1.75m QnA - Triangles, Getting Owned by GodLogic, and Douglas Adams' Puddle

24:56I could just use physics. I could talk about the electricity of the device. I could talk about the way that screens work. I could talk about the emission of photons into the air and all of that kind of stuff. The thing that makes it interesting is that your brain is interpreting that as a triangle. And yeah, when it does that, there's this like new thing that's emerged that can't just be explained in terms of zeros and ones and the sort of atomic structure of electric devices and photons being emitted from screens and stuff. But the interesting thing that can't be described in those terms, the thing that's actually emerged, in other words, that's like different from the fundamental stuff is an experience.

25:37It's you seeing the triangle. So yeah, imagine like you just had a computer that was not plugged into a screen. And I told you there's a triangle in that computer. And you said, what do you mean? I don't mean like, oh, there's some data on the computer. There's like a hard drive, which if you plug it in there's some information that will represent itself as a triangle on a screen i mean like right now there is in some real sense like a triangle with three sides in that computer it kind of be like what do you mean you might say oh i think i see what you're saying you're telling me that there are zeros and ones on this computer which when plugged into a screen will produce this image of a triangle on the screen right and i say no no no the triangle itself is just like there in the computer.

26:28That would just be a really strange thing to say. And it would seem untrue. It seemed like it couldn't be true. And that is what it is like to close your eyes and imagine a triangle. There's no screen on which I'm projecting that image. It's all internal. I mean, the questioner talks about YouTube, for example. If I download a YouTube video onto this phone and then say I like break the phone so that the screen doesn't work, I can't sort of tap it anymore I can't even get into it and I say there's a YouTube video saved on this phone that would be true right and you would know what I mean like there is a hard drive or an SSD in this phone on which is stored the information of that YouTube video but I want to be really specific here it's not that I've got a YouTube video in my hands what I've got is a hard drive with information which, when plugged into a screen, will display the thing that I am calling a YouTube video.

27:23But the video itself, like the imagery, the color pattern, that kind of stuff, is not literally inside of this phone right now. It's something that gets projected by the phone when I plug it into the screen. And so, yeah, you would say, well, of course you're not going to find the YouTube video literally inside of the phone. No, no, no. It's something that kind of emerges like when you plug it into the screen and turn the screen on and the screen like accesses that information and presents it as like a pixelated image and that's when you get what you call a YouTube video. But imagine I said no no the YouTube video itself like the thing you call the YouTube video the pixelated image you know of a particular sort of size and resolution is like literally inside of this phone right now.

28:08That kind of just doesn't make any sense to me. And similarly the idea that the triangle can exist in the same way in my head just doesn't really make very much sense to me and yet there it is that pesky little triangle it just won't go away and that just gives me a lot of pause and it's interesting when i talk about this i find that like half the people i'm speaking to are like yeah that is really weird and cool and interesting and half the people are like what are you talking about man it's just like atoms in your brain and so maybe you just think that i'm going crazy or something but the thing i really just want to drill down on and make clear is that when I say the triangle is not in your brain, I don't mean to say that there isn't like neural activity, which is correlated with my experience of the triangle.

28:53That's there. If I open up your brain, I will see neurons firing in a particular way. I may even be able to prod your brain in a particular way to make you experience a triangle, right? If I knew enough about brain chemistry, I could make the right neurons fire such that you go, whoa, I just saw a triangle. Even then, the neurons that I am pushing along are not the same thing as the triangle that you've just experienced. They're correlated. And for some reason that we don't fully understand, or I would say even remotely understand, that neural activity is correlated and seems to somehow bring about that experience.

29:31But it's not the same thing as the experience. Just as every time I clap my hands, there's a sound and it seems to be that my hands cause the sound to occur. Me clapping my hands is not the same thing as the sound that sort of vibrates across the room. It's not the same thing as it. It might cause it. And of course, in this case, we understand how it causes it, but it's not the same thing. So yeah, you can fully explain all of the brain activity that goes along with, correlates with, maybe even somehow causes conscious experience, but that doesn't make them the same thing. And I'm seeing a triangle.

30:07I'm not seeing a bunch of neurons firing. That might be what's really going on in my brain, but that's not what I'm seeing in my head. So please, somebody, anybody, tell me where this triangle is. I'm getting quite desperate. A$50 reward for anyone who can find the damn triangle. If you clean the vacuum cleaner, doesn't that make you the vacuum cleaner? Yes, and I think in a way that can sometimes be quite philosophically relevant. This is essentially an example of equivocation, sort of taking two words that sound like they mean the same thing, but don't mean the same thing. You know, like the word bat is a classic example of this.

30:49If I were at a baseball game and somebody told me, go and grab a bat so you can hit the ball. And I came back with this small winged mammal and sort of got in position. Obviously, something has gone wrong there. And that might seem kind of trivial and obvious. And in that case, it is. But more subtle versions of this exact mistake can show up all the time in philosophical arguments, political arguments, all kinds of disagreements that people have. Because, you know, two people might be debating about the economy and they don't quite mean the same thing by that word. Or maybe people are debating about the government, and one of them's really kind of talking about the legislative branch, and one of them's really kind of talking about the judiciary, but they're using the same word.

31:34And so a lot of the philosophical or political confusion that comes about is not down to any genuine disagreement, but just over having different definitions of the same word and not realizing it. I mean, a modern classic of this is Linus from Linus Tech Tips, who a few years ago, I think, was on a podcast and talked about how in his old videos, he used to casually say the hard R. And his co-host is like, This episode is brought to you by Prime. What if you had one more chance with the one that got away? Sam, you came home. Based on the best-selling novel from Carly Fortune. Every year after follows childhood friends Sam and Percy as they reunite in the dreamy, nostalgic lakeside town of Ferry's Bay.

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33:06Yeah, it's jarring now. Casual use of hard R? Yeah. like i'm not gonna i'm not gonna deny that i dropped my fair share of hard r's back then because we didn't even the term hard r didn't even exist we didn't think about it and it turns out that linus thought that that meant something else are you talking like n-word hard r what no okay i'm pretty sure that's how people use that term no i think so n-word what are you guys talking about? Am I mistaken? I think so. No, the one with the, like, for, like, mental disability. I'm pretty sure people use hard R in a very different way than you just used it.

33:51But you can also imagine somebody, like, having an argument about whether it was okay to use a particular word, and they might just, like, not realize that they're not talking about the same thing. So to illustrate how this can be a problem in philosophy, here's an argument for you. Premise one, nothing is brighter than the brightest star in the universe. Premise two, a torch is brighter than nothing. Conclusion, therefore, a torch is brighter than the brightest star in the universe. Now you should be able to immediately spot the problem with this, but it might take you a second at least to really actually pin down what's exactly gone wrong here?

34:30Well, it's the word nothing. And there's been specifically an equivocation on the word nothing. It's being used in two different senses in the same context. But the reason I'm giving these obvious examples is because there are less obvious versions of this. When people are talking about God, for example, do you think they have any idea what they mean by that word? Oh, well, I mean an omnipotent, omniscient, all-loving creator of the universe. Okay, but maybe the person you're talking to is thinking of the Greco-Roman pantheon of limited gods. Are you talking about the same thing? No, you're definitely not.

35:06Maybe you're talking to a scientist who is kind of more talking about whatever caused the universe. He doesn't really care if it's all-loving or whatever. That's got nothing to do with creating the universe and setting the laws of physics in motion. So he's kind of talking about a totally different thing as well. And then maybe you've got the sort of classical theologian over there who believes that God is fundamentally simple and that sort of he's just the same thing as love and truth and beauty and isn't thinking of it in those analytical terms of like the tri-omni God or whatever. And so you've got a bunch of different people kind of just talking about completely different things, but maybe not realizing it when they all get together to discuss whether God exists.

35:49So for example, when David Bentley Hart wrote The Experience of God, which is a fantastic book, by the way, he talks about Richard Dawkins and how Dawkins is attacking this God character. But really, the kind of God that Dawkins is talking about, this sort of creative, malevolent agent that kind of sets the material world in order and seems to be this complex entity is more of a description of what Bentley Hart calls the demiurge than the god that at least Bentley Hart believes in. Now, you can agree with him about this or not, but it led him to say, I think kind of famously, that Dawkins and people like him have never written a word about god, which is like a pretty radical thing to say about maybe the most famous atheist alive who wrote a book called The God Delusion.

36:41But of course, what David Bentley Hart is arguing is that, yeah, Dawkins has written about this character that he's calling God, but the thing that everyone else is calling God throughout all of philosophical history is just not that thing. It's a bit like Dawkins has shown up to the baseball game with a winged mammal and is now complaining about how terrible the sport is. So yeah, if you clean the vacuum cleaner, you do indeed become the vacuum cleaner. But this is one among many reasons, I think, why we in England prefer the word hoover. And if we render this into proper English, it reads, if you clean the hoover, doesn't that make you the hoover cleaner?

37:23And the answer is trivially, yes. So let that be a lesson that whenever we can, let's figure out exactly what we mean by the words that we're using, and then we can argue about them. Because otherwise, we're all just wasting our time the classics okay is water wet uh i don't think so i think water makes things wet i think broadly speaking if something is wet it's got water on it but there is a problem with this view which is that if i kind of take a big volume of water you could kind of say of the water that's in the middle that it's got water on it right because it's like surrounded by the rest of the water.

38:03So maybe that water in the middle is wet. And another problem is that if we define water as just the molecule H2O, and if I took like an individual H2O molecule and put it on an object, I kind of don't want to say that that object becomes wet. But you know, the dictionary definition of wet that comes up is covered or saturated with water or another liquid. So like, if you want to say water is wet, you kind of have to say that if you've got a bunch of water, say in a glass, then the water in the middle of the glass is wet because it's surrounded by water. But the water on the surface and the water at the edge is not wet because, well, I suppose it's kind of covered by water on one of its sides, maybe.

38:48Yeah, maybe it is wet. But then you would also have to say that individual molecules of water not only make things wet, but are also wet themselves because, you know, they're in there and they're surrounded by water. They've got water on them. In fact, you'd have to say that like any molecule that you put inside of that glass would become wet, which I kind of don't want to say that either. But I think no. I think the only like practicable definition of wet that makes sense is to say that something becomes wet when it's got a liquid on it. It's not a property of the liquid itself. How many holes in a straw?

39:23I'm tempted to say zero for a few reasons one is that holes don't exist they're kind of the privation of a thing but that might be a little bit too easy I mean yeah like if I've got some kind of object and there's a big gap in the middle it's not that the gap exists it's that there's this object that exists around the gap making that gap sort of seem kind of conspicuous to us but it's not like a thing in the world you can't touch it it doesn't weigh anything in fact there's your answer for the materialist right if you are a materialist then you believe that everything which exists is made out of matter a hole is not made out of matter therefore a hole does not exist and if there is no such thing as a hole that means that there are no holes in the universe including in any straws so the answer to the question is zero there are no holes in a straw but then of course you would also have to say that there are no such thing as say red straws wouldn't you?

40:19Because you materialists, you just can't tell me what redness is. And there would certainly be no straws with any triangles on them. Seriously, please, somebody tell me where the triangles are. Okay, we're going to consult our friend the dictionary again. Hole definition, a hollow place in a solid body or surface. I think hollow is a bit too vague there. Let's try Cambridge. Hole, an empty space in an object, usually with an opening to the object's surface, or an opening that goes completely through an object. Okay. Actually, yeah, maybe this doesn't need to be so hard. On this definition, a straw has one hole.

41:01Of course, you know, with the caveat that holes aren't things, they are like sort of defined in terms of them like lacking any material substance, as long as we can talk about that as a thing, there's one hole in a straw, right? This definition has given us two options. It usually either has like an opening to the surface of the object or, notice the word or, an opening that goes completely through an object. So if you take a straw, it's got an opening that goes completely through the object. So it's got one hole. But then the question is always, oh, but what if I close off one of those sort of sides?

41:38If it's only got one hole and I close off the side, how many holes has it got now? And the problem is you still kind of want to say it's got a hole, but that would mean that one hole minus one hole is still one hole. Well, yeah, because you've just changed it from one kind of hole to another. Now it's the kind of hole that sort of, it's this sort of singular object that has an opening at the top. And you've created the kind of hole, which is the first part of this definition with an opening to the object's surface. And if you lift off your finger again, you've just reverted it to the other kind of hole with an opening that goes completely through an object.

42:11So in both cases, there's one hole. It's just a different kind of hole. But of course, for me, like, you know, the question only gets worse when you realize that not only do holes not exist, straws don't exist either, because of course, neoreological nihilism is true. So how many holes are in a straw? You're just like talking about nothing except concepts of your own imagination. And the great thing about your imagination is that you are the singular liege lord over it. You have complete authority to imagine whatever you like. So these concepts of hole and straw are up to you to devise and use as you see fit.

42:50Is a hot dog a sandwich? I don't know, man. Is a Jaffa cake a cake? You remember that legal like court case that went down where I don't know what was going on. Someone was being like sued or something because they were calling Jaffa cakes Jaffa cakes when really they're like biscuits. Yeah, okay. So in the UK in 1991, there was a dispute because of that. It all comes down to tax, doesn't it? Cakes are not taxed and chocolate covered biscuits are standard rated when it comes to VAT. And so obviously McVitties who produce Jaffa cakes want to argue that they're And I think they won in the end. So legally, in the United Kingdom, Jaffa cakes are cakes.

43:34Why? I think it was because it was determined that if you leave a cake out, like on a table or something, then it will eventually go hard. If you leave a biscuit out, then it will go soft. And because Jaffa cakes go hard, they must be cakes. But of course, like, this is all just made up. It's completely made up. There's no such thing as a Jaffa cake. There's no such thing as a hot dog or a sandwich. It's all just up here. And if you don't know what I'm talking about or why I would say such a seemingly absurd thing, I do actually think that's true. Skip back about 500 ,000 subscribers to my 1.25 million subscriber Q &A, where I discuss this idea called myriological nihilism and tell you why I think that objects do not exist.

44:22Do you edit by yourself? No, I don't, at least not my podcasts. I still edit all of my video essays, like anything that's not a podcast, because usually they're unscripted or it's like a response. And when I'm editing it, I'll chop things out. I'll reorder things. I need to splice things in. There's too much editorial decision-making going on to outsource that, even to someone who was an expert, in the channel or something. It's just something you kind of have to do yourself. But podcasts, I have my wonderful editor, Alex, who does all kinds of things for me, including really high tech and intensive graphics like these that he's putting on screen right now.

45:02Or like if I asked him to like rotoscope me out frame by frame because I don't have a green screen so that I can change the background like he's doing right now. I mean, it takes ages, but the guy is just a warrior and he gets the job done. So you'll see the fruits of it when this video comes out. What do you think it would be like to observe a genuine slash true contradiction? Would it resemble anything like the Penrose stairs? Yes and no. Which philosophical concepts often get misunderstood or misinterpreted? You know what, there's something specific that comes to mind here because I just recorded an episode that may not have come out yet, so I won't say with who, but we were talking about the fine-tuning argument for the existence of God, right?

45:44And the fine-tuning argument is this observation that the universe abides by physical laws that involve really specific constants. These are things like the strength of gravity, the strength of the strong and weak nuclear forces, the expansion rate of the universe, the curvature of space-time, these kinds of qualities which, if you change them even a tiny, tiny amount, the whole universe as we know it just couldn't exist. If gravity were a tiny bit weaker, then when the Big Bang happened, everything would have just flown apart and atoms wouldn't have been able to form. If gravity were a little bit stronger, then the whole universe would just collapse in on itself.

46:24And there are numerous constants like this which have to be precisely balanced in order for the universe to exist. Now, I'm not convinced that this is good reason to believe in the existence of God, per se. It might be like a good reason, I take that back, but you know, it's not like a conclusive argument or anything. Many people point to it as, you know, the most challenging argument or whatever. But the thing that I want to talk about here is a really common response I see people putting in the comments whenever I talk about fine-tuning. So after the novelist Douglas Adams died, there was a posthumous publication of some of his writings.

46:55And I think this is where it comes from. But Douglas Adams is always quoted as saying, this is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, this is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in. Fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact, it fits me staggeringly well. It must have been made to have me in it. Because yeah, when we look at a puddle, it might seem to us that the shape of the puddle is kind of perfectly designed for the shape of the water that sat inside of it. And clearly, we would be making a mistake if we did that, because it's the other way around.

47:31The water has just like filled the space created by the hole. So when people talk about the fine tuning of the universe, sometimes they mean something like, you know, the earth is the perfect distance from the sun to allow us to live and survive. And they might say, oh, you know, this is a good reason to believe in God. And people bring up this kind of observation. They say, no, no, it's not that the sun and the earth were designed to bring about life. It's that life has evolved in a universe of a particular set of conditions. Like there are billions of planets that are not the perfect distance from their stars to provide life and so they don't provide life and of course the one that happens to be in the correct position and therefore happens to produce life is going to be the one that we're going to like observe and it's the same thing with biological complexity for a long time people looked at plant life and animals and indeed the complexity of human beings like the the nature of the eye and things like that and said these are so intricate they must have been designed.

48:31But again, like the puddle just filling the hole of its environment, evolution by natural selection tells us that the complexity of the eye is actually just a result of the environmental conditions that these organisms find themselves in. And so yeah, in those situations, Douglas Adams' puddle analogy is quite a clever and funny retort. It's a useful analogy to show where the thinking is going wrong. But when we're talking about the strong version of the fine-tuning argument. So not about the distance of the Earth from the Sun in a universe of billions of planets, but the constants that dictate the very fabric of the universe itself, such that if they were any different, atoms couldn't form.

49:15This is not the kind of thing that can be explained away by saying, oh, well, the universe just evolved in a particular way, and had it been different, then we would just observe a different universe, and we'd go, oh look how finely tuned it is. Like no, there might be some kind of universe but there would be no molecules, there would be no planets or stars, there'd certainly be no us to observe it. And so then you might say well okay but if it had been like that then we just wouldn't be here to observe it. So of course if we're observing something we're going to be observing a world in which things are finely tuned for our existence, that's no mystery.

49:48But the problem is the probability of that occurring by chance is just so unfathomably small that saying well if it had gone another way, we just wouldn't be here to observe it, doesn't do away with the mystery. A common example given to illustrate this point is to imagine that you were being executed by an expert firing squad. And suppose there are like a thousand men with rifles, all experts, who are trained on you with the intention of killing you. And then they all pull the trigger and you're still alive. And in fact, when you turn around, you see that the bullet holes in the wall behind you have perfectly traced out the outline of your body where you were stood.

50:26And somebody says, that is extraordinary. These exceptionally talented marksmen must have done that on purpose. And you say, no, no, no. I think it was just chance. They all just missed by chance and just happened to miss me in this unfathomably unlikely pattern that perfectly traces out my body. When somebody then says to you, do you realize how unlikely that is? Like, there's just no way that that's what's happened. If you said, well, of course that's what's happened, and it's no mystery because, you know, if they'd have hit me, then I wouldn't be here to observe this crazy mystery. That would not be enough to explain the problem of the unfathomably unlikely occurrence of what we've just witnessed.

51:07And the chances that the constants of the universe would just happen to line up with exactly what's needed to produce the world as we see it are even more unlikely, like by orders of magnitude, than that those 500 expertly trained marksmen should all miss you and perfectly trace out your body. So when we're talking about biological complexity, or like the distance of the earth from the sun, then Douglas Adams' puddle analogy is quite useful and quite fun. But when we're talking about the finely tuned constants of the universe, in the face of this mystery, saying something like, yeah, but that's just like how a puddle fits the shape that it finds itself in just doesn't even come close to cutting it.

51:47Now, of course, this isn't to say that the fine-tuning argument works. There are all kinds of other responses. Some people think that there is a multiverse, which kind of does the same thing as having all of those billions of planets. Like, yeah, one of those universes is going to be finely tuned. Some people believe that there might be some necessary reason why the constants have to be the way they are. There are options for the atheist here. My only point in all of this is to answer the question, which asks which philosophical concepts often get misunderstood or misinterpreted. And in the context of fine-tuning, I just see this puddle thing coming up way too much.

52:23When you debate, are you always 100 % locked into your position, or do you sometimes change your mind because of a good argument from the other person? Well, officially, of course, I'm always open to having my mind changed. I do think it's quite unlikely though that if I accepted a debate on like a big question say does God exist or are the gospels reliable or something that I would change my mind about the whole motion right there and then at that event it could happen one day and in fact I always thought that if I were to convert to Christianity or something one day the way I'd like to announce it would be to accept a debate on the motion of Christianity being true, show up, have the other speaker give their opening statement for like 20 minutes and then get up and just go like, yeah, no, you know what?

53:12Fair enough. But I think, yeah, that's probably quite unlikely. On the particulars, however, like particular arguments within a debate, I try to change my mind all the time. And if somebody makes a good point in a debate, I try to grant it. And there is one example of this that comes to mind sometime, I think it was like a year ago, I did a debate with David Wood on whether Jesus claimed to be God. And look, trying not to get too complicated here, I don't think that Jesus claims to be God, even as he's presented in the Gospels. I don't think there's anything he does in the Gospels which are him claiming to be God in either his words or his deeds.

53:51Now, that's a big topic, and it upsets a lot of Christians, actually. But that's why I decided to accept this debate with David Wood on that subject. There's a point in this debate where I'm talking about a character in the Old Testament called the angel of Yahweh. And without trying to get too into this, the angel of Yahweh in the Old Testament is sometimes kind of equivocated with Yahweh or God himself. So it seems that the angel of Yahweh kind of is the same thing as Yahweh, which is a little bit weird. And some Christians interpret this as the angel of Yahweh being Jesus, who is also God, but he's kind of separate at the same time.

54:30That's why he's the angel of Yahweh, but why the Old Testament kind of talks as if they're the same character. Now, there's this brief moment where I'm trying to say that whoever wrote the book of Hebrews in the New Testament probably didn't think that Jesus was the angel of Yahweh. Why? Because in the first chapter of Hebrews, the author writes that in these last days, God has spoken to us through his son. And I say, it'd be a weird thing for him to say if he thought that Jesus had spoken to Moses all that time ago as the angel of Yahweh. The fact that the author of Hebrews says that Jesus has sort of come to us in recent times implies that he doesn't think Jesus was there with Moses.

55:14So fast forward to the Q &A period when a YouTuber called GodLogic gets up and he asks me a question. This episode is brought to you by Redfin. You're listening to a podcast, which means you're probably multitasking, Maybe even scrolling home listings on Redfin. Saving homes without expecting to get them. But Redfin isn't just built for endless browsing. It's built to help you find and own a home. With agents who close twice as many deals, when you find the one, you've got a real shot at getting it. Get started at Redfin.com. Own the dream. Send Help is now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+.

55:53We're somewhere in the Gulf of Thailand. Getting us out of here should be your focus. I'm your boss. You work for me. You're not in the office anymore. It's bold, relentless, and endlessly rewatchable. Discover why critics give it 93 % on Rotten Tomatoes. You're so fired. Oh, am I? No help is coming. Send help. Rated R. Now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+. You mentioned in Hebrews 1 where, you know, God is speaking, you know, God spoke to our, you know, you know, through prophets. Now he speaks to us through his son and you're saying, where was Jesus then? You know, back then he should have been active.

56:35And so, you know, regarding Hebrews, I just want to read you this and get your thoughts on this. Okay. It's Hebrews 11 regarding Moses. It says by faith, Moses, and I'm going to just skip down to 25 and 26 for time, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God, then to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin, he considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward. So how is it that Moses can be considering Christ's disapproval if Christ wasn't around for him to disapprove? And I was like, good point. Yeah, in fairness, why would the author of Hebrews place Christ in the time of Moses if he didn't think that Jesus was around back then.

57:22And I was like, you know, I'm not sure that this means that the author thinks Jesus is the angel of Yahweh specifically, but it's probably presenting him as God. And I'm essentially like, yeah, fair enough. Good point. Yeah, that is a great question. So Christ there, he regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as greater value than the treasure of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward. Now, Now, that's something which I think, yeah, I think it's a good point. I mean, of course, I can offer a Christological interpretation of this, which sort of says that Christ is promised as the redeemer of mankind.

57:58And we're looking at this in retro... Where has he gone? Oh, there you are. And we're looking and just dropped it and left. And I suppose we're looking at this in retrospect. And he regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ. Yeah, I do think that in this instance, Hebrews is probably presenting Jesus as... I don't know about the angel of Yahweh, but certainly we're looking at a high Christology in Hebrews, yeah. So close. Because the only point in discussion here is whether the author of the book of Hebrews thinks that Jesus is the angel of Yahweh. Right, if the author of Hebrews does think that Jesus is the angel of Yahweh, cool, that doesn't mean that Jesus claims to be God in the Gospels, It doesn't mean that the angel of Yahweh was Jesus.

58:43It doesn't mean that the authors of the Old Testament think that the angel of Yahweh is like, you know, the second person of the Trinity or whatever. But like with those caveats, it's still worth saying. Yeah, it's just it's a good point. So I say to God logic, Avery, I think his name is. I say, yeah, on this point of the author of Hebrews thinking that Jesus isn't the same thing as the angel of Yahweh. Yeah, I think that that's a that's a good retort, like good point. And the thing is, right, like I understand and I knew as soon as that happened that people are going to like clip that up and put it online and be like, Alex gets destroyed and stuff.

59:20And yeah, fair enough. It's the Internet. But I kept seeing clips come up with titles like, you know, like God Logic gets Alex O 'Connor to admit that Jesus was God or like, you know, how this Christian YouTuber destroyed this atheist's entire position. And I'm like, hold on a second. This is on quite a particular point, which I was happy in the moment to just say, yeah, good point. Like if that had been me conceding the entire debate, I think it would have been a bit more of a dramatic moment. But it wasn't. I was just saying, yeah, you've made a good rebuttal to a point that I made. And I think that's fair enough.

1:00:00And yet people keep posting this clip and titling it in such a way as if I've like granted the entire argument when it's actually on a relatively minor as far as I see it, but still interesting point of like biblical scholarship. But yeah, there's a specific example for you of a moment in a debate, live on stage, on camera, where I just changed my mind and grant that somebody made a good point. For what it's worth, by the way, since that moment, I thought about it some more and I left, I think, quite a lengthy comment under GodLogic's video about this question, where I sort of tried to respond in the way that I wish I'd have been able to do on stage.

1:00:40but at least in that moment like yeah good point man but what's annoying is that because this is single-handedly like the biggest clip of me getting owned on the internet like i see it come up on my feed and it's got some crazy title like atheist admits jesus is god i didn't by the way and like my own friends are liking the real like my christian friends have liked the real it's really annoying. The thing that's most annoying about it is that it kind of puts me off doing that, right? Because the next time I'm in a debate and somebody makes a good point and I want to say, huh, yeah, yeah, good point, man.

1:01:19I'm not going to want to say that now because I'm thinking if I say that, it's going to find its way onto YouTube and people are going to say that I've like conceded the whole debate and my Christian friends are going to be liking it on Instagram. No, I mean, hopefully I still will as and when that occurs because, you know, if someone expects to go through their entire career, a public career where you're like on stage debating intricate and complicated topics and never once have to change your mind on stage or concede that someone makes a good point, then like that person is deluding themselves.

1:01:52That is bound to happen. As long as you're being honest, of course, you don't have to concede anything if you're just going to sort of put your foot down no matter what. But I like to think that when a good point is made, I will say it's a good point. And so, yeah, those clips kind of annoyed me a bit because it would be one thing if it were just a bit of an embarrassing moment. And I get it. Yeah, I'm sort of a bit taken aback and stumbling a bit. And it's not my most eloquent of moments. But it's not like the point itself is this sort of debate-altering moment. And I kind of wish we lived in a world, if I can get utopian for a moment, where somebody makes a point, somebody says, good point, and everybody says, wow, that's really nice.

1:02:34And isn't that why we're all here. Isn't that ostensibly why we've gotten together to put two people on stage and take questions so that we can share ideas with each other? But no, of course, it has to become like atheist destroyed by a Christian YouTuber. Fine, but just beware of how that might put people off in the future trying to grant when they might be wrong about something. Like, you know, if God logic had gotten up and said, here's an example in the gospels of Jesus saying something, doesn't this prove that he's god and i went like huh yeah actually maybe it does yeah that would be pretty spectacular because that would be me like saying that i think i might be wrong about the thing we're there to discuss but if it's on a kind of tangential or not quite tangential but supporting piece of evidence that doesn't make or break the whole case but it's just like one piece of the puzzle, then I just don't think it should be as big of a deal for somebody to grant that they might be wrong about something.

1:03:38I also get that I was in a room full of Christians, right? So you can like, you can like hear the excitement when I, when I grant the point, the way that they all sort of start clapping. I do think that in this instance, Hebrews is probably presenting Jesus as, I don't know about the angel of Yahweh, but certainly we're looking at a high Christology in Hebrews. So close. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I see what you're saying. All right. Let's go to the next question because we only have a few. He's so close, guys. But I have no, for what it's worth, I have no problem saying that Hebrews has a high Christology.

1:04:14That's kind of not an issue to me. But I think it is interesting to suggest that as a retort to the idea of the angel of Yahweh being Jesus, I think that is an excellent point. Yeah, that's fine. You know, yeah, cool. somebody made a good point and the atheist got humbled on stage and that's totally fine but i just wish people wouldn't make more of it than it was and that we could i suppose normalize a culture of granting points when you think they've been made well would you ever tour to do like speeches well funny you should mention that speaking of showing up and asking a question and trying to tell me that I'm wrong about something and me hopefully granting it if you make a good point.

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1:05:30I'll see you there.