I'm impressed by Matt's humility here. Rather than go right to a video on "why I was right and he was wrong", instead, he went to someone he respects for constructive feedback on BOTH viewpoints to see what he/they might have gotten right/wrong. He is a critical thinker at its finest, and I'm glad to be a follower. Well done, Matt.

This debate was painful to listen to. Vela spent time trying to pigeonhole matt into logical positivism as a way to disregard the point matt made several times concerning a preference towards empirical facts. Sadly, as malpass noted, he confused logical positivism with Empiricism.

LITERALLY couldn't hit play fast enough. I fangirl ALEX SO HARD! 😍🤩

Thank you both for doing what you do. I'm a lifelong skeptic, born to Catholics who converted to Baptists. My husband was a lifelong believer who recently stopped believing. The trauma from his indoctrination has been difficult. He's still overwhelmingly credulous, and I often find myself using your arguments to bring him back to reality. I grew up with people who believed in all sorts of woo. I thought I was crazy for not falling for any of it. I've raised two wonderful children to think critically and after finding you, I have so much more courage to be myself. Again, thank you. 🖤

I also loved the pressupp's horrible syllogism which was tantamount to saying 1) if God is necessary then he exists. 2) God is necessary. 3) therefore God exists.

Amazing timing. I just got done having a conversation (more of a debate) with a friend who is convinced that I am going to hell for simply not being convinced by Jesus’s word. I don’t usually engage with people when it comes to this topic, but I was feeling particularly frustrated by the constant patronising remarks. "I feel sorry for you, for not being able to feel the power that I do". And the "You need to pray". Even though this friend is completely aware that I was a Christian for years. It was impossible not to say something back. Thanks for the help in remaining rational and being highly sceptical of extraordinary claims.

Hey Matt, I’m going to see you live in NYC this Sunday, I can’t wait!! I really appreciate your way of thinking, you’ve helped me immensely in shaking beliefs that I couldn’t figure out how to shake on my own. Many thanks my friend, best of luck on Sunday, hope to quickly meet you if at all possible! Keep up the great work!!

More Alex Malpass please. He and Ozymandias are 2 of my favorite thinkers on KZfaq.

Watched the debate. Your opponent was as dishonest in representing your views as I have ever seen short of Hovind. At one point you corrected what he was saying about your beliefs three times in a row and he just kept using the false one he was trying to push on you. So frustrating but also very transparent Also right away he admitted he didn't have good evidence. And the debate was wether or not he had good evidence...... So he lost by his own words immediately hahaha

The whole presup argument revolving around laws of logic is such a hot mess, I loved hearing Matt and Alex delve into it. An honest conversation shows how difficult certain areas of philosophy are and likewise the emptiness of declarative statements claiming claiming to have solved them.

Great format Matt. Definitely worth doing for other debates/convos.

That was So fun. More of these debates!

Matt took Tyler out to the woodshed for a whooping, Tyler was one of the worst debater I have seen. Keep up the good work Matt.

Bibliolatrous God: "I do not change my mind... but I did change my mind in the past... and I am free to change it in the future."

Even when i find some debates intellectually frustrating i still learn something, thank you for the analysis guys.

This conversation was so good that it made watching the entire debate worth it. :)

I fragging *LOVE* Alex Malpass. THANK YOU for having him on. Brilliant? Or most brilliant?

Mad respect for Matt!

Genuinely love listening to you two guys.

Its great that matt is willing to have a critical review on camera top man,much respect.

Matt: I'm a "dilettante." Me: Maybe you're a "dileahunt"

Matt should have turned the star question around by asking "If the stars realigned and spelled out 'god does not exist, stop believing in him', would you stop believing? " I could guess that his initial answer would be "no, I'd do more investigation", just as one should if the other way around.

Well worth the wait. I also totally felt like Tyler was trying to "shadowbox" with ideas he thought you might hold

Thank you so much for this Matt. I found the debate itself painful as Tyler struck me as so disingenuous and kept misrepresenting your point of view whilst basically refusing to clarify his. This talk with Alex on the other hand was a real joy to listen to and I really feel I’ve come away from it with a better grasp on the topic. So thanks again.

Thanks, Matt.

This was refreshingly interesting, after not having been able to finish watching the debate. I thought honesty was supposed to be a property of christianity.

amazing stuff

Great explanation by Alex of the "Writing in the Sky" argument!

Dillahunty: these are the standards of evidence & why Vela: you atheists standards are unfalsifiable Dillahunty: nice try

Dammit. Philosophy can be like legal text sometimes. You know they're speaking about a really simple thing but it's put in such a complicated way that you have to listen to every sentence 10 times to get what they are saying (Well I do at least). Especially when you are talking about a very fantastical subject like a god. People try their hardest to make it sound like they are actually quite sophisticated and replace every word with a more complicated one and drop all sorts of technical terms and names and such. And now here I am listening to this debate in a second language concentrating with my eyes shut, pausing every 10 seconds, googling what the hell "neo-logical positism" means and finding out they are basically just arguing whether you have to take things on faith, and actually agreeing for the most part! Damn debate made my head hurt.

Amazing content Matt.

Matt you look fabulous! Whatever you're doing keep it up....I'm sure you've been hearing this a lot!

I can’t really comment on this debate intelligently. All I know is I’m going to go outside and throw a ball for my dog because we both enjoy it. Nothing less, nothing more...and that’s just fine.

Interesting to hear 26:52, I have often argued that the ridiculous claims of out of body experiences and other even more nonsensical claims about ghosts flying around after they are dead, are all impossible because there would be no retina matter to project an image onto, therefore spirits would be completely blind. Photons would be flying in all directions, how would they mind-read which ones going which way are relevant to a particular viewpoint and view direction? Also, there is no mass in any ear anatomy to be vibrated by air pressure fluctuations, so they would be deaf. Does gravity affect them? They may end up floating through space, blind, deaf, numb, and entirely unable to interact with the universe. The whole concept of a spirit is nonsense in my opinion.

This was better than the debate by far.

I enjoyed this review more than the debate!

I stopped watching vela when he tried to define god into existence. When you start on such shaky grounds everything else just falls apart.

Wouldn't it be great to see Malpass on TAE?

Great Stuff!

I learned a lil somethin’. Thx guys!

this is over thinking the issue man. this type of thinking means u can argue for anything...leprechauns bigfoot unicorns or anything. and legitamatly too. which i find to be total bullshit.

Sometimes Alex looks 25 other times he looks 45

Malpasse lookin sharp w/ the head shave! I dig it👍

Alex describing debates nowadays as "a practiced art of miscommunication" is quite spot-on 😊

That debate was too easy for Matt... the guy was using decades-old arguments of presupp that Matt has demolished the last 15 years. I've always seen Matt's arguments like a hockey lineup where the first line is usually the best line and then there's the second and third and fourth line and for this debate he used his 12th line because this guy was so bad.

He didn't seem to understand that all claims are not equal and how we tend to determine what's more likely for a claim to be accurate. Me having a dollar isn't too unlikely as opposed to a billion. It's more likely just by the fact that 95% of the population at least has $1 but a very small 1 or 2% has a billion.

I think this is a very humbling discussion. The fact that Matt is reaching out to others to ask if he was correct about the issue, making himself vulnerable, that shows to me how true his intentions are.

With regards to the writing in the sky, if anyone asks me if I would convert if stars aligned to say something like 'Jesus is God', I just ask them if they would deconvert if it instead said 'Jesus never existed'. A bit glib I know, but many people just don't think about what they would do if these sorts of miraculous scenarios contradicted their own beliefs. Your explanation about the predictions aspect of it is great by the way, I might try to pinch that for future conversations

Hi

nice video

A very interesting point raised here on the writing in the stars. If you would think X would be valid evidence for a proposition does that mean that the lack of X is evidence that points the proposition being more likely false than true. This would play in so many different areas especially in SE.

Matt, I did in fact get high, and I finished the last half of this review at 2:30 AM. So lemme tell you, listening to Alex's potential descriptions was fucking great.

I just watched Tyler Vela's deconstruction/deconversion video from about three months ago where he declares he is no longer a Christian. A fundamental aspect of his thinking is divine hiddenness. It was interesting to hear him say that God hasn't revealed himself despite Vela's sincere search and god would know how to make himself known.

Thanks Matt and Alex for doing these. I always learn a lot from these discussions. I want to comment a bit on the "alignment of the stars" thing. I actually do think that if the stars aligned to form the words of the bible, it would be evidence in favor of the God hypothesis. And the fact that they don't ever align does detract from the God hypothesis. I understand Alex's argument that since the vague God hypothesis of philosophers doesn't explicitly predict that the stars will align, the stars aligning or not aligning doesn't support or detract from the idea of God existing. But I think we can go off the general assumption that God wants to make himself knowable to humans, and given that he has imbued humans with rationality, there should be some evidence in the natural world of his existence. Now the evidence doesn't need to be the stars aligning to form the words of the bible. It could be something else. Maybe if at the center of every cell, there was the word "Christ" spelled in Hebrew. Maybe if the symbol of the cross could be demonstrated to have special powers over matter. Any one of these things would add some support to the God hypothesis if they were true. They would not give us absolute certainty that God exists, because, as Matt said, it could be a sufficiently advanced alien species causing these phenomena rather than God. But nevertheless, these things would lend some support to the idea of God. Since none of them seem to be true, and there seems to be no obvious signs in nature that point to God, it does detract from the idea of a God who wants us to know him.

First time hearing from Alex. I like him. Lol totally agree with his thoughts on the coin flip vs. The signs in the clouds.

I like calm-Matt videos, especially with guests like Alex or Ozy. AXp is fun but it's good to hear full arguments not being stymied by some theist plank reeling off old fallacies.

Alexxxx! Dig the new hairstyle!

Good dialogue by Matt! It's hard to see where he lands. And I think that's why he is where he is because like he says. He doesn't know.

57:40 Asking “What happened before logic?” appears to be as invalid as “What is South of the South pole?” -- Any thoughts?

When you say something like "laws of logic" , so its a symbolic phrase ( because all language is symbolic) and it represents a pattern reoccurring in reality. So the phrase laws of logic is an description of what is , but then also like in quantum mechanics a particle can be in a exact location and not be there at the same time and be somewhere else. So the laws of logic as a pattern in reality is still relative to specific contexts, but then why would the laws of logic need grounding ? Its a pattern under certain conditions and contexts. Its a matter of what is.

The thing which astounded me near the end of the debate was when Vela was confronted with the stuff about slavery in Exodus 21 and he flat out said that it doesn't say that. I've heard people say that they've heard apologists say that but it was the first time I've heard it. I couldn't believe it. Apparently, there is context. I realise that wasn't the subject of the debate but blimey, I wish it could have switched to that because I would have loved to have known Vela's reasoning. Sadly there wasn't time for that anyway.

I enjoyed how much Alex came alive when he began delving into philosophy.

I stopped watching the original debate after Matt's statement and came to this discussion, which I found really informative. I did find Vela's introduction pretty dense and not obviously about evidence. I like abductive arguments in science but not in bafflegab.Probably I'll go back and watch the rest of the original debate.

BTW Matt... That agnostic You were not naming? You were talking about Steve McRae, lol ;)

The grounding for the laws of logic is in the definition of the axiom. They are self-evident. even you take the laws of logic for the sake of the argument. If one where to look for a ground for something that is self-evident or take for the sake of argument then one wonders where they begin at all. How would one prove the beginning of reason with taking something as axiomatic?

I've got a comment in regard's Alex's assertion that the presence or absence of evidence needs to give symmetric impacts on the likelihood of a claim being true. There are evidences that, if present, almost assure a conclusion to be true, but their absence doesn't mean very much. Example: In protein mass spectrometry, peptides are broken up and ionized in an instrument, that reads their mass to charge ratio. Observing a particular mass-to-charge ratio in the analysis of a protein sample virtually guarantees that that the peptide corresponding to that mass-to-charge ratio is present, however, the inverse is not true. Some peptides just don't ionize well, or are otherwise not well detected by the instrument. Thus, that evidence has asymmetric effects on a conclusion depending on its presence or absence. There's probably less technical examples, but that was the first that came to mind.

It doesn't really matter if someone finds the concept of whether or not we can know something absolutely, to be dull; the problem still exists at which level of ad hoc acceptance of "what is real/true" is most "reasonable" to accept.

At 59:40 Alex talks about the "Principle of non-contradiction". This may be off-topic, but how does this apply to Schroedinger's cat? It states quite clearly that the cat is *both* alive and dead, which to me seems to violate the principle. And quantum physics? Doesn't it state that electrons are everywhere within their probability wave functions until observed (when the wave function collapses)? Again, this may be off-topic, but I'd be interested to hear others' opinions.

Hi Matt, can you post thoughts on your talk with Glenn Scrivener?

Consider having some introductory audio, so people can adjust their levels and confirm audio, without a long silence, that makes people nervous.

On the murder mystery analogy regarding fundamental laws of logic; it's not that we don't have valid candidates, we don't even know that there has been a murder.

Was anyone able to figure out Vella's ace-in-the-hole, that devastating analogy re: the dog and the ball?

What he meant by brute fact was something that just is because it is. He first used it to describe the idea that logic is just logical and doesn't need foundation. He said that would be a brute fact. That was his definition.

25:57 That is what I screamed during the debate. A disembodied, spaceless, timeless mind that can cause things to exist from nothing using its thoughts- isn't a solution for the interaction problem. It makes it even worse. It's also not just proposing "just one entity" regarding his argument that somehow that violation of every thing we understand about everything, doesn't violate parsimony. By that logic, proposing Klingons stole it, is a parsimonious explanation for where my car went because Klingons "are only one entity" no occam's razor problem with introducing merely the one entity of Klingons.

On a debate about whether or not there is good evidence. Tyler appears to have conceded in his introduction. Matt should have acknowledged Vera's defeat and surrender after Vera's introduction, thanked him for not wasting everybody's time, and left the stream.

yeah if the laws of logic are dependent/contingent on the mind of god then what is god's mind dependant on?

I have a question about contradictions. Sometimes it seems like we think we have a good idea about something and it's opposite (denial) by simply slapping a "not" in front of it. "A" or "not A". I wonder if "not A" is a silly concept in some circumstances. How can we rule out that there may only be A, and that "not A" may not even be a category? For example "something" and "not something". We know what "something" is, but do we really know what "not something" is? Can our brains possibly conceive of "not something"? We certainly can't assign attributes to it, or describe it, or visualize it. "not something" itself might be a logical contradiction. Maybe that means "nothing" or "nothingness" is in itself a contradiction.

Would Matt mind if I type in my 10 books or so *reading list* that led to my de-education in faith?

Matt is such a chill guy. He's very open to constructive criticism and just honestly does as he says. He wants to believe as many true things as possible and not believe as many false things as possible.

I would love to see Alex debate Darth on modern-day debate. it would be a epic destruction of darth. lol

While his hair is a little too short for my taste, I thoroughly enjoy Alex's "look". He may rise before me.

I don't see any reason to think that the "law" of non-contradiction etc. are transcendental. In a true void, true nothingness, you wouldn't have anything to contradict, so the law wouldn't be descriptive of anything. The moment you introduce something, you could talk about contradiction, but then you wouldn't have a void/nothing anymore. To say 2+2=4 is true even if nothing exists is semantically meaningless because if nothing exists, neither does 2, + and 4. Simply put, contradiction/non-contradiction merely reflect observation of traits of things that exist. They're grounded in existence. Non-contradiction appears to be a trait of things that exist, hence the most reasonable inference is that it is rooted in things existing. Also, a big semantic problem is talking as if conceptual existence and concrete existence are of similar nature. The number 2 does not exist. The thought of "2" exists. Confusing those as the same is mistaking the map for the territory. It's the equivalent if saying "fast" exists, and because it doesn't exist like rocks and oxygen does, "fast" is transcendental. This is ridiculous. I don't think the law of noncontradiction "exists". I think it is the case, based on my observation, that things don't contradict and have discrete identies, so I confine my thoughts and speech to reflect that fact. Nothing more, nothing less.

Regarding the section about 56mins in... I think I might have an idea of why theist come to the table asking you to defend all the various thinker's quotes: it's their way of putting "scripture" in our mouths. We ask them to defend their Bible and they think they have to find some similar thing to throw back at us. So they pick some book somewhere and claim we must accept it and then defend it. Building up a strawman and ready to take it down (but we might not even agree with it, nor do we need to).

The problem I see with apologists is that their arguments for god can prove any “god” to be true. Just because you think you have an explanation for something doesn’t automatically make it true. I never heard a response to this problem from an apologist. I think they might say well their Christian theology has a “coherent truth” explanation but again plug in a different god and you can make a similar claim.

I actually wish Matt would pushed JAY AND vela since they hold kind of similar views on transcedental argument. What do they mean by the reflection of God's mind.

It's interesting that certain theists don't mind there being the law of gravity without this magical grounding of absolutes they require to be convinced it works the way we describe it or to be confident in it regardless, yet the laws of logic which are descriptive we need a firm grounding in that and so they go even further into absurdity to say they are prescriptive. Arguing if we use the laws of logic to deduce descriptive laws of the Universe and therefore if we don't have and absolute grounding for laws of logic then everything we know will be subject to error and yet that doesn't seem to bother anybody when we're talking about gravity or light or physics or laws of nature which we interact with and work in synchronicity with to produce planes and medicine and nukes and know what to eat or not to eat.

I thought it would of been interesting to hear an answer on the writing in the stars flipped. What if a god from another religion said I am real. Would that or should that convert someone. I'd say no. More investigation should be done. Is the god testing you? Are you being tricked? Are you imagining things? Idk aliens? I just thought that'd be an interesting discussion.

Anyone with a dog knows that all it’s interested in is the ball, and not where it came from.

I was really aggravated just watching this debate. There was so many times Vela was so dishonest. I don't know how you stayed composed.

That debate was rough

I love you guis.

Matt, i love ya brother! Talking to presupps is not a productive conversation because 1) You will never change the presupps mind (I know thats not your goal). 2) The audience cant follow the conversation so you probably wont change anyones mind. You even said the majority of the population cant understand this crap. I just want you to debate with honest people seaking the truth and it seems like the only people willing to debate nowadays are presuppositional apologists. Maybe you find meaning in doing it but i most definitely dont see it lol

There's a lot to say about this, but just wanted to mention that the discussion of the "writing in the stars" example is fantastic (~ 38:45). It is a poor argument but it does have the potential of painting the atheist side as unreasonably unyielding, thanks for breaking down fairly comprehensively why arbitrary messages in the sky still don't amount to compelling evidence. The debate wasn't frustrating because of the philosophy. It was Tyler's seemingly disingenuous point-scoring attempts and the fact that his main position still boiled down to a version of TAG (quite frankly, if this transcendental hand-waving is at the core of your argument then your interpretation of any more "sophisticated" philosophy is suspect). There is little progress to be made when God is defined into being in places where our ability to investigate anything breaks down. Repeating the word "abductive" ad nauseam doesn't magically change an essentially presup argument into anything more worthwhile. Honestly think this wasn't among Matt's best but I cannot entirely blame him.

I understood his tennis ball analogy to show your lack of answering his question. He asked "What is the foundation/reason behind the laws of logic?", the laws of logic being the ball and his question being the act of throwing it. He then suggested you didn't answer the question (retrieve the ball), but merely pointed out that they seem to work (the dog saying hey look at the ball in response). The problem I see with the analogy is that he either missed or didn't see how your response was a valid response when you said something along the lines of "There hasn't been any demonstration that we need a foundation, so in the meantime we can accept the laws of logic without any other presuppositions (something a lot of Christians seem to do with this Transcendental Argument). Not a great debate with respect to mutual understanding, these apologists get away with a lot of vague and unfalsifiable assertions.

On the point about the stars spelling out Yahweh, whereas the fact they don't doesn't disconfirm it - I'm not sure that holds. Is that not only true in a strictly scientific test? (In which case it is actually the null hypothesis that can be rejected given enough statistical significance). However, some evidence will be confirmatory where as its absence isn't, particularly with agent causation. For example - if I go into the kitchen and the kettle is on with water boiling it confirms someone was in the kitchen before me, but if I don't find that it doesn't disconfirm it. It maybe leaves me agnostic about it, but doesn't disconfirm. For the record - I think there is a bigger problem with the stars aligning example in that there are a nearly infinite amount of explanations and nothing in any specific theism that predicts that phenomena.

Awesome- Matt gets another free philosophy lesson....

Doesn't brute facts, in the sense Matt wants to use it, mean everything that we can see or know that is there are brute facts, no matter how HUMANS describe them or explain them, HUMANS accept that they are there? It seems, using words that don't help get someone communicate to the other person what they are really trying to say, then it seems better to use the words that define that word, skip the whole misunderstood word all together and keep it more layman or use simple language that anyone can understand.

I’ve made a number of comments under the video itself. Essentially, it was a waste of your time Matt. Never throw a tennis ball for a dog...🤣

My problem with the Laws of Logic (LoL for short) is the labelling of the A=A as the "Law of Identity". All three laws establish identity with the existential verb "is" or the negation "is not". I prefer labelling the Lol in the following order: Law of Non-Contradiction (A≠~A), Law of the Excluded Middle (A+~A=Set), and rounding it out with what I call the Law of Integrity (A=A). I don't waste my time on the "why" or the "how come" of the LoL (because "why" implies a purpose that has yet to be demonstrated, and "how come" implies some sort of a reason that, you know....even El/Yahweh (aka Asherah's ex-husband/father/brother) would be hard pressed to provide even if said Maximally-Mighty Magical Anthropomorphic Immortal Alpha Male were ever demonstrated to exist). IDK, it just seems that if there were to be some sort of foundation to the LoL, it would probably have to be existence itself, as the existential verb "is" manages to show up in all three laws when verbalized.

Near the end of the video, Alex said something like: "It could be a fundamental fact about cognition that we can't process contradictions" But here's the thing: we CAN process contradictions! That's what the quantum mechanics example is all about! The example presents a person (a quantum physicist) whose mind can process a contradictory statement and form a concept about what state of the Universe that statement describes. That is a clear demonstration that the laws of logic don't always apply. The Law of Non-Contradiction only applies *in conversations* in which people do not have (or choose not to use) an cognitive algorithm that is fine with contradictions.