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Popular Youtube Skeptic Becomes Catholic (Joe Schmid) | Ep. 593 — Transcript

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0:00You have a popular agnostic [music]
0:02atheist YouTube channel. And by the way,
0:04as we're recording this, you haven't
0:06announced this publicly. Last time you
0:08were on my show, you were debating
0:11Father Gregory Pine on Divine
0:13Simplicity. You come on as an atheist
0:15agnostic and then a couple of months
0:17ago, I get a call from our mutual friend
0:21Cameron Batuzi. What happened? What
0:23happened? Who are you and what happened?
0:26Why is [music] gay sex impermissible?
0:27Why would God send people to hell? Why
0:29is there so much evil in the world? Why
0:30is God so hidden? Why is there so much
0:32religious diversity and religious
0:33[music] confusion? The problem of evil
0:34is just so powerful to me. I'm very
0:37cautious. Like, it takes a lot to
0:38convince me.
0:39>> Yeah.
0:39>> At this point, I'm like, I don't know.
0:42I'm a little bit scared.
0:43>> Yeah.
0:44>> It's just coincidence [music] upon
0:45coincidence upon coincidence upon
0:46coincidence. Oh, no.
0:49Catholicism might be true. That's not
0:51good.
0:56[music]
1:01Last time you were on my show, you were
1:05debating Father Gregory Pine on Divine
1:07Simplicity, and I'm pretty sure you won,
1:10which pissed me off a little bit.
1:12>> Did I win?
1:13>> It didn't piss me off either. I'm just
1:14joking.
1:15>> If I'm defending falsehood, I think I I
1:16think I lost.
1:17>> No, it was pretty wild. I would I don't
1:19know. It wasn't like a knock him down,
1:20drag him out kind of thing, but I
1:22remember Father Pine calling me and he's
1:24like cuz he saw a picture of you and you
1:26know you look kind of young and he's
1:27like should I be debating this guy? I
1:29mean he's like I know I'm not one to
1:30talk cuz I look young but this guy looks
1:32really young. I'm like trust me he's
1:33really smart. It's just so anyway you
1:36come on as an atheist agnostic and
1:38debate Father Pine and he did really
1:40well. And then a couple of months ago, I
1:44get a call from our mutual friend
1:46Cameron Batuzi and he's like, "Uh, so
1:48Joe Schmid just converted to
1:49Catholicism." [laughter]
1:51So you and I have intentionally not
1:54talked about it. Even over lunch, we
1:56didn't talk about it. What happened?
1:59What happened? I was just in
2:00>> Who are you and what happened?
2:02>> My goodness. I was just inundated with
2:03divine grace. That's what happened. I
2:05mean, ultimately, conversion is a work
2:07of the Holy Spirit, right? So it's not
2:08me. It's God working. So, what happened?
2:11My
2:11>> And you I want to say too before we get
2:13started that you have a popular agnostic
2:15atheist YouTube channel called Majesty
2:18of Reason, which we'll link to below,
2:19which I imagine is going to take a
2:20different trajectory. So, it's going to
2:23be wild to see. And you And by the way,
2:25as we're recording this, for those at
2:27home, you haven't announced this
2:28publicly.
2:29>> Oh, no. Yeah, we're still uh we're still
2:31in private right now.
2:32>> So, I I told my social media guy as we
2:34came in, he's like, "What?" [laughter]
2:36Cuz he was a fan. All right, I'll stop
2:38talking. Go.
2:39>> Yeah. So right now I'm a PhD student at
2:41Princeton University studying philosophy
2:43and ultimately it was philosophy and
2:47just reasoning about Catholic miracles
2:48that brought me to the faith. Now again
2:50divine grace was at work throughout all
2:52this and this is not my own merit this
2:53is God. Um but yeah do we where do we
2:56want to start? Do we want to start with
2:57the upbringing Catholic upbringing?
2:58>> Well I guess I want to begin by asking
3:00you if like if I had have said to you
3:02two years ago like
3:05you'll be Catholic one day and on my
3:06show took me ridiculous. utterly
3:08ridiculous. What are you talking about?
3:09Like I just had so many objections. I
3:12mean, hell, gay like gay sex, morality.
3:16I mean, I was I had boatloads of
3:18objections. I was like, why is gay sex
3:20impermissible? Why would God send people
3:22to hell? Why is there so much evil in
3:24the world? Why is God so hidden? Why is
3:26there so much religious diversity and
3:27religious confusion? Like, I would have
3:28just like, and of course, I would, as I
3:30normally tend to talk fast, I got to
3:31slow down. I would have just like
3:33inundated you with like hordes upon
3:34hordes of objections. You know, I have
3:35this 12-hour long video where I'm like
3:37systematically debunking all the
3:39arguments for God's existence and it's
3:41like my most popular video. So, I would
3:42I would not have believed you. I would
3:44have thought you've gone insane, Matt.
3:45>> And if I had have said, "And you'll also
3:47be wearing an alady of Guadalupe tie and
3:49St. Padre Peio's socks." You would have
3:51went, "Okay, just stop making fun of
3:53me." [laughter]
3:53>> Yeah, I would have you probably Well, as
3:55I uh discovered, you know, skeptics are
3:58inclined with respect to Catholic
3:59miracles to posit hallucinations all the
4:00time and whatnot. Like these really
4:02striking coincidental hallucinations
4:03like happening all the time. So, I would
4:04have thought that maybe you were just
4:05hallucinating or something.
4:06>> I do want to get into your story, but I
4:08also want to ask, how do you think your
4:09community is going to receive this when
4:11it becomes public?
4:14>> It'll be mixed. So, I've got Listen,
4:17I've been ironic for quite some time.
4:19I've been very cordial and convivial to
4:21people who disagree with me because I
4:22think that's how we discover truth,
4:23right? So, I think I've cultivated a
4:26community that first and foremost, at
4:27least I hope, loves truth. And if they
4:30love truth and they recognize that this
4:32is at least where I think truth is, I
4:34think they should be and potentially a
4:36lot of them will be open and receptive
4:38to what I'm going to say. Of course, a
4:40lot of them won't like it. I've got a
4:41lot of friends in the LGBT community. I
4:44have a lot of people who are atheist
4:46agnostics. I've co-authored papers with
4:47a bunch of atheists and whatnot, and
4:48they're all just going to be like,
4:49"What? You've lost your mind." Like,
4:50they're going to think I've gone insane.
4:52So, I do have a lot of friends who I
4:54mean, maybe we'll become aranged. Maybe
4:57I mean, I don't know what will happen,
4:58but
4:58>> are you bracing for that? Are you
4:59nervous about the potential fallout? Not
5:02because you'll change your mind, but
5:03because it hurts to lose friends. People
5:05think ill of you.
5:06>> It it does hurt to lose friends, but you
5:07know, like if they hate me, they hated
5:09Christ first, right? So, I mean, before
5:12I converted, I did have a lot of these
5:13psychological barriers and whatnot
5:15pulling on me and tugging on me like,
5:16man, dude, I've been like a public
5:18critic of Catholicism and Christianity
5:20and like specifically Catholicism.
5:21People can look up my papers and books
5:22and whatnot. I am just like tearing down
5:25divine simplicity, divine timelessness,
5:28divine impassibility, divine
5:29immutability. Uh I'm just like going
5:31after the very core of Catholicism's
5:33doctrine of God. Um I have just I've
5:36been systematically cutting that down.
5:37I've made videos against like the Bible
5:38and various other things like that. So,
5:41you know, I was there. So, firstly, I
5:43need to show some kind of compassion and
5:45love to them, right? Cuz I was there.
5:46>> Yeah.
5:47>> Um and if one of my best friends
5:48converted to Catholicism at that point,
5:50I'd be like, "What? What are you doing?
5:51you've I would also have had very
5:53similar reactions. So, I've just got to
5:54show love. And again, I think uh at the
5:56time I had psychological barriers. Um
5:58but I think through God's grace, through
6:00the intercession of our blessed mother
6:02and glorious Theotocos, um I' I've been
6:04able to I've been able to kind of get
6:06over
6:07>> It's so wild to hear you talk like that,
6:09man. I'm like, is he punking me? Is he
6:11about to destroy my worldview and make
6:13me an atheist? Cuz you know, you're a
6:16smart guy. People should know you're a
6:17PhD student at Princeton. I'm glad to
6:20hear that you'll be having a
6:21conversation with Trent because you'll
6:22be able to go a lot deeper with him than
6:24you will be with me. He's a smart fella.
6:26Um, yeah, but I really am it's it's it's
6:29weird to hear you speak like that cuz
6:31I'm used to hearing your videos where
6:33you and Alex O' Conor are criticizing
6:35Catholicism and Christianity and, you
6:37know, always I thought you always did a
6:40good job doing it in a balanced loving
6:42kind of way. I never thought you were
6:44hostile or Alex for that matter.
6:46>> Yeah. [sighs] Well, listen, where where
6:48sin abounds, where darkness abounds,
6:50where imperfection abounds, grace
6:52abounds all the more, right? So,
6:54>> yeah, I I don't I don't want to go back
6:56to your childhood. Maybe we'll get there
6:57eventually. What I want to get to is
7:00when did the first domino fall and how?
7:04And obviously that's a you could go back
7:06to your childhood, but I mean like more
7:07recently over the last couple of years
7:10who it was an argument for God's
7:14existence called the psychophysical
7:15harmony argument. So for the longest
7:17time I had been agnostic, right? I was
7:20initially atheist. Well, I was initially
7:22Catholic. We'll get back to that. But I
7:23was initially um you know very skeptical
7:26of the psychophysical harmony argument
7:28when I came across it in um I think in
7:31college. No maybe maybe the end of
7:32college, the beginning of grad school.
7:34So you know I've been agnostic for quite
7:35some time. I thought that the evidence
7:36for and against God's existence was
7:38roughly counterbalanced. It was hard to
7:40tell one way or another which way the
7:41evidence pointed. And you know I had
7:44some I had lots of evidence against
7:45God's existence and the problem of evil
7:47and hiddenness and confusion and
7:48whatnot. But I had some arguments that I
7:50thought pointed towards God's existence
7:51like the contingency argument and
7:53certain arguments relating to
7:54consciousness. But really nothing tipped
7:56the scales particularly significantly.
7:59But then this paper came along published
8:01in Oxford studies and philosophy of
8:02religion by Brian Cutter. He's a
8:05philosopher at Notre Dame and by Dustin
8:07Kummit and he's a philosopher. I think
8:10he's now working at like the insect
8:11institute or something like that. Some
8:12sort of effective altruist cause. And
8:15it's this, it's called like the argument
8:16from psychophysical harmony or something
8:18like that. And they put it up on field
8:19papers and I read it and I'm like, "Oh
8:21man, this seems pretty forceful." So
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9:19>> Can you [snorts] break it down?
9:21>> Yeah. So,
9:22>> the basic argument.
9:23>> Yeah. So,
9:26we got the physical world around us,
9:28right? Things made of matter and motion
9:30described by physical laws and whatnot.
9:32I claim that we can at least conceive of
9:35a world where it's just like our world
9:38down to every last microfysical detail,
9:41right? Down to these subatomic
9:42particles, the way that they move, etc.,
9:44but devoid of consciousness, devoid of
9:46this felt conscious experience of the
9:49world. So philosophers call this world
9:51um like a pea zombie world or a
9:52philosophical zombie world where you
9:54know you and I not really you and I are
9:56doppelgangers are walking around they're
9:57having a conversation like this where
9:59their mouths are moving you know their
10:01brain is firing in the same way all
10:02their synapses firing the exact same way
10:04but it's dark upside or it's dark up
10:06there sorry and this world is missing
10:10lots of goods right it's missing the
10:12goods of free and rational agency it's
10:15missing the goods of like meaningful
10:16relationships conscious experiences love
10:18of God and of each other. It's devoid of
10:21significant cultivation and
10:22manifestation of virtue and various
10:24other things. So consciousness seems to
10:25be intimately bound up with some of like
10:27the most profound goods. Okay, so like
10:30one question is why aren't we in a pea
10:32zombie world? Why is consciousness
10:34actually sprinkled around? Why is there
10:36something it's like to be in this brain
10:37state? I mean after all this is soggy
10:39gray matter. Why is there something it's
10:41like to be in this state? It's very
10:43strange. Okay, but things get even
10:46stranger cuz not only can we conceive of
10:48a world where things are physically just
10:50like they are in the actual world, but
10:52things are devoid of consciousness.
10:53There's nothing it's like. There's no
10:54felt sense of, you know, the smell of
10:57lilacs or the taste of chocolate.
10:58There's none of that in this world. In
11:00addition to being able to conceive of
11:01that world, I claim we can conceive of
11:04alternative worlds where the
11:06psychophysical mappings are different
11:08than they are in the actual world. So
11:10what is a psychophysical mapping? It's
11:11just a description of which conscious
11:13states are associated with which
11:15physical states. Okay? So in the actual
11:17world, conscious states are associated
11:18with brains, right? Pain is associated
11:21with C fiber firing, which you know that
11:23happens when we get tissue damage and it
11:25causes us to engage in avoidance
11:26behavior and whatnot. We feel pleasure
11:29when we have fitness enhancing stimuli
11:30and that leads us to pursue the things
11:32which caused fitness enhancing stimuli.
11:35Um and more generally, you know,
11:36consciousness is associated with brains,
11:38but we can conceive of [snorts] hordes
11:40of alternative ways of mapping
11:44>> conscious states, phenomenal states, as
11:46philosophers call them, with physical
11:47states. And boatloads of these are just
11:50not going to result in any intelligible
11:52or orderly or harmonious mental life. So
11:55for instance, it might have been the
11:56case that all physical states were
11:58associated with just the felt sense of a
12:01patch of blue. That could have been an
12:03alternative psychophysical mapping like
12:05the the physical world behaves exactly
12:07as it does in the actual world. But all
12:08physical states are just associated with
12:10this sense of blue or something like
12:12that. That's a very simple
12:13psychophysical mapping. The
12:14psychophysical laws, the laws that
12:16connect conscious states with physical
12:18states in that world are very simple.
12:20It's just the simple universal
12:21generalization for any physical state P.
12:24It feels like the presentation of blue
12:26or something like that. So we can
12:27conceive of that world. We can conceive
12:29of other sorts of worlds. And just more
12:31generally, our mental lives are
12:33strikingly orderly, harmonious, and just
12:36strikingly fortuitous in a way that
12:38calls out for explanation. And you know,
12:40like just think about this. I mean,
12:41think about like like a a screen, right?
12:44And think about the pixels on the
12:45screen.
12:47If you could just randomize which pixels
12:49are showing up, what colors and whatnot
12:51on all the individual pixels, how many
12:52times would you get a coherent, orderly,
12:54intelligible image? Almost never. you
12:57would almost never get a coherent,
12:59orderly, intelligible image on the
13:00screen. Well, our mental life is kind of
13:03like that, right? Think about all the
13:04different ways that the psychophysical
13:06laws could have paired conscious states
13:08with physical states. They our our
13:11mental lives could have just been like a
13:13chaotic jumbling like mess of like TV
13:16static-l like experience which just
13:17mimics the microchemical structure of
13:18our brains or you know basically any
13:20sort of uh conceivable psychophysical
13:22mapping which wouldn't have resulted in
13:24this kind of profoundly orderly
13:26intelligible harmonious mental life that
13:27we do in fact have and so just as if we
13:29came across a random TV monitor and saw
13:31that there was a coherent orderly
13:32intelligible picture on it rather than
13:34just chaotic static we would infer some
13:36kind of design because that's a very
13:38tiny sliver of the total possibility
13:40ility space for the ways that you could
13:41arrange pixels and colors on a screen.
13:43Likewise, the total way that you could
13:46arrange conscious states and pair them
13:47with physical states, only a tiny sliver
13:50of them result in orderly, coherent,
13:52intelligible mental lives that give rise
13:54to those goods that I mentioned.
13:55>> So, this seemed to just call out for
13:57some kind of explanation. We kind of hit
13:59the psychophysical jackpot. And I was I
14:01was struggling. How can I respond to
14:02this argument? Like, ah, but isn't isn't
14:05God's mind kind of like fortuitously
14:07harmonious as well? But then it just
14:08turns out that there are very simple
14:10underlying principles from which you can
14:11derive divine harmony. Um, and I was
14:14just really trying to push back. But
14:15aren't there so many ways in which it's
14:16disharmonious? But those could be easily
14:18explained by giving us opportunities for
14:20developing our souls or our character.
14:22And so I was like I was trying to push
14:23back. But this was the first domino.
14:25>> So it's like the fine-tuning argument,
14:27but instead of the universe, it has to
14:28do with our brain and matter, how our
14:30minds perceive.
14:30>> The psychophysical laws are strikingly
14:33fine-tuned to enable profound goods. So
14:35like the fine-tuning argument also was
14:36one of the dominoes. I had lots of
14:38objections to the finetuning argument
14:40but they just started falling by the
14:42wayside and I was like oh no the
14:44fine-tuning argument probably works and
14:46the psychophysical finetuning argument
14:48probably works. So I mean like with with
14:49the fine tuning argument right we have
14:51various laws physical laws that reign in
14:53our universe and they have various
14:55constants within them right and those
14:57constants take on certain values and we
14:59can uh examine like a physically
15:01meaningful range in which those values
15:02can take on and we can actually perform
15:04pretty detailed universe simulations for
15:05what the universe would look like under
15:06different ways the constants could have
15:08fallen uh within the broad parameters in
15:11which they they physically could have
15:12fallen. Um and it turns out that only an
15:15extremely narrow range in the total
15:18range that the values could have taken
15:20on would allow for life and anything to
15:22develop. So take the cosmological
15:23constant. This is a constant that
15:25governs the rate of expansion of the
15:26universe. If it had been slightly larger
15:29by one part in 10 ^ of 120, the universe
15:34like all the matter in the universe just
15:35would have been like a diffuse soup of
15:36like individual particles that are light
15:38years away. If the cosmological constant
15:40had been slightly smaller by one part in
15:4310 the 120 then the universe would have
15:46collapsed back in on itself in like
15:48picos seconds or milliseconds. And in
15:50neither of those cases do you get
15:51anything of value? Do you get any
15:52conversations like this? Do you get any
15:54conversions any cultivation and
15:56manifestation of virtue and love and
15:58relationships?
15:58>> And if somebody had have said this to
15:59you two years ago what would you have
16:01said to it?
16:02>> Oh I would well maybe I would have
16:03brought up oh well maybe this is
16:05explained by like the multiverse or
16:06something. So if there's like a vast and
16:08diverse ensemble of universes, each of
16:10which varies randomly in its initial
16:12conditions and the constants and the
16:13laws of nature, well then it's going to
16:15be unsurprising that maybe somewhere in
16:17the vast multiverse the constants would
16:19fall within the exceedingly narrow life
16:21printing range. That's one thing I might
16:23have said. I mean now I don't find that
16:25particularly plausible. Um there are
16:26lots of reasons for that. I mean one
16:28thing is that like in order to even get
16:29a multiverse up in the first place with
16:30these sorts of laws and lo structures,
16:32you need a very striking degree of fine
16:33tuning. So it just pushes the fine
16:34tuning problem back a step. You also get
16:36a uh with at least lots of standard
16:38multiverse proposals a proliferation of
16:40Boltzmonzmon brains. So Boltzman brains
16:42are just these like
16:43>> spontaneously formed local brain-like
16:47objects which uh pop into existence very
16:50shortly in the quantum foam and then
16:52dissipate shortly thereafter. And as
16:54actually as it turns out Bolton brains
16:56will be the vast vast vast vast majority
16:59of observers in multiveres. And the way
17:02that you can see this is actually kind
17:03of intuitive. Imagine we had hordes of
17:06monkeys just randomly typing on a
17:08typewriter.
17:09How often do you think are they going to
17:12type an entire play of Shakespeare
17:14compared to how often are they going to
17:16type a single paragraph or a single
17:18sentence?
17:19>> Single sentences and single paragraphs
17:21are going to massively dominate the
17:23space of intelligible like sentences or
17:26intelligible uh vocabulary. Right?
17:29>> An entire work of Shakespeare that's
17:31going to be much much rarer. So it's
17:33actually going to be exceedingly
17:34unlikely that you get this vast array of
17:38like a pocket of order and low entropy
17:41compared to just localized pockets of
17:43order or entropy. So actually uh and
17:45localized pockets of entropy or high
17:46order um that's just going to correspond
17:48to like the Boltzman brain compared to
17:50this ginormous pocket of uh order that
17:52we have that we see around us for like
17:5413.8 billion years going up to now and
17:56then this vast universe with an
17:57evolutionary history and whatnot. So,
18:00and that of course if there are if
18:01Boltzman brains really do predominate
18:03observers then we are we are in a
18:05skeptical scenario because that
18:06basically means that among all the
18:08beings which share my current brain
18:10state and thereby share all the same
18:12experiences that I have the vast vast
18:14vast vast vast majority of them are
18:16Boltzmon brains that are going to
18:17dissipate almost immediately and so then
18:20that just casts us into a skeptical
18:21scenario and so I do think there are
18:24pretty significant challenges to the
18:26multiverse hypothesis in response to the
18:28fine tuning argument. But so these are
18:30just the these are just the initial
18:31dominoes, right? Like I was still
18:32agnostic, but I was like
18:33>> I I I would think that if I was wasn't
18:36willing to commit to Christianity, much
18:38less Catholicism.
18:40I I would be I would think I'd be open
18:42to going, okay, fine, fine. You read
18:45this paper, right? Fine. There's some
18:47creator. Why Why was that a scary thing
18:49to come to?
18:51>> I'm not sure if it was scary.
18:53>> Okay. It was more so just, oh man, maybe
18:56I've been wrong all this time. So I
18:58actually interviewed Brian Cutter on my
19:00channel when I was at a conference in
19:02Virginia and I interviewed him about the
19:04psychophysical harmony argument and
19:06another argument about why the laws of
19:08nature kind of fortuitously match the
19:10conditions of the universe. I'm actually
19:11doing my dissertation on these topics
19:12right now. So that's pretty fun. But um
19:14I interviewed him that night and after I
19:17pressed him with some of my objections
19:18and he was able to really abley respond
19:19to them. It's up on my YouTube channel.
19:21People can watch it. I went to bed that
19:22night and I was like maybe God exists
19:24after all. I remember thinking that as I
19:27went to bed.
19:28>> What was that exp what was that
19:29conscious experience?
19:30>> So actually it was it was kind of
19:31exciting because I like wow I've sort of
19:35gone on this quest my whole life. Like
19:36my whole life's mission really has been
19:38to try to find out whether God exists. I
19:40mean since I was a child this has been
19:42something that's just been like
19:43consuming for me. I debated people on
19:45social media way before I had my YouTube
19:47channel. I had like Instagram accounts
19:49where I was just debating people
19:50paragraphs on paragraphs on paragraphs.
19:52And then because like I don't know, I
19:53always just saw reality as this kind of
19:55quest. Uh and I was just so interested
19:57in what is fundamental, what is
19:58ultimate, does God exist? I've always
20:00just been so profoundly fascinated by
20:02that.
20:02>> And so the prospect that there is this
20:05like all powerful, all knowing, all
20:07good, perfectly loving being out there
20:09who set up the universe, it was I mean
20:13it was beautiful. So I mean it was I
20:15have mixed emotions cuz like I was wrong
20:17this whole time. I was starting to
20:18suspect that I'd been arguing against
20:20something that uh maybe I really
20:22shouldn't be arguing against. So, that
20:23was a little bit nerve-wracking.
20:24>> Now, I would think if I was in your
20:26shoes and came to that realization, one
20:27of the first things I would do is talk
20:29to other atheists and skeptics to help
20:32them talk me out of what I feel like I
20:34might be being drawn into. Did you do
20:35that? And what was that experience?
20:36>> Yeah. Oh, definitely. So, I mean, I
20:38reached out to a lot of my friends who
20:39were thinking also about the
20:41psychophysical harmony argument. And it
20:42turns out a lot of them who were
20:43skeptical at the time like Amos Woolen,
20:46Matthew Adelstein, these amazing guys,
20:48they were also starting to become
20:50convinced. And so then they are like
20:52basically like, "Yeah, I'm kind of a
20:53theist now as well." So like we're all
20:55just looking at this argument. We're
20:56like, "Oh man." And of course I have
20:59other friends who have tried to offer
21:01responses to it and
21:03>> I just didn't find their responses at
21:05all remotely plausible. like they're
21:08trying to appeal to like, oh, you know,
21:10divine psychology is super difficult and
21:12like who knows what God would do and
21:13maybe there's just some like
21:15foundational natural reality which just
21:17has a kind of brute disposition to put
21:19the constants within exactly the life
21:21permitting range and which just has like
21:23a brute disposition also to lead to the
21:24psychophysical laws being strikingly
21:26fortuitous and harmonious and whatnot.
21:28Um, and I just I didn't find those
21:30responses plausible. They succumb to for
21:32instance like this like imagine that the
21:34initial conditions had spelled out in
21:37like the atomic soup made by God with
21:40love in all the human languages. That
21:43would be insane evidence for God's
21:44existence. But notice that you could
21:46apply lots of these objections
21:48>> to the finetuning argument to the
21:49psychophysical harmony argument to the
21:52world in which we had that as our
21:53evidence. Oh, you know cuz I would say
21:55that's clearly evidence for God's
21:56existence. It's powerful evidence for
21:58God's existence. But a lot of these
21:59objections to the fine-tuning argument,
22:00to the psychophysical harmony argument
22:02would also work in that world. It's
22:04like, oh, you know, this is no evidence
22:05for God's existence. Divine psychology
22:07is really hard, right? And you know,
22:09maybe there's just some kind of like
22:11natural reality which just has like the
22:12brute or necessary disposition to
22:14produce exactly that initial arrangement
22:16like it's ridiculous you but you would
22:18be able to apply lots of the objections
22:19to these arguments to a world in which
22:21we saw that.
22:22>> And that was like a light bulb. I was
22:23like, oh man.
22:24>> Oh dear.
22:25>> Yeah. So then I I started leaning
22:27towards God's existence, but it I did I
22:29didn't go all the way
22:30>> because there were still lots of
22:31barriers, right? The problem of evil was
22:33just so powerful to me.
22:36>> And this is something I'm sure you have
22:37read so much on it. You've watched so
22:39many debates. You're like, where can I
22:41go? It feels like the well the scale
22:44tips in the side of atheism, I suppose,
22:46is where you were at at the time.
22:47>> Yeah. So I mean I don't know exactly
22:49where I was leaning at the time. There
22:50were periods where I was like an
22:52agnosticleaning atheist. There were
22:53times where I was more of a pure
22:54agnostic. I think when I came across the
22:57psychophysical harmony argument, lots of
22:58other arguments for God's existence. Uh
23:00I started losing my objections to the
23:01finetuning argument. I was a pure
23:02agnostic. Um and then I as a result of
23:04that I started leaning towards theism.
23:07So that's the first domino, the first
23:08light of grace coming into my life
23:10really. Um and I I still couldn't go all
23:14the way even though I thought these
23:15arguments were like reasonably
23:16forceable. I mean, one reason is because
23:17like I should still maybe have some
23:19higher order uncertainty because there
23:21are some smart people who disagree with
23:22me and whatnot. Um, but also just I mean
23:25the problem of evil was so powerful. It
23:27was so powerful like
23:29>> yeah state it forcefully as you can
23:34>> if you don't mind.
23:35>> Yeah. So for hundreds of millions of
23:39years, animals have been ripping each
23:42other to shreds, praying on one another,
23:45parasetizing one another, languishing,
23:49being burned in forest fires,
23:51>> lying there in agony, crying out.
23:56This stuff has been going on for
23:57hundreds of millions of years, right?
24:00Like just I mean again, just like think
24:01about the most brutal kind of death you
24:03can imagine. Like imagine an elephant
24:06getting trapped in a tarpit. It's there.
24:08It's wondering where its parents are,
24:11where its family is, and then it's
24:13trapped there for Oh, [laughter]
24:15>> what was that?
24:17>> It was a book.
24:18>> All right, we're just going to keep
24:19going.
24:19>> Okay,
24:20>> sorry about that. Although, [laughter]
24:24maybe it'll come flying across. We'll
24:25talk to that later.
24:26>> That's never happened before.
24:27>> Oh, right. Right. Well, that's what the
24:28skeptics say, but there's lots of I
24:30mean, basically thousands of documented
24:31witnesses would disagree with you, but
24:33um No, let's go on
24:33>> back. Maybe go circle back to the
24:35elephant in case you want to edit that
24:36part out.
24:36>> Okay. Yeah. So, imagine, for instance,
24:39an elephant is trapped in a tar pit.
24:42It's wondering where its parents are.
24:44It's wondering where its family is. And
24:46it's just slowly sinking. A day goes by.
24:49It's starving.
24:51And then some hyenas come by. They're
24:54like, "Oh, look. It's prey." And they go
24:57in and they start eating it alive from
24:59its guts outward. And they they tear off
25:01its tusk. It's still there. It's
25:04whining. It's wailing. It's crying. And
25:07basically, it gets tortured, let's say,
25:09for another 24 hours. And I would just
25:12think like, where is God in this? Where
25:14is God in the suffering of the elephant?
25:17This is an innocent creature. It's not
25:19like the elephant is like, "Oh yes, I'm
25:20going to develop my virtues in response
25:22to this suffering." It's like, that's
25:24not what the elephant is doing. They're
25:25not cognitively sophisticated enough to
25:27engage in that sort of virtue
25:30cultivation. Right? So these innocent
25:32creatures are just being subjected to
25:35horrific suffering. And this was going
25:38on for hundreds of millions of years
25:39with no humans around, none of us to
25:41help them or anything like that. And
25:44this was the very means or the mechanism
25:45by which God brought about biological
25:47diversity in general and humans in
25:49particular. This was the means. Those
25:50were your chosen means. You couldn't
25:52have like created them in 6,000 years
25:54like the young earth creationists think
25:56God did. You couldn't have maybe made
25:59them like photosynthesizers or something
26:01one and all. I mean, it was hard for me
26:05to believe that a perfectly good
26:07>> all powerful all knowing God would
26:09institute that
26:11>> as his divine creative means. That was
26:14that's what initially caused my decon
26:16conversion
26:17from Catholicism
26:19and it stuck with me and I was just
26:22thinking like listen I could have I was
26:24starting to get a lot of evidence for
26:25theism you know the psychophysical
26:26harmony argument the finetuning argument
26:28etc. I could have all this independently
26:29converging lines of evidence for
26:31something. But for a long time, the
26:33problem of evil just seemed almost
26:35decisive, right? I mean, we can almost
26:37compare it to like, oh, the Jeffrey Dmer
26:38is a nice guy hypothesis, right? So,
26:40imagine that, um, you know, we've got
26:42two people that are debating whether or
26:43not Jeffrey Dmer is a nice guy. Um, you
26:45know, one of them points out to all
26:46these like independently converging
26:48lines of evidence that Jeffrey Dmer is a
26:49nice guy. Like, yeah, he served jury
26:50duty and he helped puppies and like he
26:52cared for this old lady one time and
26:54whatnot, but like once you learn that he
26:56was like drilling holes in the skulls of
27:00his victims so that he could insert
27:01hydrochloric acid to permanently zombify
27:04them and make them his sex slave. That
27:06is just a decisive reputation of the
27:08Jeffrey Dmers and I sky hypothesis. And
27:09so I thought with the problem of evil, I
27:12thought that okay, yeah, there is lots
27:13of independently converging evidence for
27:15God's existence. And it's really hard to
27:17explain away as an atheist,
27:20but
27:21we just seem to have this decisive
27:23evidence against God's existence from
27:24evil.
27:26And for a long time, that was a big
27:28barrier. So I mean, and part of what
27:32helped me get over it was just like the
27:34sheer coincidences that I would still
27:36have to posit atheist, right? like okay
27:39like let's step back right
27:42firstly there's a like a physical
27:43universe at all in the first place that
27:45seems quite striking quite surprising we
27:47can easily imagine that nothing existed
27:49under an atheistic worldview um and that
27:52seems much simpler than the world we got
27:54just nothing exists okay so we got a
27:57physical universe but now look at the
27:58laws of nature firstly the structure or
28:00the general form of the laws of nature
28:03have to be strikingly parameterized or
28:05strikingly fine-tuned after all the laws
28:07that could have rained. We can conceive
28:09of all different sorts of law structures
28:10that could have rained. It could have
28:11just been a law that there is a single
28:13electron and it just like vibes for all
28:14of eternity. That would have been much
28:16simpler than all the laws that we got
28:17and very plausibly like scientists
28:19rightly have a kind of bias towards
28:21simpler laws when we're comparing how
28:22probable things are before looking at
28:24the evidence. So like under atheism we'd
28:25expect a very simple law structure like
28:27that or maybe it's a law that like
28:28spacetime is empty or it's a law that
28:31you know we can imagine hordes
28:32infinitely many of these sorts of laws
28:34that are even simpler than the actual
28:35laws that we got but which would not
28:37enable any interesting or valuable
28:39things to occur. Okay, so the structure
28:40of the laws have to be strikingly
28:41fine-tuned. Okay, but now look at the
28:44constants within laws. So let's hold the
28:45law let's hold the law structures fixed.
28:47Let's look at the constants within laws
28:48and then we see that they had to take on
28:50exceedingly narrow values as I said in
28:53order to allow for anything interesting
28:54to happen. And if we're talking about
28:56like 1 in 10^ the 120, I mean, you're
28:58more likely, just think about like that
28:59number. There are I don't know how many
29:01atoms there are in the universe. It's
29:02something I think I've heard estimates
29:03like 10 to the^ of 80, right? So, you'd
29:06be more likely to just throw a random
29:07dart as Robin Collins said. He's like a
29:09scientist who's worked on the the
29:10finetuning argument. You'd be more
29:11likely to throw a dart and hit a random
29:13like sorry to pick an atom in the
29:15universe and to throw a dart and to hit
29:17that atom
29:18>> than you are to get the constants in the
29:20laws of nature to fall within the narrow
29:21lifeing range by chance.
29:23>> So, I'm like, okay. So the the constants
29:25within the laws of nature have to be
29:26strikingly fine-tuned. Okay. But let's
29:28suppose that they are strikingly
29:29fine-tuned. Well then in order to get
29:32any temporal evolution of the universe
29:33in order for the universe to evolve
29:35through time uh after the big bang the
29:38laws of nature have to match the initial
29:40conditions of the universe. If they talk
29:42about mass and charge and whatnot and
29:44they specify how mass and charge and
29:46whatnot are to behave, but the universe
29:48only contains different physical
29:50properties like schmass and smarge or
29:52whatever where these are just
29:53alternative physical properties that
29:55aren't actually instantiated. Well, then
29:56there would have been a mismatch between
29:57the fundamental dynamical laws of
29:59nature, the laws which specify how the
30:01universe is to evolve over time. There
30:03would have been a mismatch between those
30:04laws and the contents of the universe.
30:06And in fact, given like that there are
30:08infinitely many possible physical
30:09properties that exist, it's very
30:11striking that a match between the
30:13fundamental dynamical laws and the
30:15physical conditions occurs. It'd be
30:16like, you know, uh taking like basically
30:19at random certain like uh a game board
30:22and like game a rule book for it. uh and
30:24like basically randomizing that. And
30:25then if you randomized both the rule
30:27book and the game pieces for how the
30:29pieces are to evolve like according to
30:30the rule book, if you randomized the the
30:32pairing between the rule book and the
30:33game board, it'd be very crazy if you
30:35got a rule book that actually matches
30:37the the the board itself and tells you
30:39how the pieces are to behave, right?
30:41That would be really striking. So,
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31:42A [snorts] lot of us have a
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31:46freedom? Well, when we talk about
31:47freedom, we can talk about being free
31:49from something such as constraints. And
31:51this is usually what people mean today
31:52when they talk about freedom. But we
31:54also need to be talk about be talking
31:56about freedom for something, right? So
32:00the truest freedom is to be free to be
32:02who we are and not enslaved to our
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32:50Become the man you were created to be.
32:53Okay, so we've got it's striking that
32:55there's a physical universe. It's
32:56striking that the uh the general form or
32:58the structure of the laws are as they
32:59are to even permit interesting and
33:01valuable things. It's striking that
33:03within those general features or forms
33:05of the laws of nature, the constants
33:06fall within narrow life burning range.
33:08It's striking that even given all that
33:10the laws match the initial conditions so
33:11as to induce temporal evolution. And
33:13we're not even like we're not even at
33:14consciousness yet, right? So then all of
33:16that is like insane coincidence upon
33:18coincidence upon coincidence upon
33:20coincidence for the naturalist and then
33:22the naturalist or the atheist, right?
33:24And then it easily could have been the
33:25case that again the universe just
33:28evolves without any consciousness,
33:29right? So we could have just had like
33:31the Pz zombie world or even if there is
33:33consciousness even even if there are
33:34these laws which specify how conscious
33:36states are to interact with physical
33:37states which by the way that's like an
33:39extra addition to the ontology and that
33:41seems like unlikely like under under
33:43naturalism we'd expect the universe to
33:44be simpler and not to include these
33:45extra fundamental dynamical laws not
33:47sorry these extra psychophysical laws
33:49but even if they do include those
33:50psychophysical laws then we see that
33:52they are strikingly fine-tuned to allow
33:54for an orderly coherent intelligible
33:56mental life. Again, if you just
33:58randomize the pairing between conscious
34:00states and physical states, we would
34:01expect our mental life to just be like a
34:03chaotic static or maybe we'd expect it
34:05to be much simpler than the actual
34:07psychophysical laws that we got. Okay,
34:09even okay, so now we've got
34:10psychophysical harmony to add to the
34:12list. The fact that the psychophysical
34:13laws even match the contents of the
34:14universe. And then we go on to even
34:16further striking things. So like we have
34:18moral knowledge. I know for instance
34:20that recreationally torturing a baby for
34:22fun is wrong. We have lots of moral
34:24knowledge.
34:26That's not that's not something you can
34:27take for granted as a naturalist because
34:29evolution doesn't care about the moral
34:32facts. The moral facts for the
34:34naturalist do not play into our
34:36evolutionary history. And so imagine
34:39just
34:40imagine that you had a book and you're
34:42reading it. It's talking about
34:43Madagascar birds. Okay? And you're
34:44reading it like oh look there's like a
34:46Madagascar bird and it was it the
34:48population size is X and it talks about
34:50what they eat normally and what they
34:51drink and like their mating behavior and
34:53whatnot. If you learned that that book
34:56was just a hallucination from chat GBT
34:59and wasn't actually explained by facts
35:02about Madagascar birds, would you
35:04continue believing all the stuff in the
35:06book?
35:06>> No, I would not.
35:07>> No, it would. No, of course you
35:09wouldn't. So, the naturalist grants that
35:14the moral facts don't explain our moral
35:16intuitions and our dispositions to
35:18evaluate things morally. And so the
35:20naturalist faces a skeptical challenge
35:22with respect to moral moral intuitions.
35:24They can't trust our basic moral
35:25intuitions. They can't trust our basic
35:27moral sensibilities.
35:29And you know again we could have easily
35:31evolved in any which way which would not
35:33have been conducive to generally
35:35reliable moral faculties. I mean imagine
35:37for instance that we had evolved like
35:39the honeybees. If we had we would have
35:41thought it a sacred duty to just kill
35:44our brethren right for the sake of the
35:45the tribe or something like that.
35:47>> So we easily could have gone astray
35:48evolutionarily as well. So, we kind of
35:50hit the jackpot. So, then look what I'm
35:51doing.
35:52>> It's just coincidence upon coincidence
35:54upon coincidence upon coincidence for
35:55the naturalist. And I could just keep on
35:56listing these.
35:58>> Why not then accept or did you not flirt
36:00with Steven Law's evil God argument?
36:02[laughter] So, if you can't do away with
36:04God and you can't do away with the
36:05problem of evil, maybe there's an evil
36:07God who wants as much suffering and pain
36:08in the world as he can. Maybe he's not
36:11as effective as he could be. But did you
36:13ever consider that?
36:14>> I wasn't really ever particularly moved
36:16by the evil God challenge. I mean there
36:18are a few reasons for that. I mean one
36:19thing is just like there are various
36:21theoretical virtues that we can apply to
36:23a hypothesis independently of looking at
36:25the evidence. So there are a few
36:26criticisms I would raise here for the
36:28evil god challenge. One is just like in
36:30terms of the internal features of the
36:32hypothesis itself make it inferior to
36:35standard theism. And then secondly I
36:38don't think it fits the data as well as
36:39standard theism.
36:40>> So in terms of the internal features of
36:42the hypothesis
36:44think about this [clears throat] evil
36:45god. It's got lots of greatmaking
36:46features. It's got lots of knowledge
36:47about the world. It's omnisient and
36:49knowledge is good. It's got lots of
36:50power. It's like it's got all the it's
36:53like independent of things. It's got all
36:55these great making features. But then,
36:56oh, look at this. It's got like a
36:57badmaking feature. It's evil. Well,
36:59that's a weird kind of tension. It's got
37:01all these other perfections or
37:02greatmaking features like omnipotence
37:04and omniscience and a whatnot. But then
37:06that that like oh then you get another
37:09one on the list, another feature on the
37:10list and it's like evil. Like that
37:12doesn't seem to mesh very nicely with
37:13the other features. Like just in general
37:16when we make inferences about the world
37:18we should think that things are kind of
37:19uniform like you know the sun will
37:20continue to rise tomorrow. Uh in general
37:23we prefer hypotheses which have these
37:24like simple uniformities to them. But
37:26this view this evil god hypothesis does
37:28not have simple uniformities to it.
37:30Instead you have this list of attributes
37:32all of which are seemingly great making
37:33feature greatmaking feature greatmaking
37:34feature greatmaking feature. Oh and then
37:36a badmaking feature. That's weird. So it
37:37introduces a kind of tension and it's
37:39not as not as like a simple or uniform
37:41hypothesis as theism. Moreover, under
37:43that view, you can't derive all of those
37:45attributes from a simpler attribute of
37:48the being in question like perfection
37:50for instance. So under theism, if for
37:52instance, God has let's say a simple
37:54attribute of perfection,
37:56>> well, we can derive from that various
37:57other individual perfections that follow
37:59from it, right? But under so like we
38:01just have this very simple, compactly
38:03stable hypothesis that there's a perfect
38:05being, a being with every perfection to
38:06an unlimited extent. That's a very
38:09simple hypothesis, very uniform, very
38:11elegant.
38:12Nothing similar can be said with respect
38:14to the evil god hypothesis. You don't
38:15have some like simple
38:17>> or at least we're not aware of any
38:19simple property or simple attribute from
38:20which follows all these features and
38:22evil or something like that. So that's
38:24like one challenge to like the internal
38:26coherence of the hypothesis.
38:27>> Could you argue that maybe this is an
38:29example where our minds don't map onto
38:31the reality as the way that they should
38:33because after all it turns out evil is a
38:36perfection and that's just something you
38:38you haven't figured out yet. Why can't
38:40evil be a perfection on board with?
38:43>> So
38:44>> I have to define it differently. It
38:45wouldn't be an absence of good, but if
38:46this is what God wants, could we?
38:49>> So I mean that would seem to though
38:51require us to be like almost in like a
38:53radical skeptical scenario with respect
38:55to our basic moral intuitions, right?
38:57Like if evil is good after all or like a
38:59perfection, right? Um, so
39:03if you want to go in for that route and
39:04basically just like visiate all of our
39:06moral knowledge, uh, that seems to be a
39:08much larger cost than even the cost that
39:10I was just mentioning.
39:11>> So like to go that route, you'd
39:12basically have to say that like yeah, we
39:13just went systematically astray with
39:15respect to our basic moral intuitions,
39:16which of course leads to like another
39:17challenge for this hypothesis. Like this
39:19is you've heard of Daycart's evil demon,
39:20right? It's like this this thought
39:22experiment where maybe there's like an
39:23evil demon which is just feeding us
39:24sense impressions and we're just these
39:25disembodied intellects. uh and we're in
39:27just this kind of radical skeptical
39:29scenario where we don't know anything
39:30about the external world. [sighs]
39:33You're basically what the evil god
39:35proponent is positing, right? They're
39:37they're positing. I mean, of course, the
39:38people who run the evil god challenge,
39:39they don't believe in the being. They're
39:41just trying to say that there's maybe
39:42some kind of evidential parody between
39:43theism and this hypothesis. And since
39:45that hypothesis is ridiculous, then so
39:46is like theism. Um but theism doesn't
39:50posit basically a cartisian evil demon
39:52going out there like who exists at the
39:54foundation of reality. And so if there's
39:55a being who is like maximally vicious,
39:58we can't count on it to have given us
39:59reliable cognitive faculties. We can't
40:01count on it to have given us reliable
40:03moral faculties. We can't count on it to
40:04basically put us in epistemically
40:06friendly environment that's conducive to
40:08our having knowledge of the world. So
40:09basically, I just think you're cast into
40:10a radical, skeptical scenario. And that
40:12I think is just ridiculous. Of course, I
40:14know I have hands. Of course, I know
40:15it's wrong to recreationally torture
40:16children.
40:18>> All right. So then you've got this
40:19formidable argument from the problem of
40:21evil. You're seeing these lines of
40:23evidence converging for the existence of
40:26some kind of creator. How then did you
40:28reconcile that? How did you overcome the
40:30problem of evil? Cuz the way you put it,
40:32it's pretty forceful. And I think about
40:33that today. Sometimes you think about
40:35evil and you don't just see the horror
40:36of it, but it seems like the world is
40:40mad or unintelligible. Like you think
40:42that maybe there are more people dying
40:44in the womb that actually get born. Why
40:46would a loving God allow that? or people
40:48are being sex trafficked while we're
40:50sitting here talking watching this
40:51video. You think about I think about
40:53that and then I think and I think a lot
40:55of people would agree that they go I I
40:57don't know I it feels like God might not
41:00exist.
41:01>> Mhm.
41:02>> But of course as what you're doing is
41:04we're less interested in what it feels
41:07like and more interested in the way we
41:08should think. So how did you overcome
41:11the problem of evil or have you?
41:14>> At the time I didn't overcome it. It was
41:16just a persistent thorn in the side. So
41:20I was starting to lean towards theism
41:22>> and starting to maybe more strongly lean
41:24towards theism. I was like where maybe
41:26to the point I'm like an agnosticleaning
41:27theist,
41:28>> but I didn't overcome the problem of
41:30evil until
41:32I basically got overwhelming miraculous
41:34evidence for Catholicism and
41:36Christianity. Come on.
41:37>> And basically once I got that it kind of
41:39I see.
41:40>> Yeah. Once I had that I was like okay
41:42>> I must just be missing something. you
41:45know, I must be missing something. And
41:46then along the way, there were some
41:48interesting and new theodysies or
41:50responses to the problem of evil that I
41:51thought like, yeah, maybe they have some
41:53force and maybe we can go into those.
41:55But I only kind of came to appreciate
41:56their force
41:58>> after
41:59>> I basically was just inundated with
42:01miraculous evidence for Catholicism.
42:03>> I see.
42:04>> So, cuz like Well, we can get into that,
42:06but
42:06>> Oh, I'm pumped. Okay, so we should point
42:08out that you are a friend of Ethan Muse
42:11and we've had him on the show. People
42:12should definitely go and watch our 5hour
42:15show where he just lays out miraculous
42:17evidence for the truth claims of
42:19Catholicism.
42:20>> Did you know him at the time?
42:22>> I think I met Ethan [sighs]
42:24um when I was agnosticle leaning theist.
42:28>> Okay. I didn't know. Is is this where he
42:30comes into the story or
42:31>> this is this actually this is where
42:33Ethan comes into the story basically. Um
42:35so well actually it's a little bit
42:38after. So, I was initially introduced to
42:40certain pieces of miraculous evidence
42:42that were just like pebbles in my shoe,
42:44thorns in my side as a result of some
42:46people that we'll mention in just a
42:48second. After that, and I was starting
42:50to lean towards the I was like, "Oh man,
42:52there is some miraculous evidence." I
42:54was introduced to Ethan and then then
42:56the miraculous evidence really started
42:59just overwhelming me.
43:00>> So, we can maybe talk about some of the
43:02initial sparks.
43:03>> Yeah. Tell tell us what you mean by I
43:04know what you mean, but pebbles in the
43:06shoe. What were you being introduced to
43:07and why was it bothering you?
43:10>> So [sighs] there are a few things here.
43:13One is demonic phenomena.
43:17And me even saying this right now, go
43:19back two years. I would have laughed. It
43:21would have been ridiculous. I would have
43:22joined the skeptics and be like, "Oh,
43:24this is just ridiculous. What are you
43:25talking about demonic phenomena? Like
43:27come on. We're we're prim proper
43:29intellectuals. We don't believe in
43:30demons or anything like that." Right?
43:33That's what I would have said and I
43:34would have laughed it off. would have
43:36thought that you guys are just like
43:37primitive superstitious morons
43:39basically.
43:39>> Yes.
43:40>> Um but I have a friend Cameron Btusi and
43:46he started making videos where he just
43:48has on a bunch of differentists, people
43:50who work in deliverance ministry, people
43:52who have like experienced deliverance
43:54ministry and people like that.
43:57And Cameron, we were good friends at the
43:59time. And Cameron was like he started
44:01sending me some of these videos and he's
44:02like, "Joe, come on. Like watch it.
44:03Like, stop making fun of it. Watch it.
44:07Listen to what the exorcists are saying.
44:10Hear them out. Listen to what Dr.
44:12Richard Gallagher on the faculty of
44:13Colombian NYU, a Princeton alum. Listen
44:17to what he's saying, okay? And give me
44:20your explanation. I demand it. That's I
44:23mean, that's basically what Cameron told
44:24me in a little bit nicer terms, but um
44:27Cameron just kept on pushing me. He's
44:28like, "Explain it, Joe." So he would
44:30just say, "Okay, watch this video and if
44:32you don't want to watch the whole thing,
44:32just go to this timestamp." And you
44:34know, I go to the timestamp and like the
44:36exorcist is basically saying like,
44:37"Yeah." So like we started the right, we
44:39did the litany of saints and then the
44:40person started levitating and then he
44:42was there for about 30 minutes and and I
44:44was like, "Uh, okay." Uh, and
44:47[clears throat] so I go back to Cameron.
44:48I'm like, "Well, you know, maybe, okay,
44:50listen, maybe the dude was just
44:51misperceiving. Okay, the person had it
44:53was like kind of like holding themselves
44:54up with their arm and maybe that was
44:55being covered by their like dress or
44:56something."
44:57>> Lying. That seems more likely.
44:58>> Yeah. Well, lying, that's another
45:00potential option. But, um, so I was
45:02like, I gave him this disjunction like,
45:03okay, maybe it's a combination of like
45:06either it's lying or confabulation or
45:08something or um maybe like some weird
45:11kind of trick or some memory distortion
45:14or confabulation or something. Um, and I
45:16was like, okay, yeah. And maybe maybe
45:18the person was just, as I said, my
45:19initial thought was like, maybe they
45:20were just holding themselves up cuz I
45:22think like I didn't have any independent
45:23evidence for the person lying. Um, and
45:25then Cameron's like, "Joe, [sighs]
45:27I asked him that two minutes later. Go
45:29on." And he said he could he he
45:30literally put his head down and could
45:32see under it. He could see like a foot
45:33up. And I was like, "Okay." So, and I
45:37was like, "Okay, well, maybe this was a
45:38long long time ago." And the person just
45:40forgot or something. Um, or maybe yeah,
45:42it's some kind of fab confabulation.
45:44He's like, "Joe, at the beginning of the
45:45interview, he said that this was a week
45:46ago." And I was like, "Okay." Um, maybe
45:50he's lying. Uh, so then you know even
45:54there I'm like I'm shifting in my seat.
45:56Notice what I'm doing. I basically have
45:58just divined from the armchair that this
46:01person that I don't know who I've never
46:03met and whom I have no independent
46:05evidence of lying is a liar and I'm
46:07accusing him of lying because well I
46:09just have these other like arguments or
46:11something. So like I can like divine
46:12from the armchair these like empirical
46:14facts about the world even though I have
46:15no independent evidence for them. And so
46:16I was just like I was I was shifting in
46:18my armchair and you know it didn't
46:20bother me too much at the time. But then
46:21Cameron's like, "Okay, Joe, you thought
46:22he was a liar. Well, let's look at this
46:24other guy, Dr. Richard Gallagher. Okay,
46:27I've had him on." And just like you go
46:29through what Dr. Richard Gallagher is
46:30talking about. He has this Julia case,
46:32for instance, that Ethan talked about
46:33when he was with you. And like
46:35>> the things that he's testifying to are
46:37things that are almost impossible to be
46:39honestly mistaken about. like he would
46:40just be extensive interactions with this
46:43Julia person and then things would
46:44literally just like just be him him and
46:46her and something would literally just
46:47like fly across the room or Julia would
46:51engage in extensive
46:54fluent Latin and Greek even though she
46:57didn't know it and Dr. Dr. Richard
46:58Gallagher knows that because he studied
46:59Latin and Greek at Princeton or you know
47:02like and he would just describe all
47:03these different sorts of things and I
47:05was like okay so this guy who has like
47:07all the professional cred and reputation
47:09you could
47:09>> seem like a liar yeah it doesn't seem
47:11like a liar gaining power or money
47:13through
47:15>> if anything it's the opposite he seems
47:16>> no if anything people are just like yeah
47:18people are thinking that he's a coug and
47:19they're sort of making fun of him or
47:20something like that and you know he's
47:21got like all these uh recommendations in
47:23his book demonic foes from like
47:25higherups in like the the uh psychiatric
47:27He's seen like 30,000 patients and for
47:29none of his patients that he's normally
47:31seen, for none of them has he ever
47:33suspected any diabolical influence. He's
47:35a professional at detecting when it's,
47:39you know, some kind of psychiatric or
47:40mental illness like schizophrenia or,
47:42you know, dissociative identity disorder
47:44or, you know, various other things like
47:46that. He's an expert in that. And like
47:48schizophrenia doesn't make for instance
47:49like your eyes just like turn completely
47:52black instantaneously or your eyes turn
47:55into like thin green slits
47:57instantaneously which is what like a lot
47:59of these exorcist and deliverance
48:00ministers are saying. Being a
48:01schizophrenic doesn't make you in the
48:02room with like a dozen witnesses.
48:04Basically the room would instantaneously
48:06change to like freezing cold such that
48:08people can see their breath and then
48:10instantaneously change to for instance
48:13like almost scorching heat where they're
48:15sweating things like that. uh it doesn't
48:17make you be able to levitate. It doesn't
48:18make you be able to have things just
48:20like fly off the shelf. And we just
48:21literally have hundreds thousands of
48:24testimonies to these sorts of things
48:26from seemingly honest people in group
48:28settings individually contemporaneous
48:30documentation and it's like at some
48:33point am I am I implicating all these
48:35people in a massive lie? Are they all
48:37just cosmically confabulating? Isn't it
48:38weird though that you or I or many
48:42people who watch this haven't seen uh
48:44things like that to at least to the
48:46degree of which we're speaking?
48:47>> Well, I'm guessing a lot of our
48:48listeners probably have. I mean, I think
48:49these these things may very well be more
48:51widespread than we're giving credit, but
48:52>> they might be. I don't know if I've I
48:54think I would know if a friend had seen
48:56someone's eyes turn completely black or
48:58levitate. Uh I have some people who've
49:01told me stories like that, but it you
49:03see my point. It doesn't seem that
49:04common. We don't seem to have video
49:06footage of this stuff taking place.
49:08Isn't it just Shouldn't we just conclude
49:10that these people were either? Yeah,
49:12maybe they're lying. Just it seems more
49:13obvious because we don't have a direct
49:15experience of these uh crazy phenomena.
49:18And you couple that with the fact that I
49:20imagine most claims to supernatural
49:22experiences aren't true. Even Catholics
49:25would acknowledge that. So why not just
49:27say, well then
49:29>> well that no need to take this is what's
49:31going on in my mind. On the one hand,
49:33I'm thinking it seems incredibly
49:34difficult to explain away what they're
49:37saying. And I mean, actually, like there
49:39are some cases where, you know, we do
49:41have at least puditive photographs and
49:43things like that that actresses have
49:45talked about and shared and whatnot. And
49:46Cameron's actually done a video on that
49:47with like Manina Rosetti or something
49:49like that. So anyway, this is this is
49:52actually some like kind of tension in my
49:53mind where I'm thinking, okay, maybe
49:55they're they're all just like cosmically
49:56lying and confabulating on like cosmic
49:58proportions. That's like one hypothesis.
50:01Another hypothesis is that they're
50:02telling the truth and what they're
50:04reporting seems to be things that are
50:05very difficult to be honestly mistaken
50:07about like again like a group setting
50:09where like multiple multiple of them are
50:10like testifying to the exact same thing
50:12contemporaneous documentation etc. So
50:15I'm just thinking like again at this
50:17stage I don't actually believe it. I'm
50:19just shifting in my seat right and I
50:21don't know how someone could like
50:22seemingly honest people like Dr. Richard
50:25Gallagher, Adam Bllye, all these
50:27exorcists and like basically pan
50:29cultural testimony for thousands of
50:31years um to this phenomena and not at
50:33least shift in their seat, especially if
50:35they actually listen to the people like
50:38Cameron demanded that I do and try to
50:39offer some kind of explanation for all
50:41of them systematically if you try to
50:43explain it.
50:44>> And again, I could I could at the time I
50:47didn't actually believe it, right? Once
50:48I I came across this, I'm only at the
50:50moment of shifting in my seat, right?
50:51This is a pebble. It's a pebble in my
50:53shoe. It's something that's bothering
50:54me. Right.
50:55>> This is this is a really good point and
50:56I love that Cameron tried to get you to
50:59come up with a hypothesis because it's
51:00easy to be dismissive. It's easy to mock
51:04but there's got to be some explanation.
51:06>> Yeah. Well, there there's something even
51:07if it's lying or whatever. So, you tell
51:09me what you think it is based on this.
51:11>> Yes. And you know, you can just divine
51:13from the armchair that there's basically
51:14this massive conspiracy among all the
51:15people in question where they're just
51:17like saying like, "Yeah, I was there."
51:18And like the words were literally being
51:20carved on his like carved on his skin
51:22right in front of us without him doing
51:24it. He he had his hands by his side.
51:25This is like the Robbie Manheimr Roland
51:27Doe case where we have like the
51:28contemporaneous taken notes from like
51:29the two exorcists at the time. Lots of
51:31other cases like, you know, in the um in
51:34the uh See, again, it's not just
51:36deliverance ministers and whatnot. um in
51:37the Latoya Ammons case in like Gary,
51:39Indiana or something like a decade ago
51:40or something like that. Um they had like
51:43a whole government report about this and
51:45we had like testimony from like um the
51:46workers at the hospital where they
51:48literally walk in and they see the child
51:50with like they have this weird grin on
51:52the child's face and they literally in
51:54the government official government
51:55report that they did for this. We have
51:56the testimony from like a nurse or two
51:58saying yeah I saw him walk backwards up
52:01the wall
52:03and like literally it's like this is a
52:05government like official government
52:07report with like a like a nurse like
52:09okay is she's wrong? Is she on the lie?
52:11And so, like, again, I'm just shifting
52:13in my seat. I'm not convinced yet.
52:14>> Yeah.
52:14>> But again, it's something that's like,
52:18uh, what do I do? Okay. I I don't have
52:20any room in my worldview for this sort
52:22of thing. It seemed ridiculous, but like
52:24all these people, all this testimony,
52:26contemporaneous documentation, pan
52:28cultural, etc. And in fact, I could see
52:31at least nonsilly explanations for why
52:34this stuff isn't so prevalent, right? I
52:37mean because you have to recognize that
52:39demons under the Catholic worldview are
52:42agents. They have goals and intentions.
52:45And do you I mean one thing that they
52:47presumably don't want us to believe in
52:49is Christianity or God, right? So if
52:53they can hide themselves, especially in
52:55a world where we're basically all
52:56deadened to the supernatural, then
52:58they're presumably going to maybe go out
53:00of their way to hide themselves. And of
53:01course, maybe God in his mercy will
53:03allow them to do manifestation so that
53:05people can get in localized context so
53:06that people can get freed. But basically
53:10to to all that they can do, they're
53:12going to try to hide and they're only
53:14going to show their hand if God
53:15basically forces them for the sake of
53:16liberating a victim. And you know, of
53:18course, this is like an extremely
53:20intimate setting. These people have
53:21dabbled in the occult. They're basically
53:23being systematically oppressed by these
53:26spiritual forces. You're not going to
53:28take a camera into an exorcism session.
53:29like it's it's in extremely intimate.
53:32This is like a mercy. This is like a a
53:34ministry of mercy and healing for them.
53:35And it's usually it's extremely
53:37humiliating and disgusting and gross of
53:38the victim. There all sorts of privacy
53:40things and I think just like God in his
53:41providence is also just like
53:43orchestrated things such that the
53:46evidence is a little bit ambiguous and
53:48we'll get back to this cuz this is like
53:49the divine hiddenness model that started
53:50explaining my evidential situation once
53:52I learned about all the other miracles
53:54and whatnot.
53:54>> Yeah.
53:55>> So again at this stage Yeah.
53:57>> at this stage let's like recap.
53:58>> Just shifting in your chair. Yeah, at
54:00this stage I'm starting to lean towards
54:01theism.
54:03>> Came is starting to press me about
54:05demonic phenomena and like by press I I
54:09mean like he's messaging me, Joe. What
54:10is your explanation? I have I've gotten
54:12like a dozen of these people on who they
54:15don't seem like they're lying. What
54:17What's your explanation? Are are they
54:19just systematically lying? Are they
54:20confabulating on cosmic proportions? And
54:22what I had to say, I was just shifting
54:24in my seat. So, I'm I'm uncomfortable.
54:26Okay. Cameron continues to make videos.
54:29He picks Our Lady of Zetune.
54:32>> So, here comes a Marian apparition. And
54:34I'm like, "Okay, come on, Cameron. Like,
54:36okay, you got demonic phenomena and now
54:39you're doing a Marian apparition. Come
54:40on." Like, the mother of God is like
54:41appearing to people. Like, what are you
54:42talking about? Um, this is ridiculous.
54:45But again, he's like, "Just watch.
54:48Watch. Listen. Have eyes to see and ears
54:52to hear. Listen." Okay. So, again, I'm
54:55thinking, "Okay, fine. I'll watch your
54:58silly, stupid little video on Marian
54:59apparitions. And then I go in, I'm like,
55:02whoa, something happened here. So, to
55:05give you a little bit of context, um,
55:07Our Lady of Zetune was probably like the
55:11biggest uh, mass religious experience
55:14event since the parting of the Red Sea.
55:16[laughter]
55:17So, it happened in 19 from 1968 to 1971
55:21at top a Coptic Orthodox church in
55:24Zetune, Egypt. I think that's like a
55:25suburb of Cairo or something like that.
55:27And one night there are these Muslim
55:29transit workers and they look at top
55:32this St. Mary's Coptic Orthodox Church.
55:35They look up and they see someone who
55:36they think is a nun about to commit
55:38suicide. So they start freaking out like
55:40they they literally we have testimonies
55:41from this like don't jump, don't jump.
55:42They call the cops,
55:44but they start to they start to wonder
55:46like hold on a second. I don't actually
55:48think this is a nun because then it
55:49started like floating above the the I
55:52know it start it literally started
55:53floating the the apparition thing which
55:54they thought was a nun like evidently
55:56they had it had some kind of like female
55:57figure female shape and then it started
55:59like floating up. They're like okay
56:01what's going on? And some of them
56:02started thinking well maybe this is like
56:04a Marian apparition. So it turns out the
56:07person who initially saw it um I forget
56:10his name like Farukq Muhammad Atwa or
56:12something like that. This is in Travis
56:13Dumstead's book. Excellent. It's called
56:14like um Our Lady of Zetune uh or the
56:17Marian apparitions of Zetune an
56:18evidential inquiry or something like
56:19that. I've I've had him on my channel as
56:21well. Um but uh this guy who pointed the
56:25Muslim transit worker pointed out to the
56:26apparition initially. He did it with a
56:29finger that was bandaged and it was
56:30gangras. So literally a dead finger was
56:32scheduled for amputation the next day.
56:34He goes the next day. They open up the
56:36bandage completely new finger. A dead
56:40finger came back to life. We have
56:42documentation for this.
56:44Okay, so I'm thinking, okay, this is
56:46interesting. We have documentation for a
56:48dead finger coming back to life. Oh, and
56:49then of course, this woman, this female
56:52luminous female figure continues showing
56:54up intermittently, different points
56:56throughout the next 3 years, sometimes
56:58in front of crowds of hundreds of
57:00thousands who see her. We have literally
57:03thousands of testimonies to seeing this
57:05luminous female figure at top the Coptic
57:08Orthodox Church, including testimony to
57:11the figure being engaged in intentional
57:13movements, kneeling before the cross,
57:15holding a Christ child, bowing before
57:17the cross, blessing the crowd, things
57:19like that.
57:20>> Talk about what the government how they
57:21shut the electricity.
57:22>> Yeah, the government literally shut the
57:23electricity down at one point because
57:24like what what's going on? This is
57:25ridiculous. And that night it was when
57:27the night where they shut the
57:28electricity down to the entire
57:29neighborhood.
57:31That didn't stay the apparition. And in
57:32fact, it was the like the biggest
57:34apparition stayed there for hours on end
57:37where people could just literally see
57:38and witness the mother of God there. So
57:41they see this like female figure,
57:42luminous female figure, and there are
57:44all sorts of other things that are
57:46happening in connection with this Mary
57:48apparition. People are seeing luminous
57:50dove-shaped objects spontaneously form
57:53around the church, fly around without
57:56flapping their quote unquote wings,
57:57sometime in the sometimes in the
57:58formation of a cross of which we have at
57:59least put photos. And also they would
58:02fly around without flapping their quote
58:03unquote wings. And of course, doves
58:04don't fly at night, neither do pigeons
58:06and whatnot. And they're like luminous
58:07as well. And then they would also just
58:08like spontaneously fizzle out. So it's
58:10like what is going on? And then of
58:12course like when you look at the
58:13testimony there are like striking
58:15independent convergences or
58:16corroborations or undesigned
58:18coincidences between different sides of
58:19the church. Like there's one night where
58:21they um there's a person on like one
58:22side of the church and a person on
58:23another side of the church and they see
58:25the apparition phenomena start as like a
58:28ball of light a thin slit of light. They
58:30describe it as starting as a thin slit
58:32of light turning into a ball and then
58:33taking a distinctive female shape and
58:35then engaging in various intential
58:37movements. both of them describe the
58:38abition at the at the same time engaging
58:41in like starting in that exact way. So
58:44like we have tons of independent
58:45convergences about this. We have the the
58:47luminous dove-shaped figures. We have um
58:51medically documented healings. These are
58:53insane. The Coptic Orthodox Church set
58:55up a medical commission to to examine
58:57these. And we have healings from like
58:59muteness, paralysis, hernas, all
59:02different sorts of instantaneous organic
59:06untreatable diseases remitting after
59:09praying to the apparition and for the
59:11intercession of our lady. So it's and we
59:14again we have medical documentation for
59:16this. Travis Dums goes through this
59:18extensively in his book. It's it's
59:20really powerful. And then in addition to
59:21all this we have like other sorts of
59:23anomalous phenomena. like there are
59:24these anomalous clouds that billow up
59:26and that have this huge scent of
59:29fragrant incense um associated with them
59:31which just like cover the crowd. We have
59:33like a ton of testimonies to this sort
59:34of thing as well. And it's like one one
59:36of the testimonies is like you couldn't
59:37even produce this with like hundreds or
59:39thousands of sensors. So then it's like
59:42okay what is going on? Like I I have to
59:43say okay yeah dead fingers are coming
59:45back to life. like all these all these
59:48like organic
59:50untreatable diseases are just like being
59:52remitted in connection with praying with
59:54this thing like somehow despite there
59:57being no power in the around the
59:59neighborhood or anything like that. The
1:00:00apparitions are there. People are seeing
1:00:01it with like hours on end. Um there was
1:00:03no evidence of any projectors or
1:00:05anything like that. And of course they
1:00:06didn't even have that technology at the
1:00:07time. So it's like ridiculous to posit
1:00:08that. Um like you go to my comment
1:00:10section on my video with Travis Dum and
1:00:11one of them was like well maybe it was
1:00:12like just like a complex paperier-mâché
1:00:14thing that people were up there. And of
1:00:16like ridiculous [laughter]
1:00:17and of course like it doesn't explain
1:00:18the the luminous doves or just like the
1:00:20billowing incense or anything like that.
1:00:22Like I was shifting in my seat now real
1:00:25big time. I'm just shifting around with
1:00:27Zetune cuz again we have at some at some
1:00:30points there were hundreds of thousands
1:00:32in the crowd
1:00:33>> and like literally we have thousands of
1:00:35testimonies. I'm not exaggerating. We
1:00:36have thousands of testimonies to this
1:00:39>> all of which say like yeah luminous
1:00:42female-shaped figure. Not I mean there
1:00:45were anomalous lights and whatnot other
1:00:46things that were like associated with it
1:00:47again like um there were sometimes like
1:00:49fireworks or not fireworks but things
1:00:50were sort of resembling that or um there
1:00:52were like the luminous dove-shaped
1:00:54figures and various other things but
1:00:55there was overwhelming testimony to a
1:00:57luminous female-shaped figure who would
1:00:59go around and engage in intentional
1:01:00movements including massive undesigned
1:01:03coincidences insane medically documented
1:01:06healings
1:01:06>> for multiple years
1:01:07>> for multiple years on end. Yeah.
1:01:09>> So, I'm just thinking, okay,
1:01:12what am I going to say? Um,
1:01:15I could say it maybe it's some sort of
1:01:17like technological hoax. Like maybe
1:01:18there's some sort of um I don't know,
1:01:20the government's just trying to do this
1:01:21to like get people to get tourists or
1:01:25something. Um, but they chose like a
1:01:27Coptic Orthodox church and not like the
1:01:28Muslim majority or anything like that
1:01:30cuz like you know the Coptic the cops at
1:01:32the time are like a tiny minority and
1:01:33there was actually being persecuted a
1:01:35lot by the Muslim majority at the time.
1:01:36Um, and of course, like, okay, also not
1:01:39even invented at the time, whereas what
1:01:40is anything that could account for like
1:01:42the dove-shaped figures which would like
1:01:43spontaneously form and then fly around
1:01:45without flapping the rings and then
1:01:46spontaneously
1:01:48disappear. And like I mean, you know,
1:01:49this government hoax is also making dead
1:01:51fingers come back to life. Or maybe
1:01:52they're just forging all the medical
1:01:54like testimony and documentation for
1:01:55this. So you can you can sort of see I'm
1:01:57just having to posit coincidence upon
1:01:58coincidence upon coincidence upon
1:01:59coincidence just to explain away this
1:02:01one Marian apparition. And that's in
1:02:04addition to all the coincidences and
1:02:06whatnot, like the crazy confabulations
1:02:07and hordes of liars that I'd have to
1:02:09posit for the demonic phenomena.
1:02:12>> One [snorts] of the things I love so
1:02:14much about being Catholic is our
1:02:16devotion to the saints and hagography.
1:02:19That is to say, the study or the writing
1:02:21of the saints. So much can be learned
1:02:24through their lives, through their
1:02:26writings. And it's important to realize
1:02:28and to remember that the saints were
1:02:30people just like us with doubts and
1:02:32struggles, ordinary lives who through
1:02:35their yes to God changed Christian
1:02:38history as we know it. If you've been
1:02:40wanting to build a more consistent
1:02:43prayer life, I want you to go and check
1:02:45out.com/mattfrad.
1:02:48Now, here is something really amazing. A
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1:03:10Get it for free for 3 months. So, every
1:03:13parent can tell you there was a before
1:03:15or after. Man, I still remember the day
1:03:18that my good wife announced to me that
1:03:20she was pregnant and just it felt like
1:03:22the whole world looked different just
1:03:24before and after. I mean, one little
1:03:28beautiful person changes everything.
1:03:30Your priorities change, your schedule
1:03:32changes, your heart somehow grows larger
1:03:35than you thought was even possible. The
1:03:38tragedy is that so many mothers facing
1:03:40difficult pregnancies never get the
1:03:42opportunity to discover that. They're
1:03:45overwhelmed. they're scared. Sometimes
1:03:47they simply need someone to slow
1:03:48everything down and remind them that
1:03:50they're not alone. And that's why I'm
1:03:52grateful for the work that pre-born
1:03:54does. They provide free ultrasounds and
1:03:56real support. Not only helping mothers
1:03:58choose life, but walking alongside them
1:04:01afterward with practical care. It's
1:04:03deeply pro-life in the fullest sense of
1:04:05the word. If you would like to help
1:04:08another family experience that before
1:04:10and after, visit pre-born.com/matt
1:04:13or dial pound250 and say, "Baby, thank
1:04:17you for standing for life."
1:04:18>> Did you consider extraterrestrial life?
1:04:22[sighs]
1:04:23>> Uh, not really. This is what's good
1:04:25about what Cameron did with you because
1:04:26it's very easy to throw a hundred
1:04:29possible objections to a particular
1:04:31proposition, but when you actually have
1:04:33to commit to one, you then see that it
1:04:35doesn't work.
1:04:36>> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like the
1:04:39extraterrestrial thing just seemed to me
1:04:40just kind of ridiculous. I don't know.
1:04:41Um like they're simulating like the
1:04:45mother of God. I mean, I guess you could
1:04:46say um you know, and also like they're
1:04:49just like selectively healing certain
1:04:51people. Well, like they would just have
1:04:53to have insane powers and like we I
1:04:55don't know like I if I sat down and I
1:04:57could think about it like okay where
1:04:58were they located? They located like in
1:05:00the inside of the earth or like like
1:05:01from a distance and they're like zapping
1:05:02so they can like exactly heal the finger
1:05:04at exact exact time and they can like
1:05:06coordinate the movements. Like it just
1:05:07seems kind of ridiculous when you think
1:05:08about it at least for me. Um and it
1:05:11especially seems ridiculous when you
1:05:12look at the the broader pattern of
1:05:14miracles. And I I don't know. I just
1:05:15didn't really take the alien thing
1:05:16seriously. Like if I'm if I'm really
1:05:18having to avoid the consequences of
1:05:22>> the existence of God,
1:05:23>> yeah, the existence of God in
1:05:24Christianity by saying, "Okay, maybe
1:05:25there are aliens who are just like
1:05:26systematically deceiving us by
1:05:27performing all these miracles that like
1:05:29distinctively seem to like vindicate or
1:05:31support or authenticate Christian
1:05:32revelation." I mean, you've lost the
1:05:35plot. And like, am I going to risk going
1:05:37to Jesus after I die? Am I going to risk
1:05:39seeing him and saying to his face, "I
1:05:42thought that your mother who was
1:05:43appearing there was an alien." Am I
1:05:46going to risk that? How ridiculous am I
1:05:48going to sound on judgment day if there
1:05:49is such a thing? Because at this point,
1:05:51I'm thinking there's some chance that
1:05:53that's going to happen, right?
1:05:54>> Uh at the time, again, we're still in
1:05:57the initial stages of the conversion.
1:05:58So, at the time, I'm not even Christian.
1:06:00And in fact, I'm I maybe I I'm not even
1:06:03really leaning towards Christianity, but
1:06:04like these are just massive pebbles in
1:06:06my shoe. Like the pebbles are are
1:06:07growing in size, as it were. They're
1:06:09starting to become stones in my shoe.
1:06:11And I just didn't,
1:06:13as time went on, I didn't want to risk
1:06:15saying to Jesus's face, "Yeah, I just
1:06:17thought that there was this like massive
1:06:19alien deception going on." Cuz like we
1:06:21don't do that in any other context.
1:06:22Like, you know, um we see, [laughter]
1:06:25>> okay, this looks like the prime minister
1:06:27visiting us. It's doing all the things
1:06:28that a prime minister would do, saying
1:06:30it's the prime minister or, you know,
1:06:31things like that. I'm just going to
1:06:32posit that it's like aliens who's trying
1:06:34to deceive us and make it look like
1:06:35there's a prime minister there. Like,
1:06:36no, it's ridiculous. We don't do that in
1:06:38any other context. We take things at
1:06:39like face value until we're given like
1:06:40good reason to reject them. Right?
1:06:42>> So like the miracles at least at face
1:06:44value were indicating Christianity.
1:06:46>> So again at this stage I'm not a
1:06:49Christian. I was an agnostic starting to
1:06:53lean towards theism as a result of those
1:06:55various arguments that I mentioned. I
1:06:57still got the problem of evil in the
1:06:58background which is holding me back. And
1:07:00it's also holding me back in addition to
1:07:02some other arguments. But let's be
1:07:03honest, none of them are as powerful as
1:07:04the problem of evil. So, I've got these
1:07:06objections that are holding me back from
1:07:08Christianity and then I start to get
1:07:09some pebbles in my shoe and then they
1:07:10start to grow or more of them start to
1:07:12get put in my shoe. So, it started with
1:07:14the demonic phenomena.
1:07:15>> Mhm.
1:07:16>> Move from demonic phenomena to Our Lady
1:07:18of Zetune or Zaiton, however it's
1:07:20pronounced.
1:07:22>> And at this point, I'm like, [sighs]
1:07:24okay, I've got sufficient doubt that I
1:07:26really need to settle this. I need to
1:07:28investigate. Uh so I basically just like
1:07:32to maybe to the chagrin of uh my
1:07:35professors and whatnot and unbeknownst
1:07:37to them I sort of like put aside all my
1:07:39academic duties. I still carried them
1:07:41out but I put them aside and I'm like
1:07:43basically full-time investigating uh the
1:07:45miraculous case investigating
1:07:47Catholicism, investigating Christianity.
1:07:49Uh because like I've got enough doubt
1:07:51now that I'm like this might be true. I
1:07:53don't think it is.
1:07:54>> But I I need to
1:07:55>> I need to find out.
1:07:56>> I need to have a conclusion. I need to
1:07:58find out
1:07:58>> so I can move on with my life.
1:08:00>> This is evidence that demands a verdict.
1:08:02[laughter]
1:08:02So,
1:08:04>> all right.
1:08:04>> I basically put basically start now.
1:08:06We're like full-time investigating uh
1:08:08the miraculous case.
1:08:09>> Your parents have any idea about what
1:08:10you're going through at this point
1:08:12>> or is that too big a question to right
1:08:14now?
1:08:16>> My parents I told my parents two days
1:08:18ago that I was an atheist and that I was
1:08:21an agnostic and that I just reverted.
1:08:24[laughter]
1:08:26>> Hang on. What? 2 days ago from this day?
1:08:29>> 2 days ago.
1:08:30>> I told them for the first time that I
1:08:31deconverted from Catholicism.
1:08:33>> They didn't know that.
1:08:33>> 10 years ago.
1:08:34>> How do they not know that?
1:08:37>> I'm good at keeping things hidden. I
1:08:38suppose
1:08:39>> you have a YouTube channel.
1:08:40>> But listen, I'm the baby of the family.
1:08:43>> They are. I love I love them to death.
1:08:45They're the best parents I could
1:08:47possibly imagine and hope for. They're
1:08:49the most selfless, loving people I could
1:08:50imagine.
1:08:52>> But they don't follow YouTube. They
1:08:54don't follow me on Instagram or social
1:08:55media.
1:08:56>> If they did, they'd be like, "Oh,
1:08:57there's, you know, Joe doing his
1:08:58philosophy stuff."
1:09:00>> Probably probably. Yeah. So, they had
1:09:02actually no clue at the time that I even
1:09:04deconverted in high school, that I was
1:09:06an atheist in the household. And
1:09:08>> uh to my shame, I systematically
1:09:10deceived them for about a decade.
1:09:12>> Okay.
1:09:13>> They would have been disappointed,
1:09:14upset.
1:09:15>> Well, so it turns out, so I sat them
1:09:18down. I wrote a letter to them right
1:09:20when I reverted
1:09:21>> and I I didn't share with them the
1:09:23letter at the advice of of a confessor.
1:09:25Um but I was like, "Okay, I got invited
1:09:27onto your channel. I'm like, I'm not
1:09:29going to let a conversation with Matt
1:09:30Frad be the first time that I I revealed
1:09:32to my parents that I systematically
1:09:34deceived them for a decade about being
1:09:35Catholic when I wasn't Catholic."
1:09:37>> So, I wrote this letter um just
1:09:40explaining things and uh I sat them down
1:09:44and I was like, you know, got something
1:09:46to tell you. Uh, it ends beautifully,
1:09:50but there are some really bad things
1:09:51along the way.
1:09:53Uh, no, I didn't get anyone pregnant. So
1:09:56then they were like, [laughter] okay.
1:09:58Um, and so I was like, yeah, listen, in
1:10:01high school, [sighs]
1:10:02uh, I deconverted. I became an atheist.
1:10:05And then I became an agnostic, and I'm
1:10:07sorry for systematically deceiving you,
1:10:09deceiving the church. I, um, I went
1:10:11through with confirmation even though I
1:10:13didn't believe. You know, I, you know,
1:10:14I've confessed all this stuff. thanks to
1:10:15God, you know, um works and abounds,
1:10:17grace abounds all the more again. Um but
1:10:19yeah, I sat them down, told them that
1:10:20and I'm like, you know, ultimately God
1:10:24works things for the good of those who
1:10:25love him. And this has been, you know,
1:10:28think about my position now. I have
1:10:30lived in the atheist mind. I've lived in
1:10:33the agnostic mind. I know how they
1:10:35think. I know how skeptics think. I was
1:10:37the skeptic. I thought exorcisms were
1:10:40ridiculous. I thought a Marian
1:10:41apparition was utterly ridiculous,
1:10:43ludicrous.
1:10:45like you guys have thrown your brains
1:10:46away. This is ridiculous. I was the
1:10:48skeptic. So, I've been in their
1:10:49situation. I know how to appeal to them.
1:10:51So, it's going to make me a much more
1:10:53effective witness for Christ going
1:10:54forward. And I can
1:10:56>> empathize with them.
1:10:57>> I can love them. I was there with you
1:11:00struggling.
1:11:01>> I was there wondering about hell and
1:11:03homosexuality and contraception and all
1:11:06the difficulties for Catholicism and all
1:11:07the difficulties for theism. I worried
1:11:09about that elephant, too. I was there.
1:11:12So, I know what you're going through and
1:11:15I love you and I'm here for you and
1:11:16we're going to work through it.
1:11:18>> So, that's what I can do now.
1:11:19>> I can do that because I went through
1:11:21that myself.
1:11:21>> So, how did your parents take it?
1:11:23>> How did my parents take
1:11:23>> I would think they were like, "Oh, okay.
1:11:25We didn't even know you left, but glad
1:11:27you're here." [laughter] What did they
1:11:28>> So, of course, first they hugged me,
1:11:30which was beautiful
1:11:31>> and said how much they loved me. And um
1:11:35they said they were so thankful. They
1:11:38were just exhilarated really. And they
1:11:41said to be honest they had some kind of
1:11:44inkling or some kind of suspicion cuz
1:11:46little things along the way came by
1:11:49their footstep. So like I went like this
1:11:51is long after well I don't know how long
1:11:53but long after I even had a YouTube
1:11:54channel way after I deconverted um
1:11:57someone at my mom's work came up to her
1:11:58and she's like is your son is your son
1:12:00Joe Schmidt? He was just on Tren Horn's
1:12:02podcast. And she's like oh [laughter]
1:12:05that's interesting. Um, and of course
1:12:06that podcast episode was an agnostic uh
1:12:09response to the case for atheism.
1:12:12>> Uh, so I think my mom looked it up at
1:12:14that point and she was like, "Okay." So
1:12:15she had seen me say that I was an
1:12:16agnostic. So um, and they had some
1:12:18inklings here and there. Um, and they
1:12:20didn't really know what was going on. So
1:12:22they they didn't know how to bring it up
1:12:24um, once they had seen some of that. And
1:12:26so we were both in this kind of like
1:12:27collective state of unknowing and just
1:12:29silence like we're just not going to
1:12:30bring it up.
1:12:31>> And so they so they they did find out
1:12:33later. I mean, I think they didn't know
1:12:34for a long time. Um, and uh, but once
1:12:40they found out that I was agnostic, they
1:12:42basically just prayed intensely.
1:12:45>> They prayed intensely every single day
1:12:48for my reversion.
1:12:49>> Really
1:12:50>> and for my faith.
1:12:51>> That's good.
1:12:51>> And, you know,
1:12:52>> talking to God more than talking to you
1:12:54about God.
1:12:55>> Yes. Yes. So, literally, I mean, why
1:12:57didn't I tell my mom? because you know
1:13:00like me she has anxiety and I don't know
1:13:03she would have been worried about the
1:13:04state of my soul she she would have had
1:13:06sleepless nights upon sleepless nights
1:13:07and my dad is um you know he got me into
1:13:11thinking very rigorously and
1:13:12argumentatively about the faith like
1:13:14every single day on the way to Catholic
1:13:15school he would play Catholic radio and
1:13:18this is K through 12 so he'd play this
1:13:19and I'm just listening to people like
1:13:20object to the faith and be like the the
1:13:21apologists defend the faith every single
1:13:23day throughout K through 12 right so my
1:13:25dad like and we had a little some spats
1:13:27in in high So, I was like, "Okay, this
1:13:30is going to mar our relationship. Um,
1:13:32we're going to have spats upon spats. I
1:13:34don't know what's going to happen. Um, I
1:13:36don't want to sew division in the
1:13:38family." I'm not saying that all this
1:13:39justifies lying. That's not what I'm
1:13:40saying. No, I was not justified. And I I
1:13:42sinned and I, you know, male koopa male
1:13:45koopa male koopa, right? Um, but, you
1:13:49know, I just want people to understand
1:13:50that's where I was coming from. Yeah.
1:13:52And I'm [clears throat] just like, you
1:13:53know, this this teenager who's scared
1:13:54and just trying to figure out the
1:13:56fundamental nature of reality. Um,
1:13:57>> well, that must have been a beautiful
1:13:58experience sharing that with your family
1:14:00and having them embrace you and
1:14:02>> Oh, yeah. Definitely
1:14:03>> tell you they were praying for you.
1:14:04>> Yeah. Oh my gosh. And you know, my mom,
1:14:06you know, it's it's it's just like St.
1:14:08Monica and Augustine, you know, where in
1:14:10confessions there's somewhere where like
1:14:11a bishop was telling St. Monica, it is
1:14:13not possible that the son of these tears
1:14:16should perish.
1:14:18>> So, I was like, "Mom, you are St.
1:14:19Monica.
1:14:20>> You are St. Monica and I am Augustine."
1:14:22I mean, of course, I don't have the
1:14:23rhetorical prowess or the intellect of
1:14:25Augustine, so I don't want to No, I get
1:14:26that. But yeah. [laughter]
1:14:27Um, and yeah, it really was just a
1:14:30beautiful experience. And you know what
1:14:32they also disclosed to me? So, I have a
1:14:34mass being they they set up a mass being
1:14:36said for me. Um, this is like one of the
1:14:38most beautiful things. It's one of the
1:14:39most beautiful gifts you can give
1:14:40someone. And of course, our our home
1:14:42parish is massive. It's gigantic, right?
1:14:44So, you have to schedule that like at
1:14:47least a year in advance.
1:14:49Do you want to know what day the mass
1:14:52was said?
1:14:53>> Which day?
1:14:55>> Today.
1:14:56>> Today. When I'm talking with Matt Frad
1:14:59about my conversion, a mass scheduled a
1:15:02year in advance was said for me today.
1:15:03>> Wow.
1:15:04>> Isn't that a cool providential
1:15:05coincidence?
1:15:05>> Jesus Christ.
1:15:06>> Beautiful providential coincidence.
1:15:08>> I love it.
1:15:09>> Yeah. All right.
1:15:10>> So, that's how they took it. Um,
1:15:11>> God love them. Yeah. Okay. So, you're
1:15:14leaning towards Catholicism. You have
1:15:16>> Well, no. No. I'm still at this stage,
1:15:17remember, I'm not even leaning towards
1:15:18Christianity.
1:15:19>> That's right. You said you No, no,
1:15:20that's right. You said you put your
1:15:22academic work on the back burner so that
1:15:23you could investigate the claims of
1:15:25Christianity and Catholicism with with
1:15:27more intensity.
1:15:28>> Yeah, exactly. And so I'm again, and I'm
1:15:29not, Dude, I'm not even a theist at this
1:15:31point. I mean, this shows just like how
1:15:33I don't know how difficult it was for me
1:15:35to change my mind and how careful I
1:15:37mean, I don't know. I just wanted to be
1:15:39very careful with it. Like, this is not
1:15:40a light thing. I cannot convert or
1:15:43change my mind lightly. I can't be rash.
1:15:45I have to do my due diligence and I have
1:15:47to know basically um or at the very
1:15:50least I have to have enough evidence to
1:15:52make a kind of practical commitment
1:15:53rational. So at this stage even after
1:15:57seeing all the exorcist stuff and like
1:15:58kind of flailing around for naturalistic
1:16:00explanations that are just like massive
1:16:02cope in the end. Uh even after that,
1:16:04even after Zetune and like looking into
1:16:06that pretty extensively and talking with
1:16:08like Cameron and Cesar Bernstein and
1:16:10various various other people who were
1:16:12thinking about that um even after all
1:16:14that I was like yeah Christianity is
1:16:16probably false. Catholicism is probably
1:16:17false. There all these different
1:16:18objections to the Bible and to hell and
1:16:20to the magisterial contradictions and
1:16:23you know all the moral problems with the
1:16:24church you know like all their moral uh
1:16:26teachings that seem false to me and seem
1:16:28like just obviously false and various
1:16:29other things. Um and then even you know
1:16:31Christianity like I can't understand the
1:16:33incarnation trinitarianism there are
1:16:34lots of objections to that and what
1:16:35about like old testament violence and
1:16:37various things. So and the problem of
1:16:39evil still ringed in my mind right or
1:16:41rang in my mind. So I I wasn't even a
1:16:43theist at this point. I'm just leaning
1:16:45towards theism even after having seen
1:16:46all that evidence uh after having gone
1:16:49through the exorcist phenomena gone
1:16:51through the demonic phenomena gone
1:16:52through our lady of etun um even then
1:16:56I'm still very skeptical of
1:16:57Christianity. And then this is where um
1:17:00well there there are a few other
1:17:01miracles that came along the way um that
1:17:04started pushing me again more towards uh
1:17:07Christianity before I even met Ethan
1:17:08Muse.
1:17:09>> Okay.
1:17:09>> So um one of them was uh so like the
1:17:14miracle of Col for instance. So Jimmy
1:17:16Aken put out a YouTube video based on um
1:17:18a paper that Caleb Jackson has on the
1:17:20miracle of Kanda. So this is I think in
1:17:21the 17th century Juan Miguel Peliser
1:17:24he's like a Spanish um farmer and his
1:17:26leg gets trampled on when he's out on
1:17:28the farm or something and so he used to
1:17:29travel I think to Zaragoa Spain to get
1:17:31his leg amputated. Okay. So there are
1:17:33two doctors there that amput a amputate
1:17:35his leg. They go out they bury it in the
1:17:36graveyard or whatever and um you know he
1:17:40he has an extensive uh convolescence
1:17:42there because of course it's they have
1:17:44very primitive techniques and he has to
1:17:45be there for months on end being
1:17:46attended to by these doctors who you
1:17:48know by this time they know exactly who
1:17:50he is. Like you know they're spending
1:17:51months upon months with this person that
1:17:53they amputated his leg for. Okay. And
1:17:56then he goes uh after his convolescence
1:17:58he goes and he becomes a beggar because
1:17:59now he can't work. Um so he obtains his
1:18:01beggar's license. We still have that, by
1:18:03the way. Um, he obtains his beggar's
1:18:05license and he basically uh every night
1:18:07um I think he Yeah, he he every night he
1:18:09prays, I think, to um
1:18:11>> like uh Our Lady of the Pillar or
1:18:13something like that for um I think maybe
1:18:15for the healing of his leg or something
1:18:16like that. And he was like rubbing the
1:18:18oil from uh something associated with
1:18:20our lady of the pillar on his stub. Um
1:18:22and so, you know, at for for whatever
1:18:24reason, he had cause to go back home. Uh
1:18:26so he goes back home and like you know
1:18:29he uh he's greeted by everyone there cuz
1:18:31like he was known by the village or
1:18:32whatever. And so the people there, they
1:18:33wanted to see his stub and they
1:18:34literally like felt his stub um like his
1:18:37stub for his knee or whatever. Um and
1:18:39then I don't know how long he was at his
1:18:41home but one night I think he like had a
1:18:43dream or something of like Mary and he
1:18:46wakes up and his leg is back. [laughter]
1:18:49His leg is back. And so like everyone's
1:18:52like going insane. And they have like um
1:18:53um like a canonical investigation for
1:18:56him, like an inquisi like the uh
1:18:58Inquisition trial they had for this just
1:19:00to make sure like is this a fraud? Like
1:19:01what is going on? And we literally have
1:19:03like the transcripts from that. We had
1:19:06like two dozen people from his town
1:19:09testifying to like feeling his stump
1:19:12beforehand. No leg. And then afterwards
1:19:15leg. So no leg. Leg. We even have they
1:19:19even sought out the two people who
1:19:21amputated his leg and attended to him in
1:19:23his convolescence. They sought them out
1:19:25and they gave testimonies at this trial
1:19:26as well. They're like, "Yeah, I
1:19:27amputated this guy's leg." So like we
1:19:30have just dozens of testimonies to a leg
1:19:34being miraculous miraculously restored.
1:19:36People can look at the video on like
1:19:37Jimmy Aken's channel and they can go to
1:19:38Caleb Jackson's paper on academia.edu. I
1:19:41think he may turn it into a blog post on
1:19:42his Substack, but like I'm like, "Oh
1:19:45gosh, like this is insane." Like this is
1:19:47much better evidence than the
1:19:48resurrection for instance. Like in my in
1:19:49my view like the resurrection like yeah
1:19:51we have people who I mean four or five
1:19:55eyewitness accounts like accounts that
1:19:57maybe claim to be based on eyewitness
1:19:58testimony. I mean we think that probably
1:20:00they're written decades after the fact.
1:20:02There's some they're not probabistically
1:20:04independent on one another. Sometimes
1:20:05they're like borrowing from one another.
1:20:06So we got Paul and then the four
1:20:07evangelists. Um but like okay so like
1:20:10four or five testimonies decades after
1:20:12the fact um compared to okay like very
1:20:16shortly after the fact like a trial
1:20:18where people are giving sworn testimony
1:20:20it's two dozen of them saying I felt his
1:20:22leg beforehand now he has a leg
1:20:23afterhand the two people who performed
1:20:25the amputation etc. So like I'm like oh
1:20:27my gosh this is insane. So the miracle
1:20:29of Kanda is pulling on me and you just
1:20:31have to pause it like the craziest
1:20:33conspiracy theory.
1:20:34>> How did you how did you come upon that
1:20:35one? Did Cameron send you that one as
1:20:37well or
1:20:37>> I don't know. I So, for whatever reason,
1:20:39um I got into some of Jimmy Akin's
1:20:40Mysterious World episodes and this one
1:20:42just like popped up and I was like,
1:20:44"Okay, I'm examining miracles. This one
1:20:46looks interesting." And it
1:20:47>> does a great job examining things with a
1:20:49even keel
1:20:50>> and it says like regrown leg and I'm
1:20:51like, "Okay, come on." Like a regrown
1:20:53leg. And then I look at I'm like, "Oh
1:20:55no.
1:20:56Oh no.
1:20:58Maybe Christianity is true."
1:21:01Uh that's a bit a bit daunting because
1:21:04that would have to require a pretty big
1:21:05change in my life. But I'm thinking like
1:21:06maybe it's true. So I'm still actually
1:21:08at this point I'm still leaning towards
1:21:10thinking Christianity is false. But I'm
1:21:12you know again the pebbles are mounting
1:21:13like my shoe is starting to get stocked
1:21:15full of pebbles.
1:21:17So the miracle of Kanda comes along and
1:21:19that kind of bothers me and I start
1:21:20looking into some other miracles that
1:21:21people like testify his YouTube channel
1:21:23have talked about. Caleb Jackson like
1:21:24there's a a Barbara Schneider case that
1:21:26I found really convincing. She had like
1:21:28advanced multiple scerosis. She hadn't
1:21:30walked for years. She was sent to like
1:21:32her deathbed basically um at home and
1:21:35she had all these tubes inserted into
1:21:37her. She had a fully collapsed lung. She
1:21:39had a massive um atrophy for her legs
1:21:41because of course if you don't walk in
1:21:42like 7 to 10 years or however long it
1:21:44was, you're going to get massive
1:21:45atrophy. Her her feet were like um I
1:21:48think frozen in like planter uh flexion.
1:21:50So they could she couldn't like walk or
1:21:51anything. She was legally blind. Her
1:21:53hands were like crinkled in on
1:21:54themselves. And she was this
1:21:56>> this is in the 1980s I believe. Um, and
1:21:59so like she's basically dying and they
1:22:02have a her church has a prayer campaign
1:22:04for her and they get like hundreds of
1:22:05letters coming in for the prayer. And so
1:22:07her friend is reading to her these
1:22:08prayers one day and when when she's
1:22:10reading the prayers to her um she hears
1:22:13a voice, Barbara that is, she hears a
1:22:15voice saying, "Get up my child and
1:22:16walk." And she's like
1:22:20she takes out her tubes, she gets up,
1:22:22she walks. She looks down and the first
1:22:24thing she notices as she says is her
1:22:26feet are flat on the floor. They haven't
1:22:28been like that for seven to 10 years.
1:22:30And then she looks at her hands and
1:22:32they're not crumpled in on themselves.
1:22:34And then only after that she notices I'm
1:22:37not blind.
1:22:38I can see
1:22:40and like she starts dancing and they had
1:22:42like they start dancing and running
1:22:44around and and the the her family
1:22:45members are like feeling her calves and
1:22:46like your calves are restored and like
1:22:48we have like medical testimony to all
1:22:49this stuff. So this is like an
1:22:52instantaneous and permanent remission of
1:22:54advanced multiple scerosis. Oh, her her
1:22:57lung uncolapsed as well. She had a
1:22:59collapsed lung and it uncolapsed. So all
1:23:03of these things happening at once in
1:23:05connection with what I would have to say
1:23:06is like a hallucination on her part. So
1:23:08okay, we just happen to have this
1:23:10hallucination with content in
1:23:11association with hundreds of prayers.
1:23:13All this stuff is coinciding with an
1:23:15uncolapsed lung, blindness
1:23:16instantaneously remitting, like muscle
1:23:19being restored, doctor's testimony to
1:23:22this. We have medical documentation
1:23:23beforehand, afterhand.
1:23:26>> What am I to do, Matt? What am I to do
1:23:30>> when you see this? What are you supposed
1:23:31to say?
1:23:34What are you supposed to say? So, like,
1:23:35okay, I guess, okay, I guess God
1:23:37probably exists. So, I'm like, now I'm
1:23:39basically like, yeah, theism is probably
1:23:40true, but maybe God's like just like
1:23:42accommodating to our religious beliefs.
1:23:43Sure, like they're praying to the
1:23:44Christian God and whatnot, but maybe
1:23:45God's like accommodating to our
1:23:46religious beliefs and whatnot. Um, and
1:23:48there are some other healings as well,
1:23:49like Gregory Spencer, this is another
1:23:51one that, um, uh, Caleb Jackson likes to
1:23:54go through. So, uh, [laughter]
1:23:56he has macular degenerative blindness.
1:23:58So, macular degeneration does not get
1:24:00better on its own. It's natural. It's
1:24:01not doesn't like heal naturally. Um, and
1:24:04he like he's seen by we have all of his
1:24:06medical documentation beforehand uh
1:24:07where he's seen by um like an
1:24:10opthalmologist, he's declared legally
1:24:12blind, he gets all of his legal permits
1:24:13and whatnot. Um and then he goes to like
1:24:16some kind of Christian retreat and after
1:24:18like after he prays for like uh I forget
1:24:22like I think he just wanted he wanted to
1:24:23pray for some spiritual healing cuz I
1:24:24think he had some trauma in his life and
1:24:26then after that prayer he can see almost
1:24:30crystal clearly.
1:24:31>> When was this? Um, this was I think in
1:24:33the early 2000s or something like that.
1:24:35Like again, I'm just going off of memory
1:24:36here. So, um, I think this is in the
1:24:38early 2000s. Okay. And so then he's
1:24:39like, "Oh my gosh, I can see." So then
1:24:41he goes to the doctor and the doctor's
1:24:42like, "Oh my gosh, your eyesight is
1:24:43totally fine. This is insane." And the
1:24:44macular degenerous stuff like literally
1:24:46cleared. And it's like, "What is going
1:24:47on?" And then get this. They had to
1:24:51investigate him for insurance fraud
1:24:52because they're like, "Dude, you just
1:24:54you just had like all this medical
1:24:55documentation that you were legally
1:24:56blind with macular degenerative
1:24:57blindness. This is insurance fraud. Like
1:24:59what are you going on?" And they had to
1:25:00drop the they had to drop the fraud case
1:25:01cuz like okay yeah and we have like the
1:25:03the government report it's like yep yep
1:25:04he's healed cuz they had to go through
1:25:06the medical documentation and he's all
1:25:07open about it like puts the medical
1:25:08documentation online. So like none of
1:25:10this stuff is like oh yeah I had a
1:25:12headache and I prayed to Jesus and it
1:25:14was healed. Like no that is ridiculous.
1:25:15We have in some cases like dozens
1:25:18hundreds of contemporaneous medical
1:25:20documentation signed notorized reports.
1:25:23Deal with it explain it. No leg.
1:25:26Accommodate yourself to the fact. God
1:25:28exists. Accommodate yourself to the
1:25:30fact. So I was like, "Okay, God probably
1:25:34exists." It was still a probably at this
1:25:35point. Like cuz I was like, "The problem
1:25:36of evil. The problem of evil. I can't I
1:25:39can't get over it, man." Like again, the
1:25:40Jeffrey Dmer thing, the Jeffrey return,
1:25:42like God seems to be like Jeffrey Dmer.
1:25:44Like okay, sure, there's so much
1:25:46evidence, but it was still so hard for
1:25:48me. I mean, again, at this point, I'm
1:25:49like leaning towards theism. Okay,
1:25:53Ethan Muse still hasn't come into the
1:25:54store yet, but now I'm like, oh gosh, at
1:25:57this point, Christianity, I was like
1:25:58maybe 30% confident that Christianity is
1:26:00true.
1:26:01>> But Catholicism, Catholicism was like
1:26:040.00001%.
1:26:07I was like, okay, maybe Christianity is
1:26:09true and there's some kind of like
1:26:10liberal Christianity where like
1:26:11everyone's going to be saved and you
1:26:12know that sort of thing. Um, so I was
1:26:15like, "Okay, yeah, Christianity like 30%
1:26:17chance. God's existence. Yeah, I don't
1:26:19know. Maybe like 70 80% or something
1:26:21like that. Even though I've seen all
1:26:22this stuff,
1:26:23>> yeah, I just it's a testimony to and I
1:26:25don't want to make light of it. The
1:26:26problem of evil is powerful and it was
1:26:27powerful really psychologically and I
1:26:28had other objections as well, but we
1:26:30we'll circle back to the problem of evil
1:26:31later." [snorts]
1:26:32>> Um, so still haven't met Ethan Muse. I'm
1:26:35about 30% confident in Christianity.
1:26:38Super confident that uh Catholicism is
1:26:40false. Um, and we can go through my
1:26:43objections later, but okay.
1:26:45[sighs and gasps]
1:26:46Again, the the the pebbles in the shoe
1:26:48are mounting and mounting and mounting
1:26:49and mounting. Now, what comes next is
1:26:52probably uh kind of simultaneously
1:26:56eucharistic miracles and Adam Bllye his
1:26:59stigmata case, which we'll get to, and
1:27:01then Ethan Muse. So, let let's take
1:27:04those in turn.
1:27:05>> Okay.
1:27:06>> So, Matthew Levana, he's like a Catholic
1:27:08apologist in France. He's talking about
1:27:10like eucharistic miracles and like
1:27:11Heaven Non-Tratic is making videos
1:27:13against them and like I'm like, "Okay, I
1:27:14should probably check this out cuz like
1:27:16I'm starting to think Christianity has a
1:27:17really live chance of being true and
1:27:19like I guess this could help me figure
1:27:21out which form of Christianity is true.
1:27:23I suppose if there are Eucharistic
1:27:24miracles. Um, what does your YouTube
1:27:27channel look like right now as you're
1:27:29going through this? I mean, you have to
1:27:31post. Are you posting videos?"
1:27:32>> Yeah, I I am posting videos. So, like
1:27:34I'm doing stuff on a video with Brian
1:27:36Cutter on psychophysical and nomogical
1:27:37harmony. I'm doing videos on um like
1:27:41metaphysics. I'm doing videos on
1:27:43philosophy of mind. Like why dualism is
1:27:44true, why the mind is not reducible to
1:27:46the brain.
1:27:46>> You know, one thing we never addressed
1:27:48that we should address now is why you
1:27:50haven't gone public about your
1:27:51conversion until now.
1:27:52>> Oh, do you want to address that now?
1:27:54>> Well, just I think it's important
1:27:55because my next question was going to be
1:27:57like, were you playing the skeptic in
1:27:59these videos to plate your audience
1:28:01since the since you wanted to keep your
1:28:03conversion close to the chest? How were
1:28:04you navigating these discussions without
1:28:06coming out like a This is where this is
1:28:08postcon conversion what I'm doing.
1:28:10>> Well, no. Well, yeah, I guess so.
1:28:12>> We're sort of in the sort of
1:28:12investigative phase. Um,
1:28:14>> yeah. Yeah. Postcon conversion.
1:28:15>> Postconver.
1:28:16>> Why is it you didn't choose to announce
1:28:18it right away?
1:28:20>> I needed at least 6 months of the
1:28:23sacramental life of the church under my
1:28:25belt before I was ready for the
1:28:27spiritual attacks and the flack that I
1:28:30would get from my LGBT friends, my
1:28:32atheist friends, my agnostic friends,
1:28:34and various things like that. Yeah.
1:28:36>> And I just wasn't ready for a public
1:28:38defense of the faith as like a new
1:28:40revert.
1:28:41>> I need to receive the Eucharist on like
1:28:43a regular basis. I need to go to
1:28:45confessions to heal like all my past
1:28:47sins, you know. Um I needed to
1:28:50>> get your prayer life in order.
1:28:51>> I need to get my prayer life in order. I
1:28:52need to, you know, pray the rosary every
1:28:53day. That sort of thing. I needed to do
1:28:55my fasting and mortification. I needed
1:28:57to do um penences and whatnot. You know,
1:28:59I needed to get all my ducks in order
1:29:01spiritually before I was ready to go
1:29:03public and defend the faith publicly.
1:29:05Okay. But in the time that you converted
1:29:07to when you make your announcement, um,
1:29:11how are you navigating your
1:29:12conversations on your YouTube channel?
1:29:14You don't want to come out as a theist.
1:29:15You presumably don't want to spread the
1:29:17error of atheism. So, how are you what
1:29:18are you doing? Are you just posting less
1:29:20or?
1:29:20>> Um, so I I did post a little bit less. I
1:29:23am posting things that are I mean for
1:29:26instance I did one video just on like
1:29:28the nomological harmony argument which
1:29:29is the one where I said like the
1:29:30fundamental dynamical laws match the
1:29:32content of the univer universe and I
1:29:34gave like the rulebook analogy and you
1:29:35know it's really striking that like if
1:29:36you just had a randomized rulebook and a
1:29:38randomized game board that they would
1:29:40match each other such that the rules
1:29:41actually tell those particular game
1:29:42pieces how to go. It's really striking.
1:29:44So I just made like a video on that and
1:29:46I didn't actually come out and say that
1:29:47I was a theist at the time and that I
1:29:48was even Catholic at the time. I just
1:29:50made the video like I was exploring it,
1:29:51you know, and I'm just presenting the
1:29:52argument. I'm just saying like and
1:29:53here's how one might object and here's
1:29:54how one might do this. Um and that's
1:29:56basically how I carried myself. You
1:29:57know, I went on Miles Donahghue's
1:29:58podcast, um the uncertainty podcast. We
1:30:01talked about the fine tuning argument.
1:30:02And I told him in the email, I didn't
1:30:03tell him why. I just said, "You are not
1:30:05to call me an agnostic. You are not to
1:30:07call me an atheist. You not to call me
1:30:08anything.
1:30:09>> We were just going to talk about the
1:30:10fine tuning argument and why it's so
1:30:11amazing in all of its beautiful glory."
1:30:14So, okay,
1:30:15>> I just did that sort of thing, you know,
1:30:16and I just I didn't really touch on it
1:30:18and you know,
1:30:19>> um, so we we should return to this, but
1:30:22I struggle with scrupulosity, Matt.
1:30:24>> I really struggle and we should return
1:30:26to that.
1:30:26>> Um, thank you.
1:30:28>> Um,
1:30:29>> so I just I was paralyzed. What am I
1:30:32supposed to do with this channel? I
1:30:33>> is it a sin to keep the videos up?
1:30:35Should I delete the channel? Should what
1:30:36what what do I need to do? Uh, and so I
1:30:37need I had to thankfully I have good
1:30:39confessors and spiritual directors in my
1:30:41life like um, Father Minders, I
1:30:44absolutely love you. You're my hero,
1:30:46Father Miners. And Father Zach at
1:30:48Princeton, you're my hero. Uh, priests
1:30:50are my heroes at this point. But, uh,
1:30:52they know the scrupulous heart. And so,
1:30:53basically, um, I took down the ones that
1:30:55I think are were the most scandalous.
1:30:57So, I had some where I think they were
1:30:59very scandalous. I had one arguing like
1:31:01against, um, natural law theory where I
1:31:02I just think it's way too scandalous. I
1:31:04had one where I like just very
1:31:06vigorously defended uh like an argument
1:31:07for atheism and divine denism and
1:31:09whatnot. So I I thought that was too
1:31:10scandalous. And for for all the others
1:31:12that presented anything contrary to the
1:31:14Catholic faith basically I went and I
1:31:15put in the description and in a pinned
1:31:17comment um I did this in March of this
1:31:19year. I said like hey um my views have
1:31:22changed since then but this represented
1:31:23my views at the time. Don't infer
1:31:24anything about my current views. And I
1:31:26just left it at that. And dude I'm
1:31:27getting all these emails. Dude, I'm
1:31:28getting all these emails these messages.
1:31:29Oh Joe, what happened? Why can you
1:31:31elaborate? I'm like no I can't
1:31:32elaborate. What are you talking about?
1:31:33And people are commenting like, "What
1:31:35happened? What happened?" I'm getting
1:31:36messages like, "Are you a theist now?
1:31:37Are you?" I'm just getting all these
1:31:39messages. I'm like,
1:31:39>> "Yeah,
1:31:40>> sorry, bro." Um,
1:31:42>> wow.
1:31:42>> So, that's kind of that kind of what
1:31:43happened. There is a lie that we believe
1:31:46when we fall into a pattern of sin,
1:31:48especially when we begin to
1:31:50unfortunately love sin. Namely, that we
1:31:53have to keep this in the dark and
1:31:55everything will be okay. The fear that
1:31:57we have is that if we open it to the
1:31:59light, and what I'm talking about there
1:32:01is accountability,
1:32:03that everything will fall apart for us.
1:32:05That people will walk away from us. That
1:32:07things will get worse for us, which is
1:32:09such a shame because some things can
1:32:12only be healed by the antiseptic light
1:32:14of truth. And just to say it frankly,
1:32:18pornography is one of those things.
1:32:20Sexual sin is one of those things. And
1:32:22this is why I am genuinely honored to
1:32:24promote Relay. Relay is built around
1:32:28honesty, accountability, and helping men
1:32:30move toward genuine freedom instead of
1:32:33carrying shame by themselves. The fact
1:32:36is that freedom is possible. And I know
1:32:38that firsthand. But it starts with the
1:32:40hardest thing a man can do, namely
1:32:42asking for help. And that's what relay
1:32:44is for. Real lasting freedom from
1:32:46pornography. Not shame, but a road out.
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1:34:25>> All right. So,
1:34:27>> so% Christianity. You're looking into
1:34:29Catholicism
1:34:31>> a little bit. I mean, I still think
1:34:32Catholicism is kind of silly at this
1:34:33point. Um,
1:34:34>> you're hoping for a liberal
1:34:35Christianity.
1:34:36>> Oh, yeah. Oh, definitely. just some kind
1:34:38of like universalist liberal
1:34:39Christianity where you know the Bible
1:34:41>> yeah maybe it's inspired or something
1:34:43but maybe like yeah maybe God just in
1:34:44his providence let it be like error in
1:34:46error like errors left and right
1:34:47basically um
1:34:49>> [sighs and gasps]
1:34:49>> uh so I was I was sort of hoping for
1:34:51that um and I was actually like starting
1:34:52again 30% confidence in Christianity and
1:34:54maybe I was like super confident that
1:34:56that would be the kind of Christianity
1:34:57that I go to um and very confident that
1:34:59Catholicism is false
1:35:01>> okay but then as I said eucharistic
1:35:04miracles come in
1:35:04>> that's right
1:35:06>> Adam bl stigmatic case comes in and
1:35:08Ethan Muse comes in. Okay, so let's take
1:35:11eucharistic miracles. So I'm I start
1:35:13watching all these videos, watching
1:35:15these debates. I start participating
1:35:16these debates online. I was like, "Oh,
1:35:17I'm just playing devil's advocate." I
1:35:18remember I debated like a on Facebook
1:35:20and I'll I put this in my um conversion
1:35:22video that people should definitely go
1:35:23and check out um this the hours long
1:35:26conversion video that that's out by now.
1:35:28People are watching it.
1:35:29>> Maria, we will link to it. [laughter]
1:35:30>> Okay, sweet. Um, so I was basically
1:35:36examining these Eucharistic miracles. I
1:35:39went on I talked with Matthew Levvenia.
1:35:41I talked with um the skeptics of the
1:35:42Eucharistic miracles. I read the best
1:35:44skeptics, the best arguments for it. I
1:35:45watched videos on it. I started kind of
1:35:47engaging in debates and whatnot with
1:35:49like Protestant scientists on Facebook
1:35:50and whatnot. Like very extensive back
1:35:52and forth debates.
1:35:53>> Um,
1:35:54>> so I started just like thinking about
1:35:55these. Uh, and Matthew Levan was like,
1:35:57"Joe, you've been thinking about this
1:35:58stuff. Um, pick up Dr. Dr. Franco
1:36:01Saraphini's book, A Cardiologist
1:36:02Examines Jesus. I was like, "Okay, fine.
1:36:05I'll pick it up." Um, and so I pick it
1:36:08up and I read it and I'm like, as I'm
1:36:10going through it, I'm like, "Oh my gosh.
1:36:14Oh no." And I remember I remember going
1:36:17through it and I was like, by the end I
1:36:19was like,
1:36:20"Oh no,
1:36:22Catholicism might be true.
1:36:25That's not good.
1:36:27That's not good." So like I can tell you
1:36:29some of the things that I sort of
1:36:30discovered when I was looking through
1:36:31that. So like he goes through five
1:36:33eucharistic miracles. Laniano, Buenos,
1:36:35Cyrus, Tixla, Sakoka, Lenita,
1:36:39different continents, different time
1:36:40periods. Lanchiano goes back. So the
1:36:44kind of historioggraphy is a little bit
1:36:46like patchy for the first some hundreds
1:36:48of years. It goes back to like roughly
1:36:49the seventh or 8th century. Um but the
1:36:52providence of the relics here are very
1:36:54secure from like I think the 16th
1:36:56century onward. um and we have like
1:36:58references and whatnot to it in like
1:36:59earlier middle middle ages and whatnot.
1:37:01Ethan Muse goes through this in his um
1:37:02post on Lana which is excellent and he
1:37:04you know he talked about that in your
1:37:05interview but anyway um that one is
1:37:09insane like uh Dr. Eduardo Lenoli looks
1:37:12at it in the 1970s and then again in the
1:37:141980s he's he determines through lots of
1:37:17different chemical tests that it's real
1:37:19human flesh that is there with no
1:37:22preservatives. He determines that the
1:37:24these little like blood globules that
1:37:26are just like exposed to the air. This
1:37:28is the most like fragile biological
1:37:29material on the planet in these blood
1:37:31globules in the open air in like the
1:37:34Italian climate
1:37:36>> and they they've just like existed there
1:37:37and persisted for hundreds of years. He
1:37:40does tests on the blood type. They're
1:37:42both AB blood, rarest type in the world.
1:37:44Sorry, they're both like AB. Yeah, the
1:37:46rarest blood type in the world. This is
1:37:47insane. Like and then the preservation,
1:37:50utterly unprecedented preservation um
1:37:52with like especially if you don't use
1:37:54preservatives like if you cut out a
1:37:55human heart cuz it is mioardium. He was
1:37:57able to tell by the way that the fibers
1:37:59are aligned and by the like the um
1:38:02macular features of the um microscopic
1:38:04features of the relic and whatnot. Um
1:38:07if you take a human heart and try to
1:38:10pass it off as a relic, it's going to be
1:38:12the most disgusting putrid thing after a
1:38:15few days. You don't even get that kind
1:38:16of preservation if you put it in like
1:38:18amazing conditions in like like a fridge
1:38:20for instance. It's going to be putrid.
1:38:22But no, it's lasted hundreds of years,
1:38:24hundreds of years. Utterly unprecedented
1:38:27uh preservation. It's just and Ethan
1:38:29goes through tons of reasons why it's
1:38:30not naturalistically explicable on his
1:38:31on his um Substack post. Um so like
1:38:34that's already kind of insane. And of
1:38:36course, like we, you know, skeptics,
1:38:38they'll try to pinpoint like all these,
1:38:40this is another thing I kept on seeing a
1:38:41pattern in skeptical responses to
1:38:43miracles where they're just trying to
1:38:44like pinpoint peripheral anomalies and
1:38:47like minor embarrassments for the
1:38:48miracles, but they're not actually
1:38:49addressing the core data.
1:38:51>> Like we do have a good prominence for at
1:38:53least hundreds of years. So, what's your
1:38:54explanation for hundreds of years for
1:38:56this preservation? And like also the way
1:38:58that the the providence of the
1:38:59artifacts, the way that they were cut um
1:39:00like basically would be overwhelmingly
1:39:03difficult uh if not impossible for um a
1:39:05forger in um the Middle Ages to do.
1:39:07Ethan goes through that as well on his
1:39:08on his post. So like already even launch
1:39:11is just insane. And then you go to all
1:39:14these other eucharistic miracles and
1:39:15it's like we have laboratory analyses,
1:39:18blinded laboratory analyses like with
1:39:19Tixla we have pictures of like the
1:39:21priest at the mass. So, um, basically a
1:39:23sister was, you know, distributing
1:39:25communion at the mass and she looks down
1:39:27and one of them during mass has this
1:39:30like red kind of congealed kind of
1:39:32seeming like blood on it. She's like,
1:39:34"Okay, this is weird." She goes up and
1:39:36takes it to um the father at the mass
1:39:38and he kind of holds it up in front of
1:39:40the the audience and says like and they
1:39:41thought they thought at the time that it
1:39:42was a miracle. Uh, and you know, we got
1:39:44pictures of it. We have like I think
1:39:46it's like 17 signed like sworn testimony
1:39:48about like this event. Um and then they
1:39:50basically send they take off little bits
1:39:52of it uh the ucharist and the the little
1:39:54blood spots or whatever and they send it
1:39:56to um two laboratories blinded. They
1:39:59both determine that it's AB blood.
1:40:02>> They see that there's myo peroxidase and
1:40:04glycophorin A which are characteristic
1:40:06of lucasytes and red blood cells.
1:40:08>> They do tests for human hemoglobin and
1:40:10they come back positive. And then and we
1:40:13even we even have these laboratory
1:40:15reports. You can look at them. I've
1:40:17talked with father Perez who worked on
1:40:18the case and he's sent me some of the
1:40:19reports from the like the doctors who
1:40:21looked at it and you can literally see
1:40:23in there like these branching muscle
1:40:25fiber-l like structures as well and they
1:40:27I mean they lost some cuz usually it's
1:40:29like suffering myioardial tissue that
1:40:30they'll find in these eucharistic hosts
1:40:32um you can literally look at the
1:40:34pictures and you can see a tendency to
1:40:37bifurcate and anastimos and that
1:40:39anastimos basically means joined
1:40:40together and that's very characteristic
1:40:42of myocardium. So like uh we've got that
1:40:45we have a hisystological identification
1:40:47of white blood cells and again like we
1:40:48have these tests which are
1:40:50iminohistochemistry tests
1:40:51imunocchromatography tests confirming
1:40:53that it's human hemoglobin we can see
1:40:54the white blood cells in the images and
1:40:56you can also see like a a fagosite which
1:40:59is like a white blood cell um swallowing
1:41:02debris [laughter]
1:41:04in the process of swallowing debris.
1:41:05It's like it's so cool in some of these
1:41:06images and Dr. Francoini has the images
1:41:08from the reports in his book. It's just
1:41:10insane. And you can literally see like
1:41:11the white plant cells of the host
1:41:13outside of it as well. So like it's just
1:41:15crazy. And it's like, okay, how did
1:41:17human blood get in there? How did
1:41:18suffering myioardial tissue get in
1:41:20there? What's going on? Okay. And that's
1:41:22just like TikS like what is going on?
1:41:23And then of course they go later on like
1:41:25years later and they um they have like
1:41:27an like an expert in like imaging look
1:41:29at it and they can still detect the
1:41:30presence of human blood. They had they
1:41:32had another person do a study which they
1:41:33determined that the blood comes from
1:41:34inside the host. Like they did all
1:41:35different sorts of studies on this Tixla
1:41:37host. And then like again very similar
1:41:40things happen to at Buenos Cyrus in 1996
1:41:45like we're there like uh you can
1:41:48literally like see the image that Dr.
1:41:50Lawrence looks at when they take the
1:41:51host to him. So here's what happened
1:41:52with that one with Buenosy.
1:41:55They uh like they leave the host in
1:41:58sorry they find the host. It was like
1:42:00desecrated or something like that uh
1:42:01under like a candlestick or something
1:42:02like that. They put it in water and they
1:42:04come back a few days and they see that
1:42:05there are some red gross and whatnot.
1:42:06Now, of course, the church is very
1:42:07cautious. It's very diligent. It is
1:42:08aware. We're not morons. We're aware
1:42:11that uh there can be bacteria and fungi
1:42:13that produce red spots and that even
1:42:14produce like a red bloodlike substance.
1:42:16So, we're aware of that. For whatever
1:42:17reason, for Buenosiris, they waited 3
1:42:19years and left it in distilled water.
1:42:22[laughter] Uh and the and the blood
1:42:23spots were still there. So, that's
1:42:24really weird. And so, they have um they
1:42:26have like Dr. like Ricardo Castiano
1:42:28Gomez or something um come and he takes
1:42:30a sample of the host three years later
1:42:33which was in distilled water um in the
1:42:35presence of notary witnesses recorded
1:42:37and they send it off to a lab called
1:42:39Forensic Analytical. Forensic Analytical
1:42:41does some preliminary tests. They're
1:42:42unable to amplify DNA um and they also
1:42:45just use like a like a very simple light
1:42:47microscope where you wouldn't be able to
1:42:48see any like um microchemical features.
1:42:51You wouldn't be able to identify the
1:42:52species or something like that. And so
1:42:53they they weren't able to identify
1:42:54anything but then they sent it off. So,
1:42:56Forensic Analytical then forwards the
1:42:57sample to Dr. Lawrence. Dr. Lawrence
1:43:00prepares a slide and looks at it on the
1:43:01slide and we have a recording of him
1:43:02looking at it on the slide and he's
1:43:04there and we can see it and he's
1:43:05pointing out the red blood cells and you
1:43:06can see these like striations around
1:43:08them and we can literally compare
1:43:10independently. We can compare what he
1:43:13saw with characteristic pictures in
1:43:15textbooks of myioardial inffections and
1:43:19they look almost identical. They look
1:43:21almost identical like and people are
1:43:23saying like, "Oh yeah, but it's just a
1:43:24bacterium. Oh, it's just a fugellum. No,
1:43:26you're you I'm not you're asking like
1:43:28you're asking me to disbelieve my eyes.
1:43:30I can see what Dr. Lawrence is looking
1:43:32at. And of course, they bring it to some
1:43:33other doctors and they have some
1:43:34difficulty identifying it because it's
1:43:37um it's not a heart muscle in its normal
1:43:39state. It's lost its fragmentations.
1:43:40It's lost its centralized nuclei. Uh and
1:43:44basically it's in a kind of stressed
1:43:45state. So it doesn't look like like a
1:43:46characteristic picture of what you would
1:43:47normally see from a like a heart in like
1:43:50a textbook. And so they bring it to
1:43:51actually like a heart expert. Um Dr.
1:43:53Zugabe. they don't tell what it is. And
1:43:55he's like, "Yeah, that's from the left
1:43:56ventricle." And he could literally like
1:43:57point out exactly where it is. And like
1:43:58it's just insane. And it's like again,
1:44:00people like all these scientists are
1:44:02mistaken. Like they can't tell uh bact
1:44:06rod-shaped bacteria from like suffering
1:44:08myocardial tissue. They can't tell like
1:44:10sporeshaped fungi from heart tissue. And
1:44:13again, like I have eyes. You're relying
1:44:14on me not looking at it. Like you
1:44:16skeptics are relying on me not looking
1:44:18at it. Using my eyes and comparing what
1:44:19I see on the video, Dr. Lawrence looking
1:44:21at with a moardial inffection. Again,
1:44:24you can put them side by side and they
1:44:25look almost identical. You can see the
1:44:26white blood cell influx around the um
1:44:28the red fibers and whatnot which have
1:44:30lost their centralized nuclei which have
1:44:31that fragmentation which have the
1:44:33characteristic um anastimosing features
1:44:35and whatnot. Um it's just insane. Okay.
1:44:37So then that then you just go again you
1:44:39just go to the other uch eucharistic
1:44:40miracles and it's like a similar story
1:44:41where they see like suffering myioardial
1:44:43tissue, white blood cells, various other
1:44:45things inside of a host. Okay,
1:44:49this was very difficult for me as you
1:44:50can imagine. [laughter]
1:44:52I I I tried think like, okay, maybe
1:44:54there's just like some crazy string of
1:44:56frauds that just happened on different
1:44:57continents with different scientists on
1:45:00different occasions or maybe like
1:45:02there's some really weird kind of
1:45:03misidentification happening or something
1:45:05like that because I knew, Matt, I knew
1:45:08that if I granted Eucharistic miracles,
1:45:11>> it's game over. It's game over.
1:45:16A Catholic priest prays over some bread
1:45:18and it becomes suffering myocardial
1:45:20tissue. Am I just supposed to go along
1:45:22with my day? Am I supposed to go along
1:45:24with my day? No. And dude, like I
1:45:26imagine imagine going back to the
1:45:27Reformation debates, right? And you're
1:45:29there and there, you know, all the
1:45:30Protestants, they're like, "Uh, yeah, I
1:45:32know that this is like a completely
1:45:33novel view that has never popped up in
1:45:341500 years, but let's just deny that the
1:45:36mass is a propitiatory sacrifice and
1:45:38that, you know, this is, you know, a
1:45:39sacrificial um representation of of
1:45:42Christ's sacrifice as a propitiatory
1:45:44sacrifice." you know, they're all
1:45:45denying that even though it's been like
1:45:46the perennial teaching of the church for
1:45:471500 years, like they're just
1:45:48manifestally breaking away. But um
1:45:51imagine that we went to those debates
1:45:52after we've internally debated with
1:45:54Luther or Kelvin um church history, you
1:45:56know, we've pointed like dude read
1:45:58Ignatius you it's like what are you
1:45:59doing like or like read John 6 like what
1:46:01are you doing? Um we've engaged in these
1:46:04internal debates about church history
1:46:05and the Bible and whatnot. And I just we
1:46:07can't agree and I say dude what would it
1:46:09take to convince you Martin Luther or
1:46:11Calvin? And I could we could imagine
1:46:12them jokingly saying, "Okay, here's what
1:46:15here's what would convince me of the
1:46:16Catholic view."
1:46:18Five different times on different
1:46:20continents, a priest prays over some
1:46:22bread and it turns into suffering
1:46:23myocardial tissue. Okay. Oh, and yeah,
1:46:27have that happen on different
1:46:27continents. Oh, and when they do blood
1:46:29tests, have it be AB blood on across
1:46:32multiple eucharistic miracles cuz that's
1:46:34the rarest blood type. Okay. Across
1:46:36multiple eucharistic miracles, have it
1:46:37be AB blood. Oh, and yeah, make the
1:46:38blood type match the Sudarium of Odo and
1:46:40the Shroud of Turin. make that happen,
1:46:42too. Oh, and put in some put in some
1:46:44human blood as well. Some uh human
1:46:45hemoglobin and that as well. Put put
1:46:47that in.
1:46:50We would think that they're joking
1:46:51because that's like an unrealistic
1:46:52demand. Like, yeah, you guys, okay,
1:46:54you're you're only going to become
1:46:55convinced when it happens like multiple
1:46:56times across multiple different
1:46:57continents and blinded laboratory tests
1:46:59find that like, yeah, priest prays over
1:47:01some bread and it turns into suffering
1:47:02myioardial tissue. Um, and it's like,
1:47:05yeah, it's like the rarest baby blood
1:47:07type across multiple eucharistic
1:47:08miracles and happens to match the shroud
1:47:09and the ovo. Like, that's your demand,
1:47:11Martin Luther Calvin. That's what it's
1:47:13going to take to to to believe. You're
1:47:15joking, right? Well, Matt, it happened.
1:47:19It happened. It happened. Their view has
1:47:22been refuted. God has refuted
1:47:24Protestantism.
1:47:25>> So, will you read the book? [laughter]
1:47:28>> So, no. At this point,
1:47:29>> you closed the book.
1:47:30>> Yeah. Are you sleeping at this?
1:47:32>> No. No. I'm just like, "So, no, no, I
1:47:34close the book and I'm not yet
1:47:35convinced, right? Because it I don't
1:47:36know. I'm very um
1:47:39>> I'm very cautious. Like, it takes a lot
1:47:40to convince me."
1:47:41>> Yeah.
1:47:41>> Uh so, I But at this point, I'm like
1:47:44>> I don't know. I'm a little bit scared.
1:47:46>> Yeah.
1:47:47>> Uh Catholicism is true. Like, how could
1:47:49Catholicism be true? Uh and even now,
1:47:52like I still think, okay, maybe
1:47:53Christianity is like 40% probable. Maybe
1:47:54Catholicism is like 2% probable or
1:47:56something. Like, I got a massive boost
1:47:57for Catholicism after reading this. But
1:47:59again, like listen, like come on. Like,
1:48:01hell, this is ridiculous. like God s
1:48:03punishing people eternally, eternal
1:48:04suffering. That's ridiculous. Like come
1:48:06on. Like like two gay people who seem to
1:48:10love each other, they can't like they
1:48:11can't get married. Like that like it's
1:48:12ridiculous. It seems ridiculous. Or you
1:48:14know, various other things just seemed
1:48:15ridiculous about the about the church.
1:48:17Um so like I can't get there and like
1:48:21and I was scared cuz I was like I don't
1:48:23want to have to believe those things and
1:48:24I don't want to have to change my life.
1:48:26Like my life would have to be like
1:48:27radically upend itself. Yeah.
1:48:29>> I mean, I' I've been like a public
1:48:30critic, as I said, of Catholicism and
1:48:33Christianity
1:48:34for for a decade, actually, cuz like
1:48:36even going back before my channel, uh I
1:48:38had like Instagram uh accounts where I
1:48:42would like systematically defend
1:48:43atheism, things like that. I had a blog
1:48:46which was initially called
1:48:47naturalistically inclined, like a
1:48:49naturalist, but then I changed it to
1:48:50Majesty of Reason. So, like I've been a
1:48:52public critic. I'd have to like that's
1:48:53very humiliating to admit that you've
1:48:55been wrong the whole time. I'd have to
1:48:56admit to my parents that I've
1:48:57systematically deceived them. I'd,
1:48:59[gasps]
1:49:00you know, I'd have to just stop engaging
1:49:02in lots of behaviors that I really want
1:49:03to engage in, that I really like. Um,
1:49:07uh, that's difficult. It's a difficult
1:49:09ask. And especially intellectually, like
1:49:10the docsility, like I'm a free thinker.
1:49:12I'm like this. I'm I'm intellectually
1:49:14autonomous. I can think what I want. Uh,
1:49:16and you're asking me to be like docsel
1:49:17to the magisterium, like a teaching
1:49:19authority. Like this is this is
1:49:20ridiculous, you know? like sabulba
1:49:23nothing in words like dare to know dare
1:49:25to question nothing in words um I mean
1:49:28ultimately that spirit took me to
1:49:30Catholicism
1:49:31>> but still it's a spirit that's sort of
1:49:34fundamentally at odds with a kind of
1:49:36>> humble deference and childlike
1:49:38difference to Christ and the magisterium
1:49:40>> so like it took a radical intellectual
1:49:42reorientation to get to that stage and I
1:49:44just I wasn't ready for that and I also
1:49:46just wasn't ready for believing in hell
1:49:48believing in all these moral doctrines
1:49:50and whatnot So, so after Eucharistic
1:49:52Miracles and looking into that book and
1:49:54like talking with the skeptics and
1:49:56reading the skeptics, I've read them and
1:49:58typically what they focus on is these
1:50:00minor peripheral anomalies, they're
1:50:01like, "Well, what about in these cases
1:50:03that they tried DNA tests and the DNA
1:50:04didn't amplify?" H it's like, "Okay, the
1:50:07DNA didn't amplify, but I I have eyes. I
1:50:09can look at it and I can see that like
1:50:11in legit for instance, we have the
1:50:12pictures like that's not a bacterium.
1:50:14That's not a fugellum. Are you saying
1:50:15that that's a fugellum? Are you Are you
1:50:17saying that that's a fleellum?" Because
1:50:19it's not. I have eyes.
1:50:22So like they they don't explain the core
1:50:25data I don't think and to the extent
1:50:26that they do it's just like you know the
1:50:28craziest frauds or conspiracies that
1:50:30happen across multiple continents
1:50:31multiple people like it's it's not it's
1:50:33not plausible. Um so like I looked at
1:50:36that and they don't and like of course
1:50:38there are all sorts of humrum
1:50:39explanations for why the DNA might not
1:50:40amplify. Like I don't know the
1:50:42scientists themselves usually say that
1:50:43like it's because the tissues are too
1:50:45degraded for instance. Sometimes it was,
1:50:47you know, left in water, for instance,
1:50:48for like 3 years or something, which by
1:50:49the way, it's insane that you could have
1:50:51identifiable white blood cells after 3
1:50:53years submerged in distilled water
1:50:55naturalistically inexplicable. Um, so
1:50:58they tended, the skeptics that is,
1:51:00tended to focus on minor peripheral
1:51:01anomalies. And I was just seeing this
1:51:02crop up over and over again or they're
1:51:04like focusing on how Dr. Ricardo Caston
1:51:06Gomez has some weird views in other
1:51:07domains and whatnot, but it's like,
1:51:08dude, all he had to do here was like
1:51:10take a piece of a host, put it in a
1:51:12vial, and ship it off. It's like, what
1:51:15are you saying? So, I don't know.
1:51:16They're just trying to cast clouds of
1:51:18uncertainty and unknowing. And I was
1:51:19like, but you're not getting to the core
1:51:20data. And also, there are lots of
1:51:22reason. We'll get to the hiddenist model
1:51:23of divine activity. I think there are
1:51:24lots of reasons why God might sprinkle
1:51:26in these peripheral anomalies so that
1:51:27people can cling to them if they want.
1:51:29Um, so we'll get to that later. But even
1:51:31even at this stage, I'm just like,
1:51:35okay, Catholicism might be true. I'm
1:51:38really scared. I really don't want that
1:51:39to be true. Uh, that would be
1:51:41disastrous. I would really I actually
1:51:44kind of wanted Christianity to be true.
1:51:45This kind of universalist liberal
1:51:46Christianity. Um Christianity maybe now
1:51:49is like yeah 30 40% probable to me.
1:51:51Maybe Catholicism is like 1% 2%
1:51:53something like that. Even after the
1:51:54Eucharistic miracles um but that's a
1:51:56massive boost from 01
1:51:59or something like now Catholicism
1:52:02it's a live option.
1:52:03>> Mhm.
1:52:04>> And that isn't good for me. Um, so
1:52:08that's Eucharistic Miracles and there's
1:52:09much more that can be said and that I
1:52:11say in my um, conversion video.
1:52:14>> Okay. [sighs]
1:52:16Then I start reading this book by Adam
1:52:17Bllye.
1:52:18>> Okay. Tell me about this book. I don't
1:52:20know about
1:52:20>> So it's a book called like The Catholic
1:52:21Guide to Miracles.
1:52:22>> Okay.
1:52:22>> So Adam Blie, he uh has he does like
1:52:25deliverance ministry stuff, so he's done
1:52:26YouTube videos and whatnot. He's this
1:52:28very gentle soul. This totally
1:52:31unostentious individual. Um, and he
1:52:34seems like he wouldn't hurt a fly. like
1:52:35he and he just really has a heart for
1:52:36people cuz like he's been he's been
1:52:37through as he says on his website like
1:52:40between like a thou like 2,000 exorcisms
1:52:43or something like that. So he does
1:52:44deliverance ministry stuff. He was
1:52:45initially getting um he he got his I
1:52:48think uh degree in psychology then he
1:52:50did substantial PhD work in psychology
1:52:52or psychiatry but then he just felt
1:52:54called to go to the deliverance
1:52:55ministry. So he went he went down that
1:52:56route. He's also done lots of work in
1:52:58like forensic criminal settings and
1:52:59whatnot. Um so he writes this book on a
1:53:02Catholic guide to miracles. Um, and so I
1:53:04read through it and whatnot, and you
1:53:06know, a lot of I don't know, um, I
1:53:08wasn't really convinced by a lot a lot
1:53:10of the stuff in there at the time. I was
1:53:11still again really skeptical. But I got
1:53:12to this one section where Adam Blie
1:53:15himself testifies to a contemporary
1:53:19stigmatist case. Um, and he's very shy
1:53:23on the details and he says, "Hey, like
1:53:24the church hasn't looked into this. You
1:53:25know, be very careful. This is like
1:53:27private stuff. You don't have to believe
1:53:28this or something like that." You know,
1:53:29he's very careful. like the way it reads
1:53:31is just very careful. But it just shook
1:53:35me um like down to my core. Like it was
1:53:38just weird because he's just and I later
1:53:40interviewed him because Cameron is uh
1:53:43Cameron's like I guess acquaintances are
1:53:45friends with him to some extent. And so
1:53:46Cameron put me in touch with him and I
1:53:47sat down with him for about an hour to
1:53:49interview him about this stigmatist
1:53:50case. And it turns out that over the
1:53:53course of a year, almost every Thursday
1:53:56and Friday, he was assigned to console
1:53:59this individual, this stigmatist, where
1:54:01she would miraculously relive Christ's
1:54:04passion. So starting on Thursday night,
1:54:06this is Adam's testimony.
1:54:07>> Starting Thursday night, she would
1:54:09literally spontaneously sweat blood.
1:54:11>> Mhm.
1:54:12>> She would walk around pacing and
1:54:13whatnot. She would be having these
1:54:14mystical kind of encounters during this.
1:54:16Um on Friday she would relive the
1:54:18passion and it was very difficult for
1:54:21Adam to watch this. He testifies to
1:54:24seeing again every Thursday and Friday
1:54:26over the course of a year to spontaneous
1:54:29lash wounds 6 in long spontaneously
1:54:32forming out of thin air on her back and
1:54:34her legs. Not self-imposed. He's
1:54:36literally there watching this in
1:54:38perfectly totally conducive perceptual
1:54:40circumstances every Thursday and Friday
1:54:41over the course of a year. And so she's
1:54:43reliving that. Um she even goes through
1:54:45like the crucifixion and like um uh you
1:54:48know she's like tossed around at various
1:54:50points and she's like saying things in
1:54:52Aramaic that like what's really
1:54:54interesting is he he has this funny
1:54:55story where she's like she says she says
1:54:57some things at one point in Aramaic and
1:54:59he didn't know what it meant and I I
1:55:00don't even know if she knew what it
1:55:01meant but um I want to look up Adam Blly
1:55:04just to see if I know who this is. I
1:55:06feel bad that I don't. So, um, he, uh,
1:55:11basically wanted to look up what she was
1:55:13saying. And so, he he found it in a
1:55:15song. And it turns out it was like part
1:55:16of like the Our Father or something like
1:55:17that. And so, he plays the song in
1:55:19Aramaic.
1:55:20>> And, uh, she's like, "Well, hold on a
1:55:22second. That it's slightly different
1:55:24from what the song actually says." And
1:55:26so, he he goes and he seems what what
1:55:27kind of Aramaic it was. And it was
1:55:29actually like a different sort of
1:55:30Aramaic that was a local dialect that
1:55:32was different from the one that Christ
1:55:33would have actually sort of actually
1:55:35said. And so, he goes to the one that
1:55:36Christ actually would have said. and
1:55:37then she's able to sing along and go
1:55:38along with it. So, it's like it's just
1:55:39like insane. Um, now again,
1:55:41>> this was this is only one person
1:55:43testifying to this. So, I'm not saying
1:55:44like this is the end all be all.
1:55:46>> But Matt, this caused so much cognitive
1:55:50dissonance in my mind.
1:55:51>> Yeah.
1:55:51>> So much cognitive dissonance because
1:55:53dude, how can you be honestly mistaken?
1:55:56How can you be honestly mistaken about
1:55:58over the course of an entire year?
1:56:00>> Yeah.
1:56:00>> Thursday and Friday in totally
1:56:02perceptually conducive circumstances.
1:56:04>> Yeah. No, you could only be a liar. Or
1:56:06unless he's confabulating on cosmic
1:56:08proportions in a way that's like utterly
1:56:10absurd. So again, I just have to divi I
1:56:13can divine from the armchair that Adam
1:56:15Blie, you are a filthy liar. Even though
1:56:18you believe that lying will send like
1:56:20especially in this case where like he's
1:56:21writing this in a book and promaggating
1:56:22on behalf of Catholicism. I mean, and
1:56:24like telling me this and knowing that
1:56:26it'll kind of affect my conversion. This
1:56:27is a serious lie. It may even go into
1:56:28mortal sin territory if it were to be a
1:56:30lie. So does he not believe Catholicism
1:56:32even though like he's obviously a
1:56:33Catholic? Yeah,
1:56:34>> cuz he would just be having to engage in
1:56:36like mortal sin upon mortal sin upon
1:56:37mortal sin. Like it's ridiculous. So and
1:56:40I can just sit in the armchair and know
1:56:43that he's lying. Like it's just so
1:56:45weird. Like it's just this weird kind of
1:56:46epistemic move where I'm like, "Okay,
1:56:48I've got all these independent
1:56:49objections to Catholicism based on my
1:56:51intuition." And from that I can infer
1:56:53that Adam Blie who's sitting right next
1:56:55to me or standing right next like I can
1:56:57see him right here. He's utterly
1:56:58ostentatious. He presents it in a very
1:57:00reserved kind of way. the way he puts it
1:57:02in the book, it's not um like flashy or
1:57:05anything like that. He's obviously not
1:57:06here to sell things. In his in his
1:57:08interviews about demonic phenomena, he's
1:57:09like, I'm just here to warn you guys.
1:57:11Like I I care about your souls, you
1:57:13know? Um I'm here to warn you. Like he's
1:57:15not flashy, ostentatious. He's not doing
1:57:17this for money. Or at least at the very
1:57:19least, that's what's screaming to me.
1:57:20Like
1:57:21>> just as much as I know that like
1:57:23>> my friend is not doing something for
1:57:24money when I talk with him.
1:57:26>> I just had that kind of moral sense,
1:57:28just a moral sense talking with him. And
1:57:29I almost felt like morally opposed to
1:57:31just saying, "I know that you're a liar
1:57:32because I intuit it something about
1:57:34hell."
1:57:35>> Yeah,
1:57:35>> it sounds ridiculous. So then that
1:57:37caused so much cognitive dissonance. I
1:57:41was like I was I called Cameron
1:57:42afterwards. I'm pacing around my room.
1:57:44I'm like Cameron, what am I supposed to
1:57:45do? Uh I've got so many objections to
1:57:47Catholicism. It can't be true. But like
1:57:49this stigmatist case and of course this
1:57:51is like you know a victim like this is a
1:57:53victim soul really. Uh if this is true,
1:57:55this is like redemptive participatory
1:57:58vicarious uh suffering being united to
1:58:01Christ's passion.
1:58:03>> Uh most Protestants don't believe that.
1:58:05It's like distinctively Catholic
1:58:07doctrine. Like this is for instance what
1:58:09like I mean what like Sean Luke has a
1:58:12problem with like lots of things
1:58:13regarding Fatima because they were doing
1:58:14like penences and like vicarious
1:58:16reparatory participatory redemptive
1:58:18suffering um uniting uniting it to
1:58:20Christ's passion. There are these
1:58:21distinct sacrifices and whatever. Um,
1:58:23like this is precisely what Protestants
1:58:26disagree with Catholics about, but God
1:58:28is like screaming
1:58:30Catholicism is my church. So, God is
1:58:32like screaming that. Um, and so I don't
1:58:35know. I was like, "Dude, Cameron,
1:58:38I can't take it." Like, it was it was
1:58:39just gnawing away at my mind. Um, and
1:58:42again, I I recognize that it's only one
1:58:44testimony. And maybe people I just for
1:58:47whatever reason, Matt, this one just
1:58:49stuck with me for whatever reason. Um
1:58:51cuz I just I couldn't say that I
1:58:54couldn't get myself to say that Adam
1:58:55Blie is a filthy liar who's mortally
1:58:58sinning despite all of his own beliefs
1:58:59and whatnot. I just morally I couldn't
1:59:01get myself to that.
1:59:03>> Um and so this now we're in a real hard
1:59:05drive. I got to I got to figure this
1:59:07stuff out. I've looked through the
1:59:08Eucharistic miracles. I've listened to
1:59:09Adam Bllye. [sighs]
1:59:12What am I to do if Catholicism is true?
1:59:14So then I don't know what my credence
1:59:16here in Catholicism is. But again, I'm
1:59:18taking things slowly. Maybe it's only up
1:59:20to like 5% or something, maybe 10% cuz I
1:59:22still have so many barriers. It's so
1:59:24difficult, Matt. It's so difficult. It
1:59:26was so difficult for me at the time to
1:59:27think Catholicism is true. Um, and we
1:59:29can get to why later on when we get to
1:59:31the more personal side.
1:59:34So, the Eucharistic miracles, the Adam
1:59:36BL case, now maybe Christianity is up to
1:59:39like 50% or something like I'm thinking,
1:59:42okay, yeah, Christianity real life
1:59:45option. Um, and maybe God's just like
1:59:48accommodating to their beliefs or
1:59:49something.
1:59:50>> Um, even if Catholicism is false, so you
1:59:54know, or sorry, even if Cathol Yeah,
1:59:55even though Catholicism is false, maybe
1:59:56God is just like accommodating to their
1:59:58beliefs or something. We'll get to why
1:59:59>> reaching out to the Catholics.
2:00:00>> Yeah, we'll get to why I think that's
2:00:02not plausible at all later. Um, but I
2:00:05was like, okay, maybe something like
2:00:06that is happening.
2:00:08Um, but in comes Ethan Muse, [laughter]
2:00:14>> right? How did you How did you meet him?
2:00:16Is he at
2:00:17>> So he's he's at Ruckers so he's like
2:00:19right down the road from me. Um
2:00:20>> how did you how did you first
2:00:22>> I don't I don't really even remember. I
2:00:24think um maybe Caleb Jackson was friends
2:00:27with him or something like that and I
2:00:28just had heard of him. Um or maybe I
2:00:30came across like his Fatima post or
2:00:32something and I emailed him and I was
2:00:33like, "Hey, let's grab dinner or
2:00:34something. Like I'm curious. We should
2:00:36talk about miracles because I've been
2:00:37thinking about this and I'm curious what
2:00:40you think. Um can you like help me? Can
2:00:42you like I'm curious." And I remember
2:00:44like we had our first dinner and he was
2:00:46like like do you think you could convert
2:00:48to Catholicism and I was like no it's
2:00:50probably very it's not really a live
2:00:53option. I think this is probably a
2:00:54little bit before I got through like the
2:00:55Adam Bllye case and whatnot. So I was
2:00:57like no like it's extremely unlikely
2:00:59that I'd become Catholic but like I am
2:01:01starting to really take Christianity
2:01:02seriously. Um, and then we had this like
2:01:05fivehour dinner [laughter] where we were
2:01:07just going back and forth and back and
2:01:09forth on all of my objections and
2:01:10whatnot and he'd make a point and I'd
2:01:13parry and he'd repost and then I'd
2:01:14rejoined and then, you know, we just go
2:01:16back and forth. Um, and then, you know,
2:01:18we enjoyed talking with one another.
2:01:20Yeah, that was after his Fatima post.
2:01:21Um, so it must have been the Fatima Post
2:01:23that that led me to talk with him. And
2:01:24then we just started having like like
2:01:274-hour long conversations in the
2:01:28evenings about
2:01:31miracles and my objections to
2:01:32Catholicism and various other things.
2:01:34Um, so
2:01:37>> uh that's where yeah that's where Ethan
2:01:38sort of comes in and then the next kind
2:01:40of stage in the journey. So now again
2:01:42let's let's take a step back when I meet
2:01:43Ethan Muse. I'm like this is probably
2:01:46before Adam Bllye and I'm kind of going
2:01:48through the Eucharistic miracles at this
2:01:49point and Catholicism still seems really
2:01:51implausible. Christianity is like you
2:01:53know 30 40ish% or something like that
2:01:55for me and theism yeah maybe like 70 80%
2:01:58likely to be true.
2:01:59>> Have you prayed yet?
2:02:01>> Yes. So actually for quite some time I
2:02:04have prayed prayers as an agnostic.
2:02:06Actually as far as I can remember I've
2:02:07prayed prayers and they've just been
2:02:08conditional prayers of the form God if
2:02:10you exist please help me to come to know
2:02:11you and love you. It's like basically
2:02:13that's what I did because I think I mean
2:02:14listen I think it is I mean I was going
2:02:17to say I think it's irrational for uh
2:02:19agnostics and even atheists to uh to not
2:02:23pray conditional prayers. So like Matt
2:02:25imagine that you are stranded in a
2:02:27forest. Okay. And you've you've been
2:02:29there for a week. You need help. Okay.
2:02:32And you're in a dire dire circumstances
2:02:34cuz you just ran out of food. Okay. So
2:02:36you're stranded in a forest and you've
2:02:37got a flare gun which basically allows
2:02:39you unlimited flares that you can shoot
2:02:41up. doesn't take much effort. Maybe
2:02:43takes just a few seconds to just shoot
2:02:44up a flare into the sky and it would
2:02:46alert anyone who's potentially looking
2:02:47for you. I mean, you know, you have
2:02:48friends and family who hopefully care
2:02:50about you. I mean, I I care about you,
2:02:51man. So, maybe I would be looking for
2:02:53you um at the very least. So, you know,
2:02:55you think maybe there are helicopters
2:02:57out there looking for me. Maybe there
2:02:58are search crews on the ground looking
2:02:59for me. Um in that case, I say even if
2:03:02you think there's like a 2% chance, a 1%
2:03:04chance, a.5% chance that there's someone
2:03:06out there looking for you when you're in
2:03:08this dire circumstances, you should
2:03:10shoot the player. It would be irrational
2:03:12not to shoot the flare when you're
2:03:13starving basically, right? Of course you
2:03:14would shoot the flare. Everyone would
2:03:15shoot the flare. Well, conditional
2:03:18prayers for an agnostic or atheist are
2:03:20shooting the flare. So, premise one, if
2:03:23you like, you should shoot the flare in
2:03:24that case. Even if you're pretty
2:03:26confident that no one's out there
2:03:27looking for you and who might be willing
2:03:28to help you, even if you're like 1%
2:03:29confident, you're 99% confident that
2:03:31there's no one out there who will help
2:03:32you, you should still shoot the flare
2:03:33cuz it's effortless and it has potent
2:03:35massively potential payoffs and the
2:03:37stakes are high. So, you should shoot
2:03:38the flare. premise two. If you should
2:03:40shoot the the flare, then even an
2:03:41agnostic or even an atheist should shoot
2:03:43up conditional prayers to God of the
2:03:44form that I just gave. Conclusion,
2:03:46agnostics and atheists should shoot up
2:03:48conditional prayers to God because after
2:03:50all,
2:03:51>> the stakes are dire.
2:03:52>> Yeah,
2:03:53>> the stakes are dire. You you know there
2:03:55may very well according to you like
2:03:56there even if it's unlikely even if
2:03:58there's 1% chance 5% chance there may
2:04:00very well be a god out there who's
2:04:02willing to help if you ask. So just
2:04:05shoot the flare. It's effortless. Just
2:04:06wake up every day for 3 seconds and say
2:04:09it with honesty and sincerity. Say,
2:04:11"God,
2:04:13if you exist, help me to know you, love
2:04:16you, and serve you." Amen. Every day. Do
2:04:20it every day.
2:04:21>> See, see where it takes you.
2:04:23>> Beautiful.
2:04:23>> See where it takes you.
2:04:24>> Yeah. Love the analogy.
2:04:26>> See where it takes you. [laughter] It
2:04:28might take you to Matt Frad studio. So
2:04:31[sighs] So yeah, I haven't I had been
2:04:33praying conditional prayers.
2:04:34>> Gosh, I wish I was a fly on the wall.
2:04:35listening to you and Ethan Muse talk for
2:04:38[laughter] 5 hours. That must have been
2:04:40wild.
2:04:41>> I mean, typically to to be completely
2:04:43honest, uh you know, as a mortification
2:04:45of my pride, it was a series of just me
2:04:48being utterly utterly intellectually
2:04:51mogged by Ethan Muse. Just like
2:04:53>> just like yeah, massive mogging left and
2:04:55right and left and right and left and
2:04:56right. Like it's so hard to get a get a
2:04:58point on him. Um, and like you know,
2:05:00you'd be like a fourth of the way
2:05:02through a point and he's already seen
2:05:03like four steps of the dialectic ahead
2:05:05of you. [laughter] So, he's already seen
2:05:06four steps of the He's like, "Yes, I
2:05:08know your objection." Then he
2:05:08articulates it to you like much more
2:05:10succinctly and clearly than you could
2:05:11have. And it's even more forceful than
2:05:12you could have done it. And it even gets
2:05:13like to the heart of what you're saying.
2:05:14And then he's like, "Yeah, but that that
2:05:15that fails for at least four reasons."
2:05:17Then he systematically lists through
2:05:18those four reasons. You're like, "Oh
2:05:19gosh." Um, [laughter]
2:05:22you're right. Um,
2:05:24>> oh man.
2:05:25>> So, wow. Praise God.
2:05:28>> I know. It's a grace. It's a grace.
2:05:30Unmmerited grace.
2:05:31>> All right. Well, come on. Let's rip the
2:05:32band-aid off. How did you How did you
2:05:34accept Catholicism?
2:05:35>> Well, okay. No, no. We We got to get
2:05:37that. No, no. We got to get that.
2:05:38>> We're going to tear it back slowly.
2:05:40Really slow.
2:05:40>> Yeah, it's going to hurt cuz it did
2:05:42hurt.
2:05:43>> I just can't wait to hear about when you
2:05:44prayed your first rosary. [laughter]
2:05:46>> When I hear about a seeker or a
2:05:48Protestant praying their first rosary,
2:05:50I'm like, "All right, set the timer.
2:05:51It's not long."
2:05:52>> No. No. Our lady will get you. Our the
2:05:54beautiful Theotocos does not uh neglect
2:05:56her children. So, um,
2:05:58>> all right.
2:05:58>> She loves us so much. She'll she'll
2:06:00bring you around. She'll bring you
2:06:01around.
2:06:01>> Okay.
2:06:02>> So, yeah. Um, let's go back to So,
2:06:04Eucharistic [snorts] Miracles, Adam
2:06:06Bllye.
2:06:07>> Yes.
2:06:07>> Uh, now I'm really struggling like the
2:06:09cognitive dissonance is on full
2:06:12throttle.
2:06:12>> Yeah.
2:06:13>> Okay. So, I've got complete cognitive
2:06:14dissonance at this point. Catholicism
2:06:16may be true, but I've got all these
2:06:17psychological barriers and all these
2:06:18rational barriers as well. Um, I just
2:06:20can't accept it. Um, but yeah, theism at
2:06:24this point is looking like, yeah, 80%
2:06:25probable. I'm really starting to lean
2:06:26towards theism. Um, Christianity maybe
2:06:3050% probable, something like that. Um,
2:06:34and yeah, Catholicism after the Adam
2:06:36Bllye and the um, Eucharistic miracles,
2:06:38maybe we're at like somewhere between
2:06:40two and 5% or something like that. I
2:06:41mean, I don't know exactly where. These
2:06:42are just really rough ballpark numbers.
2:06:44I mean, I don't think we have like super
2:06:45precise credences up here, you know,
2:06:47>> um, or confidence levels.
2:06:49>> So, what came next? Well, because Ethan
2:06:53Muse was in the picture,
2:06:54>> Fatima came next.
2:06:55>> Yeah.
2:06:57>> So,
2:06:58it So, we'll put them put them on the
2:07:00table. It was Fatima,
2:07:02Lords, a bunch of different like
2:07:04canonization healing miracles and Padre
2:07:08Peio.
2:07:08>> Yeah.
2:07:08>> So, let's take them in those in that
2:07:10order. Okay. [laughter]
2:07:12So, Fatima comes first.
2:07:13>> Yeah. And so I'm I'm reading Ethan's
2:07:15post and I'm like, "Oh gosh, the
2:07:19evidence here is staggeringly powerful.
2:07:23It is staggeringly powerful." So like,
2:07:25of course, you know, people have watched
2:07:27the people should watch the 5-hour long
2:07:29interview that that you had with him.
2:07:30But I mean, just to recap things, you
2:07:33know, um there are three shepherd
2:07:35shepherd children, Lucia, Justinta, and
2:07:38Francisco. and they start to have kind
2:07:42of these mystical encounters with um
2:07:44this beautiful lady who later identifies
2:07:47herself as our lady of the rosary and
2:07:50they start uh they have an apparition I
2:07:52think it's on like May 13th 1917 is when
2:07:55the the first time this is so this is in
2:07:56fact a Portugal these are shepherd rural
2:07:58shepherd children um and our lady
2:08:00basically starts appearing to them they
2:08:01start having these visions of this
2:08:02beautiful lady and um you know they go
2:08:05into these kind of like mystical trances
2:08:07where they have kind of conversations in
2:08:09a conversational cadence with this lady.
2:08:10Actually, only Lucia has a
2:08:12conversational cadence. Um I think uh
2:08:14Justinta can um hear her and see her um
2:08:18but doesn't speak. And then I think um
2:08:20Francisco can only see her. Um and so
2:08:23like you know basically on on the May
2:08:2413th apparition um the lady tells them
2:08:27to return to the Kova at this spot spot
2:08:29near the homemoke. There's like an oak
2:08:31there. Um every month going forward. So
2:08:34every month on the 13th. So um
2:08:37>> they do that. So the next month they
2:08:38come on um June 13th.
2:08:41>> Is this 1917?
2:08:42>> 1917. Yes.
2:08:43>> The year of the Russian Revolution was
2:08:46overthrown. And
2:08:47>> it's wild to think that in that year is
2:08:49when she said that the errors of Russia
2:08:51will spread throughout the world.
2:08:53[laughter]
2:08:53>> Yeah. And then it literally happened. So
2:08:56>> um so yeah, and so they come back
2:08:58repeated predictable schedule. They just
2:09:00enter into these like almost like
2:09:02translike states where they're like and
2:09:05of course word gets out and you know her
2:09:07parents, Lucia's parents, their parents
2:09:09think that like you need to knock this
2:09:10off, stop the gig. Um and so people
2:09:13start hearing about it that the our lady
2:09:15is appearing to these shepherd children.
2:09:16A bunch of people start showing up at
2:09:17the Kova. Um there all these like weird
2:09:20and anomalous phenomena happen while the
2:09:22children go into these like mystical
2:09:24trances where they talk with the lady.
2:09:25Um like there are just like seemingly
2:09:27miraculous conversions and healings and
2:09:29like there's like seemingly sourceless
2:09:30sometimes colored clouds of smoke that
2:09:32happen at the beginning and the end of
2:09:33apparition at the near the home oak on
2:09:35August 13th when the children are
2:09:37detained cuz like the local authorities
2:09:38were not happy with this sort of thing
2:09:40like they're like what is going on? Um
2:09:41and it turns out that after lots of
2:09:42these apparitions the children were um
2:09:45detained and interrogated both
2:09:46individually and collectively. Um, and
2:09:49so you know when they were detained for
2:09:50I think the August 13th apparition, uh,
2:09:52people still showed up at the Kova and
2:09:54like these like large booms and like
2:09:57these sourceless booms almost like
2:09:58cannons like were heard and people
2:10:00scattered. They were freaked out. Um, so
2:10:02like okay like what is going on? Um, and
2:10:04so then you know they're uh while during
2:10:06these interrogations um you know the
2:10:09children the way that they describe the
2:10:10lady is like in exceptional detail. They
2:10:13have like these striking undesigned
2:10:15coincidences about like where which
2:10:17direction exactly the woman came in,
2:10:19what exactly she's wearing, her exact
2:10:21posture, which way like her head is
2:10:22tilt, where she leaves, what exactly
2:10:24she's saying. We can like we can like
2:10:26independently confirm that like what the
2:10:28people around heard the children say or
2:10:30heard Lucia say like matches up with
2:10:33Lucia's recollection during these um
2:10:35interrogations. Um and like you look at
2:10:37the skeptical ex I mean they're like
2:10:39diverting their eyes. They're like
2:10:40shielding their eyes whatnot cuz like oh
2:10:41it's blinding me. It's blindingly
2:10:43bright. So like look at what the
2:10:44skeptics have to say. And lying is not
2:10:45at all plausible. These children were
2:10:47threatened with death and they were
2:10:48saying knock it off. And like the the
2:10:51local authorities tried all these
2:10:52different police tactics and came away
2:10:54with basically just like utterly
2:10:55convinced of the children's sincerity
2:10:56and honesty. Um and so like if you look
2:10:59at even the naturalistic explanations of
2:11:00the the apparition phenomena themselves,
2:11:02they're kind of just like flailing.
2:11:04[snorts] I mean um you know like these
2:11:06like people like these children are
2:11:08going into either like pred at a
2:11:10predictable schedule at predictable
2:11:12times exactly at noon on the 13th and no
2:11:14other times they enter into these what
2:11:16like either group hallucinations or like
2:11:18these weird multimodal like delusive
2:11:21transances where they can't tell a
2:11:23difference between imagination and
2:11:25reality even though they're well past
2:11:26the age where they can tell it and they
2:11:27can tell it on all other occasions. Uh,
2:11:29and it's happening on these like yeah
2:11:30these predictable predictable uh
2:11:32foreseen schedule in advance and like
2:11:34they're basically infallibly
2:11:36transmitting the contents of these to
2:11:38each other. Oh, and like Francisco he
2:11:39didn't get the memo that the person is
2:11:41talking like what uh that the lady is
2:11:43talking and then you know there are all
2:11:44these undesigned coincidences between
2:11:46their like very complex and diverse
2:11:48multimodal experiences that they're
2:11:50describing in both individually and
2:11:51collectively when they're interrogated.
2:11:53Um and like Ethan goes through all the
2:11:55reasons why like even the apparition
2:11:56phenomena themselves are very difficult
2:11:57to naturalistically explain. But then
2:11:59they predict 3 months in advance that on
2:12:01October 13th there will be a miracle for
2:12:03everyone to see and so that everyone may
2:12:05believe. That's what the apparition
2:12:06said. We'll perform a miracle so that
2:12:08everyone may believe.
2:12:10Okay. So word gets out all like the
2:12:13secular newspapers show up. All like a
2:12:15bunch of different skeptics show up.
2:12:16Atheists show up. Anti-clerical people
2:12:18show up. Catholics show up at noon. And
2:12:21it happens like literally a spontaneous
2:12:24localized emitter forms in the lower
2:12:25lower atmosphere bathes people in
2:12:27multiple hues of color. We have people
2:12:30describing the object as distinct from
2:12:32the sun detaching itself from the sun.
2:12:33This happened for 10 minutes. People are
2:12:34saying that they can painlessly stare at
2:12:37the object and sometimes against what 15
2:12:40out of 15 witnesses who described clouds
2:12:42said that this object was against a
2:12:44clear blue cloudless sky at various
2:12:48points and yet was nevertheless painless
2:12:49to stare at. This is when the sun, this
2:12:52is noon. This is a solar azimuth. You
2:12:54cannot look painlessly.
2:12:57>> Mhm.
2:12:57>> At the noon, midday sun against a clear,
2:13:02cloudless blue sky. It's impossible. And
2:13:05we have people who are like avoiding
2:13:06optical effects by literally refusing to
2:13:08look at the sun, looking backwards, and
2:13:10they literally see the environment
2:13:11around them bathed in multiple hues of
2:13:13color.
2:13:14>> And they they it's also just like the
2:13:16phenomenology. They describe it as being
2:13:18out there rather than in here. Um, so
2:13:20like you know they're saying that oh
2:13:21yeah, the the lights are like reflecting
2:13:23off of like hats in the environment and
2:13:25whatnot. So um and of course like the
2:13:28the the naturalistic mechanisms that
2:13:29could make the sun itself painless to
2:13:31stare at are things like cloud coverage
2:13:33and things like that. And that doesn't
2:13:34result in um the sorts of effects that
2:13:37you need for retinal over stimulation to
2:13:39get colorful phenomenology. So even the
2:13:41naturalistic explanations for making the
2:13:42the light source painless to stare at um
2:13:44would remove the phenomenology that
2:13:46everyone is reporting. there's like a
2:13:47crazy massive degree of convergence
2:13:49around these phenomena. Even like the
2:13:50best skeptic who's published on this on
2:13:52Substack and Ethan has responded to him.
2:13:54Um even he Scott Alexander says that uh
2:13:57there's an impressive degree of
2:13:59convergence among the testimony here um
2:14:01about what you'd expect from a real
2:14:02objective event. Um so we just have like
2:14:06hordes of testimonies as distant
2:14:08witnesses who like at Alberell they're
2:14:10not looking towards the sun they're
2:14:11looking towards the Kova and they
2:14:13describe there a three-fold descent of
2:14:15the sun.
2:14:16>> Yeah. And that just happens to
2:14:17independently corroborate what people at
2:14:19the Kova say when they say they saw this
2:14:20object rear towards them three times. So
2:14:24we have distant witnesses, we have
2:14:25skeptical witnesses. It's just insane.
2:14:28And people's clouds also we have a bunch
2:14:29of different witnesses who said that
2:14:30their clouds just their clouds, sorry,
2:14:32their clothes just instantaneously
2:14:34dried. And then you look at photo and we
2:14:36know that it was raining. We have
2:14:37meteorological data, Matt. It was
2:14:39raining all the way up until the
2:14:41miracle. And then the mir and the rain
2:14:42stops and the clouds part and then this
2:14:44this spectacle happens in front of
2:14:45everyone. So like it's just insane. And
2:14:47we even have images of the crowd where
2:14:50you can see these selective drying
2:14:52bands. So literally it's just like
2:14:54soaking wet at one point but then like a
2:14:56completely dry part and it's like it's
2:14:58insane. Um so like that would just be
2:15:01like thermodynamically impossible for it
2:15:02to dry that quickly. And we just have
2:15:04tons of testimony that so the testimony
2:15:05just happens to like independently
2:15:06corroborate exactly what's seen in the
2:15:08images. It's it's insane. It's
2:15:11naturalistically inexplicable, man. So,
2:15:14Fatima was like, "Wow." Oh, and of
2:15:16course, it just turns out that like
2:15:17directly in connection with this, there
2:15:19are oodles upon oodles of healing
2:15:20miracles, which are insane and medically
2:15:21documented afterwards. So, God's like
2:15:23going out of his way to basically heal
2:15:24people in connection with this
2:15:26apparition.
2:15:26>> Yeah,
2:15:27>> it's insane. So again, you got the
2:15:30apparition phenomena which the
2:15:31naturalistic explanations are already
2:15:32sort of having to flail to explain away
2:15:34these like utterly unprecedented unknown
2:15:36to science like a scheduled delusive
2:15:40transes where these children can't tell
2:15:41a difference from imagination and
2:15:42reality and they're like diverting their
2:15:44gaze cuz it's like hurting them and they
2:15:45have like crazy independent cooperations
2:15:48among their like highly detailed um
2:15:50descriptions of this multimodal
2:15:52experience. Uh and then they predict 3
2:15:54months in advance
2:15:56a meteorological phenomenon over which
2:15:58they have no control. And then it
2:15:59happens. It happens and it's seen by
2:16:01distant witnesses by between 30,000
2:16:03100,000 people at the Kova. We have
2:16:04healing miracles in connection with it.
2:16:06We rapid drying. We've got all the
2:16:07testimony about like the sun detaching
2:16:09itself and it's just it's
2:16:10naturalistically inexplicable.
2:16:12>> So photographic evidence. We have
2:16:14newspaper
2:16:16articles written by the enemies of the
2:16:18church.
2:16:18>> Yeah. OCO. I mean, literally the enemies
2:16:19of the church are literally saying,
2:16:20"Yeah, uh, I went there and I was I went
2:16:23there to kind of de debunk it, but it
2:16:26happened. [laughter] You literally in
2:16:27Oculo, they they talk about that and
2:16:29it's it's just insane." Um, and like,
2:16:34>> uh, another thing we haven't mentioned
2:16:35is like, you know, there's a
2:16:36photographic analysis where you
2:16:37basically you just perform some
2:16:38trigonometry on light cues.
2:16:40>> If you're interested, people should
2:16:41check that out. Ethan used spoke about
2:16:42that and he had images to to prove that.
2:16:45>> Yeah. And so what that shows basically
2:16:46it's a non-solar elevation of the light
2:16:47source. So, it wasn't actually the sun.
2:16:48It's a localized emitter, which I mean,
2:16:51it's just it's incredible, Matt. And of
2:16:53course, like, okay, so I I find out
2:16:56about Fatima. And now,
2:16:59>> okay, let's look at the implications for
2:17:01Catholicism, Matt. Um, oh boy. Oh, boy.
2:17:05What is happening here? Well, we've got
2:17:07the mother of God seemingly appearing to
2:17:10Catholic children and joining them to
2:17:13pray the rosary. That's one of the
2:17:15biggest messages. She identifies herself
2:17:16as our lady of the rosary
2:17:18>> and she's enjoining people pray the
2:17:19rosary. Pray the rosary every day. If
2:17:21you pray the rosary, the war will end
2:17:22etc. Like you need to pray the rosary.
2:17:24The rosary meditates on what? Various
2:17:26mysteries that only the Catholics
2:17:28believe in. The assumption vindicating
2:17:30the assumption. We have miraculous
2:17:31vindication of the Catholic doctrine of
2:17:34the assumption. Mary saying get the holy
2:17:38father to consecrate Russia, a
2:17:40principally orthodox nation to my
2:17:42immaculate heart. Hm. Immaculate heart.
2:17:46That's a reference to the immaculate
2:17:48conception. Hm. Only one Christian sect
2:17:51has dogmatized that. It's only the
2:17:54teaching of one Christian sect, the
2:17:56Catholic Church. And the Holy Father,
2:17:58what's up with that? What does that
2:18:01mean? It's the holiness of his office.
2:18:04And he's a spiritual father to the
2:18:06universal church. And Mary is requesting
2:18:09him to do something outside of his
2:18:11jurisdiction according to the Orthodox.
2:18:13So he's doing a religious a formal
2:18:15religious act, a consecratory act on
2:18:17behalf of things outside of his
2:18:20jurisdiction
2:18:21calling and Mary is calling him the hol
2:18:23holy father and getting him to
2:18:26consecrate Russia to his imac to her
2:18:28immaculate heart. So we got the
2:18:30immaculate conception, we got the
2:18:32papacy, the holy father, the holiness of
2:18:33his office, the fatherhood of the
2:18:35universal church, his universal juris
2:18:37universal and ordinary jurisdiction.
2:18:38We've got the assumption. We got the
2:18:40rosary being commended. all this stuff.
2:18:43We have the children doing all these
2:18:45reparatory acts of penance where they're
2:18:46uniting their sacrifices to Christ's
2:18:49passion to bring about uh to be mer
2:18:51meritorious causes of grace. This is
2:18:53utterly suffused with Catholic
2:18:55vindication which is why Protestants
2:18:58have to go in for the demonic
2:18:59explanation because otherwise God's a
2:19:01liar. God is a liar. Mary isn't the
2:19:05immaculate conception. The Pope isn't
2:19:07the Holy Father. He doesn't have
2:19:09jurisdiction to do that. No, you
2:19:10shouldn't be praying the rosary, etc.
2:19:12And the rosary is meditating all these
2:19:13false things.
2:19:14>> Mhm.
2:19:15>> So, like, oh, and of course, like Mary's
2:19:17obtaining conversions to Catholicism.
2:19:18They give they give requests to her and
2:19:20she's explicitly granting requests to
2:19:22convert people to Catholicism.
2:19:25So, we have the mother of God appearing
2:19:26to Catholic shepherd children, granting
2:19:28requests to convert people to
2:19:29Catholicism, saying basically
2:19:31vindicating, authenticating, confirming
2:19:34the immaculate conception, the rosary,
2:19:37the papacy, etc.
2:19:40God has disproven Protestantism. Now, of
2:19:44course, you might go in for a demonic
2:19:45phenomena, but of course, I think that
2:19:46that doesn't work for a million reasons
2:19:48that Ethan goes through in his debate
2:19:49with Shaun Luke. Um, and of I mean, you
2:19:52know, like just like let's step back,
2:19:54you know, like [laughter]
2:19:56a demon is introducing into the rosary,
2:19:59a Marian devotion, something which is
2:20:00like christocentric. Oh my Jesus,
2:20:03forgive us our sins. Save us from the
2:20:06fires of hell. Lead all souls to heaven,
2:20:08especially those most in need of thy
2:20:10mercy.
2:20:10>> Yeah,
2:20:11>> sounds like demons to me. Sound totally
2:20:13sounds like demons, right?
2:20:14>> And of course, you know, like
2:20:17>> Christ is saying, I mean, you know,
2:20:18there's just a million reasons why I
2:20:20think just a demonic explanation doesn't
2:20:21work. And especially when you bring in
2:20:22all the miraculous evidence.
2:20:24>> Now, you had heard of Fatimar and Lurids
2:20:26in these different apparitions while you
2:20:27were an atheist or an agnostic. I guess
2:20:29you just didn't pay them much heed. No,
2:20:30I mean, in fact, I I responded to Tren
2:20:32Horn at one point when he brought up
2:20:33Fatima because I have a lot of responses
2:20:35to Trenhorn. I even have a response to
2:20:36Tren Horn playlist. [laughter]
2:20:38>> Come on.
2:20:38>> Yeah. So,
2:20:39>> Oh, that's great.
2:20:40>> Yeah. So, I go into that playlist in one
2:20:42of my videos. I talk about Fatima and
2:20:43I'm just like, well, you know, maybe
2:20:44they just like stared at the sun and I
2:20:46don't know, had some weird phenomenology
2:20:48effects or something which is just like
2:20:50>> utterly intention with all the evidence.
2:20:51So, I don't know. I just sort of waved
2:20:53it away.
2:20:54>> Anything at the time seemed more
2:20:55plausible than the mother of God.
2:20:57>> Yeah.
2:20:57>> Yeah. Oh, exactly. Exactly. Um, but we
2:21:00can get back to like alternative
2:21:01explanations for the miraculous evidence
2:21:03later. But like now I'm starting to
2:21:04think like and just like given my
2:21:06background, given my upbringing, I'm
2:21:07like
2:21:09if I grant Fatima,
2:21:11>> yeah,
2:21:12>> Eucharistic miracles,
2:21:13>> Eucharistic miracles, Adam Blind, you
2:21:14know, like all this stuff, the exorcisms
2:21:16and whatnot. And if and then if I grant
2:21:18this, then seems like it's going to be
2:21:20over. So then that was bother I didn't
2:21:22grant it yet.
2:21:23>> How did you deal with hell and
2:21:24homosexuality? Well, maybe maybe let's
2:21:26get to that uh after some of the other
2:21:29stuff. Is are you cool with that? So
2:21:30then
2:21:32>> after Fatima that that really bothered
2:21:33me and I was like
2:21:35>> I was trying to think of oh maybe
2:21:37there's just some like unknown
2:21:38naturalistic explanation. Um
2:21:41>> you know I don't know I was like holding
2:21:42I was trying to hold off or maybe like
2:21:43ah maybe God's trying to do some kind of
2:21:45accommodation.
2:21:47Um but then I started coming across
2:21:50other cases. So, we have Lords, other
2:21:52canonization miracles, and
2:21:54>> Padre Pio.
2:21:56>> Um, and maybe after that we'll talk
2:21:58about how I dealt with some of the
2:21:59objections.
2:22:00>> Um,
2:22:00>> maybe we'll skip Lords if that's okay
2:22:02and go to Padre Pio. Okay.
2:22:03>> Cuz he was the off the top ropes.
2:22:07>> Well, that the Padre Pio one, the reason
2:22:09why I say that last is because that's
2:22:10that's where my conversion happened.
2:22:12>> Okay.
2:22:12>> So, that's what led to the conversion.
2:22:14So,
2:22:15>> do you want do you want me to go through
2:22:16the those two and then Padre Pio or
2:22:17what?
2:22:18>> Can we may maybe just do Padre? Okay,
2:22:19we'll just do P.
2:22:20>> We'll have you on a whole another time.
2:22:22>> No, no, we don't.
2:22:23>> So,
2:22:24in February of this year, no, maybe.
2:22:26Yeah. No, it was February this year,
2:22:27Ethan was writing his post on Padre Pio.
2:22:29>> Yeah.
2:22:30>> And I'd already at this point I'm like
2:22:34I'm Catholicism is very very live option
2:22:38at this point. Um I'm thinking like
2:22:40yeah, I don't know. Maybe Catholicism
2:22:42now at this point after Lords and all
2:22:43these canonization healing miracles and
2:22:45after Fatima maybe Catholicism is like
2:22:4830% likely 40% likely or something like
2:22:50that. Um
2:22:51>> and maybe Christianity is like I don't
2:22:53know 60% or something and theism is
2:22:55maybe like 90% or something. I don't
2:22:57know or like 80%.
2:22:58>> Uh
2:22:59>> so [sighs] I just felt like maybe I was
2:23:01one miracle away. I don't know. I just
2:23:03had that kind of sense. It was just like
2:23:04one
2:23:05>> massive
2:23:05>> Are you talking to other Catholics? Are
2:23:07you emailing people?
2:23:08>> Oh yeah.
2:23:09>> Yeah. You don't have to say who they
2:23:10were or anything.
2:23:11>> No, I mean I was talking with Jimmy
2:23:12Aken, Swan Sona, like lots of different
2:23:15people working through lots of my other
2:23:16objections because I had biblical
2:23:17objections. I had all different sorts of
2:23:19objections. Um, so I was definitely
2:23:21>> They were helpful.
2:23:22>> Oh yeah, 100%. I mean, all these people
2:23:24are like partially responsible for my
2:23:26conversion. So it's wonderful.
2:23:27Wonderful. Okay.
2:23:28>> Um, but in February, I sit down with
2:23:31Ethan Muse when he's writing this like
2:23:3220,000word blog post on Padre Pio and we
2:23:35sit down for like four I think it was 4
2:23:37hours and he just walks me through the
2:23:40evidence for Padre Pio. [laughter] So,
2:23:42it's just it's just insane. So, Padre
2:23:47Peio in is it like 1918 or something
2:23:50around there? Like something somewhere
2:23:51around the 19 teens or something 1920s.
2:23:53um he has a mystical vision of Christ
2:23:58after mass uh and where Christ says I
2:24:01unite you to my passion and thereafter
2:24:03immediately he has Christ's passion
2:24:06wounds in his palms he has a laceration
2:24:09wound on his side and he has wounds in
2:24:11his feet
2:24:13okay so we have testimonies beforehand
2:24:16afterhand he didn't have it before he
2:24:18had it after um okay what's going on so
2:24:21then you know he had a kind of I
2:24:24kind of difficult relationship with the
2:24:25church. At certain points, the church
2:24:26was like a little bit skeptical. They
2:24:28sent a bunch of like um uh scientists to
2:24:31investigate him and whatnot. And like we
2:24:32have like seven different scientists who
2:24:35investigate his hands like up and close.
2:24:40And we like we literally have like the
2:24:41letters written like right afterwards of
2:24:42these people describing in meticulous
2:24:44detail what they saw. So they're like,
2:24:46"Okay, there's no edema or swelling
2:24:49around them." They're like basically
2:24:51entirely circular which of course we
2:24:53also have photos of this. We have
2:24:54videographic evidence of this.
2:24:57[sighs and gasps]
2:24:57We have you know one of them is like
2:24:59yeah um I palpated his hand so I felt it
2:25:02>> and I could feel a palpable void. There
2:25:05were just thin membranes and I could
2:25:06touch my fingers on the other side.
2:25:10>> We have these doctors saying that one of
2:25:11the doctors said that earlier on. So
2:25:12like they they have a kind of they
2:25:14change in interesting ways um throughout
2:25:17his life basically. Um and uh one of the
2:25:20earlier doctors when he looked at he
2:25:22said it was a complete perforation such
2:25:24that I can see things on the other side.
2:25:26Uh and then like uh the way that changed
2:25:29was that then a little kind of membrane
2:25:30formed and so that's where we have I
2:25:31think it's Dr. Festo who's like
2:25:33palpating his hand and saying yeah
2:25:34there's a void in there and there are
2:25:36various reasons why this is just like
2:25:37utterly naturalistically inexplicable.
2:25:39So like he's got stigmata he's
2:25:42supernaturally reduplicating the wounds
2:25:44of Christ. Like
2:25:46what am I supposed to do? Like of course
2:25:48Christianity is true. Like it's just
2:25:49like manifestly evident when I look at
2:25:50his case. He's a living icon of Christ.
2:25:52How can you not be Christian at least if
2:25:54you see this? So like he's taking me
2:25:56through all this evidence. Ethan is he's
2:25:57reading to he's just reading to me the
2:25:58the reports of the scientists and I'm
2:26:00like oh gosh. [laughter] And then you
2:26:02know he's got all this like miraculous
2:26:03blood loss and like literally like
2:26:05dozens of people like are taking his
2:26:07temperature in sequence with like
2:26:08multiple different thermometers
2:26:10spontaneously and whatnot. They'll
2:26:11they'll take it with like a mercury
2:26:12thermometer. It'll shatter. Then they'll
2:26:13get out a professional bath thermometer
2:26:15and then it'll go up to like 125°.
2:26:17naturalistically inexplicable. You
2:26:18couldn't possibly have that. And we have
2:26:19like the doctors like we we still have,
2:26:21you know, you saw the picture when Ethan
2:26:23was here. We like have doctors signed
2:26:25reports like, "Yep, I took his
2:26:26temperature. It was like 120 or 125
2:26:28various other naturalistic things." Like
2:26:30again, is this something you can be
2:26:31easily mistaken about? Like you put a
2:26:34you put a thermometer here and you read
2:26:36a number. Oh, and this just like
2:26:38happened. So maybe they just all
2:26:39systematically misread it. Or maybe all
2:26:41of the thermometers even in sequence are
2:26:43just systematically in error like dozens
2:26:45of times in like dozens of different
2:26:47contexts. It's ridiculous. And like he
2:26:50has so much blood loss it'd be
2:26:52naturalistically impossible for him not
2:26:53to get hyper uh not to get anemia. Um
2:26:56>> it's just oh my gosh. And then the aroma
2:26:58of sanctity. So people are just like
2:27:00smelling this beautiful fragrant scent
2:27:02associated with his blood and his relics
2:27:04and whatnot. And it persists for
2:27:06literally months, sometimes years on
2:27:09end. Sometimes it just like washes
2:27:11entire rooms. It just floods them
2:27:13instantly with this beautiful scent.
2:27:16It's just insane. Which is something I
2:27:18forgot to mention with the stigmatist
2:27:19with um Adam Blie also had the odor of
2:27:21sanctity and neither she nor Padre Peio
2:27:23could smell it.
2:27:24>> So that's interesting. Um but yeah, Adam
2:27:26Bl would say like yeah, we'd come into
2:27:27the house and then like it would even
2:27:28though there were no flowers anywhere or
2:27:30any sensors like it just it would smell
2:27:31like a a floral shop. like it would just
2:27:33inundate us like a send of flowers. Um,
2:27:36so just all these mystical cars charisms
2:27:40that Ethan is just going through and
2:27:41he's giving me all the evidence and the
2:27:42testimony on that 4-hour interview and
2:27:44there I was like
2:27:47I submit like I I I can't I can't fathom
2:27:51looking risking looking at Jesus after I
2:27:54die
2:27:55>> and saying, "Yeah, I know that Padre Pia
2:27:57was a living icon of you supernaturally
2:28:00reduplicated your passion wounds. I know
2:28:03that happened, but I I didn't believe.
2:28:05Where are you when you're given up as it
2:28:07were? Like he's reading you these
2:28:09things. Is it
2:28:09>> I'm in my room. I'm in my apartment. I'm
2:28:11on uh Yeah. No, this is like a Zoom
2:28:14meeting. So I'm like zooming with him
2:28:16and you you can look at me in the the
2:28:18thing and I'm just at some points I'm
2:28:19just like
2:28:19>> I literally just like throw up my hands.
2:28:21I'm like what am I supposed to do with
2:28:22this? As Ethan is just like ringing out
2:28:23the explanation like the testimonies one
2:28:25after another after another after
2:28:26another to like a lot of these things
2:28:27where it's just naturalistically
2:28:28>> and he's giving his like cute Ethan
2:28:30chuckle. [laughter]
2:28:32>> This is ridiculous, you know? He's like
2:28:34and he's like he's after he described
2:28:35all the other phenomena he's like oh and
2:28:36like think about what you'd have to say
2:28:38as the fraud hypothesis. So like somehow
2:28:39he's like using carbolic acid and it
2:28:41never gets infected and there's no
2:28:42swelling on it at any point which is all
2:28:44the doctors agree to and he's like
2:28:45crucifying himself as well. And then
2:28:47he's like in addition to all of that he
2:28:50just happened to go out of his way to
2:28:51try to fake hypothermia for dozens of
2:28:53times on dozens of different occasions.
2:28:55It's like [laughter] he's like he he's
2:28:57already convinced people right? What's
2:28:59he doing? And like especially with this
2:29:00risk it's just like insane. So, um,
2:29:03yeah, it was that kind of
2:29:05>> it was just insane. Like I couldn't not
2:29:07be a Christian at that point. So, what's
2:29:08really funny is that I was convinced of
2:29:10Christianity before Catholicism. Uh, so
2:29:13at the end of that conversation around
2:29:15like we had 30 minutes left or something
2:29:16like that. Um, I was just convinced of
2:29:20Christianity. I was like, listen, I
2:29:21can't do it. I can't imagine even
2:29:23risking saying to Jesus after I die, I
2:29:26didn't believe even though there was a
2:29:27living icon of you. Um,
2:29:30>> not going to risk that. Um, so I was
2:29:33basically like, "Okay, listen. I got to
2:29:34be Christian." I told Ethan Muse that
2:29:36like on that on that interview, that
2:29:38that 4-hour thing. I was like, "I got to
2:29:39be Christian. What do I do now?"
2:29:41[laughter]
2:29:42And so Ethan and I just talked through
2:29:43like Joe, like what what would you have
2:29:44to say as a Protestant to all this
2:29:47stuff. So like God is going out of his
2:29:48way to manifestly vindicate
2:29:50distinctively Catholic doctrines where
2:29:52it's like you look at the Protestant
2:29:53miracles and it's like healings or a
2:29:55felt sense of presence. It's not like
2:29:56manif manifestly vindicating particular
2:29:59Catholic doctrines. The immaculate
2:30:01conception like lures. She said, "Mary,
2:30:03I am the immaculate conception."
2:30:06>> And then God just concentrates the most
2:30:08insane medically documented healing
2:30:11miracles like the most insane
2:30:12unprecedented string of miracles
2:30:14associated with that apparition
2:30:15specifically. And they're all different
2:30:16sorts of like crazy phenomena with
2:30:18Bernardet Subaru there as well. So like,
2:30:20okay, we've got the mother of God
2:30:22appearing to people. We've got like
2:30:24Catholic priests praying over bread and
2:30:25it's turning into suffering myioardial
2:30:27tissue. And we've got like Padre Peio
2:30:29being united to Christ's passion in a
2:30:31kind of vicarious participatory
2:30:32redemptive suffering that a lot of the
2:30:34Protestants don't believe in. We've got
2:30:36like
2:30:36>> At any point during this examination,
2:30:38did you think to yourself, well, maybe
2:30:40there's other miracles of note from
2:30:42other religions that might cancel these
2:30:44ones out somehow?
2:30:45>> Yeah. I mean, I was thinking like maybe
2:30:46there were. I hadn't heard of any and
2:30:48Ethan had like looked into a lot of them
2:30:49and I I also like I mean like a lot of
2:30:51them are also just just totally
2:30:54naturalistically explicable like people
2:30:55will talk about like the Hindu milk
2:30:57miracle where it's like capillary action
2:30:58or you know various other things like
2:30:59that. Um and I we can get into
2:31:02potentially alternative explanations to
2:31:03the miraculous data later but at this
2:31:05point I was like I got to be Christian
2:31:07but what am I supposed to do? And I
2:31:09don't know, it almost it really just did
2:31:11seem like God was going out of his way
2:31:13to manifestly vindicate distinctively
2:31:15Catholic doctrines where like the
2:31:16intention behind the miracles was to
2:31:20promulgate a specific message with
2:31:22specific content. Like I don't know in
2:31:24Eucharistic miracles, it's simulating
2:31:25the exact onlogical change that only
2:31:27Catholics believe in
2:31:28>> transubstantiation and it seems to be
2:31:30only happening in a Catholic context as
2:31:32well. Like where are your Orthodox
2:31:34Eucharistic miracles? You don't have
2:31:35them or at the very least we don't hear
2:31:36of them. And what you know what is or
2:31:38like Protestant things like we don't
2:31:39have those either. So Mary's appearing
2:31:42to people she's granting requests like
2:31:44saintly intercession like if you're a
2:31:45Protestant you don't believe in saintly
2:31:46intercession again like God has refuted
2:31:48you. He's gone out of his way time and
2:31:49time again to grant miracle upon miracle
2:31:51as a result of saintly intercession.
2:31:53That was the miracle of Kanda seeking
2:31:55saintly intercession. That was all the
2:31:56uh like Lord's healings. It's all the
2:31:58like lots of these different Fatma
2:31:59healings. It's the miracle um like the
2:32:02Zetune healings etc. It's the
2:32:04canonization healing miracles. Like
2:32:07God is literally just manifestly
2:32:09vindicating this practice,
2:32:11>> saintly intercession,
2:32:12>> which according to at least some
2:32:14Protestants is either idolatrous or
2:32:16worship or in some other way illicit.
2:32:19God has told you that you're wrong. So
2:32:21conform your intellect to that.
2:32:23[laughter] So I don't know. I just think
2:32:26when I look at the miraculous evidence
2:32:28and I look at the broader pattern when I
2:32:29look at the particular miracles and it
2:32:31seemed like God would had have to be
2:32:32basically performing deceptive miracles
2:32:33if Mary really isn't immaculately
2:32:35conceived. Well then like what's the
2:32:37deal? She's saying I am the immaculate
2:32:38conception.
2:32:39>> So is God basically facilitating
2:32:41deception? That would be very bad for
2:32:43various reasons if you think that God is
2:32:45a deceiver. Um
2:32:46>> okay. So then what did you do?
2:32:48>> Oh well so Ethan I don't know. I was
2:32:50just toying around with can I be like
2:32:51orthodox or something? Can I get some
2:32:52kind of accommodationist model?
2:32:54>> And why did you want to be Orthodox?
2:32:56>> Cuz I didn't want to be Catholic.
2:32:58[laughter]
2:32:59>> But I mean, Orthodoxy condemns
2:33:01homosexual acts and teaches the
2:33:03existence of hell, despite people might
2:33:06say.
2:33:06>> Yeah, I was about to say, um, it
2:33:07depends. You could go in for a more
2:33:09liberal version of orthod orthodoxy
2:33:11where like you have universal salvation
2:33:13and, um, maybe you're a little bit
2:33:15slippier with some of the moral
2:33:16teachings and whatnot. I don't know. Um,
2:33:18>> also, was the pope a stumbling block?
2:33:20>> No, not at all. And I mean again like I
2:33:23think Fatima kind of serves as a sort of
2:33:24indication of that. Um so I don't know
2:33:27>> I I was listen I was toying around with
2:33:28this for like 30 minutes cuz I had
2:33:30thought of this stuff previously but I
2:33:31was like okay now that this is real I I
2:33:34have to become Christian.
2:33:35>> Um we spent like the last maybe hour or
2:33:3730 minutes of that interview just like
2:33:39talking through
2:33:40>> you say interview. Is this
2:33:41>> No, not interview. Sorry. Like it's just
2:33:42like a conversation with with Ethan
2:33:44Muse. Yeah.
2:33:46>> 30 minutes.
2:33:46>> Yeah. Yeah, the last 30 minutes to an
2:33:48hour just going over like my last
2:33:50remnants of trying to hold on to
2:33:51non-atholic explanations. Like I was
2:33:53already aware of lots of difficulties
2:33:54for various accommodationist models, for
2:33:56various demonic models. Um,
2:33:58>> and
2:34:00uh Ethan was just like reallyounding me
2:34:02on like yeah, Matthew 16 and like uh
2:34:05church history and like the early
2:34:07monoiscopacy and various reasons why
2:34:09like Protestantism probably is not it.
2:34:12uh and like all the the the the Catholic
2:34:14vindicatory implications and like it
2:34:16would almost seem like betrayal if like
2:34:17the thing that's convincing me of
2:34:18Christianity is like distinctively
2:34:19Catholic miracles to then not become
2:34:21Catholic.
2:34:21>> Um so then I don't know it was the last
2:34:24remnants, the last fight, the last
2:34:26battle, the last like 30 to 60 minutes
2:34:29of that conversation. So after the
2:34:31conversation I was like okay I've got to
2:34:32be Christian. I'm leaning towards
2:34:34Catholicism. And then the next day I was
2:34:37like I was sort of basically snapped
2:34:39into my senses and I was like, "Okay,
2:34:41there aren't plausible alternative
2:34:42explanations of the data. I've got to
2:34:44become Catholic." So then uh looked up
2:34:47when the next confession time was and
2:34:49made a decade long confession on
2:34:52Saturday, I think February 7th. So on
2:34:55Friday, the night before, I did like a
2:34:57two or three hour examination of
2:34:58conscience and just made this huge
2:35:00document. And
2:35:01>> did you let the priest know that this
2:35:03was going to be long? Oh. Um,
2:35:05>> did you show up?
2:35:06>> No, I I showed up and yeah, I shouldn't
2:35:08have done that. I should have like
2:35:08scheduled one, but um, no, I showed up
2:35:10and it was going to be long and it was
2:35:11long and it was very difficult, but I
2:35:13don't know. It taught me a lot about
2:35:14myself, you know. I there was a lot
2:35:16under the hood. I was a lot worse than I
2:35:18thought I was and
2:35:19>> wow.
2:35:19>> Um,
2:35:20>> yeah,
2:35:21>> but and it was difficult. You know,
2:35:22basically peeling back a decade of your
2:35:24life and just
2:35:24>> Okay, just practically speaking,
2:35:26although this is clearly the least
2:35:27important thing about what you're
2:35:29saying, did you just go in and say,
2:35:30"Hey, just I haven't been here in 10
2:35:32years. This is going to be long." I
2:35:33said, "Yeah, I this is a like a I said I
2:35:36my last confession was a decade ago or
2:35:38something like that." That's what I
2:35:39said. And
2:35:39>> was he welcoming?
2:35:41>> Yeah. Oh, yeah. He was welcoming.
2:35:42>> Um and he just
2:35:44>> he's like just listened in.
2:35:46>> Wow.
2:35:46>> Um
2:35:47>> how long did it take?
2:35:48>> I don't remember exactly. It's probably
2:35:51like maybe 45 minutes or something.
2:35:53>> Yeah.
2:35:53>> People loved you in line. [laughter]
2:35:56>> I'm so sorry to people who
2:35:57>> No, they can go and confess if they
2:35:58judged you.
2:35:59>> Yeah. No. And then no, you know what
2:36:00that let me I was like whenever I'm in
2:36:01confession lines now I'm going to be
2:36:03like h praise God that it was a long
2:36:05confession because it means like someone
2:36:07was returning to God you know.
2:36:08>> Yeah. Yeah.
2:36:08>> So gee whiz. What was the
2:36:10phenomenological experience of having
2:36:13your sins forgiven and walking out and
2:36:14going about your day like?
2:36:16>> I mean I don't know. It was it's just a
2:36:19new beginning. It was beautiful. It was
2:36:22peaceful you know. Yeah,
2:36:23>> there's like a a sense of kind of
2:36:25comfort and peace um knowing that I'm a
2:36:28child of God and that God loves me and
2:36:31that he's forgiven me of all my my
2:36:32decade of debauchery and
2:36:34>> decadence and depravity.
2:36:36>> How wonderful and merciful is God that
2:36:38it's that simple.
2:36:39>> It is that simple.
2:36:40>> Just that's it. Just
2:36:41>> go in there, come out, done. In a way, I
2:36:44would imagine it might have been easier
2:36:46to kind of become a Protestant or an
2:36:47Orthodox just to go through some big
2:36:49ritual
2:36:50>> to make it feel appropriate to what
2:36:52you're going through internally. Do you
2:36:53know what I mean?
2:36:54>> And not that it wasn't a big deal
2:36:56confessing 10 years of sin. But
2:36:58>> yeah, you got to do back in union with
2:37:01the church.
2:37:01>> Yeah. And then back into the sacramental
2:37:03life of the church.
2:37:04>> Yeah.
2:37:04>> Did you just start going to holy mass or
2:37:06>> Yeah, started going to mass. Started,
2:37:09you know, I mean, it was right before
2:37:10Lent, which was great. Um and uh I
2:37:13definitely made that like a special end,
2:37:15you know. Um and yeah, just started then
2:37:18praying the rosary every day. And I mean
2:37:20even before then when I was like, you
2:37:22know, inching closer and closer, I
2:37:24started maybe praying like a decade of
2:37:26the rosary a day on Ethan's advice,
2:37:28which is like something that I would
2:37:29advise like all everyone who's listening
2:37:30to this, like
2:37:32dude, a decade takes two to three
2:37:34minutes. The stakes are massive. Pray a
2:37:37decade of the rosary every day. Just
2:37:38like do it every single day. 2 to 3
2:37:39minutes
2:37:40>> and grace will flood your life and do it
2:37:43like honestly with sincerity. You can
2:37:44even meditate on a mystery or something
2:37:46like that. Um but even if you don't
2:37:48believe if you're Protestant right now,
2:37:49please like pause this
2:37:52>> and commit to praying a decade of the
2:37:54rosary every single day.
2:37:56>> Well, I think they've got to overcome
2:37:58prayers to the saints before they do
2:37:59that,
2:38:00>> right? But that's why we went through
2:38:01all the evidence that prayers to the
2:38:02saints is efficacious and God has
2:38:03basically put a stamp of approval on it.
2:38:05Although I would say fair enough.
2:38:07Although I would say that just praying
2:38:09the first half of the Hail Mary, the
2:38:11angelic psalter, that's how the rosary
2:38:14used to be, right? The half the first.
2:38:15So like you could start with that.
2:38:17>> Yeah.
2:38:18>> I always like to stoop to conquer.
2:38:21>> Yeah.
2:38:21>> To to mention those words that the angel
2:38:25said to Mary which turned hell up.
2:38:28>> I mean, you know, yeah. I mean, you
2:38:29know, a protestant can also do is um
2:38:32listen, if you have objections to
2:38:34saintly intercession. I mean, again,
2:38:35like I think that God is sort of Yeah,
2:38:38you shouldn't, but um the second thing
2:38:40is just that um listen, God knows your
2:38:42heart. He knows your intentions, right?
2:38:44So, just pray beforehand.
2:38:46>> Mhm.
2:38:46>> God, if this is against your will, I'm
2:38:50sorry. Please forgive me. And then pray
2:38:53it. God knows that you're just trying to
2:38:55seek him, right?
2:38:56>> That was Dr. Han. He did that. Scott,
2:38:58>> really? Yeah.
2:38:58>> Yeah. And then afterwards you can be
2:38:59like, "God, if that was idol, if that
2:39:01was idolatry or if that was against your
2:39:03will, I apologize and you know my heart
2:39:05and you know I love you."
2:39:06>> So just just say that and it'll be fine.
2:39:09So that's what I would recommend.
2:39:11>> Yeah. Very good.
2:39:12>> I mean there we could talk about getting
2:39:15over my barriers. We could talk about
2:39:18hell. We could talk about the problem of
2:39:19evil.
2:39:20>> Let's talk about hell. Let me throw an
2:39:21objection at you.
2:39:23>> It seems unreasonable to think that
2:39:25someone should suffer for
2:39:28all you know eternally for a finite
2:39:31number of sins.
2:39:33Why would a loving God exclude someone
2:39:36from his presence as it were for all
2:39:38eternity for 5 years? Sure. Okay, I can
2:39:41be down with that. Someone might say,
2:39:43but this just seems unreasonable. It
2:39:45seems like it was a belief born out of a
2:39:48more brutal time,
2:39:51especially when you read the likes of
2:39:52Dante and others that we've kind of
2:39:54we've actually progressed in. We we
2:39:58realize now that uh that God's love is
2:40:00greater than our sin. And if God's to be
2:40:03victorious, then surely it's not going
2:40:05to be the case that most people are
2:40:06going to be or even many people are
2:40:08going to be damned.
2:40:10And then have you read uh I don't
2:40:12believe in any of the things I'm saying
2:40:13just to everyone who's watching. Uh have
2:40:15you read uh who's the uh orthodox
2:40:18philosopher
2:40:18>> David Bentley Hart.
2:40:19>> Yeah. Brilliant fellow but who clearly
2:40:21is a staunch opponent of eternal
2:40:24conscious torment.
2:40:26What would your kind of response to what
2:40:28I said be? And then maybe if you can
2:40:30flesh out maybe a more sophisticated
2:40:32argument that David Bentley Hart has put
2:40:34forth and why you disagree.
2:40:35>> Yeah. So I mean I haven't looked into
2:40:36David Bentley's David Bentley Hart's
2:40:38stuff in too much detail. Um, I've
2:40:40looked into some of like the um like
2:40:43more mainstream like philosophy of
2:40:44religion, academic literature on this.
2:40:46Um, but yeah, so I mean hell was one of
2:40:50my biggest barriers, one of my biggest
2:40:52objections along with various other
2:40:53moral problems, you know, with
2:40:54homosexuality and things like that. Um,
2:40:57so yeah, how did I work through this?
2:41:00Well, two things to say at the outset.
2:41:03one is that even if I don't have a
2:41:06response to the problem of hell, um
2:41:10>> there's just so much evidence that just
2:41:13utterly inundated me for Catholicism
2:41:16>> that basically I just felt like it was
2:41:18irrational for me to cling to those
2:41:20objections. Especially when I mean like
2:41:21again, imagine that you're sitting there
2:41:24with our Lord before he's crucified at
2:41:26the last supper. You've seen all of his
2:41:28miracles. He's raised people from the
2:41:29dead. You've seen them with your own
2:41:30eyes. He's raised people from the dead.
2:41:32He's given sight to the blind. And then
2:41:35you watch him get crucified in bloody
2:41:36fashion. Maybe you even watch him get
2:41:38interurred in the tomb.
2:41:40And then you're sitting there in the
2:41:42upper room with the apostles and he's
2:41:44there in bodily form. And he invites you
2:41:46to touch him. And you reach out and you
2:41:47literally poke his side. You're feeling
2:41:49his side
2:41:50>> and he's breathing on you. He's like
2:41:52literally breathing. It's a very bodily
2:41:53thing. And then he's with you for 40
2:41:55days and he's eating fish and he's going
2:41:57out there and he's like, "Simon, do you
2:42:00love me?" And like you're hearing all
2:42:01this. there and you you've seen all of
2:42:04this. Imagine that happened.
2:42:06>> Okay?
2:42:07>> And imagine, as is the case, that Christ
2:42:10teaches that there is everlasting
2:42:11punishment in hell for people who are
2:42:13unrepentant mortal sinners.
2:42:16I think if you saw all of that, it would
2:42:19be ridiculous to think, "No, I'm not
2:42:21going to go with this Christ guy because
2:42:23I've got some like highulutin abstract
2:42:24theoretical objection that I can't quite
2:42:26work through with hell. even though I've
2:42:28seen this guy raise people from the
2:42:29dead, give sight to the blind, I've now
2:42:31just like indirected with him after I
2:42:32saw him interred in the tomb. Like,
2:42:33okay, maybe maybe there's some sort of
2:42:35story that I'm unaware of that, but I've
2:42:37just got to be docel to this guy because
2:42:39he has been manifestally vindicated by
2:42:40God and that just overcomes my abstract
2:42:43theoretical objection. Like again, I
2:42:45mean, the sort of evidence that we have
2:42:46for these Catholic miracles, like we are
2:42:48like one person removed from palpating a
2:42:50reduplication of Christ's passion
2:42:52wounds. We have direct eyewitness
2:42:54testimony from like a bunch of people.
2:42:55We have photographs. We have videos of
2:42:57Padre Pio. We also have a photograph the
2:42:59day that he died and he didn't have
2:43:00scars despite the fact that it was like
2:43:02deep wounds for 50 years
2:43:04naturalistically inexplicable. We have
2:43:06photos. So I had to accommodate myself
2:43:08to the facts.
2:43:09>> Mhm.
2:43:09>> I had to accommodate myself to the
2:43:11facts. And so basically
2:43:14the evidence I thought was very similar
2:43:16in kind uh and very forceful, very
2:43:19similar in kind to the sort of evidence
2:43:21I would have if I saw Christ basically
2:43:23with my own eyes. Uh and then Christ
2:43:25taught hell. And in that case, I should
2:43:26not be clinging to my own um objections.
2:43:29I just should think, okay, there's some
2:43:30way to respond to this. Maybe I don't
2:43:31know how. Maybe it's difficult. But
2:43:33listen, philosophy is difficult. You put
2:43:34a 100 philosophers in a room and you're
2:43:35going to get 307 answers to a
2:43:37philosophical question or puzzle cuz and
2:43:38you know, they're applying methods with
2:43:40applying their uh taking their
2:43:41intuitions and trying to get to
2:43:42verdicts, but they just radically go
2:43:44astray all the time. So like humans were
2:43:47not the greatest at these abstract
2:43:48speculative theoretical philosophizing.
2:43:51And so it wouldn't be surprising at all
2:43:53if I just am making some mistake in my
2:43:55assessment of the hell arguments because
2:43:58those were just like it's theoretical
2:43:59speculative philosophy and I don't know
2:44:01maybe there's something I'm missing and
2:44:03still I wanted to dent its evidential
2:44:04force in my mind and there were various
2:44:05things that did that but fundamentally
2:44:08>> how I got over it was I am a finite
2:44:11limited fallible creature. Um, God has
2:44:15manifestly vindicated his church and
2:44:18maybe I don't know exactly how to
2:44:19respond to it, but I submit my intellect
2:44:21and will to what is being manifestly
2:44:23promag promuggated to me as truth with
2:44:25divine stamp of approval.
2:44:27>> So that's like the fundamental response
2:44:29that I have. Now again, how did I
2:44:30accommodate um hell to my worldview? How
2:44:33did I really just get to the point that
2:44:34I could do that? Yeah.
2:44:35>> Um,
2:44:37>> there were a few things. So there was
2:44:38this paper by Brian Cutter, the
2:44:40psychophysical harmony guy that I
2:44:41mentioned earlier. It's called hell and
2:44:42proportionality because this is
2:44:44ultimately the the the biggest kind of I
2:44:46think worry with hell is like how is
2:44:48this a proportional punishment and you
2:44:49you mentioned it's like we have the very
2:44:51various finite sins while on earth. Um
2:44:53how does that merit a kind of infinite
2:44:55punishment? Doesn't that seem
2:44:56disproportional? Right? So the objection
2:44:57would just be like hell is a
2:44:58disproportional punishment. God wouldn't
2:45:00inflict a disproportional punishment um
2:45:02because that's unjust and God is just
2:45:04therefore there's no such thing as hell.
2:45:05So that's like probably the steelman
2:45:07version of of the argument. and what
2:45:09what Brian Cutter points out in that
2:45:10paper. So I mean there are a few there
2:45:13are a few ways you could go. One um you
2:45:15could say that basically no the sins
2:45:18actually aren't finite in terms of their
2:45:19gravity.
2:45:20>> They are infinite in terms of their
2:45:22gravity because the one that they offend
2:45:24has infinite mer inf sorry infinite
2:45:25dignity infinite glory.
2:45:27>> Um and like just it is an intuitive
2:45:29common sensical thing that like
2:45:32>> the kind of thing that you harm uh
2:45:34matters a lot to the gravity. So, like,
2:45:36think about stepping on the the head of
2:45:38an ant.
2:45:38>> Yeah, there you go.
2:45:39>> Uh, listen, you shouldn't wantingly step
2:45:40on the heads of ants. Okay, don't do
2:45:42that. But that's not that's no that's
2:45:44nowhere near as bad as stepping on the
2:45:46head of a puppy.
2:45:47>> That's much worse. You should not step
2:45:49on the head of a puppy.
2:45:50>> You know what's much worse than stepping
2:45:51on the head of a puppy? Step stepping on
2:45:53the head of a baby or a grandma. That's
2:45:56much worse because of the kind of
2:45:58dignity or the kind of the kind of being
2:46:00that you're wronging. Right? And so if
2:46:02you if you just extrapolate this to
2:46:04God's case, this is a being of infinite
2:46:06dignity, your biggest benefactor,
2:46:08everything you owe to God. He is he is
2:46:10he is due a kind of honor that is
2:46:15utterly incompatible with the decisive
2:46:18rejection of him and the decisive
2:46:20turning away towards something that you
2:46:22know is gravely wrong and opposed to his
2:46:24law opposed to love of him your biggest
2:46:27benefactor and someone who is infinitely
2:46:29valuable infinitely worthy of honor and
2:46:31dignity and you say no to that. you
2:46:33valued let's say stealing a pack of gum
2:46:36over relationship with this infinite
2:46:38being and I don't know it wouldn't be
2:46:41given that principle that like you know
2:46:43the gravity of wrongs may very well
2:46:44scale in some way with the uh dignity of
2:46:46the one being offended maybe it is
2:46:48indeed an infinite harm maybe it is
2:46:50something which is infinitely grave in
2:46:51in uh in its matter you know if you
2:46:54decisively reject with full knowledge
2:46:56and deliberate consent
2:46:58>> with fully knowing that you're doing
2:46:59something gravely seriously wrong You
2:47:03stared clearheadedly at evil, something
2:47:07opposed to God, which evinces a hatred
2:47:09of God, and you chose it. You chose it.
2:47:13Maybe maybe I'm just wrong in my
2:47:15intuition that that doesn't have
2:47:16infinite gravity. Maybe it does have
2:47:18infinite gravity. It wouldn't be the
2:47:20first time my intuitions were wrong
2:47:21about things. So, that's one way you
2:47:24could go.
2:47:24>> Mhm.
2:47:24>> Of course, there are lots of objections
2:47:26to that. But, okay, you have objections
2:47:27to that. Then, there's this huge
2:47:28disjunction of other things that I could
2:47:30say. So this is where hell in
2:47:31proportionality, Brian Cutter's paper
2:47:32comes in. Maybe indeed over the course
2:47:35of the afterlife, the sufferings of hell
2:47:38are only in aggregate finite. How could
2:47:42that be? Well, maybe the intensity of
2:47:44the suffering decreases by a geometric
2:47:46proportion at certain periods. So that
2:47:48maybe you have like I don't know how to
2:47:49I don't know how to calculate, but maybe
2:47:51you have a you know let's say a thousand
2:47:52units of suffering for the first hundred
2:47:54years.
2:47:54>> Then you have 500 units of suffering.
2:47:56Then you have 250 units of suffering for
2:47:58the next portion. then you have a, you
2:48:00know, 125 and you just decrease it by
2:48:02half over time. If you add that up, you
2:48:05it's provable mathematical fact that
2:48:06that only adds to 2,000 units of
2:48:08suffering. So notice it is everlasting
2:48:10suffering. It is everlasting because
2:48:12you've sort of decisively rejected God.
2:48:14You've stared clear-headedly at evil and
2:48:15you've chosen that. You've conformed
2:48:17your will to evil. So God will respect
2:48:19your freedom to do that. Um, but if we
2:48:22adopt this model where the suffering
2:48:24geometrically decreases, then this total
2:48:26suffering is finite. And so if you think
2:48:27that the crimes are only finite in
2:48:28gravity, the punishment is only finite
2:48:30in gravity as well. So you can get
2:48:31around that. Or you could think that
2:48:32maybe uh I don't know what the church
2:48:34says about the following. So I fully
2:48:36submit my intellect and will to the
2:48:37magisterium. If what I say is against
2:48:39the magisterium, then take a lighter and
2:48:41burn it. Put it on a hard drive, burn
2:48:43it, and I'll be the first there to
2:48:44celebrate the burning. Okay. So maybe um
2:48:48hell is like a timeless state. Maybe
2:48:49it's not temporally endless. So it is
2:48:50endless. It is kind of like in some
2:48:52sense uh it doesn't end. But if it's
2:48:54timeless and you only have a finite
2:48:55amount of suffering, then uh it's never
2:48:58ending and it is suffering but it's only
2:49:00finite. So it's a finite punishment for
2:49:02what the objector thinks is a finite
2:49:04crime. And there are lots of other
2:49:05models you can go through you know um
2:49:07Jacqu meain or whatever it is. He's this
2:49:09I think 20th century toist. proposed
2:49:11this model called like the revery model
2:49:13or something like that where um
2:49:16basically God mitigates the suffering of
2:49:18the damned um over uh the course of time
2:49:21to the point that um after they've been
2:49:23meed out just punishment uh and maybe
2:49:26even this is totally unmmerited um God
2:49:28basically decreases their suffering
2:49:29decreases their suffering to the point
2:49:30that at some point they only experience
2:49:34the pain of loss of the beatotific
2:49:35vision but nevertheless in terms of
2:49:37their senses and their natural happiness
2:49:39they reach a state of natural beatitude
2:49:41So that's an example of like what Jack
2:49:43Maritain has proposed and I think
2:49:44Cardinal Avery Doulles has a post on
2:49:46first things about like the population
2:49:47of hell where he says as far as I can
2:49:49tell this is consistent with what's in
2:49:50the magisterium. I've talked with father
2:49:52James Dominic Rooney who has a really
2:49:53good book on hell with uh Routlledge. Um
2:49:56he talks about that model and he says as
2:49:59far as I recall that that's totally
2:50:00consistent with magisterial teaching. Um
2:50:02I'm not saying that this is true. My
2:50:04point is that here's a disjunction of
2:50:05things like you could say this or you
2:50:07could say this or you could say this or
2:50:09you could say this or you could say
2:50:10this. How confident can I be that all of
2:50:12these different proposals are false? Not
2:50:14very confident especially given that
2:50:16this is a speculative abstract
2:50:17theoretical domain where I've made lots
2:50:19of mistakes in the past where
2:50:20philosophers applying their their
2:50:22philosophical methods to the same stock
2:50:23of intuition to reach radically
2:50:24divergent conclusions. So we already
2:50:26know that we're kind of unreliable at
2:50:27this sort of reasoning. It's just
2:50:30different in quality the evidence here
2:50:32compared to
2:50:33>> no leg leg.
2:50:36>> Okay. No, no leg le like I just have to
2:50:38conform myself to the facts in that
2:50:40case. So, I don't know. There are there
2:50:41are there are I guess non-silly models,
2:50:44non-silly ways that you could see the um
2:50:47a decisive clear-headed rejection of God
2:50:49and embrace of evil um being infinite in
2:50:53gravity. there are ways where even if
2:50:54you think it's finite in gravity, there
2:50:55are models on which hell could only be
2:50:57uh finite in terms of the suffering
2:50:59that's um inflicted on the damned. So I
2:51:02don't know, I just I was able to just
2:51:04sufficiently mitigate the force of the
2:51:06problem of hell in my mind that I could
2:51:08I could see myself accepting it. And
2:51:10again, I just returned to this point
2:51:11about Christ.
2:51:13I'm not going to be clinging to my own
2:51:15kind of uh yeah my own kind of
2:51:17philosophizing with like this sounds
2:51:19like clinging to human wis wisdom as
2:51:21Paul says rather than like a a
2:51:22manifestation of divine power, you know,
2:51:24like [laughter] um I'm just clinging to
2:51:26my own understanding of things where God
2:51:28has kind of just shown his hand and I
2:51:31trust you God. I'm just going to become
2:51:32childlike in your presence and I know
2:51:34that whatever you do, God is going to be
2:51:36just and it's going to be merciful. And
2:51:39you know, I wouldn't be surprised if God
2:51:41surprises us with his his mercy, how
2:51:43merciful he is to creatures. So like I
2:51:45think Padre Peio even claimed it as I
2:51:48could correct me if I'm wrong if people
2:51:49know, but I think he claimed it as a
2:51:51private revelation that there's
2:51:53anti-mortem opportunity. So at the
2:51:55moment of death let's say between the
2:51:57bridge and the water at the moment of
2:51:59death there can be divergences between
2:52:01how long things seem to you in
2:52:02psychological time and how long in
2:52:05objective temporal reality the duration
2:52:07is such that in that moment God can give
2:52:11you the grace of let's say perfect
2:52:13contrition uh a a sorrow for your sins
2:52:17out of love of him above all else. And
2:52:19if God can give people the resistable
2:52:21grace, I'm not saying this is like an
2:52:23irresistible grace that God's given
2:52:24people. He's not determining people. But
2:52:25if he he may very well be able to, and I
2:52:28think Padre Peio claim this as a private
2:52:29revelation, that he gives people an
2:52:30anti-mortem opportunity at the moment of
2:52:33death, one last chance. Do you embrace
2:52:36the evil that you've been embracing so
2:52:38far? Or do you embrace me, the ultimate
2:52:40love of your life? Now, perhaps some
2:52:43people still stare clear-headedly at
2:52:44that and reject it. I mean, as Christ
2:52:46said with respect to the Pharisees, they
2:52:48saw his works. It was manifest to them
2:52:51>> and out of the evilness of their hearts,
2:52:53>> they rejected Christ.
2:52:54>> I think the same thing too of the
2:52:56Israelites who were guided with the
2:52:58pillar of cloud and pillar of fire
2:52:59because we often say, well, if it was
2:53:01more evident to me than I'd believe and
2:53:03yet we have an example of the Israelites
2:53:04where God's existence was very evident
2:53:06and yet their hardness of heart, they
2:53:09rejected him and they made a golden calf
2:53:11and worshiped it.
2:53:12>> Yeah. And I mean, that's what sin is.
2:53:14It's worshiping the creature over the
2:53:15creator. You're choosing a pack of gum
2:53:17that you stole over relationship with
2:53:18God. You're choosing the
2:53:20>> finite
2:53:22pleasure of like masturbation over union
2:53:26with the infinite God of the universe.
2:53:28>> I mean, what do you expect? So, anyway,
2:53:32yeah, that's helpful. What about gay
2:53:35stuff and [laughter] LGBT stuff? What
2:53:39has been your opinion of the Catholic
2:53:40Church's teaching on these things? I
2:53:42presume you've looked into them in
2:53:43greater detail
2:53:45>> because I think I mean I'm sure you're
2:53:47were too smart and wise to realize that
2:53:50the church didn't have the character
2:53:52she's often attributed as having namely
2:53:54we hate gay people. Yeah.
2:53:56>> When you read what the church teaches,
2:53:57it's really beautiful about our love for
2:54:00[snorts] those with samesex attraction.
2:54:02The idea that we're all in this
2:54:04together. We all struggle with
2:54:06disordered sexual desires that we have
2:54:08to reign in in
2:54:09>> and just improperly ordered desires in
2:54:11other cases as well. Um I mean you know
2:54:13when you when we say disordered right I
2:54:15mean Catholics are talking about it's
2:54:17not properly oriented toward the good
2:54:19right so it's uh you know all of our
2:54:21actions they have a kind of direction or
2:54:23orientation are we orienting ourselves
2:54:24toward the good or and even our desires
2:54:26have a kind of orientation. Are we
2:54:27desiring an object which is genuinely
2:54:28valuable or genuinely good or is it
2:54:30disvaluable or bad? So that we're not,
2:54:32you know, we're not trying to like or at
2:54:33least I'm not trying to medicalize
2:54:34things at this point when we're this is
2:54:36a moral category. This is a moral
2:54:37category whether you're directing
2:54:38something to the good or whether you're
2:54:40directing it away from the good.
2:54:42>> So yeah, I mean at the outset whenever I
2:54:44talk about this,
2:54:45>> I just want to emphasize that
2:54:49I would I would die. I would take a
2:54:51bullet for anyone in the LGBT community.
2:54:55I would take a bullet for them. And I'm
2:54:57not lying. I'm not lying. That's how
2:55:00much I want to love them. That's how
2:55:01much I do love them.
2:55:02>> All right.
2:55:03>> So that's I want to start with that so
2:55:04that people know that like and this is
2:55:07just like this issue matters a lot to
2:55:09me, right? And I' I've thought a lot
2:55:10about this. So and I struggle with it. I
2:55:12I I struggled a long time with it.
2:55:14[sighs]
2:55:15>> So
2:55:17how did I get over these hurdles? Well,
2:55:19one thing again,
2:55:21return to the I mean, it is a it is a
2:55:24good point like return to the the point
2:55:25about Christ. If you're sitting there
2:55:27with Christ, you see his miracles. You
2:55:29see him miraculously duplicate all the
2:55:31loaves and the fishes and whatnot.
2:55:32You're like, you see him heal people.
2:55:34He's like, get up and walk. You know,
2:55:35he's like, so that you know that the son
2:55:36of man has authority to forgive sins.
2:55:38Get up and walk. And the person gets up
2:55:39and walks. You see all that. You see him
2:55:41crucified. You're there next to the
2:55:43blessed mother and John at the foot of
2:55:45the cross. You see him. And then later
2:55:48on you're interacting with him in his
2:55:49glorified body. You see all that and it,
2:55:52you know, it just so happens that he has
2:55:53some moral teachings that great against
2:55:55your moral intuitions.
2:55:56>> It's ridicul I I think it's ridiculous
2:55:58if you're in that epistemic situation.
2:55:59It's ridiculous to cling to those moral
2:56:01intuitions and not submit yourself to
2:56:02Christ. He's been manifestally
2:56:04vindicated by God. He's been accredited
2:56:05to you as a divine legate. So submit
2:56:07your intellect to him, right? Um don't
2:56:10cling to your own understanding. Submit
2:56:13your intellect to him. And that's
2:56:14actually the rational thing to do in
2:56:15those circumstances. I think it is
2:56:16positively irrational if you see all of
2:56:18that to then be like, "Oh, yeah, but he
2:56:20had some teachings on morality that I
2:56:21just I sort of disagree with."
2:56:23>> Go against what popular culture say.
2:56:25>> Yeah. Go against what popular culture
2:56:26says. And again, like
2:56:28>> it's not like at least to me, it's not
2:56:30like he's saying that um you know, like
2:56:33good is evil or you know, like it is per
2:56:35you are morally obliged to
2:56:36recreationally torture children for fun
2:56:38or like 1 plus 1 equals 12.
2:56:40>> Like okay, that that that's
2:56:42discrediting. But when it's these other
2:56:44things where like I don't know the vast
2:56:45majority of humanity for the vast
2:56:47majority of time has thought these
2:56:48things are morally impermissible and uh
2:56:51I don't know like the arguments here are
2:56:53in a kind of speculative abstract domain
2:56:55and where it's really easy to see how
2:56:57our intuitions could be cognitively
2:56:58penetrated that is be affected by our
2:57:00prior beliefs and prior desires. So
2:57:03basically cognitive penetration is when
2:57:04you can either gain an intuition or lose
2:57:06an intuition um including in the moral
2:57:09domain um as a result of your prior
2:57:12beliefs or worldview or desires. Yes. So
2:57:15>> and moral intuitions are just
2:57:18overwhelmingly susceptible to cognitive
2:57:19penetration. I mean I've just been able
2:57:20to like throughout this process my moral
2:57:23intuitions have themselves just
2:57:24literally changed. Like the way things
2:57:26seem to me changed. They're so
2:57:27malleable, right? Yeah. They're so
2:57:29malleable. Like previously I have
2:57:30certain moral intuitions for or against
2:57:32something but then just as a result of
2:57:33changes in my background beliefs like I
2:57:35just no longer feel that like the
2:57:36intuitions like the way things seem to
2:57:37me it's like intuitions are highly
2:57:39cognitively penetrated. They're super
2:57:40prone to framing effects. There's
2:57:42significant interpersonal disagreement
2:57:43with respect to moral intuitions. It's
2:57:45really easy to talk yourself into an
2:57:47intuition or talk yourself out of an
2:57:48intuition. Um so like I don't know this
2:57:51just does not seem to be the sort of
2:57:53evidence that stacks up against leg
2:57:56you know like that sort of thing. Um, so
2:58:00and given that uh they're so susceptible
2:58:02to cognitive penetration, I don't know,
2:58:03that's like a non-truth tracking factor
2:58:04that could easily be explaining why I'm
2:58:06going ary with respect to the moral
2:58:07domain. And I mean, this is another
2:58:09thing. Catholicism seems to have an in
2:58:12like a plausible by Catholicism's own
2:58:14lights internal explanation for why I
2:58:16would have those intuitions and would go
2:58:18astray. Why would have intuitions about
2:58:19the permissibility of homosexuality? So
2:58:21this is called like a debunking
2:58:22explanation of intuition. Basically like
2:58:25if you adopt a theory which goes against
2:58:26certain intuitions, it's good to have a
2:58:28kind of explanation by the lights of
2:58:30your own theory why people would go
2:58:31wrong with respect to their intuitions
2:58:33and that actually mitigates the
2:58:34evidential force of those intuitions
2:58:35because then it's not surprising under
2:58:36the theory that you would go you would
2:58:38go astray with respect to those
2:58:39intuitions and I just think that
2:58:41Catholicism has plausible internal
2:58:42explanations plausible debunking
2:58:44explanations of these contrary
2:58:45intuitions about hell and about
2:58:47homosexuality and whatnot namely the
2:58:49knowetic effects of sin both original
2:58:51sin and personal sin. So it's just like
2:58:53I think it's unsurp we have darkened
2:58:55intellects. They're not totally
2:58:56destroyed, right? We still have a
2:58:57natural aptitude to discover things and
2:58:59to know things, but our minds are indeed
2:59:01broken. Our intuitions are indeed
2:59:03broken. And it's utterly unsurprising
2:59:05under Catholicism that some of our minds
2:59:08would be darkened in precisely these
2:59:10ways where it comes to like sexual sin
2:59:12and it comes to like my ultimate fate
2:59:14and other people's ultimate fate where
2:59:15it's kind of like not something I want
2:59:17to happen or I have to kind of stop
2:59:18engaging in certain behaviors that I
2:59:19find pleasurable. It's like it's not
2:59:20very it's not very surprising that the
2:59:22noetic effects of sin might kind of um
2:59:25manifest in these sorts of ways. So I
2:59:26started seeing that Catholicism has an
2:59:28intern and again this isn't even like
2:59:30you don't have to be a Catholic to
2:59:31recognize that this is a dialectically
2:59:33forceful point. Catholicism by its own
2:59:35lights, without having to add any
2:59:37additional posits that are ad hoc,
2:59:39already has an internally coherent
2:59:41debunking explanation for why you'd have
2:59:43contrary intuitions to it, for why some
2:59:45of us would go pretty pretty seriously
2:59:48astray with respect to some of our
2:59:49intuitions.
2:59:50>> Totally.
2:59:51>> So, and I just didn't So, Catholicism,
2:59:54it was just basically a and this also
2:59:57just goes to like the divine
2:59:58hiddenenness model. So let's talk about
2:59:59this divine hiddenness model because I
3:00:01was just my evidential situation was
3:00:02being called out by Catholicism. So like
3:00:06um this you know go Ethan Muse kind of
3:00:07introduced me to this but basically the
3:00:09divine hiddenness model is a model for
3:00:10how kind of God generally interacts with
3:00:13the world.
3:00:13>> So it's about God's like general modus
3:00:15operandi with respect to um both general
3:00:18revelation and special revelation. And
3:00:20the the thought is that he epistemically
3:00:22fine-tunes the evidence so that there's
3:00:26enough objective evidence out there
3:00:29>> to make the ascent of faith rational and
3:00:31perhaps even rationally obliged,
3:00:32>> but also enough kind of darkness, enough
3:00:36sort of counter evidence, enough kind of
3:00:38peripheral anomalies sprinkled in,
3:00:39enough counter like intuition sprinkled
3:00:41in to preserve the psychological
3:00:44possibility of doubt. And there are lots
3:00:47of I mean for starters this just like
3:00:48explains a lot of the miraculous
3:00:50evidence. It explained my um so sorry
3:00:53let me take a step back. There are lots
3:00:54of reasons why God might adopt this
3:00:56model. It preserves the freedom of the
3:00:57ascent of faith. If there are
3:00:59psychological and sometimes rational
3:01:01considerations pushing against
3:01:03Catholicism, but the objective evidence
3:01:05is also very strong in favor of
3:01:06Catholicism. When you're in that sort of
3:01:08situation, you can kind of like almost
3:01:10freely
3:01:12>> embrace the truth of Catholicism or
3:01:14reject it. Um, but also if there's a
3:01:17little bit of obscurity like that where
3:01:18there really is a psychological
3:01:19possibility of doubt that enables
3:01:21various goods. So like making a
3:01:24difference in the lives and salvation of
3:01:26others.
3:01:26>> Yeah.
3:01:28>> Evangelism, right? Think about like how
3:01:30beautiful my story is with Ethan Muse
3:01:32and Jimmy Aken and Swansona
3:01:35>> coming to me and just basically
3:01:37>> in a kind of secondary derivative
3:01:39participatory sense saving me, right?
3:01:41>> Mhm. So like think about how beautiful
3:01:43that is and that can actually in fact
3:01:44improve our relationships for all of
3:01:46eternity, right? So that could reap an
3:01:48infinite benefit throughout all of
3:01:50eternity. So when I thought about that
3:01:53hiddenness model, it was almost calling
3:01:55out my evidential situation. I was like
3:01:57I had I was I had so much evidence for
3:02:00Catholicism, but then I had these like
3:02:03rational and psychological barriers
3:02:05pushing me the other way. Like ah but
3:02:06what about these intuitions? so hard to
3:02:08give them up about homosexuality and
3:02:10hell and things like that.
3:02:13And you know, I had these like
3:02:14psychological barriers, you know, like I
3:02:16had built up this whole public persona
3:02:18of being the skeptic and like
3:02:19criticizing Catholicism and Christianity
3:02:21and theism and whatnot. Um, and that was
3:02:23pulling me away, but then I just like
3:02:25God was manifestally vindicating his
3:02:27church. And so then there was this tug
3:02:29of war. Um, and so Catholicism in that
3:02:34model in particular was just calling me
3:02:36out. who was calling out my evidential
3:02:38situation. It made perfect sense of my
3:02:39evidence and it also made perfect sense
3:02:40of lots of these miracle cases where
3:02:42there like as we said earlier with the
3:02:43Eucharist miracles, there are peripheral
3:02:45anomalies where you can cling to them if
3:02:46you want.
3:02:47>> How many debates have you done with
3:02:48Christians? Public debates or
3:02:50>> not not many public debates
3:02:52>> cuz I mean have you gone back and
3:02:53watched your debate with Father Gregory
3:02:55Pine to come full circle?
3:02:58>> That'll be fascinating.
3:03:00>> Yeah. Um we got to get you on the uh on
3:03:03his podcast to discuss that. Yeah.
3:03:05>> Yeah. That'd be awesome. That would be
3:03:07amazing. I'd love that.
3:03:08>> We have to begin wrapping up here.
3:03:10>> Okay.
3:03:10>> So, how do we do that? I mean, this is
3:03:12beautiful. Thank you, first of all, for
3:03:14sharing your lovely story and glory to
3:03:15Jesus Christ for your conversion and the
3:03:17good work that he's going to do through
3:03:19you despite your best efforts to thwart
3:03:21it. That's a joke, but almost not. Um,
3:03:27okay. Let's maybe we could wrap up with
3:03:29the uh
3:03:31>> the hiddenenness of God. I just want to
3:03:32start there. We you you can close how
3:03:34you want to as well. But the hiddenness
3:03:35of God thing, right? Because we see
3:03:37people that we really respect and admire
3:03:39and look up to, a friend of yours, Alex
3:03:41Okconor for example,
3:03:42>> and he would make the claim like, okay,
3:03:44I want to believe. Like I'm not lying to
3:03:47you when I say I want to believe, and
3:03:48yet I don't see the evidence sufficient
3:03:51to make that claim. What do you say?
3:03:53What have you said to him? What might
3:03:54you say to him?
3:03:56>> Yeah. Yeah. So I mean
3:03:56>> or someone like him if we don't want to
3:03:58call him out specifically.
3:03:59>> Well I mean one thing to say is that I
3:04:01don't think that this is a problem
3:04:02that's like probabilistically
3:04:04independent of the problem of evil. Once
3:04:05you conditionalize once you put in your
3:04:07background knowledge that God has
3:04:08allowed the Holocaust for instance then
3:04:10it then it just becomes much less
3:04:11surprising that he would allow other bad
3:04:13things for instance like people to be in
3:04:15a state of non-belief say. So like I
3:04:17just want to say that this is not like
3:04:18an additional piece of independent
3:04:19evidence from the problem of evil. And
3:04:21once you recognize that you start to see
3:04:22that actually a lot of the objections to
3:04:24theism
3:04:24>> it's a sub argument.
3:04:25>> Yeah. A lot of the objections to theism
3:04:27are probabilistically dependent in ways
3:04:30that really significantly temper their
3:04:32evidential force. Okay?
3:04:34>> Because like once you take into account
3:04:35evil for instance, once you put that in
3:04:37your background knowledge and even like
3:04:38one instance of horrific evil, then it
3:04:40becomes much less surprising that there
3:04:41would be other bad things because it's
3:04:43just much more likely once you have that
3:04:44in your background knowledge and you
3:04:44conditionalize on theism and you take
3:04:46theism as well cuz like we have to
3:04:47evaluate competing hypotheses. So we
3:04:49examine how likely the evidence is
3:04:50conditional on theism with our
3:04:51background knowledge and then we examine
3:04:52how likely the evidence is conditional
3:04:53on atheism in our background knowledge
3:04:55and then we see how well they they
3:04:56predict data and then we gain evidential
3:04:57points if one of them predicts it better
3:04:59than the other. But like again once we
3:05:02take into account evil then there's
3:05:03already going to once we conditionalize
3:05:05on theism and evil there's going to be
3:05:06half there's going to have to be some
3:05:08sort of story that God has for allowing
3:05:09bad things to occur
3:05:10>> right in which case that's very
3:05:12plausibly going to transfer over to the
3:05:14problem of divine hiddenness. And so
3:05:15then it significantly dense the force of
3:05:17divine hiddenness. So again like even if
3:05:18I don't have a particularly strong thing
3:05:20to say in response to this like there's
3:05:22just significant counterveilling
3:05:23considerations that we've gone through
3:05:24lots of things that we haven't even gone
3:05:26through which are very powerful um all
3:05:28the arguments for theism etc. and then
3:05:30the probabistic dependence of these
3:05:31arguments. So that's one thing. I guess
3:05:33we also didn't um well I'll make a few
3:05:35points. One is that um again I think if
3:05:39there are some people who are in a state
3:05:41of non-belief concerning the existence
3:05:43of God that enables lots of very
3:05:46profound goods like sincere seeking
3:05:49after God
3:05:50>> like helping like us having a kind of
3:05:54high stakes responsibility for helping
3:05:56each other come to knowledge of God and
3:05:58knowledge of the truth, right? in order
3:06:00for you for us to be able to make a
3:06:02difference to one another to like
3:06:03actually be able to help each other unto
3:06:05salvation there have to be some people
3:06:07who are kind of in that state of
3:06:08obscurity or something like that right
3:06:10so that's another thing that you could
3:06:12say a still third thing you could say
3:06:14some people try to appeal to various
3:06:15models on which actually um people who
3:06:17don't yet believe in God can be in some
3:06:19kind of implicit relationship with God
3:06:20that maybe they're not aware of and that
3:06:22maybe can kind of come to fruition um at
3:06:24uh let's say the moment of death or
3:06:26something like that um
3:06:28>> and maybe that can enable lots of
3:06:29profound goods um for various reasons
3:06:31like I don't know there's something
3:06:32there's something beautiful about the
3:06:34fact that like you know when I was an
3:06:36atheist and an agnostic I still had this
3:06:38like adoration almost of like truth and
3:06:42like reason and whatnot that's why I
3:06:43called my channel the majesty of reason
3:06:45>> I was swimming in the logos without
3:06:47knowing it you know um and I in my book
3:06:50in my majesty of reason book that I
3:06:51wrote when I was like 19 or something I
3:06:53I had in there like
3:06:54>> I I included a line where I was like we
3:06:57should love dare I say adore or the
3:07:00truth or something like that. Uh and
3:07:01that's when I was either an atheist or
3:07:03an agnostic or something like that. So,
3:07:05I don't know. I was sort of swimming uh
3:07:08in the depths of God kind of without
3:07:10knowing it. Um and you know, now I've
3:07:14kind of looked back and I see, oh God,
3:07:15it was you all along, right? It was you
3:07:17all along who I loved and I adored. Um
3:07:19and maybe, you know, even still then I
3:07:22was probably in a state of like mortal
3:07:24sin. So maybe I didn't have a kind of
3:07:25supernatural love of God. Um but even
3:07:28even a kind of like natural love and
3:07:31kind of cooperating with pervenient
3:07:32graces I think can be um incredibly
3:07:34valuable and can form some kind of
3:07:36implicit relationship with God.
3:07:37>> So you know this argument from Dine
3:07:38Henness assumes that people like can't
3:07:40be in a relationship with God or a
3:07:41valuable relationship with God if uh
3:07:43they don't believe.
3:07:44>> Um
3:07:45>> so
3:07:45>> that's good.
3:07:46>> Yeah that that's that's another thing
3:07:47that I would say. So I don't know there
3:07:48are lots of lots of responses to that.
3:07:49And then in terms of the problem of evil
3:07:50which we should briefly say because I
3:07:51gave a very forceful presentation of the
3:07:53problem of evil to which we have not. to
3:07:54the problem of evil [laughter]
3:07:56>> once and for all.
3:07:58>> Three basic responses.
3:07:59>> Okay.
3:07:59>> One, um it wouldn't be just terribly
3:08:02surprising given God given that God is
3:08:05infinitely wise. He so under theism, it
3:08:08wouldn't be terribly surprising that
3:08:09maybe there are just reasons that God
3:08:10has of which we're unaware for allowing
3:08:12various evils that there are.
3:08:13>> And notice I'm not saying that we're
3:08:14just we're totally in the dark about
3:08:16God's reasons. That's not what I'm
3:08:17saying. because my my various natural
3:08:18theological arguments for God's
3:08:20existence required me to make some
3:08:21judgments about um comparative judgments
3:08:23at least about divine psychology. So I'm
3:08:25not saying we're totally in the dark
3:08:26about God's existence, but we do need to
3:08:27have some kind of epistemic humility.
3:08:28And that requires us to assign a
3:08:30non-negligible credence or
3:08:32non-negligible probability to the
3:08:33hypothesis that maybe there are just
3:08:35reasons that God has for allowing
3:08:37various evils that I'm unaware of. And
3:08:38so long as that's the case, that will
3:08:40significantly dent the at least dent the
3:08:42evidential force of the problem of evil
3:08:44to the point that like it could it could
3:08:45really be overcome by like no leg. So
3:08:48that that's one thing to say. A second
3:08:49thing to say is that um well yeah I mean
3:08:52you could just say it actually is very
3:08:53very strong evidence but there's like
3:08:54very very very very very very very
3:08:57strong evidence for God's existence
3:08:58which just outweighs it.
3:08:59>> So that's the second thing that I would
3:09:01probably make. And then the third point
3:09:02that I make is just like I don't know
3:09:04there are so many theodysies out there
3:09:06in the philosophical literature which
3:09:07identify various goods that God may have
3:09:09that justify him in permitting various
3:09:11evils. Uh and if we take like the
3:09:12massive disjunction of those like either
3:09:14this good or this good or this the
3:09:16odyssey or this the odyssey. Um I think
3:09:18that very significantly dense the force
3:09:20of the problem of evil cuz then like the
3:09:22problem of evil to run it uh and to make
3:09:24evil very surprising under theism you
3:09:26basically have to deny systematically
3:09:28each and every one of those theodys. Um
3:09:30so like one one example of a theodysy
3:09:32for evolutionary animal suffering will I
3:09:34was going to ask that.
3:09:34>> Yeah. No there are a few. So I mean Tren
3:09:36Dhy has this book on um uh the problem
3:09:38of animal pain theodysy for creatures
3:09:40great and small where basically um
3:09:42>> there will be a kind of afterlife for
3:09:43for animals you know uh where the
3:09:45sufferings that they experience in this
3:09:46life actually are going to be uh they're
3:09:48going to form part of an integrated
3:09:50whole which is you know better on the
3:09:52whole as a result of the sufferings that
3:09:55they underwent and basically their
3:09:56cognitive capacities are going to be
3:09:57elevated to some extent in the escaton
3:09:59in the end times. so that they can
3:10:00appreciate their role in in God's
3:10:02providential plan.
3:10:02>> Why not mosquitoes?
3:10:04>> It depends on whether or not they're
3:10:05conscious, you know. So if
3:10:06>> be conscious
3:10:06>> why
3:10:07>> they have to be conscious.
3:10:08>> Oh, maybe not.
3:10:09>> So maybe maybe the mosquitoes too. I
3:10:11mean the lion will lay down with the
3:10:12lamb, right? Like why not those very
3:10:13lions and lambs that existed throughout
3:10:15evolutionary history say? So um
3:10:17>> maybe they actually do kind of uh have
3:10:20some kind of like narratival development
3:10:22in their life and maybe they actually
3:10:22can cultivate some kind of virtue that
3:10:24outweighs the sufferings that they
3:10:25experience in in this life as a result
3:10:26of things in the next life. Um,
3:10:28>> is this his primary argument to go
3:10:30against Thomas and saying that animals
3:10:32will be in heaven?
3:10:33>> Uh, well, so when you say be in heaven,
3:10:35like I don't I don't think we should say
3:10:37they experience the botific vision.
3:10:38>> No.
3:10:38>> Um, [clears throat] but like uh
3:10:41>> Yeah, but I don't think Aquinas says
3:10:42there'll be animals in heaven.
3:10:44>> Okay.
3:10:45>> Experiencing the divine uh sorry, the
3:10:47botific vision or otherwise, but that's
3:10:49not church teaching. So,
3:10:50>> right. Right.
3:10:51>> As far as as far as I can tell, um, this
3:10:53is totally consistent with magisterial
3:10:54teaching. So, that's one.
3:10:54>> Yeah, it is. It is consistent. But is
3:10:56that his primary is that Trent Doy's
3:10:57primary argument that
3:10:58>> I think that's his that's one of his m
3:11:00major responses to the problem of
3:11:01evolutionary animal suffering. I mean
3:11:03there's a more recent one um by uh Brian
3:11:05Cutter again he's one of my favorite
3:11:06philosophers and Philip Swenson it's
3:11:07called the omission theodysy it's a
3:11:09paper that won the Sanders prize a very
3:11:11very like esteemed renowned prize in
3:11:13philosophy um and it's published in
3:11:14Oxford studies in philosophy of religion
3:11:15I think it's actually forthcoming um and
3:11:17the thought basically is that um
3:11:20uh we already have in our background
3:11:22knowledge that for God has given us very
3:11:26high stakes moral responsibility for how
3:11:29well the lives of other creatures go
3:11:31like other animals but also So for other
3:11:33human beings like he's basically put us
3:11:34in high stakes moral circumstances where
3:11:38either through our omission to help or
3:11:39through our helping we can make a
3:11:40massive difference to how well the lives
3:11:42of others go. And why might why might
3:11:44God do that sort of thing? Well because
3:11:45if we do indeed help the person
3:11:47>> that can reap infinite benefits across
3:11:49across all of eternity because that at
3:11:51least enables a better relationship
3:11:53between me and the person that I helped
3:11:54for all of eternity. Like you you saved
3:11:56me or you saved me from the the I was
3:11:58drowning and you saved my life. Think
3:12:00about like if if that improves our
3:12:02relationship for all of eternity, that
3:12:03good can kind of aggregate and be an
3:12:04infinite good.
3:12:05>> So that can uh the the possibility the
3:12:09enabling that kind of infinite good can
3:12:11justify risking finite harms of us
3:12:13omitting to help other people.
3:12:15>> Now so we already have in our background
3:12:16knowledge that this is kind of God's mo.
3:12:18This is something that like God um may
3:12:21very well plausibly be interested in
3:12:22doing giving us high stakes moral
3:12:24responsibility. But then just apply that
3:12:25to the evolutionary process. Maybe there
3:12:27are various beings, non-human agents who
3:12:30were delegated with the task of
3:12:32benevolently guiding the evolutionary
3:12:33process away from pain and suffering and
3:12:35languishing and death and whatnot and
3:12:37towards a more kind of kumbaya symbiosis
3:12:39but they freely omitted to intervene and
3:12:42again the reason why so maybe these are
3:12:44like um angels for instance and some of
3:12:46them said no I will not serve and I will
3:12:48not guide the evolutionary process uh in
3:12:50the direction of in a kind of benevolent
3:12:51direction. Uh and so again this this can
3:12:54be justified by the fact that if they
3:12:56had done
3:12:57>> their divinely appointed task that could
3:13:00enable infinite goods for all of
3:13:02eternity.
3:13:02>> And again the point with these different
3:13:04theories isn't that they're the correct
3:13:06one or you're saying that they're
3:13:07correct one.
3:13:08>> Yeah. I'm just trying to give an
3:13:08accommodation, right? I'm just trying to
3:13:10say like sure maybe this is like this
3:13:12isn't Oh, and this another thing like
3:13:14this doesn't this story doesn't need to
3:13:15be plausible to the atheist. The point
3:13:17is like conditional on theism.
3:13:18>> That's right.
3:13:19>> Conditional on theism because we're
3:13:20trying to predict. We're trying to see
3:13:21how probable is the evidence of evil
3:13:23conditional on theism. Right? So given
3:13:25theism,
3:13:27>> is this at least a non-negligibly likely
3:13:29story to be true? And I think it is
3:13:30non-negligibly likely. For starters, we
3:13:32already have significant empirical
3:13:34evidence for the existence of demonic
3:13:36phenomena for these non-human
3:13:37intellects. Secondly, it's good to
3:13:39create good creatures. And you know
3:13:41what's up with this ginormous gap
3:13:42between us and God, right? Like the
3:13:44intellects of us. We're these puny
3:13:46intellects. It wouldn't be surprising at
3:13:47all if God created hordes of even more
3:13:49intellectually capable beings than us.
3:13:50so that even more beings can experience
3:13:52the botific vision and help each other.
3:13:53We already know in our background
3:13:54knowledge that God gives people at least
3:13:56us this significant high stakes moral
3:13:58responsibility such that if we omit to
3:14:01take our moral obligation seriously that
3:14:03can have very drastic consequences in
3:14:04the lives of others.
3:14:06>> Uh and so like we already have in our
3:14:07background knowledge like significant
3:14:09testimonial testimonial evidence to
3:14:11demonic phenomena. This is not at all an
3:14:13ad hoc hypothesis. We already know from
3:14:14the Bible you know that like it's
3:14:16already said in the Bible. So this isn't
3:14:17some ad hoc posit that like Satan is the
3:14:19prince of this world. He's the prince of
3:14:20the powers of the air and things like
3:14:21that. Um we know we know that like we
3:14:24can see why there may very well be
3:14:26infinite goods enabled by this
3:14:27differencem responsibility over the
3:14:29course of uh evolutionary history by
3:14:31giving these angels this kind of
3:14:32providential governance over the rest of
3:14:34creation. And even like Aquinas said
3:14:35that yeah God gave the angels uh certain
3:14:38tasks in the providential ordering or
3:14:39governing of creation. Um we yeah I mean
3:14:43so I think that like conditional on
3:14:45theism it's not at all surprising that
3:14:47God might create beings like this. It's
3:14:48not at all surprising given the infinite
3:14:49goods that it enables that he would give
3:14:51them this differencem responsibility.
3:14:53>> Um, and it's yeah, it's just not at all
3:14:56ad hoc. We already have significant
3:14:57evidence for demonic phenomena. So, I
3:14:58just take this to be like utterly non-ad
3:15:00hoc and just not actually very
3:15:01surprising under theism. Um, and again,
3:15:03the evolutionary horrors that we see are
3:15:06finite bads, right? However bad they
3:15:08are, they are finite. And God basically
3:15:11um allowed the creatures to be able to
3:15:15have that high stakes moral
3:15:16responsibility. the the angels or
3:15:18whatever they he gave them this divinely
3:15:19appointed task to providentially govern
3:15:21the creatures and if they had if they
3:15:23had gone through with their divinely
3:15:24appointed role that would have been
3:15:27improved the relationships between them
3:15:28and the creatures for all of eternity.
3:15:30So there is an infinite payoff um and
3:15:32God was justified in basically risking
3:15:34them um using their free will and
3:15:36abusing their free will in that kind of
3:15:37way so that they freely omit to guide
3:15:40the evolutionary process. And notice
3:15:41this is not like demons are like
3:15:43tinkering with the tectonic plates or
3:15:45like setting ablaze forest fires. So
3:15:47this is totally compatible with our best
3:15:48scientific evidence. Um this is it
3:15:51explains why lots of the evolutionary
3:15:53evils seem to be kind of like randomly
3:15:54or half-hazardly distributed. Um so I
3:15:58don't know I think that this can like at
3:15:59least dent the force of the problem of
3:16:00evil um significantly. So like we and
3:16:02again just I'll just take the
3:16:04disjunction of these various different
3:16:05theodysies. like either animal afterlife
3:16:08or you know this differencem like angel
3:16:11abandonment theodysy or this kind of you
3:16:14know maybe there are reasons of which I
3:16:15were unaware or this and you just put
3:16:17all those together and I don't know it's
3:16:19it can significantly dent the evidential
3:16:21force of the problem of evil.
3:16:23>> So
3:16:23>> all right well you have a 5hour show
3:16:26that's up right now over on your
3:16:27channel.
3:16:28>> I don't know how yeah how long it is.
3:16:29>> We don't know how long it'll [laughter]
3:16:30be. I suspect it'll at least be 5 hours.
3:16:33>> I don't know. Is it What are you
3:16:34thinking? Uh yeah, it'll probably be at
3:16:36least five.
3:16:37>> It's terrific that you should make it
3:16:39the longest video. 10 hours I say just
3:16:42and just have Ethan Muse bringing you
3:16:44espresso. [laughter]
3:16:45Yeah. But anyway, we will put a link to
3:16:47that. We'll share this video with you so
3:16:49we can post it together and people can
3:16:51go check out Majesty of Reason and
3:16:52support your work. And then uh do you
3:16:55currently have a Patreon or something?
3:16:56>> I do have a Patreon. Yes.
3:16:58>> Well, that'll be interesting. It will be
3:16:59interesting. Let's ask people who are
3:17:00watching right now to consider support
3:17:02your work.
3:17:02>> I would appreciate that. You should get
3:17:03your tears in order.
3:17:04>> I should get my tears in order. Yeah.
3:17:06>> You know, right now so that who watch
3:17:08this could go over and support.
3:17:10>> I appreciate that cuz I Who knows? I
3:17:11might lose patrons who were like atheist
3:17:13agnostics. Just
3:17:14>> like when I when I interviewed Did you
3:17:15ever watch the interview with me and
3:17:16camera?
3:17:16>> Oh, yeah. You should have flown me out
3:17:17to the Vatican. No, I'm kidding.
3:17:19[laughter]
3:17:19>> I should have
3:17:22did the same thing. We promoted his
3:17:23thing right there and invited people.
3:17:24That's really cool, dude. Yeah. Thanks
3:17:26for coming on the show and sharing all
3:17:28of this. I know you have so much more
3:17:30>> to say, but
3:17:31>> Yeah. Well, thank you for having me and
3:17:32you know, praise God. This is all God's
3:17:34grace, right? It's God working through
3:17:35me and Mary working through me as her
3:17:37instrument. Okay, how about we end with
3:17:38this? There's going to be mothers and
3:17:40fathers and brothers and sisters who
3:17:41watch this who have a loved one who's
3:17:43away from the church and it doesn't seem
3:17:45possible that they'll come back. What's
3:17:47your one piece of advice to them?
3:17:52I mean, pray, right? Pray, fast, um,
3:17:55give arms in support. Um, and like
3:17:58basically fly to our blessed mother. I
3:18:00mean, pray rosary upon rosary upon
3:18:02rosary upon rosary upon rosary. And uh
3:18:05God won't neglect our prayers.
3:18:07>> Well, I feel like the example you laid
3:18:09out earlier of your parents who spoke to
3:18:11God about you more than they spoke to
3:18:13you about God.
3:18:14>> And this like peaceful surrender is what
3:18:16we're called to. We're not called to be
3:18:18like the disciples in the boat who freak
3:18:21out, wake up Jesus, say, "Don't you care
3:18:22that we're perishing?" That's how we
3:18:24often pray. And he rebukes them after he
3:18:26rebukes the wind and the waves for
3:18:28praying in that way. But instead, I
3:18:31think what's I know it's easier said
3:18:32than done. I'm aware of this, but a
3:18:34peaceful surrender. Lord, I give you
3:18:36this person. I trust that you love them
3:18:38and want their good more than I do.
3:18:41>> Um that's the ticket.
3:18:42>> And don't I mean, you know, sometimes we
3:18:45are um a little light on fasting. So
3:18:47like, you know, consider fasting for
3:18:48this. I mean, like it's a if you're in
3:18:50the state of grace, it's a meritorious
3:18:52cause of grace. So like if you give up a
3:18:54breakfast or you take a cold shower or
3:18:56you know you have an intentionally bland
3:18:58meal or you know you have a black fast
3:19:00or something like don't underestimate
3:19:02the power of fasting. You combine
3:19:04fasting and prayer daily say at least
3:19:06one decade of the rosary for them a day.
3:19:08Um God will inundate them with grace.
3:19:10>> I like what you said there about just
3:19:11giving up breakfast or something because
3:19:13often we kind of think well I can't do
3:19:14anything heroic so I won't do anything
3:19:16at all.
3:19:16>> You can do so much heroic. You could you
3:19:17could you could not eat for a day. You
3:19:19could not eat for a No, I understand
3:19:20that you're we're capable of acting
3:19:22heroically, but my point is when we're
3:19:24invited to do something heroic, we often
3:19:26shrink back. My point is what you just
3:19:28said, fast from breakfast. Do something.
3:19:30Just do anything. And even if you don't,
3:19:32so I understand a lot of people have
3:19:34like dietary restrictions or they're
3:19:35like professional athletes. They don't
3:19:36fast, but you can eat a bland meal,
3:19:39right?
3:19:40>> Yeah. You can have an intentionally
3:19:41bland meal. So, um instead of putting
3:19:42the sauce in the pasta, just have the
3:19:44bland pasta.
3:19:45>> There's something beautiful about
3:19:46fasting in a way that is unbragy.
3:19:48>> Yes. Like if you say, "I didn't have
3:19:50that second cup of coffee." No one will
3:19:52clap for you. But it's something. It's a
3:19:54little thing that you can do.
3:19:55>> Yeah. Yeah. I took my sister to a Marian
3:19:57apparition site while she was still an
3:19:59atheist and agnostic. And I fasted like
3:20:01a coward for her, but with great desire
3:20:04for her conversion and love, but I did I
3:20:06mean I could have been way better than I
3:20:08was, but I did fast from X, Y, and Z.
3:20:10And she came to Christ on that trip.
3:20:12Like she just went to confession. Like
3:20:14my sister who dresses in black and is
3:20:17just like upset at the world, she went
3:20:19to confession.
3:20:19>> Wow. Yeah.
3:20:20>> Praise God. Praise God.
3:20:22>> All right. God bless. Thanks for being
3:20:23on the show.
3:20:24>> Thanks for having me.
3:20:31[music]
3:20:33>> So, if you've made it this far, I'm
3:20:35willing to bet that you don't hate what
3:20:37you're watching. So, you should, you
3:20:40know, maybe consider liking and
3:20:41subscribing. Go on. Consider it.
3:20:44Consider it.

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