This is not a real debate, and it’s definitely not a formal debate. It’s a revival of 2018’s bloodsports on the k1llstream, where interruptions are allowed, and this installment did not disappoint. Atheist Tjump attempts to prove his case by the unanimous consent of the “professional philosophers.” From there, it’s pure comedy gold.   The second half of the talk is a debate between Andy and comedian Dick Masterson.  It’s only included on the video version.  The podcast audio is just my “debate.” As a note, my replies to him on the facts were all correct, and his all incorrect in regard to Bertrand Russell, the cogito, etc.

“Descartes’s indubitable facts are his own thoughts—using “thought” in the widest possible sense. “I think” is his ultimate premiss. Here the word “I” is really illegitimate; he ought to state his ultimate premiss in the form “there are thoughts.” The word “I” is grammatically convenient, but does not describe a datum. When he goes on to say “I am a thing which thinks,” he is already using uncritically the apparatus of categories handed down by scholasticism. He nowhere proves that thoughts need a thinker, nor is there reason to believe this except in a grammatical sense.” -Source: Russell, Bertrand. 1945. A History of Western Philosophy And Its Connection with Political and Social Circumstances from the Earliest Times to the Present Day. New York: Simon and Schuster, p. 567.

Russell also has a longer critique of Descartes and the cogito here.

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