Debate: Does God exist? Slick vs Adelstein

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If you can see inside here, you'll see, I think from your perspective, the upper left -hand corner, you'll see it says live.

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Do you see that? Yep. Okay. And there's zero people watching right now. If you put your mouse over that little eye, there's zero people watching because we just started it.

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But it'll be recorded and people will come in. All right? Yep. Now we've got two people on, we're watching.

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Okay. And so what we can do is just self -time and, you know, go over a little.

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A little over is fine. You know, half a minute or whatever doesn't bother me any. All right? Yeah. Okay.

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Not a big deal. So we've got 20 people watching right now.

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Okay. You see how it works? I guess you already know. Okay. All right. So what we're gonna do, have 10 minute open each, 10 minute response each, 10 minute cross exam, and 10 minute close.

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Now the cross exam, will that be, that'll be just consisting of, like for example, I'll ask you questions for 10 minutes, you have to respond, then you ask me questions for 10 minutes, right?

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Yeah. Okay. And then Q &A from the listeners. All right. And the

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Q &A will have to be filtered down through here on the chat. You see the chat on the right -hand side? I do.

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Okay. And what I'm gonna do is just see if a friend of mine wants to come in and maybe help out.

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And if he does, great. We should be taking it. We had old tech problems, folks. That's why we're a little bit behind. And so there, that's it.

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Let's see. Do you want to help run a debate? All right.

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And if he does, great. If he doesn't, then not a big deal. And I'll put this

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URL in here. And if he jumps in at the last minute, we'll just take a 30 -second pause. He knows how to do this.

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He helps me in the radio show all the time. All right? All right. Sounds good. Okay. So I should have done that one earlier.

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All right. So I'll introduce myself really fast and you introduce yourself.

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My name is Matt Slick. I'm the founder, president of the Christian Apologetics Research Ministry. And I'm a hardcore

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Christian. I defend the Christian faith. And here we are debating a gentleman.

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And he will introduce himself and hopefully it will be interesting. So your turn.

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You're up. All right. So my YouTube channel is called Deity Defeater. I am a hardcore not

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Christian. I generally enjoy discussing and debating things, interesting topics, particularly religion.

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I've had several debates on my channel. I didn't have as an impressive resume as Mr.

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Slick does, but it should be a good debate. And I talk a lot about why I'm not convinced that there is a

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God. And in fact, I'm convinced that there is not a God. So we'll hash that out. It should be interesting. All right.

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It'll be interesting in a cross -exam. And maybe we could just have an open discussion too as well. That's fine.

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All right. So Chuck, my friend, said he will probably come in. So if he does, don't worry about it. During one of the breaks,

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I'll just introduce him a little bit and stuff. He's no big deal. Let's see. So we've got 87 people watching.

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So I'm still getting over a head cold. And so occasionally, I will cough and clear my throat.

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I'll try and mute myself. In order to do that, you should have muting controls also at the bottom of the screen. And also, you might see me talking while you are talking.

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You may see me, but what I'm going to do is mute myself. And I have my notes, my computer. I have three 27 -inch 4K monitors and a speech recognition program.

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So when you're talking, I'm repeating what you're saying and adding notes in so I can come back and respond to what you're saying and things like that.

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That's what I do. So that doesn't bother you. No one else. It's not bothering anybody else.

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They just know what I'm doing. All right. You ready? Yeah. All good.

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Whenever you want to start your 10 -minute opening statement. Okay. My 10 minutes. Let's see.

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Timer. 10 minutes. And let's see.

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We're just us. Okay. Okay. Here goes. First of all, thanks, everybody, for watching and for Matt.

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He's another Matt for participating in this debate. He challenged me.

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And here we are. Now, we're both named Matt. Matt means gift of God.

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So we'll see which one of us is. We know that God exists because without him, we could not justify rationality, our existence, or any moral absolute truths.

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In order to have a debate, we must be rational. And to be rational, we must properly apply the principles of logic.

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The principles of logic in our debate are based on the laws of logic, the law of identity, law of non -contradiction, the law of excluded middle.

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These laws of logic are utilized by our minds, by both the debaters and the listeners.

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Now, rational thought, deduction, conclusions are all the processes of the mind. We do not find rational principles, these laws of logic, under rocks, behind trees, or embedded in dirt.

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We can't weigh them or take pictures of them or put them in jars. This is because the laws of logic are not properties of the physical universe.

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Therefore, they are independent of the physical world. They are not altered when people reference them, nor when people reference them, like today or tomorrow, or wherever they are, when they reference them in Africa or here in America.

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Therefore, they are transcendent in their nature. That is, they are independent of space and time. Also, these laws of logic are not dependent upon our brain chemistry.

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I've yet to see or hear any atheist produce a sound argument that demonstrates how one chemical state in the physical brain, at least another chemical state in the physical brain, produces proper logical inference.

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If my opponent has something to offer, I'd love to hear that one. The very possibility of a rational debate necessarily includes the presupposition that the laws of logic are trustworthy, applicable to all, and binding in our search for truth.

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Otherwise, our argumentation would be useless, and Blue sleeps faster than Wednesday. I propose that my opponent uses the laws of logic in our debate, and when he does so, he's borrowing from my

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Christian worldview. The reason he would be borrowing from my worldview is because the transcendent nature of these abstract laws can be grounded in the transcendent nature of God, the

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Christian God, but not in atheism. In an atheistic system of thought, where the transcendent

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God is not allowed to be part of the explanations for things in our world, including the laws of logic, the rationalizations from within that atheistic worldview repeatedly fail to account for the immaterial, transcendent, abstract laws of logic.

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In contrast, the Christian worldview can account for the transcendent laws. If my opponent says he does not need to ground the laws of logic from within his worldview, then

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I can retain his dodge and use it at my leisure, should he ask me a question to which I might want to not respond, just say,

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I don't have to give you an answer. Would that be acceptable? Well, of course not. On the other hand, if my opponent tries to ground the laws of logic from within his atheistic worldview, then he would be arguing in support of transcendent abstractions from a non -transcendent worldview.

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This would be self -refuting and invalid. However, if he tells me that he has within his atheistic worldview a transcendent foundation, then

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I would like to hear it. I'd like to know how he would justify a universal transcendent precondition for the universal transcendent abstractions known as the laws of logic within his atheism.

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I do not believe he can do that. Therefore, for him to participate in this debate and use logic necessitates that he borrow from my worldview, and by just merely arguing, he's already defeating himself in his own atheistic position.

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But the Christian worldview can account for the transcendent abstractions known as the laws of logic by affirming the transcendent and universal

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Christian God, and this Christian theism is victorious. Now, as far as our existence goes, the universe is not infinitely old.

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There's issues of entropy, expanding universe, problems of traversing an infinite amount of time. I can go over these another time.

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The dominant view of science is that the universe is around 18 billion years old. Therefore, the universe came into existence.

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That which came into existence was caused to come into existence. The cause of the universe was personal or it was not personal.

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Only those two options. If the cause of the universe is said to not be personal, then that non -personal cause would have to be naturalistic, materialistic.

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The cause was either eternal or it was not eternal. Now, if it was eternal, that brings us to an infinite regression issue and worthy of another discussion.

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But if the impersonal cause of the universe existed eternally, then it would have had to have possessed the necessary and sufficient conditions to bring the universe into existence as part of its eternal nature.

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However, in an impersonal state of being without choice that consists of strictly natural laws and conditions, the necessary and sufficient conditions would have automatically resulted in the formation of the universe.

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If the cause was eternal, then it would have possessed the necessary and sufficient conditions eternally.

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But this would necessitate that the universe would have automatically come into existence an infinitely long time ago.

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But the universe is not infinitely old. Therefore, it is not possible that an impersonal cause brought the universe into existence.

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The only other explanation is a personal cause brought the universe into existence. The Christian God would possess the necessary and sufficient conditions.

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Let's do this. Hold on one sec. We'll do this right here. The Christian God would possess the necessary and sufficient conditions to bring the universe into existence.

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And because he's personal, he chose when to create the universe. This accounts for the fact that we're not, the universe is not infinitely old.

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And of course it accounts for our own existence. The third area that's problematic for the atheist perspective is the area of morality.

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According to the third law of classical logic, the law of excluded middle, statements are either true or false.

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The statement, I am involved in this debate is true, or it's not the case that it's true.

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The statement, I am presently walking on the moon is either true or it's not the case that it's true and so forth.

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So I asked my opponent if the following statement is true or false. The statement is this.

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Hold on, let me pause. Sorry. Okay, there we go. So is this statement true or false?

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It is always morally wrong for anyone to torture babies to death merely for their personal pleasure.

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If my opponent agrees that the statement is true, it's always wrong for anyone to torture babies to death merely for their personal pleasure.

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This is a moral issue. If he says the statement's true, then he's affirming a universal, transcendent, and moral absolute.

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But how would he justify such a thing in an atheistic worldview that lacks abstract transcendent truths?

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If my opponent says that the statement's not true, then I would ask him to provide an instance where torturing babies to death merely for one's personal pleasure is valid.

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After all, that would be the logical requirement of his position. If he says that the statement's neither true nor false, then he's working against a law of excluded middle and he's adopting irrationality, which would then cast doubts on his ability of his argument regarding his denial of God.

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Now, just to be clear, I'm not saying atheists cannot be moral. The issue I'm raising is that they cannot justify what is objectively universally right and wrong from their atheistic perspective.

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At most, they can only propose theories, popular opinions, pragmatism, and other vacuous options to account for morality.

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But in the Christian worldview, we can answer the question whether it is always morally wrong for anyone to torture babies to death merely for their personal pleasure.

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The answer is simple. Of course, it's always wrong. God has said it's wrong to murder. He's revealed it.

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He's revealed it out of his own character and in nature. So my opponent is an atheist who denies

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God's existence or at the very least denies that he has any explanatory ability and power in his own worldview.

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So in order for him to demonstrate that God does not exist, he has basically a very difficult position to prove a negative.

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It's going to be very, very difficult for him. He would have to provide answers to the challenges that I've given.

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If he raises a logical argument, I assert that he's borrowing from my worldview and refuting himself.

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If he jumps to morality and makes statements about what is right and what is wrong, then he must defend from his atheistic worldview where universal moral absolutes come from.

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But this would presuppose universal abstractions, something his atheistic worldview would have an extremely difficult time defending, even if he could try to do it at all.

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This leads us to conclude that the impossibility of the atheistic worldview as being valid is just not valid.

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When we have two options to account for something, God or not God, and the not God position can be shown to be invalid, then the evidence supports

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God's existence. Finally, I'd like to say that from the Christian perspective, the laws of logic are the reflections of God's universal mind.

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I can give account for them in the Christian worldview. I can give account for our own existence that God is our creator.

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I would say that any argument supporting any moral right and wrong necessitates the Christian Trinitarian God, and that to argue that something is or is not right or wrong presupposes his holy existence, because from the atheistic perspective, it's an indefensible position to hold that there are universal truths that apply in moral areas, and he cannot say, therefore, what is right and what is wrong.

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Atheism, therefore, fails. The truth of the Christian God prevails. All right, so my 10 -minute opening statement, and in this opening statement,

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I will not be refuting what Matt has just said. I'll be giving my opening statements, the rebuttal, and I'll be refuting what he said.

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All right, everyone good? All right. The first argument against God is the problem of maximization.

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Premise one, a God would attempt to maximally achieve its goals. Premise two, an omnipotent

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God has infinite ability to achieve its goals. Premise three, a God with infinite ability to achieve its goals would infinitely achieve its goals.

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Therefore, if there were a God, whatever its goals are would be produced in infinite quantities, or if there's some logical problem with an actual infinite amount of things, some unfathomably vast amounts of God's goals would be produced.

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Premise four, God's goals are not produced in nearly infinite quantities. Therefore, God does not exist.

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For example, if God merely wanted beings to have a connection with him, he could make infinite beings, all of whom have sufficient evidence to have a close connection with him.

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There is some experience that could bring anyone to have a close connection to God, and even if there isn't, God could certainly make beings that are all able to be close to God, or by miracle provide people with a godly experience.

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Therefore, the absence of nearly infinite quantities of God's goals disproves an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent

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God. The second argument is the problem of hell. Why condemn people to hell where they experience infinite suffering?

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Because they are unpersuaded by Christianity. If God punishes non -believers for all of eternity for their non -belief, then if you asked the victims of the holocaust who had caused them to suffer more,

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God or Hitler, they would have to say God. The fact that he's willing to infinitely torture atheists and Muslims proves that he's not a perfect God.

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The most benevolent non -Christian who you know is not deserving of eternal damnation, given that by Matt Flick's own account, atheists can obviously be mortal.

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The third argument is the argument from obvious improvement slash the problem of evil. Premise one, good beings improve the world to whatever extent possible.

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Premise two, if God exists, he has infinite ability to improve the world, thus he would make the world perfect.

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Premise three, the world is not perfect. There are bad things in the world. In order to answer this argument, there are six obvious improvements that I claim a perfect God would make that must be addressed.

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One, why would God make diseases such as malaria, depression, and flesh -eating parasites that devour the eyes of infants?

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Two, why wouldn't he cause every experience of joy to feel 10 trillion times better and every experience of suffering to be 10 trillion times less painful?

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Any justification for suffering is not sufficient to explain why this degree of suffering exists relative to the well -being that could exist.

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If Matt posits that the reason for suffering is for us to enter heaven, God could let everyone into heaven without the suffering.

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If it's for spiritual growth, then the theist would have to accept that no amount of well -being is worth a marginal decline in spiritual growth.

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Given that God can turn up the well -being dials as much as he wants and turn down the suffering dials as much as he wants,

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Matt would have to defend that no amount of well -being justifies whatever explanation there is for God forgoing these obvious improvements.

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Three, to resolve human evil, why wouldn't God make people feel the suffering that they inflict upon others?

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That would result in them having the free will to partake in evil but never desiring to commit acts of evil for when they harm another, they suffer.

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Four, why wouldn't God make the peaks of suffering be less painful? Imagine the worst possible experience.

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Imagine being burned alive or being eaten alive. Could God not find a way to make that less painful without violating free will?

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Five, why wouldn't God make a world with less wild animal suffering, where wild animals generally live good lives?

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According to Oscar Horta in 2015, there is far more suffering than well -being in the universe, given the vast number of wild animals and the vast suffering that they experience.

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Most animals are R -strategists, which means that they have thousands or millions of babies, 99 .999

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% of whom die, before reaching sexual maturity. The life of most animals that have ever existed consists of being born and either starving to death or being eaten alive on their very first day of life.

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Even if the deductive argument is refuted, there is an incredibly strong inductive argument against God, given that the level of suffering in the world seems to be far greater than the level of well -being in the world, as Horta has pointed out, given that humans only make up a minute percentage of sentient beings, and non -human sentient beings live terrible lives.

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Even if God has some explanation for evil, could he not create a world with more overall pleasure than pain?

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And worst of all, all of this has been going on for millions of years before humans were ever on the scene. Could God not think of a way to bring humans into existence without inflicting unimaginable suffering on unfathomable numbers of animals for unfathomable numbers of years?

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Six, for those who are pro -life, they must explain why 80 % of fetuses that are conceived never come to fruition.

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If life begins conception, that means that God allows the death of 80 % of people before they are ever born, meaning that God is the most aborticidal deity in history.

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Theists will often, in response to this argument, claim that there is a morally sufficient reason for evil, as Matt has before.

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However, there cannot be a morally sufficient reason for evil and for forgoing these obvious improvements for four reasons.

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One, if there is some morally sufficient reason for flesh -eating parasites making them good in the long run, then it would be bad to eradicate flesh -eating parasites.

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Therefore, for them to proclaim that flesh -eating parasites have some morally sufficient reason such that the world is better because of flesh -eating parasites, they'd be in the unfortunate position of defending that efforts to eradicate flesh -eating parasites are immortal because they're eliminating something that is ultimately good.

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Two, the idea of a morally sufficient reason for badness is nonsensical in the context of an omnipotent being.

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The nature of a morally sufficient reason is that something bad is necessary for something good. However, an omnipotent being can simply decree the good end without needing the bad means.

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If it were possible to magically heal children with a wave of a magic wand, it would be immortal to give them surgery.

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If the reason for malaria, for example, is because it gives humans knowledge, God could simply implant us with that knowledge.

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If it's because solving problems makes us progress, God could give us problems that make us progress equally that don't involve babies dying.

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Therefore, these evils can't be justified on the basis of instrumental value because an omnipotent being never needs bad things for their instrumental value.

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With a wave of their omnipotent wand, they can achieve their end without needing babies to die horrifically. Three, this cannot explain the problem of hell.

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In hell, we are eternally separated from everyone else and from God, so why must we be tormented? Why can't we be granted happiness in hell?

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We are eternally separated from everyone else, so eternal damnation can't have instrumental value. If we must be eternally separated from God, can't he at least give us some entertainment for all of eternity?

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Can't we at least have some books to read or some games to play as we languish in hell? And then four, it results in moral paralysis because if a perfect being would not prevent an earthquake that causes children to suffocate under buildings and doesn't stop flesh -eating parasites that eat infants' eyes, we should be very skeptical of every moral claim that we try to make.

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The fourth argument is the argument from concealment. Why would God remain hidden and not reveal himself?

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Why would God demand being worshipped without revealing his existence? If there were a God, you'd expect revelation to be available for all who seek it.

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There's no reason for God to privilege one group over another when it comes to revelation, and yet there are clearly people who want to receive revelation but who are never given divine revelation.

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Fifth is the argument from mortal uncertainty. Why would we be mortally uncertain if there were a God? Nick Beck said, found in 2013, that our mortal intuitions are very often mistaken, yet if there were a

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God, you'd expect us to know right and wrong. Why would the mortal law that's written in our hearts have so many errors in it?

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Sixth is the argument from alternative explanations. There are many other explanations for all arguments that could be brought up by theists, such as an eternal, all -powerful, naturalistic force.

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All arguments for theism are arguments from ignorance, saying we don't know x, therefore a God. However, a naturalistic force, the world being a computer program, it being created by a series of pixies, it being created by an apathetic deistic

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God or some unexplained law of nature, serves as an equally good solution and is historically far more likely to be the correct explanation.

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An eternal, uncaused, all -powerful natural force can cause objective morality, provide for presuppositions, and cause the universe to exist.

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If any arguments against God hold any weight, then alternatives become far more likely than the Christian God. Seventh is the argument from instruction.

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The Bible is not the product of a divine being. It has many atrocities and ambiguities. The best possible designer would not design a contradictory book open to conflicting interpretations such that religious people all disagree about what he actually wants.

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Here's some verses that are pretty atrocious. Leviticus 24, 16 says, anyone who blasphemes the name of the

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Lord is to be put to death. The entire assembly must stone them. Numbers 31, 17 through 18 says, now therefore kill every male among the little ones and kill every woman who has known man intimately, but all the girls who have not known man intimately, spare for yourselves.

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In Job 2, 3, the Lord said to Satan, have you considered my servant Job? There is no one like him on earth, a blameless and upright man who fears

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God and turns away from evil. He still persists in his integrity, although you incited me against him to destroy him for no reason.

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There's not a morally sufficient reason for this evil, as God admits when he says it's for no reason. Hosea 13, 4, 9, and 16 says, you shall acknowledge no

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God but me. You are destroyed, Israel. The people of Samaria must bear their guilt because they have rebelled against their

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God. They will fall by the sword. Their little ones will be dashed to the ground and their pregnant women ripped open.

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Isaiah 13, 9, 16 says, see the day of the Lord is coming, a cruel day with wrath and fierce anger.

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I will put an end to the arrogance of the haughty. Their infants will be dashed to pieces before their eyes, their houses will be looted, and their lives violated.

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The world would have been much better if the Bible had said, never own slaves, never have sex without two -party consent, and had provided a comprehensive explanation of deep scientific truths.

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Imagine the millions of lives that could have been saved by the Bible explaining the germ theory of disease. Eighth is that it's irrational to believe in God absent some very compelling reason to believe in God.

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My opponent has the burden of proof. They need to provide compelling evidence for God, and if they can't, then you should be skeptical about his existence given that they have the burden of proof.

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And that's my opening statement. Matt, you're muted.

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Okay, so you said a lot very quickly. What I'm going to try and do is spend 10 minutes answering your stuff, and hopefully you can do what you want.

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You'll try to spend some time answering mine. All right, let me get the 10 minutes ready. And just to let you know, what

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I try to do is represent you accurately. So if I don't represent you accurately, my apologies. You're talking very, very quickly, trying to get as much information as possible.

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So, all right. Well, that's what it is. I'm trying to understand the argument for maximization.

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An omnipotent God is infinitely able to achieve his goals. Such a God would have goals. Goals are not produced to quality.

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Therefore, he can't exist. I didn't really understand that. You're going to have to send me this syllogism or this logical argument, and I'll find holes in it because there were some things that you said very rapidly.

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You went, no, that's not correct. It's not accurate. It doesn't necessarily follow. But on the issue of goals, and the problem here is that inherent, what are goals?

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You'd have to know the mind of God to know what his goals are. And since you don't know the mind of God, to insert that he would have to have certain requirements for goals, it becomes unfounded.

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Your whole argument fails. So something about hell, why would God condemn people to hell for not being persuaded by Christianity?

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Because they rejected the only provision that God gave them to be safe in the righteous judgment and their rebellion against him.

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That's why it's a biblical question. You want to ask a biblical question, I'll give you a biblical answer. You don't have to like the answer, but you can't refute the answer.

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Just raising up objections and implying that it's morally wrong has no bearing on whether or not it is or is not wrong as your later arguments produce.

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As you quote Leviticus and other verses and things like this, your implication is, hey, these things are morally wrong.

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Really? Who says so? You're going to have to develop a method and a system by which there is a moral right and wrong for you to be able to say, this is something we need to complain about.

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Otherwise, all it is is just your opinion and no offense meant. But your opinion doesn't make something right or wrong. You've got to offer something more solid than something basically like, hey, he's mean,

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I don't like it. It doesn't work in an argument. Now, infinite torture of God.

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Well, you don't have to like that. God has a right to do with his creation as he desires. And if you resist him as you are and working against him as you are and spit in the face of God in the infinitely valuable sacrifice of himself in human flesh at the hands of people who denied him and you side with them, then you're going to get the reward that they deserve.

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As the Bible says, the wages of sin is death. So you said, if God exists, he can make a perfect world.

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Well, define what perfect is. Who are you to say what is and is not perfect? You say he'll make a perfect world, but it's not perfect.

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So therefore it doesn't exist. Really? Give me, you tell me what standard is you have a perfection by which you can hold

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God to. This is a problem you've got. You beg the question. You assume that your position has merit.

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You assume that you can say, well, I know what the right world is. I know what the perfect world is. I know what morality is. You've got nothing to offer us in that regard.

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Absolutely nothing other than your opinion. And again, no disrespect meant, but your opinion has no bearing on whether or not something is true.

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And the world is not perfect. I'll tell you why it's not perfect. I'll tell you why things aren't as nice as they should be. Adam and Eve were in the garden and things were great.

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They were harmonious. Everything was nice. And then when Adam and Eve started acting like atheists, that's when it went bad.

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When they started deciding for themselves, what is true for themselves, what is morally right. And they decided for themselves that they would say that, well,

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God's words don't really mean what they say. And I will judge the truth of God's word. They started behaving like an atheist and all hell broke loose, sin entered the world.

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So you can blame the atheistic principles of rebellion against God for why there are germs in the world because of the fall of the world.

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Sin entered the world and germs and diseases are part and parcel to the effect of sin in the world.

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You ask biblical questions. Now here's something you're going to pay attention to. You ask biblical questions,

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I give you a biblical answer. If you were to then say, I'm going to argue from an atheistic perspective, then don't ask me biblical questions.

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Don't use the category of atheism to judge Christianity. This is a worldview examination here.

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I'm showing you from my opening statement that your worldview is incapable of accounting for rationality, argumentation, for our existence, and for any objective morals by which you can raise against God to begin with.

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If you're going to raise objections against God and I give you the answers biblically, then you have to deal with it from an internal perspective.

29:49

For you to jump outside and say, no, I'm going to ignore that and judge it from mine is to put your category upon mine.

29:55

I'm using your own internal critique, your own position, and I'm showing you why it doesn't work.

30:02

You say something about, why would you make the peak of suffering to be less? I didn't understand that statement. Sorry, I'm just going to go through my notes really quickly.

30:09

Wild animal suffering. Yeah, there is a lot of suffering in the world because sin is in the world because sin, oh thanks

30:16

Charlie with the timer at the bottom there on the screen, sin is in the world.

30:23

And because sin is in the world, because of its effect, this is why we have suffering.

30:29

This is why we have atheists. This is why we have people who want to control other people who rape and pillage and murder.

30:37

If they were to follow the Christian God, this would not happen. But if they rebel against the

30:43

Christian God and act like atheists and say, no, I will judge truth. I will judge what is right and wrong.

30:48

Then the effective sin in the world becomes paramount, becomes pervasive, and that's what we have. And then you have the nerve to stand there and raise your fist up against God and say, you shouldn't let that be.

30:58

Really? Who are you to say what should and should not be? You can't just give us your opinion. You can't just do that.

31:05

Pro -life stuff. 80 % of fetuses never reach birth. Yeah, I know. I had a son who died at birth. I had my wife's, one of her other pregnancies ended in a miscarriage.

31:14

I'm very familiar with that. It's the effect of sin in the world as well. Something you need to study biblically.

31:21

You want to know the biblical perspective, go to CARM, read up the articles. But see,

31:27

God has the right to do with his creation as he desires. He has the right to ordain you to eternal hell if he so desires.

31:33

You don't have to like it, but you can read Romans 9, 9 through 23. Or you can repent and you can bring yourself into that place in that relationship with God and escape the righteous judgment upon you, which is coming.

31:45

You have no basis of morality. You have no basis of rationality. You have no basis to justify why you're even here.

31:52

Your atheism can't provide any of those things by which you can then base any of your complaints and your arguments.

31:58

And that's the problem that you've got. You assume that your arguments are rational, but you can't account for the rationality.

32:05

Only in the Christian world can you do that. You assume that your moral perspective is the right one to argue from, but you don't have any moral perspective by which you can then say that I ought to hear and you ought to hear and the listeners ought to obey or ought to make sense.

32:19

Well, that is right. We ought to do this. You can't justify that from your atheistic perspective. The only thing you're doing is pontificating about your opinions.

32:28

You've got nothing of substance whatsoever. Concealment, why would God conceal himself?

32:33

Because people deny him, because people work against him, because people rebel against him, because they get on YouTube, they get on StreamYard, they argue with people and deny

32:43

God's existence and they accuse him of unrighteousness. And God says, he hides himself from the prideful.

32:50

He hides himself from those people who are just like you. And I've met many,

32:55

I'm 63, almost 64. I've been arguing and debating for 40 years. And I've met a lot of atheists who accuse

33:01

God and they say, well, where's God? Show himself. You want the Christian God? Then humble yourself.

33:07

But you stand in opposition to him on his tree, on his foundation of truth and then argue against him, on his foundation of morality and argue against him.

33:18

You've got nothing except foolishness and empty argumentation. Moral uncertainty, what moral uncertainty?

33:26

You're the one who has moral uncertainty. You can't tell me what is right and wrong. You can't tell anybody what is right and what is wrong.

33:33

You have no basis of moral certainty. I do. I can rest it in the true nature of God himself.

33:40

But you don't have anything like that. You can't do it. All you can do is say, I don't like it.

33:45

Here's, I'm going to try and make it sound intellectual. This is why I don't like God, because morally people suffer.

33:50

That can't be. Why would God do that? Well, let's have a Bible study and I'll explain why God would do that.

33:56

Because when people who remain in his image rebel against him, he lets them have their free choices and the rebellion and the consequences of that rebellion, which you yourself are experiencing in the hardness of heart, the judgment upon you already.

34:08

Read Romans chapter one, verses 18 through 31. He said something about, let's see, hopefully when

34:16

I read it, my mind will come back. Alternative explanations, creation by pixies or some other known principles, equally valid explanation for God's creative work.

34:24

Well, saying it doesn't make it true. You can offer these things and say they're just equally valid. Really?

34:31

Let's hear some rationality to this. Not just a statement that you have by faith that's not based in actuality, rationality, or anything.

34:39

Let's hear something more than just that. Now you said the Bible's got atrocities. Prove to me what an atrocity is.

34:47

Prove to me what moral uncertainty is. Prove to me that you have a moral standard by which you can hold

34:52

God accountable. Prove that you have it that's universally actable. How do you do that in an atheistic worldview where there are no transcendentals and no universals, no universal truth principles like that?

35:03

How do you do that? You can quote Leviticus 24, 16 and Job 2, 3. And incidentally, you quoted

35:09

Satan in part of your defense. You ought to be careful about what you do. And as far as germ theory goes, just so you know, the

35:15

Black Plague was stopped by people adopting Levitical cleanliness laws and millions of lives were saved.

35:24

But in the atheistic worldview, the ones who kill Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, Lenin, Hitler, these are the ones who have killed over 100 million people in the 1900s alone.

35:39

There's your atheism for you. If you're going to argue, argue from truth. Argue from what the word of God says.

35:45

Let's see if you can. Go ahead. All right.

35:58

Cool. So I will be giving my rebuttal. Sorry, give me one second.

36:07

My computer's freezing. No rush. Take your time. No rush at all. All right.

36:19

I am good. Okay. So I will be refuting Matt's opening statement and then going back over my arguments five times.

36:29

All right. So the first argument that Matt provided was the argument from presuppositions saying that how do atheists justify presuppositions to argue with logic and reason that requires presuppositions and yet atheists cannot justify it.

36:45

There are a lot of problems with this argument. The first one is that there is a distinction between just presupposing

36:50

God and all other presuppositions. The distinction is that other presuppositions are falsifiable.

36:56

If induction stops working, then we will reevaluate. But God is not falsifiable within this lifetime.

37:02

If God does not exist, then it will never be proved that God does not exist. That's a fundamental distinction between presupposing

37:07

God and other presuppositions. The second argument is that we can ground these basic presuppositions because they produce reliable conclusions.

37:16

Whenever we've tested one plus one, we've gotten two. We know induction works because denying induction requires induction.

37:24

The idea that we haven't proved induction that because we haven't proved induction, there's no proof is an inductive claim, which proves that to deny induction, you have to use induction, which concedes the validity of induction.

37:35

But also, here is a very good proof of presuppositions. Premise one, if induction were invalid, it would likely have failed in the past.

37:43

Premise two, it hasn't failed in the past. Therefore, induction is almost certainly valid. Induction allows me to assume that the rules of the future mirror the rules of the past.

37:52

In the past, rationality, the law of identity, truth, and the excluded middle have worked. Therefore, they're very likely to work in the future.

38:00

Third, if you can make up an explanation for logic induction, so can I. I can just presuppose a magic nature force does it or that pixies establish presuppositions that these things just exist by their very nature.

38:11

Just because something can't explain it does not mean that it's rational to believe it absent good evidence for it.

38:17

Fourth is that how does God solve the problem of presuppositions? How can God trust induction?

38:22

Just because he's been omnipotent in the past doesn't mean he will be in the future. Any traits that they ascribe to God to resolve this problem can just be ascribed to the universe to equally resolve the problem.

38:32

Five, for God to make the universe, he must be rational and assume the law of identity, non -contradiction, etc.

38:39

How else would you make a universe? Therefore, God can't explain these presuppositions because they have to already exist for God to be able to do anything.

38:46

And then six, and finally, this argument is just not formally sound. Here's another argument that relies on the exact same justifications, yet is far less persuasive.

38:55

Premise one, either unicorns or not unicorns explain logic, mathematics, and predictable universal rules.

39:01

Premise two, not unicorns cannot explain logic, math, and predictable universal rules. Premise three, logic, math, and predictable universal rules exist.

39:08

Conclusion, unicorns exist. That proves that this argument is not logically valid or sound because the premises do not directly lead to the conclusion.

39:18

Then the next argument that he provided is the argument from, is what's called the Kalam cosmological argument.

39:24

If there has to be an infinite chain, how do you have an infinite chain? With atheism, only God could have created the universe at a certain time.

39:31

There are a lot of problems with this argument. Number one is that God does not solve the causality problem. What caused

39:37

God? If God began to exist, then God arose from nothing. But if God is eternal, then

39:42

God has to be infinitely old. And then you have an infinitely old God, you can also have an infinitely old universe.

39:48

But if God is outside of time, then an atheist's account of the force that brought the universe into existence,

39:54

I can just say that force is also outside of time. Second, the ultimate laws of physics that explain all of existence could be eternal and could never have begun to exist.

40:03

Time could have been brought into existence, which would mean that the ultimate laws of physics that explain all of the cosmos never begun to exist.

40:10

Kuhn explains in 2015, quote, many physicists and philosophers now suspect that time is not fundamental.

40:17

Rather, time emerges out of something more fundamental, something non -temporal, something altogether different.

40:23

While this may sound kind of strange and conflict with our intuition, it provides a very easy solution to the

40:28

Kalam, and complex physics often does conflict with our intuition. There are dozens of viable models of eternal cosmology, such as the

40:36

Hawking and Hartle No Boundary Quantum Cosmology Model, where the universe is infinitely old and entirely self -contained, and the model of eternal inflation.

40:43

The physicist Sean Carroll was able to find in about half hour a dozen models of cosmology where the cosmos is eternal and never begun to exist.

40:52

That's why God is never considered in modern cosmology, no physics papers include the

40:57

God variable to explain cosmology because it can't make predictions and it's not a viable theory. Third, is that physics and philosophy is increasingly proving that time is in some sense an illusion, and that time arose as a result of physical forces that predate a time.

41:12

This, the idea that time is real and objective is what's known as A -theory. However, according to Zimmerman, writing a philosophy paper in 2005, quote, the

41:21

A -theory is almost certainly a minority view among contemporary philosophers with an opinion about the metaphysics of time.

41:27

And scientific theories are debunking the tensed theory of time, which claims that time is an objective, unconditional phenomenon.

41:34

Esfeld writes in 2007, special relativity shows that there is no objective simultaneity. There is no objective now.

41:41

Spatial as well as temporal distances between events are relative to a reference frame. Space and time are united in a four -dimensional entity, space -time.

41:50

An objective present is entirely ad hoc. Rejecting the tenseless theories of time has consequences that are unacceptable for science.

41:58

The reason why this argument matters is it proves that time begun to exist, which means that you can have something that existed since the beginning of time, but time arose out of something more fundamental, which solves the problem of an infinitely old past.

42:12

Four, the idea that everything has to have a cause, the principle of sufficient reason, it's not justified. There's not a warrant for it.

42:19

Abandoning it does not throw science into disarray. We can adopt the principle of nearly sufficient reason, where the principle of sufficient reason is true except in a world where there is nothing.

42:28

And in that case, the principle of sufficient reason can be violated. The fact that we've never observed nothing means we can't make absolute claims about the nature of sufficient reason.

42:36

This means that it's possible that the universe and time just popped into existence and happened to exist. While this may seem implausible, again, physics often violates our intuitions and we have no way of making claims about what it looks like for nothing to exist.

42:50

And then five, an actual infinite can exist. There can be an infinitely old past. It may seem to result in absurd conclusions, however, so do numerous other things in quantum physics.

42:59

An actual infinite does in reality exist. For example, there are infinite sets of points on a line.

43:05

Now, the last argument that Matt brings up is the mortal argument. I have four responses. The first one is that there's no proof that morality cannot exist in a godless world.

43:15

This premise is not justified. In a second, I'll get into how I ground objective morality.

43:20

I think that objective morality stems from the very nature of well -being. Well -being is something that it's rational to desire.

43:26

The second problem is that God cannot solve the problem of morality because if morality would be subjective absent of God, then

43:33

God could not make it objective. If morality is simply a description of preferences, then God cannot make objective morality any more than he could make objective beauty or an objectively best flavor of ice cream.

43:44

God can't just magically turn subjective things into objectives because that violates the law of logic.

43:50

Third, at best, all this argument proves is that morality is subjective. It doesn't prove that there's a God. And then fourth is

43:55

Euthyphro's dilemma. There is a double bind. Is it good because God decreed it or did God decree it because it's good?

44:02

If the former is true, then good is just whatever God decrees, and there's no reason good is binding. If Satan were ultimate, he could just decree the things that we think of as evil.

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He could just decree that those things were good. However, if God decrees it because it's good, then that proves that good exists external to God.

44:18

Some try to avoid this problem, such as Matt, by saying that God's nature is good, so it's not true either because of or in spite of divine decree.

44:25

However, this just raises the deeper question of whether it's good because it corresponds to his nature or that it corresponds to his nature because it's good.

44:32

Thus, it doesn't avoid the problem because if God's nature were evil, then evil would be justified.

44:38

Matt says that are there ever any justification for drowning, for torturing babies?

44:44

I don't know, but I do know that God did it in the Old Testament when he drowned everyone, every man, woman, and child, including babies.

44:50

If there's never a justification for torturing babies, then God is immortal by Matt's own account.

44:56

Now let's get into how I ground objective morality. Premise one, well -being is all that is good. Premise two, more good is better than less good.

45:04

Conclusion, the way to make the world better is to attempt to maximize the well -being in the world. The arguments for premise one are as follows.

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A, if we experienced all that was experienced by anyone, we would certainly be utilitarian.

45:18

If the perpetrator experienced the suffering of their victim, they would not kill, for they would feel the suffering of the person who they'd killed.

45:25

Experiencing all that is experienced allows us to experience everything that could conceivably have value.

45:31

Therefore, if there are objective right answers of what should be done, if one is the sole consciousness in the universe and had their consciousness infused into every sentient being in the universe, whatever it would be objectively rational for them to do is objectively good, for they experience everything that could be imagined to be good or bad.

45:47

For one to hold the position of nihilism, they would have to deny that there would be objective derivatives from this initial state, which seems a self -evidently false position.

45:56

B, self -interested agents desire well -being, which proves that it's good. Self -interested agents only desire that which is good for them, which requires that they recognize it as the property of goodness and that they want to experience that goodness.

46:09

To deny this argument, one must deny objective derivatives from self -interest. They must deny that rational self -interested agents pursue their own happiness.

46:16

C is that it's self -evident. When we put our hand on a hot stove, we recognize that it's bad, such that we pull away.

46:23

And then D, this forms the basis of our mortal intuitions. Every mortal intuition that we have, everything that we think of as good produces well -being, which proves that it backs up all of our moral intuitions.

46:33

That's how I ground objective morality. All right.

46:38

So, Matt, now you ask me questions for 10 minutes, and then I'll ask you questions for 10 minutes. All right.

46:46

So, can you define exactly what moral intuition is? Yeah, sure. So, moral intuitions are intuitive judgments about what's right and wrong, what we feel about.

46:59

Are intuitive judgments subjective? So, by that question, do you mean do they vary from person to person?

47:10

Yes, because what you think is intuitively moral, another person may not, correct? All right.

47:16

So, then how do you establish, then since it's subjective, how do you establish moral intuition as a viable basis for developing moral truth?

47:24

No, I said that well -being forms the basis of all our moral intuitions. Well, that's a tautologist thing.

47:34

Well -being is what forms a basis of an intuition. And what's your intuition? That which is a moral basis.

47:39

All you're arguing is developing a definition that suits you. How do you know that? That's my question.

47:44

How do you know that's the right definition? The other arguments for why well -being is good prove the desirability of well -being.

47:52

This argument proves how everything that we think of as being moral or immoral, every intuition that we have can be traced back to well -being.

48:01

I would challenge you to name a single intuition that cannot be traced back to being a heuristic for maximizing well -being. Why is well -being good?

48:09

Because there is, say, phenomenal introspection allows us to realize that as we experience well -being, there's something good about it such that it's worth pursuing.

48:17

So then well -being is defined as that which is being good, and good is defined as what's being well -being? No, well -being is not defined as that which is good.

48:24

Rather, well -being has the property of that which is good. So for example— Tell me what good is. Define what good is.

48:31

Worth seeking or doing. How do you know that that's the correct definition? Well, like, definitions are arbitrary, but—

48:40

How do you know what is worth seeking and doing? If it's intuitive and subjective, what you say might not agree with somebody else.

48:47

So why would you posit something like this which is so subjective, not universal, as something that you want to offer as objective, which means it's universal?

48:55

Well, I'm not basing morality based on my subjective preferences. I've given four arguments, which I don't think you have, like, refuted at all, which is understandable.

49:03

We're going at 80 miles an hour. The thing to do is have a discussion and go back and forth on one point at a time.

49:09

There's a lot of stuff, and you didn't even address the answers, the things that I raised. You actually got close to them, but you didn't represent them.

49:16

You misrepresented what I said. Oh, yeah, you did. Absolutely. But this morality issue is what you're sticking with here right now at the end.

49:23

You sit there, and you sit there. You tell me that morality is something that is based on intuition, but intuition is subjective.

49:31

That's what you were saying. No, I'm saying, so, to the extent that a moral view can explain the basis of all mortal intuitions, that's strong evidence for that moral theory, it's not definitively conclusive.

49:44

One person's subjective morality is not a good basis of morality. So then you admit, with what

49:49

I said at the opening statement, that you have no universal transcendent moral standard by which you can hold anybody to account, correct?

49:57

Nope. Did you hear? So you do have a universal one? Yeah. Do you want me to go over again my arguments for utilitarianism?

50:03

No. What is the basis? Give me the one -sentence basis of your universal moral system. Maximizing well -being.

50:09

So maximizing well -being. And who defines what maximizing well -being is? Whoever's making the decision about what action to take.

50:16

So then it's subjective. One person's maximization is another person's minimization.

50:23

So what you're offering is not a transcendent universal truth, but a subjective preference from different people.

50:28

That's a self -refuting statement. Just to clarify, I think you're misunderstanding what

50:33

I'm saying. So there is a phenomenon known as well -being in the world, which is an objective thing. No, no, it's not objective.

50:41

Well -being is not objective. Can you measure all well -being in all people to know that they have the same standard and what they think well -being is, is similarly defined so that you can then say that that's what they all want?

50:52

Can you do that? Disagreement does not mean that it is subjective. I didn't ask for disagreements.

50:57

I said, can you measure all of them to know what the standard is by which well -being can then be defined?

51:03

Sure. So while it is true that different people have different views about what well -being is, the people who have incorrect views would be mistaken.

51:11

The fact that people disagree doesn't make it subjective. How do you know that? What's an incorrect view about what well -being is?

51:16

What's an incorrect view? So the well -being encapsulates those experiences which are worthy of rational pursuit.

51:25

You can't connect morality with rational pursuit. You don't have the ability to connect.

51:31

There's the is -ought problem, the moral imperative that Kant brought up. There's some issues and some problems here.

51:37

So let me ask you, you want well -being, increasing of well -being, right? Let me ask you a question then. There's a man who works at a hospital.

51:43

There's a woman who's in a coma. She is completely oblivious to everything. She's been like that for five years.

51:49

He rapes her. She is not deleteriously affected. She's not harmed.

51:54

No emotional damage whatsoever at all. He has an increase of well -being.

52:01

Is it morally right for him to do it at that point? And some sense of rule, utilitarian. So I think that we should generally adhere to rules that are good in the long run for maximizing well -being.

52:10

So I would say he oughtn't do that because it goes against a rule that's a good heuristic for maximizing well -being. Well, you can't jump ship here and say there's a transcendental necessity.

52:20

You don't have a transcendental necessity. You're saying we ought to do that. I asked you, is it good and morally right for him in his moral intuition to rape her?

52:30

Nobody knows. Nobody finds out. His well -being is increased. She is not harmed in any way.

52:37

By your definition, isn't that the morally good thing to do? Well, so my response was that I think that we should generally adhere to rules that are good heuristics for maximizing well -being.

52:49

You're not saying anything. I asked you the question. Is it the right thing for him to do? The answer was no.

52:56

My answer was no, and then I gave an explanation as to why. So then, if it's not for him and another man in another state does it a year later, it's also not good for him.

53:07

So now what you're saying then is that there is a universal principle that they both must adhere to and ought to adhere to, right?

53:15

Yeah, I believe in objective morality. They ought to adhere to certain moral principles. So morals are abstractions, are they not?

53:22

Define an abstraction. Of the mind. You don't find morals under rocks. You don't take pictures of them. They occur in the heart, in the mind.

53:30

No, I would disagree with that. I think that things can have the property of being good or bad independent of a mind understanding them.

53:39

So, for example, if you had... Hold on a second. I'm not asking you for explanation. You can talk about that in your next time. I'm asking you if these different men who do the same thing, 10 men do the exact same thing, you're saying they ought not do it.

53:51

What you're saying is that there is a moral principle that they ought to adhere to. Yeah, I'm a moral realist.

53:58

You're saying... Yeah, you're saying there's a moral... Okay, well, thanks for telling me that now. You're a moral realist.

54:03

Therefore, you believe in moral principles that have an existence out there. Yet, how can you justify having a moral absolute without a transcendent mind?

54:14

Do you want me to go through again my arguments for utilitarianism? 80 miles an hour. So it's so difficult.

54:19

We had to have a back and forth discussion. Morality is an abstraction. It occurs in the mind.

54:26

It occurs here. Yes, it does. You don't find morality under a rock. You don't find it in a freezer.

54:32

It's something that occurs between people like communication. This is why I slap you because I don't like you.

54:38

That's immoral. If I slap you because I'm trying to save you from a bee that's going to sting you because I know you're allergic to bees, then it's a good thing.

54:45

The intention makes it morally good or morally bad. What you're talking about here is the intention of this man.

54:51

We can't get into arguments. We don't have time for all this. The intention of this moral issue, this man who wants to rape to increase his own well -being, as you said, is a standard of righteousness.

55:01

You must say that it is good. But you can't say that it's good because you said it's bad.

55:07

But you can't justify your badness when I've used your own logic against you.

55:12

You said, you're the one who said that if it increases well -being, it's good.

55:19

She's not hurt. His well -being is increased. Therefore, by your definition, it must be good.

55:25

But yet you say it's not good. Can you please explain how you can rectify that contradiction in your worldview?

55:33

Sure. So I adhere to what is known as rule utilitarianism, which means that we should adhere to rules that are genuinely good heuristics for maximizing long -run well -being.

55:45

The implication of that - No, no, no. You're saying what we ought to do, but you haven't grounded why there's an ought to be there.

55:50

We ought to hold to these heuristic things. You haven't said why we ought to. You presuppose -

55:56

No, you haven't. I gave you justifications for utilitarianism. Utilitarian because it's practical?

56:02

It's practical for the man to rape her and make himself feel good. That was not my justification for utilitarianism.

56:07

My justification is that if to the extent that it is only possible for desirable experiences to be encapsulated in conscious states, then if you experienced all conscious states and acted self -interestedly, then you would experience everything that would have value.

56:22

So you should act as you would if you experienced everything that everyone experienced. So that's a bunch of philosophical malarkey.

56:30

Act as everyone else. You're just saying that this is how it's supposed to be because this is how it's supposed to be. It's all you're saying. It's all you are.

56:37

It's all you're doing. You're not saying that it's the right position to hold. You're just assuming it is. You're begging the question.

56:44

Your worldview can't answer the difficult questions. All right. Now my 10 minutes of cross -examining you.

56:52

I'm gonna set the timer. I accidentally set it for zero seconds rather than 10 minutes.

57:01

Okay, start now. All right. So I understand that in my opening statement,

57:06

I referenced a lot of morally atrocious Bible verses, and I understand you weren't able to get to them.

57:13

So now in cross -examination, let's go through some of them. You said you wanted to have a Bible study. So Leviticus 24 16 says, quote, anyone who blasphemes the name of the

57:22

Lord is to be put to death. The entire assembly must stone them. If I say goddamn, should

57:27

I be stoned to death? There's the old covenant and new covenant. If you go to Hebrews chapter 8 verse 16 and Hebrews 9 15 through 16, you'll find that the

57:36

Old Testament to a sense is abrogated. This is for the people of Israel. There were many statements in the

57:42

Bible that says, say to the sons of Israel, and they applied only to Israel. This is not a universal statement.

57:48

So at that time, was it mortal to stone people who said, goddamn it, if they stubbed their toe? Yes. Okay.

57:57

So does morality change over time? Some morals do.

58:04

Okay. So you claim that morality is an objective, unconditional phenomenon, and yet it changes over time.

58:10

No, I didn't say that. I said that there are such things as moral absolutes, but there are also such things as moral, subjective things.

58:19

Don't limp them all together. Thou shalt not, okay, rape is always wrong. But if you like a morally, you know, so that depends on moral things like, like in my home, taking your shoes off or on, that's, you know, you come into my home,

58:35

I take your shoes off, please, is my home. And it's a moral thing. But what if next week I go, that was stupid. Don't need to do that.

58:40

It could change at that point. It's not a universal absolute. Okay, sure.

58:48

So your position is that morality has changed over time such that now it's not okay to stone people who say, goddamn it, but it used to be.

58:57

Now, you don't understand. I'll go over it again. A covenant is a pact or an agreement between two or more parties.

59:02

The old covenant, the old testamentum, testamentum in Latin is covenant. New Testament, new covenant. There's an abrogation in the covenant.

59:09

You should study this so you don't make these mistakes when you come up to debate later on, unless Christians just don't know the answer.

59:16

Hebrews chapter eight, Hebrews chapter nine, you need to read this. It deals with the issue of the covenants and covenants have stipulations.

59:23

My wife and I are married. Here's a covenant sign. The covenant is in effect until one of us dies.

59:30

Then the covenant is done away with. The covenant is like that in the old testament. God says,

59:36

Jews, you are to do this for this time and this covenant. And when the covenant is ratified, it's no longer in effect.

59:43

This is a Christian principle. You need to understand this. Sure. So would it be moral for you to put in your covenant with your wife?

59:51

Well, so if you had it in your covenant with your wife, that if anyone says,

59:56

God damn it around you, you would stone them to death. Would that be immoral? Even if it was in the covenant? You mean if I were to make a covenant that was meant and put it in there, something was meant only for Israel to get out of its context and then put it in and charge it to my wife?

01:00:13

I mean, I think murdering people based on the words that come out of their mouth is not morally okay.

01:00:20

I would say in most circumstances, we would say yes, but in the context of the Christian context of the infinitely

01:00:27

Holy God through whom the Messiah will come in the nation of Israel, the people that would say these things and blaspheme the

01:00:34

Holy God are right for judgment. Now you can say you don't like it, but you can't justify that you're not liking it is right or wrong.

01:00:41

Sure. So you said that there are some mortal absolutes that adhere no matter what time that just are always true.

01:00:47

Correct? Yeah. Would one of those be that you should not kill infants? Murder infants.

01:00:55

Okay. So Hosea 13, 4, 9, 16 says, you shall acknowledge no

01:01:01

God but me. You are destroyed Israel. The people of Samaria must bear their guilt because they have rebelled against their

01:01:07

God. They will fall by the sword. Their little ones will be dashed to the ground and their pregnant women ripped open.

01:01:13

What is the ethical defense of that verse? Ethical defense? How much time do you want to give me to answer that?

01:01:22

30 seconds. 30 seconds to give an ethical defense on this? All people sin against God.

01:01:28

There's what's called federal headship in the male representation and all children are by nature children of wrath,

01:01:33

Ephesians 2, 3. So all deserve to be executed. And in so doing, they would directly go to heaven and not risk the issue of going to hell eternally, being raised in a pagan society.

01:01:43

Sure. So does good come from God? Good doesn't come from God.

01:01:49

It's revealed from God. But does good exist independent of God? Of course not.

01:01:55

Okay. So can God change the nature of goodness? No. What if God's character were different?

01:02:02

Would goodness be different? Is it possible for God's character to be different? That's like saying, what if round is really square?

01:02:09

You're asking me a nonsensical question. Well, but then that concedes that morality exists outside of God.

01:02:15

Because if what you have said is that God's mortal nature cannot say anything else, then that proves that the idea of morality externally binds

01:02:23

God. No, you don't understand the Christian view of God. You should understand what the Christian view of God is before you criticize it.

01:02:31

You need to study aseity, immutability, his perichoresis, the

01:02:36

Trinitarian nature's eternality. He cannot be any different than what he is by nature and essence.

01:02:42

That is it. It's eternal, holy nature. For you to say, what if he were different? Is an impossible question.

01:02:48

From my worldview, that's not possible. Sure. So what you have said was that it is not possible for God's nature to say that different things were good.

01:02:58

If it is not possible... No, no, no, no, no. You're mixing the terms. Sorry. Nature doesn't say it. Sure. So if morality...

01:03:09

So what you have said is that in order for something to be impossible for God to change, it must be logically impossible, correct?

01:03:17

No, no, no, no. God's nature is immutable. By Christian theological definition,

01:03:22

God is what he is. He does not change. Malachi 3 .6, his nature always... Would it be logically possible for him to change?

01:03:32

It's interesting that I will give you this and you ask me the question that contradicts what I just said. I said his nature cannot change.

01:03:39

That's the definition of the Christian God. So if it's logically impossible for his nature to change, you have to demonstrate that a contradiction would arise out of his nature changing.

01:03:49

What contradiction would arise? You make the mistake of assuming that he's subject to logic. Could God make one plus one equal three?

01:03:59

Could God make there be three of us having this discussion? So then God is constrained by logic. No, not by not logic, but by his nature.

01:04:07

You don't understand the Christian doctrines. You don't understand the Christian perspective. With respect, I'm telling you, you don't understand

01:04:13

God, the Christian God, and the criticism of Christian God. You don't understand. Okay, but do you want to like answer the question rather than...

01:04:20

I just did. Okay, so if there are external things that constrain

01:04:25

God, that are byproducts... There are not external things that constrain God. But you have just said that God is constrained by the laws of mathematics.

01:04:33

I did not say that. I said God is what he is by nature and cannot change. His own essence and his own nature doesn't change.

01:04:40

That's what I said. So what contradiction would arise out of his nature changing? It's impossible for him to change.

01:04:49

Why? He is what he is because it's his nature. So it being his nature is a descriptive claim that what is occurring right now that does not prove that it would be impossible for his nature to change.

01:05:00

For example, I am Matthew right now, but that does not mean it would be logically impossible for me to change.

01:05:06

Why would it be logically impossible for God's nature to change? Because God is what he is.

01:05:12

If he can change, it's within his nature to change, which wouldn't be a change of nature. God is what he is by...

01:05:18

He's eternal. He does not change his essence. This is his self -revelation. You're actually not representing the

01:05:25

Christian God properly. So what you've said is that he cannot change because, quote, he is what he is.

01:05:31

I am also what I am. That does not mean that it would be impossible for me to change. So why would it be logically impossible for God to change?

01:05:39

You haven't stated what you mean by change. We're talking about the nature and the essence of... Change his very nature. Why would that be logically impossible?

01:05:46

Because the Bible reveals to us... It's not an issue of logically possible because what you're trying to do is say that I'm going to subject

01:05:51

God to logic. You don't understand. God does not subject himself to logic. Logic is the emanation and reflection of his very mind.

01:05:59

If logic is that, then that's why we have that logic is consistent and transcendent. You're arguing from perspective and you're arguing from the idea that God is not changeable.

01:06:07

Sure, so if logic is a byproduct of his mind, then if God's mind changed, could logic change?

01:06:13

Would God be able to change the very nature of logic? Okay, you keep doing this. I'm trying to tell you, you're asking questions that don't fit in the

01:06:20

Christian worldview. God does not change. So you just say, well, can he change? I'm gonna say he doesn't change.

01:06:26

Whether or not he does is not relevant to the question of whether or not it is logically possible for him to change.

01:06:32

For example, I do not change. I have not changed into a tree, but that would not mean that it would be logically impossible for me to change into a tree.

01:06:40

Whether or not he will is distinct from the question of whether it is logically possible for him to... Why is it logically impossible for him to change?

01:06:49

Do you have an explanation? It's not an issue of logically possible. I'm telling you, the definition of God's revelation of his nature, he doesn't change.

01:06:59

What you want me to do is abandon what it says to argue against him. The fact that he doesn't change does not prove that he can't change.

01:07:06

You haven't proved he can or anything. The Bible is a revelation that you're talking about, and the Bible says he does not change.

01:07:12

He's revealing it about himself. That's what it says. That's the Christian perspective, which you're ignoring when you ask these questions.

01:07:20

All right. Well, that was cross -examination. So you have your 10 -minute closing statement, and then I'll give my 10 -minute closing statement, and we'll go on to Q &A.

01:07:31

Okay. All right.

01:07:45

Let's see. I'll start. You did not answer the issue of the laws of logic.

01:07:52

You did not address, nor did you answer from your perspective, how there could be transcendental laws.

01:07:58

What you did was you shifted to the idea of presuppositions. I didn't say presuppositions.

01:08:03

We all make presuppositions. Presuppositions exist inside of worldviews. I asked you and raised the challenge of how it is that you can defend the idea of universal abstractions.

01:08:15

If you're a moral realist, the implication is that there are moral principles that have actuality existing out there in the universe.

01:08:22

If that's the case, you should be a rational realist as well, a logical realist, because both are abstractions.

01:08:29

Morality and logic are abstractions. They occur in the mind, intention, in the heart, that part of what we are in the soul.

01:08:36

So if you were to pick one and not the other, you're being inconsistent inside of your own worldview. That which is inconsistent is self -refuting.

01:08:43

If you're going to refute yourself, you abandon your own argument. You lose. I'm asking you to demonstrate how it is, from your atheistic perspective, that you can provide the necessary preconditions for the universal abstractions, which are absolute.

01:08:59

Absolute abstractions require minds for you to say, well, I'm a moral realist. All that is, is

01:09:04

I believe there's principles out there that exist that don't need a mind. That's all it is. It's just, I just believe it.

01:09:09

That's what I say. You can't defend it. I've talked to moral realists before, and I can run them into the corner because they can't defend their position.

01:09:17

All they can do is assert it. And to assert it, you have to presuppose the laws of logic to do that.

01:09:24

I can, from the Christian perspective, say that the laws of logic are the reflection of the mind of God. I can give you a grounding for them.

01:09:30

I can give you an explanation for their universality. I can give you a reason why they are transcendent, why the properties of them match the existence of them actually, which you and I both apprehend.

01:09:43

My worldview can account for them. You've not refuted the worldview. You've just offered various things at rapid fire,

01:09:50

I understand, limited time, but you've offered things which don't explain how you can account for these universal abstract realities.

01:09:59

You haven't done that. You haven't refuted the idea that the necessary preconditions for the universal abstractions, which are the laws of logic, is the very transcendent mind of God.

01:10:09

You've not refuted it. You've just said, I'm a moral realist, I'm a this, I'm a that, and you argue about presuppositions.

01:10:16

I didn't do that. You didn't represent my argument properly. You went into the issue of the

01:10:22

Kalam argument, and I made some notes. Let's see if I can find them on what you said about that.

01:10:28

And if God is infinitely old, you said, guys, it doesn't solve the problem of causality.

01:10:35

Remember, you misrepresented the argument there as well. And I think that you don't really hear what

01:10:41

I say. I think you react to what you think I'm saying. I didn't say that everything has a cause.

01:10:48

I've never said that, and I don't believe that. I said everything that comes into existence has a cause.

01:10:55

But God is, by definition, without cause. Psalm 90, verse 2, from everlasting to everlasting, thou art

01:11:01

God. He's immutable. Malachi 3, 6, he does not change. This is the definition of the

01:11:07

Christian God. If you're going to argue against the Christian God, then argue against the Christian God, not your misrepresentation of it.

01:11:12

Well, if God can change. No, the Christian God says he can't. Let's just say he can't.

01:11:17

No, that's like saying triangle. Let's just assume a triangle has four corners. We don't do that.

01:11:24

Why? Well, let's assume it does. It's that kind of argumentation that makes no sense from your perspective.

01:11:31

You used to say God is infinitely old. And you talked about a potential or actual infinites.

01:11:36

Actual infinites can exist. I hope you studied enough to know that there are problems with actual infinites.

01:11:41

And you use the idea of between two points and lines. So if I have a point, two points between my fingertips, how many points, a line between my fingertips, how many points are on that line?

01:11:53

And you rightfully said an infinite number. Well, if I go half that distance, how many points are on that half that line?

01:11:59

An infinite number. How then is a half of an infinite equal to the whole of the infinite? These are the kinds of paradoxes and problems that arise in what we call actual infinites.

01:12:08

It's not a great place for you to rest your argumentation because there are problems with it and you should do the research on that.

01:12:14

And it's just not a good place to be. And you said, quote, opinion of scientists about what they may or may not like or believe.

01:12:21

I'm sorry, I'm not trying to disregard what you're saying. I just couldn't keep up with how fast you're talking and try and make cogent statements to respond to later.

01:12:30

You talked about the ultimate necessity or the naturalness of the physical laws of the universe. Well, you haven't explained how you know that they're true, except to say, well, they work here, they work there.

01:12:41

But in order to do that, you have to presuppose the laws of logic by which you can then examine things. But you can't test all the places of the universe to know that the things work the same way.

01:12:51

You have the problem of induction and Hume trashed that. If you want to go with the idea of induction, well, it works this many times, so therefore we're going to base it.

01:13:00

It works that many times. Well, you can do that, but you can't justify it as an absolute necessity and build the case that this is why it is or must be the case.

01:13:10

When we deal with the issue of the Kalam cosmological argument, which you did not deal with on the necessity of the necessary and sufficient conditions of an impersonal cause and the impossibility of that, you just brushed over it.

01:13:23

You know, granted, I mean, you know, this is a time thing. We can't get to every point. A lot of things are said, and if you want to talk about it later, that's fine.

01:13:29

But you have not been able, or have not at this point, I should say, been able to refute the idea that an impossibility of the cause of God.

01:13:38

Now, you brought up, that reminds me, you brought up a unicorn or not a unicorn brought the universe into, or whatever it was, brought the universe into existence.

01:13:45

You picked the wrong one to look. Did the unicorn bring the existence of the universe? No. Therefore, the other one is true.

01:13:51

It's not the case that the unicorn did this. You see, when you use a disjunctive syllogism, you have to understand which side of the equation you're going to jump to first, and you misrepresented it as well.

01:14:03

You've made a lot of errors. As far as moral things go, you always want to stay away from intuition, the subjectivity of intuition, the subjectivity of the majority says this, the majority says that.

01:14:18

You were not able to defend the statement, the truth value of the statement, and maybe you can in your final closing statement.

01:14:26

Maybe you can answer the question. It is always wrong. It is always wrong to torture babies to death merely for their personal pleasure.

01:14:32

And then when you go to God, you say, well, God did that. No, he didn't do that. He didn't torture babies to death merely for his personal pleasure.

01:14:40

That's not what it is. You misrepresented the argument, and you misrepresented the issue out of Hosea. I said the statement's either true or it's not the case that it's true.

01:14:49

It is always wrong for anyone to torture babies to death merely for their personal pleasure. It certainly doesn't apply to God, who has the right to execute all people who were born under sin, and in so doing, even with the babies, deliver them into his righteous hand and save them, which

01:15:05

I believe that my son, who died in my arms literally, literally,

01:15:11

I will see in heaven. Who knows what would have happened to him if he had grown and he became an atheist, because all things are possible like this.

01:15:19

Who knows? You don't have a broad perspective enough to be able to answer the question and offer a moral challenge against God's actions.

01:15:26

You don't have a standard by which you can say that some things are or are not true. In your moral realism, you don't have that ability because it's just an assumption that you make.

01:15:34

If you're going to rebut, you need to be able to prove and use logical defense why your moral realism is actually true, why it then is a universal standard that you can apply to God himself, why

01:15:46

God must subject himself to it, why it's applicable to him. Your assertions don't make anything true.

01:15:53

You have not been able to demonstrate why, from your atheistic perspective, why the universal truths called the laws of logic have their transcendent and ubiquitous nature and their invariant quality from your atheistic worldview.

01:16:08

Other than just to say, well, they just exist. I'm a moral realist or whatever realist, I'm just, you know, realism.

01:16:14

They just, they just are. Then how do you have abstractions that are, that we apprehend in our minds that are universally true and extent without a mind?

01:16:23

You haven't established that. The Kalam thing, you haven't established how the position of the impersonal being, an infinite regression, the actual infinite, it doesn't work in this case.

01:16:36

I showed you why, the paradoxical problems. There's all kinds of problems with the idea of actual infinites. Potential infinites have actuality and they can work.

01:16:44

And if you want to apply this to the issue of the Kalam cosmological argument, and then you rebuttal, you might want to try and answer that.

01:16:50

How that it's actually going to work in an infinitely old universe where the thing that created the universe has to have the necessary and sufficient conditions, which meant, means that it would have already had it eternally, which means it would have brought the universe into existence automatically eternally.

01:17:03

But that's not the case because the universe is not infinitely old. Therefore, that position can't work. The other one has to be the case.

01:17:10

Your positions don't work. They don't add up. Now, what we should do, we can ask questions after you want, and then we could have a little slow dialogue if you want.

01:17:19

Pick a little topic. We'll go back and forth and I'll show you even more why your positions fail.

01:17:25

Go ahead. All right.

01:17:36

Okay, I'm going to be beginning with my arguments and then moving over to Matt's arguments.

01:17:47

I know that most of you watching are people who tune into the Matt Slick radio show, presumably are not likely to be convinced of atheism, but I can say for certain that based on the arguments that have been made so far in this discussion, it's very clear that if you only evaluated the things that have been said so far, the rational conclusion would be about the non -existence of God.

01:18:08

Let's go over them. My first argument is the problem of maximization. This argument states that whatever

01:18:13

God wants to achieve, he could infinitely achieve given his omnipotence. So if he wanted everyone to have a relationship with him, he could just make it so that everyone had a relationship with him without violating free will.

01:18:24

He could give them such a powerful experience. They have no choice. Well, they technically have a choice, but that everyone is brought to God.

01:18:31

However, the fact that God fails in his goals proves that he's not omnipotent.

01:18:36

The same way that if a supposedly perfect chess player lost more than half of his chess games, you would conclude that he wasn't actually perfect at chess.

01:18:44

Given that more than half of people don't believe in and relate to the Christian God, then God is unable to achieve his goals, which contradicts the idea of omnipotence.

01:18:52

Matt says that I don't know his goals. Well, what he has said is that God's goals are to bring people close to him, to bring them into heaven, to have a relationship with him.

01:19:01

He has said that that's his goal. So if that's his goal, why does God fail so much at this goal? Also, this argument applies to whatever goals he could have.

01:19:09

If God's goal was to just make as many paperclips as possible, which it's obviously not, but if that were his goal, you would see infinite paperclips.

01:19:15

Whatever his goal is, it would have to be produced infinitely. The fact that we don't see infinite of anything that could possibly be

01:19:20

God's goals disproves the idea of a God. My second argument is the problem of hell. Why does

01:19:26

God condemn people to hell who are generally mortal for the crime of non -belief? This argument is not just an abstraction.

01:19:34

Think about the victims of the Holocaust. The victims of the Holocaust suffered and died as a result of the oppressive

01:19:39

Nazi regime, and yet when they get to the afterlife, God decrees that not only are they worthy of punishment, but they are worthy of infinite punishment.

01:19:47

They are worthy of torture on a scale that infinitely dwarfs what Hitler had done to them. If you asked the victims of the

01:19:54

Holocaust right now who had caused them to suffer more, God or Hitler, they would have to say that this supposedly perfect God caused them to suffer more than Hitler.

01:20:03

That doesn't sound like what a morally perfect God would do, and the fact that it doesn't proves that this is not a morally perfect God who would do these things.

01:20:12

Matt says that the reason that they're condemned is because they reject this provision. That doesn't make it morally okay.

01:20:18

Even if you reject things that are true, it does not make you worthy of eternal damnation.

01:20:24

For example, I might disagree with Matt about politics. I might think that it's true that one party should win, and he might think it's true that the other party should win, but that wouldn't make it okay for me to torture him forever.

01:20:36

It does not make it okay because they reject what you believe, to torture someone for all of eternity, to torture them infinitely for the crime of non -belief.

01:20:44

That is an unimaginably barbaric idea that shouldn't stand in modern society.

01:20:50

Then Matt asserts that God has the right to do anything with his creation. That is absolutely not true.

01:20:55

You cannot punish the thought crimes of your creation and infinitely torture them. If I had a child, that child would be in some sense my creation, and yet I could not burn them for all of eternity because morality transcends the creator -creation distinction.

01:21:10

My third argument is the problem of evil. Why does God make flesh -eating parasites that eat infant eyes, and why does he make it so that fewer than 20 % of conceived fetuses come to fruition?

01:21:22

If life begins at conception, that means that God allows a process that naturally kills 80 % of beings, which makes him the most murderous dictator in history.

01:21:32

And why does God make so much wild animal suffering? Most animals are strategists, which means they have thousands or millions of babies, 99 .999

01:21:40

% of whom die before reaching sexual maturity. The life of most sentient beings that have ever existed consists of being born and then just being immediately eaten.

01:21:48

That dystopia that occurs in the world right now is not something that would be made by a perfect being.

01:21:54

Matt asserts that Adam and Eve made things bad, but we should not be punished for the crimes of our ancestors.

01:22:01

That's a barbaric idea that we abandoned in the 16th century, that a person should be punished for what their great -great -grandparents did.

01:22:08

We should not be punished for the crimes of Adam and Eve. And certainly, squirrels who are devoured alive, insects, zebras who are eaten by lions should not be punished for what

01:22:17

Adam and Eve did. We can put some of the blame on Adam and Eve, but we would also have to put some amount of blame on God if he exists.

01:22:25

This proves the non -existence of God, because a perfect God would not make things that are so evil.

01:22:30

The fact that there's so much suffering proves that there is not a

01:22:35

God. Sin did not cause the suffering. God caused the suffering, because sin did not make the disease.

01:22:43

Sin did not make the wild animal dystopia that is the status quo. This was all caused from the creation of the universe.

01:22:50

And yet there needs to be an explanation of why God would make a world with all that suffering. Think about the lives of most sentient beings.

01:22:57

They're born, they're eaten alive. That's not a world that a perfect God would make. Even if the deductive argument is refuted, even if there's some justification for some small amount of evil, there's not a justification for this amount of evil.

01:23:10

There's not a justification for the universe having far more suffering than well -being. Now, I brought up the argument from concealment.

01:23:17

Why does God hide? Why doesn't he reveal himself? Matt says that he hides because people deny him.

01:23:23

That would be a reason why he should reveal himself. If people are denying that you exist and you want them to know that you exist, then a good way to solve that would be to reveal himself.

01:23:31

The fact that people don't know that he exists is why it's necessary for him to clear it up by revealing his existence.

01:23:38

But many atheists are not arrogant and prideful. They're just not convinced of the existence of God. And yet God does not help us out, does not help us find the answer to these solutions, because either he does not exist or he does not care for humans to know about him.

01:23:52

I brought up the argument from moral uncertainty. This argument says that if there's a God and he writes a moral law directly in our hearts, as Matt has said, why does the moral law that's written on our hearts have so many errors in it?

01:24:01

I'm not using intuition to ground morality. I'm saying that the fact that humans disagree about what is right and wrong just proves a

01:24:09

God, because if there were a God, we would have general agreement. We would know what's right and wrong. Matt asserts that there's not moral uncertainty.

01:24:15

But remember, I cited you a paper by Nicholas Beckstead in 2013 that demonstrates very clearly that the majority of moral intuitions throughout history of people's inclinations about what's right and wrong have been wrong.

01:24:27

The God hypothesis cannot explain that. Then my sixth argument goes almost entirely unanswered.

01:24:34

The argument is that anything that you can use God to explain, I can use Pixies, an infinitely old naturalistic force to explain.

01:24:41

This argument is not saying that we should believe these things, but rather it's saying that everything that you would use as evidence for God, I can use as evidence for a deistic

01:24:49

God or for a naturalistic, all -powerful force. Matt asserts that there's no basis for it. Yes, that's the point.

01:24:55

You can make up a post hoc justification for how all these things exist, and so can I. If you can say that this magical God makes morality, logic, rationality exist,

01:25:05

I can presuppose that a naturalistic force makes it, and it works just as well. The argument from instruction,

01:25:11

I gave a bevy of atrocious Bible verses where God commands the murder of innocent men, women, and children.

01:25:18

I have, I will, when I look at the arguments that Matt has made, I will demonstrate how I can have a moral standard.

01:25:24

But for you to believe in a Christian God, as you watch this on Matt Slick's live, you have to say that it is okay for God to command that babies are gashed before the eyes of pregnant women and that pregnant women are murdered based on the command of a

01:25:36

God. If that's not moral, then God doesn't exist. Eighth, Matt has the burden of proof. If there's any possibility, if there, if Matt has the very heavy burden of proof, if God might exist or might not exist, you should lean towards God not existing, because otherwise, you would just believe everything that is possible.

01:25:55

Just because God could explain things in the universe doesn't mean he's the best explanation. Now, Matt Slick, in his opening statement, he presented a lot of arguments, but he has not grappled with any of my responses to his arguments.

01:26:07

He brings up the argument about how there could be transcendental laws. There are many explanations, and it could just be an inevitable truth of the universe, but I can just make up an explanation.

01:26:17

It could be brought about by some magic naturalistic force that provides for everything that God has, but most importantly,

01:26:23

Matt has not answered that God has to rely on these presuppositions. God has to use logic, identity, and non -contradiction to make sense of the world.

01:26:31

Absent logic, absent the law of identity, how could God make the world? It proves God cannot explain these because these things already have to exist for God to do anything.

01:26:40

This was not responded to. That proves that God has no ability to explain how any of these transcendental laws exist because they have to already exist for God to exist.

01:26:50

He brings up the Kalam cosmological argument, but again, remember, the majority of physicists agree that the laws of physics are eternal and non -contingent.

01:26:58

They weren't caused by anything. They're just infinitely old laws that spawn universes. While it may seem that an infinitely old thing is pretty counterintuitive, the world does not correspond to our intuitions, and this is what the physics models say.

01:27:12

Scientists agree that time began to exist, and so the world is not infinitely old. The problems with actual infinites are obviously negated by the fact that they exist in the real world.

01:27:22

There are infinite points online, so you see that you can have infinite of things. Matt brings up the argument about morality, but I went into a two -minute explanation of how

01:27:31

I ground morality that was entirely glossed over by Matt. We can have well -being, we can know that well -being is desirable based on phenomenal introspection.

01:27:38

When we experience it, we recognize that there's something undeniably good about the experience of well -being. Furthermore, if morality would be subjective absent

01:27:46

God, then God can't magically make it objective because God can't turn subjective things into objective things.

01:27:51

God cannot make an objective best flavor of ice cream. He cannot make objective morality if it would otherwise be subjective.

01:27:57

Finally, Euthyphro's dilemma was not grappled with. Is it good because God says so, or does God say so because it's good?

01:28:04

If the former is true, then God could make any atrocity good, but if the latter is true, there's some external moral constraint.

01:28:10

God cannot ground morality because God has external moral constraints. Thank you for the debate.

01:28:16

It was fun. I enjoyed it. So, do you just want to go into some open discussion, or do you want to go into Q &A from the viewers?

01:28:30

You're muted. Yeah, I can do open discussion if you want, or I can do

01:28:37

Q &A. We'll leave it up to you. What do you want? Either way works. Okay.

01:28:45

Do you want to do, how about 10 minutes of open discussion, and then we start Q &A? Okay, that's fine.

01:28:53

That's fine. You want to ask your question? You wanted to start off with something? Yeah, I'll ask you a question. So, in my last speech, was it clear the argument from the problem of maximization?

01:29:03

Was it clear what I was saying? Okay, sure. So, the problem of maximization says that whatever

01:29:09

God's goals are, God could infinitely actualize. So, if God's goal was to - Wait, wait, wait.

01:29:16

God could make them appear in the universe infinitely. So, for example, I'll give an example that should clear it up.

01:29:23

So, for example, if God's goal was to just make as many paperclips as possible, which is obviously not, but if that was his goal,

01:29:29

God can just go, poof, make infinite paperclips. Done. However, whatever God's goals are, if he's omnipotent, and he wants to achieve those goals -

01:29:38

I don't know if that's sound. Make an infinite number of paperclips, you mean without end.

01:29:46

Is it logically possible for God to do that? I mean, I don't know. You say that God is unbound by logical constraints.

01:29:55

No, you keep misrepresenting that. Could God make infinite paperclips? God is bound.

01:30:00

God is bound by his own nature. He cannot lie, for example. He cannot do that which is contrary to his own nature.

01:30:07

He cannot make a round square because it's just not consistent with what his essence is.

01:30:14

We know these things in the world because they reflect his character and his essence. Is it possible to make an infinite number of paperclips?

01:30:23

You can assert that it is, but I'm not going to grant the assertion. I'm not saying you can or can't, but it doesn't seem to be the case.

01:30:29

Let's say that God can't make infinite paperclips. God could presumably make, insert, grams number paperclips.

01:30:36

Grams number is some stupidly large number. It takes a long explanation to just get a really big amount, right?

01:30:46

So whatever God's goals are, God could go, bam, make some unfathomably vast number of whatever his goals are.

01:30:53

However, we don't see that level of production of whatever God's goals are, which proves that there is not a

01:31:00

God who has those goals. Then that's not his goal to do it, then is it? This applies to any goal that God has.

01:31:07

God has goals, right? Wait a minute. You said God doesn't make an infinite number of paperclips, therefore

01:31:13

God doesn't exist? No, no. You're misunderstanding the argument. So what do you think God's goal is? God's goal is to bring himself glory,

01:31:20

Isaiah 43, 7, to redeem the elect, Ephesians 1, 4, and 5. How much glory does

01:31:26

God have right now? I don't know. I don't have a scale. It's in the closet. But could

01:31:31

God have more glory? Would it be logically possible? What does it mean, more glory?

01:31:36

Well, you say God's goal is to have as much glory as possible, so there has to be a scale. I said one of his goals is to glorify himself,

01:31:45

Isaiah 43, verse 7. That seems kind of arrogant for God to do, but even putting that aside...

01:31:52

Why is it arrogant? If he's the greatest good, the greatest perfection, does it make sense that you should give honor and praise to the greatest perfection, the greatest goodness?

01:32:02

I mean, it potentially makes sense to give honor, but the greatest goodness' sole goal would not be just to bring himself honor and praise.

01:32:10

You don't know what just is. You have no ability to define what is just and is not just, as moral is not moral.

01:32:17

You cannot even present that. I think I can. I gave a pretty... I gave like a two -minute explanation in my rebuttal speech.

01:32:25

No, no, no. Let's cross -examine. Let's cross -examine. Is it wrong for the man to rape the unconscious woman, as an example?

01:32:33

Of course. Why? Because it causes long -term suffering. No, it doesn't.

01:32:39

She's not affected by it at all. There's no long -term suffering at all for her. In fact, his goodness, his pleasure is maximized.

01:32:46

Unconscious people wake up. Are you going back to... Sorry, just to clarify, are you going back to the earlier thought experiment about the woman who's in a coma?

01:32:55

Yes. She's not injured. She has no emotional trauma whatsoever.

01:33:01

And because he has a vasectomy, she's not going to get pregnant. It maximizes his thing.

01:33:07

So is it morally good? Because according to your definition, hey, it maximizes goodness, well -being, and all that kind of stuff.

01:33:15

I don't think that there is a possible situation where something like that, where the cards could align up right, such that it maximized well -being and had no detrimental spillover effects.

01:33:24

But if there was, then sure, it would be moral. So you can actually justify the morality of rape?

01:33:30

No. So again, you said it would be moral. Did you hear the first part of that sentence?

01:33:36

Yeah, you said to maximize benefit or something like that, and therefore it would be okay. So you missed the first half.

01:33:42

The first half was a giant qualification on the second half. So the first half was, I don't think that it would be possible for there to be a situation where all the cards could align, such that a person raping an unconscious woman, a person in a coma, could maximize long -term well -being.

01:33:59

If that situation did arise, it would potentially be moral. I don't think that that situation could arise.

01:34:06

Maximize well -being. For who? Everyone.

01:34:12

Every sentient being. So wait a minute. Where did you get this idea that what we have to agree to is that the maximization of well -being for everybody, the majority, is the right thing?

01:34:24

Where'd you get that? So desirable experiences are only possibly encapsulated in conscious experiences.

01:34:34

So for example, a tree that no one observes, if you just had a universe devoid of all sentient beings, there could not be any desirable experiences.

01:34:43

So then if we want to maximize desirable experiences, maximize that which is good, and we should act as if we experienced all sentient beings' experiences, and then maximize those desirable experiences that we achieved from that initial state, because only those desirable experiences can, and they encapsulate everything that could conceivably have value.

01:35:02

Is it maximization for... Let's just represent society, all the world's 100 people, all right?

01:35:08

So we want to maximize the pleasure, the well -being of 100 people, right? Sure. Okay.

01:35:16

And let's just say that in order to do that, they need to enslave two people.

01:35:22

Because the two people are enslaved, and their maximization is reduced by 10%, but everybody else's is increased by a whole bunch.

01:35:33

So there's an overall increase of the 98 people left over. Their value of maximization...

01:35:40

It's just, wow, this is awesome. But the pleasure that just for these two people, it's only two people, let's say there's 10 units of well -being that anybody can have.

01:35:53

And so 100 people at 10 units, right? That's 1 ,000 units of pleasure. And let's just take two of those people away, and let's reduce it by 20 units.

01:36:02

So now it's only 980. Well, there you go. From your logic, your idea, the maximization of well -being would be some arbitrary thing.

01:36:13

You can't have two people be punished, be suffer, in order to maximize for somebody else.

01:36:19

Why would that be right or wrong? You can't answer the question. If you're going to arbitrarily... You want me to answer the question rather than...

01:36:26

You can try. Sure. Try, go ahead. Try. Two things. One, there is a proof that would eat up far more than the extra time that we have in cross -examination that slavery could never maximally achieve well -being.

01:36:41

Because if it does, then people would voluntarily agree to it randomly. The proof is a bit complicated.

01:36:46

People do agree to slavery all over the world. Indentured servitude. There's different kinds of slavery, even in the

01:36:53

Bible. Never is it chattel slavery. If you could... Any situation that you could imagine, if it is true that it would maximize well -being,

01:37:01

I will bite the bullet and say that that situation would be immoral. I think many of the situations that you give, it would not maximize well -being, and so it would not be moral.

01:37:09

But if you could give a situation where it would, then that would be moral. And this does seem to conflict with our moral intuitions.

01:37:16

However, as I've presented the paper by Nick Beckstead, our moral intuitions throughout history are woefully flawed.

01:37:23

They produce contradictions. They produce horrendous conclusions. They're subject to a host of biases.

01:37:29

So while there may be a slightly uncomfortable feeling in one's gut as they say that they would be willing to do something that seems unpalatable intuitively for the greater good,

01:37:40

I think that I don't trust that sort of base intuition, that base mortal feeling in my gut, in telling me what's right and wrong.

01:37:48

And I think I can demonstrate with overwhelming evidence that these intuitions are not especially reliable.

01:37:54

But going back to the problem of maximization - Hold on, let me try to that. Because here's the thing is, I gave you the issue of the coma rape.

01:38:01

A woman's in a coma and she gets raped. And you said for that guy earlier, you said, yeah, that would be maximizing his pleasure.

01:38:07

Well, then by your principle then - Wait, sorry. I think you're misrepresenting my position accurately. My position is that there is not a situation that could arise where all the cards could align such that it would maximize wellbeing.

01:38:22

But if that situation could possibly occur, which I don't think it could, but if somehow a situation occurred where in that situation, the person in the coma, you have a guarantee that it would maximize expected wellbeing, then

01:38:34

I would bite the bullet and accept that hypothetical. But that is impossible given the way the world works. First of all, you've not established that maximization of wellbeing is the proper goal.

01:38:44

You've not defined what it means to maximize. You've not defined what wellbeing is except to be tautologist and circular.

01:38:51

So then, but I'm just working from what you've said. You've not justified things, you just asserted them. So then to maximize wellbeing, the more rapists who rape coma women, the better.

01:39:02

Then that's an increase in maximization of pleasure, isn't it, in the world? No, so again -

01:39:08

Yes, it is. Yes, it is. If more people rape coma women who never get hurt, women never get hurt, that is an increase in pleasure and wellbeing.

01:39:16

I don't think that there are viable situations that could possibly arise where raping coma women would maximize wellbeing, such that -

01:39:25

Would it be the case or not the case that if more men raped coma women and women are not injured and their pleasures increased, would that not be an increase of overall maximum wellbeing?

01:39:37

No, because there's no way to guarantee that the women will not be injured.

01:39:43

Also - No, no, no, I said they're not. This is my analogies, my thought experiment. It's not.

01:39:49

Now what you're doing is saying, I'm going to take your thing, I'm going to not agree with it, but you did.

01:39:54

Matt, okay, so to clarify, if you could make a situation such that raping a woman in a coma could be guaranteed with 100 % certainty to maximize wellbeing, then it would be moral.

01:40:07

No, no, no, no. Any situation - It would not do that. No, it would not maximize wellbeing, practically.

01:40:13

No, no, you have to define what maximize wellbeing is. It would increase the wellbeing. The more men who rape coma women, in your worldview, that's an increase of wellbeing.

01:40:22

They're not injured. You justify rape. No, they are injured. Number one -

01:40:28

No, they're not. I said, they're not. No physical injury, no emotional injury, no mental injury.

01:40:34

They're in comas. The men's positions are maximized, they're pleasure. There you go.

01:40:40

That's your worldview, working it out in real time. No, so again, two things.

01:40:45

Number one is that you have said that in the real world, this would be justified. I have given you practical reasons why -

01:40:51

I didn't say in the real world. This is your world. Your world isn't the real world. Earlier, you said, and I quote, this is a direct quote, so you would justify in the real world raping coma women.

01:41:05

Did you not say that? I don't know if I did or not. If I did, let me just correct. This is your worldview

01:41:11

I'm working with. I'm working with your worldview. So you agree that that was a straw man in my position? My position does not just -

01:41:17

I don't know. I don't know if it was or was not because you're not very logical in a lot of areas. So I don't know if you're nailing it right or wrong.

01:41:23

So here's the thing. Your worldview justifies men raping women because your worldview is the maximization of wellbeing.

01:41:32

That's the goal. Well, then if a hundred men start raping women and women are never deleteriously affected, then that encourages and maximizes wellbeing.

01:41:42

It encourages and increases it. That's what your worldview - You're taking away all of the qualifiers before it for more ethos appeal.

01:41:49

So what you're saying is your worldview justifies X, and then you're not including the qualifications. So we have to, before you say your worldview justifies rape, no, my worldview justifies if you had a entirely perfect guarantee that it would maximize wellbeing and there would be no harm to come about.

01:42:03

And it was entirely secret such that there's no deleterious effects on sight, negative effects on people's consciousness, et cetera.

01:42:09

If only under those situations, would it be morally okay? Under any other circumstances - You're just saying there's a way which rape would be morally acceptable.

01:42:18

You're justifying it. It is logically possible to configure a situation where that is possible. However, your argument against that seems to be just an expression of generalized skepticism, which is not an argument.

01:42:29

The fact that that conflicts with our moral intuitions is not evidence against it because our moral intuitions, as I've demonstrated, beyond all shadow of a doubt, are not particularly reliable.

01:42:38

Then don't bring them up as a means of justification. You're the one who talk about moral intuition.

01:42:44

I'm the one who said it's based on subjectivity and don't use it. You're the one who's saying that in your worldview, you're going to maximize wellbeing.

01:42:50

And I'm telling you, if there's a situation where a hundred men can rape a hundred women and the women are never injured physically or emotionally or spiritually or mentally or in any way, and their pleasure is increased, the men's pleasure is increased, by your definition in that scenario, then that's a good thing.

01:43:11

Sure. Do you have an argument against that other than just expressing, other than just sounding -

01:43:17

You have an argument against it. The argument against it is this. God says that rape is wrong. It violates his character.

01:43:23

And whether or not you're going to be made to feel pleasure and she's not injured is not the issue. The issue is what does

01:43:29

God's revelation according to his character say? That's why it's wrong to do it, period. That's why an action actually has a moral value.

01:43:38

And does God say that you should not lie? He says, thou shalt not lie.

01:43:44

Sure. So could you lie to save the universe from being destroyed? Would that be -

01:43:49

No, I'm not very big and strong. So I can't lie to save the universe. Okay. But sure.

01:43:55

So again, if in a hypothetical, the only way to save the universe was by telling a relatively benign lie, saying that something had three grams of sugar when in reality it had four.

01:44:09

And if you did that, it would save the universe. Would you do it? Would you lie to save the universe? Because if not, your mortal view justifies things that are far more atrocious than mine.

01:44:19

Wow. So you just went to the patently absurd to try to defend your position.

01:44:26

You went to the patently absurd to give a hypothetical, which is understandable. Which is not, because men have raped women in comas.

01:44:33

Yes. But there's no case where a lie will save the universe. Sure. So again, whether or not it's occurred in the real world is not relevant to the question, because it's a test -

01:44:43

Yes, it is. We live in the real world. Okay. But has there ever been a situation where a man had a 100 % guarantee that raping a woman in a coma would have no deleterious effect?

01:44:56

They had a 100 % guarantee. No one would find out. No deleterious effect. No one would find out about it.

01:45:02

Has that ever happened? If no one's ever found out about it, how would

01:45:07

I know if it happened or not? Exactly. So that does not happen in the real world, because you can never -

01:45:12

No, no, no. You can never have a guarantee. No, no. You can't say it's not happened. You can only say the question that you asked doesn't make any sense.

01:45:20

Because by definition, you refute yourself. You're saying, how would we know that which never happened?

01:45:26

We can't. So your question doesn't have any merit. No, my question - So the question demonstrates that -

01:45:33

So do you agree that we can never have absolute certainty about the consequences of our actions?

01:45:40

No. So we can have just absolute certainty? So I can know -

01:45:45

So is it logically - Is it possible for a person to know with absolute certainty that they won't get caught? I can know for absolute certainty, because of the revelation of God, that if you continue to reject

01:45:55

Christ, when you die, you will face eternal judgment. I mean, I'll hash it out with him when

01:46:01

I die, if that's true. No, you won't. No, you won't. I've been in his presence, and the only thing you will do is put your face to the ground, and you will yell out in your agonizing tears of repentance and sorrow, and it'll be too late.

01:46:14

Sounds like - And your ideas that you want to object against God is you raise up moral atrocities, and you have no basis of it.

01:46:22

You have no basis. When I apply your principles to yourself, then your world supports rape.

01:46:29

Your world, you can't justify moral absolutes. Your world, you cannot justify logical truths.

01:46:36

It can't do it. So let me ask you this question. Is it true or is it not true? It is always wrong for anyone to torture babies to death merely for their personal pleasure.

01:46:46

True or false? I'm going to need to ask a clarification question about that.

01:46:52

So do you mean as a logical question or as a practical question, the way the world works right now? It's a moral question.

01:47:00

It is always morally wrong. That's what I wrote, and I said early, put the word moral in there. It's always morally wrong for anyone to torture babies to death merely for their personal pleasure.

01:47:10

That's a statement. The statement is true or false. Is it true or is it false? It's true.

01:47:17

Okay. So you believe in a universal moral absolute. Yes, and I believe in a universal moral absolute that we should maximize well -being.

01:47:24

Okay. Wait a minute. You believe in a universal moral absolute. How do you justify that universal moral absolute from your atheistic worldview?

01:47:36

Because torturing babies just for fun is not conducive to well -being. I've given you a justification for why maximizing well -being is morally virtuous.

01:47:45

All you're saying is that well -being is a standard I have. You haven't established that it's the right standard. Well, this is a universal principle.

01:47:52

You're saying it's a universal principle applicable to everybody. How do you justify? Now, listen, a universal moral principle, an abstraction that's universally true to everyone all the time.

01:48:04

How do you justify that in your atheistic worldview that doesn't allow for transcendentals and universals?

01:48:10

I can go over my arguments for utilitarianism again. So in other words, you have to abandon that.

01:48:17

I don't have to abandon anything. I've given you arguments. You have not answered any of the arguments that I have. Yes, I have.

01:48:23

I've done it over and over and repeatedly. Matt, what arguments for utilitarianism have

01:48:28

I made that you think you've refuted? Your idea of utilitarianism, basically what you define it as being is that which works is what is good.

01:48:37

What maximizes pleasure, what maximizes benefit to people, but you can't define -

01:48:43

That wasn't my question. I've given you several justifications for utilitarianism.

01:48:49

Which of them do you think that you've refuted? I was defining what utilitarianism was.

01:48:54

When you get in here and you say that maximization of good, and I apply what you're saying to the real world and say the coma rape situation, that's when your argument falls apart.

01:49:04

Which could not occur in the real world. Yes, it does occur in the real world. Coma rapes do occur in the real world.

01:49:11

However, if it's a rape where you have an absolute guarantee - What? You don't know about the real world outside?

01:49:19

You don't know that men have done this to women? You don't know? I do know that men have done this to women.

01:49:24

However, what I've said is that the parameters prescribed by your thought experiment could not occur in the real world.

01:49:31

Some of the parameters could be met, others of them could not. For example, to the extent that a person rapes a woman in a coma, they could never have certainty.

01:49:40

They could never have certainty that the woman would never find out about it. They could never have certainty that they won't get caught.

01:49:46

They can never have certainty that it will not have any deleterious effect on the woman. If we think - Let me ask you. Let me ask you something.

01:49:52

Wait, I want to go back to the question that I asked you, which is you've said that you've refuted utilitarianism.

01:49:58

Which of my justification for utilitarianism do you think you've refuted? The justification for my argument against you is that you just beg the question.

01:50:05

You just assume your position is the right one. That's all you're doing. Which of my arguments for utilitarianism -

01:50:11

Health, maximization, you haven't designated or established any way by which those are the right principles.

01:50:18

Those are just like util buzzwords. What arguments for utilitarianism do you think are tautological?

01:50:24

I've given you several. I can go over them again. Look, pick one and I'll pick it apart.

01:50:30

Just pick one. Pick your favorite. Sure. Sure, I'll go for the argument about what a rational agent would desire.

01:50:38

So the argument is - Argument of what? Sure, so the argument is that -

01:50:45

Wait, sorry. Sorry, one sec. Okay, yeah. So the argument is that self -interested -

01:50:53

Premise one, self -interested agents only desire that which is good for themselves. Do you want me to type that into the chat?

01:51:01

Self -interested agents only desire that which is good for themselves? That's the definition of a self -interested agent.

01:51:08

But you see, how do you - That is the definition that I'm using for what a self -interested agent is.

01:51:15

Why is that definition the right one? All definitions are somewhat arbitrary, but I'm using the - So you're using an arbitrary definition -

01:51:21

All definitions are arbitrary. All definitions are sounds that we make, that we use to - I got that,

01:51:27

I got that. So you're just making a universal truth statement now. All definitions are arbitrary. Yes, all definitions are sounds that we make with our mouths that we use -

01:51:37

Is that statement that all definitions are arbitrary true? Yes. Well, then how do you know the statement itself is true?

01:51:45

You're, again, pivoting back to presuppositions. You haven't answered - No, I'm in logic. You said that all of them are basically subjective.

01:51:52

Well, then if they're all subjective, how do you know the statement that you're giving is true? Because the fact that the mouth sounds are subjective in terms of what they confer, what idea that they signify in the real world, does not prove that the conglomeration of sounds that we make with our mouth cannot lead to a conclusion.

01:52:09

They represent an idea in the real world, and we can come to conclusions based from those ideas in the real world.

01:52:17

So you're saying self -interested agents only desire that which is good? Is that what I'm trying to hear? For themselves.

01:52:23

Good for themselves. Okay, what's good? Well, we're going to get to that in premise two.

01:52:33

Define what good is. Worth seeking or doing. Beneficial.

01:52:39

So don't you get it? Look, look - The definition of any word is going to be tautological. That is how definitions work.

01:52:44

No, no, no, no. Look, let's work with the definitions. Self -interested agents only desire that which is -

01:52:51

Good for themselves. That produces a benefit for them. It produces a benefit.

01:52:57

Okay, so a benefit. So if I come and rob you and take your computer and stuff and your money, and I'm doing that, which is a benefit for me.

01:53:09

You said benefit. So is that a good thing to do? No, so Matt, we're going to - In the next two premises, we're going to explain how we ground you.

01:53:18

Well -being generally - No, no, no. No, Matt - You're wrong. You have not heard - You're wrong. Because your first premise -

01:53:24

Your first premise has to be valid. You can't build on an improper premise and then say, well, the later ones explain it.

01:53:31

No, that's not how you argue. My first premise is not how

01:53:37

I'm grounding morality. My claim is not that it would be moral for you to rob me.

01:53:42

Rather, my claim in premise one is that to the extent that robbing me would be beneficial for you, a self -interested agent would rob me.

01:53:48

That's not to say that it's moral. That is a definition of a self -interested agent. Self -interested agents often do that, which is not good for themselves.

01:53:57

Yes, it is. Oh, so a perfectly rational self -interested agent only does that, which is good for themselves.

01:54:03

Let's get to - Perfectly rational. Now you know what perfectly rational means. In the context of a self -interested agent,

01:54:10

I think that there are certain derivatives. Some things are better for one's self -interest than other things. For example -

01:54:15

How would you measure what is better? That - Well, we're going to get to that in premise two. Go ahead.

01:54:21

What's your premise two? Okay, premise two. Self -interested agents only desire that which produces well -being for themselves and avoids suffering for themselves.

01:54:32

So then you're saying that goodness is based on what people want? No. When have

01:54:38

I said that? Well, I'm reinterpreting it. It produces well -being. Do they want well -being? They - generally, yeah.

01:54:46

They only desire what's good, and what's good is - It's a question of what a perfectly rational self -interested agent would desire for themselves.

01:54:53

Perfectly rational? I thought you were arguing the real world. There's no perfectly rational person except God.

01:55:02

Sure. So it's a question of whether or not it is an effective way of achieving the goal of maximizing well -being.

01:55:08

There is no perfectly rational person except God. He's the only one who's perfectly rational.

01:55:14

How do you have a perfectly rational person? Your premises are so full of problems.

01:55:20

Matt, the fact that something cannot exist in the real world or does not exist in the real world does not refute it as a philosophical argument.

01:55:28

So, for example, the trolley car problem is very unlikely to ever arise, but it's still an interesting thought experiment because it exists inside the mind, even if it does not exist in the real world.

01:55:40

And we can still make a lot of - And thought experiments exist. And my coma rape situation is something that you will fail to answer by saying no, it's not happening in the real world.

01:55:50

But you just now said thought experiments can work in the not real world in an abstract way. That's why -

01:55:56

So what you have said, sure. So the claim that I've made is that we can have logical abstracts that are not in the real world and we cannot directly fill them in in the real world the extent that they don't apply to the real world.

01:56:11

It's a test of consistency or moral theories. So let's just get to the conclusion because the conclusion will make everything much clearer.

01:56:19

So then the conclusion is therefore wellbeing and the avoidance of suffering is the only thing that is good.

01:56:27

Because if self -interested agents only desire A and self -interested agents only desire

01:56:32

B, then A and B are synonymous, or at least A is a category of B and absent anything else in the category of B, then it fills the entire category.

01:56:42

All right. So self -interested agents only desire that which is good for themselves. And good is what is worth seeking and doing.

01:56:50

Yep. And so the conclusion is that wellbeing is the only thing that's really good, seeking that, right?

01:56:56

Yeah, wellbeing is all that is good. Okay. So what you're doing is you're saying self -interested agents only desire that which is good for themselves.

01:57:07

That's not true. Why? Some self -interested agents don't only desire that which is good for themselves.

01:57:19

Some self -interested agents desire that which is not good for themselves because they're not perfectly rational.

01:57:26

Nobody's perfectly rational. Your first premise fails. It's not a question of the actions that they take and whether they are perfectly conducive to their goals.

01:57:36

But if they're perfectly self -interested, they only care about that which is good for themselves. They may not actualize that which is good for them.

01:57:42

If they are perfectly self -interested. Yeah. So where do you get this universal principle of what is perfectly self -interested?

01:57:51

It's a definition that I've given of being self -interested. Oh, so it's arbitrary. All definitions are arbitrary.

01:57:58

When I say that what you're doing, what you're saying does not make any sense logically.

01:58:05

Like if I say a tree is a thing with branches and leaves, et cetera, in the trunk, you can say, why is it that?

01:58:13

Well, I don't know. It's arbitrary, but that's just what we call it. Ah, so it's arbitrary. No, that's not an argument. It's just a description of how all words work.

01:58:22

Now, you ready? I am ready. Okay. Everybody has circular arguments.

01:58:30

Everybody has certain levels of arbitrariness. The question then becomes, which worldview can account for and validate the even beginning of the points, the places that we're going to have by which we can offer definitions.

01:58:42

Because you have to presuppose the validity of the universality of the laws of logic and the law of identity to be able to even say, first of all, self -interested individuals.

01:58:50

You presuppose that law. You cannot justify why those laws exist. In order for you to even argue, you have to presuppose my worldview because only in my worldview can the universal truths of the abstractions, which are logical absolutes, can have any foundation or any place of grounding.

01:59:08

So if you want to argue for what you're saying, you have to presuppose self -interested and has a meaning.

01:59:14

Presuppose agents, presuppose desire, presuppose good, which you say basically is all arbitrary definitions.

01:59:21

For it to make any sense rationally, you have to get out from your arbitrariness. But you say, well, wait a minute, everybody's arbitrary.

01:59:27

Then we have to use logic inside, which means you have to presuppose the validity of logic, which you can't do.

01:59:33

Justify the universality of the laws of logic so that you can have an argument to begin with. This is pivoting away from the question of morality.

01:59:43

This is not even a question of logic, what definitions we use. The definitions that we use are arbitrary.

01:59:49

I could use the word tree to refer to lamps. The reason why I don't is because -

01:59:54

No, I agree. I agree I win. What? I agree. I agree with you that you lost the argument.

02:00:01

I agree. Thank you. I don't agree that I lost the argument. Oh, thank you. I agree.

02:00:06

You're right. You just said it again. Yeah. All right. Sure. The fact that words can mean whatever we want,

02:00:14

I can use the word tree to refer to - What about my wife? Okay.

02:00:20

As funny as that is, it's making it difficult to make arguments given the constant interjection.

02:00:25

Oh, you mean if we were to use your principle that definitions are arbitrary, then it doesn't work.

02:00:34

And then just like throwing in arbitrary things, but misunderstand what my position is. I'm just going with what you said.

02:00:39

You're the one who said that definitions are just arbitrary. We have to say, if you want to do it any better, you have to say, we argue within a societal linguistic framework.

02:00:49

That's what you have to do. We have a shared linguistic framework. That shared linguistic framework is arbitrary.

02:00:55

It is an arbitrary thing that our society - Linguistic frameworks presuppose logic.

02:01:01

They don't. No. I can, even if logic didn't exist, I could call a table a tree. You can call things whatever you want.

02:01:08

That's not an argument for God. So if the law of identity, the principle of something is what it is, and is not what is this, is that did not exist, you could still say what it is.

02:01:20

Well, if no law of identity, like the world description would break down absent the law of identity.

02:01:27

So sure, you need the law of identity. Let's just get to questions because this is just wow.

02:01:34

All right. Let's get to questions. Yeah. Anybody got any questions? Just before we get to questions, just a last thing.

02:01:42

So you just went to like, how do I ground the laws of logic? Before we go to questions,

02:01:48

I want to explain it again. Induction is reliable, probably because it's worked every time in the past.

02:01:55

If we say that there's a 50 % chance that induction would work and a 50 % chance that it doesn't.

02:02:01

Well, then the fact that it's always worked in the past proves that it almost certainly works. If our induction works, induction allows us to ground everything else because every time in the past, a law of identity, non -contradiction, et cetera, they've always worked in the past are likely to work in the future.

02:02:14

All right. We can get to Q &A. Induction presupposes the laws of logic. I'm asking you to justify the laws of logic from your world view.

02:02:21

Induction justifies the laws of logic and the laws of logic are necessary existences. No, your tautologist, your argument is circle your world.

02:02:27

You can't account for the transcendental nature of the laws of logic. You cannot.

02:02:32

Okay. So remember, the argument that I've made, one of them was that in order for God to make anything,

02:02:38

God has to abide by logic, non -contradiction, et cetera. That means these things have to already exist for God to make everything.

02:02:44

So God can't be used to explain them the same way that I can't be used to explain the existence of my mother because my mother has to exist for me to exist proves that if these things have to already exist for God to explain anything, then

02:02:56

God can't explain those things. Wrong. Okay. So you don't recognize the issue of what transcendentals are.

02:03:05

There's a bed behind you. There's a bed in my other room over here. Bedness is a quality of transcendental abstraction.

02:03:12

It's a universal principle. You're a realist. You're a moral realist, which means you adhere to some form of transcendentals.

02:03:20

Sure. Now you're an atheist. How do you justify in a materialistic world transcendentals?

02:03:30

So again, that just doesn't grapple with either of the things I've said. Number one, we know that they probably work that they worked in the past.

02:03:37

The long induction explanation, et cetera. Second, God can't explain those any better than I can.

02:03:43

Because the Christian God explains it fine. I'm asking you from your atheistic materialistic worldview and I can prove to you materialism is self -refuting.

02:03:51

It's easy to do, but explain to me how you can have transcendental truths that apply.

02:03:57

Transcendental means not dependent upon space and time, not dependent upon who believes them or not believes and they have independent value.

02:04:03

That's what your realism is leaning towards. How do you have that in an atheistic materialistic world? They're a necessary existence.

02:04:10

They exist in all possible universes. One plus one equals two in all universes. Oh, so you're a Christian. You're a

02:04:16

Christian. As you may have derived from the last two and a half, two hours.

02:04:23

You just refuted yourself. Not a Christian. Where did I refute? No, you are. Because you said all possible universes.

02:04:29

Is there an infinite number of possible universes? Yep. Okay. Then that means in one of those universes, you're a

02:04:35

Christian defending the Christian God. And in one of those universes, the infinite Christian God, which transcends all universes is true.

02:04:43

Therefore, you just refute yourself. In one universe, perhaps it exists. But in that universe...

02:04:50

So that's not transcendent truth, is it? No. So again, these are not universes that actually exist.

02:04:57

These are universes that are logically possible. They exist as ideas... Logically possible that you believe in the true living God. It would be logically possible for me to believe in God.

02:05:07

However, empirically, I don't. As you may have derived... Empirically. So you base your knowledge on your experience.

02:05:15

Partly I do. Partly I don't. There are some transcendental truths, as you've pointed out. There are some things that exist empirically.

02:05:21

So your brain works according to the laws of physics, right? Your physical brain, right? Absolutely. Okay.

02:05:28

So one chemical state in your brain, it leaves another chemical state in your brain. Does it produce proper logical inference?

02:05:33

I think so. How do you know? Because it's been reliable in the past. It likely works in the future.

02:05:39

And also, even if there's some fail rate, even if it's possible that my reasoning doesn't work, if we say that there's a...

02:05:46

Maybe my reasoning works, maybe it doesn't. One, if it didn't, it would probably have broken down in the past, which means it probably works.

02:05:52

And two, if my reasoning doesn't work, there's nothing I can do. So may as well just continue abiding by reasoning as much as I can possibly in order to know things.

02:06:01

But you can't ground that either. You can just make up an explanation. And so can I. I can just make up... No, I can explain it because I'm not a property dualist.

02:06:09

Now, so your brain made you say that? I think so. But I can just make up an explanation for how

02:06:15

I've perfectly... Yeah, make up one. They'll be just as valid. Sure. An eternal natural force imbues consciousness with rationality and imbued me with rationality as it made the universe.

02:06:27

Okay, so your brain chemicals just made this say this. So the brain chemicals are producing truth? What? No, the brain chemicals are producing truth.

02:06:39

They're not producing truth, they're understanding truth because the naturalistic force just allows me to... How do you know your brain chemicals are understanding?

02:06:45

Brain chemicals don't understand, they're just reactions. Well, so that's the fallacy of...

02:06:51

Oh, I'm blaming on what it's called. Composition. Fallacy of composition. Just because my brain is entirely made up of brain chemicals that cannot individually reason does not mean that the conglomeration of them is capable of reasoning.

02:07:03

Your brain made you say that. It's a chemical reaction saying it. True. So you can't justify whether or not your conclusions are correct.

02:07:11

Your materialistic worldview refutes itself because it casts doubt upon itself. Two explanations that were not answered.

02:07:19

I'll go over them again. The first explanation is that if we have a...

02:07:25

If we assume that the prior probability of my reason working and of it not working, it starts out at 50 -50.

02:07:32

Then my reasoning, it's worked every time in the past. So then we weigh the probability of it working to 99 .99999%.

02:07:39

And it's very unlikely that it doesn't work. Second, if it might work and it might not work, if it doesn't work, there's nothing

02:07:45

I can do. But if it does work, then there's a lot that I can do. So I should act as if it works, even if I cannot know whether or not it works.

02:07:53

Do you want to go to Q &A or do you want to keep talking about this? All your brain chemicals keep making you say things. It's not an issue of truth.

02:08:00

It's just brain chemical reactions and stimulus. That's all it is. Let's do Q &A. You said it. Let's go to Q &A.

02:08:05

I've just given you two arguments to refute that, which you haven't answered. No, you can't. Because all I got to do, like I did with Dillahunty, all

02:08:11

I got to do is say, hey, your brain chemicals made you say that. There's no way out of this for you. Because any machinations that you might have, all

02:08:18

I could do is say, your chemicals produced it. It doesn't mean the chemicals are right. Oh, you have any questions?

02:08:27

Anybody got any questions? I'm open for questions if people have questions.

02:08:33

Okay, go for it. Because it takes about 20 seconds to go through. There are probably another 20 seconds for people to write a question.

02:08:40

And write it to Matt. Matt or Matt. So just say,

02:08:48

I will agree as much as we disagree. You do have quite a good name. You know,

02:08:53

Matt's a good one. Matt's a good name, but Slick is totally cool. So I am slicker than you, that's for sure.

02:09:02

I don't know about that one. Oh, by definition, slicker. Are you in a basement?

02:09:12

You're little, Matt. Big Matt, I guess. Okay, because I'm 220 pounds, so I'm big

02:09:18

Matt. Are you in a basement? That's your question. Me or you? You. No.

02:09:23

No, okay. That was an easy one. Matt, how do you feel about Old Testament slavery?

02:09:30

Is it moral? That'd be for me. Oh, you go first. Oh, my answer is no.

02:09:36

I think the Old Testament says a bunch of messed up things about slavery. For example, it says that you can hit a slave with a rod.

02:09:41

It's okay as long as they get up after three days. I didn't remember the exact word, but it says that. Yeah, but he can complain about slavery all he wants, folks.

02:09:50

But it doesn't make it right or wrong. He just says, I don't like it. And also the issue there, if it gets up, has to do with capital punishment because the law required that they don't beat slaves.

02:10:00

I've got articles written on this. You should study up on that. What's another question? Cattle slavery, plantation slavery, slavery.

02:10:07

What standard? That's right. What's your eternal hope? Come on, put some questions in there. Did you start the Bible? Okay, put big

02:10:16

Matt, little Matt, or just put... We can both answer the questions.

02:10:22

But I think my answer is, for a lot of them, our answers will be obvious. Are you a materialist?

02:10:29

For you, no. Ask a question. Just ask a question. We'll do that. Slick just dodged.

02:10:34

I did not just... We got somebody who likes what you say. All right.

02:10:40

Wait, actually, I got to use this for self -promotion. If you like what I say, and if you appreciate my discussions, then subscribe and go over to D &D

02:10:50

Defeater where I have a bunch of these discussions. I mean, I haven't had that many yet, but I plan to have more. Okay, so what did

02:11:01

I dodge? Oh, do you want me to tell you what you dodged? I can post it to the...

02:11:08

I'm not sure what he said in the text, what I dodged. Well, I can explain to you what I think you dodged.

02:11:13

Okay. On this issue of what? Whatever it is. Yeah, you just dodged the question about the

02:11:19

Old Testament. You first committed the two -course credibility of saying, you can't justify that it's wrong either, which

02:11:25

I can. I've given my justifications for an objective morality. And second, you said, but I've written a bunch on that.

02:11:31

That's not a justification. That's just an assertion that you've written about it. That's equivalent to saying,

02:11:36

I know that I'm not going to know you. Let me answer the question, okay? Because I think it's about beating a slave with a rod.

02:11:42

Now, here's a disadvantage of answering questions like this, all right? Corporal punishment was common in the ancient

02:11:48

Near East and was used upon free as well as slaves. The Code of Hammurabi 2 .11

02:11:54

scourged 12 tablets of Roman law in 815. I did all this research. Free men were beaten with rods in Deuteronomy 25, 1 through 3.

02:12:03

Rebellious sons were beaten with rods, Proverbs 22, 15. The rod is not a lethal weapon.

02:12:09

It was a means of discipline. In the context there, that's what is going on. It was to be applied fairly and equally.

02:12:16

In Hebrew, the word for rod is shebet. In the NASB, it is translated into the English club, four times, correction one, half tribe 22, rod 27, scepter 12, spears one, staff one, and tribe 122.

02:12:32

Since the rod is not a lethal weapon, like a knife, dagger, or sword, we can conclude that the intention of the master was not to kill, but to discipline.

02:12:40

But if a slave dies, the master was to be punished. From the context, it appears the punishment is execution.

02:12:46

Since just a few verses earlier, it says in 2112, he who strikes a man so that he dies shall surely be put to death.

02:12:54

I can keep reading if you want. I've got the answers to this. It was not a lethal weapon. It was not intended to be that.

02:13:01

That's why he would not be punished. He would not be punished in the context of being executed.

02:13:09

It says that they are not to be punished if they get up after three days. But if you beat someone so badly that they're injured so that they can't get up, but after two days they get up, then they're not to be punished.

02:13:19

I think not to be punished means not to be punished. Does not mean whatever your ad hoc reinterpretation of it means.

02:13:26

It means to not be punished, and not to be punished. Here's the thing. What you don't understand also is that part of the

02:13:32

Old Testament law about slavery was that in an injury to discipline, that the slave, and there's different kinds of slaves, lost an eye or a tooth.

02:13:41

The slave was to be set free, Exodus 21, 26 to 27. Right, but if you beat them and you don't destroy their eye or their tooth, not to be set free.

02:13:50

Well, then they'd be disciplined. They could also discipline their child, can't they? Yeah, but if you discipline your child such that you beat them, such that it takes them two and a half days to get up, you should be punished.

02:14:02

I would agree. That's why it says they are not to be punished. Hey, the context of the punishment, read the earlier part.

02:14:10

I have read the earlier part. The earlier part is about being punished with execution.

02:14:17

The rod is not a lethal weapon. The earlier part is describing other punishments that culminate in executions.

02:14:23

This is not saying only not to be punished with execution. It says, quote, not to be punished, not to be punished with execution.

02:14:31

It says not to be punished. There was supposed to be equal punishment between slaves and non -slaves, between all people.

02:14:38

That's the whole context of what's going on. No matter who you beat with the rod is still bad. I'm not ignoring the context.

02:14:45

How do you know it's bad? I guess it's not connusive to well -being. How do you know it's...

02:14:50

Oh, because of the arbitrary definition that you give. That's your standard. All definitions are arbitrary.

02:14:56

I have justified more than well -being. You admit you have nothing but arbitrary opinions about what should and shouldn't be right.

02:15:05

No, that's not what I meant. You said it's arbitrary. No, the words, the ideas that we assign to the words are arbitrary.

02:15:13

So for example, I could use the word morality to refer to tables. But given the agreed upon definition of morality of doing what's right versus wrong,

02:15:21

I can ground it. You can't. Wrong. You beg the question.

02:15:29

You said your definitions are arbitrary. Why is rape wrong? Because it's not conducive to well -being.

02:15:36

How do you know? Given the well -being of the rapist, it is. Yeah, but for the well -being of the victim, it's not. It's a question of overall well -being.

02:15:44

The well -being of the rapist. And particularly if the woman's in a coma and is not affected by anything negative, then your definition falls apart.

02:15:53

It supports rape. Your definition doesn't work. It's arbitrary.

02:16:00

It's not arbitrary just because it's a common solution in one hypothetical. It's not disprove the solution when you have not been able to justify why we should trust our moral intuitions.

02:16:09

And again, I have given you a paper. I can send you the link. Proves that our intuitions have been flawed throughout history, which is why we should not.

02:16:16

I don't appeal to intuition. Then what you're doing with this hypothetical is giving the most affectively disappealing what it justifies.

02:16:26

I'm using your position. Yes, you're saying that it justifies it. You cannot prove why what it justifies is wrong.

02:16:33

You said well -being is a thing that's good. And I gave you a situation.

02:16:40

A woman's in a coma and a man rapes her. She's not injured. His well -being is increased.

02:16:47

Therefore, your position justifies, at least in that context, rape. In that functionally impossible situation, it would be.

02:16:55

So you say it's functionally impossible. In other words, you change. You move the goalposts. You recognize the problem. Now you got to change the argument.

02:17:02

Anybody else have any questions? Consistently said that it's functionally impossible that that would happen. That's not functionally impossible.

02:17:08

It happens in the world. It does not happen in the real world. People do rape women. People do not rape women in this hypothetical where they have a certainty that no one will.

02:17:16

You know it never happens. Because we cannot have certainty about the effects of our actions in the case of whether or not we'll get caught.

02:17:27

Any more questions? Here's for you. How can you justify standards of morality without making yourself out to be God? Because every time you're asked why something is wrong, you personally define why you believe it's wrong as if your mind produces absolutes.

02:17:40

You cannot justify morality in any form. You just feel things. False. It is not true because I say so.

02:17:48

Rather, I have given an argument as to how we know that things are moral or immoral.

02:17:54

I've given a syllogism that Matt has not grappled with at all that proves that well -being is that which is good and suffering is that which is bad.

02:18:02

But also, again, remember, you Christians out there watching the Matt Slick radio show, the

02:18:08

Matt Slick Live, cannot ground it either because it can't be good because God says so and it can't be good in spite of God.

02:18:17

Otherwise, it's either independent of God or God can make anything good, in which case God could command the murder of babies and it would be morally okay.

02:18:25

You cannot ground it either. I can. I've given you a syllogism. You haven't been able to refute it.

02:18:31

I've refuted it numerous ways. Matt doesn't grapple. Unfortunately, he does

02:18:37

Krav Maga. Sorry, I used to do Krav Maga. I don't know which Matt they're talking about.

02:18:42

Yeah, it's just somebody made a joke. Matt doesn't grapple. I was trying to get in the middle of stuff. Everything I know about Christianity, I learned from watching people like you, not from the

02:18:50

Bible. A question for little Matt. Do you believe in extraterrestrials? Okay.

02:18:56

If they exist, they need the laws of logic to be intelligent. If aliens are real, doesn't this prove the laws of logic are detranscendent?

02:19:03

Yeah, I agree that the laws of logic are indeed transcendent. So sure, whether or not aliens are real,

02:19:12

I'm not sure. I would go with the scientific consensus. I think there was a paper that I saw recently that was, the title of it was something along the lines of, are there aliens?

02:19:23

Probably about one. It said that based on the size of the universe, the expected number of aliens is like about one or two in the entire universe.

02:19:31

It's like, maybe there are aliens. We don't really know. Yeah, that's another topic of what aliens really are.

02:19:40

All right. We don't, okay. Somebody keeps asking you the same question. Are you afraid of dying? Depends on what you mean by afraid of dying.

02:19:50

Like I enjoy life. I get value from it. So I would be sad to be dead.

02:19:57

How do you be sad to be dead? If you're dead, do you exist after your death? I would be sad at knowing before my death, that my death would deprive me of experiences that would be desirable.

02:20:09

Do you believe you continue on after death? No. Okay. Making his bed would maximize.

02:20:20

I was actually thinking about that. Making your bed would maximize my well -being, but it's messy. Yeah. Sorry.

02:20:26

My bad. I probably should have done it before. Hey, mine's messy too, but at least it's not on camera. Let's just go after a few more minutes because two and a half hours.

02:20:36

I've already been asked to be on something in another half hour. And I got my daughter's over making food. I just want to say whoever posted that, that was pretty funny.

02:20:46

Actually, Air Church, that's an interesting point because I use this kind of logic with my debate against Dan Barker about maximizing well -being.

02:20:56

If lying maximizes well -being, then shouldn't we lie? Yes. So then let me ask you something.

02:21:03

If it's true that we should lie in order to maximize well -being, then isn't the case that in our debate, you should lie in order to win the debate to maximize well -being among the people that you think are right?

02:21:17

In theory, if lying would, in my view, maximize my pursuit of well -being, it would.

02:21:22

I don't think it does though. I think that I speak the truth.

02:21:29

But if lying can maximize well -being and you believe that I'm wrong, then shouldn't you lie in this debate, in order to win the debate, in order to maximize good?

02:21:42

I don't think that lying would help me win the debate. Like what would I even lie about? Maybe you're lying right now.

02:21:49

I said the issue is... Well, I want to get advice for my next debate, for things that I could lie about to help me win the debate.

02:21:55

So what things could I lie about to help me win the debate? I'm not going to help you lie. I don't believe in lying.

02:22:01

I believe that you should tell the truth. But if you think lying can... Can you lie to save the world? Okay.

02:22:07

If you think that lying produces good, then if you're winning the debate would be good, right?

02:22:15

Um, sure. If there was a way... Then shouldn't you lie to win the debate? Yeah, if there was a way that I could lie to win the debate, such that the value to the world of me winning the debate mattered more than the degradation of my character and damaging my credibility, then sure.

02:22:31

However, one, there's no way to lie to win the debate. The harms would obviously go away. So now your worldview supports rape and lying.

02:22:42

And your worldview supports the destruction of the universe in the face of the opposite of a white man.

02:22:48

Wait a minute, actually, God is going to destroy the universe. God's going to do it. You have the choice to lie to save the world from nuclear war, to save man, woman, and child from having their faces melted off in a nuclear war as autocrats crack down on children in the post -apocalyptic world.

02:23:05

You only have to tell a single, simple lie to prevent that. Would you do it? No. Yes or no?

02:23:11

You would not? Okay. So in your moral view, it's quite a lot more atrocious than mine. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

02:23:18

Hold on, hold on. You mean that if I were to lie that that would be okay, but for to not lie, it would be bad.

02:23:26

And so you're saying in my Christian worldview, which is impossible for that situation to be there, you're saying abandon your

02:23:33

Christian worldview to answer this question, which I played a little game with you and say, no, at least

02:23:38

I have a moral basis by which you can do. God would never let that happen because he's already prophesied what's going to happen.

02:23:44

He's going to be the one who melts every element with intense heat. He's the one who's going to remake the universe.

02:23:50

It's going to happen. Yeah, sure. God's going to do it, not me. Let's suppose that you have the ability to prevent everyone in -

02:23:57

I don't have the ability. Okay, but not P is not an answer to if P then

02:24:02

Q. Like the fact that something is not the case - I got you, modus ponens. Look, I got you. This is a question, like modus ponens, you have to justify the conclusion.

02:24:10

So if you had the option of telling a simple lie to prevent everyone in America from dying in nuclear hellfire as their faces literally melt off under burning heat -

02:24:23

Tell me the simple lie. Tell me what the simple lie is. Okay, so you get captured by the terrorists.

02:24:29

They break into the Russian nuclear weapons. They say, myth.

02:24:37

I don't know why they sound like that, but they say, you know, we just want to see that thought experiment that we orchestrated all those years ago on the

02:24:46

Matt Slick live radio show. We just want to see what you would actually do. So we will launch these nuclear weapons if you call up your wife and say, honey,

02:24:55

I'll be home for dinner. When in reality, you won't be home for dinner. Would you do it? Would that be a simple lie to say, honey,

02:25:00

I'll be home for dinner, not home for dinner? Would you do it? Or would you let everyone in America die? I'm just asking you to qualify what a simple lie is.

02:25:07

I mean, I don't know the complexity of that lie, but would you do that? Yes or no? Would I lie to what?

02:25:14

Would you lie in that situation? If the terrorists say, if you don't lie, we will vomit to death everyone in America.

02:25:20

Would you do it? Yes or no? Let's look at it. I'm going to answer. There's two possibilities.

02:25:25

A yes and a no. Let's look at both. Let's just say I said, yeah, I'll do that. I'll lie. Before you go off on your long explanation,

02:25:32

Matt, just start with a yes or a no. And then explain. I'm going to work from both. If I were to say yes, it's still a lie.

02:25:43

Why aren't you willing to just say yes or no? I'll let you explain right after you say yes or no. Is it yes or does it no?

02:25:49

Or are you not willing to answer? You're correct. It's yes or no. That's correct. Which one is it? Is it yes?

02:25:55

If it's yes, and I say, yeah, I'll be on for dinner. Listen to me. Listen to me. Listen to me. Listen to me.

02:26:01

If I say something that's not true, is it still a lie? Is it still a lie?

02:26:08

Yes. Okay. So then is it still wrong if it's a lie? Are you asking me?

02:26:17

Yeah. Well, I would say the lies have some small degree of wrongness that is dwarfed in the face of nuclear war.

02:26:25

Well, wait a minute. So now what you're doing is you're saying that lying. Now who's lying again? You're pivoting.

02:26:30

No, I'm not pivoting. I'm asking questions that you haven't even thought of. Who is the standard of what a lie is?

02:26:37

You can't just assume your worldview is the right one. You're not willing to answer the question.

02:26:46

Is it yes or is it no? I will let you explain after you say either yes or no.

02:26:51

Yes or no. Would I what? Would you tell a lie in this hypothetical to save everyone?

02:26:58

I don't know what I would do. Okay. I don't know what I would do. If the situation occurs.

02:27:05

Which one should you do? Now you're talking about deontology and you don't have a reason. No, I'm not.

02:27:11

I'm not talking about deontology. I'm talking about an ethics claim. Which one should you do? Deontology is a study of moral obligation.

02:27:19

You say which one I ought to do. What I should to do. It's moral obligation. It's not ethical unless you're a deontologist.

02:27:26

So again, which one should you do? Just say you should. I should do whatever the right thing is.

02:27:33

Which one is the right thing? That's the question we would have to discuss. Okay, go ahead.

02:27:38

Discuss. You see, I'm trying to help you out, but you don't want to do this. I have a very simple answer.

02:27:44

Yes, you tell a lie. You don't let everyone in America have their face melted off in a nuclear war.

02:27:50

So this is it. This is your gotcha that I would lie in order to not have people's faces melted off.

02:28:02

So what you're saying is, from your perspective, lying is okay and rape is okay.

02:28:09

Lying is okay if it prevents millions of men, women, and children from having their faces melted off.

02:28:14

Sure. Well, that's a universal truth statement that you're making. I will make the universal truth statement.

02:28:21

Lying is okay if it prevents millions of men, women, and children from having their faces melted off. Can you prove that's true?

02:28:28

Yeah, it maximizes well -being. And I've given you the proof. So well -being is just what you assume arbitrarily is the right standard.

02:28:34

Nope. I've given you the proof. Check your foot. Look down to your left foot. Just curious. Is there a nail there?

02:28:42

Because you keep running in circles. I was wondering if you're going to the left there. Okay. Yeah.

02:28:49

Sure, but you don't have an answer. I've given you a syllogism for utilitarianism, but you've just not answered.

02:28:55

You just haven't responded. I'd have to see your syllogism on paper, and then I could just pick it apart. You'd have to... I've had atheists.

02:29:04

I say they have these syllogisms. They have these arguments. They send them to me, and I put them up on Karm. I destroy them. All right.

02:29:10

I'll send it to you. I'll email it to you, put it up on Karm, and you can destroy it. Um, but so wait.

02:29:17

I want to go back to the thought experiment, which you dodged. So which one should you do?

02:29:25

Should you dodge? What does it mean to dodge? It means to not address it. And look at over there.

02:29:30

That's dodging it. Did I do that? Or did I say, you're correct. It's yes or no. Let's look at each one.

02:29:35

How's that dodging it when you're the one who didn't want to answer it? I asked you a yes or no question.

02:29:41

Your answer was, well, hmm, let's discuss. And then you went on. I finally said,

02:29:47

I don't know what I would do. You said you don't know which one you would do. You did not, which, do you know which one you should do?

02:29:54

Look, let me tell you something. Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait. Do you know which one you should do? Yes or no. So you should.

02:30:00

Okay. So you should let everyone die. I should not lie because lying is a sin. It's not hypothetical. It's not hypothetical.

02:30:06

Hold on a second, hold on a second. The difference between what it should and what would happen. I'm not asking about what would happen now.

02:30:13

Just did, you just did. Yeah, I just did. And then you answered. And so then I asked a follow -up.

02:30:19

I don't know what you would do. Okay. Ignore the question what you would do.

02:30:25

What should you do? I probably would just not answer the question. If I just say, hmm. What should you do?

02:30:30

Do you know? No, no, no. Look, you said. Because I know what you should do. Look, look, look. You said, it depends on my question and my answer what's going to happen, right?

02:30:39

Right? What? Yes or no. It depends on my answer. What's going to happen? Yes or no, right?

02:30:44

That's what you said. I don't answer. Now, what are you going to do? Well, okay.

02:30:49

So you're not, you're not willing to answer the question. You said, you said, you said.

02:30:58

If I say yes, everybody's saying. If I say no, all the people's faces melt off. Okay. Here's what you said.

02:31:05

And then my response to you is. I misunderstood. My response is I don't answer it.

02:31:11

Now, what do you do? I misunderstood the question. Sorry, to clarify. It's not, you can't not answer.

02:31:16

Rather, they say, okay, call up your wife right now and say you'll be home for dinner. Even when you want. Or we will nuke the world.

02:31:23

If you don't call her up, we will nuke the world. Or we will nuke the United States. Okay, so I call up and I say,

02:31:29

I say. Hold on a second. So you just, I'm going to work with you. Okay. So I'm supposed to say a sentence. What sentence am

02:31:35

I supposed to say? To save the world. Honey, I will be home tonight.

02:31:40

Honey, I will be home tonight. I'm going to say the sentence. If I say the sentence, the world gets saved.

02:31:47

Okay. I call up my wife. Hey, honey, I'm being held hostage. And it turns out that according to this one guy who thinks he knows about God and everything.

02:31:54

He says that I have to say a sentence so the world will be saved. And the sentence is, honey, I'll be home tonight.

02:32:00

I just, let me finish. I just said the sentence. It's not true, honey. But that's the sentence I have to say. Okay.

02:32:06

This is, okay. This is almost laughable. Your attempt to just like move out of the thought experiment.

02:32:12

What you just did is analogous to answering the trolley problem with, well, what you should do is just, just yell to the workers.

02:32:19

No. For the purpose of this hypothetical, you have to say it with integrity such that your wife believes you.

02:32:25

You cannot orchestrate. Now I have to say it with integrity? Integrity. Now I have to say it with integrity.

02:32:32

You have to say it with integrity. You take a look at this. Look at what he does. Look at what he does. You're the gold digger. This is literally atrocious.

02:32:39

You cannot answer this, Matt. And when you do, I don't like that answer. I'll move the goalpost. Answer the, move the goalpost. I keep answering you.

02:32:46

Try your next one. I'll do one more. And then we got to close this out. One more and I'll move on.

02:32:52

And they say to you, remember that time on the Matt Flick radio show, when you said you would try to weasel out of it and you would say, honey, they're holding me hostage.

02:33:00

So I have to say that. You're not allowed to do that. You have to say it. There cannot be any qualifiers around it. You have to just say, honey,

02:33:06

I'll be home tonight and then hang up. That's it. And you can't say anything before or after it.

02:33:12

That's the only thing that you can say. And otherwise we will nuke the world. Which one would you do? No weaseling out of it.

02:33:17

Answer the, oh, sorry. Not what, not what, not what should, which one should we do? Laughing is not an answer.

02:33:26

Which one should we do? So let me get this straight. You're asking me, this is your, this is your position. This is what you want to ask.

02:33:32

I have to say. You're not willing to answer the question because it makes your position absurd. Look, you're saying, you're saying

02:33:40

I have to say the sentence, honey, I'll be home tonight. And now I have to say it with sincerity. You have to say it and then hang up.

02:33:49

That's it. And you can't say anything before or after it. I have to be sincere when I say it. You have to sound sufficiently sincere such that.

02:33:57

Sound sufficiently sincere. Does my wife know I'm, I'm outside the country? No. She thinks

02:34:03

I'm there with her in the house? She doesn't think you're in the house. She thinks that you went out to go have a debate with Matt Dillahunty.

02:34:10

But then you got captured by these terrorists who just are trying to orchestrate this thought experiment. Okay, so now

02:34:16

I've been captured by terrorists when I'm supposed to talk to Matt Dillahunty, who lives in Austin, Texas.

02:34:22

And my wife knows that. That's the nature of the thought experiment. This is modus ponens, which you are not willing to answer because it exposes your position as absurd.

02:34:31

No, it doesn't. Which one should you do? I'm having to ask the context.

02:34:39

Is the context allowed to be asked? Okay. What context do you want to know? I'm asking you.

02:34:48

Listen to me because I have something up my sleeve. So you say to me,

02:34:53

I have to do it with sincerity. How would you know if I'm sincere? So you're avoiding that.

02:34:59

You're trying to narrow this down into impossibilities. Now I have to say the sentence, Honey, I'll be home tonight. Listen to me.

02:35:08

Listen to me. A lie is an intention to deceive, right?

02:35:14

So now you say that I have to say an intentional deception to my wife to save the world, right? Okay. So can

02:35:21

I say it without intending to deceive her? No. Can I say,

02:35:27

Honey, I'm going to be home tonight? No, you can't do that.

02:35:33

I can't say that. Okay. What else could I say in a lot of tone? How many decibels can I go up and down?

02:35:40

Okay. It has to be what a reasonable observer would find to be sincere. What's a reasonable observer to find sincere?

02:35:48

You can do that with any thought experiment. You can just ask for infinite context. This is not relevant. You're just not willing to answer.

02:35:55

I already told you my answer. I wouldn't respond. Okay. But in this case, if you don't respond, if you don't call her up, then they go, bam, hit a bunch of dupes.

02:36:03

Millions of kids. If I were to say this and say that some people are saved, does it mean

02:36:09

I'm a Christian and he's not true? Well, it means your moral system is absurd.

02:36:17

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. My moral system is absurd.

02:36:25

My moral system is absurd. Your moral system justifies the next bad thing. Let's talk about who is absurd.

02:36:32

My moral system is absurd because I don't want to answer the question about people, terrorists who have kidnapped me on my way to go see

02:36:43

Matt Dillahunty, who's out of state, who then said that I have to say a certain sentence with sincerity in order to convince them that I say this.

02:36:54

And who knows why that sentence has to be the right sentence. And for some reason, these terrorists say, if Matt Slick says, honey,

02:37:02

I'll be home tonight. If the terrorists say that, we won't destroy the world. So this is not absurd.

02:37:09

That's your argument. This hypothetical probably won't happen in the real world, but to the extent that you're making a claim of morality, it's reasonable out of hypotheticals by saying that they won't happen.

02:37:23

The toy car problem won't happen. You can't just call it a toy car problem by saying, well, it probably wouldn't happen.

02:37:28

Or you can just yell, that doesn't work. You just shot yourself in the foot because you said my rape women coma thing, it doesn't work because it's not really in the real world.

02:37:37

You got out of it that way or tried to, which I held your feet to the fire. And then I beat the bullet.

02:37:42

I said that if you could have a guarantee. I'm going to use your example as an example of absurdity from an atheist to try and defend his position.

02:37:50

Okay. You can go ahead and do that. I like everyone who's watching this to note. Matt took every effort to dodge this hypothetical because I'm talking to you about it.

02:38:01

You're talking to me about it, but you will not. You kept changing it and then you said it was a weaselly answer.

02:38:11

And so I made it even more specific so that there was no underdetermination.

02:38:18

Would you do it? Or should you do it? Yes or no. Should I?

02:38:24

I don't know if I should or shouldn't. There. That's your answer. You're damned if you do.

02:38:30

You're damned if you don't. Because if you do, it violates the prohibition on lying.

02:38:40

You're the one offering absolute absurdity to defend your position. Even now, here's a think about it.

02:38:46

If I were to say the truth or not the truth, it has no bearing on whether or not Christianity is true and the

02:38:52

Christian God exists. Because if I don't apply a moral principle properly in a situation, it doesn't have any bearing on whether or not

02:39:03

God exists. Your whole thing is absurd to begin with. It proves that your view of morality, the biblical view of morality, is immoral because it's willing to blow off the faces of millions of children.

02:39:15

I didn't say it was willing to do that. It's not willing to tell a lie to prevent the faces of millions of children from being blown off.

02:39:22

Who's clicking? I'm hearing sound. I'm also hearing sound. I don't think it's on. Is that you,

02:39:28

Charlie? Might have been me. I'll mute myself. Sorry about that. Yeah, it's clicking sounds.

02:39:34

I don't do well with those exact kind of sounds. So my opponents can now use them. You're the one who got into absurdity.

02:39:43

You're the one who did this, not me. You're the one. And even if I were to say yes or no and commit to either one, tell me, how does it prove

02:39:52

Christianity and the Christian God is not true? Because that's a debate topic. The Christian God exists, right? How does it prove that God doesn't exist?

02:39:59

You say my moral system is absurd. Wait a minute. My moral system is absurd because you invent an incredibly absurd situation.

02:40:09

Whether or not it's like saying Matt, I'm going to give you the most absurd thing

02:40:21

I can think of. And if you don't answer one way or the other, that proves that your God doesn't exist.

02:40:27

That's your argument. The situation is very unlikely to occur, obviously.

02:40:34

Now, the idea of women raping women in Tomas, is that absurd? That will also not occur in the real world because you can never have certainty about whether or not you'll get caught.

02:40:44

You can never have certainty that it will not harm them. Yeah, it never occurs in the real world. Men raping women.

02:40:51

It's been done. It has. It has. But it has never been done such that they had absolute certainty that there would be no harm.

02:40:57

That has never happened in the real world. It has been done where they did not have absolute certainty that there would be no harm. Yeah, absolute certainty.

02:41:03

You introduced this ethereal, unverifiable thing as a qualification.

02:41:08

Wait, wait, wait, wait. Earlier in the hypothetical, you have said that absolute certainty is required for it to be morally permissible.

02:41:17

No. You have. You have said that you wouldn't. No, no, no. When I said you couldn't guarantee there was no harm.

02:41:23

What context? Because I don't know. If I don't know something's absolutely right or wrong, it doesn't mean it is right or wrong.

02:41:30

Oh, no, sorry. to clarify, so what I was saying was, so earlier when you asked what gave me the hypothetical,

02:41:36

I said you could never have absolute... I said... Sorry, Ernie, you said a question.

02:41:44

What? Matt, talking to you, you have no lips or teeth. Would you eat beef jerky to keep a bomb from going off at Starbucks?

02:41:51

If I had, I mean, if I had the ability, if it were possible for me to do that, then sure. But the situation that I have not given is not logically impossible, it's just unlikely.

02:42:06

For terrorists to kidnap Matt Slick, that would not violate any known law, any laws of logic.

02:42:11

It wouldn't violate the law of non -conflict. We have the Dillahunty dodge, now we have the

02:42:17

Adelstein absurdity. I mean, I think we have the Matt Slick, Matt Slick, uh, swift dodge, no, that didn't have a good ranking.

02:42:29

You gotta work, you gotta come back quicker than that to make it work. The Matt, the Slick dodge. Yeah, the Matt Slick dodge.

02:42:34

Okay, um, Matt Slick sliding out of hypotheticals. Yeah. So, uh, we're going to move along.

02:42:42

Okay. So I, you know, I would thank you for being on and, uh, you know, uh, you need to study the

02:42:48

Christian God you criticize because you don't understand him very well. That's one thing I'll say. Okay.

02:43:01

I'm sorry, but it's funny. I get my name made fun of, but Absurdalstein, and I just got a kick out of that.

02:43:07

Okay. You're smiling. That's okay. I mean, people make fun of my name. I laugh, you know,

02:43:13

I'm not offended. These are pretty fun. All right. I got to go eat.

02:43:19

I'm supposed to be maybe gone in 10 minutes with somebody else, but I don't know if I am folks. I'll put a link on, uh, in, um, and make sure to send me the clip so I can download and upload it.

02:43:30

All you had to do, wait a second. I have to like, send it to me so I can download it.

02:43:35

Well, I don't send it to you. Just download it. The address is, well, let me do this.

02:43:42

Let me do this really fast. I'll make sure. Okay. Wait, reply. Okay. That's the, uh, 10, 10, 20, 20, slick debate,

02:43:57

YouTube, YouTube, uh, address

02:44:03

URL. There we go. Okay. So my channel would just have a link to yours?

02:44:11

No, it's the URL. You just download it. You can upload it on your channel. That's fine with me. Where did you send it?

02:44:19

To your email address, which I won't say over the air. Great.

02:44:25

Cool. Sounds good. It was a nice discussion.

02:44:31

I appreciate you having me. Okay. No problem. Just so you know, I'm going to give him a little kudos because earlier we're trying to, before the debate, we're trying to figure out how to get this show working into his feed.

02:44:44

And so he was giving me, which I forgot is, is a email and password. He trusted me, um, which well -paced for us, but, uh, in order to do that.

02:44:54

So he would, you know, he's nice guy. I forgot all the information. I couldn't remember it for a million dollars. I couldn't remember it.

02:45:00

So anyway, there you go. I emailed it to you. Hopefully you have it. If you don't have it. I have a link to the YouTube video.

02:45:05

I don't know how I can like download it and then upload it on my channel. You just download it. Then you upload it.

02:45:11

That's, that's it. It's, uh, this is, this is, let me do it again.

02:45:18

This is make sure it's the same one. Yeah. Okay. That's it.

02:45:25

That's the YouTube address. That's the link to the YouTube address. How do I download it and then upload it to my, go to Google type in, how do

02:45:33

I download a YouTube video? And it'll tell you what to do. You get, you have to go get an ad on and then you just click on it and hit download.

02:45:40

Okay, cool. All right. Sounds good. Thank you for having me. It's not hard. If you get stuck, let me know.

02:45:46

Okay. Sorry. Go ahead. Great. Thank you. Yeah. It's been good chatting. All right. Goodbye. All right.

02:45:52

Talk to you guys. Okay. Talk to you later. Bye. How many of you folks would like to have a, just curious, um, an after show debrief?

02:46:03

If you're, I wouldn't mind. You wouldn't mind. Okay. Tell you what, I'm going to do this.

02:46:09

I can take a break. So give me 15 minutes. So a quarter after the hour, I'll open up a room and I'll put the link on Facebook and we do, we can do an after show.

02:46:21

Okay. That's a good way to do that. By the way, Charlie, that was good with the phone like that. That was good. That sound good.

02:46:27

Everybody that want to do that a quarter after, which would give me about 25 minutes. Sure. I'll look,

02:46:32

I'll look for the link. Okay. So I'll put it on, I'm going to put on Matt Slick Facebook page, not

02:46:37

Carm. I'll just put on Matt Slick Facebook page. I'll put the YouTube link and the, uh, and this is for people who want to come in.