DEBATE: Can We Have Ethics without God Jay Dyer Vs Jack Sezer - Modern-Day Debate

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Jay'sAnalysis – "DEBATE: Can We Have Ethics without God? Jay Dyer Vs Jack Sezer" (Modern-Day Debate, July 12, 2026)

Episode Overview

This episode features a robust philosophical debate between Jay Dyer, an Orthodox Christian apologist and cultural commentator, and Jack Sezer, a first-time debater and philosophy student, moderated by Mike of Modern-Day Debate. The central question: Can we have ethics without God? The conversation traverses meta-ethical foundations, historical context, practical examples, religious traditions, and the viability of secular versus theistic moral realism.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Opening Statements

Jack Sezer (For Secular Normative Ethics) [02:51]

• Main Argument: Objective normative ethics can exist independently of God or gods.
• Personal Journey: Converted to Christianity at 18, attracted by the idea of objective morality—a reaction against moral relativism.
• Critical Philosophical Influences: Deeply influenced by Derek Parfit, contractarianism, Kantian deontology, and reasons fundamentalism.
  • Quote: “I'll be attempting to defend a normative account of ethics that does not presuppose or require a moral lawgiver.” (07:13)
• Ethical Foundation: Rationality itself is the basis for objective morality; the concept of "reasons," irreducibly normative and accessible to rational agents, underpins secular morality.
• Critique of Religious Ethics: Religion has monopolized objective ethics and has demonstrated repeated moral failings and inconsistencies.
• Approach to the Debate: Sees all worldviews bottoming out in some circularity or brute fact, including theistic systems; emphasizes the importance of critically examining underlying presuppositions.

Jay Dyer (For Theistic/Christian Ethics) [11:50]

• Main Argument: A coherent, objective, and universal ethic requires the existence of a particular (personal) God as its metaphysical foundation.
  • Quote: “Christianity has as its ethical framework the highest good, namely the personal God of Christianity himself…a coherent worldview to ground our ethical claims and beliefs.” (13:22)
• Meta-Ethical Critique: Secular systems ultimately reduce to individual relativism or social constructivism; they lack genuine ontological universals and cannot escape infinite regress or skepticism.
• Positive Case for Christian Theism:
  • God constitutes the transcendent, unchanging highest good, grounding not only ethics but human dignity, teleology, and narrative purpose.
  • Christianity offers a historical record of positive civilizational change.
  • Only orthodox theological frameworks evade the Euthyphro dilemma via the distinction between uncreated and created goods.

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2. Key Philosophical Exchanges

A. Universalizability, Reason, and Ontology [24:07–47:34]

• Jack: Asserts that “reason is a universal phenomenon, not merely reducible to the individual mind.”
• Jay: Counters with the Kantian challenge: one cannot know, justify, or access the inner states/minds of others, so secular universalizability cannot be justified.
  • Quote: “You keep asserting that it's universal, that it's universalizable... limited, finite observations... how do we get to a universal ontological metaphysical principle?” (37:26)
• Jack: Draws analogy to mathematics—numbers do not exist in the physical sense but are universally true; likens the universality of mathematics to moral truths.
• Jay: Presses for internal justification—in what sense, metaphysically, does reason or these moral truths “exist” in a secular schema?

B. Motivational Force and Normativity [41:32–43:48]

• Jack: Distinguishes between subjective motivating reasons and normative reasons (universal, irreducible).
• Jay: Challenges whether subjective experiences can genuinely ground normativity—if “motivational force” is subjective, how can it be normative or universal?
• Jack: Offers criteria—universality, rational non-rejectability, optimific principles—but admits limits to certainty.

C. Is-Ought Gap, Ethical Circularity, and Grounding [49:05–66:18]

• Both acknowledge all systems “bottom out” in brute assumptions or a degree of circularity (e.g., “reasons are normative because reasons are normative” vs. “God grounds the good because God is the good”).
• Jay: Argues his theistic system provides a more coherent meta-ethical grounding (the transcendental argument); without God, one cannot ground logic, math, universals, or the very possibility of knowledge or normativity.
• Jack: Parallels the charge, claiming that in practice, the theist is “shoving God into the picture to make sense of a model you’re already using.” (59:57)

D. Historical and Societal Impact [17:56, 84:40]

• Jay: Christianity as the source for transformative ethics historically (slavery, human dignity, social responsibility) and narrative cohesion in civilization.
• Jack: Cites Christianity’s internal divisions and ethical failures as evidence it has lost its right to moral monopoly, while noting convergence and progress in secular ethics.

E. Practical Ethics Debate [75:08–81:34]

• Jack: Presses for a non-harm-based universal ethic uniquely found in Christianity.
• Jay: Cites virtue ethics and the plurality of goods (e.g., choice to marry vs. monasticism) as an alternative to strict harm/benefit calculus.
• Both: Discuss struggles of act vs. rule consequentialism, Kantian dilemmas, and the problems of integrating self-interest, virtue, and impartial moral demands.

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3. Notable Quotes & Engaging Moments

• Jay Dyer (on universalizing reason):

  “None of these tell me why I ought to believe that that universally is the case because these are all specific finite instances.” (36:53)

• Jack Sezer (on the “bottoming out” problem):

  “If we want, we can sit here and look for the most prior fact, like who can go back further before it comes down to a brute assumption or a circular argument?...All positions…eventually bottom out in a circular axiom. Presuppositionalists…do not escape this fact either.” (47:34)

• Jay Dyer (on metaphysics):

  “Once you deny metaphysics...you're then stuck in a box of not really being able to talk about the good...You might say there is some good, but it's only the individual sort of relativistic, subjectivist, or perhaps society created, social construct kind of ethic.” (18:08)

• Jack (on motivation and universality):

  “Normative reasons are giving us motivational force. These things are things that you experience and I experience...” (45:41)

• Jay (critiquing the secular approach):

  “Just because we've been using something or doing something has nothing to do with whether that's a good reason to believe that it has some kind of ontological status.” (92:54)

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4. Q&A and Rapid Exchanges: Societal Issues and Hot Topics [112:10–194:47]

Old Testament Morality & Progressive Ethics

• Audience: How can Christian ethics account for Old Testament violence and slavery?
• Jay: Defends via historical context, progressive revelation, and fulfillment in Christ; temporary “standing commands.”
• Jack: Notes “moral progress” required rejecting much of OT ethic; modern Protestantism often adopts enlightenment values, evidence that secular morality is progressing.

Harm Reduction, Feminism, and Political Commitments

• Jack: Not a strict harm-based moralist but sees the reduction of harm/well-being as defensible, though not ultimate. Warns of regressive trends in Christian communities (anti-feminist, patriarchal).
• Jay: Challenges coherence of feminism as a moral duty within Jack’s framework.

Objective Secular Ethic and Incest Example

• Audience: What does secular ethics say about consensual incest?
• Jack: Applies rule consequentialism; social/moral rules like “no incest” maintain greater social coherence and wellbeing, even if intuition is not definitive.

Abortion & Beginning of Moral Status

• Jack: Argues for subjective conscious experience as the marker for moral consideration, not mere biological life.
• Jay: Presses logical implications and challenges the potential arbitrariness.

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5. Meta-Ethical Stakes and Paradigm Comparison

• Jay: The contest is not merely about answering "what is right or wrong?", but about which paradigm can justify claims to objective ethical fact.
• Jack: Emphasizes practical observation—cooperation, convergence, social progress—as evidence that secular, reason-oriented ethics are viable. Accepts some pragmatic limitations (“never 100% certainty”).
• Both: Acknowledge that the deepest roots may be ultimately arbitrary (theistic “God is the good” vs. rationalist “reason just is”), shifting the debate to coherence, explanatory power, and internal consistency rather than empirical proof.

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Important Timestamps

• 02:51 – Jack’s opening statement.
• 11:50 – Jay’s opening statement.
• 24:07 – Open dialogue; debate over reason, universality, and the mind.
• 37:26 – Jay’s critique of moving from particular observations to universal claims.
• 49:05 – Discussion of circularity, brute assumptions, and Popper.
• 66:27 – Switch to practical ethical content; virtue ethics vs. consequentialism.
• 84:40 – Question of Christian ethics’ monopoly and secular progress.
• 112:10 – Audience Q&A begins (wide-ranging: OT ethics, circumcision, feminism, abortion, incest, epistemology).
• 175:58 – Debate over bottoming out, foundational justification, and epistemology.
• 183:10 – Views on nihilism and philosophical pessimism.
• 184:00 – Discussion of the disparity between Old Testament and modern “real” ethics.

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Summary of Debate Tone and Noteworthy Moments

• Respectful and Rigorous: Despite sharp critique and philosophical stakes, both debaters maintained a friendly, often humorous tone. The debate avoided ad hominems and focused on the ideas, even as Jack, a first-time debater, held his own against Dyer's experience.
• Community Engagement: Engaged Q&A with the YouTube chat, including rapid-fire responses to both trivial and deeply philosophical queries.
• Notable Running Jokes: "Bottoming out" circularity became Jack’s catchphrase. Frequent tongue-in-cheek banter about fedoras, marriage, and “bottoming out” in the chat was a recurring source of levity.
• Meta-reflection: Both speakers were self-aware of the limitations inherent in philosophical debate on ultimate foundations, repeatedly returning to the question of which “brute fact” or paradigm is preferable, not ultimately provable.

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Conclusion: Takeaways for Listeners

• The debate is a survey of contemporary meta-ethical questions: Do secular accounts of reason, rational consensus, and normativity suffice to ground objectivity, or does only a transcendent, personal God provide a legitimate foundation?
• While neither side offers deductive “proof,” both make a case for the explanatory power and coherence of their paradigm. Theists are challenged to explain scriptural atrocities in light of evolving morals; secularists are challenged to justify why their rules ought to bind all rational agents.
• If you seek to understand the philosophical landscape of debates over moral objectivity, this is a rigorous and accessible entry point—enriched with both historical context and live, contemporary relevance.

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For further learning:

• Derek Parfit’s On What Matters (secular moral realism)
• Immanuel Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals
• Jay Dyer on presuppositional apologetics and the "transcendental argument for God"
• Debates on Euthyphro dilemma, is-ought problem (David Hume), and virtue ethics (Aristotle).

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End of Summary

Transcript

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[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

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[Mike (Moderator)]

guys, welcome back to modern day Debates. I'm your host Mike. Tonight we have a really fun one to philosophy interested individuals and obviously you guys know Jay's really into it on a lot of different levels and we're kind of doing a more religious oriented topic. It's going to get philosophical, it's going to get all sorts of interesting. I do want to remind everybody we will have Mr. J here at debatecon both for the pregame and I believe another debate or two after. So that should be fun. Get your tickets if you haven't yet. And if you'd like to debate in live in Texas or Florida, you can join that IRL group or you could even right here, you could even debate jay himself on July 27th. So reach out to us, email us and we'll see if you're a good fit. But I do want to get over to the topic tonight which is going to be can we have ethics without God? I believe this is going to be the same format as usual. 5, 10 minute opening, 60 minute open dialogues and then we're going to do some five minute closing. So if you go a minute or two over that, that's fine. Then we'll get into the audience's favorite part which is the Q A. So that's going to be all super chats guys. You know it's going to be popping. Very fun. Get your questions in. I'll start the timer here for whoever is opening I believe is with this statement. I guess Jack, would you have an affirmative on this? That you can have ethics?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Yes.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Okay.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

So, yeah, my claim is going to be that we can have objective ethics without God.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Cool.

[Mike (Moderator)]

We'll let you go first, then I'll start a 10 minute timer the moment you start talking. And whenever you're ready.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

All right.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Hello. Today I'll be arguing for and attempting to defend the notion that we can have normative ethics without God or gods. I believe that there. If there is no objective morality, then life has ultimately no meaning. Firstly, I would like to admit that this is my first debate ever. And although I'm a little bit nervous, I will not allow this to serve as an excuse for any mistakes or shortcomings I might display tonight. A brief little story. I converted to Christianity when I was 18 years old. Although many things drew me to faith, one thing in particular was very enamoring. The idea of there being an objective right and wrong. I felt morally impoverished at the time and was greatly disturbed by notions of relativism. Christianity and its ethics provided an antidote. The standard Protestant Baptist Christianity that I was introduced to prided me on the sense that ethics cannot under any circumstances exist without God. I'm embarrassed to say I was a huge fan of the apologetic Frank Turek. I memorized common apologetic talking points such as a moral law implies a moral law giver. Moral epistemology is not the same as moral ontology. An example of that might be someone saying we might all agree that being raped in the face is bad, but why is it bad? And of course the other slogan that atheism or agnosticism is inherently relativistic. I believe this might be Jay's position tonight. The of course, if the position is that God gave us rationality and that's where objective morality is, my argument stands because I can just Occam's razor away the God and argue that as long as we have rationality, regardless of where it came from, we still have objective morality. After getting my undergrad and Christian studies and getting my Master's in Biblical and Theological Studies, I began to realize that God was not providing the adequate answers to or the adequate moral answers to humanity's most pressing issues. Of course, those who claim to know God's objective moral code can often be quite morally repugnant. Christian Maga is a good example of this. Naturally, I can separate modern American Christianity from the claims made in the Bible. Doug Wilson Defending slavery does not mean that Jesus did not rise from the dead. But I'm not here to argue over God's existence. In fact, the thumbnail for this debate might be a bit misleading. I have not labeled myself an agnostic nor an atheist. I am happy to answer any questions about religion, but the debate over morality is my primary concern. I am hoping to display that normative ethics can exist prior to or without God. Many times when this debate is held, it happens to be that the secularist always defends himself from a seeming lack of moral ontology. The common harm based morality, for example, that by Walter Armstrong or Sam Harris, relies on moral epistemology and takes it for granted that harm harm is assumed to be wrong. To summarize saying but rape hurts and we don't like being hurt will probably not satisfy Jay in this debate. Despite me believing that, as Derek Parfitt did, that objective morality exists in a non ontological sense or immaterial sense, its demands are still very much real on us. I hope to do something a little different tonight. Though not wholly original, I'll be attempting to defend a normative account of ethics that does not presuppose or require a moral lawgiver. The last page of Derek Parfit's Reasons and Perfect Reasons and Persons says this There could clearly be higher achievements in the struggle for a holy, just worldwide community, and there could be higher achievements in all the arts and sciences, but the progress could be the greatest in what is now the least advanced of these arts and sciences. This, I've claimed, is non religious ethics. Belief in God or in many gods prevented the free development of moral reasoning. Disbelief in God, openly admitted by a majority, is a very recent event, not yet completed. Because this event is so recent, non religious ethics is at a very early stage. We cannot yet predict whether, as in mathematics, we will all reach agreement. Since we cannot know how ethics will develop, it is not irrational to have high hopes. Derek Parfit is the greatest philosopher to ever live, and he is the lodestar of all my philosophical endeavors. Of course I have criticisms for him, but these are all dwarfed by my gratefulness for him. I have read cover to cover all of his writings and all the writings about him with the exception of one, of course. As Kant notes in the beginning of the Critique of Pure Reason, we should not measure books by their length, but rather their difficulty to comprehend. In that sense, I barely scratched the surface of Parfit's moral model. You ain't heard about Moto Casino?

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

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[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I will argue that contractualism, Kantian deontology and consequentialism or utilitarianism all converge at the same point. This is roughly Parvat's argument, but he died before engaging in the debate on religious grounds. I am also a reasons fundamentalist or a member of the relatively new philosophy known as reasons primitivism. Sorry. Contractualism is the idea that all rational agents will agree on the same laws if they all knew the relevant moral facts. Kantian deontology is summarized in Kant's categorical imperative act only according to the maxim whereby you can at the same time will that should be a universal law. And consequentialism, often lumped in with utilitarianism, aims for the most optimistic consequences or the consequences where things go best. I'll be quick here. My offensive take on religious based ethics that is not concerned with targeting the issues of fundamental ontology is that religion has had a monopoly on objective ethics for far too long. Not only is this monopoly based on false assumptions, religious based morality has forfeited its right to the monopoly by repeatedly demonstrating its inadequacy and sheer incompetence at getting what is most optimistic for people. On my account, an action is wrong when it is disallowed by optimific principles that are uniquely universally willable and not reasonably rejectable.

[Mike (Moderator)]

You got five minutes left.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Cool. Karl Popper's the Open Society and Its Enemies argues that all non empirical arguments bottom out in a contradiction or circularity. He is not wrong. This is why we have a normative moral reason to be rational, because being self critically rational is more effective at discovering truths than religious dogma and or presuppositionalism. Without reason, the only avenues to settle disputes is violence and force. Observing religious people today makes me also think that they might silo themselves off and refuse to engage, though this isn't the case with Jay and many other good faith debaters. Thus, dogma is also a method at settling disputes. I had some anxieties on how this debate might go. I believe a debate that is fighting over who can have the most prior fact to Ground morality will be quite unsatisfying. Jay and I will both agree that the position harm is bad because it does not feel good, and not feeling good is bad is a bad argument. The religious ethicist loves to push back on these positions, rightfully so, by asking why is not feeling good bad? The religious ethicist does not get off the hook so quick here though, arguing with a religious person literally last week I'm speaking about you Drew Mills. He literally asked me why is being raped in the face bad? Something tells me that when ethics based debates get to this point, something fundamental has been lost. All positions in metaethics, metaphysics and reason itself eventually bottom out in a circular axiom. Presuppositionalists, if J happens to be one, do not escape this fact either. If the debate is destined to be trench warfare for the most prior fact, despite me believing that the moral law is inherently a priori, we will be dissatisfied. However, I am equipped for that debate if push comes to shove and I can speedrun it if we want, I'll skip over that speedrun honestly, for the sake of time. Anyways, though I am not willing to grant God's existence to Jay for the entire debate, I am willing to grant it at points to demonstrate that despite God's existence, the existence of rational animals, us with access to reason is sufficient for normative ethics. Euthyphro Kant and only a million other philosophers have pointed out that to call God good is to presuppose a moral standard. To evaluate God, one might argue that God provides that standard. Well then, congrats. You use God's standard to critique God. Of course the theist has the benefit of arguing for the atemporality of God and his features. But this would only make the metaphysics analogous to the Kantian position. From there I would still have the more prior fact, because before one can even contemplate God, one must be reasonable and able to cognitively tinker with concepts such as God's features. In whatever time I have left, I would like to propose that ironing out where our moral intuitions stem from is not always wasted time. Exploring content of our moral models might help the audience sift through which model reveals itself as to yield a more fruitful and flourishing life. Lastly, I did not memorize fouls. I did not memorize fallacy terms for this debate. I hope that it will be conducted in good faith and where I commit myself to a fallacy or something illogical, Jay can point it out, explain what the fallacy is, and see if I can do some repairs on the logic. Likewise, I will do the same for him. And that is my opening statement.

[Mike (Moderator)]

All right, thank you for that. I guess for the remainder of the debate, if you could refrain from using the word gotcha.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Yeah, gotcha.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Just being safe for tos. We don't want to get this video removed for any reason. Thank you guys like the video. We're going to get into Jay's opening now. Whenever you're ready, Jay.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Yeah, I want to thank Jack for joining us. I will argue that in order to have a consistent coherent ethical framework in terms of justification, in terms of grounding that in terms of a coherent worldview, one does need the existence of a specific type of God. We're not going to go into the Trinity tonight. I can argue separately that it's the trinitarian Christian conception of God. But I'm going to argue that for theism we need at least personal deity type of. We need a personal deity in terms of our. The theism to ground the type of ethic that we're looking for when we want to have what Christianity has as a virtue ethic. There are many other types of schools and theories of ethics, especially post enlightenment, post, you know, postmodern schools, whatnot, many different theories. But it's really ultimately a lot of men that are doing autonomous reasoning and we're going to talk about reason here in a minute to try to come up with a future ethic perhaps one day that could be objective. You notice in his opening statement he said a very faith based commitment when he says non religious ethics is very early in its stages, perhaps one day it can develop. So we noticed quite a bit of faith in future progress of humanity to perhaps one day develop something that's objective. And I would argue that that's not going to happen because all individual human beings that are relying on their own autonomous reasoning are necessarily going to be because they're finite, limited in their scope, and they're always going to be falling back into the relativist trap that my friend here is seemingly aware of. So I applaud him for wanting to avoid relativism, but I don't think that he's going to be able to escape that given the fact that as he argues from post Kantian and then into utilitarian schools of ethics, that these are all really anti metaphysical. And when you cancel out metaphysics, even though that's not our topic tonight, you, you cancel out a key concept in the history of philosophy that that relates to both to metaphysics and to ethics and that's the concept of the good. Christianity has as its ethical framework the highest good, namely the personal God of Christianity himself. So that God, especially God the Father here, is our highest good. He's not the only good. There are many goods. And I heard at one point what might perhaps be a version of the euthyphro dilemma, in the orthodox conception of God, there's not only God himself and then a higher standard that perhaps God must be judged by. In fact, there's many goods. There's created goods and there's uncreated goods. And so the unique metaphysics that orthodox Christianity posits isn't really susceptible to the euthyphro dilemma, which is based on a kind of specific Greek chain of being ontology. That's a separate issue. But I do want to talk about the highest good, because I think that in Christianity we have a notion of the highest good being God himself and also thus being unchanging. And so although we might not think that that necessarily proves God's existence, it at least shows that there's an ability to ground our moral claims in something transcendent and something higher that does touch on philosophy. So, for example, if God exists, then there is a basis for human dignity, there is a basis for the respecting of human life. There is a basis to say that it is objectively, morally wrong. Again, you might not agree with it, but there's, at least within that system, it's not internally inconsistent. And so I'm arguing that Christian ethics, together with the Christian notion of metaphysics and the good and the highest good, gives us a coherent system, not just to say that there is a highest good or that there are many goods and thus objective goods and standards, but also to give us value judgments by which we might say certain actions are not good, not virtuous, other actions are virtuous because they thus match up to this objective, beyond the physical, thus unchanging standard of the good, that good being not just impersonal, such as Plato's forms, but also personal. And thus we have a relationship to that highest good. It's not just an abstracted idea, it's not just a form. It's not just numbers or Pythagoreanism or something like that. It's actually a personal deity who also gives us intentionality and gives teleology to the universe. Now, I'm not saying the teleological argument. I don't think that's a very good argument. I'm just saying that within the Christian framework, within the Christian ethic and metaphysic, you have a basis not just for meaning, objective morals and ethics in the here and the now. You also have a basis for the idea that, that there is purpose and intentionality in our actions. And so we might think of the way that human beings throughout history have made sense of their world. They tell stories. Stories have beginning, middle and end structure to them almost universally, for the most part. And so Christianity having that religious story, narrative aspect to it is thus much more approachable and it's much more able to be understood by the masses, collectively speaking. And thus it's a greater good not just for the individual in terms of finding a highest good, it's also thus collectively good for society as a whole. We can see a lot of effects that Christianity has had on the history of Western civilization, whether it's Roman Christian society or Byzantine society, etc. There have been many advances, many positive aspects that help to put an end to certain aspects of abuse that occurred in the Roman Empire. Certain things like human chattel, slavery, et cetera. All of these things were in part aided by the prevalence of Christianity and Christian ethics. Those are just some examples historically that the masses related to because they could see in this story.

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[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

that they could unite themselves to with the person of Christ and his ethics and his message. This also relates to the state, though, because this is not a religion that only speaks to the private individual, but again also duties that the state has. Thus that the state cannot claim itself to be God or to override God. And so, for example, when Christianity permeates the Roman Empire, it begins to change the attitude that the average people have towards the Roman Emperor. He can no longer be called a God or a savior. So these are some historical examples of how Christianity changed, for example, the Roman Empire and brought a new way of understanding and a way of even doing commerce. The idea that you need to be honest in your economic dealings. A lot of the ethics that we get, for example, out of Proverbs, out of the church fathers, out of Christ's Beatitudes, et cetera, those began to permeate society and Thus we see that with Enlightenment ethics, although it might sound very highfalutin and philosophical, and a studied a lot of this when I was in college and graduate school, Enlightenment ethics are almost always kind of geared towards something like moral calculus with utilitarians, this idea that we could come together and through mathematics create pleasure points, and that if you can figure out the best way to have the highest number of pleasure points amongst the broadest number of people in society, well, that would constitute the good. But again, it's only a sort of a material based desire level of what the good is, and so there's no higher values to shoot for. So Christianity gives us a coherent worldview, not just with ethics, but also the connecting point of the good being both ethical and metaphysical. And once you deny metaphysics, as Enlightenment philosophy did, and as my friend here represents, you're then stuck in a box of not being able really to talk about the good. Or you might say that there is some good, but it's only the individual sort of relativistic, subjectivist, or perhaps society created, social construct kind of ethic. So in other words, we're going to need, for the normativity claims that he gave, gave earlier, and for the claims he made multiple times in his opening statement, claims about the universality. This is a universalizing principle. We can universalize this. Well, enlightened philosophy pretty much puts an end, I would argue, to the possibility of universal claims at all, because there really aren't any more universals. Enlightenment philosophy becomes dominated by empiricism and nominalism. And so when we've canceled out the possibility of metaphysics and thus universals, we then lose the possibility, not just of mathematics and the laws of logic being actual, invariant conceptual things that are real, they become human constructs. Mathematics ultimately ends up as a human construct. So it falls over into typically postmodernism, narrative construction. And from epistemology we get into ultimately psychology. Epistemology as a discipline oftentimes falls over into psychologism. And thus we lose any possibility of objective ethics and objectivism precisely because we've cut out metaphysics and the transcendent to begin with. And so the entire Enlightenment system becomes a bunch of false presuppositions that have no justification. So I'm going to argue that yes, we do need to presuppose the existence of God to have a justification for the preconditions of knowledge. And so if we have knowledge at all, those preconditions would thus be justified in the existence of the type of God that Christianity prefers that could then ground the, the preconditions of knowledge or ethics whatsoever. So yes, we do have normative ethics, and Christianity as a system makes perfect sense of those because it is a coherent worldview and thus it does have the ability to ground our ethical claims and beliefs, whereas atheistic materialism, although it might believe it has ethics, won't have a way to ground it. What'd you say?

[Mike (Moderator)]

30 seconds left.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Okay, so. And since there won't be an ability to ground those ethics, what is right action? What is virtue? What is vice? How ought we punish vices? Should we have the death penalty? Should we have abortion? All these kinds of questions will all ultimately in the enlightenment scheme be decided by technocrats, hedonistic calculus, individuals trying to come up with their own systems? It's really all going to be reduced to individual, finite, making it up on the spot. I'm not saying it's true because we have a tradition, but I'm saying that tradition, story, narrative, these all points us to the highest good beyond just the self.

[Mike (Moderator)]

All right, thank you. I was right on time, basically. Okay, so we're gonna get into the open dialogue now, guys. I appreciate both of you giving those intro statements and just want to remind the audience there's a bunch of you in the chat if you like the video. That helps us out a lot. We do have debatecon8 coming up. Jay will be there, Andrew Wilson will be there. We have a couple other big name debaters that are in the works as well as some that you've already heard of that are on there. We got destiny as well. This is going to be a three day event now it was two. So we'll have a pre, pre game debate with Jay and then the next day are the main two days and I believe Jay's going to be returning for those.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Kind of like debating Jake.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Yeah, for, for the second, for the second main event. Yeah. So yeah, this is the WWE of debates, guys. You're going to want to be there. If you haven't got a ticket, I highly recommend it. If you have the top tier VIP pass, you get automatically to come to the, the pre game event. So just keep that in mind and then if you can't make it, become a member on the channel, you'll be able to stream all the, all the live streams that we do that day. That'll help you out a lot if you just can't travel and you still want to watch them. So without further ado, we're going to start the hour timer and you guys will Be able to go back and forth here. All I ask is that you be respectful, try not to talk over each other too much or the audience can't hear you. And then, yeah, we'll see how deep we can get. And then we'll go into closing statements when that hour is up. So at any time you can appeal to me if you, if you feel like something's not being fair, and I'll try to sort it out, keep you guys back on topic. But I think you guys can, can do this. So here we go.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Yeah, Jack, you can go first if you want to ask questions. And then.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Yeah, I guess, I guess first I would just want us to clarify some terms. So I want to start off by saying I agree with you. Materialism and, you know, radical empiricism bottom out in relativism. I agree with that. I'm not a materialist. I'm a non. I'm a non naturalist cognitivist. And by that I just mean that there are irreducibly normative truths. These truths can be known. And basically I take the position that a lot of other philosophers have been taken as recently, which is we don't need materialism to explain our morality. Just like two plus two, just like numbers are not natural phenomenon, I can't point to them in the world yet. Two plus two will always be four. I believe normative ethical truths are just the same. I want to clarify. I guess I just want to make sure our terms are accurate. What do you mean when you say you're a presuppositionalist? So are you saying that we have to posit God even though it's okay that that's a circular position to then be able to access the knowledge of ethics?

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

No, I don't think that a person has to know the transcendental argument or presuppositional lines of thinking to access divine revelation or ethics. In the Christian framework, all human beings kind of have some degree of ethical norms written on their heart because we're made the image of God. So we have a basic conscience idea that you cannot know about. The transcendental argument still have a basic idea of right and wrong from your conscience.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Okay, some of your points in your opening statement, I wrote down all the things I kind of want to address, but I'm not going to work top down. I'll kind of work from what bothered me the most when you talked about Enlightenment ethics being sort of inherently relativistic. I think you are getting that wrong because reason is a universal phenomenon and the Rules of reason that apply to one individual will be consistent when they apply to another individual. So reason is sort of separate from the physical human. It's something that once a person becomes rational, they gain access to this realm. And then I don't like calling it a realm because it makes it sound more spooky than it is. But the concepts of reason, the pure concepts of reason, are going to be universally applicable. So you said, I think you said literally autonomous reasoning, I guess you could call it autonomous reasoning, but it's reasoning through a universal medium. And so if one person's moral beliefs conflict with another person's moral beliefs, one of those people is wrong, or they're both wrong, but one of them is wrong. There will be no such thing as true conflicting moral beliefs or moral truths, for that matter. And so I guess that's my first point of attack, is that you, you think autonomous reasoning is sort of relative. But I would argue that where they're pulling from is a, is a universal pool and that having reason is going to give universal concepts.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Yeah, I think to be clear, I mean, if you wanted to start enlightenment reasoning with Descartes, you could say, okay, Descartes, definitely not a rational or, excuse me, not a relativist in the way that he thinks of, you know, doing philosophy or doing epistemology. But I'm, I'm more, more so. Speaking of, like, you know, when we get to the empiricist term, when we get to Kant, when we get to Hume, when we get to Barclay, I'm arguing that those guys, although they might think of the possibility of universalizing your ethic, particularly Kant, I think that ultimately he doesn't achieve the, that actual status. I think he would like that to be the case because he's trying to solve this problem with universalizing his ethical scheme. But I don't think it actually works, mainly because there's some very serious problems within Kantianism, such as the idea that other minds work the way Kant thinks his own mind works. So Kant could do this internal kind of structuring and think that that's probably how the categories work. But on his own system, everyone else's minds would also be part of the noumenal realm that he also says he has no access to. So with David Hume, I would say his position ends in skepticism. And so although he might think that there are universalized principles, he would admit that you can't justify that universality. So my critique is really that if you say reason is a universal phenomena, I don't think you could justify that claim on Kantian or Humean grounds. That's why I meant Enlightenment philosophy is relativistic.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

But wouldn't minds have to work the same and be universalizable under your model as well? Because if you're going to say that you have a transcendental access to God and God's knowledge, wouldn't everyone else also need to have access to that?

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

And then that's not an internal problem in my system, because God made us in his image. So, yeah, I think that the human mind is universal. Universalizable. Yeah.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

But if that's. If you're able to just drop that in on your model, why would saying that rationality, or reason for that matter, is not.

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[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Social casino also just available as a universalizable thing.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

And then also, like, because. Because in my system, there are universals, because God is a universal mind. And if we're made in his image, then I don't have an immediate metaphysical problem of how there could be universalized statements or universal claims. But if you begin with the human mind, and this is kind of what Kant noticed in Hume, there's a problem of universalizing. Even though you think you could do it, the question is not can you do it? It's can you justifiably do it from the other positions within the system? So I'm doing an internal critique and saying that the other. You don't know if the other minds work this way. I mean, they could. Maybe they do. But how do you know?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Well, do you think there's a mind where, you know, math does not work the same for us, that someone comes to the same or comes to different mathematical conclusions?

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Do I think that. That even for someone out there, that

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

2 plus 3 equals.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

I agree with what you said earlier, that if you want to apply that argument that you made about ethics, that somebody is either wrong or right in that equation, that's what you're arguing?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Yeah, but if someone's right or wrong, that means that there is a code outside of what people are coming to by themselves.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Yeah, absolutely. I Believe that.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Yeah, so. But this is my position. People can be wrong about their moral conclusions. In fact, I, I would say I don't think there's a single human out here that has the right, you know, moral, a complete moral framework. But we're getting closer, and then people are more right than others. But then to say that anyone is to put right or wrong or being closer to right or wrong, putting that on a spectrum is basically positing that, that there is a standard. Judge it by. And so if there is that standard, that standard exists under my model as well.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Yeah, but the question is, how does it exist on your model, given the Enlightenment presuppositions that I was critiquing? I don't doubt that you can tell a story about universalizing, and that's what Kant does. But the Internal critique is saying that how does Kant legitimately have those claims when he's also said elsewhere that he has no access to other minds or how they work or anything outside of his own mind? That's the problem is that you can make the claim, but is it consistent internally with the other presuppositions in the system?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

What would be those other presuppositions?

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Again? So Kant has no access, you have no access to other people's minds, and so there's not actually a universal at all in that system. It sounds good to make the system work, but the question is, it's an illegitimate move to say that I don't have access to anything in the noumenal realm, and that would be other people's minds. So I don't actually know if anybody else's minds actually work this way. So it's a violation at a presuppositional level of what Kant wants to do.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I'm not a strict Kantian. I'm not saying that there's some noumenal realm. I would say I am a realist. But I'm not saying there's a numenore. And I'm not even saying that ethics would be in something like a numeral realm.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Well, you did mention a reason realm, or you said you didn't want to use the, the term realm. I forget what said.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

You said, yeah, and then I, and I think I immediately said, I don't, I don't like using that word because.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

So whether you want to use conceptual reality, I mean, do you think that that has an ontological status?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

No, I believe it exists in some non ontological sense.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Okay, what is something that exists in a non ontological? Because existence posits Already a status of ontology.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Yeah. So this word. I guess ontology would be helpful to be. To clear up. So I believe they exist, just not in the natural sense. But like I think when a lot

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

of people talk about what is a non actual existing thing.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Numbers, feelings.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Well, no, I know you. That's. That's. You're listing those, those things. I'm saying what is that? Not what are the. What are the. Not what's in that set. But what is that? What, what type of a thing?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Something you can't point to empirically. Something that exists outside of empirical experiences or something like.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Like God.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Under, under. Like religion. Yeah, religions would have to. Yeah, all the.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

But what I'm wondering is how does your granting of that type of an existence. How is it any different than what I'm arguing for God?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Well, one is that yours goes further. And so I would argue that in order to even begin to contemplate features of God, which is sort of what you're doing real quick.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

I mean you're already contemplating the features and you're going way beyond what. I'm not understanding how we're getting there yet. So how are we supposed to know that these things exist that you're talking about?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Well, to deal with concepts at all. I think this goes back all the way to Aristotle, to believe in concepts. Concepts are not a physical, natural thing that you can point to.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Okay, right. So what are they though?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Cons. What is a concept?

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Sure,

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I guess like a concept.

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Are they.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Are they in the mind only? Do they exist in a realm above the mind? Are they in the transcendent realm? Are they.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I think it's a weird question.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Just molecules, atoms.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

So they're not molecules, they're not atoms. I don't. I think distinguishing between what's in the mind and what's beyond the mind. I mean the mind is what lets you contemplate anything that's non physical. So I don't know. I don't really.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

So you. But you said that they're. You said they're separate from the human and they're also. It's an. Also a universal phenomenon. So reason you said is quote, separate from the human, but also a universal phenomenon.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Yeah.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Okay, but do you have access to that?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Yeah, through rationality, through having a mind that's capable of reasoning.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

But you're an individual recognizing a subject, right?

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[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

You're an individual, finite subject.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Yeah.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Okay, so how do you have access to a. Separate from the human universal phenomenon?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Because the concepts of reason apply to everyone.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

That's the thing in question.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I guess I'm just wondering what kind

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

of questions because again, you keep moving from the individual to the universalized, the universal claims. These universal, that's a, that's a universal claim. You're saying that all beings that exists that are humans have access to or should have access to this separate from the human universal phenomenon?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Yeah, I mean we observe in other people that other people have reasons and have motivational force mature.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Right.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

When we observe other people having these reasons and then a lot of times they overlap with reasons that we have. I'm not talking about just reasons in a. I'm not talking about like personal reasons for, you know, minor tasks. I'm talking about like normative reasons with motivational force such as you have a good, there's a reason for you to want to be healthy and that or being healthy is a, is a reason for you to take the actions, to be healthy, to go to the doctor, to exercise. We see a lot of these reasons overlap with other people and we can't come up with a good theory on why they should be wrong.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

None of these tell me why I ought to believe that that universally is the case because these are all specific finite instances. So I'm trying to figure out how we get to.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Well, you recognize, we recognize that other humans operate, I mean we as well are all operating in community. And then these reasons. I'm not a, I'm not a hedonist, I'm a rule consequentialist to a certain extent. But we see that whenever we other people subscribe to these reasons that they are the most optimistic, they can't be rationally rejected and they're all universally willable.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Well again, you keep stating what's in question, that it's universal, that it's universal, salizable, etc. And I'm just calling into question how you make that move legitimately. Why ought we believe that? Because you've observed certain human beings operating in a practice of this or that way that seems to overlap with what you've observed. Those are all limited, finite observations. And I'm trying to figure out how we get, how we get to a universal ontological metaphysical principle that there's this non physical reasoning that we all have access to. That's a quote. Phenomena.

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[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

So I believe that reasons are irreducibly normative, meaning that like I don't think I can come up with a better definition of a reason other than it gives. It has motivating force. And we, when we, when we experience a Reason ourselves, when we, you know, when we are being rational and we, we think of something we ought to do, we, we encounter an ought to. We can also see how this would be universally willable. I mean, from the Kantian side, we would want other people to will that principle as well. Or I guess the updated version of Kant's formula would be you should only will what people could rationally will. So I take that position, but also I think asking, you know, what reason do we have to believe that reasons are universal? I think that's going to be an area where it bottoms out that reasons imply universality or normative reasons imply universality.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

It's sort of, you just keep stating that. Well, it's just because it's universal, it implies that it's not. I mean, could I just say then if you can make those arguments, can I just say. Well, I mean, God just is. It just kind of is the case that God is. You wouldn't accept that?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

No, no, I wouldn't. No, I wouldn't. Because there's.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

So why ought accept that reason just is reason because it's universally rational?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Well, reason is a fundamental, is a fundamental like texture of human existence.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Whereas, whereas, whereas, whereas God, we haven't, I haven't heard exactly what reasoning is other than it's sort of a critical thinking process. I mean, do you think the laws of logic are part of reasoning?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Okay, so are those like a, is a I love identity or something like that? Do you think that's, is that part of this universal rational phenomena that we have access to? And you said when I have a reason, so there's like particulars and then there's a universal reason. There's a one in many relationship. Said again, so you mentioned, you said there's universal reason as a phenomena that we have access to that's separate from the human. And you said that there are also reasons plural when I have a reason. So I'm just wondering what's the relationship between the particular instance of a reason versus this universalized reason? Is this a one and many relationship?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

No, I think this is where like the language gets a little, a little annoying. Reason with a capital R being that sort of series of concepts that are universally applicable and universalizable. Like logic would apply to that versus a reason. I guess like, I wish the, the language wasn't so tedious on this. Where a reason is in like a sort of a thing that gives, that gives you mode that has motivational force on you that's distinct from 10 hours

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[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Capital R reason though it comes from capital R reason, or that's where you realize it.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

So, like, you included, say, mathematics or something like that, or, you know, really abstracted, say, logic problems or something like that. What motivational force does a mathematical problem have on me?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Nothing. I mean, you have reason, so how

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

do I know which aspects of reason have the motivational force?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Hold on, let me. Let me amend that. You have a reason. There are reasons to be rational and logical, and so your reason to that two plus two is four. There's no, like, moral content to that. But being consistent and being coherent is something that isn't. Is a. Gives. Has normative force. So. So that would be the motivating reason to believe.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

What's the criteria for knowing which things have motivational force and which ones don't?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

If you're motivated, if it gives you

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

motivation to do, is that subjective?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Yeah.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

So the motivational force behind what's rational is purely subjective.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Well, we can have. We can have motivating reasons. We can have reasons that have motivational force, but they're not all normative. Normative reasons do all have motivational force. But they're. But they're normative. They. They imply what we should.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Well, if they're subjective, how are they normative?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Well, everything is subjectively experienced. I mean, I don't think anyone.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

I'm saying ethically, are they. Are they relativistic? Ethically speaking, are they. The ones that have motivational force, are they also relativistic?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Some reasons that have motivational force can

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

be relative, yes, but the ones that are and aren't, what's that standard? How do we know what that is?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

If it is universalizable, if it is rationally universalizable, if it cannot be rationally rejectable, and if it is optimistic, those are the ones that have.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

How do we know those three principles are the case?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Through, I guess, like you could say, all the history of philosophy has revealed that those things, like we want to be able to be worthy.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

According to Will Durant, according to Bertrand Russell. What do you mean all the history philosophy. How could you just appeal to all the history philosophy?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Well, I'm saying, like, all of reason. Reason is what gives these.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

So now reason is all of philosophy. So I'm getting a whole bunch of ideas of what I thought reason was a universal phenomenon separate from the human. Now it's just studying the history of philosophy.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I mean, all the history of philosophy is tapping into reason, right? Well, all legitimate philosophy is.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

How do you know that? That's just a wild sort of claim.

[Mike (Moderator)]

How.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

How is that a wild claim? How could you be doing anything?

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

How is all the history of philosophy tapping into reasoning? These are just grandiose assertions that I'm just like, how do we know that this is a giant leap? Says who? How do we know?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Well, well, you. You know, you can, like, realize the phenomenon of reason. Like, you don't have to know what reason is to be using reason. Like, just because people didn't have a term for reason.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Well, but that doesn't tell me how reason functions in your system as a. Just as a justifiable thing to understand or accept.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Well, it's not really something you understand or accept. It's just something you use. It's just there, whether you like it or not. But, like, it's impossible.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

The fact that I use a thing doesn't tell me that it's good, that it's. I can use the belief in unicorns for all kinds of things. That doesn't tell me.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I'm not saying reason as a universal phenomenon is what's. Is. Is. Is good in itself. I would say that, you know, the human.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

You just said it's a thing that you use. And so storytelling doesn't justify that. That is a thing. Because I could tell all kinds of stories. I could just say, you know, God's a great story. So, you know, the history of philosophy points to God. You wouldn't accept that. Basically, all I'm saying is that any argument that you would level against the existence of God justify. I mean, it's fine to argue that way. I'm just arguing the exact same type of argument against all of the metaphysical claims that you're making about what reason is.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Yeah, I guess what I would. I'm trying to argue, though, is that you are going much further than me. And in order to get.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

I don't think so.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I mean, I know. I know you don't. I know you don't think so, but

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

when you are, any justification at all, just even if you're not going that far, but it's not Justified at all. It's like that's still a giant leap.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Well, okay, when I say, pardon me, when I say that reasons, normative reasons are giving us motivational force. These things are things that you experience and I experience your.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

How do you know that?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Because you, I mean, I can.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Do you have, I mean, do you have access to my subjective mental states?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I mean, if you want to ask if we want to pretend that there are. That other humans are dealing with other, you know, non universal, Non universal, maybe

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

I've been on DMT the entire day. And how do you know that we're having the same experience right now?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

You might have been, but then I would say that you wouldn't be. You would be, but you don't know that I'd be just adding a whole lot of other contingencies to the.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

All I have to do is give you one like, hypothetical that shows that you don't know because you don't have access to my interstate. So how do you know that?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

No, I'm not talking about like individual, like I'm. When I say, like we are all having access to reason and experiencing the, the commands and the imperatives of reason, I mean, we could go around and again, we can go around and pretend that we have our own code and we have our own God and we have our own personal sort of like array of the way things are. But one, we see that as completely irrational in that it leads to, you know, uncooperation, it leads to disunity. It leads to.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Yeah, but the fact that it leads to bad things doesn't tell me that it's the case. So none of these things are actually arguments as to why I ought to accept your account of what reason is. And again, you don't have access to my interstate or any people, anybody else's mental states, which is what Kant system needs. If you don't have access to that, how do you keep making justifiably these claims of universality, that everybody's mind works this way and we have access to reasoning.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

This is what I touched on in my opening statement, is that if we want, we can sit here and look for the most prior fact, like who can go back further before it comes down to a brute assumption or a circular argument? We can do that. I'm.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

That's how I argue so well.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

But then you do understand that your argument is going to fall to the, the same issue. In fact, yours is going to fall to that of asserting a circularity or a Brutus assumption before mine will.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Well, I agree that all worldviews are at base, circular. That's why I argue for the transcendental argument and presuppositionalism, because it's a, it's an argument about incoherence in, in terms of the internal, internal critique of the system.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Yeah, so this is, but this is what I pointed out with like Karl Popper and why he pointed out to using reason as a ground for, like using critical rationalism as a justification for or for reasonable morality. The reason I pointed that out was because he realized. Well, I'm not going to say he realized, probably someone did a lot before him. But I think this goes back to the ancients, is like, yeah, there's, there's not a single sober philosophical system that doesn't bottom out in circularity or brute assumption or something like that. Like, that's, I mean, I think even Aristotle pointed out that the law of non contradiction, you know, is going to fall victim to circularity if you want to assert it. But there's no way to disprove the law of non contradiction either without contradicting yourself. Right. So like we can.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Yeah, that's a trans, that's a type of transcendental argument.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Right. I don't think that's a transcendental argument to assert that you can't disprove, you can't disprove the law of non contradiction

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

without being specified type of transcendental argument. Say that.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

How's that a transcendental argument?

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

It's a type of one to say that because the impossibility of the contrary, therefore you, you're assuming the usage of logic when you deny logic is this, it's the same. It's similar in structure to what a transcendental argument is in terms of Christian apologetics. I'm not talking about Kant. I'm saying the transcendental argument for God is a very similar structure of saying that what's at root in this debate is two conflicting paradigms. And so if worldviews bottom out like that, and I think they do, the only way you could argue is internal incoherencies within the paradigms to show which one can give an account for ethics and metaphysics and epistemology versus the system that can't. So I'm arguing that in your system you have this, this idea of reason which kind of takes the place of God in my system. And so I'm saying that there's nothing incoherent in positing a world where God exists and humans have usage of the faculty of reasoning, which is Universal, because there's a universal deity that grounds it in your system. It's bottom up with a finite person trying to make universalized claims. And I'm saying that's an invalid move within your system. But I don't know how we're getting to that.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

But under your model, I don't know how we get to anything with your model, because your model is saying, like as you just said, reason is given to us through God. I mean, my question to you would be, how did we get there?

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

What do you mean how did we get there?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

How do we get to the place of saying that there's God that gave us reason? How could reason not exist a priori or just without God? You're saying that faculties of reason.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Well, first of all, using the faculties doesn't tell me that it's the case. I can use all kinds of things that aren't real and aren't the case and still get things done pragmatically. So pragmatism and pragmatic usage isn't a justification of a thing. By the way, just because something looks like it would be impossible also isn't a justification. Because you could people critique Kant on this point?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

It's not. It doesn't just look impossible, it's logically impossible for you to argue.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

But again, people have critiqued Kant on this point. I think it's a good critique of Kant to say, yeah, but just because it seems coherent mentally, it doesn't necessarily mean that that's the case in the world. For example, it's schizophrenic might have an internally consistent mental schema that he pays on to the world, but that doesn't mean that it is. This is the case in the world. So I'm just simply saying that just because something seems to look impossible or crazy also isn't enough to get justification. So the fact that you could say, well, I can't. You can't conceivably deny reasoning. That's what Aristotle was saying. Like if you deny the law of non contradiction, it doesn't. You're assuming it when you use it. And I'm saying that in terms of modern theories of epistemology and justification, that's not even enough to get you to a justified claim, because I can defeat it with the critique of saying that, well, maybe reality just appears to match up to my mental schema. So I can launch a Kantian critique of your claims about reason and say

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

the fact that reality matches up to everyone's mental schema, you don't Know that.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

That's what I keep trying to say.

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[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

We do know. We observe it all the time. Yeah, I observe it in you acting

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

relatively enough to get you to justification because your observations are limited to individual, finite instances that never get you to a universal claim. That's what I'm trying to say.

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[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

So it's an unjustified.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

When I argue. When I argue that these things are not rationally rejectable that a rational being would not. Would not reject.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

That's just begging the question that anybody that's agreeing with you is thus the one that's rational.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

No. No, it's not. Because I can. I can be acting irrational sometimes. I do act irrational sometimes.

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[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

But for me to say that I'm acting irrational or you act irrational at times is to put the standard out there.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Well, that doesn't tell us that it's universal just because that's the standard that you're using.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

But we all use the same standard.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

How do you know that? You keep asserting that. How do you know?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

You engage in. In this conversation with me right now.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

That doesn't make it universal.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Along these lines. Well, then what does? Universe. What could universal even mean if it's not observed in all beings and is able to be sort of like.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Again, I believe that is what it means. But my worldview gives an account for. That's how it's universalized. Because God and mine gives it first. No, it doesn't.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Yes, it does. Because contemplate God in his features, you would need reason itself.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

It's a category error. It's a category error.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

What do you mean by a category error?

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Just because I'm using the faculty of reasoning and then talking about God doesn't mean that reasoning is prior to or superior to or ontologically prior to God. That's a category error in the Christian paradigm. I'm using a created Faculty to reason about the uncreated, which I have within the framework of the God that gave it to me.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Sure. But the problem with that is it's unfalsifiable. And then Karl Popper had a. I'm allowed to cuss a little bit, right? I can say, okay, cool. Karl Popper had this idea of the principle of falsification, that if I can't falsify your claim, if I can't falsify that reason precedes God or what came first, God or reason, if I can't falsify that, it basically leads it into the realm of. Now, just because something can't be falsified and is. And is in this realm of like, being a little bitty, it doesn't mean it's necessarily false. It just means it's not philosophy or it's just not something.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

You can say my views aren't philosophical, but that's not an argument. Because I could just say, okay, well, your position is also unfalsifiable. It's not philosophy.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

My position is falsifiable.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Well, I know if you're going to launch the critique of me to say that because you're talking about theology, it's not really philosophy. That's an arbitrary. Like, that's a version of the naturalistic fallacy to say that, or no true Scotsman fallacy, say, well, you're not a real philosopher. I can launch. If you can use the fallacy, I can do the same thing to you and say, well, fine, you're not really doing philosophy either.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Because Popper says something that's. That can't be falsified. He's not saying that. It's not philosophy. I know I said that. When Karl Popper says that if something, if something can't be falsified, it's just not up for. Up for. It's not a. It's not a prime candidate for rational debate.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Well, I mean, the fact that you don't find theology part of rational debate is irrelevant to the argument that I'm making.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I find you can have rational debate about that.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Okay, well, then what you said doesn't apply. Then falsification isn't applicable.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

No presuppositionalism, like forcing God into the picture to make the.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

That's not what the argument is. It's not forcing it. It's arguing that without God you couldn't have the picture at all.

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[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

That's what the transcendental argument is.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

But. Okay, but. Well, I think it's been demonstrated that you can have reason without God. And then to say that.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Well, I mean, you have. That's what you're here to demonstrate. So.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Well, yeah, yeah. So I pointed out that there are moral claims that are irred. They are irreducible normative claims that are available through reason. That these are immaterial and exist in a non ontological sense in the same way that mathematics is universally true and exists. They are unconditioned by empirical factors. They're available to everyone with reason. Desires sometimes overlap with these reasons, but they can diverge. There is stuff that is reason. When I say that there's stuff that is, I'm saying like reason is irreducibly normative in that I can't define reason any more than using the word reason, saying that. It's just.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

You can do that in presenting your position and the opponent in a debate can do the exact same thing and say God exists.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

God, just mine is more fundamental than yours. Because even if you want to say that.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

What are you talking about?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Even if you're going to say that God.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Okay, God. So you understand, if that's your claim, I can just say God's more fundamental than you. I mean, that's why it doesn't work in a debate. It's not a good argument.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Well, it's not. It's that if you wanted, even if you did posit God, you would still need reasons to obey God. You'd. I mean, we see this in the Greeks with their gods.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

That's not an argument within the Christian paradigm. There are reasons to obey God. If you, if I want to be blessed, if I want to enjoy his, you know, communion, etc.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Why do you obey those reasons? Why do you obey those? Why do you obey those?

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

For all the reasons I'm listing. What do you mean?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Yes. So they have motivational force.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Sure.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

And you have, you, you have an aim that you want out of them. Sure, yeah. And this could exist outside of God.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

The question isn't could you list these things without God? It's a question of whether it's justifiable to make those moves philosophically to say that as a finite individual I now have access to this vast metaphysical thing that also exists in the particular with reasons that has motivational force at some times, but other times it doesn't. So there's all of these assertions and I'm just trying to get without arbitrariness, like how am I supposed to think that all that is the case on your worldview?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Because this is essentially something that you believe with some added no, it's not.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

So again, I have different justifications for my system and for what I'm positing. So the fact that I have the same positions or the same assertions doesn't mean that I have the same reasons for those assertions. That's what I'm trying to say is like we need good reasons, not just do we have the same arguments? Because I might have. Let's say we have the same ethical positions on any. Some moral, moral issue that's out there. And my argument is, yeah, I believe that you're supposed to do XYZ because I had a dream about that last night. That wouldn't be a good reason to follow it.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

So the fact that, I mean, it could be a reason with motivational force, but it wouldn't be a normative reason because it could be.

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[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

It. It would be a reason with motivational force, but it wouldn't be a normative reasons because we could rationally reject it. Other beings could rationally reject that. Like you having a dream of why I should do something.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Well, I'm just saying that it's not. The fact that we have the same position of the universality of reason doesn't mean we have the same account for it. That's what I'm saying.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Yes, but your account of it. What I'm. What I'm. One of the, One of the points of my argument is that your account of reason is sort of it, whether you, whether you think you are or not. It is sort of like shoving God into the picture. It's shoving God into the equation to make sense, to make sense of a model you were already using.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Again, that's a category that, because I'm using it, that doesn't mean that I have the same account for what it is. My account for what reasoning is is the Christian metaphysical paradigm by which I'm made in the image of God. I have a faculty that mirrors the reasoning that God has as a universal mind. I have a particular mind which can reason after God analogously about the world, function in the world. I have volition, I have responsibility, I have free will, etc. All of those beliefs, they make sense within the Christian paradigm with the Christian God existing. And my argument is that if I'm going to begin as an enlightenment individual and try to reason up from my finite experience, I'm just going to apply David Hume's skeptical critique and say that I can never get to any justified universal claim.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

So, okay, one of your criticisms, criticisms of me or my position is that we have, when I, when I say that we, that reasons are given normative force, you're, One of your arguments is that I'm a finite being and I have no reason to think that reason is universally applicable to other rational beings.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Yes.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Okay, well, what can I, first off, so I would say that the, we can observe other beings using, I mean we already covered this. But I said, well, how does your,

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

but your observation isn't universal, so how do we know that that's actually universal?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I don't believe anything will ever be able to be 100% confirmed. But there's, I guess try not to word salad this. There's good reason to believe that when we see other humans cooperating, other humans, you know, working together and building similar moral systems and converging on their moral systems and using integration theories instead of error theories, this is evidence to some degree that humans are probably roughly working with the same faculties. The fact that when we do large scale projects, I think humans, with the exception of maybe like ants and honeybees, humans are capable. I mean, I'm not even going to give other non rational creatures the benefit of the doubt. Humans are a very unique creature in that we have mastered large scale planning, large scale cooperation. Going to the moon, you know, building crazy satellites, doing crazy microchip stuff. All these things with, you know, cooperation are, is I would say evidence that we're all working roughly with the same rules and the same thinking, but turning it. I think prisoners, prisoner dilemmas demonstrate this as well. The fact that prisoner dilemmas oftentimes yield similar results with people sometimes doing what is irrationally best for them. I think prisoner dilemmas kind of prove my point. But I, but the reason I brought this up was to say, okay, this is my position, this is your criticism, and that's my response to your criticism. My question to you would be, how would you know that you're under your model when you are presupposing God? How do you know that other beings are working with the same principles that you are to be able to presuppose God to explain or justify their rules of rationality? Right.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Well, I don't begin, Yeah, I don't begin with Enlightenment empiricism or Kantian. I'm not an empiricist.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Yeah, right.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

No, I'm saying that I don't believe in, I don't have the Enlightenment presuppositions, whether it's Hume's skepticism or Kant's, this phenomenal noumenal divide or any of that. So.

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[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Well, again, in the Christian scheme, all human beings are made in the image of God, so there wouldn't be a problem.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Like, but isn't that under your Christian scheme? Like, is it? Couldn't there be plenty other religious folks who don't believe that all humans are created in the image of God?

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

But what does that have to do with my position? I'm arguing my position. So yeah, I'm sure there's a thousand positions out there, but that's irrelevant to what I'm arguing right now.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Yeah, but then what reason do people have to be convinced of this argument? What reason do people have to listen to this debate and then walk away and saying, you know what? Yeah, I'm in the right position.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

There's no probabilism involved in the belief that reason is a universal faculty because it's grounded in a universal reasoning being, namely God, a universal omniscient mind. Thus, in that paradigm, it would make sense. It's coherence consistent. It has explanatory power to say that human beings also have this faculty of reasoning which touches on that transcendent reasoning that you've been appealing to. But you just said a second ago that it's not for sure 100%. It's actually probabilistic. That's the direction you seem to be leaning. But something can be universal, but then not universal. It's probabilistic. So now you've kind of hedged and moved towards probabilism versus universality. So which one is it?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Well, I guess, I mean, I would argue. I would argue, you know, privately, I would argue, yes, these are all still universal. But I would just say that there's there. Well, because there could be. There could be a response. You could say, if I'm being good faith, you could say, hey, just because people are building satellites or microchips or their moral theories are all converging across societies, just because we can observe this, it could all still be luck. It could all still be chance. It could all still. So I'm kind of hedging. That's why I say you know, probably because there are responses to that that would still make it non universal. But I would say the reason we do see convergence on moral theories, we do see consistency in response to prisoner dilemmas. We do see the, the rules of logic when people are doing large scale.

[Mike (Moderator)]

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[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Go ahead.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Yeah, and. Okay. I'm fine with continuing to argue on moral ontology and then sort of the, the logic on this, I'm fine with keeping. With continuing to do this. If you would also want to argue on the content of these religious models and how they are. How yours is more optimistic than mine. I would. I mean, I'm interested in that debate as well, but I understood that the prompter.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Whatever questions you want. Yeah, go ahead.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Okay, so what makes a. Would you say that you are a divine command theorist?

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

I think the Christian, the orthodox Christian scheme can implement various ideas of different schools of ethics. So we might have aspects to where we could understand a consequentialist element. There might be situations where we understand, you know, limited standing commands at the Old, during the Old Testament, certain positions that, you know, God commanded David to do this or that, that are not universal. So I think that there might be, there might be even, even other, you know, you know, situationist schemes where we can have nuance. A lot of canon law deals with, like, specific instances that wouldn't be universal. So I think there's room for different modern schools of ethics having a place within Christian ethics.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

But those would all be after the fact of Christian, of, of. Of God. Right? Those would all be downstream.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Yeah, I mean, the system, the Christian system relies on the existence of God as the foundation for anything else.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

But, but like. So you would say divine command theory might have a place, but it's not right. It's not a soul subscription.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

It's not the only source of ethics because humans also have the ability to reason and come to specific conclusions about things that don't directly relate to divine command theory.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Yeah, Real quick, just to make sure I'm not misinterpreting your points earlier. So you would say we have reason. We have universalizable concepts of reason. We have, we do have sort of what Kant would call a pure concept of reason. And just because we're also then using these to, you know, then talk about God or the features of God, this doesn't mean that they, it doesn't necessarily mean that they predate God and that God would be the only being that could facilitate such principles. Sorry to just go to divine.

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[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I just wanted to make. I just wanted to make sure I lose. You would say what?

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Ground them. God is the type of being that could ground those types of things because of what they are, metaphysically speaking. Right. So, for example, universal principles, universal reasoning, laws of logic, mathematics. For us, those things are universal qualities or universal concepts. They do have some degree of existence, ontologically speaking, because God is the creator, not just of the physical world, but also of the mental world. And so those things do have a kind of mental existence, a conceptual existence. And that's exactly what's described in the history of the Christian tradition. So to me, it makes sense on a kind of, what's sometimes called exemplarism or divine mind theory, that that would be a natural grounding for those types of things.

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[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Yeah, so when you say that. So in your. Your criticism of my position is that there are. Just because people are realizing universal concepts or they don't.

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[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

They aren't even capable of realizing these universal concepts in universal moral laws. Because. And wait, what is the. Why is it.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

I mean, you could, you could. You could believe in those things. Like. Yeah, sure, any. Like a Platonist or a Neoplatonist. That doesn't mean that you have good reasons to believe in them.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

So you just. So you don't believe finite individuals could have access to a sort of universal code or a universal, you know, system of.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

No, I just said they can. But that doesn't mean they have good justification for why they believe that.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

And the observation of cooperation, the convergence of moral theories, the.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

None of those things justify it.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Leaning towards integration instead of error theories.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

None of them are just going to use all of David Hume's words.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

None of those, sir.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Yeah, I'm going to use all of Hume's arguments against those being justifications.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

So, okay, if Hume's position though, is that you know, reason can never give us, you know, we can never have morality from reason. It's always inclination. I mean, are you, when you take Hume and when you use Hume's position, are you pushing the other side of that? We can only have inclination. We can only have inclination. Inclination.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

I use an argument from empirical sense data. It doesn't make me an empiricist. If I use an argument from, I'm just curious. Plato's, Plato's forms. It doesn't make me an idealist.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Yeah, but we do know that Kant was responding to, you know, Hume's assertion of this.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

And then, I mean, Kant has great arguments. Doesn't make me a Kantian.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

No, it doesn't. And I'm, like I said earlier, obviously

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

I'm not going to adhere to all of David Hume's positions.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

No, but so you would think that, you think that Kant failed to counter Hume's position on the ISA distinction. You think Kant failed on that project?

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

I think Khan had, I think he moved in the right direction. But I don't think that ultimately his system works to justify why we ought to follow deontological ethics. No.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Okay. I wanted to make some.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

So can I give you another example that illustrates this point? Right. So Kant, for example, he critiques Descartes and I think

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

for granted. Yeah.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Okay. So I think Khan has a phenomenal critique of Descartes. Cogito. That doesn't make me a Kantian because

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I'm not saying that. No, no, I'm not. And I'm not saying you have to subscribe to Hume's position. I was just, I was just curious if you took the other side of Hume's argument because.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

No, no, of course not.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

No. No. Okay. Just curious. So I wanted to say that it might be true that we cannot get an ought from an is when everything just is. I, I would agree with that. However, I think we can get some clarification for what we mean by is. And I, I, I know it sounds like just philosophy slop, so I'll try not to do too much philosophy slop here. But we, I would argue that we can get an ought from an is, where within that is, are rational animals who respond to normative reasons. There, if that is what is, then we can get an ought from that. Normative reasons that have sort of this non ontological existence outside of empirical factors. You can get an ought from that is. But also I wanted to say one more thing on that is that if we cannot get an ought from an is and all human contemplation of God and his ways along with his moral commands by the way are done through the mind which is facilitated by reason or by empirical experiences. Then the religious person is in the same boat of not being able to get an ought from an is.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Again, the basis for normativity and ethics in our system is going to be multifaceted in the sense that I have a duty and an obligation to God. There's also incentive as to why I would want to choose virtue versus vice because of temporal punishment, temporal consequences, eternal consequences that might occur.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

That just sounds like a harm based morality.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

I'm just listing certain aspects that might overlap. That doesn't mean that's all that it is. I'm saying you could have an element of consequentialism within that. That doesn't make the ethic consequential. It's just because one of those incentives is that what could be many incentives,

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

what could be a religious ethic under your model that is not going to be grounded out in some harm based reductionism of the ancient. Can I have an example of one of those?

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

A moral position that wouldn't just be based on harm.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Yeah, like I don't want to go to hell. Like do you think that there could be a reason for you to do something?

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Let's say that not all of our actions are motivated only by eternal consequences.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Yeah, but that's what I'm asking. That's what I'm asking. I'm asking, can you give me an example of an ethic that would exist under your model that wouldn't just bottom out in harm based morality?

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Yeah. For example, one ethic, one ethical issue that might be a problem, say for, you know, utilitarianism would be something or, or optimistic optim, excuse me, optimific versions of ethics where you have to say something like I must choose the action that is that always, for example, saves lives. Let's say I'm a doctor and I have to choose the action that always saves lives. Well, if I was very strict with that approach, I might be in a position where, well, can I ever take my wife on a vacation? Well, wait a minute now I'm in a qualm because if I take my wife on a vacation, I'm actually participating in the unaliving or the not saving of the lives of people that as a doctor, so I'm now in this quandary to where I should not take my wife on vacation because I'm not being optimistic. So it's just arbitrary. I think when you want to say that I'm going to solve the problem with, with what's optimistic, because what's the standard by which we determine in those types of questions? And there's other problems that I could bring forth in terms of utilitarianism as well. But my point is that in a Christian ethic, that type of a question would not be purely based on, on harm. On a harm basis. I would have a duty not just to be optimistic with lives, but also with my wife.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Yeah, but you deciding to take your wife on vacation and having that not be an immoral act. I mean, this just goes back to Sidwick. Sidgwick and the duality of practical reason where he says, you know, sometimes our. The impartial motivating reason, if you were an impartial moral agent, would be to stay back and, you know, do your surgery. The sort of, the self interest side of that, which being self interest theory might be self defeating, but it's not. Acting out of self interest is not immoral. But then you also have, you know, you want to take your wife on vacation. Sigwick argues that sometimes these can come into conflict, but you're not immoral.

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[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I mean, this is the paradox of the duality of practical reason. But that being settled is actually a product of enlightenment values of you being able to take a, a non impartial decision to go and take your wife on a vacation. But my, my question was. But that's not even, that's not even my.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Who says it's settled? I mean, you're asserting a lot of things, but how is that settled? What do you mean?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Well, it's settled that, like, we understand that like a world where everyone had to always act at their most impartial would lead us to a society that is very unoptimistic and it might be self defeating to always act from.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Well, the point though is that sometimes these systems are ad hoc and they're not actually telling us what the actual root principle is, even though they're searching for universalized principles. The question is, can you actually do that without Christian theism? I'm saying that you can't consistently do it. I can't. But I'm just saying that you could never come up with a position of right or wrong. And Christian theism accounts for the fact that Plato or Aristotle, even though they were pagans. Yeah, they got a lot of things right. But the question is not can you get some things right or can you come up with ethical right and wrong? It's a question of. My argument is can you justify why we ought to do that and why that's universal?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

No, but my question going back was, can you give me an example of. A motivating reason or of an action that does not bottom out in a harm based reduction on your model?

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Well, again, not every action in my ethic is purely related to the eternal. There's also the many goods in the created realm. And so, for example, here's an example.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Those would all be. Those would all just be, you know, natural reasons that, you know, anyone can realize.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

You just asked me for something that wasn't only motivated by harm. And so how about this? I could choose a life where I choose to be a monk and be a monastic, or I can choose a life where I choose to be married. In the orthodox conception, they're both goods and you can do certain things with one over the other. But neither of those is necessarily harm based.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Yeah, you're. But your reasons to do one or the other might bottom out in something harm based. You might find a reason to do one that.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Oh, they might, but they might not,

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I guess, but those. I don't think. But like, if it's.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

How is this an argument if it might or might not? I mean, so.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Well, no, but like, I guess I shouldn't have even said that because this, this is not one of the normative reasons that I'm talking about. Is there a normative reason for moral action under the presupposition?

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

What I'm saying is a virtue ethic allows me because.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Real quick, real quick. Sorry, sorry. You having to decide between getting married or. This is a hypothetical imperative. This is like something that is not universally applicable to anyone. I'm asking, is there a universal, you know, moral code under. Under your model?

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

That is, there are many situations that could potentially be universal in different people's lives where they have to choose things that are directly related to anything based around harm. And I'm giving an example of my ethic as a virtue ethic informing a situation of choosing between two different goods that is not necessarily based around harm.

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[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

You just asked for an example of that. Okay, there's one. And that's informed by my Christian.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

But I clarified the question of asking for a universal one, the one that would have to apply to other people.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Well, universally, every human being could potentially, potentially be in a scenario where at some point in their life they're having to choose between multiple goods. And you admitted that it might not necessarily relate to harm. Okay, well, there you go.

[Mike (Moderator)]

We got five minutes left, gentlemen, then we'll get into the closings.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

But I'm not even understanding, like, what are you trying to prove? That every action is in some way related to like pleasure versus harm or something?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I think, I think under the Christian model, I think it is hard for people like presuppositionalists. I think that it's hard for people in your position to argue for an ethical model or give anyone a code of ethics that is not also, you know, that does not ground out itself in some Enlightenment view.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Well, how would it ground out Enlightenment view when Christianity is pre Enlightenment? Or you just mean it has that same shared feature.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Has, has the same shared features, but also the features that were, that were clarified. They might have pre. Existed the Enlightenment. They certainly did. Well, but they also, but they also existed. They also existed in religions that predated Christianity.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Well, I admitted that Plato and Aristotle got all kinds of things. I mean, Aristotle has a virtue ethic and a lot of that I agree with. But, but that doesn't mean it's not the same thing as whether or not you're giving an account for that ethic. And so I think Christian theology does give an account for the. I think that's what I've been trying to argue. Whereas I don't think Enlightenment ethics can do that, even though it would like to do that.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

So I guess one thing that. I guess we got five minutes left and so I guess we'll just continue on the. Maybe. Well, maybe in the Q A we can get into content. Because one of my positions, and it's not necessarily related to the debate, is that Christian ethics is sort of forfeiting its right to have the monopoly on, on universal normative ethics. But I guess along these lines it's forfeiting.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

How would, how would that be the case?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Because we're watching them. We're watching Christian Christianity is such a wide group of families. But I'm sure like under your view, you wouldn't even call like a progressive Christian a Christian, would you?

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

No.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

No. Yeah. Would you call like Baptist Christians?

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Technically? No.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Okay. Would you call like Presbyterians Christians?

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

No.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Okay.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Now in the orthodox view, Orthodox are the only Christians.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Okay, okay, interesting. All right. Well, for the wide family of Christians of people that roughly subscribe to some package, whether we believe it or not, the Baptists who are believing in the Trinity, whatever, whatever, whatever. When I say they're forfeiting is. We are watching the application one. We're watching a lot of debate and divide within the theological tradition. And I think the massive disagreement within theological tradition is sort of demonstrating the incoherency and the inability to be consistent within the religious code of ethics. So I think that's one mark against it. But also another one is that we watch that when these principles are applied, societies get regressive and then also they get very misanthropic.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Okay, well, but you already admitted earlier on, you said at the very beginning that if two people were arguing morally a position and they came to radically different conclusions, or people were arguing a mathematical problem, they came to different conclusions. One of them is right, one of them is wrong. Right?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Yeah. Or they're both wrong. Yeah.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Right. Well. And conceivably you could have two heretics arguing and they're both wrong. But I can argue the same position and say that, well, just because multiple groups are arguing Christian theology, that really has nothing to do with whether Christian theology is wrong or right.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

No, I'm not saying it's wrong or right. I'm just saying that the consistency of the debate, or I guess I should say the inconsistency within the debate, but also the misanthropic values that are being pushed on societies that are subscribing to, or not societies, but traditions or cultures that are subscribing to these Christian values, and I mean Christian in more of a wider sense than you do, are demonstrating themselves to be misanthropic. And then that is again, on the faculties of reason, the pure concepts of reason, we are able to conclude that these are probably not the most optimistic. They're not all rationally universalizable and. Or willable.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Would that same argument apply to the realm of secular philosophy without then.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Yep, yep. But there we see convergence and there we see cooperation. We see a lot more cooperation within secular philosophy and secular normative ethics. We see a lot more convergence, integration theories, a lack of error theories, and. Yeah, convergence.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

So the secular philosophers are all coming together to. What did you say in your opening statements? You said, perhaps one day we can have a progressive, non religious, objective ethic that can develop one day. So it's faith based.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I think you're misusing the word faith there when you say you're the one

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

that said perhaps one day you're hoping it'll develop.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

That's something I'm trying to. I think you know this. I think, you know, when I say

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

I just think it's funny. This is my argument is that I think.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I think. You know what I think I think you're. I think you know that I mean hopeful. I think you know that I mean hopeful. I think, you know, I'm not sitting down and praying, but.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

But right now. Right. So you're arguing for a thing that's going to come one day. It doesn't actually. There's not actually secular objectivist ethics right now.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

No, they are and they would have always been, but they are just becoming more realized because you guys have had the monopoly on.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

But you argue that they belong. Well, wait, so they haven't always been. If it was theologically based. So that's not true?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

No, I would argue the ethical code has always been there.

[Mike (Moderator)]

All right, guys, that was.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

That doesn't mean it's true.

[Mike (Moderator)]

But yeah, that was the end of the 60 minutes there. If you want to go ahead and start some closing statements, Jack, since you opened, you'll go first here and Jay will get the last word. So five minutes on the clock whenever you're ready. Then we'll take a short break after a quick little ad read, and then we'll be right back for the Q and A.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Okay. I guess throughout all this, I planned on writing up my five minute closing, but I just didn't. So I would argue that ethics is, again, like. I will reiterate my opening position and I'll try to respond to some of Jay's responses that we made during the debate that ethics is realizable because we are rational animals. And as rational animals, we are all. We are all working with the pure concepts of reason. The evidence of cooperation and, you know, massive projects being undertaken by people is proving that is evidence that we are all working roughly with the same concepts. The fact that, you know, if I ask you to do math problems in your head in your room, and I do mine in mine, and we compare answers will be correct. Assuming we're all following the same rules is evidence that reason is universalizable. Also, the fact that our, our ethical theories are converging and we are noticing, like a progressive system of ethics. By progressive, I don't mean politically progressive. Progressive is in that it is becoming more and more integrated. But also we are realizing things that are misanthropic or unethical and are cutting them from our debate or from our theories, I would argue that any unethical practice still done in society today are often usually maintained by religion. For example, some states that are, or any resistance to researching stem cells and all the benefits and optimistic results that could come from that, that is all stopped by religious based ethics. Also we got, we go back in time, we could see the justification of slavery, of chattel slavery, we could see the witch burnings. But these are all very cliche talking points. I would argue that the death penalty is something that is practiced in all the most regressive countries and then also weirdly, the United States, and that it is religion that is grounding the death penalty. The only other countries that we are like when it comes to the death penalty are again regressive states like Iran. When we look at more that states that are doing more optimistic practices like those in Europe, we can see that they are leaning more into enlightenment ethics. And their cooperation is again evidence that they're all working with the same universal principles. I would argue that the presuppositionalist position has to force God into the picture to explain the reasons that they were already using. Jay would call this a category error. And I can understand how he gets there. I could understand how he would say that God is an atemporal entity and to use tools to realize God doesn't mean that the tools predated God. I can understand that. But then there is still a leap. And this is why Christians or people in faith based communities talk about the leap of, you know, of the leap of faith, right? You, you, before you make that leap, you are already working with these tools, with these concepts, with these, you know, you know, reasonable axioms. I also argued that pretty much every philosophical position, any position at all, I think in the whole universe, even relativism, cultural relativism, even intentional irrationality, all these are going to bottom out in something that's either circular or dogmatic. Gerald Lange in his book Strokes of Luck talks about this. And Thomas Nagel talks about the bottoming out in circularity. All these concepts are always going to bottom out. And then debating on who can bottom out the fastest is always going to be the most boring. But I will reiterate that mine bottoms out. After Jay's bottoms out, you are always going to be using your reasons to talk about God. You are going to be using the pure faculties of reasons to talk about God and about God's features. And then so if we're arguing who's going to bottom out faster, it's still going to be him. I tried my best to respond to some of these points. I think Jay and I can both admit maybe possibly talking about the origin of ethics is a philosophically daunting task. And this is going to be. This is going to continue to be debated for. For much, much longer. I think the one hope that we have, and again, I'm more of an integrationist than an error theorist, so I'm always looking for integration. But one hope that we can have is that we can easily identify what is not a source of ethics. We can easily identify what is a. Is a bad ethical theory. I would argue that when we judge these ethical theories, we are using, again, a universal code of reason.

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[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

And it is just my hope that we can, that this debate is just one small little peg in the ladder towards understanding and realizing a more universalizable and optimistic code of ethics. So I'm just grateful to be here.

[Mike (Moderator)]

All right, thank you. All right, Jay, we got five minutes on the clock. Go ahead. Whenever you're ready.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Thank you. Yeah, this is a great discussion. I had a lot of fun with it. However, throughout this discussion, I didn't hear the thing that I kept looking for and wanting to hear, which was a justification for the move from observing certain patterns, observing internal states, and then jumping to that being a universal principle. And so we saw at one point that early on in the discussion, it was very hard line. It was very, in terms of quantifiers, it was all every everywhere universal claims. And then eventually it was like, well, but maybe that's actually probabilistic. I want to kind of bring that down a little bit. I think that shows us that a lot of what undergirds the whole approach of trying to universalize these things is arbitrary. Because if there's not a good explanation as to why I should accept an individual subjective experience than being universalized, then I don't know why I would believe that his account of reasoning was a good account. He says ethics is realizable. It's based on, quote, pure reason. I don't know what pure reason is yet we talked about it in terms of meta ethics. I knew this debate was immediately going to go into meta ethics, which is one of my favorite topics to debate. And the thing especially when he appealed to the history of philosophy as justification, the reason that's no good is because reason is one of the most elastic and confusing generic things in the history of philosophy. For example, the way that the Stoics use reason is very different from many of the pre Socratics. The way that Hegel uses reason, very different from Aristotle, the way that Hume uses reason is very different from what Freud would say, right? Like it's just instincts or something. So amongst all of these different philosophers, the idea that we can appeal to the history of philosophy as a basis for understanding universal reasoning, none of those are good arguments for why we ought to believe in a universal principle of reasoning. I think the Christian system does give a clear, coherent, justifiable basis for why reasoning as a faculty would be universal. Because God is a kind of universal, you could say he's a universal mind, he's omniscient, and thus being made in his image would make sense. As to why we would have that faculty, I don't know why in the secular position I should believe that there's anything at all like reason. In fact, I would think that it's probably something more like Freud's description of being instinctual. We're just driven by instincts or something like what David Hume said. So when he said, for example, that all positions bottom out at this kind of circularity, that's exactly right. That's why I think that the only way to argue paradigms about meta ethical questions or metalogical questions is precisely comparison paradigms to see which ones can give an account for those principles and which ones are so internally inconsistent that they make knowledge impossible. I think that his approach to ethics from Kant and other other later philosophers, Derek Parfit and others, it's a noble effort, but I don't think that it achieves a real coherent justification. He said, for example, Iran is so regressive, it has all these problems this, that now as a Christian, I could say, yeah, I believe that there's regressive problems in Iran precisely because of the religion that they have, Islam, etc. But I have a basis to make that critique from my theological paradigm, from my worldview, from his perspective, I don't know how we would measure what makes it regressive. It Just seemed to fall back into pragmatism. Well, what we do over here works because we build, you know, rockets and we build computers or whatever, and it's like, well, but they build nuclear bombs. So it's like, what? Why is that? Why is that good versus bad? It's all really begging the question the entire time as to what actually is bad versus what actually is good. Because we never heard an actual universal principle other than we can all universalize the principle. Yeah, but what is that? Where is that? How is that? How do we justify that? In the Christian paradigm, it makes sense as to why there would be a universal faculty of reasoning. But to just go to a bunch of the history of philosophy and then perhaps one day our secular philosophers will come up with some kind of thing. And by the way, we've always been using reasoning. Again, none of those, those are all fallacious lines of argumentation. Just because we've been using something or doing something has nothing to do with whether that's a good reason to believe that it has some kind of ontological status, which was always kind of unclear because it was like it has motivational force, but sometimes it doesn't. But also it's immaterial. It also, it's universal, but also has particular instances. That's a vast metaphysical scheme that I'm supposed to believe in and just sort of accept ad hoc when it's all grounded in literally philosophers who reject metaphysics. So the fact that you think it ought to be universalizable is actually proving my point. It's proving my argument that you need metaphysics. But Kant and Hume and all those guys are anti metaphysics. And once you go anti metaphysics, there's no good, because the good isn't just ethics, the good is also metaphysics. And thus, you see, these are all kind of linked together. And that's why I think Christianity pride provides a basis for right action, for obligation, for duty, for many goods, for many choices, free will, etc. All of these things that I think are lost in the maze of relativism that Enlightenment philosophy, whether it wants to or not. There's a lot of good arguments in Kant, a lot of good arguments in Hume, a lot of good arguments even in Descartes. But I don't think their systems ultimately work because they're grounded on human autonomy and the rejecting of the transcendent.

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[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Well, maybe not Descartes, but it ends up in that I would argue.

[Mike (Moderator)]

All right, thank you, Jay. Just grabbing this.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

There'd be time in the Q and A for more back and forth between

[Mike (Moderator)]

Jay and I. Yeah, the way it works is we ask the question or read the comments. Who, if it's directed at someone specifically, they get to respond first and then the opposition gets to have a comment and that usually spurs into some sort of conversation or arguments that we can kind of let go on for a second. Really just going to be depending on the debaters times. If you guys are pretty open to it, we'll try to get through as many of the super chats as possible.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

I'll try. How many is there a lot of super chats?

[Mike (Moderator)]

It's a good amount. I'll try to prioritize the largest ones just so if we have to cut out at some point we're not.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Well, one thing we could do too is we could hit the super chats and reply and then we could do a part two down the road if Jack likes because it was a great conversation.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Yeah, I just, I feel like in that, in that closing statement it's always like after the debate ends and people click off, then I'm like, damn it.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Well, you could do a round two or something.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Well, I have, I have as much time as you guys are willing to give.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

So I have no time limit. So as long as people want to sit here and just insult me or grill me, I'll just sit here and take it. As long as you get paid.

[Mike (Moderator)]

I'm gonna set a seven minute timer for us to be back. I just want to real quick give this ad read that James has as a sponsor a quick read and then we're going to go on a break. See where that is at. There it is. All right guys, debatecon and the online remote debates for a little while now. We'll be thanking the sponsors here from Pharma Easy Bank.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I believe I'm good to go get a drink.

[Mike (Moderator)]

I'm good to go.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Grab a drink.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Yeah, yeah. I'm going to start the timer as soon as I get up. So these guys here. Let me make sure it's centered. Yeah, it looks good. All right, so these guys here, you know, you might be asking yourself, when are we getting to the Q and A? But like I said, seven minutes. You might also be asking, where can I get my prescriptions at better prices? James wrote this, by the way. Well, look, no more as Pharmeasy bank has an extensive range of discounted prescription drugs including Ivermectin, Fenbenzedol, Fildena and all ED products and weight loss products including oral semiglutide, pronunciation, semaglutide. Pharma Easy bank uses fast secure shipping directly to your doorstep. And James can vouch for it as he's used Pharma Easy bank himself for top tier discounts. Anyways, we do have a code on the screen. You can scan, you get 20 off. Some people don't like going to the pharmacy to get their stuff, whatever it is, and you can get all that delivered to your door. So big thanks to those guys for sponsoring the online debates. Helps us out a lot. We have a lot to do for debatecon 8, 9 and 10, which is getting bigger every time. So if you haven't got your tickets yet, get those. They're going to be pretty much entirely sold out probably by the end of the week or so. We've made a little bit more space. It's a, it's a bigger venue and we're pushing it. So like the venue hasn't changed. It's just we've kind of worked some things out there so the spaces look good. We added an extra day for that as well. If you have the tickets then you're going to be able to get the pre game. If you have the VIP tickets, you're going to be able to get the pre game debate for free. If you're going in person and if you're a member on the channel, you'll be able to get all of the debates live streamed to you and that is awesome. All right guys, we will be right back and I'm just gonna leave it over on this page for a brief moment.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Sam,

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[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

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[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Sam, There's a left in the break.

[Mike (Moderator)]

We are back right now. Sorry to surprise you.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

No, you're good.

[Mike (Moderator)]

I came back a minute earlier for you chat. If I had Mormon space wise maybe I would have played it. I don't have it. Yeah, we're gonna get into the Q A now. As soon as Jay gets.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Now that we're doing Q and A, I can, I can drink the heavy stuff.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Oh yeah.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I don't feel like I need to be on my A game for this.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Let's see, it's slash here. Yeah, I didn't. I was. I was pissing whenever you sent that. So I will check to see if they are still spamming. I appreciate you.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

For anyone there. If you want to come.

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[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Fight me. Rhetorically, of course. I'll also be at debatecon in Dallas. So you guys can. If you. Sorry. If you guys can hear those beeps, it's my wife messaging me. She's snitching on you guys. Saying chat was being very mean to me.

[Mike (Moderator)]

That normal for the Internet. Yeah, right. Okay, there we go.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Hey, if any of you people are there and you have mean things to say again, you can just come up to me in Dallas at DebateCon. I'll be there with my wife and you just. If you have any arguments or if you yourself were bothered by anything I said tonight, you guys can dis it out with me. Desiree, stop texting me. Because they. You're the beep on the computer. They're going to hear that. But yeah.

[Mike (Moderator)]

I don't know if James is watching or not, but I'll put up the poll. Guys, you guys keep spamming me for it. Just do a couple timeouts and bands here. Little housekeeping.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Can I. Shameless plug.

[Mike (Moderator)]

You guys will be able to do that after the Q and A or like right before we're done. Jay, we are back, by the way. We weren't going to start without you, though.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

My bad. Go ahead. Sorry.

[Mike (Moderator)]

It's all good. I came back about a minute early. I was getting abused by the chat. Let me just exit out of this. Okay, let's pull these up. Let's pull these up. And then as they're answering the first super chat or two, I'll go ahead and throw the poll up for you guys.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Okay, What's. What's the poll?

[Mike (Moderator)]

We just asked people if who had a more persuasive argument. Typically is how I word it.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

And then I'm gonna come out on top on that.

[Mike (Moderator)]

There you go. That's good confidence there, everybody remember that

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Arrogance when you vote.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Yeah. All right, first one is from Bless my vibe code for 10 bucks. Thank you, Bless. The thing I can't get on with religion is I have to worship another man. It feels kind of homosexual. Some men literally bow their heads and get on their knees for another man. Jesus. I don't know, man. What do you guys got to say to that? I feel like that was more. Jay, answer first question.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Well, I would say that, you know, in Christian ethics, we do not favor homosexual relations and we think that it's a vice and not a virtue. And so outside of Christianity is actually, I think, granted within the Christian church, there's a lot of people who have that vice. I'm not denying that. But it's not part of our ethical scheme. So ironically, the very thing that you're saying is wrong actually makes sense within Christian ethics.

[Mike (Moderator)]

All right, Jack, you got a comment on that?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I was thinking about before this debate. This is my, like I said, this is my first debate. And so I watch a lot on YouTube and I was thinking, you know, I, I argue with a lot of people in person and sometimes I can turn into an. And kind of like a douche. And I was like, you know what? Not gonna do it tonight. So I will say that comment was rude, misplaced, and intentionally, intentionally misunderstanding the positions. But still funny. Made me laugh.

[Mike (Moderator)]

All right, appreciate that. Next question. Comment is from Darth Thoranes for two says, Jay, why is chopping off foreskins objectively moral?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Is that your position?

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Objectively immoral or did you say Jay or Jack?

[Mike (Moderator)]

Jay. And they said objectively moral. So they're, they're assuming you think that's objectively moral.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Yeah, well, I mentioned earlier, if you, if you listened standing commands, it had a temporary time frame. So in the Old Testament, according to our theology, there was a time period where, because the law had a harsh tutelage phase where they were. God was bringing the Jews back to him and imposed, you know, legalities that were harsh even for that time. Those were fulfilled in Christ. And so they're standing commands, like when God tells David to go and fight this battle or whatever. Those are not universal principles. And that's why I said that our ethic is not just sort of a single ethic of, oh, there's only this divine command that always applies. There are temporal time bound commands. And that would be one of those that's fulfilled in the rite of baptism.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

So you don't think people need to get. You don't hold it that people need to get circumcised. Anymore.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

No Christianity ever taught that except for various Judaizing sects.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Just checking.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Jawali, you said, why am I an option? There is because you wanted me to tell a joke and I don't. That's the best I got for you. Kevin Blackwell, welder for five, says for Jack, you said in your opener that morality exists in a material sense. What is the matter that morality is made of? What is its mass or weight? Etc?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I hate that this guy lost his money. I don't think I said that. I think I explicitly said it exists in a non natural sense, being immaterial. I, I don't, I don't. I sucks. He's. He spent his. If he, if he spent money to send that question in, but it was based on a misunderstanding. I feel bad for him, but. Yeah, no, I, I believe ethics is immaterial. I don't believe that you can. I believe it's always unconditioned. In fact, I would even go as far as Derek Parfit does of saying any normative truth cannot be reflected in a, in a empirical. Cannot be reflected by an empirical truth. It can only be a property of an empirical truth. So, but now I'm just responding to a. I'm shadow boxing right now because, you know, you spent your money on that. Sorry, not my position.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Well, Kevin, we appreciate the five Jay Darman for five says, please reconcile, quote, God drowned babies, killed them in mass in Egypt, condoned slavery, allowed wartime sex slave, end quote with quote, God is necessary for ethics, end quote.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Yeah. So again, during that period, the ancient pagan world was brutal. God was in the orthodox conception, as the church fathers teach, gradually bringing man back to him throughout various periods of the Old Testament. So when you get the laws in Deuteronomy or Exodus, for example, those are the first laws in the ancient world that actually gave slaves certain rights. And so there's a gradual tempering of the tendency that ancient pagan humanity had to bring them up to the phase when it was the time in God's providence to bring about the Messiah, the first coming of Christ. So we don't think that just like with Abraham, right. There was less expectation and less legality that was imposed upon Abraham versus what we get by the time of the Messiah. And pretty much, I mean, even if you're a secular ethicist, most people think that, you know, human ethics have progressed over time. I mean, Christianity has that same notion of ethics progressing not in the progressive leftist sense, but in terms of the totality of human existence that human ethics do Progress. And so God didn't lay all the same expectations on the first, second, third generation, you know, people in the book of Genesis that he did later on at the time of Christ or us today. So the world is very different from the way that it was back then. So God judged that humanity was itself not really salvific or salvageable except for Noah and his family, because they were righteous at the time of the flood. And God has that right because for us, God is the ultimate standard. So if God determines that people are going to die at XYZ time, it's really not any different than dying at any other point in your life. I mean, we're all going to die. So it's sort of like the fact that infants died in the flood isn't really any different than infants dying right now or any other time. So death itself is part of the fall. It's one of the aspects of the fall.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Can I. Can I.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Absolutely.

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[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Yeah.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

So I think one thing that's always bothered me in Christian theology was a lot of people, and I remember back in my, you know, apologetic bro days, the question was always, oh, you know, but God, the, the, the Canaanites and the Amalekites and the, and the Amorites and, and then he didn't explicitly condemn child slavery or sex slavery in. And, but it was always, it. It was really odd to me that while the same time I was being taught that, oh, God had to make laws that would work with the culture at the time, and God had to. This is not my position. This is the position of many apologetic authors like Dan Kimball, Greg Kokel, Frank Turek has always spouted these points. And I know Jay probably would have subscribed to these apologetic apologists, but many Protestant Christians do. And the, the responses are always, well, God had to sort of work with, with the people at the time. The reason God couldn't give, you know, early humans, you know, germ theory is. And this is why people always challenge the creation story. God couldn't give him germ theory and, and, you know, and the speed of light to understand cosmology and all these things. And so, and this kind of makes sense. But then at the same time, we're taught that Jesus was supposed to be a radical, unsettling in the way the order things were. The Jews were expecting a king, a soldier, but he's a, he's a, he's a popper born from Nazareth. And Jesus is coming in when he says the, the scene where he's, you know, drawing in the sand with the, the lady caught in prostitution. All these things. Jesus is meant to be this crazy radical force upsetting all the forces or all the the, you know, prior moral assumptions. Yet when it comes to slavery in the Bible or, or you know, the floods or genocide or whatever these charges, well then God has to work. By the way, this is a position of Christian apologists is that God couldn't

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[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

just completely get rid of slavery because, because it would have upset the economic structure. And this is again, this is what many apologists say. So I'll shut up now. But it's just always interesting that when

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

God is doing those arguments.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

But no, I know you're not making them, but this is just something that I hear a lot of Christians spout and it's just God. When God's doing something we morally abhor, it's because God's a mystery. When something great happens, it's because he's, you know, he's, he's a miracle worker. And it just seems kind of slippery for me sometimes.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Jay, you want to say anything back to that before I go to the next one?

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Well, I was just going to say, I mean first of all, the Old Testament does condemn sex slavery. You're not allowed to rape people. There's punishments for, for rape in the Old Testament.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

There's not verses about taking women after you go and conquer the Amalekites. That's.

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[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

The verses in Deuteronomy also say that you, if you, if you take those brides, you have to marry them, then thus you're also bound by all the other sexual ethics. There's no place where you can rape anybody and you're actually condemned if you rape. So that's a misunderstanding of the book of Deuteronomy. But there's no place where anybody advocates or says you engage in sex slavery.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Why are we just glossing over the if you take the women, you have to marry them. Like we're just like that alone. We find that morally repugnant now, but. But totally permissible.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Again, the argument was that in an ancient world where slaves, people like that had no rights, this is the beginning of those people actually having some rights in Mosaic Law.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

But why does it have to be this, like, slow. This was the point I made.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Because the, because the progression.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Why is it not just like.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Because it was.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

When you conquer, when you conquer a world of vitality.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Check. You asked him a question. Let him answer.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Sorry.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

All right.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

It was a world, and the ancient world was brutal, especially if you read throughout the Old Testament, and not just the Old Testament, but also, you know, ancient accounts of the Near East. I mean, it was a brutal situation. So the expectation was not that you could have, you know, 21st century American, you know, in light, post Enlightenment values in place, you know, civic nationalism or this kind of stuff that didn't exist in the ancient world. So I think that in divine providence, the gradual implementation of these types of, of laws, giving more and more people dignity and rights, there's nothing in, there's nothing inconsistent within the Christian system. That, I mean, that's, that doesn't, that doesn't constitute a problem for the Christian system. If God chose to work that way rather than sort of just automatically like wiping all the, you know, wiping every single violation of human rights as we understand in the 21st century, out in the, you know, the 13th century B.C. like, why. Why does it have to be. Why could it not be a gradual situation?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I would just think that one Jesus coming and then the radical implications of Jesus. I mean, I mean, maybe you're a

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Protestant with Protestant ideas about who Jesus was as a radical, because I don't think he was. I think Jesus is the God of the Old Testament that gave those laws. He says he was in the book of John. And, you know, you have. Well, you have in the book Revelation condemnation, for example, of human slave trade. So I think that that was always. For example, take polygamy, right? God permitted polygamy, but when Christ comes, he says polygamy was not the original ideal. And I want to call my followers to that original ideal.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

So, yeah, it was just the fact that the, the, these people are traveling around in, in Exodus and they're constructing their tabernacle and then they believe that this guy's walking into the tower or they're watching Moses go to the top of the mountain and they're seeing Moses talk with God. The guy comes out from the tabernacle and it's just not going to be. He's not going to be influential enough to say, you know, don't take, don't take women. When we go conquer nations. It had to be progressive because the ancient areas was so, it was already so rough.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

He says don't take them and rape them. So if you're going to take them, you have to marry them.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

You're going to take them.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Well, but again, like that, that, but marrying them gives them legal status with rights which they would not have had in any other situation. To be a wife gives you legal status with rights, including inheritance, dowry, all of that.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

It's still against their will. And so. Yeah, I just, I just think it's really interesting that the, the guy couldn't. The, the, the.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Well, the idea that we marry people come out of the tabernacle and just say the idea. But wait a minute. The idea that we marry people. Only basis of will. I mean, that's a very late development. I mean, most of the world, all the way up until, you know, the courtly love tradition, never even thought in that way. And even after the courtly love tradition, the Middle Ages, I mean, most of the world was giving daughters away in marriage by arranged marriages. So you're sort of imposing these sort of like post 1960s cultural revolution ideas like, why didn't the ancient world have that?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Yeah, yeah. It's good evidence for the, for the. It's good evidence for the progress of secular ethics.

[Mike (Moderator)]

We will.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Why are we supposed to care about.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Sorry, I was gonna say we'll probably circle back around that. I'm gonna, I'm gonna read a couple of these ten dollar ones real quick and if it connects, just pick it right back up. Kevin Blackwell, welder for 10, says for Jack. You said numbers are not natural and you don't exist or. And don't exist in the world, just like ethical truths. But in your opener that ethics are material, how do materials exist outside this world?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Did I. I don't think I said. I don't. Can you repeat the last, the second half of that question?

[Mike (Moderator)]

I'm sorry. So the claim is that you said numbers are not natural and they don't exist in the world.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Yeah.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Just like ethical truths. But in your opener, you said that ethics are material, so how do materials exist outside of the world?

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

I don't.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Well, okay, first off, again, I think I had to explain this to the first question that I didn't say ethics were material. I don't think there's a chemical composition to. Maybe I have sort of a lisp. And when I said immaterial Maybe I was talking fast because I was trying not to. I, I don't, I mean, I don't think Jay misheard me in my opening. I don't. I think I made it very clear that I'm a, I'm a, I'm a non naturalist cognitivist, meaning that ethics are immaterial. They're. You can't see them. Naturally.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

I did hear you argue that, and that's actually one of the things I was arguing against. So, yeah, in your position.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Okay, yeah, so, but, but wait. But just so I can make sure this guy gets a little bit of his money worth. The last part of that question was how can something material. Say the last part, the very last sentence. How?

[Mike (Moderator)]

Just like, how do materials exist outside this world? So, yeah, if, if the ethics are material, as he claims, you said in your opener.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Okay, yeah, I guess by this world, I guess he means this universe. And I mean, you, you could, I mean, just to entertain the question, because I didn't say ethics were material, but just to entertain the question, you, you could go, I'm not a multiverse guy. But you could argue that if you really wanted to get into philosophy slop and just be a freshman in a philosophy degree, you could argue that, that the dement that humans are, you know, working with finite minds that cannot. They could be non realist in that there could be aspects of, Of, Of. Of the universe that are not realizable to humans. Like snakes see things through infrared or whatever, and humans see things differently. So maybe there's another realm or, or dimension where there could be sort of a physical objectivity that we can access. If you really want it to be just philosophy slop on Reddit, but that's not a position I hold. But I, I was just trying to entertain the guy that, who spent some money. But I don't, I don't believe any of that.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Okay. TJ 2502 for 10 says, Jay, have you heard of Hata or the hybrid abduction transcendental argument? And is it better than tag? Someone told me it bypasses problems that traditional tag has wanted your take.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

I don't know if I'm being trolled or That's a real thing. I don't know what that is.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Is it like the TAG argument but with alias?

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Probably like the Maga version. Probably Maga Mag.

[Mike (Moderator)]

That's probably the best version of Tag Hater.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

What's tag?

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Oh, the transcendental argument for God.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Oh, all right. 1313, Maryland for 10 says we are the image of God. Kings and Queens and everything should be free. Jay is a fed.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Yeah, I'm KGB Massad. CA Sorcerer.

[Mike (Moderator)]

I learned that recently.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

All of those at once.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Is that a promotion or.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

I run all of it. I'm running this, dude. Oh, yeah, dude, promote me because I'm at the top.

[Mike (Moderator)]

I started it.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Can I have some like two real

[Mike (Moderator)]

quick rapid fires related to the question or not?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Not really.

[Mike (Moderator)]

All right, make it quick.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

All right, Jay, just. I'm not. These aren't meant to be insulting questions. I'm just curious where you stand. How old do you think the Earth is?

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

I favor a younger Earth.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Okay. Do you believe in dinosaurs?

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

I'm an agnostic skeptic on all kinds of things like that. I don't have any position. I don't. I don't have any position on that. I'm not exactly how the universe like formed. I'm. I don't have like cosmological stuff. I have a pretty. With a lot of like mainline sciency type stuff. I've just have a skeptic position.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I don't have any agnostic on dinosaurs.

[Moto Casino Promoter]

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[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

I think they could be, but I don't. I don't study paleontology, so it's not an area that I have much thought about.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Okay. All right. Was that did both questions or.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Yeah, that's. Yeah.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Okay, cool. Moving on. We got Alchemist for five. He says nice to see Jay come out of his comfort zone. Twitter spaces to have a good moderated debate with the first timer. Moving on up since the Warski days.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

I mean, I've been doing moderated formal debates for 10 years, since the Worsky days. So I don't know where that is. I mean, I've done like 10 Muslim debates. 10, 10 moderated Muslim debates. Many atheists moderated debates.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

So you like this? No, this no name. This no name. Phil Student. I'll just. I'll just dance with him for a bit.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Make a Wish Foundation.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Yeah. Thank you. This is probably the most attention I've ever gotten.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Hey. Well, you're, You're. You're a brave young man getting on the platform. There was at the peak about 2100 people watching. Which reminds me to ask all of them to like the video, please. That would be awesome. Give it up for Jack for. For stepping in the ring.

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[Mike (Moderator)]

Next up, we got J. Darman for five says, didn't Euthyphro kind of decimate the idea of deity based ethics, Bro kind of nuked deity based ethics millennia ago. Whoops.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Well, like I said when I responded to that line of argument at the beginning, which I wasn't sure if he was going in that direction or not, but the argument's really based on a Greek view of metaphysics and the idea that there's only one good, the highest good, which is the one, and then everything else is kind of on a chain of being. And so the argument presents kind of a false dilemma based the Greek metaphysic of you either accept that the deity is the source of the ethics, or there's an ethical norm above the deity. And we would say that it's neither of those in the orthodox Christian perspective, because there's not just one type of good or one type of ethic. There's created good and there's uncreated goods and there's also many goods. And this has a lot to do with the notion of free will, the notion of, you know, different levels of reality within Christian metaphysics. So Euthyphro dilemma is really contingent on Greek Hellenic metaphysics. And if that's not true, then it's not really a problem for the orthodox perspective. This is a long winded answer. But orthodox theology believes in the essence, energy distinction. So we don't equate God's actions or even commands, divine commands or whatever, necessarily as identical to his essence or to his, to his very being. So God can do different types of things. So not every action is the same, not every moral command, etc is identical or eternal. And so in the same way there's not just the choice of a standard above God, which we don't accept, nor is there only an ethic or a norm that's identical to the one that's eternal.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Awesome. Appreciate the response, Jack. If you have a quick one before I move on, you're welcome to it.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Otherwise, yeah, I think good is a good ought.

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[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

All these are irreducibly normative claims which mean they can't be defined in any terms other than more normative claims. And so the idea of there being different types of goods, I think muddies the waters a little bit. I. I'd be curious what the demarcations are on those different types of goods. Yeah, I mean, the original question was about euthyphro and I mean, I've never read a single word of euthyphro. Of course there's Euthyphro's dilemma. When I brought up Euthyphro, I also mentioned Kant. And really what I'm referring to is Kant and the groundwork for the metaphysics and Morals. Who mentions that? I think in the first 14 pages, if you have the Hackett edition, mentions that to even call Jesus Christ, and he doesn't even just mention God, he mentions Jesus Christ himself. He says to call Jesus Christ good is to sort of imply a standard. Of course, I could be misreading Kant just a little bit there, but I've yet to meet a professional academic philosopher who has mastered Kant. I was very fortunate enough to have a Kant seminar with a schizophrenic professor who made us free to all three critiques cover to cover. So I get the bragging rights of saying I've read all three critiques, but I get the unfortunate realization that I don't really understand any of them.

[Mike (Moderator)]

So

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

that's just some slap there.

[Mike (Moderator)]

All right, all right, we got another one from Kevin Blackwell, welder. Thanks. Well, this is two back to back. I'll just read both. I said for Jack on both of them. First one is what is the state of being rational? And the second is how do you encounter an ought to?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

The state of being rational would be acting in accords with things that are irrational. And I know that kind of sounds like it bottoms out in circularity. Yeah, I might even be willing to concede that to be rational is to be is to be conforming to reasons that have normative motivational force. And so just to make sure there weren't any misunderstandings in the debate, I was arguing that all reasons give motivational force, but only some of them are normative. Only some of them are universalizable. I have, I'm. I might want some coffee later. And therefore I have a reason to go get coffee that's not a normative reason that doesn't make sort of universal claim. You could maybe go down some Phil slop route and say if everyone wanted coffee, they would all have a universal reason, but that's a slop. So the state of being rational is just according with reasons that have motivational force that are either, you know, operating on reasons that are optimistic, can't be rationally rejected and would also be rationally willed by other rational animals, other humans. I guess you could put some other species as long as they had access to reason. So some extraterrestrial force that had the pure concepts of reason would be included in this. And then the second question was, how do you give us an.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Yeah, how do you encounter an ought?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

How do you encounter. Not usually it has something with motivating force. So you're motivated to do something and you ought to do it. But I don't. Just for clarification, to make sure Jay doesn't misunderstand me and other people don't misunderstand me. Oughts are not. Just because you have an odd, doesn't mean you should always follow through on it. So rationality is not at bottom

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

really

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

what's going to be like. You can be acting rational and have it not be good. If you want to genocide 6 million Jews, it'd be very rational for you to be a Nazi in the 30s. That'd be a rational thing for you to do. But you ought not do it. And there are other overriding, optimistic, rational, norm based reasons that would give you reason to not do it. And they're also interesting enough, and Parfit talks about this in his book on what Matters. There are instances where it could be rational to be irrational and to, to operate against irrationality. For example, if someone confronted me and said, I'm going to kill 20,000 people unless you take a pill that makes you irrational. Well, it is always irrational to choose to be irrational. But again, this sounds kind of slop. It would be rational to choose to be irrational for the sake of those 20,000 people or however many people were going to die. So interestingly enough, there are weird fringe cases. And one last thing I would say is. And Derek Parfitt talks on this. Dirk Parfit operates with a lot of thought experiments and a lot of people think philosophy kind of bottoms out in slop when it comes to thought experiments. Parfit uses. The whole point of these thought experiments is then when you encounter like philosophy grift, these can be really annoying, but they do do a good job at testing intuitions and universalizable principles. So if your principle cannot hold up to some crazy, ridiculous thought experiment, as long as that thought experiment doesn't violate the laws of physics or the laws of nature. And as, as long as there's no logical miscalculations in that thought experiment, and you're consistent reason or your universal reason can't line up with that thought experiment, then whether you like thought experiments or not, it's demonstrated that your principle is bad.

[Mike (Moderator)]

All right, we're gonna Put a bow on that.

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[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Yeah, that was long winded.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Go ahead. Cool.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Moving on. Thank you though, Jack. I'm sure Kevin Blackwell, welder, did not expect that response, so it's appreciated.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

You got your money's worth. You got your money's worth, right?

[Mike (Moderator)]

We got Cleave to Antiquity for Two says, in my subjective experience, Jack is a talking flea. And then he said, cussing fallacy. So you're gonna have to internalize that there. No more fallacies, Jack.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Yeah, sorry.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Darth Thoranes again, says Jay. How do you ground logic in a transgender Jewish God? Ral. Holy Spirit. Is the family pronoun Jesus. Jewish. How is a trans Jew necessary for logic?

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Yeah, that's the Kabbalistic teaching that God is by gender or bisexual. It's not the orthodox Christian teaching. So we think that God the Father is really the ground of patriarchy and patriarchal theology. So our church is pretty strict on that stuff. Male priests, male bishops. So none of that's even true.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Appreciate that. J. Darman. Oh, yeah. He says for five towards Jack. Great first debate. Lose the stash for clarity. You were on point. Stop being generous. This is the Internet, not normal intellectual exchanges.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I'll be meaner next time.

[Mike (Moderator)]

All right. Valhalla 6 or D6K for 20. Thank you. Valhalla says Dire on Catch up. Your videos and ideas have been a great inspiration. Led to the orthodoxy for me. I appreciate you.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Appreciate that.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Yeah.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

So to the Orthodox. I got out of theology in like 2020. At the end of 2023, I was kind of like, theology's not doing it for me. I want to do philosophy. And I just moved to philosophy because I realized you could do theology in the philosophy department. You cannot do philosophy in the theology departments in the academic sphere. And so I'm like, listening sometimes to, like, some of these questions that like. Jay, I was checking out your channel. The topics you are always having to cover are like. It's just. I don't. I don't know. It's just there's people that spend so much time thinking about the gender of God and things. Like, it's just.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

That's not on my channel. What are you talking about?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I mean, do you ever engage? I mean, you. You feel. It seems like you have to engage with these sort of arguments from time to time.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Like the gender of God. Yeah, Like, I don't think I've ever been clarify that. We do. We do open calls, you know, all the time on live streams. I don't ever recall that question coming up. I mean, maybe once in. In the last 10 years. I mean, a lot of what I cover is like, geopolitics, movies. I don't just cover theology, so I cover all kinds of stuff. But I mean, in the open forums, we get all kinds of questions. But I don't recall that. But maybe once.

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[Mike (Moderator)]

All right, Jay, this one's from a Linux live who really thinks that I skipped her question, but I was just reading the bigger super chats. But hey, you know, squeaky wheel gets the grease there. Question for Jay. If God real, why no Reddit Utopia? Why no what Reddit Utopia?

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Well, I could. I guess I could say with my friend Jack here that there's good reason and hope to believe that they will achieve it in the near future because it can develop. So one day it will develop more rules in moderation.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Yeah.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Oh, I see what you did there. Moderation. Tip my fedora to you, Jack. All right. Valhalla sent another 20 and said, if God is for us, who can be against us?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Just kidding.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Right on, Valhalla.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I just wanted to make something clear because.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Did you raise your hand?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I was kidding, but I just wanted to be clear because again, and I'm not. You did a great job moderating, and

[Mike (Moderator)]

you guys are too very chill. I didn't have to do anything.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Yeah, you did a great job moderating. And then also, I'm very grateful for this to be my first debate. I did reach out just for anyone in the chat who's curious what my religious positions are. If you ask. I mean, I'm. I'm. I'm okay with talking about it. I don't believe, like, this whole, like, Donald Trump position of, like, my faith is really personal, so I won't talk about it. And, like, I'll talk of ass, but, like, I just believed God's existent or not existent. That's besides the point. We can have normative, objective ethics without God. And then originally the title is the thumbnail said atheist versus versus Christian. And I reached out and I said, yo, I never said I'm an atheist. Most people know me as a Christian, but I'm, but I never, I've never, I haven't made a statement on my religious position. I see a lot of people in the comments or earlier during the break, I was looking at the chat and people being like, man, the, the agnostic or the atheist. I just, I just, I haven't made any of those explicit and I think even a Christian could conceivably take my position and argue, hey, you can have this code and follow it without, without God. And so I just, so we're clear, this was a morality debate, not a debate on the existence of God. And I'm, I'm glad me and Jay didn't have to get into whether God exists or not. That was $20. I think that was a worthwhile response.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Yeah, fair enough. He didn't necessarily ask. I think it was more red rhetorical but you know, you, you can respond to anything.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Yeah.

[Mike (Moderator)]

13, 13 Maryland sent 10 and said Jay, in what way are you the image of God? If you need a master, yet Jesus calls us friends, you take no accountability and are without excuse Jesus.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

I mean that sounds like a fanatic weird line of argument. Jesus also made the analogy to, you know, Paul says Christ, he's a slave to Christ. So you know, it doesn't mean that we're literal slaves in some, you know, serval sense. It's just different analogies that the New Testament uses in many places to describe the relationship. They just, it's described like a covenant, like a marriage, like a legal setting. All those images are used so we don't pick out one to, to make that the only analogy.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Fair enough. I got a 20 from D. Jules here. I hope I said that right. D. You're constantly worried I'm going to mess it up. Q. Jack Ortho or question for Jack Ortho explains why we have moral duties. Morality is rooted in God's unchanging character and human beings are made in his im. In your worldview, what transforms. I prefer reducing harm into everyone ought to.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I'm not a harm based reductionist. I believe the Sam Hor. It's the Sam Harris and the Walter Armstrong atheist slash agnostic arguments for a harm based morality. I honestly think those are pretty okay. I mean I could understand why someone would be convinced by them prepping for this debate. I mean again, I'm not a guy. I believe morality is a lot more deeper than just like let me reduce harms in fact, I believe that there can be self defeating. Those, those theories can be kind of self defeating. So I'm not a harm based moralist. When I meet people that have a harm based morality, pretty happy with that. People that want to maximize well being, people that want to reduce misery. I think those are really good. I think if everyone was more like that, that'd be great. But I knew that wouldn't be satisfactory for tonight. I knew Jay wouldn't let that slide and he, he probably shouldn't. But again, I wish everyone, if everyone was more like that, the world would be a better place. But that's not what I'm like. And then the. Well, but that was the second part of the question. Real quick. Sorry, what was the first part?

[Mike (Moderator)]

Sorry, I was reading all the chat, calling Marilyn a wine mom. Why are you all saying that? Posting all these wine glasses.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

That's a joke from my channel.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Okay, I seen her, I've seen her on a couple other streams that I've hosted in other people's streams. So I wasn't sure if there's something I was missing.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

But the first part of that question was.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Yeah, yeah, one second. It explains ortho, explains why we have moral duties and morality is rooted in God's unchanging character and human beings are made in his image. So in your worldview.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Yeah, yeah. So two, two things to respond to that. One, the unchanging moral duties. It seems like the Christian community is still taking a while to figure out what those unchanging moral duties are. I think the fact that you guys still have a lot of, I mean, this new weird, like resurfacing, this new anti feminist renaissance going on right now is a little weird for me. The consistent evidence of like unoptimific principles being like championed by Christians, the fact that there's like pastors going around, like, I can't think of any names off the top of my head, but like, this has been a pretty common talking point among people concerned with the matter of like, like people coming on saying like empathy is like anti Christian and it's coming from pastors. These are just, I mean, y' all need to get your theories straight and y' all need to figure out a system to be more coherent on these. But also reason gives you like duty based theories. I mean, this is what we just debated so we don't rehash it. I know.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Jada, is feminism a duty?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I mean, feminine? I don't think. I mean, feminism is a movement.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

I mean, I mean the ethical ideals of feminism. Is that a moral duty that we have?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I would argue, I mean, like, feminism is like a really, really broad thing.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Well, you were just saying that we're bad for being anti feminist because of this patriarchal renaissance or whatever. So I'm trying to figure out why I follow the ethics of feminism in your view.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I mean, like, it's going to lead to, I mean, well, one, females are autonomous. I mean, I say autonomous very loosely here, but they're rational agents operating in the world and they have like the same cognitive capacities as you and I do. They have the same dignity that you and I have.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Feminism, though, because feminism is a lot more than that.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Well, this is why I said feminism is like a really broad concept. And so like the idea that like feminine. Dude, I. There's so many ways to interpret feminism, but like, like, as far as. What I mean is just like the idea of realizing that women are like equals in terms of dignity to men.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

And so as far as not feminism, that's just.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Well, this one, like that is.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

But you said so.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Yeah, it's a part of feminism is recognized.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Feminism is based around the idea also that at least most feminists that women can do and ought to do all the same jobs, you know, societal roles as men. Do you. Do you think that's also an ideal that we should shoot for?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I don't think feminism is a universalizable movement. Like, I don't.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

But I shouldn't have said universalizable movement then when you. Then you don't have a basis to critique our position against it because you were arguing that there's these duties. So you have a duty.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

This new anti feminism renaissance. What I mean by that is like, like people who are at bare minimum not realizing the dignity in females. Like, I'm totally down to say women are not as capable of doing the same things as men in some, like on. On average. Right. Generally men are going to be stronger. So of course, generally men are going to be taking stronger jobs. Generally men are going to be. Or generally females are going to be wanting to raise kids. I might, you know, it might be a very plausible argument to say that most women want to stay home and raise their kids.

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[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

So of course men are going to be taking more, more demanding jobs. Like, I'm. Yeah, I'm fine with conceding all that. You're not gonna, I'm not gonna be got on any of that progressive slop. But I mean, there is a. I'm

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

just confused what you meant by like, oh, the Christians are not Being, you know, they're being.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I mean, I'm watching this Sarah, whatever the hell her name is at TP usa saying have more kids than you can afford and also saying that women should be okay with giving up their right to vote. That's schizophrenic. That's crazy.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

How's that schizophrenic?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I mean, I mean, we're in 2026 and we're going back to the idea of, like, repealing the 19th Amendment.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Well, but why ought I believe that there's some.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Dude, why aren't you to believe that you ought to repeal the 19th amendment?

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

No, why ought I believe that I have a duty to defend or support just women voting? Like what? On what basis?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I mean, you can take a neutral stance to it, but to take an oppressed, to take a, an offensive stance to it and say we ought to repeal the 19th amendment, that I think is.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

No, I'm asking why I ought to support your view of supporting women's right to vote.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Because it realizes women's is at least on when it comes to voting.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

You don't think voting, you think voting's like, legit, or is it faking gay?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I think voting's legit.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Really?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Yeah, I think when I cast my vote, it goes into a pool that my state electorate will count up. And then as long as I'm electing electorates that agree to go with the counting in my district, then that vote will go on to elect the people that I'm voting for.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

If I, if my believer in democracy.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Yeah, I'm a big, big liberal, Stan. I'd hate progressives, but I'm a big liberal, Stan. Big, big time liberal.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Okay, well, I think democracy and voting are fake. Both are fake and gay. But you can have that debate down the road if you want.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I believe you. Real quick, real quick. The option was Trump is a fascist or ethics can exist without God. I have a lot of political positions, but I said, you know what? I'm, I'm, I'm trying to be more philosophical, less political. On all my platforms, though, I have a lot of political. So I chose to do the philosophy argument, and I don't regret it. I, I, I, I prefer to do philosophy over politics, but, but I, oh, that's.

[Mike (Moderator)]

And we're moving on here. D Jules, I hope you got your money's worth out of that. One in the film says secular philosophy, slowly trying to use reason with the hope of discovering truth. Bros having faith they'll receive divine revelation. In my opinion,

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I don't even know how to respond.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

I mean, I don't understand that.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I mean.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Yeah, I'll give him one more. Just because he's a regular super chatter. Basically, secular philosophy is using reason to the point of it seeming to this gentleman that you're just hoping that through reason you will receive divine revelation and discover truth. And it's just a hopeful.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Oh, I see what you're saying.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Yeah.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

He's trying to say, I think that what I was arguing that for you, reason kind of occupies the position of God like it does in my system.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Oh, nope, I think those are all. Any, Any theory that you could say is coming from God. You just be having to intuit it through the faculty of reason. And so. Yeah, just. No.

[Mike (Moderator)]

All right. He says it's a joke.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Oh, okay.

[Mike (Moderator)]

1313, Maryland one last time. Says Jesus came to tell his father's business that we are no longer called slave, but friend, because a slave does not know his master's business. J is a J.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Right. Marilyn is a former super chatter who believes that we're all God.

[Mike (Moderator)]

I've seen those super chats before.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

She's a pantheist. Wine mom.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

See, you don't encounter these like astrology, like deranged people. You don't encounter this, by the way, in the secular academic philosophy departments. You don't encounter this.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

I've encountered a lot of deranged people in the secular philosophy academic department. I was in academia grad school, so there was plenty of. There was.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I know you got your ma.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Can I ask you brought into my. One of my professors offices and he had a giant painting of a child angel with a giant dong. So there's plenty of freaks in the secular.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

That might have been Michelangelo, though. He painted the 16th Chapel.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

No, it was not painted.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Well, the 16th Chapel. I haven't seen the first 15. Faith can move mountains. Big 50. Thank you. I appreciate that. They said we love Israel. We love Israel. All kidding. Jack, please go to a divine liturgy and we're praying for you. Fake out.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Since he. Wait, he paid $50 for that?

[Mike (Moderator)]

Yeah.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Okay.

[Mike (Moderator)]

I mean, so you're gonna go. This is kind of what he wants to know, I guess.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I mean, there's. I've. I've planted. I've planted a church. Well, I've helped plant a church.

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[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Like I said, outside of I've. I've. It's really odd. I mean, I've been a. I've been a outspoken Christian since 2018. I kind of went incognito in 2023. Ish. Regarding that, mainly, I never really got strong positions on theology. I just got more interested in philosophy and kind of left theology and thoughts I've gotten in the back.

[Mike (Moderator)]

But there's a quick comment on that one that says, here's your 7,000 BB coins.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Oh, they might be. They might have stalked my thing.

[Mike (Moderator)]

No, no, no. That person saying we love Israel twice, they got 7,000 BB coins. We got to move on. We got a lot coming in here. Unless Jay wanted to say I don't know what.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Okay, yeah, I don't know what to say to that.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Opgram3r 482 since 20. And says Jay, when you just went into the EO view, God's commands, not being eternal or needing to be alike is a statement that defines and justifies his. Or is it a statement that defines justifies his limitlessness? Did I understand that correctly?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Do you enjoy engaging with those types of questions?

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[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

I mean, I'm used to it. It's like 10 years, these types of questions. I mean, I don't know if it necessarily directly relates to limitlessness, but I think, you know, the orthodox conception of God is a lot more nuanced, I guess, theologically nuanced than anything that you would find in Protestantism. I would argue that it's even way

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[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

scholastic and nuanced in that sense than. Than Roman Catholicism. So I think we go in directions that even Aquinas people like, that kind of didn't even go in. So, yeah, I think there's just a lot more, a deeper understanding, I would say, of the Trinity in orthodox theology than you get in kind of Protestant or even Roman Catholic circles. So, in a sense, yes, but I don't know that directly relates to limitlessness.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Jay, when I meet Orthodox people that say they're Orthodox, like with a capital O, because, like, I was always under the assumption that Protestants and Baptists, these were. These were all people that. They describe themselves as Orthodox with like a lowercase O. Like, they're just meaning they're not Catholic or they're not. Not doing progressive Christianity. Is it Is it the position of most people in the orthodo capital o Orthodox camp that, like, they don't think Presbyterians, Baptists are Christian? Is that like a common trend?

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Yeah, I mean, for the Orthodox Church to be even under the umbrella of Christian, you would have to at least accept the Nicene Creed. Most of those churches fundamentally reject, you know, elements of that creed. So. So we could say that, yeah, people broadly go under the nominal term of Christian. But from the Orthodox perspective, in terms of, like, do we recognize them as churches? No, not saying that we. We don't know their eternal destinies. We're not judging people's destinies, just in the sense of, like, recognizing what is and isn't the church, which is very specific for us. We would not recognize the Presbyterian Church or the Baptist Church, but it has.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

No, that's not a. So when you say they're not. When you say a Baptist isn't Christian, that's not a salvific claim.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

You're not. We don't know people's destinies. No.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

But would you say it's just as up in the air as if you met, like, a progressive on the street? Like just anyone on the street? You'd say they're kind of in the same camp. Like, they're uncomfortable.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

I think that you can have. There's, you know, you can have more truth and less truth. There's gradations on that. But from the vantage point of the means of grace, in terms of the sacraments, we don't think that there's, like. We don't think baptists have like 20 of the sacraments and Catholics have, like, 70 or something like that. We see them all as outside of the Orthodox Church. And only the Orthodox Church has the means of grace. And God can, you know, judge people's hearts in terms of, like, baptism of desire, that kind of stuff. So that's why we don't make, like, individual judgments. But we don't recognize any of those confessions because we're already bound to not. We can't do that.

[Mike (Moderator)]

All right, before I get to Kaden Lucky's chat, faith can and move. Faith can move mountains. Who donated 50 a second ago, just sent another 10. Thank you. They said that we love Israel is a cleave to antiquity reference. And there's only one true holy Catholic in apostolics.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Yeah, it's just a joke. They're making jokes. They're not actually Zionists.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Yeah, yeah, I figured that a Zionist wouldn't tell Jack to go to divine liturgy.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Good point. I was in it for the audience. I knew you knew.

[Mike (Moderator)]

So yeah. Another 10 comes in from monarchia of the Memra says literally the calmest debate I've seen in my life. Jay is nice, not mean.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Jack is in a chill and Jack set the. Set the tone early on that we were going to be chill. So I was like, we'll be chill tonight.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Yeah, there you go, guys. Chat could set the tone too. Kaden.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Lucky y' all were. Y' all were gassing me in a bad way in the freaking pre chat that the number one commenter was like those pubes on his face. And I was like, damn.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Chat could be a little bit, a

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

little bit harsh talking about me, dude,

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

maybe they were talking about you.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Yeah, these are him.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Caden says hello. My friend Luke is a Byzantine. Byzantine Lutheran. They are like eo. It would be nice to debate him on the filioque. He said he is confident he can beat you.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Whatever. There's no such thing as a Byzantine Lutheran. That doesn't exist. So that's. Whatever.

[Mike (Moderator)]

That's a good one. All right, we got a couple more here. Zanderk van or V4N for five says Euthyphro is about a Hellenic religion in which various goods are determined by gods with competing values. Eg patricide is bad, but Zeus did it it.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Okay, that's part of what I was trying to get at. Yeah.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Yeah. White Fang 1440 for 20. Thank you. For the 20 moderator, what are your thoughts in terms of this discussion in terms of the argument of morality? Just out of complete curiosity, firsttime viewer and loving it. Well, appreciate you tuning in. If you aren't a member, you should. We're about to have a lot of debates streamed in the next two weeks with Jay and a few other people that are massive debaters that visit the channel frequently and that will be something you don't want to miss if you're new. My thoughts on this is a very chill debate. One of the chiller ones I've done one of the more crazy ones which a also present in it. You guys can go check that out. It might be behind the member wall though. And yeah, I think the argument of moralities is pretty, pretty well discussed here in a way that I am not going to entirely give like a straight opinion on. But I think it was a good back and forth and there is definitely something that you could put in the. From the transcripts into AI and get a more precise like who made what argument and what wasn't answered. I like doing that. Stuff. So, I mean, that would honestly give you better view because I just look at that a lot of the times to see what was missed question wise. And then I kind of form opinions based on, you know, what I feel wasn't answered. I'll look up. So, yeah, can I quickly. It's not about me though. Chat.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Can I rapid fire say something?

[Mike (Moderator)]

We do have a lot of super chats to get to Jack, so I want to respect Jay's time. Get these knocked out. If there, if there's only, you know, three to five more after that, you're good, you can ask away until he's

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

got to go, you're good.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Trotics for 10, says Jack, following your Earth's age. Q. Hypothetically, if you had an absolute knowledge that it seriously was a few thousand years old, no progressive development, would that influence your views?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

If I had absolute knowledge of it, yeah. Would I go against absolute knowledge? No. If I. If it was revealed, if God walked into this room right now and said, Islam is true and then he, you know, threw lightning out of his hands and then I did some tests to make sure he wasn't, you know, some bullshitter. Yeah. Then I would believe that guy. Yeah. Yeah, probably, yeah.

[Mike (Moderator)]

I saw someone in the chat say only three Triceratops heads, skulls were discovered ever. Is that true? Does anyone know?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I believe the consensus on dinosaurs and I believe the scientific consensus on the age of the earth.

[Mike (Moderator)]

So I'm still curious about Triceratops.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Always, always, always question. Make sure it's not coming from some rando. Right.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Yeah. Pull it to the next window. Emily Elizabeth 8866. We got abstract YT for five says astrologists have come about from secularism and loss of faith in Christ. Even Richard Dawkins seeded this.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Richard Dawkins conceded that he was a cultural Christian because he, like Tom Holland, the historian Tom Holland, not the actor Tom Holland, you know, note that Christian morality has sort of textured a lot of secular ethics. Like, this is roughly true. I would argue a lot of these ethics exist. So, like, you can find like, for example, the golden rule existed in many other religions, you know, prior to Christianity. Yeah, you can argue that, like, Christians dominated in setting the tone for ethics. This doesn't mean that God is real or not real. And it could just be that Christians had the monopoly sort of on, you know, having more people that were tapped into reason and not other superstitions. This is why I think Christianity was very prominent in Europe. But it's also where secularism sort of took off from and also where the Enlightenment took off from. I mean, to repeat Jay's point, this doesn't. This would be a categorical error of saying that one generated the other. But, you know, maybe, maybe.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Okay, we just have a couple more here. Gold Robo for five says gold robot here. Good job, guys. Okay, thank you for that money well spent. Polls done. 1.3 thousand votes. Go check that out. Chat. And we got one. Oh, native Wildman 9335, who's been a member for 15 months, just said hi. Hello. Appreciate your membership length. That's very good. The Zucker for five says we need a Destiny versus Jay Dyer. It's probably the Mayweather versus Pacquiao of debates. Both destroy their opponents.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Yeah, well, there was actually. I've asked Destiny three or four times back in 2018, 2020, and at that time the responses were all pretty much just, he says, I only debate politics. I don't do any, like, theology philosophy type debates. So I don't, I don't know the destiny. I mean, I debated erudite, which is like female destiny. So if he wants to do some topical thing, like, I don't know, feminism or something like that, like, like maybe we could find a halfway meeting ground to debate. Since he doesn't do, like, theistic type stuff.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I'll be, I'll be at debacon at Destiny's table.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Oh, yeah.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

So I can, I can sort of, if you're willing to. I mean, I think. I mean, a lot of people would love to watch you debate destiny on politics, and so maybe you should. I can drop it in his ear

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

that, hey, I mean, what counts as Paul? Like, I don't really. I mean, I debated about Brian Shapiro on like, Trump type stuff, but I mean, I have a lot.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Did you say you're maga? Would you say.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Well, that's what. No, I'm saying is that when we tried to debate Trump, but I had, like, I had most the same criticisms of him as of Trump that Shapiro had, even though we basically disagreed on everything else. But I disagreed on Epstein on Iran.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

So actually, actually found you because I first heard about you, because I was. I watched your debate with Kyla at first. Kyle has been on my podcast, and so I'm kind of a fan of her. I would say she's not the female Destiny. She's a Christian.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Is that the grip is trilemma debate?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Yeah. Anyways, you and Destiny should probably debate feminism. That'd probably be fun. But I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna hype up destiny when this is.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Well, he says stuff like he. I mean like in our debate, like we ended up getting into like meta ethics and I. I mean he tends to not that type of stuff.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

So he debated philosophy more. I wish he did, but he doesn't.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Yeah, but. And also like, I mean I think politics is interesting, but it's also to me fun and kind of fake and gay. So I don't really spend a whole lot of time debating politics, but I'm open to it.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Yeah, this one is the Same comment for 10 from y' all trying to do. Yama says when will we see J die versus Destiny to debate? Everyone wants to see both top tier debates.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

If we can figure out the right topic, we might could do that. Yeah. Yeah.

[Mike (Moderator)]

That was two back to back of that FPV flight says Jack. Good game. Thanks for a debate against our bipoc diva.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Yes. I'm for those that don't know, I identify as a black woman, so.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Jack did 2018. No.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Yeah. The. The. The whole like I identify as an attack shopper. That was funny Like. Like 15 seconds.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

No, but I. I am a black woman. I'm a diva. So I don't appreciate you saying that's funny and not funny because it's.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I mean you can argue that against some progressive shill, but like now we're getting spicy. I mean.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Yeah, most argument it's an identity.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Yeah. Well, I would deny you're not. You're not. You're not a black woman.

[Mike (Moderator)]

How dare you, Jack.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I know.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Can't believe you come on the channel and say stuff like I know, don't

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

let the TOS get me or whatever

[Mike (Moderator)]

El Balo Bellow says for two Mormon space Wives. I think that was during the interlude. They wish that the elevator music I had playing was Mormon Space Wives.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

It's one of my many songs that you have a lot of album or excuse me, cringe core hits. People can go check those out on my channel if you like what's called music.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Do all the listeners hear that? Heavy metal rock music that freaking is started this. Does everyone hear that?

[Mike (Moderator)]

Oh you. You mean the. The intro music?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Yeah, that.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Yeah. I don't know if that's like James's old band, but that's been like a intro music on here for a while. I'd say it's more of like kind of like an indie punk rock. Ish. New Jersey punk rock or something I

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

don't even know played for so long I was like dang I feel real official right now.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Two minutes. All right, we just have a couple more here, guys. I appreciate Yalls time. Samuel, not The Prophet sends 20 pesos. This is why I waited to read this one. Props to Jack for going deep in the debate. Wj.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

He means J is in the first letter of my name. So thank you. I'll take the dough.

[Mike (Moderator)]

It's spelled J A Y. Monty's foreman for five says Q for either. Wouldn't an objective secular ethic be impossible without the grounding of an all knowing good as a standard?

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

I would say that's kind of the direction I was trying to go. You know, a form of divine conceptualism. I think that's a better route to kind of ground those kinds of universal principles. And my argument was just simply that the line of reasoning that he had I don't think could get us to that.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Say the motivational force that is normative and applicable to all people was enough for it to be universal. I don't think you need to go further than that. I think that that's part of me. Good enough.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Hipster faux punk is what Chat's saying. That genre is of the intro. I need fishtail split for 10 says Jake. How does Jay's view bottom out before yours? If I understand you take reason as granted, by necessity, Jay seeks proper justification for reason. That sounds like your view assumes much more.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Did he mean Jack? I mean, who is that for?

[Mike (Moderator)]

Yeah, that's. Yeah. I don't know why he's asking me.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

How does Jay's view bottom out? So yeah, like I said, yeah. So all views are going to bottom out. So my view would bottom out in that, like at base, when I say bottom out first, I guess I probably shouldn't put it on like a. On a distance scale like that. So when I say like bottom out at the more absurd conclusion, meaning that like, mine can go to something more fundamental than Jay's will. Jay's would probably bottom out in that.

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[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

we can't have reason without God. Or that, you know, we need God to support our concepts of reason. I 1 I don't see a reason why you ought to say that. I don't see how reason can't exist prior to it, especially since reason without God. What would that look like? I would say that that looks like what it looks like right now. But also it would bottom out further in that Jay's debate would. Jay would, as long as he subscribes to something along, maybe a divine command theory or maybe that universal axioms are not possible without God. That stops there. Mine says you don't even need the God. You can go further, you can go deeper and you could bottom out somewhere along the lines of like reason gives you good reason to be reasonable, which I think is probably as bottom out as you can go. Unless you wanted to, you know, you could bottom out even further and say good, you have reason to do something that that's good because reason provides you reason to be good. Which I know that sounds like full slop and it is full slop. This is why meta ethical debates are. They can be like fun, intellectually stimulating for a freshman in, in, in, in university. But yeah, since everything's going to bottom out eventually it sort of turns into who can go more fundamental than the other person. But I mean, Jay probably has a response to that, but

[Mike (Moderator)]

there are different

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

terms for bottom out. You felt like this debate was first year philosophy centric. I don't think first year philosophy students get into meta ethical debates. I think that's a pretty advanced topic. But I'll let the audience in the poll decide whether this was a first year philosophy level debate.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I mean, but you don't think the question of like, yeah, but why? Like always asking, yeah, but why? And then they give you a reason for that and then you go, yeah, but why?

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

And then you get a reason for that. I asked for justification, which is not just saying, yeah, but why?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I mean, I, I, I

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

mean when did I argue, yeah, but why?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I mean, isn't ask what would be the difference between asking for justification and

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

saying one of them is a domain of epistemology and philosophy? I mean, it's a very important, you know, philosophical subject.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I guess when you say yeah, but why? You're asking why?

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Yeah, but why? Yeah, but yeah, but why do I

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

have justification for that? Like what's the why?

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

What's not the same thing as epistemic justification? Those are two different topics.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I mean, to understand why has to

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

do with causation, the origin of it, what caused it, what's the purpose of it, what's the episode?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Why I to believe that? Why I to do X? Why I to believe X? Whatever.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Yeah, but what I mean by that is justification. I'm not just saying like why should we do that? Why?

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[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Why? Like. Yeah, you could say that. Asking why could be a low tier question or it could be a high tier question depending upon what the argument is. So I'm arguing that your position was not justified and you're saying, well, that's low tier sort of first year stuff. Well, okay, but I mean you got to cover the bases. Before I'm supposed to follow all your other elaborate theories, I need to know the basics of why this is a preferable good reason based position.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Yeah, but I, but I like I argued everything bottoms out in circularity and I think you even, I think I saw a debate with you. Some guy with the last name Thorne. I'm probably getting that wrong. Where you even conceded. You're like, yeah, circular arguments. Yeah, I subscribe to circles.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

They've conceded that to you.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Yeah, so like the presence of like

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

they're eventually that means that there's not got to be another way to resolve those. That's what a transcendental argument is.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

That's because I mean there's not. There has to be another way to resolve that.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

That.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

That is not what that means.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

No, I'm arguing that. I'm arguing that if all the positions at a basic level end up in some form of self referencing or self recursion, then I would argue that the way that we would com. Approve or disprove these paradigms would be a comparison of internal inconsistencies within the paradigms that make knowledge claims or ethical claims impossible. So that was the line of argument that I was using tonight.

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Point.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Can I ask you. Wait man, we probably have too many chats. Can I ask a question? You can say no.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Is it?

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Thank you for. Thank you for telling me what I can and can't say.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Not you, not you. The moderator. Moderator?

[Mike (Moderator)]

Oh yes. It is your platform, Jack, Let me know. Hey, well look, we're almost, we are almost done. Just hold that thought, okay? I just want to shout out Jay Darman for sending a bunch of memberships. Thank you so much that, that helps a lot of people watch the debate con streams that are coming up and then last couple chats we, I think we got through pretty much almost all of them. We got I think two left. So Dukuji for five says, I feel like Jay was kinda amber gutuous, but that was amazing.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

That's a reference to the Jesse Lee Peterson interview I did.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Oh yeah, I haven't watched the whole thing yet, but love Jesse. Abstract. YT for five says, what are your thoughts on nihilism? They seem to have reason that have different motivations than your reason.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Who's the question for?

[Mike (Moderator)]

Anyone, probably you, Jack.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Repeat the question.

[Mike (Moderator)]

What are your thoughts on nihilism?

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Oh yeah, I mean obviously you can answer.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

You can answer first.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

I mean as a Christian, obviously I'm not a nihilist. I, I do appreciate aspects of say Nietzsche's philosophy and you know, I think we can agree to some of those critiques of the weaknesses within Western civilization. But I don't think nihilism itself is ultimately freeing. I know that many nihilist philosophers argue that it's a pathway to sort of freeing oneself. But I think as a Christian I would recommend. There's a great Saint, Seraphim Rose wrote a book called Nihilism the Roots of Modern Revolution and he does a very good presuppositional critique of leftism and socialism, kind of leading to nihilism as a, as a dead end. So I would agree with that.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I'm an anti nihilist. I'm not a leftist, but I am liberal, leftist, center. I guess that wasn't political. I guess you were talking about like sort of leftist. Isn't the, the a tanky sense which I would, yeah, I would probably agree leads to nihilism. Yeah, nihilism is dead end. It makes you forfeit your duties to society. It also makes you forfeit your duties to yourself. Under nihilism you have no incentive to take care of your health, to better yourself, to seek knowledge, to seek self improvement, to worry about being logically coherent. You have none of these reasons under nihilism. I think Jay would take the position that anything secular naturally leads to nihilism. But I would obviously disagree with that. I think you can have optimistic reasons and normative reasons to not be nihilist. But yeah, I think me and Jay might be able to somewhat meet in the middle and say relativism and nihilism and absurdism are all dead end, immoral. Even if you think you're being amoral, you're being immoral to your duties. You're forfeiting your duties to help others and to be serving others.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Okay, I found a couple that I missed here real quick, real quick, real quick.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Slot the Phil Slop online before you guys get into philosophy. Like, you guys think philosophy is like reading Nietzsche and like, start anywhere but Nietzsche.

[Mike (Moderator)]

You're talking.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Yeah, Chad just don't. Like, you can engage with, you can read Nietzsche, but like, his, he, he got sick halfway through and his sister started publishing shit like Nietzsche's not. I mean, Nietzsche's philosophy. But it's like, like you can't just like, read Nietzsche and the Myth of Syphesis and think you're doing philosophy. I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Glad you got that off your chest. Jay Darman for five says Jack, please point out the insane disparity between old TM ethics and, or maybe that's Testament ethics and what we recognize as real ethics today. I think this is important.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

What's the question again for Jack to

[Mike (Moderator)]

point out the insane disparity between Old Testament ethics and what we recognize as real ethics today day.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

He thinks the fact that anyone practicing, the fact that anyone trying to live a common life that they would have been living in the Old Testament would probably get you arrested or thrown into an insane asylum today. The idea that like kill your, kill your kid or send your kid to death if they disobey the parent or if you're caught picking up sticks on the Sabbath, you probably ought to be killed or, you know, if you're, if your cult leader goes up to the top of the mountain and starts talking to the clouds and you're building a gold cow, then the earth should open up and you should be swallowed up by an earthquake. I don't think a lot of people agree with that today. And I think the evidence in Protestant Christianity of a lot of Protestants adopting enlightenment ethics or products of the secular enlightenment movement is demonstrating that they were working with an outdated or just, you know, misanthropic ethical model. I mean, we're waging a lot less wars than they did in the Old Testament. I'm not a typical. I mean, I mean, again, I never said I'm an atheist. And yeah, like the whole like, I think there's like this sort of like bell curve of like low tier atheists is like you're arguing about the genocide and the wrongs in the Old Testament. High tier. You're arguing about in the top of the bell curve. You're 459. You're arguing about like the ontology of God. But I think like at the end of the bell curve, yeah, you just go back to being like, like, why do we need a flood? But, but that's God's ethics. As far as like the Old Testament cultures, which were not always ordained by God. Like, you got the Canaanites and the Malkites and the Amorites, the. These people, I mean, like, yeah, these people. I mean, you might just not know about the region. But yeah, they were very counter to what we practice today in the West.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Rebuttal, Jay?

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

I mean, yeah, one thing I would say, and I'm gonna. I'm not a huge, huge fan of William Lane Craig, but he does have one good book that addresses this sort of a. Of a critique, which. Which really technically would be a critique of, say, like rabbinic Judaism, not of orthodox Christianity, but to specifically rebut the idea, Craig has a good book called Creation Ex Nilo, which is an argument for in what ways. Mosaic law actually was very unique in the ancient world in terms of the positive aspects of it, in terms of raising the value of humanity, including people that you conquered, giving them certain rights. The ancient world had never seen anything like that. So I think that we overlook Moto Casino America.

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[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

What, in a sense you could say is revolutionary in terms of Mosaic Law, focusing on certain aspects that were, again, for Christian, very temporal, that were intended to be fulfilled in the coming of Christ, like animal sacrifices, stuff like that. We see that as a means of pedagogically leading people out of idolatrous practices of human sacrifice or worse, and bringing them to the final sacrifice of the person of Christ, which I think you could argue for many civilizations, many, or excuse me, many people groups, you know, post Christianity contributed to the end of, you know, human sacrifice, eventually helped to contribute to ending of sex slavery, things like that. For example, Ottomans took Christian children to be sex slaves. And you have many saints and people in the Orthodox Church who would fight against that and would buy people out of sex slavery. So the Orthodox Church has a history of, I think, standing up for those things.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Xx Lockstep says, quote, I'm smart, therefore atheists, because authority and then said, quote, I don't need God. My ancestors did. It's different. Thank you.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I've acknowledged the. I've acknowledged that Christianity has passed down a lot of good morals. I've made a comment earlier that. That doesn't lead anything to the source of those morals. But yeah, yeah. Christianity in the west, in Europe. All right, very grateful.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Just a couple more came in. I think this is the last one. And then we're caught up towards the. The two that just came in. Shadow of death 33 says question for Mike. Genuine question. I have a micro. And I don't know how to tell my girlfriend. How do I break the news to her? Okay, well, I would. Like I said in the comment, you're lucky you have a girlfriend anyways.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Wait, wait, how would you break that news for though? That's that person sent you money, dude. That person sent you money.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Yeah, but, you know, sometimes stuff like that's a mistake. Just like here. How about you answer this question that's addressed to you by Sky Knight. Question for Jack. What does objective secular ethics say about brothers and intimate smexual relationships?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Well, one that would. I mean, it's a good question. I mean, I've heard this before of like, I think Jonathan Haidt in his book the Righteous Mind or something like that, talks about what do you do about two consenting siblings that wear protection and ensure that they won't have any STDs or whatever committing insist. Yeah, I mean, I have intuitions that are against that, but I don't want to intuition pump and say that that's wrong. But maybe I have a normative reason with normative force acting on me to say that you probably shouldn't be committing incest. But there also might be like rule consequentialism and act consequentialism. They differ. Bernard Williams covers this in his book called Morality.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

He gives the argument, might be a really hot sister. Right? Is that where you're going?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

You know, there might be a. There might be a time when you want to break the rule.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Right.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

But rule consequential is like their rule consequentialism. I argue and Parfit argues and many other people argue is superior to act consequentialism in that the cost of always acting on act consequentialism might be more expensive than always just sticking to a rule. And so the rule of like, hey, no incest. We're just not touching that. We're just not doing that. That ensures a greater consistency and coherency. And, and, and yeah, just dream of.

[Mike (Moderator)]

How do you break it to your sister that you have a micro.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

How do you break it to your sister? I mean, you can, you can tell her, just don't, don't you don't have to act on it.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

All right.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Real question, real question. That was a real question. But Sky Knight got much more of an answer than that question deserved. El Belu Ballo Blue says don't do incest. Didn't. You could have just said that Jack check. Didn't them Bolsheviks cat bottoms out of the Sister.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

That's where we got it.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Bottoms out at the system.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Bottoms out of the Jake, Jay. That's a bottoms, bottoms out fallacy.

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[Mike (Moderator)]

Didn't them Bolsheviks cats try ethics sans God? Says El Baloo.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

They are one atheistic group who tried to have some kind of ethic. I don't know what exactly, but yeah, yeah.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I think the Bolsheviks weren't really acting on the most optimistic principles. I mean, they had an economic theory and they tested it. And I think we've realized L. Communism. Probably don't do communism. We don't like communism here.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Okay. So there's two new ones that came in that we haven't got to are from White Fang. In response to his abstract's comment on nihilism, he said, Nietzsche's the mainstream philosopher. He was an incel. If you follow his form of nihilism, you are also probably an incel.

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[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

True, true.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Fair faith can move mountains. Another five. Thank you for being. I think, number one. Chatter. Faith. What about the mass unaliving of the unborn?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Oh, my gosh. Yeah. I mean, I mean, unless Jay has something to say. Yeah. I'll just quickly note that the argument is. I mean, like, I'm. I don't want to say I'm pro choice. I mean, I am pro choice according to a lot of people. I mean, like, I believe that you should be just. I mean, I take a very boring position, but.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Well, one of the commenters. Sorry to interrupt. One of the commenters kind of predicted that you would say, bet he has that. He says he has no right to an opinion. You want to address that one?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Because I'm not a woman and it's a woman's choice. No, like, as long as it's like the kid, the. The potential human. The potential, you know, full grown child. That responsibility. I mean, the father deserves a say in that. Absolutely. But yeah, it being. It being, you know, not a creature.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Not if they're drawn in the flood only.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I mean, those were conscious. To summarize, to shut myself up. I believe, you know, life gains moral consideration at the moment of subjective conscious experience. And that's at a certain point that's not going to be at conception. If you wanted to. I mean, I believe life begins at conception, but the life was there before conception. The sperm is alive, the egg is alive, and so it's not a matter. It's not. I mean the abortion debate is like. So I'm. I'd be actually kind of happy to sign up for this debate at another time. I mean, I have thoughts. I've never taken a crazy hard position on it. I think subjective conscious experience is all that kind of really matters. And for the people that say that life begins at conception, that's way too crazy for them. And for the radical progressives who believe you can abort a baby at nine months, it's way too conservative for them. And so kind of everyone hates me on that. But I believe an EEG device or whatever can pick up the. The sort of the prerequisites for consciousness which would be the brainwave activity at like maybe six to eight weeks. And I'm even. I'm even comfortable to give sort of some cushion on that just to make sure we're not committing some moral atrocity and put it at six weeks. But for all you people that are, life that begins a conception, people that's. It's never going to be satisfactory for you. It's never going to be good enough. Isn't just nothing's good enough.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

So you say you were in your father's loins or in your mother's loins before conception?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I was not an eye.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Well, whose loins were you in?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I. None.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

I'm just joking.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Okay. I was like, there's no way he's asking this right now.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Chat's like, anyone else up

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

is the bottom out at your mama's loins or your daddy's loins.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Okay.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Mama's bottom. Maybe use a butt baby or something.

[Mike (Moderator)]

I appreciate yalls time. Three more came in. So the only one I really actually give maybe a serious thought on would be this one for.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Hey, I have no time limit.

[Mike (Moderator)]

I understand that, but I gotta go soonish. Like you know, within the next hour or two. I don't want to go forward.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

If any of y' all want to play satisfactory on Xbox with me, you can message me and I'll add you. I need people.

[Mike (Moderator)]

I gotta play.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Just trying to get laid from the chat.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Hey, I'm married.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I'm married. I'm married. I'm married.

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[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

You can't be trying to get laid late, dude. Trying to have a baby, dude.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

One person.

[Mike (Moderator)]

All right, no bottoming out in the chat, guys. JR again. 777 for 20 says thoughts on criterion problem in epistemology. This is for 20. Thank you, Junior.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I don't know who that's for. I don't know what the criterion problem.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Yeah, I mean, I. What I was. I thought about. I've got it in my notes at the top to discuss Chisholm and the criterion problem, but we didn't end up going in that direction. So, I mean, I. I mean, the. Technically, the debate was supposed to be ethics, so I didn't. I felt like it wouldn't be super fair to try to immediately go into epistemology debates. But he's welcome to give his view on it.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I mean, I've. I've. I mean, I've read a couple Nagel essays. For my master's thesis on moral luck, I read Duncan Pritchard's book Epistemic Luck. Other than that, I'm not very familiar with philosophy of mind or epistemology. I mean, yeah, I don't have any.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Tell that from the debate. It's just a joke. It's just a joke.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

But no, I'm not a radical skeptic. And so Duncan Pritchard confronts radical skepticism. And like, I'm familiar with gettier problems, like how to. Like what is a. What is a good definition of absolute, of. Of. Of knowledge? And I believe justified true belief is good enough. I think. I think that's a good enough definition. I know you should have.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

You should have followed along with my line of argumentation when I was asking about all the questions about universal reversal claims and whatnot. So that's what I was asking for.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Yeah, I believe just my true belief is good enough.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Turd. Ferguson said for five. Jack, can we see your fedora and funko pop collection?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

No Funko Pops. I'm a Magic the Gathering guy. And a Lego guy. And no fedora. Sorry.

[Mike (Moderator)]

And then abs and.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

You're married. You're married.

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I am married.

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[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I'm a Magic the Gathering Xboxer and I'm married. Yes.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

What's his name?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Her name is Desiree.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

I'm just joking, dude.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I know you're good.

[Mike (Moderator)]

I don't know. This is. She decides to identify as a part of the stream.

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[Mike (Moderator)]

Okay, last comment that I see here is from Abstract. YT for five says, I asked about nihilism because you said there are motivations we can gather from the history of philosophy. Unless I'm misunderstanding motivation.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Okay. My comment on the history of philosophy is just like people that were engaged and thought that proved to be influential were probably engaging in using normative concepts of reason. So the progress in the line of thought sort of just goes to the narrative of. I don't think, Chris, by the way, I don't think Christians or religious people have the monopoly on compelling narratives. I think the story of humanity is a very beautiful, wonderful story that's only getting better. I mean, we're in a bit of a low point in the story, but we'll keep getting better as long as AI doesn't murder us all. But yeah, we're getting better. And yeah, I mean, like the history of philosophy, I mean, it's just we, we see progress in all the realms of philosophy. And so that's kind of why I didn't mean anything crazy by it. But you know, don't be nihilist. Don't be nihilist. There's meaning to life. You have meaning.

[Mike (Moderator)]

That's. Yeah. It looks like the, the super chats have bottomed out.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

So did I create a new insight? I mean, I feel like I heard like 40 inside jokes that I didn't get is bottoming out. Did I contribute to the pool?

[Mike (Moderator)]

That's yours, bro.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Okay.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Be proud.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Thank you. I'm glad I contributed.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

That was your catchphrase throughout the debate.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Yeah, yeah.

[Mike (Moderator)]

It was funny though. It's funny.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Chad.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Chad. I'm having a hard time keeping a straight face during the chat. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I appreciate both of you guys. Time. This was a super fun late night debate. It's about one in the morning almost here in Texas. And you know, it's gonna, it's gonna be a, a long couple weeks here with debatecon coming up. So if you guys haven't got your tickets, I know Jack has, I know Jay's going to be debating there. So you guys can come hang out with us at debatecon and, and see some really good debates. I think this is going to be interesting. You know, obviously there's been seven debate cons before this, so there's going to be a lot of arguments that have probably gotten refined over that time. And you know, you want to hear what the latest update on it is and how it gets either defeated or can't be contended with. This is going to be what you want to come see or become a member on the stream. So shout out to Yonaguni Cuisine. They are one of our sponsors for debatecon. That sideshow Bob, he's going to be one of the conference managers there as well. So he and I will probably be checking you guys in, getting you set up, telling you where, where to go. And then we also have. If you would like to debate. To debate Jay, email us. We'll see if you're a good fit here.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

That'll be, that's, that's for like a one on five, one on one, one B10, right?

[Mike (Moderator)]

Yeah. So I think it's going to be July 27th is what the, the ad card here should say on the screen right next to me. And so we do like a surrounded kind of series thing like similar to the, the Jubilee style except it's going to be filmed I think one on one each time and then the next person comes and sits and either picks up the argument or keeps going. So, so it's really cool. We did it last year in Nashville and then I, I don't think we did it in Houston because it was more of just a one day event. But this should be cool. So email us or I think there's a link also. We are on.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Yeah, I wanted to, I wanted to be a part of that Jay, but the topic just looked too damn boring to me.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

So I don't even know what the topic is. What is the topic?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

It's like is orthodox the true church or something?

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Oh, okay. I don't know what, I forgot what he chose.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Well, there's a lot of like that

[Mike (Moderator)]

there's a lot of Christians that are probably going to be at debatecon so it's a good opportunity to clear up the distinctions. I think that, you know, Jack, you might want to look into it a little more if, if you hadn't. Because you, you talked about Protestants a lot referencing almost all Christians. I know they're a majority but it doesn't really work with views like Jay's or people's, you know, who are a little bit more nuanced when, when you can't generalize it. So it doesn't give him anything to argue against. But other people coming showing up will have those distinctions to argue with. So that's what's going to be interesting to watch. And then the last thing I want to say guys is like the other channels we now are multi streaming on Kick Rumble. I don't know if we're on Facebook Live, but it might be. We are on a few other platforms like Tick Tock for clips and then the very last thing is a shout out to main first project and the Roar Project. Those are both also big sponsors for debatecon 8. They like to see these arguments had because there's a lot of different things happening in Maine specifically that affects a lot of politics around the world or around the country. They're just kind of a epicenter for where it starts.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

You said Maine.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Yeah.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Interesting. Speaking of that, real quick promotion. Monday my interview with Tucker comes out. So if you guys are interested, it was a wild two hour interview. So check out my Tucker Carlson interview because we did it in Maine. So that'll be out Monday.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Yeah. Any other things you want to shout out, Jay? I was about to turn it over to you guys to to do that.

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[Mike (Moderator)]

Shout out spot. So go ahead, tell us your channel, what you're featured on weekly, things like that.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Yeah, Jay Dyer on YouTube. I host the Alex Jones show every Friday. We just did that. It's up on X. You can follow me on X. Same, same name, Instagram everywhere else. And then yeah, Monday will be the big Tucker episode dropping.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Awesome. All right, Jack, go ahead, do your shout outs, brother.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Yeah, you can find me on Instagram at Jax is there. And then I'm also, I write regularly on. I write semi regularly like once or twice a month on Substack. It's kind of hard to balance with my school writings and so I'm on Substack under the title Veridical. And then I also have a podcast called Veridical where I bring on guests that are a lot more impressive and a lot more worth listening to than myself. And so I have guests on there. I hope to have this debate on my podcast.

[Mike (Moderator)]

But yeah, I'll try to rip the audio for you. If you can't just Download it from YouTube. If you have YouTube Premium, I think you can just download both parts.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I'll figure it. We'll figure it out. Someone will give it to me.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Yeah, for sure.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

But yeah, yeah. So substack and substack social media. I'm not, I'm not crazy on social media. You can reach out to me. There's. But yeah, Substack, podcast, YouTube. Yeah, things like that. And then I'm. I'm very, very small. So if you want to reach out and talk to me or confront me and you can set something up. But like I said, I'll be at

[Mike (Moderator)]

debatecon and so we'll see you there, man.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I'll just be a guest. Yeah, you can come up, say hi.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Sorry, I, I trying to not interrupt. I thought I was the in there. But, but Jay, I. Apparently, according to chat, I'm a fed for hosting this debate with you.

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[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Well, welcome to the team. We're glad to have you on the board. And we're going to give you all your MK Ultra mind control initiation very soon.

[Mike (Moderator)]

I like those BB coins.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

But also I'm Russian, so I'm a Russian KGB agent. So you get Putin coin with.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Well, I mean, that's my daughter's Russian, so it works out. But the, the other thing is how, how, how dare you be friends with Alex Jones?

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

That was Brian Shapiro's argument.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Yeah, I thought that was funny. It's not really an argument of argument.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Just how dare you.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

You don't host Alex Jones.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Yeah, the.

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[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Yeah, the Alex Jones literally just hosted it today.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

You host the guy, Alex Jones?

[Mike (Moderator)]

No, no, he's on his show. You know how Alex Jones hosts other

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

people And I host the fourth hour for Alex. Alex Jones.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

But it is the Alex Jones Show.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, how many are there? We all know who Alex Jones.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Well, Jones is a popular last name, but. Okay, yeah, that's. That was, that was interesting.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

There's only one guy in the world named Alex Jones. There's just one. And it's that guy.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Is there you a big fan of Alex Jones? Are you a fan of him?

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

I mean, I've been host of the show for six years.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Yeah, that doesn't tell me if you're a fan of him.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Well, I wouldn't host a show for a guy hate. I mean.

[Mike (Moderator)]

So yeah, sure, before we go. Alchemist since 5 and says Vatican Catholic on YouTube. Did a great video on Jay Dyer's career. If you want to see his rise to fame.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

They've debunked me. Right.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Got him. All right, guys. Well, I appreciate yalls time. There's anything else coming up, feel free to say it now or forever hold Your peace until you're back on the channel in a couple days and then go ahead.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Yeah, I mean, I have within. I mean, I'm very young in my academic career. I start my PhD this fall. And so I'm. I'm sort of in the. In the beginning phases of sort of developing some ideas that I can actually claim on my own. And I mean. Yeah, I have some thoughts I would love to keep debating you on. I'd love to debate you on free will, I think, and then I would maybe. Yeah. Yeah.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Does he have a choice?

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

You don't believe in free will?

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I don't. I mean, I'm. I mean, I'm not taking a. I'm not crazy. Our position, but yeah, I think. I think the evidence. I think it's very hard to defend a notion of free will. I think it's a very, very difficult thing to do. And so.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

But you think we have ethical obligations and duties.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Yeah, yeah, I think. Yeah, I think you.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

I think we don't have free will.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I think you can maintain both. Okay, yeah, you see, that's. That's the primer. That's the primer for another conversation.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

By the way, here's my. Me hosting Alex Jones today. You can go watch it right there.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Oh, Jesus.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

You seemed incredulous.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I mean, I mean. I mean, like. I mean, can I just. Real quick, Real quick. Like, do you think 911 was like an inside job?

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Of course.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

And then do you think. Do you think Israel runs the world? Do you think Jews run the world?

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

I think that there's a combination of various elite families and oligarchs and combines that rule the world. No, I didn't just say. I said a combination of families and elites. I didn't say it was just one people group

[Mike (Moderator)]

that's a little special.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Wait, wait, wait.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Like, are.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Was Covid real?

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

I mean, it was a real psyop.

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[Mike (Moderator)]

No, this is all interesting stuff, guys. Very interesting. I. I don't want to rush you out. Yeah, no, no. I was just gonna say I. I don't want to rush you out. I'd like to entertain that if he

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

wants to do a little bit on. On, like, geopolitical conspiracies or, you know, are there elites that. That, you know, have a significant amount of control? I don't think they run the whole world, but one of the things I do on my channel is I lecture through the writings of the elite to prove that thesis. So I'd love to have a debate on that sometime if you want to, because I Get tired of the theology debates. I don't mind doing them. I just been doing it for 10 years. So I'd love to debate something like geopolitics with if you'd like.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I mean, I can imagine getting tired of the theology debates. I'm not super well versed on all schizo theories, but I'm very anti conspiracy theory.

[Mike (Moderator)]

And so, I mean, even if it's only on, on Jay's channel, not on mdd, maybe you guys could you, Jack, you could go get, you know, some sources together that you think disproves some sort of cabal in any circumstance, whether it's, you know, Jewish or not, that that is centralizing power in a secretive way. And then Jay could show you his evidence. That would be really awesome. I haven't, I haven't streamed on my own personal channel yet too, so I mean, I'd also love to host that too and just ask questions to both of you.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Sure.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Everything about that is just a fascinating time.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

I mean, you're over there giggling, dude. I mean, we've lectured through 70 books.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

I mean, I'm not. I mean, it's more, it's more depressing and soul crushing than it is funny. It's more of a nervous laughter. Yeah, it's more of a. It's more of a. It's more of a I'm gonna put it, put it in my mouth and pull the trigger kind of thing.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Oh, buddy, let's keep the channel up. But guys, seriously. Awesome, awesome way to end this. Jay. I'll message you on X. Maybe we can pick a date and just work around it.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

But I know we got the one on 510 or for his thing.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Well, the one on 5 10, I think there is a date that's July 27th. So you'll get an email about James regarding anything on that. But yeah, you two working around the debate con schedule and other stuff you got going on, that's what I'll mess

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

you up to the chat telling me to do it, by the way.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Yeah, everybody's encouraging you, so it's really

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

funny to kill myself, by the way.

[Mike (Moderator)]

No, no, not to do that. No one's saying that.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Oh, okay.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Yeah, you guys, thank you again. Everyone. Go check out the debate. If you are just joining us now. Rewind. It's awesome. We'll go, we'll go through and post the, the actual full video probably behind a membership in two days or so. So watch it while you can in and then become a member.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

All right, guys, thank you guys.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Take it easy.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Good night.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Appreciate it. Thank you, Jay. Take care.

[Jay Dyer (Orthodox Christian Debater)]

Absolutely.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

Thank you, moderator Take care.

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[Mike (Moderator)]

Break out the hand grenades.

[Jack (First-time Debater, Philosophy Student)]

You know it's time to play explosions to the rain.

[Mike (Moderator)]

Going out in time.

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