how did my name is anneka Souza and you're listening to Catholic versus atheist just tell the listeners a little bit about yourself who you are what you believe and why you believe it yeah so I'm just a regular Joe I'm not an apologist I'm not a counter Paula gist not a philosopher I have a regular job in IT and I was a Christian for at least 13 years during my adult years and then I left the faith and now I try to look for conversations that'll you know bring more knowledge to people to myself in regards to that matter and that approach has changed through the years and that's why I kind of don't like very much the Catholic verses idea I prefer Catholic with atheist before we get into the philosophy and ideas maybe just talk a little bit about your childhood how you were raised if you were raised Catholic or if you were raised atheist just describe a little bit what it was like in the home with philosophy and religion if you would I grew up in Brazil and so I was raised nominal Catholic and by the age of my early teens I think I had some disappointments in family and that led me to question what whether God existed or not I was sort of the enraged atheist and that lasted until I was about 18 and I started my my family started going to a Jellico Protestantism and that had some in place over the years I converted when I was almost 19 and was led to look into philosophy politics ethics the whole array of things and that led me to my deconversion five six years ago in your honest opinion do you think that you ever knew God and loved God do you want the Jordan Peterson style answer or no my personal answer your answer because if you take a any type of series say Star Wars or Harry Potter for the younger generation if you know a character very well if you know what we want kenobi which is a very honorable character in the Star Wars series you can relate to him you can have a relationship with him you'll hear him talking to you you know what he would do in such a such situation sort of the what would Kenobi do and in that sense yes people can have a relationship with a fictional character they can experience that relationship so in that sense yes people can have an honest relationship with God which in my opinion is a fictional character so yes I know so is that a relationship with a real person no it's not are you a real person do you exist I think that's an irrelevant question but yes well it is relevant because either you are the source of that existence or not there's an old third option so you are either self existent or not why would that question even matter I am here I have to take decisions tomorrow I have to go to work and I have to create a program I work in aerospace and right now in data processing for a space so I need my program to do things that are predictable how does knowing whether I am the source of my existence or not help with that or with anything else it doesn't it does help because if you're not the source of your own existence then you need to know God to love God and to serve God otherwise you're in deep deep trouble see this is the whole point of religion is to reconnect with your Creator so do you think it's more important to reconnect with the Creator for this life or for the next one it's more important for the next life because the next life you're going to have one of two outcomes one of them is very pleasant and the other is not pleasant at all to put it mildly so heaven and hell are the two outcomes awaiting you and you have to choose it's a question of your will do you love the self-existent being the one necessary being the uncaused first cause do you love your Creator yes or no this is what it comes down to that's why it's very important that you wake up and realize that you are not God and that God is God right so if I said I had twenty billion dollars and if you invested $10,000 and my project later on I would give you at least a share like 1 billion dollars of that the tastic projects that I'm involved in and you say ok when are you going to give me that 1 billion dollars I say later ok I'm going to travel to Europe when I come back I'm gonna give you that you won't bid in Dallas for sure but I don't give you a date you call me 10 years later say Kate where is my 1 billion dollars he did I come back yet I said you know you're still in Europe so yeah when I go back I'll give you the money lenders how long will it take for you to realize that you have been fooled well I don't trust any human I only trust God so I wouldn't invest in your company but there's a categorical difference between you because you're contingent you're radically contingent and you're eminently fallible whereas God is infallible and he's necessary and he's omnipotent and he's all good and deserving of all my love you see there's a radical difference of category it's not a question of a difference of degree it's a difference in kind right we can't compare apples and oranges in that way I agree but we can compare with this conversation because who is telling me about heaven in hell it's use not God so it's exactly like me offering you a billion dollars you're offering me heaven in hell not God in five minutes we can come to the conclusion that you are not God and that God is God we just need to look at contingency we need to look at the principle of causality and you will you we'll agree that there is a supernatural first cause that is not spatial not temporal and that is infinite in every perfection it would only take five minutes but you're not willing to do that we could have this conversation but I'm more interested in meta conversation yes so if you were convinced today that your religious view is incorrect would you lose something no well do you have a job or related to your religious practice no if I were to change my worldview I would celebrate because I don't want to cling to a lie I want to approach the truth so if I realize I'm believing a lie and I embrace a fuller portion of the truth oh I would celebrate right I agree that that should be the case but most of the times it's not right so people have jobs related to religion their professional apologists or their priests or their teachers either in church or college or school and they have families there but it's just I don't know what's your family's inclinations and people can be shunned or they can have some contact being damaged by that change of religion sometimes even believe our association can change that as well do you think none of that will change for you nothing will change for me nothing would change I would just be happy to have gotten closer that much closer to the truth and none of your relationships would change because of that well my wife would be ecstatic because she's an atheist oh really all my entourage are atheist and agnostic I'm the only one that converted 10 years ago it's interesting because think about it do you have this kind of conversations with your family your friends I want to but no one wants to talk about religion or philosophy so we're in the same boat here when I first D converted I had a very raging time because it's hard to realize or to at least think that you have been fooled for so long and you have committed so much to something and for at least a couple of years how this conversation started like a regular debate with arguments being presented for one sided they are there people there that was my thing and I realized not soon enough that it doesn't work yeah so why do you think that doesn't work because it's not a problem of the intellect conversion and faith is a problem of the will so we are loved by God and we need to freely choose to love him back it's a problem of the will not a problem of the intellect because there's a certain slavery to sin and God wants us to be slaves to him to his goodness and to his freedom but we'd rather be slaves to sin because it's what we're familiar with it's more comfortable it's more predictable you talked about predictability well it's more predictable being a slave to sin than it is being a slave to a God that is wild and free and incomprehensible and mysterious what do you mean by a slave to sin because that's one thing I don't quite understand okay so you open a bag of chips and you say I'm just gonna have one and then you eat a second when you say okay with it this is my last one and then you have a third one and a fourth one and then the whole bag is gone right it's like we cannot control our compulsions because we get these little pleasures we have difficulty having self-control and making self sacrifice for a higher good this is the very definition of sin is choosing deliberately choosing a lower good over the highest good okay as I mentioned I used to be an evangelical Christian and that means having strict moral behavior but my behavior didn't change in fact I am probably morally more strict now than when I was Christian I don't do anything that I didn't do before D converting so even intellectually I have a hard time grasping what you mean by being your slave to sin that that just doesn't click okay I give you one example do you remember when you were evangelical Christian do you remember what the first commandment was sure okay so you used to try to keep it now you don't try to keep it that's why you're a slave to sin because of the first commandment you used to strive to keep the first commandment now you can't be bothered right but can you will yourself to believe something or to not believe something because when I first suspected that God didn't exist I wasn't looking into that as I mentioned I was looking into politics and ethics and when I first suspected I was desperately trying to find a reason to be wrong I didn't want to not believe in God if anything I was looking for reasons to cling to that belief I never chosen to not leave and then can I love something that I don't believe in the analogy I would use is marriage so you're married now yes I am okay have you ever met an attractive woman that you weren't married to in the time that you have been married so on record off record okay let's talk about me rather than you so I am married have been married for 24 years I love my wife I think she's beautiful but I have had opportunities to have sex with other women that were attractive okay so I had to say no even though even though the opportunity was there the attraction was there the pleasure is real that I could have indulged in everything in my nature was saying yes you can go for it but there are principles that guided me and said look there consequences if you go down this path it will feel good you will be able to rationalize it and you will afterwards perhaps say that you had no choice because of your human nature and because of the way that the parts fit together so naturally and effortlessly and pleasurably but there's a principle that overrides that instinct that lower animal instinct like the animals of the field have the exact same instincts to reproduce with those that they're attracted to right but you have we have a higher nature because we have we are made in the image and likeness of God we have free will and reason and our reason is a voice to the conscience that says yes or no this is good or this is not good so I listen to that voice but there are plenty of people I can tell you there plenty of people that don't listen to that voice for whatever reason and they're sucked into the snare of adultery and their marriage and their family is ruined okay this is a reality to deny that it would be very foolish it is a reality and every one of those people that said yes to this temptation and whose lives and marriages and families were ruined because of that mistake they can all point to how natural and effortless and pleasurable the whole process of sleeping with their secretary or whatever it was how natural that process was right so we can't argue based on the natural inclinations that we have we need to rise above that using our freewill and our reason this is what makes us human are you saying that not everything that we wish that we want is natural no I'm saying everything that you are tempted by is good right but the definition of sin is deliberately choosing a lesser good over the highest good and God is the highest good and God says don't sleep with other women everything that you could possibly be tempted by is necessarily good ontologically good it's not necessarily morally good though that's the difference it's not necessarily morally good so when you were tempted away from God what ever tempted you away was natural and it was ontological ii good but it was not morally good and the proof is in the pudding because right now you feel completely justified and you think that whatever drew you away from God was good and right and holy and that there is no God and that we can't even know him even if we wanted to know him because he doesn't exist right so this is the price you're paying for your sin but it's not too late you can come back to God you just need to swallow your pride and you need to be humble and admit that you are not self existent and therefore you have to find this God serve him love him and come back into the church yeah I'm not going to respond to anything you just said okay I'm just gonna forget about good and bad when you said about things that we want it seems that there was some difference between natural will in some sort of unnatural will that I superior no I never said that your inclinations are not natural I never said that your inclinations are natural everything you're tempted with is natural and good now you could be tempted by the preternatural you could be tempted by demons putting images in your mind or recalling images better yet the images that you exposed yourself to by your own free will you exposed yourself for example to pornographic images and the demons can bring those images back up before your eyes in order to tempt you everything about that scene is good the women are good the pleasure is good everything about it is good and natural but it's not the highest good the highest good is to follow God's commandments and to have self-control and moderation and temperance and all the rest how do you think that kind of argument helps people get closer to knowing God because it's like the image I like to uses of the Titanic we're on a ship that everyone thinks is unsinkable and everyone's enjoying themselves in the first-class lounge eating drinking and carousing and the captain says we've hit an iceberg and the Titanic is sinking so please make your way to the lifeboats if you want to be saved and you're in the first-class lounge enjoying yourself saying look I'm a good person I'm enjoying myself I've paid my way onto the Titanic leave me alone and I'm saying well excuse me but we've hit an iceberg and the ship's going down and you keep pointing it to the pamphlet that says well this ship is unsinkable so we don't see the same reality the reality that I see is what the captain told me the captain told me and I believe him that we've hit an iceberg and the Titanic is sinking so please make your way to the lifeboats and you're just saying I don't believe you and it's a life-and-death situation there's a sense of urgency that I have that you find bewildering and that you find perhaps foolish or naive but I guess we're gonna find out when you die right this is Pascal's wager if you're wrong you're going to regret it if I'm wrong I have nothing to regret I just won't exist okay but please put a pin in Oscars wager let's go back for a moment to the Titanic thing why do you think people are just going get your nuts yes we essentially we don't believe you first of all they're drunk and they're full of rich food and the music is hypnotizing and the beautiful bodies that are swaying all around them on the dance floor they're very mesmerizing and it's enchanting and everyone's laughing and having sophisticated conversations and it's just not easy to believe that this unsinkable ship is sinking it's just not easy I'm not blaming you or anyone else it is incredible but for God's sake please sober up wake up and let's make our way to the lifeboat please but if I have to heard that before and if I have checked the whole let's see there's no hole in the hole no it's not possible for you to check the hull and to determine that you're not in danger this is the whole point of my analogy is that we really are in danger if we ignore the captain because we are not self existent yeah but do you think that it's something that covers their eyes that they cannot see or since that they don't want to look at it because it seems very unsure at all that you would just say they're just drunk and they don't reason well because to me that's what it sounds like well when someone says I have nothing to worry about there's no way that God exists there's no way that there could be a negative consequence for refusing to return God's love when someone says that that is the height of arrogance it is insane it doesn't correspond with reality and it doesn't call here as a story even as a fairytale it doesn't make any sense at any level atheism makes absolutely no sense so it's not uncheered abow for me to point this out to you or to anyone else right right okay no can I take back that pin on Pascal's wager sure okay so you're saying that you don't lose anything by believing God even if you're incorrect correct yeah all right so do you remember the first commandment as stated by Jesus yeah love of God love God so on with all your strength or your something else all your hurt or your soul or your mind everything yep so essentially your religion costs you everything yeah hey so if you're incorrect you have given up everything yeah okay so that's called waitress incorrect in its first words no but even the secular atheist knows that self-sacrifice is the most beautiful and worthwhile thing and the most meaningful thing that's what love is love is a self giving no atheist that I've ever met says oh no I don't love because love is a self giving it's a self sacrifice it's a self denial therefore I don't love my mother because she gave her life to me she gave her energy to me she gave her health to me she gave her time to me therefore my mother is a fool no no one says that not even the most hardcore atheist would say that about his own mother everyone knows that love is self-sacrifice and that love is self-denial and that love is the highest virtue everyone knows that even you yeah so I don't like the label atheist because atheism doesn't inform you of anything it doesn't motivate me to do anything it just means that when someone asks do you believe in God I just answer no that's all Asia is amiss that's why I prefer to call myself a pragmatist and that has nothing to do with whether I know the source of my existence or not whether I believe in the supernatural and goes whether I'm a naturalist tourists the realist or idealist has nothing to do with any other question about any other subject so saying something about atheists doesn't add to the conversation are you a theist no not okay well there are logical implications for that right and we call this atheism because there are so many logical implications for that rejection of theism there's so many touching on metaphysics touching on morality touching on freewill touching even on science on reason it touches on everything everything that's it touches on love right we just finished talking about love you know the love of your mother you as an atheist you have there are logical philosophical implications for your understanding of what your mother's love is and it basically reduces it to an arbitrary configuration of matter energy in space-time that's all your mother's love is it's just another random configuration of matter energy in space-time that's all it is if you're an atheist if you're not really an atheist if you're just a confused theist who's wandered off and you're confused about metaphysics and morality and everything else then hopefully you'll wander back but if you are an atheist there are many many many many many implications and they're all absurd they're all absurd each and every one did I say anything about though you don't have to because if you call yourself an atheist I know that you do not believe that love is anything more than a random configuration of matter energy and space-time that's all it is yeah saying that I'm an atheist doesn't say anything about what I believe about love it does it says everything you do not believe that there is first of all a supernatural realm you think that everything is natural you denied this earlier said well it doesn't necessarily mean that I'm a naturalist well yes it does you cannot believe in the supernatural if you're an atheist can I can I not believe in ghosts you do not believe in ghosts I know that you do not believe in ghosts if you're a self-consistent atheist you do not believe in ghosts because ghosts are supernatural right I happen to not believe in ghosts but there are at least legends of people that label themselves atheists that believe in ghosts there are people that believe in reincarnation that are themselves atheists because if there is something that's not known and it starts to be known whatever it is it's going to be considered natural because supernatural just like chance is a label to that which we don't know know your mind is supernatural and I'm interacting with your mind right we have an intimacy with the supernatural the supernatural presupposes the natural okay I'm a computer programmer so when I put together code that's just electrons and ions and metal so on that's not the program the program is what arises from that process of electrons the niners changing position yeah but if you put a bunch of rocks in a room and tell them get to work making a program they cannot make a program because they do not have free will and reason it's the same thing if you put a bunch of apes in that same room with a bunch of computers and you tell them come up with a program they don't have the agency that we have they don't have the free and rational mind that we have because we're made in the limit image and likeness of God I mean you cannot deny this but as an atheist you are denying it which is completely absurd to deny that there's any difference whatsoever between a pile of rocks and a group of computer scientists is completely absurd but that's what you have to do as an atheist if you're a self-consistent atheist now there are many hypocritical mediocre atheists just like they're hypocritical and mediocre Catholics there are pro-choice Catholics you know you can meet these people they're very confused there are vegetarians who eat meat they're confused they don't know where they stand right and you can meet atheists that think that there is such a thing as reason and freewill you can meet these people but they're just very confused they don't adhere strictly to their own worldview they're borrowing from Christianity right they want free will they want reason they want science so they borrow it from Christianity because atheism cannot have free will or reason or science or love or anything else that's meaningful it's philosophically incompatible with atheism so they have to borrow it from the one true worldview the one true reality which is Christianity yes do you understand that when you ask is there a god or do you believe that there is a God and I say know that I am a firming that there is no god yeah you're affirming it the analogy that I like to use is with a powerful King there's some people that are agnostic about this King being King and there's some people that outright deny and explicitly deny that he's so in other words some people say no those are like the hardcore atheists and then they're the more agnostic people that say I don't know but neither one is willing to bend the knee when he walks by so the faithful people those who are faithful to the king and who know and love the king they bend their knee and they're not hauled off to the dungeon but those who say no you're not the Kings I'm not gonna bend my knee and those who say I don't know if you're kings I'm not gonna bend my knee they have the same fate awaiting them in the dungeon and it's just as miserable for both of them so it doesn't really matter if you're a hardcore agnostic or a hardcore atheist the outcome is exactly the same if there is a king no huh you'll find out when he passes by if you refuse to bend your knee you'll find out if he's the king or not right and it won't matter all your sophisticated argumentation won't matter one little bit he didn't believe he didn't say yes you didn't bend your knee so you're in the dungeon either way there are very very severe consequences to not believing yes so when should I bend the knee or in other words when should I be convinced with something because say okay there is a tax collector it says comes by it's a skate there is a new king in town and now you have to pay taxes to him and I just say okay here's 20 shackles next day comes back another tax collector look that kick is dead now the king of this other country came by and you know killed him and now he's the king and I'm here to collect taxes again and it gave him too many shackles when do you stop giving shackles to every tax collector that passes by well I don't worship everyone that claims to be God there many people who claim to be God but I know who and what God is by the light of natural reason without recourse to divine revelation I can understand that I am contingent I might not have been my essence is not existence and therefore there is another there is one and exactly one and only one whose essence is existence and who is infinite in every perfection and I can come to know him without interacting with any slimy sales people that are trying to convince me that Joe or Bob or Doug is God it's easy because I know who and what God is by the light of natural reason without recourse to divine revelation or to a team of shysters who are trying to sell me a bill of goods you understand and you have access to to this knowledge of God but for whatever reason you are unwilling to know this God all right why do you think that would be unimpressive to someone that doesn't share your beliefs well because it's very simple if you're on a Titanic that's not sinking you have nothing to worry about just go about your business eating drinking and being merry you have absolutely nothing to worry about so why do you spend so much time obsessing about God and religion right doesn't make any sense you know that it's real you know that it's true you know that hell is real and that you might go there you know that otherwise you wouldn't spend all your time thinking and talking about God and religion but a pin on Pascal's wager again let's take care of that second part later but I want to go back to that argument you presented earlier you say that you can come to know God without any human telling you about God right yeah but that doesn't actually correspond to how you actually came to be convinced that God exists you mentioned that used to be an atheist right I was a theist for 25 years yeah and you pinned the identity of God to Jehovah to that specific Christian God through the teachings of someone right through religious texts through preachers you didn't write the Bible herself did you no but I came to the God of monotheism I didn't immediately jump on Christianity I was a generic monotheists I believed in the God of classical theism I came to God through philosophy not only was I not attracted to Christianity I was anti-christian I was a Satanist when I was an atheist I was an atheistic Satanist I was very very anti-catholic anti-christian so when I found out that classical theism is true I did not believe in the Trinity I do not believe in the Incarnation or Jesus Christ and I also did not believe in Mohammed or the Quran or the Bible or the Torah or anything else I just worshipped God the fall right and it's only through education that I came to understand that Christianity is the one true form of religion I understand that but when you have these sources conversation that you might be trying to convince someone or to walk together towards the conclusion that you have reached when you say something like I have reached my conclusions without resource to human influence that's not true on its face because we are surrounded by all sorts of ideas and it's very rare that we come to an idea of our own by ourselves yeah I'm not saying that I'm not saying that I am an island in that I've never been influenced by another human being what I'm saying is I don't look at a bunch of candidates that are trying to sell me a phony God and pick my favorite we can know with certainty by the light of natural reason that the first cause is the God of classical theism that monotheism is true we can know that and then you can if you want you can sincerely set yourself to the goal of understanding which of the three monotheistic religions might be true and if any of them is true and I am firmly convinced that Christianity is true and that Catholicism is the fullness of the Christian religion now can I convey this to you in a convincing manner to the point where you will become a monotheistic Wriston and then a Catholic within a one and a half hour conversation probably not like you said but that's not the point of the podcast the point of the podcast is to share my perspective to hear your perspective to meet people to entertain the audience but underneath that facade of entertainment is a very real instrumentality of grace my podcast is bringing infinite grace to hundreds of people every day till the end of time so that's the main point of the podcast I just want to make that clear to you and to all my listeners mm-hmm I don't know if I see any common goal with you here and and that's my main concern what are our common goals what do you like life yes absolutely you value life okay that's the principle the first principle is life I'm pro-life I want you to live not just a hundred years of animal pleasure on earth I want you to have eternal life so that's the common goal you like life if you could prolong your life you would not necessarily yes you would and if you want to say well I don't like suffering and pain I'm not talking about suffering and pain I'm talking about life life is good life is not pain life is not suffering life is not confusion life is not sickness life is not death life is good so you do want life and if you could have more life you would have more life you want life and you want health and you want beauty you want goodness you want love all you want all the good things that I want that's the common ground everyone shares that I do think that life in general is good but I know that there are come a point in life that my enjoyment of life is going to be diminished I know I just said that but those are parasites on life disease is parasite on life dementia is a parasite on life everything that is evil is a parasite on life it's a privation of goodness so you know this whole discussion of aging and illness and the sickness and confusion and death that's all because of sin original and actual sin but life itself is good health itself is good and all of these infinite perfections lie in one in the same direction and one in the same source and we call that God so you do want all of the good things you're just confused about how to get it right you think that you can get pleasure and you can get health and beauty from some sort of materialistic man-made world in which God is absent that's both yeah I know it's false I know it's false no what is that your assumption of my motivation is false okay do you think you can have happiness without God yes or no yeah I hope I can but yeah so that's all I'm saying you think that you can have happiness without God do you think you can have life without God but it's not true it's a lie look I am Alive whether garthok exists or not I have a life and I can't achieve happiness and there will be a time when this life is going to end and I have I have a limited time here I have a limited effort here and right now I don't know that eternal life really exists and it seems that even if it does exist no one is going there it's impossible so look I'm not going to give you that ten thousand dollars and to come back with more a convincing justification that you actually have the twenty billion that actually there is eternal life that there is something supernatural that there is some sort of God you just need to look in the mirror and you'll have all the answers you need either your self existent or you're not and if you're not then you know that another being is and that that being is one and only one because there cannot be two gods right there cannot be two beings who are infinite in every perfection because one of those candidates will either lack something that the other has in which case that one locking is not God or the two candidates are identical in all their infinite perfections and therefore there are not actually two but one right so there is only one God and if you're not that God then God is God it's that simple and any number of salesmen telling me that I've won a fortune in Nigeria or whatever I don't buy any of that because I don't trust human beings I only trust God and the God that I believe in can be known through the light of natural reason without recourse to a dusty old book or to a bunch of men in robes I don't need people to explain to me who God is I can use my natural reason to figure out who God is all I need is a mirror look in the mirror am i God yes or no if I'm not God then God has got it's that simple I'm more interested in the things of the here-and-now and of how people change their minds rather than what is the correct conclusion because we disagree on the conclusions but if we agree on the methods maybe we can move forward with the things that we actually share right we share a space on the here and now but it's hard to get to that point of a meta conversation we get so distracted by the arguments and the you know figuring out what's correct or not and who's right and sometimes we forget that it's the people that matter the most because we have to figure out that common path that finding out the common good yeah I mean I'd love you I respect you and I respect your freedom and I appreciate your approach it's not that I'm stupid it's just I made a choice to drill home that sort of get into the safety of the church while you still have time message you know what I mean yeah I know and if you believe I'm going to suffer if I continue the path I'm going you do nothing it probably means you don't care and that hidden message in people that used to be my friends and my family you know having the impression that they don't care is concerning so yeah I understand what you mean and I didn't find that wrong or offensive at all I think that's exactly what you should do yeah and you know the thing is like you might have a relative that's very religious then that you think they don't care about you but they really really do they don't rub your nose in it the way I was trying to but they care more than I do do you understand so it's not because you don't see them preaching to you that they're not begging God for your eternal salvation every day so try not to judge your religious relatives if they seem cold and indifferent I don't think they are god only knows obviously god only knows but to the extent that they are religious I think they do they must care mm-hmm but at the end of my interview I do ask the guests to end the show to finish the show off with a nice little positive message of hope so just to wrap up the show what do you think you might be able to say as a final thought yeah okay so we should be able to figure out how to move forward to rise above religion if you forgive my arrogance or perceived arrogance and find out how we can reach our common goals and better our lives at least for now because we're all interested in that as I mentioned just a moment ago and if we can't agree on how to do that then I think we can then we'll be a lot better off if you like it will do if you got some questions at the end I'll tell all you got to do it all you got to do all you got to do it all you got to do