good morning good afternoon good evening wherever you are welcome back this is Catholic versus Catholic and I am max from red pill religion tell us a little bit about yourself who you are what you believe and how you came to believe what you believe okay well I go by max it's not my legal name but it's my confirmation Saints name and it's what I prefer to use online and as a pen name see I've run and the founder of the project called red pill religion which is not specifically a Catholic project although I am Catholic and there are other Catholics associated with it we also hang out with Eastern Orthodox and Anglicans and people of completely different religions and what we like to do is explore the intersection of politics culture and religion because those can't be separated and we are critics of secularism ideological atheism feminism secular social justice and we like to discuss philosophy history and science mostly addressing a male audience so that's what we do as for how I came to believe what I believe I am a former atheist I was not raised in a particularly religious home up until a certain age and then I had two different kinds of Protestantism introduced to me spent one year in a Catholic school came away convinced that the Bible is just incoherent nonsense and wasn't true I came to the Catholic faith and roughly the age of 41 42 I'm in my 50s now after considerable investigation I once I determined that atheism did not make sense I had begun a search through religion I concluded the Christianity was probably where I needed to go in my searches I basically wanted to know who had the best claim to being the correct original Christianity who could go back to the earliest Church and this annoys a little bit some Catholics because there's more than the Roman Catholic Church that I think can plausibly make that claim and I came in through what's called the pan Orthodox movement which looks at the very strains of Orthodox Christianity and so what I concluded ultimately was that only the various branches of Orthodoxy could have any legitimacy at all so I rejected Sola scriptura Christianity I rejected mostly Sola fidei it depends on what you mean by Sola fidei and I had only to determine from there well which version makes the most sense I did conclude that there has to be something to the reality that Jesus gave the keys to Peter I don't know if I agree as strongly as you do on the matter of how much we have to listen to the Pope but in the final analysis I could decide Catholicism makes most sense Chesterton Aquinas the the reality of what the church did for all of what's Western civilization despite all the calumny against it so I became a Catholic and I was surprised to be honest because well I knew anti-catholic sentiment was out there I didn't know just how virulent it was can you tell me just a little bit about your childhood growing up some of the first instances of religion that you had can you talk about your first impressions please without getting to and do it I grew up in a very chaotic and abusive environment I was also part of the first very early wave of children of divorce and divorce is always traumatic 100% of the time for everybody especially the children but anyway it was at that point that religion kind of got introduced surround it was a couple years after the divorce but around the age 8 or 9 my mother had remarried but the marriage was already breaking down so my stepfather figured we could fix this by becoming religious so you know they decided we were going to become Presbyterian and all of a sudden I was thrust into Sunday school and had to go through confirmation classes my biological dad kind of in retaliation said well no no you know yeah you know I want to introduce you to Christianity properly and had me on the King James Bible and Alcoholics Anonymous philosophy and watching television lists like oil robber and Pat Robertson and in folks of that strain and I was kind of pushed really hard through Presbyterian confirmation classes I hated it I wanted nothing to do with it I did have a year in a Catholic school one year only why it was only one years a long story but one year only I do remember the monks at st. Rita there made an impression on me with how smart they were but I read the Bible I found that I didn't like God and I didn't like most of the stories in there and I didn't understand why anybody believed it or why you would want to when I hear some atheists say reading the Bible made me an atheist I'm like yeah me too because that that certainly helped I did not think much of the Bible I did not think much of the Old Testament which I found horribly boring and pointless I did not think much of the New Testament because I certainly didn't think much of Jesus who certainly seem to be quite bizarre to me I drifted off into exploring New Age spirituality some of which my grandmother and my aunt and my mother kind of got into so as you can see it was not a very religiously coherent upbringing my mom and her family especially in flitted from one religion to another sometimes Christians sometimes not I eventually just gave it up and I started accepting the Atheist proposition that was increasingly being indoctrinated into the culture scientific naturalism and that whole ideology of scientific naturalism and I was an atheist so what can I say mm-hmm so I want to zoom in on the conversion from atheism to monotheism can you just flesh that out as best you can sure let's this would have been in my early 40s it was a number of factors and but but I think the biggest one for me is I was very active on the internet I've been working on the internet since before most people right I've been part of internet culture since the 80s and back in the early 2000s there I I was running a very popular weblog it's not around anymore but it used to be very popular called Dean's world and I noticed you know the Atheist movement along on the internet in the early 2000s and I even bought into it for a little while you know I was a big fan of Penn Jillette and Penn & Teller and I kind of like Daniel Dennett and he started this movement called the brights and I I called myself a bright very briefly I don't know if you remember that term but yeah what got me was I started being attacked by my fellow atheists on the internet for heresy and for thoughtcrime first by saying that I thought the constant debates over creationism or more harmful than helpful both to the Atheist cause and to science I thought the entire fight was just non-constructive like at the time there was this desire to put a warning sticker on school books saying evolution is a theory and as an atheist I said that's actually just true just let them have the stick here you're gonna make it worse I was saying that you're gonna make people hate scientists and not believe science teachers if you keep being bullies over this issue just let them have whatever you know let them have a debate in the school and then let them go back and study biology well I was viciously attacked for that and lied about and I was attacked by atheists for other things that had nothing to do with atheism and I began to notice what a cliquish cult movement it was these weren't about science they aren't about rationality and the viciousness which was they turned and the emotionality that came behind them and the fact that they would storm people and smear people for the wrong thoughts made me think okay don't you know what I don't want I dent alive with this anymore don't even call me an atheist call me agnostic call me whatever you're going to call me I'm not an atheist don't call me one these people are awful that was more than 10 years ago and I began looking and I began talking more and more to people who believed in God and I've talked to a lot of Orthodox Jews got friendly with them they were a big help in my road I think it's finally you know in my searches I just noticed through the anthropological and archaeological and an evolutionary record I don't want to argue about whether you believe in evolution or not at the time I did and it just struck me very profoundly that it was clear that the need for spirituality and the need to touch the you know the ineffable in the beyond was obviously an evolved trait religion was obviously an evolved trait a functional one and you could see how people who are not religious at all actually tended to be more violent and more intolerant and so I thought it doesn't make sense that we would evolve a need for something in a sense for something that's not real so even though I did not fully grasp an idea of God I thought there had to be something and to be honest with you I was a practicing Christian and as someone who prayed on a regular basis who still didn't have a real wealth longer articulate idea of what he believed even after I was a Catholic even after I came in as a Catholic I was more like I don't understand all this I'm not sure I believe all this is literally true but I will go with it you know I joined a church that had certain specific teachings and values in history and I said I will go with it and I will learn as best as I can and you know over time with various experiences I learned more and more and came to understand things more and more so the process of atheism was actually very slow for me it happened in a heartbeat for me when I was reading discourse on the method by Rene Descartes when I first lost my faith at age 14 I became nice-guy agnostic that led to a sort of pantheism and then I got into atheists almost I started studying philosophy more seriously late later in life and then when I read and sommes ontological argument it really perplexed me and then after eight years of chewing on that combined with studying philosophy and reading the Bible in an attempt to undermine it in market and ridicule it everything came together when I read Rene Descartes because I had fallen into solipsism hard solipsism I really thought that I was all there was and Rene Descartes helped me out of that I've since abandoned rationalism and Rene Descartes but I'm forever grateful to him for the help that he's given me but I want to talk about what you're excited about today well the thing that moves me most is the pan Orthodox movement in Christianity and it's what made me Catholic it's still something that I am rather passionate about is there a website for that I could look it up I don't know if there's one that describes the whole movement but I can tell you that the website that I studied the most that actually helped make me Catholic is called Orthodox wiki so if you look at birth Cox wiki org now that is officially run by Eastern Orthodox Christians however they have a straw it is actually more of a pen Orthodox effort in that they have representation of from the Oriental Orthodox from the Syria Church of the east from some Roman Catholics and it is in terms of style is more toward Eastern Orthodoxy but they present the position of the Roman Catholic Church and the Assyrians and others very well so that you on various issues so that you can see and compare them and it was this along with some other articles that got me there the people at ancient faith radio and the podcasts of guys like father hopko you'll notice so many of these are not Catholic sources they were Orthodox sources and that's because I was raised and I heard my whole life you know even when I was an atheist I would hang out with Christians cuz I always had Christian friends and I would even I get invited to Bible study groups once in a while on the phone I was bored I was go you know they never attracted me but I mean I just heard relentlessly all of my life about all the supposed lives of the Catholic Church and you know as an incessant thundering of lies about the Catholic Church well when I started not just the Eastern Orthodox it wasn't even the Eastern Orthodox who fascinated me the most it was the oriental Orthodox and the Assyrian Orthodox and the reason they fascinated me the most those two fascinated me the most as they schism the way from Rome and Constantinople both back in the 400s the disagreements with them had started in the 300s and you know they walked away but I as an outsider looked at them and said what do they have in common these people who walked away 1600 years ago let's see they have pre priests that they call father who are ordained by bishops bishops who they say can go all the way back to Pentecost there in the book of Acts they all take something called the Eucharist extremely seriously they're all Trinitarian they all affirm the eternal virginity of the Virgin Mary at her status as the Queen of Heaven and that the Saints are alive in heaven and that we can seek their intercessory prayers they all have sacraments that they take very seriously in other words they all look suspiciously Catholic despite the fact that he had 1500 1600 years of separation and all of them rejected the Protestant doctrine of Sola scriptura and I looked at all of them and that that was like like it was an instant cure I I could no longer just say well that's a Catholic invention that's a Catholic invention that's a Catholic fabrication that's a Catholic invention all these things I could now see clearly went back to a minimum of the 300s and Jesus said the Holy Spirit would be with us and guide us a right and he must have lied because I could find no evidence of these Christians who just read the Bible and who rejected all these doctrines anywhere in the early church and so I knew it had to be one of these four branches and the differences are there but they are so tiny compared to almost anybody especially in what I would call what is sometimes called the Sola scriptura tradition now I don't believe in any version of Sola scriptura but the most hard-core are the ones who use the Bible and nothing but the Bible believe in something called the sufficiency of Scripture and it's all self-contained anyway but beyond all that I simply don't believe in Sola scriptura Christianity you're supposed to have priests we're supposed to have sacraments the church is a living breathing thing that's been in Congo inoperable Church the visible Church has always been there sadly divided maybe but it actually means it meant a lot to me that whatever people say about that I can - one of the things that's happened is about because of attic and - and things like it they do matter is is that we've gotten you know a lot closer to not just our Eastern Orthodox Brothers but like I said the Oriental and the in Orthodox - and I view that always miraculous and good and prompt that the Holy Spirit is working still and has been working on all the time I think as a Catholic of these other branches of Orthodoxy is like the brother bishops have been arguing our uncles have been arguing but in the end they have the faith I want to talk about Vatican two in particular I want to talk about the teaching that they reinforced although you don't hear much about that when in the context of discussions about Vatican 2 but they did reassert the Catholic dogma that there is absolutely no salvation outside of the Catholic Church but they went on to say the the church subsists in the Catholic Church meaning that there are elements that can save you outside of her visible boundaries there are elements for example anyone an atheist can baptize in an extreme need an atheist can baptize someone there are undeniably elements saving sanctifying elements of the Catholic Church outside of her borders so this is something that was articulated in Vatican 2 the set of a Cantus really don't like that what do you make of the dogma that there is absolutely no salvation outside of the Catholic Church and yet we have these separated brethren even in Protestantism how do you reconcile that and what do you make of Vatican 2 generally well I joined the Vatican two church was which is an important point I usually have to make when I'm confronted with said of a consists and others the post Vatican 2 Catechism that's what I assented to I'd have to go find it maybe I've misread but part of the Catechism says that in some sense the whole world may be said to be within the Catholic Church a lot of these people think they're part of the Catholic Church you know when I grew up a Presbyterian we said the Creed I believe in one God Father Almighty Creator of heaven and earth anyway and when I was among the Calvinists Presbyterians we always ended with that line I believe in the Holy Spirit the Holy Catholic Church the communion of saints the forgiveness of sins the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting there's lots of Protestants who say that I think what I would have to say is is that I don't think God will punish people for being wrong or confused or misled I think that God honors his sacraments but is not bound by them we don't ultimately know who saved or not only God does but your best bet is in is in ancient Orthodox sacramental Christianity and even if you're not happy with Rome right now Rome's your best bet long-term although when I look at a lot of the dissolution in the church today particularly in America I can see why some people are real unhappy right now yeah yeah can we talk a little bit about the recent scandals particularly the sex scandals just talking a personal level how did that affect you and your faith in terms of the sex abuse scandal I entered the church in my 40s knowing already about the sex abuse scandal I also entered it as a child sex abuse survivor who was not abused by clergy I was abused by authority figures in the Chicago Public School System or part of a pedo ring that also operated out of the police department and the Chicago Transit Authority the bus and train people where do PTO's like to go where they'll find kids and sure they can find him in a church but they can find wayward kids that no one will notice in police stations bus stations train stations school rooms that's where they really hunt and I had already done my research and I already knew this was more than 10 years ago I already knew a Catholic priest was actually statistically less dangerous than the average man on the street which happens to still be a fact and more Catholics should remember it a Catholic priest is less dangerous than the average man on the street he's also less dangerous than a female public school teacher statistically and I had done a lot of men's rights work and men's issues work you'll find me in a movie called the red pill by Cassie J I know you don't want to go too much into politics but that was kind of the politics and I already know there is a rampant child rape problem in the public schools in the foster home in a secular foster home system in the juvenile prisons it's off the charts how bad it is and how bad the cover-up is and I knew all this and I had pretty good reassurances that the church was cleaning up its problem I already know P dough's are everywhere if I even Boy Scout troops you find them in anywhere you look they're there I encountered them I know how they talk I know how they think so this new scandals in the news has me somewhat annoyed with my fellow Catholics I'm gonna guess a lot of them people like Taylor Marshall and and Patrick Kaufman have been afraid to say anything people like Michael Voris have been vindicated people are talking about it now and so a lot of Catholics I guess they had managed to convince themselves that the problem was behind us and it's not so they're still reeling from that but I think a lot of Catholics still need to find a spine and stop and say okay now wait a minute we completely agree there's a problem here that we need these individuals torn out but we know what the problem is and we know where it came from most of the victims of priests are teenaged males it's more than 80% of them so we have a predatory homosexuality problem homosexual males with a thing for teenage boys that's what more than 80% of it is and they've been covered up by people in the hierarchy and it's the cover-up that's the real issue and the cover-up that needs to be dealt with and some people need to be defrocked they need to be excommunicated frankly um but all that said it still remains for decades now we have known about these entries coming in the church with the specific goal of subverting it the specific goal of doing this we now know that these people who came in as priests mostly in the 60s and 70s are in the hierarchy now we know who they are we don't even have at the moment a particularly bad problem with priests acting most of most of the things that we're talking about are things that happened in the 80s and 90s and it's these old guys who are coming in for examination of it now in the meantime if you look I want everybody to look for an important book called Catholic priests falsely accused by David f Pierre jr. which you can buy that on Amazon there's others we have documented proof that many priests were falsely accused and did nothing wrong and died in misery because of those false allegations and Catholics need to start remembering that one too especially because I can tell you what I am certain has happened in many cases let's say you're a priest and you're having dealings with the altar boys and you think maybe you're going to get caught what's one of your best strategies you figure an innocent man and accuse him of what you've done this is an old old old trick you see it don't want to get political but Marxists do it Satanists do it Satan does it okay I accuse you of what I'm guilty of now all eyes are on you and you're defending yourself and that I know for a fact has happened to priests we know for a fact that that's happened to priests and so not only to Catholics need to get up and start we do need to do get these this Judas element that's made it all the way up into even being bishops and Cardinals in some cases we need to confront them in a big big way but at the same time we need to turn around and defend Mother Church and point your back at the secular element which has a much greater child rape problem than the Catholic Church does and we also need to say to our fellow Christians who are not Catholic to plucks a beam out of their own eyes because if you really look at the statistics there's corruption including sex corruption including child sex corruption in every part of Christianity including all these little nondenominational groups and Baptist groups and Methodist groups we need to be looking at where Satan is and Satan there among some of the child predators and Satan will be there among some of the accusers because they'll be false accusers covering for guilty people by acute any innocent we have to keep all that in mind yeah have you heard of Aaron raw yes I have in fact been highly critical of Aaron raw I just interviewed him and he was saying that you know there's this conspiracy to move around priests and this sort of thing and I saw well it's no different in any other pedophile ring they they have measures to protect themselves as well and he he just laughed he thought that that was absolutely ridiculous but what you said makes it sound like there might be a sophisticated mechanism in place for them to move people around or at least to cover it up in a different way that might be the case oh are you kidding teachers unions are well not the teacher who got me you don't think he got in any trouble do you he got moved around that's what happens in the public schools they get moved around they get moved to other school districts or they move to other school districts they apply for a job in another state it's been going on for my guy got me in the 80s I don't know what eventually happened to him but he never certainly had to answer for his crimes yes the secular system protects PTO's to say that it doesn't you have to have not paid attention to the pedophilia problem at all and that's what I would say to people like Aaron Ross he's a complete hypocrite he has to know that the secular system covers for sex predators of course it does look at the news we've seen the statistics Aaron rah is specifically an anti-christian ideologue for pay and has been for decades he's a recruiter he's a cult leader and he makes his money spreading lies and hatred about Christianity so I see nothing but hypocrisy coming out of him he's part of a network that calls themselves rationalist atheists he's hooked with other people who rationalize pedophilia including Richard Dawkins I can see nothing but hypocrisy coming out of Aaron raw talking about this he like others who claim they care about child rape don't because when I present myself to people like him and know that that victims of child sex predators of the secular system are much more common than victims of priests they laugh at me and mock me putting people Aaron knows Braun knows personally have done that to me he hasn't personally done it the people he knows have people in his circle so ya know I've got no respect for them because I don't believe that Aaron Rock cares about child rape at all now you seem to me to be a reasonable person and nice guy I mean we've only just met but Steve McCray who I also thought was very warm and sweet guy didn't speak too highly of you I didn't get the details but what might it be about your conversations with him that led him to think that maybe you weren't actually a good Catholic because he contrasted you with one of his Catholic friends that he thought was a good nice Catholic and then he used you sort of as an example of what not to do as a Catholic what what's behind that do you think well I would say that Steve McRae is a professional hate propagandist and I've said that publicly and I'll reiterate that he's a public hate propagandists and he's an anti-catholic bigot he's also an anti Jewish bigot at least towards Orthodox Jews Steve McRae has said that anybody who supports the catholic church supports child rape and when I confronted him on that and when I win several of my team members also try to were sex abuse victims confront who aren't Catholic when several of my team members in front confronted him on that he simply was simply rude dismissive and nasty about it he literally called me a child rape survivor a child rape apologist he called and rooster tivities on our team who's not even Catholic was an Anglican and John Baptiste who's an Eastern Orthodox Christian called them child rape apologists too he will not acknowledge the reality that I did work for years advocating for male survivors of sex abuse the man spreads hate propaganda and we have a long history going back with his group if he wants to condescendingly say there are quote unquote good Christians who don't challenge him I would guess that's because it's Christians who don't call him on it my friend Christopher Lansdowne at missing the mark had a terrible encounter with his non sequitur show a few years ago in which McRae was quite disingenuous and condescending and nasty his entire group the non sequiturs show misrepresents science on a regular basis this represents history on a regular basis and is friends with people who spread anti-christian and anti religious hate propaganda and they routinely muzzle anybody who calls them on so I know I have no respect for mr. McCray he puts on a show of being a nice person and a lot of people in the professional atheist hate movement and I will repeat that a via Internet professional atheism is a hate movement Steve McRae is part of that hate movement and is a cult movement as well Aaron raw is Richard carrier is Richard Dawkins is Matt Dillahunty is we are critics of this movement McRae likes to deny being an atheist but we've had multiple people now confirm well if he's not an atheist he certainly talks like one and his hatred and contempt toward religion knows no bounds he will be nice to your face but he say that with his entire group these are people who are like Nazis we'll be nice to your face but we'll say the worst most heinous things about you and I'm not the only one who's had that experience with those people I think what professional common artists like that in the whole atheist movement like to do is put on a show of having a few Christian friends or a few Jewish friends or religious or a few other friends were religious but then we'll continue to put up the most ridiculous hate propaganda and hate propaganda is how it would call most of it they'd like to claim that you know anti-homosexual sentimentality comes from Christianity it doesn't in fact Christians are responsible for gay rights even existing that's just the fact they push us all into being young earth creationists and claim that we're anti science they distort the history they read the Bible but they read it wrong and then they criticize and condemn anybody who challenges their approach which is always a very rudimentary nasty approach Steven McRae claims that he learns all kinds of great things about the Bible from a guy named John Gleeson aka the godless engineer and the guy is nothing but a hates viewer who pulls things out of context so who he associates with who his group associates with what they want is Christians who don't challenge them and they will not stand up for a fair challenge on anything so yeah I don't get along with the non sequitur show people others on my team which is quite large feel the same way we tried being reasonable with these people early on but all they do is spread anti-christian hate propaganda and they misrepresent science and history while doing it and so ya know he he can think we're not nice we haven't been nice we as a team on red pill religion took the position that being nice doesn't work anymore and that you know being nice isn't what's required for calling out heresy calling out hate calling out bullying calling out lines for what they are are what we're gonna do this disturbs some Christians but others are our biggest fans so who are your sort of comrades that aren't directly associated with you and your work that you're doing I guess you could say that I like Owen Benjamin people like Michael Flores Taylor Marshall and Patrick coffins so I would say that within Catholic circles that are well known those would be the three that I would most because I think Morris is being vindicated as we speak this year and I think there's real issues that need to be addressed and I was actually pleased to see the Patrick coffin and Taylor Marshall had finally been broken silence and begun talking about these concerns because I think they're legitimate yeah what do you think of Pope emeritus Benedict the sixteenth what do you think of him as a man as a pope and now as a retired Pope I generally think well of him the idea of a retired Pope who's still knocking around the Vatican wearing his papal regalia and living in the papal apartments is weird and disturbing and that's one of the things that bothers me he looks to me like he was a fairly solid Catholic who was trying to reestablish wertha Doxie in the face of vatican ii he said many things and did many things I agree with so I mean I don't know I have an overall positive view of him yeah he wanted to reform the reform yeah there's no problems with the Novus Ordo Mass I'm coming in you know I came in with the Norma Soto mass but I'm actually very sympathetic with people who want to see liturgical reform going back to more traditional forms it's really weird like I I guess I say I'm very sympathetic with the traditionalist catholic movement and with many of their issues i I think some of them go too far some of them make sweeping generalizations they shouldn't or they they can't really back up at least not yet but I mean I'm very sympathetic I'm very sympathetic I don't have the Latin Mass but I'm very much a supporter of those who want to see it making a comeback you know I I came I came out of Protestantism and atheism and the modern Church in America quite often just reminds me of Protestantism again and I often think well I came here because I wanted to be Catholic you know and I'm actually pretty old-school I pray my rosary every day I go to the mass I prefer not to take the Eucharist in the hand I think a lot of the liturgical reforms after vatican ii were way too fast and caused way too much confusion you know in other words i'm broadly sympathetic with the trad catholic revolt although again i think so i'm going to go too far yeah I did want to sort of get a feeling from your sense from you about how you deal on a personal level with friends or colleagues or family members who might be liberal so-called Catholics where they're pro-choice they're Pro women's ordination they're pro gay marriage and yet they go to Mass they want to be considered Catholic even though they're in full-on rebellion how do you deal with those sorts of people in your real life or do you it's hard because you want to keep peace in the family and you don't want to just start arguments and frankly I used to be a liberal Catholic which I think might be worth remembering for at least some trads a lot of people they wind up having these non Church attitudes you don't want to kick them out you want to encourage them in and to I mean we're all we're all sinners and we all get things wrong so I'm not into starting arguments with people I'm into talking about what I think is true and telling people what I think is the truth of the faith this is apocryphal he didn't actually say it apparently but it's always been attributed to st. Francis saying preach the gospel always use words when necessary I try to make it clear that I support traditional Catholic teaching and so even if you're gonna depart from orthodoxy you should at least know what it is you're departing from and why now idea I guess mostly I pray for people and hopefully continue thinking and exploring because I do think that in the end you can't mix earthly politics with the faith and you really do have to think hard when I spoke with Aaron raw he was very very proud of the fact that he has lots of converts from Christianity to atheism so have you had a similar experience where you touched someone's life and they've contacted you and said that they are religious now have you had any experience like that quite a few quite a few I'm not surprised when Aaron Rob gets mails like that I used to be I mean I get it especially people who come out of some fundamentalist religion that used Bible verses to beat them up of course they feel liberated when somebody says here it's all fairytales long term most of them are gonna change their mind though in fact we ought to ask Aaron what the conversion rate out of his atheism looks like because he doesn't seem to be able to hold on to a lot of those followers long term I notice and I have had the experience of quite a few people tell me they reverted to the Catholic faith because of me I have one guy just recently the one I most recently remember I was messaging and because of the work I'm doing online he reverted back to his Eastern Orthodox faith a lot of people are just thanking me for strengthening their face I get a whole lot of that and it just because I kind of tend to focus like a laser on how irrational the atheist movement is the atheist ideology is and the scientific naturalist ideology and then I kind of let people think for themselves from there so sometimes people come to me and they say I'm not an atheist anymore I'm into paganism now but thank you and I'm like well hopefully you'll find Jesus on your way it's better than that atheism because that makes no sense at all and yeah we've had quite a few converts and reverts that's really amazing I want to ask you because I came to God partly through the ontological argument of st. and so I really am excited by that and all the ontological proofs of the existence of God I'm not thoroughly convinced that they're airtight but it worked on me even though there may be some circularity in it or some question begging in it I don't care what hit me it's the prayers and meditations of st. Anselm moved me so deeply that I don't care if he's wrong about some of the logical steps he took when he's praising and worshipping God I don't care he's wrong about something but his love is real so I want you to tell me what you think the best arguments for the existence of God are for the atheist what works best and from another perspective maybe it doesn't work the best on atheist because of psychology but what do you think logically is the best argument you are the first person I've ever met who was convinced by Anselm's ontological arguments and I personally hate the ontological argument it's a really weird argument to me although I happen to know from a philosophy professor of mine that at least three people have set out to disprove Anselm's ontological argument and wound up converting instead I personally think the strongest argument right now is the argument from intelligibility it's it's pretty much something that benedict xvi forwarded how can an orderly intelligible universe exist without an entirely intelligence making it happen but at the same time what I have found over the years because I've done a we are specifically focused on criticizing the Atheist movement as one of the things that we criticize that there is no one argument that is best for anybody what convinces different people is different things so the argument from motion is extremely powerful and impossible to debunk I think but it doesn't convince some people nothing convinces everybody what I do find works is we simply focus on most of the time the utter illogicality and irrationality of the Atheist worldview itself the ludicrousness of the claim that is just a lack of belief when it's anything but a lack of belief that is what usually gets through to most people the very fact that atheism is ultimately incoherent leads to post-modernism and actually harm science via the ideology of scientific naturalism which is garbage these are the things we focus on and we do get through a lot of people with who are some of your favorite Saints the Saints that you pray to on a daily basis that you ask for intercession there's so many Saints that I could tell you that I'm just madly in love with first and foremost being Mary I took her name and at my confirmation I took the name Mary oh and I'm consecrated via st. Louie de Mol forest consecration I also love Saint Louie de Mol for so just gush about your favorite Saints the ones you love the most Maximillian Mary called babe who was murdered by the godless Nazis he was in Auschwitz ultimately for the crime of being a Catholic priest him first and foremost I use his name publicly this is my confirmation name I was confirmed as maximilian mary cole bana I honor him all the time when I chose him I didn't know much about him and I found his fascination with the Virgin Mary odd and I didn't quite understand it but long story short I wound up doing the devout for consecration and it changed my life so not only mom maximun million miracle but st. Louis de Montfort same doing Marie de Mille for um did he put Maria in there I can know that about him that's funny oh man yeah when I the first time I read true devotion to Mary it turned my brain upside down I know everybody who's read that book has different reactions people say don't understand it I'll just tell you I read that book and I felt like every word of it was just poured like fire into my brain and like I understood every word it was a life changer so they say Maximilian Kolbe Mary called the st. Louie Marie de ma for Aquinas for obvious reasons definitely the Blessed Virgin Mary who has interceded in my life more than once and while everything to just about I'm hers body and soul things like Joan of Arc Saint Jerome st. Ambrose Catherine of Alexandria although some like to claim she wasn't real I don't know um fabulous Saint John Paul the great was a huge influence on me coming into the church you know when I pray every day I try to remember when I do my rosary I try and mention every Saint I can think of who was in that particular meditation have you read Saint Alphonsus Liguori x' glories of Mary no maybe I need to yeah Alphonsus Liguori definitely check out the glories of Mary really really moving maybe we'll never have the fullness of the Christian faith or a full relationship with Jesus Christ unless you have a good relationship with his mother yeah I truly believe that what are three things that I can do that will make me a better Catholic just off the top of your head one go to confession at least twice a month well do you feel like you need to or not join something like the Confraternity of the Rosary and pray at least one rosary a week if not more stand up for the church including the falsely accused you do all of those things excellent thank you so much did you have anything that we didn't cover that you sort of want to squeeze in before we start wrapping up I will mention that if any Catholics come or other Christians come to visit red pill religion do bear in mind we're not running a ministry we do a lot of secular social commentary we tend to be abrasive in the as the proverb says answer a fool according to his folly lest he think himself wise so we tend to be pretty hard on people and we do tend to again people don't get this but we actually defend all religions we're big advocates for religious freedom so when we hear about fool on gong being persecuted in China or even Muslims being persecuted by atheist China or whatever we speak up about all of it Buddhists any of it so anyway I guess I just wanted to make sure I got that out yeah so at the end of my interviews I always ask my guests to give the closing thought a little message of hope something nice in general enough that anyone could appreciate it what would you say to anyone that's out there listening now Wow a message of hope well the truth of the matter is we have ample and abundant evidence that there is a God and an afterlife and we have ample and abundant evidence that you'll be more mentally healthy and happy if you accept this and the reality is I don't know if this is a message of hope for everybody but the reality is the atheist movement is dying and everybody knows it I mean Aaron Roz admitted it publicly so is Matt Dillahunty so PZ Myers so has Sam era so have a lot of them and for me that's a sign of great hope because the truth of the matter is those of you are still atheist you did buy into an ideological movement that's what the atheism of all these men is it's ideological and once you get past that ideology and get skeptical of them you'll find that there's a huge world of ideas out there we like to say that on Retro religion the belief in the supernatural and the transcendent is normal healthy rational and evidence-based because it is and the world is filled with a religion if you look at the work of dr. Rodney stark you're going to find out that not only is atheism and secularism declining but all the major world religions are growing if you open your mind to the world of spiritual and supernatural ideas that doesn't take away any of your scientific knowledge whatsoever it certainly didn't take mine away it only adds to in enhances my understanding of science which is considerable and coming to the understanding that there is a God it is not incompatible in any way with being an open-minded tolerant thoughtful intelligent learner person get to know some religious people and who knows maybe you'll actually become one of them some questions all you got to do is all you got to do you got to do