Speaker 1: A boy, oh boy, bouck us about us out hookups.
Speaker 2: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome back to the Crucible.
I'm your host, Andrew Wilson. It's been a long time
since we've hosted a debate on this channel. Remember we
cut our teeth doing that years ago. It's a lot
of fun for me to do. I still do it
by special request here and there if somebody asked, and
I have the time, I have this world's dumbest look
at the how stupid this coffee cup is. It's way
too small. Wait, it's like one of those you can
only get one finger through it. It's just a stupid
coffee cup. Anyway, Tonight, head to head, we have nostic
Conformant up against Jay Dyer.
Speaker 1: Rules for the debate are as follows.
Speaker 2: There's going to be ten minute opening statements for each
for the first hour, and then it's going to be
followed by ten minute rebuttals followed by ten minute closings,
and then we're going to get into an hour of
open debate followed by super chats and callers.
Speaker 1: It's going to be a banger. You guys know you
want to see it. It's going to be a banger.
Speaker 2: And said, for those of you who are new here,
of which there are many, I just want to point
out that we always had the coolest music for the debates,
and so we'll give you one of the throwbacks this
evening before we bring our debaters on.
Speaker 3: The cans do.
Speaker 4: Things they constn do that cons the kids of dot.
Speaker 3: Dot dot dot dot.
Speaker 2: Do you hear that hard cut off? Nobody liked the
hard cut off. Everybody was always upset that the gus hard,
just like I had that really hard.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: People are always pitching about something. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome
back to the Crucible. That's fine evening. Welcome to uh well,
perhaps the debate of the month. Jay Dyer, welcome back.
Nice to see you. Take a brief moment, introduce yourself
to everybody, tell them a little bit about yourself.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 5: Yeah, jayder of Jason also stock come, also host of
the fourth hour of the Alex Jong Show most Fridays,
and been on the Crucible for several debates back in
the past. Glad to be back, Glad to be sitting
here with Gnostic informant. And you can find me on
Twitter and you can find me on YouTube under my name.
Speaker 1: All right, I appreciate that.
Speaker 2: Before we get over to you, Neil, I just want
to let the atheists who are supporters of yours in
the audience know. I just want to let you guys
know you may think that because I'm an Orthodox Christian,
I'm going to treat you like shit, and you would
be correct. But you can remedy that by sending in
tons and tons of super chats in order to support
Neil this evening. I will give him fair moderation. Go ahead, Neil,
tell everybody a little bit about yourself where they can
find you as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my name's Neil Nostic Informant. I have a YouTube
channel with about two hundred and thirty thousand subs. We
get into topics like ancient history, ancient mythology, early Christianity, Gnosticism,
especially different sects of Christianity, the heretics, Tyroneus and Hypolitis.
That's stuff justin Martr Marcion Valentinis. If you're into that
type of stuff, come to my channel. I'm also on
X but I just kind of shit talk there. So
if you like shit talking, you follow me there too.
Speaker 2: That's funny because that's what I do on X. It's
my favorite thing is to ship post on X. Anyway,
ladies and gentlemen, without any more ado, I'm going to
let Jay go ahead with his opening statement, Jay, die,
you got ten minutes on the clock.
Speaker 1: Go ahead when you're ready. Yeah.
Speaker 5: I want to start by saying that the argument here
is about the coherency and the worldview that makes the
best sense of reality, and between us, we will be
arguing two different paradigms that have radically different accounts of
the nature of reality.
Speaker 1: For my argument, I.
Speaker 5: Will be arguing from a divine revelation position that I
believe sets forth. What I would say is an Orthodox
Christian paradigm, namely that the basic fundamentals of a worldview,
my worldview, anybody's world would be metaphysics, epistemology, and ethic,
and those fundamental categories would point us in the direction
of a worldview that makes sense of and gives an
account of those things. It just so happens that within
the Christian paradigm, specifically the Orthodox Christian paradigm, all of
those three elements of philosophy of a worldview makes sense
with the God that created this world, that providentially guides
this world, that gives this world a telos or a purpose,
and has also structured this world with a kind of
logos or a logi that is a foundational organizing principle.
The Greek philosophers talked about the logos, and if you
go back to those Greek philosophers, even all the way
back to the pre Socratics, they spoke about this logos
as a universal organizing principle. Other philosophers like Plato or
Aristotls talked about the logi or the logos being something
that is an explanation or a definition. When we work
through these ancient philosophers, we notice that they don't really
give much of an explanation other than conflicting amongst themselves
as to who or what this actually is. It's fine
to say that it's a law, it's a principle, but
that doesn't tell us very much. And also it conflicts
the Stoic idea, conflicts with later Neoplatonic ideas as to
what the logos actually is. The Hebrew wisdom tradition, and
I can give many scholars if we need to hear,
was not primarily drawing from the Greek ideas. Certainly Philo
and other Jewish scholars were influenced by Hellenism, and they
used the terminology of the logos that was coming out
of the Sceptuage and other translations of the Old Testament
text during the second century.
Speaker 1: But the idea according to Hebrew.
Speaker 5: Scholar or excuse me a Biblical scholar, the Orthodox excuse me.
From the Oxford Guide to the Bible. It notes that
the Johannen logos is strongly parallel to the concept of
wisdom and Hellenic Jewish thought. But wisdom was already associated
with the attribute of God in Wisdom of Solomon nine
one through two. In the Hebrew Bible, the word of
God is both creative and active Genesis one in Isaiah
fifth eleven, and in Greek logos meant spoken word or
pervading principle. Stoic philosophy saw this as the guiding meaning
or layer that ordered the universe. However, this meaning is
not a direct background for John's logos that was already
drawn out of as we're saying the Hebrew wisdom tradition.
In Genesis one, we have God's word there president as
an active means by which the world comes to be.
As we progress throughout the Torah, and we're going to
probably get to that later. I'm going to stick to
the Torah all though, as many examples in the Psalms
and the minor prophets and historical books, there's many examples
of this voice, this angel, this form, this theophany, having
a personality being distinct from Yahweh, but also being Yahweh,
also being divine.
Speaker 1: Also having the same characteristics to redeem, to save, et cetera.
Speaker 5: The reason this is important important is that, as I understand,
he tends to argue my opponent that the idea of
the Trinity, these ideas are cribbed from Greek philosophers. They
don't exist in the first three centuries of Christianity. I've
heard him claim, well, I'm ready to counter all of
those claims, and we'll get to those later. But there's
about twenty pre nice seen references that I have amongst dozens.
Speaker 1: More ready to go to prove than know.
Speaker 5: In fact, the early Church fathers of the first, second,
and third century were consistent not just with the New
Testament passages.
Speaker 1: About the deed of Christ and the Trinity. For example,
in the.
Speaker 5: Gospel of John, every chapter refers to either the deed
of Christ or to the triad, and some passages have
both in that chapter. And that's in continuity with the
Old Testament, where you have all of these Old Testament
passages again not just in the Torah, but we're going
to focus on the Torah when we get to that.
In some of the rebuttals, the point there is that
the Bible teaches this God, this theology, Old and New Testament.
It's not cribbed from the Greeks. Even though there's similar terminology.
The terminology of logos is really dependent upon the system
and the person using it. So, for example, Logos by
Marcus Aurelius, as it comes up in his meditations, it's
all over the place and what it means. It's a
universal guiding principle, it's something innate within him. It's all reality.
It's a pantheistic conception. It's the embodiment of the Roman
Empire itself. So it's so elastic as to be almost
everything and nothing. And that's really nothing in common with
what John is doing in John one when he argues
that the logos is actually the parallel to the Voice
of Genesis one. John one is a parallel to Genesis one.
Genesis one is a creation of the world and created light.
John one is a parallel that plays on that with
uncreated light and the person of the logos identified as
the second person of the Godhead. But I want to
go back to philosophy for a second, because what's really
at root between he and I will be conflicting and
competing world views. What I laid out is that revelational
position of my theology in general and some of the
sources and texts. I understand that he doesn't believe these texts,
and many of the audience don't believe the texts, And
when we have competing ideas about the text, that means
we have to go to other areas where we find
common authority or common ground, and that would be the
realm of debate. Debate functions around principles like logic, the
laws of logic, the three basic laws.
Speaker 1: Excluded middle non contradiction law at any.
Speaker 5: Those basic laws lay out how we would argue and
then suss out contradictions between worldviews. If his world view
is unable to give a fundamental account of those three
basic areas of philosophy, epistemology out of physics, and ethics,
then it's going to be undercutting his ability even to debate.
So that he showed up shows that he has to
recognize the laws of thought, critical thinking or to not
engage in fallacious reasoning. And we're going to be having
to pay a lot of attention to make sure that
he doesn't engage in and rely on a lot of
fallacious argumentation. Now, how do I get from what I'm
arguing to my Christian conception? Well, as I said, if
the world was created by God, and it's the God
that I'm arguing for, then it would make sense why
there's regular already in nature because God is providential. He
providentially guides history. History has meaning. History is not something
to flee from, as if we were a gnostic or
perhaps even a Neoplatonist to try to return to the
One or whatever his view might be.
Speaker 1: It's not something to go away from. It's actually a
good thing.
Speaker 5: So history, it's reality itself is fundamentally declared to be good.
And it's good because it has this logos organized and
instructuring principle within it. It's not identical to the world,
and we're going to see I think many fallacies and
kill shots with his position a priorism, and that's compared
to a position where we don't have priority monism or
any of these weird ideas about metaphysics with no justification.
We have justification for the idea of an external world,
for the idea of regularity in nature, the idea of
objective ethics, because we're made in the image of a
good God, a holy God who has a requirement a
lot of the Ten Commandments of.
Speaker 1: How we ought to live. Two minutes share.
Speaker 5: Position of neoplatonism or in the position of priority moanism,
we're going to notice that there's no real basis for
good and evil. In fact, we might argue, or we
might ask, does evil have ontological existence? In a situation
where all things are essentially parts of the one? We
might ask why would we prioritize one over many? And
we're gonna think We're gonna see I think that when
he answers those types of questions, it relies on unjustified assumptions.
That's why epistemology has to come into play. We have
to figure out what are the justifications for the assertions
that we have, and do we have good reasons for
our beliefs, not just any old reasons, but good reasons.
So I'm going to argue that the logos this personal
God that we have a relationship with, who's not just
an unknown unitarian, far off Platonic idea or monad, but
is a personal god who has a relationship with us
that gives us ethics, that gives us life and meaning,
and gives us an end goal of purpose. The universe
has intentionality. Even within the Neelblek conception or the Monus conception.
It's hard to figure out exactly why an immaterial one
or an immaterial universal impersonal force or principle would in
anyway give us purpose or tilos in a grand scheme.
Speaker 1: In fact, all of reality is sort of an eternal generation.
Speaker 5: If you follow the neoplatonists argumentation, maybe he doesn't have
to see, but regardless, there's going to be many fundamental
problems that aren't fundamental problems in a Christian paradigm. His
paradigm will be totally different and undercut the possibility not
just of his metaphysical speculations.
Speaker 1: But reality itself and knowing reality.
Speaker 5: Itself again, having a justified, true belief about reality that
you can make sense of without relying upon it's just
what I feel, bro, This is the easiest answer.
Speaker 1: It's parsimonious. All of those things are unjustified reasons and
assumption as to why his worldview should be true, when
really what's at stake here is which world you can
give an account for the preconditions and the possibilities of knowledge,
ethics and metaphysics. All right, and that's time, right on time.
Speaker 2: In fact, I just want to point out over five
thousand on YouTube, seven thousand between all platforms. Appreciate all
of you guys coming in this evening to watch this debate,
Gnostic and formant.
Speaker 1: You have ten minutes on the clock. Go ahead when
you're ready. So I guess I heard some arguments there
of why his worldview is coherent and accounts for these
things he said, the logos is personal. There's a few
things in there, but mostly what I heard was my
opponent needs to do this, needs to do this, needs
to do this, needs to do this, worrying about what
I'm going to say when that should be for the
next round. You should be giving an argument for your worldview,
which I'll be doing right now. My worldview, which I
call apoloist monism. It's metaphysically priority monism, and I'll explain
why I call it apoloist monism. A second, it is
basically priority monism as described by the neo Platonist philosophers.
So it's starting off with a it's called the hierarchical hypostasis,
the the One, the good is, the the the ArKade,
the beginning. It's all perfect, all knowing, all powerful, and
the one emanates from this the noose, which is represented
in different ways by different philosophers. I use Apollo because
Apollo is is a form intellect, logos, reason, perfection. The
Sun we can we can tell we can use the
sun as an example of the brightest, brightest light that
we can see in our in our presence world right now.
It also gives off the most radiation heat in life
and life sustaining. Doesn't mean I believe the Sun is
the monad. It's a representation. It's a model that we
can use to sort of explain the metaphysics. And then
there's and then also there's a triad at play because
the next emanation, which is the first emanation, which is
the noose, is the brightest emanation. It's almost identical to
the one itself. It's the closest thing you're going to
get from perfection. The third emanation is psyche or soul,
and this is the mediator between the all the numbers
that come after all the plurality that comes after, the
mediator between the physical and sensible emotions and feelings. I
use Dionysus as a way to describe the whirling of
the cosmos, and from this triad, and from this triad
emanations go all the way down to the physical world
of matter, and the farther away you get from the one,
the less good. There is evil persist in this realm.
Humans are at the top of the lowest realm, but
our main objective is to climb the ladder to get
back to the good. So I'm just giving basic. That's
just the basic under understanding of You can ask me
whatever you want if you want to deeper into it.
But it accounts for all things because it accounts for
the reason, the laws of logic, It accounts for particulars,
It accounts for universals, all the things that you ask for. Now,
it CONTs for the one and many too, because the
emanations allow for the plurality to be distinct, but also
have the essence of the one. So even down to
the lowest form of life, there's a little bit of
essence of the One within it. It doesn't mean that
you and I are the same, that I'm literally your
ear or I'm literally your finger. We are distinct, but
we all come from the emanations of the one. That's
what saves the one of the many. It's a metaphysical argument,
just like you would say the trinities is what accounts
for that. Now, I think your worldview is incoherent. My
worldview isn't because my worldview doesn't have contradictions. My worldview
allows for things Empiricism and modern platness today actually accept
evolution and we accept the age of the earth because
of empiricism. You can even go back and read Aristotle,
who is not an evolutionist, but you can see he
got close because of his empiricist mindset, because of his
discovery of the laws of logic. He got very close.
And I actually have a passes from Aristotle that I
had got got ready from low where he says nature.
This is from History of Animals. He says nature proceeds
from the inanimate to the Oh, I gotta sign back,
and it signed me out. Damn, that's an f minus Neil. Yeah,
that's crazy, minus Neil. I got signed clocked out. I
got clocked out of low. That sucks. I can't find
it now. Well, okay, whatever, I don't have to say.
I'll just you guys can look it up. On animals,
he's he says, basically, he's what he's I'll just describe
what he says. I'll just paraphrase it. He says that
when you look at animals, you can almost see types
going into other types. There's almost like a blend of
different types of animals, Like there's different types of horses
and different types of fish, and there's like a gradient line.
And he he gets close to almost understanding that there's
an evolution going on, but he doesn't. He doesn't get
that far. And a lot of modern Platonists think that
he would have if he would have been around today
and saw the evidence of like when we when we
find fossils, he would have said, oh shit, there's there's
transitional fossils, things like atoms. By the way, I thought
this was the defeater for Platonism, and that's actually not
Werner Heisenberger. Werner Heisenberg, who is the one who discovered
the law of uncertainty. He actually argues that when you
smash atoms together under the atomist Epicurean view Democratius view,
they should get smaller and break apart. But what happens
when you smash atoms together is they actually form mathematical
sinem trees, which is forms. So it actually it actually
it actually favors the Platonist view more so, those type
of things is why I started to become convinced by
this worldview. So I'm just kind of laying this out
for a little bit. But another thing I want to
I want to stress is the concept that Plato talks
about is at pori. So Plato in his dialogues. If
you read Plato's dialogues, you know they don't They never
end on a solution. Socrates is always the best debater,
but he doesn't He never really wins the debate. It's
always left off on like they don't really know the
like we get close to it, but things have to
stay open. We need to have that scientific mind that
we could be wrong. That's just me completely coming to you. Honestly,
I don't have to know all things. I am a
not omniscient being. However, with using the with using empiricism,
laws of logic, you know, not not not falling, not
going against law, non contradiction the law, by identity, you know,
the scientific method. I can know things, and we can
see that Aristotle discovered the laws of logic thousands of
years ago and they still stand up today. So we
can know things almost to a certainty. But the dog
the only dogma that a Playton that should hold is virtue.
If you are doing things that are that are reading virtue,
they are good and you should do them. If you
are doing things that are not bringing virtue, you shouldn't
do them. That's the That's the main dogma that a
Playtons holds, rather than having faith. So it is a
nosis verse faith paradigm. We are disagreeing on that. But
I would argue that the uh, how do we know God?
So he might ask that question, how do I know God?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 1: Through negation? What God not is God doesn't contradict himself.
For for example, God, God doesn't tell you in through
his through his scripture, for example, I have numbers here.
He doesn't tell you that he wants to abort babies,
and then thousands of years later. One of the main
dogs of the church is like no abortions. So in
the Book of Numbers, you have Yahweh telling the high
priest that if you suspect there's any this is numbers
five eleven thirty one. If you suspect that a woman
is being an adulterer, that you should make this potion,
this water from the dust of the tabernacle and give
it to her, and then put a curse on her,
so that the baby and the abdomen will swell and
the womb miscarries. Then the woman is to say, amen,
so be it. So that's a contradiction in your worldview.
You have your own God telling your priest to do abortions,
but you say you're anti abortion. Here's some more premise. One,
a perfect self sustained being lacks nothing and does not
require appeasement. The biblical God commands sacrifices to atone for sins.
Requiring sacrifice implies a need for appeasement or satisfaction. Conclusion, therefore,
Yahweh is not a perfect, all sustained being, not only
that he requires human sacrifice. In the Book of Judges,
Jephtha tells the Lord. He says, if you let me
win this battle. The next person you put in front
of me, I will put on an altar and sacrifice
him to you. What is God? What is God? Put
in front of Jephtha after he wins the battle, his
pre pubescent daughter who's a virgin, and they go on
with the sacrifice and do it. It's not like the
Abraham story where Abraham's tested at the last second the
angel stops him. Jeptha actually sacrifices a human to Yahweh.
This is seen as good Yam Kipor. Leviticus sixteen says
that you can sacrifice goats and bulls for sins every
year at the time of yan Kippor. So what happened?
Did God change his mine and say, wait a minute,
we don't no more yam kippor, We need a human. Actually,
I'll send myself a person of myself who's literally God.
I'll put them in human form to sacrifice them to
myself so I can save all you guys from me.
It doesn't make any sense. It's not logically coherent. So
a perfect being cannot experience emotional states that imply you
got to wrap their security last one or relative change
premise too. The Bible attributes jealousy, repentance, and wrath to Yahweh.
Therefore Yahweh is inconsistent with divine perfection.
Speaker 2: Okay, now, gentlemen, I've always given people this option after
they get past opening statements, if you want to keep
the format, get into rebuttals and then get into closings
before we open it up. We can do that, or
we can open it up right now, which will give
you an extra forty five minutes of open debate. It's
up to you, guys, what do you want to do there?
Keep going okay, awesome, ten minutes in jay for your rebuttal.
Go ahead when you're ready.
Speaker 1: Just sing here, yeah, okay.
Speaker 5: So we heard a whole lot of list of ideas,
almost like you just sort of spat out all the
things that just popped into his head, with little to
know actual refutation or argumentation about anything in the Christian
paradigm other than perhaps going to Reddit and finding a
few of the classic misunderstandings of anthropomorphic language. The argument
that I gave that he said I gave no argument,
was that your worldview is incoherent at a fundamental level
such that it makes the possibility of knowledge impossible.
Speaker 1: You might not like that argument.
Speaker 5: You might not understand that argument, but that's an argument,
that's an internal critique, it's a transcendental argument. He said,
he's an appolished apollost monist. For him, there is a
hierarchical one and monad and that there's an emanation from
this news. The news then produces psyche. There's these gradations.
So there's an ontological diminishment in this worldview. He laid
out this wild neoplatonic story. There's this triad. The things
at the bottom are less good from the things that
the top, which are the highest good, and it's also
more perfect. Now, obviously this is a wild bunch of
metaphysics that he claims to want to be in line
with modern science and scientific data and information and so forth.
And maybe there is some reconciliation there. But if you
want to appeal to modernity, ninety nine point nine percent
of modern academics, scientists and all the people that he
wants to perhaps appease or be in good cahoots with,
would laugh at this worldview and would not believe anything
remotely close to neoplatonism. Neoplatonism died out in the Middle Ages,
in fact, and never really made a resurgence now has
nothing to do with what it's true false.
Speaker 1: But it's just funny to me that there's this desire to.
Speaker 5: Want to be rational and academic and scientific when neoplatonism
is anything but it's one of the most speculative metaphysical
disciplines in the history of Western philosophy. Now he says
that the perfection is up at the top with the one,
and there's gradations down to the triad and then everything
else that comes from the triad. How do we know
this on what basis are we supposed to believe from
his worldview, from his paradigm that there are good reasons
to believe in this impersonal monadic generation that's going on.
Why would the one, if it's perfect, split into many,
which is less perfect? His own argumentation about perfection in
Yahweh would apply to his own monad, that the monad
wasn't able, it wasn't able to keep it from being many,
which then leads to gradations. Think about how silly it
is to say that Yahweh doesn't make sense because.
Speaker 1: He did this and this and this and the Old
Testament and that doesn't make sense to me.
Speaker 5: But then you turn around and say that an impersonal
force or one that's a perne beyond no ability and
existence and any predication at all.
Speaker 1: Just split into two, and then that just split into three.
Speaker 5: It's just arbitrary assertions from the domain of metaphysics that
anyone with an empiricist worldview would laugh at. Neil doesn't
know the difference between empirical sense data and empiricism as
a school, so that was a huge blunder when he
made the conflation between these two things. The gradations of
perfections would be laughed at by any modern philosopher. For one,
because after the Middle Ages, philosophies and metaphysics of perfection
get questioned and they're not believed because there's a Copernican
shift in philosophy after.
Speaker 1: Human cont Why what does that mean?
Speaker 5: It means that instead of having metaphysical assumptions and assertions
that you make, the question then became, well, how do
we know that those assertions and metaphysical things are actually
the case. For example, Hume begins to raise questions about
the regulator of nature. He raises questions about knowing the
external world. Wouldn't you need to know those things before
you tell me about ultimate reality? And metaphysical gradations and
levels beyond reality. Now, in the Christian paradigm, of course,
we believe that there are these other realities. But that's
because we have a divine being that's outside of time,
a space that gives us access to that reality. I
realize that you don't believe that, but I'm saying we're
in a much better position to say how we would
think that that's the case, given the fact that we
believe in divine revelation. If God exists, he could give
revelation about himself and these higher realities or whatever to
created beings. But in Neil's paradigm, the one is an
impersonal modad. It doesn't do anything with intentionality. So notice
there's no purpose actually to our lower bodily reality. Even
when he says our goal is to get back to
the One, how do we know that?
Speaker 1: Why? The One is an.
Speaker 5: Impersonal aper own a beyond being, a being beyond being,
and beyond that being. That's what the operona, or the
negated existence of the one actually is. So Neil has
a position which is purely feedistic and based on faith.
He thought that he would come with rationality and reasoning,
but his position is completely irrational. In fact, he doesn't
even know the difference between empiricism as a school and
empirical sense data. Christians do not reject empirical sense data.
In fact, we believe that God created us as beings
with minds and with senses.
Speaker 1: To learn things about the natural world. We just simply
don't accept the empiricist school, which says that all knowledge
comes from sense data. So again fundamental conflations.
Speaker 5: Thus he made another basic mistake by saying that Aristotle
was an empiricist.
Speaker 1: Certainly, Aristotle was more empirical in.
Speaker 5: His methodology than Plato, but he was not an imperial
as we think of the post Enlightenment philosophers like David
Hume or anybody from the positivist schools of philosophy. So
he says that we can know these things, and we
can know, for example, that there's only one dogma of
a Platonist, and that is virtue.
Speaker 1: How do we know that that's the one dogma?
Speaker 5: He began his whole argumentation from the most outlandish speculations
about the monad and the news and the psyche. But
then he says, but really, the only thing we can
know from Platonism is the virtue is to be virtue,
to be virtuous?
Speaker 1: How do we know what virtue is? If everything is
a manifestation of the One.
Speaker 5: I understand that as a priority monus he recognizes the
reality of particulars and distinctions. But the problem isn't about
recognizing distinctions. The problem is, well, what's the difference between
good and evil? If all reality is fundamentally one thing
monism and a manifestation of the One. Even if there'ss
then what is moral evil? In other words, even if
yahweh were guilty of the things that Neil says, well,
in Neil's paradigm, everything is just a manifestation of the One. Anyway,
Jeff zy McAffrey doing all this stuff on his island,
that's just a manifestation of the One. It might be
a lower manifestation, but it's not an objective evil that
one must oppose because there is no objective standard of
good and evil in Neil's paradigm. That's again another kill shot,
which again Christianity, even if you don't like it, at
least it makes sense and as a coherent cherent basis
to why there would.
Speaker 1: Be good and evil. There's a good God.
Speaker 5: Evil is a negation of privation and a moral infraction
against that God's commands. So the bad parts of the
Bible don't even have any sensibility in his worldview, given
that there is no bad for him.
Speaker 1: The bad is just non being.
Speaker 5: That's the classical chain of being model that we're talking about.
But that's not really bad in a moral sense, it
just lacks being. Now, for the Church Fathers, we agree
in some places that there is a sense in which
evil is a negation. We don't think it has ontological existence,
but we have a basis for moral evils because of
a moral character that God has and tells us not
to do these certain things.
Speaker 1: And thus we were also in print that Being made
his image with a moral sense of good and evil.
That is the law of God has written on our
hearts in the Christian paradigm.
Speaker 5: Now, the passage that he talked about, none of those
teach the necessity of human sacrifice. If you read James
Jordan's book James Jordan's famous commentary on the Book of Judges,
very prominent biblical commentator. He makes a very good argument
that when God tells Jephtha to give up his daughter,
this is in the tradition of the Jews, just like
with Samuel of committing your first born child to go
serve at the temple, and this is a known Jewish practice,
just like why we believe that Mary was committed to
as a young person serve at the temple. You have
that ability in Judaism to give up or you're firstborn
or your daughter even.
Speaker 1: As well, to go serve with the temple.
Speaker 5: And the reason that mattered for the kings at that
time was that meant they might not have a male
errant through that daughter. So it's not just human sacrifice
because remember already we've been told in the Law of
Moses to not have human sacrifice. The point of the
story with Abraham is that God will provide the sacrifice,
not that we that he accepts human sacrifice. In fact,
Neil and misunderstood the anthropomorphic language throughout the Old Testament,
and Jews, Christians, Muslims, almost everybody understands that there's anthropomorphic
language that's used to give us an idea of what
God is like.
Speaker 1: Doesn't mean that God.
Speaker 5: Literally has jealousy, right, he doesn't learn new facts because
he's omnission. But we have words that are used to
help us understand this deity, and we actually believe in
the theology of negation as well. We think that God's
essence is unknowable. We negate what God's essence is. But
God's positive cataphatic attributes are the energies that come down
to us, as the saint Basils says, so we.
Speaker 1: Believe in it both and and again for him.
Speaker 5: You gotta wrap it very quickly, Jay, the world as
it exists has no actual purpose and no actual basis
to understand moral good and evil.
Speaker 2: Thank you for that rebuttal. I appreciate it very much. Neil,
your rebuttal, you have ten minutes on the clock.
Speaker 1: It's funny how you just admitted that you also have
the same doctrine of negation to know God, when for
the last ten minutes before that you're sitting there asking me,
how can I know things like God? When it's all
how do He just had a nonsensical way of just
just speculating basically, And it's not speculation. It's a metaphysical
argument just like you're putting out there. The only difference
is my metaphysical argument doesn't have contradictions like in the Trinity.
For example, the law of non contradiction. The law of
contradiction states that something cannot be both one and many
in the same respect. At the same time, the Trinity
claims that God is one and three. One and three
are numerically contradictory predicated on the same thing in the
same respect. Therefore, the Trinity violates the law of non contradiction.
Also the law of identity. If A equals C and
B equals C, then A equals B transivity and identity.
The Father equals God. Premise too, premis three, the Son
equals God. Conclusion, Therefore, the Son the Father is the Son.
Not it's this that doesn't That doesn't make any sense.
That's a as a fallacy. I know, I know you
have your answers for that. I love to get into that.
I have a back and forth with the Trinity. But
you also mentioned in your first first go around the
Wisdom of Solomon. And it's funny because even Orthodox scholars
admit that the Wisdom of Solomon is dates to like
one hundred to fifty b C. It's a Hellenistic text
drawn heavily from Platonist and Plethagorean metaphysics. It's written in Greek.
First of all, it's not even written in Hebrews, so
I don't know why you think that's some old texts
that goes back to Solomon, and it doesn't. So you
need to show me how you've even got there, when
all even your own scholars will say that it's yeah,
it's definitely hellenistic. You don't even have your churches even
have a position on things like the age of the Earth,
because it can't have a position. It can't say we
think we agree with the empirical data, because then your
your Bible is in contradiction with the empirical data. You
can do the math yourself and go do the genealogies
and figure out that you can go from Jesus back
down to Adam using any of the genealogies, and you'll
end up a world that's six thousand and seven thousand
years old. That is nonsense. And we can do this
through predicted we can tell we could test, we could
test this out and through empirical data predictive success. Every time.
When we when we dig rock layers, we always find
the extinct fossils on the bottom of the layers that
farther down you go, you never find Homo sapiens at
the bottom. You never find dinosaurs at the top. It's
always the same layers for the same time periods every
single time, ninety nine point nine percent every single time.
We know how old the earth is. You can't have
a global flood that wipes everything out if you don't
even have enough water to cover the earth. And not
only that, how did the animals swim across the Atlantic
Ocean around after two thousand BC to two thousand and
seven hundred BC. We never know it was. So you
have problems that you have to deal with that. I
don't have those problems. You also talked about John One
the triad or he said that I don't believe that
the trinity exists or the triad didn't exist after the
third or fourth century. I never said that. I don't
worry why you even brought that up. I actually argue
the triad is in John One. I actually agree with you.
John One is a retailing of Genesis. Logos represents atom,
the new atom, and in him and aute Zoe, which
is the life. There's a triad there Logos, God, Zoe, Tryad. However,
it's not the later triad. It's not the trinitarian nice
and creed triad is what I argue. So n r
K and ho logos, ki ho logos and pros tone
the one. And then it says ki theos and hole
logos that that that phrase ki ki ki theos and
hole logos is the predicate nominative in Greek. It's a
well attested grammatically phenomenon that that that's all over the place.
And if you, if you, if you switch theos with logos,
and it makes it an adjective. So actually, theos is
not equal to logos in this in this verse. I
know your church would disagree, but I'm just going off
what the basic Greek tells me. That the logos is divine.
It's a it's a divine being, but it's separate from
the logos. And that's why it says logos was with God,
not was God, and the logos was divine. That word
theos and the predicate nominative means it's used being used
as an adjective just basic Greek. No, it's not basic Greek.
It's pretty advanced actually, But that's what the best Greek
scholars will agree with me. Logos you say, like it
doesn't have meaning that it bounces around from person to person.
But that's because the word logos has multifaceted, multi purposes.
The word logos can mean reason, it can mean logic,
it can mean word, it could mean letters, it could
mean a lot of different things. So people use the
word logos in different ways. But ultimately, the logos that
we're talking about is the is the function of the
creative reason in the cosmos. It's the news, it's the
it's the brightest emanation from the one. And you, I
would argue that Christian theology is borrowing from our worldview
with the logos to construct John's logos with the logos.
And so also you said Neoplatonism died in the Middle Ages. Well,
Werner Heisenberg was a Platonist. Iris Murdoch is a Platonist.
Thomas Taylor was a Platonist. That's just that's modern to us,
all the way of the twentieth century, twenty firstcent, almost
twenty first century, they live. There's platonists today. Actually, I
just met someone. I was in Athens to the Tonic Academy,
So I don't know, I don't know how you just
thought that Gemestis Plethon was a was the debating Orthodox
Palamites in in Constantinople in the fourteen fifties. He was
a Platonist. What do you mean they died out in
the Middle Ages. That's just that's just wrong. But I
actually I would argue that there's a straight line from
today to Plato. And the reason you might say, where
do they all go? How come they all just look?
First of all, they got kicked out by Justinian. But
second off, we don't want massive people. We want elites.
We want people who can think with reason. That's it's true.
We're not trying to go out and convert people to Platonism.
That's what you do because because it's that's that's what,
that's what. It's a corporation, it's a religion. And so
what else was I gonna say? Okay, so much time I.
Speaker 2: Left right now, it looks like you still have almost
two minutes. Okay, so your just over two minutes.
Speaker 1: Okay, you said, I don't I don't account for the
I don't account for things like the one of the many,
because the one is just uh, it's everything's just you know,
just sending from the one. But I already explained the
emanations solve this, And it's a metaphysical argument that I'm making.
The solution to the one and the many preserves real
unity and plurality without collapsing. And my monism, the many
emanates from the one without being separate from it. So
emanation preserves ontological unity while allowing real structured plurality. Therefore,
the monism that I'm arguing preserves both unity and plurality.
Now the trinity does. To the trinity, you're just saying
it does because you have three heads in one God.
But that's still one thing. You're still talking about one
thing with had properties. So how can one thing that
has properties and needs sacrifices and and and and gives
scripture that has contradictions Like when was Jesus born? I
don't know, Luke says seven eight, Matthew says four BC
when Herod died. Luke's sensus happened in seven a D.
When Corinius was governor. So what you're going this is
what we're dealing with, all just contradictions and contradictions. But
the trinity does not even account for this. It's one
one being one can't equal three. I like to hear
you argue, how one can be three at the same
time when my my emanations actually solves this.
Speaker 2: All right, we've got about pretty close to eight thousand
live viewers this fine, fine evening.
Speaker 1: Appreciate that from everybody.
Speaker 2: We're going to move into the debater's closings and the
hour one section, and then we're going to move into
open debate. Jay Dyer, you have ten minutes on the
clock for your closing.
Speaker 1: Go ahead when you're ready.
Speaker 5: Right, So again, and I think this is kind of
funny because half of what I said he didn't even understand.
First of all, negation in my view, and using negation
doesn't mean that I have the same view of you,
right or as you. So the fact, yeah you did.
You said that, Well, I have negation too. Yeah, But
you don't have the idea of positive energetic presence in
this world of the One. You have the emanations that
are not the one, but you're supposed to but they
supposedly reflect or are in some way perhaps participatory in
the One.
Speaker 1: How do we know that?
Speaker 5: And why should we think that? If the One is perfect,
then why would we think that something that is not
the one and is imperfect somehow reflects or participates in
the one. I don't think you even thought about the
very classic refutations of platonism and neoplatonism that have been
around for centuries and millennium people have been critiquing these positions.
Speaker 1: What I said was that ninety nine.
Speaker 5: Percent of today's academics and scientists laugh at neoplatonism. I
sided Bernard Heisenberg about neoplatonic ideas in my book ten
years ago. I'm well aware of what he said about
fundamental reality bearing and showing geometric structure, and I think
that's interesting.
Speaker 1: And I cite Paul Davies's book.
Speaker 5: Mind of God all the time, where you have people
like Roger Penrose, who's a modern mathematician. Those are mathematicians
and physicists who speculate and believe in something that makes
sense with a Christian paradigm. That fundamental reality is ordered
and structured. But this reality is way less perfect than
the higher reality that you talk about. In fact, again,
why ought we think that there's any similarity between the
perfect monatic unity reality and the imperfect multiplicity becoming flux
reality that we live in. It's almost like you're not
even aware of the basic critique of platonism. How does
the realm of the forms and the perfect idea up
there relate to the imperfect, tainted, destructive chaos realm down
here because they have oppositional characteristics. Now you can say
an assert that they have a similarity and they share
in each other, but you don't have an arguement for
that other than to keep asserting that it is. So
you seem to think that laying out the position of
neoplatonism is an argument. You said, well, it reconciles the
one in the many. It does not reconcile the one
in the many, because, as I just pointed out to you,
the one does not have the characteristics of the many,
because it's perfection at a higher level. If many is imperfect,
then it's not like the one. And if you're going
to say, well, but it's also kind of like the one,
how do we know that's the thing in question? These
are classic critiques of platonism. You say that three and
one cannot there's not a thing that can be three
and one at the same time. Really, you ever seen this?
This is a basic number?
Speaker 1: Is this one or is it three? Oh, it's both
at the same time. Is it more a single number
or more three it's both.
Speaker 5: So even objects in this world, as we've argued countless
times against the Muslims, can be both one and many
at the same time. Furthermore, the way you even laid
it out, something cannot be one and many at the
same time and in the same way.
Speaker 1: Well, guess what.
Speaker 5: The trinity is not one and many at the same
time and in the same way, because the persons are
not the same.
Speaker 1: Thing as the essence.
Speaker 5: So it's not the same thing in the same way,
even according to our doctrine. So again, I don't think
you understand what these arguments actually are about.
Speaker 1: The logical problem.
Speaker 5: The trinity is something that we've also dealt with many
times when it comes to Muslims, and the whole.
Speaker 1: Argument trades on the word God only having one reference.
Speaker 5: But Neil seems to be really adapt at word constant
fallacies by thinking that a word always has a single
same reference. In fact, when I brought up the many
different uses of logos throughout the ancient Greek philosophers, my point,
and you backed that up, was to say, yes, correct,
they all say these different things.
Speaker 1: And then you said, but my position is the right one.
Speaker 5: How do we know that what is the justification for
choosing the neoplatonic idea, or even if it could be
a Neoplatonists. For example, you have Iamblicusts, who's a ritual
magic Platonists, and then you have Platinos, who'se ay. Sit
around and speculate and think your way back to the
one neoplatonists. Which one is the real Neoplatonism, Which one
is the neo Platonism.
Speaker 1: It's the one that you've made up.
Speaker 5: And that's the thing, is that there's no justification for
Neil's Platonism, which is his own made up Neoplatonism.
Speaker 1: Now, Counting by identity versus counting.
Speaker 5: By division is what the early Church fathers and even
many in the ancient world used to distinguish different ways
of counting different types of things. So the divine essence,
for example, is counted by dividing. That's why the Nice
and Creede says one and undivided. That's counting by division,
and many ancient Greek philosophers also counted this way. Counting
by identity is a different way of counting, and certain
types of things that you can't think of as having
any partitions you count by identity. For example, logical sets
or laws of logic. Right, So for example, the law
of non contradiction. There's no half of a law of
non contradiction, right, So it's an abstract object that you
would you have to count by identity. Thus you can't
count by division. And throughout the history of the world,
people have counted different things in different ways. Even in
the Middle Ages. They began to recognize in medieval grammar
texts and mathematical texts how to count different things in
different ways. So they had this distinction by first order
imposition and second order in position even in the Middle
Ages when it came to counting.
Speaker 1: So it's nothing new.
Speaker 5: But what you're saying with the logical problem the trinity
is again something that we've elucidated in all the Muslim
debates when it comes up many many times over. It's
just conflating two different ways of counting. And the funny
thing about that is that in the case of Muslims,
they also counted in various ways. In the ancient world,
they counted by division. For example in Al Gazali. Many
ancient Greek philosophers who I'm sure you actually would like,
also counted by division and counted other things in other
ways by identity. So if you understand that, that really
sort of dissolves the whole issue with counting and the
logical problem the trinity, and also the fact that the
word God doesn't have a single reference in divine revelation.
God can refer to God himself in terms of divine persons,
It conferred to the divine nature, it can refer to
divine operations or attributes, refer to human and it can
refer to angels and demons. Throughout the texts of scripture.
When I said the Wisdom of Solomon, I didn't just
mean the deuterocononical text, which again apparently you're not aware
of this, but there's a bunch of other texts called
proverbs that are dated to the time. Loosely, you could say,
even even take the liberal.
Speaker 1: Dating of Solomon.
Speaker 5: So guess what Proverbs seven, eight, nine, those talk about
the wisdom texts. So you didn't even know that Hebrew
wisdom text is not summed up in the Wisdom of
Syric if you date that to the second century BC.
I'm talking about the totality of wisdom texts, whether it's Syric,
whether it's the Wisdom of Solomon or whether it's proverbs,
they consistently refer to wisdom as a personified character, as
a sponified person, for example, Proverb seven or eight at
the beginning of the creation, participating in the creation of
the world. That's why John one is using that same terminology.
Now you claim that that basic Greek shows you that
John one should be interpreted in your way.
Speaker 1: Do you actually know Greek?
Speaker 5: And then you said the best Greek scholars say this. Okay,
I'd be interested to hear some of your Greek scholars
and what Greek scholars are the best Greek scholars that
say this, Because you gave the impression first, like you
know the Greek, I'm skeptical.
Speaker 1: Maybe you do, Maybe you are a Greek scholar, but
I'm skeptical that you are. Perhaps you are.
Speaker 5: Then you go you went on to say that the
logos that you're talking about is the logos that is
the news and so forth and so on. That's the
one that's the right one out of all these ancient texts,
and there are many uses the variations of the use
of logos, that's the one. Okay, how do we know, Neil,
what is the epistemic justification? You said, there's all these arguments,
but you said the one of the many. Okay, but
the one of the many is a problem in your position,
because why are there many at all? Why would we
think that imperfect things reflect the perfection of the opera
O and the beyond.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's it, Jay, are you yielding your time?
Speaker 2: You still got a couple of minutes left if you
want to take Yeah, if you want to take it,
you still have looks like almost three minutes.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'll keep going going.
Speaker 5: So again, let's go back to what we wanted to
distress when it was an issue with the original I
didn't This are things I didn't get to the original rebuttal.
So again, what I think Neil's not understanding is that
modern science, modern academia, for the most part, I said,
ninety nine point nine percent are not neoplatonists. It doesn't
mean there aren't some outliers, but the majority of academia
who are inmpiricists for the most part, meaning that we
can't really go beyond since data. You've got two different
conflicting situations in your worldview, Neil. On the one hand,
you want this mystical theology that's gradations of reality from
the one. And then you've got this other desire to
fit into modern academia and be scientific. Well, modern scientific
empiricism or positivism or whatever you want to call it
has nothing to do and would totally reject all of
your first presentation.
Speaker 1: Now maybe you've got someone you think you can reconcile it.
Speaker 5: But I'm just curious, like, how are you going to
get from empirical sense data because you said that's what
you want to be rooted in and grounded in and
do science. How does science tell you about the monad
that's beyond experience? How does science tell you about the
news and psyche underneath that? Where does science or the
scientific method tell you that there's gradations of reality from
the one and that the one is more perfect? So
these are all assertions, metaphysical assertions. And I think you
meant Plethon. You mispronounced it. But Plethon was an atheist
platonist in Byzantheum. Yeah, one guy in the Middle Ages.
So what that's again against the point that the majority
of people today are not that. And it actually proves
my argument by by you saying that there was this
guy in a Byzantium Plethon.
Speaker 1: Yeah, one guy in Plethon, so it died out. Or
one one guy was Andrew, so it died out.
Speaker 5: Now, if you read a Synicio Glues book on Plethon,
which came out a couple of years ago, I've got
it right over here. He argues that the tradition of
atheistic Platonism went on into Spinoza and into the Jacobins
and other philosophers of the Renaissance. So I want to
know again, Neil, we've got to understand. Gotta we gotta
hear some kind of reason as to why we ought
to believe this mystical neo platonism. All I heard was, well,
it does this, this, this, and here's problems in the Bible. Okay, fine,
what is the good argument to know from empirical data
and sense data?
Speaker 1: What you rely on that all of these metaphysical things
are true?
Speaker 2: All right, we gotta gotta leave it there. Try not
to interrupt the last portion there, Neil, you have ten
minutes on the clock for your closing statement before we
open up the floor for an open debate.
Speaker 1: Go ahead when you're ready. I didn't actually pronounce his
name wrong. It's playthone. In Greek it's plethone and maybe
some English anglicized version of I'm just you did the
same thing to me when I'll talked to you a
while ago, when I said do odd, you said diet
haa Douodd is a word that people use. It's a
Greek word. We even anglicize it as do in philosophy.
So I'm surprised some of the master's philosophy didn't know us. I, yeah,
I do. I don't speak right, and Jay can't. You
can't interrupt his his closing, go ahead, and Neil, I'm
a student of Greek, so no more than you do anyways.
So yeah, well, not to go back to when you
point pulled you picked up a book with a number
three on it and said, is this one and three
at the same time, it's one book with the letter
with the number three on it. Doesn't mean anything. You didn't.
You didn't you didn't show me anything. You didn't demonstrate
that it can one something, give you one and three
at the same time. You just you just picked up
a book with the number three on it, and that
all that is to me is that's a book. That's
one book with a number three on it. That was
like mind blowing when I saw that. That was hilarious.
But yeah, you want to know why, why why should
I believe your world? You? Why should I care? Well,
first of all, I never said that I'm trying to
get modern science to be grounded in all these I
want everyone to be a Platonist and all believe in
my stuff. These are metaphysical arguments. Is there metaphysical arguments
that account for things just as you're doing? The difference
is my worldview allows for things like impirsist empir empirical
data to to and we have the predictive success on
our side, where you have are bogged down by dog
buzz that gets you to have to you have to
believe the Earth is six thousand years old or that
evolution is false and you just flat out just deny
in your face physical evidence of transitional fossils or I
don't have to do that. So I don't care if
ninety nine point nine percent of empiricists all right, atheists, Great,
I don't care if they're atheists. That means nothing to me.
Doesn't bother me one bit what we're doing in philosophy
and platonism it's a totally different thing. We're accounting. We're
doing metaphysical arguments and trying to account for the world
and and and ethics and metaph and stuff like that.
But the problem, but we can just do we can
just negate your worldview off the rip just because of
how flawed it is, and we can just go through
and say, and I pointed some things out to you,
the contra the major contradictions in your in your biblical corpus,
And I didn't I wasn't talking about anthropomorphic stuff like, yeah, okay,
maybe you can get away with saying God being jealous
is anthropomorphic and he wasn't really jealous. But that's just
how it's reflected in the story. But I but you
still have an answer. Why does God needs sacrifices? Why
does God need to send him hisself to save the
world from himself. That's not an omniscient God, that's not
an all powerful God that needs to do all these things.
So a perfect and omniscient being doesn't regret prior actions.
Yahweh regrets Uh regrets making the earth. In Genesis six,
he says, ah Yahweh regretted that I have made the
earth so Yahweh can't be a perfect omniscient being. So
I'm already more coherent with you. This debates over at
that point. I'm already even if you don't think that
my metaphysical arguments are can be proven with with whatever,
Why should I believe in your in your monad well,
I don't have to believe in yours because you have
You're giving me things that I can just cancel out
just because of the fallacies. An all perfect being does
not need anything, can't be jealous, can't not know things,
can't lose battles in in Uh. In the Book of Judges,
I have my notes here, Yahweh goes up against the
the Midianites, and it says that Yahweh was the spirit
of Yahweh was with the Judah heights, but the Judah
Heights couldn't defeat the Midianites because they had iron chariots.
The spirit of God was with the Judah. Heyightes, this
is what it says. How else do you exeget that?
Do I have to be an orthodox priest to exegy
that no I can use. I can use my own
reasoning and say that is not a perfect God, that
is a God that is flawed. This is a god
that dashes little children's, little children against rocks and is
boasting about it in the Psalms. And let's talk about
you meant you brought up, uh, you brought up the
dating of the text. And because I was talking about
Wisdom of Solomon in particular, which is clearly Hellenistic, it's
written in Greek. First of all, game over, they don't
even have a heat. It's Greek. It's a Greek text.
And you said, I'm talking with the whole corpus of Solomon. Well,
let's talk about the whole corpus of Solomon. Then none
of it. There's no evidence for any of it going
back before like four hundred to the latest. And I
can tell you how I know this, when when Israel
was conquered by the Assyrians in five eighty six BCE,
a bunch of thousands of Jews fled down to Elephantine,
while all the rest of them went into Babylon in captivity.
But they set up a colony called Elephantine, and they
set up a temple of Yahweh there, and they call
themselves Judaios in Greek, Yehudim and Hebrew. And they wrote
aramic texts, and we have hundreds of them, so we
have a perfect time capsule. From five eighty six to
four hundred is when they left and went back to Jerusalem.
It's one hundred and eighty six years, so this is
after the First Temple period. Well, guess what do you
find there? You don't find anything about the Torah. There's
not a single mention of Abraham, not a single mention
of Moses, not a single mention of Jacob, not a
single mention of the twelve tribes, not a single mention
of Moses. No Noah, no Adam and Eve, nothing, no Torah. Nothing.
They get a letter in the year four hundred and ten.
I think it is from Jerusalem. They get a letter
sent to them. We had the letter, we found it,
we dug it up, and it's telling them for the
first time how to do a Passover. It shows we
were starting this new thing called Passover. This is in
four to ten BCE, this new thing called Passover, and
we celebrated on Nissan fourteen. Well, it's every year, it's
on Nissan fourteen. That's like me telling you to celebrate
Christmas on the Stummer twenty fifth. You should already know that.
So these are the Old Testament that you think goes
back to Moses and Solomon. That's nonsense. Prove it. There's
not a single piece of evidence for the Exodus anywhere.
There's no mention of Moses and any Egyptian sources. Joseph
in the Old Testament was the visier of the entire
Egyptian kingdom, the second highest most powerful person in the
entire Egyptian kingdom. Well, guess what we have from Egypt
even to this day. We have all the records of
all the pharaohs and their viziers. None of them mentioned
any of Joseph. We don't know. Joseph doesn't exist. He's
made up. In fact, the name Joseph probably probably some
sort of derivative from Osiris at some people, some scholars
point out some sort of euhemerization of Osiris, how he
descends into the underworld, into the dungeon and it rises up,
it becomes the second most high next to Amen. So
there's a lot of things we could see what's going
on in the Old Testament text, like the like the
story of the flood with Noah where he lets off
a raven and a dove and the raven and the
dove comeback seven days later to show him he's in land.
Sure enough, we got Sumerian and Thekadian tablets that predate
the Bible by one thousand, two, two thousand years about
the epic of Gyogamesh And as another there's another source.
I'm I'm thinking of the mind slipping right in the
name of it slipping my mind right now. But it
has this exact same story where, uh, what's his name,
I can't remember his name. He's on the he's on
the arc, and he lets he's got all the animals,
two of each animal, same story, and he lets off
a dove and a raven that come back seven days later.
But it's not Noah that sucks. It's not Jewish, this
is Akkadian. This is just borrowing other stories and then
personalizing it. And how do we know that. I'm just
assert that they do this right here. You see those
yellow and black texts that I'm pointing to. Those are
called pseudo pigripha. Should you read them? They're false writings, Yeah,
they're false writings. They're fake text writing in the names
of other people. And this is like this Christians pick
up on this pseudo Dionysius, fifth century a d. He's
not a first century writer, He's a fifth century writer
adopting neo Platonism. So when I see these things, pseudo text,
no evidence, I go My reasoning tells me this is
not the true religion, this is not the true worldview.
So I have a more simple worldview that accounts for things,
and that's why I go with neil Platonism.
Speaker 2: Gentlemen, gentlemen, we just got a major rate in which
I really appreciate. We're at almost ten thousand live between
all platforms. Nice, about eight thousand live on YouTube at
the moment. Appreciate very much for the raid. Yeah, I
do pretty well anyway, Appreciate it very much. I don't
know who rated me. Maybe a mod can let me
know so that we can think.
Speaker 1: Real quick. Yeah, you can grab a water.
Speaker 2: We're going to take a brief intermission for two minutes
guys before we get to the open debate. If you
want to grab anything else, you're welcome to bathroom break,
whatever it is that you guys want to do. Appreciate
the raid or was it Timcast? Thank you Tim Cast?
Appreciate it real quick call to action. Make sure you like, subscribe,
share all that good stuff, and also send in your
super chat. You don't want all that evil money in
your wallet anyway, it's uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: You can send it in to me instead. I always
think that that's a much better gig.
Speaker 2: All your super chat's going to get red moving into
the third hour of the debate, we're moving into the
second now we're also going to be taking on callers,
So mods will be this hour putting in the link
so that you can come into the discord to get vetted,
so that you can call in in the third hour
to ask your questions directly to the debaters. With that,
ladies and gentlemen, we're going to open the floor up
for this debate between Jay and Gnaustic. Inform it, gentlemen,
I expect you both to it adhere to my moderation.
There's too much over talking things like this. I'm going
to break the debate up a little bit and get
it back on track. That's my job as the mod
to your guys' job to do the debating. With that,
the floor is open. Are we going to go back
and forth with any time or just no time on
this one? So open open floor, So I'll just start
with Neil talking about the book. I'm talking about the
numeral three. Is the numeral one thing?
Speaker 1: Or is it three? Well, it's one number, so it's
the number three, So it's one in three. But it's
the number three. But it's one thing. Yeah, So that's
is that three things and one thing? It's not three things,
it's one thing. The number three is not three. The
number three can count three. You can count three things
using the number three. This is three and one. It's
just the number three on a piece of pay thing.
So it's one in three. No, it's not. It's one thing.
It's not three. It's one thing with the number three
on it. We use we use three, We use three
to count things. We don't just put three on something
and it becomes three. Oh really yeah, okay, so all
numbers are only one thing. This has a bunch of
numbers on it. Does that make it the numbers?
Speaker 5: Well again, whether you think it has ontological existence or not,
is different from the fact that the number three is
not just one, it's also three.
Speaker 1: But it's one thing that has the number three on it.
That's realnumber three. Signify Neil three, thank you. But that's
doesn't make the number. That doesn't make that three things.
That's just what the number this also a signifier? Right? Yeah?
But I would you gave me that one and signifiers? Right?
If you gave me that to signify three, I would
say three? What is?
Speaker 3: It?
Speaker 1: Does matter what? We're trying to be coherent here, right, coherent.
Speaker 5: If it's a signifier, then it also then one is
also a signifier.
Speaker 1: So you're just saying one is three? Great gets me nowhere. No,
I'm saying three and one, Neil. Are you fundamentally unable
to understand that?
Speaker 6: No?
Speaker 1: I understand what you're trying to say. It doesn't make
sense though, Okay, then is the one can't be three
when one is one or three? This is fundamentally stupid.
Is the number one a signifier? Yes? Okay? How many
is that? That's one? Okay? How many is that one?
That's a one in the two? No? This two? Okay?
So is this one object itself? The symbol itself? The
symbol is two? Thank you? But but you can't say
that this book is now two things? Now one is
also one is also a symbol? I know, but the
book is still one. It's a both in No, you
asked me what the symbol means? That was you slipped
that in there at the end of the fire. They're
both there. It didn't one object. That's a signifier of
two things, right, But you're still holding one thing in
your hand. I'm talking about the numbers.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: The number means too, I get that, but in your
hand is still one. Fundamentally stupid? The number it is
so fundamentally stupid. So this.
Speaker 7: What is this?
Speaker 1: It's the Roman numeral too and what is this too?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: So they both refer to what those numbers, those symbols
mean too right, to just one thing as a whole.
The number is the number means one thing on the
page right here, it is one thing on the page.
Speaker 3: Yes, you.
Speaker 1: Just admitted it, but it's still one thing. Are you
fundamentally stupid? Imagine you can say one thing is you
can put a number two and say I'm one and many.
Speaker 5: Is the point of this that something can be singular
and also many at the same time. For example, take
an object like a book, Neil, is a book? Does
it have many parts?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 5: Okay?
Speaker 1: Is it also one book? It's one book? Thank you?
So it's one in many. So objects can be one
and me the same time. Question. Yes, but that that
Now you have a problem. Now you have one entity
with three parts. How do you make it three distinct things.
Speaker 5: You argue that something can't be one and many at
the same time, I can have different parts.
Speaker 1: I didn't say that. I said one can have different parts.
I didn't say one could be many at the same time.
That's why the emanation is a better account for you said,
I'll say exactly what you said. Something cannot be one
and many at the same time, and it can have
many parts, is what I said. No, you said, quote
something cannot be one and many at the same time,
in the same way I wrote. I wrote down the quote.
I agree with that. Okay, never stopped, never stopped saying.
This book one thing and many things. It's one thing
with many parts. It's different one in many. It's one
thing with many parts. It's different. So is it one
and many at the same time. It's one book with
many parts. That's how you want many. It's one, it's
one in money, Yeah, it's one in many parts. Yes,
that's so. That was that was Keep watching this with
a normal like you understands what just happened. Now you're
going into ad homin All right, ad homs? Then okay,
is there any more questions? You got? Sure? I want
to know what the trinity? I want to know how
the trinity? I mean, I mean you're you're saying the
training it could be one and three at the same time. Fine,
we can move past that. I think it's nonsense. Yeah,
but you.
Speaker 5: Already admitted the contradiction. So you can think it's nonsense,
but you can.
Speaker 1: Never admitted the contradiction. I'm talking about part of you
talking about parts versus just contradict yourself like ten t oh,
you think I did the part people to think I did?
Is it's one thing with many parts.
Speaker 5: So it's one and many. So it's one thing with
many many Thank you. So again you're shooting yourself.
Speaker 1: You're getting your make You want me to say that,
I'm sure you want me to. You want me to
be incoherent because I'm not going to do it. Do
I want you to be incoherent?
Speaker 3: One?
Speaker 1: Is it one in many? No, it's not one of
many many parts? Am I am? I many things at once?
Many parts? Yeah, I have many parts exactly. I have
a I have a hand, I have an eyeball. But
it's all, Neil, I have different cells, one and many.
Thank you. You're just making many parts. Why can't you?
Doesn't matter, Neil, because it's one. It does. No, it doesn't, Yes,
it does.
Speaker 5: Parts is that it's many, it doesn't matter. Obviously many
would be parts. That's contained in the idea of many.
Speaker 1: But that's all I'm agreeing to is that it's one thing, still.
Speaker 5: Many, regardless of part. Parts is containing the idea of many.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but many the parts. It's not many different things.
It's not different things altogether. The parts aren't different things.
The parts are different parts. You said they're not different things.
Well they're not that. My hand is still Nil's hand.
It's part of me. Okay, but it's not a different
thing from your not your hand. It's not it's not
Andrew's hand. Not different things. Can it be Neil's Can it?
Can my hand be different thing from your leg? Yes?
Speaker 5: So it is different things, which you're getting you're contradicting.
It's a different part. I keep saying it's a different part.
Speaker 1: You said they're not different things. I said it's a
different part. You said it just said that I said,
one thing has many parts within it. Everything has many parts.
And then you said they're not different things. Okay, let's
see something more basic. Well, are they different things or not?
Is this one thing or many things? It's both? Really?
Where is it? What's the different? What else?
Speaker 3: What is it?
Speaker 1: What's so different about it? What else is there? What
I mean? It has it has a surface, and it
has a cat.
Speaker 5: Oh okay, so different parts exactly. Yeah, but Neil, you
said different parts are not different things.
Speaker 1: Well, if you want to describe parts as things, then okay,
I would have to. I would have to ask you
what you mean by things and you would say it's parts,
and I would say, okay, yes, it's just regular English
right here. Okay, now all right, do you want to
ask the next question or do you want me to? Yeah?
I mean I I threw at you a lot of
biblical contradictions, and you know, like the idea, like you
seem to be very adamant that the world is only
six thousand years old because the Bible says so, I
don't mean just I don't even blame you. You're trying
to stay consistent in your worldview. But even the church,
your church doesn't have a stance on this or like
things like evolution. Why does the church have to have
a stance on the age of the earth. I mean,
this are these are fundamental things about a reality where
you and I are dedating on these things. How do
you so you know the age of the earth?
Speaker 5: Yeah, said it's fundamental, right, Yeah, Well, if it's fundamental,
it's a dogma.
Speaker 1: Is it a dogma or not a dogma? But I'm saying, like,
if the Bible says the Earth is six thousand years
old and we have empirical data that contradicts that, that's
a problem for you. How do you do You just
deny empirical data? Is how this is how this works.
Speaker 5: No, I already said at the beginning that we don't
deny empirical data.
Speaker 1: So what do you do when people show us? What
do you do when paleontologists and archaeologists dig deep under
the ground and they predict exactly what's going to be
down there based on other digs for the last hundreds
do you.
Speaker 5: Understand that when you look at an object, an object
doesn't give you age.
Speaker 1: It's an interpretation of the object. Yeah, But I mean
I just asked you a specific question on how paleontologists
can dig to certain levels on the ground and predictively
and predict to a t ninety nine point nine percent
of the time what's going to be down there based
on the other digs around the world.
Speaker 5: But there's also times when there's fossils between those layers,
which contradicts that theory.
Speaker 1: Right now, there's show me an example.
Speaker 5: Uh, there have been trees in Iceland, excuse me, u
in uh Antarctica that extend between the ice layers.
Speaker 1: You have to show me that. I've never heard of that. Well,
it's a famous case. But well, I guess nine point
nine percent of the time. I'm sure there's outliers. But that.
Speaker 5: But wait a minute, why would wouldn't one outlier mean
that perhaps that No, it means there's something something happened
that was so.
Speaker 1: Then so they're not reliable.
Speaker 3: No, it is.
Speaker 1: It's ninety nine point nine percent not reliable. No, so
you're gonna you're gonna that predictive success. I'm not. I'm
not a paleontologist.
Speaker 5: And sure the fact that you understand that just because
there's predictive success doesn't mean that your model is correct.
You can have multiple models that have predictive success. This
is called the underdetermination of data.
Speaker 1: Agree. I actually agree with that.
Speaker 5: Okay, so then what you're arguing doesn't tell us which
which paradigm is correct. So beyond that, like I can
say that I have a different authority, uh in terms
of what I consider uh the ancient world to have
existed and been, Like, you have another authority.
Speaker 1: And I don't reject quote science.
Speaker 5: But again I'm making a different point about when you
see the rock layers or when you see the strata,
there's nothing about that that immediately tells you a time
frame or an age.
Speaker 1: So how do you know? Fair? Fair? But let me
ask you this, when you find contradictory data, for example,
when we go to places like Elephantine and they're doing
the opposite. They're making graven images, they're polytheists, they are
not You're going to something different. I know I'm saying.
I'm saying, for let's let's not let's not talk about
just looking at rocks. I'm talking about evidence that goes
against the biblical narrative. For example, when we go to
places that say that that that where there's Jews living
after the First Temple period, and we look at all
their not we look at all their writings, and that
has nothing to do with what the Bible said. They
were like, they're completely different. They're they're doing stuff on Sabbath,
they are worshiping mymultiple gods'.
Speaker 5: That's like saying that scenes disproved Judaism because thees scenes
did something totally different than the Jews.
Speaker 1: Are doing. That goes against the biblical narrative. I'm not
talking about.
Speaker 5: They were like, they were listen to me. They had
a Jewish gnostic perspective. They believe that they were the
sons of light, and they had certain aesthetic they had
certain ascetic practices that the Torah doesn't teach. So my
argument is, but the scenes, the scenes had the Torah. Okay,
go ahead, it doesn't matter, I'm making it. That's not
the point. The point is that the fact that there's
a sex somewhere that's doing things different in no way
leads you to the conclusion that the Jews with the Torah,
or the Jews in Israel are doing that they don't exist,
or that they're not there.
Speaker 1: It's an argument from silence. It's not an a from silence.
It's actually the evidence is the opposite of the historical
claims from the Bible. There's there's evidence that are that,
how directly though.
Speaker 5: That the Jews didn't exists prior to this sect what
in the g and it didn't exist?
Speaker 1: Okay, I said, there's no evidence that there were tora observant.
There's no evidence that they even knew what the tora was.
In fact, the things that they're doing in their text
and in the archaeology shows the exact opposite that they
got you. Okay, So, and and this is what century
you're saying we're talking Are you talking about Elephant Team
five eighty six to four hundred BC, sixth century, fifth century?
Speaker 5: And what main scholars have this opinion? Because I'm going
to show you a scholars that said the opposite of that.
Where are you getting this?
Speaker 1: Well, Okay, I can go I can go to Gad Barnea,
I can go to Adler, Russell Amerkin, Thomas L. Thomas,
Philip bar Davies, I could go to let's see, I
could go to Bruce Louden. I can I can keep
going on and on about this. Okay, So everybody know
these scholars, because we have no idea who yeah, write
those down? Please everyone write those down, Bruce Louden, Thomas L. Thomas, so,
Philip Davies, Russell Amerkin. Let let you respond, just some
people know arm respond response.
Speaker 5: So now when we go to for example, the again
just using this as an example text which refutes also
this claim and the other claim, release it shows contrary
scholarly evidence. So again Oxford opinion too. The Bible, the
Book of Proverbs deals with the prophetic tradition. The writings
excuse me, different from the prophetic tradition, The writings of
this wisdom literature, consistent parts of saying, short, pithy forms,
et cetera.
Speaker 1: The Hebrew word is translated to mean comparisons.
Speaker 5: And then it goes on to say that many of
these sexts debate date to the fifth century BCE, but
also many of them are actually even earlier to the
pre monarchic position. So you said earlier that there's no
evidence for this period for the Book of Proverbs mainline,
mainline non conservative. Necessarily, this is just awesome.
Speaker 1: That's a linguistic claim. First of all, are you do
you have evidence? Degree? I would ask, are you it's actual?
Are you a textual scholar? First, I'm not a textual scholar.
Speaker 5: How do you know about linguistic claims because I talked
to textual scholars.
Speaker 1: Okay, but that doesn't make wrong with that. I didn't
say I was a textual scholar. You just made this leak.
Speaker 5: You're acting like the fact that you cited the scholars
necessarily means that, by the way, where was it means
didn't argue that the arguments.
Speaker 1: On the basis of the words does there averbs is?
Where is it? And the proverbs themselves are pre monarchic.
Where are they? Who's talking? Who's citing it? Where's the text?
You don't think we have taxticle back that far? We do.
None of them cite proverbs. None of the text from
that period site proverbs.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 1: One mentions probably the first person an argument from silence
that scholars are saying that the scholars scholars are making
linguistic arguments on this I talk. They're not just making
linguistic arguments are making they're also making archaeological arguments. There's
no archaeological data to show that Solomon is right. There's
no Solomon text in archaeology I'm making. I'm telling you
that there's nothing there. You're calling m silence.
Speaker 5: You're saying the saying, But what I'm showing you is
that so there's competing scholarly claims.
Speaker 1: How do we know what's true between these? I would say,
you're what you're reading is probably outdated scholarship. When is
that date? What does that?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 1: What year is that book from? How do you know
what year? What counts is up? Because the modern up
to the most up to date, most rigorous academics are
all agreeing that we don't have any evidence of the Bible.
Now there might have been some layers of solomons. Do
go back and what counts as as outdated? I don't
know twenty years whatever book I say, right, No til
i's twenty years, probably twenty years. How do you you
don't say a arbitrary that? No, it could still be correct.
But I'm telling you there's no evidence. Well, I know
you're telling me that, but you're not actually proving that.
Speaker 5: You're saying that when I give you scholars with hold on,
scholar I give you, when I give you counter scholars.
We're in a dilemma then where we have to figure out, well,
how do we know what scholars are right or wrong?
And I'm asking you what tells you and you said, well,
it's got to be up to date. And I said
that's arbitrary. How do you know what the up to
date is? You said, oh, it's gonna twenty year. This
is all arbitrary.
Speaker 1: You just asked me what I think is outdated and
I just gave you a number. You're in a debate
that means you have to make good arguments. But Jay,
what I'm telling you is you can Scholars can guess
Solomon is dated to the fifth century or whatever, fine,
based on linguistics. How do you know they're guessing because
they do. We don't have any text from that period.
They all are guessing none of these texts go back
to that far? Do you not know that? You're just
how do you know that? Do you know? How do
you need zero biblical that? How do you know that?
Because we don't have a single manuscript of the Bible
the Dead strolls. You just keep asserting this. How do
you know that assertion is true? Because we don't have them?
Is there one of the music counter textual evidence? Right?
And I'm saying that it doesn't exist? I know you're
saying that physical.
Speaker 2: Copy of it hang on, hang on, hang on, Let's
let's see if we can untangle this. Okay, just a
little bit here, all right. Uh, we'll start with Neil. Neil,
I believe, are you saying your argument is there's no
physical evidence for this? Yes, okay, and then Jay will
operate off that counter Neil saying there's no physical evidence,
and we'll move from there.
Speaker 8: Go ahead, guys, again, the claim about the dating, and
that would be that would include dating actual physical texts
and not later copies.
Speaker 1: Would itself be subject to debate. And thus, when he
said that.
Speaker 5: We didn't have examples of proverbs prior to a certain century,
and I gave scholarly claims that there are proverbs that
go back to the pre monarchic period, Neil then said,
we don't have physical text. So we moved the goalposts
away from scholarly claims to you have to have the
physical copies.
Speaker 1: That's a foulccy to move the goalposts.
Speaker 5: And so when that's what the point of the scholarly
claims is, to say, Neil, it if I give you
counter scholarly claims and there's conservative scholars who date the
text before what you would date them, what is the
mechanism to know whose scholarly claims are correct and just
reassert your position.
Speaker 1: No, we take a holistic approach to this. So how
do we have not only hold on nominally only respond
Not only do we have no physical evidence? On top
of that, we don't have we So, for example, another
thing that scholars do to test this out is we
let me finish my you just I just you talk.
I'm not repeat a argument to give you some more
name ignored. One of the things we know about how
how we know textave survivor or go back far enough
is things like naming people name their children after heroes.
After four hundred BC, you start seeing names in the
sources of Moses, Abraham, Noah, all the heroes from the
Old Testament before that, There's zero. There's zero. They don't
have anyone with those names at all.
Speaker 2: Hang on, let me let me unentangle this too. I'm
sorry to step in here, guys, but I just got
to make sure so you I got your claim correct.
You're talking about physical evidence. But Jay did give an
argument to that, and I would like to hear what
you have to say in regards to that argument. As
he was addressing your argument of doing.
Speaker 1: Even say the argument perhaps you're saying you can bring
up come up with scholars who say that the more
conservative scholars who dated past the premi archt period. Yeah,
I say where, I'd say where are they right there? No?
I would say where, who's where? How do you know this?
Where are you just because the linguist that I thought,
the linguist that I talked to, say this is all
circular that they date a text. They go, Moses lived
in twelve hundred BC. So they find a text in
Hebrew that looks like it has the same linguisty point
they think. They find they say they use axiom Moses
as twelve hundred BC, and they find they then they
use that Hebrew that from that text and say that's
twelve hundred b C. Hebrew addressing they find another text
that looks like that Hebrew and go and also twelve
hundred b C. Stelling picular reasoning. Yeah, I mean I
do have to step in here.
Speaker 2: You are talking specifically to methodology here, and he's he's
giving a specific argument that he wants contended with.
Speaker 1: And I do think it's fair as you're we're at
a lock here. You have your scholars I have mine.
Fair you want to end it? There is what you're saying.
Speaker 5: The question is you said that, well, if we have
a competing claims of scholars thing going on, then it
would just be going to the holistic approach.
Speaker 1: How do we know that the holistic approach is the
right approach because your your scholars are just saying this
text dates period scholars I'm talking to hold on, No,
I'm not saying you have the same problem. I'm saying
your scholars have your scholars date the text of this period.
I'm saying, how do they know that? Where the scholars
I'm sorry, are going off archaeology argument going They're going
off archaeology namings, they're using the holes they're seeing that
Jews in that period argument. You're again you're talking about
methodology and chances. If the Jews before four hundred BC
are making graven images and doing things on Sabbath and
eating pork, they're not torre observant, right.
Speaker 5: Can you state what my argument is about the holistic
approach and what what you think?
Speaker 1: I'm arguing you can go ahead? You so you can't
You've not understood the argument yet. No, I don't you
think that what I'm doing is not and you're saying
it's yours. It's your argument versus mine, But I'm not
all you're going on Neil, No, that's not the argument.
What's the argument.
Speaker 5: The argument is that when we have a contention about
which scholars and we're going to resolve it, I ask
you what would resolve this? How would we know whether
it's conservative or liberal scholars or whatever your scholars? My so,
how would we resolve it? And you said we would
go by the holistic approach? Okay, why would we How
do we know that that's the criteria to go to.
That's the question. What's the proof?
Speaker 1: What's the good reason to believe that your arbitrary statement
that it's the holistic thing? Do you know what the horse?
Do not know what the historical method is? Again, how
do we know that the holistic approach is the right
way to go because it follows the historical method and
we go off the data and we have the best
possible we said this is the most likely scenario, the
most likely scenario.
Speaker 5: A holistic approach surveying scholars is not the same thing
as the historical method.
Speaker 1: Those are two different questions, so they're not these scholars
who are applying the historical method.
Speaker 5: One is consensus of scholars telling I'm not talking about huh,
I'm not talking about the consensus of scholar.
Speaker 1: You said it, we would go with the holistic approach.
I'm talking about. Here's one scholar who's a linguist. Here's
what he's saying, here's what, here's reasons are. Here's another theologist.
Here's all a scholar, it's a textual scholar said a
holistic and they're all applying the historical method. You don't
do no, you just say the Bible truth again.
Speaker 5: If they're using all the scholars are using some form
of a historical method, that's not that's a deflection away
from how do you know that the holistic approach is right?
And you're saying no, no, I didn't actually mean a consensus.
What did you mean by holistic? I said, you go
to each of these, study each of these a consensus.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's not a consensus in all these are
different fields that you put together. And then you say,
wait a minute, not even not only we look at
the data and we conclude not only is there no evidence,
respond not only is no evidence, it's the opposite again,
So you have nothing and I have.
Speaker 5: A whole bunch of dais is the criteria that we
go with?
Speaker 1: I just explained that. Now, how do we all know this? Well,
you don't. You don't have to know it, I guess
because you're just going the audience. You're just throwing off
with one scholars. I just told you. I just gave
you the answer. How does every one of the audience
following your arg on Neil? Let them respond? Here?
Speaker 5: Go ahead, Jay again, you keep circling back to listing
various methodologies amongst different disciplines. That doesn't tell me that
a holistic approach of scholars amongst a bunch of different
disciplines is the way to go.
Speaker 1: Fine and ignore it all. Go like this, close your
eyes to all the data around you.
Speaker 7: Do it.
Speaker 1: I don't know. That's not what I'm arguing.
Speaker 2: Hang on, guys, guys, Neil, we can't or we're not
going to operate. And I don't care, right, I'm just
saying I would like it. I would like a response.
Just as you gave an argument to Jay's responding to
your arguments, make an argument back. I would actually like
to response to the argument. I'll hold his feet to
the same fire. If I see he's not responding to
an argument, so I would like you to actually respond
to his argument.
Speaker 1: Please, Okay, you said that I have a scholar right
here from this book that says that the books of
Solomon go back to the pre monarchopare, which would be
a thousand BC plus. Wow, that's a great that's a
crazy claim. From my experience with scholarship, that's that's pretty fringe.
I would say, how do you know that? So I'd
have to ask him how he knows that what is
evidence is why he's making that conclusion. And then I
would go to other scholars in archaeology. I'll go to
scholars in and techrual criticism, scholars who do linguistics, scholars
who study Egypt, scholar to study, and I would go
and find all the data and say, wait a minute,
where is the evidence for the for the Torah?
Speaker 5: If it's not there, not understanding that it's an epistemic question,
I'm not asking you. Can you list a bunch of
scholars that are liberal scholgical data. Neil, stop interrupting me,
because it's a really clear, simple argument. I don't dispute
that people go and look at other scholars and other disciplines.
Your resolution to the challenge of complete competing scholarly claims was, quote,
go to the holistic approach.
Speaker 1: Maybe that is true.
Speaker 5: And all I'm saying is, how do we know that
that's the way to resolve it, because you know, sometimes,
how do you know, Neil, Neil, that's a.
Speaker 1: Too quote way. I'm here, I'm doing I'm committing too quickly.
I want to know how he's admitting that he's doing.
I'm admitting it.
Speaker 5: How do you know, Jay, Well, I don't have the
problem of Oh, I don't accept, so you don't even
have to know it's true.
Speaker 1: I don't accept that. Holistic at hoc is an argument.
Why would I have. You don't accept, you don't accept
the you don't accept the data. You don't accept, you
don't accept if I present contrary scholars and you want
scholars and types of things. Your answer was wholeism. And
then I asked you to flesh that out, and you say,
I don't care. And I asked you how do you know?
And you said, I don't have to know. Well, it's
a problem. It's not my argument. It was your argument.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're going we're going here in circles. Ask to
Neil's question, I think it's a fair question. He is
asking what sort of methodology would you appeal to Jay
for this? And I do think that that's fair for
you to answer that right.
Speaker 5: No, I don't disagree with scholars or the approach of
scholarly you know, academia, et cetera. I was spent time
in academia. I have one of my good friends is
an orthodox archaeologist. Uh uh, so there's there are people
who do this but also have a conservative perspective. Sure,
and a lot of archaeology backs up the Bible. This,
this kind of stuff comes out all the time. My
buddy James as an archaeologist, he blogs about this regularly,
is a PhD in archaeology.
Speaker 1: So I have scholars and friends too.
Speaker 5: My point was just simply that it's not resolved by
throwing the claims of scholars back and forth, because there's
no way to know if there's conflicting claims.
Speaker 1: If you get to this issue of it being an
epistemic question.
Speaker 5: So again, the way that we interpret the textual data,
the scholarly data, the academic data, is going to be
governed by our paradigm. So you notice that Neil's not
going to accept the scholars that I present or mention,
but I'm not going to be accepting his. So that
proves that we have kind of a fundamental issue.
Speaker 1: That's why I raised the question of how would we
resolve it?
Speaker 5: If there's a scholarly disagreement and we're throwing scholars back
and forth.
Speaker 1: It can't be resolved by just Neil saying and I
don't just reject, I don't just I'm sorry, I cut
you off, You're done.
Speaker 5: It's not resolved by an arbitrary ad hoc principle of
it's just holistic. Okay, maybe that's true, Neil, maybe we
do go to a whole realistic But what does that
actually mean? And why ought we think that that's true?
Maybe it is true, but I need a good reason
to believe it's true. Your answer to that was just
to give a bunch of methodologies that are used. That
doesn't tell me that holism is the right approach.
Speaker 1: Maybe it is, okay, And I would even respond to
that and say, I don't just deny conservative scholars because
I don't like what they're saying. I accept I fact,
I'm convinced by Christians all the time. But well, he
didn't get you didn't give me a reason why. He
says that he just wrote it down, So what how
did he make that? How did he come to that conclusion?
And they say that your liberal scholars just wrote it down?
Conservative scholars, you just Schmidt, doctor Schmidt who just came
out with the published a book about Joe Siphas saying
it's authentic. I was convinced by some of his arguments.
He made good arguments off the Greek. He demonstrated why
he made why he made his arguments that Joseph, I'm
just showing you it's not ba. I'm not just denying
scholars because they're conservative Christians. They bring arguments that are data.
They bring arguments that sport's the supportive of the data.
I'll be convinced it's never. It just doesn't happen to
the point where ystemic questions are prior to scientific questions.
Is that I know that? Huh? I know that you do.
You're saying you asked the question about wholeism, and how
do we know that that's the right way, because my
worldview accounts for things like being being objective, is and
maybe it does.
Speaker 5: But why ought we to think that wholism is the
right approach here? You just admitted that some scholars can
be in the minority to be correct.
Speaker 1: Right, because if we because the we want to follow
the data to its final conclusion, to the most. But again,
you are missing you're missing the point. How does that
what you're saying there tell me that wholism is the
right approach? Maybe it is, but what is the what
is the basis for that? Because that's how we that's
how we discover things in the world. So that's just
restating the curiist. Well, you just asked me a question
that's the answer to So the answer is just a circle.
How is that a circle?
Speaker 5: Because the thing in question is an epistemic issue, and
you're saying that we'll just be an empiricist.
Speaker 1: How does that resolve that wholes follow the most the
most rigorous methodology, that's how we discover things in the world.
Speaker 5: Is that so the rigorous one is the one that's
your position? Yeah, the rigorous methodology. Again, so it's just
right that you just follow. So you're just saying follow me.
Speaker 1: So I'm not saying me. I'm not saying have you
ever had a family member that had cancer, you know,
anyone that ever had cancer? Do they pray? This is
becoming this is becoming a series of No. This is
actually I'm actually making a point here. You can hang on,
hang on, Neil, allow allow the point.
Speaker 2: But if it's becoming a non sequitor and we're not
getting to the answer to this question, then I'm going
to step in.
Speaker 1: So go ahead, okay, And someone has cancer, they don't.
They don't just go to their own devices or ask,
you know, pray about it, or go to the witch
doctor on the street. They go to the best experts,
whether it's the the hospital, PhDs or Roswell Institute, something
where there's literal experts who know what they're doing. That's
that they want the best experts that are out there,
who have the best credentials period, and you can use that,
you can you can see the same thing for all
these other fields of study, the not just medicine, but
even history, even things like the humanities. The same thing applies. Okay.
Speaker 5: Is it possible that sometimes the scholarship that's conservative is
in the minority and could be correct, Like you said
with the guy about Josepha's.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Okay, So that makes.
Speaker 5: My point that scholarly consensus and wholism isn't going to
be a reliable way to go about it.
Speaker 1: Well, when it comes to the Bible, the consensus usually
leans in the direction of the most so that most
of the scholars that are in the field, Neil, I'm
asking why. I'm not talking about consensus. I'm talking about
you in particular fields.
Speaker 2: Hang on, But this is the question, this is the
question at hand that Jay Jay has. He has asked
this argument now twice, and I think it's fair to
answer to it. Yeah, he's asking the odd claim, and
I'd like you to respond to the act claim.
Speaker 1: That's why I brought up the cancer thing. You go
to the experts in the particular field, who are the
most well most well established, who know what they're doing, Neil.
Speaker 5: The question is how do we know that we ought
to go to the holistic approach or a consensus.
Speaker 1: If you want to be right, you do it. If
you want to be right, you do it. Do you
want to be right or wrong? The question is how
do we know that that's the right approach that we
ought to take. Well, No, that's a fair it's a
fair point. But I wouldn't like to hear the counter evidence,
so you don't have an argument. It's not no, it's
not too hang on to be fair, to be totally fair.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, Neil to be totally fair here, that is
not actually answering the argument. That's that's asking him to
to now state a position. I I do think it's
fair for you to answer to it, to the argument
that he's making. I would I would make him answer
to yours as well, like I have. I just did, though, Okay,
I mean that if you want to do you want
to move on to another topic?
Speaker 1: Maybe? Yes, it's just kind of going around. You don't
have to follow the expert. You can follow the conservative scholars.
Speaker 5: Fine again, I'm just I'm not even it's an epistemic
question about how do we ask I gave you a
counter you know, I gave you a counter to why
sometimes consensus is wrong, and you admitted that that can happen,
And so I'm asking you, how do we know then
that we should follow the consensus. I just told you, Okay,
do you want to move on to I'd like to
ask you about because you mete a big deal about
you know, the evil god of the Old Testament and
his actions.
Speaker 1: Isn't it just the case that.
Speaker 5: If infants are dashed against stones, wouldn't in your worldview,
that just be the one manifesting?
Speaker 1: No, Because in this material realm we are farthest away
from the One, and because of the flux of our reality,
things can like this do happen. So the One has
a will, but we farthest away from the One, which
is where the flux is, there are opposing forces that
do things that we even if we have a piece
of the One within us and that which is our
full potentiality, are tilos, if you will, to Aristotle's phrase
that you also use in your world world view, Sometimes
people don't follow that and they do evil things because
we're in the flux. We don't all have direct we
don't all have direct access to the good. That's what
that's the problem of evil solved by my worldview. Your
worldview just says God, let Satan do it. So what
things in this lower dimension are good or evil? Whatever
is in in a in a apply in whatever is
in appliance with virtue, virtue, we know what are the virtues.
So we those have been debated over time through the
dialectic through Socratic method, and we have we have texts
that you know, talk about the virtues like the Golden
the Golden sentences. Then no, we do, Okay, they're debated,
but like honesty, what honesty? Yeah, okay, how do we
know that? I thought you said earlier it was the
it was just virtue, right, yeah, because we can, we can,
we can. We can come up with things that lead
to virtue. That's the highest of the pinnacle of good.
And then there are others. There are other principles that
are good that lead to virtue, like being honest, like
and like and what what what's the epistemic justification for
knowing that my will I view accounts for it? How
do we know that?
Speaker 5: Within your worldview, honesty is the key one because it
leads the virtue. But honestly was supposed to be the virtue.
Isn't it one of the virtues? It's honestly leads to
it leads to virtue. It's one of versus. The highest
versu is the highest good you can attain.
Speaker 1: Honestly is a virtue? You don't know? Yes, so honesty
leads to honesty, nor it's one of the lesser virtues.
That leads to how do you know which ones are
lower and higher? Well, because there's different ways to debate
this negation we can use. We can debate it. We
can tell you that honesty is a lower virtue than another.
We can tell I just said, we debate and we negate.
We figured out what tell you that knowing what not
is good? What is not good? What is the what
I just told you? Oh you didn't. You said debating
that's a thing that people. That's that's the same thing
you do. Not an epistemic principle, it's an action. Yeah,
but that's how we figured these things out over time.
So that's no method, it's not a principle. Well, the
principle is having the having the dogma of attaining virtue.
That's wait a minute, I thought you were about reason
and now you're saying it's dogma. Yeah, the only the
only dogs is dogma, the only platonist that virtue that
that that the only dog when that playton is holed,
is attaining virtue. Yeah, buttu was the highest good. That's it.
Because you have more than one dog, one of you
have more than one dog, will you end up conflicting
at some point, Neil, this is all just gibber soft
of what the wrote. This is what the neoplatonist wrote.
That's an appealatory Who cares. I'm just saying, you're saying
it's all nonsense. This has been written about a thousands
So what there's a lot of ancient writers that wrote nonsense. Right,
I'm just giving you the answers.
Speaker 5: Okay, So what we need is good reasons to know
that honesty is the one that leads us to the
higher virtues.
Speaker 1: View my world view, do isn't? Isn't in contradiction of yours?
Is we're debating?
Speaker 3: Debating?
Speaker 1: Just explained to me. I want to my world more
coherent than yours. So that's why people should listen to
me over you. Fine, let's say Christianity's contradictory.
Speaker 5: What is the reason that we ought to believe that
honesty is the virtue that leads to the highest virtues?
Speaker 1: Because you haven't demonstrated any other worldview to be better,
because I haven't done something?
Speaker 5: Yes, no, no, I'm asking from your worldview, why aren't
we what's the epistemic principle here? Because of the predictive
success and the For example, how does honesty, get predictive success.
Speaker 1: Well, no, hold on a second. When we look back
in history, we could see wherever these Platonists were, there
was renaissances. So when they were kicked out of Constantinople,
a lot of second and going take a point here,
they're kicked out of Constantinople after after the world, after
having the greatest empire ever, the Roman Empire, inheriting things
from the Greeks, the greatest, the the Pax Romana all
the way up to the late Antiquity, they become Christian.
They kick the Platonists out, they go to the East,
they go to Babylon, and then you you they even
lead to a quote unquote exlomic go because they're reading
the text. And when they come down, when they come
back to Macedonia, when they come back to business, there's
a Macedonian mini renaissance. And then there's another measure. Did
you measure that scientifically? When we can look at we
can look at history, and that's arbitrary. Okay, let me
ask your criteria, Aristotle, and Aristotle and your criteria a
successful society is correct because we're asking world world. The
basis for what the successful society is that's so it's
a circle. Sure, okay, So I'm let me ask you this.
Aristotle and Galen. Huh Aristotle and Galen you know there,
Uh huh. So Galen Galen was the textor for medical text.
He was the second century a d. Aristotle's fourth century
is not a Neoplatonist. I'm well, actually, middle Platonists and
Neoplatonists and later Platonists take Aristotle, I'm merging with we
can use it. We use aristotles So I'm not talking
we use Aristotle. You're wrong. So what I'm saying is
how wrong he's not a Neoplatonist. I didn't say he was.
I said we use Aristotle either way. How is a
going to prove neoplatonism. I'm showing you Aristotle's works and
Galen's works were not even were the central textbooks for
medical science and and and all the way up until
the sixteenth century. But how does that prove neo platonism
Because Christianity couldn't do anything to improve on that. We
had to wait till the plan we had, We had
to wait till my world he was back world. No,
it's not a fallacy.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, to say, well, Christianity couldn't do. This is
not answering the question of how do we know that?
Because aristotles You were asking about worldviews, how do we
know that that proves? The question was about proving neoplatonism,
and you said, well, Aristotle did some good things and
then Galen wrote some medical stuff and Christianity couldn't do it.
Speaker 1: That doesn't prove neo platon escunt improve on these basic
science text and then that prove neo Platonism from Aristotle
and Galen. This is ridiculous because we're doing a worldview
versus we're doing a world vers world to right, they
coherent have to do with proving because my world is
more coherent than yours. Not neo Platonists. I didn't say
they were faith and then it's irrelevant. Neo playton is
drawn from Galen and Aristotle. They're part of for them,
and it's irrelevant. I know that I'm after them too.
This makes no sense. I'm after Aristotle. I can borrower
from Aristotle. Why not you think I think I can't
read Aristotle and learn from Aristotle? How does this prove
I have some sort of metaphysical thing that's stopped Aristotle
Because I said my world view is more coherent than
yours because you said it. Wow, I proved it in
this debate.
Speaker 2: Gentlemen, Neil Jay's done a lot of the cross exam here.
You haven't really had too much chance to cross exam back.
I'm going to give you the last ten minutes to
do that. Go ahead when you're ready.
Speaker 1: I don't want to get into the dating of the text,
the stupid we are to get in there. So I
you know, we talked about the trinity, what about the
I haven't heard much of you defending things like God
being jealous, or God not being omniscient, or not even
being omnipotent. For example, when the iron chariots came and
in Judges the tribe of Judah got wiped out. This
isn't that show God is not all powerful? What's what's
the response to that?
Speaker 5: You know, there's often statements that explain why they lost,
and in every case God explains that you lose when
you're wicked. But by the way you said that it's okay.
You could you said it's okay if jealousy is used,
Well why not?
Speaker 1: You made a point there. I'm doing the cross examination here,
Ald seconds. You're not letting me answer judges, but you
want to move on to to finisher. Okay, So again
the anthropomorphic language again.
Speaker 5: If God says something like he's jealous, you said, okay, fine,
you could say maybe that's anthropomorphica earlier. But if jealousy
can be anthropomorphic, as you admitted, then't regret ken as well.
So I think that clears up the jealousy and regret issue.
But when God says that you will lose your battles,
this is explained in Deuteronomy that you will be trodden
upon when you're.
Speaker 1: Wicked, So it's not because of a lack say the wicked.
In Deuteronomy.
Speaker 5: When there's covenant sanctions, God warns them and he says,
if let me finish. So if you are wicked, you
will lose your battles and be trodden upon. So what
I'm saying is that when there's an explanation like that,
it doesn't mean anything close to denying divine omniscience.
Speaker 1: It just means that the reason that they were.
Speaker 5: Defeated was because of this, but ultimately because of God
punishing them.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm talking about judges, don't talk about Deuteronomy. It
specifically says Judges one nineteen Yahweh or the Lord. It's
my turin, dude, if it's Judges, because that's Yahweh was
with Judah or Theos in Greek. Theos was with Judah
and he drove the inhabitants of the mountain, but he
could not drive out the inhabitants, still talking about Yahweh
because they had chariots of iron, nothing.
Speaker 5: To do with There's a similar statement where you have,
for example, Jesus says he goes into a town and
it says and he could not do any miracles there
because of their unbelief.
Speaker 1: So this is a principle.
Speaker 5: Why are you talking about I'm giving other examples of
this principle in scripture that just because that text doesn't
say that they're wicked, it doesn't follow from that that
there's not another text that comments on that and explains
that where you know, when you're wicked, this is why
you're defeated, And sometimes the texts explained that God allowed
them to be defeated via the This.
Speaker 1: One doesn't do that, though. This one just says that
Yahweh couldn't win know wed iron cheeriot.
Speaker 5: Everybody interprets texts holistically, including Platonists and neoplatonists. If I
took one phrase of Plato out of out of context,
and I said, this phrase disproves all platonism, you would
say you got to look at the whole body of
a Platonic corpus. You can't just take one one passage.
And so that's a yeah.
Speaker 1: But if you had a contradiction that he does, if
you had one text that was in contradiction to something else,
I would we would look at it. We don't have
to take the whole thing. And in this particular one
here it's clear. What's what's happening here? Yeah, wait, could
not drive them out, You're just it's clear. But you say,
you say, thinking about them being wicked.
Speaker 5: You just admitted what's called canonical interpretation, which is that, yes,
you can look at the rest of the text to
see if it's reconciled or if it synthesizes. And then
you turn around and said, but here this one is
clear as to contradiction. Well, again, it's not if you
believe in a holistic interpretation, which again, if I brought
the Platonic corpus here and I found one phrase, wouldn't
you call me out and say you don't have the
right to.
Speaker 1: Say one phrase out of context from the rest of
the corpus. Right, well, actually, the platon is don't really care.
If you think there's a we would debate. We would
have a debate about the maybe you do have a contract,
maybe you did find the contradiction here, let's talk about it.
Speaker 5: So you wouldn't care if no, if play platonic texts
were being interpreted improperly, okay.
Speaker 1: And that that's not you mean that way, then yeah,
we would. But what I'm saying, okay, so you're saying,
because of this doctrine that when something bad happens to
the Juda Heights, they were wicked. So, no matter what says,
if they felt they were.
Speaker 5: K specifically, not anything bad, but specifically, if you do
not obey me, you will lose your battles and be
trodden upon. That's one of the penal sanctions in Deuteronomy.
Speaker 1: Right, But you got to you at least be at
least admit this particular text here in Judges one is
very unclear about there being some sort of divide punishment.
Speaker 5: Again, it's when we read holistically the way the Covenant
functions all of the battles and all the situations where
they lose. The implication is that when Israel is unfaithful,
they will lose the battles. In the same way when
Jesus walks into that town and it says and he
was unable to do miracles there because of their lack
of faith. It's not because of his omniscience that he
that he or that his omnipotence was failing that day.
It's because he chose to not reward them and to reciprocate.
It's a reciprocal relationship where he chose to not do
the miracles because they did not have faith. Likewise, Yahweit
chose to not give Israel to battle because they're your
Your text, the New Testament says that they didn't have faith.
Speaker 1: Judges one does not say that. Judges One says he
even says it earlier that Yahweh said jud to go up,
and I have delivered.
Speaker 5: The lay body interpret sex holistically. That's what I said earlier.
But these texts weren't written. Different have to say within
the text every implication.
Speaker 1: To me and what I'm saying, I understand that now
that you have a church that does ex Jesus and apologetics.
Then now you can interpret things everyone does ex to Jesus.
You just admitted that with Plato, Right, But I'm saying
these tax were written for different people in different times.
They weren't necessarily written for a canonical church to be
taking in a holistic thing.
Speaker 5: Well, I mean that's your assumption as an unbeliever. But
I have a different paradigm, a different assumption. So but again,
that's why I asked you if wouldn't you agree that
you can interpret platonic texts holistically? For example, even within
one platonic dialogue, Right, you wouldn't take one line and say, well,
this appears to be contrary to all the other things
in this dialogue, right, it would wouldn't it be fair
to interpret it holistically?
Speaker 1: That's fair? Okay, So I'm being good faith.
Speaker 5: Interpretation between canonical versus taking one verse.
Speaker 1: Let me chat out to understand you better. You're saying
that whatever this guy wrote is not is kind of
doesn't really matter because no interpret it anyway. Is that
what you're saying?
Speaker 5: No, this isn't even nessessitate bringing the church in. I'm
just saying that canonically or holistically, even in Jewish literature,
for example, you wouldn't take one verse out out of
the context of Judges and read it against all the
rest to the Book of Judges. Right now, you could
do that, like you can do it, but it's not
really fair to any text to operate that way. And
all I'm saying is that from our perspective, doctor Burke
would be read, for example, in the context of the
Book of Judges and the rest of the Old Testament,
where we have other explanations as to well, why is
it that the Israelites sometimes lose these battles. Well, in
the Covenant Sanctions it says when you're unfaithful, you will
be trodden upon and you won't win the battles.
Speaker 1: Yeah, one question left, Neil, and then we got a
rap it for a Yeah, okay, My last question is
we you sew another There's there's minor contradictions too that
I'm not going to make a big deal out of.
Like First Chronicles twenty one, it tells the same story
that's in to Samuel twenty four, and it starts off
Satan rose up against Israel and incited deal, Yes, incited
David to taking census, and then so and God did it,
and the other one, and then God did another one,
and then you have another one where you have in
the New Testament, and I want to get your question.
Speaker 7: You can.
Speaker 1: I'm not just going to put this aside. Fine. In
the New Testament it talks about Corineans doing a census,
which we can actually locate through reading Josephus and other
sources and triangulate that he would have been governed around
seven to six BC or AD I'm sorry, which is
when the senses would have happened. Where in Matthew it
says Jesus was born in four BC. How do we
know that? Because Herod died in a certain year of
Augustus reign. I can't remember exactly, but it leads to
four BCE. Now, someone like myself, when I'm reading this stuff,
I'm seeing these contradictions. I know these aren't minor and
there are not big theological major difference. I'm not saying
this like shatters your religion or anything, but I'm reading
these things as just a person with doing regular reasoning,
conductive deductive reasoning, just reading these texts and going, wow,
these are some contradictions. Why ought I believe in the
text like this? Why ought I follow some sort of
religion like this.
Speaker 5: So the question of the situation of God allowing the
evil to occur and then or David took a census,
and then it says Satan, God moved David to take
a sense says Satan move David to take a census.
Speaker 1: The answer is that in many.
Speaker 5: Cases, if you look at the Exodus narrative as well,
you have the explanation that when Pharaoh quote hardened his heart.
There's one pastor where it says Pharaoh hardened his heart
against Moses and against God. And there's another passor word
he said God hardened Pharaoh's heart. So one pastor that
Satan did it. Once past said God did it. The
answer to that is that God allowed Satan to have
dominion and to do it. So it's a really simple
resolution that. And there's other cases where for example, there's
other cases where, for example, you have people being deceived.
One of the prophets has a lying spirit and it
says that God allowed a lying spirit to be.
Speaker 1: In the mouth of the prophet.
Speaker 5: So God allows evil, and you can speak of things
as direct and indirect causation. So one pastor is talking
about the ultimate indirect causation. The other pastor is talking
about the direct, immediate causation that Satan's moving them.
Speaker 3: To do it.
Speaker 5: So, and then when it comes to the claims about
dating and that kind of stuff with the sen or whatever. Again,
from my paradigm, if I believe that divine revelation is true,
I'm going to have that as my judge of the
secular unbelieving scholars. And again, the reason I would saying
that about with holism earlier was that just to illustrate
that you have a paradigm and you have scholars that
you're going to accept on the basis of your presuppositions
and your pre commitments. I have the same situation. I
have my pre subposition with my pre commitments, and that's
why really the reconciliation has to always go back to worldviews.
Speaker 2: Okay, gentlemen, I'm going to give a real quick wrap
up two minutes each because we're way over time. I
know that that's not a lot of time, but I
want to make sure that we keep this confined to
something close to three hours here. So Neil Jay opened first.
I'm going to give him the last close. So go
ahead with your opening or closing statement got two minutes.
Speaker 1: Well, just want to admit Jay's a good to dater.
I knew this wasn't going to be easy, and he
can he can get out of get out of some
good pickles there. But I ultimately do think that my
worldview is simpler, accounts for things just as well as
his does. And you even have modern impiricist scholars and
blatantists like I mentioned Werner Heisenberg who attests to these things,
and I could see that the things out in the
real world work in sync with what my worldview is.
So you know, things like evolution and atoms and the
age of the universe, stuff like that, where I don't
have to fight that for any particular textbook where Jay does.
I think that's where these I think we both agree
on sort of like the metaphysical reality of there being
a perfect God in the beginning who whether you call
it a trinity or a triad, and it emanates these
things or you don't believe in the emanations. But the
essence and energy is distinction thing that Orthodoxy has. I mean,
you can read stuff like Saint Dionysi as the Arabic
guy put him side by side with someone like and
you see a lot of this stuff does line up. Now,
I agree with Jay, there are fundamental, big differences that
are going to be drastic, which ends up with pre
debates like this where it can get pretty nasty. But
you know, I think I think my worldview, I think
I did a good job. I think my worldview is
more more coherent than Jay's. Okay, Jay got two minutes.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I want to thank Neil for doing the debate.
It was an enjoyable debate and I didn't think it
was nasty. I thought we actually had a really a good,
great conversation. It got heated, but it wasn't over the time. Yeah,
so I would say I think from Neil, we didn't
really hear a convincing, coherent argumentation about why his position
is correct. We heard a lot of claims, a lot
of assertions about you know, platonism, and we saw some
appeals to authority and well, this physicist today had this
view and my view is simpler. Well, you know, it's
funny because when I debated Dane Kikikachu, he said, look,
Islam is true because it's simpler. Well, Islam has a monad,
Neil has a mon ad. There's other positions that have
this sort of monad. How would we know what amongst
the monad positions is true because they all appeal to
principles like simple or because it's scientific, or because it
follows the data or it Again, these are a lot
of appeals that don't actually put any rubber to the road.
Speaker 1: They don't actually give us any meat to know.
Speaker 5: Well, wait a minute, why is it Neil Platonism and
not Iamblicus or Plotinus or Proclus or any of the
other middle Platonists and later Platonists. There's no real way
to know or to see that any of those positions
or anything other than something totally antithetical too, modern scientism, which,
again Neil wants to have his foot in both camps.
He wants to be an ancient neo platonimistic, but he
also wants to have this scientific perspective. And he said, well,
I wasn't trying to appeal to scientists. I just think
that empiricism is true. Well, again, empiricism is not the
same thing as neo platonism at all.
Speaker 1: In fact, they're typically pretty much very quickly jay quickly.
Speaker 5: So I think that Neil did not give a coherent view.
I think that the Orthdox perspective is coherent, and maybe
gonna have a part two or something going more into
worthodox he or something.
Speaker 2: Happy to have you guys back on again. I understand
that I am known for being a tough moderator on
both sides, and so you felt like I was being
unfair at certain points. Then I did my job properly
diving into super chats. Here callers going to stack up
on the back end at this point, So drunk Batman
gives five Crucibal memberships. Appreciated, Appreciate the membership. Appreciate the membership.
Appreciate the membership. Congrats on the win.
Speaker 4: Jay.
Speaker 2: Now, just so you know, this happened at the beginning
of the debate, so I guess this person had some
sort of clairvoyance. Unfortunately I have to be up for
work in five hours. Well that sucks because you missed
a great debate. Thanks for the five gifted Crucible membership
to the grifter host. Take my money, dammit, I will.
I appreciate it. This gnostic guy sure is a word.
Salad generator says, get great. Uh we was fingers says Austin.
Appreciate that Jay is pulling from Plato and Aristotle. G
I is pulling from Hayesan Ovid is that.
Speaker 1: Those are more poets, those are the poets. Easy W. J. Well.
Speaker 2: Emmanuel, who sends in fifty Mexican pesos, don't be fooled,
that's like three dollars in nine nine cents, says, not
all assertions are justified justifications. Not all superchats count for shit,
this one sure doesn't. I totally agree you should be
deported for that super chat, except you live in Mexico.
Straight out of Arkham for uh, it says mister funds
wrecker for five dollars. Deef Sleazy for ten says what
I'm hearing is bro developed a worldview that allows for
evolution to not contradict it.
Speaker 1: What an idiot? Evolution? Is this real god? L m
ao And you want to say to that, Neil, Well,
that's just a it's it's what it is according to Heisenberg,
is it's the uh, the becoming of the What does
he say? He says something like the turning into the noose,
like we're moving into the we're moving to our final form.
Speaker 2: Okay, the only true wisdom is in knowing, you know, nothing, Socrates,
It's good good.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Smokey says Neil's worldview comes from the game Cruelty Squad,
God Bless Dire and God bless the Eastern Orthodox Christians.
Ten dollars says four point seven k viewers and less
than one thousand likes.
Speaker 1: Do better. We did a lot better.
Speaker 2: The san Joe Savage for twenty says, how does monism
solve for the gettier challenge? It seems to fail right
at the start with epistemology, given the impersonal nature of
the one making truth inaccessible.
Speaker 1: I think that's for you, Neil. That's the one in
the are they talking about? Is that another another name
for the one of the many problem.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to comment on as to what it
is that he's referencing. Just how does monism solve for
the gettier challenge?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm not sure what the gettier challenges
to be honest.
Speaker 5: So it has to do with another layer of justification
and the classical JTB not being sufficient. So you also'll
have to have a justification to not accidentally have knowledge
that's correct. In other words, you have to demonstrate that
you actually could know that what was correct wasn't just accidental.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I have to look into that and check and
come up with something better.
Speaker 2: Why would God exist in such way to make his
presence blatantly known to such beings who identify as gnostic.
Speaker 1: I'm not actually a gnostic. I use the term because
I did have a phase where I was really into
narcissism after I was even Christianity, and I started my
channel as talking about narcissism. So it was like it
was like scholarship on narcissism. That's kind of what it was.
Speaker 2: And if anybody today is upset he spaghetti with your
fine moderator. Just remember I was requested for this debate
by both vaders to take it up with them.
Speaker 9: Uh.
Speaker 2: This one comes in from Succo says, my father equals
a person, Me equals a person.
Speaker 1: We're the same person. I guess.
Speaker 2: This is the one and the many problem. I think
he's going back to or trying to will this towards Jay.
Then I think it's towards you. My father equals a person,
me equals a person.
Speaker 1: This is the Quanta Parks shift fallacy. It's probably for Neil. Yeah,
we're not the same person. It's a word it's a
word concept fallacy. Wouldn't that be the person were quarkshift fallacy? Yeah?
Speaker 2: So abstract says I'm willing to hear this guy out,
but come on, don't straw me on the Trinity. This
one comes in from Austin says, did bro google Muslim
arguments against the Trinity before this?
Speaker 1: I don't think Muslims believe emanations and the news? Do
they do? They arguments against the Trinity? Oh? I guess, yeah,
I guess they would use the similar Yeah, I know
some of them. I didn't. I didn't use the muscle ardians.
Speaker 2: Drew breesays for ten says thirty to thirty seven trillion
selles equals one human.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the parts.
Speaker 2: This one comes in from Well, at Manuel, he's not
gonna be able to eat for a week sending all
that Mexican currency to us. He says, if punishment and
sacrifice her tools so to speak, for our salvation, that is,
they help us prevent. How does that mean God requires
something for his perfection? Any takers on that?
Speaker 1: Well, one thing I will just briefly say is that.
Speaker 5: I did not get to to Neil's objection about God
needing in terms of sacrifice. But even within the Old Testament,
from the Orthodox perspective, we don't think that God had
those sacrifices because he needed the anything from the created order.
They were typological for the coming work of Christ, and
that's why David says, I'm Solm. Fifty one that sacrifice
an offering you do not desire. So in one sense
God laid that down as a pedagogical tool within the
ancient world where there's a lot of idolatry. But it's
also not necessary from God's perspective, and that's why Paul
says in Hebrews to blood and animals and blood offerings
to not appease God.
Speaker 2: How do you logically apply laws and concepts of this reality?
There's something incomprehensible that exists outside of this reality.
Speaker 1: What do you mean, like it's for me? Yeah, oh
well I already said I I account for this with
the the noose, which is the intellect and form and
logos and reason. So things like things like these concepts
of is that what they mean, like, logically apply concepts
of this reality something incomprehensible that exists. Yeah, I mean,
that's that's kind of what I said. I'm making metaphysical
arguments to accompany these things.
Speaker 2: This one comes in from Darth Jeff, who says, holy filibuster, bro.
I think a lot of people thought that there was
a filibuster because they weren't familiar with the particular format
of the debate. The first hour of the debate, for
those of you who came in later, was designed to
be a ten ten ten, with rebuttals and then closings
before we got to the open end of the debate.
I know it's a bit of a different format, but
it helps both debaters set the stage for what it
is that they're actually going to be arguing. Patriot Muss
for ten, says Gregor Mendel was a priest and a geneticist.
There were religious figures who were geologists and hypothesized the
earth was old. To say the church can't hold a
scientific position as ludicrous.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I was just saying that they don't have
a particular position on the old the age being old
or young, which is fair. I mean, it's better than
dogmatically asserting at six thousand in my worldview. Maybe jadea'n't agree.
Speaker 2: But whatever, Neil, you should have just barred on the
floor because that would have been more coherent than your rebuttal.
Speaker 1: Nice.
Speaker 2: This one comes in from the San Joe Savage for twenty.
He says, Gi, your objections to Trinity is premised on
grammatical errors and a word concept fallacy. Basil addresses the
misreading of John one multiple times on the Holy Spirit
and letters against enemis Or I'm sorry, is that?
Speaker 4: And you know me?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I know me? Okay, gotcha. I'd like to know
what the grammatical errors were. And that's kind of a
if it If it's grammatical, I mean I'm saying it
is because I'm saying it wrong. Is that what they're saying?
Speaker 2: Take my emanation of cash, I will nice Nostar's list
of top one hundred debunked misconceptions of Christianity read Irenais
that's true, I smil says quest for j Can you
give us an undetermination of scientific theory that Gnostic has
used Stone to determine the.
Speaker 1: Age of the world, that Gnostic has used Yeah?
Speaker 2: Can you give us an underdetermination of scientific theory that
Gnostic has used.
Speaker 5: I mean, I think the point there is just that,
like you could have a lot of data that two
different theories or two different systems might conceivably make sense
of and so the point of underdetermination of data is
just that more and more data isn't going to tell
you which theory to go with. So the point is
that you've got you've got to have some other kind
of argument beyond just more data or more science papers
to deal with the problem of the undertermination of data.
Hence the phrase itself under determination of data, meaning that
there's not enough data to tell you which paradigm or
model is true.
Speaker 1: So I don't know how to explain that.
Speaker 2: From his view, project did for ten says the problem
is that either the one contains differentiation so it isn't simple,
or it contains none, so it can explain multiplicity. The
structureless source cannot yield a structured world.
Speaker 1: Yep, that's where that's where the I think it's Platinis
who comes up with the idea of the emanations to
solve that. The eminations means you can have a spark
of the one and also be different from the one,
So it's not just strict monism where we're all raw
one man, it's not that question. I'm sorry, did I
wonder if this one came in twice? He looks like it.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, I'm sorry, I backed it must have
backed up slightly. This one comes in from Jeremiah. It
says Gei's problem with God's commands for sacrifices as well
as atonement by Christ, stems from his complete lack of
research and understanding of the Orthodox view of atonement. Okay,
So one comes in from Cooler who says, no, star
keeps reading info someone else's writing for him on a
screen like I.
Speaker 1: Cheated or something. Yeah. Right, the only thing I looked
up was Orthodox scholars who say the Earth is or
who says Solomon isn't one fifty BC text.
Speaker 2: Okay, listen, I think it's perfectly acceptable when you're using
sources in a debate to pull up the sources in
the debate, and sometimes that may require a Google or
something like this if you don't have the source on end.
Speaker 1: I think that that's totally fair.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 2: No, Neil, you never go full Billy Carson. Neil, nice,
that's a that's a good reference. Neil smoked mad Ganja
before this. I wish were you were you token a
little bit of the Devil's lettuce. Neil, No, No, Okay,
twenty dollars is when it comes in, Sam shimone would
eat g I alive. Not that Jay Dyer hasn't been
dog walking already, but man, he wouldn't get away with
any perverting of sam Shimun's crazy. You might actually literally
eat him alive. So glorry to the trune God. I
want to show the entire audience something I can do
that Sam Shimon can't.
Speaker 1: I just there you go. I can do that Sam
Shimon can't. So this one comes in.
Speaker 2: From Caleb, who says in gnostic non formant, very clever,
very clever, Caleb, you very clever guy.
Speaker 1: You you really got us with that one.
Speaker 2: Josie says, Gi is drifting the debate into reliability of
scriptures off topic from metaphysical debate to this just mumbling
and spatting. He shouldn't be doing this major red herring.
Be better, Gi. I do think that the debate went
off the rails a little bit here and there, but
we managed to get a lot of it back on track.
So Jay, the worst three and one's too complex for Neil,
but twelve logos in the Nomad's perfectly acceptable. Nice, okay,
Jeremiah says, Gnostics a frequent retreat back to it's one
book when you know his dang well, what Jay is
saying just one example of his many sophistries. By the way,
right now we have a full we I mean we're
totally full. In the call queue, there's tons of people
still trying to join the studio. I'm sorry, guys. As
we start filtering through callers, you'll be able to get in.
Are you getting my super chats to read? Are they
just going on my end?
Speaker 1: I think it's that's just you brokay, Yeah, I'm not out. Yeah,
I'm just warning. Yeah.
Speaker 2: This one comes into lesions Map, certifiably debunking the yeahootish
origins from Moses to now so if it's all stolen
mythology to wire.
Speaker 1: Dire is a dweeb, he says Jay. He called you
a deweve. No, I guess it's time to pack it up.
I don't. I don't think. I don't even think he
has a mustache though. Fuck that guy.
Speaker 2: This one comes in from Davis Wood, who says, question
for Neil, it's a block of iron, one thing. If
it can be divided into individual atoms, Adams themselves are
fundamentally separate things, not just parts.
Speaker 1: Question for me, sorry, I was yeah, I was typing
a mic. Pay attention, Neil Lock of irony. Thing is
if it divided into Adams, Adams themselves are fundamental, separate,
not just parts. I mean the the as I said,
the the modern playton this view on Adams is that
we we actually accept that Adams are are are like
a describing the fundamentals of reality. But they actually they
actually attest the Plato, not Democratius, because when you smash
Adams together, they don't break up in the fall, and
the smaller atoms they actually show a mathematical symmetry. That's
that's the modern perspective on it. Mathgree here. One is
not many.
Speaker 2: Worst debate ever, Okay, Zach Mercer, I didn't I noticed
that you didn't have a beard, Bill.
Speaker 5: I didn't actually argue, by the way, one is many.
I said that the numeral three is both one and many.
Obviously the number one is not many, although it is
divisible into many many. You know you can go into fractions, so.
Speaker 1: I have to add this.
Speaker 2: The Pando aspen Grove in Utah is roughly forty seven
thousand aspen trees. But one thing that is amazing about
them they have a single root system, a singular living
origin or organism. Imagine that one root thousands of trees.
Peanuts says evidence of Moses and the Exodus do exist
in Egypt when the hieroglyphics are deciphered correctly using Welsh
language and syntax, as shown by Wilson and Blackhart in
their book Moses in the Hieroglyphs.
Speaker 1: Talk about Exodus. Yes, Welsh language and syntax. Well, I
don't know what they're talking about. I have no idea.
That's above my pay grade.
Speaker 2: Jay the worst I predict Neil did the magic fun
guy and misunderstood the trip. You can make fun of
these guys because they sound beardless. Neil's that's perfectly acceptable.
Bird Brain for ten says, the trinity is not complicated.
God is the Sun, the Sun is the light of
the Sun, and the Spirit is the warmth you feel
from the sun. At least that's how I understand it.
Thanks for the content.
Speaker 1: That's the Son of righteousness idea. We believe. We believe
that too, about the news being the represent being represented
by the Sun being the all pervading form, all pervading
source of logic and reason perfection.
Speaker 2: I don't think he's actually making a literal reference to
the sun, but rather saying that this one thing has
three different things you can do, right, Is that okay?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: So, Ti Cavallo says, for five bucks, thanks for curing
me my thorazine addiction. This was a burden to watch.
Waale Jennings says, I wasn't religious. When I was eight
years old. I got real sick. My whole family and
school came to visit me. When the disease moved my head,
it was game over. But that night an angel appeared
before me and saved me. Yeah, Neil, what do you
think about that?
Speaker 1: Neil? Look, if that happened to me, I don't blame you.
That's like that that happened to you. You've got to
follow it only whatever.
Speaker 2: I haven't seen any angels either, but you know whatever.
Slavic polytheist for five Canadian says Jay said, one can
be many things.
Speaker 1: I agree.
Speaker 2: He just used the trinity to prove pagan monism. The
one can emanate many gods and other forms and beings.
Speaker 1: Interesting.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so I mean I would just say, okay, how
do we know that, how do we know that's true?
Versus Neil's conception of the same monadology.
Speaker 1: James says, for Gnostic, do you have a soul? Are
you your soul your body? Both? Are you on? Are
you many? Are you one and many? The essence of
God is Yeah. In this world my worldview, I believe
there's a soul and a body, So Gi.
Speaker 2: The evidence shows Jews actually worshiped multiple gods and did
not obey the Torah. A single tear runs down the
prophet Jeremiah's face as he says, I know.
Speaker 1: That's actually that's actually the strongest argument against what I'm saying,
is you go to the prophets and say talk about
how bad the Jews were and how polytheistic and idolatry
they were. That's the best argument I've heard against my
my stuff that I put out there. The Unplugged Beta says,
for ten, I'm not right. You see what I'm saying, though,
Jay about that, because when I'm my arguments are like,
when we look at the evidence of the Jews before
this period, they're all worshiping many gods, they're worshiping Astrara Yahweh,
they're doing all this stuff. They're making curre of them,
and the person who actually made a fair critique and says,
that's what Jeremiah is telling us. He's literally saying, that's
what's happening in his time before. We mean that the
text do relate historical accuracies which would refute your argument
that they are late. It's a good argument, but it
also you still we still don't have evidence for the
contrary either, So it's not so you like in Jerusalem
or like in the Temples of Yahweh.
Speaker 5: Profits talk about the high priest in Jerusalem engaging these
activities like in Ezekiel.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what it looks like to me that later
scribes were counting for the history of Jerusalem being But
you just said that the prophets are describing Polytheism early on.
That's what the text say. I think the text writing later.
That's what I'm saying, because guys, guys, that's actually reliable. There,
let's finish barreling through the super lias. Boys, I'm not ready,
but I'd like to debate at some point. Well, good
for you, I guess get ready. Wipedia?
Speaker 2: Yeah right, Gi is your source Wikipedia, Urban dictionary or book.
He's making a crucible reference to guy who's debating wants
to told me that The definition of hypocrisy from the
Urban Dictionary was pretty funny. Bruce Loaden is an independent researcher,
and there's no scholar called Thomas L. Davies gnostic information
Philip R. Davies, Phillip R. Davies, Thomas L. Thomas I
said you missed. You heard me wrong, Philip R.
Speaker 1: Davies. Thomas L. Thomas, and Bruce Louden is a PhD.
Not just some random independent scholar. He was a professor.
Do you trust anybody with a redundant name Thomas L. Thomas. Yeah,
that's what I mean. He trust He's still He's still
trust you trusts anybody with an Irish He is an
Irish scholar, then you can't trust him. Double you were
gonna like him because he's Irish? Are you kidding me?
Speaker 2: I'm a self loathing irishman. I'm English and Irish, and
my friend Posh says that that means I wear the
traditional headwear of the Irish, which is the English boot
technician says, Notice.
Speaker 1: How Thomas L. Thompson I said his name wrong?
Speaker 2: Okay, Notice how gnostic lover profiles don't have PfP Typical
bot behaviorally say something with substance dips. This one is
from the Unplugged Beta says, this is for the grift.
I appreciate it as the grift or extraordinary. I appreciate
all the super jazz.
Speaker 1: Roger Rabbit says for one hundred bucks, A perfect God
would know all that is required to have on earth
at seven thousand years old.
Speaker 2: He would have created everything to make it so. You
both rely too much on teachings unless on any type
of faith.
Speaker 1: I don't even know what that means. It's a lot
of money though. Yeah, it's a nice super jet.
Speaker 2: Respect that the lost Neil Fallacy, says Josie Gaming. Eric says,
AB and AB are three different things. The paper, the
writing represents the number, and the number itself. You're the
dumb one. But that's a whole different formula.
Speaker 1: Okay. This one comes in from Pepper Prophet. Good work, Jay.
Speaker 2: This one says from the San Joe Savage GI. Simply
using something does not provide justification for that something. Ie
using consensus of scientists is not justification for the consensus
nor their mythology.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: Methodology interesting. Okay, guys, I got to wrap the super
chats there. I'm sorry that they they they're coming in.
I wish I'd get to all of them, but we
got to jump over to the callers. I'm just going
to take them in the order that I saw you,
guys pop in a scrumpage. Tutor, You're up first, How are.
Speaker 1: You this fine evening.
Speaker 2: I'm going to try to time this so point maker
your questions very pointed towards the debater, so that they
can answer them.
Speaker 1: Go ahead, yes, sir.
Speaker 7: So before you guys moved on. In the middle of
the debate, there was a mention of a holistic approach
to acknowledging scholarly reference, and so far as whether or
not you're actually going to give credence to a certain
set of arguments from a scholar, Neil, could you go
ahead and reconcile this for me. Jane necessarily mentioned that
later or after you had said that that a minority
of scholars couldn't necessarily be right? Are you arguing that
the same in your you know, in your refutation, are
you arguing the same thing that Jay is necessarily saying
when you say that a minority of scholars could necessarily
be right?
Speaker 1: I e.
Speaker 7: The idea of neo platonism, not being existent in your reference. Yeah,
of course, okay, cool.
Speaker 2: Thank you, yeah, thank you have a good one caller.
Please drop out on the back end so other people
can come in. I'd appreciate that very much. And you
have a wonderful evening, Terry at can you hear me?
Speaker 1: Okay, yep? Perfect?
Speaker 9: First of all, mazing show guys to everybody. I just
have a real quick question for Neil. Neil, you don't
like a multiple different podcasts with Jason Georgehnny and he
basically makes the case that Christianity is just like the
brainshaw of Plato. So if that is the case, why
would you not just support orthodox Christianity rather than neo Platonism.
Speaker 1: Well, it's it's not it's not identical to it, so
it's different from it. So you can't just be like, oh,
it's because it's adopting Playton's tenants. Clayton is tenantstead it
And obviously I believe in my worldview that it bastardizes
things like the news and the logos and stuff like that,
and so yeah, that's that's the reason why.
Speaker 9: But like if you look at it from if it
was like Aristotle and the likes that continued on Playo's vision.
Why do not trust off his vision rather than something new?
Speaker 1: It's like the Layton has continued on. They didn't all
become Christians. There was Platonists all the way to late Antiquity,
all the way through the Dark Ages, all the way
to Plathon Plathon do you want to call them that?
All the way till today. So it's not like they
all just became Christians. Even though it is true that
some Platonists did convert. I think Origin was one of them.
I think very quick last question, Terry app got a
lot of callers.
Speaker 9: Yeah, no, I can go there. Appreciate you having me
on and shout out with everybody.
Speaker 1: Jay, Neil and Andrew. Thanks for on the show, of course,
thank you have a wonderful evening.
Speaker 6: Corinth very quickly, Yeah, just a question for Jay and
the analogy used for the Trinity using written out to
number three. You were trying to use this to show
that the Trinity can be one and many. In this sense,
this was relative to the critique of mazkinformant, so we're
saying it like three is in the numerical sense it's
three and in the amount of figures being put forward
there one. Do you think that this is analogous to
the Trinity in so far as you think in some
senses Christ is God, but in other senses christis in God.
Speaker 1: No, it's not about Christ.
Speaker 5: It's a question of just that even objects in the world,
even mundane created objects, have both multiplicity and unity that.
Speaker 1: Are trading different senses.
Speaker 5: Right, So the relationship of one and many in the
triad is obviously not the same. But it's just an
analogy that if it exists in the created order, there's
no reason why it couldn't exist in God, in the Creator.
Speaker 6: Or we see it exists in different senses. So if
we look at something in one sense another sense, it's
different senses. In the Trinity, we're not doing that, right,
We're not why it's an analogy, But it's not an
analogy because you're the thing that we're looking at. There
is dis analogous. They are identical. Christ and God, the
One and the three are identical, not just different invocations.
Speaker 1: The nature Nature in person, the Trinity are distinct. They're
not identical.
Speaker 6: So you don't think Christ is identical to God.
Speaker 5: He possesses the divine nature, but Alatari all trinitarian theology
hinges on the nature person distinction.
Speaker 6: So Christ is not God or Christ is God.
Speaker 1: Christ has a divine nature, but he's God the son.
So Christ is God or Christ is not God. Christ
has the divine nature which is shared amongst three persons.
So Christ is God or Christ is not God?
Speaker 5: And you're equivocating on the word God, which the heart
explained to gnostic and format.
Speaker 1: I'm not last last question. Make it good, Okay. I
know this is going to be a new question. But
Christ is God or Christ is not God?
Speaker 10: No?
Speaker 1: Christ is God?
Speaker 2: This yeah, out of here, Corinth. Thank you for the question.
I appreciate it. Please drop out on the back end.
I appreciate that very much so that other callers can
get in. Bishop, how are you?
Speaker 1: Can you hear? Good to see your Bishop?
Speaker 10: What's what's up?
Speaker 4: Neil?
Speaker 2: You're kind of you're a little bit choppy, so please
die your question.
Speaker 1: We can hear you. Good to see you.
Speaker 10: Man, Right on, man, Neil, you did a great job.
I had to say you did a great job.
Speaker 1: Uh and uh.
Speaker 10: I was had a question for Jay why why would
you want to believe or worship with God who dashes
babies against rocks and orders the slaughter of many people,
why would you consider him.
Speaker 1: A good God?
Speaker 5: Well, God is the power of life and death, and
in the ancient world, he gave that command to the
Israelites to get rid of any of the opponents who
would conceivably be future problems for the Israelites. So God
knows all things. And if he decides that certain people
should be gotten rid of because they're opposing the people
that would produce the Messiah, then it's it's within God's
rights to get rid of people, because, as scripture says,
he has right, he has the power of life and death.
He can make that decision because he's God. But even
if let's say Neil Platonism is true, I mean that's
infants being dashed against rocks is just another manifestation of
the one.
Speaker 10: Well, also, why would God send himself to kill himself
and then beg himself not to kill himself.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, that's not what happened. The atonement is a
deifying of the human nature. It's not a paying off.
Speaker 10: Didn't get that. That did not happen.
Speaker 1: I'm explaining the word box view of atonement, which is
in color.
Speaker 2: You gotta let him answer, you gotta let Jay, answer
the question you asked, go ahead.
Speaker 5: You not the Protestant view that God is punishing himself.
It's that God the Son willingly took on death to
destroy the power of death, which is a demonic power.
It's the power of Satan, and so he's deifying our nature.
He's not paying the Father off with some sort of
created thing, because God doesn't need anything, so he's not
being paid off.
Speaker 1: Last follow up, color, but you.
Speaker 10: Guys did mention that God incited David to create a census,
but also Satan incited David to create a census. Wouldn't
that be the same character you said that that was Satan.
Speaker 1: No, Marcy Knight in the house. It's just it's primary
and secondary causation, right. So if I know that a
bank is going to be robbed, and I overhear them
that they're going to rob a bank, and then they
go and rob the bank, like the fact that I
know of thing's happening, or I let a thing happen
doesn't make me the immediate cause of it makes me
approximate cause or a secondary cause.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, I got to leave it there. Caller, thank
you so much for calling in. I hope you have
a wonderful evening. If you don't mind drop out back
in the back. We still got a ton of callers
coming in. I'm sorry that these are very brief, but
I want to try to get to as many people
as we can.
Speaker 1: Not your dude, go ahead. Hey guys, thanks for having
me on. I enjoyed the civility of the debate, and
I'll chalk that up to Father Turbo keeping Jay honest.