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Jordan Peterson, God, & Christianity | Kaczor & Petrusek | EP 212 — Transcript

by Jordan B Peterson · 20,325 words · 3,517 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

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0:00why this book what's the motivation and
0:02well i
0:04followed closely your lectures on
0:06genesis and
0:07when i was listening to them i was
0:08really fascinated because again and
0:10again i saw
0:12themes that i had read earlier in the
0:14church fathers people like augustine
0:17chrysostom origin
0:19and you were reading scripture according
0:21to
0:23what's called the moral reading of
0:24scripture where you're looking at the
0:25story of say cain and abel and your
0:27primary question isn't was there
0:29actually two brothers someone named kane
0:32and someone named abel you're not so
0:34much looking for the historical facts
0:36you might say in terms of cain and abel
0:37but rather you're looking at that story
0:40in terms of what universal lessons the
0:42story has for us today and that moral
0:45reading of scripture is something that
0:47is very very common in the christian
0:50tradition of
0:51uh biblical reading and so i thought
0:54that was super interesting and then i
0:55also thought it was interesting how
0:57you were bringing to bear all kinds of
0:58other resources when looking at these
1:00stories so you would bring in
1:02evolutionary
1:05psychology you'd bring in russian novels
1:08you'd bring in all these things that
1:10would seem to be foreign to the biblical
1:12text but in a way that too was something
1:14that was very traditional in other words
1:16if you look at people like augustine
1:18he'll say that all truth is from god and
1:21so bringing in
1:22any truth from any field is perfectly
1:25legitimate in his view in terms of
1:28trying to understand scripture because
1:29he thinks that god is the ultimate
1:32author of two books the book of
1:34revelation scripture but also the book
1:36of creation so everything in creation
1:39can help inform our understanding of
1:40scripture and scripture can help inform
1:43understanding of creation
1:47[Music]
2:03hello everyone i'm pleased to have with
2:05me today dr christopher kaiser and dr
2:08matthew petruck
2:11they're both working at loyola marymount
2:13university
2:14and they recently co-authored a book
2:17called
2:19jordan peterson god in christianity the
2:21search for a meaningful life which is
2:24definitely
2:25a title that i would never have imagined
2:28existing
2:29so
2:31i
2:32decided to
2:33talk to them today to see what sort of
2:35useful discussion we might have
2:38about that book
2:39but about christian issues more broadly
2:42religious issues more broadly cultural
2:44issues
2:45um
2:46dr kaizor is professor of philosophy and
2:50a fellow of the word on fire institute
2:53which we'll discuss a little later he
2:54graduated from the honors program of
2:56boston college and earned his phd four
2:58years later
2:59from the university of notre dame
3:02he was a fulbright scholar who did
3:04postdoctoral work as an alexander von
3:06humboldt german chancellor fellow at the
3:09university of cologne
3:11he was appointed he was appointed a
3:14corresponding member of the pontifical
3:16academy for life of vatican city
3:19and william e simon visiting fellow in
3:22the james madison program at princeton
3:24university the winner of a templeton
3:26grant templeton funds
3:28research into the intersection between
3:30religion and science among other things
3:32he's written more than a hundred
3:33scholarly articles and book chapters and
3:35is also the author of 16 books including
3:38the one that i mentioned earlier dr
3:41petrucc received his m.a
3:43in religious ethics from yale and a phd
3:46in the same field from the university of
3:48chicago
3:49he is currently associate professor of
3:51theological ethics and serves as a word
3:54on fire institute fellow as well
3:56in addition to numerous articles he is
3:58authored co-authored and co-edited
4:00several books
4:02he's bilingual english spanish and
4:04lectures broadly on topics in ethics the
4:06catholic intellectual tradition and the
4:08intersection between christian theology
4:11and philosophy
4:13so welcome gentlemen thank you very much
4:15for agreeing to speak with me today
4:19and for your careful work as well
4:22so
4:23i guess
4:24i'd like to start by asking you
4:26as i mentioned in the intro
4:29i never
4:30had
4:30really envisioned
4:32being
4:33included in a book
4:36like the one that you just wrote and
4:39i
4:39have noted that a variety of religious
4:42thinkers have
4:45commented on my lectures and work and
4:48i'm wondering why you felt compelled to
4:51put all the time and effort into this i
4:53mean it's a it's a major undertaking to
4:55write a book and so why this book what's
4:58the motivation then
4:59well i
5:00followed closely your lectures on
5:02genesis and
5:04when i was listening to them i was
5:05really fascinated because again and
5:07again i saw
5:09themes that i had read earlier in the
5:11church fathers people like augustine
5:14chrysostom origin
5:15and you were reading scripture according
5:18to
5:19what's called the moral reading of
5:21scripture where you're looking at the
5:22story of say cain and abel and your
5:24primary question isn't was there
5:26actually two brothers someone named kane
5:29and someone named abel you're not so
5:31much looking for the historical facts
5:33you might say in terms of cain and abel
5:34but rather you're looking at that story
5:36in terms of what universal lessons the
5:39story has for us today and that moral
5:42reading of scripture is something that
5:44is very very common in the christian
5:47tradition of
5:49biblical reading and so i thought that
5:51was super interesting and then i also
5:52thought it was interesting how
5:54you were bringing to bear all kinds of
5:55other resources when looking at these
5:57stories so you would bring in
5:59evolutionary um
6:01psychology you'd bring in russian novels
6:04you'd bring in all these things that
6:07would seem to be foreign to the biblical
6:09text but in a way that too was something
6:11that was very traditional in other words
6:13if you look at people like augustine
6:15he'll say that all truth is from god and
6:18so bringing in
6:19any truth from any field is perfectly
6:22legitimate in his view in terms of
6:24trying to understand scripture because
6:26he thinks that god is the ultimate
6:29author of two books the book of
6:31revelation scripture but also the book
6:33of creation so everything in creation
6:36can help inform our understanding of
6:37scripture and scripture can help inform
6:40understanding of creation so
6:42these lectures i really enjoyed them and
6:43it seemed to me that what you were doing
6:45in a certain way was uh reinvale
6:48representing again in a new and fresh
6:50way
6:51the insights that were found in these
6:53older thinkers and the fact that so many
6:56young people especially young people who
6:58call themselves atheists or agnostics or
7:01religious
7:02the fact that so many of these people
7:03were fascinated by our lectures and
7:05drawn to them and as you know so many
7:07comments in on youtube would say things
7:09like i thought the bible was a kind of
7:12stupid old collection of naive stories
7:15totally meaningless for contemporary
7:16life but after hearing your lectures on
7:18genesis now i see how these stories have
7:21perennial
7:22and are extremely important and
7:23insightful for navigating life and so
7:26you know for me what i wanted to do in
7:28the book is both bring out these
7:31resonances with these earlier figures
7:33but also to try to show how these
7:35earlier figures actually in my view
7:37develop
7:38and enhance some of your own insights
7:40and move them further down the road as
7:42it were
7:43so i thought that it would be useful to
7:46bring these reflections together in the
7:47book
7:49yeah i i have the same uh intellectual
7:52reasons as well uh for for engaging your
7:54work uh basically i think we're trying
7:57to speak to two audiences at the same
7:58time one is to your your massive
8:00audience uh to speak
8:03to them
8:04through your work that the ideas that
8:06you've been engaging with such
8:08verve and such power and such clarity uh
8:12not only resonate with the biblical con
8:15context but in fact this is where
8:17from our point of view they find their
8:19fullest expression
8:21uh and so to that audience we want to
8:22see look a little bit deeper look a
8:24little bit broader um we're also
8:26speaking though to to christian
8:28audiences as well to see look at the
8:29work that jordan peterson is doing
8:31perhaps he doesn't see it this way but
8:32he's a serious theologian and he's
8:35opening pathways and opening
8:37modes of communication
8:40that can help us more clearly
8:41communicate some of these biblical
8:44truths as well i also have a personal
8:46reason for it i began watching you
8:48actually i was chris introduced me to
8:50your work and i began watching your work
8:52online um
8:54everything you put out and watch and
8:56what i found so fascinating
8:58is
8:59from from my point of view you exhibit a
9:02lot of the the christian virtue of
9:04courage
9:05and people were attracted to that they
9:06were attracted to hearing truths
9:08including very hard truths
9:10and i thought i wanted i want to dig
9:12deeper to see what what this phenomena
9:14what's been called the jordan peterson
9:15phenomena really is
9:17yeah that it this is a strange thing for
9:20me there's the the popularity of those
9:23biblical lectures i mean it came as a
9:26shock
9:27you know
9:28um
9:30i joked with some people when i first
9:32rented the theater
9:34um in toronto to put the lectures on i
9:36thought i said
9:39if i had gone to
9:41a bank for a loan and told them that my
9:43business plan was to
9:45do 15 two-hour lectures on
9:48on genesis mostly to young men and that
9:51i was going to charge
9:53them to come to a theater and sit
9:55through that
9:56they would have laughed me out of there
9:58because it's such a
9:59preposterous proposition
10:02and yet it seemed to work and the
10:03lectures have been
10:05quite popular online and they've they
10:07seem to have attracted attention from
10:10religious and non-religious people but
10:12basically in the religious vein right
10:14even the atheists who've been watching
10:16are pulled in by the
10:19by by what is essentially the religious
10:21content i guess part of the question is
10:23you know exactly what is that religious
10:25content that's something we could
10:27we could talk about in depth i mean the
10:29fact that my thinking
10:31is influenced by these
10:34church fathers the church fathers and
10:36other historical figures that you
10:37discuss
10:39i guess i get that second hand in some
10:41sense right and probably primarily
10:43through jung carl jung see was
10:45unbelievably educated and i saturated
10:47myself in his
10:49work
10:50and
10:51he was of course
10:53incredibly influenced by the thinkers
10:54that you talk about in the book and so
10:58um and you mentioned
11:00dr kaizor that you know i was putting
11:03old ideas into a new package and
11:05you know that
11:06it's very important to to
11:09to note that that's true is that
11:11you know truly original ally truly
11:14original ideas are very rare
11:16and so
11:18much of what we think of as original is
11:22it's built into the structure of our
11:23culture in ways we don't understand and
11:25then manifests itself within us and
11:28that's certainly the case with these
11:30these biblical stories and i wanted to
11:32make another comment too about truth
11:35you know dr caser you mentioned that i
11:38engage in a moral reading of scripture
11:41say rather than a literalist reading
11:43and maybe we should have a talk about
11:45that because
11:47it isn't easy to read a book like the
11:49bible literally because
11:52it's full of
11:53of literal contradictions
11:55and it whatever it is especially the
11:57really archaic stories in in genesis
12:00whatever it is it's not
12:03it's not history the way we think of
12:05history
12:06and so that's hard for
12:08people it's hard for people to see how
12:11that might still be true
12:14if it's not literal how can it be true
12:16and this is a discussion that i tried to
12:18have with sam harris a lot
12:21because
12:22the atheist types the rationalist types
12:25there's something they miss and what
12:27they miss is that
12:29fiction isn't false it's not a lie
12:33right it's not literal
12:36but it's not a lie and great fiction is
12:39true but it never happened so how can it
12:42be true
12:43and the answer to that is something like
12:46well there are patterns in things deep
12:49patterns
12:50deep recurring patterns
12:52you know human nature the fact that
12:54we're human
12:56that that the humanity itself is a
12:58recurring pattern it has characteristic
13:00shape
13:01and
13:03great fiction
13:05describes the shape of that pattern and
13:07the greatest of fiction the greater
13:09fiction becomes the more it is religious
13:12in nature and
13:13that's not even a
13:16claim about the nature of truth it's
13:18more a claim about the nature of
13:19experience you know when we say
13:21something is profound
13:24what we
13:25mean is that it's moving
13:28and that it has a broad influence it's
13:31capable of having a broad influence on
13:33the way we think and see and act so if
13:35you read a profound book like one of
13:37dostoevsky's books
13:39you could say of that book and people
13:41often do that it changed my life when i
13:43read that book
13:45and
13:46a story that can change your life
13:49has a power that is best described as
13:52religious
13:53and so religious is a kind of experience
13:56in some sense rather
13:57in addition to a claim about what
13:59constitutes truth
14:01and then those stories in genesis
14:03cain and abel i think and the story of
14:05adam and eve because those stories are
14:07so deep that it's almost unfathomable
14:11they
14:12get at the
14:13at the most profound of patterns and so
14:16to say that they're literally true
14:18is actually to massively underestimate
14:21how true they are
14:23because you could tell me what you did
14:24this morning
14:26that would be literally true but like
14:28who cares whereas if you read the story
14:31of adam and eve it's so true that it
14:34applies to everyone always
14:37and mere literal truth can't do that
14:40and we don't have a good language as
14:42scientists let's say as psychologists or
14:44even as citizens
14:46we don't have a good language
14:48for that kind of truth
14:51and so
14:52well i i guess i'd like your thoughts
14:54about that idea
14:58yeah so the the literal sense of
15:00scripture is sometimes misunderstood by
15:02people and i think the the right way to
15:04think of the literal sense of scripture
15:05is what the original human author
15:07intended to convey to the original
15:09human audience and so if we're looking
15:11at genesis i think that we need to put
15:13genesis back in its context if you read
15:15genesis as if it is a contemporary
15:18textbook on science i think what you're
15:21doing is
15:22wrenching it out of its original context
15:24and therefore you're bound to misread it
15:27and that's true of not just genesis it's
15:28really true of any work that to
15:30understand it we need to understand its
15:31genre and we need to understand its
15:34context so what is the original context
15:36of the genesis story well the original
15:38context it was written in terms of rival
15:41stories of creation
15:43other stories that were circulating in
15:44the ancient world and it was meant to be
15:46an answer to those and it uses poetry it
15:49uses imagery and that was what all those
15:51stories did and the poetry in the
15:53imagery i would not set that against
15:56truth as if on the one hand you have
15:57truth in the other hand you have poetry
15:59imagery and story i think that one kind
16:02of truth is scientific truth the
16:04empirically verifiable but i think it's
16:06too narrow to say well the only kind of
16:07truth
16:08is the empirically verifiable i think
16:11truth actually is broader and in fact
16:13that claim that
16:15the only that the truth is empirically
16:17verifiable that's the only kind of truth
16:19that is itself a self-defeating
16:21statement right there's no empirical
16:23evidence that
16:24that the only way to get the truth is
16:26through the empirical method so if we
16:28put genesis back in its context what do
16:30we see well we see it is a story telling
16:32us
16:32about
16:34in contrast to the other stories the
16:35other stories in the ancient world
16:37were stories in which there were
16:39multiple gods
16:40they engaged in a warfare and violence
16:43so you think of the greek myths or like
16:44this where right zeus overthrows his
16:46father and there's all this violence
16:48and genesis is meant to answer
16:51um
16:51these other ancient myths and it's
16:53saying things like there's only one
16:55god
16:56there's not multiple secondly that
16:59creation is not a matter of violence
17:01but that the creation is reasonable
17:04speech and this was something that you
17:05talked about in your lecture which
17:07really struck me because i obviously i'd
17:09read that story before but i never
17:10really thought of it that well creation
17:13awry
17:15right god says let there be light and
17:17there was light and what is reasonable
17:19speech reasonable speech is orderly
17:23right the difference between you know
17:24random sounds you make and reasonable
17:26speech is that there's a kind of order
17:27to it so
17:28if creation arises from reasonable
17:31speech the creation itself is ordered
17:33it's intelligible it makes sense
17:36and
17:37that gives rise centuries and centuries
17:38later that belief that creation is
17:40orderly and makes sense gives rise
17:41centuries later to science
17:44but to read genesis as if it's failed
17:47science it makes about as much chances
17:48to read genesis as if it's you know for
17:51or against
17:52iphones
17:53i mean imagine somebody reading genesis
17:55and they're like well is this should i
17:56buy an iphone or not i'm not going to
17:57read genesis to determine this well
17:58clearly the original author of genesis
18:01wasn't addressing that and the original
18:03author of genesis wasn't addressing for
18:05or against evolution so i think that
18:08that these readers who want to make it
18:10for or against evolution are just
18:12utterly misreading and taking the the
18:15story out of its original context and
18:17therefore
18:18necessarily
18:19providing a really bad reading of
18:21genesis
18:22there's also a really important
18:23theological
18:24point to make here as well and and
18:26that's they can put it philosophically
18:28what's the condition for the possibility
18:30of something being literal
18:33in the first place
18:34what's the condition for the possibility
18:36both of it being recognized spoken
18:40and then apprehended there's a certain
18:42court of orderliness that's necessarily
18:45presupposed in the act of knowing and in
18:48the act of communicating that knowledge
18:51that itself as chris said can't be
18:53empirically verified so when we as
18:56catholics say that that
18:58recognize from the new testament that
19:00jesus is the truth
19:02that would include in a literal
19:04historical sense but also the condition
19:06for the possibility of anything being
19:09intelligible and and literally
19:12understood and communicated at all so i
19:14think one of the the frustrations i
19:16found in finding contemporary debates on
19:18these questions is that secularism
19:21oftentimes isolates and identifies the
19:23literal the empirical as if this is a
19:25freestanding epistemic platform that
19:27belongs to them and everybody has to
19:31compete in order to to be on their
19:32territory and i just don't think that's
19:34philosophically the case it presupposes
19:37a lot of things that that they can't
19:38give an account for yeah i mean so so
19:41one more little yep please go ahead no i
19:44just was just going to add one thing so
19:46imagine somebody was reading
19:47shakespeare's son at 18
19:49right shall i compare thee to a summer's
19:51day that are more lovely and more
19:52temperate
19:53rough winds do shake the darling buds of
19:56may and summer's lease hath all too
19:58short of date so imagine somebody reads
20:00that and they're like okay shakespeare's
20:02a meteorologist she's a weather man and
20:04i'm going to look up in the almanac to
20:06see if may had rough winds and that
20:08turns out there's no rough winds in may
20:10oh shakespeare about it at you know
20:12telling us about the weather well i
20:14think that's a obviously radically
20:16radical misunderstanding of shakespeare
20:17he's not trying to tell us the weather
20:19and then failing to tell us the weather
20:20and so i think genesis is not trying and
20:22failing to give us scientific truths
20:25it's just doing something totally
20:26different and that's part of the reason
20:28i appreciate your lectures is that you
20:31highlighted
20:32the reality that the author of genesis
20:34is trying not to he's trying to
20:37communicate very important truths but
20:38not truths that are in the uh scientific
20:42um
20:43discourse
20:44they're true but not scientific truths
20:46the problem with
20:49the empirical
20:50approach the problem with totalizing it
20:53is that the empirical approach tends to
20:56be mostly
20:58descriptions of things and the way they
21:00interact and the way they can be
21:02manipulated and
21:03and that's fine but it doesn't tell you
21:06doesn't provide any
21:08real insight into how to live how to act
21:10how to take your next step how to
21:13how to produce a hierarchy of values and
21:16how to determine what's most important
21:18and what's least important and
21:20all of that is also
21:23so difficult that we'd actually don't
21:25know how to do it
21:27completely explicitly which is why we
21:29need poetry and drama and literature we
21:31need that whole domain so we could call
21:33that the literary domain
21:35and then i think
21:37you could consider it this might be an
21:39empirical proposition is that
21:42the religious domain is
21:45at the base of the literary domain and
21:48as literature gets deeper
21:50it becomes more and more like religious
21:52writing
21:54and so that by definition in some sense
21:56and i've swiped this in part i would say
21:58from jung is
21:59almost by definition
22:02that the sense of profound engagement
22:05that the most profound literature
22:06produces is what constitutes the
22:09religious
22:10and
22:11that's a domain of experience you know
22:13when you're captivated in a movie
22:15theater when you're captivated by a
22:17story when you're taken outside yourself
22:19none of that has anything to do with
22:21logical argumentation
22:23it's a whole different issue and it to
22:25me it's tied very very deeply
22:28to our ability to imitate and mimic
22:31and so we're really good at that way
22:33better than any other animal we met like
22:35language is mimicry we use the same
22:37words
22:38and so we're mimicking each other and
22:40but i can't mimic
22:42every person separately i have to
22:44extract out from each person some
22:47essence of being that's admirable and i
22:50do that
22:51person after person and i try to imitate
22:54that
22:54and then that core thing that's
22:57admirable that i imitate that's as far
22:59as i'm concerned that's psychologically
23:02equivalent to christ whatever else
23:04christ is christ is
23:07that's why he's sometimes described as
23:09the king of kings
23:11it's like if the king is the thing
23:12that's at the top of the hierarchy and
23:14then you look at all hierarchies and you
23:16take the thing that's at the top of all
23:18hierarchies of value then
23:21that figure when you see reflections of
23:24that figure anywhere
23:26it produces awe and respect
23:29and that's because that pattern
23:30constitutes the appropriate way to act
23:32just as when you see the opposite of
23:34that pattern which might be in its most
23:37fundamental essence satanic or demonic
23:39it's something that's ultimately evil
23:41that produces revulsion and terror and
23:44that's
23:45that's all instinctual it's it's not in
23:49the domain of rationality precisely it's
23:51way way deeper than that
23:53and
23:54the the the eighth and then there's
23:57another problem that the atheists have
23:58never come to terms with
24:00i i believe and you guys tell me what
24:02you think of this is that
24:05if
24:07if what is rendered if what is properly
24:10rendered unto god
24:12is rendered unto caesar
24:15then caesar becomes inflated to god
24:19and when that happens all hell breaks
24:22loose
24:23that's the genesis of totalitarianism
24:25that's
24:26subservience to an idol
24:29and so
24:30and this is a case i think the church
24:31needs to make particularly the catholic
24:34church in the most strenuous of ways is
24:36that
24:37if we don't segregate off the religious
24:40instinct and give it its proper
24:43attention and do which i suppose you do
24:45in part with ritual and church
24:47attendance and so forth then every
24:50single thing we do starts to become
24:52inappropriately contaminated with
24:53religious longing
24:55and that's why you see the rise of
24:57extremely powerful political ideologies
24:59and the division of people you know for
25:02trivial reasons into moral camps it's
25:05that that religious instinct isn't
25:07hasn't got a grounding in it it's
25:09searching for something to attach itself
25:11to and it it picks up second-rate
25:13substitutes you know they people like
25:16dawkins they seem to think that
25:18if we all just abandoned our religious
25:20superstitions we'd all become you know
25:22rationalists like
25:24well like like isaiah newton who was an
25:27alchemist and not a rationalist by the
25:29way
25:30that great genius
25:32and so
25:34one of the things i think that the
25:36catholic church in particular isn't
25:38doing a very good job of is warning
25:40people how dangerous it is
25:43to lose
25:46the proper
25:47theater of expression for our religious
25:49instincts they don't go away
25:52they just get perverted
25:54and they show up all sorts of places
25:56they shouldn't that's that's terrible
25:58it's not good so
26:04yeah that theme is one that augustine
26:06talks about in the city of god he talks
26:08about two loves and he talks about the
26:10love of god and
26:12it creates a certain uh city a certain
26:15organization and if you don't love god
26:18if god is not your ultimate love well
26:20you're gonna love something so it could
26:21be power
26:22it could be pleasure it could be money
26:25it could be status
26:26but augustine thought that if you love
26:28say power
26:30the most well what that's going to do is
26:32it's going to shape you and ultimately
26:34distort not only you but also your
26:36relationships in your society so the
26:38christian view is that ultimately god is
26:41perfect truth love and beauty and so not
26:44only is it the case that worshiping
26:46anything other than that is going to
26:49fail to give god what's due to god and
26:51that's what religion in a sense is about
26:53it's a binding of oneself to god giving
26:55to god what's due but also it ends up
27:00making the person
27:01ultimately unhappy so you can't think
27:04about this even from a psychological
27:06perspective that um people like martin
27:08seligman would say things like
27:11love is at the core of human flourishing
27:14and and if we don't have that if i love
27:16money or power
27:18more than i love god and more than i
27:20love my friends and more than i love my
27:21family well that's going to deprive me
27:25of the source of my
27:26uh my flourishing i'm going to end up
27:29harming myself and characteristically
27:32also harming others when i love power or
27:34money or whatever
27:36too much and so yeah for augustine at
27:38least this is um a perennial temptation
27:41to replace god with something else
27:43that's perhaps
27:45the warning at the end of genesis with
27:47the story of noah and also the story of
27:50the tower of babel
27:51you know because the tower of babel is
27:54people get together and they try to
27:56build an edifice
27:57that
27:59that's absolute in some sense right it's
28:02it's it's a building that's that's under
28:04the control it's an edifice that's of
28:06human manufacture and
28:08it it becomes larger and larger and
28:10larger and then it devolves into a kind
28:12of chaos
28:14and
28:15so with the flood story with knowing the
28:17flood
28:18that's
28:20that's one form of danger that emerges
28:22as a consequence of deviation from the
28:25proper path let's say orientation
28:27towards whatever the highest good is and
28:28the tower of babel is a secondary one
28:30that has more to do with the danger of
28:33of egotistical human construction and it
28:36is something like the worship of these
28:38idols so imagine we can think about this
28:41technically and psychologically in some
28:43sense is that in order to act you have
28:45to presume that that to which you're
28:47moving is more important than where you
28:49are right so you make a value judgment
28:52moving in this direction is appropriate
28:55and then you have to move in a lot of
28:57directions over the course of your life
28:58and and
29:00you know maybe you search for for a
29:02friendship and you search for love and
29:03you search for money and you search for
29:05power and and so forth and
29:07if there's nothing integrating all that
29:09then you're pulled in all sorts of
29:11directions right it's like devil's
29:12pulling you apart because
29:14you don't know what's more important
29:16than
29:17than than what and that's very very
29:19confusing and off-putting and if the
29:21wrong thing takes control then you get
29:23demented and bent
29:24and so what you see in christianity is
29:27this
29:28this struggle over
29:30thousands of years to specify
29:32the thing that should be at the top of
29:34the hierarchy and
29:36one of the things that really opened my
29:39eyes to the depth of these works was
29:41this strange
29:43proclamation that
29:45the word that existed at the beginning
29:47of the time of time that brought
29:50creation into being was the same as
29:52christ which is an unbelievably bizarre
29:56proposition i mean i'm not speaking
29:58about precisely religiously i'm thinking
30:00about it more conceptually it's like
30:03people who had that revelation or
30:06intuition are making the presupposition
30:09that
30:10there's something
30:13about the emergence of
30:15reality into conscious being like
30:18because reality without consciousness
30:20doesn't really seem to exist right so
30:22when we talk about reality we always
30:24presuppose a conscious viewer
30:27and that the conscious viewer that
30:29makes order out of chaos
30:31is
30:32most appropriately the perfect being
30:35that's manifested in the figure of
30:38christ
30:39to
30:40and so that we participate in that
30:42process in some sense
30:44to the degree that we're
30:46attempting to embody that mode of being
30:49so
30:51i i know that's you know that's going
30:53out there in some sense but it struck me
30:56as such a brilliant idea that
30:59it was hard to account for
31:01i don't know if i've made myself clear
31:02with that
31:04well
31:05i i think it
31:07it cuts in many different ways at the
31:08same time but it also cuts directly to
31:10the the previous question that you asked
31:12about the the right domain of religious
31:14expression
31:15and in a sense it's it solves that
31:18problem why well if jesus christ is the
31:22logos on the one hand there means that
31:24means that there is a logos there is a
31:25truth there is a way of existence that
31:27is real which gives us a standard to be
31:30able to identify false ways of being
31:32both individually but also important
31:34politically so it establishes a
31:36groundwork for there to be
31:38an intrinsic limiting principle
31:40politically speaking and morally
31:42speaking to life and that is there is a
31:44truth of the matter and if you're not
31:46living according to the truth you're
31:47you're deviating from it so that
31:49establishes a kind of of ground and
31:52sealing for the proper expression
31:54of of what it means to live morally
31:56individually and also political power as
31:58well you only have right political power
32:00insofar as it conforms to the truth
32:04but the logos is also christ that means
32:06christ is also
32:08the person the historical person that as
32:10catholics we believe is is literally
32:12literally real and literally raised from
32:14the dead and that shows that the
32:16political life is not the sum totality
32:18of life the moral life isn't even the
32:20sum totality of life the some totality
32:22of life is love
32:23in relationship with god who has made
32:26himself incarnate so on the one hand you
32:28have the foundation of truth to to
32:31structure and limit
32:33human life and then its ultimate
32:35transcendent tale or purpose
32:42dr kaiser you got some comments about
32:44that
32:46i did i wanted to circle back to you
32:48said if i heard you correctly that
32:50reality doesn't exist without
32:52consciousness
32:53and i think that's true if if god exists
32:57but then if god doesn't exist then it's
32:58not true so human beings of course
33:00haven't been on planet earth since the
33:02beginning of the universe the universe
33:04is about 13.8 billion years old so say
33:0612 billion years ago there are no human
33:08beings at all and presumably there was
33:10no consciousness at all so there was
33:11reality there were
33:13the beginning of stars and things like
33:15that but there was no conscious beings
33:17anywhere that that you know was able to
33:20understand that unless god exists now if
33:22god exists and if it's true that god
33:25um is the the logos well then he would
33:28say from all eternity
33:30um there was consciousness there was a
33:32mind there was a divine mind and so
33:36and on that view there actually would be
33:40an ultimate unity you might say
33:43in terms of
33:44the divine essence in the divine mind
33:46ultimately being one so consciousness
33:49and existence
33:51have this fundamental
33:53ground in in god but if god doesn't
33:55exist then i think what you said would
33:57not be true because again 12 billion
33:59years ago there's no human beings around
34:01presumably unless there are aliens
34:02there's no one around to be conscious
34:04and so there would have been reality say
34:0612 billion years ago but there there
34:08wouldn't have been consciousness yeah so
34:11i want to go out on a limb here too
34:13because
34:14i have a problem with that i can't shake
34:17this
34:19the supposition that our
34:21scientific cosmological theories
34:24have an implicit conscious observer
34:26nested inside of them even when they
34:29claim not to
34:30so for example
34:33when you talk about 13 billion years ago
34:37there's there's
34:41i don't know how to say this properly
34:44this the
34:46the concept of 13 billion years seems to
34:49me to require a conscious observer to
34:51formulate to begin with because i don't
34:53understand
34:54what duration consists of in the absence
34:58of something experiencing duration it's
35:01like how does something last 13 billion
35:03years
35:04like in some sense it all happens at
35:06once if there's no conscious observer
35:09like there's
35:11i
35:12i know well it would depend it would
35:14depend right on the nature of time so
35:16the view you're talking about was
35:18actually put forth by a guy named
35:19barclay and he said to be
35:22is to be perceived so in other words if
35:24you don't have a perceiver there just
35:26wouldn't be any being at all but i don't
35:28think that that is that's right i mean i
35:30think you're right that the idea or the
35:33concept the human concept of time
35:36obviously that can't exist without human
35:38beings but before there were any human
35:41beings it seems that all available
35:43scientific evidence suggests that there
35:45were
35:46things there was carbon molecules and
35:48there were stars and there was all kinds
35:50of things that existed before there was
35:52any conscious human
35:54uh perceiving them so it is true of
35:57course that all of our evidence for the
35:58big bang and all of our scientific
36:00investigations presuppose conscious
36:03observers that are
36:04you know taking the measurements and
36:06things like that but i'm not sure it
36:08follows from that logically that
36:09therefore
36:10we
36:11can't with good reason hold that things
36:14existed before there are any human or or
36:17for that matter any kind of conscious
36:20observers
36:21unless we think berkeley is right that
36:22to be is to be perceived well
36:27there's something in berkeley's
36:29objection that that that seems to me to
36:32be
36:33hard to skate around like
36:36when we
36:37imagine
36:38time before consciousness and we imagine
36:41the existence of objects before
36:42consciousness we imagine them as if a
36:45conscious observer was there even though
36:47there wasn't one so we think like we see
36:50a star from a particular level of
36:52resolution right we can't see subatomic
36:55particles um we can't see
36:58atomic structures we can't see molecular
36:59structures
37:02that
37:02that which exists before there's a
37:04perceiver is all those levels
37:06simultaneously
37:08at once
37:10with a duration that doesn't with a with
37:13a temporal sequence that doesn't involve
37:15duration
37:16and so it
37:17whatever was there before there was a
37:19perceiver is in some sense unimaginable
37:22without the projection of a perceiver
37:23back into time
37:25and i think that warps our
37:27perspective
37:28on what it was that's there and perhaps
37:30our perspective on the role of
37:32consciousness in the genesis of being
37:35so
37:36anyways that's those are
37:39here's another another way of thinking
37:41about it and i don't know what your view
37:42would be so let's say god forbid
37:45uh there's some sort of plague that
37:47strikes humanity and all human beings
37:49die
37:50on my view there would still be lots of
37:52things that continue to exist like the
37:54sun would still exist the earth would
37:56still exist there'd be all kinds of
37:57things that exist now there'd be no
37:58human beings in that terrible scenario
38:01that were there to perceive it but they
38:03would still continue to exist
38:06or maybe you have a different view
38:08i just
38:10so imagine that consciousness was
38:11eradicated say not just human beings
38:14just to make it cleaner in some sense
38:16the
38:17i can't understand how to conceptualize
38:19what it is that would be left
38:21you know is it is it nothing but quantum
38:24potential
38:25is it the sea of quantum potential
38:28is it not turned into stars and solar
38:30systems and galaxies when there's an
38:32observer or specifying a level of
38:34analysis
38:36it isn't obvious to me from looking at
38:38the physics what it is that's there see
38:40because you say well there'd still be a
38:41sun it's like well
38:43wait a
38:44second when you think of the sun you
38:47think of what you perceive and when you
38:49say it would still be there you think
38:51that what you perceive would still be
38:52there but you're not there so what you
38:54perceive would not be there i don't know
38:56what it is that would be there you could
38:59say it's as if the sun is still there
39:01but
39:03but the the level of analysis problem
39:05and the fact of
39:07the strange constituent
39:10uh reality of matter at the at the
39:13quantum level
39:14makes it very difficult for me to
39:17conceive of a universe that's just the
39:20same as it is now
39:21except there's no conscious observer it
39:24doesn't make sense to me
39:27it if it may briefly it seems to me that
39:29there's perhaps some equivocation in in
39:32the in the use of the word existence
39:34here
39:34um because existence is of course tied
39:36up with duration uh understood from our
39:39own perception of it but that doesn't
39:41necessarily mean that duration is the
39:44is either a necessary uh condition for
39:47existence or uh or the most important
39:49condition so we think of existence uh in
39:52terms of of other potential qualities
39:54that it has unity following a kind of
39:56pattern
39:57and in in that sense it seems to me the
39:59more more important question isn't what
40:01would existence be like if there were no
40:03observers but would there be existence
40:06and i think it's it's logically possible
40:08metaphysically perhaps even necessary to
40:10say that there would be existence but
40:12that doesn't mean that we would be able
40:13to
40:14describe it
40:16yeah so i think i'm going to disagree
40:17with you now um i'm not sure there would
40:19be if there was no
40:21if there were no perceivers at all um
40:24including god
40:26then i don't think there could be other
40:27existing things well i would think i
40:28mean human perspective okay i was
40:29limited to that yeah because if because
40:32if aquinas is right
40:33there there couldn't be anything at all
40:35right in existence
40:36if god wasn't the ultimate first cause
40:39of all these things and so if god didn't
40:42exist at all that would mean that there
40:45couldn't be anything else if he's right
40:46about this whole argument i mean i think
40:48he is right so
40:50um so there is ultimately a
40:53uh mind perceiving all created reality
40:56the divine mind but i don't think there
40:58needs to be human minds or for that
41:00matter if they're you know if we talk
41:02about angels i don't think there needs
41:03to be angelic minds for there to be
41:05existing things
41:07yeah well i i guess i'm i'm i'm stuck on
41:10this for
41:11for
41:13reasons that i think are somewhat
41:14scientific in in their nature
41:17my inability to conceptualize what it is
41:20that would be if there is no point of
41:22reference because everything is all
41:24things at once in some sense without a
41:27limited without a delimited observer
41:31and so i don't know what it is for there
41:33to be something when everything is
41:35everything at once
41:37there's no differentiation as a
41:39consequence of a limited observer so but
41:41we can we can we can leave that
41:43that part of the argument i'm pushing
41:45this at least in some part because
41:48i i
41:50i have also seen i would say on the part
41:53of the more dedicated modern atheists
41:55this
41:55necessity to
41:58devalue consciousness
42:01consciousness seems to be
42:05it's a mystery let's put it that way and
42:08it's it's an unexplained mystery and
42:10it's given such
42:12pronounced status in the biblical
42:15writings it's part of what gives human
42:16beings dignity is the fact that we share
42:18this logos consciousness that's
42:21integrally tied up with the structure of
42:23reality as such
42:25and
42:33well yes i'll just leave it at that
42:35that's enough exploration of that as far
42:37as i'm concerned um
42:39one of the
42:41another thing that we might talk about
42:42briefly is that
42:46there's also
42:48a tendency in
42:50the modern culture
42:52as we move away from
42:54our religious heritage as fewer few
42:56fewer people go to church let's say and
42:58are even familiar with the traditional
43:00church writings
43:02to swallow this story that
43:04science and religion have been at odds
43:06with one another throughout the course
43:08of history and dr petrasek you made a
43:11case earlier in this discussion
43:13i believe it was you
43:15that
43:17the
43:19proposition that the world was
43:21ordered by something
43:23that was akin to
43:25a comprehensible intelligence
43:28or an intelligence or a consciousness
43:30that we could have a relationship with
43:32was the deep felt sense that
43:35we could understand things if we
43:37investigated them and
43:40that's
43:42means that the religious proposition of
43:44an orderly comprehensible world amenable
43:47to the investigations of consciousness
43:49was actually a precondition for the dawn
43:51of science and that's what nietzsche
43:53claimed us nietzsche claimed that
43:56christianity died at its own hands by
43:59emphasizing
44:00the
44:02the uh
44:04what would you say the primary
44:06importance of truth
44:09and so
44:12the exploration of truth at least in
44:14part developed into the empirical domain
44:16and then the scientific worldview
44:18produced
44:20representations of being that seemed to
44:22contradict the traditional
44:24representations
44:26and because
44:27our minds had been trained to value
44:29truth to such a great degree
44:31at least in part as a consequence of our
44:33religious education
44:35we
44:36were
44:37forced by logical consistency in some
44:40sense to experience this existential
44:43crisis that
44:44the apparent opposition between the
44:46empirical and the religious has put us
44:48into
44:49so that's a different reading of the
44:50relationship between science and
44:52religion
44:53it means it's a problem we have to solve
44:55instead of a battle between two
44:58opponents one of whom has to win and the
45:00other
45:01whom has to lose
45:04yeah well that completely uh contradicts
45:06the certainly the the catholic
45:08understanding the relationship between
45:10science and and religion there's a
45:12historical question here which is
45:14how did science emerge into its current
45:17form and even even on those grounds it's
45:19inaccurate to say that that christianity
45:22and specifically catholicism has ever
45:24been opposed to science
45:25uh
45:26the historical record just just doesn't
45:28show that then there's a conceptual and
45:30philosophical question of again using
45:32the philosophical language
45:34what's the condition for the possibility
45:36of there being
45:37a empirical investigation insofar as
45:40it's it's
45:41cognitively and epistemically possible
45:43and then the motivational question of
45:45why in the world would you carry it out
45:47unless you you have the belief either
45:49explicitly or implicitly that the world
45:51both is knowable and that that knowledge
45:54is somehow real
45:55that presupposes not only any generic
45:58metaphysics but i would i would say a
46:00specifically christian metaphysic in
46:02particular so it's it's a meme i would
46:04say that science and religion are
46:06somehow opposed but it's it's it's a
46:08false one
46:10the idea that
46:11science and religion are opposed
46:14arose really in the 19th century there
46:16was a guy named draper and he wrote a
46:17book that they basically put forward
46:19this thesis and
46:20and before that the thesis wasn't held
46:23and there's no real good historical
46:25grounds for for holding that so if you
46:27look at many of the
46:29uh prominent scientists in the history
46:30of science many of them were
46:32faithful believing people i mean newton
46:35uh was a faithful protestant you have
46:38people like descartes catholic you have
46:40blaise pascal a great
46:42mathematician you have uh gregoire
46:46mendel you have um george lemaitre in
46:48the 20th century who was one of the
46:51founders of big bang cosmology so all
46:53the way from the beginning of science to
46:55today you have prominent people of faith
46:58that are that are scientists even right
47:00now i think the head of the
47:03what is it the head of the national
47:05institute for health i think francis i
47:07forget his name but anyway he's a
47:09prominent believer
47:11and the church as an institution
47:13also supported science so the cathedrals
47:16were designed in the 17th century to
47:18serve also as solar observatories uh
47:21catholic universities all around the
47:23world
47:24have departments of science and promote
47:27scientific investigation for their
47:28students
47:29the pope has a pontifical academy for
47:31science he invites scientists from all
47:33over the world scientists of
47:35all different faiths and no faith to
47:37come to the vatican for these scientific
47:39meetings so i think it's really quite
47:41unfair to say the church is opposed to
47:44science so faith and science are
47:47obviously not the same thing there's
47:48people that are great at science that
47:50don't have faith there are people that
47:52are great at faith and don't know much
47:54about science but there are people that
47:56are kind of overlapping and so i think
47:59it is really
48:01yeah a myth to think that the church is
48:03opposed to science yeah i just have very
48:04very briefly it's not a biographical
48:06peculiarity that that these these great
48:09uh people of science who are catholics
48:12they they didn't practice their their
48:14scientific craft in addition to
48:16believing in god and practicing
48:18catholicism they they did it precisely
48:21as catholic working from the the
48:23framework of faith and reason there and
48:25that that's always that's always been
48:27the case
48:29so nis
48:30let's let's delve into this faith issue
48:33a bit too
48:36because the faith is a very complicated
48:38term and
48:40you know it's often
48:42parodied
48:43but by the rationalists you know
48:47to have faith in god
48:49is
48:50parodied as a
48:51like a
48:52primitive and superstitious
48:55belief
48:56but
48:57my psychological investigations
48:59convinced me that
49:01there's no action without faith
49:04because we are always stepping into the
49:06unknown
49:08we have to take a leap of faith to
49:11exist
49:12to do the simplest of things to
49:14literally to move and that has to do
49:17with what i said earlier is that
49:19we're trying to move from a place of
49:21less value to a place of more value
49:23so we have to make some assumptions
49:25about what constitutes value
49:27and then we have to believe that our
49:28actions are going to have the outcome
49:29that we desire
49:31and we do that without evidence i mean
49:33that's partly why to be human is to be
49:35riven with anxiety it's because there's
49:37no certainty and so
49:39you can't act without faith and so then
49:41the question might if you accept that
49:43proposition you can't act without faith
49:46and i actually believe i don't believe
49:48that that's a
49:49disputable
49:51proposition unless you view people as
49:54deterministic in the way that clocks are
49:57you know so that we're just stimulus
49:59response machines it seems to me that
50:01instead we're moving into the unknown
50:03and we do that
50:05in dread in some sense dread and hope
50:08and we do that because we have faith and
50:10when we lose that faith our lives fall
50:12apart
50:13and and we don't know which way is up or
50:16down and so then the question is well if
50:18we have to have faith
50:20what is it that we should have faith in
50:23and then the answer seems to be
50:24something like well we should have
50:27if we have to make a decision about that
50:29maybe we try to have faith in what in in
50:31the idea that the best should be pursued
50:34and will prevail
50:36as an organizing principle and then the
50:38question is well what is the best and
50:41the answer is well that's really hard
50:43question and so we need cathedrals and
50:45we need box music and we need the
50:47stories in genesis and we need the
50:49world's great literature and we need all
50:52of that
50:53theater and drama and art and aesthetics
50:56to help us understand what the best is
50:59and to determine how it should prevail
51:00and i don't see that technically as any
51:03different from
51:05i think it is the same thing
51:07psychologically
51:08as the worship of christ
51:11i think it's the same thing
51:14because
51:15again i'm trying to speak
51:16psychologically to think about what
51:18christ represents i'm not thinking about
51:20him as a historical figure that's
51:22something we can get to later
51:26that image
51:27which is seen for example
51:31laid out on these massive cathedral
51:34domes
51:35christ as logos as as generator of the
51:37world it's
51:39it's the idea that the proper mode of
51:41being is brought into existence by
51:43consciousness that's operating according
51:45to the highest possible principles
51:48and like why wouldn't
51:51and that is the kind of faith that's
51:53maybe got some courage associated with
51:55it right i'm going to act as if this is
51:57the case we're all going to act as if
51:59this is the case
52:01now that begs the question does that
52:03make it real well
52:05that's a harder question
52:09yeah saint anselm
52:11thought about god as that than which
52:13nothing greater can be conceived
52:16so he thought of god as the highest
52:18perfect good in aquinas too thought of
52:20god in a similar way is absolute
52:21perfection
52:22and i would say that this kind of faith
52:24though can be reasonable
52:26it's not in my view at least a kind of
52:29blind
52:30shot in the dark that you're just
52:31wandering around and you just kind of
52:32make things up i think there's actually
52:34good philosophical reasons to think that
52:36there does have to be
52:38a first cause there does have to be a
52:41necessary being and aquinas puts forward
52:44these arguments and people have i myself
52:46have
52:47talked about these things to my students
52:49and on and online there's it's not just
52:51a a shot in the dark as it were so
52:54but i think you're right that people do
52:56need faith in some sense just to live
52:58just to move forward but i do think that
53:01you might say specifically theistic
53:03faith is something that's very
53:05reasonable you think of people like
53:07william lane craig who has devoted a
53:09considerable amount of his time to
53:10exploring the kalam
53:12cosmological argument
53:14and
53:15i don't know if you're familiar with
53:16that argument but it's it's quite simple
53:17it just says that oh you're not so
53:20it says that
53:21whatever begins to exist
53:23has a cause
53:25that's the major premise and then the
53:26minor premise is the universe began to
53:29exist
53:30and therefore the universe has a cause
53:32and by universe what's meant in the
53:34argument is all time
53:35all space and all matter
53:38and so if the universe has a cause
53:40that's prior to time it must be
53:42something that is timeless
53:44or you might say eternal if the cause of
53:46the universe is the cause of all matter
53:49it must be prior to matter it must be
53:51immaterial
53:53if the cause of the universe brought the
53:55whole universe into existence obviously
53:57the cause of the universe has to be
53:58immensely powerful
54:00and so you have say in the
54:03cosmological argument the cosmological
54:05argument an argument a reason to believe
54:09that god exists and you know we can talk
54:11about whether that argument works but
54:13you also have other arguments like the
54:14fine-tuning argument and i read online
54:16that you were looking at the god
54:18hypothesis and as you know from reading
54:20that book there is a lot of very solid
54:23evidence
54:24that the universe is fine-tuned and then
54:28if you're going to explain that
54:29fine-tuning in terms of chance
54:31the likelihood of that is unbelievably
54:33unlikely it'd be like if i won the
54:35lottery every single day of my whole
54:36life
54:37it's much more unlikely
54:39that the universe could have been
54:40brought about by chance and still been
54:43able to have life in it so i think that
54:45that to believe in god is very much a
54:48reasonable faith it's not just a random
54:50arbitrary uh
54:52you know wishful thinking kind of kind
54:54of view
54:56yeah i would add that that
54:58i i think i'm hearing two different
54:59kinds of faith at the same time that
55:01ultimately i believe can be in fact the
55:04teaching of the catholic church that
55:05they they are united and that's we call
55:08faith one faith one could be defined as
55:11as what must be
55:13in existence and true in order for there
55:16to be anything else in existence and
55:18true and as you were putting it jordan
55:21how do we make any kind of decision
55:23based upon any kind of evidence
55:24whatsoever whether it's in terms of
55:26empirical matters whether it's term
55:28immoral matters there's so many
55:30presuppositions that we can't make
55:31arguments about but that must be true in
55:34order for us to make arguments about
55:35anything so that's the horizon as it
55:37were of faith and we can't not have
55:39faith in that sense but then as you put
55:41it then then it raises the question what
55:43do we have faith in
55:45well the the catholic answer to that and
55:47the christian answer to that in its
55:49broadest possible sense is you have
55:50faith in jesus christ jesus christ is
55:53the logos is the totality of who god is
55:56that horizon of meaning the horizon of
55:59intelligibility and that whom you can
56:02ultimately trust that's the second
56:03meaning of faith which is not really an
56:05epistemic category it presupposes an
56:08epistemic category which is belief but
56:10it's multiply about trust who do you
56:12most trust and it's the options there
56:15are really quite limited either you're
56:17going to trust something in the world
56:19you're going to trust yourself or you're
56:21going to trust god
56:22and anything in the world and yourself
56:26you'll be let down guaranteed you'll be
56:28let down disastrously in fact
56:31so the third option
56:33is you trust christ who through
56:36revelation we see loves you infinitely
56:39so in that in that sense christ once
56:40again solves the problem of faith both
56:43at its beginning and it's at its end
56:45okay so let let's
56:47delve into that again so
56:49i mentioned that
56:51earlier when we were talking that
56:54you could conceptualize christ
56:56psychologically as
56:58the re
57:00the representation of all things that
57:02strike us as admirable
57:06so
57:07you can so here's an example you know
57:10when i used to watch my kids play house
57:14my son would play the father and my
57:17daughter would play the mother
57:19and she would
57:20act out being a mother and you might say
57:22well she was imitating my wife
57:25but she wasn't because
57:27she wasn't copying her exactly because
57:30you know my wife would walk across the
57:31kitchen in a particular way and
57:33and
57:35pick up
57:36a plate and bring it to the table in a
57:37particular way like they were to copy
57:40that is to duplicate it exactly with
57:42your body right which i could do if i
57:44was imitating you
57:46something you'd find very annoying
57:49anyways what the child does
57:51is something quite different
57:53they
57:54they watch the father across time and
57:57they watch the mother across time and
57:58they extract out
58:00those elements of perception and action
58:03that can be imitated that constitute the
58:06spirit of the mother and the spirit of
58:08the father and then that's what they
58:10manifest in their play
58:12and so they're doing that at a very very
58:14early age it's not direct mimicry
58:16it's me it's as if they've
58:19they're working out the story of what
58:21it's like to be a father and they're
58:22acting that out now they use
58:25their
58:26observations of their actual father to
58:28fill in that
58:30play
58:31space that imaginative space but they
58:33also get information from
58:35movies and television and all the books
58:38they've been read and all of that is
58:39feeding their
58:41embodiment of the father
58:43and so and this isn't something that's
58:46rational exactly so let's say the child
58:49as a consequence of this felt sense of
58:52admiration
58:53focuses on a particular attribute in a
58:56book watches the hero of the story
58:59and is compelled to incorporate that
59:01into their representation
59:03and so
59:05they're trying to act out what's
59:06admirable and then faith in that sense
59:10is
59:12what is it
59:13is
59:16is it willingness to act out the
59:18proposition that
59:20what we find admirable will in fact be
59:23the most appropriate guide to how we
59:26should act in the world
59:27because you have the child acting out
59:29the father but then there would be the
59:31set of all fathers and then there would
59:32be what was extracted out of that that
59:34would be
59:35the ultimately admirable ideal
59:38which is
59:39like god brought to earth if if god is
59:42that which no greater can be imagined
59:46and then that's embodied which is the
59:48christian idea
59:50then what's most admirable
59:53is embodied in the figure of christ and
59:55that's
59:56the thing to imitate and the faith isn't
59:58belief that that's real i don't believe
1:00:00that the faith is
1:00:02willingness to act out of the world
1:00:04that's a different thing because i we
1:00:07make this propositional too much i don't
1:00:09think it is
1:00:11yeah
1:00:12it
1:00:13because the imitate is the imitation of
1:00:15christ
1:00:16not only propositional oh sir
1:00:20sorry everyone there's a bit of a lag on
1:00:22our connection so that's why we're
1:00:23awkwardly interrupting one another so
1:00:26please go ahead i think i
1:00:29i i would say that it's it's not only
1:00:31propositional and in fact
1:00:33on a final analysis the propositional
1:00:35components of the faith may be the the
1:00:37least important i would say they're
1:00:38they're necessary but certainly not
1:00:40sufficient
1:00:41but as you're describing your conception
1:00:43of faith the the word that that really
1:00:46uh stuck out for me is is that this that
1:00:48this will happen that i act according to
1:00:51a belief or to an intuition
1:00:54uh that
1:00:55if i act a certain and according to a
1:00:58certain kind of pattern that i will
1:01:00realize the
1:01:02uh the the nature of the the pattern
1:01:05itself
1:01:06i think that's certainly part of it from
1:01:08a christian perspective it absolutely is
1:01:09it has to be because it's metaphysically
1:01:11the case that god created
1:01:13all things good and so this pattern is
1:01:15embedded absolutely everywhere in
1:01:17creation including in the human mind
1:01:19including in the human soul
1:01:20however there's the the problem of sin
1:01:22right we live in a world that is
1:01:24radically fallen starting with the the
1:01:27broken natures of our own selves and so
1:01:30the will there
1:01:31is not just the question is do i have
1:01:34any reason to believe that my acting
1:01:35according to this pattern will act will
1:01:38actually bring about the the desired
1:01:41outcome that i hope for and that's where
1:01:43jesus christ moves from being the
1:01:45teacher
1:01:46who
1:01:47not only gives the pattern but
1:01:49instantiates the pattern to the savior
1:01:51because the reality is no you will i
1:01:53will not i will fail and again fail
1:01:56disastrously so it is only because this
1:02:00archetype of moral truth and goodness is
1:02:04actually
1:02:05willing to reach into my life into our
1:02:08lives that that will actually can have
1:02:10any meaning and and really
1:02:13command any kind of belief that's why i
1:02:15believe is because it's not just a
1:02:17pattern that i'm seeking to conform to
1:02:19it's a person who's reaching out to me
1:02:22it's both so if that's the case then why
1:02:25is it necessary for us to strive to be
1:02:29good
1:02:33like what role does our moral striving
1:02:35play
1:02:36because it's the same reason i would
1:02:38strive to be a good husband
1:02:40uh and not only in a generic sense that
1:02:42i have a certain set of of criteria that
1:02:46this is what defines being a good
1:02:47husband is and so therefore i'm going to
1:02:49act to it sort of duty bound say again
1:02:51duty is necessary but not sufficient i
1:02:54act out of love so i seek to be good
1:02:57because i love that he who who loves me
1:03:01and again at that point duty is it it
1:03:04ruins the story it ruins the
1:03:05relationship it's i am loved and i wish
1:03:08to love and i recognize i will fail time
1:03:10and time again
1:03:12but i love because
1:03:14i love he who loves me and and and and
1:03:17conversely that's also what leads to my
1:03:19ultimate happiness so
1:03:21i i think i think one thing that's that
1:03:23is
1:03:24could could really complete a lot of the
1:03:26a lot of the theological reflections in
1:03:28your work more broadly is is a
1:03:29conception of grace
1:03:31um a lot of the christianity i see
1:03:34in terms of its in its ideas and your
1:03:36work is a christianity without grace now
1:03:38grace we have to define very carefully
1:03:40but at the end of the day a christianity
1:03:42without grace is not christianity
1:03:47one distinction that might help our
1:03:48conversation is the distinction between
1:03:50a living faith and dead faith so for
1:03:54a living faith what that is is a faith
1:03:56that is
1:03:58enlivened by charity and it's a faith in
1:04:01which god's own love sort of works
1:04:04through me god's love is in me and i
1:04:06express god's love to others now we say
1:04:09well why do we need to worry about being
1:04:10good i mean if if
1:04:12jesus is doing all the work then you
1:04:14know i can just do whatever i want but
1:04:16part of the answer would be
1:04:18that for me to have a living faith i
1:04:20have to maintain that connection with
1:04:21god
1:04:22so
1:04:23it's possible to just as it is with a
1:04:25human relationship it's possible to
1:04:27damage a relationship in a kind of minor
1:04:29way but it's also possible to damage a
1:04:31relationship in a really deadly way so
1:04:33that our friendship is just over in
1:04:35virtue of me punching him in the face or
1:04:37doing something just terrible and the
1:04:38same thing would be true for god that we
1:04:41have this relationship with god or we
1:04:43can but it's possible for us to so
1:04:45damage to that relationship that we no
1:04:48longer have living faith the best we
1:04:50could have is the dead faith i believe
1:04:52in a proposition that god exists
1:04:54and you know maybe that informs me in
1:04:56certain ways but basically i don't have
1:04:58a living faith at all
1:04:59and so
1:05:00the the things i do can't be an
1:05:02expression ultimately of my union with
1:05:04god that spills over into loving other
1:05:07people because in the catholic view
1:05:10jesus is
1:05:11the ultimate pattern you might say but
1:05:13the ultimate pattern is
1:05:16becomes part of our lives through us
1:05:18being united with him
1:05:20so there's different metaphors used in
1:05:22scripture like he's the vine and you are
1:05:24the branches and
1:05:25uh he is the head and you were part of
1:05:27his body
1:05:28uh but another beautiful way of thinking
1:05:30about it and i just ran across this in a
1:05:32book called christ alive in me by this
1:05:34jesuit priest father david mcconey and
1:05:37it was a great kind of analogy and it he
1:05:39said imagine as if god is a sort of
1:05:41burning furnace and then you're like the
1:05:43hot iron that's put in this furnace and
1:05:45kind of heat it up well the the heat and
1:05:48the light from that fire gets into
1:05:50the iron and you take it out of the fire
1:05:52and it's still like lit up and it's
1:05:54still super hot because the heat has
1:05:56kind of gotten inside and so in the
1:05:58christian view
1:05:59we are
1:06:01in this relationship and we want to as
1:06:03it were let god inside and then
1:06:05hopefully god
1:06:06remains in us we don't kick god out i
1:06:08mean god wouldn't leave of his own
1:06:09accord but we can kick him out through
1:06:10serious serious wrongdoing but hopefully
1:06:13that light and that fire
1:06:15makes us more alive and makes us able to
1:06:18give some of that light and that fire to
1:06:21other people who are
1:06:23in need other people that need god's
1:06:25mercy and they they need god's help so
1:06:27it's not just a teacher-student kind of
1:06:29relationship that i that jesus is a
1:06:31little bit like socrates i mean i love
1:06:33socrates i love aristotle they are
1:06:35absolutely terrific but the idea of
1:06:36jesus is beyond
1:06:38just a good teacher beyond just a good
1:06:40example but that the life of jesus would
1:06:43actually live in
1:06:45in you and so this is called by
1:06:46different names sometimes it's called
1:06:48theosis deification sanctifying grace
1:06:51these are all kind of
1:06:52different terms for the same idea but
1:06:54the basic idea is that the heat and the
1:06:56light of god
1:06:57becomes part of you and then hopefully
1:07:00you're able to
1:07:01make the world a better place and be a
1:07:03better husband be a better father be a
1:07:05better friend be a better professor you
1:07:07can do the things you do in a new way
1:07:09because you have this this light and
1:07:11this heat within you
1:07:16uh two two more questions if you don't
1:07:18mind let's let's let's talk about
1:07:21the evolution issue
1:07:24i mean
1:07:25it looks to me like the story of
1:07:29creation in genesis and the story of
1:07:31adam and eve
1:07:33is in large part
1:07:35a description of
1:07:37the role of consciousness in being
1:07:40i mean
1:07:41the idea that
1:07:43the the beginning itself is associated
1:07:46with the dawn of light it's
1:07:48it's like the experience of the day of
1:07:50the morning sun it's that things spring
1:07:52into being and so
1:07:54there's some illusion to consciousness
1:07:55itself there and then
1:07:58the fall of adam and eve seems to
1:08:00involve something like the development
1:08:02of
1:08:02self-consciousness
1:08:04and so
1:08:06that's one way of
1:08:07conceptualizing creation and the human
1:08:10role in it and and maybe our fallen
1:08:13state to some degree as well as the
1:08:15corrupting influence of
1:08:16self-consciousness and the terror that
1:08:18it that it generates
1:08:21it's it's difficult to square that
1:08:23account
1:08:24in some sense with theories of evolution
1:08:28and i'm curious about how
1:08:31you two manage that like
1:08:33you're you're both and may correct me if
1:08:36i'm wrong but you both accept the broad
1:08:39outlines of modern cosmology and
1:08:41evolutionary theory
1:08:43and so
1:08:44how do you see
1:08:46the
1:08:47christian narrative
1:08:50how do you see it in in in juxtaposition
1:08:53with that i mean that was certainly a
1:08:54problem for darwin
1:08:56i mean it just about drove him out of
1:08:58his mind so
1:09:01so in the catholic tradition there is a
1:09:03long history of reading genesis uh in a
1:09:06way that's sensitive to its context so
1:09:09there are some readers like saint ansa i
1:09:11mean
1:09:12ambrose who did hold for instance that
1:09:14the seven days of creation were seven
1:09:1624-hour periods but most catholic
1:09:19interpreters augustine
1:09:21thomas aquinas john paul ii
1:09:24pope francis don't interpret it in that
1:09:26sort of way so i think genesis is
1:09:28teaching us very very important truths
1:09:30but it's not teaching us about
1:09:33contemporary science so i would say it's
1:09:35not for or against evolution it's just
1:09:37not
1:09:38trying to to do contemporary science so
1:09:41what is it trying to do well it's trying
1:09:42to teach us important truths and you
1:09:44have in your lectures explored a number
1:09:46of those
1:09:47important truths but but here's another
1:09:49truth that at least i think is quite
1:09:51significant in terms of
1:09:53the genesis story
1:09:54if we take the genesis story as a
1:09:57poetic and
1:09:59imagery filled kind of narrative one of
1:10:02the points i think is that all human
1:10:04beings ultimately are part of one human
1:10:06family
1:10:07that is say everyone on planet earth i
1:10:10should treat as if they are distantly a
1:10:12brother or sister of mine
1:10:14and if you look at some of the other
1:10:16rival stories of creation if you look at
1:10:18for instance uh plato's symposium he has
1:10:21a story there that is spoken by
1:10:23aristophanes and aristophanes in that
1:10:25story says well human beings arose from
1:10:27three different sources some arose from
1:10:30the sun some arose from the moon some
1:10:32arose from
1:10:33the earth and so we all come from these
1:10:35different places and on that on that
1:10:36view right ultimately other human beings
1:10:39are literally could be from a different
1:10:40planet and so
1:10:42you know there's ethical consequences
1:10:44for that if we really took seriously the
1:10:46idea
1:10:47that all human beings
1:10:49are part of one human family that is i
1:10:51think a revolutionary idea in centuries
1:10:53and centuries later that idea was
1:10:55developed into this idea that we still
1:10:57have of human rights right the idea of
1:10:59human rights is that every single human
1:11:01being regardless of race religion age it
1:11:03doesn't matter
1:11:05all human beings
1:11:06deserve fundamental respect in other
1:11:08words you might say all human beings are
1:11:10part of one human family we're all equal
1:11:12in dignity and so we should be respected
1:11:15so i think genesis is teaching us
1:11:16incredibly important truths
1:11:18like that truth that we should respect
1:11:20all human beings as part of one human
1:11:21family but i do think it's a mis reading
1:11:24of genesis to um to look to genesis as
1:11:27if it's a science textbook just like we
1:11:29wouldn't look to genesis you know to
1:11:31again i mentioned this earlier we
1:11:33wouldn't look to genesis to find answers
1:11:34about well should i buy an iphone or
1:11:36should i buy an android phone like
1:11:38that's just genesis isn't trying to do
1:11:41that it's not for or against iphones
1:11:42it's just not about iphones and so
1:11:44genesis just isn't for or against
1:11:46evolution it's it's it's just not
1:11:48talking about that kind of thing at all
1:11:51yeah i i would just say i think i think
1:11:52the root question
1:11:54the more important question both morally
1:11:56and metaphysically
1:11:58with regards to evolution and
1:12:01god and existence is is is existence
1:12:03arbitrary or not
1:12:06is life accidental or not
1:12:09is there any way in which we can
1:12:11identify that the symbols and patterns
1:12:14that we see in the world both
1:12:17empirically scientifically and
1:12:20bringing in some of your thought jordan
1:12:22morally are those ultimately our own
1:12:26creations our own anxious creations in
1:12:28order to try and cope with an existence
1:12:31that is neither here nor there
1:12:34and and therefore just as arbitrary as
1:12:36anything else or are they real and i and
1:12:38i i know the question of the real is at
1:12:41the one hand the hardest question to
1:12:43answer um but on the other hand it's the
1:12:45most important question to answer that's
1:12:47the root question for me with regards to
1:12:49evolutionary theory
1:12:50um
1:12:52do i accept the broad contours of it yes
1:12:54saint john paul ii uh
1:12:56a previous pope has
1:12:58wrote in support of its the general idea
1:13:00that life can involve
1:13:02but the root question again is does god
1:13:04exist and did god create the universe
1:13:06how that happened the mechanism by which
1:13:08that took place is an incredibly
1:13:10important question for scientific
1:13:11analysis but it's a secondary question
1:13:14to whether or not god exists and
1:13:16therefore there is meaning purpose order
1:13:19and structure in existence
1:13:23so let maybe we'll
1:13:26i definitely want to ask this question
1:13:30so it's become increasingly difficult
1:13:34for the
1:13:35catholic church
1:13:37perhaps in particular in the west to
1:13:39attract young people
1:13:42i don't think that's a statement that
1:13:43anyone would disagree with but people
1:13:46are watching my biblical lectures
1:13:49and lots of them are young and they came
1:13:51to the lectures
1:13:53so
1:13:54why is that exactly what's going on
1:13:57there
1:13:58i mean i don't know how to understand it
1:14:02precisely
1:14:03and i can't work it out in my own mind
1:14:06you're looking at it in some sense from
1:14:08the outside
1:14:10what
1:14:12what's the story there
1:14:14uh i think part of it's a just a
1:14:16sociological cultural question where in
1:14:18the minds of many young people perhaps
1:14:21most people religion is an
1:14:22undifferentiated mass
1:14:24and what religion means is
1:14:26basically what the the technical term
1:14:28would be feedism that you believe
1:14:29something that you have no rational
1:14:31reason to believe
1:14:33and you've just embraced it as a matter
1:14:35of kind of a personal mantra but
1:14:37otherwise it's completely irrational i
1:14:38think in most young people's minds
1:14:40that's the case so the the general trend
1:14:43we see within catholicism is more the
1:14:45specific trend we see within catholicism
1:14:47more just a general trend of people
1:14:49leaving uh religion and i think why why
1:14:52your work has been so important for
1:14:54those of us who
1:14:55who are who are catholics
1:14:57is that
1:14:58you are showing that that's not what
1:15:01religion is now we can have very
1:15:04important and timely questions about why
1:15:06the catholic church hasn't been
1:15:07doing its duty as it were we're part of
1:15:10the word on fire institute and that's
1:15:11that's precisely what we're seeking to
1:15:13do that's precisely the the mission of
1:15:15the word on fire institute um but your
1:15:19work has re-established that connection
1:15:21for
1:15:22millions of people who have a false idea
1:15:26one of religion generally but two of of
1:15:28christianity and catholicism in
1:15:29particular
1:15:31yeah i think that's right so part of
1:15:32your lecture
1:15:34lectures i think are showing
1:15:36a dialogue between faith and reason
1:15:38because obviously you have the you have
1:15:39the scientific background your professor
1:15:41of psychology and you know about the
1:15:43empirical science and all kinds of
1:15:44things but you're also taking these
1:15:46questions of faith seriously so for us
1:15:48that is really bread and butter part of
1:15:50the
1:15:51catholic tradition so there are
1:15:52definitely are some forms of religion
1:15:54even some forms of christianity they
1:15:56will want to pit faith against reason as
1:15:59if faith and reason are in an mma fight
1:16:02and they're you know going at it and
1:16:03they're going to you know choke each
1:16:05other out and well on our view that's
1:16:07not true on our view god is the ultimate
1:16:10source of both faith and reason so john
1:16:13paul ii put it in a very beautiful way
1:16:14he said that faith and reason are two
1:16:17wings that the human person uses to fly
1:16:20up towards the truth and so the idea is
1:16:22that there's a kind of harmony they're
1:16:23different right your left wing's not the
1:16:25same as your right wing these are two
1:16:26different things but they are not set at
1:16:29odds with each other
1:16:30they're in harmony so you see this sort
1:16:32of
1:16:33harmony and figures like augustine who
1:16:35wants to combine a kind of platonic
1:16:37philosophy
1:16:38with a christian wisdom and then you
1:16:40find a different kind of synthesis in
1:16:42someone like thomas aquinas who wants to
1:16:44combine an aristotelian philosophy with
1:16:46a christian wisdom and then you find a
1:16:48similar sort of combining in many other
1:16:51figures in the christian tradition john
1:16:53henry newman john paul ii etc and so
1:16:56i think in a way one way to interpret
1:16:58your work is as
1:17:00another
1:17:01way of bringing together faith and
1:17:03reason in this in this conversation in
1:17:05this dialogue and it's certainly part of
1:17:07the work i try to do as a professor of
1:17:09philosophy i mean some people say oh
1:17:10you're a professor of philosophy you're
1:17:12supposed to be you know how could you be
1:17:14catholic
1:17:15and i think that question is nonsensical
1:17:17if you understand the catholic view of
1:17:19faith and reason that faith and reason
1:17:21are not on our view
1:17:23you know opposed they're working
1:17:25together they're in harmony
1:17:27and part of the intellectual adventure i
1:17:29think is is talking about these
1:17:31questions and bringing these two sources
1:17:33into fruitful conversation
1:17:36in a very basic sense
1:17:37faith cannot oppose reason
1:17:39because if god is and god is one
1:17:43then any truth whatever form formulation
1:17:45that truth is taking it cannot be
1:17:47opposed to itself this is a fundamental
1:17:49principle in the thought of saint thomas
1:17:51aquinas and so any statement that would
1:17:53be irrational
1:17:55we as catholics would reject but faith
1:17:58is
1:17:58supra-rational and we talked about this
1:18:00early in the conversation right there's
1:18:02a sense in which there's a there's a
1:18:04there's an invisible but real foundation
1:18:06to reason itself both logic and
1:18:09empirical observation and then there's a
1:18:11destination for where it's headed so in
1:18:13that sense faith is is never against
1:18:15reason but it's the condition for the
1:18:17possibility and the purpose of reason
1:18:21so part of it you think is is this
1:18:23demonstration of the coexistence and
1:18:26maybe the necessary coexistence or the
1:18:28optimal coexistence of faith and reason
1:18:31but there's maybe there's another aspect
1:18:33to a couple other aspects and
1:18:35like
1:18:36maybe
1:18:38this might be a consequence of
1:18:40the empirical revolution in human
1:18:42thought is that
1:18:44maybe the modern church has concentrated
1:18:47too much on
1:18:48emphasizing the propositional
1:18:50at the expense of the
1:18:52enacted
1:18:55and i could see that happening a little
1:18:57bit in our conversation you know so
1:19:00i i'm trying to find places to stand
1:19:03that are really solid and like the idea
1:19:05that we have an instinct to admire
1:19:09and that we can extract out the pattern
1:19:11of what's admirable and that we can then
1:19:15deify that and assume a relationship
1:19:18between that and the ultimate ideal that
1:19:20seems
1:19:21very solid to me
1:19:23i kind of i don't feel
1:19:25any
1:19:26internal disunity about those
1:19:28propositions
1:19:30that's different about those
1:19:31suppositions let's say
1:19:34that's different than the claim that you
1:19:36know there was a god who exists outside
1:19:38of time and space and who created the
1:19:40universe
1:19:41that that's more like
1:19:43a set of
1:19:44statements that you need to believe
1:19:47whereas the first set is
1:19:49a set of
1:19:51answers to questions that everybody has
1:19:54you know and and
1:19:56maybe that's
1:19:57see i was trained as a behavioral
1:19:59psychologist
1:20:00i was trained
1:20:02as a cognitive behavioral psychologist
1:20:03but i concentrated more on the
1:20:04behavioral element the
1:20:07how to help people change the way they
1:20:09act and to make that central
1:20:12and i i try to do that in my lectures
1:20:14it's like well you know everybody needs
1:20:16to know how to act no one disputes that
1:20:19the audience doesn't dispute that and
1:20:20then figuring out how to act is a great
1:20:22mystery and
1:20:24we all seem to be guided by our
1:20:26conscience and we can't escape that
1:20:28conscience even though we might like to
1:20:30and we all seem to have some sense that
1:20:32some things are good and other things
1:20:34are evil and
1:20:37so what's good and is that what we
1:20:39should pursue and how is that
1:20:40represented
1:20:42those are all solid questions and there
1:20:44are solid religious answers to them
1:20:46but then
1:20:47there are these
1:20:49more abstract propositions
1:20:52that seem to make that people bounce off
1:20:55them and young people bounce off them
1:20:57because they're more like
1:20:59a set of
1:21:01they're like an insistence about what
1:21:03you must believe propositionally rather
1:21:07than answers to questions about how to
1:21:10walk through life given this the
1:21:13questions about life mysteries that you
1:21:15all have in your head
1:21:16and it's the latter that i'm
1:21:18trying to explore and address in the
1:21:20lectures you know
1:21:23and i think that's partly why people are
1:21:27find them
1:21:28acceptable you know they don't just
1:21:30bounce off them and say well that's
1:21:31religious claptrap i'm done with that
1:21:33you know and reject them the same way
1:21:35they do
1:21:36at least to some degree
1:21:38you know church attendance and
1:21:44i'm always mute i'm always exploring a
1:21:46mystery with the audience in my lectures
1:21:49you know when
1:21:50i'm not telling them what i believe
1:21:52i don't even tell them what i believe to
1:21:54be true because i'm always questioning
1:21:56what i believe and
1:22:00the reason i keep insisting on this in
1:22:02this conversation is because it is
1:22:04really is something i'm trying to solve
1:22:06it's like
1:22:09what is the
1:22:10i do believe that we are in danger of
1:22:12making all sorts of things religious
1:22:14that shouldn't be and that that's going
1:22:17to do our culture great damage
1:22:19and that unless we put god back in god's
1:22:22place and caesar back in caesar's place
1:22:26things are going to
1:22:28be grim
1:22:30and i the church the classical church
1:22:32the catholic church has to play a role
1:22:34in that but
1:22:36it i don't see it
1:22:40i don't see a tremendous amount of
1:22:41evidence that that's happening among
1:22:43young people so i'm not saying that with
1:22:45any sense of glee obviously
1:22:47it's it's it's a mystery that needs to
1:22:49be solved
1:22:51and so
1:22:53yeah i think you're right that your
1:22:55lectures focus more on the existential
1:22:57and the practical and how to live this
1:22:59out
1:23:00and i think that's really important and
1:23:02in the catholic church at least part of
1:23:03what we do
1:23:04is actually offer
1:23:06young people a chance to do that so for
1:23:08instance at every catholic university in
1:23:10every catholic parish there's all kinds
1:23:12of
1:23:13outreach programs there's all kinds of
1:23:15ways in which we're trying to live out
1:23:18this christian message because at the
1:23:19end of the day i think you're right the
1:23:21living it out is
1:23:23so essential and so important
1:23:25on the other hand i think when you're
1:23:26living out something there is at least
1:23:29implicitly
1:23:30some sort of theoretical
1:23:32view that you're living out that is to
1:23:34say if i live out a life of greed right
1:23:38at least implicitly i am saying as it
1:23:41were
1:23:41at least in my actions that i think that
1:23:44money is the most important thing
1:23:46and so in a way the theory
1:23:48i think you're absolutely right just the
1:23:50theory is what i would have called
1:23:51earlier dead faith of course that
1:23:53doesn't help at all we need living faith
1:23:55but i do think that a living faith is
1:23:57not going to live very long unless there
1:23:59is at least some
1:24:01intellectual content to it and the
1:24:02reason for that is that human beings
1:24:04have minds and they ask questions and so
1:24:07if people are asking questions and you
1:24:08know my students in philosophy class ask
1:24:10questions all the time
1:24:12and there's no answer at all
1:24:14then i think that leaves the the
1:24:16practice of faith being uh kind of
1:24:19unmoored and being kind of shallow so i
1:24:21think you're 100 right like if i could
1:24:23say for my kids would i rather have them
1:24:25have all kinds of theories and all kinds
1:24:27of abstract ideas and be an expert in
1:24:29theology and philosophy
1:24:31but in their real life
1:24:33they don't worship god they don't serve
1:24:35people in need they're a horrible friend
1:24:38etc or the reverse well of course i'd
1:24:40rather have them living a life of
1:24:42charity and and the virtues and being a
1:24:45great person even if their intellectual
1:24:46understanding was sort of thin
1:24:48but i do think you know given that
1:24:50people ask questions and people ask
1:24:53other people questions i think if
1:24:54there's no intellectual content what can
1:24:56happen really easily is it it just sort
1:24:58of evaporates right that is to say that
1:25:00you you give up going you give up
1:25:02worship you give up service you give up
1:25:04thinking that people that are different
1:25:06from you deserve fundamental respect you
1:25:08sort of
1:25:09the practices end up
1:25:11going away i think unless there's at
1:25:12least some intellectual
1:25:14um
1:25:15substance there and then partly depends
1:25:18on your person person like who you are
1:25:20so
1:25:20i'm someone who really loves to read
1:25:22books i love to talk about intellectual
1:25:24things so for me that's a big part of my
1:25:27life now there are other people who are
1:25:28great people who you know they don't
1:25:30read books and they don't like talking
1:25:32about issues and
1:25:33fair enough i mean not everyone's not
1:25:34everyone's alike but i do think there
1:25:36are lots of young people that ask
1:25:39intellectual questions
1:25:41right they ask well how do you fit
1:25:42genesis with evolution
1:25:44and if you just sit there and go i have
1:25:46no idea i just just believe
1:25:48well you could do that but at least for
1:25:50us as catholics we don't we're not
1:25:52fetish we don't say oh just believe it
1:25:53there's no explanation we try to provide
1:25:56reasonable explanations of things but
1:25:59but i do think i do agree with you at
1:26:01the end of the day
1:26:02living charity is the most important and
1:26:04it's something that saint paul talked
1:26:05about
1:26:06right if you give your body over to be
1:26:08burned if you have faith to move
1:26:09mountains
1:26:10but you don't have love
1:26:12right it's all worthless
1:26:13and so love at the end of the day is
1:26:15the most important
1:26:17yeah i think i think an important
1:26:18distinction here is is
1:26:20what's necessary and what's most
1:26:22important they're not always the the
1:26:25same thing so what's necessary in order
1:26:27for
1:26:27catholicism to become catholicism it
1:26:29must have a set must have dogma right or
1:26:32else it's it's it's not anything
1:26:34whatsoever so in so far as the catholic
1:26:37church has dogma we have a set of
1:26:39propositions that we believe in many
1:26:41sets of propositions that we believe to
1:26:42be true in every way that something can
1:26:44be true
1:26:46historically
1:26:48metaphorically literally morally all
1:26:50these things we believe to be true so
1:26:52that's necessary but that's necessary
1:26:53for any group it's necessary for any
1:26:56individual in order to have any kind of
1:26:57unified personality so in that sense
1:27:00it's absolutely necessary is it the most
1:27:01important no no but but that again the
1:27:04most important is that these dogmas as
1:27:06chris has been put it become alive
1:27:09become alive as saint paul also puts it
1:27:11without without love you are a like a
1:27:15gong that makes no sound whatsoever and
1:27:18so one of the critiques that i've that
1:27:20has really hit home that you that you've
1:27:22also made in in previous videos is that
1:27:25catholicism is not calling its people to
1:27:27be heroes
1:27:28that that that sticks with me i think i
1:27:30think that's right and we we have within
1:27:33our faith what's called the doctrine of
1:27:34the saints which in a very basic sense
1:27:36just means that we believe that there
1:27:38are people just like us
1:27:40who have lived in a way that exhibits
1:27:43what it truly means to be a follower of
1:27:46jesus christ
1:27:48and if you look at the different kinds
1:27:50of saints what you will find is
1:27:52vastly different kinds of personalities
1:27:54vastly different kinds of interests but
1:27:56two things will also be present one
1:27:59courage
1:28:00and two fidelity to
1:28:02the truth
1:28:04diversity across all other levels
1:28:06but courage and fidelity to the truth so
1:28:08i do think that this is a time for
1:28:10courage and again that's one of the
1:28:11reasons that i was so attracted to your
1:28:13work because of the pushback that it's
1:28:15received pushbacks perhaps the most
1:28:16diplomatic word i could say uh but
1:28:19and you remain consistent and i see that
1:28:21that's that's courage
1:28:23and that's a model for us as
1:28:26well so a couple of comments on that so
1:28:30well optimally you want
1:28:32the optimal pattern of action
1:28:35to be part of your personality
1:28:37and then you want
1:28:39the story
1:28:40of your life to be concordant with that
1:28:42pattern of action and then you want the
1:28:44propositions abstracted from that story
1:28:46to be concordant with the story so then
1:28:49you have the intellectual and let's call
1:28:51it the literary and the behavioral
1:28:54existing in harmony with one another and
1:28:57i suppose a fully developed religious
1:28:59system would
1:29:00flesh out all three levels and you see
1:29:03that in in catholicism you have the
1:29:06patterns of action you have the stories
1:29:08and you have the the the propositions
1:29:12so i i agree with dr kaiser that
1:29:16the dogma
1:29:18is crucial and it's partly too because
1:29:20the rational can undermine faith you
1:29:24know and we always think as modern
1:29:26people we think well if faith can be
1:29:27undermined by rationality than it should
1:29:29be but as a practicing clinician i see
1:29:32how devastating that is so i had a
1:29:34client for example who was an
1:29:35extraordinarily creative person
1:29:37brilliant person
1:29:38and fundamentally a good person
1:29:41but he had a very very critical rational
1:29:44mind
1:29:45and it was always
1:29:47digging at his roots
1:29:50and as long as he he was an architect
1:29:52and an artist and
1:29:54as long as he was engaged in creative
1:29:57activity
1:29:59he could live
1:30:00but as soon as he started to think
1:30:03his thinking killed him it was so
1:30:08it was so brutal
1:30:10everything was up for grabs everything
1:30:12was questionable
1:30:14you know and you should say well you
1:30:15don't take anything on faith you know
1:30:17it's like well try to live like that and
1:30:19see what happens it that doesn't get at
1:30:21the problem that the untrammeled
1:30:23rational mind can be unbelievably
1:30:26destructive in its
1:30:28ability to go down to the depths and
1:30:30undermine and and destroy
1:30:33and so
1:30:36the
1:30:37the protective structure
1:30:39that a functioning religious system
1:30:42offers is some protection against
1:30:46the
1:30:46against that element of untrammeled
1:30:48rationality
1:30:50and that's also something i think the
1:30:52the rationalist atheist types they just
1:30:54maybe they haven't had enough experience
1:30:56with
1:30:57say seriously depressed people
1:31:00who've been driven to the depths of
1:31:02despair by
1:31:03a mind that just won't stop uprooting
1:31:06and
1:31:07and destroying
1:31:09and
1:31:10and
1:31:11you know that's not
1:31:12only a personal thing in some sense
1:31:14because
1:31:15it's easy for you me anyone to become
1:31:18possessed by these destructive ideas
1:31:21and they're very powerful
1:31:23and once they're part of us we need an
1:31:25answer to them you know and we need an
1:31:28answer to our her our nihilistic doubts
1:31:31and
1:31:32what
1:31:33catholicism offers
1:31:36i wouldn't say uniquely but but
1:31:38definitely is
1:31:41the consequence of thousands of years of
1:31:44effort at
1:31:48keeping that terribly destructive
1:31:50destroyer of necessary faith at bay
1:31:55and that's also a good way to
1:31:56communicate it i think to young people
1:31:58it's like look you're going to be
1:32:00plagued by these existential
1:32:02catastrophic existential doubts
1:32:05what the hell's the point of it anyways
1:32:07and that's particularly the case when
1:32:09things aren't going well and you're
1:32:11suffering and suffering unjustly it's
1:32:12like what are you going to do then well
1:32:14here's
1:32:16here's how people have solved that
1:32:18problem you know it's possible that
1:32:20we're akin to deity in some sense that
1:32:22there's something transcendentally
1:32:24important about consciousness that you
1:32:25play a crucial role in the structure of
1:32:28existence
1:32:29it's like no one
1:32:31can say that for certain you know
1:32:33because what the hell do we know but
1:32:35it's the best we've been able to manage
1:32:38in terms of
1:32:42what was it milton
1:32:44wasn't didn't milton write paradise laws
1:32:46to justify the way of god
1:32:48the ways of god to man
1:32:50it's a hell of an ambition in some sense
1:32:52that's what this entire religious
1:32:54endeavor does the literary endeavor as
1:32:56well
1:32:56what's the point of all this what's the
1:32:58meaning of this and
1:33:00you know when you think about that in
1:33:02two
1:33:03two propositionally
1:33:06and this i also saw this in my therapy
1:33:08practice it's like well what's the
1:33:09meaning of life and i could easily get
1:33:11off on a nihilistic argument with some
1:33:13of my more intelligent clients they had
1:33:15a rejoinder for every proposition about
1:33:17why life was valuable
1:33:19but then if you said to them
1:33:23don't be so sure that that part of you
1:33:25is your friend look what it's doing to
1:33:27you it's so destructive and it has all
1:33:30of its self-justifying arguments and
1:33:32they might even be coherent but look at
1:33:35the consequences and then
1:33:37contrast that
1:33:38with
1:33:40your own experience like when does that
1:33:43sense of nihilistic despair disappear
1:33:45you know for some people it's when
1:33:47they're with people they love they're
1:33:48with friends or family some people find
1:33:50it in creative activity some people find
1:33:52it in charity
1:33:54there are various sources of meaning
1:33:57and that's not propositional
1:34:00you see it in your own life right you
1:34:02can literally in therapy you have people
1:34:04track that it's like well you're
1:34:06nihilistically depressed let's let's
1:34:07watch your life for a week and see how
1:34:10that ebbs and flows with what you're
1:34:11doing
1:34:13and then see if we can get
1:34:15you participating more in what makes it
1:34:18ebb than what makes it flow and that's
1:34:21empirical in a sense right i'm not
1:34:23asking you to believe something i'm
1:34:24asking you to watch the structure of
1:34:26your own reality to see where meaning
1:34:28manifests itself and then you could say
1:34:32in some sense the sum total of
1:34:35where meaning manifests itself that's
1:34:37where god resides
1:34:39and that relationship with god that you
1:34:41described
1:34:43as
1:34:44as the
1:34:45what would you say
1:34:47as
1:34:49that that has to be maintained by our
1:34:51good behavior
1:34:54i suppose that's that
1:34:55desire
1:34:57to live in that space of meaning
1:35:00and
1:35:01then you can propositionalize that you
1:35:02can say well that's associated with love
1:35:04and it's associated with courage it's
1:35:06associated with these classical virtues
1:35:08and it's not these things that we've
1:35:10learned to deem as evil
1:35:12and that's that's where you is that is
1:35:15it reasonable to say that that's where
1:35:17you find god if you're searching is that
1:35:19the is that an appropriate way of
1:35:21looking at it
1:35:23i think so i i met a guy one time who
1:35:26told me he went to a lecture
1:35:28and the lecture was on god's existence
1:35:30and the guy who was lecturing and then
1:35:31after the lecture my friend came up to
1:35:33him and said uh you know everything you
1:35:35say is a bunch of malarkey there's no
1:35:38god it's just your lecture is just
1:35:40meaningless
1:35:41and the guy said okay
1:35:43what i want you to do is for the next
1:35:45week i want you to treat everyone
1:35:47that you meet
1:35:49as if they were jesus in disguise
1:35:52and the guy left the lecture and he went
1:35:54home and you know he gets home and you
1:35:57know mom's there doing the dishes and he
1:35:58thought to himself well if this were
1:35:59jesus and disguise doing the dishes i'd
1:36:01probably go up and like help my mom do
1:36:03the dishes and then dad came home from
1:36:05work and rather than ignore him he said
1:36:06hey dad how was how was work how's
1:36:08everything going and you know because if
1:36:09that were really jesus in disguise i
1:36:11would do that and then they're eating
1:36:13dinner together with the family and
1:36:14there's one hamburger left
1:36:16and he turns to his brother says hey why
1:36:17don't you have this
1:36:19and the guy told me his life was
1:36:21completely transformed by literally one
1:36:24week
1:36:25of acting in this sort of way
1:36:28and that's not really surprising pope
1:36:29benedict talked about this in one of his
1:36:32encyclicals that one way to god
1:36:35is to act in this sort of way to act as
1:36:37if god exists right right to act as if
1:36:40other people are jesus in disguise and
1:36:43you know mother teresa talked about that
1:36:44too that in for her the poor and the
1:36:47leper and the destitute
1:36:49were all jesus
1:36:51in disguise and so she served them as if
1:36:54they were jesus and so that is one way
1:36:58it seems to me to move towards god i
1:36:59don't think it's the only way though and
1:37:01the reason is that
1:37:03i know a philosopher aleister mcintyre
1:37:05who mentioned to us in class one day
1:37:07that he was an atheist until he
1:37:08carefully studied the arguments for
1:37:10god's existence so there are at least
1:37:12some people at least one person aleister
1:37:14mcintyre who really did come to god
1:37:16through that way but i think the more
1:37:17common way is through
1:37:19lived practice lived action yeah you you
1:37:21brought up the the case of of severe
1:37:23depression and um
1:37:25you know
1:37:26it is the case of course that
1:37:29you can make
1:37:30profoundly coherent arguments of for why
1:37:34your life is meaningless and why
1:37:36meaning there is just a vast nullity to
1:37:39all existence but the question isn't are
1:37:41they coherent the question is are they
1:37:43true the question is are the premises
1:37:45right because anything can be coherent
1:37:47within false premises the question is is
1:37:49it the case that your life is worth
1:37:51nothing and the answer has to be no
1:37:53that's a false statement it's a false
1:37:56apprehension of reality oh look what
1:37:58happens if you act that out
1:38:01of course but even then you could say
1:38:03well no i'd be doing a sum if within
1:38:05within the grips of depression you'd
1:38:07still be thinking that i am acting
1:38:08according to a good given the premises
1:38:11that i have about the meaninglessness of
1:38:12my own life and of all life
1:38:14so i think the foundation it keeps going
1:38:16back to the same question the foundation
1:38:17of truth must be there but then the next
1:38:20thing to say is not that you are wrong
1:38:22about your life being meaningless as a
1:38:23false statement but that you're also
1:38:25loved
1:38:26you are loved
1:38:29and it's i think that's the kind of
1:38:30thing at least my own experience
1:38:32that can take you out of the darkness
1:38:34that your life is not about you and your
1:38:36own thoughts it's not about you and the
1:38:38systems that you are building
1:38:40ultimately you are in response to
1:38:42something much greater than you and that
1:38:44thing that's greater than you is looking
1:38:46at you and calling you out and saying i
1:38:48love you so it's not it's not an either
1:38:50or it's not well what's true
1:38:52propositionally about the nature of
1:38:53existence and is there a soul it is that
1:38:56and
1:38:57i'm calling you
1:38:59which is a universal call for us as
1:39:01catholics
1:39:04this
1:39:05exercise that you described dr kaiser
1:39:09i believe that
1:39:13when we see other people
1:39:17except under
1:39:19very extraordinary circumstances we see
1:39:23an illusion that we project upon them
1:39:27mostly it's a simplifying illusion we
1:39:29don't see the whole person partly i
1:39:31suppose because we we couldn't tolerate
1:39:34the
1:39:35the complete vision
1:39:37it would be too much for us you know so
1:39:40our doors of perception are three
1:39:42quarters closed and exactly why that is
1:39:44isn't obvious but
1:39:47i do believe that the more accurately
1:39:49you perceive a person
1:39:52the more you perceive them in the manner
1:39:54that you described
1:39:56you see this eternal
1:39:59recurring
1:40:01conscious
1:40:02hero
1:40:04striving against the darkness
1:40:07it's
1:40:09and when you treat people like that
1:40:12of course they're
1:40:14what compelled by that
1:40:16it's a compelling way to be interacted
1:40:19with
1:40:21although i don't know what it is is that
1:40:23maybe
1:40:27it's not obvious how much of that you
1:40:29can tolerate which is a very strange
1:40:31thing too
1:40:32you know
1:40:34i'm thinking about this
1:40:36most of what we perceive is our memory
1:40:40and sometimes that
1:40:41is stripped away and we see what's there
1:40:43but seeing what's there is awes aw
1:40:46inspiring
1:40:48it's it's it's gripping and and it
1:40:51instills terror and i think that's the
1:40:53same as the burning bush
1:40:55and in some sense everything is a
1:40:57burning bush
1:40:58but
1:41:02you're blinded to it
1:41:08the
1:41:11you you see what's there
1:41:13i think when you really love someone a
1:41:16child
1:41:17you really see that in a child if you if
1:41:19you're a parent
1:41:20right
1:41:21you see
1:41:22you don't see a generic baby you see
1:41:25that actual person
1:41:27so that memory that
1:41:30pushes generic baby into your field of
1:41:32vision dissipates and you see what's
1:41:34actually there and that love drives that
1:41:38i imagine it does that
1:41:40it love seems to
1:41:43like i always saw when people fall in
1:41:44love with one another they see the
1:41:46perfection that could conceivably exist
1:41:48it's like the curtains of
1:41:50of illusion
1:41:52pull apart momentarily and you see the
1:41:55paradisal state that could be there
1:41:57hypothetically if everything was done
1:41:59properly
1:42:00and that drives the love
1:42:02and then maybe if you work across time
1:42:04you can achieve that to some degree
1:42:07you know because other people think
1:42:08about themselves as deluded when they're
1:42:10in love and
1:42:11that's a very cynical way of looking at
1:42:13it
1:42:14it certainly doesn't apply
1:42:16to the love between a parent and a child
1:42:21yeah i think i think you're right i mean
1:42:23i know in my own life
1:42:25having children has been such a
1:42:26unbelievably enriching
1:42:28experience and i think about
1:42:32you know especially when kids are little
1:42:34and they're asleep you go in there and
1:42:36they're just sleeping and you see their
1:42:37little chest moving up and down
1:42:39there's something painfully beautiful
1:42:41about that i mean you just wish it could
1:42:43go on
1:42:45just indefinitely
1:42:46and
1:42:48for me that is something that taught me
1:42:50something about about god's love right
1:42:53if god really is
1:42:55god the father
1:42:57well then you know we that's sort of how
1:42:59he looks at us and he sees the good
1:43:02he sees the effort and
1:43:04of course there's imperfections too but
1:43:06i don't know it for me
1:43:08having children is a kind of
1:43:11i try to sometimes tell my students
1:43:14most of whom don't have kids what it's
1:43:16like and it's very hard to describe so
1:43:18the best way i came up with was well
1:43:20remember when you were a little child
1:43:21you're like six
1:43:23and you thought um
1:43:25oh boys have cooties girls have cooties
1:43:27and the idea of romance or kissing
1:43:28someone is just repulsive and then you
1:43:30know you could imagine trying to explain
1:43:32to a six-year-old look at some point
1:43:34you're gonna look at someone else and
1:43:35just find this person unbelievably
1:43:37captivating and you're going to want to
1:43:38kiss them and you can say the words but
1:43:40a little kid's been like
1:43:41no way that that's hard to describe and
1:43:44and i think becoming a parent is similar
1:43:46to that in that
1:43:48yeah it seems to me
1:43:49that it is so enriching
1:43:53that uh and has given so much at least
1:43:55to my life and including calling out
1:43:57something for me that would have never
1:43:58been elicited because there's kind of
1:44:00sacrifices that you'll do for a kid that
1:44:02you'll never do for you know an adult
1:44:04so that that's interesting
1:44:06that ties in with this this idea that
1:44:09you brought forward of treating
1:44:10everybody as if they were manifestation
1:44:12of christ
1:44:14you see that
1:44:17meaningful fragility in your children
1:44:20and it's beautiful
1:44:22and
1:44:23maybe if you're
1:44:24if you've been warped and hurt you get
1:44:26resentful about it
1:44:27and jealous of it and that can lead to
1:44:30all sorts of terrible things but to the
1:44:32degree that you can that you're
1:44:34privileged to see that
1:44:37that calls you to be a better person
1:44:40and you can think of that you know
1:44:43biologically well
1:44:46you have these fragile creatures
1:44:49that you're responsible for
1:44:52of course that's going to call you to a
1:44:54higher mode of
1:44:55action because otherwise they're not
1:44:56going to live you know so it's it's very
1:44:59practical but
1:45:02so then but what you see there is if
1:45:04that if you
1:45:05view someone with love
1:45:08then it's incumbent upon you to treat
1:45:12them as if they're valuable
1:45:14and then the more you treat other people
1:45:16as if they're valuable
1:45:18the better person you are that just
1:45:20comes along for the ride in some sense
1:45:22so none of that seems questionable to me
1:45:25that that seems solid
1:45:27and so then maybe the more love you view
1:45:29other people with
1:45:31the higher the moral demand that's
1:45:33placed on you and then i would say too
1:45:35well then
1:45:36that's another reason why
1:45:39it's so important to be truthful and and
1:45:41in some sense to be good because it
1:45:44isn't obvious to me that you can
1:45:45withstand that moral load
1:45:48if you're
1:45:50compromised by
1:45:52too much sin
1:45:54it's too much
1:45:57and then that's another thing that that
1:45:58we're not very good at teaching young
1:46:00people about you know we shouldn't do
1:46:01that
1:46:02you know it's like
1:46:06there's a
1:46:07sanctimonious authority that goes along
1:46:09with that that's the wrong tone it's
1:46:11more like
1:46:19you know
1:46:20i don't know how you lay it out properly
1:46:22but you tell people that you love how to
1:46:26avoid the road to hell
1:46:29and you don't do that because you're
1:46:30shaking your finger at them or because
1:46:33you're
1:46:34a moral authority
1:46:37you do it because you don't want them to
1:46:39burn
1:46:42and
1:46:44i think there's too much of the moral
1:46:46authority still in the church and not
1:46:48enough of the
1:46:50you know the love that
1:46:53helps people avoid
1:46:55the fire
1:46:58i assume
1:46:59i think that you've just beautifully
1:47:01described is the the unity of the love
1:47:03commandment that you you love your you
1:47:05love god with all your heart and all
1:47:06your soul and all your mind and you love
1:47:07your neighbor as yourself
1:47:09the love the love of god identifies the
1:47:12pattern and then they interplay between
1:47:14the love of the neighbor and the love of
1:47:15the self they're they're inextricable
1:47:17they're differentiated but inextricably
1:47:20intertwined
1:47:21and so to to love the neighbor is to see
1:47:23the neighbor as he or she actually is
1:47:26and to respond to the actuality not to
1:47:28your desires not to what you want this
1:47:31person to be in a utilitarian or
1:47:33instrumental sense but to the reality of
1:47:34that eternal soul right there
1:47:37and through that then you see who you
1:47:39are
1:47:41that's a commentary on the ten
1:47:42commandments right that's christ's
1:47:44summation of the ten commandments so
1:47:46that's another
1:47:48another
1:47:49illustration of that abstraction
1:47:52proper behavior the story on top of that
1:47:55the propositions that would be the ten
1:47:56commandments let's say so then christ is
1:47:59challenged on the ten commandments
1:48:00something like
1:48:02rank order these if you're so wise
1:48:06right exactly because you're going to
1:48:08say something heretical
1:48:10and christ does this unbelievable
1:48:12sleight of mind
1:48:14and and extracts out two superordinate
1:48:18principles
1:48:20and it's done in such a compelling way
1:48:22that the interlocutor who's basically a
1:48:24prosecutorial mind
1:48:26like an inquisitionist in some sense
1:48:29is reduced to silence
1:48:33that's that's a very powerful story it's
1:48:34one of those stories you read that you
1:48:36think
1:48:37it's not obvious how someone could have
1:48:39made that up
1:48:41there's a lot of genius
1:48:44there's an immense
1:48:45well of moral genius in that story and
1:48:49the idea that that's some sort of casual
1:48:53false construct
1:48:55you know produced
1:48:57for the purposes of power it's like well
1:49:00you try to write a story that short that
1:49:02that's that is that wise see how far you
1:49:05get with it
1:49:07so
1:49:09yeah those those stories are all over
1:49:10the gospels i mean think about the story
1:49:12where
1:49:13the woman is caught in adultery
1:49:16and they say to jesus well you know the
1:49:18law says we should stone her to death
1:49:20you know what do you say
1:49:22and they're trying to trap him of course
1:49:23because if he says well don't stone her
1:49:25to death then they say well you're
1:49:26against moses huh you're a religious
1:49:28heretic and then if he says go ahead and
1:49:30throw the stones then he's going against
1:49:32his message of mercy but jesus of course
1:49:34says very famously
1:49:36let whoever has the first sin
1:49:39cast the first or whoever has no sin
1:49:41casts the first stone
1:49:43and you know everyone has to drop their
1:49:45stones and go away yeah and then he says
1:49:46to her of course go
1:49:48and sin no more
1:49:50so that that kind of story you think
1:49:53yeah you'd have to have quite an
1:49:54imagination
1:49:56be a kind of literary genius to come up
1:49:58with this and i think it's important in
1:49:59part because
1:50:01christ combines both
1:50:03right that is to say we have the command
1:50:05and the commandment say not to commit
1:50:08adultery is there for a reason i'm sure
1:50:10you know from your clinical practice
1:50:12that you know that can cause
1:50:13unbelievable problems you know for
1:50:15couples and families
1:50:17uh but he also has the mercy so jesus
1:50:19combines the the high commands of
1:50:22justice and with this high mercy and in
1:50:25a way that's what the church is seeking
1:50:27to do now always imperfectly because
1:50:29we're imperfect but but both need to be
1:50:31there there needs to be
1:50:32the uh moral uh the high moral calling
1:50:36but also the
1:50:38great mercy both because i think one
1:50:40without the other is going to be
1:50:43unbalanced
1:50:44and and the high moral calling again
1:50:47is for our own good the the law is a
1:50:50form of grace this this is how we
1:50:53flourish this is how
1:50:55we become happy
1:50:57now of course we fail which brings in
1:50:59the mercy component but that's another
1:51:01terrible misconstrue of religion broadly
1:51:04and specifically christianity and
1:51:06catholicism is that somehow these rules
1:51:08were were premised on on
1:51:11control or power as their motivating
1:51:13reason for coming into existence it's
1:51:15the exact opposite
1:51:17it's to liberate it's to liberate us
1:51:19from ourselves
1:51:22i guess it's the other thing that that
1:51:24seems to have worked in my lectures is
1:51:26like a lot of this
1:51:29a lot of the work i've done was
1:51:31motivated by my attempts i suppose to
1:51:33understand hell
1:51:35and then more than that like
1:51:37how is it that you become an active
1:51:40contributor to hell
1:51:43and you might say well hell isn't real
1:51:46well and i would say that well you
1:51:48haven't looked enough
1:51:50if you think that's true
1:51:51you're fortunate enough so that you can
1:51:53believe that's not true
1:51:55it's like you know nothing about history
1:51:57and
1:51:58you've been unbelievably sheltered in
1:52:00your own life if you don't believe that
1:52:02hell is real
1:52:03and you know
1:52:05maybe
1:52:06only someone cruel would wish that that
1:52:08ignorance be stripped away from you
1:52:11but if you study history as a
1:52:13perpetrator
1:52:16well then
1:52:18if you study history
1:52:20you believe in hell and if you study
1:52:22history as a perpetrator then you see
1:52:24how your own inequity contributes to
1:52:26that
1:52:27and then it's not unreasonable to say
1:52:29well if you love people you would try to
1:52:31guide them away from that and
1:52:35when i did my maps of meaning lectures
1:52:37at the university and in public that's
1:52:39always in the back of my mind it's
1:52:42well look at what happened in germany
1:52:43and look at what happened in the soviet
1:52:45union and look what happened in china
1:52:48and
1:52:49how do you act so that that happens well
1:52:52i i wouldn't make that happen it's like
1:52:54if you say that then you
1:52:56would because you don't know enough
1:52:59you'd because if you do you'd say yes i
1:53:01could contribute to that and i probably
1:53:03am and i should be terrified enough to
1:53:05stop if i only knew how and then
1:53:09these guidelines to love and to tell the
1:53:11truth they are in fact
1:53:13protection against exactly that kind of
1:53:15catastrophe
1:53:18yeah and i think it's true not only in
1:53:20those uh very dramatic examples of hell
1:53:22like the gulag but i think it's true in
1:53:24a really everyday sense i mean yes
1:53:27hell can start here on earth um in a
1:53:29very everyday sort of way so i think if
1:53:32somebody
1:53:33actually that i know on my block and
1:53:34this person is incredibly
1:53:37angry at everyone even people that try
1:53:39to help this person she's always angry
1:53:41at them and she's filled with hatred and
1:53:43bitterness and everything's bad and
1:53:45and so for this person i would say
1:53:48she is already
1:53:50living in hell the beginning of hell at
1:53:51least here on earth i mean her life as
1:53:53far as i can tell is just really really
1:53:56hellish in every respect and then people
1:53:58in contact with her she makes their life
1:53:59polish very often and the reverse is
1:54:01true too there can be people here and
1:54:03now who are already living in the
1:54:05beginnings of heaven they're filled with
1:54:06love for god they're filled with love
1:54:08for other people they love themselves
1:54:10they
1:54:11they're living this heavenly life
1:54:12because at the end of the day at least
1:54:14on on the catholic view
1:54:16what is heaven well what heaven is is
1:54:18perfect
1:54:19love of god perfect love of other people
1:54:21perfect love of yourself
1:54:23and what is hell what's the opposite
1:54:24it's a lack of all that right it's
1:54:26lacking love of god lacking love for
1:54:28other people lacking love for yourself
1:54:30it's being filled with hatred so heaven
1:54:33and hell i would say really begin right
1:54:35now
1:54:36and
1:54:37in the life to come i they say they're
1:54:39intensified they're deepened so and this
1:54:42is the vision of dante right that that
1:54:44you know heaven or hell is something
1:54:46that
1:54:47all of its punishments are meant to show
1:54:48that the sin
1:54:50is its own punishment in some respect
1:54:52right all the punishments that say that
1:54:55people in hell experience are all a
1:54:57natural outgrowth of their own
1:54:59bad behavior here below and we can see
1:55:02this in everyday life with for instance
1:55:04people that
1:55:05um you know end up destroying their
1:55:08relationships destroying their families
1:55:09and they end up isolated alone and again
1:55:12living this sort of hellish existence
1:55:13but unfortunately in those cases they
1:55:15are as it were their own worst enemy
1:55:17yeah i think that connects back to the
1:55:19your insights into morality as well and
1:55:22that
1:55:23it is remarkable
1:55:25just in a cultural sense that that your
1:55:28work which has rules in the title 12 of
1:55:31them right two books
1:55:33has garnered the audience there's
1:55:34obviously a that it has there's
1:55:36obviously a profound hunger cross
1:55:38culturally
1:55:40cross
1:55:41linguistically
1:55:43for what you are saying and what you are
1:55:45saying is about the necessity of
1:55:47rules i think what we have here is we
1:55:49now have a couple generations that have
1:55:52been liberated from rules
1:55:54and
1:55:55we get to see what that actually looks
1:55:57like in practice
1:55:59and it's it's not just the the the
1:56:01possibility of these external forms of
1:56:03hell it absolutely is that but the
1:56:04internal forms of hell as well
1:56:06depression and anxiety i can't think of
1:56:09any greater hell
1:56:10than being in the grips of of of severe
1:56:12depression and severe anxiety and the
1:56:14worst thing that you can tell somebody
1:56:16in that position is do whatever you want
1:56:20and invent anything according to your
1:56:22own fancy
1:56:25it's poison
1:56:27so the the fact that there there are
1:56:29rules and that these rules correspond
1:56:31with reality and they're for our good
1:56:33and for our happiness
1:56:35i think just speaks again to not only
1:56:37the necessity of the rules but
1:56:40the fact that we are all called to
1:56:42something greater and when we stop that
1:56:44call
1:56:45hell
1:56:46begins to take over soul by soul
1:56:50you have their directions
1:56:52if you're lost and you're trying to get
1:56:53somewhere and someone provides you with
1:56:55directions you have to turn right at a
1:56:57certain point and left at a certain
1:56:58point and you don't say well
1:57:00to hell with these rules
1:57:03you think thank god for these rules
1:57:05because you know i'll wander off the
1:57:06path and then where will i end up at the
1:57:09least lost
1:57:11and so yeah it's
1:57:14all right so i want to close with one
1:57:15more question if that's okay unless you
1:57:17guys have something else you want to
1:57:19talk about
1:57:20um
1:57:21what are you doing right at fire what's
1:57:24working
1:57:27at word on fire yeah
1:57:30what's working
1:57:32what's working i think the um
1:57:34on a lot of it i would say it sort of
1:57:37follows the contours of of the
1:57:39conversation that we've had
1:57:40uh the the rules are there the dogmatic
1:57:43clarity is there the arguments are there
1:57:46the
1:57:48the propositions and the defense of
1:57:50those propositions is all there so
1:57:51there's sort of a we call apologetic
1:57:53foundation to it so it's necessary but
1:57:56again not the most important one of word
1:57:58on fire's
1:57:59uh
1:58:01ways of describing the work that it does
1:58:03is is acting at the intersection of
1:58:05faith and culture and leading with
1:58:07beauty
1:58:09so
1:58:09again there's theological freezing this
1:58:11if god exists
1:58:12then god is the unity of all that is
1:58:14good all that is true and all that is
1:58:15beautiful and these aren't mutually
1:58:18exclusive you don't and you don't have
1:58:19to choose one or the other
1:58:22so the
1:58:24the mission of this apostolate is to
1:58:26without any kind of denigration of the
1:58:29importance of truth is to lead with
1:58:31beauty
1:58:32and and with that to to reopen the eyes
1:58:34of the culture to the possibility of
1:58:37being happy
1:58:39and and living a life that is
1:58:41genuinely enchanted
1:58:43in a non-magical real sense
1:58:48is it working are you seeing results
1:58:52i think so i think so so
1:58:54you know
1:58:55i follow a word on fire very closely in
1:58:57terms of their the the materials they
1:58:59produce and i benefit from them and
1:59:01enjoys them a lot and i think part of
1:59:03the success is the
1:59:05um
1:59:07distinctive work of bishop robert baron
1:59:09i mean i think that he is to be credited
1:59:11uh his own way his own intellectual way
1:59:15of putting things and his winning
1:59:18way of persuading others i think is is
1:59:20very
1:59:21very powerful and has seen uh seen great
1:59:23results so so i'm very grateful to be
1:59:25connected with word on fire and as i say
1:59:28not only do i sometimes
1:59:30produce content for them but also i
1:59:32benefit personally from listening to
1:59:35his uh podcasts um his sermons etc so
1:59:38it's been a real benefit for me
1:59:42i'm going to be talking to him in a
1:59:44couple of days along with jonathan pagio
1:59:46and john verveiki so i'm very much
1:59:48looking forward to that
1:59:50an extension of this conversation i
1:59:52suppose so it is there anything that we
1:59:55didn't talk about that you think is
1:59:58vital
1:59:59that we should talk about
2:00:03well one thing i wanted to ask you and
2:00:05and encourage you really would be if at
2:00:08some point you could
2:00:09carry out the plan that you've talked
2:00:11about before of giving lectures on
2:00:13exodus and i realize given covet
2:00:16restrictions and things like that maybe
2:00:17it's it's impossible right now to rent
2:00:20out a huge place etc but i wonder if you
2:00:22could even just do it via
2:00:25video right that you
2:00:27you know or even to a very small group
2:00:30i i think that your lectures on genesis
2:00:32were such a huge benefit for literally
2:00:34millions of people
2:00:36and i think that
2:00:37lecturing on exodus which in some ways
2:00:40is an even more gripping story i mean
2:00:41it's it's very dramatic
2:00:43i think that could be an enormous
2:00:45benefit to many many people so anyway i
2:00:47just want to was wondering if you were
2:00:49planning on doing that or if you'd be
2:00:51willing maybe given covet and
2:00:52restrictions maybe to do it in a
2:00:54different format slightly different than
2:00:56you did before
2:00:58i'm trying to figure out how to do it
2:01:00i've
2:01:01had a lot of health trouble and it's
2:01:03got in the way in a big way i'm trying
2:01:06to figure out how to do it and to figure
2:01:07out if i can do it it's not obvious to
2:01:09me what i'm capable of doing and what i
2:01:11can't do so but
2:01:14it's definitely something i would love
2:01:16to do i'm i mean i have the ideas
2:01:20i work i developed them in the lectures
2:01:22obviously but
2:01:24i would love to do it
2:01:25so
2:01:27god willing and all that
2:01:30i i would just end with uh really a
2:01:32statement i suppose is i
2:01:34and i'm sure you already know this but
2:01:36there are many many believers like
2:01:38ourselves who who are who are praying
2:01:41for you
2:01:42and who are so grateful for the work
2:01:44that you are doing whatever your
2:01:45personal beliefs are and however you
2:01:47work that out
2:01:48we're so grateful for
2:01:50your voice
2:01:51uh on the international stage and the
2:01:54kinds of
2:01:56of arguments that you're making and the
2:01:58kinds of appeals to
2:02:00to becoming better both individually and
2:02:03socially as communities
2:02:06uh you you are a light in the darkness
2:02:08for for many people and again i i'm
2:02:10saying that as a believer from within
2:02:12the christian community looking out at
2:02:14someone who's not claiming to be a
2:02:15christian
2:02:17but i just want you to know that we are
2:02:18praying for you and that we we wish you
2:02:20all the best
2:02:22it's very much appreciated very much
2:02:25appreciated
2:02:26so i hope that i can
2:02:29i really hope that i can do these exodus
2:02:31lectures that would be something so
2:02:34i'm working out a way to do it i
2:02:36i have a group of people maybe that i'm
2:02:38going to talk to exodus about i might
2:02:39just record those
2:02:41discussions like this we'll walk through
2:02:43it with some people who can help comment
2:02:47so i think i might be able to manage
2:02:49that
2:02:50we'll see well thank you very much
2:02:52gentlemen um
2:02:54and for the attention that you showed me
2:02:56in the book and all of that and for the
2:02:58work you're doing with word on fire and
2:03:01hopefully we'll get a chance to talk
2:03:03again we'll see what people think of
2:03:04this conversation see what they might
2:03:06want to hear more about
2:03:08or less about
2:03:10so
2:03:12thank you jordan thank you thank you all
2:03:14right bye bye

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