Debating the Existence of God – John Gleason

[00:00:00] hi everyone thanks for being here we’re gonna get started in a few minutes but

[00:00:05] we’re just giving people a chance to join and we’ll so we’ll start in about

[00:00:11] two or three minutes John Gleeson is here and being a part of

[00:00:19] this debate so we’re glad to have him here John thanks for being here Oh No thank you for having me for this

[00:00:25] debate and I always gonna always love to have a chance to talk about this particular subject fantastic yeah so

[00:00:34] we’re going to be debating the evidence for the existence of God so what we’re leaning on is the evidence and I met I

[00:00:42] actually met John through reference I was actually speaking at a conference on

[00:00:47] the evidence for the existence of God and a gentleman came up to me at the table and said hey you should talk to a

[00:00:55] friend of mine and about this and I was thinking it was it was somebody who you

[00:01:01] know just happened to be like his neighbor or something and turns out John has a huge YouTube channel and everything with hundreds of videos here

[00:01:08] so that’s not what I was expecting but it’s been good to get to know John a

[00:01:14] little bit here and he actually invited him to speak in my class last year with

[00:01:20] my seniors not last year last week with my seniors to be able to share his

[00:01:25] perspective I like my my students to be challenged and to be able to hear other

[00:01:31] people’s opinions because we want to be able to you know ultimately get to the

[00:01:38] truth and look for what is real so I think that’s really important when we’re

[00:01:44] dealing with issues of origins and these sorts of things so we’re gonna get started here but

[00:01:51] again John I want I want to thank you

[00:01:58] again for being here and and please keep your your comments and everything clean

[00:02:07] were we’re trying to have a good forum here where everybody is welcome and

[00:02:14] the policy basically is if you’re causing trouble or creating controversy

[00:02:19] then our tech guy has the right to ban you so Robert if you can clean up the chat bar that’d be great

[00:02:26] and just keep everything clean so John has done me the courtesy of giving me

[00:02:33] the opportunity to start first so I’m gonna kick it off here and the outline

[00:02:38] of our debate today is going to be 15 minutes for each of us to present our case and then we’ll have a ten minute

[00:02:45] rebuttal on each side then we’ll have a five minute closing then we’ll have a discussion and question time so where

[00:02:51] you can ask questions of each one of us and we’ll just alternate questions back and forth and that’ll be the case

[00:02:58] that’ll be what we’re doing and so I’m gonna get started here I’m gonna just

[00:03:04] start my timer here and I’m gonna share my screen with you and you can follow

[00:03:10] along with me here as I make the case for theism and that the best conclusion

[00:03:16] based on the evidence we have is that there is a God that exists we’re specifically debating the existence of

[00:03:22] God we are not at this point debating whether specifically the Bible is true

[00:03:29] or not although there may be some overlap there and that may come into play a little bit but our focus is on the existence of God okay so here we go

[00:03:40] okay so evidence one that I have here is theism says that functional information

[00:03:48] comes from an intelligent mind whereas atheism says that functional information can arise naturally and so again I’m

[00:03:54] making the case from my perspective of what why I believe in God if I found a rock that looked like this and I told

[00:04:02] you that I found this rock out in the desert and it was it was caused by wind and rain most people would say no you

[00:04:09] didn’t somebody carved that and this is because the mind is able to recognize

[00:04:14] design meaning there are things that are naturally caused by the natural laws of physics and then there are other things

[00:04:19] that are caused by an intelligent mind and the the human mind is able to

[00:04:24] identify the difference and and see what is designed and what is not now there’s

[00:04:30] been a lot of studies on this William demske is the the kind of the go-to guy on this he has studied this

[00:04:37] he has cambered studies and probability and he ended up explaining in detail how

[00:04:44] the human mind identifies design and so two of the things and I’m simplifying

[00:04:49] this for the sake of our discussion here but two of the characteristics that the human mind identifies is is it an

[00:04:56] unlikely natural object or event and is it a pattern I recognize if we get a yes

[00:05:01] to it is an unlikely natural object or event right we don’t typically find rocks that are shaped like dolphins with

[00:05:07] little fins and eyes and a mouth and is it a pattern I recognize we get two yeses the human mind says that is

[00:05:13] definitely designed that’s what’s happening and this is the and again I’m simplifying this but this is the process

[00:05:19] of how the mind identifies design around the world whatever it might be and this

[00:05:25] plays into things like a forensic science so in forensics what they’re

[00:05:30] looking for is if there was a death was it caused by natural causes or was it

[00:05:36] caused by a mind did somebody formulate a plan for

[00:05:41] somebody to die and so in forensics this this is an ability to distinguish between what’s happening here this also

[00:05:48] applies in things like anthropology or archeology so for

[00:05:53] this rock here the human mind looks at it and goes is it a pattern I recognize and is an unlikely natural object and

[00:06:00] the answer is yes that’s how we distinguish between just a rock and an arrowhead or some other information in

[00:06:07] that regard somebody’s writing on my screen a if you could not do that that’d be awesome

[00:06:12] I don’t know how that happened but this is my first online debate here so all kinds of exciting things

[00:06:19] so is intelligent design science well many people would argue yes and many

[00:06:25] people would some people would argue no but the reality is is that what is intelligent design it’s the ability to

[00:06:31] identify things in nature that are best explained as a result of an intelligent

[00:06:36] mind so for example an instruction manual when we look at it is it an unlikely natural object or event if you

[00:06:42] found it you’re walking through the forest and there’s an instruction manual you’re gonna say this is not a likely

[00:06:48] natural object or event and your mind automatically begins to think hmm this was designed by a mind is it a pattern I

[00:06:56] recognize absolutely words are patterns we recognize therefore the mind says this was designed that’s what that’s

[00:07:03] what happens so we say intelligent causation and this is how we’re able to identify that source now the crux of the

[00:07:12] issue is this the definition of information is specifically and what we’re talking about here is functional

[00:07:17] information functional data is this data

[00:07:23] that has been manipulated or organized to convey knowledge so what does that

[00:07:28] mean this can apply to a lot of different things so for example you can

[00:07:34] have Morse code the series of dots and dashes is information it’s data that has

[00:07:40] been manipulated or organized to convey knowledge music can be used that way you

[00:07:46] can use anything almost right you can arrange shells on the seashore and you

[00:07:52] can convey information because you have data that has been manipulated or organized to convey knowledge and so you

[00:08:00] can have information is inherently an unlikely object and a pattern I recognize now what do I mean by that

[00:08:06] information by its very nature it’s very essence is an unlikely object and a

[00:08:11] pattern I recognize because we know of not no source in nature that is able to

[00:08:18] provide information meaning in order to convey knowledge you have to have a mind

[00:08:23] convey knowledge you convey information it doesn’t come from a natural source the wind does not try to convey

[00:08:30] information because it has no mind therefore it’s not trying it and that’s why things in you know from the laws of

[00:08:37] physics and how everything is governed we don’t see information in that regard

[00:08:43] information is never naturally caused it is always from an intelligent design

[00:08:48] from a mind as far as we know now remember what I’m arguing for is the

[00:08:53] probability of God’s existence so what I’m doing is I’m saying what is most probable that God does exist or that he

[00:09:00] doesn’t exist based on the evidence that I see around me so examples of information are Moore’s car codes smokes

[00:09:06] signals organized letters binary code whatever it might be there’s lots of

[00:09:12] sources of information but they always come from a mind now I’ve heard people say that the genetic code is not

[00:09:18] information but all the definitions we have of the genetic code of the DNA is

[00:09:24] that it is information it is telling proteins how to organize themselves this

[00:09:30] is from genome gov why is it called a genetic code specifically because it is

[00:09:36] for chemical letters and it’s a lot more complex than this but it’s for chemical oetiker letters that are organized in

[00:09:41] order to tell proteins what to do it’s literally an instruction manual telling proteins how to organize themselves to

[00:09:47] ultimately build a living organism and so and this is in everything this is in plants it’s in every living

[00:09:54] organism so similar to how a computer uses a potentially binary code and I

[00:10:01] know that’s a very base language but zeros and ones there’s a pattern there and if the the binary code is not

[00:10:08] programmed properly anybody who’s a computer programmer noses if the prop if it’s not programmed properly then you’re going to have

[00:10:14] problems with the computer it’s not going to run properly and very similar to that

[00:10:20] DNA a is the program code for a human being if the code is not organized

[00:10:25] properly if you take out you have nucleotide substitutions right if you

[00:10:31] have what are called point mutations and those point mutations ultimately don’t don’t move things forward or they create

[00:10:38] a problem then you’re going to have a very serious problem you can’t just move it however you want you can’t just do

[00:10:44] whatever you want with it and so in the same way that binary code is the programming language of a human it is

[00:10:50] the programming information so is DNA the programming information for a a

[00:10:55] person or a living organism now the significance of this is huge because

[00:11:01] Dean Kenyon he was one of the leading chemical evolutionists in the world he wasn’t agnostic and ultimately he

[00:11:08] became a theist specifically because he could not figure out how you could get DNA into a cell when the cell didn’t

[00:11:17] exist yet how did you get that organized information to tell the cell how to build itself one had to the they had to

[00:11:24] pre-exists each other right you can’t have the cell without the DNA you can’t have the DNA without the cell and so

[00:11:29] ultimately his conclusion was there’s only one source for this information and that must be some sort of super

[00:11:36] intelligent being that is able to put those instructions in there so that every living thing can organize its kin

[00:11:43] can know how to build itself Bill Gates said DNA is like a computer program only much more complex than any

[00:11:50] we have been able to devise all over the world people are envious of the DNA and the the density of the information

[00:11:57] within the DNA and how it’s able to convey all this information is such a

[00:12:02] compact information so if we take the the method through which we understand

[00:12:08] design and we apply it here to DNA is it

[00:12:13] an unlikely natural object or event well remember what we said information is

[00:12:20] inherently an unlikely natural object or event because it must come from a mind so literally information is never quote

[00:12:28] naturally produced through just the natural laws of physics in nature it’s always from a mind

[00:12:34] so the answer is yes is it a pattern we recognize most definitely in fact we can

[00:12:39] manipulate that the DNA and the human genome and we know exactly where the

[00:12:44] letters are that that caused certain features of us or disease or whatever it might be and so ultimately the

[00:12:51] conclusion here is that it’s intelligent causation if DNA is information on how to build a person and information comes

[00:12:58] from an intelligent mind then this is scientific proof we were designed by God now the significance here is that this

[00:13:05] is not an argument from ignorance this is not a God of the gaps argument this is not hey we don’t know how it works

[00:13:10] therefore God did it what this is the conclusion that’s being drawn here is this that if it’s true that information

[00:13:16] only comes from a mind ultimately then it must be a mind it’s evidence-based

[00:13:23] this is not a God of the gaps argument it’s evidence-based meaning we have this

[00:13:29] is where the evidence is leading us it’s not something that we’re saying I don’t know how it works therefore God it’s

[00:13:36] saying the most likely the most probable that the conclusion that makes the most

[00:13:41] sense right is that a mind ultimately designed the human DNA okay

[00:13:48] evidence to in support of theism I’m probably not going to get through all this but I’ll get through as much as I

[00:13:53] can living organisms were created with kinds families all living organisms evolved from the first light so theism

[00:14:00] says that living organisms were created within kinds or families of animals whereas atheism says all of the organs

[00:14:06] involved from the first life through undirected mutations in natural selection now I’m well aware that there

[00:14:12] are theistic evolutionists there are people who believe in evolution and God

[00:14:17] and so naturally you don’t it doesn’t this prove God’s existence simply

[00:14:22] because evolution turned out if evolution turned out to be true but on the other hand if evolution turns out to

[00:14:29] be false you have a significant problem with believing in atheism because then

[00:14:35] you don’t have just a material process that developed us you actually have to resort to a supernatural being

[00:14:42] ultimately because this is through the process of elimination so meaning if as we move things

[00:14:48] off the table we only have so many options left and so this is an inference to the best explanation this is this is

[00:14:55] the process of elimination drawing us to the conclusion that there must be a super intelligent being because of what

[00:15:02] we see around us so undirected mutations I always use this in my class Marvel

[00:15:07] capitalized on the theory of evolution and although this is a little

[00:15:13] tongue-in-cheek I I’m just making a joke here but what is an undirected mutation

[00:15:19] because the T two key components for evolution to work are undirected mutations and natural selection so what

[00:15:25] is an undirected mutation you can see the definition I have here below here and we are recording this this will be up for you later to review but if I

[00:15:33] break this down into just basic language and undirected mutation is a mistake in the programming code of living organism

[00:15:39] that’s what a undirected mutation essentially is now the question is did

[00:15:45] undirected mutations with natural selection take us from jellyfish to humans from that single living that

[00:15:51] original first living organism all the way to what we are today now dr. John Sanford is a scientist who

[00:15:57] ultimately concluded that you cannot you can that the genetic code does not

[00:16:04] justify evolutionary theory undirected mutations do not ultimately lead to the

[00:16:10] the do not support the evolutionary claim so basically to break this down

[00:16:17] dr. Sanford in his book on genomic degeneration actually talks about

[00:16:22] throwing letters under recommendations into the programming code so for example when you throw a point mutation and you

[00:16:29] have three billion letters in your your human genome and when you throw a mutation in its a change in the letters

[00:16:36] so this is an instruction manual to make a wagon and I throw in an undirected mutation that is a point mutation and

[00:16:42] you can see that what’s happening here and I’m this is very simp simple here

[00:16:48] what i’m doing i’m adding undirected mutations to the instruction manual now the claim of evolution is that through

[00:16:55] this process of undirected mutations with natural selection weeding out the bad things that

[00:17:02] the bad organisms that develop out of this ultimately over millions and millions and billions of years you will

[00:17:07] have upwards evolution but in fact what dr. Sanford has shown and what population geneticist is showing is that

[00:17:14] you are only contaminating the human genome and making it harder to read that’s what’s happening in this wagon

[00:17:20] illustration the instruction manual over time will get harder and harder to read

[00:17:26] and and weed it out so the problem is that random mutations can’t add useful

[00:17:31] information to the DNA and natural selection only selects useful changes because there’s nothing guiding the

[00:17:38] process of undirected mutations meaning there’s no mind there’s no purpose there’s no plan to evolve because of

[00:17:44] that what happens is those mutations don’t actually add useful information to the genome they actually cause more

[00:17:51] problems and so over time what you have is you have the degeneration of the

[00:17:56] human genome you cannot get from a single celled organism up to ten

[00:18:01] trillion cells without ultimately killing the organism in the process because you’ve contaminated it so much

[00:18:09] this cannot happen there is nothing in science that is demonstrated that this is possible so what we are now know is

[00:18:18] that equivocally beneficial mutations which still have a downside are extremely rare about one in 10,000 unequivocally beneficial mutations are

[00:18:25] non-existent in nature what does that mean sickle-cell anemia is often comes up and as an example of a mutation but

[00:18:32] what does it do it creates cells that are shaped in the shape of a sickle now they give a

[00:18:38] benefit which is that you’re more resistant to malaria but they also kill the organism because of the danger of

[00:18:46] sickle cell anemia so what you end up doing is you get what’s called an equivocally beneficial mutation it has

[00:18:52] an upside but it also has a downside and the problem is is that there are far more mutations that have a downside than

[00:18:59] that have an upside and so what happens is let’s say you’re moving from a chimp-like ancestor to a human

[00:19:06] well there’s 50 million nucleotide changes that need to take place in order to get there and the question is and and

[00:19:13] what does the evidence tell us you not get from that chimp-like ancestor to a human without first killing the

[00:19:20] organism because of the amount of changes that have taken place what we’re seeing now is that the human mutation

[00:19:26] rate is at least 100 nucleotide substitutions per person per generation meaning 100 undirected mutations per

[00:19:33] generation that’s a minimum many population geneticists believe it’s much higher than that and so my daughter has

[00:19:41] cystic fibrosis well in 1983 a child with cystic fibrosis only lived at 2 years old so the question becomes this

[00:19:48] it’s only a change in three nucleotides if it just three nucleotide changes can

[00:19:54] kill an organism how can we expected to believe right by faith that you can go

[00:20:01] from a chimp-like ancestor to a human through that undirected process through

[00:20:06] undirected mutations when all it takes is three to kill an organism through those three changes this is just not

[00:20:13] feasible it doesn’t make sense and this is why a big part of why a lot of scientists right now are really

[00:20:19] questioning the theory of evolution because the science is demonstrating that it’s not feasible to ultimately

[00:20:27] rely on undirected mutations and natural selection to get you the complexity of life that we see all over the planet

[00:20:34] because this would have to go for not just a chimp like ancestor to a human but it would have to go for every league

[00:20:40] living organism on planet Earth that process would have to go perfectly like that and and I going to get into this

[00:20:48] more later on my time is about up but the the point being here is is that science the evidence is actually pushing

[00:20:55] us towards an intelligent mind which has ultimately designed everything and so

[00:21:02] thank you for listening to me here I’m going to turn it over to John Gleason and John go ahead and take it away

[00:21:12] okay thank you so much Kevin for your presentation

[00:21:18] now of course my my beginning arguments

[00:21:23] introduction here is not going to be directly in response to Kevin’s

[00:21:29] presentation I did take a lot of notes for us to get into maybe later but I first wanted to present you know my my

[00:21:38] introduction here and that’s pretty much why I think theism is an insufficient

[00:21:43] explanation for anything so first off my

[00:21:50] arguments rely on the prior probability of any one religion being the correct version of theism and then it also

[00:21:59] relies on the insufficient nature of theism explanations for events in reality and then finally the bad

[00:22:06] arguments to use to to argue for the existence of a God so first I want to

[00:22:13] lay out the prior probability that any one definition of God or a theistic belief is the correct one currently

[00:22:21] there are 4,200 religions in existence today with many more that have existed

[00:22:28] in the past all these past religions have been proven to be false we know that Zeus does not throw

[00:22:36] lightning bolts we know that a rainbow-colored snake hasn’t vomited out the Australian Aboriginals we know that

[00:22:44] Uranus didn’t impregnate Gaia and give birth to Titans those are beliefs of

[00:22:49] past religions at the time they were considered to be representations of reality this is the fate of all

[00:22:56] religious ideas even in Christianity we have obsolete ideas the creation of the

[00:23:02] earth in Genesis is not representative of reality the earth and the diversity of life that we find on earth today what

[00:23:09] was not created 6,000 years ago and even ideas like God man mandating the taking

[00:23:16] of slaves have changed we know that the earth is 4.5 billion years

[00:23:22] we know that the universe is at least thirteen and a half billion years old we know that Moses didn’t write the

[00:23:30] Pentateuch the prior probability of an idea that doesn’t match what we experienced in reality being true is

[00:23:36] essentially zero every idea that is true should match what we find in reality the

[00:23:43] likelihood of any one of these religious ideas being correct being the correct

[00:23:48] religious idea is vanishingly small however they can all be wrong

[00:23:54] next is the insufficient explanations that theism has for events that happen

[00:24:00] in reality ultimately the only explanation that theism can provide is

[00:24:07] God during the current pandemic we have seen this inability of religion to

[00:24:14] explain anything about the situation or how to protect ourselves countless numbers of people have the irrational

[00:24:20] belief that they are covered in the blood of Jesus and therefore cannot contract a communicable disease

[00:24:27] preachers and pastors still demand their congregation meet for worship because

[00:24:33] they are they think they are immune to the disease simply because they are Christian going even deeper into the

[00:24:40] theology you would blame humans for viruses in general original sin in Christian theology is the reason why

[00:24:46] viruses even exist today we disobeyed God therefore we are to blame for this

[00:24:54] virus we know that the current pandemic is a natural virus

[00:25:00] it evolved from existing versions of the coronavirus claiming that the only

[00:25:06] reason why it exists is that a woman ate some fruit six thousand years ago is irrational again the only explanation

[00:25:14] that theism provides is God and that’s not an answer to anything

[00:25:21] we all have also heard that God has a plan what was God’s plan for this

[00:25:27] pandemic is it to punish the Jews as some Muslims had proposed is it to

[00:25:32] punish everyone that isn’t Jewish like some rabbis have proposed is it punishment for homosexuality and sexual

[00:25:39] deviance like he was an online preacher recently

[00:25:45] that actually espoused this all of the reasons that religion can

[00:25:53] give us for the motive or plan behind current that this current pandemic cannot be simultaneously right they can

[00:26:00] all be simultaneously wrong and in fact they are all wrong this pandemic is not a punishment from

[00:26:08] God it’s a natural event that happened before in 1968 1956 to 58 1918 1910 1889

[00:26:18] 1852 to 1860 and etc what were we being punished for then simply existing

[00:26:26] natural events have natural causes non-supernatural ones every supernatural

[00:26:33] event that has supposedly happened in the past has always been proven to be a natural event later take lightning for

[00:26:41] example the ancient Greeks thought Zeus wielded lightning as his weapon every

[00:26:46] place struck by lightning was considered sacred Muslims have also attributed

[00:26:52] lightning to their God Jeremiah 51 16 claims that God controls lightning all

[00:26:58] of these supernatural ideas can and are false can be and are and are false we

[00:27:05] know that lightning is caused by large collections of positively and negatively

[00:27:10] charged particles interacting with each other normally this occurs in the clouds but

[00:27:16] also does happen between the clouds and the ground this process is dictated by

[00:27:23] the physics of the natural world we had no need for a supernatural explanation when we have a natural one

[00:27:31] again the only explanation that theistic ideas can give us is God

[00:27:38] finally I want to go over the arguments for God’s existence [Music]

[00:27:43] there have been several arguments made for the existence of God the cosmological argument suggests that

[00:27:50] there is a transcendent transcendental first cause of the universe and that cause is God this argument makes a leap

[00:27:58] in logic from what caused the inflation of the universe and connects it to God the bigger leap in logic occurs when it

[00:28:06] is used to suggest a specific definition of God I agree that something caused the

[00:28:12] inflation of the universe but you don’t have the evidence to say that this cause was God you must first prove that

[00:28:19] natural events need supernatural intervention in order to prove in order in order for it to happen next the

[00:28:27] teleological argument this is just an argument from design it postulates that

[00:28:33] if something looks designed then it must be designed everything that was designed

[00:28:38] has a creator therefore crap hold on so sorry I messed

[00:28:47] up

[00:28:52] just be there for in the the universe has a creator since it looks designed

[00:28:57] just because you think the universe looks designed doesn’t mean that it is designed

[00:29:05] again if we have a natural explanation that we don’t need a supernatural one

[00:29:12] the moral argument is likewise insufficient the moral argument speculates that God is needed for

[00:29:19] morality to be absolutely or objective if there is no absolute objective or

[00:29:25] absolute morality then everything is just an opinion since murder is absolutely wrong then

[00:29:31] God must have written this code on our hearts this doesn’t make sense with what we experience in reality if God had done

[00:29:38] this then we should expect his moral code to remain absolute across time even

[00:29:43] now our moral foundations change depending on what society we live in we don’t see that in Crete we don’t see

[00:29:51] that in Christianity in fact Christianity’s moral foundation changes depending on time and place in numbers

[00:30:00] 31 17 through 18 God commands his chosen people to abduct young girls after

[00:30:05] murdering their entire family including all of the young boys if you transpose

[00:30:11] that to present day these would be horrible war crimes but it’s okay for

[00:30:17] them to do that because God told them to do that if this isn’t considered good or

[00:30:22] okay to do now why did God command it if

[00:30:28] this moral code is not immutable then what explains are changing moral

[00:30:33] foundation since our common moral foundation changes since our common

[00:30:40] moral foundation seems to change with the social norms of society it seems like we are the ones that dictate what

[00:30:47] our moral foundation is if we’re the ones dictating what we see is morally right wrong and neutral then we would

[00:30:54] expect a changing landscape of morality that’s exactly what we find in

[00:30:59] Christianity we see religious people with differing opinions on what their absolute moral code is morality is an

[00:31:07] emergent property of a complex central nervous system that is why we find a

[00:31:12] primitive moral foundations in other forms of life it’s why

[00:31:23] it’s why our notion of right and wrong varies depending on the time and place that we exist this provides an actual

[00:31:30] explanation for why Bharati exists as we experience it could there be some

[00:31:35] absolute moral foundation exist sure there could be due to the human

[00:31:41] condition and how we experience our reality we would never know if we attained such an immutable set of moral

[00:31:47] laws so to summarize my case basically I don’t think a belief in a deity is worn

[00:31:54] – due to the lack of sufficient evidence to support such a belief the prior probability of any religious faith being

[00:32:01] correct is vanishingly small the explanations that the ISM provides are

[00:32:07] insufficient because they do not explain anything about our reality and finally

[00:32:12] all of the arguments for the existence of God fall short of showing that God

[00:32:18] most likely exists so I know that was relatively short

[00:32:25] compared to the presentation that Kevin had and I think that I technically have

[00:32:31] a probably a few minutes here to sort of go over some of the things that Kevin

[00:32:37] brought up in the thing so I don’t know if the moderator can let me know when I’m starting to breach on my time but

[00:32:47] Kevin kind of started out with an argument from design saying that oh well

[00:32:52] we look at things and we know that they are designed because our brains are meant our artists are concordant design

[00:33:00] to look for patterns in things and this goes back to the I believe is the

[00:33:06] teleological argument just because something looks designed does not necessarily mean that it is designed

[00:33:12] Kevin did lay out some criteria for determining whether or not something was designed but I think that you could find

[00:33:19] some situations where that particular criteria would not really be able or be

[00:33:24] sufficient enough to discern undesigned objects from designed objects Kevin

[00:33:30] brought up archaeology whereas the arrowhead is a better it is a better

[00:33:35] example they’d say like fossils fossils happen by a natural process those are

[00:33:41] things that look designed when you look at the rocks but they’re really not designed what they are are

[00:33:47] representations of the the biological matter that had its biological manner

[00:33:56] replaced with minerals over long long periods of time so that would be a case

[00:34:02] where something looks designed but isn’t actually designed it actually happened

[00:34:08] by a natural process he also talked a little bit I noticed you brought up William demske

[00:34:14] he’s normally brought up for you know the genetic entropy even Kevin even

[00:34:21] mentioned how mutations don’t really help evolution at all in fact I know at

[00:34:27] one part Kevin said that there are effectively no beneficial mutations and that’s just

[00:34:33] simply not true you can go to a website called talk origins and they actually had a full

[00:34:40] list of experiments that have shown that beneficial mutations do happen now

[00:34:46] mutations that happen in genetic code are mostly neutral they don’t have an

[00:34:52] effect on us one way or another the bad mutations do happen and sometimes they can be very detrimental

[00:34:58] but the thing is is that with evolution it’s the build up of good mutations that

[00:35:04] allow it and organize into an organism to survive in its environment so these

[00:35:09] bad mutations will not allow for an organism to survive in its environment and thus would not be propagated

[00:35:15] throughout the population that’s how that’s why bad mutations do not survive

[00:35:21] long in a population of organisms it’s the good mutations that allow them to

[00:35:26] survive that actually went out he talked a lot about how undirected mutations

[00:35:32] don’t really help us or don’t really exist or don’t really happen because

[00:35:37] they’re all bad but in reality these seemingly random mutations happen but

[00:35:43] they are non randomly selected by nature to help that organisms to survive one

[00:35:52] really good example of this is the pandas that I’ve talked before about in

[00:35:57] Kevin’s class they have a bone in their hand called a radial sesamoid that seems

[00:36:04] to be modified in the pandas from its ancestor 40 million years ago and the

[00:36:10] radial sesamoid was actually modified by these seemingly random mutations to help

[00:36:18] it sir help both of the species survive better in their environment and it allowed them to consume bamboo their

[00:36:24] primary source of food a lot easier and so it allowed them to survive this is

[00:36:30] the primary driving force of evolution now he did mention how evolution doesn’t

[00:36:36] necessarily disprove the idea of a God existing and I would agree with that there definitely could be a God that

[00:36:43] exists an evolution still happened so I wouldn’t suggest saying that oh well evolution disproves the

[00:36:49] we need a God at most you could say that evolution is just one of those facets of

[00:36:54] Christianity or is one fact of a reality that proves that one of the facets of

[00:37:01] Christianity is obsolete specifically the fundamentalist view of Genesis so

[00:37:10] let’s see you go through man oh we started talking about genetic code and what I have to say about genetic

[00:37:16] code is that we can interpret it as genetic code like as code as information

[00:37:22] but inherently DNA is deoxyribonucleic acid it’s a chemical this chemical

[00:37:28] reacts with certain other chemicals in various systems in order to produce

[00:37:34] different proteins this is akin to like diet coke and regular coke I wouldn’t

[00:37:41] say that diet coke inherently contains any kind of useful information just because it

[00:37:47] has a chemical code behind it the change between diet coke and regular coke

[00:37:53] doesn’t it doesn’t prove anything about the existence of God so I would I would

[00:38:01] just caution the use of genetic code as information and as a way to suggest that

[00:38:08] we need a creator in order for it to exist and I guess I’ll be done with that okay

[00:38:17] great thanks a lot John that was awesome so we’re going to move into the ten

[00:38:22] minute rebuttal of each it’s a little bit difficult the amount of content that that John covered there there’s no way I

[00:38:30] can I can respond to all those in ten minutes but but maybe for future conversations does those sound like good

[00:38:36] topics but I’m gonna hop into what I was covering because my presentation

[00:38:42] actually responds to several of the points he made I’m focusing on specifically I’m focusing specifically

[00:38:51] on on the evidences for God so Robert I

[00:38:58] can’t share my screen can you fix that Roberts our tech guy so oh yeah I just changed it now you should be able to

[00:39:03] okay great thank you okay so let’s go back to this here okay so I gave

[00:39:11] evidence one I gave evidence to and and I heard a lot of what he was saying about you know all religions could be

[00:39:18] wrong that’s most certainly true I’m not relying on religion or even specifically

[00:39:23] Christian belief in order to justify my belief in God so I believe in God very

[00:39:29] specifically because to me as far as I can tell both the scientific the historical the logical evidence actually

[00:39:36] leaves that to be the most probable truth so it’s most likely to be the case

[00:39:41] now I know this argument to right here a lot of people it comes up frequently

[00:39:47] because it’s it’s such a common one but I’m gonna cover it simply because I’m going through I have six big reasons six

[00:39:54] big reasons why I think the evidence overwhelmingly supports the probability

[00:40:00] that God does exist more than that he does not exist and one of them has to do

[00:40:05] with this issue of where we came from again what we’re doing into it it’s the inference to the best explanation it’s

[00:40:11] the process of elimination you don’t have a lot of options when it comes to where the universe came from either somebody made the universe of the

[00:40:17] universe made itself that’s really all you’ve got and I don’t think it makes much sense to come to the conclusion

[00:40:23] that the universe made itself Einstein use to believe in a steady state universe he used to believe the universe had no

[00:40:30] beginning in 1915 but his math actually caused him to change his mind and he

[00:40:35] concluded the universe did have a beginning and he even confessed that to hit one of his best friends that he had

[00:40:42] actually altered his math in order to not come to the conclusion that the universe had a beginning because he

[00:40:47] didn’t like the ramifications of the universe having the beginning which indicated that there had to be some sort

[00:40:54] of being that actually caused the universe to start and since then we’ve had many many scientists who have

[00:41:00] concluded yes the universe had a beginning I’d say this is generally accepted now in the scientific community

[00:41:06] that the universe had a beginning limit was an astrophysicist who promoted the Big Bang event and when Hubble concluded

[00:41:13] that based on the expansion of the universe and you can only go so far back in time you had to have a expansion

[00:41:20] George Kemal said that because they’re still heating the universe if it was infinitely old it would already be

[00:41:25] cooled off so it can’t be infant can’t have always existed therefore there must have been a beginning to the universe Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson both

[00:41:32] concluded there there was a beginning to the universe based on the background radiation they were getting from

[00:41:38] everywhere so today many people have concluded that yes there was a beginning to the universe from a scientific basis

[00:41:44] now the bible already had that in it in the beginning in Genesis 1:1 it was already there and Psalm 102 it says in

[00:41:51] the beginning they didn’t have to write that but there it is there’s a beginning and so the Big Bang of course has huge

[00:41:59] problems and people are trying to solve these problems right now but everybody has confessed yes this is a big problem

[00:42:05] cosmologists have confessed this Carl Sagan said hey the cosmos is all there is and then when he was confronted with

[00:42:11] the idea of well where did the scientific laws come from that govern the way the universe developed which are

[00:42:18] needed in order for galaxies to develop and all these sorts of things then then he said yeah you know what that’s a huge

[00:42:23] problem because they had to have been there Fred Hoyle said somebody has tinkered with the universe essentially

[00:42:30] it’s too perfect in order to let life right and you’ve heard that that’s the fine-tuning argument or the anthropic

[00:42:37] principle Robert Penrose and Stephen Hawking specifically worked on a formula that

[00:42:43] when you go back in time what they ended up with was a point of nothing literally

[00:42:50] mathematically you as you go back in time you get to a point where there is literally nothing there you can’t have

[00:42:56] anything there and the problem is is how do you get something from nothing now of course

[00:43:01] there’s still these ideas out there about the recycled universe the universe coming into existence going out of

[00:43:07] existence but what we’re noticing is that science is basically pushing these out of the picture

[00:43:13] they’re not justifiable and people can believe them that’s fine that’s their

[00:43:18] prerogative but the problem is you can’t call it science right it’s not observable it’s not testable it’s not

[00:43:23] repeatable and what frustrates me a little bit is when people claim oh I have science you have faith but in fact

[00:43:30] what I’ve noticed right on a regular basis for example John says he doesn’t believe in miracles there’s no miracles

[00:43:36] right but at the same time he’ll believe that a whole universe can come into existence from nothing if that’s not a

[00:43:41] miracle I don’t know what is and we can apply that to life coming into existence from non-life that is in essence a

[00:43:48] miracle because so it’s kind of a cherry picking which miracles you want to

[00:43:53] believe in the miracles that that prop up your your paradigm yes but where are

[00:44:00] we going where we’re going with the evidence is ultimately both scientifically from the design inference

[00:44:05] and as well as through process of elimination the most impressive conclusion is that God does exist which

[00:44:12] makes more sense that something made everything or nothing made everything and ultimately it has to be a someone

[00:44:19] because you have to choose to start the universe inanimate inanimate material

[00:44:24] cannot make any decisions causal decisions right but yet we see here in

[00:44:29] Scientific American they’re talking about everything could potentially have come from nothing this is not scientific

[00:44:36] I interviewed Lawrence Krauss on the radio I I interviewed him and he says nothing is doing something and not only

[00:44:42] that it has to do something but essentially what he’s doing is equivocating he’s changing the definition of nothing to something else

[00:44:48] okay and people often talk about quantum fluctuations and the

[00:44:54] hypothetical theories about quantum fluctuations starting universe there’s no evidence for that they’re purely

[00:44:59] hypothetical there’s no evidence at all that this could ever take place that there could be a quantum fluctuation and in order for a quantum fluctuation to

[00:45:06] take place you have to have the universe already there right for the universe to make itself it’s got a pre-existed self

[00:45:11] you can’t have a quantum fluctuation when there’s literally nothing there we’re not talking about Lawrence Krauss

[00:45:17] is definition of nothing we’re talking about nothing and so there has to be something that pre-existed the universe

[00:45:24] there’s no way around it unless you’re going to equivocate and change your definitions of your words so again here

[00:45:31] Discover Magazine same thing the universe person is something from nothing it got bigger it became filled with even

[00:45:37] more stuff that came from nowhere how is that possible these are these are stories these are rescuing devices this is not evidence

[00:45:43] this is not scientific evidence these are not scientific conclusions these are just theories and stories special

[00:45:49] pleading ad hoc these are just somebody’s way of trying to justify what

[00:45:55] they believe even though the evidence is to the contrary you violate laws of

[00:46:00] logic when you say that nothing made everything the principle of sufficient reason is a law of logic it says things

[00:46:05] don’t happen for no reason that just doesn’t happen even if we don’t understand how there are quantum

[00:46:12] particles that pop up into existence and go out of existence it doesn’t mean just because we don’t understand it that there’s not a reason for it all around

[00:46:18] us everywhere we look there are reasons for everything that goes on and so we have no reason to think that a universe is going to pop into existence the

[00:46:25] biggest event ever right for no reason whatsoever that’s not a good conclusion and so for that reason I believe it’s

[00:46:32] more probable that God exists and that he doesn’t exist so we also violate the law of causality

[00:46:37] which is a very common argument right but the here’s what people seem to misunderstand skeptics have no cause and

[00:46:44] no reason for the beginning of the universe they don’t even have a plausible guess the idea that nothing made everything denies known laws of

[00:46:50] logic and science it’s not just unscientific it’s anti scientific and so

[00:46:55] if we’re arguing about who has science on their side I believe that the theistic worldview by far has scientists

[00:47:02] science and logic on its side and of course the question that comes up all the time which is

[00:47:08] if God made everything who made God well there is a very good and logical answer

[00:47:13] to that question evidence for I’ll try to get through this one life comes from life according

[00:47:18] to theism but according to atheism life comes from non-life and so what we’re

[00:47:23] looking at here is a scientific definition of life is that organism

[00:47:29] reacts to stimuli metabolizes and reproduces or grows right rocks are not

[00:47:35] alive they don’t do these things therefore they don’t have life Louis Pasteur ultimately concluded that life does not

[00:47:41] spontaneously arise and he came up with the law of biogenesis now today people

[00:47:46] are saying the law of biogenesis isn’t actually a law but this isn’t because the laws of biogenesis have been proven

[00:47:52] wrong or there’s evidence against them it’s because if the law of biogenesis is true you can’t have purely material

[00:47:59] causes to everything around us you can’t be a materialist somebody who doesn’t believe in the supernatural and so the

[00:48:06] law of biogenesis says all life comes from preexistent life how is it possible that anybody could consider thinking

[00:48:14] that life could come into existence from non-life it’s completely against science

[00:48:19] science are made up of protons are made up of proteins 250 proteins

[00:48:24] approximately for the simplest living cell and proteins are made up of amino acids to get one protein from amino

[00:48:32] acids about 20 different amino acids that make up a single protein the problem is amino acids do not

[00:48:39] naturally connect together they need enzymes to connect together and they don’t they don’t naturally connect

[00:48:44] together in fact the prebiotic soup that people talk about so often where life would have come from is

[00:48:50] thermodynamically unstable if you calculate the probability of a protein

[00:48:56] forming itself by chance with no design the probability is 1 in 10 to the 164

[00:49:02] and that’s conservative that’s not that’s not a that that’s a huge number

[00:49:08] right if you the the a million seconds is 11 days a billion seconds is 32 days

[00:49:15] a trillion seconds is 32,000 years 32,000 years so this

[00:49:22] number is one in 10 to the 164 that’s the probability of a single functional protein the amount of people living in

[00:49:27] the USA is 300 million unit US national debt 22 trillion I believe in and growing sadly that’s depressing the amount of

[00:49:35] particles in the universe is 10 to the 80 now that’s a huge number but that’s half as much as the probability of a

[00:49:42] functional protein making itself by accident that is less than half the

[00:49:48] amount of seconds that evolutionists say has passed since the Big Bang is 10 to the 16 now let me explain something to

[00:49:54] you and I am on this to get one single protein the probability is 1 in 10 to

[00:50:00] the 164 this is hard math this is not guessing this is not theoretical this is hard scientific data and math one in 10

[00:50:09] to the 164 to get one protein you need 250 of these to get a single cell

[00:50:14] remember proteins are not alive it’s not like they’re walking around going man I really need to find another protein I’m

[00:50:19] gonna I really want to get together with 249 other proteins let’s do this no they’re like rocks they can’t find each

[00:50:26] other and so just to get one protein and amino acids aren’t alive either you hats the number so which is more

[00:50:33] probable that there was a super intelligent being that organized those proteins which ultimately organized to

[00:50:39] make a cell which ultimately was able to reproduce and then keep going right or

[00:50:45] is it more probable that this happened all by the roll of the dice ultimately by an accident remember they are

[00:50:50] thermodynamically unstable amino acids they do not come together like magnetically or something there’s no

[00:50:56] natural process through which they come together they have to be forced together right scientists have to do this in a

[00:51:02] lab very carefully under very very particular conditions otherwise it all

[00:51:08] falls apart because it’s thermodynamically unstable and so I think by far the best conclusion is that there is a super intelligent being and

[00:51:16] could all the religions potentially be wrong hmm they could be according to John yeah they could be but that

[00:51:22] wouldn’t mean that God doesn’t exist even if they were all wrong because the the evidence actually supports the idea

[00:51:28] right that God does exist ok I’m done and John Europe

[00:51:40] okay thank you Kevin for that and so

[00:51:46] just trying to go through here what Kevin covered in his very first part of

[00:51:54] his of his presentation here

[00:52:07] you

[00:52:15] so starting out in his response Kevin pretty much made the connection that

[00:52:22] because we transition from a steady state theory of the universe of the

[00:52:28] existence of the universe to the universe had a beginning that inherently means that the Bible got it correct now

[00:52:34] the this is kind of a jump in logic because there’s there’s there’s no

[00:52:40] indication that the people that wrote the Bible had any kind of modern concept

[00:52:46] of cosmology the fact that we now have actual evidence to suggest that the this

[00:52:54] particular universe started at some point in time does not in does not inherently mean that the Bible is

[00:53:01] correct we actually don’t know what the universe was like prior to the start of this

[00:53:08] universe we don’t know if other universes even or do exist or don’t

[00:53:13] exist so there’s no way for us to say that the start of our universe is the

[00:53:19] absolute actual first start of every universe out there every possible

[00:53:24] universe that could be out there we just simply don’t know we don’t have anything that suggested that it can’t happen is

[00:53:31] the problem with that Kevin also mentioned how abiogenesis in the

[00:53:39] beginning of the universe from quote-unquote nothing is a miracle and I really wouldn’t call those miracles we

[00:53:45] have several experiments that show how the building blocks of life could have developed naturally and how they could

[00:53:52] have eventually came became the natural life that we see on the earth today the

[00:54:00] beginning of the universe didn’t start out from nothing as Kevin or anybody that normally references nothing like if

[00:54:07] you look at my hand here you know I have nothing like there’s no like now there’s a pen but now there’s nothing in my hand

[00:54:14] well this is not a scientific concept of nothing the scientific concept of

[00:54:20] nothing is it still has an electrical charge in it and what the scientific

[00:54:27] definition of nothing would be would be like all radiation all matter any everything

[00:54:33] from a single bit of space but what we find is is that when even when we do that there’s still an electrical charge

[00:54:40] there and that’s because the scientific version of nothing is still something

[00:54:46] just because we can’t see it or really experience it doesn’t mean that it’s not there

[00:54:52] we have been able to measure it though Kevin also talked about the quantum

[00:55:00] fields and how it’s all hypothetical and we don’t have anything to suggest that

[00:55:05] that is true when in fact we do have a lot of evidence that seems to comport

[00:55:11] with quantum theory and the use of quantum scalar fields I know anytime

[00:55:17] that I’ve mentioned the quantum theory for how the universe began it’s always

[00:55:23] the most likely or the best guess for how it started not that that is indeed

[00:55:28] in fact the way that it started but this is one idea that currently is not

[00:55:33] refuted that fits the evidence that we have for how this universe could have

[00:55:39] quote-unquote popped into existence from nothing I would also venture to on the

[00:55:46] topic of the Bible being correct about the beginning of the universe I would want to ask why wasn’t this God more

[00:55:54] specific about the universe because like for instance we know that the universe inflated it to a little bit smaller than

[00:56:03] the size that it is now in the matter of 10 to the negative 32 seconds we know that this happened thirteen point five

[00:56:10] billion years ago we know that the first bit of light wasn’t even able to traverse through this universe until

[00:56:17] 300,000 years what we would experience now is years after the inflation of the

[00:56:23] universe atoms weren’t able to form until about that time either I would I would want to know why these

[00:56:30] early people if they had this God to inform them why didn’t this God inform

[00:56:36] them more precisely about how this universe began because these are things that we know for

[00:56:43] as for the evidence for the quantum scalar fields we do have evidence in the

[00:56:49] form of virtual particles of this energy trance trance forming basically virtual

[00:56:55] particles they transform energy into these particles that that exist and then

[00:57:03] they transfer back and it happens very very short very short amount of time

[00:57:09] but these virtual particles do seem to pop in and out of existence from what

[00:57:14] seems to be nothing of course if you look more into the science you’ll find a lot more detailed descriptions of this

[00:57:27] he also talked a lot about the law of biogenesis and it actually isn’t a law

[00:57:36] this was actually proposed by Louis Pasteur who was doing experiments with flies and rotting meat and basically

[00:57:43] what he refuted is the idea of is or tuck reiation idea spontaneous

[00:57:49] generation that that would be a creationist sort of idea the law of

[00:57:55] biogenesis was just a phrase that was coined by Louie Pasteur where it’s not an actual law at least not in science so

[00:58:04] the main important thing to take away here is the fact that Louis Pasteur

[00:58:10] wasn’t looking to disprove evolution or abiogenesis which is really what the

[00:58:17] argument is used for is a biogenesis and he was looking to disprove that he was

[00:58:22] looking to you know figure out you know why flies you know come into existence

[00:58:30] there was an idea at the time that flies just spontaneously generated from meat so he was trying to disprove that idea

[00:58:37] so the law of biogenesis doesn’t actually say anything at all about whether or not life can come from

[00:58:44] non-life then Kevin talked about the how

[00:58:51] many proteins it would take in order for a simple cell to exist and you know that

[00:58:58] just looks at how simple cells exist now we don’t know the composition of these

[00:59:04] simple cells when they started developing back when life was starting

[00:59:09] to form in fact we have a lot of evidence for the like RNA world

[00:59:15] hypothesis where RNA self-replicating RNA eventually changed into what we did

[00:59:22] experience as cells we already know how how prokaryotic cells developed into

[00:59:29] eukaryotic cells and this is by other other single-celled organisms invading

[00:59:35] some of these cells and then creating this symbiotic relationship

[00:59:41] to sell to the point where the cell couldn’t exist our curtain couldn’t live without that other entity living inside

[00:59:49] it and so they eventually formed into a eukaryotic cell and that’s what we have

[00:59:56] today are these eukaryotic cells as those are structured cells with a nucleus mitochondria and other

[01:00:02] organelles inside the cells while prokaryotic cells those are ones that do

[01:00:07] not have any structure inside them and they would have been most like the

[01:00:12] original life that ended up developing although we don’t know how much how much

[01:00:18] light they are but they’re closer to it now he talks about the amount of time

[01:00:23] needed or the amount of changes or the amount of proteins needed in order for

[01:00:28] these things to happen but when he fails to say what he seems to fail to understand is the fact that these

[01:00:35] processes don’t take place linearly just because it takes that much time in order

[01:00:42] for those meaning that many proteins in order to build a cell does not mean that

[01:00:47] you have to build one protein and then the next protein and then the next protein we have chemical processes that

[01:00:55] go on all the time an instant what’s what would seem like instantaneously

[01:01:01] there there’s there’s a lot of chemical reactions that go on so well he uses big

[01:01:07] numbers to suggest that it’s impossible for these things to happen it doesn’t mean that they are impossible just that

[01:01:14] they are highly unlikely and I would agree that it’s highly unlikely for life to develop but given a big enough data

[01:01:22] set you can garrett you can a hundred percent guarantee that life will arise naturally even when the probability of

[01:01:30] it is very low so I think that’s all of my ten minutes and I guess I will I will

[01:01:39] let it go to the moderator or Kevin thanks John okay so we’re at the

[01:01:46] conclusion part what the conclusions that we’re drawing here I think for me

[01:01:51] you know I’ve constantly challenged my Christian beliefs because I I like to

[01:01:58] know the truth so I put myself out there with people who have different reviews

[01:02:04] of mine because I want to see if there’s anything that that holds up to scrutiny so you know I have a radio program I’ve

[01:02:10] a shameless plug I’ve interviewed Michael Shermer I’ve interviewed Lawrence Krauss I’ve

[01:02:16] interviewed Dan Barker and so I enjoy the opportunity to hear other people’s ideas

[01:02:21] I enjoy the opportunity to hear what other people think I’ve interviewed many people have different religions and so

[01:02:27] my point is is that the reason I believe that the most plausible conclusion was

[01:02:34] is that God exists is because otherwise I think what you’re dealing with is a

[01:02:39] naturalism of the gaps so people always accuse people of God of the gaps but what I would argue is that when you say

[01:02:47] hey we’ll figure it out someday and sure you know what if that happens if all of

[01:02:54] a sudden somebody’s able to generate life from non-life naturally right with no intelligent mind involved then I

[01:03:00] think that would be a a pretty significant issue when it comes to the

[01:03:05] Bible and God and the necessity of God and these sorts of things but in the meantime what we’re dealing with here is

[01:03:11] that okay I’m gonna reserve judgment even though the evidence is heavy against me and and you know John even

[01:03:19] confessed he said I think it’s highly unlikely that life would come into

[01:03:24] existence by itself and so again what we’re debating here is the probability

[01:03:29] of God’s existence meaning right Michael Shermer said to me well I’m a skeptic I

[01:03:34] need a certain amount of evidence before I believe something but I felt like he

[01:03:39] was a little bit insincere in the sense that when it came to a universe starting

[01:03:46] from nothing which again any cosmologists is going to tell you we don’t know how to do this we don’t see

[01:03:52] any way possible we don’t see any way forward and as long as I continue to say well in that case I’m going to continue

[01:03:59] to to maintain my atheism despite the evidence to the contrary I would call

[01:04:04] that a naturalism of the gaps it’s it’s hoping that at some point in the future that gets worked out but the issue is such a

[01:04:11] big issue that ultimately you’re you’re basing your philosophical foundation of

[01:04:19] atheism or agnosticism or what it might be on what I would consider faith right

[01:04:24] it’s not science based it’s faith based and you know John said that there are

[01:04:31] studies that show were able to generate you know we’re coming close to generating life from non-life or we’re

[01:04:38] coming close to understanding how quantum fluctuations work and this can happen I’d love to see the studies that

[01:04:44] actually demonstrate that to be the case but as far as I know there is not the science has not come any closer since

[01:04:51] 1952 in the hearing Miller experiment – being able to come to the conclusion that that you can generate life from

[01:04:58] non-life and you know John said that the law of biogenesis is actually not a law

[01:05:04] well I believe that’s being correct the fact of the matter is is we have no evidence whatsoever to the contrary that

[01:05:10] life can be generated from non-life we have no examples of that in science not in the laboratory not outside of the

[01:05:16] laboratory that has never ever happened and therefore typically when you

[01:05:21] establish a law the law of gravity the laws of physics the law of biogenesis it’s something that there is no evidence

[01:05:26] to the contrary there is no spontaneous generation and Louis Pasteur by the way was a bible-believing Christian and a

[01:05:32] part of his part of why he was dealing with this was because he felt that it violated what was set out in the

[01:05:39] scriptures and therefore he felt that it was a very significant issue that he wanted to make sure scientifically he

[01:05:46] came to a good conclusion about and the law of biogenesis States two things and that is that all life comes from pre-existent life and all life

[01:05:52] reproduces after its own kind and that is a kind or a family of animal and so

[01:05:57] so that being the case we currently have no evidence to the contrary there is no nothing in science that has violated the

[01:06:04] law of biogenesis if we wanted to talk about the issue of animals reproducing after their kind all over the world what

[01:06:11] do we see we see monkeys make monkeys rabbits make rabbits kangaroos make

[01:06:16] kangaroos and so we have all the scientific evidence we need to support the creation hi

[01:06:22] in that regard what we’ve never observed never observed is animals changing two

[01:06:27] fundamentally different kinds we’ve never seen that process that molecules to man evolution we see fossils but

[01:06:35] these are just dead things they’re not reproducing there’s no observational evidence that they’re that a that a

[01:06:41] mudskipper is changing into a salamander or a salamander into a into a lizard or

[01:06:48] a lizard into a bird or a bird into a mammal we do not have the observational evidence and what I hear every time

[01:06:53] that’s brought up I hear well because it takes millions years and again people are free to believe that they’re but

[01:07:00] they’re making a they’re making an assumption they’re making an assertion that I would say is not warranted by the

[01:07:06] scientific evidence the scientific evidence doesn’t support that conclusion and until we have evidence of how

[01:07:13] something can come into existence from nothing until we have evidence of how life can come from non-life until we

[01:07:20] have evidence of how one kind of animal can change into a fundamentally different kind there is no mechanism

[01:07:26] undirected mutations by the way I didn’t say John said I said that there are no beneficial mutations I didn’t say that I

[01:07:32] said there are no equivocally beneficial mutations I’m sorry unequivocally beneficial mutations and that’s totally

[01:07:38] different there are beneficial mutations but an unequivocally beneficial mutation is a mutation that only has a good side it

[01:07:46] has no downside we have equivocally beneficial mutations which are mutations which have both a upside and a downside

[01:07:52] but by far and the the most conservative

[01:07:58] elements the most conservative estimates are 1 in 10,000 meaning you get one

[01:08:04] beneficial mutation for every 10,000 negative mutations point mutations and

[01:08:11] so the problem is is that you can’t accumulate enough good mutations in time

[01:08:17] to overcome the amount of mutations that are dragging you down so there is no

[01:08:23] process forward and so any way that that

[01:08:30] I think is my summary I think there’s a lot more evidence to support the

[01:08:35] hypothesis but obviously we’re limited on our debate here we will have the QA

[01:08:40] after John does his does his summary here go ahead John

[01:08:46] well first I want to say thank you Kevin for you know having me on for this debate and for hosting it and everything

[01:08:53] I really do appreciate any time that I get to discuss these particular topics

[01:08:59] because I do think that these topics are important for us to discuss fundamentally though my my entire

[01:09:06] position rests on just a few really simple logical facts one of those would

[01:09:13] be that the supernatural has yet to be proven to actually happen we don’t have

[01:09:19] any evidence that that definitely suggests that the supernatural exists

[01:09:25] any supernatural event that we’ve experienced seem to have experienced in

[01:09:31] the past has always been able to be explained by a natural process that was

[01:09:37] my entire point going through like the lightning example so whenever we’re

[01:09:44] looking to explain some kind of event that happens in in reality like life

[01:09:51] existing here on earth or the universe coming into existence the prior

[01:09:56] probability of any supernatural claim being that well God decided to create

[01:10:02] this universe or God decided to create life those would be supernatural explanations but the prior probability

[01:10:09] of those supernatural explanations being correct is vanishingly low and the

[01:10:16] alternative is is natural explanations and those have always been proven to

[01:10:22] supersede supernatural ones and so those are just the the basic that’s the basic

[01:10:30] underlying thought process that I have on any one of these any one of these

[01:10:37] events that we need to explain now one big thing that I do want to push here is

[01:10:42] that it’s okay to say that I don’t know it’s okay that we don’t know the exact

[01:10:47] process by which abiogenesis happen it’s okay that we don’t know how this

[01:10:53] universe came into existence but to make the logical leap that God

[01:11:00] be the one to do it or that some supernatural deity had to be the one to create life or start this universe

[01:11:06] without any kind of connection that we’ve been able to establish to the supernatural is a gigantic leap in logic

[01:11:15] and it’s most likely the answer that these are natural explanations so while

[01:11:21] I may not know what the exact process of abiogenesis is or any particular process

[01:11:27] in this reality it doesn’t necessarily entail that God had to do it

[01:11:33] I noticed that Kevin you know had kind of a false dichotomy when he was like

[01:11:39] well there’s two possible answers either God created this universe or the universe created itself and I think that

[01:11:46] it’s not disingenuous but I think that it’s really short-sighted to suggest

[01:11:52] that those are the only two options for this because then it becomes well which

[01:11:58] definition of God which particular God wanted to create this universe why did God create this universe that what seems

[01:12:04] to be designed to you know snuff out life rather than allow life to arise

[01:12:11] 99.9% of this universe is uninhabitable earlier when I said that it was highly

[01:12:16] unlikely that life would form on its own that doesn’t mean that it’s impossible it just means that there’s a low

[01:12:23] probability of it happening and that’s what we experience in reality a low probability of it happening but if you

[01:12:31] have a sufficient enough data set for this event to happen then it will 100%

[01:12:38] happen this goes back to what’s known as the pigeonhole theory and this isn’t

[01:12:43] like pigeon holing somebody into a particular subject or niche pigeonhole theory would be like let’s say you have

[01:12:49] this cube or this board with 12 holes in it and you have 13 pigeons how many of

[01:12:57] those holes will contain two pigeons the answer would be definitely one one of

[01:13:04] those holes will definitely have two pigeons so that makes the probability of one of the holes having two pigeons a

[01:13:10] hundred percent and that’s exactly what we see for life existing in this universe it will

[01:13:16] 100% happen because of the fact that we know that it happened but also there is

[01:13:23] a sufficient and all sufficiently large enough set of planets and systems that

[01:13:29] would allow it to arise naturally he also talked about how the lie about

[01:13:36] Genesis not being an actual law but I would still contend that the law of biogenesis doesn’t say anything about

[01:13:43] abiogenesis it only states what louis pasteur experiences in in in life as we

[01:13:51] know it now that animals produce after their kind and that life comes from life

[01:13:56] that’s what we experience but that however does not say anything about the possibility of life being produced from

[01:14:03] non-life just what he observed in that experiment and i get the idea that if we

[01:14:12] don’t have evidence for something then you shouldn’t believe in that but i would hazard to say that we don’t have

[01:14:22] solid evidence that this God supposedly exists so therefore we shouldn’t necessarily believe in it I think the

[01:14:29] position of I don’t know if a God exists because that’s my position I don’t know if a God exists but I don’t believe one

[01:14:36] to exist and that’s because we don’t have the evidence to support that and I’m perfectly fine with theists if they

[01:14:43] want to say well I don’t know if a God created this universe or not but I choose to believe that a God created

[01:14:50] this universe that’s perfectly fine but I would I would say that you can’t

[01:14:55] necessarily prove that particular belief which you could conversely turn around

[01:15:01] on me and I’m perfectly fine with that throughout this entire discussion I hope

[01:15:06] that everybody takes both sides and carefully carefully analyzes them

[01:15:12] analyze what you’ve heard here today I don’t suggest that I’m absolutely correct in anything so definitely always

[01:15:19] be learning go out there and and you know read these science articles even if

[01:15:25] it even if it disagrees with what you’re tickler faith is or your particular idea about this universe is definitely look

[01:15:32] at those and and expand you know your expand your mind on these particular

[01:15:38] topics and with that I think that I’m done and I guess we can go into Q&A

[01:15:45] [Music]

[01:15:52] hey there we go thanks I can’t unmute myself sometimes on this but uh hey John I just want to

[01:15:59] say thank you so much for being here and I really appreciate your willingness to to just have this discussion it’s pretty

[01:16:05] awesome so thanks again if you guys want to write a thank-you in the chat box

[01:16:10] there too John for being here he’s awesome so so anyway we’re gonna do a

[01:16:18] Q&A here but before we do John I wanted to give you a chance to just share your

[01:16:23] YouTube channel and anything else that you you’d like to point people towards okay well yeah so I do have a YouTube

[01:16:31] channel it’s godless engineer you can go over there in fact I put up my portion of like the presentation and some of the

[01:16:37] answers that I gave to questions on my channel so if you want to go and check

[01:16:43] out the lecture that I did for Kevin’s class you can definitely go there and check that out and I do a lot of

[01:16:49] different things we actually do a Bible study every Tuesday although I would

[01:16:54] always suggest it if you’re a bit more of an adult mindset we take a little bit

[01:17:01] more of an adult view on the Bible at first but anyway so we do a lot of

[01:17:07] different topics over there and we cover a lot of different things so I definitely go over there and subscribe

[01:17:13] if you would we’ll check out some videos first and then subscribe if you would like awesome we’re going to post a poll

[01:17:20] to see if you guys have opinions about who won the debate people it’s just interesting to me

[01:17:27] of course polls don’t determine truth but but it’s still interesting to see to hear people’s opinions so we are posting

[01:17:34] that poll right now let’s go into the Q&A now

[01:17:47] you