly autonomous to the true

God. And David Neff here is gonna introduce himself, and then when he's ready, he'll just start.

All right, Dave. Well, thank you, Matt Slick. I wanna thank you so much for agreeing to this topic.

I'm gonna begin by saying that I know I'm not gonna win this debate. Matt Slick is just too slick for me.

I am a student right now at Harvard Community College. I actually am getting ready to transfer to four -year.

I had actually an interview today with the University of Colorado, Boulder, and it looks like that I have a pretty good chance of being accepted.

If I am accepted, I'm gonna be studying molecular cell developmental biology with a minor in planetary and astrophysics.

So that's who I am, and Matt, if you wanna introduce yourself, go right ahead. Well, I already did, but boy,

I'll tell you, I wish I was young. I would love to be able to study what you're studying. Yeah, it's fascinating.

Molecular biology. Oh, yeah, I would use it for the glory of God. Yeah, I'm using it for,

I'm really interested in virology, so that's kind of what I'm interested in doing. I love astrophysics as well, so two of my passions, studying them, would be great.

Yeah, I, well, I'll be 64 next week. I'm too old to really get into a whole new set of learning stuff, but I'd love to.

If I could be given another 100 years, I'd go back and get more degrees. All right, so Dave, when you're ready, and I got my little timer here on my phone, and at one minute,

I'll just say, I'll just interrupt you and say one minute, or 30 seconds, and if you go over, you go over, but we'll do it, okay?

All right, and you can activate the, because you have control, you're in here, you can activate that, if you need help, just ask me.

Yeah, well, you need to add the screen back into StreamYard. It is? Oh, I have to? I thought you could do it.

Well, when you're ready, let me know and I'll just do it, okay? I'm ready, whenever you are. Okay, go for it. The PowerPoint isn't up.

Oh, you want it up there, okay. Yeah, yeah, there we go. There we go. Well, thank you very much.

This is a debate that is coming now between two worldviews, naturalism and Christianity. First, let's understand the two worldviews.

Naturalism says that the natural world is all that exists, and that is governed by natural laws, which can be discovered by science.

Theism says that in addition to the natural world, there is God in the supernatural world, and that this

God is supposedly all -knowing, all -powerful, all -loving, all -present, et cetera, and that this God is able to interact with the natural world and perform miracles.

And the superior, I will define as the worldview that best explains our observations and our reality.

And there are two main points that I wanna bring forth. Number one is that theism is incoherent, and number two, that theism, excuse me, naturalism, is a better model of our reality.

So first point is that theism is incoherent. There is no agreed upon definition of God, and the properties of God are incompatible, such as all -knowing and all -powerful.

So no agreed upon definition of God. What does the word God even mean? What does it actually mean to be outside of space -time?

That doesn't make any sense. How can we objectively know the mind, the will of God? How can we objectively know the nature of God?

And how can we objectively know which religion is correct and which interpretation of that religion is correct?

So this is, of course, what Dan Parker calls the fang, the free will argument for the non -existence of God, that if God exists, then he is omniscient and free.

But this is largely absurd, that if you're being free,

I define as that which is in accordance to your nature, the capitalist view. I totally agree that that's slick, that God does not necessarily have the ability to choose to sin, but did

God have a choice as to whether or not to create the universe? So the problem is if one knows what action he will perform, then it is impossible for him not to do it.

So henceforth, it is impossible for both to be God, for it to be both free and all -powerful and all -knowing.

Something is happening here. There we go. Or not. Why is this not going? Let me try this again.

Here we go. And naturalism is a better model. Exactly what do we expect under nationalism?

So nationalism can create models, whereas theism cannot. For example, theory of evolution is a model on the biodiversity of life.

The germ theory is a model on how bacteria and viruses cause diseases. The nebular theory is a model on planetary and star formation.

The atomic theory is a model on the fundamental particles that make up the matter. And actually, theism actually steals the concept of the uniformity of nature.

If God exists and is able to perform miracles, interacts with the world and shake things up, this would actually be quite destructive to the scientific enterprise.

Science would not be able to predict when God steps in and performs miracles. And theism does not have any explanatory power and cannot make any novel testable predictions like nationalism can.

So with that, I wrap up my points. How did I do in time? You're on mute,

Matt. Something is weird. For those who are in Discord, we're doing a debate right now, so if you talk to me, it's not a good thing.

Okay, yeah, I had my Discord open. I'm gonna exit out of Discord. That may have been my problem.

Yeah, so I'm doing debate, folks. I gotta figure out how to mute everybody inside of here so that, I don't know,

I may have to get out of here because we're having a debate right now, folks. So if you wanna go to CARM, I'm gonna get out of it because it'll be distracting.

I'm gonna just go to CARM Facebook, Facebook CARM .org, and you can see the link. And David Neff and I are going at it right now a little bit, just coincidentally, and that's that.

All right. Okay. You had another minute.

I had a whole minute? Okay, well. You wanna use your minute? Sure. Yeah.

I really don't have anything to say in the one minute, but I guess I'll just point out that I know

Matt Slick is gonna be using the tag argument, the transcendental argument for the existence of God, and gonna be asking some questions about how we are able to trust our thoughts and all of that.

And I do have some good answers for that. So I'm gonna wait for Matt Slick to bring those arguments up.

You're not a very good prophet. All right, so let's go. I'll put my timer on, here goes.

All right, so we first must define our terms. The issue is does naturalism or Christianity best explain things?

Well, naturalism is a belief that nothing can exist beyond the natural world.

Instead of using supernatural or spiritual explanations, naturalism focuses on explanations that come from the laws of nature.

That's from vocabulary .com. From dictionary .com, it says the view of the world that takes account only of natural elements and forces, excluding the supernatural or spiritual.

The belief that all phenomena are covered by laws of science and that all theological explanations are therefore without value.

So there's a lot of problems here. One thing is why is that the proper definition?

And what in it necessitates the validity of that position to begin with? Whenever we argue about something, if we're gonna argue about Christianity, we have to define what

Christianity is. I'm not arguing about theism in general, I'm arguing about the Christian God and only the

Christian trinune eternal God. And I can give you a definition if you ask me later what that encompasses.

I will agree with you that all other theological perspectives are invalid. I will join you in arguing against them and exposing their fallacious positions, but not with the

Christian view because in the Trinitarian economy, it is what's necessary to account for the one, the many, truth, absolutes, the laws of logic, our existence, morality, values, and all other things.

So when we talk about the issue of what naturalism is, there's a problem of begging the question of defining it and saying, this is what it needs to be.

Well, why? Just saying it doesn't make it so. And just saying it's superior doesn't make it so either.

You had to have a standard. I do think that you provided, you tried to provide one, that what's best explains what you observe.

Well, that would be up for debate. We could just talk about that. So there's a problem inside of naturalism, which teaches that everything operates under the laws of physics, motion, matter.

The reason this is a problem is it's self -refuting. If something's self -refuting, you can't trust it. How is it self -refuting?

The physical brain, the physical brain, my physical brain, Dave's physical brain, would therefore under the laws of, excuse me, laws of physics, which is what naturalism requires, that everything has to operate under the laws of physics and chemistry.

What that would be stating is that his physical brain also operates under the laws of physics, chemistry, motion, matter, all of that.

But the problem is that this necessitates automatic and necessary chemical reactions. It does not produce proper logical inference, or we should say,

I should say, there's no way to know that it does or does not produce any proper logical inference, since it's only operating under electrochemical necessity.

If it's operating under electrochemical necessity, there is no way to validate whatever you might think, believe, or hope to be true.

This is a fundamental problem inside of naturalism. It's something that must be overcome. I have used this so many times with atheists to get to the point where I say, your brain just made you say that, and I'll end up saying this probably again later tonight.

My opponent, what he has to do is provide a model by which naturalism can be judged to be true. But if he judges naturalism by naturalism, he's begging the question and validating, or committing the law of begging the question, that's not a valid procedure.

If he says it's because it's what he observes, then he's an empiricist, and empiricism has its subjective problems.

If he said it's logically necessary, then we can get into the tag thing, because how would he presuppose the laws of logic in a naturalistic world, since the laws of logic are abstractions and the natural world is not?

So how does the impersonal produce a personal? How does the impersonal produce transcendental abstractions known as the laws of logic?

These are just some of the many problems, but I'm gonna turn it back to this. And if naturalism is true, then the physical brain is required by the laws of chemistry.

I'll reduce it to chemistry, electrochemical reactions. In the brain, stimulus,

I say two plus two is four. He hears that, he agrees, disagrees, whatever it is. He has that, it comes into his brain.

Chemical reactions occur, and a thing comes out. If I say, what's three times three? He'll say nine. That's because the chemical reactions required that.

Now, if the chemical reactions require it, is it true? Naturalism is self -refuting because it cannot provide a means by which you can know if naturalism is true.

What naturalism does is cast doubt on itself because it reduces the physical brain to a chemical reaction factory.

It doesn't necessitate the production of proper logical inference and truth values. It only necessitates chemical reactions.

And we can't justify, or how would he justify that one chemical state in the brain that is in another chemical state of the brain, thank you, one minute, produces proper logical inference.

If he cannot find a way or produce an argument that justifies why naturalism is correct to begin with, then he doesn't have a leg to stand on, and his argument is invalid all the way.

He must demonstrate that naturalism is not self -refuting. Again, to summarize, the physical brain is limited to the laws of physics, chemistry, motion, matter.

The physical brain operates under necessary reactions. Do necessary chemical reactions produce proper logical inference?

How do you know that? If it does, what's the model that produces it? If you don't know, then you can't trust naturalism, and naturalism cannot be trusted or used as an explanatory issue for what we're talking about.

Go ahead. Excellent, well, thank you, Matt Slick. So pretty much what I predicted, except for the tag boards, that he's gonna ask about how we know that our mind can be trusted and all of that.

Sure, so I think this is quite nicely, excuse me,

I'm sorry, I need to turn that off, by basic population mechanics and natural selection.

What I mean by that is if our thoughts, if our logic and our perception of reality is so far off the mark, then natural selection would simply wipe us out.

Does that make any sense? Oh, yeah, yeah, okay, sorry,

I forgot. Yeah, but you see, look, this is, your brain may just say that.

Okay. How do you know that the statement you're making is true? Since your chemical reactions just produced it.

Does your chemical reactions produce a truth? Well, this goes back to empiricism. I wouldn't be what you would call an empiricist.

We can, again, check our thoughts and our logic and compare what reality is.

But empiricism means that you judge reality by your experience, by your senses. How do you know your senses are producing proper logical inference?

Well, again, as I said, again, as I said, popular, it's basic population mechanics and natural selection.

Natural selection would wipe us out if that was the case. Well, so it wipes you out, it wipes it out.

It doesn't mean it's true or false. It's just saying, oh, it wipes you out. It doesn't mean that survival means it's true.

It just means you're not surviving. The issue is naturalism has a philosophical starting point.

The philosophical starting point is what you have. Well, on the exam, I haven't even looked at why it's the right one, but if naturalism is true, then that means your physical brain is just operating under the laws of physics.

This is what's called property dualism. Property dualism says the mind is a product of the physical brain.

The mind's a product of the physical brain, that's it. So if the brain ceases, the mind ceases. That means if it's a property, it cannot exceed the physical aspects or characteristics of the physical brain.

The physical brain's characteristics are it's necessarily operating under the laws of chemistry. That means that I say something, it just causes chemical reactions.

This means you can't know if your naturalism is true, therefore you can't trust naturalism because it refutes itself.

Okay, sure. So regarding property dualism, again,

I think there's pretty strong scientific evidence for this property dualism. I've had surgery a few times and if property dualism was false, then why is it that we lose consciousness completely during surgery and stuff like that?

Our actual conscious and our perception absolutely does depend on the mind.

The reason we would lose consciousness is because in property dualism, or substance dualism, which says the mind is a separate substance in the physical brain.

In Christian theology, that's all I'm arguing is Christian theology, is that God has embedded us inside of physical bodies and the physical body can affect the soul, but the soul continues on after death and I can give scriptures for that.

So there's no problem there. That's not a challenge to the Christian theological perspective. However, your perspective necessitates property dualism.

Therefore, when the physical brain ceases, you cease. And if you cease, well, okay, whatever. There's no purpose, no value, no need of anything.

The question is how do you know that naturalism is true? Well, we know naturalism is true by, again, comparing it to our models.

And again, what we need to be doing is creating a model. Naturalism has the model, whereas theism simply does not.

Naturalism has the model of the, such as the germ theory when how the bacteria and viruses cause disease.

And we know how planets and stars form through the accretion disks.

And these are things that we can actually check out and actually verify through the scientific method.

And what novel predictions has theism has ever been able to make? Again, if theism were true, if Christianity were true, where God can perform miracles, then the whole notion of the uniformity of nature just falls apart.

Okay, you said several things. Uniformity of nature falls apart. Let me go down the list,

Ted, three things. You said naturalism is true because it's a model that can predict.

Theism does not. Yes, Christian theism certainly does. It predicts the uniformity of nature. Naturalism, yes, it does.

Because in the Bible, God makes things in a trustable manner.

The heavens are laid out by the decree and knowledge of God. So therefore, we know that we can then justify the uniformity of nature everywhere.

Okay, well, the problem is God performing miracles interrupts that uniformity of nature. For example, when

Jesus walks on water, he is interrupting the uniformity of nature by walking on water.

Because what should happen is when humans go out on water, we should sink.

And another good example is when you're dead, naturalism, you should stay dead. That's the uniformity of nature. But God, Jesus raises people up from the dead.

That is a violation of the uniformity of nature. So the

Christian God and the Bible violates that uniformity. First of all, you don't know if it does.

You've still not answered my refutation on naturalism, but nevertheless, miracles, assuming that it's a violation of the natural laws,

God certainly would have access to laws that we do not yet know about and can do what he desires. So to say that it's a violation of the natural law is just an assertion without necessity.

Well, if you wanna assert that it does not, you're the one that's saying that it does not violate the uniformity of nature, but on what basis do you make that claim?

I make the basis by saying that things that are denser than water simply sink.

And that's what happens. That's why we sink when we go out in water. Okay. What exactly are the laws then?

Hold on. I wanna respond to what you said. Miracles don't necessarily violate anything because you don't know what

God is accessing in order to perform what we call a miracle. If we took a laser, my little laser pointer, which

I've got back a thousand years and pointed at somebody, they'd say, it's a miracle. How can you make that light do that?

Or two walkie talkies. It's just a matter of the laws that they don't know about yet. So they would call them miraculous and in their context, it would be.

But if you wanna say that the miracles violate the law of uniformity, you gotta be careful because in the science, particularly when they're getting down into the area of quantum mechanics, they're saying there's irregularity and certain things that they cannot predict and seem to be random.

So science itself is introducing the randomness and violating the uniformity of nature issues itself.

So it is refuting itself. So the argument against you doesn't work against me. Incorrect.

Let's take this down one more time. So under your position that laws of nature are uniform because of God and based on the nature of God, this becomes a circular logic.

This could be uncircular. What exactly is the nature of God? First off, how do we know the mind and the will of God?

What does it even mean for God to be transcended or outside space -time? Well, I never say that God is outside of time because we don't know what that means.

I tell Christians, don't use that phrase. We don't know what that means. It's nonsensical. How do we know the will of God? It's easy, read the

Bible. He has self -revealed himself in the word of God, the Bible, and in the person of Jesus Christ.

How do you know that? Because one thing, it's self -attesting that it's true. It has prophecy.

Circular reasoning. Circular reasoning. We all do, yes, we all do circular reasoning and I'm willing to step into that circle if you want.

But the thing is that the Bible has prophecies in it in the Old Testament that are fulfilled in the New Testament. And plus it provides, and this is very pre -conditioned.

Okay, what prophecies did Jesus fulfill? Matthew 5, 2, born in Bethlehem. Okay, and how do you know?

Let's break this down one by one. So what if Jesus was born in Bethlehem?

Many people were born in Bethlehem. And what I found in my studies is that all of the so -called prophecies that Jesus supposedly fulfilled are either out of context, mistranslated, non -existent, or the passage they are quoting is not even a prophecy.

And how do we know Jesus was actually born in Bethlehem? And I say that because there is actually a very interesting passage in the book of John.

Let me try and pull that up. Where is it?

I think it's in John where, where is it? What's it say?

Maybe I can find it for you. It's basically where the people are arguing about Jesus. And they say, must the

Messiah be born in Bethlehem? I know, I think that's in John. Yeah, it says in John 7, as the scripture said that Christ comes from the descendants of David's and from Bethlehem, the village, the town he was, yeah.

Okay, so here's the question. Here's the problem with that verse. If Jesus was actually born in Bethlehem, then this verse does not make any sense.

It appears that the people in this time did not know that Jesus was born in Bethlehem.

Otherwise he would not be saying this. And neither the gospel writer nor any person there actually stepped in and correct them.

They should have corrected them saying, well, actually Jesus was born in Bethlehem. And there's actually another really interesting point against the whole nativity scene.

And it's in Mark 3. Well, hold on. Let's read the prophecy.

Okay. You know, it's just that anybody's born there and that's what it means. No, no, no. This is what it says. This is what it says.

This is why they knew. But as for you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, too little to be among the clans of Judah from you.

One will go forth for me to be ruler in Israel. His goings forth are from long ago from days of eternity.

So what it's saying about that person born in Bethlehem that is eternal in the past tense. Okay. And how do we know

Jesus was eternal? Well, Jesus said so. Circular reasoning. How do we know

Jesus was? How do we trust? We're getting away from naturalism, but this is okay. But he rose from the dead. Yeah.

Cause I'm kind of starting to examine Christianity here. Then when, so this is basically a clash.

Jesus rose from the dead. And how do we know that? Because the eyewitnesses wrote it. And how do you know we can trust the eyewitnesses?

Because the eyewitnesses wrote it because the book of Acts, which is written roughly 60 AD does not contain the death of Peter and Paul which are significant in the

Christian church. And the death of Stephen had been occurred, had been recorded in Acts chapter seven but Peter and Paul were not recorded which occurred around 62, 64

AD which means that the book of Acts was written before that. Furthermore, Luke wrote book of Acts as well as Luke and Luke wrote the book of Acts after he wrote the book of Luke.

So Luke preceded Acts by say five years. And most scholars agree Matthew's before that let's just say five years.

So what we're doing is we're getting back to the time of Christ right there by the eyewitnesses. So we know that these things are written very early.

And I have studied the historical reliability of the new Testament documents and there's something like 99 .8

% textual identical. There is no historical evidence that suggests that the documents have been corrupted or are inaccurate.

And they do go back to the time of the original writers. So that's how we know. So you said that there's no evidence that they've been corrupted.

What evidence would we look for if the Gospels were corrupted?

Because I can think of - We have to contradict each other all over the place but there's 6 ,000 supporting manuscripts. And as I said, there's something like 99 .8

% textual identical. Okay, so, and there are differences that are both meaningful and some of them actually really do change how you read the entire book or an entire -

Well, we're not into historicity. You asked me, I said, how do you know this? This is, the Bible's reliable because I gave you the

Acts thing that's very important, this is how we know. And it's very accurately transmitted. You need to do your homework because it's the issue of historicity.

So how do we know that Jesus is who he said? Because the eyewitnesses wrote it what they said. And it best explains the issue of their changed behavior, his resurrection, his ascension into heaven and all the stuff that was prophesied that they wrote was prophesied and their behavior, which was changed.

It's all consistent. If you have a better explanation, go for it before we get back to naturalism's problem.

Okay, sure. So my explanation, the way that I look at it is that Jesus was a person who claimed to be the

Messiah. It was a apocalyptic preacher who believed that the kingdom of God would be coming in his lifetime and the lifetime of his followers.

And over time, the story of Jesus grew and changed over time. And if you don't believe that the story of Jesus changed, just look in the

Bibles. Now, I'm not gonna list thousands of contradictions because that would be a dishonest gishgallop, but there are significant contradictions in there that there are significant textual variations.

And when you look in the non -canonical gospels, you see that so many different stories were written about Jesus.

And these stories keep circulating and circulating time after time, day after day.

And they changed. The early Christianity was based on an oral tradition and then it was written down several years after the events.

Maybe we could say three to five years after the events, but that's still a pretty long time. And so, yeah.

It's not enough time for what's called legend and corruption of the story to come in plus the eyewitnesses were still around when the documents were written.

And they would have said, no, this is not accurate. You don't have any evidence of that. What you do have evidence of is the accuracy of the

New Testament documents that describe who Jesus Christ is. Jesus Christ claimed he was God in flesh. Jesus Christ claimed to be the creator of the universe.

So now, the Christian worldview can explain the origin of the universe, why we're here.

In naturalism, you can't do that. You can only presuppose naturalism's validity.

So then how then can we account for our own existence is out of naturalism, which you still have not refuted my argument that naturalism is self -refuting because of the physical brain problem.

You still haven't dealt with that. You dismissed it. You wanna attack on the Bible, which I can tackle for a while. Well, we gotta come back to this issue.

How do you know naturalism is true if your physical brain under naturalism's definition is limited to the laws of chemistry?

How do the laws of chemistry produce proper logical inference? Again, as I said, if the mind did not produce these logical inferences, we would be extinct through natural selection.

And we would also, we can actually go through and verify and check whether or not our thoughts are being logical.

For example, this here is a book and we can check that by understanding, okay, what exactly is a book and all of that.

So again, it can be - Got problems. Verified. We can check our thoughts and verify it.

You said if the mind does not produce proper logical inference, you'd be extinct. Not true. There are plenty of people in the world who don't think logically and they prosper.

They have all kinds of children. And it's because they work in a world of other people who keep things running.

So that's not a good argument. It doesn't work. You can check to see if your thoughts are logical. In order to do that, you have to abandon the naturalistic worldview to do that.

If the naturalistic worldview is true, that means your brain is operating only under the laws of chemistry.

Just chemical reactions. But in order for you to say, well, we have to validate whether or not the chemical reactions are producing proper logical inference, you have to abandon naturalism.

You have to go into my worldview to say that there are abstract universals called the laws of logic that we can appeal to.

If you say - You're gonna hear me out. If you say that we're just appealing to what occurs in the mind, you don't have any way of knowing that if your mind is thinking properly.

You have to leave your mind and go external to the transcendental laws, which naturalism doesn't allow.

So therefore naturalism has no way out of its own predicament. Okay, so why does naturalism not allow these?

Because naturalism says you can only offer explanatory options based on the laws of physics, chemistry, motion, matter within the natural world.

You can't allow for transcendentals, for example, the transcendental laws of logic. You can't allow for universal moral truths and things like that, which

I can prove to you that there are such things. Well, I would agree. So it does not...

So naturalism cannot get out of its own circle. Its own...

It hangs itself. It shoots itself in the foot. The physical brain is limited to the laws of chemistry.

How does one chemical state that leaves another chemical state in the brain produce proper logical inference? You can't justify its proper logical inference inside of itself.

Because if an improper chemical reaction reduces a conclusion and you say, well, that conclusion true, let's check it again to get the same bad conclusion.

You're just... You're not doing anything. You're just verifying the same chemical reaction. In order to verify if it is true, you have to leave that worldview, go to an external one, which the

Christian worldview is only thing I'm gonna argue, which is where the transcendental laws of logic operate. And then you can judge by those whether or not your proper chemical inferences are valid or not.

That's the only way to do it. If you use logic to validate your naturalism, you refute naturalism, and I win.

If you don't use logic, you stay inside of naturalism and it refutes itself, and I win.

Okay. Sure. I don't think I kind of understand what you're saying.

Again, as I said, everything can be checked against what

I say, and then we can check and fact check each other, so to say.

And - In a naturalistic universe, where do the universal laws of logic come from?

Humans invented them. So if humans invented them, then that means that they're the product of your mind and my mind.

So I think let's step back a little bit. How do we find logic? You don't find it.

I said, how do you define it? Oh, define it. Logic is that which conforms to the mind of God.

And you know that how? Because of the revelation of scripture. Okay. I would define evidence as, excuse me, logic, as the science or the mathematics that deal with the rules and processes used in sound thinking and reasoning.

You beg the question. Okay. You assume these things to be true. You assume the laws of logic in order to argue for the validity of laws of logic, but you can't account for the laws of logic.

You assume the law of identity, something is what it is, not what it's not, the law of non -contradiction, LNC, LEM.

You assume these things. Okay, that's fine. You're the one who brought up transcendental, so I'll get into it, do this.

But the naturalistic world, naturalism says only the physical world. How do you have transcendental abstractions only in a physical world?

What do you mean? Transcendental abstractions? The law of identity, for example, something is what it is, it is not what it is not.

So - Like I was saying that this is a book, actually a very good book to do, The Skeptic's Guide to the

Universe, a very good book by Dr. Stephen Novella, strongly recommend it. Yeah, and this is a telephone, so a cell phone.

So the thing is, we recognize this, you presuppose the validity. Well - So how do you account for that in naturalistic thought?

Sure, so again, humans defined what a book is. Humans defined what a cell phone is.

These are properties that emerge as the natural consequences of language. So again, when we talk about what something is, this is a book, because that's how humans define a book to be.

So then you're saying that humans invented the laws of logic.

Correct. So how can they be transcendental if they're invented by humans? Same way the mathematics can be transcendental if they are invented by humans.

For example, it was Sir Isaac Newton that invented calculus. And so they are transcendent, so I don't see any difference there.

And I think the number zero, I think was invented, or at least discovered in like a couple hundred years before Christ and was -

You just shot yourself in the foot. No. You said zero was discovered, and you're correct. So calculus was discovered.

It wasn't invented. It was discovered, just like the number two was discovered, just like the law of identity, something is what it is and is not what it is not.

These are abstractions that apply. If I were to say that two plus two equals three, you would rightly say that's not true.

From your naturalistic worldview, you can't prove that your retort is correct.

You can't say, based on my chemical reactions in my brain, I know that two plus two is not three, because all

I gotta do is say, well, your chemical reaction just made you say it. It doesn't mean it's true. If you're to say, no, we know it's true.

How do you know it's true? Because we invented the law of logic. Well then, wait a minute. If that's a product of your mind, you're just coming right back to the naturalistic explanation, which doesn't get you anywhere.

The only way to say that something is true or is false, like two plus two is four, and not two plus two equals three, is to apply or appeal to a universal law of logic and mathematics, because they're similarly related, that is not dependent upon merely the physical brain.

So for you to appeal to those laws is to refute your own naturalism. But if you were to stick inside of your naturalism, you can't account for them, and you can't validate your naturalism.

Either way, you lose. Okay, sure. So again, as I said, they are easily accounted for.

And can easily be fact -checked. That being said, let's get inside the issues of the

Christian worldview. The fact is that God is self -refuting, because, especially with the Trinity, because it is incoherent.

The whole idea of God is incoherent. And again, naturalism has the models.

So again, how is God able to be both free and all -knowing?

Okay, first of all, you haven't refuted my argument. And just to say God is incoherent doesn't make it so.

I showed you why naturalism has a problem, an internal problem. I showed you, this is why.

Here, here, here, here. If you do this, you're abandoning that that refutes it. If you go stay inside, you're abandoning it. I went through back and forth and showed you the reasons.

And you just come back and say, well, God is self -refuting. Let's work with that. Let's see.

Show me how the Christian triune God is self -refuting. Okay, sure.

So again, the triune God, let me still me in the position first, just so I can make sure that I understand it correctly, that the

Trinity is three, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and that these three are co -equal, co -powerful, three basically, three independent minds, yet one

God, they are persons that have, that each think, that each have the ability to act.

You see the problem? No. Is that, okay, sure. So basic algebra.

So if A equals B, B equals, so let's see.

A equals B, B equals C, then A equals C, peg of three, yeah? Yeah, A equals C. That's right. Yeah, so A equals

B, or excuse me, A equals C, B equals C, and D equals C.

What does that tell us about A, B, and C? You haven't shown why the

Trinity is self -refuting. Well, yeah, basic mathematics. You're saying that God is not the

Father, excuse me, the Father is not the Son, and not the Holy Spirit, yet all things three are God.

No, no, no. As I say this with most atheists, be very careful when you criticize

Christian theology because you guys just don't know what it is. If you're gonna study and you're gonna refute it, you need to understand what it is.

So the Trinity is one God in three simultaneous co -eternals, excuse me, distinct persons.

Okay, and so there are distinct persons, how does that even make any sense?

Three independent people, part of one God, how is that not three gods?

Because by definition it's not, because the Bible says in Isaiah 43, 10, 44, 6, 44, 8, 45, 5, there's only one

God in all existence. And then it defines Jesus as being God, the Father being God, the Holy Spirit being God, and they speak to each other.

And yet we see there's only one God. There's nothing logically contradictory about it. If it's logically contradictory, it would be impossible, but nothing says it's impossible.

But the doctrine of the Trinity actually provides for something very philosophically important. We have two main views about the nature of the universe, monism and pluralism.

Monism says that the universe is all one substance and that the plural idea of different aspects and distinctives within the universe are merely illusion.

Pluralism would say all the distinctions that we see are actualities and the appearance of it as one form, monism is itself an illusion.

So they refute each other, but only in the Trinity where there's one God, monism, and also the plurality of God in his

Godhead, can we then actually lay the philosophical foundations for the justification of the nature of the universe and the distinctions that we would hold regarding the absolutes of logic, the absolutes of actuality, what we call norms, forms,

Platonists, people know what Platonism is, the abstract entities that we call the laws of logic, tableness, truthness, et cetera -ness, and all of these things can be ratified and justified in the

Trinitarian economy. But I've talked about this many, many times with Christians, I mean, excuse me, with people who deny the doctrine of the

Trinity, and I'll say, show me a logical thing on paper or wherever, statement after statement, whether Trinity is illogical or not possible.

Nothing, no one can come up with anything. You can say it is, but it doesn't mean it is. So maybe you can try.

Okay, sure. So again, the problem here is, as you point out several times, like it's impossible to have, to infinite all -powerful beings, such as Mormonism, where they have numbers of gods that are all infinite, and -

But they don't say that, it's not, you don't know Mormonism either. Yeah, well, I know Mormonism, all these gods go backwards in time, and -

That's an infinite regression problem, but they don't say that they're all the same power level. They're all attaining and growing in their wisdom and knowledge in Mormonism, which is stupid, but that's another topic.

But yeah, or at least, I guess another way of finding it would be Hinduism, where there's all these different gods, and that's impossible, because of the issue of multiple infinities, right?

Right, you can't have a bunch of ultimates, all these gods. You can't then defend any ultimate truth of anything, as naturalism can't either, but the

Christian theistic model can, because God would then be the ultimate.

He's the ultimate source of logic, the ultimate as in the final foundational point of logic, of morality, of our existence, of all kinds of things.

We can then account for all of them in Christianity. You can't account for any of them in naturalism.

Like, what do you mean? We can account for all of them in Christianity. You can't account for any of them in naturalism.

That's what I mean. Then again, it goes back to the whole circular issue, with the

Bible is true because it says it's true, because the witnesses say that it's true, because of prophecy and all that. Everybody's circular.

You're circular. You presuppose the validity of the laws of logic in order to argue the laws of logic. Right, well,

I mean, we all have to have assumptions. But your view can't account for the circularity or even know if the circularity is right or wrong.

And we know the circularity is right or wrong based upon empiricism, and it can be verified and fact -checked independently.

Hold on one sec. Carl in the room. Carl, be nice, or I will boot you.

Okay, sorry, go ahead. Okay, sure, so. He was insulting you.

Yeah, I see that. I don't care. I'm insulted all the time. I don't care. If you want to do debates like this, you have to have thick skin.

I don't care what people call me, a faggot. That's why you look like that. I know, I look like that. Thick skin, that's a bad joke.

No, it's just not appropriate. Yeah, I know it's not appropriate, but again, I really don't care.

I do. It doesn't bother me. You're made in the image of God. You're in sin, but you're made in the image of God.

So you are due that proper respect and honor, even though you're suppressing the truth of God, and people should treat you accordingly, respectfully.

That's what the Bible says. You can't justify that in your naturalism, though. Even that, you couldn't justify. Okay, let's see here.

What was the other thing? You kind of got me distracted. Oh, sorry. Yeah, with the whole

Carl thing. He's probably, he's got a faggot flag behind him. Yeah, I don't care. See, if he says it again,

I'm just gonna ban him out. I mean, it just doesn't, you know, I don't want that to happen. Yeah.

You know, I disagree with you. He can say to you, you're wrong, but let's just stick, you know. Yeah, okay, sure.

So again, the problem here with the Christian worldview is also that the Bible is wrong on so many things.

Well, that doesn't mean that naturalism is true. And you can say it's wrong, and maybe you've kind of realized,

I've defended it for longer than you've been alive, and I've not seen any problems.

Yeah, well, lots of problems with even the very first chapter of the Bible. We know how planets form.

We know how solar systems form. Completely contradictory to what the Bible says with the earth coming first.

Well, what was that? How is it contradictory? Show me how it's contradictory. Sure, so in the biblical model, the earth, well, light came first, light and darkness, and then the earth with the waters above the heavens and the waters below the heavens.

Excuse me, excuse me, the waters above the earth, water under the earth. The cosmological model of the earth is completely wrong.

Water above and water below. Did you know that pterodactyls cannot fly in the thickness of our present atmosphere?

Because they have to be a lot thicker. And the water above model demonstrates that the earth atmosphere was a lot thicker back then.

Hold on, I'm sorry. Slow down there. You said pterodactyls are unable to fly?

In our present atmosphere, it's not thick enough to sustain the flight of pterodactyls. I was reading this in some journal.

And so they assume that the atmosphere was a lot thicker back then when it was. That's consistent with what the

Bible says about the waters above and waters below. Incorrect. So first of all, we do know from the climate record that hundreds of millions of years, like 70 plus million,

I'm not sure exactly when. How do you know it's a hundred million years? 70 million radiometric dating and -

Radiometric dating doesn't go back hundreds of millions of years. Yes, it does. Uranium -thorium goes back billions of years.

Carbon -14 goes back about 40 to 50 ,000 years. That's it, the most. Why are they finding soft tissue inside a dinosaur bone supposed to be millions and millions of years old?

Sure, so Mary Schweitzer herself, who happens to be an Evangelical Christian, has commented on these arguments quite a bit and says that the creationists who are copying and pasting her argument, this argument, clearly has not read her work, understand it.

And she said, and again, these are straight from Dr. Mary Schweitzer herself.

They said, point blank, they should stop using the argument because it's a blatant misrepresentation of what

I found. Well, I have to verify that. But the thing is that the Genesis chapter one doesn't count to contain.

How do you know how God created the universe? If he is light and he's there and he creates light, well, if he is light, wouldn't he be created then?

Have you ever heard of the model where the universe, excuse me, the model of the earth would be formed and then as it's coalescing, diffused light would be present, but you couldn't see the sun until after cosmic rays and photosynthesis combined to clarify the atmosphere.

And then you'd see it. Yeah, I've heard of that model. Yeah, I read that probably 45 years ago.

I don't know, a long time ago. And it stunned me because it was just like what the Bible said. But what do you do with the

Cambrian explosion? 530 million years ago, within what, 30 million years, there's 40 new phylotypes.

How do you justify that in your naturalism? Again, as you said, that's a period of 50 plus million years.

And you have to remember that many entire phyla were extinct long before the

Cambrian. I don't, seeing it as being - It's an information problem because the record there does not show transitionals.

It shows sudden appearances of phyla, sudden, very, very quick.

Does naturalism best explain it or does God's creative work and order best explain the evidence?

So again, it seems a sudden appearance, but it's not the origins of complex life.

Just reading directly from Talcott Origins - You have phyla are, phyla are body types.

Yeah, I know what phyla are. An entire phyla were extinct before the Cambrian.

No, no, no, 40 new phyla types suddenly appear in blink of an eye geographically, which is like they say anywhere as short as 5 million years to as long, the longest

I've ever heard is 40 million years. But most of us said 35. So we do the average and say, just say 20 million years.

Then in 20 million years, how do you account for naturalistically 40 new body types?

You can't do that in naturalism. So again, there are actually quite a lot of transitional fossils within the

Cambrian explosion. No, they suddenly appear. They appear suddenly and mature and they're without any transitionals.

For example, lillipods, basically worms with legs are intermediate between antipods and worms. Let me pull this up.

How do you know that? Well, because they're transitional fossils. Hold on a sec.

How do you know they are transitional? Because they look like it? Yeah, and this is what - If you say yes, because they look like it, that's not scientific.

My child could say, well, that looks like it belongs over there. Okay. Okay. So yeah, again, we're gonna make a prediction.

What exactly should we find in the fossil record? Here's one of my personal favorites is it's

Italic. So hold on, I see trigger warning. I'm just gonna answer this question.

Harford Community College. Yes, I live close to Bel Air, Maryland. And so, yeah, right now

I live on the Maryland -Delaware line. Shoot me an email if you want. You can find my contact information on my

YouTube page, youtube .com slash David P. Nuff. Just wanted to make sure everything was there.

Let's see here. Okay, let me get back on. Sorry, I'm getting distracted here. The creation model makes predictions.

What it would predict is, at the fossil record, would show sudden appearances of fully developed phyla.

What do we see in the fossil record? Sudden appearances of fully developed phyla.

Sure. So again, it also makes a lot of predictions that we do not find. For example, what was that?

What? Was it what? You said it for example, I cut you off, sorry. Yeah, sure. So one of the great predictions is

Tiktaalik. Have you ever heard of it? Of what? Tiktaalik. I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right.

Spell it. Tiktaalik, I'm gonna put it in the private chat here.

I'm bad with pronunciation. You're just gonna have to - Tiktaalik sounds like a drink you'd get in the Bahamas. Yeah, so Tiktaalik is actually one of my personal favorite predictions of evolutionary biology.

Oh, Tiktaalik. So basically it's a transitional fossil. They said, okay, I predict that if this is true, then we should find something that looks like this.

And this particular layer of the geological record, and we found it.

I don't know what it is, so I can't respond to it. But I do know, it's something we both are aware of, that the fossil record shows fully developed phyla.

Transitionals are very few and far between, and they're highly debated. Okay, so what would you accept as a transitional?

Well, you see the problem about how do you, how would anybody know if there's a transitional?

If you had like Eohippus, which is the horse ancestor, in all seriousness, let's just say there's five gradations where they have small to bigger to bigger to bigger to bigger.

How do you know they're transitionals? People would say, well, because they look alike. But that's not science. Homology is not scientific.

Homology just says, well, it looks like it is. I'm sorry, but this is a real weakness in the scientific methodology.

It looks like it. Well, you predict it. So that's why it's true. Well, hold on.

If you say we predict it, and that's why we know it's true. Then if I say, then I could predict in the creation model, the very same thing, it must be true.

But then they'll say, no, it can't be true. Well, why not? If we have the same evidence, and I can offer just as good an explanation, but you just dismiss it, then that's being arbitrary.

See, the thing is there are problems in the transitional record. Problems all over the place.

Okay. And one of the reasons is that fossilization is a rare event.

Takes a lot of sudden flooding all over the place to bury them, for fossilization.

That's what it takes. Like a universal flood. Northwest, of course, is impossible for a whole host of reasons.

What is? The global flood being impossible for a whole host of reasons. If you want to talk about the information problem, that is actually a pretty huge problem on the creationist side, since I want to make sure

I understand your position, because I know different creationists have different perspectives. Your position,

I guess, would be similar to the answer to Genesis, that the global flood happened about 4 ,500 years ago, and Noah only took

Hines on the ark. Is that what your position is? I could go with that. I could go with that. Okay, sure. And you would accept speciation, correct?

Yeah. So the problem is, if we take AIG's model, or the CMI model, where Noah's taken only 6 ,000 to 10 ,000 animals in the ark, you're gonna have to take those from a huge bottleneck to a couple million species in just a few hundred years, which, of course, would be a huge problem information -wise.

Not if the information was already there in the parent forms, and then predation and environmental pressures produce the necessity of speciation, because speciation is a reduction of genetic information.

So information is not a problem with that. Where did the information come from? Information formation theory is a real problem in naturalism.

It's not when it comes to creationism. The Christian model, God created.

God is the author of all creation. How did he create it? I don't know. He just did. Okay, well, that's a problem.

Why is it a problem? Because you have to have a model in science.

How exactly, you need to have a mechanism. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You're just saying that the scientific method has to be the right one to judge the other one.

You can't do that. You can't say the scientific method has to be the right one. In fact, maybe you're not aware of this, but the scientific method is based on philosophy.

Correct. So it makes assumptions, but it can't validate the assumptions using itself.

It is, and plus it's provisional, which means that it's always changing and always learning.

So it cannot be, no, I'm saying, it cannot be used to falsify

God's existence. Okay. So you should not be using it as a means to defy

God's existence. You still have not answered the issue about naturalism in the brain, because it means, logically speaking, you can't trust it as being a true model.

In order to assume its validity, you have to abandon naturalism to assume naturalism, and that's inconsistent.

You can't account for it unless you borrow from my worldview, which is a transcendental laws of logic, uniformity of nature.

You have to assume these things. The laws of logic are universals. They have to assume them.

Uniformity of nature can't be justified in the scientific method. It can only be hinted at and believed in, but we can provide as Christians a necessary precondition, not only for the laws of logic, but also for the uniformity of nature, as they reflect the character and mind of God.

Christianity has far more answers to these problems than you do. And let's pick, here's an easy one.

The woodpecker. I love the woodpecker. The woodpecker's tongue goes down its mouth, down its neck, okay, down by its neck like this, back up the back of its head, between the scalp and in the skull, there's a groove, down the forehead, down through one of the nostrils and out the mouth.

It's just one of the many features of the woodpecker. How does that evolve?

Sure, so basically, again, all that is really required is where the woodpecker's tongue should evolve is for it to go longer, which of course happens gradually.

And of course, you're actually kind of mistaken about the understanding of the tongue anatomy. You think that the tongue is actually anchored in the nostrils and go backwards.

Although - It goes from the mouth down by the neck vertebra, comes back over the back of the head, over the eye.

You can tell me that, how's that happen? It's best explained by God designed it.

It's not best explained by over 2 million years, the tongue gradually worked around up to the top of the head and it aided survivability during that time.

And then that genetic information, while it was occurring, was spread throughout all the genus.

It doesn't make any sense. And why doesn't it make any sense? How does a tongue stuck in the back of a bird's skull aid in survivability?

I don't quite understand. So is it - Birds fly in the air and they grab bugs.

And they just, they crush them and then they just jerk their heads momentum and they swallow the bugs. You don't really need a tongue for that, okay?

The woodpecker, however, is different. It bores a hole in a tree and then inserts its tongue into the cavity created in order to get to the insects.

So it necessarily must have that tongue. Now, if a bird is gonna be flying around with his tongue stuck back here, and then back here, the generations, now it's in the back of its skull with a great, it takes a long time.

Now it's gonna come back between the eyes. How many generations is this occurring before it becomes functional?

Like, I mean, I'm not quite sure I understand the question, how many generations? Well, again - It's a rhetorical kind of question.

It's a ton of generations, it's a whole bunch. It, you can't explain, for example, the woodpecker structure and function naturalistically.

I read an article once it tried or tried to read an article on it. It was, man, did they stretch logic and things in order to make it work?

Because they see the problem that it is. That's just one of the examples. It's best explained by design and by God creating it.

That's the best explanation. It's all in place. Now, what time do you gotta go?

We've been on for an hour. I can be here all night if you want. How about we'll go for that till the bottom of the hour, then we'll call it, okay?

We'll open up, unless you want people to have Q &A, whatever. Well, there is gonna be an open mic on my channel.

Afterwards, if you wanna open up for Q &A in the audience, that's fine with me. When do you wanna do that? Well, we can do that whenever if there's any questions in the audience, we can kind of take them now if we want.

Okay, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll open up right now. Anybody who has questions for Dave or me, just type them in and we'll see them here inside of StreamYard, and then we'll call it a night at the bottom of the hour, which is 25 minutes, okay?

Oh, Joachim West, please, Joachim, please explain how the woodpecker evolved.

Please explain, Joachim, because he's insulting Christians. Explain the phylogeneration inside of the

Cambrian explosion. What model do you have that suddenly scientifically that you can demonstrate and repeat as being true can explain for it?

So don't talk about idiocy. You're gonna be condescending and insulting. Let's see if you can do that.

Explain how the tongue of the woodpecker can evolve. Explain the, and don't just say punctuate equilibrium as a response either.

And then we haven't even got into the problem of information formation. Okay, anyway, go ahead. Okay, whose question is that?

It is somebody, Joachim West. Listening to Christians talk about evolution is sad or lack of education in this country, especially amongst

Christians, is how you idiots ended up electing Trump. You know, I just find his attitude condescending and insulting.

You know, you're just being a jerk. So if he wants to, you know, voice up, then answer the tough questions. And if he can't, then maybe just shut up and go home and then you can cry in a used diaper.

All right, sure. Yeah, the hummingbird. How does that, yeah, that's true. Just because you don't understand how something happened doesn't mean it didn't happen.

Oh my goodness. Okay, sorry. I'm supposed to be debating you. So anybody have any questions?

Basically, just because you don't understand how something happened doesn't mean it didn't happen. We're making an argument. George, you can't think critically, that's obvious.

So of course, I'll probably be able to answer more about the details of evolution through my four -year education.

You're gonna be learning a great deal about biochemistry, right? Yeah, and that's one of the things that I'm really looking forward to learning about, getting more in detail.

Now, I'm not, you can tell me, you can name any structure and ask me how it evolves. I'm not gonna be able to tell you exactly how every teeny tiny part evolved because we'll be here all night.

And that's not my real expertise, at least not yet. So -

Anybody have any questions you wanna ask him, either him or myself? Let's just ask.

Okay, Tony, Anthony, you're gone. Yeah, and I also wanna point out about the

Cambrian explosion or Cambrian radiation is that many phyla groups, such as mammals, reptiles, birds, insects, did not appear in the

Cambrian. And the fish that were in the Cambrian are unlike anything we see alive today.

Okay, but the Cambrian explosion says in roughly 25 million years that basically 40 different phyla.

For those who don't know what phyla is - It's a basic body type, correct? Body type, a snake, a bird, a dog,

I don't know, fish. These are body types, they're major. In order for body types to change from one to another, the amount of information is incredible in its change.

And the basic model says this, that if you have a fish that's gonna change into an amphibian, and I'll just butcher it just for the issue of illustration.

The fish has to develop through mutations some lobes of some type. Then they get the coelacanth and all that kind of stuff.

And then it was able to get out of the land. Well, then it has to have gills that can now breathe air. But these things, now it has gills that breathe air.

It's not like that. It's the protein molecules have to form and disseminate through the folds and through the...

It's vast. Yeah, I am getting a couple of questions in the thing. I also do wanna point out that only about one third of all the phyla alive today are appeared in the

Cambrian. There's a couple of questions. Let me pull back.

Here, I put one in the major window there. Hold on, there's one right before that from Adam Harold.

How does your view point explain the lack of transitional fossils? The question, of course, what would you accept as transitional?

Because there are lots of things that are transitional, like the Chautauqua that I already pointed out and the

Archaeopteryx also is a good transition. So again, what exactly - I don't know what is transitional.

What would you accept as a transitional? What would you actually accept? I would accept as a transitional form if we found very tightly gradated transitions through a bottom up area in a geographically located area, then

I would accept it as a transitional. But then it would have to be from like a fish to an amphibian not from a mostly flying thing to a kind of a flying thing and say that, no, no.

We're not going to find that simply because of the - It doesn't exist. No, because for one thing, fossilization is rare and there are transitional fossils.

And one of the great ways to prove that - But you say that you define transitional by fossils by what you find.

How do you know what a transitional fossil is? Because we define it that way. Well, how do you define it by what that is? But what is that?

A transitional fossil? It's circular. Here's a question from Jimmy. It's one of the better questions to ask.

Sure. So Dave, in the absence of a revelation to the country, how do you know the universe wasn't created five minutes ago? You have five seconds with streaming.

So this is last Thursday -ism, I guess. You can kind of call it that. There's a name for that.

Philosophically, I can say, I don't know. I can't really say that it was not created five minutes ago and neither can you.

So the point is, it's all boils down to Occam's Razor. There's simply no reason to believe it.

It's simply Occam's Razor. Give me a help you out. A better response would be, in a naturalistic worldview, that's not allowed.

It wouldn't fit in the model of naturalism. You wouldn't have it created because naturalism negates the idea of a creator.

But then that just begs some other questions. It just pushes back a problem one level. So what we know is that, as a

Christian, because God is faithful, God is consistent, and he has not done that because he's operate that way.

All right, let's see another one. There's a good question. I have a question for Dave. This is

Matt and I. How is it that the fossils are dated by the rock layers they are in? Is it that circular reason?

So the answer is no. There's two kinds of dating methods. One is kind of a relative dating method where we use index fossils.

As a guide, however, we do use radiometric techniques to verify ages.

So obviously Matt does not know exactly how geologists actually date things.

Radiometric dating is quite reliable. Jay, great question. How does something come from nothing?

It doesn't. Didn't that mean if nothing comes from nothing and something doesn't come from nothing, then there had to be a cause of our universe, right?

We don't know if the universe actually began to exist, but that's a physics topic of -

It's another discussion. Some physics that I won't really get into right now.

Carm Videos from Oregon. How does the flood explain the Cambrian explosion? Oh, for me then.

I'm trying to put these questions up on the thing. How does a flood, if I can find it. Okay, it doesn't matter. How does a flood explain the

Cambrian explosion? Very simply, by simply the life forms that were already there just naturally sifted through the sedimentary disposition of the flood.

And it appeared to show from lower to higher because the smaller ones are gonna go down in the sediment in the flood, and the more complex things, larger, are gonna float up higher.

And then as they come down, they settle, and you see this gradation. That's all. So Carm, K -A -R -M, says age of accountability.

I'm guessing that is a question for you. What is the age of accountability? The Bible does not say there's an age of accountability. Julie, great question,

Facebook. Can you point to any example that we have witnessed in modern history of one animal slowly turning into another animal?

Speciation has been witnessed both in the lab and in the field, so quite often. One great example,

I know this is a virus, but the HIV virus came from the

SIV virus. Yeah, but you see, such speciation presupposes that the information's already there.

It's a reduction of genetic information that causes speciation, not an increase. It doesn't validate the theory of evolution.

Yeah, Matt and I, I already answered that question, how they're dated. This is a great question.

PRO, I'm not gonna be able to pronounce that. Now, if there's anything wrong at all, and if so, why?

So yes, truth is what the facts are. Facts are what the evidence shows. That which is not congordant with facts are wrong.

But how do you know what a fact is? Fact is what the evidence shows. But the evidence doesn't always lead to facts.

So a man's walking down a path. To the right is a forest, to the left is a cliff.

He's walking along, and a tiger jumps out. He jumps, he ducks, the tiger goes over the cliff.

The man's evidence, he concludes that all you have to do when a tiger jumps at you is just duck and you'll be fine.

That's the evidence, because he saw, he saw the evidence, it was empiricism, it was just rationalism, and that's his conclusion.

He goes down 100 feet, he jumps, he ducks, the same thing happens again, he verifies his theory. So evidence doesn't always necessarily lead to facts.

It's facts that have to be provided first, and a worldview has to be provided first in order for evidence to have its existence.

Listen here, Karen, there were over 300 prophecies in the Bible about Jesus alone. I thought this area of debate got passed over very quickly.

Has David studied the mathematical odds of fulfilled prophecy? Yes, I have. I wish we had more time to spend on Messianic prophecies.

I think that'll be a fun topic to debate just by itself. If you want to just talk about Messianic prophecies,

I could be here all night. The problem is that they're all either mistranslated or out of context.

So yeah, let me pull up something real quick. Let's see,

I'm looking through the text also. David, Lisa, David, what is truth?

Truth is what the facts are, truth is what conforms to reality. How do you know that's true? Again, because that's what it is.

How do you know that's what it is? You don't know that's what it is. You don't know that that's what truth is.

You're just saying it's what truth is, you defined it. Why is it that definition, the proper definition? Again, because it is.

Okay, so then God exists. How do I know? Because it is. So Matt and I, David, you mentioned radiometric dating in your response.

How do you know that the rate of radioactive decay has remained the same over time? Well, great question.

If it has not remained the same over time, if there was a sudden acceleration of nuclear decay, that would release an enormous amount of heat and energy.

And Dr. Andrew Stelling actually did the calculations and got 22 ,000 degrees

Celsius, would be the temperature if nuclear decay was actually sped up a couple million years in a few amount of times.

You read the question? So question for David, why are there no gradual fossils?

Again, what would they accept as transitional fossils? That's what I'm trying to get at.

What would you guys actually accept? So again, there are transitional fossils out there.

Yeah, but that's a problem. Do you say they're transitional fossils? How do you know? Because they look like it. That's not science.

Yeah, again. Let's see what else we got.

Humanity, I'm looking. God is amazing. Okay, good. David, you mentioned, here we go. You mentioned radiometric dating in your response to my question.

How do you know? Oh, he already got that one. Yeah, I already answered that question. Sorry about that. Let's see. Matt, did humans live with T -Rex?

No, they did not. Why wasn't there more accounts of it in the caves and such? I don't know if they did or did not. Yeah, they did not live.

They lived 70 million years plus before. No, that's what you say. But the last few chapters of Job describe what looks like or sounds like dinosaurs.

Let's see what this says. David, you mentioned radiometric dating. Okay, repeat it. Somebody's just coming in again and again.

Okay, we don't have a natural mechanism of changing, David. David, absolute favorite question.

Matt and David, what about Pascal's wager? If Matt is wrong, he loses nothing. If David is wrong, he loses eternal life and suffers eternally.

What about that? Do you wanna respond to that? Yeah, sure. So real quick, real quick.

So let's see here. Hell, every religion has some form of hell.

I guess you could say I'm going to hell in every religion. I'm not going to waste time fretting over a place that does not exist.

I'm not afraid of the Christian hell for the same reason I'm not afraid of the Islam hell.

Jesus said it was real and Jesus rose from the dead. Take him seriously. Let's see.

Question for David now, does energy and matter produce life? Not sure I understand the question.

You have just energy and you have matter. Does it produce life? Yeah. Life from non -life.

Yeah, abiogenesis. I'm not up to speed with the whole science of abiogenesis, but quite interesting research is going on.

And that's one of the things that I might do my undergrad research on. And there was a paper out not too long ago where RNA bases were created in a lab.

Yes, where - You mean by design? Lab -made primordial superheroes, RNA bases.

It's designed specifically an experiment to get the basics, which still is not information, which is necessary for life.

Okay, let's see here. Hold on a sec, I need to plug in my computer before it dies. Nef, I'd say evidence for Darwinian evolution, but might be to show one of these transitions being born, but even that might just be flukimentation, okay.

Dinosaurs and men live together, that's obvious. Yeah, it happens all the time. You have Democrats out there, they're obviously dinosaurs.

Yeah, and - What's wrong with chemical processes? Okay, stop right there. I would actually agree. Dinosaurs, we call them birds.

We call them birds. Birds are dinosaurs, they are tetrabot dinosaurs. People just say this, they're dinosaurs.

How do you know? Because we said so. How do you know they're dinosaurs?

Because of the physiology. Same way we know that cats are mammals. Because you define them as mammals.

Okay, and why do we define them as mammals? Because you pick a definition and it suits and you work within it and that's it.

Yeah, and that's why we call birds dinosaurs. They are tetrabot dinosaurs.

And they have, we do know that avian dinosaurs did exist.

The question really becomes the dividing line between what exactly is the difference between an avian dinosaur and a bird.

Very difficult to define and even creationists disagree among themselves. And this is how you know when you have a real transitional fossil is when the creation organizations themselves can't agree whether it's one way or the other.

Sorry to interrupt. I still disagree a lot of things, so. Yeah. I want to go evidence.

You still have not refuted my attack on naturalism as a self refuting problem. Trinity violates the law of identity.

No, it doesn't. The Trinity is just simply the Trinity. Doesn't violate the law of identity. The law of identity says something is what it is and is not what it is not.

The Trinity is simply the Trinity. Doesn't violate the law of identity. Try again.

Go to the back of the class and write on the blackboard in the back of the class, I will not offer non sequiturs.

I will not offer non sequiturs. Okay. Why aren't we seeing evolution stages going on now?

Why aren't there some lions starting to get wing buds, for example? Turtle is stromian of evolution.

What? That is a stromian of evolution. Obviously he knows nothing about, obviously Karen, sorry

Karen, you know nothing about population mechanics and basic biology one -on -one, but that's a topic for a different discussion.

Yeah, I would agree. No disrespect meant Karen, but it doesn't fit inside the model anyway.

Yeah. Let's see. God is most glorified as we are satisfied in him. Yep. Ha ha. I'd like to ask my friend

Orgay343, are you sponsored by Dr. Pepper? Yes. Dr. Pepper is a sponsor.

I shouldn't say that because that might get me sued if I say Dr. Pepper is sponsoring me, but that might get me sued,

I don't know. Ice, water and mist is an explanation of the Trinity.

I wouldn't go that far. That's modalism. Let's see. How does, talk about this one.

How does naturalism account for the rules of logic? Well, again, as I said, they are discovered by humans.

That means they already exist. Okay. But the laws of logic are abstractions.

Okay. But they're universal abstractions. How do you account for universal abstractions in naturalistic world?

Again, the same way I would account for mathematics. They are - Mathematics is abstractions. Yeah, exactly.

How do you account for universal abstractions in just a materialistic world? Again, mathematics are what we would call a, in philosophy, there are three types of entities.

Innecessary, contingent and impossible. Mathematics logic is what we would consider a necessary entity.

But they can't justify why it's necessary as a problem. That being said, there are rules of mathematics, which are definitely created by humans.

PEMDAS being one of them. There's no real reason why, it's simply a convention.

PEMDAS, the order of operations. Yeah, but that's not universal abstractions. Those are just inventions.

How about this one? David, what is your cosmology? Big bang, study state universe. How did all this come into being? By chance? Sure, so big bang cosmology, supported by lots of evidence, being the microwave background, the cosmic microwave background, the expansion of the universe, the temperature and a bunch of others.

We don't know exactly how it all came about. Dr. John, that's a good thing.

That's what science is all about, is discovering what happened in the past. The cause of the universe has to be personal or not personal.

If it's not personal, it has to have the necessary and sufficient conditions to bring about the universe. And if it did have the necessary and sufficient conditions, and it doesn't make a choice, it just automatically is.

But if it automatically is, so the universe would have been brought into existence an infinitely long time ago. But that's not the case because the universe is not infinitely old.

So the impersonal causes does not work. We're left with the personal cause of the universe. Hold on a sec.

Carl D, it's Carl D. Pedro asked, Carl D.

Pedro, will you send me your info and message me? Yes, I'm actually on your Facebook page right now and I am going to send a friend request.

Bad friend. Pedro, Carl Pedro, you just sent me your friend request.

This is a good question. You have got to answer this one. I think it's a great question.

The changes in human evolution have been so drastic over time that we will look, what would we look like in 500 ,000 years,

Martians or lizard people? Ask me again in 50 ,000, 500 ,000 years. And then this guy says,

Slick's laws of logic repeat the Trinity. No, they don't. Try, you know, if you want to offer a syllogistic analysis or it's a logical thing, please give it a shot.

You can email us, but no, it doesn't. David, how can abiogenesis be valid with the second law of thermodynamics?

States everything tends towards chaos and disorder. How do you get complex cells from non -life giving, not non -life, given the second law?

So this shows an ignorance in the second law of thermodynamics. First off, the earth is an open system, not a closed system.

Second of all, if that were the case, then snowflakes would not be able to form planets and solar systems and all will not be able to form.

But we do see the process. We know how stars form, we know how planets form through core accretion.

We can actually see that process happening today. I love this one.

You want to respond to this? Logic is just the nature of the universe, just like Christmas is goodness is the nature of God. What does it mean that it's the nature of the universe?

Is the nature of the universe abstract? Because logic is an abstraction. So if the universe is abstract, then you could be consistent, but that's not the case, it's material.

Are you saying logic is material? If you're saying logic is a property of the physical universe, that's a problem because properties can be measured.

So a property of, oh, I can't use this. This flashlight, there's properties of this little flashlight right here, okay?

Properties of the flashlight. It has grayness to it, a little thing here. It has weight, density.

So you could measure all the properties, but you can't measure the properties of logic. You can't measure logic using the same methodology.

So therefore, it's not a property of the universe. It doesn't work. That statement is incoherent. Yeah, let's see here. I want to go back to one question, a couple here for Nath.

What happened to the body of Jesus? Well, I know you're not going to like my answer, but Jesus died and probably was buried either in a mass grave or just left to run on the cross in the gate of the time.

So you believe he existed, and I could get into why you believe that. I said, I believe he existed. I said he was probably thrown into a mass grave.

Then all the eyewitnesses who wrote about what they saw were wrong. Another topic, 150 years of digging millions of examples found, why do you say rare fossils to many billions of opportunity for transitions?

Where are they? Statistically, it seems they should be everywhere, but they're not, okay. Yeah, sure. So number one, because fossilization actually is real.

We are very fortunate to have the fossils that we do have simply because of how they need to be preserved and billions of opportunities for transition.

Again, what would you guys actually accept as transition? If you guys can't get me what you guys would accept as transition, then nothing you guys would,

I can show you. That'd be interesting because there's problems there. Slick just claims he can account for all these statements without justification, just assumptions.

No, I've been arguing these things and providing God as a necessary precondition. The nature, for example, the laws of logic, they are abstractions and they're transcendental, but if they're abstractions, abstractions require a mind.

How do you account for the universality of the laws of logic if they're abstractions and transcendent absolutes without a transcendent absolute mind?

These are the questions, Jerry. If you want to debate me on this, we could do this, and I'll ask you the questions, and you won't be able to answer it because from a naturalistic perspective, you can't justify it.

I'm Matt from the Philippines. Oh, if you want to respond to that, go ahead. I'm gonna look for some other ones. Yeah, Matt and I.

David, the universe is a closed system though. Incorrect, the universe is not a closed system. It is an isolated system.

Let's see, how about this one? I haven't read it. Transitional fossils should be defined as a group of fossils that demonstrate a transition.

Yeah, it's circular, that's all. Transitional fossils should be defined as a group of fossils that demonstrate a transition.

Yeah, that's circular, it's invalid, but yeah. Let's see,

Christianity is a relationship. David, do you accept Pangea? How about this one? I don't know if you want to answer it.

David, do you accept Pangea? Yes, Pangea was actually just one of many super continents, others being

Gondwana Land, Rodinia, and many others. So Pangea was not the only super continent that existed.

Let's see here, Matt and I. In response to my answer, you said that the earth is an open system. The second law of thermodynamics is overcome, correct?

But there has to be a complex organism to harness the energy for that to be true. Incorrect again.

So again, a complex organism to harness the energy that's simply wrong.

Icarus says logic is not a property of the universe, it's a fundamentally a part of it. What does that mean?

It's a fundamental part of it. I don't understand what they're saying either. Yeah, it doesn't make any sense.

Let's see, let's see, let's see. How about this one? Quantum theory doesn't need God. How do you know?

Let's see, you're just wrong about thermodynamics. We live in a system with energy coming from the sun.

Yes, and in fact, that means we're an open system. Right, isolated open system.

No. Related fossils, okay. Let's see here.

You know nothing of quantum physics. Maybe you'll eventually get back to naturalism. Yeah, we should get back to naturalism. Anyway. Speaking of which, my friend

Leophilius is in the chat. He is very good on quantum physics and cosmology. I think that would be a phenomenal debate.

You versus Leophilius on cosmology, God, and physics. That'll be phenomenal debates.

I would love to see that happen. I have to bone up on quantum physics. Can you justify the validity of a reasoning? No, how about this one?

Let's go after the next five minutes because really, there's nothing to do. David, in response to my question, you stated that because the earth is an open system, the second law of thermodynamics is overcome, correct?

But there has to be a complex organism to harness the energy for that to be true. No. No. Incorrect.

And yeah, Leophilius, in quantum theory, there's no God anywhere. It's just a lot of math. A cell is a complex organism.

Yeah. Let's see here. Cherry, Pana, David's due intelligence to fall for biblical nonsense of angels, humans, sex, talking animals.

What's wrong with that if God exists? There's no problem with that. You see, your assumption is, no, there's no God. So all that's ridiculous.

If there is no God, it would make sense. But how do you know there is no God? So you're just asserting something you can't verify.

How about this? How does naturalism account for objective morality? Excellent question.

Uh -oh, we lost him. Hold on. We'll see if he comes back in a minute. Okay. So he should be back in a bit.

That does happen. Okay. Let's just see if he comes back in, folks.

How does naturalism account for the objective? It can't. Here we go. All right, here we go.

Sorry, there. I do apologize. I asked it out. By the way, there is gonna be an open mic on my channel, youtube .com

slash davidpneff. I'm starting at the top of the hour at 10 p .m.

Eastern time. Everyone is welcome to join the open mic. Again, it's simply my name, youtube .com

slash davidpneff. All right, let's do, Slick has no concept of biology of complication.

No, that's not true, Jerry. You should say I have an insufficient concept, not no concept, okay?

And when you say things like that, Jerry, you're just overreacting and being inaccurate. David, please explain how abiogenesis is possible.

Second author. Again, that is simply incorrect.

And Leo is in the chat. He's better with the physics stuff than I am and he can explain that better than I can.

Try this one. There's a better one up there. Karen, what argument for the God do you find the strongest and why does it fail?

I don't find any of them to be convincing, to be honest, but that's a topic for a different night.

Let's hear a question from both. Is there enough evidence presently to believe in apes evolved humans?

First off, let's understand that humans are apes. I know people don't like hearing that, but humans are apes for the same reason we are animals, for the same reason you are a vertebrate.

What evidence do you have that humans are apes? Now, I could see some of it on TV. Okay, so humans are apes.

Well, what's an ape? Define what an ape is. Leftist, leftist antifa. Let's just move back and you'll see where I'm going.

In primates, yeah, primates, as Aurob points out, are collectively defined as antikillers, organic

RNA, DNA protein -based metabolic, mesozoic, nucleic, diploid, bilaterally symmetrical, endothermic, digestive, fibroblasts, et cetera.

With a spinal cord, 12 cranial nerves connecting to a limb system and an enlarged cerebral cortex with a reduced olfactory region inside a jaw skull with a specialized teeth, including canines and premolars forward oriented, fully closed optical orbits and a single temporal, for instance.

So by all measurements from all systematic classification of life, humans are apes for the same reason that we are animals, for the same reason we are eukaryotes.

So apes never, there's never been a half human, half ape.

Yeah, there has. No. Well, antifa,

I think most members of antifa are half human, half ape. And correct me if I'm wrong, because they are fully antifa.

No, I'd say there's something else mixed in there, like from the genus of moronicals, something.

If God has proven you enough, would you worship him? Let's just go, let's do two more and then we're gone, okay?

Because - Okay, two more. If anyone has any more questions, youtube .com David slash

David P. Nuff, starting at 10 o 'clock, be there. Okay. You know what, you just close it.

Why don't you just go to his channel if you want. I have to go downstairs and clean up the kitchen. All right. Join me at my channel later tonight.

All right, anything you wanna say before we go? No, thanks for coming on, I appreciate it.

You challenged me, but I accepted we talk, but short notice. Why don't we talk a little bit, if you want, we can just talk about Messianic prophecies next time, if you want.

Maybe we'll just see what's happening, because holidays are coming up and whatever, and I don't know, but we'll get to something like that.

Yeah, Remy says, Matt, will you have an after show? I don't know, Remy, do you want me to? Okay. How many people want me to do an after show?

I could do one for 15 minutes if you want it. Yeah, come to my channel. If you want, Matt's like, here's an idea.

If you wanna do an after show, come to my channel and do it. Okay. You're one of the few guys that would trust to treat me okay, too.

How do you determine - Okay, that's another thing. okay.

I guess no one really wants to do after show, so that's okay. After show, Melissa. Okay, I'll just put a little after show link for me, just for a little bit, so I can leave when

I wanna leave on the Facebook page. Okay. Hold on a second before you go. I'm gonna, can you type this into the comment section?

That is the link directly to the after show. If you could paste that into the comment section, that'd be fantastic. Sure, type it in.

It's right in the private chat. I don't know if you could put it in the comment section. Yeah, you see the comments, right?

Yeah, I can't actually type it in from my - You should be able to. Hold on a sec.

I thought you could. I thought you had the same. Maybe you don't have the same. Oh, the private chat. Are you doing the private chat with me? Yeah, I put it in the private chat.

Oh, sorry about that. Put it in the comment section. Okay, I'll do it. Here it goes. That's David Neff's after show.

Okay, all right. And that's starting in 20 minutes. There it is. So I'll let it stay for a bit.

In fact, I'll put it there. So that's in the window. So you guys can look in the window there and you can copy it and I'll give you a minute.

Okay, and then I'll just put a after show link on Facebook and we'll just talk for a little bit.

Then I gotta go wash dishes. All right, bye -bye. Okay, thanks Dave. Wait a minute.

We can just do our after show right here. No, actually what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna close this out and then

I'll put the link up for the after show because then people can come in here. Okay, talk to you guys in a minute or two.