hey we are live i'm here with floyd fp floyd how are you doing are you there are you there floyd yeah are you there yeah good good how are you doing good can you scoot can you scoot to your left or turn your camera yeah there you go so you're more on the other side of the the screen that would look good yeah let me separate the tab so i don't accidentally keep on closing it sure no problem do what you got to do um let me make sure the probably a different link to the show so let me update the link here i see uh [Music] okay sorry about that not a problem hopefully we'll get it going yeah yeah yeah nobody cares slice of life all right okay now i think we're good yeah yeah so we'll see we'll see your facebook peeps coming into the coming into the live chat yeah so i guess uh i guess we should start from the beginning again um um i was born and raised outside of philadelphia i was raised a mainline presbyterian um which is a kind of a more liberal branch of the presbyterian church there was a schism in a presbyterian church and they broke off basically in the two factions the pc usa which i was a member of which is kind of the more armenian liberal side and in the pca which is more conservative calvinistic side pc usa is more affiliated with the princeton theological seminary where pca is more affiliated with the westminster theological seminary which basically the westminster theological center broke off from princeton move across the river the delaware river into suburbs of philadelphia but but yeah i basically my mom took my brother and i to church you know for sunday school and so forth sunday mornings um it's something i i was kind of bored by it i was kind of confused by it we you're learning stories i i think i always always i was i think i was always skeptical of christianity you know i heard these stories especially the old testament stories like noah's ark and stuff like that and these stories just kind of sound like fables just like the other childhood stories i had um and um i don't think i was ever told that i should take these uh literally that that you know you should just try to learn lessons about god from them and so forth and it was kind of just um not that you know not not to be taken like as history and so forth um and um i i viewed it as odd i i said i said this is just cultural relativism to me but then i was exposed to christian fundamentalists saying oh no no you need to take these stories literally and our cultural relativism which they never never you know declare that that they are but but our ways is absolute truth and everyone else is you know everyone else is wrong and and uh and um i i saw like the tribalism going on especially with the kids my age um i had you know i had a couple jewish friends and and and they were bullied and so forth for being jewish um you know then i was taught you know hell and it seemed like oh well if you're not part of our tribe you go to hell so i said well what about like japanese and chinese they're going to hell it just didn't seem right to me and i i just became more and more skeptical of christianity um i started learning more and more especially when i came across uh fundamentalists because they were very sure and certain of themselves and and they brought up arguments and i said oh well okay these are arguments i better look into it so i kept on studying christianity more and more and more uh took courses in college and so forth i engaged in different bible studies and um i've read a lot i i studied a lot and 30 years later here i am and i now consider myself an atheist um and a naturalist um i don't hold the naturalism dogmatically i hold on provisionally i'm willing to change my mind i i i just think it's a more parsimonious worldview uh at this time and um i just think a lot of the christian claims are just false and a lot of the claims in the bible are false um and it's something that i don't think we can really should apply to our lives anymore um particularly kind of like the things that are taught or condoned or even commanded in the old testament you know i have a lot of problems with some of the actions of yahweh uh in in the old testament new testaments really have that better you have jesus but he kind of teaches worship me and die as well so um i yeah i i don't consider myself a christian anymore although i i continue to study christianity i love the bible i love church history um i love talking about the bible um i love talking about theology and so forth i still have i still have interest in it and um a lot of the books i read uh nowadays are really from christians uh because that's the way you really learn um you know you don't learn by just staying in your tribal bubble and just you know read the books from your side because it's just it's just confirmation bias and uh you're just gonna you know if you do that you're just gonna straw man when you talk to christians or you know someone for a different world you're just gonna end up strawmenting them you know the best way to learn from them is actually learn from them actually you know read what they have to say try to understand what you know you know how they really think and so forth and if you want to if you want to change their minds if you really want to convince them um you have to understand them you know you can't you can't get the steel men uh still man their views and understand understand them and then so anyway you can really get through to them and that advice goes for you know anyone you know when you dialogue with someone who has differing differing ideas absolutely 100 agree with you um what do you think of rebecca what do you think of her approach she's got a soft approach from what i can tell a very soft and loving approach but i've i've only interacted with her four times i've enjoyed uh obviously i've enjoyed meeting her i love her um i i think she's a true christian um but i don't know i haven't watched a lot of her content so i don't know how does she deal with all these atheists because she told me she has a lot of atheists hanging around and uh she's not quite sure why but so i mean what do you make of her approach with apologetics or is she just a nice woman who's christian who's praying for you or does she try to does she try to argue with you at all like uh from any angle like pascal's wager or anything like what's happening i i will check out her channel eventually but um i just want to get your perspective on what is she doing what is she doing with the athletes in particular i like rebecca a lot and yeah and uh i i uh she's one of my favorite christians because she's able to have real dialogues with atheists and um she's a brave woman she'll she'll have a show and take on five atheists at the same time and um she's uh she's confident in her in our christian beliefs because i think of our personal experience i think her view is you know whatever argument you throw at her that's not going to trump her personal experience so um you know so but but she's brave because of that saying you know you can have all the best logical arguments you know you want but it's not gonna trump you know what what i've experienced in my life so she's not scared to talk to atheists and um and uh yeah i i yeah i recommend watching a lot of her shows i think they're i think her good um you know i think she you know she does know the bible she does have her own theological uh points of view um i think i think i think a lot of conservative christians would disagree with her in some parts but i think you know there's many different factions of christianity so that's that's not new you know i think you know she's an open theist for example um uh what does that mean uh open theism is the view that um god doesn't necessarily know what the future is going to be oh really so so the future's open so to speak so which is you know i don't know if you can call that heretical but your view is god god is uh a mission right he and he's all-knowing and that includes the future um but uh open theism kind of is one way of dealing with the problem of evil saying uh you know god doesn't know the future uh so forth but um yeah i think there's problems with that you know what does that say about bible prophecy how can god prophesize if he doesn't know what the future is going to be so i think there's no issues with open theism but um sure yeah but i mean i put i put aside all the the differences uh you know because uh she she and i differ on a lot of stuff obviously but it's not about a theological checklist like you know it's not a theological exam right the entrance to heaven it's it's having it's having the heart and mind of a child being innocent being authentic being sincere and loving loving god loving neighbor and um we're on a journey you can't forget that we're all on a journey here below it's a messy messy messy ordeal you were exposed to some sorts of christianity and you rejected things that were absurd to you and if you do that sincerely i don't see any problem you know i just don't see a problem so um stephanie mcguire's in the chat along with my friend joe and i think you might know stephanie from bread of life channel but on uh rebecca's had um a couple of my guests on her show i don't know who met them first but chris date he's an annihilationist i interviewed him uh nathan ormond who is a protestant christian when i interviewed him the first time and then was agnostic the second time uh i'd really love to have him back and then brenda dino brenda yeah yeah i've known brenda for years uh yeah i've i've been on nathan's uh channel a couple of times i know nathan ah no way cool brendan and i used to be on google plus hangouts many years ago ah cool so yeah i i've known brenda for quite a long time that's cool i've had brenda on three times or something like that and i enjoy uh our chats you know we disagree obviously disagree about a lot of stuff that doesn't really matter that's not that's not the main issue for me the main issue is um hey here's a human being i would never meet in normal life because i don't know if you know this but i live up in canada montreal quebec canada did you know yeah yeah i i can i can tell by your uh when you say uh about yeah so i mean i'm not going to meet all these americans and australians and the different people that i've met so i just love i just love that about the about the podcast excuse me but um so uh what about catholicism in particular was your upbringing anti-catholic like the [ __ ] of babylon that kind of stuff or did you meet any nice devout catholics that were good people what's the sort of overall impression of the church pedophilia and all that sort of stuff yeah um no i'm not like i said my church was pretty liberal um they didn't you know they didn't attack other uh you know christian faiths um i did have catholic friends and um kind of as a child um yeah they seem tribalistic as well you know they say oh you know we're catholics we have the you know we belong to the true church so that was kind of off-putting uh to me as well um uh i remember one time i went to a blood drive it was at a a local it was our neighborhood catholic church and um my my catholic friends you know brought me there and said yeah i'll give blood i normally give blood you know i don't care where i give it you know i don't care what cuban gets my blood is this america's giving blood and i remember the lady there you know asked me like what um you know what to terminate the catholic term uh um wait what's the way how they divided with the churches of the denominations no the uh that die i can't think of why i can't think that word which parish you're from yeah what parish or diocese which diocese that's the word diocese yeah i thought no i'm not catholic and she looked at me like i was an alien or something i said you know you know it's a idea but it it does seem like yeah it seems like the catholics at least in my neighborhood seem to be to be very cliquish yeah well not in my neighborhood i don't know any i don't i don't have any catholic friends i got like uh all my friends are atheists because i was i was atheist my whole adult life you know until i converted but yeah um well i guess early uh you know i like i said i was always kind of skeptical of christianity and one thing that i was skeptical of it it seemed you know at the time it seemed to be very anti-science i was kind of pro-science and i had trouble with the catholic church with the persecution of galileo so i so that kind of caused the schism you know in me saying oh do i want to go this way you know the religious way or go this way the science way and so oh no i'm going to go with galileo and so i was kind of i you know and i kind of still view the church as you know uh getting in the way of progress um uh but yeah and um you know the the pedophile stuff yeah that's bad um i i think you know i think uh secular authorities need to take a look at the catholic church and and you know take proper action but you know you know the protestants are having the same problems as well you know i think you know the latest news the southern baptists are uh are having the same problems now oh really yeah that the the the authority the leaders of the southern baptist you know organizations were covering up uh you know uh the sexual harassment and and uh things like that in the church so uh you know the the devil's everywhere it's just you know it's it's not just uh you know in in the catholic church but um but all this stuff tells me that these are these are human organizations you know uh they're as fallible as any other any other uh human and so forth if i i on my youtube channel i i give a three-part uh series of why i'm not a christian and i and what and one of one of the sections i go was you know what would convince me uh to be a christian again and and one of the criteria would be if if christians led a better and fruitful life than non-christians you know it's like you know i look at them saying boy you know uh christians they had their act together you know they're more peaceful they're more happy they're more loving um they're more successful at life they live longer you know that what's their secret they have something going on here um but no i i i don't see that um you know mormons mormons live a very clean and wholesome lifestyle i i don't think they drink so it seems like a surface i've seen some documentaries about the mormons not so pretty yeah i mean more in gems you've heard about warren jeff's right no i haven't but you know but they have their past as well you know but you know but like you know they don't even drink soda you know they don't drink caffeine and uh so you know neither did the jews of jesus day but they were jesus's biggest enemies those religious hypocrites i'm not saying that the men and i uh sorry the uh the mormons are all hypocrites i'm just saying hypocrisy is everywhere in this fallen world like that's for absolutely sure yeah well it seems it seems like the mormons have a kind of a racist past you know they're nice people i mean they they definitely come across as nice people and for the most part i think they're uh they're nice uh sincere people and trustworthy and all that sort of thing but we just watched a documentary about the uh sexual perversions of their so-called prophet warren jeffs and he's i think he's still in jail i'm not sure but anyway i don't want to i don't want to you know denigrate any religion i have respect for people of all world views even scientologists i live with i lived with a scientologist at one point and i respected her you know she was nice so uh whatever you know people have crazy ideas and people believe all kinds of crazy stuff and who am i to make fun of the religious beliefs of other worldviews as a catholic right it's like we got some pretty wild uh we got some pretty wild beliefs with the the eucharist the real presence of the eucharist and this sort of thing but as fun as it would be to talk about christianity i don't i have a policy where i don't talk about christianity with atheists i talk and i don't talk about the bible obviously with atheists i talk about god and the i don't talk about any faith-based beliefs whatsoever zero we only talk about philosophy metaphysics and how we can know with certainty without recourse to faith that there is one and only one uncaused first cause the prime mover the necessary being uh that's the fruitful discussion if you wanna if you wanna really dig into uh our differences that's where we would have to start we would not start with the pedophile priests okay that's yeah that's not the way to go and we wouldn't talk about you know the immaculate conception of area or anything else we would talk about god the the god of classical theism not the god even of christianity with the trinity no that's that's an article of faith we cannot no we can never know the trinity we can never understand the trinity in a comprehensive intellectual manner not even in all eternity in heaven we will never comprehend that so there's no point talking about faith-based stuff until you're a monotheist so my my apologetics uh approach is uh to get from atheism to catholicism they're basically three steps you have to get first to monotheism to do that you need to look at metaphysics from there you need to become a christian you need to look at history because jesus is the messiah and the jews the christians and the muslims all talk about jesus the messiah in very different ways and then once you establish that christianity is the truest that the only true form of monotheism you have to look at which form of christianity is the truest form of the one true form of christianity the fullness of christianity and for that you need to examine the question of authority and as much as i'd love to talk about authority and history with you you're an atheist so we have to talk if you're interested in discussing our differences we have to go back and we have to talk about metaphysics and there are many many ways of proving the existence of god and there's absolutely zero philosophical basis for uh for your worldview in terms of atheism or agnosticism or anything other than monotheism it's like there's monotheism and that's your only option there's no plan b there's no alternative because every other option is philosophically untenable and full of contradiction so i'm not saying this to be aggressive i'm just saying in all my years of apologetics work since my conversion i've boiled it down to that so it's just a more efficient way to proceed with the conversation if that's the way you want to go or we could just chit chat about the cultural side of religion and this sort of thing it's up to you but no i would like to talk about that and what you just brought up now is uh what i want to talk about how you think other world views are uh internally consistent and and and and problematic that's that's that was two varying degrees to varying degrees yeah that was my reaction when uh you know as i watched you on on rebecca's uh show and um oh yeah so before we get into the metaphysics maybe you could just sort of challenge me on some of the stuff that you bulked at with uh when i talked to rebecca when she interviewed me because that's kind of light light little topics where you could just shoot me a question i could shoot it down and then we can go uh talk about medifix after you've dealt with those because i did want to hear what some of your reactions were if you don't mind sure sure yeah well i think eventually it will you know end up in the metaphysics but i guess i i jotted down a list as i watched i just took notes and so forth and the first one the first thing that caught my attention as you said as an atheist and an atheist in general where atheists have to be their own final judge um where it where it's uh it's just one will against another will as opposed to some absolute you you say an internal absolute uh an eternal objective absolute immutable standard of truth and goodness yes yeah and and uh and and you know and god can only have that and my reaction to that is um is that everyone kind of has to everyone is a epistemic and moral agent and because they're a a agent they have to make decisions they have to make judgments therefore i can't see um i can't see how you you can't be your your final judge if you wish to submit yourself to god that is a judgment you're you're the final judge of deciding to submit yourself to god so i i don't see how how you can avoid not being i agree with you i agree with you 100 i agree with you but it's it's like a life-changing moment when you decide to submit to god as your authority that's a life-changing moment right it's like it didn't happen to me i was atheist for 25 years and it did happen to me i realized i'm not god god is god and then i submitted to god and i made god my standard of truth and goodness and beauty and all the transcendentals okay so prior to that i would just gather the opinions of the experts and make my decision just based on me i was the standard but when i realized that i'm not god that god is god i said hey okay jesus you take the wheel okay i'm being silly here when i say that but basically i place myself under your authority god and guess why i believe in the trinity it's not because the trinity makes sense to me it's because god said i'm a trinity so it's like okay i don't get it but you said it and i believe it and that's the end of it boom so this is what it's like to to have faith but uh and i appreciate the comment and i do agree with you that i i was the final authority when i said i relinquish control and i'm giving it to god i submit to god that that is a private judgment that i made and uh if we get into the metaphysical conversation uh i hope to lead you to that very same decision it's the best thing that's ever happened to me and it will be the best thing that ever happened to you and you'll thank me later but i'm i'm just being silly again like i don't expect that to happen but i'm just telling you from my experience that uh it was the best thing i have ever done and i i really sincerely wish it on everyone especially the atheist yeah well i mean um as an as a as a human as a fellow human i recognize that i have limits yeah so i remember you know you said as an atheist you consult different experts and so forth and then you make your own decision uh based on you know your input different inputs you get and consulting experts and stuff like that and i said oh yeah i do that as well and you know don't we all do that just seems like we have different authorities you know you just you just adopted a a different authority which is the catholic church where you know i haven't done that but it sounds like you know you you accepted catholicism kind of as a package deal it's like you know part of the package is trinitarianism so i'll i'll just accept that because that's that's part of the package and um and uh you know and and you know the catholic authorities said yeah that's true so i'm just going to accept that but i you know if you if you don't understand if you kind of don't understand something something's a mystery can you really believe it it's like yeah you know i i think you know it just seems like kind of like a pascal's wager sort of belief where it's like oh well they're telling me i better believe this okay so i'll okay i'll declare that i believe it uh what is it i don't know but but if you ask me a treat yeah i'll just check it yes i am whatever that is well there are reasons there are reasons to believe like this is the misconception of those who don't haven't explored the faith and don't have the faith when you have the faith it's it's faith seeking understanding this is what saint anselm said and saint augustine said the same thing in the fourth and fifth centuries uh saint anselm was in like the 11th 12th century but uh i just want to give a shout out i got stephanie mcguire i got uh rebecca in the live chat i got lena do you know lena floyd lena is a young person i think that uh rebecca knows too a lot of these people are from rebecca's bread of life channel lina you had lean on your show right yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah i actually i just watched uh that show like three hours ago with lena oh okay okay yeah i like lean i thought i thought uh you know was pretty uh pretty intelligent and uh yeah i i enjoyed that show yeah yeah so it's fun uh thanks for sharing i think you shared this on your facebook so getting some people in the live chat here um uh what were some of the other notes you took and some of the other uh objections that you had about some stuff i said with rebecca there um let me see um well you mentioned that uh you know atheists believe in everything um chester it's a witty thing to say that's basically that that things are wide open and and you can believe anything at that i was as an atheist i enjoyed not being committed to anything i had loved that i was just like yeah maybe this and maybe that and also depends who you're hanging out with and who you're smoking weed with but it's just like it's just in a certain sense of freedom or a license to believe whatever you want to believe right it's a lack of judgment because you don't have that standard you don't have an objective standard today i have god almighty i've got christianity and i've got the catholic church with the living magisterium it's like to to those looking from the outside in it probably looks like i'm in some sort of self-imposed prison where it's like i can't believe this i have to believe that and thou shalt this and thou shalt not that but it's the irony is it's the most free i've ever been because you know it's all about my love of truth i am a philosopher in the strictest sense of the word not that i'm bright not that i'm intelligent not that i've read everything and understood everything but i love the truth i love wisdom and god is truth god is wisdom and when you have that relationship that personal relationship with god not to say that i have an exemplary relationship with god okay you can get used to me giving these caveats and these excuses and these disclaimers about myself because i'm not going to try to say that i'm better than you or better than anyone else but having the privilege of being recognizing the truth that i'm dependent on god and that uh that you know the truth does not belong to me i belong to the truth that gives you a freedom that gives you like you know there is a slavery we do talk about the slavery i'm a slave of christ i'm a slave of god but that slavery is freedom why because god is freedom itself god is truth itself god is goodness itself and so we're all slaves to something we all have a master just choose your master which masters it going to be saint ignatius of loyola of the jesuits famously said that there are two standards or two banners on two hills one for christ one for satan just choose you can only choose one and you have to choose one so i choose christ and so i'm a slave of freedom and the cruel slavery of the devil is self-evident if you look around this fallen world you can see that indulging in your lusts in your animal appetites is not the way to freedom that's the way to really really crippling freedom and uh you know luckily god has blessed me with a very very weak constitution so i can't indulge in a lot of abusive things like drugs and alcohol like i'm having a beer here tonight just for the first time and probably in a month and uh it's like i had two small beers and that's about it that's about as wild as i get so um i have this weak constitution so i can't really abuse my uh myself too much but those who have a strong constitution i've seen a lot of horror stories of people going down nasty paths with heroin cocaine illicit sex orgies and these sorts of things and it always ends the same way it doesn't end with the white picket fence and the beautiful wife and kids it doesn't it ends with death suicide jail or whatever it's always ugly it's always nasty yeah lifestyles you know certainly will lead to destruction um and um and you know i i think when you say you know atheists believe in everything i think i think you're kind of protesting as post-modernism where it's like oh you have your truth i have my truth you know you reject that nonsense yeah i do i believe there is an objective truth i believe um part of my mesophysics is i i believe that there is a mind independent reality i talked about your solipsism after this i have something to say about that um but uh there is there is truth out there and nice and it's up to us to discover what that is um and we can only do that from our first person perspective um um and uh that's a limit that's a physical uh limitation of of humans uh we're fallible uh we we have uh limited means but uh our senses and our reason are our tools in which uh we can accomplish that um uh and they're just they're not they're uh they're not infallible uh but but they're the only tools we have if we have other tools we can certainly use them but i'm not you know unless you can you know show the reliability of uh census devenatus you know i just go on with you know what what i think uh i have now which kind of leads me to your comment about uh naive realists saying you know atheists are are naive realists and i'm not sure if you mentioned all atheists way i interpret that as you're saying they're unaware of um their metaphysical uh foundational beliefs which uh which uh guide them in and um someone who's not trained in philosophy i think that is that that can be quite common uh people are are unaware of their metaphysical beliefs um uh that that shape their worldview um and um and i i certainly recognize them um and uh and uh you know everyone has metaphysical beliefs whether they or wherever or not so um you know i i i think you know i think a lot of humans can kind of fall into naive realism it's just not just not atheists of course of course but you know but i'm aware of my metaphysical assumptions i i consider them faith-based but i consider them separate from other beliefs i consider my metaphysics to be properly basic beliefs um and that's something that that um we don't learn we we just assume uh uh is this part of our human nature that that we believe in these things um which kind of leads to solidism i mean one of my metaphysical views is there is a mind independent reality that um i don't believe in idealism if i if there's a there's a window behind me with with with the window shades if i turn my back to it i believe it's still there where an idealist will think it's you can see it in the camera that's why yeah i guess i'm cheating right i'm cheating you're like one of those magicians like your tricks yeah it's like don't show me you know um but that's a that's a metaphysical belief i have and along with many other beliefs i believe i believe other minds exist i don't believe that you're a zombie i believe you you're you're you're a human agent uh you know with a mind with feelings with consciousness and so forth can i prove that uh no i i can't just like uh the principle of causation is another properly basic belief i have and and and there's there's there's many others and most people aren't aware of that well i'm very impressed with your axiomatic beliefs because it's like everything that i love objective truth check principle of causality check this is like if we if we could just educate people i'm not suggesting that we go around forcing education on people but if we could just have a basic metaphysical education on our children and adolescents and adults that there is objective truth there is objective morality the principle of causality is universally valid that principle of sufficient reason is universally valid i'm not saying you subscribed to everything i just said but just some basics i think you're way way way ahead of most people already and this is not to say the two camps like the cool kids like us over here with the cool kids we got the metaphysics and then all the losers over there no i'm not saying that i'm saying we're all in the same boat and we all just need the same thing education this is the socratic method right it's like it's like what socrates said it's learning is remembering it's like this is stuff that we all have access to and if you wanna if you have the luxury of taking the time and thinking about stuff you can come to the conclude the same conclusions that the great minds of the western tradition have come up with right this is not it's not really rocket science it's just do we have the luxury to take the time to think about stuff that's about it and it seems like you've had the time to think about it or you've made it a priority um did you study uh philosophy formally at any point in your education um i i did take courses in college i didn't major in philosophy um i was a science major but um but um as the years went on in my my college experience i was i felt the humanities to be much more enlightening and interesting than science you know i when i first went is as a freshman it's like oh i just want to learn computers i just want to learn science um you know you know what i'm a geek i just you know you know forget this other stuff but um after going through the different courses i i found history philosophy psychology things like that to be much more enlightening um but um but unless you get like a phd in those things you can't really make a living at it so so i got my i got my science uh degree instead but but um it it it made me very interested and and you know i fell in love with it and i continued to read study philosophy um i i've always been interested in the great debate and theology and so forth and uh um and uh like i said before i continue to study the bible and in church history and stuff like that and i enjoy having conversations with christians because a lot of atheists aren't even aware of it but um but i also debate a lot of christians too you know when uh you know if if some evangelical says oh well you know jesus fulfilled the 70 weeks prophecy in daniel 9. well okay then i have something to say about that and uh and you know and i'll have a debate or i'll i'll post a youtube video you know on daniel 9 where i go over that and i say well why i think that that claim's wrong so i i you know i i enjoy that challenge i find that [ __ ] i i enjoy that challenge uh um let me see okay well looks like we're agreeing a lot uh than i thought because i'm an agreeable person it's one of my yeah it's one of my temperamental uh characteristics i did the jordan peterson personality test and i can't remember what it said but i think i was agreeable i think i was agreeable and he places a lot of emphasis on i'm not a huge fan of jp but he places a lot of emphasis on agreeableness yeah i'm not a big fan of him either i mean he his his his view of truth is pragmatic you know what what's true is what works so he holds sort of pragmatic i have infinitely more respect for your worldview than for his worldview let's just put it that way okay yeah he's a nihilist the guy is a real nihilist like a an existential nihilist like he is just he's just staring into the abyss he doesn't have any metaphysics whatsoever it's just like he's swimming in the darkness and he seems to like it because i mean it's not that hard when you're that desperate like i mean when i was in my darkest philosophical outlook i didn't enjoy it and i looked for a way out and i found a way out okay so i don't know why he's uh he's slumming in the in the darkness i just don't i just don't get it but to each his own i know i wish him well but uh he seems like he's really uh slumming it yeah well he's uh he's making millions off of it so okay you know so yeah so um that's the cynical approach you're like taking the cynical approach he's just worldly he's just worldly 100 worldly maybe that's it maybe it's that simple yeah yeah um one thing he says eighth is as i was curious about or even confused as when you're an atheist a satanist uh you said that uh you're a solstice yeah now uh we have metaphysical solvencies the epistemic metaphysical self-says heard solipsist i am yeah i am a disembodied mind and that's all there is yeah i i i how do you live that way do you actually view your family members and your friends to be this in your mind it was a short term it was it was like my my descent from nice guy agnosticism into hardcore antagonistic new atheism into atheistic satanism and then hard solipsism was like an ever accelerating decline okay and then once i was a hard solipsist i don't know how many weeks or months but it wasn't it was definitely less than a season like less than four months in that because it was horrible and so like i said i did not enjoy that i wanted out and i found a way out through rene descartes i think therefore i am boom you know it's like yeah yeah i guess that's what i'm also curious about how's that established that sobsome's fault i mean i think therefore i am well says yeah we'll think okay yeah i'm a disembodied mine i think right uh so therefore the only okay that that establishes that you exist but how is that established at other things well it's an existential two things to bear in mind psychologically i want it out of my heart solipsism because it's not pleasant it's very lonely and it's very disturbing okay very dark so psychologically i want it out so i'm motivated to escape okay second step i read rene descartes who talked in passing when he was building his new science from the ground up he doubted everything with radical doubt he doubted everything he could possibly doubt and the only thing he could not doubt is his own existence because to doubt it is to affirm it therefore he exists and so i i i mean i was already there i was already there so how did he help me he helped me by just saying in an offhand way but we know that hard solipsism is not the case because we know that god is good of course god exists of course he's good of course there's no evil demon fooling us with our senses and these sorts of things he just he just showed me that it's not about syllogism it's not about proof it's not about philosophy metaphysics or anything else it's just he just shocked me with a bucket of ice water and said david you're not god god is god and i just suddenly gave up i said uncle and that's it it's like yeah i'm not god god is god and now in my defense because the atheist always says well it was just a subjective experience and you just want it you want it out and blah blah and i admit all of that but subsequent to that i was able to reason and i you know this is uh this is what rene descartes gave me was basically this confrontation with the he intensified the confrontation with being per se and the when i you know because i was i was i was life eternal but to be confronted with it and to be given a way out i took the way out and then i was able to reason and to uh sort of understand using metaphysical principles that uh you know the nature of being the i am i think therefore i am thinking about uh essence and existence like am i the source of my own ex this is after i became a monotheist but just thinking about like okay well i was a hard solipsist like how do i know i wasn't that that i'm that it's not true so i had the reason i had to go back and i had to reason i had to think about the distinction between essence and existence am i what does it mean how can i know that i'm not the source of my own existence and these sorts of things and i subsequently was able to have a firm metaphysical foundation for my rejection of hard solipsism and i'm i'm 100 convinced and to this day i believe that hard solipsism is a great gateway path into monotheism but it's a false obviously a false worldview it's like absolutely ridiculous and it can be proven uh using syllogisms uh i was able to come to that uh understanding afterwards but in the moment it was just being overwhelmed with the the despair of the abyss of infinite being and uh just taking the out that was offered to me by descartes so nonchalantly yeah i you know i i still have trouble uh seeing how how you connect the dots there um i mean as a heart solve cyst you said that you thought you're god but i don't see how that follows i mean you could be the only mind i know that i am but the thing that when i talked to atheists about my experience with her solipsism what they always seem to miss is that i became aware of the fact that life is not temporary life is eternal and this is an existential experience that i had that's hard obviously hard to communicate but i mean i'm telling you what it is what it's all about like to to hear the words i'm saying is one thing to be there and to have an existential confrontation with life eternal you'd think oh it's angel singing and it's pleasant and it's god and it's all these sorts of things no not when your heart solves this when you're a heard solipsist it's like i'm absolutely alone there's infinite time behind me infinite time ahead of me there's no meaning it's just blackness and i'm just stuck with myself and it's just i'm in a a game that i set up apparently i set this up because i'm the only i'm the only mind so i set this up somehow but it's weird um so to escape from that is a great relief but the the thing that you can't deny is uh is still that that that essence that the core of the cogito which is i am i cannot deny that i am and so i had the firsthand existential experience of bumping into eternal life and although it was overwhelming and an abyss of blackness when i was a heart solipsist when i submitted to god it was the complete opposite right it's like now it is angel singing now it is heaven now it is hope now it is joy now it is beauty now it is creativity and now it is community it is family it is intimacy it is union it's all the it's all the transcendentals and more and it's it's it's it's the source of of everything that i value in this world and with the leap of faith that i took i had also you know restored to me a new appreciation of the natural sciences of philosophy of uh religion in all its forms and all these sorts of things i had infused knowledge i had mystical experiences and i had all kinds of stuff so these are you know you're listening to me and you just you shrug your shoulder though you know you're just saying to yourself i have no idea what this guy's talking about was he on drugs whatever but when you experience life eternal as a hard solipsist and then you escape through a leap of faith into monotheism and you have this infused knowledge and you get the gift of faith which is a supernatural gift it's not natural it's supernatural when you get that and you get a new appreciation for everything that you took for granted as a naive realist which i was at some point early in my life it's just it's just amazing and then it's like i said with saint anselm and saint augustine it's faith seeking understanding and i haven't stopped from that day forward i haven't stopped reading studying learning about my faith but also learning about first things in metaphysics and philosophy generally so i could ramble on and on but i'll let you just lead the conversation the way you want it to go yeah i guess um well i'll i'll i'll i'll i'll move on um yeah i think i still have a lot of issues with what you said i still don't see how you connect the dots but i think we'll move on but it sounds like you had a subjective experience you had a life-changing experience um i guess that kind of leads us to augustine and uh i guess predestination and regeneration do you feel like you had a a a a uh a uh kind of like a regeneration i i'm more familiar with calvinism and and and and i think augustine was a forerunner of calvinism uh you know john calvin in italy but yeah wrote you know references augustine a lot i i forget the exact number but people do it's 100 it's like 100 in the hundreds um um but um i think uh and there's a debate with with uh with with scholars whether augustine um subscribe to double pre-destination or not but regardless um do you feel like you know through god's grace that you know he regenerated you to accept you know the gospel well it's definitely grace everything i believe absolutely everything is grace so yeah everything everything is grace right so obviously my conversion is the result of grace and uh you know my acceptance of the catholic faith is a conversion is grace and what do i have that i have not received nothing right i just have sin which is evil which is nothing so um yeah everything is grace now do i believe that people are predestined to hell absolutely not why well two reasons common sense and my catholic religion teaches me that that's a heretical belief so you know it's like uh would an all good god predestine someone to hell no i don't think so and my church teaches me definitively that god is good and he doesn't predestine anyone to hell we have the sufficient grace to be saved each and every one of us and it's a messy messy affair but it seems like i had a big conversion event in 2009 and it seems like now i'm on a different track which is looking better for my eternal salvation than beforehand but i could still end up in hell and you could still end up in heaven period and a lot of the saints seem to think that that's likely to happen because the burden of responsibility that i have is a lot greater i would say maybe infinitely greater than the burden that you have right there is a bliss a certain bliss in ignorance and there is a certain uh reduction of your culpability if you don't know you don't know i know a lot more than you do about the catholic requirements on me the obligations that i have you may have read them but you didn't attribute them to yourself you didn't say that these are true and i'm i'm subject to these obligations i do believe that i'm subject to these obligations that's why i'm in a lot more danger than you are a lot more danger um well i'm not sure uh oh augustine didn't seem consistent it's like um have you read his retractions well around 412 it seems like he kind of changed his mind on free will and he kind of went back to his manichaeanism uh when he was debating uh pelagians and and so forth but give the view that like you know god this offers his grace to serve people like the calvinist that there's certain people who he will regenerate and other people he will just pass over and and leave them in their sin yeah yeah i mean like i mean the the thing with god is he's all good and he is maximizing everyone's chances to have the highest place possible in heaven the only thing stopping god from putting everyone at the absolute maximal place in heaven is our freely made choices which are irrational and go against you know our god-given intellect because you know if we were to live in agree in accordance with reason the dictates of reason we would all be saints and we would never be going to war raping our sisters and these sorts of things it just wouldn't happen we would be virtuous and rendering the adoration that is true due to god we would be rendering that to god and so on and so forth all down the line we'd all end up you know in the highest ranks of of heaven but that's because we have free will uh we're able to abuse our free will and some of us will end up at a lower place in heaven some of us will end up in purgatory before we even get to heaven and some of us will end up sadly in hell for all eternity so that's what my church teaches and that's what reason teaches me because if you don't believe in an eternal hell you have zero basis for any morality whatsoever you can literally do think su think say and do whatever you want and you get the goodies at the end you get the reward you get to go to heaven or you get to be annihilated in the case probably that's what you think everyone gets annihilated everyone gets the same outcome so there's absolutely zero difference between the best case scenario and the worst case scenario for any two human beings throughout history zero difference in outcome what does that mean what does that mean for morality it means there is no morality you can literally do what thou wilt do what they will shall be the whole of the law because there's absolutely no lasting consequence in the traditional mainstream uh branches of christianity judaism and islam there are consequences for the choices you make and you got to be careful because you might end up in hell so i mean you might uh some people don't like the idea of hell but i love it because i love morality i love justice i love truth and if the truth believe me if the truth is that doesn't matter what i do i'm going to end up with the same heaven or the same annihilation my behavior is gonna change right and i've had this conversation with some christians where they sort of kind of convinced me that no you know you'll be good for goodness sake because you know you're connected with god and truth and you're going to do the right thing because your conscience is going to naught you and all this sort of thing and that is true but it's only true because god is real and hell is real it's only true because hell is real if hell is not real i mean i'm going to be living quite a a a different lifestyle i can promise you that because i love sinning i love being selfish and when i say love i'm using it in air quotes because it's a false love it's a false joy it's just it's just like we were talking about earlier with these people that indulge in their animal pleasures it doesn't really end well right well yeah well i i don't see why we need to believe in hell to be motivated to be moral i think we talked about as earlier you know these these people live in self-destructive lifestyles and i don't live that way because i i see the outcome i i you're an epicurean epicurean yeah i mean i'm i'm driven by unimodia i i want to flourish and and certain certain actions won't lead to my flourishing and also i have uh as a social creature i'm interested in the well-being of my family of my close friends and so forth and um but um as as a species that evolved i also see the uh kind of more negative sides of our evolutionary history um not only are we capable being altruistic and um and and uh and caring for our loved ones and so forth we're also uh can be tribalistic and zea xenophobia and there's probably a evolutionary advantage you know for that where you need to protect the tribe then you need to work together as a tribe and you know uh you know you have competing tribes and so forth but now we're becoming uh kind of a more of a global community and so forth so that tribalism really isn't really working out that well for us anymore especially with technology and and international travel and and um our economy is now world-based you know and so forth so you know isolationism nationalism and so forth doesn't seem to it doesn't seem to work anymore i mean you see the state of north korea for example um you know there are people starving to death you know there and uh and you know just the just the the uh war going on in ukraine is is called is causing you know uh you know economic problems all over the world now you know we are a global community now so um yeah so i guess i just went off on tangent there so i don't think it's necessary that that we have to believe in hell i i think if if you just want to live a good flourishing life now and also if you care about your family your family's future you know i you know i i have a child i i want her to to uh to flourish and and live on um after i'm gone and um you can say well you know after you're dead um it won't matter then right well it won't matter to me then because i'm dead but it matters to me now you know you know it matters to me right now what the future of my child is going to be so i you know so i have to make a moral decision in how to act now on that basis so i think that's that's enough so i i don't think we need to be motivated with with the carrots and sticks of heaven and hell to be justified in in uh you know in our morality just self selfish losers like me need heaven and hell but i'm saying that unironically it's like that's just that's just reality like some people are naturally good like you and some people are selfish [ __ ] like me so i agree with you that you know if you have this natural virtue that's good and uh you know but the on the other hand you know we you can't go to heaven just for natural virtue that's that's the sad part that's what my church teaches anyway that you can't go to heaven just based on natural virtue and jesus says like look the pagans love their friends and family too who cares that's nothing that's that's of no value not that it's of no value but it's no it's of no value for eternal life if you want to have eternal life you have to do more than the pagans and guess what you have to do more even than the scribes and the pharisees it's like the bar is high the bar is really really high so for a selfish uh a-hole like me i mean it would it would be better just to be like you a a materialist naturalist or whatever you are atheist and just to not have that high high bar of virtue and of how i have to live my walk with god and all these sorts of things but i can't deny the truth i'm not pretending that i believe in god i'm not pretending that i'm christian i'm not pretending that i'm catholic i really actually do believe these things and the bar is high and it's painful it's not easy i'm struggling you know every day almost every moment of every day confronted with my lower animal passions and my laziness and my greed and my lusts it's just it's not it's not easy so i'm not begging you for sympathy and poor me for me for me but it's sort of an argument for like um some atheists think that uh you know that we christians are doing it as a lifestyle option or to fit in with the peers and all these sorts of things next who has time for that like who has time to fake it like if i'm of all the things of all the lifestyles to adopt in a fake way who would pick catholicism you know and i'm not saying this because i felt from you that you thought my uh walk with god was insincere but i do get that a lot from people think that i'm just trolling i'm just being uh you know uh even my own wife who's anti-catholic says that she thinks i'm just catholic because it annoys people it's like they're better ways to annoy people more you know it's just it's a lot it's a lot to take on to be a catholic now i'm not saying i don't enjoy it i do enjoy it but it's a lot it's uh it's quite a commitment and it's there's no certainty i don't have the certainty that rebecca has rebecca has the certainty that she saved wouldn't that be amazing wow to know that you're going to heaven wouldn't that be amazing but as catholics we don't have that it's a dogma of the church that we cannot know without uh you know without uh a special grace from god which is very rare where god's going to assure you personally that you are saved don't worry you're saved but i don't have that assurance from god so i am i'm not sure of my salvation right doesn't the catholic church have certain views on the noble savage yeah i'm sure it has certain views like we have like i was talking about earlier how ignorance is bliss i mean it really is like i mean uh but we have an obligation to seek the truth to know that you know find that if you seek you find and if you find then uh then you're implicated right you have those moral obligations that are always increasing never decreasing like your moral obligations only grow they never shrink so you have to you have to love the truth you have to seek the truth and if you seek it you'll find it and then guess what more uh the the bar gets raised but yeah the nobles the noble savage i have a lot of hope for them for their eternal salvation more than i do for myself um listen along alongside um what uh your views of augustine uh are you mentioned that uh augustine was a biblical narrative inheritance he said augustine uh believing if there is a if there is one wrong thing about the bible then we can reject it all yeah and the problems with the bible and you went on to say that your your uh for you the bible itself is a mystical thing yeah and and that mystical bible is inerrant where um where kind of the bibles we have on earth are not is it is that your view yeah yeah every bible you can purchase or own or touch or whatever acquire is has a non-zero level of error like it's a non-zero uh quantity of error contradiction or whatever like flaws whatever you want to call them uh they're not they're not the same thing as the actual holy scriptures right so so it sounds like they're different variations different degrees of approximation to the one true scripture so it sounds like for you like the bible is a is a platonic form it's a reality it's a reality up in heaven right and if you're able to take a trip up to heaven to look at it and memorize it or whatever come back and tell me about it i would appreciate that but most people don't have that privilege um you know another thing uh saint augustine said was i would not believe in the bible we're not for the authority of the catholic church so that really is my whole point with the mystical bible comment is that we don't have the bible what do we have we have a living magister and we have a god-given authority and infallibility and indefectability of the church here that tells us what the canon of scripture is with the interpretation of certain scriptures not every scripture but certain scriptures is john 6 is a good example right the real presence in the eucharist and uh i would argue uh you know that the church has given us the interpretation of uh genesis the first uh chapters of genesis to the point where a catholic is not allowed to believe in theistic evolution we have to believe in special creation right i would that's my argument that's my understanding of the history of the church's uh doctrine on creation it's not an option to be a theistic evolutionist it's happening the same way you have pro-choice catholics it's just it's happening okay there are catholics in the pews and the pulpit and even bishops and cardinals who believe in for example same-sex marriage but it's established in the church doctrine that no right and there are catholics in the pews pulpit and bishops and cardinals who i would hope not that high who believe that women could be ordained as priests but when i read the tradition of the church and the teachings of the church it's well established that the priesthood is only for males of a certain age so you know you can point to people that have their little heretical beliefs within the catholic church and i would count any form of evolution as a heretical belief but doesn't mean that i'm not outnumbered i'm definitely outnumbered on evolution in the catholic church right so it's a very imperfect and very messy affair here in this fallen world but like i said in purgatory that's all being purified and then in the church triumphant up in heaven it's spotless the spotless bride of christ is there and the mystical bible is there and everything is as it should be that's why we pray your will be done on earth as it is in heaven because down here it ain't so good but up there it's perfect so yeah well again it sounds like to you the bible the mystical bible is a platonic form perhaps in the mind of god where we have a lot of particulars here on earth and they are they're participating in bible-ness so to speak well no because the difference is plato could never actually claim that there's a physical correspondence to any of the forms but i have an actual autograph of all the human co-authors of every part of scripture i have a historical fact that this man wrote these words this man wrote these words and taken all together that's the bible that's the real bible we don't have access to it here below that's why i call it mystical because it's up in heaven but it's a reality and real men in history natural history in in the supernatural history of salvation they were the co-authors with god god's a primary author but there really were real men writing things down and those writings are to be found in heaven right so it's it's very different from the platonic form very different although i love plato i love socrates they're my absolute favorite uh non-catholic philosophers for sure are you suggesting like the original autographs of the bible are up in heaven or just kind of like the immaterial either way i mean uh words or verses or this question this question reminds me of when people ask me like will my favorite pet dog be in heaven i always say yes it will be okay little bessie is going to be in heaven and the subtext of that like what i'm thinking in the back of my head when i say that with all confidence is or something much much better so if it's not bessie it'll be something even better than bessie it might be a simulation of bessie it might be some kind of uh bessie 2.0 i don't know but one thing i do know god's uh dogs don't merit heaven they don't merit hell they don't merit purgatory they don't merit anything they're they don't have free will and reason like we do so there's no reason god can't give you your pet dog in heaven and there's no reason god can't have the physical parchments or whatever they were vellums or whatever they were that were the original autographs i don't see any reason against that but it's not it's not really the essential salient point here the essential sailing point is the words the meanings what is what is this uh inherent word of god right and that's going to be exciting to go through that it might take all of eternity actually to unpack the scriptures that's maybe what heaven is it's just like okay genesis 1 1 let's start here and let's go for all eternity unpacking it all layer after layer after layer after layer i'm sure that sounds boring to some people but uh one thing's for sure heaven's not boring so whatever it is god's got an exciting eternity for each of us that makes it there yeah i wonder if the long ending of mark is uh up in heaven i don't know and which one which version of the wrong one i know that's the beautiful that's a beautiful thing he's like we're going to find out right we might even go to heaven turns out catholicism is false religion i don't know i don't know i'm not i'm a fallible man like you said at the very beginning of this i might be wrong maybe catholicism is a false religion one thing i do know for sure god is real god the father okay maybe the trinity is nonsense right but i know that god exists i know god the father exists i know that much so when i get to heaven and heaven is just god right when i get to heaven meaning when i go to god if god willing i i make it by god's grace if by god's grace i make it then no harm no foul because god will know why i'm catholic and what god will know as i said earlier that i'm not just pretending to be catholic how foolish would that be how foolish would it be for you to pretend to be atheist when you really believe in calvinism right if you believe in calvinism be a calvinist if you believe in atheism be an atheist be sincere be authentic this is what i said to rebecca on her channel the problem is not which worldview you have the problem is are you examining it do you believe it are you taking it seriously are you diving deeply into it that's what i said i stand by that yeah one thing um you know one of the things one of my objections to christianity on my series of why i'm not christian was the kind of the evolution and development of the concept of god uh throughout history and and i you know one thing i want to see especially with roman catholicism is that i think i think uh theologians like augustine ensem and aquinas kind of restructured god to a more um hellenistic concept of god i i believe what blaze pascal said that that the god of abraham isaac and jacob is not the god of the philosophers that they're that that it's kind of a separate god from anselm august augustine and aquinas yeah he wanted to bring he wanted to bring the gritty realism back in for sure but there was no there was no disrespect uh you know toward the great thinkers he just wants to draw us the reader away from the intellectual masturbation back to the reality the gritty reality of 2022 years ago wasn't that long ago when he when he was around but you get the idea he really wanted us to be in that existential mode rather than an intellectual mode so i i applaud him for that and i think uh i think he he took the best of both worlds but was emphasizing you know prudently emphasizing one uh one aspect over the other but definitely he was not an anti-intellectual norway no way yeah i i think what it does is it turns god into an abstract and it removes kind of like the personhood yeah of god and um your talk with rebecca you have you you mentioned that uh there's there's certain uh stories and passages in the bible that you've struggled with and the one you mentioned was the one in genesis 18 where you have abraham um bargaining with god over over the uh over the future of sodom and he said you know well if there's 50 uh righteous people in heaven uh you know you know we'll save sodom and and god says okay but then he borrowed it goes down lower what about 20 what about 10 and and so forth and this back and forth and and um you know that sort of god is more of a zeus type god and i think that's the god that we find in in the j source of creation in uh in in genesis 2. you know he he walks with adam and eve and after they eat from the fruit he says where are you and so forth and um you know it's more of an answer anthropomorphic god and um and i i think if i think you better understand these stories if if you don't try to interpret it as the god of of anselm and aquinas where it's it it's you know the greatest conceivable being and so forth end up being a mormon or something where god's just really really really good but not infinite in every pure perfection i mean it's just hey if that if that's what melts your butter if you're if you're willing to worship a god who's imperfect go for it but i never would never never count me out i'm not going to worship a god who's not infinite in every pure perfection period yeah well you know when when i i i see the bible history and and uh kind of history of of the jews and christians you know i see this evolution of god where he's a very anthropomorphic zeus-like god um who gets angry who has regrets um who can be bargained with uh and so forth you know to uh to uh the god of um of thomas aquinas you know you seem very much to be uh mystic where he's pure actuality he uh he you know he's all output uh uh and and so forth and uh you know he's not he's not contingent on on on humans and so forth and i kind of see that as kind of two separate bibles uh not two separate bible but two separate gods and i think i think if you try to view god that way i think it's going to make understanding the bible a lot harder and as as you experience with some certainty stories you know how you make sense of god bargaining with people and and you know moses seeing god's back parts and uh and and god enjoying the aroma of of the sacrifice that noah made it you know after after the flood and things like that well i i you know i have a different understanding now you know because uh the incarnation ushered in a new uh new sort of uh model for god because god is fully human in the incarnation and there's nothing that he lacks in his humanity in the god man of course they're two separate natures in christ the the divine and the human but did you ever hear saint augustine did you read the city of god by saint augustine by any chance i i read it like 30 years ago anyway he says a lot of stuff it's a fascinating read but he rambles and he talks about all kinds of crazy stuff and you know you don't have to believe it all but it's interesting but one of the things he talks about is the greek and roman pantheons these gods and there's the god of fertility and this god of war and that god of whatever you know and he says fine let god be zeus and he talks about the attributes of zeus and he says let god be thor he talks about the attributes of thor and let god be venus and he talks about the attributes of venus and he just goes on through all these ones all these gods major and minor and uh he just says look god has all of this and more right so what do you what are you excited about as a pagan are you excited about uh jove job's the big one right is joe zeus joe zeus right joe jehovah yeah yeah is uh yeah the roman version of of uh i believe of uh of uh the greek zeus yeah yeah so i think i think he's top dog i think he's top dog right if i'm not mistaken he's the top dog um well he he's kind of like yahweh he didn't start out that way but uh he was he was promoted uh you know because it's because joe had a father right i mean i mean zeus had a father yeah same thing um yeah let me well i'm googling it real quick yeah jove uh yeah i mean there's uh there's zeus and jupiter is the roman uh counterpart of zeus but yeah i i thought jove was another name i think it's the same but i don't know anyway my point is that uh the saint augustine was very comfortable yeah yeah jupiter yeah yeah jupiter also known as jokes okay yeah okay yeah so so yeah it's the roman counterpart of suits there you go yeah so it doesn't really matter it doesn't really matter the hierarchy the saint augustine's point was that look don't get all tripped up on these deities and you know you're there's one god and it doesn't matter if some religions are confused about uh the attributes of the deity we can know a lot of the attributes of god of the one true god and there's nothing foreign to god there's nothing foreign to god right and the only thing foreign to god is sin and evil he has no part in that but i mean it's kind of natural because uh evil has no substance whatsoever right evil has no substance so uh we really don't have anything to fear from likewise from those who do the um the theory about the myth the myth theory where it's like well there's similar stories to the flood in different cultures and they've got the story of gilgamesh and all these sorts of things and this story came earlier and these sorts of things yeah but we're not threatened by that either because they're similar stories it depends how you how you look at that right what do you look what are you going to conclude from that you don't have to conclude this is an older story it's similar therefore the new story is made up nonsense no i always take the personally i always take the approach if i'm going to compare zeus to the god that i worship or if i'm going to compare some myth to the story a biblical story i always just ask a very simple question is there any difference is there any difference if the answer is no then hey that's my god or hey that's my bible story if there is a difference i say well hey you admit there's a difference right so if this candidate for being the one true god lacks some pure perfection guess what it's not god and if it doesn't lack some perfection if it doesn't differ from the one true god then guess what they're not two they're one it's god so i've had many arguments with atheists where i end up saying yeah i do worship the flying spaghetti monster according to you because according to you there's no difference between that and my god it has all the pure perfections you know it's immaterial it's absolutely simple and all these sorts of things it's just a very simple it's a very simple uh thing to to distinguish god from not god and if you want to use the word whatever that's immaterial even the flying spaghetti monster or zeus or jupiter it's completely immaterial it's what do you mean what is what are the what are the perfections of this being right so so i don't buy into the uh all the the hairy complications of the scriptures and the anthropomorphism that's all been explained away like uh in the early in the early church right i don't know if you've read a lot of the early church fathers but they deal like justin martyr and they they deal with this stuff head-on and not afraid and it's pretty easily dealt with um you brought divine simplicity is it yeah is this wrong catholicism do they subscribe to divine dogmatic yet okay because yeah that's prosthetism goes back and forth some do and some don't but i didn't know the official catholic uh stance on divine simplicity um yeah i find that uh hard to believe uh in regards to the trinity um how can how can three persons and one being be simple um it doesn't seem to explain it to you yeah if you could i'm joking yeah um if we go into evolution i mean i i don't debate evolution i'm not a scientist i leave that up to the scientists to to uh to uh support evolution although i i do believe in evolution i believe in natural selection i believe in in common ancestry and things like that but one thing i was curious about you mentioned on rebecca's show you uh you said you're a young earth creationist and uh you brought up the immaculate conception yeah so uh you actually said there's there's only uh there's one and only one immaculate conception and if adam and eve were conceived in the womb of any animal human of any animal human animal or non-human animal then that dogma is false if the dogma is false my religion is false and if thousands is false then christianity is false and yeah i don't understand how the immaculate conception which is you know the conception of mary you know conceit with um free of original sin how does that tie back to adam and eve i don't see the connection they they fell for any felt i mean this is from a christian perspective so bear with me but adam and eve existed they were created perfect and free from sin right immaculate in other words they were created free from sin and then they fell so they didn't fall and they get created right you can't fall before you exist so step one create adam and eve whether it's through evolution or through uh special creation step one create them step two give them free will step three they abuse the free will and they fall from grace okay so when they were created whether through evolution theistic evolution or or special creation when they were created they were innocent they were free from sin they were immaculate and so if they were created in the womb of a beast or of a human they would have been necessarily immaculately conceived and therefore christianity is false period so i mean there goes your bible so you're right back to where you started with natural uh sort of generic monotheism right so that's that's not really an issue for me that's why i have no fear fear or anxiety about uh discovering that christianity is false it's because like the farthest i can possibly fall is to generic monotheism and that's the best place you could possibly be right it's the best place you could possibly be having christianity and catholicism is literally just icing on the cake it's the cake though it's the cake it's all about the cake it's all about the monotheism the christianity and the catholicism are wonderful don't get me wrong but it's icing on the cake if i get stripped of my catholicism and therefore my christianity i'm not gonna i'm not gonna lose any sleep because i got god i've got monotheism so uh yeah the whole thing with immaculate conception is just like that's that's on a hair trigger like if uh if any dogma gets contradicted i'm out right i'm ready to abandon jesus christ as legend lunatic liar or some combination of those three all right so you're saying adam and eve if they were conceived in a womb and they were born they would have not if they would not if they were conceived they were conceived without sin because they didn't see they didn't sin before they were conceived obviously they only conceived they only sinned after they were conceived so when they were conceived they were conceived without sin they were conceived immaculately and so if they were conceived immaculately guess what mary is not the one and only immaculate conception period christianity is false boom so if you can prove to me that adam and eve were conceived in the womb of any animal human or non-human i'm out of christianity but good luck with that project i'm still trying to understand this so i mean there are two components the immaculate conception the immaculate part and the conception part which part don't you understand immaculate means without sin conception means zygote right right so okay would so let's say adam and eve were conceived in the womb yeah all right so but why can't you're saying you're saying since mary's there's only one immaculate conception that was mary's so you're saying that if adam and eve were conceived in a womb that they would have sin no they would have no sin because right because like i said you can't sin before you're conceived you can only sin after you're conceived right right just sing came in the world after they were conceived so they were immaculately conceived if they were conceived at all right so so so and you're saying that's not possible it's not possible it's it's not possible if christianity is true and christianity is not possibly true if if adam and and or eve were conceived without sin in the belly of any animal because you could say you know before adam and eve there were no there are no soul-infused creatures and adam and eve were the first ones to have souls yeah they were born sinless and then after they fell sin came into the world and every conception after that except for mary original sin was passed down yeah but when they how did they come into the world with sin or without sin they came in without sin without sin yeah so when they were conceived in the womb they were conceived in the womb sinless so they were immaculately conceived which contributes which contradicts the dogma of the christian faith all right so you're saying there's there can only be one immaculate conception that's the dog right there's only one ticket and mary got it yep so adam and eve could not have been born could not have could not have been conceived seamless right so so it's it's it's it's a it's a it's a one-seat show and and mary got the ticket all right i think so that's a little clearer now um so are you catholic now just kidding yeah no i get it yeah so so okay so your hang up is not the immaculate part it's the conception part you know you you you can't have both you can't believe something you can't have food cannot both i don't see why god can't do whatever he wants to do he could do whatever he wants to do if he wants to take a bunch of apes and have them whatever but that does also it does also there's another dogma which is that god created a good world and you know there was like a paradise uh eden and there was no sin there was also no suffering there was no death so you know there are a bunch of problems it's not just the immaculate conception it's the immaculate conception though that made me say aha okay definitely 100 percent guaranteed i'm a young earth creationist now because up until that point i was just sort of like agnostic about the whole uh young earth creationism thing yeah well i think if you're going to be biblically consistent you should be a young earth creationist yes that's that that's that's my view um uh let me see all right well that that's clear to me now i was really confused about that um could talk more about augustine but i'll let that pass um i love saint augustine yeah i don't want to get i can get well we could talk about him we're done with him yeah next um oh okay yeah i guess in regards to evolution you said that evolution is against the uh metaphysical principles of the scientific network yeah that's i yeah i'd like to if you could talk more about that because you know some of the metaphysical principles in science are things like uh the principle of causality the the principal uniformity of nature principle substance uh things like that those are metaphysical principles that guide the scientific method yeah just just so you know okay just so you know there is uh that uni uniformitarian thing is not catholic the catholic view of creation is that there's a distinction between the time of creation and the time of providence okay so we have creation and then uh there's six days of creation then the seventh day is the day of rest and then we have providence so um it goes against it flies in the face of the uniformitarianism of the naturalist you know materialist atheist of today so that's one of the big big big big obstacles to understanding the debate between uh for example a theistic evolutionist and a young earth creationist who is a christian like as the theistic evolutionist might be a christian it might be a devote pious christian just hasn't understood that there's that distinction between uh creation and providence errors because they're distinct um but how do you feel that evolution as a theory violates some of the metaphysical principles of the scientific method my number one principle that's violated the one i like to focus on is the principle of proportionate causality you can't give what you don't have and the cause is more perfect than the effect always always okay so uh that's clearly violated by evolution where you get you start out with a molecule you end up with a man right you start or you start out with whatever like you name it start even start with an ape and go to a man it's violating the principle of proportionate causality it doesn't matter where you start if you're going from one kind to another kind you've definitely violated the principle of proportionate causality 100 because guess what i'm more perfect than an ape speaking for myself personally i'm more perfect than an ape i have free will and reason so i'm i would say infinitely more perfect than an ape any ape even the one they train to do dancing and painting and speak a few words or whatever well i mean that's subjective i mean there's other animals that have you know greater abilities than than humans have you know obviously human beings we are better at being bacteria doing bacteria things but i'm infinitely superior to a bacteria because i have free will and reason i'm made in the image and likeness of god so you have to remember that i'm going to always be arguing from a christian perspective i'm not going to be you know going to some atheistic mindset and saying yeah it's better to be a human than to be a worm no the atheist can't do that and the atheist evolutionists don't do that aaron rod does not do that er aaron raw will not say that a human is objectively absolutely eternally immutably superior to a worm he will not say that i've tried i've tried to get him to say that he won't say that yeah i mean i i think you know we're all different species uh some have uh certain abilities over others uh you know bats have echolocation we don't uh cheetahs can uh run faster than humans but obviously you know we can invent machines that that go faster than cheetahs so um you know we're we're the uh you know we're the top of the food chain um but but again each each each species have their their their uh you know their unique abilities and you know natural selection will only select for what survives so what uh what can benefit us now uh could be a detriment to us later if the environment changes if we don't if we're not able to adapt to the environment um we could uh we could go extinct um which uh corn evolution over 99 of all species are extinct um i like to ask evolutionists if you don't mind if i interrupt uh i find the whole talk a little bit boring but i'd like to ask you about the future of the evolution of humans i interviewed a couple of uh transhumanists uh you know about the transhumanist movement i'm not too familiar okay well they believe evolution they believe in evolution and they like it and they say hey guess what we've evolved to such an extent that we are sort of able to comprehend this process that we're a part of and hey why don't we harness that knowledge we have about the process by which we became so wise right homo sapiens sapiens right we became wise so let's harness that process tweak it and let's build the ubermensch this is what nichi's product project was all about too right so you've got out of this we have planned parenthood we've got the eugenics movement we've got all kinds of satanic uh stuff that's just totally anti-life from my catholic perspective but from their perspective this is wonderful this is the future we're going to have humans living forever and they're going to have their minds in a computer hardware that will be updated and maintained and they envision all kinds of things for the future of humanity that's better it's humanity 2.0 and these sorts of things and if you believe it or not the morons that are running this sick planet believe this stuff uh in you know the world economic forum and khloe schwab talks about it in his book the great reset stuff like that it's it's a real thing like these godless baby killers they really believe in this stuff and they're excited about it and you know the the methuselah project i'm sure you've heard about these projects like these are these are supposedly intelligent overly educated uh you know predominantly men but some women in there too white men and white women but anyway it's a sick thing but i like to discuss it with anyone that believes in evolution because yeah why not get excited about the future of humanity why not look forward to the uber mensch the over man that omega point off in the future where we're bigger better stronger we live longer and we don't need food we don't need this we don't need that we don't need mother and father we don't need the nuclear family we don't need any of this stuff and we've just evolved past that what does it fill you with dread as it does me or does it fill you with excitement or you just find the whole thing ridiculous or what well i think i think what evolution teaches is it it evolution doesn't uh doesn't say that you know we're going to perfection you know evolution doesn't care about our we can harness evolution and go toward perfection that's what they say yeah well you know if we could if we come to a point where our uh our personalities are in a computer can we say we're humans at that point i think what evolution really teaches that eventually all species including the human species will uh will eventually go extinct will either go extinct or we will we will evolve we will evolve into a different species we'll be homo something else it's funny it's funny because the theistic evolutions reject that they say no no no we've reached the apogee we've reached the high water mark and this is what god intended we're human and we're stuck at this level of evolution and that's as far as it's going to go and i'm like why why why do you say that what makes you say that what reason do you have to say that as a theistic evolution evolutionist why because jesus had this form because jesus was limited in this way is that why or what is it you know so it's very it's a very interesting question to ask the atheist but it's even more interesting to ask the uh the christian who believes in theistic evolution it's fascinating yeah i i think theistic evolution well i think christian theistic evolution has a lot of problems particularly biblically um i mean you mentioned one already though yeah i don't think the avenue story how sin entered in the world and so forth uh is compatible with theistic evolution at all um again i think to be more consistent you need to be a young earth creationist um but yeah i think with evolution you know i think the environment will definitely change and humans will either change with it or all will die out you know they're you know they say we're going to be out of fossil fuels in 50 years you know things will be quite you know could be quite different then um there could be another you know uh ice age uh you know who knows you know if we don't adapt to the changing environment uh then we'll we'll die out but but we'll have to evolve you know uh whatever advantages we have to survive in that environment we'll we'll direct us uh you know we'll direct our our gene uh our genes going forward from there so but yeah i think you know evolution teaches that eventually homo sapiens will will go extinct we'll either go completely extinct or we'll evolve into something else what do you think about the heat death that's uh coming according to the mainstream uh physicists well i think that's one theory they're saying there's enough dark matter you know dark matters is a ho it's a placeholder for something we can't explain uh but there might be enough dark matter where the universe kind of you know goes back on itself and perhaps you know it's like yeah but still he does it's still heat death it's still a heat death because when guess what happens when all that matter energy gets compressed temperature rises right yeah and then you know perhaps in a half there'll be another big bang and that that's an endless cycle so forth yeah that's what nietzsche believed yeah the eternal recurrence this is the stoic idea right that great fire conflagration and uh you know so much for the meaning of your life but you said you know it's just a subjective uh passing existential thing like i'm here now i've got my meeting now i've got my value now whatever but um you know the what do you think about the laws of the three laws of thermodynamics do you think that they're pretty well established like their laws because they're called the laws of thermodynamics right because they're supposed to be invaluable for closed systems and the universe is necessarily a closed system yeah i mean uh you know who knows i mean with quantum mechanics it you know it it seems quite open at this point um you know you know the first law of thermodynamics that you know matter energy you know cannot be created or destroyed it just transforms from from one form into another and so forth i mean yeah that's what science runs on and so forth but quantum mechanics is is making us uh you know uh see the see uh the laws of physics in a totally different way and um they say uh einstein's theory relativity doesn't hold up um you know in regards to the big bang in quantum mechanics it's not compatible with it and so forth so you know i scientific theories are are are models or predictive models um you know you can get into whether or not you're a scientific anti-realist or not but but they're certainly useful um you know science is has produced you know wonderful things you know in fields of medicine agriculture technology and so forth it's it's it's it's very useful and that's where maybe a pragmatic theory of truth might have some uh viability uh there but you know i still hold to a correspondence theory of truth um but um but yeah no i don't think you know again you know and science teaches that we can't be dogmatic you know all scientific theories are provisional and open to revision and uh they're not considered uh absolute truth they're just considered uh you know effective reliable models that there that we can make predictions with and um but uh but you know something new can come along which will change that um you know one example is uh newton's theory of gravity um you know einstein showed that so there's problems with it and there are problems with it like you know like the orbit of mercury for example there's problems with uh newton's theory of gravity doesn't fit well with the orbit of uh mercury but um it's still used because it's a simpler uh theory you know newton you know they didn't just throw out newton's theory it's still it's still in use um it's it it still has uses it's just uh you know there's just exceptions to the role and now there's exceptions to the rule with with uh with einstein's theories as well so it's it's uh perhaps we can call it progressive revelation yeah it's a lot of a lot of room for the atheist and the agnostic to hide and all the the fancy complexities of the quantum world and relativity and that the you know the website i'm not i'm not i'm not you know i'm i'm mocking a little bit but you know i love that when i was an agnostic and then an atheist i loved that i loved the it's it's sort of funny to use this word but the mystery of it you know the mystery of it you know it's just like it's wonderful it's awesome and you hear you hear a lot of uh atheists or agnostics that are into the natural sciences that have that reverence that oh look it's almost like a religious experience and more power to them i think that's great right but we need to also understand uh we have reason we're able to reason clearly one plus one is two i've met physicists who deny that one plus one is objectively eternally immutably uh two and they're serious and uh i asked them what do you do when the cashier gives you the wrong change because it's like it's an objective eternal fact that one plus one equals two and you can prove it and you know it intuitively and when you get shortchanged you're angry and you you you appeal to a standard which is unmoving that is god you're you're you're bowing to god at that point you're going back to that cashier and you're like you shortchanged me i just talked to a guy i just talked to an atheist had this experience he got he gave a 50. he got changed for a 20. he was angry he had a righteous anger and he was glorifying god in that moment because he knows one plus one is two he knows it but the physicists today they deny one plus one is too objectively internally and absolutely they deny that the principle of causality is universally valid they deny the principle of sufficient reason they deny everything and anything why not because it makes sense but because they don't want to confront their own sinfulness they don't want to submit to god almighty they don't want to repent they don't want to change their ways so i'm sorry to go into this uh emotional rant here but that's what it's all about i mean i see through it i've been on both sides of the question i know myself i told you earlier i love sinning it's fun it's easy okay i love it but i can't deny the truth i discovered the truth by the grace of god and i have to i have to change i have to change my ways no there's no doubt about it i mean i'm not saying it better than you but i'm striving to be better than you i'm striving so we'll wrap it up there because i do have to go to bed i got to get up to work in the morning but i really appreciate meeting you your sweet nice guy i respect your world view uh for the most part and uh i'd like to have you back and chat some more it's real pleasure and uh you drew a big audience by my standard you got a bunch of people in the live chat here love you all i'm looking forward to seeing you again and uh so that's it we'll wrap it up here what would you like to leave us with in terms of a positive uh hopeful message for anyone that's listening because you know we've got in the live chat we've got a lot of atheists but a couple of uh catholics and uh protestants too so what would you say just as a general message that everyone can uh walk away feeling good well i think we're able to clear some things up i had a lot of questions and i think you're able to answer them and i'm hoping our conversation will generate more dialogue more conversations so i think um we can walk i think i think that'll be a positive thing that comes from our talk it's more more positive and effective dialogue amen my brother thank you so much i appreciate it and uh please keep in touch reach out anytime you know how to book a slot on the live stream it's easy just go to that app and just pick a time and uh so we'll definitely have you back we'll see you again and take good care of yourself and we'll dig a lot deeper into all kinds of other stuff all kinds of other stuff as you wish okay so uh keep in touch and god bless you great thanks for having me we'll talk soon bye now