Hi, I'd like to welcome you all to our student debate, Where Does Morality Come From, and it's my privilege to introduce to you our two speakers this evening. I will introduce in the order in which they will be presenting. First, Mr. Jason Spatero is a student here in sociology major with a concentration in criminology, a minor in psychology, and if that wasn't enough, a minor in religious studies. He's a third-year student. Welcome, please, Jason Spatero. And our other speaker is Mr. Jonathan Harris. Mr. Harris has been involved in college ministry since 2006, serving on the campuses of Dutchess Community College, College of the Canyons, and SUNY New Paltz, as well as leading Bible studies at both his local church, Grace Bible Church in Wapinders Falls, and Vassar Road Baptist Church in Poughkeepsie. He's taught apologetics, how to defend the Christian faith from objections at his home and currently serves as a deacon intern there. Mr. Harris graduated from Thomas Edison State College in 2010 with a BA in history and is currently working on his Master's of Divinity at Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary. Please welcome Jonathan Harris. Each will have a 10-minute opening statement. Thank you for coming, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you, Professor, for the introduction and thank you for moderating. A special thank you to both of the organizations for making this happen and for Mr. Harris for agreeing to the debate. Now, I'm going to be very to the point here. I posit that our morality, our sense of right and wrong, our judgment to make moral decisions over immoral and wicked and odious ones, is innate to us. And I would further state that the idea that we need any sort of a system or a supreme power or a supernatural god to tell us how to make these decisions, that we wouldn't know right from wrong if it was not for this, is a somewhat nasty insult to integrity. A historical anecdote to evaluate this. In the year 1606, the continent of Australia was discovered by Dutch settlers. The indigenous Australians were existing on the continent for, at minimum, we now know, 40,000 years. At the very minimum. They had no sense of Christianity, no Judeo-Christian values. No scripture. They had not only lived predating these religions by tens of thousands of years, but they had lived in locations sequestered and isolated from the desert area where our monotheisms were brought up. If they did not have morality, because they clearly didn't have Christianity, And I'm not going to limit this to Christianity tonight. This is Judaism and Islam and any religion that would profess to be the basis for morality as well. If they did not have these religions, they were animists actually. One of the fondest things you'll get from a monotheism. How is it that they were able to survive for 40,000 years How is it that they didn't slaughter each other? They didn't wipe each other clean and exterminate one another in the midst of barbarism? How would that be? I think that the fact that they weren't predisposed to rape, robbery, and murder is testimony to the existence of an innate morality itself. It's testimony to the existence of an inner integrity. And I think that's something that, thankfully, we all have today. Now, how could Christianity, or once again, I'll keep saying Christianity, but if you're of another religious sect or belief, I'd like you to posit it for your own position. How could Christianity account for morality? If morality is present, very obviously present, in time periods before Christianity ever existed, and geographic locations to which it had not spread. I'd like to know this. I'd also like to know now to the point, because this is not just a discussion of origin. Is Christianity moral? Is the idea, for example, the doctrines, the morals of Christianity, a value system we want to adopt? Is there anybody here, ask yourselves really, who thinks it's a morally brilliant idea? Who thinks it's ethical? To kill your child for God, as Abraham is praised for doing in the Muslim religion, is actually revered to the point where there's a holiday that just passed two weekends ago, the Eid al-Adha, where he is specifically, the entire concept of his willingness to kill his own child for God is revered. This is a Jewish, Christian, and Muslim concept, something always smiled upon by the three monotheisms. I'd say it's a positively wicked idea. And I'll further add that when it was conducted with Abraham, or when Jephthah in the Book of Judges actually did burn his daughter alive, For God, this is a nasty proposition. It's philosophical. The killing of your own child. I don't think very many people in this room, I can hope, would be willing to conduct that. And for those of you who might, I'd like to know what you think then of Deanna Laney, who in 2004, at the age of 39, a mother of three, bludgeoned to death two of her small children, I don't believe either was over the age of 10, one closer to her at 5, with a rock, and nearly killed her 15 month old in the same manner, who barely survived because God told her to, was her excuse. So if this is a moral concept, because it's biblical, then is it also moral right there in the heart of Texas? And if it is then, I'd like to ask you to ask yourself one more time, would you say, as a parent, for those of you who are, or anyone who's considering to be, well, The voices, this God figure, he's been telling me to do this for quite a few days now. I guess when the missus is sedated and when nightfall occurs, we'll take the little one up to the mountain and we'll gut Junior for God. I'd like to know if that's a moral proposition to any of you. I'd like to know if it's moral to preach the idea of hell to children. To tell them, you and your loved ones and your family And the people you care about who don't follow the word of God, you'll burn in everlasting fire. You will suffer the torments of hell. I don't know about you, ladies and gentlemen, but I don't think this is a very moral proposition. I don't think that this is a good thing to be telling children to be embracing them with fear instead of with love. And that's the next thing to talk about, is love, the concept of love, something that's applied by religion in general. The idea that it's compulsory, that you must love, you have to love God, not because you want to, but because you're afraid to. It may be because he's done great things. But it's not just that. It's not just the idea that here's your creator, here's your brilliant, loving, caring, supreme, totalitarian father. It's here we are. washed over by a supreme being, a supernatural dictator, who can listen to your thoughts and knows what you're doing when you're awake and when you sleep, and who is ready to punish you for all that, to intervene in every single bedroom. That's not Somewhere you should be finding love and who am I to say back? Because you don't find love when people live in real life. You don't find love when people of North Korea, people of Soviet Russia. or monitor while they sleep and while they're awake. It's a totalitarian concept. I'd like to call something that is not moral and that we can do better than that as human beings. Now, one minute, 45 minutes. It sounds fantastic. Paul Grebel is an Elizabethan poet. But I really urge you all, and it's Paul Grebel, You walk back to your dorms, your homes, your abodes, and to read. It's brilliant. And you go to a home called Musab, where it's not a long walk. You all should check it out when you're having time. There's a whole travel world of wine in Musab. It summarizes the point I'm here to make tonight. It's the final line. And I'm just going to recite it to you. And I won't need to provide much commentary on it because of that. It says my point altogether. He says, yet when each of us in his own heart looks, he finds the God there far unlike his foes. That's all I need. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. The word moral can be defined as conforming to a standard of right behavior. Now, this standard affects every area of our lives. Think about the questions that you encounter, let's say, in the world of politics. Should abortion be legalized? Should we have traffic laws for the protection of human life? What should we do with other people's money? These are all moral decisions. And on a personal level, we also encounter these things, right? When you're going about your daily life, should you cheat on your tests? Should you lie to your friends? Who should you vote for? These are all moral decisions. And I'd like to suggest that if we did not have some kind of a moral law, that our society would cease to function. We all rely on it. And to give a quick example, science itself is dependent on the assumption that scientists will honestly, honestly report their data. Because without that honesty, science does not work. So everything in our society depends on this. So we know why morality is important, and we know basically what it is. But the question in tonight's debate is, where did it come from? And for the Christians, it's actually a very easy question to answer. The simple answer that you're probably all familiar with is, human morality comes from God, right? Well, this might seem like a simple statement, but there's actually more to unpack in this. And I'm going to read for you a quote right now. This is from C.S. Lewis, and he's speaking about the subject. He states, a man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. In other words, we don't know what evil is unless we have some standard of right behavior by which to judge what evil is. The standard of good in Christianity is the character and nature of the God of the Bible. It's wrong to lie because God does not lie. It's wrong to murder because man was created in God's image. It is wrong to withhold love from your neighbor because God is love. So morality isn't above God dictating to God what he should do, nor is it below God where he arbitrarily decrees it. It's one and the same with the character and nature of God. Now, for those of you who have studied the Bible, you know that there's other attributes that God possesses as well, and I'm going to go over three of them right now. God is unchanging, God is absolute, meaning His authority is binding on everything, and God is immaterial. Ironically enough, morality has these same three components. It, too, is unchanging, absolute, and immaterial. To give a poor instance here, it is wrong to rate babies for fun. I know that's an extreme example, but I have to go to extremes to make the point that I'm about to make. It is wrong to rate babies for fun no matter who you are and what the extenuating circumstances are. In other words, this moral imperative is binding on every person, past, present, and future, no matter what culture you come from, and no matter what the state of your mind is as you're completing the act. Furthermore, this moral imperative is not going to true somewhere. You can't put this up for scientific analysis and demonstrate that it's wrong to do this. And that's actually just what the Bible says. The law of God is written on the hearts of human beings, every human. And there are some humans that just suppress that truth in unrighteousness. The book of Romans chapter 1 talks about this. So to review real quick, the Christian position is that human morality comes from God and is a reflection of God's very character. So we have a foundation, a straight line, if you will, by which to say that other lines are crooked. Now I've just described where morality comes from according to Christianity. What I need to do, though, in order to win the debate tonight, is to demonstrate that the Christian worldview is the necessary foundation for morality, and that the atheistic position cannot account for morality. And conversely, Mr. Sotero will also have to demonstrate that the atheistic position can account for morality, and the Christian position cannot. So how are we going to do this? Well, before we get into this, I would like to just briefly go over what this debate is not about. This debate is not about who's more moral. Frankly, it doesn't matter. It doesn't pertain to the arguments. This debate is also not about whether atheists are capable of doing good things or using moral reasoning. Actually, the Bible says that they are. Just because someone acts in a certain way does not mean that they have the right foundation for acting that way. Someone can say all day that air doesn't exist, but they still have to breathe it eventually. Thirdly, this debate is not about whether the Bible is an immoral book of Christianity and a moral religion. You may misunderstand the Bible. You may not personally like the Bible. Those are merely preferences, not moral imperatives. The question is, where does morality come from? Not whose idea of morality are most people comfortable with. That question is just irrelevant. Now then, getting back to the real issue in tonight's debate, how are Mr. Scatero and myself to prove that our worldview has the necessary foundation for human morality? I'd like to suggest to you this evening, and I do this very respectfully by the way, Mr. Scatero actually conceded the debate by showing up tonight. And I'll say it again, Mr. Scatero conceded the whole debate tonight just by showing up. And I'll demonstrate why. The question in the debate tonight is where does morality come from? Now, in order to even ask that question, you have to make an assumption. One of those assumptions is that morality exists. And in assuming that morality exists, my friend, Mr. Shapiro, has conceded a debate. Because if morality exists, there is such a thing as good. And if there is such a thing as good, there must be a moral law by which to differentiate between good and evil. If there is a moral law, if you assume that, you must assume that there is a moral law giver. But that's the very person the atheist is trying to disprove. So, you see, in order to even argue against the God of Christianity, my opponent will first have to assume that he exists. Now, why is this, though? Why can't an atheist have a rational justification for morality? Simply put, in an atheist universe where all that exists is matter in motion, the concept of morality makes absolutely no sense. Some atheists have said that morality is whatever the majority decides. Now, if that's true, Nazi Germany was right because that culture decided it was right to do what they did. So that doesn't work. Other atheists have said, well, it's just what I say is right. Well, if that's true, morality doesn't exist either because the rapists can just say, I get pleasure out of what I'm doing. Therefore, what I'm doing is right. So that doesn't work. Other atheists, this is a little more complicated, but they'll say that, well, morality comes from some kind of a principle. One that's commonly given is that morality is that which reduces the greatest amount of harm or brings about the greatest amount of happiness. Of course, though, this begs the question. Both those terms, happiness and harm, are morally charged terms. They actually assume that morality exists before you can define what they are. So you're basically assuming what morality is in order to prove what morality is. That's a circular argument. It doesn't work. And furthermore, I want to know by whose definition of harm and whose definition of happiness. A rapist gets a lot of happiness from what he does, so why should we just define it that way? All right, there's one more example that an atheist can use, and this is probably one of the more common ones. They'll say something like this. We evolved to be moral creatures for mutual cooperation and survival. Now, in logic, this is called the naturalistic fallacy. Just because something is the case has absolutely nothing to do with whether it ought to be the case. For example, most people like chocolate ice cream, just statistically. I don't. I'm in the minority, but most people do like chocolate ice cream. Does this mean that it is the obligation of every human being to like chocolate ice cream? They have to because the majority of people have evolved that. Of course not. So that one doesn't work either. Now, atheism is utterly bankrupt of any necessary reason to treat your neighbor like yourself, yet many atheists liberalize as if they do appreciate that we treat each other as ourselves. For instance, I don't think Mr. Spatero would care for it if I decided to win the debate tonight by shooting them. He would probably think that's not such a great idea, because he does have a moral standard that he operates by. Now, why is this? I submit to you it is because, in their heart of hearts, the atheists know the God of Christianity. They have His law written on their hearts, but as Romans 1 says, they suppress the truth in unrighteousness. They borrow from the Christian worldview, stealing concepts such as absolute moral standards, in order to attempt to disprove the Christian worldview. Tonight, you're going to hear both Mr. Shapiro and myself make moral arguments and judgments, all the while both of us standing on the same foundation of Christianity. I encourage you to take notice of every time that my opponent assumes that morality is obligatory, ununiversal, or unchanging. Observe the way he argues, and then ask yourself, what foundation is he standing on? Because I submit to you, he cannot account for moral absolutes in a world of time, chance, and matter. he will have to rely on my worldview in order to make his arguments work. And that, my friends, is ultimately the proof that the Christian concept of morality is the correct one. Because without it, you cannot prove anything. It must be assumed by both of us to make any rational sense of the world around us. Thank you. In the absence of God, in the absence of Christianity, in the absence of God, would you rape, rob, and murder? In the absence of God, nothing would exist. We wouldn't be here, so it's kind of... Assuming that we would. That's a logical fallacy, so no. I'm going to appeal to the audience and let you all decide whether that's a logical fallacy or not. Well, I can explain it to you if you want to. No, that's okay. All right. There are obviously other religions which you and I don't believe in. Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism. We can concede that. I believe they exist, but I don't believe that they necessarily are. Right, they're teachings. What is it, by what authority, and by what standard, I won't even say standard, by what authority, by what right, do the preachings of your religion, Christianity, and the values and the moral teachings stand over these other religions? Well, actually, the answer is in the closings of my opening statement. Without the Christian worldview, you cannot prove anything. So, the God of Christianity, his character makes morality consistent. We can't actually arrive at any moral statement if his character is not there to make it, you know, rightly understood. So, I would argue that way. Okay. How do you explain the existence of morality in time periods before Christianity existed and in geographical areas to which it had not spread? I know that you did touch upon this, but like a really reasoned answer. Yeah, sure. There's actually, I think, a misnomer there. Christianity, in a sense, has existed from the foundation of time. I mean, we go back to Genesis with the Word of God and the Christian worldview. So, in a sense, there have always been followers of God. Christ didn't come until 2,000 years ago, but that was a continuation of a religion that was already in place. Ultimately, though, in my opening statements, I talked about this. Every human being, whether you're an atheist or a Buddhist or whatever, has the law of God written on their hearts because we live in His world and we are created by Him. So even those who don't believe that morality exists still have to operate by some kind of moral standard. All right then. How much more? Sounds good. You talked about, and I know I might be making you repeat yourself just a bit here, but I'd like to clarify a few things. So you do believe that Abraham's willingness, or Jephthah's actual going through with killing their child for God, that was an act of morality? It was an act of morality. I don't necessarily agree that it was right morality. And those are two different situations, so I'd make a distinction between them. You said that it's a tactic morality, but not a right morality. Yeah, I don't think it was right what Jephthah did. And what Abraham, if you read the context of the story, that's actually foreshadowing of what's going to happen when Christ came. And God had already promised Abraham that Isaac would be the father, basically the father of a great nation. So Abraham trusted God that God was going to have to somehow figure out a way to get around this. So if you read the whole story in context, which is what we do on Thursday nights, then it would actually make more sense. Alright, and Jephthah who burns his daughter alive, but that's not, that one was not a moral act. I would say descriptive versus prescriptive. In scripture there's a lot of moral things that happen, some of them are descriptive, bad things that happen, but God doesn't necessarily say that this is the right thing to do. So Jephthah basically did the wrong thing in that situation. Alright. Do you believe that the institution of slavery is, throughout the Old and New Testament, do you believe that there is morality in the institution of slavery, which is widely acceptable apparently by the standards of God? It depends what kind of slavery you're talking about. The scripture talks about debtors being basically slaves. It talks about we are slaves of Christ, they're slaves of the devil, so there's spiritual slavery there. If you're talking about Hebrew slavery or Roman slavery, which are two completely different things historically, then I would say at the time that the Bible was written in the context as an institution for the betterment and the welfare of the individuals in that context, Slavery was a good thing, but it's not the conception that we tend to have in our minds of what slavery was with the racist and the man-capture elements in it. I'm kind of confused as to where exactly you derive your moral standards. So I want to ask you a very simple question, and then maybe we can get to the bottom of where your morality derives from. Is it wrong to torture babies for the fun of it? Yes. Why? Well, because first of all I do think that to answer this question you have to start by realizing that the harm that is part of the Golden Rule, Rabbi Hillel quoted parts of the Golden Rule in his own teachings, but it can date back even to Confucius. that do unto others as you would have others do unto you. Now, I don't think of that as a universal law of morality, but it does hold true. With all due respect, I understand what you're saying as far as I agree with you that it shouldn't happen. What I'm trying to ask is why? I agree, do unto others as you should have them do unto you. Jesus even said that. But why is that something that is binding on every human being? Why should we not torture babies for fun? Well, that's the point, and that's the point and conclusion of innate morality, that the why is apparent enough within ourselves, and asking myself and in front of an audience why we shouldn't torture babies for fun, I don't think that there's anybody in the audience who is questioning, or at least I hope, who says, well, maybe we should torture babies for fun. I think that everyone here, and myself, knows that. That's the point of it. Because the majority all says that it's wrong, that it's wrong? No, no, not moral relativism. Because I don't think it's the majority. If you torture babies for fun, there's a sociopathic or psychopathic nature to you. So you're saying that it's wrong to torture babies for fun because we all just know it. Because you just know it's wrong. Well, yes. We just know God exists. Would you accept that as a valid argument? No. Why not? You're just making that argument to me, are you not? I see. Well, the evidence... No, no, it's a good point. The evidence for the existence of God is substantially lower than the evidence, I think, that we all can see within ourselves that we shake and torture babies for fun. There can be an inclination to believe in a higher power. There can even be an argument for it. I don't think anyone would take a speaker seriously if he came up here and tried to debate with either of us why we should torture babies for fun. And you're certain of this? Yeah, I'm pretty certain that nobody here... No, no, you're certain that the evidence is substantially less for... Yes. Have you run a scientific experiment on that? I'm not a scientist, no. How do you know? Because I'm a human being with enough critical faculties and functions of inquiry to decide for myself. But I'm also a human being and I have the opposite conclusion of you, so... Sure, you've decided something else for yourself. You've looked at the Bible, right? I shouldn't be posing questions to you, actually, so continue. Yes, what I'm trying to basically say, the line I'm trying to go on here is you seem to just say it is because it is. It's just we all just know it's self-evident, we all know. May I read a quote from someone? I'm sorry? Read a quote to answer exactly where. Well, if you have a quote that answers the question, yeah. That's what I'm trying to get to. It's something you've argued against in your opening statement. But for those of us who do believe it, and I don't have time to explain why, Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist, says in one of his books that first, there's three cases for morality in nature. First, that there's a case of genetic kinship, that we're all human beings. Second, that there's the idea of reciprocation, that we, in Darwinian, in nature, You mind if I just cut you off for a moment? Is the bottom line of what you're talking about, we basically evolved this function? That's where it comes from? No, not that we evolved it, but it's in nature, that it's been with us, that it's in other species, that it's in all of animal and plant and wild life. Well, lions have a sense of morality as well. Pardon? Lions have a sense of morality, they're animals. Yes, they have to. But they think they're young, so why shouldn't we do that? I think that lions have a different sense of morality and a different brain. And if it's scientific, if they have a different brain, they have a different lifestyle. With all due respect, I have a different brain than you. So shouldn't I have a different moral standard? We both have very different brains than lions. Correct, yeah, biologically, but I'm saying there are different molecules, different materials that make up both of our brains as well. So if you're going to go along that line, then why shouldn't anyone who has a different material in their mind have a different moral system? Right back to the first thing I said, genetic kinship. Atheism doesn't say this is what morality is. It also doesn't say this is what you should do on Sunday or this is what you need to eat. Atheism just says there isn't a God. It's as simple as that. And by the way, that means not a creator. That's very specifically not an intervening, all-knowing, all-powerful God. There you go. Second, I'd like to agree that morality is not relative. And I'd like to say on the concept of absolute morality, that that sounds like a pretty bad bargain to me. The second that someone makes an absolute morality, or I should even say an objective morality, I'd be very hesitant to believe that they've found the truth. Rabbi Hillel, once again, I'll quote him once more, speaks of the truth, saying that it's a battle that you might not ever win, but you can never stop fighting. And objective morality. The idea that there's one specific standard that we can all go to, like a Bible, or any rule, whether you want it to be a Bible or a law system or Hammurabi's Code, any single objective standard, you should question. You should be very suspicious of. For anybody who tells you, not just that they know the truth, that they've found out the truth, but that this is what it is and you have to follow it too. I think that's a little bit of a our ability to learn and expand and discover things for ourselves. That's all from our book. All right, well, I jotted down a couple notes. from your opening statement, Jason. And I just want to actually go over for the audience some of my reactions to them. First, you did consider morality, basically, the definition is there is a sense of right and wrong, and that is an innate sense of right and wrong. And on this point, I'm in complete agreement with Jason, because that's exactly what I said in my opening statements, that the reason there is innate morality of right and wrong, that is absolute transcendence and all the other characteristics we talked about, is because God basically gave that to us. We went on to talk about Australia and how they had no exposure to Christianity. I think we've already dealt with that. They had a law of God written on their hearts whether they were exposed to Christianity or not. We went over two examples from the Old Testament on things that Jason found to be immoral. First I'd like to appeal to the audience, though, and ask them, how can Jason even bring the question up of whether these things are right or wrong if he doesn't have a standard of his own by which to compare them and judge them to be right and wrong? So the question shouldn't really be asked in the first place. If it was right for that culture, or if that culture evolved it, or if it was the innate sense of morality for Jethro to do what he did, then what makes it wrong? That's just what he did. And if what is, just is, then I don't understand what the problem is there. But as a Christian, I will deal with them just really quick. The example with Abraham, basically that's a picture of Christ, when Christ sent his own son to die. Christians have interpreted it that way for a long time. We'll get more into that if we need to. God promised that Isaac was going to be the father of a chosen nation, and Abraham knew that God was somehow going to work this out. So it was confusing. It's like, why would he want me to give up my son? God was really teaching Abraham a lesson. If you note in the story, he doesn't actually kill Isaac. God provides a lamb, or a ram, rather, stuck in the thicket. So if we actually go through the whole story, put it in the greater context of what the Bible says, and the immediate context, then we will find there's really no problem here. With Jephthah, again, that's a prescriptive thing, or a descriptive thing, not a prescriptive thing. God's not saying that you should do this and kill your daughters if you make a bad promise, so that's not really a problem either. The lady who killed her daughter because God told her, that's irrelevant. I mean, there's a lot of people that say a lot of people told them different things. I don't know if she was crazy or... or whatnot, but okay, so she killed her daughter, it's still wrong, it conflicts with the standard that's set forth in scripture. And again, on our consciences of what God says is right and wrong is. You kept saying that I don't think it's right. I don't think it's right to punish children with child. I don't think it's right. Well, okay, I understand you don't think it. What I'm trying to get to is like, why is it wrong? Is it just because you don't think it? Because I could sit here all day and say, I don't think you're right. I don't think you're right. That's a valid argument. Then I guess I just won the debate because I don't think what you said makes any sense. We talked about love a little bit and where that comes from. I'd like to know, in an atheist universe of just matter and motion and material things, how is a concept such as love, that's not even a material thing, so how does that even exist? I guess we can get into that a little bit later, but I think there needs to be some more explanation there. Let's see, do animals love? Actually, I'll get into it a little bit. Do animals love? Do rocks love? Do non-material things love? Or material things that aren't, here's my Christian worldview coming out, made in the image of God. They love. Atheism really doesn't account for morality. You just said that in your rebuttal. So I'm not sure why we're here right now. Atheism doesn't account for morality. Why don't you just become a Christian then? Because my worldview doesn't account for morality. And one last question, and maybe we can get to this in our cross-examination. Are you absolutely sure that it is wrong that there exists no absolute morality? I'd like you to think about that a little bit, because if you're absolutely sure that it's wrong, then you do have an absolute standard of morality. If you're not absolutely sure, that means you're not sure whether that standard exists or not. And so you're opening to the Christian worldview being true. Let's see, what else? I think I've covered most of the things that I've brought it down to here. Character and nature. We're talking about the God of the Old and New Testament, correct? Correct. So this is the God who commands genocide against the Amalekites and Midianites. Well, for the sake of argument, I'll say yes. I don't think that's maybe the right term, but yeah, sure. Well, he commands them to, in paraphrasing it, kill all of the men, women, children, and then even the animals, because of the fact that they just own them. So that would be genocide to me. Yeah, but if you look in the greater context of scripture, again, which is why we meet on Thursday nights to discuss these things, you're going to find out that there were many exceptions to that. You're going to find out about Rahab the harlot, her whole family was saved because she trusted in God. She was humble. God saved her. There's another group of men, I forget exactly what their names were, but God spared all of them. They actually deceived the Israelites into thinking that they were someone else. You'll find that Jesus, when he's with the woman at the well, she's a Canaanite woman. There's a lot of hyperbolic war language in the Old Testament that's used, not just in the Bible, but in other literature of the ancient times, where they talk about, and we do this a little bit today, sports, right? We murdered them, you know, last week or whatever. Did you literally murder the sports team? No, you just beat them. And a lot of that kind of stuff happens in scripture. So no, they did not annihilate all of them. And God, just as a side note here, he sent pestilence ahead of the Israelites to warn the Canaanites so that they could flee, so that they could repent. He gave them a chance. He even stopped the Israelites from going in there initially because he said their corruption hasn't been complete. But eventually, and we get into Canaanite culture, they were a horrendous culture. We don't even have the level of depravity in our culture. consider it, but God did judge them through the nation of Israel. So to just blankly say it's genocide, that's not really the whole story, but I would concede, if you wanted to define genocide, with the caveats I just gave you. Would ethnic cleansing be a better term then? Not ethnic, it's actually about their belief system, it wasn't their ethnicity. Religious cleansing. Sure, sure, absolutely. Religious cleansing of, you know, having child sacrifices, burning of their god Molech, of horrible bestialities. I mean, if you get into the gods of these tribes, these are some really awful people groups. So, and by child sacrifices, that wouldn't be anything similar to the killing of all the firstborns in Egypt, now would it? The firstborns in Egypt were killed by Pharaoh, so I'm not sure what your point is. I meant to say the Amalekites, the Midianites, their children were killed. This is the same subject. They killed their children rather than the Amalekites. Israelites. Israelites killed many of their children, correct? Correct, okay, so that's the same, not quite sacrificing, but killing of children. It's not exactly the same, because... Right, it's not the same, that's what I said. It's not the same, but it is still the killing of children. They would both be killing of children. Okay, okay, and then child sacrifice, let's go right to that. You said that it's less immoral because Abraham doesn't kill Isaac. It's also more because God was trying to teach Abraham a lesson and Abraham knew in the first place that God would have to provide an alternate way, that was my point. Okay, but conveniently when Jephthah kills his daughter, I'd like to press you on this, why is it that when Jephthah burns his daughter alive, because for those of you... I guess you should inform the audience, for those of you who don't know, and you'll correct me if I'm wrong at any point here, that Jephthah says to God that as a sacrifice, as an offering, if he wins this battle, he will burn to God the first thing that walks through the door, right? Sure. And then it said that his daughter walks through the door, and then he burns her alive for God. Uh, yes. Okay, so that's better than the situation with Abraham. But he was wrong. Why was he wrong? Because that contradicts a number of other commands in the scripture. If you look at the passage, God never approved of what Jephthah did. It was actually... An omnipotent... Sorry, continue. Yeah, I'm just saying that basically that was a descriptive thing. There's stories in the Bible that are evil things that happened. It doesn't mean God necessarily approves of them. Okay, but an omnipotent... all-powerful and omniscient, all-knowing God. And all-loving. And all-loving, right. Could not prevent him from burning his daughter alive. For sure he couldn't. Alright, well I'll leave it at that then. an entire standard, an entire system of rules, then you're limiting the possibilities for further improvement. And if there's one thing I think we've learned as a species, it's that there really is just about no, I can't think offhand of any, no limitation for improvement. Not with our technology, not with our economy, not with our societies, and especially not with ourselves as individuals. Are you absolutely sure about that? Well, I'm pretty damn sure about that. I'm sure enough to assert that as much of a fact as this. I don't see any conclusive evidence, any evidence at all really, to go against that idea. Okay, so you think that it's wrong to have absolute sense. But you're not absolutely sure about that. Are you absolutely sure that you think that there shouldn't be absolutes. There's catastrophe in the wordplay here. When I'm absolutely sure of something, it's not that I'm, if someone were to put evidence in front of me. Are you sure of that? It's not that if someone were to put evidence in front of me. I'm saying when. The sense of when. When I say I'm absolutely sure, or I don't say I'm absolutely sure, it's very different than saying there's an absolute standard. Because when I say that I'm sure of something, then I'm open-minded enough that if you were to put it in front of my face, Are you sure? If you were to put it in front of my face that there's a reason, the sentence has to finish, for this to go on. If you were to put it in front of my face that there's a reason for me to think differently, I would. If there was evidence for this totalitarian god that I don't find, then I would believe in him. But so far, he's just been talking through, apparently, secondhand accounts of stupefied desert peasants. I think you're ranging beyond the question I asked. Let me ask you this question. Can you be wrong about everything that you claim to know? Could I be? Yes. So I'm going to explain this a little bit, but then how can you be certain of anything? Because if you stated that you thought the mail came today, let's say, but you could be wrong. You don't know if the mail came, but you could be wrong. And the fact is you really don't know whether the mail came or not. And I'd like to know if you could be wrong about everything you claim to know, how can you be certain of anything? Well, I don't need to be certain of anything. I need to be confident enough by the evidence that I can find, that's put before me, that I can go and look for. The evidence that I can gather for anything. I need to be certain enough to make decisions in my life. Are you certain that you don't have to be certain? Would you elaborate that for me, please? Would you go into that just a bit further, sketch that out for me? Because this really just sounds like catastrophe in wordplay to me so far. Certain that I don't need to be certain? Well, you keep making these, basically these absolute statements, and then you keep saying that, no, there's no absolute. You say, no, there's no certainty, but you keep acting as if you're very certain of it. You're very certain that this God of the Bible who you define as, with all these negative things, is a really horrible guy. And no one should worship him, but then you'll say that, no, I'm not certain of anything. So I just, I'm, I'm really curious, then why do you keep making absolute claims if you don't believe in absolutes? Because I'm an open-minded enough to not say that no matter what you were to put in front of my face, I would be so close-minded as to say, no, that's, that's not getting at the question. The question is, I want to know how you're certain that you're open-minded. How do you even know that? In other words, how do you know anything? How do you start? How do you even start? I'm going to appeal to the audience to this one, to just take this question. I'm not even sure how to take the question. How do I appeal to anything? It's not from a God. I'd like to know if I were to say to you the same. Actually, you know what? Once again, I'm not going to ask you questions during the interview. I'm actually okay with it. You can have it back and forth, that's fine. Alright, well if you were to ask, if I were to ask you the same, I know that you would say that, I'm assuming you'd say that God of the Bible, you were created with this, the image of God. I mean, I'll let you answer it. I would, the way that I actually, that's a good question. I would say, and actually I'll ask you the question since I'm not asking questions. If the God of the Bible is this all-powerful being that he claims to be, do you think it was possible, I'm not saying that he does, but is it possible that he could communicate with human beings in such a way that they could know for certain? If he exists? Certainly if he exists. If he exists, then is it possible that he could communicate in human beings? Yes. Okay, and that's how I know for certain. That's how I can have absolute certainties in my worldview, whereas you can't. Okay, well I'll say open minds is enough to keep other perspectives in mind. I'm glad you're certain of that. I think we're done with those. And once again, I'm going to appeal to all of you as individuals to make a final and conclusive decision for yourself. The idea. To me, it would be a theory, but the idea or the concept that's been put forward by Mr. Harris tonight so graciously, that we would not have morality, we would not know right from wrong, if it was not for God, not for Christianity. I call this, in reference to the classic Wizard of Oz, I call this the Tin Man Theory. Because Jay is very plainly that we wouldn't have a heart unless the wizard gives it to us. A very simple question. And I think that it's a nasty insinuation. I'm now talking to you all around the world that there's an insult to us, to our humanity, to our integrity, to our independence as individuals and our ability to cooperate with our species and with our fellow primates. that we can choose right and wrong for ourselves, that we are capable of making decisions without appealing to a supernatural power, and that we don't need to rely on scriptures that date back to Bronze Age, Palestine, and Middle Eastern areas, to tell us how we live today, with the context that we have, with the morality that we have, and that we are better than this. It was Albert Einstein who said, I'll quote him, I don't know if I'm going to interpret it, but right along the lines of, if we are, If mankind is only good to one another because of the threat of an eternal punishment, and because of the hope of an eternal reward, then we are a sorry lot of people. And I don't think I have to make too much of a push. And everybody think for themselves, would you? The question that Mr. Harris did not cross. that would you, in the absence of God, for those of you who can't ask, break from the Lord? If the answer to this is yes, then I'd do to keep a good distance from you, and so would the rest of us. Because I believe that your morality, your humanity, is hanging by a thread of fate. And if the answer is no, then you've just proven to yourselves that there is an innate standard of morality. There is an innate knowledge and understanding. Now, very quickly, because I won't read all of that. This is the abnegation, the denial, the tossing away of our own humanity. And we're better than this, and we deserve to see ourselves destroyed. It's as simple as that. And I'll very quickly touch upon, from the prospect of evolution, the idea that Richard Dawkins, and who describes to us in one of his books, and many other scientists do in their own minds. The response from Darwinian and evolutionary perspective is that where does morality come from? Why does it exist? Examples of inundation around us. The first is genetic engine, the idea that we all are human beings. We label not to one another that we do whatever is great. And that is a strong degree of understanding of our people. The second is, I don't think the answer is, the second is very emotional. that it's in hopes for the reciprocation of such a thing. If I do something good for you, you will cut me down for it. That we can live, breathe, and think happily. We do know, and I think everyone can agree, religious or otherwise, that without morality, we would be exterminated as a species. It's self-extermination. We wouldn't be able to survive. Whether we get it from God, or from innate truths, or from evolution, however you'd like to put it, we wouldn't be exterminated without this. We would not be here. The third a point that Dawkins makes, touches upon that very closely, is that we look to create a reputation for ourselves, that in a society, in a way of nature, among our fellow friends. We don't say, or we don't create the image that we are going to do wrong, that we are going to harm, that we are going to hurt, that we are going to name the lives of others. If we did, once again, we would not be able to function as a species. And if you do that, you will not be able to function as an individual, not in this society, not in yourself, any other. So I'll repeat one claim I just made as a proposal. That this is the abrogation of our own humanity, and that we deserve to see ourselves better than that. We are better than that. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming. Thank you to both organizations. Thank you to Mr. Harris, and thank you to the professor. Have a great time. Thank you very much, Jason. I actually prepared a five-minute closing statement, and I just found out I goofed because it's at 10 minutes. So I find myself with some extra time. So I'm hoping I can address some of the things that Jason just talked about in his closing statement. I heard Jason talk about tossing away our humanity, that we would be essentially not human anymore if we, I'm presuming, embrace the idea that we have to be moral because God dictates it to us and that's where it comes from. I'd just like to briefly get a little bit of Christian theology on this. Christian theology teaches that we're made in God's image. That's what separates us from the animal kingdom. An example I gave earlier, lions eat their babies at times. It's an interesting habitat they've seen before. And I asked Jason the question, well, why is it wrong for humans to do that? He said, well, we're different than animals. It's part of our humanity. So Jason and I both recognize that there is a difference between humans and animals. I'd like to know, though, in an evolutionary world, where we came from animals, why is there a difference when it comes to morality? In my worldview, it makes perfect sense. We're made in God's image. But in the worldview of the evolutionists, of the atheists, of the humanists, it doesn't seem to make much sense. It doesn't comport with the reality you see around us. So I would suggest that we need to not toss away our humanity. If you want to toss away your humanity and say that you're just like an animal, then embrace what Jason is forwarding. If you want to actually embrace your humanity, embrace what Christianity says which gives us self-worth because we're made in the image of God. The naturalistic fallacy was used again, that we've evolved this ability to be moral with each other. I'd like to also ask another question to the audience. It seems that human beings are peculiar creatures because we've evolved two things. We've evolved the ability to harm one another, and we've also evolved the ability to help one another. And I'd like to know why you would arbitrarily choose helping over harming. They both came from evolution, right? Because everything came from evolution. So why should we just pick one over the other? Isn't that subjective? Another thing I want to touch on is bringing out the naturalistic fallacy. If I gave you an example, let's say a plane crash happens. The plane went down. It was a horrible crash. Everyone died except you. You're the one person that survived. And there's news reporters there, people standing around. And you go up to them and they say, how did you survive that horrible plane crash? And you say to them, well, you want to know how I survived? I survived because if I hadn't have survived, I wouldn't be here talking to you. They'd be like, what? That's not what I was asking. Well, that's a naturalistic fallacy. Jason's basically saying, without some sense of morality, you wouldn't be here. Well, that's true, but that's not the issue tonight. We all know we're here. The issue is where did the morality come from? So, again, you can't basically base your morality on an evolutionary concept. It just doesn't work. I'd like to get to more of what I really want to talk about in my closing statement, though, and I'd like to start off by just thanking Jason personally. I actually, I really like Jason. We were talking, we talked a couple of occasions before this debate, and he's a really stand-up guy. He's an honorable guy. I really respect him. I'm really thankful to the Secular Student Alliance for putting this together, and the True Studies for the help that they put in as well. But what I'm about to say is meant for Jason as well. I care about Jason, and I want to see Jason in heaven one day, and I want all of you to be there one day. So that's why I'm about to give you what I'm about to give you. In most debates, the closing statement is set aside for debaters to make their final closing arguments and drive home their points. I'm going to do something a little different today. I feel as though the Christian position has already been represented and has been proven and justified. And I think that the atheist position has been shown to be relying on the Christian foundation. So I'm not going to belabor that point. What I'd like to do is circumnavigate your intellect for a moment and speak directly to your conscience. Before that, I'm going to start with a story, though. The debate tonight would not have taken place without a gentleman by the name of Ray Marchetti. Ray was a good friend of mine, and some of you actually may have met him. He used to stand outside of the sub every Monday morning and afternoon. And if you guys remember the person, Italian guy who used to stand there, and you'd try to get past him, and he'd put literature in your face in a respectful way, or try to talk to you about Christianity, that's the guy I'm referring to. So many of you have either seen him or heard about him or probably had a conversation with him. But anyways, this debate happened because Ray saw someone, I guess met someone from the Secular Student Alliance. They started talking. Ray referred him to the Tree of Study. He came, we talked, and that's where the debate came from. And Ray was actually very excited about Sam. really likes apologetics, which is defending the Christian faith. And every conversation we had, he talked about it this night. And he actually even told me, he said, can I sit there with you and debate as well? And I was like, well, that would be two against one, right? He said, oh, get another one. We'll debate two on two. And I was like, we already have the format and stuff. But all I have to say, he was really excited about it. And you can just see it in his eyes. He wanted, though, to see the gospel of Jesus Christ preached in front of everyone. He wasn't here to bash the atheists. He wasn't here to make other people look bad. He wanted the gospel to go forward, because that's what he cared about. And anyone who's talked to him knows that's exactly what he cared about. He cared about people. And I want to follow him, and I care about people as well. Ray actually died two weeks ago in a tragic car accident. And it was very sudden. It was a shock to everyone at my church. The reason I bring this up is because Ray was ready for death. And I want to ask you the question, are you ready for death? We debate tonight on the precipice of eternity. You don't know how long you have. You could die on the way home today. Or you could have 70 years. Even if you have 70 years, eventually you are going to die. The Bible describes this life as a breath. It's today it's here, tomorrow it's gone. What you believe doesn't matter. And if Christianity is true and there is a moral standard that is binding on all of us from a perfectly moral being, we're in trouble. I ask you, have you kept God's law? Have you kept God's law? Have you put him first in every situation? Do you blaspheme his name? Do you murder? Maybe you don't murder, but Christ said if you hate your brother and you have fantasies about doing it, you're a murderer at heart. Because God looks at the inward. He doesn't look as man looks. Man looks at the outward appearance. God looks at the heart. If you've committed adultery, if you cheat on your spouse, or your girlfriend, or your boyfriend, because if you're doing that, then you're also breaking God's law. But more importantly, God looks at the heart. If you're even fantasizing about it, God knows. We could go on, but I think we all know innately that there's this moral law that's over us, and our conscience convicts us that we have not kept that moral law. What will you do when you stand before God, and he asks you to give an account for your life? If the arguments given tonight were able to convince you that morality comes from God, I'm glad, but that's not the main goal. The goal is to go to the next step, realizing the standard exists over you, your conscience bearing witness. It will crush you on the day of judgment. And God has in place what's called hell for those who break his law. You might say, that's not fair. How can God do that? You don't know the holiness of God. God says that he cannot even look at sin. His way is blameless. And since I have a little bit of time, I'm going to give a quick example here. If you lie to your child, if your father or mother, then there's not going to be a lot of consequences. If you lie to your wife, you might sleep in the doghouse. If you lie to the government, you get brought up by treason charges to go to jail. Same sin, different people. But we're talking about an infinitely holy God right now, who's far above anything we can humanly conceive of. An eternal God requires an eternal punishment. But ladies and gentlemen, He made a way so that you could be forgiven. He sent His Son into this world, God of human flesh, a perfect sacrifice to take your sin, your law-breaking, your rebellion upon Himself. He paid your fines so you wouldn't have to. It's like this. You're in the courtroom, you owe five million dollars. Christ comes in, He pays that money. You could have never paid it back. You say, my good works can pay for it. That's like giving the judge five bucks when you owe five million. All He asks you to do is repent, meaning turn from your sin and trust in Him for your salvation. It's not enough simply to believe that God exists. That's like a plane's going down. It's like saying, I believe in the parachute, but not putting it on. The Bible says to put on the Lord Jesus Christ. You have to rely on Him. You have to trust in Him that what He did paid for your sin. This is the message Ray brought to this campus, and it's a message of love, that we're lawbreakers, and God has made a way so we can get a right relationship and forgiven. Alright, I'll finish up right now. Ray brought this message, I'm bringing this message now. This true study is supposed to be an event for those who are interested next Thursday in SCB 402. I encourage you to come if you have questions. If you want to make sure that you know that you go to heaven when you die. If you have questions about anything that happened in the debate tonight or just want to talk, come and be with us. We have some pastors lined up and they will be willing to answer any of your questions. So thank you once again. Thank you everyone. I hold in my hand questions from the audience. I will ask each of our participants a question in turn. They will have three minutes to answer the question. And our partner participant gets two minutes to rebuttal as well. We'll continue in the same order we've been proceeding. Jason, you get the first question. How do you account for a man who innately feels that he should murder someone? Well, that would be by one of three. The first two, I'll knock off very easily, they're products of nature. They're sociopathic and psychopathic. Sociopathic, very simply, being. It's just a definition of someone who doesn't have any innate sense of morality, who doesn't understand right from wrong, and who's indifferent to the pain he can inflict on other people. And psychopathic, a step further, someone who enjoys inflicting that pain on someone else. Now, in the other situation, it could be an emotion. Very simply, that anger, that sadness, that, I mean, I think anger and sadness would be two good enough examples. Ideas, emotions that appeal to emotion, anything against logic, anything against that innate morality. And I think it's very plain to say that we don't always act as we would or act as we innately know we should, under the pretense of emotions. That's all. The question was, how do you account for a man who innately feels that he should murder someone? I think Jason's answer was a great answer to the question, why do people ever feel like they should murder someone? But it did not answer the question, how can he account for it? That's a completely different question. That's asking about the underlying foundation for why morality exists in the first place, and why people do the things that they do. Christianity accounts for that by saying that people know what the truth is, but they suppress it in their unrighteousness. The murderer knows that it's wrong to murder. He wouldn't want to be murdered himself, but he does it because he thinks it's the right thing to do for what? For a wrong end, for his own personal, whatever his personal reason is. So Christianity can't account for it. I'm not sure how atheism does because the whole concept that Jason was talking about with morality coming from nature, well this also comes from nature, the fact that people murder. So if people murder comes from nature as well as people doing good things, why shouldn't we just choose good over evil? So I think that was a good answer to a different question. Okay, question for Jonathan. You talked about the distinction between prescriptive and descriptive events in the Bible. Are you not the one choosing what is prescriptive and what is descriptive? Are you not making your own code of morality by choosing which stories to take lessons from? I think this question kind of misunderstands maybe the point that I was making. It's not that I look in the Bible and I see a bunch of things that God says, these are the right things to do, and I say, you know what, I like four of the Ten Commandments, but I don't like those other six, so I'm just going to, you know, we're not going to do those. It's more like this. There are situations, I'll give you one example here. The crucifixion of Jesus, right? The Roman soldiers, it says that they were evil, they had evil motives in what they did. Well, clearly that was a wrong thing to have happen. It was wrong for them to do what they did. They were doing something evil. That doesn't mean God approves of it because it simply is recorded in the Bible. This is just basic literature for anyone who's taking a literature class. Any book you read, just because the story is in the book of something that happened doesn't mean that the book is saying you should go do it. If that's the case, I think that You know, everyone who reads Twilight should go look for vampires and fall in love with them. That's just not what this is talking about. We're talking about the difference between descriptive, descriptive meaning it happened and there's no information about whether you should or should not do it, and prescriptive. Prescriptive meaning when a doctor prescribes a pill to you, you should do this. God says you should not murder. That's prescriptive. Jephthah murdered his daughter. That's descriptive. God did not approve of it. So that's the answer. Well, I think that I'll just point back to something that is a basic concept called monotheism, that we're all supposedly created in the image of God. the God who supposedly accounts for the events in the Old and New Testament, the same God that's genocidal, philosophical, homophobic, misogynist, condones rape and slavery, and boasts his own jealousy while forbidding you to covet and yearn for what others have. questioner, whoever you are, is absolutely right. We have to choose what to take from the Bible. We have to decide what's in prescription and what's just description. Because if we didn't, because there are examples for both, but if we didn't, then we'd be resorting to barbarism, just like the characters in the Bible. Thank you. One more question for Jason. If morality is a name, then how do you describe or explain the abject depravity and total lawlessness witnessed often in civilized societies in the immediate aftermath of large-scale disasters, both natural like Katrina and man-made like Vietnam? No, it's a good question. It's a very good question. Desperation, very simply, and the idea that we do have an innate sense of morality, but that doesn't mean that we are all going to be innately perfectly moral. The fact is that we do. incline to selfish behavior. We all do, just as we incline to moral behavior. I don't think that we're perfect human beings. And I wouldn't state, I don't think anybody. I actually don't think even Christians would think that we're perfect human beings. I think that's something we could agree upon. So it's a good question, but it's simply answered by desperation and the fact that even though we have an innate sense of morality, we don't always act on it. I'm sorry for doing this again. Could you read the question one more time? If morality is innate, then how do you describe or explain the abject depravity and total lawlessness witnessed often in civilized societies in the immediate aftermath of large-scale disasters, both natural, like Katrina, and man-made, like Vietnam? I think it's actually a very good question. The key word in that question is the word innate. It's conditional. If morality is innate, then why do so many people do horrible, horrible things? And I think what Darwin is saying is when desperate times come, people tend, the worst of them tend to come out. And they tend to actually resort to horrible, horrible things. And we see this in all sorts of historical examples. The French Revolution, you know, we go on and on. But I think the point that the questioner is trying to get at is if we get our cues for how we should act from human behavior itself, then in a desperate situation, if that's the way humans behave, should we all behave that way? I think that's a good question. I don't really think Jason answered it, so I'll let the audience be the judge. Now another question for Jonathan. You attacked Jason on how he was certain. How are you certain? You said God communicated that to you. Sorry, let me start again. You attacked Jason on how he was certain. How are you certain? You said God communicated that to you. What if you're just isophrenic? How do you know you're not? That's actually not what I said. I did not say that God communicated it to me, and that's why it's the truth. It's actually, and I'll try to briefly do it, it's called the Transcendental Argument for God's Existence, and it's an argument you're going to find in scripture if you want to read Acts 17, Romans 1, and even in Proverbs there's some allusions to it. It says, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. In other words, you can't even have knowledge, you can't exist in the world that we exist in, unless you start with the God of the Bible. So, the argument goes like this, the proof for the existence of God is that without Him you cannot prove anything. In other words, we all rely on Him for what are called the preconditions of intelligibility. And that's just a simple way of saying, everything that we have to assume in order for life to make sense, the laws of logic, the laws of morality, the laws of mathematics, the uniformity of nature, all these things wouldn't make any sense unless the God of Scripture existed and His character supported them and gave them foundation. So I can be certain of everything that's happening here tonight, I can be certain that my sense perception is reliable because God makes it reliable. And to give you just a quick example of that, It's kind of like this, for any science majors out there, if you're going to look into a microscope or do any kind of science experimentation, you first want to make sure that all your instruments are calibrated. So you don't want a blurry image, you want a clear image. Well, okay, if you're going to calibrate, you're the human, and you're the one calibrating and making it certain that these instruments are functioning properly. Well, we also are instruments in a sense. We have the ability to see, think, reason, all the five senses. Well, what calibrates us? Why should we trust what we think? Well, the reason is because there is a calibrator, and that's the God of Scripture. And without the God of Scripture, then it makes no sense. You shouldn't trust your senses. That's where I get certainty from. And I would like to suggest without the God of Scripture, you're not going to have that kind of certainty? Well, there you have it. Just give up all of your systems of inquiry, your ability to think for yourself, your ability to find out the truth and your own truth on your own accounts and rest it on the Bible, rest it on a book, rest it on one absolute law, one absolute idea. if this is the way you're going to go about your existence then that's perfectly fine but I think to tell anybody else that they should give up their critical faculties and instead of exploring the world for themselves of discovering the world for themselves and appealing to mathematics and science and literature and poetry and love for themselves instead of that no, rest it on faith rested on the Bible. I think that that's, well, it's proven my point that you don't need religion to be moral, because I think it's an immoral thing to put a totalitarian and absolute concept like that in front of people and wish that all of them follow it. And I think it's somewhat of an abject and slavish kind of masochism to really think that that's the best way to follow it for yourself. Okay, final question for Jason. I realized that earlier in your argument, you stated that we as humans should be skeptical of all that we know. If this is the case, how can we have a sense of right and wrong which can be concrete beliefs? I'm very glad whoever asked that did. I've had to be skeptical of my own sense of right and wrong. And I'm sure that other people are at points too. For instance, I'll give a very brief anecdote. When I first, it was many years ago, I'm sure that everyone here, most of you are familiar with what the Westboro Baptist Church is. And I think a lot of, and I would not, by the way, that's not a label for Christianity. That's a very extreme and in a lot of words, nasty branch or denomination that preaches a lot of filthy, nasty, inhumane garbage. white noise to me when I look at it now. But when I first saw these people standing in the streets with signs of fornicating stick figures against homosexuality, that they thank God for IEDs, I thought, they shouldn't be able to say this. And then it took me time to stop and question my own morality, to say, no, no, they need to be able to say it. They need to have the same freedom of speech that we do. The extreme opinion needs to be heard. And so that's an example of how I have questioned my own morality, how I've questioned my sense of right and wrong. It's something we're all capable of doing. And I don't think that I'm above questioning it, and I don't think that any of us really need to be, or should be. The Achilles heel of skepticism is that you have to be skeptical of your skepticism. So if you are skeptical about the God of Christianity, or about everything else that exists in the world, then you also have to be skeptical of the fact that you're skeptical. And as I think most of us can see, that's kind of a self-defeating thing. You're never actually going to come to bedrock truth, if that is the case. But yet, Jason keeps acting like there is bedrock truth. He keeps talking as if he's for certain that the Christian God either can't exist or is a really mean guy. I can't actually figure out whether you don't believe in him or are just angry at him. I don't. But either way, I guess you're angry at someone you don't believe in. Then I think that we have a problem because you act as if there are absolutes, but then you say you're a skeptic, so we have an inconsistency here. OK, and a final question for Jonathan. Think back to when you were young. Is it better to act morally from fear of your parents' punishment, like being grounded, or to act morally because you can understand the harm your actions could cause? It's actually funny because my parents are in the audience. So I've got to be careful what I say here. I think every parent wants their child to say sorry and really mean it. Say you're sorry. Say it again because you didn't mean it the first time. Say it again. Go to your room for five minutes. Come back and say it when you really mean it. I'm going to presume that that's what the question is talking about. Shouldn't you have some kind of a feeling that, okay, I caused harm to another person, that's why I should be sorry. And I would agree with that, but the only reason I agree with that is because of Christianity. And Christianity, it's a misunderstanding to say that because of coercion, we should do the right thing. That's not the statement of Christianity. You come to the Savior because He's been so kind. It's kind of like if someone saved you, you were drowning, and someone jumped in and saved you, you'd be thankful to them. You love them and say, what can I do for you? That's why people come to Christianity. They don't come to Christianity because they're looking for fire insurance because they don't want to go to hell. You know, there's actually a quote up there, the doors of hell are locked from the inside. And I think it's got an interesting point to it. I think once people get to hell, they're going to realize, oh, no, you know, because it is a bad place. But in a sense, we do choose to go there, and God does allow that choice to be made. So, I think there's a misunderstanding of Christianity in the question, and I would agree that, yeah, you should have the proper motivations for being sorry. Because, again, man is made in the image of God, and if we hurt someone that's made in the image of God, then we have violated God's command. So it's not about the threat of getting punished. It is about the love and also just the gratitude that you've been saved by an amazing savior. So I'll just cut it there, I guess. Could you repeat the question? Think back to when you were young. Is it better to act morally from fear of your parents' punishment, like being grounded, or to act morally because you can understand the harm your actions could cause? Well, then, in response to Mr. Harris's answer, I don't think that there is an inconsistency. I don't think that there is something being left out. I think that what's being left out is that there's something opposite from heaven. Christianity, the problem here is that it's not just being preached to say, look, if you feel like it, come in. The doors are open. The doors of heaven will be open. There's also the clause at the end, but if you don't, There's a lake of fire that you and anyone that acts like you will burn in forever. It's not so easy as saying that the nasty insinuation to this isn't, well, the doors of heaven are open. If that's all it was and you could just say yes or no, then it would seem like there wasn't much to argue with. But the nastiness is when you go to the next part, that if you don't join this group, I'll say, that here you're going to be in hell. So no, I don't think that there was inconsistency in the question. I think that there was inconsistency in the answer. And I think to very quickly respond to the question, yes. If it's not apparent by what I've said tonight, I do think that it's better to appeal not out of fear, but out of goodness. Thank you. All right, I'm sure you'll join me in thanking again our speakers for the evening. And I would also like to congratulate both the Secular Student Alliance and the Truth Studies for putting together the event tonight. And before we go, we'll hear one last time from the student associations, I believe.