so we are live i'm here with lina lina nice to see you hi david nice to meet you nice to meet you i like your hair i mentioned it before we went live because incredible i'm uh i got a lot of hair but it's uh it's not as uh nice as it used to be when i was young you know it when you're young you're 24 right yes when you're young it has the curls or do you curl it or is it just natural it's natural yeah yeah i just uh just brush it that's nice that's nice how long is yours i can see down to my lower back oh wow yeah yeah but it doesn't look good it doesn't look good it's just force of habit i keep it long because that's the way my lo my wife i was going to say my life but yeah she's my life and my wife she likes it long so i keep it long and i wash my hair once a week and my head gets really itchy and tomorrow is my hair washing day so if you see me scratching my head it's because uh i am too lazy to wash my hair but uh not to gross you out or anything like that but um it's just i don't i i'm a low maintenance guy so i don't want to go to the barber i don't want to get uh the mani pedi uh you seem like the type that likes the pampering and all the the full works am i right well i don't like spending the money on it so we can we're in agreement there but if you had the money you'd probably you'd pamper yourself with all that stuff sure yeah totally so let's get into something just slightly more uh serious which is uh you know uh your world view and before we get into it like it would be fun to it'd be fun to talk about metaphysics with you and we will do that but uh you're a human being and i love and respect you because you're a human being first and foremost okay so i want to know who are you where do you come from uh what kind of family were you raised in were you raised religious ultra extreme religious and then you rebelled or were you raised in an atheist home just talk a little bit about your background and fill us in a little bit please yeah totally so like you said i'm 24 years old i was born and raised in the chicago area uh suburbs of chicago i was going to catholic school i think was was the first school i went to up until i think second or third grade and then i switched to uh it was kind of an interesting school it was a mix um between um k through 12 burnout through 12 k through eight so they had up up through middle school basically all together with the high schoolers um so my mom was a christian my dad wasn't and that was definitely a dynamic so i suppose you could say i'm uh the result of that that struggle at least in my worldview and in my history uh religion's been a big what about what about the siblings have you gotten any i do yeah i have an older sister uh two years older her name is ariana and then we moved here to uh to california to socal uh right before freshman year high school for me so i went to high school here i graduated went to arizona state university for a couple years um dropped out and uh and then a few years passed then cove had happened and then here we are ah what's your uh i'm guessing you're very left on the political spectrum so you rolled with the punches with covid and just obeyed the government like a good person good citizen am i right or am i wrong i have no idea what that means well did you go with the flow okay gotta wear the mask social distance and the the dog get the job and everything well so i worked uh i worked at petsmart uh when when everyone kind of first found out about it here so i was on the front line seeing petsmart a response to it yeah yeah i was a cashier star and i did dog bathing for a little bit oh boy that sounds chaotic the the pet bathing part the dogs wagging their hands yeah they started me was crazy yeah the main thing that i was upset by was the company response to covert but okay elaborate no surprise there oh we'll just uh you know profit over people you know it's a multi-billion dollar corporation and they've got us uh with the stores open it's just insanity uh okay okay because they're big they got to stay open well no they don't i mean they could have closed every single storefront and made all their sales online but they they chose not to but they were allowed to be open because a lot of mom and pop's businesses were uh forcibly they put money over profit yeah uh so hold on now uh what is the money over they put profit over people rather what uh just very briefly what what kind of life track is your older sister on in terms of religion and world do you have any idea i believe she's thought about christian as well as my mom uh as far as i can tell they're both non-denominational so after catholic school i think it was around like fourth or fifth grade we went to a mega church so it was like one of the newer famous evangelical it was called willow creek i don't know if you uh you can look them up there in the schomburg area but um yes i actually got pretty into it uh during middle school going into high school i went on a mission trip to mississippi helped people after hurricane katrina um and then right around like i think eighth grade i remember you know my small group we were being like hey like now is the time to to get serious about it which i thought was funny because i i'd always taken it pretty seriously up until that point but i noticed that a lot of the other kids at the church you know um weren't as about it and so i really wanted to you know be a disciple for christ and go out and evangelize so i think it was like sophomore year high school i took an apologetics course it was actually taught by my small group leader um so it was at my church and i was really excited for it because i was like finally i'm gonna be able to you know talk to my dad convince him and i'm going to be able to have all these arguments for god and i'm going to finally get that that doubt off of my chest um and then i was super disappointed so that kind of spurred me into looking into my worldview and questioning uh some of the more foundational beliefs that i hadn't questioned at that point that led me to a lot of atheist content on youtube and then pretty much by the time i went to uh college i was you know considered myself an atheist went to college had a lot of interactions with uh religious groups there that was pretty fun uh that kind of got me into the whole counter apologetics thing never started like my own my channel or anything because i wasn't that into it but um i did have a group of friends that were really into philosophies so we just kind of started doing that um and then yeah i mean i can go on about a few other people that influenced me sure yeah we'll talk about that well i was gonna bring in um some of the religious experiences that i've had and some of them yeah some of the people that i've listened to and trying to integrate that tell us um well so do you know who jordan peterson is yes of course he's canadian i'm canadian okay all right well when he kind of got famous um i you know hurt him through the atheist grapevine um and i was kind of more intrigued than than what people were giving credit for so i looked into his stuff and at the same time i was kind of curious about like the esoterica you know gnostic sort of teaching hermeticism and you know alchemy these sorts of what what came before what we consider to be good science and philosophy um because you know i'm an anthropologist in a sense like i'm curious about our origins so um yeah i heard him talking about uh psychedelics from alina and there were some other people at asu of course who were you know telling me about that stuff one guy was like no you gotta smoke dmp you'll meet god for sure and i was like okay it's your thing dude i was pretty dismissive about it at first but after you know jordan peterson said some things about it i started looking into it because i was like all right let's see what this is about um and found a lot there's actually surprisingly quite a connection between ritualized plant consumption of the psychedelic or psychotic varieties or sorry psychoactive varieties i should say and religious practices these things kind of go hand in hand in a lot of cultures um you know if you just read the oldest religious text we have which is the rigvedas you know they talk about preparing the zomba so um i was kind of shocked by that at first and it took me a long time like researching to see you know just what religions were more connected to this experience um but i was quite certain that there was a connection there and then i had the fortune of actually being able to try it myself so i dropped acid three times and on the third time i had or sorry on the second time i had uh what they call a breakthrough experience um so then that led me reeling i was kind of like am i an atheist my thesis the heck was that and it's it's still one of the you can't put your finger on what kind of experience that is it's uh ineffable is definitely one of its main qualities um but it was a you know overflow of emotions it was something very you know visceral and i guess some people would stay spiritual interesting you know i've done thc i had a bad very bad experience with thc with the marijuana and hashish and stuff like that when i was young i was 20 21 i was hallucinating on marijuana and hashish i consumed so much and it was it wasn't as strong back then as it is today it wasn't okay because they've been tweeted oh really well i mean well i mean so obviously there's more thc in it now right but like when you look at how they would consume it or people smoke it today right yeah and smoking it burning kills off like i don't know 90 of it okay because i ate a lot right that's yeah so the way that they would use the like the the ancient way of doing it would be to make it into some sort of preservative right and then you just stuff your face with it and then i mean they would you would eat until you were gonna throw it up right and then they tell you okay you're good and then you go lie down right in the in the dark hut and you would leave your body and you would go on this you know incredible uh journey of a sort um yeah i've never really messed with with cannabis too much because i've read from the trip reports that it's one of them more intense psychedelics actually when you break through on it and it's it's pretty hard to do that yeah um it was not fun it was not funny you're a regular smoker no i was never really yeah okay um yeah i wouldn't recommend starting with that um i'm not condoning the use of drugs by the way of course i just want to put that out there of course you know it's legal in canada to do these stupid drugs right yeah and i mean they're so they're trying to integrate it into uh mental health right it's uh it's a cure for depression and anxiety there's some studies with ptsd with mdma that's happening uh john hopkins and a few other universities here in the states so yeah it's i think it's been dubbed like the psychedelic renaissance right now because it's uh it's kind of like the the hippie movement 2.0 it's it's sneaking back in through the doctor's office i want to give a shout out to the three people in the chat uh three friends of mine gc joe and pie chris pie chris says cannabis is amazing at least in my experience and i interviewed a guy today from norway i don't know if you saw that one but he uh he uses marijuana it's illegal in norway but he uses it by his doctor's prescription for his mental health for anxiety and for these different sorts of things i wouldn't want to say exactly what his issues are but he has some sort of ptsd from a really traumatic uh abusive father experience when he was like one year old very interesting interview if you you anyone listening wants to check out this guy um but uh yeah so it is being used medicinally it didn't really uh i didn't enjoy it myself but i did enjoy magic mushrooms as they're called psilocybin mushrooms yeah you tried it and they're all pretty similar i mean yeah that's the one i've done the most um and that's the one that i've had the most difficult experiences on as well so it's people like to say that it's friendly to beginners and uh completely unforgiving to the experience okay good to know every time i take it now i i i have the same i i think it's a delusion which is that i i embody the idea of god in a sense like i i look at the world as if i were looking at it from god's perspective interesting and i i don't know if that's because of the trip i already had like the breakthrough experience is coloring all of these other experiences because when you get into a heightened state of suggestibility you're prone to go back to the same narratives that you you've already kind of been telling yourself yeah it's state dependent memory also state dependent memory i'm sure you've confronted this idea right that it breaks down your your ability to well have you ever met someone out of context let's say you and i we meet on my channel and we chat and we you know you come back time and time again and you know this is david from cvs podcast and then you go to the grocery store or the beach and i'm there and you're like i say hello to you and you're like what do i know you because i'm out of context right so it's the same thing i'm sure this has happened to you with a friend or a family member where it's like you always see them in the same context it's like this is the guy i go bowling with and i only see him in the bowling alley and then when you see him somewhere else it's like what so uh but that's a really cheap example of context of the state dependent memory a better example would be like when you're a pro athlete and you're like in the zone and like you know the slopes for your your descent on this challenging skiing challenge whatever and it's like this is the space where you have all you're connected to all the muscle memory and everything so it's sort of like a state of mind or like if you're uh you know the victim of uh ritual sexual abuse or something like that you compartmentalize different sort of modes of being allegedly this is what i've heard i have no experience with this but like people get a certain set of memories that only come out in certain contexts and trauma is a good way of compartmentalizing and i live here in montreal quebec where we have the mk ultra experiments that took place i'm sure you're aware of those right nasty yeah i've uh i've called out the cia on on the digital gnosis uh his channel oh no do you know that i'm a fan of the cia i i've only been on so i was on once yeah i'm quite a fan of his channel i don't think we had a very productive conversation when i was on there he actually the one i was on got removed because there was i think he played some ufc content and they like flagged it so uh it's not on the channel sadly but uh we could have it was a good discussion about metaphysics and um sort of the axioms that underlie uh i feel i feel bad because i kind of alienated him i debunked some of his uh 500 arguments against christianity and i guess i was a little bit too brutal on him and uh he doesn't respond to my emails now either the battery's just too busy he just doesn't care about me but he was on my podcast twice once as a christian then as an agnostic and then i i saw i don't know how i discovered this 500 arguments against christianity that he did with his friend i'm sure you know the guy's name i can't remember james fodor james fodor yeah i think so i don't know i'm not like uh i don't follow their work but i did a long sort of uh repetitive debunking of their 500 arguments against christianity but do you also know brenda who's been a guest of mine transgender no uh because brenda does talks with rebecca and with nathan ormond and i don't know if there's a scene like that you're part of online or whatever so i know rebecca i just uh joined her channel like a couple weeks ago i think okay so like i'm pretty new to like actually like joining into the special online i've mostly just been like creeping in the comments and on some some channels but what did you study did you complete it i didn't no are you planning on i'm not no i i have no intention of going back to school that's what my dad did my dad graduated from that and then got all the serious grown-up people jobs and all that sort of thing i studied i studied applied physics which is kind of like a slightly more scientific and less applied uh version of engineering it's more a little bit more theory and stuff like that but uh yeah um so you're more into the psychonautic exploration is that where your emphasis is now are you are you really serious about exploring reality and your mind and consciousness is that like your big thing or is that a hobby while you wash dogs and get high well uh getting high is definitely a hobby yeah so like i like doing a lot of things i think everyone is curious about the world around them um philosophy has definitely been a big part of my life like i said um you know i grew up as a christian i wanted to save my dad i wanted to save my friends that weren't christians yeah i want i was about it you know i was really um looking forward to hearing the arguments being able to be smart to be able to be able to hold my ground against the people who didn't agree um and so you know i think that that's still somewhat the case i mean i try and be a lot more just uh open-minded and receptive more than than try and put out what my perspective is because i'm not that smart good to be humble and good to be open right uh now um where was i gonna go with this oh yeah i was gonna ask you about your lord and savior jesus christ do you still love him or did you ever love him or did you love him and then stop loving him like just tell me yeah that's a great question so definitely loved him um obviously believed in him at that point i would say i stopped believing him before i stopped loving him curiously enough uh like it was for i think for some atheists maybe it's the other way around like maybe um they don't like about it or like there's a lot of uh inconsistencies or contradictions that they see and so that leads to doubt um for me i think it was always just kind of doubt at the start and i don't know if that was because i had you know like i said an atheist father um it wasn't it wasn't really that he was an atheist he just didn't care you know like honestly i'm more annoyed at his attitude than my mom's right because like my mom you know she's fundamental but at least she's willing to have a conversation you know at least she she knows what she believes and she can talk about it whereas my dad it's like who knows what he believes it's of no interest to him he doesn't like having philosophical conversations a very you know down to earth sort of and he's an electrical engineer oh okay my whole family is my mom my sister is wow yeah um so where was i going with that well i mean you're talking about uh connecting with your father and uh you know it's a typical it's a stereotypical thing anyway with the father the distant father we can't connect and it's like heart communication is hard expressing emotions is difficult for a lot of these uh guys i don't know how old he is he's probably my age i'm 52. so he's a little bit older uh it would be fun though uh to interview your mom or your sister if you don't mind inviting them watch that podcast it would be great to interview them about their christian faith it would be fun i would love that i don't i don't know how up for that they'd be okay um some people are shy i try to have a dialogue like i said like my mom's i say she's willing to have a conversation but we we haven't had a conversation in a long time so okay um but the relationships it is yeah yeah it's just strange because faith yeah yeah i mean i it's hard to respect her when so she studies the bible like every week right she has her like weekly bible study and she goes to turkey and i it's that i don't see how you can read the bible that like what are you studying like how are you looking at it what are you are we reading the same book is what i'm wondering and i realized that that's after i've already like gotten out of that world view out of that mindset and so i don't know what kind of like you were saying compartmentalization or or um you know cognitive dissonance is going on there um yeah i try and have a lot of compassion for people because i don't know where they're at you could join in you can join in is it wednesday night or sunday what do they do their bible study i think it's wednesday night wednesday night usually the protestants do that so uh you could just join in and say hey mom i'm gonna just come along and eat my sandwich and listen to you guys and uh you know it could be interesting because then you'll realize wow these people really care they love god they love neighbor and they're good people and okay they may believe some things that i think is a bit of a stretch to put it mildly but they're not crazy they're asking questions their answer trying to reason with some pretty paradoxical stuff in the holy texts they're not stupid okay well maybe they are maybe they are stupid and crazy i don't know but you can go and find out at least yeah i agree with all that i mean i don't think anyone's stupid um unless you're actually [ __ ] yeah like i think i think most people are are uh pretty common sense you know with it people we just have um yeah i mean it's pretty easy to look at the world either way right you you can look at the world under a view of god existing or you can look at the world without that lens well some christians i think struggle to do that um the ability to like consider hypotheticals is one of the big factors in determining how like fundamental someone is a lot of times um so like yeah going back to what we were talking about um with like the drugs like part of what they do i think is that they induce a willful suspension of disbelief right and i think that's a healthy thing to do even when you're sober when you're considering these different metaphysical um perspectives to you know just just put your disbelief on hold for a moment right consider maybe you know consider universe where god did create it and then on the flip side you know consider okay if there is no god then then what is going on how is this working right so i think that's a useful ability um not that you're actually convincing yourself of either the way right like but just being able to step outside your own head and to put yourself as best you can into someone else's perspective yeah saint paul did that and if you remember when he said if christ did not rise from the dead then you know our faith is in vain or something like that okay so he's going through an exercise like okay so if christ didn't rise from the dead what are the implications of that well we basically we should just eat drink and be america's for tomorrow we die and there's no there's no reason to deprive ourselves of sleep and to put ourselves in harm's way with our enemies and to love our enemies and to do all the hardships that we're doing if there's no resurrection unless so saint paul was able to put himself in the shoes of the non-believer and like you said i think i agree with you for the most part that people aren't stupid and they're not willfully ignorant in that way where uh you just stubbornly believe something because even though you know it's wrong i mean there are some people that might do that but what is the point like you have to at the end of the day you're stuck with yourself you have to wake up in the morning and be motivated to live your life and how can you do that if you're living a lie and a delusion and you're you're claiming as truth something that you yourself know is not true so i think we have to give the benefit of the doubt to people that they are sincere right this is a it's a word that gets thrown a lot thrown around a lot among different christian communities where they're saying oh well you know he's a catholic but he's a sincere christian and he sincerely believes in the eucharist and that so we'll give him a pass or from the catholic perspective oh yeah she's a she's a protestant but she's very sincere in her faith it's a little bit condescending right like it's like you know bless her her she does believe what she believes and so it can be a bit condescending in that way but uh at the end of the day i mean it's hard to live a lie it's hard to uh even if it's adultery or something like that like you got your nice wife and kids and then you got your [ __ ] on the side and part of you really really enjoys that lifestyle you can guess which part and where it's located but the other part of you up higher feels guilty and is wondering am i going to get caught and how long can i sustain this lifestyle and so on and so forth and if you read about criminology most criminals what do they want most in life they want to get caught they want to get caught they want justice to be served why because it's just too much it's too much of a burden too much of a too much of a headache so maybe talk a little bit uh about your background in psychology do you know a lot about the human mind and the way we rationalize and the way we can have delusions and our cherished delusions and these sorts of things have you have you studied psychology at all i have it um i mean i took it's like 101 uh freshman year but no i'm not a psychologist um there's a few things you said there that i would want to respond to but um go for it i think i think in the most part we're in agreement so like the aaron raw in me wants to point out that there are those fundamentals who are willfully ignorant um and and that's so like i don't believe in free will right like i believe that we're products of our environment and so it takes a certain everyone has different intelligences it takes a certain level of intelligence to seek out intelligence right so like if if you're a certain sort of indoctrinated or you're a certain sort of um just you know uneducated through no fault of your own um i i don't see being willfully ignorant as necessarily a choice right like like yeah they're being willfully ignorant they're you know vocals i know that i know that i know that i know that you know that there's a god those kind of people i i'm not convinced that they have the capability the intellectual you know rigor to be able to to look at it as an academic proposition instead of something more um akin to like a personal identity like religion's more deeply entwined with our emotions than our culture and our community right it's not just the philosophical uh enterprise yeah of course of course of course i don't know if you're aware of the fact i interviewed rn raw twice do you know that i do i was gonna watch that before this i didn't get a chance i was looking through the comments i saw everyone was saying uh aaron juan but of course what would you expect i should say sorry yeah i love him he's my absolute favorite atheist of all time because just just because he's so cool he's so warm he's so lovable and he's such a nice guy he was very generous and uh cooperative with me even though you know when we're talking uh metaphysics and philosophy i think he's completely out of his league he has no idea what he's talking about but you know he's cute he's cute and cuddly and uh i just have a real warm spot spot in my heart for him but uh he's wrong i mean this is the thing you were talking about uh belief in god as if it's some sort of faith-based entirely faith-based thing it's not it's a philosophical certainty like it's not a moral certainty only it's a philosophical certainty like one plus one equals two there is an uncaused first cause period there is one and only one it's the necessary being that then which nothing greater can be conceived et cetera et cetera it's like there's no escape there's no plan b there's no other alternative there's no option so it's not uh it's just i believe that i believe that i believe that i believe no it's like just use reason just use pure reason it's dogma of the church also that we can know by the night the light of natural reason without recourse to faith without recourse to any faith-based beliefs we can know with certainty that god exists so that's maybe what we should spend the rest of our time here uh talking about if you don't mind well i mean you don't think i'm in agreement do you obviously not if you if you did if you agreed you would be among yourself you would be no i never said it was self-evident i never said it was self-evident and the church doesn't teach itself and the philosophers don't teach that it's self-evident it's indirect we need to look at the creation to see the creator we need to see the contingent in order to see the necessary we need to see the finite in order to glean the infinite but it's not a lot of intellectual horsepower required i'm now i'm in agreement with you i'm in complete agreement with you that there aren't a lot of people that actually care to ask these questions about metaphysics right it's a very small minority of us that have the luxury to take the time to read a book in our air cl you know air-conditioned homes where there's a fridge full of food and drinkable tap water at the flick of a switch or whatever not a lot of us have that but uh you know it's a privileged position that we are in in the first world and of course more people i think today than ever have access to that sort of luxurious lifestyle but my point is that even if you have that i mean i know plenty of people that have a lot more money in leisure time than i have but they just don't care like your father he just doesn't care so that's a bit of a problem uh and god's gonna have to work his magic in other more subtle and nuanced ways but let's talk about the uncaused first cause and what you think are viable alternatives to that yeah sure um so hit me with your best shot well so again just to prepare aaron raw i mean when you say creation requires a creator i mean that that is circular reasoning um huh no the creator the creator the creator does not require a creator that would be absurd no calling it creation right like yeah creation means a creator but like does reality need a realtor is the little atheist jingle let's not argue about words let's talk about why there's something and not nothing and let's talk about contingency and cause and effect if you want to throw out cause and effect the principle of cause and effect the principle of proportionate causality the principle of sufficient reason if you want to throw out everything that's axiomatic to the natural sciences congratulations you've deprived yourself of the scientific method of natural science but most atheists want to have their cake and eat it too they want to have the principle of sufficient reason but deny it and they want to have free will but deny it and they want to have all these things but deny it right so let's just focus in on the uncaused first cause or the necessary being whatever you want to whichever angle you want to take and try to come up with something that's reasonable that is an alternative to having one and only one necessary being and the only thing you can propose is something that's not necessary something that's contingent and so if you believe in the in the principle of cause and effect where are you gonna go with that you're gonna go to circular reasoning every time right so again like if we call it creation no no we won't call it we won't call it creation we're not going to call it so what i'm asking is do we know that there was a first cause yes we do we know with absolute certainty because the alternative is a violation of the principle of causality where we have contrary to reason we have every effect preceding its own cause that just cannot be unless you're willing to throw out science natural sciences i don't think you're willing to do that right i'm not convinced you understand science but well i studied i studied physics i worked at the canadian space agency i've got my name on a paper in quantum physics i think i know a little something about physics and physics is the natural science par excellence right okay well so which which um which physical model posits the first cause that you're it's not the domain it's not the domain of natural science to uh do metaphysics it's not within the domain it's not within it's not within the purview of natural science the natural sciences are good but they have limits the natural sciences have limits and they don't talk about metaphysics they assume as axiomatic things like the principle of sufficient reason the principle of proportionate causality the principle of cause and effect or principle of causality they take as axiomatic all of these principles that you seem to be willing to just jettison right but if you jettison them you will be jettising the natural sciences that's why i brought natural science into the conversation because that's what's at stake for the atheist okay so we need to be very serious about this are you serious about your atheism because if you're serious about your atheism welcome to monotheism period like you've got you got literally nowhere to run nowhere to hide unless you want to just hide behind the complexity the complexity of the quantum realm the complexity of relativity and all these sorts of things if you want to run and hide there are plenty of hiding spaces but i'm pretty good at ferreting out the atheist from their hiding spaces because there aren't that many things to examine we examine cause and effect and we examine contingency and we arrive necessarily at one and only one necessary being and that's the god that i worship that's the god that your mom worships that's a god that your sister worships all the jews muslims and christians worship that god that necessarily so let's talk about it let's get to the heart of the matter here yeah well you're jumping around a bit so if we could go back to talking about the first cause right yes like i asked you how do we know that there was a first pause because the alternative we do a reduction to absurdity we do a reduction to absurdity test we say let's say there is no uncaused first cause what does that mean what does it mean if there's not a first cause that's uncaused what does it mean it means an infinite regress or a circle but an infinite regress is a circle so rejecting the uncaused first cause means a circle a circle of causality where the effect precedes its own cause we have to reject that if we're going to keep the natural sciences period therefore there is one and only one uncaused first cause therefore there is god because that is my god so i i think we're in agreement that um uncaused first cause is nonsensical no right no no it's not nonsense how does that make sense because that seems to me to me it seems directly contradictory no it's subsistence it's subsistent being that has its reason for its being in itself subsistent being has the reason for its being in itself not in another this is the principle of sufficient reason everything has its reason for being in itself or in another and those two categories in itself the necessary being and in another the contingent being they're the only two categories of being contingent and necessary and you cannot have just a whole bunch of contingent being you need one and only one necessary being the ground of being right whose essence is existence well but that's what we're debating right no we're not debating it it's you have no alternative there's nowhere to run nowhere to hide there is no alternative to that if you want to say it's turtles all the way down it just doesn't hold water it's circularity because it's it's putting the effect before its own cause you can do it you can do it but you'll be rejecting you'll be jettising the and rejecting and uh abandoning the natural sciences which i don't think you want to do cause and effect because cause and effect the principle of cause and effect says that the that the effect never precedes its own cause that's the principle of causality but if you want to have you do agree with it yeah i can agree with that okay so if you agree with the principle of causality welcome to monotheism because you will have to admit that there's one and only one uncaused first cause and necessary being whose essence is existence it's subsistent being because if you say anything else if you do a reduction to absurdity and say let's say that's not the case what you're stuck with is only contingent beings only a chain of cause and effect which is always necessarily circular therefore the effect precedes the cause which violates i'm sorry how does it become circular right like i'm just i'm imagining like an infinite timeline right yeah and like at what point does an infinite timeline wrap around on itself well because there's ever there's everything that's there's everything at there's there are infinite instances of every configuration of matter energy infinite instances so you and i you're you're one person i'm another person and in my world view and in the only sane and rational worldview monotheism you there's only one instance of you there's only one instance of me but with an infinite regressive cause and effect there are infinite instances of you and infinite instances of me and infinite instances of our parents and so follow how could it not be the case do a reduction to absurdity say it's not the case and then show me the logical implications of that well let me let me clarify your position right it sounds to me like what you're saying is given enough time everything will happen or something like that right like like given an infinite amount of time this entire timeline is going to like repeat itself it has to it has to because it's a finite world if you want to say it's not a finite world you want to say it's an informal there's infinite matter then it's it's even more circular it's even more circular because then you have infinite instances of you right now and at every moment in time if the matter of the universe is infinite and not finite then we have an even more circular violation of the principle of course yeah i i didn't claim that i i have no idea whether there is infinite matter or not right well whether there is or isn't in both cases we have circular reasoning for the atheist right so it's untenable therefore you have to reject it and therefore you have to admit painful as it is because of your little cherished sins that you love so much that you want to hold on to i'm assuming here i'm presuming excuse me forgive me i am presuming because i'm a human being and i know human nature from first-hand experience i know that i have my own cherished little sins and you know i resent god for wanting me to be a good boy when i want to be a naughty little boy so um forgive me if i presume maybe you're some kind of saint that doesn't sin but you know the idea is that you don't have a choice if you're going to use reason unfettered and unclouded by your selfishness your selfish desires and your self-centered nature your fallen nature i would say then you have to admit there's one and only one on cause first cause now let's just say just for the sake of argument let's just say for fun that you go off quietly and you think about it and you say oh geez david was right there is one and only one uncaused first caught him what am i gonna do i believe i believe he's right this is just hypothetical now you don't necessarily have to worship it because you haven't understood that it's the source of every perfection the source of every good and that it's infinite it itself is infinite in every pure perfection meaning every perfection that is better to have and not to have so you don't need to worship the first cause but you can take that first baby step and believe that it is philosophically untenable to reject the uncaused first cause so you don't have to go straight into explicit monotheism but you're well on your way and you will soon discover if you examine the uncalled first cause that it is necessarily infinite in every perfection so it is a little bit of a slippery slope it's a dangerous game and if your mind is open and you you did claim at one point that your mind is open and that you do love the truth if that's the case i think you're on your way you know given given the fact that you're an intelligent young person i think you have what it takes and i'm cheering for you and i'm praying for you i i appreciate the compliments i i want to get back on track if we can um i think you're jumping around a bit again and you you have made a number of assumptions uh during this call i just want to point out when you say things like um you know there's only one logical position or um yeah it's those sort of gaslighting statements i i don't think that that's conducive to the conversation okay show me an alternative i'm genuinely trying to to see so let's get back to the to the circular reasoning thing because i'm still not seeing how an infinite timeline is circular right so so the way i see it is forget infinite matter i don't know about that right but let's just consider an infinite timeline for a moment that's right actually in an infinite timeline is there a first cause or no no no okay so there's no uncaused first cause in an infinite timeline right yeah according to your because we're starting every cause is is uh preceded by i'm sorry every effect is preceded by its cause right yeah i just want to say i just want to say so i want to clarify something uh for posterity for posterity it's so silly to say but anyway um there are theologians and great geniuses of the church who say that from a catholic perspective god could have had a co-eternal material universe and so that would seem to imply an infinite chain of cause and effect co-eternal with god okay i reject that i reject that saint thomas aquinas seemed to think that it was possible uh i don't think he proved it per se but i think he he thought it was possible so out of respect to be clear i would i reject the infinite timeline too i'm just you know like i said being able to entertain hypotheticals is really important in these sorts of conversations i'm willing to i'm willing to entertain the possibility that god could have uh a co-eternal material creation with an infinite actual infinite timeline i'm willing for the sake of argument to accept that i do not believe it i will never become convinced of it unless you know on this side of heaven anyway i won't say never i won't say never i won't say never i mean i have a great respect for the theologians and the saints who have speculated that it could be the case i just don't see it i just think it's philosophically untenable that's my position and i mean i don't know why i don't believe it yes i do so i don't believe it because the science hasn't shown evidence for it right how could it so maybe maybe this can transition into my sort of philosophy right yes um so i'm a naturalist um and i i see that as being necessarily a pragmatic stance as opposed to some sort of you know ideologism or something like substance dualism or i don't know um yeah so suffice to say i think that everything that exists is material and that what we can say exists is what are basically the collection of our best scientific theories right um so when it comes to looking at um like what kind of metaphysical possibilities there are for like space and time and matter right like am i starting places i don't know on any of these things i don't know if existence is eternal i don't know you know all these all these big sort of metaphysical questions i try and start from what we can directly observe right and then work outwards so like you know the famous i think therefore i am yep um well and then that that was kind of corrected to like i experienced right like there's there's something like what it's like to be there there's some sort of consciousness right there for existence right and then i don't remember i mean i think it's hume who pointed out that that relies on um the validity of reason right that reason has to be reasonable for them for either of those to work um so so when i look at how how i build up understanding how how knowledge forms it does start from direct conscious experience right that's how we build our that's what empiricism means right so like to observe it and not just that you observe it but that like other people observe it too right because we know that like we can we know that hallucinations are a thing right so um and from there right from from what we directly observe we can we can start to build abstractions from that can i interrupt you yeah yes i need to interrupt you i need to interrupt you because have you heard of naive realism i haven't okay that's where you assume that there's an external material world and there are other beings okay other persons like you're a person and that you assume you just assume without any philosophical basis i'm not saying a basis doesn't exist because it does but you haven't understood or grappled with the philosophical basis and it's just taken on as an assumption hey world seems to be real seems like hey i get up in the morning and go to school and people have opinions and we talk and we share ideas and they have a will and sometimes there's a battle of the wills and uh you know this is the world i'm navigating and isn't it interesting wow but that underlying assumption which is untested and unexplored in the naive realist is well obviously it's real i mean come on look at how real it looks and look at you know i'm talking to you right now isn't this real so you need to dig a bit deeper you need to dig a bit deeper there you need to examine the philosophical underpinnings of your worldview the metaphysical underpinnings how is it possible to test your sense perceptions in order to have confidence that they correspond with an external world and other people how can you possibly set up an experiment you can't that's why i heard solipsism which i passed through as an atheist was my saving grace that's what saved me from the pits of hell because i realized that being just like when you're on your psychedel psychotropic drugs you have this sense that wow being just is i have this god-like perspective yeah go into that dive into that because that is a little taste of eternity that's a taste of life per se per se being being itself which you're participating in as a finite creature i would say but if you fall into heart solipsism you would say i am right i am period and that's where i was as a herd solipsist i thought i was god and that this is just an entertainment it's a video game or whatever you want to call it but there's no material substance whatsoever and there is absolutely no philosophical uh experiment or much less an empirical experiment that could ever justify belief in these alleged sense perceptions that you have so you need to go deeper in your metaphysical examinations i'm begging you well if i might respond no just go deeper now just kidding i'm kidding so you said a lot there um i'm trying to respond to the the last point the census it's all about the sense perceptions how do you validate the same perspective yeah so yeah so um right so like heart hard solves all right um i i would say that that itself isn't right like they're both assumptions right like you're either going to assume that other beings are real or you're going to assume that it's falling your head right like either way those are assumptions right or you could say like i don't know the kojito the kojito of uh rene de curt i think therefore i am it's not i think therefore you are no no no no no no the whole point of descartes exploration is hard solipsism and his only reason why he escapes the only reason why he escapes hurts olipsism is just an offhand shrugging of the shoulders and the waving of the hands well of course god is real of course he's good and he's not an evil demon recognition of existence it's not the same hard solidism is when um you don't believe that other beings exist that you think you're the only being yeah the only being and then there's no material doesn't follow from i think that so like you can't get to you can't get from i think therefore i am to only i think therefore i am right it doesn't follow logically that therefore nothing else things no but listen listen to me i can listen very carefully now and think about think about this for the days and weeks and months and years to come think about this i can i can deny your existence it's not irrational for me to do that but for me to deny my own existence is irrational there's a there's a difference there's a category difference between me denying my existence and me denying your existence because you might be an illusion your pixel's on a screen right now there's a i that can do you better than you do you okay so it's not irrational can we let's find some common ground here we we both recognize that everything that we experience i'm not going to say that is i'm going to say everything that we experience happens in consciousness right like the sensation all the sense perception your thoughts um right everything that's that's going on in your world is happening to you arising out of nowhere and entering into this i mean when you enter meditative states it's it's much more visceral right it's like there's no specific location of consciousness you're not some homunculus inside your head or behind your eyeballs right so we can agree that um consciousness like exists in a singular state like it's there's only one observer right for any for any mind there's only ever going to be one observer because you're you're either something is um being experienced or it's not right so that that necessarily creates um one ego right at least when we're talking about like humans i don't know if there's other sorts of minds capable out there that's a sort of metaphysical uh naval gazing that i'm trying to avoid um but like yeah so we agree and that's kind of like a buddhist um like a like a very ancient you know understanding is like um the singularity of consciousness right but then it sounds like what you're trying to take from that recognition is this idea that that's all that there is well listen listen listen very carefully again uh i i want you to know and understand that i am 100 in agreement with you that hard solipsism is a false world view that's not my point my point is not that herd solipsism is true my point you know my i i know with 100 rational certainty that hard solipsism is false i know it because i can do it well it's just using logic right yeah there are there are only two possibilities a reduction to absurdity either god is god yeah sure just let me check my settings here yeah talk amongst yourselves uh are you enjoying the conversation so far are we getting positive feedback meta no i'm asking you i'm asking you my guess oh i guess yes i know it's this is good i mean so like i kind of wanted to dig in like and go a little bit slower with with some of the concepts can you do me but i i think it's good can you do me a favor can you watch this video that i just sent you it's really quick how do i do this how do i do this how do i do i sent you a link in google me can you see the link and can you follow the link uh can you play that on your phone is that too hard uh i think i can oh no no don't don't don't watch that one that's the wrong one i say the wrong one just give me one second while you figure out how to do that so i sent you the wrong one i don't know why i sent you the wrong here it is this is the one okay and i'm gonna get you to it's very entertaining and it's also [Music] my proof that herd solip system is false okay so i'm going to send you the now this is the proper link the second one okay a shorter one yeah why don't i'll tell you what i've um you you sound like you're a really [Music] compassionate and um considerate and and uh honest person like i i i i like being here i like being on this channel um i like finding theists who are you know open to having good talks thank you very much i appreciate that yeah i'll check out the video and we can do another talk okay okay theme about um hard solid system right we could just have because again i like to stick to one topic that was what nathan accused me of was jumping around too much so i'm gonna work on that sure so you can you can uh lead the conversation i'll be less pushy and annoying and i appreciate your kind words to me i mean i'm a little bit autistic not officially but just sort of uh amateur diagnosis from my friends so if i'm socially awkward with you please forgive me no it's choice me is you being very excited about your position right and i like seeing that but i i i'm happy that you're confident because that tells me that like maybe you've got a lot of good stuff right yeah um but it also gives me it's also a bit of a red flag and that like okay you know how open is this guy really to thinking about his own positions right is he has he really questioned heart souls is he sure you know like so these are really big philosophical topics right people have been thinking about this for thousands if not longer of years those are fighting words they're they're you're attacking my young earth creationism just kidding wait right let's not go there let's not go there um you know he's he's got the series the foundational falsehoods of have you watched that i mean i've watched bits and pieces of it it's just so easy to debunk his all his stuff like uh are we really gonna go on a tangent again are we going to come i hope not i'm just i'm just curious like how much you've looked into that topic like have you studied evolution at a university uh you should read this book can you see what i got on the screen i can yes that reminds me i've got another little saying which is um you're i don't know who said this maybe someone in the track can find out uh your metaphysics must follow from your physics right to do otherwise would you know put the cart before the horse yeah that's why i started my naturalist world view but i start i started with you with hey did you know that there's a difference between the contingent and the necessary and did you did you know there's something called the principle of cause and effect this is not wacky weird out there stuff this is the foundation the axiomatic assumptions of physics i studied remember i studied applied physics this is not ivory tower stuff i worked in the canadian space agency putting satellites into orbit i worked in quantum physics with gallium arsenide gallium arsenide arsenic lasers you know this is concrete hands-on stuff hands-on it's interesting i think we disagree about the axioms of science maybe we can get into into some of that yeah because the all the axioms that upon which the natural sciences are built are philosophical axioms their philosophical principles i disagree so so i i actually think that they so i view the more fundamental level below epistemology as axiology right and i see these axioms uh not as as social constructs not as philosophical constructs um but rather naturally evolved processes right so that's kind of kind of get into but where does i don't view philosophy as being as having a prized position neither do i neither do i i have yeah i put science first i put science first i put science first too but i put capital science first my hierarchy of the sciences is that which is outlined in the catholic faith which is god first he's science big s science knowledge itself knowledge itself okay don't laugh knowledge itself and then we he laughed i told you not to laugh i told you not to laugh you insulted me anyway so we've got god the biggest science and then we have theology and then we have philosophy so philosophy is way down on the list number three and then we have the natural sciences number four and then we have all the flaky soft sciences okay so that's my hierarchy i think i would agree with you i think if i had your perspective right i think i would agree right it would start with a few axioms like god exists right and whatever accompanying axioms are are unscrappable you know like god is good and these sorts of things um and then you have whatever abstractions you can make surrounding that right and that builds up your theology yeah right and then and then above that so how do you build your philosophy i'm curious is it is it like epistemology then on time ontology first ontology first well how do you know what it is and so you know it starts with it starts with me and my experience i am i know that i am and when i deny that i am i'm simultaneously affirming that i am therefore we reject the denial of self and i have to affirm that i am so it's uh it's this is what descartes was all about no i mean not not everything but that was the core of his of his i would differentiate i would differentiate ontology betw and the more fundamental uh a priority sense of of being right what's the difference i think well i think ontology is just the linguistic discussion of what is right and like what what objects okay so i started i started then with an existential with an existential experience does that make you feel better i would put that lower down on your i would put that like well frankly i would put that below god right like i i don't have god as an axiom yeah but i came to god i have my tear i came to god through my heart says remember that so it all started with my existential experience we can put that aside i understand so let's let's just go with me here right let's put that sort of intuitive um don't you you don't even need to to say what it is to know that it is right let's put that at the bottom okay because we can vote that's a starting point we can both agree on okay right like let's put consciousness at the very bottom of our um system of knowledge oh sorry it's it's even beneath ontology for you right okay got it right yes beneath all of that right and then um above that before you get to so i put epistemology below ontology because in order to know what it is you have to know how you know things um and then below epistemology is axiology right and so like like one of the post-modernist critiques is that there's an infinite number of ways you can interpret something right it's like there's an infinite number of valid models of reality right and they can vary right but you could technically say that they're all true in some sense right you could say they're coherent but you can't say that they all correspond with reality because is that correspondence right so how are we going to categorize them right yeah exactly like how how do we um sort them differentiate and sort them yeah and so the through line that i um see that even though there's an infinite number of possible minds all minds fall into this spectrum and it's a spectrum based on their adherence to what's called the big four operational criteria okay so the big four uh of science and it in fact there's a visual aid that would help can you google something real quick yep so um google is youtube channel king crocoduck um if you just go to his channel i think it's like one of the newer videos it's um it's nuking social constructionism and there's there's a he has a diagram in there somewhere that breaks down the big four um what's the key word i can search within this channel i can search for a keyword uh can you search big4 is that or spelled out oceans of ignorance is science a social construct the brief timeline of everything i'll type in the word big big yeah i should be able to get it here oh yeah here we go okay so um yeah i i've got them if you want to pull them up too so you can take a look at them that'd be helpful what's the the first one is there a name of an episode i should be looking at her it's uh it's nuking social constructionism the second one or any of them really if you just go into the video i'm stamp 652 um okay 652. here we go is it triangle pyramid uh are you on the second video i'm on episode one i think 103. okay let me go to that one and see where i can find the picture it's got russian subtitles uh 16. 16 minutes yeah or he doesn't have them all on there at 16. they're all up at 18 20. okay i see science mythology philosophy ontology and epistemology is that with a big circle no so it'll say the big four operational criteria oh okay i got it i got it i got it predictive accuracy precision explanatory efficiency etc yeah optimal flexibility and rational coherence so these are the big four operational criteria by which we can judge all models of reality right basically all knowledge right like whether it's a human whether it's a machine a roomba doesn't matter models can be put onto this um can be can be measured with this criteria now my headphone just died so give me just a sec i'm going to swap my earbuds real quickly here yes yes so we have predictive accuracy slash precision explanatory efficiency optimal flexibility rational coherence okay can you hear me okay yeah you're back you're back you're back okay i just i guess my speaker is working yeah so these four axioms what he argues in this video is that they're not socially constructed that these axioms are themselves natural all right so like before there was ever humans before those ever monkeys before there was ever complex life um the very simple self-replicating systems obeyed these axioms right basically these axioms are selected for by the evolutionary process now i understand you don't accept evolution right so we're gonna we're gonna serious disagreement here right right right but listen listen carefully to me number four rational coherence rational coherence before any living being so you're saying that there was always a mind a rational mind even before life so we got life from non-life good luck explaining that one to me without violating the principles of metaphysics and then you want to say there was always a rational coherence there was always reason there was always a mind a rational mind even before life came into the cold dark dead universe right yeah so when he says rational coherence what that means is just internal consistency right so the model isn't contradicting itself it's not saying that something both is and isn't no but there were no models there were no model makers before yeah yeah and that's an important thing to point out right so like who's who's thinking about the logic right who like how is the how does the logic exist in a system that doesn't have consciousness is what is what we're trying to figure out right and what what what's rationally coherent about let's say a plant's model of reality right because that's a good example that that isn't conscious right a plant has a model of reality you can say well a plant is alive a plant is alive so yeah exactly yeah so it has a certain sensory inputs right it doesn't have a brain but it has it receives um stimulus data you could say right data for sure and it does sort of of internal computation right and then there's some sort of output right and like the most obvious example would be that it grows towards the sun yep right most plants can orient themselves so like what what's rationally coherent about that model is that the plant doesn't go both left and right right yeah but like it's rational only in retrospect because when we look back at a cool dead universe you're saying there's no god there's no mind there that's rationally checking the coherence it's only in retrospect like once the humans come on the scene then we have reason and then we can look in retrospect but we don't even need to go there we can talk about the first three which all presume the validity the universal validity of the principle of causality and if you accept the universal validity of the principle of causality congratulations you are a de facto monotheist okay because i disagree right i know you just i i know your reading entails that no no so we can set aside whether it leads to to monotheism right what i'm disagreeing with is that um do you get the principle of causality from these axioms right like there's no there's no theory of causality right causality is not a a well-known like we're still we're still curious about that we still don't really understand no but listen to me if you're talking about making predictions you are i'm sorry but you are presuming as axiomatic assumption that we live in a well ordered universe period end of discussion it disagreed so okay so you could disagree you could disagree but you're rejecting the principle of causality because you're saying that there are uncaused effects is that what you're going to say no what i'm saying is that that's not actually an axiom because basically that's that itself is an evolved process right what do you think did it evolved did it evolve in a well-ordered way if so welcome to monotheism if it didn't goodbye science goodbye science so so the world is both like ordered and chaotic right like there's something so like there's just some things stay the same and some things change agreed you believe in right you believe in randomness true randomness on cause effects because otherwise your chaos is just the well i don't know the chaos is just another well ordered interesting but well ordered part of the big well-ordered machine you can't have part of the universe being uncaused and the rest of it being well ordered right it's all the cosmos which means well-ordered universe the cosmos is well ordered from every from top to bottom and there's no part of our universe i challenge you to find any scientific paper that says this effect is uncaused i challenge you and i'm not saying that i i need you to listen i'm not saying that what i'm saying what i'm saying is that um gosh gather your thoughts predictive i want to talk about the predictive accuracy and precision predictive that word predictive what does that mean it means it's well ordered and the principle of cause and effect is universally valid i remember what i was gonna say so so you're conflating order and chaos whatever that means with um with cause and effects like let's let's get clearer here okay when i say some things change and some things don't i mean like if you just look at your room right now there's some things that are not moving right and then there's something there are moving they're all moving everything's moving well but not everything looks like it's moving correct who cares what it looks like i mean take it take something that's what i'm asking take some more yes or no question is there both moving and non-moving stuff in your room no everything's moving in the created contingency as you see it everything's moving everything's moving i studied physics i've seen things up close in microscopes and electron microscopes i know things are moving everywhere i feel like you're being and the whole planet the whole planet is moving everything is moving are you trying i know that david i'm trying to get you to just visualize like something just sitting like just okay visualize a glass of water sitting on a table okay okay okay you're talking in very like uh mundane non-philosophical terms and knowledge yeah without being scientifically technically correct you're just saying okay i'm not moving and now i'm moving and now i'm not like that kind of colloquial the colloquial sense okay go ahead yeah so as we live our lives right that's that's what we see like the the sun moves across the sky right yep and yet assuming you don't move or you don't walk around the surface right the rest of the surroundings are not going to move right as long as you're not walking around the tree that's next to you isn't going to move so those are two distinct objects right like we can we can say that the tree is unique and that it stays still and then the sun is unique and then it moves around right okay okay are we are you with me so far i'm with you i'm following trying to see where you're going okay so because that there's different things happening right at different speeds and different ways there is no principle of causality right there is no scientific theory that says exactly how cause and effect works we just observe cause and effect i never said there's a theory to explain how cause and effect works it's an axiomatic self-evident principle that cannot be violated because to violate it is to contradict yourself to say that an effect proceeds its cause is just nonsense that's why we reject it and that's why we embrace this principle that we don't understand don't don't get me wrong we don't understand cause and effect we don't understand a grain of sand or a blade of wheat we do not understand much of anything right yeah you can say that cause always um perceives precedes effect you cannot you can't ever say that something is a cause or what it's affected like you can't you can't identify in singularity what because we can't we can't even separate a single object right like we get down into the matter and it's yeah yeah it falls apart on us this is why this is why is why david hume was confident with his constant conjunction but then at the end of the day when he went down to the pub it's like yeah i just colloquially and naturally intuitively and naively believe in cause and effect but we can't also we can't prove it so this gets back to why i'm a pragmatist and how that differs from these sorts of ideal stances right like i'm not coming from it from a position of like okay i'm gonna accept this axiom of cause and effect and then i'm gonna go around and operate in the world it's like no organisms were operating in the world long before anyone thought of cause and effect right and then this is a discovery that follows after the fact so like again when we're talking about these big four operational criteria basically life follows those criteria even without consciously thinking about it you don't you don't need a mind to have a model that's accurate and precise you don't have to have consciousness you don't have to have the philosophical axiom of cause and effect to be able to have a model that either works better or doesn't right and the ones that work better again under the evolutionary paradigm get selected for right and so this basically the mind gets shaped by the process itself yeah i've got a very interesting question for you do you want to talk to me about something and i'll pretend to listen while i try to think of what my question is oh yeah if you don't have it yeah it's a very important question but i can't remember what it is i don't want you to sit there in silence so maybe just talk to me about whatever and pontificate all these things yeah i mean i can just i can just kind of give like a summary of like i think watching that video series um nuking social constructionism would be helpful i mean he's he's rebuking or um debunking the idea that science is a social construct and that's not exactly what oh thank you thank you thank you i just remembered do you believe in do you believe in the laws of nature so called the laws of nature f equals m a and all these sorts of things well that's that's not a law of nature i mean force equals mass times acceleration is or it's a law but it's not a law of nature it's uh okay the laws are the three laws of thermodynamics they're called laws they are laws they were presented to me and yeah school has laws yeah there's not laws of nature like they've got specific you know fields of application okay so the the laws of thermodynamics for example good example do you believe they're universally valid yes or no and if so why and if not why not yeah so i mean when you say universal that makes me think you're talking metaphysics now no no right and in your materials yeah i mean i can only go as far as what the empirical evidence shows right so as far as we can tell uh you know that's how closed systems of mass and energy operate whether that's always the case or whether you know there's usually always extend um exceptions yeah i was going to say uh extenuating circumstances uh because you know uh i'm gonna have to go away and think about your particularly pragmatic approach and how i can just force you to corner where you're going to admit something damning to your worldview i'm hoping that there's problems in it i mean it's yeah um it's something that naturalists have been like that's the naturalist position for the past century now um and there's a lot of you know famous philosophers in the philosophy of mind like daniel dennett and whatnot who are trying to figure out how consciousness can be a natural product and there's a lot of holes like i always say science is like a a puzzle right a jigsaw puzzle um you might have really huge gaps right but as long as you've got the outline worked out right it's just a matter of filling in the pieces when uh this is this is more of a personal uh psychological question for you a spiritual question okay if you were to come to believe in the same god that i believe in with all just the pure monotheistic classical theism god without christianity without judaism without islam just monotheism you came to believe in that god would you love that god would you worship that god adore that god as god with the reverence that is due to god alone yes or no good question i think that there's still too much nuance um with under that definition right like classical theism yeah there's a few characteristics we can point out right like simplicity uh you know just um i'm blanking on the other one you know these different characteristics i don't think that that really necessarily gives you a coherent uh definition like one of the problems i have with god is that he's supposed to be omniscient right so like what does all knowing mean exactly does it mean like in order to be all-knowing do you have to know what it's like to be me yeah or it's important to know of course of course so then then in that case in some finites in some tiny finite part of the infinite whole uh i am god right and you are god and so like that's kind of the buddhist you know we're all one sort of uh sort of philosophy so yeah but the the difference is that you it's not over till the fat lady sings it's an opportunity to be god or to be united with god that's it's called theosis in theology it's this process of dying to self as christ said die to self and live in christ and so um we need to that's what my athlete felt like for sure yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah well you know this is very important to appreciate these mystical supernatural events even if you don't believe in the supernatural yet but you know there's something weird and there's something a little bit out there and you just keep it in the back of your mind like well when i was on drugs i sort of had this mystical experience just respect that keep it keep it close to your heart that you know i think this is one of your strengths as a human being is that you are seeking you are open-minded you want to know the truth but you're scared about committing to a rigid system i think that's a good thing not a bad thing you're scared of some stupid rigid system and you see everyone with their stupid religion and they can't all be right and maybe they're all wrong right but they can't definitely can't all be right like if there's gonna be a right one it's gonna be one it's not gonna be six of the ten million religions it's just gonna be one so i respect uh and i admire your your pursuit of the truth i think you're going about it the right way rather than just saying oh i'm going to be christian because that's what my friends and family do no that's that's no good you have to you have to seek the truth you have to love the truth and i think your approach is good so i'm going to wrap it up here because i have to go uh i made some brownies earlier and i really want to eat them and there's no not hot brownies no psychedelics no psychotics involved just sugar show sugar well david thank you so much for having me this was a pleasure uh i'd love to hop on again and we'll talk about hard softism uh check out that video series let me know um yeah yeah i mean send me the link so i put psychedelics and i put like mysticism and that under the naturalist paradigm but um one you know if we can tear that down then it'll be free game again i'm excited so very nice to meet you really really pleasant and generous patient person and uh kind and uh i really appreciate meeting meeting you i feel the warmth and uh oh you're too pleased it's nice so i look forward to seeing you again you know how to you know book a slot right you just use that little app that i sent you the link for and uh we'll definitely do it again soon anytime you like okay awesome yeah i'll schedule one for maybe like a couple weeks out yeah anytime you like so we'll talk very soon sounds good god bless you bye