hi I'm John and you're listening to catalyze vs atheist tell me a little bit about yourself John what you believe and wide I don't believe there is a God so I'm n8 east and I believe this because of my understanding of the universe essentially from what all I've learned so far in my life my reasonable guess is that God doesn't exist in particular the gods of the Abrahamic religions Judaism Islam and Christianity team how do you exist how to explain your existence is their first cause how did you get here this is essentially the deepest question you could ask the big bang model as far as i understand is the best scientific description of the beginning of the universe we have or at least what we know is that 13.8 billion years ago the universe was compact dance and hot and if you ask me was there anything before that I don't know maybe what caused that I wouldn't be able to say do you have any philosophical aversion to an infinite universe where there was no beginning not particularly and the reason being that there are so many things that are counterintuitive in this world quite the mechanic for example doesn't make sense the first time you learn it but you get used to it you so maybe the universe is infinite in the past and we just have to accept it would you be also comfortable with a universe that extends into the future that's actually a much less controversial as far as we understand the universe will just grow old and old an old until we reach the heat death of the universe where like everything will be dark and cold we're talking about ten to a hundred years so a long time in the future in this universe whether it has a beginning or not we can say with certainty that there was a time in the universe where there was not life and then life appeared and some point in the future life will come to an end for whatever scientific reason would you say that's a safe yesterday I think that a fair assessment yet and if the universe doesn't have an end in time but it's actually infinite then however big this window of life is that I just described its approaching zero in terms of absolute percentage of time if my understanding of the universe is correct then yes life will be a very very short event in the in the universe in the whole lifetime of the universe but the more important aspect is morality where's the value where's the meaning in good versus evil do they have any meaning for you as an atheist and if you do have morality is it objective and eternal like one plus one is two would you agree that that's an eternal truth actually this is a construct when you say 1 plus 1 equal to what you are saying actually as we made up a game we made up the number one as a concept and we defined 1+1 to be to actually so it's true but topologically because we defined it to be true do you think that we invented the number one we invented the concept the thing is there's no substance that is one it's immaterial yes it's immaterial and it's a tree it's a construct for example even if you have one Apple you can slice it into and then you get to you know so it's all a matter of subjectivity the number the way we apply the number 12 the world is subjective but the concept the rules are clear can you envision a time where society adults different rules such that 1+1 is not too sure you get you can make it them in mathematicians work on this like all the time but of course the thing is now the correspondence to reality is very little of course not why do we use mathematics because it's quite effective at describing the world you could make a mathematical system where 1 plus 1 is equal tree and actually you could probably do a bunch of stuff in it but you wouldn't be able to apply it to the world world there's a consensus now with mathematics one plus one is two negative cashier subjectively wanted to decide that for her one plus one is three yeah well no give me the wrong change what is the authority by which you would enforce Forrester essentially to conform to an arbitrary set of mathematical rules personally I won't be able to enforce anything if she wants her mathematics role to be 1 plus 1 is equal tree she will just do that but of course she will not be able to stay cash here because if she doesn't give me the right change i'm going to complain because it's not what society agreed on do you believe in objective morality there's a right and around morality I think that exists quite obviously but objective no I don't think in the far future or in the far past there were no humans the concept of morality didn't even exist because there was no one to apply morality to you admit that humans are moral beings more so than the Apes for humans we have a very complex society so we need rules to ensure that things go smoothly and we can call these morals or morality I think animals have some form of primitive morality for example Apes they don't just kill each other all the time when they kill each other there's some reason they will help each other it sometimes and then they will fight it out some other time a bit like humans what do you think of cultural relativism it has weaknesses but i would say that you can only contrast morality a set of moral guidelines with another set of moral guidelines you cannot judge it from a vacuum you have to do it from another point of view so from us it's completely obvious that this is completely immoral but that's because we have a moral framework that we use that can be learned and it could be unlearned yeah morality is quite a fluid concept you can get very tricky situation in morality like where it's really unclear what you should do and if you do this if it's right or wrong now you ask me is there any meaning i don't think there is any intrinsic meaning for us i don't think it's divinely set what we are and what we should do and so on but i think is that everybody finds their own meaning and their own lives for example for me I always imagine a universe where there was no life at all no subject life and more life at all but still rainbows and rain and mountains and clouds and all these things and i always say to myself it would be a shame to not be able to witness the beauty of this world you know when you look at the telescope everything is so wonderful so for me my my personal reason to live is to experience the beauty of this world for me that's the most relevant thing to do is to appreciate the medium the universe that we live in is there something special about our sophisticated brains that makes us better witnesses to the beauty of creation and a monkey or cat i do think that we have a deeper understanding of the universe than a cat and even the most intelligent ape I think and I think this does help quite a lot in appreciating the beauty of the universe we live in this universe with rainbows and the waterfalls and community it wouldn't be quite as satisfying if it were just cats and dogs and monkeys witnessing that is there a hierarchy in the animal kingdom if you try to tackle the bearer and try to put him down you will die and you will lose quite dramatically you know so that there is much more fit in certain areas it so happens that the humans have intellectual capabilities that are I think much beyond most animals so if we compare ourselves by intelligence then yes I think we're pretty much the most intelligent or the best in that category but if I put you in water with sharks not going to work so well the Catholic Church says we have free will and reason that the other animals don't have to do you agree with that do you believe in free will I mean what does it mean free will it's unclear if such a thing even exists to begin with I don't think there's any thing uniquely different in humans but it's just that the characteristic that we have our intellectual capabilities are just much more developed is a difference in degree not in kind with you that's correct ok do you believe that everything is cause and effect there's no wiggle room if you throw a rock its behavior follows scientific laws yes are you bound by the laws of nature yes i think so i think so i think essentially everything by definition is bound by the laws of nature is there the illusion of freedom or is there the possibility of real freedom is there a difference between a perfect ill in the free will or having free will no I think we do have a nearly perfect illusion of free will so that essentially there's no difference between having free will or not having it for you what's your position on free will my position is the Catholic position in the Catholic position is always both take any deep philosophical issue where people get divided the Catholic Church's always embracing paradox paradox is different for contradictions yes it's the illusion of contradiction there is a very big difference between a paradox and a genuine contradiction and i would say there's a very big difference stream illusion of free will and actual free will how would you be able to distinguish the difference we can't we're philosophically people minded God can that's the whole point for something to be somehow relevant it has to have some effect when you say that there is a difference between having free will and having the illusion of free will but that we cannot make the difference if you cannot distinguish between the two there's no way you could make a difference i want to go to the core issue which will allow me a person of faith to embrace free will and will keep you from embracing free will the leap of faith the leap of faith that you take is not to the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob the leap of faith that you take is into realism naïve realism where you just assume that the other exists that the world exists that all those sense experiences correspond to some kind of reality that's the leap of faith that you take and I applaud you for that because we do live in reality but I also questioned why you're willing to take that leap of faith if you're scientifically minded because it's not a scientific i agree visitors i would argue it's pragmatism and I could try in my head to make up a story about the universe and I could try to deny the sensors that i have i could do that but i will not be successful at essentially anything its sheer obvious pneus that yet just have to accept the world as it is i have icing all the way of doing it it's a pragmatic decision to live in reality as it is yeah so for me it's just tried mechanism to accept reality as it is as I perceive that for the time being ok because it's just the sheer force of what I perceive it overwhelms me I have to so you think it's unreasonable perhaps to just dismiss the mountains of sensory data evidence all these things we can't really prove scientifically we do know that our brains do trick us sometimes so sometimes it is hard to know what is actually there you have to accept at least some part of what you perceive to be true to some degree there isn't a lot that separate your world view from my worldview we both choose to live in reality accept reality and work with reality but the difference is that I choose to believe since i took the leap of faith to God that my thirst for health and beauty and justice and goodness and all those things will be fulfilled ultimate but you believe that they were somehow given to you your purpose is linked to that of God yeah and your meaning of life as well yeah God is everything is the source of everything that's good life and justice beauty and truth and all the things that we seek and so there's nothing that falls outside of God's domain nothing good we can participate more fully in life and we can move towards life and we can orient ourselves in the direction of life or we can choose to do otherwise this is what free will allows us to do God somehow give you more ality do you believe in absolute morality this how is this absolute morality and gun-related it's all about nature God is not a creature God's the Creator so proud of his generous love he created everything that is ke himself is uncreated he's the first cause he's done cause these the prime mover the unmoved mover he's the being whose essence is existence where were contingent so he just is and he's just all self-sufficient and happy and he doesn't need anything he created freely out of his generous love creation university us- and he created as humans in His image meaning free will and reason i have a human nature so morality is about corresponding to reality corresponding to the reality of my human nature that God gave me in His goodness and then its infinite wisdom the example i like to use is if you're in the woodshop and you've got a screw and you've got your tools you can select whatever tool you want you can bang it with the band saw you can bang it with the hammer God wants you to pick up the screwdriver and not only any screw over the phillips number two that fits into that screw so it's about correspondence to reality it's all about sanity and yes you can bang it in with a hammer and it will work in certain extent is just not ideal there's a better way there's a more efficient way and it's his way not because he's a tyrant or bully but because he made it sold it FR work to pose a moral dilemma do you think there is always a right answer or wrong answer not that we can necessarily know it don't get all the look on you but if you read the New Testament you'll see the Jews trying to trick Jesus with questions where there's no winning answer and yet he finds a way so i think there are bad questions just out of ignorance we can ask the wrong question sometimes on the other extreme we could say that every moral dilemma has one clear-cut answer involves mind imagine that there's a train and there's no conductor and it's going to hit treat people and you're standing on a bridge and down there's a switch and there's a guy next to you if you push the guy is going to fall into switch and make the train deviates and mystery people now the question is should you pushed a person or not would you know the answer i would probably need to think about it but their principles that would guide my decision one of the principles is the ends don't justify the means so you can do any evil so that good may come of that you just cannot that's one principle in the Catholic Church the question itself probably will involve other principals and i would need to look at the question mostly by i'm pretty sure i could come up with an opinion I wouldn't necessarily trust my opinion but I know for sure that there's an answer to something like that I suppose that God does have perfect knowledge that the decision that he takes the right one but you as a person you never have perfect knowledge so it's very hard to make the good decision because it depends on factors that you cannot know for humans it's impossible but for God nothing is impossible so there's this tightrope that we walked between knowing that we will fall and will make mistakes and we're imperfect and striving nonetheless to always live by its 10 commandments and live by principles that the church gives us it becomes a question of exercising your freedom and exercising your love basically because having a list of rules and saying in this circumstance do this and that circumstance do that that eliminates merit the whole point of life is to show your love the way you show your love for God for neighbor is by struggling with the complexities and being in a situation where you don't know what the rule is and how to apply that rule if it were simply a matter of applying a list of rules we would essentially be back to where we started as atheists with this mechanical scientific view this works this doesn't work well and I kind of disagree i mean even if we knew always what the right thing would be to do there would be nothing forcing us to do it even if I knew that pushing that person would be a good thing hypothetically there's nothing forcing me even if I know it and there's nothing forcing me to do it yeah there's also nothing forcing me we both are naturally in our human nature inclined toward the good reason you reach for the proper screwdriver is not because there's some sort of in position it just makes sense it's just common sense that if you're going to achieve your end whatever that end may be working with nature will get you there and working against nature may not good work but it's not the optimal i am a free moral agent and I am going about my business trying to accomplish things and trying to experience things and if the grass is getting a bit long and I need to cut it i'm probably not going to go there with the wet dishrag and start rubbing it just doesn't work you give really example where the answer is kind of obvious of course if you want to cut your lawn you should be cool with a lot more for sure but you can always make examples that are very subtle what do you do if your girlfriend for example says always got these new jeans is why whatever your end look then he has you know but do we agree that given this circumstance if you were to say no it is a lie no it's not like it's called discretion there's a classic example given by the church where a violent madman us into your home and says where's Charlie and you know that Charlie's upstairs you're not obliged to tell him i'm pretty sure that the Church teaches that it's okay to quote-unquote lie in that circumstance because the number one principle is life but then all these objective morality that are like intrinsically true and and always true and a whole lotta have been true its it undermines this whole concept dollar shalt not bear false witness for example if you don't say the truth to the murderer you did bear false witness even if you choose to call it something else for me there's no difference I think it undermines the whole objectivity of the thing another example I would bring to counter what you're saying and the way that we are free more free with religion then without is the example of Jesus on the Sabbath you was doing things on the Sabbath and they objected and he said quite simply that the Sabbath was made for man not man for the Sabbath so it's just a question really of priority and hierarchy and of the reality of that hierarchy of values and not becoming obsessed with the letter of the law and man-made traditions he was quite adamant about that with the Jews of his day you talked about the ten commandments so one of them is thou shalt not kill for example so as far as i understand you do think there are some circumstances when self-defense exactly where it could be legitimate and you want violate the Commandant that's correct and there's no compromise whatsoever of the principles and how do you tell the difference that's the challenge of living because if it's not a challenge then it's not going to exercise our free will as moral agents what is the difference between saying thou shalt not kill this is objectively true always has been always will be but there are some circumstances where you can and this we have to determine what it is that we're doing this and just saying sometimes it's okay to kill in some circumstances self-defense or the the essential difference is understanding that in principle there is an elegant solution to a very very very messy math equation on the chalkboard there's a difference between saying it's just nonsense and let's just forget about math and saying well I have it on authority from these geniuses that means something and if i wanted to apply myself take a lifetime or two I too could see through that but i'll just take it on authority for now and I'm comforted by the principle that one plus one is two and that's the foundation for everything at this is legitimate I think there's a very big difference between saying well we don't know because they are exceptions are the complexities and nuances and we were feeble minded frankly and on the other hand saying i know that god is good i know that he created a rational universe I know that science is good i know that ultimately there's a rational explanation for everything whether to go citing an Elvis sighting or quantum tunneling or whatever it is i know there's a perfectly reasonable explanation i think it's a more scientific approach rather than just saying there's no difference between the illusion of science and the reality of science I think I know where the different slides so when you go to this chalkboard and there's this message equation that you don't understand some people does your actually it means something at face value you either accept the claim that means something are you rejected but if you choose to accept that you can then work and understand it and at some point you can actually achieve and understanding not even with them two lifetimes right and one half time you could probably do it you don't finding out what we're going to let you have depending yes but that's still it's within grasp but the examples that you give me with God and this perfect answer or dissolution this is not even security clearance chiva ball as far as I understand you have knowledge of anyone who actually achieved it yeah all the saints in heaven right this is this is the whole point is there's definitely a connection between us in this fallen world the saints in heaven who are with God who see God and who are moving every moment closer and closer to god and his love and his his wisdom so there's there's a hierarchy and there's a connection how do you determine if somebody is a saint or not one simple way the the easiest way is if this person died for his Christian faith so Muslims takeover they say convert or die if you don't renounce Jesus Christ we will kill you because you're Christian and you say i'm willing to die for him and they kill you you actually go straight to heaven and urs a that's the easiest quickest way to have some of the same there's something you just said that really really scared me if you're willing to die for your faith in islam this is a concept in Omaha bizim it's difficult for me that you don't see the problem in this because these people that for example blow themselves up they do think that they will go to heaven because they died for their faith and you say all but also in Christianity if you die for your friend it's also general standard my you're missing one very important principle if you're killing innocent lives in order to die for the faith and go to heaven you're breaking one of the Ten Commandments but then you just said that you can argue that the Commandant shalt not kill you could make an argument well yeah if you struggle as you're dying for your faith and you happen to kill one of the six guys who is attacking you so you can protect your family how you killed in self-defense as you are dying as a murder that has happened it will happen and there's nothing wrong with that because the principle is that you are trying to defend innocent life against an attack how do you you determine that innocent lives is the criterion every life is worthy of being defended if these murderous people come to your home and they want to kill you because of what you believe whether you're Christian know whatever mhm you have the right to defend yourself that's the principle of life at work and so there's a huge difference between suicide bombing people because they have the wrong religion and being the victim of the same aggression will take the case of extreme Islam because it's in the news and genetics on everyone's mind i personally like Islamic it's a false religion but i think it that they worship the same God that we in the Jews do so they're very close to my heart but if these extreme levels came in and were killing me and my family i would i would kill some of them in self-defense I hope it would save the lives of the innocent even though the people i'm protecting wouldn't necessarily be Christian huge difference for me between the Christian martyrs dying passively and a suicide bomber planning a malicious hateful violent murderous event I actually I understand the difference is quite clear the difference but it's clear for us but it's not clear for them it's a very very subjective thing you know when you said you have to protect innocent even the term in essence is a highly subjective term i am sure that when you talk with these people who are ready to die they are a hundred percent convinced that what they're doing is right and they have arguments and they believe those arguments and they have eight at least partially self-consistent story about why they're doing this it makes sense in their framework they have a justification for example you you make your own investigation okay well if they want to attack me that I can defend myself and I get makes sense even make sense for me because I'm from also like Western yeah Western culture and we share very much and culture and so on there's nothing for me there is nothing that differentiate the two other than we happen to agree and they they happen to the cultural relativism well let's let's just get rid of that thing that's bothering about the innocent people let's say that there is a really sick pedophile who killed his young child victims after having sex with him horrendous criminal he's guilty and he doesn't deny he's proud of it so I'm the security guard so some murderous person comes in and wants to kill him I am protecting him his innocence doesn't mean that he's not some sick criminal murderous pervert what i mean by innocence is that he has the right to life this guy that guy deserves to be protected and that's what i mean by innocent life because there's the aggressor coming no matter how they justify you know he deserves to die and it's not anything it's just not his place to come in sure you know her but so the whole question of innocence really is a lot broader like you then then I have to ask you then so are you against the death penalty the first principle is the principle of life i'm pro-life for the children in the womb the elderly the criminal the fact that the church hasn't come down with a totally dogmatic hard line on the death penalty but just is more or less leaning towards clemency tells me there are some nuance cases where maybe you know what it's an extension of self-defense this person unfortunately doesn't leave us an option now I wouldn't want to have to make that call that seems like a tough call to make but I'm willing to admit that in principle there may be cases where the death penalty is ok but i would imagine that those cases are few and far between it's very hard for us to agree on anything objective you know you're like okay the Catholic Church doesn't have that a diplomatic position on this but the link towards that but then I suppose there exists this answer that is above this whether it's right or wrong or what God knows in each case in each case and Katee K's it's a case by case then let's take a simpler clear-cut example of abortion you can't really find nuanced maybe there's one case where the mother's life at risk and they're trying to save the baby the baby dies but you take that intervention even though there's a risk of killing the baby the principle is to save the mother and the baby and it just so happens there's a reason the baby dies it's not it's not a violation of that predictable you can make it as subtle as you want for example you could say like what if there's a one-in-a-million chance that the baby dies during the intervention and a few the information you save both but there's a one in 1,000,000 chance that the baby dies should you do it yeah well yes obviously but then a one-and-a-half chance that he dies a 50 50 GS I don't want you to say like what you should do it or not the point is you can always make it as no ones like you can find a graze on yes okay you do it yes at six percent what if I say it's 55-percent and you know it for me this shows me that there is no right answer because it's just what risk are you willing to take that's all there is essentially the fact that it's difficult and challenging to answer in those gray areas i think proves that there is a very important moral question that something of value hinges on the decision if it was something insignificant we wouldn't be searching for that delicate nuances gray area where it's hard to find the answer but we're not Catholic because it simplifies morality that does clarify a lot of situations like for example sexual morality in our society today I can sympathize with the Atheist when they just don't want rules about who does what in the bedroom I can understand that since i became religious i have a completely different perspective where God Almighty who made human nature and has a plan for humans and loves humans he says don't have gay sex so you just don't have gay sex you know even though you could legitimize it as an atheist same thing with pedophilia like if there's a 60 year old man with a six-year-old girl they could probably get some sexual thing that would be pleasurable between the two of them but maybe that six maybe not but whatever why not why not mrs. the thing about morality right if you're going to talk about cultural relativism you know Charles Manson the killer he was a big proponent of getting rid of all the cultural taboos that were lingering in society in a post-christian world why are we against homosexuality why are we against pedal feel my let's get rid of all these social constructs if it feels good and it's two consenting people there's something that you did that kind of makes me a bit on comfortable you are talking about that two men having sex and then youyou contrasted there compared to a pedophiles no i didn't i just threw two examples the only thing that joins them is that they're taboo there are bidden by my religion yo care about your religion yes for me one is completely ok and one of them is completely not okay and for me the line is the consenting adults what is the problem with father and son consenting to gay marriage to each other in the Sun more than 18 if you want to be does it make you more comfortable yes knew both of them want to be with each other yeah then ok if you want i don't have the taboo of incest a lot of people have first of all it's two guys so they can't have babies what about father daughter and the daughter is more than 18 yeah and they both agree and that's what what i want i am a third party in this thing I don't have anything to say in this thing I mean I don't think it's a good idea because the six-year-old daughter says yeah I want to show off and willing to do but that you want that if that's a different thing because she's not an adult and of course what does it mean to be an adult it's unclear but in our society it's defined at 18 years old and I think that's a reasonable definition for most not but not all other eighteen-year-old to our capacity of course of course you have 34 years old that also mat relax mental capacity and will also get amused by your partners and if you're 18 years with somebody that's very old that's not a good idea because you have a controlled dominance but if you nonetheless want to do it when my to say knows you guys are adults you do whatever you want if it's consenting of course is the reason for giving your consent matter a sexual act and the consent is given for reasons of deep devotion and love and poetry and candlelit dinners versus a bag of money in a bag of cocaine no I one consent i would say one is more dangerous at least the eyes of the light should be regarded as equal I mean of course in Canada prostitution is illegal so technique we doing this would be illegal under law Apriori I don't see a problem there because I have something that you want and you have something that I want and I could do an exchange and if both parties are are happy with this and I have no objection I'd love this really there's no difference between your application of your principles to these hypothetical situations and my application of Catholic principles the only difference is that my Catholic principles on the surface to an atheist would appear more rigorous more limited we can do fewer things than the Atheist the Atheist has gay marriage masturbation adultery all kinds of things so you are against homosexuality I suppose where there's no free choice there's no possibility of sin so if you have an inclination to adultery you want to sleep with your neighbor's wife that's not a sin that's just the temptation but if you act on it that's the same so it's the same thing with masturbation or yeah homosexual act or stealing you know you could be inclined i really want that guy's yes ipad yes or a stereo yeah that's happy but wanting it having that feeling or that desire that orientation is Madison but then the Act would be a sin yeah to varying degrees depending on what you know of course if you make up with someone and you don't know it's a guy then what's that said but I glad no no I mean what you know in terms of morality if you think that it's perfectly healthy and normal and the legitimate and irrational and saying for two men have sex with each other and you do that there's no mortal sin and we talked about people who blow themselves up they don't know that what they're doing is wrong so technically it's not a sin for them because they hope that whatever it doesn't look good but only God knows I wouldn't wish hell on those people would you it's not an extra that's what I'm forgot to tell you that is not a nice place so I wouldn't wish it on anybody so you think that the actor for example my sexuality is a sense of which means that's not good will any sex outside of marriage ok yeah ok but why is that because god said so that's the short answer I could draw on the chalkboard all kinds of ways to make it work oh well if I sleep with the secretary and her husband ever find that I could map out this whole scenario where it actually it looks pretty good to the atheist but God said don't do it so that's what you're not interested to know why of course I'm clear happen that at some point you understand why God doesn't want you to do this and you disagree with the reason my whole body and soul could repel against God's reality he could and it does that's the challenge of being a Christian in this fallen world is that we don't want to do it god's way we want to do it our way that's the whole struggle of being a Christian of course we know what the right thing is to do in a lot of circumstances cut and dry and just don't do it even st. Paul said I don't do what i want to do i do what I don't want to I don't do the right thing I do the wrong thing there's my spirit and then there's my body my flesh and my desire and they're at odds with each other i was in germany in unique and there for two years I was walking downtown and was the standard of Muslims actually so i went there at top with them and one of them approach for I talked a lot with him and I asked him why why don't you eat pork and he told me that because God told me I cannot eat pork and for me it was like well that doesn't make any sense because if you don't tell me why I don't see any reason to not do it actually this story that comes to mind is Abraham sacrificing his son Isaac remember that yes i think the power of Abraham's faith is the whole point of the Muslim saying God said nautique works i'm not going to work and I trust god there's a connection between faith and obedience it turned out that Isaac wasn't sacrifice a lot of a serious will say what God's means he's testing us and all that sort of thing that's not how we see it that's not how a good Muslim sees it or get you a good Christian we the monotheists see God is all good all loving and in our weakness and in our struggle to learn how to love and how to be godlike we can end up in some pretty weird situations bewildering circumstances and it's not like God manipulated us into some weird scenario God put us in eat in there in the perfect paradise and we deviated and we suffer the consequences and these consequences are not imposed arbitrarily bison tyrant they're actually just cause and effect you move away from the light and you're in the darkness you know you put your hand in the fire and you get burned that's the nature of reality so I see the beauty in the arbitrary will of God as its portrayed even though it seems absurd and Abraham you could say would be justified to say i'm not going to do that I waited so long to get the Sun I'm already old doesn't make sense because you miss that he did my air and it doesn't make sense i'm not going to do it that would be the rational atheist approach but he had faith so it was a good thing that he trusted God yeah and I suppose and for you is it legitimate for you do you think they are right and not eating part because god said so I think it's false religion and that were allowed to park but i think that according to his conscience he has to be his conscience and his religion that hopefully he believes in teachers I'm not work he should not important but there is a question that the fundamental question is how do you differentiate between the two how do you differentiate between a case that Abraham had where God told him kill Isaac and a Muslim does and doesn't want to eat pork because God tells him how would you tell a Muslim that is not correct and to you how do you know that you are correct it's a bunch of converging arguments that brings me to the conclusion that Christianity is true and Islamist falls in Judaism is false Judaism was true up until the Messiah came and even even during that three messianic . the Jews went astray always that's the whole Old Testament just read it and you'll see that they're going astray all the time but there's that true religion that is carried through up until the coming of Messiah the Messiah came and now it's it's the Catholic Church so the question is how do I know I'm in the right church and how do I know Islam is not the true religion the one true religion because when two worldviews contradict each other if there's one objective reality and one objective moral truth one objective true religion we can't both be right we could both be wrong there may be some third religion that's the true religion or hypothetically non hypothetically I think there's a truth but getting back to how you know it's looking at the evidence for example they deny the crucifixion of Christ I just look at the evidence and say well I think Christ was crucified maybe he wasn't but I look at Jewish Bible the Christian Bible and then the Quran and I see discrepancies I look at the history the non-jewish non-christian history of the first century and the birth of Christianity and look at what the Muslims say and I choose to go with the evidence that says that Christianity was Christian rather than Muslim because the Muslims have a different view no not only that the religious books but of salvation history so it's just a question of looking at objective reality looking at your sources looking at history looking at scholarships looking at everything and of course no one has time to really really dig into depth to learn all the original languages to look at all the original manuscripts to cross-reference them and do all that sort of thing but you look at the works that summarize that and the works of scholarship in the works of popular writings and you can also look at the people that have come before you who are the great heroes of your faith and what did they teach that would not be Christian at all if it were not for the saints the saints that made me choose strategy / islam i wanted to be Muslim when I found God but I was compelled by the evidence of the heroic virtue of the saints and how they lived and how they died and its twenty centuries of saints it's the lives of the saints of the deaths of the Saints and the love the Saints I understand what you're what you're saying but another person would have a different thriller somehow things are more important to them and they say oh that's more important i'm going to choose Islam and it seems like a very subjective thing I will of course it is one yr you ate is why you're not Catholic it's because you are moved by what you read and what you've seen what you've experienced in and science and everything else and your your upbringing or whatever but being an 80s at it just means that I I don't subscribe to something it so happens that I also knew believe things about the world but that's a different story when i sent an 80s because I didn't I wasn't convinced by the arguments you heard you've heard the witnesses for example that Jesus Christ is God and coordinate is the second person of the Trinity came to earth and died for your sins you've heard this I heard yes you just don't believe it ain't even after investigation and I don't believe it Brandon yes I was an atheist what changed me in my particular subjective path to God was asking the tough questions about meeting about value and about morality and ultimately am i all alone or is the other real and if I'm not the source of life then who is that's the philosophical approach that brought me to go but you're on a completely different path you may just here a piece of music one day and say wow god has got I don't look at the default sincere Muslim has some kind of fool who's diluted and in any way inferior to me intellectually I just look at him as being on a different path and God watching very carefully and doing everything in his power to cooperate with that muslim and loving him and keeping track of when he violates his conscience and when he obeys his conscience my problem with this whole essentially this whole story I mean have you heard of Carl Sagan yeah anyways we had the famous sentence extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence you have been convinced of the truth of christianity by some evidence but this is a very very extraordinary claim I mean that God exists in the Bible is true and all these things the evidence that you brought up for me that that doesn't stack up nearly as much as i would need to think that they claim is true i think that it's extraordinary that I exist and that i have no way scientifically of justifying this hypothesis that you exist i just have to have a pragmatic naïve realism and just say well let's get on with life you're in that same boat you have to acknowledge that you partake of life and love and goodness and truth and beauty and just as in all these things and I know for a fact that deep down you're not satisfied with a bunch of molecules coming together in the right way and getting sophisticated to the point where we can create the idea of God and create the idea of perfect justice and create the idea of good versus evil that's not satisfied why is completely arbitrary meaningless it has no value to him but the universe doesn't owe us meaning in your heart of hearts you want your life to matter i know that yeah I mean yes I do want my life to minor yes and if you say it's a Darwinian mechanism to propagate the species that doesn't know but that doesn't satisfy you well I mean I want my life to matter in the way that I want it to matter essentially the ephemeral or the fleeting nature of life all life from the beginning to the end it's in significance is undeniably overwhelmingly depressing it is it is objectively if you actually rationally scientifically look at reality as you an atheist portray it and infinitely brief there's no lasting value and this is not where i find value because for me the meaning of my life will not be in 10 to the hundred years what will I have accomplished for me this doesn't matter why have you not kill yourself why do you not plan on killing yourself what because I do enjoy living and I presume you would struggle to survive if you're in circumstances where it was precarious for example if your health declines you'll see medical help or if you're in a dangerous situation you'll seek safety research of things i think it's only natural and human and in your heart of hearts you value your life and you know that your life has meaning that's the driving force behind struggling to survive know you value your life enough to seek medical help if you're sick and in the hope that i will have more interesting experience if you want more of life and all life has to offer you yes yeah you have a hunger for more like there's not going to come a time where you say I've had enough life my first of all i'm not i'm not about to die so it's hard for me to say i know i still have a lot of the things to experience and to live for but I cannot see play when i'm going to be a hundred and five years old maybe i'll be like look I did what I had to do a nice i had a good life and life I can paint a picture for you where you will say yes to prolonged youth prolonged health prolonged creativity and intellectual capacity to learn and to experience things you're going to say yes yes yes yes to all these because it gives me higher quality of life right but that's what we're all after all after happiness and all the things that you want i want but the difference is that you seem to be willing to say well you know the quality of my life will decline at the end and i'll be ready to just and I don't know we can prove me right by eliminating sickness and decaying body and an age and declining intellectual those things and just say if you could have more I resource you want heaven with God forever of course you did well that i'm not sure that I'm not sure but if you ask me would you like to live say 200 years a very good health i would say like $PERCENT sure but that is not because my life has any intrinsic value in itself is because of what I experienced with it I'm not gonna be sad because I stopped existing because I and at least as far as i understand it was not exist i will not get them about it but you yourself have said that the value of your existence is the fact that you are a witness to the rain were witness to the waterfall you are an accumulator of experience and you are essentially a sponge for soaking up the good things that life has to offer no yeah I'm yes to something and and not only down but also i tried to also make the life of other people good as well maybe we'll end with one topic was a little bit big the topic of love like so your mother's love for you just talk about that what it means in terms of your Atheist worldview we have various degrees of approaching the thing i can know that the reason that my mother loves me biology class because I'm her son and that there is some genetic component to it i know that this is how the mechanics of the things work but when I experienced it like i just love my mother and she loves me and like you are a lower-level we don't wonder why are these things the way they are is it like nutrition you just eat the food that tastes good and you don't think about it too much but if you analyze you could see the cold hard fact of those nutrients going into your bloodstream that is that's what we do all the time even when like that's just that's another level it's the you can't really talk about them at the same time somehow there are times where I analyzed the nitty-gritty details of stains and are times where I don't so let go interests and you just experienced things as they are for me it's unclear there are right answer but overall I'm pretty satisfied with my girls your eyes things i find yourself consistent and logical and i find it does work for me as well and and it makes sense with everything I understand about the universe as well so you just to be clear you never believed in God as a child I probably did I suppose because you know I curling here it's a very Catholic background here especially if you're a french-canadian as well like me like there's a lot of influence oh for sure for sure i think i might have believed they think but it's just not a important factor so much for me anymore do you envy people have free sometimes i do sometimes i do sometimes I would like to pretend like things that are not true are true and i would like to pretend like there is some somebody that could possibly care but me wanting to pretend sometimes it's not a good argument for me so so you just answered your own question about is the reality of freewill better than the illusion of free will I think it's just I don't know what I mean I suppose it would be nice if I knew that there would be some one that cares for me in the grand scheme of things I suppose sometimes it could be nice and so your I have to do could be nice i supposed to do you think you would be inclined to love a god that loves you so much as as Christianity teaches that God loves it well when it natural to respond to love with love and it depends i mean the god of Christianity i have like a lot of objections well that that is another big topic as well but just to know for the central the Old Testament the part about Genesis and all these things I what's your position on this my position is the Catholic position which is why forget know the Bible is inerrant there's no air there's no contradiction ok and its primary author is the Holy Spirit's got like a we have infallible Sacred Scripture and sacred tradition and we have an infallible head of the church the Pope who is protected from teaching error concerning faith and morals in the Bible there are some questionable things that God does he have those are easily explained for example whenever they talk about God's anger he's not disturbed by any emotion he's not it's a condescension it's a literary technique whereby God the inevitable and undefinable reaches down to his creatures on our level talks with on our level and when he says in the Bible that he's angry we understand right away but in truth in reality he's not perturbed in the slightest he's perfectly happy all the time always was always is and always will be his anger is a cause-and-effect working out of reality just like when you stick your hand in the fire God said not to do it he's angry when you do it and that anger is that burning of your flesh on your fingertips that's what is anger is but he's perfectly tranquil peaceful happy and whatever there's no anger there's not there's no emotion getting stirred up in in God ever he needs to condescend to this app so that a lot about in the Bible given an arbitrary amount of interpretation you can make anything say anything ok so I understand what you're saying about this condescension and so on and so forth but and actually it does make sense and that's why you believe it is because it makes sense for you but it's quite a bit convoluted and the thing is you could explain anything right about the that the Garden of Eden factory happened but then you can come up with some mechanism in the inside and you will rescue the thing yeah yeah but they're there there's something that you're missing in your evaluation and that's that my acceptance of the Bible is not based on the Bible my acceptance of the Bible was based on my trust in the saints and my trust in god because before I found God and I didn't believe the Bible you know and after i found god I still don't believe the Bible but i believe the heroic saints who in their virtue and their love of God was so powerful they love my god so perfectly they were able to open up scripture and they told me to trust the church i could possibly admire some of the saints who gave their lives for four people and so on i can appreciate what they did as well and I think they're very good people and so on that if there's quite a bit of jumps that you have to do logically from going to add I admired science to it's not that different from your typical Western atheist believing what he reads in Scientific American you swallow a lot of information you can verify a lot of information about that and there's a there's a an inherent need for us to do that because we don't have time to verify when i read articles i would possibly trust the person that says it because they are in the magazine I would be like okay apriori I believe what you will you learn otherwise I'll until I heard otherwise another thing is this knowledge here affects my life not much actually I come here and like I tell you all I have a dog in order like okay I you have a dog that's fine i believe you I come here and I say like I mean the Messiah you're not get trust me as much and for me it's like the same thing that claims are very very different nature and also the mechanism by which that claims have been verified as completely different I mean in a scientific journal you would hope that there is a scientific method that confirms or at least removes as much by as possible you know but in geology there's no as far as I understand there's no such process which is as reliable or in that you cannot confirm it IC theology as a scientific system we have the data of the sacred deposit of faith which is the Bible and sacred tradition I mean I've accepted all of that complex the Sacred Scripture and sacred tradition based on number one my unshakable faith in God the Father and on the lives in the witness the testimony of the saints it is a big leap but you don't leap into vague cloud of unknowing you leap into a library of historical documents and theology and testimony and pure philosophy and natural philosophy and theology and you leap into that it's up to you how much you dig into it as Catholics were obliged to dig into the truth were obliged to be philosophers and I admit that i'm following I could be wrong and i might be part of a false religion but i'm pretty sure and keep digging into it and verifying and of course you could point to confirmation bias but if i'm seeking truth is not in my interest to delude myself if Islam is true and strategies false i will join Islam but I am convinced more and more that Christianity is true and as long as false the point to make about the confirmation is actually quite true because when you have a worldview it's quite easy to find supporting evidence for example the Easter Bunny you can find a lot of evidence exists existence there's pictures of him everywhere and easter there's even a holiday for him it's easy to find evidence that supported belief what's hard is to try to look out for evidence that do not support you believe i would sidestep the entire question why do I believe in God the Father and why do I not believe in the Easter Bunny it comes down to that existential angst of am I the source of my own existence or not a my god or is God God and that is not the kind of thing you can jumbled up with all kinds of cultural confusion you go home at night you lay in bed and you ask yourself what am I how did I get here what is this life that i partake of and I the source of life or is there something outside of me and above me that's the source of my life you cannot compare the Easter Bunny to God Almighty because when you lay down at night and in your heart of hurts especially if you're sad and lonely and things aren't going well you won't be thinking about the Easter Bunny you really want you'll be thinking about your life what it means how you got here and these eggs deep existential questions not about chocolate yeah but actually it the fact that we humans would look for some and triple Norfolk figure is already signed that there's bias in our God's not anthropomorphic I mean at least at least at least god made us in His image reason free will but it actually this is still enter prolific in the sense that it has will it's good it helps people I suppose it performs miracle is are all anthropomorphic qualities usually in society people are good people do stuff people love each other no God love you that's a highly entrepreneur 'fuck I understand how the person in your it is a further three persons but it's the inverse of anthropomorphic meaning that we are made in god's image in the physical sense in as much as the second person of the Holy Trinity became man and he's the first man and we are modeled after him and we're supposed to imitate him oh Jesus Christ is a human being even now up in heaven he has flesh it's a glorified flesh but he is two legs two arms and the head that's almost silly because I'm gonna ask where is he located but like at the right hand of the Father and have it so do you think Kevin is somewhere physical when you're in heaven to use standards of God you didn't have a body first of all we are familiar with our human nature and with the nature of the universe as it is yes yes so heaven is not going to be unfamiliar it will be familiar it'll just be better Jesus Christ is in the Eucharist so he is right now if you look behind us using this church yes in the tabernacle I suppose technically also also God is also everywhere as well so he is also their ways is also here is also everywhere so if there's a why should we talk more about this thing what should we make a distinction with the same reason we make a distinction between the historical fact of Jesus incarnation when he came took on flesh was born in the $YEAR version and walked around Galilee and Judea yes will you admit that that's a unique and special and significant instance of God's presence you can make it if you so on you can make anything to anything so if you want you can say it's different there then it's also different than it when he is there if if if you want them in what you do you do not understand the difference if Jesus Christ chose right now to come down from heaven and stand in front of us that would be more exciting it would be a more tangible somehow it would be like a shake his hand you know do not see the significance of the course of course of course I prevention of course i do of course i do I mean I mean it's the same thing with the Eucharist in the tabernacle it's just not there for a modest it's more it's more exciting it's tangible we're gonna eat him in care you know which is a bit creepy if you ask me if you know yet he lost most of his disciples at that moment when he said the effort in John 6 he said multiple times time having is here you have to eat my flesh and drink my blood and blood is have lupus actually can you imagine if sounds a bit creepy if you ask me but yeah I mean you asked me earlier what don't you want to know why God prohibits homosexual act of course I want to know and of course I want to know why we have to eat / drink but I'm not going to doubt it just away you have to come up with all these rather convoluted way of explaining things and so on and then like explain the Bible any explain why circumcision and why not at my sexuality and you have to say we don't understand and so on you can make it work billions of people make it work it's a coherent story that's just way too convoluted for me for me archives ik like look it's much simpler for me to say the whole thing doesn't make sense and it's just a fabrication for me but I understand for you it's not but that's a completely subjective . and i cannot argue with you can't convince you and it's it will be also very hard for you to convince me this is a completely subjective thing of what we choose to accept as evidence actually explanations are interesting and they can nourish my faith dogmatic facts that are proposed to us for our belief and we have to believe that we're going to be Catholic and if we don't believe that we're not Catholic those dogmatic facts are infallible their divine truth given by God to us and they're unadulterated we can trust them wholeheartedly but all the explanation all the theologians talking about why it might be that that's the case that's not infallible it's not protected could be wrong so I don't get excited about the explanation I just swallow the dogmas as they come to me until my see contradiction and then i'll look for how did you call it it doesn't have contradiction it has word of paradox es yes of course when there is a contradiction that would appear you think of an example of what independent new Catholic dogma that contradict each other I mean I'm not I'm not I'm not I don't know enough about the catalytic would you acknowledge that it is impressive that a two-thousand-year-old religion is constantly proclaiming infallible true that they cannot back away from they cannot change their mind about them ever science doesn't do that science does the opposite of that sign says for now this seems to be true will modify it later the Catholic Church says this is absolutely objectively universally eternally true it will never change and for 2,000 years has been putting its neck on the line putting out these dogmatic statements do not find that impressive actually not at all because because as I understand most of the claims are actually unfalsifiable like Mary was a virgin and then she she gave birth to Jesus for example data is only no other kids I would be very easy to falsify that claimed by showing that she had no but not good at first it would be it would not first of all I have been 2,000 years ago second of all thousand years ago it was just yesterday that happened you understand that they were rational humans just like you optical rational people just like you weren't stupid 2,000 years ago so when the church and the apostles were preaching that Mary was a virgin before during and after the birth of Christ that she had no other children do not think that the Jews and the atheists around would be saying we'll wait a minute what about Mary son so and so I mean it could be that she only had one kid Freddie but that's a much much less impressive that she had one kid is much less than what I said about her assumption into heaven but that's also can falsify that by finding her bonds we found the ones of Peter we found the ball around the balls how do you determine that it's the person this is not an easy task that cute that is science this is sites i mean it just looking looking scientific american or whatever magazine you want to look at and say hail they found the bones or so and so you're not skeptical of that first of all he would depend who and I don't think it happens to happen I mean the only thing that I can think of it is we found the remnants of this Egyptian king in the tomb is because we had all these records that it was this person it has to be a convergence of many many forms of evidence a lot of being circumstantial lot of them being documentary but just look at some of the big cases of being a people in history that have been discovered and how did the scientists come to the conclusion and you just how they do it but it is in principle you will have to admit that it is at least in principle falsifiable claimed that her body was assumed into heaven it is true that you are technically correct in that in that it is technically false a fireball that is true but we paint the picture for us in the early church first century second century third century 4th century you could walk around the Holy Land and the places where the Apostles and their their successors traveled and you would find not only graves but shrines ornate shrines and layers generational layers of shrines being piled on top of each other of just the accumulation of the veneration of these Saints if you knew the veneration that the church in the first centuries had from area I think you would admit that we should have evidence of some sort of veneration too taking place in the same way that we see on the other grave sites that there is a common-sense argument i'm not trying to follow because because it was actually the big-name heroes of the religion and have these very obvious multi-generational constructions of shrines yes yes but we don't have one for Mary and people venerated marry the most so she should have one of these special places archaeologically the fact that I'm infected they claim that Mary was a virgin and Angie refer to Jesus and also send it to heaven that probably dates to the very early time of Christianity so the thing is you do believe Christianity you will not even try to find the bones you will not try to know you're not going to look for the bones of this person because in your challenge she had something to heaven so why would you look for it you won't look for it but your enemies will that's my point yeah but the enemies of Christianity for letting me use MIDI agreement very fast to point out the tomb where Jesus was like and where is more like they were very eager to quell Christianity nip it in the bud let me try a different approach with you because it seems to me that if these are not important the dogs are not important they are to me but if you would dismiss them as just being funny disconnected from reality not falsifiable no real bearing on anything that to me doesn't seem like a good argument against embracing the strange teachings of the church yes yeah understand what you mean but I completely disagree because you can make an infinite amount of unfold survival claims and if i were to accept one of them to be consistent i was have to accept all of them essentially what i get from your perspective when you look at my face from the outside in is it kind of seems arbitrary and if you accept one wild and wacky crazy religious story th