so we're actually live on my channel so you can do your thing and go live whenever you want oh okay well i'll say a short prayer for us because we still have like a minute so lord thank you so much for david and lord thank you for giving us the opportunity to testify about you we know we don't know when our time on earth is done so we just thank you for the opportunity right now to glorify you and we ask that all of our words would glorify you fill david with your spirit so that all of the words that he speaks may come lord as a as a testimony to those who need to hear about you we pray that those who need to be saved would receive the truth about you and and turn to you thank you so much lord and we pray in jesus name amen amen all right um so okay so we're live on your channel and there's not gonna be any problem i can just go live and do your thing i can affect anything okay awesome and how long do we have to talk as long as you like i mean uh what do you typically do it varies so we could do like an hour and a half or something yeah that sounds good that sounds that's typically what i end up doing okay cool and hello to everyone on david's channel thanks for watching okay going live hello everyone welcome to the bread of life channel i'm so excited to have my dear brother david here with me to share his journey of faith and we'll just kind of talk about some topics that we have in common and and um so it should be a great discussion um david has a a channel uh and podcast called catholic verses um i'm hearing uh echo oh that's my fault sorry okay um so anyway welcome david glad you're here thank you rebecca pleasure to see you again you too so do you want to add anything about um like where people can find you i put the link to your website in the description um so that's perfect check that out yeah that's okay i'm i'm thinking i'll get off of youtube eventually because i got a warning today they don't like my medical misinformation when i when i suggest that people uh need to give informed and free consent to the job so they flagged me for that they they might be investigating some of my videos and taking me off youtube soon because i've said a lot of things critical of uh the way the governments of the world have been handling that whole thing so i think my days on youtube are numbered but um i'll go i'll find some alternative thing but in the meantime my website's always going to be there cvs podcast.com so people can find me there cool okay great well um will you just tell us a little bit about yourself in general and then kind of dive into your story sure yeah i was born and raised protestant in a very very uh what is has come to become a very uh progressive i guess you could say left-leaning liberal uh church in canada it's the most populous or the popular denomination in canada it's a united church of canada and today not in my day but uh i was born in 1970 so i'm 52 but back in the day it was just uh you know a nice protestant church but today they have atheist ministers and if you want to listen to uh greta's interview uh she's one of the first atheist ministers of this united church of canada so it's that's how far they've gone straying from sort of the uh traditional teachings of the of christianity right um wow i've never heard of that that is fascinating greta vosper i think is her name if i'm not uh mistaken great of osprey but uh yeah i mean so i grew up in in a church that was protestant and i loved it i loved uh you know i had no idea about uh really anything in terms of the history of the church so i just enjoyed uh doing sunday school learning about the old testament and the new what stands out from my childhood is john the baptist i really love john the baptist i still do to this day and of course jesus so it was sort of like john the baptist and jesus those were sort of my two loves and uh you know it was a nice it was a nice uh experience being raised christian in a loosely christian household and i enjoyed uh praying my prayers every night and i took my religion seriously but it was obviously a very naive faith as a child right but then at age 14 everything changed i hit puberty and i remember the exact moment the exact day when i lost my faith because i had a nice dream about jesus he was waving to me on a desert island waving goodbye i guess because when i woke up i had lost my faith so that's sort of the early days of my experience with religion i loved religion i loved jesus i had a beautiful dream of jesus i woke up and it's like okay i guess uh i'm an atheist now wait what happened though you had a beautiful dream of jesus so what was going on in your mind like what was going on in my mind is this is counter-intuitive this is very counter-intuitive because i love jesus he's a beautiful dream about jesus i could say a mystical experience one-on-one he's looking at me he's waving to me i know he loves me and it's just like goodbye or maybe see you later maybe that's a better choice of words because he knows he knows the arc and the trajectory that i was on and it was uh 25 years later at the age of 39 that i came back to him so uh he's a patient patient god wait how many years 25 years of adoption wow yeah 25 years so what happened in that 25 years i can't tell you it's x-rated but no okay i'm just joking i'm just joking nothing really exciting but you know i i went down the rabbit hole with you know the whole thing started with puberty and what is puberty about it's about hormones and sexual maturity and i mean it's ironic to call it sexual maturity because i was so immature and i still am you know sexually immature and i wasn't popular with the ladies and i was a loner introvert and so i was just um doing my own thing living in my own little bubble and uh you know i was always interested in the truth and i think this is where god sort of kept his eye on me and he kept me interested in him even though i was an atheist i kept studying philosophy and i had all kinds of wild and crazy and stupid and silly ideas about ultimate reality and uh who am i and what's going on where do we come from all these sorts of things but as i mentioned to you when you came on my channel i never believed in evolution i never believed that i was an ape why would i believe that right and i was always curiously i was also always pro-life so these are two very strange things for an atheist to believe but in any case i think god kept me pretty close and often atheists say well david you are never an atheist because it's impossible based on you know who you are and what you believe now you could not have been an atheist because that would just be too much of a betrayal to the atheist community if you you know someone hardcore like you was ever an atheist they just can't wrap their head around it but i you know i readily admit that probably i never was an atheist it's just a lie that i told myself and the sad thing is that i think that might be the case for all atheists actually they're just lying to themselves and they're not really atheists right now but you you said you were like fairly close to god but you said that you were a satanist as an atheist only at the end only what did that mean well only at the very end because my love of truth never waned i mean i did have ups and downs like dis dragging got distracted with different things going to university and getting married and traveling and stuff like that and just uh living life you know with my wife and uh doing art and mute bit of music and stuff like that and traveling around always traveling around like a rolling stone never gathering moss um but you know my love of truth was always there but when i settled down into the marriage and into a sort of working lifestyle like a little bit more of an adult lifestyle less travel more work paying the bills and stuff like that um i've always been a little bit of a rebel and a lazy rebel at that so i didn't really enjoy the the uh this sort of what i was settling into a bit of a drab lifestyle but i took the opportunity to dive more deeply into philosophy and that's what led me to all kinds of crazy ideas i started you know with the pre-socratics i worked my three way through the overview of western philosophy reading a lot and by the time i got to rene descartes after like probably eight years of solid study part-time you know on my own i i'd gone down a really dark path philosophically you know getting more and more anti-christian reading lots of anti-catholic stuff and sympathizing with the anti-catholic uh propaganda and um you know i ended up calling myself a satanist an atheistic satanist because atheistic satanism is all about reason and i was very much into the rationalistic school and ironically it's uh sort of the father or the godfather of rationalism rene descartes who pulled me out and that converted me ultimately to god because i'd fallen into solipsism like all the you know german idealism and all these sorts of things that i'd tasted along the path of western philosophy because i went chronologically um that stuff really uh tripped me out because i'm a very sensitive soul i don't do you know i really don't do drugs and alcohol so just playing with ideas can trip me out you know so by the time i got to descartes in my reading list uh he offered me a solution to the hard solipsism that i'd fallen into i actually believed at that time that i was the only being and that everything else is just an illusion and uh there is no material world there are no other persons and it's just me i'm god so luckily uh rene descartes pulled me out of that with his i think therefore i am and his discourse on methods so it was quite a trip wow yeah so the satanism itself you know it's not that exciting it's just it's just worship of self it's just uh the the voluntary choice to do one's own will and to um to have that force of will to be willful and to you know it has a lot in common with existentialism too and as much as you make your own choices in life you make your own story you make your own meaning ultimately you make your own meaning because for them essence obviously uh sorry existence precedes essence so it's this sort of inversion of the catholic idea so we we have an experience but then we have to create our own meaning this is sort of the existential approach and the satanists i think borrow heavily from that too because you know it's me and my will and there's no human nature there's not there's nothing to be respected it's just a matter of uh pushing forward with what i want to create ultimately and of course their limitations and the satanist acknowledge that there are limitations and there are other wills so often you can have a battle of the wills right so ultimately it goes back to that pre-socratic idea in some sense of might makes right which is really an ugly ugly principle well now i recently had a satanist on my channel and but he was not in well he he actually says he's an atheistic satanist but he was saying might you know doesn't make right so just because even if god is you know god's the creator doesn't mean that he should be in charge no but if you were to ask him about his will and other people's will and uh the battle of wills he's going to have to take a position on that right he's going to have to admit that there is no standard of judgment like all of his judgments are measured against his will they're not measured against an eternal objective absolute immutable standard of truth and goodness right because if he had that standard he'd be a monotheist he would be worshiping god because that's what god is god is that standard right so if you press him on the battle of the wills he will have to admit that his will is the standard it's the only standard and that's why the law of thelema as alistair crowley famously put it is do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law that's it do what thou wilt and of course you have to take in consideration other people uh with their will and that's where this battle of wills enters in and then it's just might makes right period oh i can't hear you muted sorry okay so you were at this point where you had gone down this road of philosophy and you got into satan that atheistic satanism so what brought you back what brought you well i was because i had simultaneously fallen really quickly and deeply into atheistic satanism which is the worship of reason and my in particular my own reason and my own will because a human being is uh by definition a person it's a person that has reason and free will right like i read enough catholic philosophy to know this is what a person is we have intellect and we have will and a lot of the atheistic philosophies emphasize the will but they also emphasize reason and it puts reason on a pedestal you see this with scientism today where people trust the experts and science science science trusts the science and these sorts of things it's um it's a glorification of science and science is good of course natural science is good but there's uh such a romance about it that we forget the limitations and the proper place in the proper context of the natural sciences within the hierarchy of the sciences so i have now as a monotheist i have god almighty i've got uh you know that's science with the big s science meaning knowledge god is knowledge and wisdom and truth and then underneath god we have theology and underneath theology we have philosophy and then underneath philosophy we have the natural sciences and underneath the natural sciences we have the social sciences and other soft sciences so there's a whole hierarchy and they're all uh interdependent and god's at the top of that hierarchy so if you remove god from the top of the hierarchy basically you yourself become god and you're the last judge and it doesn't matter if you refer to authority you appeal to authority well uh kraus says this or hawking says that or dennett says the other thing the that would tend to cloud the issue a little bit because that gives the impression that there's a hierarchy and you're not you yourself as an atheist or an atheistic satanist you are not placing yourself at the top of that hierarchy it clouds it because it seems that way but in reality you are the ultimate judge you are deciding you gather the information from all the experts you do your readings you listen to whatever sources you have available to you and you decide what is true you decide what you accept and usually as an atheist or an atheistic satanist you will be very proud of the fact that none of your beliefs are absolute or objective they're just tentative and this is how science works and just for now but even so it is you as an atheist if you don't have god it is you yourself that is the final judge it's a sort of private judgment and uh no one can gain say you they can help you they can help to change your mind and then uh you know you can give credit where credit's due well thanks to this expert or that expert or my friend or my aunt mary or whatever i've reevaluated and i've modified my position but it's always you now as a catholic i submit to god i submit to the church i submit to all sorts of authorities even where i don't understand right so it's like god god is a trinity i don't understand that and i never will but i submit to it happily joyfully because i know the limitations of my own reason and i'm not god so i submit to god and accept all kinds of mysteries and things uh that we just can't understand because because our our reason is finite right yeah so you were an atheist for did you say 29 years or 25 25 25. so there's still some hope for some people who have become atheists and and stayed that way for many years but in that 25 years did you feel like did you ever feel like you were missing god because that's quite a long time uh my friend joe is in my chat over here he says rebecca is such a nice lady tell her i said hi so i just want to pass that message along to you oh cool hi joe um yeah so did i miss god as an atheist well certainly i mean there's there's a god-shaped hole in the heart of every atheist and the you know our hearts are restless until they repose and god this is what saint augustine famously said in his confessions and i should fill in just a little bit of detail i mean there's so there's so many ways we could go with this uh interview but there's one little detail that's very interesting which is that when i when i found god due to rene descartes i still hated christ and his church i still hated christianity because that's that's how dark my path had gone as a hardcore atheist because for many many years i was a nice guy agnostic okay a nice guy agnostic what does that mean it means i don't press i don't press the issue it's just like i don't know we can't know this sort of very gentle like hey let's talk about the possibilities and who knows and whatever you know it's a very nice soft approach for many many years and i was actually a pantheist for many years which is which is funny but um it's just kind of like just imagining is it a little hint of the monotheism to come you know because you look at a flower you look at even a stone and you think well this has being this has existence and you sort of start attributing deity to it and everything else and you know you're part of that so a lot of stuff what you need to understand about atheism it's not the danger of atheism is not that you'll believe nothing as chesterton famously said that the danger is not that you'll believe nothing the dangerous you believe absolutely everything right so this is i'm i would like to convey to you and to your listeners that this is exactly what i experienced it was just like floating in a world of ideas and this is attractive and this oh i don't like that just move away from that and coasting over here and over there very very um lost and confused and you know i was kind of like a hippie to begin with so uh i still have the long hair and cut my hair since 87. so um you know it's a nice diagnosticism and then as i studied and as i got more uh cynical and dark as the years went on in my late 30s it just got darker and darker darker and darker but the punch line i want to get to here is that when i converted i hated the church so i said well i must be muslim because i can't be a jew i can't just like decide to be a jew so i must be a muslim but i don't believe in the quran or that muhammad is the last prophet or that he was even a prophet at all you know based on what i knew of his lifestyle and all that sort of thing but i said you know just sort of a generic monotheist and a unitarian at that because why would i believe in the trinity right especially as an enemy of the church but what happened in your mind why why did you um like change your mind like about god like what brought you to the point of okay wait actually i think there's a god well there yeah there are two things to examine one is going from atheist to monotheist a generic monotheist and then there was shortly after that like within two weeks there was from generic monotheist to christian okay so the first piece from atheist to to monotheist is the most important obviously and that was rene descartes i think therefore i am because i was a hard solipsist at that time i believed i was the only being and he just by the way he talked about god in a nonchalant way in a hand-waving manner well of course god is real and of course he's good and of course he's not going to deceive our senses because this is something very important for atheists to remember is that we can never ever ever ever ever prove using philosophy much less empirical science that the alleged sense perceptions that we have correspond to sense organs much less to a real external world and other people there's absolutely nothing we can do about that right it's just like you can design any experiment you want but you're presuming the very senses that you want to test so it's invalid it's circular reasoning and what most atheists they don't like to hear this but most and i'm not trying to insult anyone but trying to help people most atheists what they resort to secretly is what's called naive realism where it's well like you know we can't deny the real world it's so real look at it look it's look i can touch it i could taste it it's like you're talking you're responding to it when i talk to you you respond but all of that is assuming what they want to prove it's assuming that your sense perceptions correspond with objective reality right so they they resort to this naive realism well it must be the world must be real much the same way that descartes did with god like well we know god is real we know he's good so there was no proof offered by descartes to me but he just what he did is he gave me a way out psychologically when i was oppressed with the weight of the responsibility of being god almighty it's not a pleasant feeling when you actually believe that you're god it's very lonely it's very lonely now god himself is a trinity and god is perfectly infinitely happy god needs nothing but for a human being a finite creature to take on the mantle of god it's a very very lonely depressing place to be so i was very happy to have this escape hatch offered to me it's just a psychological existential experience i had where descartes just kind of tapped me on the shoulder and said hey you know god's real you're not god god is god and it just it just worked and then subsequent to that i was able to reason uh you know my way uh out of uh you know thought more clearly about it and i had uh different ways of uh making syllogisms that would prove that proof that my hard solid system was false like 100 certain that my heart solipsism was false and i was able to think about that using uh pure reason and logic but he helped me get over that hump so now i'm a monotheist and i was so happy i remember the exact moment and it's funny in in the history of my life i've got those two key moments one where i lost my faith after that beautiful dream of jesus right at age 14 just to such a mind-boggling weird paradoxical counter-intuitive moment in a young man's life and then 25 years later as i'm entering middle age this moment lying in my bed reading renee descartes deep into the dark recesses of herd solipsism and and atheistic satanism at the same time and then suddenly boom i realized i'm not god god is god so that was a huge moment and then i'm gonna skip ahead to the second part of the story which happened within a couple of weeks i was just happened to be reading uh through providence uh a book uh called the confessions by saint augustine i referenced it here earlier today um and i pray i actually pray the first chapter of that book every day i've got it memorized it's one of my prayers one of my first prayers i do every night i actually pray morning and evening it's the first chapter of saint augustine's confessions and that book really really touched me because here my enemy christ and his church were portrayed to me for the very first time for what they are beautiful uh a beautiful clear pure holy respect of truth goodness beauty everything all the transcendentals unity so it was saint augustine who really converted me to christianity because i had a irrational hatred of christ in his church as i said wow that's amazing um i want to just put up a comment really quick titan uranus the atheist of the month emeratus is here no need to rise uh glad you're here and the atheist of the month is hillary's emails so um hope you got my email if not um let me know so um but okay so you fell in love with the church and with chris well you fell in love with christianity again through augustine and then what happened like where did you go from there well that's an interesting story too i mean i don't know how god arranges these things but i was working at a computer store a computer repair shop at the time and um just around the corner from where i live and reading about god loving god but wanting to worship god publicly okay this is something very uh powerful uh a movement in my heart it's not enough to sit at home knowing that god exists i need to worship him i need to worship him privately but i also need to worship him publicly it's a strange impulse that i had and uh so i was working at this computer shop and lo and behold in walks a monk and i was thinking oh i hope he's orthodox because i hate the catholic church so i asked him i said oh are you religious and he said yes of course and i said can i come and talk to you sometime about god because i've just discovered that i'm not god that god is god i'd like to talk to someone who believes in god who worships god and i want to worship god myself i want to worship him publicly so he said sure yeah i'm a catholic monk training to be a priest and my mona you can come to my monastery and if you want we'll we know we'll discuss christianity and these sorts of things and uh so i said sure but i mean i don't have a car i'm just on bicycle where's your monastery he said oh it's just across the street so it turns out this place had been by you know for 15 20 years i had known this place i had no idea it was a monastery it just looks like a regular church but um so he lives there with the brothers and sisters these nuns and monks and so i went i started going and uh you know i had questions he had answers and one of the visits one of the first visits he took me into the um the chapel and he you know it's a large beautiful church and he said i want you to assist at a mass just to be present to see how we worship god and i was very moved and at the end of the mass i said i don't believe in the trinity i don't believe that jesus christ is god incarnate but i want in i want to worship god i'm moved by this and i feel there's something i'm drawn to this more than anything else that i've seen and i want you to teach me can i become a christian can i become a catholic even though i don't believe in the trinity he said sure so he said we're just gonna go through your questions i'm gonna present you some reading material we're going to go through the basic teachings and if you accept them if you accept all of them then by that very fact you will be a christian and if you reject them then there's no harm no foul you tried you didn't it wasn't for you or whatever so for i don't know the next few months i don't know how many months if it was four months six months eight months i can't remember uh we did these uh private one-on-one uh sessions teaching sessions and he gave me lots of things to read and i was reading extra stuff on the side the catechism and uh you know i'd already been i'd been reading the bible as an enemy of the church just to mock and ridicule it but um i had a new perspective since reading the confessions so i had a new appreciation and of course having uh you know these readings of different saints gave me a different perspective on the interpretation of scripture so i was no longer an enemy of the scriptures and i wanted in i didn't believe in the trinity but all my questions were answered and you know i basically just sailed through and was just in love with the um the beauty and the mystery and how uh how reasonable christ and his church are like that was what blew me away because i'm very jealous of the truth i'm very i'm i'm socratic by nature i'm a fan of socrates he's probably my all-time favorite secular philosopher of all time socrates and that's sort of my ammo when it comes to philosophy and religion you know uh very very critical and very very uh unwilling to accept lies i think everyone should be and i think everyone is and uh very much on the on the outlook for watching out for any contradiction any genuine contradiction paradox is fine i love paradox and apparent contradiction is fine but a genuine contradiction that's obviously a deal breaker well now what's um i'm sorry i lost my turn and thought but um okay what's interesting to me is that you were mocking the bible um and like you were reading the bible to mock the bible when you were an atheist so how did you suddenly come to love the bible like what all those things that you mocked how did how were they no longer mockable well i mean they remain they remain the things i was mocking remain disturbing to me okay uh it's all old testament stuff it's all about the violence it's all about god being uh you know wanting us to smash the heads of babies against brick walls and all these sorts of things so there's nothing there's no real like um brainwashing that took place it's like i'm not stupid i know that violence is ugly i know that uh you know racism or sexism or all these sorts of things like any sort of nasty stuff i know the incest is is ugly i know all kinds of you know slavery like it's there's it's not like i was stupid and then i got converted and i'm smart it's just that the understanding of how to put the word of god into context that was the missing piece and it's the same with the atheist that i meet it's just they're just taking a common sense approach without going to that spiritual reading where they understand for example that god is not um angry he doesn't change his mind so when i would read as an atheist when god would negotiate for example uh with uh abraham or whoever it was about sodom and gomorrah like if you find 50 40 30 20 whatever uh you know if you just as an atheist if you approach something like that and you just say this is stupid like you know you're negotiating with god like and god changes mind because of a human like this is just stupid right so i went from saying that to saying well we need to interpret we need to interpret that there are all kinds of literary genres in the bible like there's poetry and it's it's written by men for men even though the primary author is god and i believe you know as the church teaches i believe that the bible is inerrant in total and in all of its parts and not merely those things that pertain to faith and morals but everything it's inerrant there are no errors in the scriptures right so i believe that and so now the question is well how do how do we understand this challenging passage right and uh so like we just know once you're grounded in monotheism you know who and what god is you know he doesn't change his mind you know he doesn't have arms right so we read passages about god's body parts so to me as an atheist that was just stupid but now i just understand who and what god is that he doesn't have body parts but that these works were written yes by god but through humans and for humans written through humans for humans and that means there are all kinds of literary devices that if you're if you're a simple minded in your interpretation and if you're an atheist in your interpretation you're going to stumble you're going to stumble on all kinds of things in the bible and there's still there's still challenges for me where it's like i'm very uncomfortable i'm uncomfortable partly it's pride because hey i want to understand like why can't i understand that this is good and holy what's what's reported in the bible here but my go-to example is that um i see a question do most catholics agree with that view of the bible no but they're obliged to they're obliged to agree with that but most don't okay um sorry did i take over your role yes comment no i just wanted to put that up before it got like lost in the comments so um yeah because i i thought that was a good question for right now so it is dogma that you you believe the bible is inherent like yeah yeah yeah part okay yeah yeah so uh that's firmly established we cannot we cannot pick and choose which parts of the bible saint augustine famously said if there's one little part of the bible that is erroneous then we just chuck the whole bible out right do you believe that yourself rebecca well it depends on the sense and what you mean do i think there are like errors in many ways in the bible but i believe the bible is inspired by god written by humans but copied by humans who have you know fallibility so there's copy errors there's translation errors in every translation that we have there are factual errors when you read between the gospels like the the you know the some of the differences in the way that you know this happened on this day they said exactly and so there are things that really do seem like real contradictions but for me that is not a problem because i believe that's eyewitness testimony that you know humans can have errors in their way of thinking but i don't think that that makes um their testimony uninspired or you know i believe the holy spirit was guiding them and inspiring them i just don't have you know take like but do you agree with what i'm saying do you would you say there is no contradiction no no i agree with you 100 i go one step further i go one step further along that same vein and i say that we don't even have in our possession the original autographs so the bible to me is a mystical thing just like the church is the mystical body of christ the bible itself is a mystical thing and the the physical bibles like i've got like five of them on my shelf those physical bibles do contain errors they do obviously obviously i mean you can't have you can't have a hundred different editions of the bible that are all slightly different and all the different transcripts are not transcripts but manuscripts and all the different you know parts that were filled in and between the scraps and these sorts of things all the biblical scholarship that's using reason and evidence to try to patch patch things together and to understand things and not to mention the problems with translation so for me it's a mystical bible that's that's what's inerrant and no one's ever seen it we don't have access to it we don't have access that's the beautiful thing the but the one the one concrete example that i like to use when it comes to uh contradictions in the bible is moses and divorce right moses was allegedly or ostensibly speaking for god when he said that you can issue a bill of divorce and then jesus came along and said well that was because that was a concession because you're heart of heart okay so assuming that these two parts of the bible the old testament and the new the old with moses the new with jesus assuming that those two little snippets that i talked about are faithful to the actual mystical bible as i call it assuming that that's the case then we have to really broaden our understanding of inerrancy the inerrancy of the scriptures right because it's presented in the old testament like god's word god's law and it comes through moses and this is a commandment and these sorts of things and then jesus comes along and says no it's just a concession so that to me that takes the edge off the whole panic stricken situation like oh no a contradiction that can't be a contradiction whatever that's like yeah there can be contradiction in the bible but they're not that it's not a deep contradiction it's a it's on a human level like it's history and this is this is god's chosen people and he's working with the people and it's messy and ugly and it's a stiff-necked people and it's the same today i'm not saying that the gentiles in the age of the christian church that we're better right we're stiff-necked and we also are getting a lot of concessions from god but when these concessions are reported in the bible it's it's it's a transcendent truth that underlines all of that right just like when it's reported in the bible about atheists and the stupid things that atheists said in the in the old testament times right and god laughs at the atheist because it's just foolish to die god they're all kinds of things reported all kinds of things that are immoral and alpha all sorts of things that were the traditions of men and this is what jesus was angry about very often is those traditions of men right and so there is a transcendent truth throughout the what i what i call what the church calls salvation history and salvation history is recorded in the bible we don't have access to the bible but we have a i think we have a fair chunk of it probably whatever percent of the text i think we have pretty good idea of what it says so it's not a big big deal that we're maybe missing some parts um but it's that it's that truth that is essential for our salvation that is contained in the bible and we're going to see on judgment day exactly how that works and what it means and in the meantime there's no point in getting proud about it and saying well you know i used to be a christian but then i discovered these contradictions and you know i just threw i threw the whole thing out and this is not what this is not what saint augustine wanted us to do what saint augustine wanted us to do is to look at the literal meaning sort of the face value meaning what were the authors trying to say and then layer on top of that different spiritual meanings and uh you know always always struggling or striving to understand what were the people of that time trying to say and uh you know they're it's a subtle it's a very subtle question it's a very difficult question to uh to explain but from my own subjective christian experience i can just say that i trust god i have faith in god he tells me this is his word and that's that it's inerrant i believe him and you know as someone that's dabbled in poetry i know for a fact that if i publish a poetry book and i never have but if i published a poetry book and it became very popular for whatever reason and people started talking about what it means and whatever i am the ultimate authority i'm gonna say hey that's pretty cute what you said over there but that that's not what i meant and the other group over there this other camp is like interpreting my words in this way it's like oh that's interesting i never thought of that i'm the author of it but i never thought of that that's interesting um but that's not what i meant and so it's the same thing with god and his bible it's like we've got a bunch of humans down here theologians and whatever who are all excited about their their pet theories and that's cute that's nice and it's if it's done with respect to god i think it's a pious exercise and there's no harm no foul but guess what we have to wait and see what the author says right and uh with the catholic church we have a living magisterium that does give us little tastes of the truths that are contained in the word of god and that's those dogmas i sent you a list of a partial list of the dogmas today and so you get a little idea of where i'm coming from here it's like the church is a mystical body of christ and it is interpreting it's the it's the only authority to interpret holy scripture but it's not interpreting the whole thing wholesale it's giving us a little interpretation here a little interpretation there and laying it down this is an unchangeable unchanging truth of god almighty and they're called the dogmas so that's uh that's why i'm confident in the inerrancy of the bible cool well i want to just take a minute to um welcome the the the crowd that suddenly arrived um thanks for being here guys and uh now i know there's like eight of you that that uh are more loyal to me than pine creek so thanks for the eight who were here before pine creek ended and by the way david i guess pine creek was streaming so you're also appearing on like he was streaming our stream so you're you're on pine creek cool as well i don't know for how long maybe just a minute um and the atheist of the month is here it is hillary's emails good to see you hope you did you get my email please let me know in the chat and because i didn't hear back from you um okay so we we got and for those of you who just got here i'm i'm really upset that you didn't hear the beginning of david's story so i hope you will go back and listen to it because it's really fascinating um he spent 25 years as an atheist so that gives me great hope for you guys so um uh because you know 25 years is quite a long time and um he really journeyed with philosophy and um so it's it's it's really kind of an interesting journey okay so can i say something yeah uh what i like to remind the atheists or encourage the atheist of today like if they're an atheist listening i'm sure there are because he said um it's not about what you believe like some people say i'm an atheist i'm agnostic i'm a satanist whatever that is not very very important what is very very important is that you take your worldview seriously look at the fundamental assumptions the axiomatic assumptions the metaphysical assumptions of your worldview that's what happened to me that's why i was able to convert because not because i'm a good guy not because god likes me more than he likes you no it's because by the grace of god i examine my beliefs my atheistic beliefs i went deeper and deeper and deeper and darker and darker and darker into my atheism and by actively challenging my cherished beliefs about ontology epistemology everything that's key that is the key same thing if you're a muslim what i would say to the muslim is what saint teresa of calcutta says be a better muslim be a better muslim that is the highway to christianity or if you're a hindu be a better hindu and examine your hinduism whatever your worldview is mediocrity is the only enemy mediocrity is the enemy so i was not mediocre because i'm not sort of autistic and obsessive and i went deep deep deep and i turned my attention onto my world view and uh it just couldn't take the heat and your atheism can't stand the heat either if you turn the heat up and you start examining it it's gonna give way it will give way well now but you said that like um it's not because god loves me more than any of you but some people feel like god loves them like doesn't love them or has not revealed himself to them and they have tried to find god so like what would you say to those people who do feel like and actually right after you said that then you said by the grace of god i you know figured you know came to this so like do you feel like there's a grace that was extended to you that is not extended to them or what do you what like how would you say how do you answer their their complaint that god didn't reveal himself well it's the the reason this is a slippery topic is because i'm going to tend to come at it from my catholic perspective like now that i'm safe i'm home i'm in the ark like i'm safe and the flood is coming i don't care i'm in the ark right i'm inside the ark and all the fools outside are going to perish in the flood right but i got in the ark by the grace of god i got in so i have this privileged position where i get kind of like complacent okay so that's a tendency that i have to i have to struggle to put myself when i was outside the ark floating around believing absolutely everything that came my way i i struggled sometimes to relate to the atheist again because i'm so comfortable inside the church right so happy inside the church but if i were to try the first thing i would say is that everyone's receiving all the grace they need to be saved so that means uh unlike what the calvinists preach everyone has a chance to be saved because god gives each person god loves these each person obviously and gives each person sufficient grace to be saved this is a dogma of the catholic faith so i mean obviously i got the grace i was happy to receive the grace and by the grace of god i said yes to the grace if that makes sense so you know protestants and catholics argue about grace and sola grazia and all these sorts of things it is an established fact that everything is grace everything is grace everything is grace there's nothing that is not grace everything is grace and if you want to say what about sin well sin doesn't exist sin is a privation of the good sin is evil it's a privation of the good so everything that is ontologically is a grace so if you stub your toe that's a grace from god you know whatever whatever happens thank god whatever happens thank god really stubbing your toes a grace from god i don't what else could it be what else could it be an attack from satan yes yes but the attacks from satan are a grace from god that's the part of the punishment that's what the worst punishment for satan is that everything satan does is the will of god it's the permissive will most of the time it's not the positive ordained will but it is the will of god and it's just so frustrating for satan because he wants he wants to do damage he wants to be bad he wants to be a bad boy but everything he does accomplishes the plan of god this is what this is what christianity teaches but david i mean this this part i have to push on a little bit just i wanna because you know of course i agree that god is gonna have the victory in the end but when terrible things happen in the world like okay if a woman gets raped are you gonna say by the grace of god it was the will of god i mean this just we have to be sensitive we have to be sensitive but in my inner inner world i will thank god for everything hopefully i'm striving to i mean it's not it's not natural it's not natural to thank god when i stub my toe or when my friend gets raped that's not natural what's natural for me in this fallen world is to fill my face with food that's sweet and salty that's what's natural is that healthy no but in this fallen state that's what i'm that's what i'm driven to just fill my face with sweet and salty junk okay so we have to make a distinction between what's natural to me what my inclinations are in this fallen world and what's good for me and sometimes going under the surgeon's knife is good for me because all the junk i ate now they gotta cut me open and take out some cancer or whatever it is so you know god is working all things for the good of those who love him right yeah and i believe that verse that god but i think of it more like god is making a mosaic like from broken pieces that ideally wouldn't have been broken but now that they are broken god is gonna take something and make you know he's gonna make something beautiful out of it but that like i'm still i'm not gonna say that those things bad things should happen of course of course of course but we um you know the thing is um i have something to say about that let me just get my thoughts straight here um yeah yeah okay so the the cooperation of god god is cooperating with us he gave us free will okay and he is up to this is what this is what i want you and everyone listening to meditate on it's very powerful idea and it's 100 guaranteed to be true god is good and he is optimizing everything at every moment in time at every part in every place in space he is optimizing everything maximally right so we as finite fallen creatures we mess things up and we sin and we make a fool of ourselves and we hurt our loved ones more than anyone else right we hurt our the people that are closest to us those are the ones we heard the most but we're doing all kinds of things and we're messing it up and we you know we apologize to god and say we're sorry and we want to have the grace to improve and these sorts of things that's all well and good that's part of you know being a child being a child of god a child of god in this fallen world but to meditate on the fact the supernatural fact the reality that everything is grace and that god is is optimizing everything maximally like there's no improvement that could be made in the way god reacts to our choices that we make so when the rapist decides to rape let's say a young child because that's shocking more shocking than raping a woman to torture rape and then kill young children and videotape it and sell it to the underworld and whatever okay the most heinous stuff god is watching that he is if fully optimizing every single moment of that and everything that's taking place he is making sure that it's that he if he allows it it's only because you bring a greater good out of it right it's shocking it is horrifying to think about war the devastation of war and corruption and everything else but you have to know if you're a christian you have to know and believe that god is allowing it only because he can bring a higher good out of it and he is maximally optimizing every situation for the individual salvation of every individual involved so if you find yourself in the middle of war or some sort of disease or something that's unpleasant you have to think about it that supernaturally that god is allowing it only because it's what's best for you and your eternal salvation you personally and i think it's very important to to limit our scope to the self and you know as a creature and then the creator and how god is working with you not for his sick sadistic pleasure but to save you to bring you to heaven so you can be happy with him forever so it's horrifying to think about it but we can't blame god like i mean if you uh some of my favorite passages in the old testament is when god says to the complaining uh chosen people are you sure it's my ways that are unfair are you are you sure that it's my ways that are unfair is it not rather your ways that are unfair you know what i mean so like it's like we have a tendency to blame god like or to complain to god and you know we should we should complain to god in in a pious way like god please stop this war stop my disease stop whatever whatever the horrible things right which god is permitting in his mercy and in his justice but we should we should beg for for an improvement in our situation um you know we can't blame him that's for sure yeah well i mean this you know if that's true then you know i mean that would certain certainly be one response to the problem of evil but as i'm seeing in the chat it's really not sitting well with most of the people watching so um i mean just let me there's a lot of comments here david like but let's just put this one up god is optimizing pedophilia am i hearing this right no no he's not optimizing pedophilia he allows let's let's just keep it 100 real here god is allowing pedophiles to abuse children right am i wrong i mean hold on let's check the newspaper any pedophile any pedophilia going on up there yeah okay so god's allowing it okay but he's not optimizing pedophilia what he's doing is he's optimizing the the the for that pedophile let's focus on one horrendous pedophile he's optimizing everything in that pedophile's life optimizing everything in spite of the pedophile not because of the pedophile but in spite of the pedophiles really horrible choices he's optimizing everything for his greatest good because he loves that pedophile and so should you you should love your enemies you should love you should pray for those who hate you you should pray for those who are committing the most atrocious horrible acts why because christ died for them god loves them and they're destined for heaven the only alternative is to curse them and damn them to hell would you would you really curse and damn someone to hell now this is a touchy topic between rebecca and myself but i believe in an eternal hell the punishments of hell are eternal i would not wish it that on anyone and neither should you if you come to believe in god and in christianity yeah well i mean and we we even if you know let's say we have a difference of opinion about eternality of hell but um you know we can at least say that it's most important that people be saved right and so like that is the most important thing that people enter into god's kingdom because it says in the bible god wants some of the people to be saved right no it says that he wants all he wants he wants no one to perish but everyone to come to repentance yeah and he's doing he that's what he's doing that's his full-time job it's making sure that everyone gets sufficient grace to be saved but guess what we have free will we can say no ultimately to god or we can say something other than yes which is the way i like to phrase it we can say yes to god and go to heaven or we can say something other than yes like maybe maybe later on my deathbed or whatever i don't feel like right now right now i'm gonna have fun and explore the dark side well no you have to say yes and you have to start getting in the habit of building your spiritual strength because on your deathbed you're going to be too confused sick and tired to uh to be a good christian yeah okay this comment came in and it gives me an opportunity to bring up the topic that we share in common our mutual hatred for evolution so deepak wants to know does david believe in universal common descent yes um so let's you said you were even when you were an atheist you didn't believe in evolution why well why why would i just like some experts have this theory that we evolve from apes why would i just say oh okay like i mean that i'm just not that i'm just not that easily persuaded by the experts right like even though everyone my whole life long everyone i've ever met my whole life long believes that we're apes we evolve from apes everyone i'm just not that easily i don't jump on the bandwagon i'm a bit of a loner a bit of a freak and i like to go my own way i just i just didn't choose to believe that because i don't i don't find it attractive first of all as an atheist and i just you know i had it just didn't make any sense i didn't dig into it i didn't like say hey i'm going to prove it's not true no i just said i don't buy it you know and then as a monotheist and then as a christian it was the dogma of the immaculate conception it wasn't natural science it wasn't like kent hovind even though i like him and i interviewed him on my channel it wasn't it wasn't evidence-based it's based on faith it's based on the dogma that there's one and only one immaculate conception and if adam and eve were conceived in the womb of any animal human animal or non-human animal then that dogma is false and if the dog was false my religion's false and if if catholicism is false christianity is false and so back to generic monotheism right so i you know it's going to take a lot it's going to take a lot to convince me evolution is true but since that time since i learned about the dogma of the immaculate conception and how it doesn't allow for any theory of evolution especially theistic evolution which i think is the worst um since that time obviously i've studied um the metaphysics of evolution can you see on your screen yep father chad ripper and uh that's right up my alley because it's all about the metaphysics principle of proportionate causality principle of sufficient reason the principle of causality so the atheist that believes in evolution it's like okay you can believe you're free to believe in the silly uh theory of evolution but in doing so you're jettisoning jettisoning the whole foundation of the natural sciences which you claim to love so you know you got to pick one right like i would i would respect the atheist more if they said no let's keep the natural sciences because their the natural sciences are based on these fundamental metaphysical axiomatic truths that we cannot deny and therefore i just will have to reject evolution i think that's a more respectable position well now um so okay but before you became a christian like i definitely understand your position as a christian not believing in evolution although it is interesting because you're catholic and you know i i most catholics i know completely believe in evolution and the church seems to teach it right i mean am i right to say the church teaches it that's a very dangerous thing to say the the recent popes have had some speeches written for them for example with the scientific pontifical academy of the sciences whatever saying john paul ii read some speech and uh you know seemed to say evolution's more than just a theory and all these sorts of things but you have to remember the pontifical academy of the sciences or whatever it's called is uh mainly comprised of atheists okay so it's it's it's a catholic body for studying the sciences but they've hired all these atheists right so it's like if you have all these advice like you're the pope and you have all these scientific advisors but they're all atheists right uh you know there is a danger that you're gonna you're gonna get some atheistic bias and some silly science right that's my opinion i would only hire you know holy catholic people to advise me if i were the pope but i think you know i think the lord works in mysterious ways and there's a good reason i think there's a good reason if i'm going to say that god's optimizing absolutely everything i'm not going to make an exception with the pontifical academy of sciences right it's like there's a good reason trust the plan cool okay but as an atheist you said you didn't deeply study it but you just didn't believe it but i'm wondering like what did for 25 years as an atheist then like what was your origin story i didn't have one i was just a flake i was just a flake like i told you most of that time i was like a nice guy agnostic that you know sort of dabbled with the new age and dabbled with this and you know different spiritualities and even allowing myself to get excited about mystical islam mystical judaism whatever as long as it wasn't like a a mainline form of of uh religion so it's uh as i quoted chesterton earlier it's not the danger of believing nothing it's just the danger of believing absolutely everything indiscriminately right so it's a very loose it's a very loose way of being the way that i was until i started taking my atheism seriously and that's when i went deep deep deep deep and got very antagonistic and that's when i started examining what i believed and then that's when it all fell apart because that's what happens that's what happens but if you want to just be a loose atheist and sort of like a mediocre atheist and like smoke drugs and go to the parties and talk about whatever and you know that's kind of like the trip i was on um you know you can do that it's just not very deep right it's just not very uh there are two truth theories the truth the uh coherence theory of truth where your ideas hang together logically and then there's a correspondence theory of truth where that cohere that corresponds with actual reality and i was not i was not interested in either i was just floating around trying to like uh what's the the philosophical school cynicism cynicism means caninism it's just living like a dog like this smells good i'm going to move over to the nice smell over there and just follow your nose living like an animal that's and that sort of naive realism like i talked about earlier it's just kind of like hey well here i find myself here in this world it seems like if the world's real seems like other people are real let's just play with the play with things as they come and not really not really digging and examining uh the fundamental assumptions it's only later in my life where i had the time and the energy and the desire to really dig and look at my world view that i was able to ask the questions and find the answers jerome would like to know what age you started reading philosophy 14. i started with aj ayers um logical positivism which is probably the most debunked worldview in history of philosophy of western philosophy it's like [Music] there is tautology and nonsense those are the two categories so things are tautologically true or they're complete nonsense that was his approach and that's the danger of atheism is to fall into that logical positivism right where you and scientism falls sort of into that camp too where you just think well the scientists will have all the answers they don't have all the answers now but uh you always need to keep looking and we're going to get all the answers if it can't be seen under a microscope it's not real it's a sort of logical positivism it's been completely debunked philosophically but it's still it still has a life because that's just people people want to coast they want uh they want what they want as pascal said the heart wants what it wants don't bother me you know don't bother me with the facts i got my lifestyle don't bother me with the facts please that's that's uh in poor taste to bring reality into my comfortable existence right well now but now um i one thing i just i love that you're a young earth creationist i want to know how you got there how did you become a young earth creationist yeah well i think i told you i think i told you it was the immaculate conception of mary she's the one and only immaculate conception so adam and eve cannot have been conceived in the womb of any animal human animal or non-human animal so what does that mean so there's no other option like no old earth but because because there's people see you've described that but there's some people who kind of hold to that how old is the old earth well unknown millions oh really millions really you know honestly the the old earth view is kind of um kind of wacky there's like a spectrum okay so you know um it's kind of the reason you know the reason i'm a young earth creationist there are two main reasons one is the uh the tradition of the church the early church fathers you know they they just consistently say at that time that the universe was less than 6 thousand years old so now it's less than roughly eight uh that's my main reason i lean heavily on the church fathers saint augustine said that the he was he was the youngest of the young earth creationists because he thought that he was mistaken about his interpretation of uh some of the uh references that he used to build his case because he had a faulty translation we go back to the faulty translations right but um nonetheless uh that error on his part led him to believe in an instantaneous creation rather than a six days of creation so he's got me he's got my young earth creationist creationism beat by six days he's uh just a little bit younger but all of the church fathers believed in young earth creationism did you flash a question yeah um spartan theology says david said if catholicism is false and christianity is false how does this follow at all well i'm going to be offending my host no you're not gonna offend me oh come on i have so many people on this channel like that don't agree with me on many things so i'm not gonna be offended well it's all about authority okay it's all about authority the reason i'm catholic i'm not the reason i'm not orthodox i'm not a southern baptist or whatever calvinist or whatever is because of authority the question of authority who who had the authority to declare the canon of scripture is these 73 books and notice that i said 73 and not 66 who had the authority and who gave the church that authority and uh because there's no table of contents in the bible right it's just like is i've asked many protestants is this is the canon fallible or infallible and most of them say it's an in sorry it's a fallible list of infallible books that's what most of them have said to me i'm sure there are some who think that it's an infallible list of infallible books but then they can't answer the question how by what authority was that uh that canon defined right it was defined it's a tradition of the church it's a tradition of the church the canon of scripture is a tradition of the church it was an oral tradition that became codified it didn't become codified one afternoon it became codified over hundreds of years and i would say uh more than a thousand years because it wasn't officially um settled until trent so uh in the fourth or fifth century i believe there was a first sort of the first sort of declaration of the uh the 73 book canon that we have today but it was it was still solidified and uh reinforced over centuries so it's it's a very very very messy process but the bottom line is who has the authority who has the authority and the answer is only god has the authority so the church is recognized by four marks it's one holy catholic and apostolic but it also has three attributes it has authority real god-given authority it has infallibility a very limited charism of infallibility which prevents the church from teaching error concerning faith and morals when it's done in a very specific way and it has indefectability meaning the church will always be here until the very end of time so with those four marks and the three attributes i know that catholicism is the one true religion it's the fullness of christianity as we say it's the fullness of christianity i know that my sister rebecca is a christian and that she is catholic in that loose sense she's not a full member okay and as i mentioned to you rebecca full membership means you have the faith and you're in the state of grace uh partial membership just means you have the faith you're not in the state of grace and then everyone else that's a member of the church is a member only potentially because they have the potential to get the faith and then to get into the state of grace and that fourth category sadly uh are those who are damned those who don't make it those who will end up in hell either eternally according to the catholic church or temporarily according to people like rebecca this is kind of you're kind of answering this question already but i wanted to put it up anyway but eat honey be happy says maybe i missed if he's already answered it but does david think non-catholic christians share the same fate as atheists and jews in the afterlife so like you did you say i'm uh i'm i'm am i i thought you said i'm in a state of grace because i i don't i'm not a member of the church so i don't know about mortal kombat i'd like to think so yeah okay then don't okay don't phone yourself i said that because i might be wrong i might be wrong okay but but how do you view non-catholic christians like me who you know do you think were were partially part of the church is that what you said yeah yeah yeah like i mean okay let me be very very clear uh i reference saint augustine a lot because he's one of my favorites he brought me into christianity he said on judgment day we're going to be surprised okay this is his pious opinion it's just his pious opinion and i happen to like it he says on judgment day we're going to be surprised why by two things people we thought were catholic who aren't and people we thought were not catholic who are okay so it's like i look at you and i feel that you are another christ you're a christian okay i'm not worried about you i don't wait lay awake at night worrying about you rebecca my friends who are like uh explicit satanists and that are you know the hate the catholic church hate christianity all that sort of thing i don't lose any sleep worrying about their salvation i know god loves them god has a plan for them christ died for that person and that person is expressing their feelings and based on the baggage they were probably raped as a child by a catholic priest or something what do i know i can't judge their heart so i don't lay awake at night worrying about the muslims and the jews and these sorts of things now i mean i i'm told by my church to never ever allow myself to think that i'm better than any other human being right and even those who have died like hitler i'm forbidden by the church to despair of hitler's salvation i can't say hitler's in hell there may be one exception with judas i think the church has hinted pretty strongly that judas is in hell but i mean even that there's a very gentle approach to it and we're not like celebrating the fact right um but when it comes to those who have passed away that led a reprehensible life the fact is we do not know what happened in these final moments his or her final moments one thing we do know god is good god loves that child and god sent his son to die to redeem that person that's what we know that's cause for celebration now should we give a catholic funeral to everyone no because you have to at least have the signs and the indications that you were striving to follow christ to get a christian burial and a christian funeral right so justin trudeau here in canada he's promoting abortion if he got a catholic funeral i'd be angry i'd be annoyed right but um i have more much more hope for rebecca than i do for justin trudeau even though trudeau is on the right team he's catholic joe biden's on the right team he's catholic right but i'm very i am actually worried i'm actually worried about joe biden and justin trudeau why because they're influencing a lot of people they're pushing abortion and uh i still don't lose sleep over it because i know god has a plan and i know it's not my job to to save them right but i am praying for them i pray every day for those in the ecclesiastical hierarchy and in the civil hierarchy and nothing would please me more than to uh see biden and trudeau in heaven like i mean along with hitler and everyone else right it's what a beautiful arc in that story we watch these dumb netflix productions and we think about the bad boy and he's so edgy and what a complicated character and all this sort of thing yeah why don't we do the same thing in real life it's like these messed up pedophiles and everything like that pedophile priest imagine we're gonna be embracing this man in heaven if god willing he gets there and if we get there right it's like it's a very very exciting story and they call it good news for a reason right rebecca yeah good news good news well now it and that brings up this question so deepak wants to know so is are you opening the door to universalism no okay so what do you can you can you explain what you mean like you're like because it sounds it's sounding a little universalist yeah i hope i hope that everyone goes to heaven i hope that no one's in health but the church teaches me that it is a real danger it's a real possibility that there are people in hell and not only that that's the minimum teaching the sort of general vibe if you read the early church fathers and the saints throughout the centuries the general vibe is that a lot of people go to hell and if you look at the private apparitions of mary fatima lord and all these these approved apparitions we learn that if these are true operations then the church does not oblige us to believe in them but it says it's pious to believe in them these apparitions among other sources say that a lot of people end up in hell a lot of people end up hell and some of the apparitions our lady has said that most people end up in hell because of sexual sin so pope francis said sexual sin is not is not the most uh concerning sin or the most important sin i took exception when he said that i said well let's be careful now because our lady said that it is a very very very dangerous sin sexual sin in my life is one of the primary motivators to examine my conscience and to ultimately uh like one of the biggest reliefs of becoming a christian is having now some level of grace where i can have self-control i'm not like a slave to my lusts as i was before now i'm still a slave to my lusts and my passions to a certain degree i sublimated some of that into just you know food and away from sex but you know we're human and even saint paul said take this thorn from my side god said no my grace is sufficient for you so we have to live with our with our crosses that we bear and we have to we have to be humbled like this is part of the reason uh that god allows us to fall into sin and to humiliate ourselves with our laziness or anger or whatever it might be the different sins that we fall into habitually like when i go to confession i try to go to confession once every week or two and i get bored of saying the same sins over and over again and the the humiliation of that process is a feedback loop like hey well david why don't you try to actually conquer yourself and have self-control and not just constantly every day do the same sins even though they're small sins i don't think i'll go to hell for these sins but the same little sins you know day after day after day like when i'm at work i'm very lazy looking at the clock i can't wait to go home and it's just like i can take steps to see that as a grace like that that trial as a grace a way to grow in virtue so it's a struggle the struggle is real and my weakness is real but i've forgotten what the original question is i'm just rambling now god forgive me what what was the original question i don't remember i don't know but travis says it's all about sex so um it is what's your response to that do you think um a lot of atheist because my husband used to be an atheist and okay you guys are probably gonna be really mad but i mean he really just thinks it's all about sex like atheism is about sex yeah and so um do you think that's true yeah i just interviewed a guy he was on his way to becoming a priest and he was really in love with christ in the church he was a young man nice young christian man on his way to becoming a priest but because he was young a lot of hormones a lot of sexual experience already at that time unfortunately and the images kept coming back to him about his real lived experience with women and of just fantasies of stuff that just came from the devil or from his imagination or whatever and it was interfering with his prayer life so he said okay hold on a minute uh i can't seem to stop it so maybe i need to get this out of my system before i actually become a priest so he indulged in his sexual lust and he stopped holding back he stopped trying to resist the temptation he just dove into the sexual indulgence and boom stopped praying lost his faith now he's a hardcore atheist and he doesn't even believe he doesn't even believe that he used to believe do you understand the deception like he doesn't believe that he used to believe he thinks he was fooled he thinks he was lying to himself but no he believed and he listened to the temptation and he decided he made a big mistake it's not too late because he can still repent he can still come back but he made a big mistake and he went into his lust and guess what he stopped praying he lost his faith if you stop praying you will guarantee lose your faith i'm not good at praying but i'm very good at telling myself every day morning and night morning noon and night i do my morning prayers i do my noon prayers i do my night prayers why not because i'm holy it's because i'm scared to lose my faith i'm scared to lose my faith so i do my prayers if you stop praying i've met many atheists who used to be christian and if i ask them how they lost their faith part of the story is they stopped praying so the atheist out there i would recommend start praying right that's good advice start praying in this to this god you don't believe in or this god you hate or this god you think is evil now i always tell the atheist don't worship any god that is imperfect or that's that you that's you know uh that you're superior to in any way don't worship that god because that's not god that's just it's just nothing but um you know if you want to say a sincere prayer to the necessary being the uncaused first cause that then which nothing greater can be conceived or you know the perfect god or the you know the supreme being whatever you want to say uh i think that uh those prayers the prayers of the atheist are definitely full of grace they're full of grace because the atheist cannot pray without race this is uh the the christian teaching the atheists just cannot pray without grace so it's a sign of grace if the atheist prays and it's the way it's one of the ways into uh and when i was desperate you know i was desperate as an atheist i did pray a couple of times you know i did pray to god and i've talked to many many atheists on my podcast and a lot of them do admit that you know when they're on that airplane that was shaking uh they said what the heck may as well give it a give it a whirl right have you seen that rebecca have you seen that well you mean like just reaching out atheists reaching out admitting that they're gonna reach out from time to time when they're depressed or suicidal you know i've had more people tell me that like the they i and when i say more i mean like a few i i the the things that stick out to me are the people who've said you know i was in this really dangerous situation i was facing death i thought i could die and i still refuse to even like consider god and so that's that's actually what i've heard more but but i mean like i'm saying i've heard that a few times i don't know that many people who've actually like faced death you know so well there are you know we have to we do have to remember that uh human beings are free and that i mean it's scary to think about but ultimately some do say something other than yes to god as i said earlier like that's the that's the highway to hell i mean it's just a reality but even if you talk to someone even if you have an atheist friend that you're fond of who adamantly repeats the same thing over and over again like i keep having these near-death experiences and whatever and i still don't reach out to god and i still don't want to reach out to god whatever you can still rebecca maintain hope in your heart for this person because it ain't over till it's over and even if on their deathbed they maintain that thing like no get get that cross away from me and i don't want anything to do with god or whatever right to the dying breath you still don't know so we still have hope as christians we always have hope and i mean ultimately god's happy right god nothing can tarnish god's happiness so if god's happy we're happy as christians and if that person chose to go to hell which is what is the case for everyone that goes to hell they chose to go to hell if that person chooses to go to hell we don't celebrate it because we we can't understand the mystery of iniquity but we can know and we can celebrate the joy the infinite joy and happiness of god it's unperturbed unperturbed completely unperturbed even when one of his beloved creatures chooses to go to hell so we can celebrate that much right yes um uh and like you said we don't know we we can always have hope until the end yeah even after they're dead like i said the church forbids me to despair of anyone's salvation even after they're dead even if every indication is that they went to hell we can uh we're not allowed like i mean i can go to hell for presuming someone went to hell right even if they did go to hell but i presume they went to hell and i go to hell because i it's i'm forbidden to presume that i don't know i can't judge the heart so it's a wonderful wonderful religion that you and i belong to it's just it's just amazing it prevents us from despair it because despair is a sin we're forbidden to despair now on the other side we also have presumption where it's like oh god's good he'll save me i can just do what i want to do and my sins aren't a big deal and you know that's the sin of presumption so there's a lot of danger on both sides of that but the narrow path that jesus talked about is that child-like love of god where you're innocent and you're spontaneous and natural and you're not encumbered with your man-made traditions and all this sort of baggage and the sophistication of an adult that thinks he knows what's going on you know with uh with religion well david now you've just made me aware of the sin of presumption you know i'm very i'm i i have no i'm kind of joking here but i i do presume i am saved i you know i mean does the number 216 mean anything to you anything at all anything at all yes it does and we're going to have a conversation about that because 216 and then there were some other ones 2 18 2 19 220 that i i strongly disagree yeah we're talking about the dogmas here for anyone that doesn't know but listen i don't the thing the thing is what a lot of people said to me when i became catholic is like hey david you got a lot of rules like you got a lot of the bar is high the bar is very high compared to some other christian communities like why would you be catholic of all things right and it's like well it's it's i i mean i can't i can't limit myself and do a sort of like pretend not to see the full truth once i've seen it and you know if i think there's some more christian truth over there i'm gonna go over there and i'm gonna look at it even if it seems to be putting more uh stringent demands on me in terms of virtue and in terms of striving to please god so you know it's a tricky thing when i talk to you because i see you in such a beautiful state of childlike innocence and i talk about this very often uh you know in terms of protestant christians it's just a beautiful refreshing clarity and innocence even in luther i used to hate luther uh as a catholic because i thought he's just a bad guy but i was my eyes were open to the beauty and innocence of his vision of the simplicity of faith and now i my faith has improved because of luther okay my faith has improved and my faith can be improved because of you and now if you pick up uh the fundamentals of catholic dogma and suddenly you don't have that rosy smile and the the light beaming out of your eyes because now you're like oh i i didn't realize this and that that's not going to be pleasant for me but i mean you know we're on a voyage of discovery all of us you know i'm still discovering you're still discovering and you wouldn't want to limit yourself like i mean from your perspective you don't think catholicism is true anyway you think a lot of the dogmas aren't true anyway so but there is that danger like it is a danger that you might discover that it's true and then you're going to have a new set of standards for your um behavior your thoughts words and deeds when it comes to worshiping god and how to behave and these sorts of things so there is that danger and i mean i all i can do is trust in god and i trust you that you love the truth and you'll follow the truth wherever it leads but i'm not sitting here saying that you are going to be an explicit catholic uh before you die but i'm definitely saying that when we meet in heaven we're both going to be catholic 100 guaranteed it might your conversion might take place right at that final moment but you're definitely going to be catholic because you can't we can't disagree about the the essential saving truths and be is both standing in god's good graces in heaven right well david you know now i'm wondering i mean is there any chance that i mean catholicism could be like i mean you said if catholicism is false then christianity is false but i mean is that really like the conclusion that must be come to what if what if my the way that i'm thinking about god and about christ is more true than some of those dogmas of the catholic church like how would you discover that are you still opening open to discovering that is your chur is your is your church well just send me a link to the website of your church and i'll take it from there okay this is the gotcha moment this is my famous gotcha moment just send me the link to the church that christ built right i can send you the link it's the vatican.va okay so i can send you the link to the church that christ built because there's there's something that go along that goes along with the church right the church is the teacher the teaching office and there's that whole progress in the organic development of doctrine so there's no contradiction there's no country i'm just laughing at the comment there but yes there's no contradiction in the organic development of the church's understanding of the eternal truths of god right there's no contradiction but there is an organic development right we can see that even in within the bible we can see the the organic development right so it's all about authority it's all about authority that's what it's all about well but you know how you said like the bible you see it as a mystical book where like what we have in our hands is a cheap imitation is not the actual thing and you it tangibly the real thing doesn't tangibly exist anywhere in the world yeah okay this is how this is my view of the church it's a mystical entity it's not an entity that can be pinned down to a website or a location but it exists because of the holy spirit indwelling and us being united in christ so it doesn't exist i i can't send you a link i can't send you um this this thing so why could you have that view about the bible but not about the church because you like so many christians including catholics by the way you like so many are hyper focused on the church militant have i mentioned this to you before no church militant as distinct from the church suffering in purgatory and the church triumphant in heaven okay so the bible guess what the bible does exist that mystical bible it does exist in the church the church has the mystical bible guess where it is it's not here in this fallen world in this corrupt world in the church militant it's not in purgatory it's in the church triumphant where we have ma mary the blessed virgin mary body and soul the mother of god body and soul in heaven already representing the church the true church in its fulfillment is perfect perfection and fulfillment the bible is there the original manuscripts the autographs of the human co-authors of the scriptures they are there in seoul and their bodies will be reunited on judgment day there might be a couple of people with bodies like enoch i don't know but mary definitely has her body jesus has his body he's not unincarnated he's still incarnated so he's body and soul mary's body and soul maybe a couple others and the bible is there the bible is there you can look at it you can touch it you can read it okay so we need to we need to remember always that the mystical body of christ is real and it's tangible but not here below here below as saint augustine said it's anyone's guess who's in who's out it's things are in flux here in this in this fallen world in the church militant in purgatory once you're in purgatory you're in it's just a question of that purification taking place and you're definitely 100 guaranteed to go to heaven but you're being purified and i pray for the souls and purgatory every day for that reason and they pray for us but they can't pray for themselves so it's a threefold distinction about the church and we really really really if we want to take the mystical body of christ seriously then we can't be hyper focused only on the church militant we have to remember jesus and his mother in heaven the king and the queen mother very important does that help yeah i mean that helps me understand your perspective and maybe we can have a longer conversation about that but maybe we can just end on something that we certainly agree about do you want to share like a passage of scripture or something like some you know or something from the teachings of jesus that you love one of your favorites and i didn't prepare you for this question so yeah that's no problem that's no problem i've got so many i've got so many favorite passengers maybe i'll just give you a little overview of the things that i think about daily one of them is saint paul what do you have that you've not received that's one of my all-time favorites and i could spend hours just talking about that um the the old testament passage when moses is at the burning bush and god reveals his name i am that's one of my all-time favorites that's a big big big part of my journey from solipsism to monotheism i am you know a lot of a lot of metaphysics in that scene with moses in the burning bush and of course the the the most beautiful scenes that i meditate on every day uh in the mysteries of the rosary the 20 mysteries of the rosie are scenes from the life of jesus and mary and so it starts with the annunciation the visitation of saint elizabeth and the nativity of course which is christmas and then goes on from there all through the joyful mysteries the luminous mysteries the sorrowful mysteries which are my favorite because i love dwelling on the effects of my sin on the flesh of the god man the torture and suffering and the anguish spiritual anguish that i cause by my sins is a very powerful powerful uh deterrent from sin so i love dwelling on the uh the agony in the garden and i love doing a mystical time share with jesus christ where i offer him in his agony uh a chance to come into my present moment so right now i'm doing a podcast with rebecca from bread of life jesus christ mystically is suffering and being tortured and dying on the cross uh mystically speaking so i offer him a chance to come now to live in me right now it's just a little break from the suffering so right now i feel pretty good i'm hydrated i got my water temperature is good it's quiet peaceful this is like heaven for jesus compared to when he's on the cross suffering so this is just a little time share exercise i do mystically with jesus christ bring him out of the suffering bring him into your life what are you doing right now and you won't be complaining if you do this exercise you won't be complaining let's say you're sitting in traffic bring jesus off the cross bring him into your car into your body and he'll thank you and you will stop complaining about the traffic and you certainly won't be flipping the bird to your neighbor right because jesus now is in you so the the meditations on the the life of christ and mary uh very powerful of course we have the glorious mysteries also where he uh you know is resurrected ascends at the heaven and sends the holy spirit and the assumption of marion or coronation in heaven the whole rosary is crowned it begins with mary with the annunciation and ends with mary being crowned in heaven as the queen as the queen of heaven so it's a beautiful beautiful meditation on the gospels and uh i recommend it highly recommend it to all christians and there's because there's become a little bit of a movement among protestants to start praying the rosary anglicans have been doing it for a while but other denominations are picking it up and i highly recommend it cool thank you so much for sharing and i mean it's been wonderful having you today i i really i you're just such a wonderful brother and i appreciate you and so thank you for being here thank you appreciate it i really appreciate it uh do you know lina yes lena he's in my chat lina's in my chat and uh i think lina just realized uh it's the wrong chat so i think lina was trying to be on your chat but anyway it was pleasant meeting lena too i uh i did an interview with lena the other day oh cool you might want to check that out so thank you so much for giving me the opportunity yeah and guys please do check out david's channel catholic versus and you know some of you he does interview atheists and people from all perspectives so some of you who are watching you know i'm sure david would love to interview you so uh you know send them an email or something like that so yeah thank you so much david and thanks everybody for being here bye bye okay are we still live on your channel what do i do yeah i