All Episodes
Previous Next
July 3, 2025 - Whatever Podcast
02:21:06
Zina (Leftist Feminist) vs. DPH (Orthodox Christian) | Free Will/Determinism | Whatever Debates #21

Whatever Debates are LIVE on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠youtube.com/whatever

|

Time Text
Welcome to a debate edition of the Whatever podcast.
We're coming to you live from Santa Barbara, California.
I'm your host and moderator, Brian Atlas.
A few quick announcements before the show begins.
This podcast is viewer-supported, heavy YouTube demonetization, so please consider donating through Streamlabs instead of soup chatting as YouTube takes a brutal 30% cut.
That's streamlabs.com/slash whatever.
Link is in the description.
We prioritize messages that are made via Streamlabs.
To read a message is $99 and up.
And if you want to ask, you can ask a question or make a statement.
We're going to read those in batches at various breaks throughout the debate.
There's not going to be any instant TTS.
Now, if you want to just tip and have 100% of your contribution go towards us, no platform fees, no cut, you can via Venmo or Cash App.
That's whatever pod on both.
Link is in the description.
We're also live on Twitch right now.
Pull up another tab, go to twitch.tv slash whatever.
Drop us a follow and a prime sub if you have one.
And then quick disclaimer: the views expressed by the guests do not necessarily reflect the views of the whatever channel.
Without further ado, I'm going to introduce our two guests.
I'm joined today by Dr. David Patrick Harry.
He has a PhD in religious studies from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California.
He's a traditionalist and Eastern Orthodox Christian.
He is also an online educator.
Also joining us today is Zina.
She's a senior at USC pursuing a sociology degree.
She is a leftist.
She does social and philosophical commentary and is a content creator and was recently featured on a Jubilee episode debating Jordan Peterson.
She's the Jordan Peterson slayer.
So there you have it, folks.
The topic today is free will and determinism.
You'll each have up to a 10-minute opening statement, and then the rest of the show is going to be open conversation.
We're going to have two, three breaks for messages from the audience.
Patrick, you're going to go first.
Go ahead.
All right.
Brian, thanks for having me.
Zena, thanks for being here for the debate.
To begin, obviously, I'm going to be affirming the existence of free will.
And determinism is self-refuting ideology.
Every paradigm has a metaphysics, an epistemology, and an ethics.
Two of those legs, determinism is already going to lose.
If all beliefs are conditioned based on, you know, nature versus nurture, they're neurological, your brain's determined, you're conditioned by social patterns.
Well, then all knowledge claims are then beliefs.
And if that's the case, then you can actually not make a universal knowledge claim.
The same thing as if you were debating an argument for relativism.
Claiming that relativism, that there is no truth as a truth statement, is counterfactual and contradicts itself can't go anywhere.
That's a self-defeating argument, especially within a debate that is premised on logic, reason, and all these different things.
So, and for my opening statement, I put together a quick little logical syllogism that demonstrates that moral responsibility is inconceivable within a deterministic framework.
And I look forward going back and forth with Zena in regards to social justice, racism, slavery, reparations, all these different things actually depend upon moral responsibility and people actually having responsibility on their right or wrong choices, good and bad, these types of things.
But there isn't an objective standard within a deterministic framework.
And so they basically have, you know, compatibilism, something like Daniel Dennett's argument, which is really just a semantic argument that's using freedom in a new context.
And that's, again, I'm not going to play that game.
But for just a quick opening syllogism, and so anybody watching, if this opening statement maybe feels like it's a little bit over your head, that's all right.
We'll get into the nitty-gritty as the debate moves forward.
But if moral responsibility, rational deliberation, and love are real, which the majority of people presume that they are, and determinism, compatibilism, or Skinnerian behaviorism render them illusions, then determinism, compatibilism, or behaviorism are self-refuting worldviews because they depend on the very realities that they deny.
And so I have seven principles.
Essentially, there are different apologetic arguments to deconstruct determinism.
The first one would be obviously the moral responsibility argument that if determinism is true, no one can actually be held morally responsible for anything.
Number two, and this is the irony of actually being in a debate that even though you're arguing in favor of determinism, you're again, the debate is premised upon that you're going to persuade somebody to adopt determinism, which then undermines the central premise of determinism.
So argument from rationality, it's a self-refutation.
If determinism is true, then all knowledge are beliefs.
Therefore, determinism itself is a belief.
Amongst all beliefs, all beliefs are equal.
And on that basis, determinism is not rationally justified.
It's only due to prior states.
And then a third one, the phenomenological argument against determinism, is that no determinist actually lives as if determinism is real.
They live as if they are free.
And so I'm interested to see what Zena thinks about voting and how voting works or democratic structures work within a deterministic worldview.
Choosing a career, debating, is premised on the idea that we actually have free will and promises, making promises.
If she makes promises to her friends, regret, guilt, any sort of deliberation, these are going to, again, be inconsistencies with a deterministic worldview.
Argument from counterfactual possibility, all decisions presuppose modal freedom.
So when evaluating alternative possibilities, determinists rely on what could have been, for example, if they go to court, yet in their worldview, there is never a what could have been because everything's already determined.
And then I assume what's going to pop up is that determinists like to use a neuroscientific argument that's really built upon Benjamin Libet's findings.
It's really from the 1980s and the field of neuroscience has actually moved beyond this.
So it's a minority opinion, the idea that neuroscience has actually proven that your brain is determined or your thoughts are determined.
This is not the universal opinion of the field.
It's actually a minority opinion.
And so Libbett himself actually says that his research did not prove this.
And the premise of the research is that they were asking people to kind of lift their finger, do different things, and then they were measuring what is called resting potentials and therefore insinuating that the brain is already determined before the action occurs.
And so I reference everybody to go look up David Schroerger's 2012 article.
It's titled RP as Neural Noise, RP meaning resting potential.
And so the majority of the field believes that whatever was happening is just neural noise.
And actually, the premise that neuroscience has highlighted that everything is deterministic, that is not a majority consensus.
Creativity and novelty.
So if you're a determinist, you're going to have to reject human agency in regards to poetry, art, invention, moral heroism.
These things break away from any sort of predictive causal mechanism that they would argue for.
And then the last one is the problem of infinite regress.
So if you go back to Aristotle, you know, the unmoved mover, this was something that was dealt with in classical Greek philosophy.
And so obviously I'm coming at it as an Eastern Orthodox Christian.
And so we believe in the Imago Day, Genesis 1, 26.
And because of that, I myself am also, in a sense, an unmoved mover, that I can be an uncaused cause within myself as a person utilizing my free will.
So, those seven points, I'm sure we'll probably rehash those and come back, all seven of which are essentially logical death shots to determinism.
And then, the last thing I just wanted to highlight six points on why determinism is actually not a dominant perspective within academia, generally speaking.
And so, determinism was very popular toward the end of the 18th century and into the 19th century.
So, you have people like Marx and Freud.
But into the 20th century, multiple turns have occurred in various fields that have essentially rendered determinism as nonsense.
First one is quantum mechanics.
So, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle contradicts Laplacian determinism.
Laplace's demon is a common sort of thought experiment determinists use.
Well, again, quantum mechanics itself has already refuted that that's the universe that we live in.
So, in regards to physics, physics has already refuted determinism.
In regards to mathematics, chaos theory in the 1960s also refuted determinism because it demonstrated that in an attempt to actually show that deterministic systems are completely determined, it demonstrated that actually they're unpredictable.
And there is no deterministic, full system that we've discovered yet.
Number three is mathematical logic.
So, Kurt Gödel's incompleteness theorems demonstrates that there are limits to what can be proven, and no complex system can prove its own consistency.
That would also be the case for determinism.
You presuppose determinism to prove determinism.
That is a contradiction.
The cognitive revolution, linguistics, Noam Chomsky has already refuted the idea that we are determined language activization.
So, that was another turn in the 20th century, again, refuting determinism.
And then, number five, philosophy of mind.
So, epiphenomenalism is typically the way that determinists would argue for their philosophy of mind, but emergentism is now the dominant thesis.
I'm more of a hylomorphic Aristotelian.
I'm in that camp more so than even the emergentism camp.
But it shows that mental states cannot be explained by conditioning alone.
And then the self-retro-referential collapse, this is essentially the logical basis that all of this debate is going to hinge on, is that one cannot rationally affirm determinism since belief in determinism is due to prior states, then it too is a non-rational belief that cannot be rationally or universally justified.
And so, that is my opening statement.
All right, thank you.
Zena, go ahead.
Hi, so yeah.
I just wanted to clear up like a couple things about my framework and like what I mean when I say that I'm a determinist.
I don't mean that like everything in the universe must have some like specified cause that everything is predictable.
Instead, that in any circumstance, any event is either caused or uncaused.
And when we look at the self specifically, we're gonna see that like when we look at any like thought that we have, any want that we have, and thus any action that we have is going to result in some kind of external cause, right?
So, essentially, what I'm saying is that free will is the ability to have done differently or to have chosen differently in any certain instance in history.
Or if we were like to rewind the clock to like, you know, 10 minutes ago when we sat down here, you could have just risen your hand, right?
But we know that that could not have happened metaphysically, right, because you didn't.
And if we hold all events constant and all variables constant and all like the environment constant in that moment, you did not raise your hand because there was no cause, right, for that to occur.
And if, and if you do something randomly, that would mean that by definition it has no cause.
So, it's either that any event is caused or uncaused.
And that cause, when we push back the chain of causal, like causality, is going to result in something that is either like your brain or your nurture.
And environmental, non-environmentalist, sorry, people who kind of study just like the way that we have evolved as human beings have kind of found that this idea of free will is a feeling that we have.
It's a sense that comes kind of like after the fact when it comes to like action, where we feel like we have some agency because we have developed the ability to create a conjunction between this idea of like the past, the present, and the future.
So, you know, as we evolved, the organisms that were able to say, hold on, wait a minute, yesterday I did this, and today I want to do that, they're able to strive for different goals, achieve more, and that's kind of just going to be like reminiscent of like intelligence and things of that sort.
So essentially, it's just that if you, there's nothing that internally, right, is uniquely kind of causing your actions or your thoughts.
Instead, your thoughts prompt your actions, but your thoughts have some cause that are either due to some type of biology or some type of nurture.
This is kind of like the whole field of psychology, the nature and nurture debate.
And then, yeah, there are many different angles we can take this from.
It's pretty simple.
So, yeah.
Okay, if you guys want to just get into it, it's an open conversation.
Yeah, so in regards to your claim that free will is basically some type of feeling that we have, would you agree that you are parodying like epiphenomenalism?
Sorry, what's epiphenomenalism?
Epiphenomenalism is essentially that consciousness is something that is a byproduct of neurosynapsis, brain activity, and it's not an emergent property, right?
So emergentism is kind of the state of neuroscience right now.
And determinism was really couched in epiphenomenalism.
So it's an epiphenomenon of brain activity.
It's a sense that you're free, but it's not actually you're free.
That's called epiphenomenalism.
I think there's a distinction between consciousness in of itself and free will.
I think that free will is an illusion, correct?
We're still a little bit kind of murky on like the nature of consciousness in of itself, but I do believe that free will is a feeling rather than something that is true, something that you can locate, etc.
I think that instead it's kind of like our conception of like these processes and like the ways that we interact with the world.
So you're arguing that the only thing that exists is materialism, right?
Like the material world.
The material world, right?
i don't think i have to posit that to to make my claim not necessarily i'm simply well i'm asking what is your claim Do you, are you a materialist?
I don't think I have to, like, I haven't completely refined my ideas on kind of like materialism versus idealism.
I would probably be a materialist, but I don't think I have to.
That entails this conversation or it's necessary for the conversation.
Well, the idea is if you're assuming materialism or any sort of epiphenomenal understanding of free will as some type of experience that's not rooted in actual consciousness or human agency, it's a circular argument because you're appealing to materialism, your brain, to come up with the universal truth statement that everything is determined.
Hold on, I'm not appealing to the brain.
I'm saying that like how do you come to your knowledge claims?
Okay, so I'm saying that our brain interacts with our environment, right?
And that is what creates our wants and desires.
And those two things, like, for example, I don't.
That's compatibilism.
No, that's not.
That's how people make decisions, right?
But that's called compatibilism.
So compatibilism is the idea that free will is when you act in accordance with your wants.
Yes, that are shaped by the external environment.
Yeah, and then that's exactly what you just said.
Yeah, and then determinists also say, right, that we are also shaped by our wants, but free will does not mean that you act in accordance with your will.
It means that you would have some agency in the moment to do whatever you want.
In regards to compatibilism versus determinism, we actually agree on the same facts of reality.
We just define free will differently.
So yeah, compatibilist would also say, yeah, you're a product of your environment and your biology, just as a determinist.
They just changed the semantic word of freedom and they say that you're making choices amongst conditioned responses.
That's what compatible is.
Okay, awesome.
So there is a difference there in like determined free will.
So let's get into epistemology.
How do you make, you believe in objective truth?
That there is objective truth?
Yes.
I would say that we can't make claims onto reality as it absolutely is.
I think that our kind of faculty.
Isn't that what you're doing right now?
Hold on.
Isn't that what you're doing?
We make assumptions every day, right?
That the world around us exists.
So we can do things like science and psychology.
We assume.
Yeah, it's an assumption, right?
That everyone acts point today.
We don't really know what the world exists outside, what it looks like outside of a human body.
We know that, for example, ants don't see the same things as us, neither do like insects.
Even the color schemes that we see are different than animals.
So we know that objectively, the world does not look the way that we see it, right?
But we assume that it exists to interact with it, for ease, etc.
That's how scientists come to conclusions.
There are baseline assumptions, right, to engage with any of these practices.
Yeah, but science is also appealing to the laws of logic, the law of identity, all these different things.
I asked you a simple question.
But they all lie on assumptions, yeah.
No, they're not assumptions.
So you don't believe that two plus two equals four?
We rely on the assumptions.
Does two plus two equals four?
We rely on the assumption that two plus two eight.
Can I answer your question?
Because I don't want it to be a debate where like you're going to interrupt me and we can't have like fruitful discussion.
If we can, yeah, just allow people to finish there.
Sure.
Yeah.
Go ahead.
Yeah.
So relying on the assumption that everything around us exists and things of that nature, yeah, I completely agree that there is some truth that we can find, but you must agree upon reality as the basis, right?
So regarding objective truth, I want to just hammer down what exactly your epistemology is.
My epistemology?
Yeah.
So, I mean, I think that in general, I don't think we can say that something is objectively true because I don't think we can truly see reality as it truly is because we already know that our faculties of experience, our senses, are set in some way that we know other animals already don't have, right?
So we only have, we only can only trust the human experience and what patterns that we recognize across the human mind, but we don't exactly know what it could look like outside of a human faculty of perception.
Do you understand what that means?
Yeah, which means that you just refuted yourself to make it.
You're making universal claims right now.
No, I'm not.
Yes, you are.
Nope.
So this is the same thing.
You're making universal claims.
We're not having free will doesn't exist.
Now you're cutting me off.
So why don't you stop and just relax for a second?
Because what you did is you just fundamentally contradicted yourself by saying that all we do is we have experiences of our environment.
We really can't make universal truth claims.
And then you're coming here to actually make a universal truth claim by saying free will doesn't exist or free will is just an experience or free will is epiphenomenal.
And therefore you've already undermined your own epistemological foundation and leads to the inability to have any sort of rational inquiry.
So for any conversation that you have, usually we have some like, you know, subliminal assumption that relies like within the conversation.
For example, if I'm just like, if I like, let's say I love the Hunger Games and I'm like, Katniss is like the best, you know, she's the best ever.
She is the best huntress ever, whatever.
You could be like, oh, you're making a universal truth claim.
Oh, no.
But actually, in that conversation, what is entailed?
That's a preference.
Yeah, right?
That's a preference, but it's a statement.
No.
It assumes that she's a person.
You realize there's a difference between that organization.
In that conversation, letter fingers.
Right.
So in that conversation, there's an assumption made that we're presuming that, you know, we're making the presumption that these people, you know, exist at some sense, like some sense, I guess, of being like fictional characters, right?
But there's an assumption there that you're making.
So I think the most correct way to say that would be like assuming or like knowing that she's a fictional character, Katniss is like the best huntress ever, right?
But like whenever we're in a conversation, whether it be metaphysical, whether it be philosophical, political, there are some underlying assumptions made to make any claim.
The underlying assumption with this claim that I'm making is that free will is an illusion, right?
But that's a universal claim.
No, it's not.
No, it's not.
You just said it's not.
What is a universal claim?
A universal claim is when you make a fact or a truth claim that is universal.
Yeah, no.
So it would also mean that it's not that.
Yeah, that's what it is.
Yeah, that's what it is.
Do you see it as synonymous with absolute claims?
Do you see there's like a distinction between absolute claims and universal claims?
Those would be the same thing.
An absolute claim would be universal.
So I would make a claim if you want to make it synonymous with like something that just like has to be true I think that we don't know that anything has to be true unless we like presume that this reality as we live in it is true.
Do you understand that?
Yeah, but you just again.
You just said there's no point in a debate.
I never said there's no point in the debate.
Your premise, your premise, the worldview.
Every paradigm has premises and presuppositions built into it.
This is called presuppositionalism.
And so your presuppositions contradict the ability to make the claims that you're saying.
You understand that scientists do this all.
No, scientists.
No, it doesn't.
Scientists perceive that.
You don't have a worldview that allows science.
Yes, I do.
No, you don't.
Scientists acknowledge this.
Yeah, they don't.
I'm very aware.
Do you know what the law of causality is?
Oh, yeah, I know what the law of causality is the law of causality.
You tell me.
You're the one that's bringing it up, right?
You're the one that has it written down on her paper here so she can look down and read the definition.
Okay, it is here.
But yeah, people, you have no idea.
These are just, these are outlines for your worldview.
They're definitely.
I don't have definitions written.
Okay, anyway, the law of causality essentially says that every event has some cause, right?
If it doesn't have a cause, it's random, right?
And we make all these claims, assuming that we can make some type of statements on reality, presuming that it exists, right?
Scientists must presume that reality exists to make the claims that they do.
So the circumstances of this debate, I'm going to presume that reality exists, and therefore I'm going to make the claim that any event is either caused or uncaused.
Does that make sense to you?
Yeah, but it's still, you have no epistemological foundation to make an actual idea.
Epistemology has to be.
Do you know what epistemology is?
You're a senior PhD.
I actually know exactly what epistemology is.
Yeah, so it's the study of knowledge, what we can do.
Exactly.
Etc., right?
Exactly.
Even in that, that gives us a framework for knowledge, right?
It is the framework that we have.
And I'm saying that you can't make universal knowledge claims within that.
I think I am making a universal knowledge claim to be aware of that.
Does free will exist?
No.
Okay, then that is a claim.
So at no point.
Assuming that reality exists, at no point right now, in the future, in the past, free will has existed, correct?
No.
It has or hasn't?
It doesn't exist.
Okay, that is called a universal truth claim.
So you just made a universal truth claim.
You just contradicted the fundamental premise of the world.
So that claim exists overlying the foundation, this idea that reality exists, right?
But that's an assumption, right?
So we make baseline assumptions that you exist, I exist, and that's what you're saying.
And then your whole presentation is an assumption.
Yeah, just like you can do this every day.
No, no, it's not.
Because I believe in the laws of reality.
You can say that you know that you're not like, you know, a brain in a vat right now, right?
And I don't think that you are, right?
I choose to believe that you're not because all the evidence I have, like navigating this world, right, points to the fact that we all exist, that we're all agents, right, et cetera, right?
So I make this presumption, but it's a very, very testable presumption, and it's almost that, like, gravity is also a theory, but I believe in gravity because it's testable, right?
So just because something is an assumption does not mean that we can't use it or that it's not justifiable in any way.
Yeah, it does actually mean that assumptions.
Do you not believe in gravity?
That's not the problem.
Of course I believe in gravity.
That's a non-structured thing.
It's a really dumb argument that you're making.
So what?
Okay, so you understand theories can hold.
But theories can actually be built on logical basis.
What is this one?
Okay, so how do the laws of logic exist?
Because these are non-physical things.
Yeah, yeah.
I'm curious what your cosmology is.
Because if you believe in the Big Bang, if you believe in the Big Bang and you believe in material evolution ever since then, then you can't appeal to things like what are called philosophical transcendentals.
You can't appeal to the laws of logic.
You can't appeal to number theory.
You can't appeal to all these different things because they're non-physical and they're universal and they're unchanging.
You can't have all of these things.
Let me finish.
Let me finish.
You can't have non-changing, non-physical things in an entirely materialist universe.
And this is a known thing.
I'm losing any idea of a non-changing thing.
That's my point.
That's exactly my point.
Do you understand?
What do you think my argument is?
Because the argument is that free will exists and that we're some like we are causal agents.
Without free will, there is no reason.
Rationality depends upon the ability to choose between things.
Yeah, right.
So I think that human beings can like develop rationality and pattern recognition, but the cause for that is determined, right?
You can like, someone can like learn and like learn to like read patterns or learn like to make connections to things, but the causes for that person to get, you know, get to that point of neuroplasticity is determined.
That's what I'm saying.
So you can have a want, you can have a desire, you can act on that desire, you can be like forced against acting on your desire, but those desires are things that you don't choose.
That's what I'm saying.
Yeah, and my point is that if that's the case, then being here and trying to persuade people to do your worldview.
Do you have any contention with the actual view though?
Because I laid out multiple points about how your paradigm makes no sense.
You just talked.
Let me know.
No, I didn't get to finish.
You kept speaking.
I think it was her turn to talk.
Let her finish and then go ahead, David.
Or sorry, Patrick, my mom.
Go ahead.
Okay.
Yeah, so my view is that which you haven't attacked whatsoever is that wants are not coming from this individual.
Instead, we can find some type of cause that extends outside the person, that terminates outside the person.
Do you have an argument against that?
Yeah, actually, multiple neuroscience experiments has demonstrated that, again, dealing with Libet and dealing with these resting potentials has shown that people can actually prevent a series of a cascade effect from the actions occurring, which demonstrates a sense of agency.
This is why you are not in step with the contemporary neuroscience.
You're not in step in contemporary psychology.
You referred to psychology earlier.
Those fields do not uphold a deterministic worldview.
No, they do not.
So no one's saying that.
No, they do not.
And so.
No one's saying that, for example, like we can have someone, a lot of people in poverty that are born into poverty and persist in that cycle.
And you can have a couple people rise out of that poverty by some mechanisms, right?
People can act in ways that seem to be unpredicted.
But we're saying that that reason that they did choose, choose or did not act in the way that most people did is also determined.
For example, let's say, you know, you were born into poverty, but you know, had an IQ of like 130, right?
So you're just like smarter than the average person, or able to excel at school better than other people, and thus, you know, you somehow became a millionaire.
We're saying that the reason that you were able to rise up out of that position is not because you just pulled yourself out of your bootstraps, but because your IQ was higher than the average person and that predicted success.
That's what we're saying.
Okay.
But still, I'm not arguing that external conditions don't affect people's lives and have influence in people.
Of course it does.
I'm saying that that's what makes a person do.
Yeah, I'm saying it's not.
And there's multiple, let me finish.
And there's multiple examples.
And so even like the entire ascetic tradition of monasticism and people actually renouncing and struggling against passions would actually insinuate that agency, free will, and human agency exist and that they're not totally dependent on external factors that are determining what they do here or there and demonstrates.
And this is where the latest research in neuroscience actually is.
So no one's saying that.
Tell me, what experiments in neuroscience validate because I've literally looked at all the research.
It's like the entire nature and nurture debate.
If the cause of someone's action does not come from their nurture, it comes from their nature, right?
So this could be biology.
This could be like, for example, we can look at Phineas Gage, I believe his name is.
He had like some type of pull that like went through his eye, through his prefrontal cortex.
I think it was around his amygdala, and it caused him to act erratically.
And it caused him to act impulsively, and he was doing things that we consider bad.
The reason why is because there's something in the brain that controls your impulses, that controls your social ability, et cetera, right?
And so it kind of comes down to these things that you inherit biologically.
Sometimes, though, it also comes from things like socialization.
If you're in a household that is abusive, you can end up finding yourself acting in ways that are socially uncohesive in ways that we don't want.
So I'm saying that even if someone does rise against what we call their biology or their socialization, the result is, or the reason always comes from either one or the other, the biology or the social debate.
So why is the abuse bad?
Because I personally don't think that it's okay to.
So it's just a personal belief, it's just your preference that abuse is bad.
I think that, so are we going to switch to a morality debate or do you want to stand up?
It's all the same thing.
No, it's not.
Yes, it is.
Again, there's only three legs to worldviews.
It doesn't matter.
Okay, then go into morality.
No, I don't want to go into morality.
No, that we are.
We are.
No, this is a free will debate.
Exactly.
Well, morality entails free will.
What are you talking about?
You don't have to talk about it.
Yes, you do.
You do not need to talk about it.
Yes, you do.
This is like you can talk about purely neuroscience.
No, you can talk about it from the body.
You can't come here and debate determinism and then refuse to even engage with morality and ethical discussions.
Okay, can I ask you a question?
Sure.
It sounds like I haven't been able to.
What causes people to act the way that they do?
It's a series of factors.
They have their own human agency.
Again, nurture and nature.
Is there any proof or evidence of that?
Will you let me freaking talk?
I mean, I say one sentence and you're already cutting me off.
Don't finish if you can.
Go ahead.
So again, there's multiple factors that contribute to the way that people exist in the world.
Human agency, again, nature and nurture.
All these things are included.
It's not one or the other.
And the idea that we have to just restrict our defense to just one particular one, that's ridiculous.
That's not how the world works.
It's both and.
There's multiple factors that contribute that shape to a human person, their parents, trauma, environment, genetics.
All these things are included, but that doesn't deny that people have human agency and free will.
And so if free will doesn't exist, you cannot make any moral claim because nobody is morally responsible.
Nobody is ethically responsible.
And this would be true for the history of injustices.
This would be true for the patriarchy.
Can I finish a thought?
That would be true for patriarchy.
That would be true for SA.
That would be true for reparations.
That would be true for slavery.
All these things entail that there is some type of moral arbiter that differentiates between good and bad.
Your worldview does not allow that to even occur.
What is this human agency?
Like, can you just define it for me?
I'm clueless.
What is that?
Yeah, for me as a Christian, it's being made in the image of God, Genesis 1.26.
All right.
So it's being, every human has this human agency.
It means you're made in the image of God.
Correct.
And God gives you this human agency, correct?
Being made in the image of God, yes.
All right.
So if every person gets this human agency, they're given at birth, essentially, right?
So what makes some people's human agency act differently than other people's?
We just said there's a whole contributing list of factors.
All right, so the other factors you labeled had to do with nature and nurture, the biology and the environment.
You talk about that.
Yeah, those are included.
Right.
So if these two things that we agreed already are fixed, right, our biology.
Fixed.
Yes, they are.
You don't control the biology that you're inherent.
Your environment changes.
You control the biology that you inherit.
Well, that's, yeah, biology.
Biology is fixed.
Your environment is not fixed because you can change environments.
So that was a dumb argument.
That was a dumb argument.
Let each other finish.
Go ahead, finish.
That was a dumb argument because biology, yeah, but we're talking about nature and nurture.
And so environments can actually change.
Okay, so you don't, your biology is fixed, right?
So what would make someone want to change their environment?
Just like, give me an example.
They want new scenery.
Why would they want new scenery?
You tell me.
You have to ask them.
You have to ask them.
Okay, right.
So, if we would look at the reason why someone has a preference for new scenery, we can look at things like just like what they're kind of exposed to at a young age, for example.
Like, if they grew up around beaches, maybe they would like beaches.
Or it could just be like the things that they've been shown, like through TV, media, etc.
All the stimuli.
However, at this young age, where all these core beliefs are being like kind of taught to you and instilled in you, you don't control any of that.
Right?
Your preferences are made at this, like a younger age.
We see this idea of core beliefs come up a lot in psychology, where like your deepest beliefs about society and yourself, who you are, this illusion of free will and the self comes about a lot of times when you're younger, right?
So, even now, when you have the agency now to change the environment, which you don't really have that agency when you're like two years old, let's say you're like 20 and you can move, that preference that we're talking about to change scenery or to fly to Paris comes from determined, right, like circumstances.
That's what we're saying.
In any given event, we keep asking why, why you wanted this thing or why you did this thing.
It is either coming from like some internal, like some nurture, right?
Something like that has been experienced, or from someone's biology.
That's what we're saying.
And once again, this human agency, you haven't explained in any regard how this thing, like if it's once, once it's first of all, if it's given to you from God, how is it yours?
Like, how did you choose your human agency?
Number one.
And number two, when we look at how it interacts with your biology, if biology affects your human agency, we know that that's fixed, that's already out of your control, once again.
So it comes down to.
But it doesn't mean that, again, but that's a non-sequitur.
There's a logical non-sequitur to say just because your biology is determined, that limits or curtails all human agency.
That makes no sense.
What is human agency?
The ability to have free will, the ability to make decisions, rational deliberation, moral responsibility.
Can you define love?
These types of things actually insinuate free will.
You're begging the question in defining free will.
Free will is free will.
Agency is agency.
That's not begging the question.
No, it's not.
Human agency, agency, and free will mean the same thing.
Can you give a distinction?
Exactly.
My point is that you're saying that.
But you're saying human agency is human agency.
No, that's not what I'm saying.
And you're not explaining.
Any reason why we have that?
Okay, I'll make an easy argument here.
You cannot have rational deliberation.
You cannot have moral responsibility without human agency and free will.
Let me finish.
And therefore, you can actually not have a universal epistemology or make universal truth claims.
You cannot make moral and ethical truth claims, which is the point, and that's why you're already shying away from getting in any type of moral ethical debate because you have no leg to stand on in regards to deliberating and differentiating why white people did this in history, why this is bad, and this is unjust.
You have no basis to actually define those.
Okay, so once again, you still have not proven why it exists.
You're saying if it doesn't exist, then this exactly.
No, that's actually logical.
No, it's not.
Yes, it is.
Anyone can go ahead and pull up their own.
You can't have knowledge without it.
You cannot have knowledge.
You cannot sit here and make knowledge.
A reason would be some type of evidence or proof that something exists.
It's to the exclusion of the opposite.
Nope.
Yes, so to give a reason for something would be, oh, yeah, human agency exists because we can look at this and this proves it.
Or neuroscience.
The arguments that demonstrate when people reach a threshold, they're able to stop that.
I didn't get to finish.
Thank you.
So, God.
Okay, anyway.
So, when we look at human agency, you have said that the outcome would be blank.
We can talk about moral responsibility.
I would love to do that.
But human agency has still not been evidenced by you.
You're saying that neuroscientists have found, right, that I don't actually know how your neuroscience, we can actually talk about your neuroscience claims.
To the exclusion of the opposite.
These are using laws of logic, right?
So if free will doesn't exist, you can't have knowledge claims.
If you can't have knowledge claims, then if there is knowledge, therefore free will exist.
That is a and again, I can just use easy syllogisms.
Do you have a syllogism for determinism?
Do you have a logical syllogism that actually demonstrates that?
Actually, I do.
Actually, I do.
I have one in relation to God, but I do want to touch on this neuroscience point.
How do you think that neuroscience entails or like free will?
Because there's been multiple, multiple experiments.
This is, again, getting back to David Schroeder's 2012 article, RP as neural noise, have demonstrated that when these neurological effects reach the cascade point, that a determinist would say, okay, now they have to do the action.
We have multiple experiments to show that people can choose not to.
And the fact that they can choose not to do it demonstrates they have some type of agency against the deterministic framework of the brain and neurological processes that you would argue.
Determinists are not saying that you are bound by your inherited biology.
It depends on who you're talking about.
And you're making the generalized claim.
Okay, so don't say determinist then, because actually many determinists.
When you come into this debate and you give me like some type of refutation, it's like tailored to me and like you've made some general blanket statement and said it replies to like determinists.
Well that just demonstrates human agency.
You asked me to demonstrate human agency.
That's what I'm saying.
Multiple neuroscience arguments do that.
You just asked me to demonstrate neuro agency.
Multiple neuroscience arguments have done that.
This Andrew Wilson debate tactic is so old.
There's so many.
The Andrew Wilson debate tactic.
But anyway, what are you talking about?
What are you talking about?
So back to what I was saying.
So in regards to determinism in and of itself, not all determinists have to entail that like, I don't think any determinists entail that like you can't act differently than like in some way like your biology predicts.
That's not true.
And also.
Actually, there are some that do.
Well, that's not mean.
You're determined to say that.
I didn't say that.
Did I say some that do?
Or did I say zero?
If you're bringing in an argument, it should be a refutation against my point.
I'm saying generally, regardless of the argument, you're talking about determinism.
You're talking about determinism.
I said determinism, generally speaking.
All right?
Okay.
So keep up.
You're like three steps behind.
Okay.
So when we talk about when someone acts against any type of like biological stimuli, there's still a reason for that, that it is going to bottom out in nurture.
So that, what you just brought up is not a refutation against determinism.
It is.
The entire field of neuroscience, this is why they believe that there's human agency.
This is why the philosophy of mind has adopted emergentism and believes that human agency is an irreducible fact.
Someone choosing to be a fancy person.
So you're saying that's not the case in the philosophy of mind right now.
I'm saying that what you're doing is not that.
In the philosophy of mind, you're saying that's not the case.
The majority of philosophers in the philosophy of mind do not believe that human agency is an irreducible fact.
I think that if they meet it in the future, no, no, if we talk about a field, if they mean it in the compatibilist sense, that might be true.
I think that a lot of neuroscientists and a lot of philosophers are like compatibilists, but I don't believe that they believe in computers.
No, they are not.
No, most, I know for a fact, actually, most philosophers don't believe in libertarian free will.
That's been like, it's been debunked.
No, it's not.
Yes, yes, it is.
No, it does.
Okay.
You're just making shit up right now because this is not even the case of academic.
Look it up.
I actually write academic papers.
I actually write books and stuff.
So I actually deal in these circles and I deal with philosophers.
I'm not being happy because it must not be that hard.
Sorry.
Ad hominem already.
Wow.
So we're off to a great start.
You called me the R word earlier.
The R word.
What?
Yeah.
Yeah, I heard.
Oh, retard?
The R word.
I don't know if that's what you're doing.
Oh, my gosh.
You guys want to do that?
Did your Fifies get hurt?
I didn't say I was hurt.
Well, it sounds like it.
It sounds like you were hurt when I ad hominem to you.
Well, my point is that it's a logical fallacy.
It demonstrates the infutility of your argument.
I don't even want to count how many times you've done that, but it's fine.
Anyway, we can get back to you.
How many times I've said an ad hominem?
Yes.
How many?
Tell me.
How many times have I?
I love it.
Tell me how many times we're talking about it.
We're talking about free will.
That's my opinion.
Exactly.
Okay.
So again, if someone acting against any type of biological stimuli does not entail free will, that means that the cause still bottoms out somewhere in socialization or nurture.
That's not like, like, like determinists don't say that like biology is the end-all be-all.
That makes your action.
Yeah, I know.
And you have the environment and exterior stimuli.
That's part of the world.
But the contrary, again, it's necessary of the contrary.
Logical argument here, if there is no human agency, you cannot have true rational deliberation.
That's a fact.
What do you mean by true rational deliberation, by the way?
Being able to choose amongst different things and come to true knowledge claims.
Yeah, so you're not going to be the sole agent in the things that you choose and the credences that you have and the beliefs that you have.
That's correct.
However, people can speak and have discussions and someone else, using their language, right, to sway your opinion, that happens all the time.
So yes, debates can still happen.
So you believe that you're going to persuade people with a deterministic world view, with your deterministic argument that...
It's not a world view, it's a fact of the...
It's not a fact.
It's not a fact.
Okay, let's get into logic.
So 2 plus 2 equals 4, would you agree?
Yeah.
Is that always true?
What do you mean by always?
Past, present, and in the future.
Is it a universal truth?
It depends.
There's an entire debate over whether we've found math or it's always existed.
For example, if there was no one to see it, in the cosmos, and we had two particles just rolling around each other, did they, were they, does that mean two?
Does that still exist?
Does math still exist in that context?
I think that math is probably something that we observe and that we've kind of come to use in a utility sense.
But I don't think that any, like, I think there probably needs to be someone there counting for like, for there to be one or two or three things.
I think it's like there's some utility in math.
So I don't necessarily think it's something that you can quantify in this way of always existing.
I think it's something that we kind of constructed.
So you're saying numbers are only dependent upon the things in the world?
I mean, if there's no things in the world, yeah, there's no number of things.
Yeah, that makes no sense.
Numbers are universal.
Yeah, numbers pre-exist.
Logic pre-exists creation.
That's why creation is ordered in a logical way.
Okay, I would probably disagree.
So creation is not ordered in a logical way.
Okay, do you believe in the laws of logic?
I think the laws of logic are like, we use them utility-wise, right?
To come to conclusions and to like, you know, you know, they could be false in the future.
That's not what I'm saying.
I'm thinking.
Okay, I'm asking, could they be false in the future?
That's what you're saying.
If the laws of physics stay constant, probably not.
No.
So you think they are universal?
That if the laws of physics stay the same, then the laws of logic are.
For example, if you make a system, whatever conditions that precede the system continue to exist, it will continue to stay true.
However, to say that numbers and math and the way that we have imagined it has always existed, probably not.
It's just a system.
For example, today I could say that, I don't know, 2 plus 2 equals 5.
And if everyone starts to kind of agree with those terms or whatever, we can make that a system that works.
But I just don't think that like how would that work?
Because everything we build, engineering, geometry, all this stuff is based on actually numbers mean things.
Again, they're built on logical principles.
So to make my point is you claiming that if we make 2 plus 2 equal 5, somehow we can make that work.
Actually, you can't.
More so.
Because that implies logic.
I meant in the semantic sense.
But either way, 2 plus 2 equaling 4 exists because it has some meaning that we gave it.
No, it's not, we didn't give it meaning that we discovered the laws of logic.
We discovered mathematics.
These things are universals and they're non-physical.
Yeah, this is just going to be like, I don't think it's like an actual tangible thing.
I think most things that we see as things are tangible.
I think it's an ideological system.
I think it works.
I think it's for pattern recognition, et cetera.
But I don't think that we can in any way kind of like say that like this system existed before humans.
Right.
And that's an entirely incoherent worldview.
Again, this is what the people that use presuppositional apologetics or even presuppositional philosophy, this is what's called the postmodern turn is realizing that the modernist project is ended and the history of metaphysics.
What's that?
I just would really love to talk about free will.
Free will is tied with all this stuff.
What are you talking about?
This is like you pivoting and going down this rabbit hole so we never get to actual.
This is all about free will.
You cannot have rational deliberation, objective truth, and moral responsibility without free will.
That's what we're talking about.
That's what we're talking about.
That this reality that we live in exists.
Okay, that's great that your whole thing is a belief based on your assumption.
We've heard it.
But everyone's doing that all the time in the world.
That's one of the things that things must be true.
We would love to hear about your must be truthful.
You're only saying that things are true because you don't like the opposite.
No, I'm not.
I'm saying that the opposite can't exist.
If you're right, there aren't objective truth claims.
So in all of your arguments, you have not given any actual proof or evidence.
Everybody watching this debate who's familiar with logic and philosophy knows exactly what's going on.
And shout out to all you guys.
God bless you all.
He continues to interrupt me, and I just.
What about this?
Do you want to pose him some questions?
Do you want to do an internal critique?
Yeah, let's do it.
I'm trying to do that.
I'm trying to get into what proof or evidence you have of human agency.
And you've given me this neuroscience argument that I've already debunked, and you'll continue to say it over again.
But again, how can you prove that human agency exists without referencing, because the outcome of the latter, I don't like.
What evidence do you have?
I never said it.
What evidence do you have for human agency?
I never said it was a preference.
Let me finish.
Jesus Christ.
Just shut your mouth and let me finish.
Thank you.
About time.
So the idea is I'm using logic to demonstrate that the opposite, if your worldview is true, that we cannot actually have universal truth claims.
We can't have moral truth.
Do you have evidence?
Are you going to let me finish?
Do you have evidence for free?
That's what logic is.
Do you understand what a debate is premised on?
Yeah, logic is not evidence?
The laws of logic are not.
What do you mean?
Oh, my God.
If you can, please let each other finish.
The laws of logic are not evidence.
That's what the entire mathematics is built upon.
So mathematics isn't evidence.
Logic isn't evidence.
Philosophy can't be evidence.
The only thing that is evidence is if I just have a preference that I assume based on my external environment, and then I can come to some type of claim.
That's wonderful.
That's a really, really strong argument.
My argument is that if free will doesn't exist, there is no objective truth claim and there is no moral responsibility.
And even in your worldview, I know that you act and move in the world as if those things are true.
My point is your paradigm, the presuppositional paradigm, the lens in which we look at reality through, your presuppositional paradigm does not actually allow for objective truth and moral responsibility and therefore by definition can't be true based on logical premises.
Logical premises are the argument that I'm making.
You could have turned back the clock five minutes ago when, I don't know, you're probably raising your voice or something like that.
Probably.
If we could have done that, could you have chosen differently?
If everything was the same, there's no interference, no different cause coming in, could you have stood up and gone to the bathroom?
Yeah, I'm a free agent.
Yeah, I can make choices.
Why?
Again, for me, I'm going to appeal back to a theological system in which we're made in the image of God and then utilize that premise to say, if that is true, therefore we can have objective truth, therefore we can have moral responsibility, therefore we can have a totalizing metaphysics that deals with being itself and unity.
So because you were made in the image of God, you have free will.
That's your kind of your well, fundamentally, yeah.
Okay.
So being made in the image of God means that you have free will.
Okay, so, and this, this, like, again, it's kind of like the same idea of like a soul, like this idea of like the agency thing.
This is where people say that it's given to you by God, and then people are kind of like, you know, thus can kind of live with it, et cetera.
Do you agree that there's some type of soul?
Of course.
I'm an Orthodox Christian.
Are you familiar with Eastern Orthodoxy and any matter?
If that's true, is everyone's soul different?
Like, let's say I'm born, do I have a different soul from someone else that prompts me to do different things?
Or is everyone's soul the same?
So I believe in Aristotelian, a form of Aristotelian hylomorphism.
Do you familiar with what that is?
Nope.
Okay, so hylomorphism, these have to do with theories.
And actually, this theory is becoming, it's utilized more and more frequently in the philosophy of mind.
And hylomorphism argues that soul actually gives form to the body.
And so form is dependent upon the existence of soul.
And that's exactly what we as Orthodox Christians would believe is that the soul is actually what's giving rise to the body.
And so our anthropology as a human being is soul, body, and noose.
Noose being the eyes of the soul, the eyes of the heart.
So be your noetic faculty, your mind, imagination, these types of things.
Is everyone's soul, does everyone born with a different kind of soul?
Yeah, everybody has their own soul, yeah.
Okay, and God gives it to them.
Of course.
And your soul causes you to act differently than other people.
Your soul allows you to have free agency.
Again, the used cause is trying to put it in a sort of deterministic framework.
Where you're going, I already already caught it.
Okay, no, it's not a caught thing.
You just don't like the wording of the same thing, right?
But again, so if everyone's soul can, like, if everyone's soul is different, what does that mean?
Everybody is a unique person.
Meaning that they act differently, right?
They can act differently, or they could act similarly.
So every people are different.
Or they could act the same.
So everyone has a different soul, and this soul, like, is what makes, is also entailed as this agency or whatever.
But it's agency, everyone's agency is different.
Everyone's soul is different.
So essentially, the soul can prompt different actions and different outcomes in different people.
Correct?
Yeah.
Okay.
If your soul is given to you from God and it can prompt different actions within you than other people, this means that there's something entailed in that soul that you were given by God that is causing you to act differently than other people, meaning that you're not the arbiter of the actual.
No, that's a non-sequitur.
That actually does not a logical following.
I've got to tell you that word a lot.
No, well, because you keep falling victim to non-sequiturs.
No, it's not.
And so just because God gave you a soul or even God foreknows the end of history does not actually entail determinism.
Yes, it does.
No, it does not.
Yes, it does.
Okay, so you understand that God is outside space and time, right?
Yep.
And so the difference is actually watching the choices that we've already made is not the same thing as making us make the choice.
He doesn't have to watch.
When you go to a restaurant and there's only certain items on the menu, are you determined to choose something?
Or is actually there's a set of opportunities to make choice?
It's not opportunities.
It's not.
It's not opportunities.
So once again, when we talk about omniscience, no, right?
When we talk about omniscience, right, if God does not need to be seeing everything in linear time to know what will always happen, right?
If you just look at like just like the story of like anyone in the Bible, like Noah from Noah's Ark, he already knew everything that was going to happen, and thus Noah could not have acted outside of God's knowledge.
No, he could.
He could have chose not to listen to God.
That's the whole point of being A Christian is that we're aligning our will with God's will.
That's the whole point of being a Christian.
God knew that he would not act in accordance with God, correct?
God knew that Noah would not act in accordance with God.
God, as outside space and time, knew that Noah would make the choice, but Noah making the choice is not dependent.
God didn't force him to make the choice.
Okay.
Again, those are two.
That's a category.
That's a logical category error.
That's a category error.
I didn't make the error that you're trying to.
I have to say that.
You said that omniscience demands determinism.
So again, if God knew, he doesn't have to be looking at this from like a linear perspective of time, but if he always knew he's omnipotent, omnipresent, whatever.
If he always knew what Noah could do, by definition, Noah could not do what God did not know he would do, aka God.
God knew he had, there was some path that everyone was going to have.
God knew what their future would hold, what their present would hold, what their past would hold, whatever.
There's some future that exists, existed for Noah, and he could not have acted out of accordance with it because God already knew it.
But God knowing does not entail causation of him causing the person to choose it.
I'm saying that he couldn't have acted differently.
I do think there is a thing for causation.
No, again, it's a category error because God is outside.
Can you do something that God does not know you will do?
God, he's outside space and time, so he's already looking at history as a finished, completed, completed thing.
He knows the choices I'm going to make before I've made them, but that doesn't mean that I did not have free will to make my choices.
Can you do something that God does not know you will do?
No, because God's already outside space and time.
But again, that doesn't necessarily cause it.
That's not causal necessity.
I just raised my hand.
God knew I was going to raise my hand.
Could I have not risen my hand?
Yeah, you could have, and then God would have known that that's what you were going to not.
No, it's not because that's a category error.
You could have chose not to not raise your hand and God would have known that's what you already chose.
Exactly.
On your own premise, you just contradicted yourself.
Yes, you did.
You have a past, a present, and a future.
You just contradicted me.
We have a past and a present and a future, right?
Thank you.
I could not have risen my hand.
Or you could have or could not have.
God being outside space and time would already have.
Because I didn't, though, right?
So if we look, that means that I couldn't have, right?
So if we look at what God knows, if God knows some events are going to happen, you cannot do whatever he wants.
For example, if God knows, let's say tomorrow God knows that I'm going to pick a blue shirt.
That means that tomorrow I cannot pick a pink shirt because God knows.
But you're putting the cart before the horse because God only knows it because he's outside space and time and for him you've already made the decision.
No, he doesn't already know it.
He knows it because he knows it.
No, he knows it because he's outside space and time.
No, God has nothing to do with it.
Yes, it is.
The actions already happen for him.
God does not have any action.
God has already seen the action.
Guys, one at a time, one in a time.
Go ahead.
Okay.
I think that you're thinking of God in some type of like human perspective in that someone has to know things by having seen them play out or in some way.
He already knows things because he's all knowledgeable.
Sure.
Not because he's sitting at the end of the finish line and looking back and replay clips.
That's not the same thing.
That's my worldview.
So why don't you debate me instead of just this general concept?
That's exactly what we as Orthodox Christians understand.
We as Orthodox Christians, that's exactly how we believe it to be.
Is that God is not a causal necessity for every decision I make.
I have free agency.
I have free will.
And God being outside space and time, being the beginning of the alpha, the beginning of creation, and the meaning of creation, the omega, he has already seen the choices that we make.
That doesn't mean that I'm putting anthropomorphizing God, because that's not something that humans can actually do.
So the idea that that's an anthropomorphization of God is ridiculous because that's not even how we understand it.
What does it mean to be omnipotent and omniscient?
What do those two things mean?
Omnipowerful.
Okay, and all-knowing.
All-knowing, right?
So where in that definition does it say that God knows everything, not because he's all-knowing, but because he's able to sit like at the end of time and just know all the events because he just, he can see them all.
Like I don't think that that's like, it's not because of some chronological order, but because all knowledge is bestowed to him.
True.
So that doesn't mean that.
So he is the source of knowledge.
Exactly.
He's the source of knowledge and he knows all things that will exist.
So it's not because he's like, he was able to like watch, you know, in his head, like how everything was.
He can do this.
It's not because he like watched, he would watch in his head like all of history play out and then he knew, okay, she's going to do this.
because he knew he knows right so it's like what's the difference exactly Right?
Because you're saying that if you didn't raise your hand, right, God would have done that.
You could have done either one, yeah.
No, not true.
Yeah.
How is that not true?
You could have done either one.
Okay.
So I'm saying that we couldn't have done either one because God knew I was going to do that one thing.
There's no multiple realities of reality.
God knowing, again, that's a logical non-sequitur.
Just because he knows what we choose does not mean that our choice is totally dependent and he forces us to choose.
Can you do what God does not know you will do?
God already knows the decision I make before I've made it.
He knows the decisions I'm going to make in 10 years from now.
I haven't even made them yet.
And that's part of the judgment.
That's part of the life of a Christian is God made humanity in the Imago Day so that we can participate in these categories that animals do not have.
And so for us, that would include love, logic, reason, truth, mercy, compassion, honor, glory.
These are called uncreated energies of God.
And these are the things in which differentiate us from the animal kingdom and differentiate us from operating purely based on instincts or in a deterministic way that's framed through nature and nurture.
Why don't you let me finish something so you can actually argue what I'm talking about?
So what?
Two minutes?
We're in a debate.
We're in a debate.
Guys, God forgive me.
God forgive me.
I said something more than two minutes.
Oh my God.
Jesus Christ.
I wonder if y'all, anyway.
So again, so decisions that you've made, God, before you ever made them, God knew you were going to make them, correct?
Before you even made the decision to like come here today, God knew you were going to do that.
Yes, that's where Providence.
If God knew you were going to do that, you could have not come here.
No, because I've already made the choice from God's perspective.
He's outside space and time.
I've already made the choice.
That means that you could not have decided not to come because God knew before you came that you were going to come here.
No.
God's knowledge does not determine my choices.
Okay.
He knows my choices because I chose them.
They do.
No, it doesn't by definition.
It doesn't make any sense.
That's not a choice.
If he knew them before you chose them, then he doesn't know them because you chose them.
He knows them because I chose them, yes.
So you said earlier that he knew them before you chose them.
So that was a contradiction.
Yes, but I still have free will and causal agency.
That's the whole idea.
So can you acknowledge it?
Let me finish.
Really?
She says a question.
So that's the whole premise of a Christian worldview in regard to repentance, moral responsibility, objective truth.
And so without those things, so it's like you're arguing that the Christian paradigm somehow doesn't allow for free will because God's omnipotent and omniscient.
And I'm saying that that does not make any sense at all because the entire paradigm is built upon the idea that we have causal agency made in the image of God.
That's the entire worldview of our personality.
So I love that this is live streamed and also going to be on YouTube so we can just rewind to the point where you said that God knows things before you make the decision.
Yeah, he's out there in space and time.
No, no, no.
Then I want to be able to speak because I've let you do that.
Then speak.
Okay.
So we know, you know, that God knows the things that you were going to do before that you do them.
Right.
And then you said that God only knows these things because you did them.
So that is a complete contradiction, right?
What I'm saying is not answering your question.
His knowledge does not determine the choices I make.
You're not answering.
So just because he knows the choices I make does not determine what choices I actually choose.
You're not answering my question.
Can you restate your question?
Is it that God knows things before you, before you, does God know the decisions that you make before you make them?
Or does God know them because you make them?
Both, essentially, because again, he's outside space and time.
This is a non-temporal form of knowledge.
So it is true that you got to let him answer the question.
You're using temporal frameworks to talk about God's omniscience, and that makes no sense.
The point is, we actually can make free will choices.
God knows the choices we're going to make, and that doesn't determine what the choices that we make.
There's a contradiction in those words.
No, it doesn't.
Yes.
No, it doesn't.
So you posited that God knows things that you're going to do before you do them.
Then that means that if God knows something that you're going to do before you do it, you can't do it.
He doesn't force you.
Let her finish.
Let her finish.
I never said anything about forcing.
I said that if God knows the things that you're going to do before that you do them, you cannot do anything other than that he knows that you're going to do.
That would entail a sense of force, that God can force you.
Hold on, let him finish.
That would entail a sense of force or a deterministic worldview that you cannot choose to do the opposite.
And I'm saying that's not the case.
Okay, so that's not what we believe.
Hold on, hold on, that's not.
Let each other.
God is outside space and time.
So he knows all the decisions that we've made.
We are inside space and time.
God is outside space and time.
Let him finish.
Therefore, at the end of history, he can already see the choices we make.
And that is a present reality for God right now.
So you keep referring back to a temporal metaphor in regards to his omniscience and that somehow we cannot make a choice because God already knows that that's the choice we're going to make.
And again, that is a logical non-sequitur because he's outside the temporal categories that you're using.
So God knows or doesn't know things you do before you do them.
Yeah, he knows.
Okay.
That doesn't mean that he forces me.
So see, see, see?
Okay.
So God knows things that you're going to do before you do them.
Therefore, you cannot do the things that he does not know that you're going to do.
Right.
Is that true or just a true or false for that one?
Say it again.
Can you do things that God does not know you're going to do?
No, he would already know the choices I've made because he's already seen the end of my life.
He's already seen the choices I make.
I am living that out and choosing those as I go, and that's what I'm going to be culpable for.
But the end point has already occurred.
History has already ended.
God is at the end of it.
Oh, wait, perfect.
So there is an end point of history, and there are some events in history that are going to occur no matter what, even if you don't know them now.
Yeah, like the second coming of Christ.
Cool.
Perfect.
So God knows what your life is going to look like.
There's some trajectory.
There are some events that are going to happen, correct?
In your life.
Just yes or no?
Yeah.
Okay.
So can you do anything other than those events?
Yeah.
You still have moral freedom.
You still have free will.
You still have free will.
That was a contradiction.
No, it's not.
Just because God knows the things you're going to choose doesn't mean that you can't have a variety of choices.
When you make the choice, you have options.
You have rational deliberation.
You have moral responsibility.
think I've done enough on that topic I think that okay let's get into ethics and morality let's get No, it's not my turn to ask questions, right?
Really quick, though, let's let some chats come, and then I'm happy to get into something else.
So we have Chef Dill Pickles.
Zena, if there are two rocks and no people are around to call it two, are there still two rocks?
Yeah, by our use of language right now, yeah, there are still two rocks.
Okay, and then we have, let's see, we have another chat coming through.
Chef Dill Pickles, thank you very much for the super chat, guys.
If you want to get a super chat in, streamlabs.com slash whatever, if you want to get a message in.
Charlie Kirk, DP USA.
Okay.
Hey, Xena, you said this about me.
Definitely Charlie Kirk.
Egregious lower region of his face.
Do you think body shaming is okay?
What if I called you a muffin?
Also, what is a woman?
Yeah, so I called Charlie Kirk ugly.
I think that in my worldview, if you are like a really shitty person, I'm going to call you weird looking.
I think that's okay.
And then a woman is someone who identifies with the traits that are associated, usually tend to be associated with the female sex, but not all females associate with this social category.
So yeah.
Okay.
Do you want to bite on that?
I would just be curious.
I mean, again, when we start getting into trans issues, I mean, determinism and the ability to choose and express oneself certainly is going to play a big factor there.
So I'm curious how she feels.
Like, are children determined?
Is it by their parents?
Is it their nurture?
Is it their environment that is going to cause them to then eventually be castrated potentially before puberty?
Or they have to go on these hormone blockers.
Like, is a trans person actually choosing to transition?
Are they determined to transition?
How's that work?
Yeah.
So this is actually like a super interesting question in psychology and sociology.
Like what makes it so that people kind of are trans?
And a lot of times I think that studies, I think it's inconclusive on whether this is like something like biological.
Although we see that people's brains, like for example, men who tend to be queer tend to have brains, chemistry that is similar to women's, and so I think it is also true of like trans women.
Like their brain makeup is similar to women's, so it could possibly be something biological.
And then also sociologically, just kind of like, you know, like what you're kind of, I guess like what you kind of gravitate towards socially, the kind of friends you want to make, all these type of things just influence things that you like, dislike, and then that's going to influence like the traits that you want to express.
If you like dresses or not, whatever.
So yeah, it's just going to be a mix of biology and sociology like anything else in regards to the human condition.
All right.
We have another chat here from Chef Dil Pickles.
When God sees our action beforehand, he sees it simultaneously during the action and afterwards.
Space-time is theorized to be the fourth dimension, completely consistent with the gentleman.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Any response there?
So yeah, I mean, I'm going off of the notion again that God is seeing our action.
Or not even that he's seeing our action, but he just knows our action.
It doesn't matter like how he's interacting with it, but just that he knows our action and he knows our actions even from the start of time.
So even given that he transcends time, there is some like actions that we are going to take that exist, right?
And there is some future clearly that you believe in that exists.
And if such things exist, that means that there are some fixed actions, right, that you're going to take in your life, regardless of whether you know it or not.
So the way that God perceives these actions, it doesn't matter.
If you agree that there is some future, some endpoint of your life, and God knows all these actions, there are some actions that you're going to take that exist fundamentally.
All right, and we have one more chat.
Did you want to respond to any of that?
Okay.
We have Jordan Peterson, Kermit the Frog voice.
What do you think about white people?
Maybe I should have you read it.
No, no, no, go ahead.
So what do you, this is for you, Zina, I guess.
What do you think of white people?
Do you think white people have culture?
Is cis a slur?
And then you, I guess you, was this a TikTok of yours?
Every, here, I'll pull it up again.
Every woman has felt innate frustration and fatigue for men at least a million times.
Maybe this is, is that something you said?
I don't know what that, I don't know what that's referencing.
Okay.
But what do I think of white people?
I think white people are people.
Fun fact.
Do you think white people have culture?
Do you, I mean, Kelly Clarkson exists.
Yeah.
Like, I look at it.
So I get down to some white culture.
I get down to some of y'all's stuff, you know?
And then what was the other one?
I'll pull it up one more time.
Is cis a slur?
No, I don't think so.
Not colloquially.
Okay.
Easy questions.
Patrick, you wanted to get into, it sounded like something.
So we just wanted to.
Yeah, so I was wanting to shift the conversation in regards to ethics and morality and how exactly Xena comes to any sort of differentiation between right and wrong.
From my understanding, you're big in regards to racial injustices through history, slavery, these types of things.
Are you in favor of reparations real quick?
I'm just curious.
Yeah, I think there's probably some mechanism that we can use to come about.
Within a deterministic worldview and claiming that there's a culture that has chattel slavery and that they are conditioned through the nurturing process, through the environment that they're in, and they have normalized this as a social construction, which you agreed earlier about two plus two equals five could be a social construction.
How exactly then are you saying that white people should be guilty for something?
Because guilty would entail moral responsibility and something that there's an objective justice, a level of justice that needs to be equated.
Yeah, so never once did I use the term guilty, but you did.
Okay, yeah, but you said that how are you saying that they're going to, they should feel guilty, which I didn't say.
I didn't say you did.
Yes.
I did.
So I didn't say she did.
But anyway, so regardless, I think that in regards to like reparations, I think that there are some just like values that I think that in society like are just should be held and that we think that humans are valuable, that no human on the basis of like skin color is lesser than another human being.
And thus, when there are some injustices that are like predicated on the basis of race, we should seek to kind of eliminate those type of things, those type of structures.
But regardless, in regards to reparations, I think that it's not something that we need to focus on feeling guilty.
It's more so just like valuing equality and valuing just like equality of opportunity specifically.
It's something that needs to be done just like structurally.
And then, so yeah, I don't think guilt is a part of the so why would why would white people in 2025 have to pay reparations to the black community in 2025 for something that neither of those communities have been a part of?
So it's first of all the system that we're talking about is not like it's a generational.
So it's not saying that like white people out of their pockets need to be paying black people in any sense.
It would have to be something that's like governmentally funded, et cetera.
It's the taxpayer money.
Yeah, sort of, but it doesn't have to be specifically from taxpayers.
Well, how does the government get to know that?
I mean, the government gets money, majority of it is from taxes, but there are a bunch of like different like there are different, sorry, a bunch of different departments that we have that are funded in different ways, et cetera.
But regardless, right, this is something that was sanctioned by the government where we had just like slavery legalized and we also just had Jim Crow laws in an era where black people were economically subjugated and thus I think it should be something that like the government kind of goes to like fix.
Right, but let's say like 2025 America, we don't have chattel slavery, correct?
Yeah, but we have like very poverty.
So but why would that be superior to any example?
I guess we could even go to Libya right now because they have open slave markets, but why would one be superior to the other in your deterministic worldview?
Because it's really superior.
Well, one, do you not appeal to one being better than the other?
Like one society being better?
Yeah, so a time in history in which slavery was normalized, would you say that that is equal to a period in history right now where it's not?
Yeah, so I would say that like when we talk about morality, I guess you're actually asking about my moral framework.
I see it as like society like collectivizes upon different views that a lot of times throughout history tend to coincide.
And we haven't been able to prove any truth aptness, right, absolutely, of like moral claims, but there are like, but there are tenets that we tend to value over time.
So like tenets that I think are valuable are things like, again, equality of opportunity, you know, I'm pretty anti-bigotry and things of that sort.
And in that, using that framework, I would say that in a society where we, you know, unalive people based on race or we subjugate people based on the race, that isn't okay.
Why is it not okay?
Yeah, so this is going to be like a moral subjectivist view.
Okay, so it's just your own personal preference.
Yeah, I think that's what moral claims are.
So it's all, okay, so then if it's your moral personal preference, me having a different moral personal preference, we're equal, equal in standing.
Yeah, so it's not even something to be like debating on base of equality.
It's more so of just like, one, I think that moral claims are spread based on like, you know, how favorable they are.
And if one, and I think that we should be making certain moral claims less favorable because of their output and their effect.
And the attempt of the moral subjectivist is to move someone's credence or belief towards their own for whatever due reason.
So it's like, it's not about the equality of certain like moral frameworks or moral takes, more just that like they all exist and they're expressions of usually like resentment or like likability.
That's like kind of like what a moral attitude is.
Okay, so why would, for example, the World Cup in Abu Dhabi got criticism because they were using slave labor to build their city.
Now, incredibly successful economically, that society, low crime, low theft, low murder.
By a lot of metrics that we would analyze, we would say, wow, that seems like the utility, if we're just going to make a utilitarian argument, that seems pretty effective.
But at the same time, you would agree that slavery is wrong.
I would agree too.
I'm a Christian.
So I'm not in favor of that.
But my point is within your worldview, I don't see how you can delineate between the two because if you're just going on utilitarian consequences, it'd be very easy to find civilizations that do things that you would find abhorrent.
And that utilitarian, that it's actually very, very successful for their society.
And maybe that they're more successful than other societies that don't do those things.
Yeah, I'm not a utilitarian.
So again, if I was a utilitarian, I think I wouldn't hold the same values that I do now.
In like equality of opportunity, of respect, et cetera.
So again, this is going to be something where it's like a society is not successful in my view and a lot of Americans' view if they do not promote the equality of opportunity and safety of all individuals.
Why is that important?
Because I feel like what I'm hearing is that you're getting back to a sort of moral worth of individuals, which I agree with.
Yeah, right.
But I'm just trying to figure out how do you come within your worldview?
How do you come to the moral worth of individuals?
I can tell you how I've come to these feelings and these opinions, but I'm telling you that moral claims, in my view, are not truth apt.
Meaning that you can't, like, in any way, they're not provable, they're not testable.
And we've observed this, like, again, like, through science and evolution, evolution kind of shows us that people who kind of tended to respect other people and like other people and work together with other people tended to survive more.
And that biology, that chemistry of having mirror neurons and social ability tended to become more of a prevalent factor in human biology.
So I think that's how we can explain where moral claims derive from, but are they truth apt?
No, that's what I'm saying.
Okay, so would you, since you debase morality and ethics from truth claims, which I, fair enough, at least you're being consistent.
I appreciate that.
Because my criticism for your worldview, now that you've actually justified or argued that you're a moral subjectivist, therefore there are no universal moral claims.
Okay, fair enough.
Now I can understand your point of view and where you're coming from.
My next question would have to do with in a world like that, and I would assume maybe you're a fan of like somebody like Michelle Foucault with theories of like power, knowledge, and stuff like that.
Are you going to argue that the only thing that actually really exists in the world is power?
What do you mean by really exist?
Like what is the arbiter of like civilizations?
Like if we're not coming down to universal truth claims and we're not coming down to universal moral claims, typically the postmodern turn, again, values subjective experience and the construction of your own identity.
But somebody within the Foucault tradition would argue that it's about power dynamics.
And that power dynamics, and my point to you would be if that's the case, I'm fairly confident that you're anti-patriarchy, but men have a monopoly on power.
And so if we exist in a deterministic worldview where there is no objective truth and there is no objective morality, how exactly do you get around the fact that if every man on this planet decided that we're going to subjugate women, which again, God forbid, but if we decided to, you have no say in the matter because we have physical, we have a monopoly on violence.
Yeah, so again, like when we talk about, like, someone like Foucault would probably say that, like, power is what drives, like, the differentiations between systems and, like, change over time, socially, et cetera, right?
But they're not saying this is some type of, like, again, they don't make like a moral, like, there's no moral claim on that.
Yeah, they're really.
It's a descriptive fact.
Yeah, they're relativists.
So I think that this is a descriptive fact that like men currently, we live under a patriarchy.
Whoa, that's really loud outside.
I'll just wait a little bit.
But yeah, like, I think we can make the descriptive claim that like things like power and like and power imbalance drive like change in society without saying that thus like whatever structure we're in is like good or making some type of like moral truth claim on whatever structure we exist in.
Right, therefore, so so I would say that like we should promote values like social cohesion, like like respect, like equality, because I think it's good to value people.
And like in that, that's an emotional.
Why though?
They're all determined.
I'm explaining to you this is a descriptive framework, right?
So I'm not going to be able to grant any objective moral truth to these claims.
And I don't think anyone can do that.
Even no matter how hard you try, I don't think that's possible.
But we can say in a society, okay, we care about people.
We care about people's quality of life.
Let's make a society that maximizes that.
I think that's what we've done in society throughout time.
If we want societies with the most power, you're going to get authoritarian fascism.
If you want a society that's most egalitarian, you might see something more close to communism or something like that.
But I'm saying we should put certain values at our foundation, or we do put certain values at our foundation, and that is what builds up the society.
The question is what values we put at that foundation, and that's just the question now.
Right.
Rather than if it's objectively good.
And in my estimation, I would prefer a society that uses logic and uses rational deliberation and uses the pursuit for objective claims to make that differentiation on what values we should actually pursue as a civilization, as a culture.
And so with my, well, but your determinism, you can't do that.
Yes, you can.
And so my point with the example of if all men decided to team up against women, even using Foucault's understanding of power and the transient restructuring of society and, again, power dynamic, institutions essentially is what he was focused on.
You can't, you yourself just agree that you can't make a value claim against that.
You can only have your own personal preference.
Yeah, well, if you look at something like an objective moral claim, I don't even really know what that means because it would mean like something that is just true because it's true.
There's no evidence for it.
This thing is just true.
I could tell you right now that like Pokemon is like oversees the world and he and like Pokemon just exists in the cosmos and they oversee this world and that's just an objective truth.
Why?
Because it is.
Because if not, I wouldn't like that world or whatever.
But that doesn't mean that that's an objective like truth claim, right?
An objective truth claim just is true and to say something like that doesn't even make comprehensible sense to me.
So I just don't think that we can make moral claims, but that doesn't mean we can't strive towards certain societies because we value certain things.
So yeah.
But how do we come to a collective orientation towards values if everybody has a moral subjectivist?
Like if everybody adopted your moral, we have philosophical conversations like this one, and we provide like you know, reasons that like might like people resonate with.
For example, like, hey, like, one reason might be like, hey, like, you don't like it when people do bad things to you that hurts, or you don't like seeing other people get hurt.
You know, we should stop hurting people.
Or, hey, this is what's happening in so-and-so country.
And we don't like that.
Let's stop doing this.
So, it's again, it's going to be belief.
It's going to be like credence shifting.
It's going to be like discussion that moves kind of like social order and what changes it.
So, it's just the persuasion of rhetoric.
So, we come to a table collectively, say the example like this, and then through rhetoric, we persuade each other.
Descriptively, that is what's happened over history, yes.
I would disagree.
I would argue that there's actually axioms and premises and logical foundations for why we should choose certain things.
I mean, I understand this is the fundamental contradiction between our worldviews, and that's why it keeps coming back to things like logic and things like objectivity.
And again, I understand that within your worldview, you can't have those things, and you're saying we don't need those things.
We can make quote-unquote claims about the world based on our assumptions of the environment and how they stimulate us and our innate biology and how that affects us.
And then you're agreeing that you can't make universal moral claims either.
So, you're a moral subjectivist.
And so, you're basically in a point in which the only thing that really exists in the world is power.
And in that game, the things that you advocate against, be it slavery, be it reparations, I mean, if people in power decided not to, you can't actually make an argument of why it's wrong.
So, people in power, like white people, when they enslaved black people, they said, like, hey, you shouldn't have rights.
But things still changed, even though there was a power dynamic there.
So, I'm not saying that the only thing that exists is power.
I never ever said that, actually.
All I say is that you cannot, there's no way to prove by definition objective truths or objective moral claims because in their definition, they don't require evidence, they just exist, they just are moral, they just are true.
That's not conceivable.
In any circumstance, when we have some type of like premise, we either just assume it, like we assume that, like, for example, again, like I've said before, reality exists, right?
We assume that to make tangible discussions, make tangible claims, test hypotheses, whatever.
But beyond that, like, if I want to say, you know, we should all like, I don't know, I'm trying to give some example.
Like, slavery should become a thing again.
People don't say that as like some absolute truth.
They give reasons why and it persuades people or it doesn't.
I'm saying that we need to push certain ideas and beliefs that promote happiness and goodness because I think most people would enjoy that.
I think it would be the best, the most optimal society when we value fundamentally, you know, equality of opportunity and enjoyment.
And so, how could somebody be, if free will doesn't exist, how could they be persuaded to adopt a different opinion?
Like, because we don't have free will right now.
However, I can have this discussion with you, and if we have, like, you know, for example, let's say we both value individuals, but then you're like, I want slavery or something.
I could say, well, hey, you know, if you value people, here's what would happen under slavery.
Then I could move your credence and move your belief into believing what I believe is that we shouldn't have slavery, right?
So you can still move people's beliefs under the opinion, in your worldview, does that insinuate that people can make choices between two different things?
It wouldn't be a choice between two different things.
It would be like your brain processing one belief over another belief, and depending on, again, your biology, your brain chemistry, and like your socialization, you would pick one over the other.
However, if we introduce better stimuli or more stimuli that promotes one belief, you're more likely to believe that, and that's how we get, like, for example, better people in society.
But if I'm determined or my innate biology and my environment determines me to choose the opposite of that, aren't we both on equal footing?
What do you mean by equal food?
Any claim that you make or any claim that I make, they're essentially equal claims.
There's no one that can be superior to the other because due to the mechanisms of how I came to my decision, it's really just a belief that I've acquired or the word you're using, assumption, because of the environment and the biology, nature versus nurture.
And if that's the case, well, then I don't understand, again, the premise of the debate, the premise of coming here and persuading people because the people that watch this and choose the opposite of you, they're no worse or better than you.
It's the same.
I mean, it's equal.
It's just deterministic.
I think it's funny needing to say that one belief in this metric is like yours is better than mine.
I think it's just that in society, I think that all we can do, at least what I've seen, is take a descriptive lens and look at the history of society and look at the brain and just look at the way that people act.
I think that we have not seen any proof that these things are inherently better or worse.
However, that doesn't mean that we can't promote different ideas because of what the outcome would be.
For example, if you value human beings, which most human beings do, some such system would result.
The question is not whether people value human beings.
I think a lot of people, especially now, really do value human beings.
Most of the time, the argument for slavery was just like, oh, they're not human.
Therefore, we can do blank.
Not saying that no one has ever not valued human beings, but many times they have something like neurologically that is actually a disorder or whatever the thing is.
So what I'm saying to you is that whatever system is going to come about, depending on what stimuli we introduce and how we kind of gauge people who tend to have that bad brain going on, who tend to have like less mirror neurons, things like people who are like really bad psychopaths or whatever it might be.
So it's not like a bearing on my claim.
It's just like, I think I'm just describing how reality exists.
Okay, I understand that that's what you feel like you're doing.
My point is I just don't see how your argument against somebody who would assume the opposite.
So let's say me, for example, or anybody watching the stream, how we get to a point in which we can justify one over the other.
And so what you were saying, and I was listening to your response, the follow-up I'd really like to hear is like your anthropology, do you kind of view humans as mechanisms based on the nature and the environment and then the biology in which that they have?
Are they a mechanism?
Is that how you would describe it?
You can call a human a mechanism or whatever you really want to.
I feel like the way that you describe it doesn't really matter.
If you define a mechanism as something that operates off of like inputs and outputs, I mean, you can define it that way, but regardless, what we have seen, what psychology has proven, why we have the nature-nurture debate, is because people are composed of nature and nurture, and that is the claim that I'm making.
So the way that you codify it, it doesn't really matter to me.
So my question then, if we are mechanisms, I'm curious, can I grape a typewriter?
I mean, that is a mechanism that's purely based on inputs and outputs.
And if we are mechanisms, then I don't even see how you could argue against grape, which again, as I'm a Christian, I believe we have free will and that violates somebody's volition and consent.
So it's wrong in that sense.
But from your worldview, I don't even see how you could say that grape is wrong because it's the mechanism.
The man doing it was determined.
And the woman receiving it, she was determined to kind of be in that situation no matter how she feels about it.
So yeah, so really quickly, so we don't think that grape is wrong, right?
Just because like the person, I think part of it.
Who do you mean exactly?
I mean, I guess you can just say like in general, I think we take it from a societal lens.
Like even if the person didn't know what they were doing, we would still didn't know what they were doing.
We would still like kind of have a problem with it.
But I think one of the biggest reasons why grape is wrong is because someone is negatively affected and they didn't want such thing to happen to them, et cetera, right?
think grape is wrong because I value people and I value human beings and their well-being and their safety right so even so when someone grapes someone we oh great Okay, sorry.
Essay.
So when someone essays someone, I would say that like we said those actions, we don't like those actions, they're bad because they kind of like violate someone's ability to kind of just like freely exist and kind of just like exist like with their body bodily autonomy and things of that nature.
But the solution is not to say like, oh, like boo, like I think we should say boo, that is bad.
But the solution is to rehabilitate that person, find out whatever cause caused them to do that, and exterminate that cause.
So that's kind of the way I would take something like grape or what if the cause is biological.
Yeah, so that's why we have like meds and pharmacy.
Like we have things that like we can pinpoint what part of the brain is causing the problem and provide a solution.
So another question.
There is an argument regarding this is specifically regarding like Daniel Dennett and his compatibilism regarding like what kind of the issue that we're talking about regarding moral responsibility and things like this.
And it's called the manipulation reductio ad absurdum argument.
And so suppose there's a woman named Alice and that a neuroscientist engineers her so that due to all mechanisms that she is programmed to commit a murder and she, through compatibilism again Daniel Dennett's terms uses her freedom to choose based on those things.
So there's not an exterior compelling her, an exterior reason or cause compelling her to commit the murder.
And then she commits the murder.
Is she responsible or is she not responsible for your perspective?
So yeah, I think this idea of moral responsibility comes from this idea that we are these isolated causal agents which again, I disagree with.
I think that when we look at like, when people do bad things, we need to look at, just like you explained, the mechanisms and the foundation that caused them to act in the way that they did so.
In that sense, I think that this idea of fault and blames comes from this idea that we just everyone has this kind of like set, state of like.
They know things that they should and shouldn't do and whatever, and they're operating off of the same you know basis.
So instead I would say that, like that person, I think I wouldn't even reference moral responsibility.
I'm thinking, how can we make it so we, we figure out what caused you to do such thing and stop it, right?
So it's like it, we understand.
But just using my thought experiment, let's say Alice committed the murder in your worldview is she?
Would you find her guilty or responsible?
Or would you say she's not guilty or responsible because she was programmed through neuroscience, say like a neuralink, Elon Musk neuralink or something like that?
Again, what is she?
If you want to go from my framework and yeah, that's what I want to know is like, in legal framework, how would you address Alice?
Yeah, so legality works in a way where it should prioritize rehabilitation and and fixing whatever again, cause caused the output, right?
So, for example, if it's her engineering you said it was engineering that kind of sounds like a lot like biology.
If it was her biology, something that she was encoded with we, we fixed that, right we we?
We give her the drugs that she needs and then we take her to somewhere where she can no longer hurt people, right?
That is the output.
So it's not.
It doesn't.
My legal framework does not have to do with like, dishing things out because you deserve it.
It's dishing things out.
That's what they're going to fix.
The problem I just want to know, if she's culpable, like in your worldview?
Is Alice culpable for the murder because the neuroscience engineered her to do it?
No, yes or no.
So she's not culpable.
No, I don't know.
Well, that would violate compatibilism because in that hypothetical, in that hypothetical, she is not compelled by external factors and she's only conditioned by her internal internal response and her biology, and therefore within a compatibilistic framework.
I'm not a compatibilist.
So earlier you were arguing for compatibilism.
No, I wasn't.
I'm a determinist.
There's a difference between determinism and compatibilism is a form of determinism.
So maybe you can call it a self-determinist?
Yeah, it's a sub-branch.
It's a sub-branch.
But once again, a determinist would say that she is culpable.
I would say she's not because as a hard determinist, not a compatibilist, I would say that even your biology is one of these causes that you are not in control of.
You don't author it.
And compatibilists agree with that, but they just define free will differently.
So like Sam Harris, then who's a hard determinist, would you argue that people who, so for example, Sam Harris is famous for being very anti-Islam, and he's okay if like all Muslims were, for your position, rehabilitated or like a cancer extracted from a tumor from the world because of the consequences.
He argues that the programming of Islam, again, using a metaphor of a computer or something like that, that that software needs to be eradicated.
So is that also your opinion?
I think that people who practice Islam should.
It's not just about Islam, it's in general.
I'm just saying that for Sam Harris in particular, that's an issue that he uses his hard determinism and talks about Islam as a cancer, as a tumor in regard to our global society.
His hard determinism, because he sounds what it sounds like what I'm hearing is that you're kind of parroting the hard determinism of Sam Harris.
Yeah, so that's my point.
He would argue that we just need to, hold on, just let me finish.
I'll let you go.
That he would argue that we need to eradicate that group of people or rehabilitate them because the software is cancerous.
That's his argument.
So I would definitely say that, so I don't know what parts of Islam he's entailing are cancerous.
I don't take that position.
I wouldn't.
But I would say that if any group of people, regardless, anyone who is committing just like violent crimes or things that we would deem as socially unacceptable, right, we would isolate the cause, right, which is always going to terminate in their biology or their socialization, and we would extract the causes.
It's usually going to entail, again, rehabilitation.
So I've given you my answer for that.
It's usually going to be rehabilitation and then kind of just like removing this person from a place where they can do that again.
Right.
And that's where when you kept saying rehabilitation, that's where, in my head, it kind of keynoted Sam Harris because that's kind of his argument, really.
Oh, well, that's kind of the rhetoric he uses in one of his books on free will.
I remember reading it.
It was years ago.
But yeah, that's the way that he tries to get around, again, the moral culpability and stuff regarding his worldview, because he does recognize that he can't actually justify morality or truth in his worldview.
And so he has to develop different systems to try to justify those things.
Yeah, cool.
I mean, I just think that rehabilitation is just the most, just even just like a logical way of kind of uprooting.
But how would you, like, what is, in your worldview, in the ideal circumstance, what is rehabilitation?
Because what you would identify as the ideal rehabilitation, I could argue as like something is negative.
For example, I'm not in favor of like the LGBTQ movement as a traditional Christian.
And so I could see potentially in a thought experiment where you would say, I need to be rehabilitated because of my thoughts and my feelings towards a particular community.
How would you go about doing that?
So if you want to harm people on the basis of something.
Don't want to harm anybody.
Okay, okay, no worries.
Yeah.
So everyone has like the ability to think what they want and feel what they want.
But right, if our goals in society are to create a society that promotes well-being, anti-discrimination, and things of that nature, and you have some type of like unwarranted belief against a group of people, I would say that you probably need to be exposed to information that would cause you to no longer hold that belief.
I think that's just kind of the same thing that would apply.
I think that people should be just like we shouldn't judge someone for something that like for an unwarranted reason unless they are like harming people or doing something that we would deem unjust.
Other than that, like I just don't see a reason why we wouldn't.
Right, I wouldn't be in favor of harming people, but the idea that I have a moral objective structure, that I believe that, for example, sexuality, there's certain things that are godly, divinely intended in certain ways, and that there are transgressions.
That's just my worldview.
So I'm not arguing for you.
I'm just saying that, so for me, it's like it's not about wanting to hurt anybody or again violate their free will.
But let's say in a thought experiment, and it's kind of already occurring in American culture, that the persuasiveness, if everything is the world, if we adopt your worldview and everything is just assumptions and that it's all rhetoric and we're just trying to persuade people so that their innate biology actually clings on to it and then deterministically moves in the right direction.
We're seeing right now, I mean, in 2025, that the support for pride, support for LGBTQ seems to be diminishing.
And I mean, the White House, so like pride parades.
I mean, general, I don't know, again, you're a leftist, so I assume that some of the cultures or the circles that you swim in are a little bit different, but in the circles that I swim in, it certainly seems like, and anybody watching this in the chat, let us know if you agree or disagree.
Seems like the support for the LGBTQ movement in general has really diminished from the last five to ten years.
So I don't know how if you have like some type of like population census on that.
I would say that like the government is moving towards like a path that I would say it probably isn't great.
But I mean, yeah, I don't think that this is going to have any bearing on my descriptive explanation on how societies change.
I would say that, like, from my worldview, someone who values people and is non-discrimination and values just, like, the well-being of humanity, yeah, I would say it's wrong to just, like, to just hate people for being kind of the way that they are and that is in a way that's not hurting people.
So, I mean, again, I don't see how this is, like— Well, my point is what if this persuasion continues, continues, continues until maybe it's 95% of the opinion?
This is a thought experiment.
I'm not saying that it is like that.
But then exactly, just based on you and your subjective experience.
And in a sense, be us who would disagree with your perspective, we would essentially win the culture war, and there's nothing that you could really argue.
Like there's nothing you can argue against it other than that, hey, this is my preference, these are my friends.
We should do this.
But if other people are being persuaded in the opposite direction, it just seems like you kind of lose.
What you're describing here is what's happened throughout history.
We have different dominances of power, of thought, of belief.
Sometimes the drive of power in one direction is founded in things like Christianity and some objective morality.
Other times people being like, I don't like how I'm being treated.
You don't like how you're being treated.
Let's fight against it.
You don't have to entail some objective morality to want some cultural change.
You just need some unified goal.
And if my unified goal is equal protection, equality, equality of opportunity, general well-being of humanity, and I get a bunch of people to agree with me that that is an important thing, then we win, right?
That's true and the opposite as well.
So yeah, exactly.
So I don't want the opposite to happen.
I can express how much I hate that idea, but I can't entail some objective moral truth because that's quite literally, it's improvable in that an objective moral truth would not have evidence.
It would just be truth.
And if it was so objectively true, it would seem obvious to us because it would be true, right?
So again, I and I would say from at least the circles that I swim in, it is very objectively obvious in regards to some of the sexual transgressions and things that are going on in that community.
For us, we would think that that's quite obvious and quite explicit.
So for us, just the observation is...
I mean, yeah, that's how you can construct a reality based on some belief that...
Well, that's what yours is.
Yeah, I think that's exactly what you're explaining, though, as well here, too.
I'm just adopting yours and doing an internal critique in regards to I don't think this is a critique, this is an explaining of like a world.
I think people watching it understand.
So, sure, we can anyone who's well-versed in philosophy will know will know what cognitivism, non-cognitivism is, whatever.
But again, so someone in your view, if you just objectively believe that God is true, then everything that He says must be true, and you will go on and live in that reality.
Regardless of if there's evidence for it or evidence for the opposite, you're going to go on living in that reality.
I am someone who values science, who values probability, who values kind of pattern recognition, et cetera.
I'm also someone who values other people here.
Do you think if you're Christian, you can't believe in science?
I've never said that, no.
I'm just asking.
I'm not saying that's what you said.
I'm just asking for clarification.
Yeah, I'm telling you that I'm saying that I value science as just something that I value.
I'm not saying making any bearing on Christianity.
And is the scientific method, can it prove the scientific method?
Can what prove the scientific method?
The scientific method.
Can using science, measuring and averaging, prove the scientific method itself?
Or is it an a priori presupposition of how we using induction?
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
So it's something that we assume to be true based on kind of like how we navigate the world and how we see the world, right?
So science is based upon the assumption, right, that reality exists in some measurable way.
I think that's not that's a pretty fair assumption to make.
And that's the assumption that you kind of come into debates with, which is kind of what we were wrestling with earlier.
Right, no, I agree with that.
I just think that without, again, this is where I would perform, if this was getting into a much larger debate in regard to philosophical transcendentals or using the transcendental argument for God, I would appeal to a coherency theory that my paradigm is actually much more coherent and allows for things like science and objective truth and morality to be justified.
And that's how, again, using the laws of logic.
I know that you argued earlier that logic isn't a methodology to prove, but it is.
And that's what I would use to justify that belief in God is actually a superior worldview because you don't have to presuppose things like the laws of logic or like the law of non-contradiction, the law of identity.
Like science is working based on the presupposition that tomorrow will still be the same as today, but that is built on a logical presupposition that science itself can't prove.
So logic and like, so logic and reality or something tangible existing outside of this human experience are all presuppositions we make to believe in science.
But that presupposition is simply because we don't have any information that deems the opposite.
So I don't think we need to fall into some alternate conclusion because it makes things easier.
Because, okay, then I don't have to make an assumption.
We make that assumption because it makes the most sense because we don't have any evidence of the opposite.
So it's more so making sure that we're the most airtight in our descriptions of how things are and how we pattern recognize, et cetera.
It's just kind of making the way that we kind of pursue information seeking the most airtight.
So I mean, I don't have a problem with those assumptions.
I think it's pretty fair to make the assumption that, yeah, reality is real, that tomorrow will be tomorrow.
Yeah, that is the foundation of science.
I completely agree.
Right.
Okay.
I mean, that pretty much answers some of the foundational objections that I had regarding your worldview.
And I think that my presentation has come across in regards to the lack of objective epistemology, the lack of moral responsibility, and that you've, and you've granted that you're a moral subjectivist.
So my point still stands.
So you've adopted a position that coincides with a deterministic worldview that doesn't allow you to justify those things.
And fair enough, that's where I granted you.
At least you're being consistent in regards to the ethical and moral component.
You being a subjectivist is at least consistent with your deterministic framework.
Well, yeah, I think that in regards to kind of like just like the whole assumptions thing, if you believe in science as someone who is non-religious, you're making this assumption as well that like reality exists objectively, that things have patterns, that things have causes, etc.
And it's a pretty sound assumption to make, especially when we don't have evidence, provable evidence of the latter.
So yeah, I think that what I'm saying makes a lot of coherent sense.
Same thing with morality.
We haven't been able to find some truth in moral claims.
It's just non-testable.
Although we do see that evolutionarily, it makes sense why we value other people, we value human beings, we value people being okay, like well-being, over non-well-being, etc.
So I think we have a lot of explanations for why we feel these things, but I think that a lot of times emotivism comes to recognize that moral claims and attitudes do come from, again, this feeling, right?
That sometimes you can point to it in the brain, socialization, etc.
So yeah, I think that kind of sums up what I've okay.
You have any counter questions for me in regards to my worldview?
Yeah, I just think, I think if we kind of, I don't know if we want to go back into this, but the agency thing, I do still just have like a really big issue with it, with this knowing that there is some set future and then also saying that we can act out of accordance with it seems to be incoherent to me.
Well, it's a category.
I mean, my argument, that'd just be a category error in regards to God.
And so that's the whole point of sin.
So we can choose right and wrong decisions.
Some of us choose bad decisions and those consequences follow.
And God, Christ, being the incarnate God, has a perfect heart.
That heart is the heart that all of us are going to be judged upon.
And my agency to choose right or wrong does not diminish God's omniscience.
And God's omniscience does not diminish my ability to make a free will choice right here, right now.
So, again, predictability is not proof of determinism, and it's just probability under limited circumstances is essentially what you're – and that's where my point with the restaurant earlier is, like, just because there's limited opportunities to choose on a particular menu doesn't mean that I'm determined for any one particular meal that I choose.
Okay.
So once again, I just want to kind of like get it straight from here.
Do you believe that there is some future that exists?
Like there is a future that exists.
Obviously.
Right.
Okay.
So again, if there is some future and some events that exist in that future, then those events must happen.
And you cannot do any events that would contradict that event.
So say, again, if there, I don't, I don't know what the, hold on.
I don't know what the future is.
And we know that God, again, still exists outside of time, but we do know that he knows what this future is.
Right?
We're sitting at this point of the present where we cannot kind of like actually perceive of that, but we know that it exists if we presume that God exists.
The question is, can you do anything that is not entailed in that future that God knows exists?
Just yes or no?
Can I do anything in the future that God knows exists?
No.
Can you do anything like in this set future that God knows exists that he's already at the end point of history, so it's already happened.
Right.
That's fine, right?
So it's already happened.
These events are going to happen, whatever.
But in these events that are going to happen, can you do anything other than the events that are going to happen?
If I made a different choice at that point, then it would have been the, again, God would have already known what choices I already make.
So again, this is a category error because the choices I make in temporal space and time are not determined by God's omniscience of knowing which decisions I choose.
Because he knows is why, like, that's.
Well, you keep asking, insinuating.
Let me finish.
You keep asking if I can choose to do something different.
Is that not what you were asking me?
No, I'm not done yet.
But that is exactly what you're asking me.
I thought we weren't supposed to be cutting people off.
Okay.
So, see?
Okay, anyway.
Anyway, we're so sensitive.
Okay.
Anyway, so if there is some set future that you know is going to exist, it's a simple question.
If there is some set future that we know exists, can you do anything that is not in those events of the future?
Just a yes or no.
Again, the premise of the question.
Yes or no.
No, I'm not going to fall into your dialectic.
It's not.
Well, let me respond.
I get to respond however I want.
No.
Oh, I don't?
You can be bad faith if you want to.
How is that bad faith?
Do you even know what bad faith means?
It's when you're arguing disinterestly.
I'm disingenuous by saying that God's omniscience doesn't entail.
You're disingenuous by not answering the clear yes or no question.
I can make free will choices.
God knows what choices I already make.
I can choose different choices in that particular period.
So free will entails that there in some event there is a choice that you can make other than another choice, right?
There's not some like lineage, even though we're already entailing that God knows some like events are going to happen in the future, right?
But you're presuming that you can pick something other than whatever is going to happen.
So tomorrow, if God knows, let's just assume God knows that tomorrow, even though he's this outside of time, he does still know that tomorrow you're going to pick a blue shirt.
That means that you cannot pick any other shirt but the blue shirt.
Just yes or no?
No, it's because God knows I chose the blue shirt because in his perspective of being outside temporal space and time, that's the shirt that I chose.
Okay, so you couldn't have picked a red shirt then.
You could not have picked red shirt because he knows that you're going to pick a blue shirt.
His knowledge doesn't determine my choice.
I'm not saying that his knowledge is.
But that's the insinuation of your claim.
That's the insinuation.
I'm saying that it's already known.
So it's already going to happen that way, right?
It's known by God, but I still choose it in the present moment.
If God knows today, right, or even before you came here that you were going to come here, right?
That means that you're going to come here inevitably.
He knows that that was the decision I was going to make, and he knows outside space and time that I've already made that decision.
So you couldn't have not come here.
I could have chosen, yeah.
And he would have known that that was the choice that I made because he's outside space and time.
He's already at the end of history.
He knows that that was the choice that I made.
That is a contradiction.
No, it's not.
No, it's not.
Again, the super chatter highlighted.
People watching know that this is kind of a reddit-level argument.
I don't think I'm going to use it.
About God's unwashed.
And you realize that I'm not a Calvinist, right?
I don't think so.
So I don't believe in any sort of theological determinism.
I'm not going to use the people watching to determine who is correct or incorrect in debate.
Well, you should because you don't have an argument.
I'm not going to run metaphysics, psychology, neurobiology, and many other sectors of the world.
Not really.
They also entail the same fact that every, first of all, that one, that when we make a choice, right, it is a product of circumstances that we don't have control over.
And also, even if we presuppose some Christian God that exists, if he knows in any regard what will happen, then you cannot do what he does not know will happen.
That's a fact.
But his knowledge is based on our ability to have free will.
It's really just a yes or no question, though.
It's going nowhere.
There was multiple contradictions there, but anyway.
Oh, yeah.
Well, name them.
What are the contradictions?
Yeah, tell me the logical contradictions I'm saying.
You're saying that God knows what you're going to do before you do it, but also he only knows things that you know that you're going to do because he's seen it before.
Yeah, he's outside space and time.
That's a category error.
Right, so it's not a category error.
Yes, it is.
If God knows you're going to do some set things, you can't do the things that he does not know you're going to do.
That's essentially the problem with your argument.
That's not a problem.
No, that's not.
Yes, it is.
That's not a problem.
Even if you're not aware in the moment that you're going to do something, you were always going to do that said thing.
That's the problem.
No, because you always have choice, but God being outside space and time.
What does choice mean?
Choose between a rational deliberation, choice between multiple objects.
If there's two One is definitely going to happen.
One, you feel like you have a choice, it's going to happen.
But this one was always going to happen?
No.
That means you don't have a choice.
No, that's not.
But again, you've already structured it, and that's not how you haven't structured it.
That's not how Christians believe that choice works.
The structure that you just drew on your paper.
Two different things.
That's not.
The point is that you just said, because God knows the choice you're going to make, you cannot make any, you basically have no free will.
You cannot make delineation between two things.
I'm saying no Christian, both Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, believes that to be the case because the paradigm is not based on that presupposition.
The framework that you laid out is not the framework that we agree to.
It's not the framework that we believe in.
Christians don't believe that to be true because it would mean that there's a contradiction in their logic that's a contradiction.
We want to categorize it, right?
So let's say you have a choice between a blue shirt and a red shirt tomorrow.
God knows you're going to pick red.
You're going to pick red.
He knows this.
He's always known it.
Even when Adam and Eve were frolicking in the gardens, he knew you were going to pick this red shirt on this day.
And you're like, hmm, blue or red?
You're going to pick red, and you were always going to pick red.
There's no option.
I thought it was blue.
No.
Now it's changed.
No, it will.
It was a blue shirt earlier.
Yeah, well, you know, examples can change.
Anyway.
So your argument is essentially the same type of Reddit tier atheist argument that would say, well, if God's the creator, who created God?
And it's like, well, that's a category.
It's the same argument.
It's the same level of argument.
No, it is.
It is the same level of argument.
It's really not.
I think that a lot of Christians also have come to see the problem with this idea.
Yes, they have.
More and more young men and women are becoming Christian than ever.
You haven't answered the contradiction.
You've just keeping it.
That's not a contradiction.
Yes, yes, no, it's not.
Yes, there is.
The super chatter already recognized everyone.
Super chatter.
Oh, wait, hold on.
Superman told us is correct, so it's right.
That's not what I said either.
That's not what I said either.
Is that what I said?
You're saying that there's some type of evidence.
I don't know because other people watching this are realizing what's going on and you and your watch this tend to lean conservative So of course they're going to agree with your framework.
And I don't think I'm going to kind of capitulate to them to arbitrate who is correct.
Especially when this argument is very so straightforward and just is going to be in the realm of like metaphysical possibility.
It's metaphysically impossible for you to pick blue if God already knows and has always known and always will know that you will pick red.
That is a fact.
I rest my case.
No, again.
You can just say no.
That's fine.
It's just not consistent with our worldview and that.
With your worldview, yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
With our worldview, because that would entail, again, that we have no choice.
There is no objective truth.
There is no moral responsibility on the channel.
I mean, there's no choice, and that's scary, I understand, but it is true.
You chose to be here.
I did choose to.
Oh, you can't choose.
You can't choose, though.
Under like a compatibilist understanding, yeah, I did choose to be here.
But I mean, did I have control over the desire to be here?
No, I didn't.
Okay.
So, yeah.
Anyway.
Well, I hope this was convincing for the audience because you guys had no choice in the matter.
We'll take a break for some chats.
We have Chef Dill Pickles.
He writes, Xena said that axioms are his preference and then almost immediately said, we should do what most people want, absolutely, cognitively dissonant.
Yeah, so never say that we should do what most people want.
Definitely didn't appeal to numbers.
So over time, we generally do like power is held by the majority, and we tend to structure society based on what the majority wants.
And then also axioms are preferences.
No, didn't say that.
There's the message again in case you wanted to address anything else.
It's probably in reference to you saying two plus two could be five if we all agreed to it.
Yeah, so if we labeled like what we conceive is like four as five and we just said semantically now like that's now five if you're just changing semantics that again that's not getting at the heart of it.
Okay.
Is that is mathematics objective and universal?
That was the point that was being made.
Yeah, so it's like gonna be one of the oldest philosophical debates.
Did we discover math or did we create math?
Whatever.
I mean, I think that for someone to say that math as a system exists, it's probably going to entail utility to some degree.
So it's something that you're actually constructing, for example, to divide 10 by 2 to come to 5.
There's some type of process or system there that requires humans.
However, the physical objects being there, for example, if there are five meteors in the sky, those meteors are there.
So I mean, it's just a very big philosophical rabbit hole.
It doesn't negate anything I've said.
We have another chat here.
Chef Dill Pickles.
Zina, please explain why we should not eliminate first degree unaliving and simply replace it with second degree unaliving.
Good point.
Yeah, so under my legal framework, right, if someone is like, if what I would want, or I think what is most coherent, if someone has unalive someone, right, instead of looking at it in this way that we do, we would say, okay, like what caused this person to unalive someone?
Was it intentional?
If it was intentional, right, we look at the cause for that thing.
Let's say they're a psychopath and we would rehabilitate them.
This person did not mean to unalive someone.
We would just kind of like figure out what caused them to do such thing.
If it was like nothing at all, like a total, something that they like, there's no circumstances that we can rehabilitate.
I think we would just see it as like someone who, like, for example, if someone broke the law, like we can still have laws under the system where like we can we can deter them from doing such law and put them in jail specifically because they broke the law and as a symbol of why you shouldn't do it again.
So I think that again, like not only rehabilitation, but deterrence should be one of like the pedestals of our law and our governance.
So yeah.
All right.
Somebody says Streamlabs is not working apparently.
I don't know.
Oh, here we go.
Chef Dill Dylan.
Streamlabs is down.
Xena, what does it functionally mean to be outside of space-time?
I can't tell if you're genuinely or disingenuously missing that detail.
Yeah, so it means that you're not bound by time, right?
Even still, regardless of God knowing something before or after or during, if something he is said to have known, sorry, if something is said to be something that he knows, it means that it will happen because he is God.
So I'm not saying that like he must know this thing before you did it, even though you kind of agreed to that.
I'm saying that God, in whatever sense, knows that something is going to happen and thus it will happen that way.
That was complete.
That's all my argument is, unless you agree.
For you, that means determinism, right?
That's like a...
Yeah, I mean, if you want to take it to be...
Well, that's what you're trying to use it as, right?
Cool.
It proves that in any circumstance, something was always going to happen.
Yes.
Well, something's always going to happen.
But the reason why you're bringing that up is try to insinuate that even in my worldview, believing in God, it's determined.
That's the premise of what you're trying to present.
And again, shout out to Chef Dylan because he's highlighting that.
It's a category error.
Nope.
Okay.
God knowing something means that it will always happen that way.
It is true.
So you can't do the opposite of that.
Is that true?
That doesn't mean the determinism.
Okay, whatever you want.
Okay.
All right.
We have about 20, 25 minutes left.
So why don't we do closing statements and then the rest of the show, for what time we do have remaining, we'll open it up to some audience questions.
We'll lower the read or TTS threshold.
We'll put it to $69 TTS because we don't have too much time.
So Zina, you go first with your closing statement, then Patrick, you'll go after and go ahead.
Okay, yeah, so my closing statement is going to be pretty similar to my opening statement.
I think I'll just focus more on kind of the God aspect, though, of how you can take determinism.
Essentially, I'm going to just restate my argument.
God knows, you know, how the world will exist and what events will take place.
Regardless of time, events are going to happen in the way that he knows that they will happen.
And thus, you cannot act out of accordance with what God knows, right?
So it doesn't matter if we're talking about this in a circumstance of time or not.
If God says that blank thing is going to happen a certain way or blank thing is, it always will be.
So thus, if God says, you will pick up this cup, you're going to pick it up, right?
That's going to happen.
So that was, therefore, this concludes that like God knowing every action that we're going to take and every thought that we're going to have or every thought that we do have, regardless of like the fact that he is outside of time, we cannot do anything that he does not know.
And thus, there are some said actions that we will take throughout life that he has always known are going to exist that way.
And thus we cannot act differently.
There's just this feeling or illusion of choice.
That's always been my argument.
I think that as well, if I want to get back, I want to get back into this neuroscience idea.
Patrick was trying to make some type of claim that neuroscientists have seen that sometimes people act differently to like biologically the way that we study it in the brain.
Well, yeah, like we're always going to find the reason for that differentiation and action, like differentiating from their biology to be something that exists in like the social realm or the environmental realm.
Like some social stimuli causes people to act differently than we might assume they will based on their biology or their brain chemistry.
So yeah, it's either that any event is caused or uncaused.
If it's caused, we'll ask, first of all, if it's uncaused, it'll be random.
So you don't have control over it.
If an event is caused, we ask why.
And when you continue to ask why, why you prefer waffles over toast, it's going to result in something like because my mom made them for me or because my taste was just in a way where it releases more dopamine in my brain.
There's always some explanation and it just resides outside of this idea of the I.
So that's been my argument.
Yeah.
All right, go ahead.
As I was presenting in the opening argument is seven points logically refute determinism.
The first one being moral responsibility argument.
So if determinism is true, no one can be held morally responsible because they were determined to do so based on nature and nurture, as we've already talked about.
And she's conceded that she's a moral subjectivist.
So therefore, she really can't make universal moral claims or ethical claims about people, things, historical events.
She can use rhetoric.
She can state her preference, which she stated multiple times today, but that does not justify and that is not a strong argument within a formal debate to actually present why something is true or false.
Second one is that if determinism is true, then all knowledge are beliefs, including the belief in determinism.
And if that's the case, then determinism is not founded on rational inquiry or rational deliberation and therefore itself cannot be rationally justified.
So therefore, point number two, if determinism is true, we can't have objective knowledge.
Point number three is that no determinist actually operates in the world as if they're a determinist.
Determinism would violate the idea of voting.
Again, I'm not the biggest advocate of democracy myself, but democracy is premised upon the idea of free will and that you can make delineations between things and choose.
But she would argue that you're really just conditioned to choose whoever your political person that you want to support is.
Fourth argument is that from the counterfactual possibility is that all decisions presuppose modal freedom.
And so even though she has a sort of semi-compatibilist, she says she's a determinist, but then she appeals to compatibilism in regards to her ability to choose and be here today, this still insinuates what's called modal freedom.
And so it's still, even within a compatibilist framework, we have to evaluate alternative possibilities.
And this is true within legal structures.
So like our entire legal institution is built upon that there could be something or it could have been the opposite.
In her worldview, there is no opposite because everything was determined.
Number five, the neuroscience misinterpretation argument regarding Benjamin Labette.
And this research has kind of been followed up more recently with John Dylan Haynes arguing again that these resting potentials demonstrate that the brain is deterministic and that things fire before every action we do.
And that's been disproven.
Again, I recommend everybody to go up look a paper.
It's from 2012 by David Scherger.
It's called RP as Neural Noise and highlights that now the kind of operating standard within neuroscience is that these neuronal firings before actions are actually just neural noise and they're not deterministic structures in regards to behavior.
Number six, creativity and novelty argument.
So again, you can't have art, poetry, invention, all these things, moral heroism.
So again, I'm surprised she didn't bring up more arguments regarding biology or evolution and evolutionary constraints in regards to our biology.
But, you know, art, poetry, moral heroism, people who actually self-sacrifice themselves and kill themselves.
This is a defiance against, again, this idea of like survival of the fittest and that we do everything for personal survival.
And then number six or number seven is the problem of infinite regress.
And I think this is a pretty strong logical argument against determinism is that there has to be an unmoved mover.
I mean, this was Aristotle figured this stuff out in classical Greek philosophy.
And so determinism relies on an infinite causal chain.
Well, where does the causal chain begin?
It typically begins with the Big Bang.
That's why I brought up cosmology, which she wasn't really wanting to get into.
And so free will allows for an uncaused cause within a person.
Again, being made in the image of God, the Imago Dei, Genesis 126, allows me to be my own uncaused cause within the world through the utilization of my free will.
And as I said in the opening statement, you know, the 20th century, this is why determinism has really kind of fallen to the wayside, is because quantum mechanics, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, has demonstrated that Laplacian determinism, again, Laplace's demon, which is a thought experiment, that's not how the universe actually works.
And this is more consistent with a theological worldview because I believe in miracles, right?
So I don't believe in a deterministic system.
I'm not a deist either.
So God's intervention into the world is a real occurring fact.
And I would appeal also to number two, chaos theory, which also mathematically demonstrates the same thing, that we live in an undetermined or indeterminate world.
And that is consistent with my worldview as God created creation and that miracles and his agency can actually still affect the world while me being made in the image of God can still have free will.
Kurt Girdle's incompleteness theory, again, trying to prove determinism based on determinism is impossible.
This is kind of what this general problem is why logical positivism failed in the early 20th century.
And so the cognitive revolution as well, Skinnerian behaviorism was overthrown in the 50s and 60s.
And this was done by, again, linguistic work.
I'm not the biggest Noam Chomsky fan, but Chomsky's work regarding linguistics and language acquisition shows, again, that we do have human agency and human free will and that these aren't deterministic mechanisms.
The philosophy of mind, as I said, typically the majority of the field adopts an emergentism, the idea that we actually have a mind.
Now, their emergentism argues that the collective firing of neurons is so complex that we have an emergent property, right?
So, water molecules, you can have a molecule of H2O, but until you have multiple molecules, you don't have what's called wetness.
That's an emergent property.
And so, I'm not an emergentist.
I don't believe in emergentism.
As I said earlier, I'm more of a hyalomorphic in the Aristotelian tradition and the Christian tradition.
But emergentism is kind of the dominant stance within philosophy of mind right now.
And persons from that perspective are not reducible to just physical components.
Human agency is not irreducible.
We actually have agency.
And this is, again, even part of the emergentist school within philosophy of mind.
And then self-retro-referential collapse.
This is the logical argument.
Again, she argued that logic is not a way to prove something, which is just ridiculous.
I mean, nobody believes that.
That's ridiculous.
Well, earlier, you're claiming that I wasn't proving something, and I said I'm using the laws of logic to show that the opposite of what I'm saying demonstrates that there cannot be universal knowledge, there cannot be objective truth, and there cannot be moral responsibility.
And so, one cannot rationally affirm determinism.
It just and even determinists will agree with this.
Since belief in determinism is due to prior states, then it too is a non-rational belief.
And then she agreed that that's all it is.
It's a preference, it's an assumption on her part due to nature and nurture.
And so, it's just a subjective opinion.
That's all she really came here with.
And therefore, her goal is to persuade you through hopefully your innate biology clings on to something she said through these deterministic mechanisms of cause, causation, and that you then will adopt and parrot her worldview, and maybe it'll become more popular.
But she can't make a claim that it's objectively true or it's superior to mine because she doesn't have a basis.
Determinism undercuts the necessary categories that it depends upon for objective truth claims and moral responsibility claims.
So, from that perspective, essentially, determinism can't be true because we're coming here to have a debate, assuming that we're coming to a truer answer, a truer response to the things that occurred today.
In her worldview, that's not possible.
So, I feel very confident that the people watching and hopefully people looking into these questions, and maybe you're wrestling with concepts of determinism and free will.
These are things that people move through in their own personal journeys towards fuller understanding, philosophical inquiry, theological inquiry, and that essentially they're going to realize that I do believe that things are true.
I do believe that people have moral responsibility.
And if that's not the case, then everything is haphazard and it's full of chaos.
And as I said, mathematics and physics, mathematical logic has determined that we do not even exist in a deterministic universe.
That mechanism that really developed in the 18th and 19th century is no longer in favor.
So, that's pretty much summarizes my argument.
All right.
We have a couple chats here.
We have, by the way, guys, we've lowered the TTS.
We're going to do TTS here at the tail end of the show.
$69 TTS, but we do have our favorite trucker here who sent in a soup chat.
Hall along, Nate.
Thank you for the soup chat, man.
God doesn't determine your choices.
He can see the infinite outcomes of your choices from Nate.
Thank you, man.
Appreciate it.
Are you in the middle of a rout right now?
Thank you, man.
Appreciate the soup chat.
All right.
Let me let the chats come through.
We have Chaw.
One moment.
One moment, guys.
By the way, guys, like the video if you enjoyed the stream.
We have Chaw here.
Chaw XD donated $69.
Thank you.
If Reddit atheism and moral subjectivism was a person, she'd be predetermined to go on whatever, incoherently spurged and make category errors.
I'm doing it.
Also, I didn't choose to send this.
Any response there to Chaw?
I don't know if there's anything intelligible to respond to that with, but yeah.
Okay, we have Charlie Kirk DP USA donated $69.
Zestizina, do you think black people can be racist towards white people?
Do you think women can be sexist towards men?
Why do you wear a cross?
There's quite a few there.
Okay.
Go for it.
So yeah, there's just going to be like kind of like semantic questions.
If you believe that like sexism is kind of like something that entails like a power structure, then no, women would not be like able to be sexist to men.
If you believe that it's just like having like a distaste for men, then yeah, like a woman could be sexist, vice versa for the race question.
And then also in regards to like sociology, yeah, it's just like it's going to be like definitional in how we define these things.
So yeah.
Well, what about your own definition definition of racism and sexism?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I think that in sociology, it's most meaningful to look at just like what's meaningful about racism is like the empower that it entailed.
And thus when we look at like racism as a system that has like outputs and inputs, et cetera, we're going to like see it as like the dominant race kind of just like perpetuating this system of racial hierarchy.
And in this racial hierarchy that we've seen throughout history, it's been white people holding this power dynamic, being at the top of it, etc.
So what about South Africa?
That would be flipped, right?
So white people are the minority.
Is there structural racism against the white people in South Africa?
Actually, no.
So right in South Africa, even though they were the minority, like in regards to numbers-wise, it was still colonized by white people and taken over by white people for them to have black people being part of the working class for them to enjoy.
So it wouldn't be some type of like systemic race.
But you just said it was the majority versus the minority.
Yeah, so majority and holding power, power-entailed structure.
But do they white people don't hold the majority of power now?
I don't know too much about like South African politics right now, but even in general, unless you're going to see like some type of like systemically racist policies happening in South Africa, which don't see any evidence for, yeah, it's just like a, it's another community, just like many in Africa and other communities that was exploitated or sorry, yeah, exploited by European, yeah, European colonizers.
And can I ask you a question about voting?
I'm really genuinely curious in your worldview, like are you in favor of democracy?
Like what kind of political or are you Marxist?
Like what kind of political orientation?
And then separately, what are your thoughts On, like, can you vote?
Like, in your determinist framework, do you have agency to vote?
Yeah, so again, I don't, I think you're just one, you're making a lot of presuppositions in the question of the voting, but regardless, yeah, I really like Marx.
I don't give myself like too much of a label in regards to like what kind of like leftist I am, but I would say leftism.
And then also, in regards to voting, it's going to be the same.
I'm not positing any like structure.
I'm defining, describing reality as how it is.
So, when we look at just like people and how they vote, if they're exposed to more ideas that say, hey, we don't like this minority group of people, they're going to vote negatively.
We still give people the right to vote, but what we should be doing in society, I would say, is kind of looking at the stimuli that are around people and what are causing them to think certain things and having some basis of like we want equality, we want justice, we want equality, opportunity.
We should kind of promote such things and promote such education that explains how we can get there and people would vote accordingly.
So it's just kind of about, again, like, I mean, all of like what I would want for voting is going to entail what system I would like us to live in, what values I have.
Again, it's going to be equality of opportunity, well-being of humans.
So again, I don't see the problem.
And he was also asking, why do you wear a cross?
I guess he's asking if you're a Christian or yeah, I like a cross.
I think it just looks cute.
And then I'm agnostic.
So.
Okay.
We have, hold on, we have Chef Dill Pickles.
Thank you, ma'am.
Chef Dill Pickles donated $69.
Zeem, thank you for admitting that you were racist against white people.
What a disgusting bigot.
Didn't I say I loved Kelly Clarkson?
I don't know what that means.
Well, even insinuating that's white culture is kind of disingenuous.
Well, I'm not saying it's racist, but it's certainly disingenuous when you look at the history of European cultures, Byzantium, Western civilization, all these different things.
Why did I say that that was only all that?
I didn't necessarily know that it was just ingenuous.
Because to choose that when somebody's asking about white culture is just, I mean, it just seems disingenuous.
It's kind of mocking it.
I didn't know it was mocking.
I actually like Kelly Clarkson.
Okay.
Maybe.
Okay.
That's just the way that I took it.
Yeah.
Okay, go ahead.
It's kind of sensitive, isn't it?
Oh, that's sensitive.
Yeah, it is disingenuous to equate white culture with Kelly Clarkson.
I mean, it's kind of low IQ and love to hear her.
How is Kelly Clarkson low IQ?
That's white culture.
Kelly Clarkson is white culture.
Is it not?
She's a white person that plays music, but culture, no, she is not a cultural phenomenon in regards to culture and like capital C culture.
Like Western civilization, culture, Christian culture, Western culture.
What makes culture?
American culture.
What makes culture culture?
Are you the arbiter of what culture is?
Well, usually, again, religion, politics, again, all these different presuppositional frameworks are going to define what culture is.
And somebody studying sociology, which should be true.
Culture has to do with music.
Yes, it is.
I'll inform you then.
Yes, it does.
Music.
And it has to do with a sacred thing.
The kind of things that you like, practices, etc.
So Kelly Clarkson, being like a white artist in America, American culture is something that's kind of tricky to define because it's really influenced by a lot of minority communities.
But especially in America, someone who a lot of white people in America would really enjoy.
I would say that, yeah, she is like related to like white culture and the things that people in this country, white people in this country, enjoy.
But so do other people.
But yeah.
All right.
We have Retro.
Thank you, ma'am.
Retro donated $69.
Zeem, you know that DPH showed up to the debate today.
So did he have a choice?
No, and you didn't have the choice to make that comment either.
Wow.
Determinism.
Okay.
Pretty hard logic there, guys.
Hard to defeat that.
I'm just going to read these instead of doing them as TTS's.
thank you retro for the message still pickles donated $69 Zima can you please delineate good from bad actions why aren't they simply actions What are morals?
Yeah, so again, like the position I'm taking is that moral claims are not truth apt, and thus there's not any absolutely, like fundamentally, like unless you can again give some, like you couldn't give some evidence for it because moral claims would just be, that are objective, would just be true, evidently.
Like they would just be true.
And clearly, I don't think that we've like found that to be the case.
So instead, I would say that like there are things that we call good and bad, but they're based on like a conception of it or like a feeling towards it.
So something being good and bad is one, when someone's talking about something, it's going to be different compared to when someone's talking about another thing.
Or the types of people that are talking about morality are going to be having different takes on what's good and bad.
Someone like Patrick would probably have like many different ideas of what is good and he would totally believe that it's totally good.
And I would have different beliefs on what is totally good and totally bad.
Obviously, he says that there is some objective morality, yet we don't agree that that is evidently true.
There's a problem there.
So again, yeah, good is going to be something that is like contextual.
All right.
We have Justin Henley.
Justin, thank you very much for your message.
Xena, you're internally critiquing Christianity.
God is omnipotent, but you claim he cannot create free will.
Your critique fails logic.
Counter, if no objective truth exists, is logic.
Dot dot dot.
Okay.
So first of all, the internal critique was saying that free will cannot exist and that it's incoherent that God says that free will exists and also says that he knows all things and how they will exist and how they will be and there is some set future that that is going to exist.
So that was the critique was that saying that free will can exist in that type of framework is a contradiction.
There's a contradiction in those beliefs.
And then I can't remember the last thing that was said.
He was saying, he said God is omnipotent, but you claim he cannot create free will.
Your critique fails logic.
Counter, if no objective truth exists, is logic.
And that was perhaps he ran out of characters.
I guess I'll just say it's probably like alluding to like how logic works.
Yeah, again, once again, all scientists, a lot of them are not Christian, a lot of them don't believe in objective morality.
And so do I think the rest of us as well agree that there is some reality, right?
And once we agree that there is some reality that exists outside of ourselves, we then can pattern it.
We can then test it.
We can look for causes, etc.
And kind of that's what happens.
And then we can create structures and frameworks and we can dissect things through logic.
Like logic is a system of governing and making claims and et cetera to move people's credences, et cetera.
And we can do that once we accept basic claims like we all exist, reality exists, etc.
So yeah, again, no problem there.
This has been a fact of philosophy and science for years.
All right, we have Chef Dil Pickles thinking in.
Would you believe me if I said I wasn't racist simply because I like Lil Wayne's music?
I don't even know what to say about that one.
Lil Wayne is good, though.
Okay.
A couple quick messages here at the end, guys.
If you enjoyed the stream, hit the like video, please.
Also, if you guys are watching over there on Twitch or you're just watching on YouTube, if you can open up another tab, go to twitch.tv slash whatever.
Drop us a follow and a Prime sub if you have one.
If you have Amazon Prime, you can link it to your Twitch.
It's a quick, freezy way to support the show.
Also, we have a really fantastic community, discord.gg slash whatever.
We post our stream schedule so you can get advanced notice of when we're kind of doing a debate or something else.
You can also buy some merch, shop.whatever.com.
And yeah, guys, thank you guys for tuning in.
Like the video, please.
Let me just double check.
Make sure.
Let's see if we have any other chats coming in.
Doesn't look like it.
Okay.
Let me see if there's anything else we needed to go over.
One sec, guys.
Patrick is going to be joining us tomorrow for our dating talk panel.
Looking forward.
It's going to be live at 5 p.m. Pacific.
We have a really fantastic panel lined up for you guys.
So be sure to tune in 5 p.m. Pacific tomorrow, Sunday.
Dating talk panel.
Got some interesting guests for that.
And let me see if there's anything else.
I do want to thank both of you very much for joining me today for the debate.
It was great to have both of you.
Very interesting debate.
And yeah, thank you guys so much.
And let me just double check.
Don't want to screw anybody over.
If anybody sent in a last-minute message, let's see here.
No, we are all good.
Okay, cool, cool.
Let me just check.
All right, guys.
Well, in the chat, 07's in the chat, please.
Oh, did you have?
Oh, no, no.
Okay, I thought you were gesturing like one more thing.
Okay.
In the chat, guys, 07s in the chat.
Like the video on your way out, please.
07s in the chat.
And guys, tune in tomorrow.
5 p.m. Pacific dating talk.
Fantastic panel.
Patrick's going to be there.
▲
Export Selection