all right we're live and i'm here with my new bff joe how are you doing joe good how are you how are you good to see you you can't see me right because i had to adjust my obs settings so i could stream i just see a young a young david you see a young me with my dark hair and my man bun there yeah and um i put on the screen when you watch this back if you watch it back you'll see i've got an image of a famous very famous joe on uh as your avatar okay so uh what is that saint joseph the foster father of jesus christ oh wow yeah it's a cartoon image it's a cute little image do you have dark hair and brown eyes in the big bushy beard no i don't have a bee i can't grow a beard oh i do that i don't have hair either remember yeah but you can buy you can buy all that from the costume shop so no problem yeah so how's it going how did you discover my channel uh in the first place how long you been watching or listening to my stuff oh actually that's a good uh interesting story well not really interesting story but i was watching one of uh your your um your girl haunted your atheist experience uh and then i was like you know i actually listened to your conversation i don't know before a long time ago i can remember it but i listened to it again like i remember oh this guy he's kind of smart he's so and i and i listened to it again and uh and then i just went down and scrolled the comments and i said oh this guy's got his uh he's his name cbs uh right so he's got his own channel i said okay let me go look at that and uh so that's how i came onto you i didn't know you had a channel or anything did you did you enjoy reading all the crazy comments on that uh america uh atheist experience uh video a lot of comments my thought is for every single atheist experience it's every single one you go down the first time i ever went to like the eighth experience and i went and i read the comment section i was like what's wrong with these people they're all they're all just saying the exact same thing it's just like a gigantic echo chamber where they all just want to say yeah look how smart i am look at how smart matt is and he you know he just said so it's just the same thing every every single every single atheist show every single thing they'll just it's the exact same comments not the most creative uh people they're not they're not the most um free thinking people that's the irony of it right they don't but and they're just going to say they you know the exact same no matter what even if you gave the greatest argument ever they'd be like oh that's right that doesn't matter what he says so you sent me a link uh to your or you didn't send me the link but you told me how to find it and i found your uh thing i i only listened to one little two-minute thing full of expletives and uh you were hot under the collar a little bit it seemed like it yeah yeah well that how that conversation ended up how i ended up there was i had called in to talk even before okay and i had talked to i was like asking them questions and then i accused one of the uh hosts i said well maybe you don't want god to exist that's what i kind of i said that to him and he got kind of offended he told me oh that offends me and i said well then i then i got kind of a little pissed at him and i said well if that offends you imagine how abdullah honey treats everybody and but you're not offended by that you know and then and then i saw honey in the comments that in the chat section and he's saying okay this guy first call our own atheist experience if he has the courage to call in oh sounds right that's why i call him oh he challenged you he threw down the gauntlet yeah oh okay okay yeah i i heard him say something to that effect in that uh in that video but i wasn't sure i thought that you were a long time caller like you've been on the show a million times like that canadian catholic guy like uh do you know him canadian catholic yeah i know he's actually a pretty smart guy he he's been on my podcast you should listen to that one if you want i know i see i i listen a little bit okay okay people accuse me of being him but we're very different our voices are different our approaches are different everything's different yeah you're very different he's not even a bad guy he's not he's a smart guy he's he's he's he knows philosophy he's he's not a bad guy but atheists they'll just hate anybody if you you know if you go against matter have you interacted with canadian catholic no i i mean i probably not not personally now you haven't been on any uh streams with her does he do streaming and stuff yeah i think he does so if you don't mind my asking why do you uh keep your full name private and your face private why is that uh i just don't have any interest on being on the internet okay okay it exposes you maybe to uh prying eyes and people want to know your business and i don't think i mean i don't think anybody's going to care but i just don't have rules really being on the internet so yeah yeah yeah yeah well thanks for coming on i know i've invited you multiple times to come on and then we spoke privately and had a good conversation and so i guess uh did you believe my story yeah yeah you but you said you're not going to share it with the public right yeah i'm not going to share with anybody yeah i believe i believe until i have a reason not to believe like i told you like i'm uh i'm very open-minded and uh you know a couple of the like your story has many little stories within it and some of them were more shocking than others and i'm not gonna go into detail and we shouldn't probably talk about too much otherwise people are gonna be coming to me asking me hey david what's the story tell me the story but so we won't talk we won't dwell on it but i appreciate that you shared your story with me and you feel a little bit shy to share your story because you think you might get laughed at or people won't believe you and you told a couple people that didn't believe you and this sort of thing but everyone's different joe everyone everyone is different some people are open-minded some people are close-minded some people are very skeptical in a good way and some people are skeptical in a bad way like that like matt de la hunty's a good example of someone who's skeptical but in a bad way yeah i just don't want you know i'm not it won't help me to tell the story so no i just need to tell somebody yeah you seem like a uh just a good guy so i thought i'd tell you so thank you very much and i'm praying for you you know i'm praying for you every day and i bought uh i didn't buy but i enrolled you in a perpetual mass so that you're having uh the benefit of the graces of the mass the mass that's being said for you every day so that's a lot of graces from god coming your way did you want to talk a little bit about yourself or would you rather just chit chat i just like chatting okay if you want to ask questions about me that's fine well you mentioned to me uh how you were raised did you just want to give a really rough outline of how you were raised in terms of world view i kind of you know i grew up as you know i never thought about god or i was uh you know i was just totally agnostic but i just never thought about it you know i would i would i wouldn't have really had any opinion or or said i would have said but probably not i would lean towards until i started you know thinking about i started researching things and researching the arguments and stuff and you know thinking about it more um is it too delicate to um talk about the ostensible religion of your parents and your ancestors or no uh my parents are jewish but you know we just did on uh god was we i don't neither my parents probably believe in god but you know never wasn't mentioned once we just did when you get to you know being jewish is about a cultural thing so yeah yeah holidays and stuff so you have a you're jewish you have a good sense of humor right do all jewish people have good senses most of them most of them yet all right i don't know and you got lots of money right yeah lots of money and a big nose and a big nose i don't like to spend money are you tight with your money are those other jewish stereotypes i'm sure there are many more are you neurotic no you're not neurotic no i don't think so i'm neurotic i don't know i mean i'm a little bit neurotic i enjoyed your story i listened i listened to you on converse contender oh he's a sweet guy that guy's a real sweetheart i told you i heard your kind of your life story which is pretty fascinating yeah very different from my what about uh can you just talk briefly about christianity what do you think of christianity are you leaning towards it have you dabbled in it dabbled uh well i believe it's true good but you know i'm i'm by nature i'm just not really a religious person and things like that yeah well i told you know i told you stuff before but uh yeah i believe it's true based on all the stuff that i've researched yeah well that's uh that's amazing congratulations i mean uh it's what a grace from god to believe in the jewish messiah i mean especially for you coming from a jewish background it's like you know your ancestors were waiting and waiting for the jewish messiah to come and then sadly a bunch of the jews rejected the messiah and they just keep pretending like he never came but you come along in 20 whatever in the 21st century and all of a sudden now we have a reconnection in your bloodline to the true real messiah like do you not feel the impact of that coming from a jewish background like that's that's major not really it's the messiah it's like you found the messiah wow it's amazing it is amazing it's amazing it's amazing do you pray at all a little bit maybe i'm not sure have you changed your behavior ever since you found god and christianity have you changed your behavior yeah i have tried definitely i know certain things uh yeah i've tried to do stop doing some things a lot less than you know i've tried to stop them permanently and you know there's a lot of things that are that are difficult and but uh yeah tell me tell me about it i know i know i heard your story yeah i've been you know i've been uh i've been a christian uh as an adult uh i've been a christian for about uh years well 2009 you do the math i guess it's almost 13 years now why did you drop out of high school i dropped out of high school just because i was not enjoying high school and i was a rebel you know and uh i didn't see the point of sitting in a fluorescent lit room see for my for me that's that's not an option to drop out of high school i had to go to high school you know no matter what my parents were enforcing you needed to go to college too so ah well i was working at a bar i started working at a bar when i was underage it was illegal but i just got the job in a bar and started drinking a little bit do you speak french may we you say your era i'm i'm my french my french sucks but i do speak french and have you been to quebec or have you been to canada no i haven't it's uh it's a nice place i mean it's uh it's going downhill like a lot of places you know it's going downhill and uh did you want to mention where you're from you're from the united states right yeah i'm from northern virginia okay what's that like oh it's a nice place it's probably uh that's probably one of the more wealthier suburbs of uh in the country so really i grew up in a middle class house just as town house but the suburb you know it's it's the suburbs of dc where all the like the senators and the congressmen live and oh no i went to you know i had a lot of i used to play sports with a lot of the congressmen and senators kids and stuff and so wow are you do you have a lot of uh best friends that you've known since childhood or have you lost touch with a lot of the childhood friends i have lost touch with my best friends they were my best friends were in high school okay i mean i had a great high school experience so those were the best days uh but you know i lost touch once you know they got married had kids and uh you know everybody goes in their own direction and yeah are you a hetero you like women yeah yeah well i gotta ask in this day and age you gotta ask very carefully okay you gotta ask yeah i can't assume anything i can't even assume your pronouns he she z it's the dumbest thing ever pronouns that's what i say i i had a bunch of comments telling me like i was arguing about it with people on uh on the on the check kind of the chat comment section and i always think the atheist experience they use the pronouns but they're talking directly to the person you know they have to say what's your pronoun but yeah they're they're talking right to him so it's just like virtue signaling we gotta we gotta know your pronouns it's vice signaling it's not virtue it's vice my pronouns are z and zero what is that what does that even mean i don't even know i would say you know i would give them i would just hand them a piece of paper with a really complicated set of rules of how my pronouns change throughout the course of the day and the week and the month and the year like it's just like this is my system you have to cater to my mental illness this is my mental illness and you have to cater to it and if you don't then how dare you you have my exact same attitude that's funny and when i when i mispronounce someone it's like well that's my mental illness i mispronoun everybody i use their sex right their biological sex to pronoun people that's my mental illness and if you don't cater it to it then you're offending me right you should get arrested and put in jail yeah because anything goes when it comes down to it if you're just going to start catering to people's mental illnesses i've got my own mental illness i'm a catholic okay so cater to that yeah and once i called into skeptic the show skeptic generation have you heard that no it's it was a two people used to host talk even which is the former atheist before the atheist experience and one of the ladies goes by they okay and i didn't call her they and she hung up on me they hung up on you yeah oh yeah yeah just say look i know you are legion because there are many demons in you but i just addressed one demon at a time that's why i use uh singular pronouns with you okay yeah that's good that's good i'm giving you lots of tips and tricks here you can really go to town next time you're going to be very popular on the atheist experience well i'm never going to call it again so it's pointless you're done you're done with the show you're done calling into the show oh yeah i would never talk to matt i mean it would be it's just pointless to go through okay as he said it's just a big game yeah you can give him any any uh i do i troll him on all on his show and he usually like uh he has to to delete me from the chat section oh or his uh debates and stuff otherwise his feelings get hurt yeah i don't know i don't know these people i i called in one time and i have to say uh he was a bit rough with me and the way he treated me on the phone but his staff were very courteous and they were very courteous before and after because they gave me permission to host the episode in an edited form on my podcast and they don't normally do that and i had a lot of his little minions coming and attacking me and saying take this down this is the property of atheist experience and you need permission to do this and i said well i have permission and then i went and got the people that gave me permission uh to come on my channel and confirm that they gave me permission so they're very cooperative in that way and they didn't have to give me permission and they didn't have to reinforce this uh among their rabid minions who were trying to attack me so i think they went out of their way for me and i do i do really appreciate that that's pretty why i don't know why would they care if you have it on your channel because they're very jealous they want to they want to maintain the um property of the atheist experience like i'm talking about the minions the little people the little fan fanboys and fan girls they want to maintain every right and privilege and how dare you if you go against the principles and these are the rules and you can't share this content and i said well i had permission to share the content and and i got i got backed up on that so it was pretty good i was uh i was pretty impressed by the organization that they they gave me permission first of all and then they vouched for me like that was pretty cool your your call was probably what probably like close to 10 years six seven eight years ago uh i think it was 2016 if i'm not mistaken yeah the show was like i think you know matt he's gotten so much worse and worse over the years i mean just become just more more like jay springer is he is his quote-unquote girlfriend a man more like a boy yeah yeah boy it's a boy is big age difference yeah she's he's probably look he she looks like in there she's actually a her name's arden i think he's in their 20s is it a biological boy yeah okay she hopes that you can now you can see her how she hosts the shows okay she hurts tran transfer not that it matters but what beauty rating do you give one between one and ten beauty writing for this person i guess she's kind of pretty huh i don't know for someone that hates pronoun uh pronouns you certainly cater to this person i would say he well i mean i'm not trying to make anyone feel bad or i have no animosity to them and they them no and i can't imagine honestly i can't imagine how difficult it would be to be agreeing i agree not the wrong body i mean that's just got to be a really a painful thing okay so you do believe people have uh the this is a real thing where they think that they're the opposite sex well i think that these are people probably who have you know a lot of issues meant they feel like uh in their head they feel like the ops the sex that they aren't born they think you know like that person you had brenda she probably felt like he she was a woman inside but you know she was born in the man's body yeah i would say that's that's probably very painful yeah yeah yeah not just not just how you look at yourself how the world looks at you but how you also feel about yourself and you know yeah you know people make fun of you i'm sure it was very difficult for those people yeah i feel a lot of compassion for them yes but that doesn't mean you have to cater to like every year they want yeah my my official policy is if they want if if one of these people is talking to me directly and they want me to use a certain pronoun i'll just try desperately to avoid using any pronouns whatsoever like i did with brenda or uh if i absolutely have to i'm forced to use a pronoun i'll use the pronoun of their choice no matter how absurd just to avoid offending them just because i care about them um and then behind their back i'll just use their biological sex right that's fine i mean nobody cares none of this matters in the end yeah i mean what matters is that that human being who's suffering like you said like you're emphasizing that's what matters the human being a child of god who's suffering and christ died for that person and that person is destined for heaven hopefully do you believe in heaven and hell as two ultimate eternal outcomes from which you cannot escape never the twain shall meet do you believe in heaven and hell with my experiences that i had yeah now i do good good without without that belief i don't think you can have objective absolute morality because i mean if everyone ends up in heaven then it's just a different and more or less interesting path to heaven ultimately that's that's that's it so there can be no morality it's like hey i'll meet you in heaven i'm just gonna take this dark path where i take advantage of every human and i get pleasure at my own expense and yeah it's a darker longer path to heaven but i'll meet you there i'll see you there later i'm taking a more interesting path than you and you cannot judge me you cannot judge me because there is no morality yeah i've heard you talk with some of the uh your atheists and i remember i heard you talk when you were uh i guess you were very young you said you used to scam people yep how what would you do you were young a fraud you would sell things or you said yeah i worked for the mafia my first job after i left home was with the mafio is selling things that people like i was selling trinkets at very high price because i had promised them all kinds of things trips and jewelry and all these sorts of things that they had won so they buy these uh these trinkets that are worthless for their business like pens and key tags and those sorts of things and then the prize that i promised them is completely exaggerated and so they get some worthless prize and it's just a this was a fly by night organization they would close up they would open shop close up shop reopen shop under a different name close shop reopen close reopen close so the cops could never really uh persecute them prosecute them so you were you're a good sales person very good sales person yeah i was a very very good salesperson yeah that's one of my that's one of my shady uh experiences but just basically lying cheating and stealing but the stealing part was usually through fraud not through directly like shop i'm the worst shoplifter there ever was i think i tried once and it's like i'm so awkward i'm like so obvious it's like may as well have like red lights flashing all around me like i'm just that awkward when it comes to like trying trying not to be seen as i shoplift i tried to shoplift a chocolate bar once in a grocery store it made such a scene my wife was embarrassed why would you do that when you probably when you had them to buy a chocolate bar you could just i just wanted to try i just wanted to try it like i mean you know i just wanted to try it and i think i did get away with it um later i stopped i stole uh dental floss from the pharmacy but it was like you know it's again it's just like hey let's try and see if i can do this and it's just like i'm really i'm just really awkward at trying to shoplift i tried to shoplift the piano it was it didn't go right but they were on to me and it didn't fit through the door so i was like yeah what do you think well you're light you laugh you may laugh but have you seen the the rash of uh brazen uh thefts from stores in california or wherever it was in the states have you seen have you seen these people just walking in and walking in grabbing a bunch of stuff and walking out this was happening happening i think last summer or the summer before it's terrible i mean come on these people are trying to run businesses yeah oh well that chocolate bar and that dental floss i'll have to uh i'll have to make up for that somehow have you ever heard of blue lives matter no but i want to join them you never heard blue lives matter no is that for cops yeah okay okay yeah i always thought it was uh the blue man group what i thought at first but yeah it's for the cops yeah yeah yeah yeah no that's just a joke see if my if i can ever become a stand-up comedian are you standing right now we can't tell i'm sitting so it won't work so um the other day we spoke and uh you mentioned uh gsp and ufc mma and all this sort of thing yeah i was trying i was trying to remember the name of the brazilian jiu jitsu guy and i just just today i remembered it who is it uh um okay no no no i did i did i had it in my memory bank just give me a second here carlos newton oh yeah i know carlos newton yeah yeah sweet her sweetheart canadian oh he's coming he's standing he uh fought anderson silva and he got knocked out by a knee oh you can watch that that's a good fight he's really good at brazilian jiu jitsu and he got knocked out by matt hughes you should watch that one that's a classic oh matt hughes is one of my least favorite personalities in all of mma i'm sorry to say you know he got he got hit by a train did you know that i'm sorry to hear that no yeah he got a serious train accident and is he alive he's still alive but uh he's uh not i don't think he speaks that well i'm sorry to hear that i shouldn't speak ill of him then no if somebody's hit by a train he can't speak you over um yeah my thoughts or prayers go to him and his family that's uh tragic but why was he in the way of a train that seems odd i don't know the whole story okay look it up yeah yeah this fibrous carlos newton's uh it's a classic one where he puts him on top of the cage okay then he plans him down carlos newton had him in a triangle you know the triangle oh oh another floor i remember that yeah i remember that scene yeah yeah yeah yeah do you remember uh the early uh the early fights which one pride or no no i'm talking about like ufc one through events yeah the guy with the one boxing glove and you know the sumo the sumo yeah that was the very beginning did you like tank abbott i i mean i didn't really watch those you didn't watch the early ones so much uh what made me curious about the ufc i was always curious uh like i was like i heard about this guy hoist crazy and i didn't know who he was amazing i heard him he beat everybody yeah and then i knew there was this guy matt hughes who who was the new best guy and they were going to fight and then matt hughes beat up ended up beating just beating my horse gracie and and now so just showed how the sport had evolved past just brazilian jiu jitsu and then then i started watching you know just the small ones then i became a big esp fan when after his first fight with josh koscheck was in montreal and he came out he had just lost him at sarah yeah now he just came out of the uh the entrance in his in his like kimono and he had like a karate you know the bandana on and he was you know he was super pumped and he that's when i became a you know i thought oh man this guy's this guy's awesome that's like the golden age right there you're talking about and uh i met him once too no way yeah well he was doing a seminar down here and i said i had to go wow did you speak with him one-on-one or uh no i just just shook his hand nice yeah strong handshake oh yeah very cool well that's amazing i mean uh there's so many uh amazing athletes it's just it's mind-boggling it's so many gentlemen you know you got your creeps in there too but the so many gentlemen because they have the martial arts that that uh dignity that comes with the martial arts if they take the martial arts seriously i'm not going to hear i don't like hero worship so like i don't like people are just people no matter what they do you know they're just people but they're they're good people and bad people they're nice people and the crappy people right right i don't want to worship someone because they're great at basketball or football you know whatever they say oh this guy you know everybody loves celebrities and stuff yeah i don't i don't like that i think this the people the true heroes are peoples we don't know we don't know their name some guy some guy named joe david ross he's a hero he's got you having a more interesting story than almost all of them more sordid what was what how long were you a solipsist uh i would say it was it was a very brief uh it was a br very brief uh moment like it was probably a couple of months a couple of months yeah maybe because because it's intolerable it's just it's too it's too heavy like it's just too heavy and it's a dark yeah it's a dark place you have a sister and a family and and all the people you talk to did you have to talk to people yeah it's just part of the that's just part of the show i mean the the whole the whole fantasy production of the solopsist right the anyone that is a hard solipsist as i was has to account for the fact that he seems to be he or she seems to be lost in a world of their own creation like in a theater production of their own creation with all the extras and believe it or not i can still it's a very dangerous thing to do because you know i can fall into uh psychosis but i can still enter into the solipsistic mindset very very easily all i need to do is go back to seeing people as extras or actors in my theater and it just brings me right back into that mindset and it's just hilarious like now you know now that i'm not a solipsist it's actually really really funny to snap back into that solipsist mindset because i see everyone just as these uh npcs in my video game right like i don't know if you play video games but they're these non-player characters that uh are just going through the motions all for the sake of me obviously it's very narcissistic and self-centered yeah it's like it's like the truman show yeah you've seen that right yeah yeah yeah but the truman in the truman show they were real people that were catering to a real another real person to put on the theater but yeah it's like that but in heard solipsism these people have no existence whatsoever they're a figment of my imagination it's just just pixels in a pixels in a hologram that's it no depth no reality any any beauty any intelligence any creativity that these pixelated holograms have is just me right so i see beauty it's my beauty if i see joy it's my joy if i see sorrow it's my sorrow if i see intelligence it's my intelligence whatever it is it's all comes from me you could just go and touch anybody you wanted right yeah yeah they feel so real no but they they you're like too bad you're in my video game so i can uh well i mean i was not i was not bold i was not that emboldened because i was still think about it like when i when i fell into heart solipsism it's a bit of a shock like oh my god i am i am god i'm the creator of everything and then i'm like well what about all the consequences that i've already lived like i know i stick my hand in the fire it hurts i know if i if i offend some big guy that's stronger than me he's going to knock me around i know if i you should tell him who you are you're a god yeah i am i created okay you think you're going to touch me you're not but it was you know i didn't have i didn't have time or the inclination to play with it in that way it was more just like what is going on and how did i become so lost and uh how how lonely is this being the only being in the universe and uh not only that but i'm not only am i the only being i'm a disembodied being who's just pretending to have a body my body my body's no more real than your your body whoever is out there because the material universe has no substance it's just illusion so it's not too far from what the buddhists and some of the eastern religions teach so it's not that crazy they're like half the planet believes this right they believe they are they are the one mind and uh separation is illusion literally like i have a i have a good friend now who believes that he believes that there is actually no difference between any of us because we are all just that one mind so this is the eastern philosophical position of i would say half the planet oh okay well i i never heard it before so you're not you're not educated on the eastern mysticism no i'm not really educated very well i only got to third grade and then i dropped out are you joking you're serious i joined the mafia in the third grade you're joking now [Laughter] uh selling pens and key tags right was that i used to run a uh cucumber store where we only sold cucumbers hello extra large cucumbers so we we won a monopoly on cucumbers and we'd sell them and never if people wanted a cucumber they'd come to our store did they did you pickle them yeah we pickled them you pickled your customers are you serious pickled them yeah you pickled your customers what does that mean i'm just kidding i don't even know their means because you said a lot of people would come to our store to buy to buy cucumbers and i said did you pickle them and you said yes i don't know what that means pickle them whether you soak them in vinegar oh okay that's how you turn them into see i didn't even know that i don't know how you make pickles okay what you got to do joe go back to third grade finish it up and then do fourth grade and then do fifth grade and then until you have a phd in pickles and then we can talk a phd in pickles that would be good and uh and pickling yeah i will i will so what else do you want to talk about yeah uh being lonely being lonely that's that's that's a difficult thing well that's why i asked you are you hetero and do you want a woman yes or no oh of course what guy okay well have you tried have you tried the apps i know well actually i mean i i enjoy my solitude to a large degree but uh what what i do with my job is uh i take care of people with special needs nice so this is my real job but uh so i had a guy with down syndrome and he lived with me so he's lived with me for the last four years wow and so i've worked with people with disabilities for the last probably like since i came back from the peace corps amazing and the guy so i've taken care of this guy with down syndrome and he has dementia and um so he's been he's been i've been with him 24 hours a day for the last four and a half four and a half years and on sunday he had a stroke oh so uh like i found him on his bed and oh and he was uh so he's in he's in the hospital now oh i'm so sorry yeah yeah it's hard so like i've spent the last you know almost five years with him and my dinner breakfast lunch dinner with him he's pretty this is my best friend you know so yeah he's not he's probably not gonna recover so now i see i'm just by myself and my in my apartment and i'm like oh man it's lonely what's his first name so we can pray for him me and my listeners can pray for him his name i couldn't hear you did you cut out oh okay so we'll pray for bill and a miraculous recovery and many more years i don't know how how old he is or how long people with that condition are generally expected to live i guess it's a shortened lifespan usually right yeah yeah so sad so sad i'm so so sorry for you and for him and his family yeah so does he have a family that uh you know yeah oh yeah i mean that's that's why i take care of him because he used to be close to his i can't really talk about it too much no because um of course of course of course but uh we feel your pain we're praying for you and for him obviously and uh that's pretty heavy if you had like a 100 million listeners then i could get in trouble but since you you probably don't have small it's a small very small audience very small it's getting smaller actually oh really yeah yeah when i started uh talking out against covet and the vaccine i noticed the numbers shrinking uh what was the algorithm huh so what are your opinions on for the covet and the vaccine that it's uh a cheap excuse for government overreach i like to get to get them back so you think the gut are you against you're against mandating the vaccine that yeah yeah i'm against mandating masks i'm against mandating social distancing against mandating washing your hands i'm against mandating anything we're full grown adults and we know how to take care of those who are vulnerable like granny and little billy and we don't need the government to tell us to wash our hands and to wear a mask we don't need that we don't need the government babysitting us sorry would you agree that the stores have a right to make their own policies yeah they could do what they want right and they could do what they want but that's not how this happened this was not a grassroots movement i'm sorry it's not a grassroots movement it's like you will get financial incentive if you go with the plan and you'll be destroyed if you go against the plan this is not a grassroots movement sorry yeah i don't care the way i think everybody has the right to their opinion and you know whatever and like i'm not some guy says you should you have to get shot i think you should have the right not to get the vaccine i just have a problem with when people like if the business has a rule that you have to wear a mask or the airplane has the rule that you have to wear a mask then you know you go by their rules so yeah but you know if you don't want it if you don't want to wear it don't go in you know it's only like five minutes i feel bad for the people after work and eight hours a day yeah well i work in construction and a lot of the uh places that i go to pick up construction materials the staff don't wear masks and they don't care if we wear masks yeah i mean not no i mean no but we still have a mandate here it's still uh the policy of the government or whatever like it's still it's still enforced here in quebec canada until ostensibly the end of april and they may extend it but they keep you know here in quebec it's one of the worst places in the world for the mandates just the tyrannical overreach of the government is one of the worst places in uh what do you think what do you think of jordan peterson he's okay i feel sorry for him i think he's his worldview is very sad and pathetic and uh i think he's a sad man right i don't think he's particularly bright when it comes to metaphysics what what's his worldview i think it's nihilism his views nihilism i think so okay i think violism if you're an atheist is pretty rational yeah i think he's an atheist and i think he's a nihilist that's what i think i don't follow him i don't follow him i wish him well i think he's a nice enough guy i don't uh i don't understand why there's all the hype when he can't answer the simplest of questions about metaphysics but maybe it's just not his strength right what about mike myers i don't know him is he the comedian yeah he's from canada his name canadians i love i love um the mini-me guy and dr evil yeah vernon troyer is he canadian no he's not canadian he's dead who many me many me he died oh did he yeah he died a few years ago oh no but i'm i'm not talking about the actors i'm talking about the characters i love that they went from the i went that they went from the dark side to the good side okay that's what i like what about norm mcdonald you know him yeah yeah i think he's very funny okay and very edgy you're gonna ask me about jim carrey next oh yeah i forgot i'm just thinking about my favorite canadians do you like jim carrey oh sure yeah i think he's yeah he's probably one of my favorites a long time ago i think he's when he's good let's just say when he's good he's very good and he's he's over the top some classic movies when you go back i mean if you like those stupid kind of movies yeah i do yeah do you do you like mel brooks movies uh space balls that's one i mean that was a long time ago but yes i like stupid movies i do like stupid movies and my friend matthew in australia was talking to me today about rom-coms romantic comedies and hugh grant i like rom-coms and i like hugh grant a lot ah cool you not particularly no no i don't hate him not your not your thing probably because you don't have a woman in your life sure i know i should get one yeah well i was going to say like they do they do have these apps now where you can go and meet women i i don't know what it's like maybe it's all right you have the mail order bride uh i know can't believe you remember that that's a tiny detail yeah i remember tiny that one stuck in your brain huh yeah i barely looked at it i didn't find the women attractive i'm sorry to say all right well i'm gonna order one okay you could probably do that you could probably do that but just be very very very very careful it's terrible it's evil that's not a good thing you know these are people no it's horrible i'm just joking it's horrible yeah i have good sense of humor right yeah see i'm fine of course well what what uh so that what point did you say well i'm gonna become uh like did you go from atheism to uh convince you that god exists well it was it was it was the uh blackness and that the existential angst of hard solipsism that was really weighing on me and then i'm surprised you haven't heard this part of my story yet but i was reading rene descartes discourse on or meditations on her first uh philosophy or whatever it's called and um i just understood because of what descartes was saying about god that i understood at that time that god is god and that i'm not god and it was such a relief and i remember the exact moment when i was laying in bed reading renee descartes and uh i went from hard solipsis to monotheist it was amazing so i was so happy and i'm still very happy i'm still ecstatic i'm good but you must have you must have had a moment in time where you went from non-theist to theater to monotheist when was that well i started watching a lot of william lane craig debates and stuff um so i you know i started like watching all the you know i watched started watching atheist experience which is just dumb but listening to william lane craig and all these guys and you know ed fezer and a lot of musics and a lot of these but i i started like listening to like the philosophical arguments and you know peter craft uh i know the name but i don't know him personally not really you should check out his stuff he's apologetics pretty good yeah yeah i've heard him uh so the contingency argument is is my favorite which yeah so like we can't have this infinite series of contingent things right we can't just go back what caused this what caused this what caused this what causes forever right no for multiple reasons because we can't get an actual infinite from you know finite a finite number of things right you always have a finite number there's no such thing as that an actual infinite right and you also you can't traverse even if there was an infinite it goes on forever so you would never be able to arrive at this actual point in time yeah well these are these are arguments for like the beginning of the universe too but fact is like everything can't be contingent so that means there must be something at the very beginning that is necessary yep well i thought about god i thought about god i'm fascinated by god the most fascinating thing about god to me is that he's self-existent yeah i also thought about that god couldn't have thought even one thought before he created because then you know then there'd be time god has to be timeless because if god was in time you'd have an infinite regression of time nothing can be i think i wrote to you you can't have nothing can have an infinite temporal past yeah because you've never arrived at any point in time are you getting that yep yeah 100 100 percent time time is a creature that's what you need to remember time is a creature god is the creator of time and time is a creature so but that means god never even thought one thought before he created the universe well god had precisely one thought and it's it's not in time that thought is timeless right but a thought takes time not not for god not for god god's creatures my ways are not your ways says the lord so our thoughts are not god's thoughts says the lord and uh this is uh this is why we need to take god's point of view to understand time and space and uh the way we think and the way our will acts and compare and contrast it with god's thoughts on god's will and uh it's a category error it's a category error that the atheists make all the time so we theists we monotheists have to emphasize the the sharp distinctions right god is not subject to change at all he's absolutely simple not composed of parts right he can't become those parts i don't know how you have a thought though without time well god has time god has all the time because he's the author of time but time is finite right it's it could be potentially infinite meaning that he can let time go on as long as he wants it to go on well i'm talking about in the past nothing can have an infinite temporal past well there are theologians who believe that god could have if he wanted to have have a material universe that's co-eternal with him i don't believe that but certain theologians do argue for that i don't believe that and you don't believe that but god alone knows for sure but i mean i think that philosophically we can rule that out but there were theologians very famous theologians like saint thomas aquinas who believed that what do you think what did you think of my uh first talk with aaron rod did you enjoy that my favorite part was when uh you told him you're a great entertainer but you're not much of a thinker which couldn't be more obvious oh the poor guy he's only an entertainer in the sense that you know it's like jerry springer entertainment you know he's just gonna yell and say stupid stuff and then he says he's smarter than all the great you know the thomas aquinas and the uh santa sin augustine and all those guys some of the great minds he thinks he's smarter than william like i don't know if you're a fan yeah william i like my how's his house his his health holding uh i think he's like i think he's fine yeah i haven't i'm not in contact with himself well i know but you see everyone i mentioned you seem to say oh you hit hit by a train he was dead he's this yeah i gotta be careful who i speak ill of here are you gonna tell me unless you're just pulling my leg every time about what no you look up my hues it's true poor guy um but uh yeah i mean i i have to admit i have i have a lot of sympathy for aaron raw and he does pronounce it aaron not aaron why do you have sympathy for him i think he's a sweet guy i think he's a real nice guy i like him ah i don't really like him to each his own to each his own it's all about chemistry it's all about the chemistry like i'm sure if i showed you uh you know 10 different pictures of 10 different random humans you'd have your favorite you could rank them like i like this guy's face i don't like her face i like her face but i don't like his face or whatever you could you could have a sort of instantaneous chemistry or lack thereof with uh i think he ran he had a really good cordial conversation with him so it was good you know like you know he wasn't he wasn't a you know a jerk to you or anything but yeah isn't that nice on a lot of stuff you know he's he acts like a fool but i really just like dylan hunty though i can't stand that guy so uh poor guy the poor guy he's probably not too happy i'll tell you what happened with dylan hunty i'll tell you how how it goes so he probably got on that eighth year you know when he first started on the atheist experience he was probably not you know he was kind he was fat and bald like me and are you no no i'm not fat okay so you said fat and bald like me but you meant fat comma and bald like me okay yeah i don't sound like exactly no one thing i hate about myself is my voice that's the worst i'm short though that's okay i'm like minnie me two feet tall are you that short how tall are you i'm two foot six oh it's so cute yeah i'm uh i'm five foot seven there you go average height average height that's not average average height for the pygmies yeah i was averaging when i lived in africa so that was good oh yeah you were in africa were you yeah for a couple years so so anyway you were saying you were saying about how dillahunty went sour yeah well you know he got on the show then he probably gained a little following and then he became a big celebrity in the atheist community probably you know most likely and then you know even when you become celebrities even in these little communities they you probably get you know people telling you wanting your autograph and even women maybe maybe they're throwing themselves who knows you know so you know they have conventions and stuff and then you know your head gets bigger and bigger everybody tells you how great you are don't you think stuff like that happens yeah yeah yeah for sure for sure for sure it's uh it's called worldliness i'm fascinated by it by like fame but by what it can do to your head it'll destroy you it's like a drug you know yeah people telling you how great you are and you know everybody wanting your autographs and you know like being like super duper famous yeah yeah you know i think they probably really think they could get away with like anything yeah okay it's uh it's a crazy world we're living in are you more optimistic or pessimistic about the way the world's going uh i i mean yeah i would say it's probably going worse but uh i don't really care no i mean i think uh yeah i think it yeah i think i would say america is getting worse as a place yeah i think that really the work i think pornography is one of the worst things disgusting evil demonic it is it's bad it's disgusting and i think uh yeah yeah just look at it you can just look at the culture and it's gone downhill i mean even from i mean if people from the i like living in africa i lived in like a rural village yeah so when i was in the peace corps and you know i had no electricity and no running water wow and and you know it was life was just super simple yeah so you know television stuff like that and would you uh i would have i had a house lady and she would sometimes like kill chickens for me and i know you had a tough time killing uh the chicken didn't you uh i don't remember that story i not making enough stories in your life yeah i did go fishing once a couple years ago and i felt really guilty about the little tiny fish that i caught like i was torturing this poor thing by yanking it out of the water and i had a hook through his cheek and i just felt horrible yeah so you're a good guy oh but i still eat meat i should stop i've been i haven't been eating meat during lent because we're leading up to easter's next weekend and i gave up meat for lent and it's very easy i don't wanna i don't need to eat meat so maybe i'll uh go full on veggie what do you think about that yeah good for you what about you what do you do oh what about me do you kill chickens on a regular basis no i don't your neighbor brings them over for you well when i was in uganda i didn't eat any day but occasionally i'd eat chicken or you know but was the food good was it tasty over there that's what i'm asking uh i didn't like it that much but like i when i originally got there i lost i was 180 pounds and then within nine months i was 140 pounds you lived in a bunch of different countries so you've seen uh only europe and north america it's very uh non-exotic the most exotic was greece oh yeah well it's still interesting to see a different culture yeah beautiful it's my favorite country that i've been to they have good food yeah very good the food was good in italy too how did you meet your wife she's greek but uh she's canadian born and we met in a bar i've told this story a couple times but we met in a bar in the university where i was studying physics and uh she was kind of showing interest in me and i was she had caught my eye two years earlier but i had never run into her since and then she spoke to me this one day i'm like oh this is that woman that i saw two years ago and uh she spoke to me and then i just kept obsessing over her like and my friends kept saying oh you like that girl don't you i'm like no i don't like her and uh i was in denial but she kept pursuing me and then eventually i had a dream where i had to decide to be with her or to lose her forever and i decided to kiss her in my dream and then the next time i saw her i was in love with her i opened my heart and the rest is history we got married like within three months moved in together got married and then went on our honeymoon which lasted for like years traveling around europe were yourselves even after you married after you married no no no i was only a salsas like at the very end of uh my atheism so like uh you know we had been married for [Music] you know 15 years by that point we're married 27 years now but you you you were a substance before you married her i was no no no no i was only a solipsist like once we were deep into our marriage well that must have been weird because she'd be like she must have been like what's wrong what's happening to you she would hear me you know she would hear me going through all kinds of different world views because i was studying philosophy as a hobby so i would be talking about oh i believe this and i believe that and it would depend on what i was reading but as i got deeper and deeper into these different philosophies that i was reading the german idealism really affected me to the point where i didn't believe in you know material reality anymore and then i had no reason to believe in other people as individuals and then there's one thing led to another and then i had this uh understanding this intuitive understanding that life is eternal because i had gone through a long period a very long period of pantheism where i thought everything is divine everything is god even the dust and the sand and the do you have kids no kids unfortunately but i'm open it's too late now i mean we're we're in our mid 50s now it's not going to happen it's physically impossible to happen but you know physically impossible nothing's impossible but it's not going to happen and plus my wife hates kids and she doesn't want kids so well that's a good reason do you hate kids don't worry her maternal instinct isn't exactly uh ideal do you fear death no i crave crave i crave death really i crave death yeah wow i fear death oh okay well you you need to get closer to god and jesus christ and then you're gonna lose your fear of death i mean if you put were to put a mouse in this room like a physical rodent in this room you would see the fear of death in me because i'm deathly afraid of any rodents okay so it's not yeah i'm afraid of mice and rats so i mean am i afraid of death no i mean no i'm not in theory but i mean if mr death came knocking on my door i'd probably crap my pants right so you need to take it with a grain of salt when i say i'm not afraid of death i used to be neurotically afraid of death and i'm no longer neurotically afraid of death okay so i i had like 50 mice in my house so you would hate that oh did you get rid of them yeah they're coming in there i had to put glue traps and i caught probably close to 50. oh my god well you know we lived in a place that had a lot of mice and they were crawling on us at night and everything like that and i'd wake up in the morning and the sink would be like full of mice and it was just disgusting and it was really bad but i got one of those sticky traps and the the mice they're so cute and sweet that i couldn't kill them i just had to like detach them by putting oil on the on the sticky mat so they could wriggle their way off and then i just and i just released the i just released them on the other side of the street because they're so they're so cute that's what i did but i didn't know that you could uh i didn't know you used oil to uh that was my intuition and it worked i just pull them off the glue and they die oh i felt bad for them because i didn't want them to suffer for like 10 hours on the glue trap oh so at least they die you know instantly but next time next time use the oil technique sorry well yeah i don't have them anymore so you killed them all you well i don't want to live in a house full of mice but i'm scared of snakes oh my god so am i don't even mention it oh yeah yeah yeah so yeah i'm i'm excited about death it's like uh it's not the end but the beginning and hopefully i'll go to heaven uh how confident are you you're going to go to heaven instead of hell i'm not confident at all oh come on now let's let's take some steps in the right direction and let's get you uh on the right path so you can be confident okay can you talk to god for me yep you tell them hey i can talk to this great guy joe he's not a bad guy he's really well you just know man you're gonna have to you're gonna have to take some steps and uh you know uh i i would recommend you know me i if you've listened to my podcast for a while now you would know that i would recommend go to the sacraments go to confession go to the eucharist and to do that you're gonna have to become either catholic or orthodox i would say catholic but um you know that's a that's a long journey for you and it would require some graces i'll be praying for you yeah if i became catholic my mother would she would die you know being jewish is very important to our family so who are my parents i don't have any moods and sisters so okay but you said they didn't practice their religion but it's just culturally important to them yeah okay so that would that would uh if i became catholic or something they would probably lose their mind oh well you could become a practicing jew that would impress them and you could uh you know i can't be i can't be three religions i can't be a muslim i can't be orthodox jew and i can't be amish do you know why no i can't grow a beard have you tried uh yeah i can't do it i don't have much uh facial hair lucky you that's a good reason not to that's why i can't become those so that's funny so listen it is late i'm gonna have to go hang out with my wife before bedtime oh sorry we're gonna talk the rest of the night no no the sleepover we'll do a sleepover some other time though all right it's nice talking to you very nice talking to you and listen uh joe we're going to talk uh we're going to talk again and reach out we're in touch by email all the time so it's not a problem and we're going to do a group chat you know you me and whoever if you want what what a group chat what goes on a group chat oh people just banter you can uh and you can also uh you can send me some interesting guests if you want like if you have a friend that's a scientologist or whatever i can talk to him about his faith or if you if you have a friend who's a hardcore jew that would be fun to talk with that friend you're my best friend david well i do i do appreciate your friendship and uh it's a real delight to meet you and i'll be praying for you and i'll be praying for your your friend uh remind me of his name is it bill yeah yeah so i'll be praying for bill and give him and his family my best and i don't know if he's conscious at all or not but um thanks david it was really nice talking to you my heart goes out to him and to you and again i appreciate you reaching out to me and we'll talk soon okay all right thanks dave take care of yourself meet you bye god bless bye you