yeah so hey i think we're live i'm here with classical theist how's it going hey good to be with you it's going pretty well thanks for coming on you don't know me from adam and uh i got a tiny tiny insignificant audience well they're not insignificant they're really nice people but a small uh devoted clan that likes to watch my videos and listen to my stuff i've been doing this uh for about six seven years now and uh recently i've been getting banned a lot on uh youtube just for mentioning stuff that violates their silly guidelines or as you know allegedly violates their guidelines oh no yeah and it happens to it happens to me every time i have a griper on i've been having gropers on recently and it's just like i think there's some red flags that are yeah that'll do it they're on trigger so people that's like that's a one-way ticket so before we get into uh all that stuff which is going to be interesting i'd i'd just like to hear a little bit about you your story your background and how you came to believe what you believe because and if you want to mention your rough age and that sort of thing i would give my listeners a bit of context too yeah yes i'm basically in my mid-20s um and you know i i was raised catholic in my in my early upbringing but as happens to a lot of people these days especially a lot of young people these days who uh kind of grow up online i uh you know i i always was very philosophically inclined so even though i was growing up being raised catholic i started out being pretty devout because i've always been like i said kind of philosophically inclined so i did kind of try to get into the um intellectual dimension of the faith even my very early early uh teen years as much as i could i didn't promise i didn't really know what the real good catholic intellectual sources were at the time so i was pretty easily led into uh internet atheism uh around the age of about oh i don't know like 14 or something 14 15. and so i actually did get pretty uh pretty deep into the like online atheist scene for for uh for a couple years um but as the years kind of went by i began to discover pretty easily that all of my you know atheist online peers i first for lack of a better word uh you know as i was reading more and more philosophy and theology generally mainly in the mainly for the purposes of uh promoting my atheistic worldview at the time uh i began to realize very easily that the online atheist community were just totally out of their debt like they were just very uh unable to articulate like basic philosophical concepts they were strawmanning the theology that i was reading and i guess out of an interest to uh sharpen my own skills i decided well why don't i delve into uh christian philosophy a little bit deeper uh not not in the interest of trying to find the truth mind you i didn't want it to be true at the time but out of the interest of you know sharpening my own arguments against christianity but eventually this led me to discovering ed fazir's article um so you think you understand the cosmological argument i don't know if you're uh i don't know how familiar you are with uh phaser's work but um not really but i've heard the name he sounds like a good guy from what i've heard yeah yeah you know he's great um and i saw this article so you think you understand the cosmological argument and i remember reading the title i'm like oh of course i understand the cosmological argument i've argued against it several times but it turns out you know when i read this article i didn't understand the gospel of the argument didn't understand it at all so that sort of was the first uh what was the first time that i was really kind of caught off guard not know really knowing how to work how to respond to a theistic and you know christian argument and so that led me to to really discover that there's actually this entire uh rationally grounded metaphysical system of thought that undergirds the central claims of of of christianity i didn't really fully realize that i mean i knew that there were arguments for the existence for the existence of god but at the time i was primarily familiar with uh people like william like craig uh modern protestant theists who argue for god primarily on you know the grounds of experimental science and i've always found those arguments to be kind of shaky i still find them to be shaky to this day honestly um but i i wasn't really fully familiar with uh the the way to argue for god's existence from the medieval catholic tradition uh so for example i had no idea that the the the catholic church uh and her uh medieval theologians in particular i had no idea how they even conceived of what is really meant by god of course can't know what god is and on this side of heaven but but in terms of you know coming to a basic understanding of what we mean when we use the term uh i i always saw that it kind of meant like the the the highest instance of uh of uh being so like what would really be translatable in the catholic understanding is just like the highest angel say i i didn't really realize that there was this understanding of god as the very sheer act of a subsistent being itself i didn't really understand i didn't know anything about divine simplicity uh i didn't know anything about the argument from essence and existence that's articulated by st thomas and i just had uh and and i also wasn't really familiar with arguments for you know philosophical realism um and that whole uh world view really opened my eyes into this way of thinking that i've never been exposed to before but it was immediately actually pretty uh attractive to me so i kind of i didn't want it to be true at the time still because you know we didn't want to necessarily conform to all of the moral demands that would come as a result of embracing catholicism so i just thought okay maybe i'll i'll uh i do find these arguments persuasive namely like the argument uh from uh change that st thomas articulates uh the argument from essence and existence so like okay maybe i'll buy into this generic kind of theism but you know what does that have to do with christianity you know nothing i thought at the time you know christianity still strikes me as still struck me at the time as you know just filled with uh unnecessary uh claims to uh claims of uh you know supernatural occurrences for which there's no evidence you know blah blah blah but you know maybe i i kind of buy into this notion of uh a uh a an ultimate source of all things right um but then as i began to think about it a little bit deeper i began to realize well um the central claim of christianity is is actually not something that's you know uh uh inexplicably added on to classical theism uh it actually congrues very fittingly with it you know this notion that you have this this this conception of the divine that is uh that that uh you know bestows his uh bestows upon creation a participation in his own being and he's he's also infinite he's infinitely good uh he's infinitely wise he's infinitely loving and so would it not make sense therefore for this infinite god infinite uh wellspring of of being of of goodness of existence wouldn't that make sense for this reality given his own infinitude and given his own given his own fakundity would it not make sense for for this divine reality to you know bestow upon creation the greatest union with himself given what we know about this reality from those metaphysical arguments and about well i guess that would make sense and what would that end up looking like well i think it would look like a lot like the incarnation i mean i don't know if i kind of want to stop here and reflect on this a bit with you sure but that's kind of the basic trajectory of where my thinking uh led me to and and it was really through embracing this fundamental coherence between the doctrine of the incarnation and uh and classical theism that led me to realize the rational inescapability of christianity and then after that i kind of said okay i i gotta be i gotta i fully buy into this notion of the incarnation it's actually the most beautiful ideal idea i've ever encountered um and i can't see life making sense without it so i have to buy into the central premise and if i buy into the central premise well what is the historical uh the historical complement to that well it's this explosive movement that happened 2000 years ago that's predicated precisely on this idea and you know the early apostles weren't doing all this abstract metaphysics they weren't doing all of this uh intellectual work that they they were they were proclaiming uh the gospel on the basis of historical witness on that like we've seen this guy he claimed to be god and he died and then he rose i've seen it and what does saint john say he says whom he who we have seen whom we have whom we have touched um and so it's it's predicated on historical witness and yet at the same time it congress very fittingly with this metaphysical system of thought that can be reasoned through completely independent of the historical research so i i see this this this uh this definitive congruence here and and that's really what what led me to embrace christianity holy and you know i i saw catholicism as as you know it congruent with my own uh upbringing but also i i i didn't really waste any time thinking about should i be a protestant or not i kind of just went right to catholicism at that point thank you for that i'm happy to let you uh ramble on and on and on because i love it i love everything you're saying i love uh being with you in this intellectual journey and just hearing how you confront the reality that you're faced with as a as a truth seeker right so a couple of questions um i've always just sort of had the hunch that monotheism is perfectly synonymous with classical theism if there's any if there's any difference do you want to explain what the differences are and yeah okay go ahead um i think if by that you mean uh classical theism is the only conception of god that makes sense of monotheism i completely agree with you there um i mean there are of course a lot of self-professed monotheists who would repudiate the central doctrine of classical theism mainly divine simplicity you know people like william and craig uh people like ryan mullins uh for some reason they they think defined simplicity makes god out to be this uh you know unapproachable uh monad that has no real uh relationship to to uh us on any kind of like emotional or or spiritually significant level uh but but in terms of but you know i would argue that you know if you don't have divine simplicity i don't think you have monotheism what about the uh eastern orthodox with their divine energies a lot of people in the east get hung up on that and they they seem to be skeptical of the divine simplicity you want to talk about that for a bit yeah i think that's that's actually really important i got to be a little bit careful because there are a lot of eastern orthodox who would consider themselves palamites and but who would not have this hang up about divine simplicity because you know there is a way to to conceive of this essence energy's distinction uh in a way that's uh sir i'm in a call so that's my wi-fi drive sorry oh yeah yeah yeah no problem um yeah yeah there's a lot of people who would think of the essence and energy's distinction not as a real distinction in the sense that would uh compromise divine simplicity but more like a notional uh distinction that has a foundation of reality that's kind of how i see it yeah is there a catholic is there a catholic tradition of dealing with these questions because they are very very important questions and they're mind-boggling and you know anytime we try to understand uh the trinity or the incarnation we're always going to bump up against things that are beyond a reason but a lot of the great saints and mystics have been able to shed light by the grace of god so has there been a number of saints that have struggled with this divine energies thing in a purely catholic context without being you know um you know limited to the eastern orthodox promotion of this idea uh yeah i mean i think if you look at all of the immediate classics they don't they don't talk about essence and energies in those terms because they're in a different tradition but um they i think they hit on the same same basic uh notion within a catholic framework so i'm thinking of actually saint thomas aquinas commentary on the divine names of dionysius um you know dionysius the areopagite of course we would call him pseudodenysus uh but you know there are some people who don't believe in the pseudo but i think that's that's historically untenable but anyway um pseudodynamicists was very big on this notion that we can consider god as he is in his super essential uh transcendence that is to say god considered absolutely prior and antecedent to his uh outward procession toward creatures um and god in his outward procession towards creatures and that we do have to distinguish between those two uh dimensions of divine procession so god's ad intra processions which would be his inner trinitarian life uh again as he would say in his super essential transcendence and his outward processions so his outward sharing of himself toward creatures outward manifestation toward creatures uh dionysius distinguishes it along those lines and st thomas is to say thomas actually follows him there and but what st thomas would say and i think he gets dionysius right uh which is that the distinction is fundamentally notional so it's the in terms of what's responsible for making that distinction it is ultimately on the side of the creature but it has a foundation in reality so it's because god is so uh rich in his infinitude that uh that the mind has to uh has to uh receive knowledge of god under a manifold uh plurality of names and concepts such as you know being truth goodness wisdom justice mercy etc nevertheless these names do map onto god each in their own way but but ultimately they signify the one divine being essence and himself in you know super essential transcendental simplicity right um and i think that's the best way to understand it and i actually would argue that palamus uh doesn't articulate that mystery in a way that the neopalamites and you know online orthodox say he does i think that you know for example when he talks about essence and energies he's talking about usia versus energeya and usia is this this greek word that refers to substance not like essence says the latins would understand it as referring to like definition so usia it has to do with the inner being of a thing the inner a thing in its inner reality and that kind of would very well map on to what pseudo-dionysius is talking about which is god in his inner reality and his inner transcendence as a as uh notionally distinct from his outward procession towards creatures which which receive the divine reality under a uh manifold plurality of uh finite modes um and i think that's actually what palomas is ultimately trying to get at um whether palamus and aquinas are fully uh compatible in terms of how they articulate it i'm not sure but i do think how palamus articulates it can be squared with what a catholic is bound to accept with divine simplicity because divine simplicity is articulated differently among catholic thinkers such as scotus and aquinas and others so yeah so that powerless guy is he uh saint in the east uh he is recognized as a saint um by the eastern catholic church and as far as i'm aware that the uh rome has never you know condemned that uh veneration so okay does that mean he's the same does that mean he's a saint in the universal church or no i think so i think so yeah and who was he he must have been standing on the shoulders of giants i'm sure he had some footnotes and he gave credit to some people before him but why is he the guy we always go to or the east always goes to is there someone that he built on does he give credit what credits do well i think uh palamus is is definitely uh getting his thinking from from the cappadocian father such as you know uh such as dionysius and maximus and uh or not yeah yeah yeah dionysius and maximus and damascene and uh gregory the theologian etc um so he definitely is uh in that tradition and um of course palomas got his fame from defending the hessy chasm practice in in the east which is uh spiritual exercises that uh were controversial at the time but palamus defended them and he defended them by way of appealing to his uh essence energy's distinction which he saw as roughly like an exegesis substituted initius um and it's that controversy that that was was kind of able to be a a uh inflection point for eastern theology in the uh 14th century you know it ultimately led to uh councils in among the eastern orthodox some of them even consider those those palomite councils ecumenical so i would say because of the conciliar um the uh conciliar documents that came out of the palomite controversy that's probably why palamus is such a pivotal figure for them i would think okay uh have you read the um the desert father's uh localia um i i actually haven't read that um [Music] in terms like primary source i mean i've read about it but i've actually not um well what do you find uh i read it it took me a i read the whole thing cover to cover it took me a year to read it um it's there's a lot of repetition but i am a disgusting sinner in need of a savior and in need of uh you know virtue and so what i love to read is repetitious moral stuff that's just telling me how to be virtuous and how to turn away from my sin that's what i love to read so i'm reading a lot of saint alphonsus liguri whom i love and the the the philip kalier however you pronounce it really it's really convicting it really really does get you scared you're not doing christianity right you're just not doing it right i think though that i think though that um catholicism is very helpful in the sense that um it was it is very you know but is it not catholic i mean is the philocalia condemned in any way i think it seems 100 catholic to me i've not ever heard of it actually being um condemned uh maybe i'm wrong on that i haven't read too much literature about it but um i guess i was gonna make a comment about the fact that you know catholicism is very of course demanding in its uh moral expectations however i think it is important to recognize in order to avoid excessive scrupulosity that when you read in the tradition about uh fundamental spiritual dispositions that the way to perfection will require of us uh you do have to make this distinction between what's uh a matter of super irrigation and a matter of strict obligation and you know this principle of super irrigation essentially being uh you know the aspiration for certain you know virtu virtuous uh virtuous acts or virtuous tendencies that may not be strictly obligatory in in in the sense that failing to acquire them would constitute some mortal sin but nevertheless it is it will you know yield a higher degree of glory in in heaven and i think that's that's very helpful for like the scrupulous who maybe struggle with like um some of that literature they might read about you know uh about certain on more uh underlying spiritual dispositions uh as distinct from you know distinct sinful acts to avoid you know um and i i think it's helpful to recognize that you know you know some uh spiritual dispositions are uh we should aspire for them uh but you know so long as you are avoiding what the church recognizes as you know mortal sin you don't have to live in you know necessarily trembling fear even though we should always be trying to aspire for the greatest possible uh virtue and state of perfection in this life yeah yeah i agree 100 and you know because i'm catholic i've got such a balanced source of wisdom among the saints it's incredible the spectrum of perspectives even in the bible you can see in the new testament you see a perspective uh a spectrum of perspectives um but uh you know i think of the divine mercy of uh sister faustina and uh you know i really i really appreciate that as a counter balance to some of the more intense stuff or the little flower uh saint terrific yeah you know it's a good counter balance like i can always remind myself there's more than one way to skin a cat there's more than one way to please that's one of the beauties of catholicism that i think i would argue that that beautiful uh diversity of spiritual thought can be attributable in many ways to the fact that we do have the papacy because how would you expect a a franciscan and a dominican and a benedictine and a jesuit to get along if not for the principle of unity in the roman politics i thought you're going to say if we didn't i thought you're going to say they all walked into a bar like it's a joke [Laughter] but you know what i mean it's like yeah if we didn't have the pope i i'm sure that all of these groups would have like became become their own christian denominations in very short order yeah i think with the franciscans the dominicans for example i think a really good example of this is uh you know the dominican uh you know the thomas versus the molinists when it comes to like efficacious grace they want you could tell like there are so many they want to anathema they want to and athletize each other but the pope just won't let them but it's like you know you guys just got to settle your differences and you know you could debate all you want but you're not going to athletize each other yeah yeah yeah so uh you know when i first discovered that controversy and i saw the way the authority of rome uh the holy father stepped in and said look it's not going to be resolved and you know do your own uh do your own research as they like to say tonight i even heard this story i even heard this story this anecdote that i forget which pope it was but i heard that a pope was about to draft an ex-catholic definition on the issue when he died before he did so i always say that you know when i'm talking about this issue if you find yourself pope one day and you're sick of your job and you don't want to uh deal with the shame of resigning try to write a definition on efficacious grace and you'll just die okay like god won't let you get away with it you know it's such so sublime a mystery that you know i it's never going to be subtle it's amazing i mean you could just sit around contemplating uh you know the omniscience of god and his omnipotence and the fact that he's given us free will and you'll you'll never you'll never understand how the two can be reconciled and i i for one am very comfortable with that tension but a lot of uh a lot of protestants aren't and that's why they fall into error right yeah i mean i think that's i think that's right i think that um uh for what i've never really understood the hang up on this issue in particular i've kind of just always seen it as a sublime mystery that i can try to articulate as best i can but ultimately um you know i've just never understood why it has has led some uh protestants you know break from rome over over an issue like the mechanics of justification i mean i it's i understand it's an important issue but i mean i i just haven't have never understood why it you know the way yeah the way i see the justification issue is like i don't know if you've seen fractal images where there's a pattern within a pattern within the pattern yeah in the pattern okay that's the way i see grace and our cooperation with grace we only cooperate with grace by the grace of god so we have an initial grace without which we can't have the faith we can't do anything good anything good uh we can't have the supernatural virtues uh without grace so this is like the kickstarter is grace so the protestants must be happy there you go one point for the protestants but we agree as catholics but then when it comes to when it comes to works and these sorts of things they they just want to latch on to the fact that everything is gray so we can't do anything good without grace but they ignore the fact that one of the benefits of the grace is the ability to cooperate with the grace and to get more graces and cooperate with those graces it's that fractal image that i have and if you want to unpack it you know you can unravel it and go right back to the very beginning like how am i able to like seek even seek after god it's by the grace of god and that's where the protestants seem most comfortable but in that tapestry of the fractal image of grace and cooperation with grace and grace and cooperation with grace because it's grace building on grace um there's a chicken and the egg scenario where the protestants want to say well no you can't do works but then out the other the other side of their mouth they say well you have to do works but it's not on your own initiative it's by grace well yeah that's exactly what we say there's like there is no controversy but they want to make it into a controversy this is what frustrates me about the protestant approach yeah i i'm right there with you and you know to me i've always seen this you know we have this initial uh moment of grace we have this initial moment of the indwelling of the blessed unity and that is completely and utterly and absolutely unmerited we affirm that wholeheartedly what we would say and i think it's very much in congruence with sacred scripture is that it's just that the moment that you you insert an act of resistance that in and of itself is incompatible with the uh indwelling of the blessed trinity and the soul that's when it stops and that to me is makes the most sense out of the various scripture passages which which do indicate that our moral behavior does make or break our salvation you know what does christ say says that you are my friends if you keep my commandments well that means if you don't keep his commandments then what are you you're if you're not a friend of god what are you an enemy of god and are you just while you're an enemy of god of course that would make god out to be a liar and god is not a liar so i mean yeah it's really it's really fascinating the psychology of uh we i mean we're basically insecure we're very frail our intellects are darkened and our wills are weakened since the fall speaking of the fall i'm a young earth creationist are you um i you know i'm kind of i take a slight agnosticism on that issue um i basically i ascend to whatever the church teaches uh i don't have any expertise whatsoever in terms of uh you know geology or um scientific history uh i have no expertise in experimental science so i try not to stake a position on that position it's not a question just just as a little exercise i'm going to give you my perspective no pressure no pressure this is just fun to uh to speak with a bright young man and to see what what he thinks about this idea so i came to young earth creationism not through natural science i studied applied applied physics i've worked in quantum physics i have a published paper that i co-authored in quantum physics i've worked in astrophysics i've worked in at the canadian space agency i have experience with hard science with physics okay physics means nature it's the examination of nature and the natural uh causes and effects that we see everywhere and uh you know i don't believe in randomness and i don't believe in um uncaused effects okay so uh just to let you know i understand natural science and the limitations of natural science but the way i came to young earth creationism as a catholic was by listening to one talk on census fidelium i don't know if you know of census rebellion it was a talk by father riparder yeah and he just in an offhand way mentioned how the cannoli there is dogmatically there is one and only one immaculate conception therefore adam and eve could not have been conceived in the womb of any animal because they were without sin obviously before the fall and if they were if they were conceived with their sin then mary's the church's claim that mary is the only immaculate conception would be contradicted by that historical fact of adam and eve having been conceived without sin so that took me instantly to young earth creationism and i could care less i could care less frankly about the natural sciences and all the mountains of evidence and what about the starlight it's from so far away and what about the fossils it's like i don't care i don't care like i mean i've got god on my side who if god's with me who could be against me and i've got the dogmas of the church one of the dogmas of the church is god created a good world right he didn't create suffering and death in millions of years of all this carnage and just mayhem and you know there are many many many good reasons to be young earth creationist and no good reasons not to be uh you know just think with common sense do you want to say that our lady is an ape and a fish and a tetrapod and you carry like all these uh all these clades because uh evolution theory is silly but it teaches dogmatically it teaches that we belong to each and every clade in our history so we're apes we're fish and we're everything uh we're also the bacteria or everything in between what would you say in response to someone who would argue that um there may have been an evolutionary history with the exception of human beings which could have been created roughly like ten thousand years like ten thousand years ago or something as distinct from the rest of evolutionary history see as far as like i have no like uh in in terms of like my personal predilection sure i mean i think young earth creationism is probably the best um the most fitting uh cosmological picture and i really have no reason to necessarily discount it so i mean i i'd go with it i don't know i don't see a magisterial um necessity to hold it i mean in light of leo the 13th providence deus and kimani generous um i think that catholic is at liberty so long as they hold to uh the distinct creation of adam and eve as as real historical people as as the first parents created separately from the rest of the um process but didn't leo didn't leo the 13th say that uh all christians everywhere have always known as a fact as a fact of christianity or something just paraphrasing here but all christians have always known that eve was formed mysteriously from the rib of adam and uh you know this is like this is pretty right a pretty strong magisterial statement and there are many more there are many more like this idea of this idea of eve being formed from the side of adam uh i don't think it's dogmatically defined but it pretty close but i guess what i would say is that if if you're okay again i'm not i'm just playing double advocate yeah um if if you're a catholic who who believes like broadly and an evolutionary history of the physical cosmos i see no reason why they couldn't believe in that and just believe that uh as far as humans are concerned god created adam from the earth and then eve from his rib and it's kind of separated off yeah i would just say i would just say that um what i would say to that is that there's a dogma a defeated dogma that god created a good world and you know the the the evils in the animal kingdom that we say to that we see today were absent in paradise period now st thomas would disagree with that uh saint thomas did hold that there was animal death before the fall well there might have been death but there was no evil there was no evil in the animal kingdom there may have been death there may have been death that was like to serve man like to they're like there are i mean like one animal eating another animal yeah there wouldn't have been disease among the animals for example there wouldn't have been uh sort of um ugliness you know that sort of ugly have you ever seen a rabid dog or a crazy animal that's just ferocious and like demonic there would be there would have been none of that in the history if if god evolved and i don't see why he would if god evolved these animals well there's another there's another thing there's another reason why i don't believe in the evolution of the lower animals there's another reason for it it's the principle of proportionate causality you can't give what you don't have it just metaphysically doesn't make sense you and we have to have the perfection that's in the effect is also in the cause and it's more perfectly in the cause so that grinds to halt any sort of uh macro evolution there many many many many reasons not to believe that the lower animals evolved from bacteria or single celled uh animals and stuff like that yeah i mean like i said i basically uh agree with you like propositionally um i guess my concern is what i don't like doing and what i've always kind of avoided doing is uh imposing magisterial restrictions on other catholics when there's no need to do so because i i don't like playing on people's like scrupulosity because there might be you know some catholic biologists who do seem fully convinced and yet and then they would say well gosh i mean this kind of conforms with my vision of the world and uh yeah i i seem to have some warrant from the current magisterium that allows me to believe in this and i have to abandon all of it to be catholic well maybe i'll leave the faith you know i would actually i would never say that i would never say that i agree with you 100 some people who do i know you don't yeah um so that's kind of like my interest is because i i don't have any expertise on this issue so i don't try to like pontificate however i basically agree with you like in terms of my vision of the world yeah i'd say i'm a creationist yeah i agree with you 100 it's delicate we need to be respectful of those who are entering the faith or that might be on the verge of leaving the faith you know and uh you know i consider myself uh an ultra montanist i'm very very very i put a lot of emphasis on the vicar of christ in the catholic church the role that god has given i pray i pray every day for pope francis uh and he believes in apparently he believes in some sort of theistic evolution i don't know how we can reconcile that but that's not what i mean john paul ii as well yeah i don't know i don't know how the recent popes have all seemed to lean that way whatever to each his own i don't obviously i don't judge or condemn the heart um but i do want to like reiterate i i do agree like i i think that uh i don't like the evolutionary picture of the universe i see no reason necessarily to believe it so i kind of go with what i see as more fitting and beautiful and uh and more reflective of you know the world as a cosmic icon of the divine and so i i basically i i repudiate the evolutionary uh vision of the cosmos but i don't condem other catholics for falling to it and i guess that's your position too of course of course of course another example another good example with pope francis and i do love and respect him and i do have a fond affection for him as a as a man and of course the office i have a high reverence for the office but another point where i disagree with him very very very strongly is in his apparent stance and speczo called me out on this he said no no that's just an apparent stance uh his apparent stance on the uh the jab for the recent uh thing that we've been going for oh yeah for the past couple of years the thing that we might not be able to mention for tos reasons yes the thing the thing that was the thing that is perfectly safe and effective yeah yeah i still yeah i still wouldn't take it even if it were but that's uh yeah no same here i mean i i i've never taken that thing but um but no i mean i i agree that i mean it's rough um i i think that you know i was actually pleasantly surprised though that the um congregation for the doctrine of the faith came up with the statement that it did that it basically did uh rule out mandates as you know morally impermissible really can you send me the link for that yeah yeah i can i can send you like after show it's uh it was it was published i think december of 20 um yeah december of 2020 and it what base what it basically said was um yes it is morally permissible for a catholic to get the vaccine but um this should should basically be relegated to conscience and it would be wrong for uh this to be mandated on on people okay sounds familiar i think i may have read that at the time yeah yeah yeah yeah so uh we're going to talk more theology because i love it but i want to just segue into america first nick fuentes cozy tv the gripers i got my boy pine sap i got spexo i've interviewed another nice young man um friedland i think his name was uh grant friedland does that make sense um and then now you now you so um and there may have been one other griper in there are you a griper and what's the movement all about uh yeah i mean i'm a huge fan of uh nick i've always supported nick uh since since since he's since 2017 when i saw him on volume and i think um you know look he's um he has he's an eccentric guy he has a sense of humor that a lot of people might not uh might be too much for some people but i think you just gotta i mean i i find them hilarious but um i you just gotta realize that you know if if you're a catholic if you are a real strong traditional catholic if you're a political reactionary okay you have to just direction directionally where he's at what he's doing his stated goals his stated mission what he's already accomplished i see it as kind of a no-brainer like okay let's say for the sake of argument you don't like him personally i like him personally but let's say you don't like him personally let's say that his personality is just a bit too much for you let's say he's too crude for you he's a bit too uh eccentric for you okay fine you don't have to like him but you should recognize uh that it's i think in your best interest as like a reactionary traditional catholic to at the very least not to counter what he's doing you know if you don't want to be involved in it god bless you fine but i think it it would be an idea it would be it would be who view i think to uh uh at the very least just like let him do his thing of course i would encourage you guys to support him but even if you don't want to support him i would say just just don't get in the way because i think he is making serious headways politically he is changing the conversation and the right he is moving that overton window that that we always like to talk about and his stated goals are catholic integralism and if you watch his show regularly he will say more frequently now than before even that he wants to see the society the united states operate under uh under you know catholic principles explicitly catholic principles uh he is at least in terms of what he would like to see he's kind of a monarchist he's kind of a he he is a catholic integralist you know and he as someone with those beliefs uh making headways in in the political right you know having martyr taylor green coming to his conference and all these uh uh you know political moves that he's effective political moves that he's making i think it's a great thing and it's something to be supportive of as as a catholic as a traditional catholic specifically if you are uh if you do have a reactionary bent in your politics um and you know if there's elements to what he does that seems distasteful to you just ignore that and just get out of the way but i i i do think that his his project is is is very very uh worthwhile and and and i've i've been a long supporter you know he's been a supporter of me too i mean he's he's supported my work he's uh uh i consider him a friend so you know there's there's that element to it as well so you've hung out in real life no not in real life no no no no no not really i haven't traveled out of state in years uh i don't know if you are aware of the fact but i'm in montreal quebec canada did you know that i could tell you're canadian a boat yeah yeah yeah yeah so uh yeah so i don't have a dog in the fight per se but you know i'm a huge i was a huge fan of trump i got so excited when he won i still can't believe he won and i won't say what i think of 2020 because i got my last video pulled um yeah um but um you know i lost a lot of faith in tr i never trusted him to begin with i just like him i just like his force of personality i like his edge i like his humor it's a lot like nick but i like nick moore um i think nick is a sweetheart uh he's like my celebrity crush right now and uh i think he's quirky and he's cute he's an introvert and it's just like he's you know we need people like that we need eccentric geniuses in this world like look i mean the most successful people are the oddballs the most successful people are the ones with the quirks they're the ones that are the tough bosses they're the ones that are easily misunderstood you know you you don't get major success in life if you don't have that edge to you that's just the way it is so you're convinced you're pretty convinced that uh he takes his faith seriously i bet 100 percent okay i have contact conversations with him about the faith and and he's he definitely takes it seriously he's uh he prays the rosary he uh you know he he goes to mass he goes to confession he he participates in the sacramental life of the church and you could just tell like listen to when he talks about the faith this is somebody who thinks about it this is somebody who has internalized it yeah he he you can tell that he thinks about these things every day and um i mean yeah like he's not a theologian but that's not his place yeah it's not his role yeah you know but he he does have this very profound uh sense of what is catholic what is not catholic and um i think i think he takes his faith very seriously and i think he thinks about it at a very high level yeah i've been very impressed uh when he does uh talk about it because it's so natural and spontaneous uh as always uh and i've never heard him make a blunder in terms of attributing to the church something that's not according to the mind of the church and most importantly what impresses me most about him and of the people i'm meeting through him the catholics that i'm meeting through him what impressed me most is that they embrace the living magisterium warts and all pope francis and they embrace vatican ii i love vatican too it's true like nick himself as well like when he's like he'll be baited often yeah yeah to like just go on some unhinged rants about pope francis he doesn't do it no he will always say like i defer to the magisterium i'd refer to the pope yep um and look i i i've been critical of some some things about what pope francis has done i think it's okay to do that so long as you're respectful and charitable and yeah and and so on um but if you're going to be if you're going to be catholic and if you're not a certified contest you owe the pope his due deference you have to give him the benefit of the doubt always um and if there are those moments where you do see like a legitimate discrepancy between maybe what he says and what a past pope has said you could talk about that and you can make the point um but you have to do it respectfully you have to do it in a way that is restrained and sober and uh and and not done in a way to arouse uh any kind of malice yeah against the pope even though he's you know i'll be the first one to say it he's frustrating at times like i i wish he would take certain political stances that he doesn't i wish he would be a little bit more uh interested in evangelization i wish he would be a little bit more interested in uh you know john paul ii's new evangelization and in the way that john ballista envisioned it um i wish she would be you know i wish he would speak out more against uh what i see as the the major evils that are plaguing modern society um but look i mean you have to just be resigned to divine providence yeah the lord works in mysterious ways and i pray and if i could say just a couple more things like about about this uh because i've thought about it a lot um you know throughout i think every age of every major era of church history you will very often come across a situation of great decadence but it's always followed by reform that far outlives the decadence so think about you know the the the 10th and 11th century church and we call it the pornocracy right where the papacy was you know infiltrated and uh run by you know brothels for a period of time uh but then you had the gregorian and leonine reforms and uh that that really did a clean house and and um and purified the state of the church for a long period after that and fast forward to the uh decadence of the renaissance popes what did you get after that you got the council of trent we're still feeling the effects of the council trent to this day in a positive way so you will have these inflection points of church history that that show great decadence but it's always followed by a period of of reform that far outlives the decadence for sure and like i said i do think the lord works in mysterious ways and i pray every day for pope francis or whoever happens to be pope right now it's pope francis how do we know that because just go to mass and listen to who we're praying for as the pope it's pope francis right so um and it says in my prayer for the pope it says whom thou hast appointed to preside over that church so it's it's an appointment by god that's why i do believe that i do believe that the holy spirit was uh there at vatican ii i do believe that the that the church is protected and that the holy spirit is guiding the church now do we you know i interviewed uh cunningham from uh census fidelium and he said well yeah we get the pope we deserve not the pope we want and you know you can you know he he made it a comparison like having a father who was an alcoholic and aggressive wife beater or something like that i think it's a bit extreme but um you know uh certainly pope francis is human and he's got his flaws whatever but i still i still like him and i like having the mystical connection to mother church where i know that god almighty has appointed him and there's a good reason why is it punitive i don't know uh but even if it is that's wonderful and mysterious and uh you know i blame i don't blame pope francis for the ills of the world in the confusion in the world or the confusion in the church and i don't uh i certainly don't blame god i blame uh you know satan and adam and eve for listening to satan and we're just we're in a world of hurt right now and there's a lot of confusion since the fall so yeah you know also like can we just step back for a moment and just realize the fact that we're in a lot of a healthier position than we we easily could have been i mean look at okay just for just to think about this from a different perspective from a broader perspective maybe in the 1990s okay would you say that you know workplace feminism has has has pretty much been thoroughly cemented in modern society by that point yeah obviously it has been what happens in 1994 pope john paul ii comes out with this ordinazio sacra tales invoking his ex-catholic authority to say that women will never be priests ever yeah and he does this at the height of you know modern globalization modern feminism you know uh our the seeds of our modern culture had fully taken root by then and and that's that's an extraordinary example of of you know a modern church that you know admittedly is is flailing a bit at times but god will always intervene at the right moment to to uh to really enter into the history of his mystical body and and reflect to the world the fullness of truth and uh you know just think about the fact that you know our main concerns say with you know pope francis have to do i would say with you know that that issue of divorce and remarried catholics receiving communion or or the death penalty or you know failing to articulate the the catholic teaching the the fullness of catholic teaching against uh say homosexuality or something those are our main complaints with the the current pope but compare that against like major protestant uh denominations where they have long for for a very long time they've already given up on some of these core issues like contraception and divorce and remarriage and homosexuality but most of them are already far gone on that we are mainly concerned with the pope not articulating the fullness of catholic truth yeah in the most straightforward manner that we would like um that's a i would say when you look at the landscape of modern western christianity in particular and even eastern christianity i mean when you look at what uh even many orthodox priests will say with regard to contraception and divorce and marriage and divorce and remarriage um i say we're in it's a decent problem to have considering the rest of the world yeah i always think of it in terms of like the difficulties and the apparent uh crises in the church i always think of it in terms of the love story between myself and god almighty um or christ in this church whatever way you want to look at it it's the same thing um i think it has a love story and it's kind of like hey do you love me do you really love me and what about you know what about if i make things appear a little bit shaky do you still love me now do you still trust me now it's like that yeah it's that sort of thing it's that sort of situation and it's like yes god i do trust you i mean where else can i go like i mean it's like jesus in the just like jesus in the boat in the midst of the storm yeah you know uh sleeping and yet he's there and yet he and yet he will calm the storm when he's most needed yeah the new testament would be quite a different document if everyone all the heroes of the faith at that time all the apostles and saints if they all had 100 faith and confidence and trust in god and in their lord and savior jesus christ it would be quite a different document wouldn't it the new testament yes definitely it's rife with examples of uncertainty and doubt and and and being on shaky ground but the moral of the story time and time time again is is you know he will always say ye of little faith you know how long do i have to put up with you idiots that's what he said at one point for lack of a better yeah that's a dynamic translation uh oh yeah i wanted to ask you a little bit more about theology you know recently i got into a little bit of a quagmire with apparent contradiction you may have heard me say this if you listen to any of my stuff but i want to get your take on it the apparent contradiction between two dogmas one of them being okay okay reconnection successful i'm gonna wait till youtube catches up okay okay so i think we're back now yeah so there's an apparent contradiction between this dogma that all of the extra activities of god are common to the three persons of the trinity and the dogma that only the second person incarnated what's your uh what's your understanding of how those two are not in contradiction please um yeah so i guess what uh what i would say about that is first of all um for first things first it's not as though the three persons of the trinity are not involved in the mystery of the incarnation they are very much all involved in the mystery of the incarnation um so it's not as if one person is uh involved in something that the other two persons aren't you also have to keep in mind that uh this is so so basically i would argue that the the incarnation is the work of the oh is the work of the trinity it's not just the work of the sun um however we would say that the human nature is assumed by the sun and that happens on the side of the creature who is assumed um there's no intrinsic change in any of the persons there's no intrinsic change in god himself um it's on the side of the creature the creature is assumed by the sun and and the creature is is uh the the human nature is elevated to this state wherein his uh his uh is supposed to him his his uh subsistence is simply the person of the logos um and what changes happens on on the part of the creature not on the part of god and so it would still be true that the um add extra operations of the divine are indeed uh common to all three persons but the nature assumed that the human nature assumed um it has a unique relation to the sound so i guess that's kind of how i would articulate that very roughly yeah that that lines up with what i've read uh i haven't read that much i just uh looked at thoughts fundamentals of catholic dogma and they gave a very quick overview of how the two are reconciled basically i think this is what you were saying basically what ott says is that there's an active incarnation and a passive incarnation the active is common to all three and the passive is the uh like you mentioned hypostasis so all three actively were involved in the incarnation and the what they were active in what the activity was their intention was to have the hypostasis with the second person only so there's there's no contradiction and it all hinges exactly it all it hinges on that active versus passive uh you know i mean it's uh we shouldn't uh we shouldn't delve into things that are beyond our grasp anyway i just stumbled upon it and i was sort of curious and i've been asking every all the catholics that i meet and you give me yeah you give us an answer you give a good answer so i appreciate that and another thing i like to bounce off people is my idea of the bible i don't think that and i don't think we have a copy of the original autographs and so uh we i you know this is a sort of an apologetics approach with non-catholic christians that are obsessed with the bible and you could just say well look have you ever seen the bible have you ever touched the bible do you know what's in the bible you know no you don't know you don't know you you have i don't know maybe 99 of it nailed down maybe 99.9 i don't know that much is nailed down but that's is it non there's a non zero error level in every bible that you've ever seen as far as you know there's a non zero error level because you've never seen it in this original and you're going to be surprised you're going to be surprised to find out once you get to heaven if god willing to make it to heaven you're going to be surprised that you were wrong about a lot of stuff in the bible because you didn't have the whole thing and you didn't certainly didn't have the correct interpretation right so this is an apologetics technique uh polemics technique i guess against the the protestants who love love love love the bible and with good reason right right well see this is why i i think that protestantism uniquely lends itself to the bart airman kind of historical historical critical method because if if you believe in sola scriptura then then you believe that that as a christian you really it's it's epistemologically imperative that that you have untarnished manuscripts right um otherwise you you don't otherwise what you consider to be the sole rule of faith uh that itself would be tarnished if if you're if your manuscripts are ultimately targets whereas for a catholic it it it definitely matters that of course we have the sacred scripture you know unblemished however uh for example like if you consider like the uh the latin vulgate right um we can concede that the latin vulgate may have some you know textual errors in it but what does the council trent uh uh assure us it assures us that there's nothing doctrinally erroneous in the latin vulgate yeah and the church therefore uh solves the epistemological dilemma that might arouse from not being sure about which manuscript is fully authentic whereas for a protestant i think that's that's kind of a world view breaking the epistemological dilemma whereas it's not for a catholic what does airmen say in the context of well like yeah like like bart ambron for example will say that you know uh most of the sayings of jesus are not really fully authentic and you know you'll basically believe that you know the new testament is just you know copy manuscript after manuscript manuscript and the process of each copy you get you know less less less authenticity as as you go on um and you know that's of course bart airman is an agnostic but um i guess my point is that uh if you as a protestant your soul rule of faith is entirely dependent upon the scriptural text that you have then uh that i think is uniquely susceptible to the bart airman challenge as opposed to a catholic who doesn't necessarily need that same level of confidence that that their text is uh 100 um authentic whereas we can be fully uh confident that the text that we do have is fully congruent with the deposit of faith that christ gave to his apostles because of what the church has codified yeah it's just hilarious you know the church teaches that the scriptures are inherent not only concerning faith and morals which is what trent said about the that translation the vulgate but in everything right so there is no error there is no error in any of its parts or in its totality no air and i believe that but when i pick up my handy dandy bible that i got at the bookstore obviously i know i don't have the real thing right right it's a good approximation it's i think i think it's a good approximation good enough because i got a magisterium so it's good enough i mean i can i could pick up anton levay's satanic bible and it's good enough for me because i have the living magisterium of the catholic church to set me straight on those things that contradict to contradict christ right exactly right right right so it makes me think that's my point too i i was thinking about as you were speaking i was thinking about one of my favorite guests that i had on which is uh kent hovind you know him quite a character oh yeah yeah yeah talk about eccentrics but uh real for some character uh quite a guy quite a guy uh um he was really hilarious when he was defending the king james version have you met these people that believe that king james is uh 100 percent yeah the king james only us yeah yeah what is up with them i haven't really followed them too closely honestly but um i mean it just strikes me as as insane just total insanity um i i mean i guess they they think i i i'm not even i don't even know enough to it's just cool comment it's just kooky yeah it's kooky i mean i i watched a bit of like that debate that stephen anderson guy had with james white and i just couldn't get through it i mean it's just like which one is uh king james oh the the uh steven anderson is the king james onliest okay and james white he's some sort of a calvinist or something or what is he yeah yeah james white is basically i think a reformed calvinist and he's um you know he he's he's not a king james only so he accepts like the the uh niv or your whatever they use i i don't even know we're good enough yeah whatever they use it's intere very very interesting there's so much to uh so much to explore in our faith and the you know the bottom line for me is are you you know the choices we're making day to day this is why i don't follow politics because i am striving to please god and to not offend god and it's it's difficult it really is difficult so i want to talk a little bit if you don't mind even though it's a little bit more intimate and personal about your struggle with concupiscence with sin and uh how do you motivate yourself to kill the old man and let christ live in you this is really this is really what i think christianity is all about i want to get to the heart of it what are some tips and tricks that you've learned along the way i'll be i'll be open and honest i used to struggle with uh with um you know the online addiction years ago um and i completely was delivered from that when i resolved and it's not true for everybody so i'm not saying like this is the way that you're gonna get out of it but um for a period of time i committed to saying three rosaries a day wow and full uh 20 mysteries three times oh well fifteen fifteen you don't do but not that i'm against the luminous but i didn't do it aluminum do you do the luminous today um i kind of just stick to the joyful sorrowful glorious i i i i like the luminous mysteries i just don't usually do them as my normal pattern of buying the rosary but um but no i mean yeah i so i did 15 mysteries a day for a while and haven't done it since how long does that take an hour oh dude you're doing uh yeah yeah but it takes about an hour um i mean i don't do that i don't by the way i mean i don't do 15 mysteries a day now necessarily but um but i i committed to doing it for a while and and i just think that uh enabled me i think what it did is it enabled me to and again i'm not saying this is going to work for everybody although i would recommend it it just enabled me to be in this constant state of awareness of god's presence that made it that that made it wholly futile and nonsensical and irrational to engage in something like that yeah like i'm on camera right now i'm not going to whip out my dick and start whacking off right so right yeah exactly and so it's kind of this sense of being in the presence of god that i think is brought about through consistent prayer yeah that that that helps you know and um as far as now you know i'm getting married in a couple months so you know i'll have that uh what st paul says um what's impulse says uh the quieting of yeah the quieting of concubines uh the outlet for that um but no i i in terms of like tips for for uh dealing with that i i i i'm not going to be like a life coach so like if you're dealing with like some serious addiction i think you can help for that and and and seek out help in the confessional get a spiritual director and everything like that but i mean what i'm about to say is you know it's something that anybody would recommend prayer constant prayer throughout the day even if you feel like you're in this constant state of mortal sin and you feel like god doesn't want to hear you he does want to hear you he does want you to to remain open in prayer engage in meditative prayer for lengthy periods of time every day so you can cultivate this this uh sense of perpetual awareness of god's presence and and i think that that is that is a major help to of to at the very avoid uh like the gravest of you know premeditated sense of the flesh yeah yeah for sure um so when did you officially join the church did you get uh confirmed or anything was there any sacrament that brought you in or was it just a confession well i was i was confirmed when i was raised catholic before i came into atheism uh but i came back in around like 2014. oh okay okay it's been a while it's been a while oh yeah yeah i'm so i'm not like a new reaver and i mean i've i've been you know catholic for a long time now talk me through and uh to my listeners i always want to give them this amazing portrayal of what it's like for someone who's been away from the sacrament of confession when they come back to it or when they've never been and then they go for the first time describe what it did for you uh with the burden of sin that you're carrying how you felt going into the confessional booth if it was in a booth and how you felt when it came out just talk about that experience with the anticipation the nervousness and the shame whatever it was that you brought in with you yeah gosh i've never been asked that before so i never really thought about it but um but i mean i think you know you you go in with with this with this heavy load you do feel like you're kind of carrying this heavy load and it's very embarrassing it does feel like very um you do feel the sense of shame and humiliation but you know that's that's i think it's part of the purging process and it it makes for a much better feeling when you go out of the confession because you really do feel like you could you could fly you know you know you feel so light that you could fly you know at least at least that's how i kind of felt it's not necessarily going to match onto all of you know your experience but um but but it's but you know it's it's it's just this understanding that that the the priest in the confessional he is the presence of christ as as uh you know he he stands in persona christi to deliver to you the medicine of the divine physician and uh that's what you have to focus on don't focus on the priest's character or personality or or anything like that you know whatever you think that you gotta what you're gonna tell him he's heard ten times worse he's irrelevant and he will tell you that he's irrelevant not holy relevant but irrelevant in the sense that it's you're just focusing on christ and and the priest is the conduit of christ's presence for you and uh that's amazing it's amazing it's a mystical experience it's a mystical experience every time you have to be reverent about your prayer life you have to be reverent about the sacraments certainly uh talk a little bit about the eucharist are you able to have a good concentration and participation at mass or are you thinking about your next meal like i'm often doing i'll be honest uh and you know again i don't want to get too rhetorical about liturgy wars but it is for me it's a lot easier to get distracted at the novus ordo yeah a lot easier for me to get distracted by the novus ordo um basically so when i go to the north soda or now i have to bring my missile otherwise i'm just going to get lost i'm not i'm because there's there's nothing there to to visually really to help me what about all the women with low cut tops and yoga yeah that's that's that's that's that's yeah that's that's that really puts you in the presence of push you in the presence of something but not really in the presence of god but um but yeah i mean like that it's it's rough so i literally have to bring my my missile there uh i i bring my 1962 missile to the novus ordo because i mean it's the only one i have so it's like i'm i'm trying to look at the like the eucharistic imagery and and and well while it's going on and that helps me focus the nova sort of at the traditional at mass it's it's it's much easier for me to just bask in yeah uh the the uh the holy sacrifice of the mass um what i do what i what i try to do so even at the normal sort of what i kind of try to do is you really got to focus on the double consecration because theologically the double consecration is what sacramentally makes present the sacrifice it's it's it's it's the consecration of the bread and the consecration of the wine that that mystically make present the the immolation of christ right it mystically makes present the the outpouring of of that infinite divine uh love that that uh that that christ poured forth you know from his for from his sacred side and from his uh sacrifice on on the cross the sacrifice of the cross is is that that that infinite uh fountain of divine life and divine love that is manifested here on earth it is it is the sun looking back to the father in infinite love but being poured out for us in a human nature making the ultimate sacrifice pleasing to god and it's that double consecration the consecration of the bread of the consecration of the wine which sacramentally make that make that present you know uh the separation of the blood from the body uh sacramentally manifested in in these sacred signs and think about that focus on focus on that while that's happening i think and and then imagine yourself kind of receiving from that that fountain of grace uh that is being present in that moment you know that that's this is one technique that has kind of helped me yeah yeah it's very uh we have to inject the make a point of injecting the mystical into everything that we do because this this life is not where it's at this is where pilgrims here it's passing away the things here are good they're ontologically good because they're made by god but they're passing away and they're serving on our journey to take us back to god um but uh i wanted to mention something about the uh the consecration of the body and blood uh i've got a friend who notoriously when he's drinking wine or whatever he'll gesture with his arms as he speaks like you know you've seen people that talk with their hands so he's holding his he's holding his goblet of wine and he's like gesturing like very breastly and i'm just i'm barely able to listen to him because i'm so worried that he's going to spill the wine and why why am i worried about that i don't know just anxiety just a general anxiety level of sensitivity but i've tried to take that energy and that concern which is really a frivolous concern into the mass when the when the wine is consecrated turns into the blood of christ i try to have that same sense of awe and uh reverence like hey i i what i'm actually doing now uh when i'm at mass is i picture the chalice even though i know it's not full up to the brim with the uh with the wine which is consecrated and turned into the blood i know it's not filled up to the rim but i i try to visualize it like it is so i can instill in myself a sense of anxiety like hey please don't spill it please don't spill it and uh it does help like having that forced anxiety it does sort of give me that little boost of reverence like it is precious please don't spill it well that's good i mean i think it's it's good that you know you when you really believe in the real presence you will try to do whatever you can to foster the maximum reverence that you can another thing i i'm going to talk to you a little bit do you have time to talk another 5 10 minutes yeah they got you know another five ten minutes okay uh when i i was making pancakes one time early in my conversion after my conversion and uh you know there's all the the butter i put butter in my mix and it's like the flour and the sugar and whatever eggs and uh as i was stirring it some of it went splashing over the side and landed on the floor and i really felt like what a waste like this is a precious delicious food that i'm making and what a waste that i spilled some on the floor and at that moment i thought not of the eucharist but i thought of abortion and how people say it's just a clump of cells and the woman's spot it's her woman's body she can choose and she can scrape it out or suck it out or put a saline solution whatever but i was just struck by the the reverence and the awe that i had for this pancake batter which is so insignificant and then when i thought about it in the context of the zygote or the embryo or the fetus that's in the mother's womb i thought like how how can i have such an emotional sensitivity for some pancake batter and women mothers potential mothers are so cold and heartless with this beautiful and mysterious creature this human creature that is body and soul and a person that is growing in her womb i mean i just can't understand the insensitivity of demonic yeah yeah unfortunately that's a tendency that i think is more common than i realize i mean how often for example or are we you know so you know sweet and loving and caring to our pets but then when then when when the guy cuts you off on the road you're thinking like the horrible obscenities and you know i think so you know you know he's a he's someone made in the image and likeness of god and he should he should you know if she was probably having a bad day or probably you know just a little distracted like you get you know like like i get stuff um so it is i think that that this is general human dysfunction that is i think of course maximalized is something so horrific as abortion but you know it's it's something that you know we always have to remember that as small as the zygote is it's in a sense bigger than the entire physical universe yeah by virtue of its a soul mate of the image and likeness of of god and one one uh tiny cell post fertilization can has the intrinsic potency to circumscribe all the nebulas in the physical universe you know and so what what a horrible tragedy it is to have such a such a uh cavaliers such a cavalier casual approach to snuffing out something as precious as that you know we're very proud people and stiff-necked and proud and i always make the comparison with technology everyone's obsessed with their iphone oh i got the new one and you know all these different gadgets we have and how computers get smaller and smaller we can pack more and more into a smaller space but you know do you realize how much information is packed into that human zygote like it's unbelievable the machinery the complexity and the and how it's going to unfold uh into uh hopefully one day uh an infant and a child an adolescent an adult and hopefully all the way to senior and all the way hopefully to uh just say natural god willing it's amazing you know but people can value their iphone and the technology but just they don't they don't seem to appreciate the uh how amazing life is it's not a toenail it's not a clump of cells it's not it's not a hair i had one guy recently i was saying is the humans i go to humans i go he says well it's a human zygote but it's not human i said what do you mean you just said it's a human zygote he said yeah but human in that case is magical it's like a human hair it's like a hue it's a it's an adjective not a noun so it's a human it's a human zygote like it's a like when i walk on the beach okay then then you're a human you're you're just a human course walking around then you know it's like but yeah i mean well you know what i've discovered is that the pro-choice argument it's one of those situations where to me like for example when i was an atheist i tried to be pro-choice i just couldn't do it i i couldn't i i i i genuinely you know i i tried because i i during that period of time became liberal and also all sorts of other issues but the abortion sure just couldn't shake because it just seems so intuitively obvious to me what it what it really was and you know all the pro-choice arguments to rob the fetus of its humanity are just grounded in in sloppy thinking and just just emotionalism at the end of the day yeah selfishness even like i think the most sophisticated argument they have is like uh is is is like this idea that um like it's it's akin to uh self-defense or something i'm not saying that's a good argument but it's the best they have and that's just like insane to me on its face everything else is just sofa streets pure silver street oh yeah i asked my friend the other day so you believe it's her body yes it's her body okay so at that moment in time when she's pregnant she's got two heads two brains two hearts eight eight rings yeah yeah she does okay well uh if if life does not like what is the first stage of human development because all of the biology textbooks say it's the zygote at conception fertilization you're saying that's not the first stage in human the development of a human being so what is what is the first stage in human development of a living human being just the magical passing from the birth canal to outside i guess yeah he said he said when it when you cut the umbilical cord boom now it's a human being okay i mean that that's that's that's literally just magic i mean that that's that's not it it is it's it's magical thinking you know they like to poke fun at our uh miracles our yeah our miracles our you know our sacramental system or whatever but uh first of all all of that is thoroughly intelligible this is just like hocus pocus popping it's it's it's not grounded in any kind of science it's not grounded in any kind of philosophical reasoning it's it's just it's one of those issues where they just i think they just can't look their own position in the face and recognize the barbarity of it so they have to revert to these uh gasping at straws arguments you mentioned hocus pocus you know the origin of that word right yeah i do yeah yeah it is my body this is my flesh yeah yeah hulk whole guest uh so very nice to meet you i appreciate it i hope you come back and talk some more i'd like to talk about all kinds of catholic stuff with you it's a real pleasure to meet you you're a bright young man uh humble down to earth with common sense and a lively faith it's just it's just a real joy and inspiration to meet young catholics and i've been meeting a lot of them like i said because of my interest in this griper movement so i really think there's something good going on there and i applaud you and uh continued success with what you're doing down there well thank you so much i really like what you got going on i think that that you have i i'm really just kind of blown away by your uh inquisitiveness by your um like the kinds of questions that you ask the shows that you think about these things that just very deep level and i think and i wish you all the best and yeah i'll i'll be happy to come back excellent yeah thank you so much take good care and if you do see nick tell him i love him i will yeah absolutely god bless you man bye