Pints With Aquinas #188 | Trent Horn

g'day and welcome to pints with Aquinas my name is Matt Fred today I'll be interviewing Trent Horne about literally everything the interview was well over three hours it was a yeah man was bordering up to four hours so buckle up strapping that favourite chair of yours get the beer hat thing going and here we go it's really fantastic oh also by the way if you're not sure why we're now calling these shows pints with Aquinas go back and listen to yesterday's episode because I explained the the change there before I jump into today's show I want to say thanks to a couple of sponsors the first is Catholic wood worker check this out I want to show you something Catholic woodworker the guy who runs it has been a patron of mine for a while he he creates these beautiful rosaries check that rosary out it's rugged but it's not too bulky it's beautiful it's masculine and it's reverent I love it I feel like you get three different kinds of rosaries right like some are too dinky and you're like I'm 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Trent won't write to have you on points of acquaintance Matt Brad good to be here now many of my listeners not who you are but I'd love for you to introduce yourself tell us what you're up to sure well I'm a staff apologist and speaker for Catholic Answers Catholic Answers is an apostolate that was created back in the 1970s 1980s by Karl Keating who banished ed you worked for Catholic Answers a little while he worked under Carl yeah so he's a great man Carl is terrific yeah he has a wonderful warm sense about him he is if I could describe Carl Keating I might say he's the most American British person I know yes he's not British he's very Papa but but if you imagined a British person became American he's he's proper he has a draw a very dry humor but a very warm charm the neat set and so Carl started Catholic Answers and what Catholic Answers has now understood itself to be is primarily a media apostolate dedicated to explaining and defending the Catholic faith we want to help non Catholics to become Catholic and Catholics to better understand and better be able to explain and defend their faith to others and particularly for myself what I've done with Catholic Answers is I've written books articles I'm on Catholic Answers live and I host my own podcast the Council of Trent which is nice of the cattle Guardians good right now I'm yeah as you found non Catholics ask you what that's about some of them do this but the ones that are that are educated I've actually had a few atheists when I've done debates or dialogues atheists in the comments they'll say something like well at least his podcast has a clever name so I'll give him that yeah yeah so cou NSEL Council of Trent and Trent Horn podcast com and what I've tried to focus through I've been with Catholic Answers now for about seven years and understand my role within the church within Catholic Answers I want to engage in dialogue with non Catholics and I want to teach Catholics how to do that how do we talk to people who are far from the church whether they're non Catholic or maybe they're Catholic and hem into Mass in years how do we talk to these people and how do we have these conversations how do we evangelize through dialogue because I've seen that with apologetics you know the art of defending faith it was great to see this resurgence of Minh in the 1980s and 1990s you know I saw the people come up to me and say I still have my Scott on tape you know Bart wants to jokingly say to them what's a tape you know but we have them at the office in the archives we've got the little cassette tapes with Scott Hans talks Patrick madrid's talks and that lighted a fire and really able to learn you can learn about your faith and you can answer these arguments that are out there that are opposed to your faith you don't have to be afraid of them but I'm concerned in the past few decades apologetics has primarily been seen as kind of an intellectual arms race that the goal is to learn the arguments learn the replies learn the rebuttals and when they say this you say that and get off you go in here watch these cattle Ganges apologists on the radio just you know take a Gatling gun to these other arguments and you can go out and do the same thing but that's just not how it works in real life that's not how we talk to other people and so what I've tried to model in my time with Catholic Answers is doing radio shows like why are you pro-choice why are why aren't you Catholic having guests on my podcasts who were not Catholic I've had atheists on I've had pro-choice advocates I've had Protestants on I had a Protestant pastor on not too long ago who is pro-lgbt he thinks that homosexual behavior is not a sin he's about our age actually Brandon Robertson I saw it was a great interview and we got to sit they go that's a divisive explosive issue for people it's easy for the blood to boil and for things to get heated but we had a very civil conversation about a divisive issue that I think will help bring a lot of people closer to the truth I wasn't just sitting around singing Kumbaya with no we it was civil but also I asserted where I disagreed with his position and why and gently challenged him on that and that's what we have to do in our conversations with people that we know and care about who are not Catholic or disagree with the faith to engage in this genuine human dialogue that challenges them to want to get closer to the truth why has it taken us this long to get to this Socratic approach people have always been doing it of course but as you say the apologetics we were taught was when they say this you say there's here's the scriptures to memorize it feels like there's this new thing emerging and you're kind of spearheading it why is it that it's only now kind of coming to the fore it seems well I think that this approach has always been present in one form or another the question is being able to find it and then give it a widespread appeal I think one reason that the approach of when they say you say has been so popular its popular as a spectator sport and I'm worried that people turn apologetics for defending the faith into a spectator sport where they read these books and they watch these did they organize as their own beliefs - right I think that part of why they like it part of it is it's simple when they say you say and if you're struggling with your faith and your well what are the answers it's reassuring to just have the answers presented immediately - lets see Tim Horne a Tim Horton's Tim staples just destroy someone who calls up with something like that Oh train horn well we go to my William Lane Craig debates we want to see him take someone else down yo I and and that was formative in my in my own conversion experience I was not Christian until I studied Christian apology it was really a lot of Protestants that brought me to an understanding of who Jesus was William Lane Craig being one of them and so seeing other arguments just being refuted point by point that's exhilarating but I was the the Holy Spirit was moving within me to dispose me to be able to receive and accept that right I think for many other people when you come at them with this kind of machine gun approach their defensive shields go up yeah for sure when you attack someone's beliefs it's actually more likely they'll double down right this is an effect that researchers discovered well it's been known for a while but there was a paper published on this back in 2006 called the was a study on what's called the backfire effect and basically what happens is that when you try to directly refute a cherished belief that someone has when you simply come at the person say you're wrong about this here's why you're wrong one two three not only will the person not change their mind in many cases they're more likely to hold the belief even stronger why is that because there's different hypotheses about why but one belief is that when a cherished belief is attacked we see that a central part of our identity is being attacked almost as if we are being attacked and so our response is not about trying to find the truth we are instinctive and defensively responding out of a sense of self-preservation yes we we don't want this part of us that's important to almost died essentially and so we will write we'll fight back tooth and nail and even irrationally so and because of the internet nowadays we have a wide array of places where we can go and find information that agrees with us to build up our defenses this also serves to bolster what is something that all people suffer from and that be confirmation bias confirmation bias basically being I'm willing to let in evidence that supports what I believe and I'm gonna shut out evidence that does not or I'm gonna look at evidence that doesn't support what I believe with a more negative and critical filter than the stuff that that I do believe if I do believe it I might more uncritically accept it it's a bias we all have it's a bias that I have that you have and so I'm trying you know always trying hard to overcome it but that doesn't mean you can't have strong positions on important issues I firmly believe the casa faith is true and I believe there are good arguments for it however I'm always gonna be have a critical eye on the arguments I'm presenting and the reasons that I'm presenting to make sure I'm presenting the best evidence to the other person and not overstating my case yes I think that it's important when you put forward arguments and evidences I try to avoid very absolute or universal phrases like well this definitely means this or it has to be this I sometimes will qualify it and say I believe the evidence points in this direction or poet's the conclusion that yeah and people are more likely to to be receptive to that it would give you an idea about how people are hesitant to change their beliefs I wrote a book called what the Saints never said yeah and that was a fun one I wrote it in about three to four months and it was gonna be an article actually give us an example of a quote that we think is it yeah chapter one preach the gospel use words if necessary st. Francis of Assisi Dostoyevsky of course as a joke you can always pin it on Mother Teresa or Mark Twain we don't exactly know where it came from some of the other false st. Francis quotes we can pick them out a bit easier so Lord make me an instrument of your peace the peace prayer not st. Francis it's not he's praying no it's not I'm sorry that's just blue the peace prayer the earliest we can trace it back to is to a French Catholic devotional magazine and it was originally just called a prayer for peace thank you for teaching me that and then the prayer how it got connected to st. Francis was after World War one the prayer was put on a prayer card a Franciscan Order put it out and on the reverse side of the card had a picture of Saint Francis that makes sense and so I believe that was the genesis where people associated the the peace prayer with st. Francis but it's not as extant writings and it doesn't sound like how Saints were pretty hot cool right I'm he's a mendicant he's always he preached about the reality of he was a hell he was a Hellfire and brimstone preacher right but what made st. Francis unique was that he said that he lived at a time where many Hama lists were University trained and so they were very dry and very academic and Francis believed that you should imitate the troubadours you know they're the performers of the time so you should preach in a way that really appeals to people's emotions but he didn't pull any punches when des came telling people about Hell and things like that he wasn't some first century hippie that walked around singing to anthem for morphic animals that would follow it just like that but he's not the Disney fied version that we think of him yeah and so a joke point is you made this book I wrote this book man it's one of my worst performing books people this they're not interested in reading and why well because you don't want to have your little bubble burst I love the peace prayer I love this mother Teresa saying that she never actually said and my book doesn't just tear those things down I also put out things the Saints really did say that are really good that we should learn but people say why don't you know I don't want to change I don't want my bubble bursts or why do you have to do that and so I would say if you are that uncomfortable with changing a fake Saint quote in your email by line or your email signature imagine how hard it must be for someone to accept the gospel mm-hmm to change their life to radically commit their life to Jesus Christ when you present that to them Randall rouser has a good analogy about this he says we have trivial beliefs and deep-seated beliefs and the analogy he uses is suppose one day your wife says to you can you get the vet Kim cleaner have you heard this I haven't but Randle's of a good friend I appreciate him he's been on the podcast a few times right and you said your wife where's that where's the vacuum cleaner cheers what's in the attic ya go where abouts it's right by the door okay I can get it that's a trivial belief so if an American thinks that Sydney is the capital of Australia and I say no no it's cam Canberra right I almost had it right but you don't dig your heels in you're like okay done but if your wife was to say well it's buried in the back behind the you know baby clothes and the Christmas decorations you're a lot more reluctant you know can we just go to Walmart buy another one because you have to do more work because you have to rearrange a whole lot of other stuff right and that's the same when we talk about you know beliefs about God about who Jesus says deep you know sea of moral beliefs about abortion I mean imagine homosexuality you if you changed your mind on abortion or homosexuality what would happen what else would have to change the Catholic apologist Trent horn you know oh if I changed my matter absolutely - yeah if you if I radically changed my beliefs about the Catholic faith I wouldn't be a Catholic podcaster anymore I would be someone who would go out and you know I would still try to follow the truth wherever it leads now I'm firmly confident where the Holy Spirit has led me that I have found the fullness of truth and I'm committed to defending it but I still have a critical and open eye I think what's hard sometimes Matt is like when I'm on the internet and I'm engaging others especially atheists sometimes atheists will it's almost like a slur they'll say oh the apologists say mm-hmm you know so it's almost you know the apologists will say this about the resurrection or the end this and that I I see that phrase I don't see Protestants using it towards Catholic apologist because Protestants will see themselves as apologists werever kind of Christianity they're defending but I'll see atheists say this about Christians oh the apologist is if we're all just a bunch of used-car salesmen and some of them have that mindset that we we know it's a lemon but we're trying to sell it anyways I've never met an apologist or someone who's committed to defending the Christian faith who isn't sincere I mean it's possible yeah they're out there but I think that they look and say well you're already committed to a particular end you're committed to a particular belief and you've got the belief before you've put all these arguments for you're just rationalizing what you believe and so I don't think that that's the case well first a lot of atheists if you are an atheist who enjoys debating religion and you defend propositions like there is no God or there is no good reason to believe in God that is a positive claim so many theists will say well I don't have a burden to prove I'm not making a claim yeah when I get to that but when you press them they'll say well I'm saying there's no good reason to believe in God well why should I believe that yeah here are many reasons that have been offered what is wrong with them right anyone who defends a positio isn't is always an apologist for that position and so there's nothing wrong with that apologetics just means to give a defense yes look like there's the neutral and the bias yeah if you are committed to a position and you believe it's true you're an an apologist for that position the other objection is well for a lot of Christians they do the apologetics later and they're rationalizing something they came to for non rational reasons I would say that's not necessarily a bad thing either I mean there are many philosophers who put forward complex arguments for common-sense beliefs we came to for non rational reasons I mean I don't think you went through a philosophical argument when you came to the conclusion that the external world is real right or rape is wrong whether or not a Russian agent right but let's take even likewhat philosophers will put forward complex arguments to defend simple propositions we come to a few examples of the external world or Israel life is worth living and it's a reality of the past yeah the reality of the past whereas there are philosophers who have put forward complex arguments against those positions David Bennett R has a book saying life isn't really worth living and it's a harm to bring people into existence Nick Bostrom has an argument saying we probably live in a simulation but I think you're rationally justified in holding these views and then when they are challenged by other people I still believe this view is correct but let me answer those arguments that are put forward it's a great point and so I think that for many people who believe that God exists and has revealed himself to that person through prayer religious experience there there rationally justified in holding that belief and then when it's challenged they may go out and find answers to to the objections that that people hold when when I engage others about whether it's the Catholic faith or being Christian or believing God whatever it may be I try to show there's a difference between knowing something is true and showing something is true then some people I've I've asked a theist do you think it's possible oh I asked um Anthony about tonight a great chat yes that was excellent Anthony Magna Bosco who is an atheistic Street epistemology so he goes on he uses the Socratic method when he talks to believers and even other atheists and I believe it's just such an effective method when you're talking to other people and I remember asking him and he rejected the idea I don't know if he reconsidered in our dialogue but that there could be a difference between knowing something is true and showing that it's true and I think maybe many people will say well if you know Christianity is true then prove it to me mm-hmm I may not be able to do that not everyone listening to this is able to do that but an inability to defend what you believe does not falsify that belief and I'll give you an example about knowing something is true versus showing it's true it's possible you could be accused of that yeah yeah it's possible you could be accused of a crime you did not commit and you're brought to trial and unfortunately you have just a poor alibi you were at home eating potato chips by yourself nobody can vouch for you so that that alibi won't hold up well in court and let's say there's all other kinds of evidence against you so much so a rational person on the jury would be rationally justified in concluding you're guilty the evidence points to that beyond a reasonable doubt now are you gonna say well I guess I did kill that guy well no you might say I didn't and it's just unfortunate the strongest evidence I have is private evidence other people do not have access to so you know as yeah and so like I can't show them my subjective experience of not killing that person at that time in that place but I know what I shouldn't doubt that experience even though there's other evidence from from other people pointing in the opposite direction so much the same way I think that many people can have religious experiences and say I believe that I've felt God's presence and I thought it's leading me in this direction and I believe that it's true and they would they could be jut they could be justified in holding that belief even if they cannot defend it to other people what do you say to atheists though who say I was walking out the other day looking up with the night sky and I had this profound sense that there was no God well I guess what I would say here what is the source of that feeling because religious people you would say well the source of that is that there is a universal transcendent cause that pervades the entire universe and orders us to the good I have a source for that nice and so I and so I could be rationally said I would be rationally justified I mean Alvin Plantinga is a Christian philosopher who wrote a wonderful book on warrant I mean you know why we can be justified in what we believe and his conclusion is simply that if God exists it is justified to believe in him right you didn't even try to prove God exists singable if there is a God you we justified in in believing him so you have a source for that but for an atheist I would say well what profound feeling it sounds like you as an atheist would admit the source of that that profound feeling could just be a hunch saying that you have this feeling something is not present well just because I don't see something it doesn't follow that it's not there another planting an example would be if I look in the backyard I'm justified in your backyard saying there's no elephants there right because they were there I could see them yep but I'm not justified in saying there's no noseeums you know seen as being those little bugs that that bite you we don't have bugs in San Diego you should come back man if I could afford it maybe I would but you know here it's little bugs a bite you can't see them but you feel them later yeah however I want to be careful though that a person's internal feelings are not you know 100% in defeatable necessarily I mean you could have a personal feeling about something and yet the opposing evidence is so overwhelming it should make you doubt that what that personal feel like I think this is how you and I maybe came to Christ in a different way I had a very intense emotional experience in World Youth Day Rome 2000 yeah it felt unlike any other experience I had ever had but it was emotional whereas you came to the faith through reasons and arguments I sometimes Envy people like yourself I envy people like yourself sometimes you know I don't have a lot of these really deep overwhelming personal experiences of God I mean I've had them and I have them but they're more few and far between I've prayed to have more of them but I just they're not they're not given to me and I think there's there's a reason for that and I feel like God has led me to say I don't give you you know I'll be at the charismatic praise and worship session you know and leave people who are just you know they're just like yeah that's me baby and I'm just there I'm like all right cool good times because I don't yeah it's you know Wyatt that electricity is not coming to me in that way and and that's okay because I think that God wants me to to come to know him through just kind of going through the evidence step by step because there's many other people who think well I can't be religious because I don't get these feeling exactly that's okay I don't get those feelings I I believe in Christianity and believe in Catholicism because I believe it is the best way of explaining the world around me the best way to understand all the different kinds of evidences there are whether it's philosophical scientific historic biblical it all makes sense for me when I put it together in that way and so to tie up loose on what I've been talking about there you could know so you could know this is true without going through all these arguments but I truly believe God wants us to have a firm foundation for what we believe and he's given us good reasons to know it and I want to explain these reasons to other people to equip Catholics to share those reasons to other people and present them to to non Catholics or Catholics who haven't practice their faith but the way I do that the way I do is I want them to confront that reason for themselves if I just tell them well here's why it's true and here's why what you believe is wrong you know it's in one ear and it's out the other mmm but when I ask them a question say what what do you think about this or help me understand what you believe that I want to do two things one I want to get them to rethink what they believe so I'm gonna ask them a question about what they believe and hope to show I think there's some kind of a problem here yeah trance that Trent the gadfly horn yes so that was the term the Socrates used I Plato used to describe Socrates who's that fly of Athens a gadfly is something a fly that bites the horse and gets it to move and so when you ask these kinds of questions it gets someone to really think about what they believe well before we get on I wanna talk about atheism and Chiron from there before we get to that what's something as a Christian you've held to be true that maybe you had to reevaluate or abandon or adjust in some way I've had as a Christian I've had to reevaluate yeah because you said we all come to these things without running built biases sure and someone might challenge you and it's difficult to have to change your mind but is there been something since becoming a Christian that you've had to change your mind on I think the biggest change that I had to go through is that through my conversion I went from being a non-religious person and to being a Protestant would be the word I would describe to someone who subscribed a mere Christianity I believed in the resurrection of Jesus the divinity of Christ and essentially I had a very primitive belief in Sola scriptura you know I looked around all these different churches and I was going to a Catholic Church now go there and I thought well I appreciate these people led me to Jesus Christ but I don't know if I can sign on to everything else that they're doing I mean what did you know sitting standing kneeling all this stuff I can't find the Bible and so I had the belief that well I you know as if I was the first person to come up with this I'll just read the Bible mm-hmm figure out what it means to me and then I'm gonna pick a church that most closely aligns with that belief and I think many people identify as Protestants do that mm-hmm but then I had but then I really and said okay wait here's my test I'm just gonna read what's in the Bible I have my test but I'm only gonna believe what's in the Bible but where is that in the Bible where is that test and I was going through the whole thing and trying to read was that any difficult experience for you then going through that like just like now if you were to D convert from Catholicism that would be a tragic experience was it a very painful experience it realizing that you may have had to become a Catholic I don't think it would be quite nearly as painful as if I were to leave the Catholic faith now because I'm so much more invested in entrenched it and and so much more assured from from the Holy Spirit and from God's witness in my life that it's that it's true along with the evidence that I've surmised but it was a difficult experience my mother left the Catholic faith you know my dad was my dad was Jewish so coming to believe in Jesus was already a bit of a jump there I was stating at a friend's house once and I was I was doing pro-life mission work this is after my conversion and the the host family hosting us was a Catholic mother and a Jewish father like my parents yeah and the mom said I got to get you some books on Catholicism and the dad said I got to get you some books on Judaism you little turncoat what does that turncoat like a traitor okay turncoat said it jokingly by the time I ready to tell my you know my parents my mom like I'm thinking of becoming Catholic I think that this you know sense and they were concerned at first but they saw the piece that it gave me and saw that I was being led in a good direction or good fruit so where they're coming from this where is it so where's now as a Catholic there hasn't been anything you've had to abandon I think there's things that I've I've tweaked I'll give you an example I think the things that I tweak aren't necessarily whether beliefs are true or false necessarily maybe on some things I do think that as I've done more work in sharing the faith I've seen whether certain arguments are more effective or less effective so I've changed my mind about you know how I feel about them like take an argument for the existence of God like the Kalam cosmological argument which I still think is a decent like argument for showing that God exists and it's main premises whatever begins to exist as a cause the universe began to exist therefore the universe as a cause for its existence and so I remember at a time prior to writing my book answering atheism I really liked showing the Kalam cosmological argument and I would try to rely heavily on scientific evidence that the universe has an absolute beginning and so I was Catholic at this time but as I was interacting with more people I felt this isn't always the best way to try to show the fact the universe began to exist by appealing to things like theoretical physics yeah because it quickly gets above most people's pay grades and they're like I'm not in the place where I can even assess if what you're saying is true or false that's right so even by the time I wrote my book answering atheism I did include some of that in in the book but I believe I had a line in answering atheism where I said I believe that the scientific evidence is kind of more like the icing on the cake okay and the philosophical arguments for or the finitude of the past would be what I think be the stronger elements and I think now the more I've reflected on it I think I would primarily if not exclusively make an argument for something like the finitude that the past is not infinite to add a beginning but use it philosophy the philosophy trying to show that it's impossible for a past sequence of events to be infinite I want to I want to get to that when I hear your argument for that obviously Aquinas had no idea about the scientific evidence for the finitude of the universe he was assessing just the philosophical arguments and rejected the Kalam argument quite vigorously I'm not sure if you've read what Aquinas had to say yeah maybe you want to address that and then also give us the argument from from a philosophical point of view oh you want to do that I'd love to yeah let's we can we can hop because we're gonna hop into that and talk a little bit about yeah atheism and even this is something though that I'm I'm actually still working through myself because the Kalam cosmological argument is is so interesting well we look at arguments for the existence of God and once again like what to share with other people I find that the Kalam is helpful for your average non-religious person mm-hmm but it's not as helpful for kind of your your internet atheist yeah like is that because that hood at so many times it's becoming almost old hat and so you hear and many apologists who want to defend the existence of God we'll start with the Kalam argument because it's very easy to formulate it's a deceptively simple argument whatever begins to exist as a cause the universe began to exist therefore the universe has a cause for its existence and then you would make an analysis of the cause and say well this Codd cause must be beyond space beyond time it's all-powerful because it can make something from nothing it's personal because it will to make a finite universe and so you go through and they'll hear not just William Lane Craig make it but many apologists share that and so there are just you go on YouTube I mean there are just hundreds of videos from atheists critiquing this argument because you go into the premises and sub premises and it starts to get complicated rather quickly so I think for many like quote-unquote internet atheists I find it's helpful to present something that they may not have heard before or heard as much and so you're more like that like to have an open montage yeah fresh it is so arguments there I like are things like the contingencies yeah a contingency argument to say like that one what's hard with these arguments is that they can become very complex and you put them forward yeah or the argument from motion like we have Aquinas aversion but Edward phaser in this book five proofs for the existence of God it has over forty premises in the argument yeah and it's rigorous and that's a good thing but it can be difficult for a layperson to articulate this like the contingency argument we'll get to kalam yeah yeah we got time I guess we got playing itself that's all we go like the contingency argument I've tried to explain it to atheists this way I try to say well look there's three options to explain why the universe exists okay either the universe exists for no reason it explains its own existence or it's explained by something else okay why does the three only options I think those logically could be the only options either you and you think about the principle the excluded middle either a or not we're talking about propositions either the the cup is in my hand or the cup is not shy hand it's there's no there's nothing like in between you believe in that law of logic and so if I think what other option could there be either there is an explanation or there is no explanation yep that makes sense that has to be true one of those has to be true and if there is an explanation it's either in the thing or an outside the board nut or you could say not in the second love it yeah perfect so it's so then logically it's got to be one of those three and then you would go through the argument to try to say well which one of these things is it and now this was actually the more popular you talk about Aquinas well we'll tie all this together when you look at the history of the philosophy of religion to try to show that God exists some version of the contingency argument was really the most popular kind of argument to try to show that God does exist at least up until I mean even though all of acquaintances five ways that were essentially a version of the contingency argument in that he is the first cause the grounding of all being yeah they though that Aquinas his arguments would work even if it turned out the universe retourner right and that you could say look we could set that question aside for right now yeah even if the universe had always existed we would still be pressed with the question why is there thing rather than nothing we it's conceivable there could have been no thing at all yeah I guess they're not all like the contingency argument even his like the kind of fifth way this is a more teleological way right you know things have kind of intentions built into them even that has to be contingent upon something given that giving him that intention right finding an ultimate explanation yeah for reality and so this is really the most popular kind of argument you go all the way up to in 1948 there was it you could you can see it on YouTube actually the clip of it there was a BBC radio debate between the Bertrand Russell have you listened to have yeah it's it and what's the other button on the jesuit fret frog they're awful yeah frog father Frederick Koppel soon who wrote a wonderful multi-volume series on the history of philosophy and you just you just feel so refined when you listen to it it's just these two wonderful British chaps it seems to me the fallacy that is in what you're saying but I was not saying that yeah it's so refreshing loss forward to today's YouTube debates oh my god and I want to bring back that that wonderful civility in my own conversations but continue but that's what father Koppel still put forward and really it was Craig William Lane Craig who brought the Kalam argument back that back in the 1950s I believe stuart hackett in his book or article the resurrection of theism yeah put forward a basic version of the kalam now there were people who argued you could show by reason the universe began there there were people like that in the history of philosophy the first would probably be john philoponus in the early Middle Ages and he was writing a book called against the Aristotelian yes so excuse me the followers of Aristotle they believed that the universe was eternal and floppiness said no you can show that it had a beginning God and Retd it and st. Bonaventure right he believed you could use reason to show the universes all beginning and all and yet yes you wanna you know I'll huzzah Lee you know it's not always that I love that the brunette's to the microphone yeah right it was a popular argument among Muslim philosophers of religion as well but it wasn't popular among people like Saint Thomas Aquinas who kept it out of fashion in the Western world and Thomas made objections to saying that of course Thomas believed the universe began to exist because scripture because scripture because it's what the Church teaches God created the world from nothing but he wasn't sure you could prove that from reason and so he definitely he said you could not prove from reason it was eternal because it's not right but the other token the other side of the coin you couldn't prove it was it was finite hmm and so Aquinas would say when it comes to the paradoxes of infinity you know the paradox of whether you could have an infinite past yeah he would say one of his objections is that well people will say you can't Traverse an infinite number of days you know if time has to move one you know one event at a time one day at a time to get to the present then that sequence could never be traversed to reach the present that the past would still be on you gotta count backwards from infinity what is Traverse mean the jurors means to move from one point to an endpoint and so yes just as you can't count to infinity and reach infinity you can't count down from infinity and get to zero and I think Aquinas is objection as well it doesn't matter because any point that you would find a long counting here is going to be finite so any point that you pick in the past to go backwards to it's always gonna be a finite distance away and so he rejected the idea that the past is infinite and it could not be traversed because any point where you would see the traversal happening interest would be a finite distance anyways but here I think this is the this is the fallacy of composition just love hang on you just accused Aquinas of fallacy unto the coins which is fine obviously you can commit fallacies sure it's just really ironic continued yeah it's the fallacy of composition and this is one we can dig in a little bit more because it's also thrown against Christians when they make cosmological arguments yes the fallacy of composition says what is true of the parts is not necessarily true of the whole it's not a formal fallacy it's not one that's a hundred percent you can always show it by saying here's the structure of the argument and it's wrong it's an argument that deals more with ambiguities in human language right give us an example well an example might be just because I can lift every brick in a wall with my hand it doesn't mean I could lift the whole wall with my hand - what's true of a part is not necessarily true of the whole not necessarily true but if every brick in the wall is red then the wall will be red okay so there's there's always exceptions to that but another example that I've heard be just because every sheep that exists has a mother it doesn't mean that all of those sheep have a mother yeah and actually that was one that Russell used in his debate against Kapil stone because coppleson said well the universe is is contingent so it must have an explanation he says it seems to me the fallacy what you're saying is that every human being has a mother therefore the whole human race has a mother but that doesn't seem to follow at all but I would say here is that when we reason to properties of the entire universe or not reasoning from things in the universe - well here's how we can expect the universe to be as a whole we're treating the universe as a set or collection of all things and truths about reality would apply to that set just as it would to things within this set so summons it's deductive not inductive yeah getting with individual things and making it no we're talking about just general truths about reality or metaphysical truths though it applied the universe as a whole and so when atheists sometimes say you're making a fallacy composition with Aquinas I would say yeah just because any point you pick in the past is a finite distance away it doesn't mean the entire sequence of events is finite and so could be traversed it's still an infinite series and have a serious difficulty in explaining how that can be traversed how how the present could be happening if time is still traversing through these past series of events now sometimes atheists you know they'll say well just because things in the universe need a cause doesn't mean the whole universe does it's a fallacy of composition well once again it's an informal fallacy so if you take it to its logical extreme then you could never say anything about the universe I'll give you an example ask you Matt does the universe exist yes how do you know that it seems to me that it does through my experience within it so you see things in the universe you conclude the universe exists that's part of it well that's but that's the fallacy of composition just because all the parts of the universe exists doesn't mean the universe exists good you'd be like what are you yeah what are you talking about yeah but you could see you can see how you could take it to this kind of extreme version what do you mean by it when you say in formal fallacy in formal fallacy is one when we look at a structure of an argument you know an argument is just a series of reasons that are used to support a conclusion all men are mortal Socrates is a man therefore Socrates is mortal right and so that's a there's a structure as a major premise there's a minor premise with a classical so syllogism there are particular terms like the middle term it's used twice the major term minor term a formal fallacy is one where that the structure of the argument is is incorrect so for example the fallacy of the undistributed middle right is when the middle term is not fully distributed amongst the other two terms of the argument so if I said all humans are warm-blooded all dolphins are warm-blooded therefore all humans are dolphins that doesn't work that's the undistributed that that's a formal fallacy yeah because the term warm-blooded is not fully distributed yes there are other animals that are warm-blooded that are neither human nor dolphin human and dolphin are not synonymous they are not the only ones that share that sharing in that category and so but in formal fallacies are ambiguous because of the nature of human language so fallacies of ambiguity is an example all feathers are light that which is light is not dark therefore no feathers are dark would that be exhibit yeah that would be no beatification that's the fallacy of equivocation and another good one would be to say hot dogs are better than nothing nothing is better than a good steak therefore hot dogs are better than a good steak that's good and of course that's the fallacy of equivocation so when they informal fallacies they're more difficult to detect is that your point there they are more difficult to detect and so and then when you when you go beyond them their most fallacies we deal with our informal equivocation is one of them others you would just say well it just doesn't follow from what you are saying it's a fallacy of irrelevance like ad hominem you you are a terrible horrible person there for what you believe is false know what's funny without Hoffman and Matt is sometimes people especially on the internet when you point out someone else is a terrible person you don't point out that someone engages in in bad behavior or there is something negative about them people say that's an ad hominem no that's not an ad hominem that is sure rejecting they could yeah if I yeah if I say Fred and is is an obnoxious jerk who cheats on his wife yeah that that could be true that could be true it could be calumny but it's not ad hominem but if I say fred is obnoxious Church jerk who cheats on his wife therefore his position therefore he's wrong about the ethics of affirmative action yeah they're not related this happened last night I was at a white elephant Christmas party and someone the book I got was it was all on fatherhood from Bill Cosby I'm like I don't want this book take the book but of course the book might be fantastic and I'd have all sorts of great advice even though Bill Cosby might be a deplorable human being oh my goodness what did not know that Bill Cosby wrote a book on father yeah sad in my hands last night I left it there get your Kodak film and jello brooding but to say well he's done atrocious things for what he said was wrong would be the ad hominem yeah and there's also a reverse at hominem is that sometimes people will instinctively believe someone or trust what they have to say just because they're insufferably nice yeah just because they're a wonderful chap yeah but that doesn't mean what they believe is true yeah and so I think sometimes especially when you're talking with young people and I think a lot of young people are falling away from the faith because they have this assumption that those who are wrong there must be something wrong about them and so we we associate those who hold false beliefs as being morally deficient there's something wrong with them they are the other and we can even end up stereotyping or caricaturing these people like oh they're you know they're just a bunch of heathens or they're they're bad people they're not like good people that I know and so then your faith can be shattered when you meet other people who hold your faith that are terrible individuals and atheists to a really respectable lovely people yeah you you're if you're raised with the idea that you can't be good without god yes and then you meet atheist that are kind and intelligent and compassionate and believe in holding ethical beliefs and acting in ethical ways you said I think oh well never mind or you meet someone who identifies as LGBT and so you have always been raised with a particular stereotype yeah seriously dysfunctional human being dysfunctional and I do believe though that within the LGBT identity there are serious sexual dysfunctions when it relates to orientation and identity but we're all broken in certain ways and so we can still have other redeeming qualities in spite of our dysfunctionality z-- and so that's why I can recognize that someone who let's say identifies as LGBT could be a kind warm and caring person and they may even have a romantic partner and someone who they genuinely will the good for that person and I can acknowledge the good things they do for that person that are that are not simple this is a pledge to to care for that person when they are sick or ill to provide for them I think I've heard you say this in the past that's not like our only options are holy marriage and Haven of Filth right but at the same time I'm not going to compromise and say everything that that person does is wonderful I will say I am concerned because there is so much good about you yet you seem to have found a sense of your identity in something that is disordered and you seem to me and in many other respects to be a very wonderful person and I would like you to be able to have the fullness of life that God wants for you and so I think also when we're talking about moral issues when we're trying to lead people towards truth when it comes to morality this is also a hard thing to give up if you think yeah well like we need to we need to preach the truth and we need to get people who you know they're identifying as LGBT they need to repent and that's true but when you come at people once again you have very hard approach it's easy for it to backfire yeah and think about once again when I believe we try to reach out to other people I think it's important I really always want to try to get into that person's shoes so when I have dialogues with people I want to really see where they're coming from I mean imagine someone came to you mat and said eating meat is wrong and it's very clear here is a solid argument they put forward and here is appeal to your motions with these videos of slaughterhouse killing of animals and doesn't just seem obvious to you it's wrong but that that desire you have for that wonderful medium-rare steak is just you know it's hard to think how could I cling from that now I'm not advocating the view that eating meat is wrong I'm just making an analogy that it's easy for us that things we care deeply about it'll be hard for us to get rid of them in virtue of a merely an argument so that's why I think when we talk to people who are stuck on things it's important to appeal to their nobility like if like if I were a vegetarian trying to eat you'd stop eating meat I'd say Matt you were a sympathetic kind-hearted person yeah and I would also say Matt I've known you in the past and I know that you're good at doing really hard things mmm you've I mean you've supported things like the Texas 90 challenge you're you I know you Matt Fred you are really good at doing hard things when you believe they are the right thing to do and so I have faith in you that you could see where I believe on this that it's right to not eat meat and I know from past experience with you you have the strength than you to do the hard thing when it when it comes to this and so they're even feeling I can do that yeah done hard things before and and that would be what my mentor Mike Phelan called appealing to a person's nobility right and this is different to just emotional manipulation yeah it's it's it's not I don't ever want to feel like I'm pulling strings with people I believe manipulation has a sense of deception involved within it yeah but you didn't really mean that you've seen me do hard things yes I did would really need that be manipulative but if I truly believe this I can appeal to your nobility and it's the same when we're talking to people to try to I remember when I used to do marriage preparation before my time at Catholic Answers I work in the Diocese of Phoenix doing marriage preparation and we would get the sign ups for our marriage preparation classes and in in some cases 100% of the signups people were cohabiting mm-hmm 100 percent of them now we could have just said you can't enter our class but until you agree not to live together and they probably would've gone to the diocese get married outside of the church but we invited them to be a part of it to go through God's plan for a joy-filled marriage meeting way there right Ethan where they're at and challenge them to grow we're there to present them what God's plan for marriage and sexuality is and to appeal to their nobility to know that they deeply care about this other person and so having a good marriage if they love this person they'll want to take steps to have a faithful fruitful holy marriage that has long lasting positive effects and that once again if they love this person they've probably made sacrifices for this person before I would hope they would true love is is sacrificial and would they would aren't you willing to make the similar sacrifice to understand what love really is and what the best expression of our love is hey I want to pause for a moment and say thank you to our third sponsor that is covenant eyes covenant eyes is quite simply the best filtering and accountability software available filtering that is to say it blocks the bad stuff the stuff that you shouldn't be looking at that you definitely don't want your kids looking at it's looking at it's also the best accountability software on the web so if you go somewhere you shouldn't your accountability partner will get an email telling them what search terms you typed in what inappropriate websites you went to this is really great I think accountability software because it treats us like responsible moral agents it doesn't just block the bad stuff it says you can go there but then someone will know about it and it's just fantastic if you've got kids you've got to have this we have covenant eyes on all of our devices and we will not let our children play at people's houses who don't have it that's how important this stuff is go to covenant eyes calm and at checkout type in the promo code Matt Fred one word and you'll get a month for free you can try it out for yourself if you don't like it quit you won't be charged a cent but you probably won't I think you'll use it it really is the responsible grown-up bloody thing to do go to covenant eyes calm and it checkout type in the one word Matt Fred as a promo code and you'll get a month for free ok back to my discussion with Trent horn and another thing I think is important when we're sharing our faith with other people is to be able to summarize it well so that it makes sense I sometimes call these elevator speeches yeah you know how to make it just simple and put together when you think about it a lot then you can have ways of expressing new people so like when I'm in these classes someone says well what's wrong with sex outside of marriage I love I love my girlfriend I love my fiancee what's the big deal about it what do I say now you could take a Socratic approach which i think is helpful but sometimes I also offer a short elevator speech so here I also try to give them something that I think is unexpected I think it's helpful in our replies we try to think of answers to people try to think of something they haven't heard before because that'll make them go what and then you the goal is I want this person to think about it so I might say well I believe sex outside of marriage is wrong because I believe that lying is wrong and I don't I think we can lie with words and we can lie with our own bodies I like that and so we ought not Express a language of love that actually has a falsehood to it and then like what do you mean like well let's let's talk and so there they're intrigued by it to that point did you ever see the movie Vanilla Sky is that with Cameron Tom Cruise yeah and Cameron who's that good yet no Kennedy has Nicole it was Cameron Diaz Cameron Diaz yeah Eyes Wide Shut isn't a cool kid it is a movie where they had slept together and she says to Tom Cruise your body made a promise to me even if you didn't and that's what you're saying yeah yeah and so what I'll do is why should I believe that language the body has a kind of language actually I was invited to go trap them by the throat and I live well crush their windpipes I wasn't so I would actually invited Matt to go to a I was invited to a Catholic University to speak to four classes combined on sexuality and gender and I was invited to prevent present the Catholic velocity University Catholic University just as bad no I find that Catholic schools are worse why is that I don't know there are resentment against it I think that there's a contempt for the familiar it's a sense of like this is what I don't want to be boxed in by and so it's almost like a disdain for the familiar you see those crucifixes on every wall and everything around and just the same as we can take our own families for we'll take the church for granted when it becomes familiar especially even within academia yeah so I was invited to go to a Catholic University to present the Catholic view because we weren't asked which Catholic University will let it we'll let it be but you of course it's ironic there yeah that here's the outsiders brought in to present and here are these these students I would say probably less than five or ten percent of them hold the Catholic position on sexuality yeah if they're in these sex and gender studies classes and so I just tried to appeal them by asking them questions I just started by saying you know sex is just kind of a weird thing right there's just things that are that are very odd about it and I'd like to propose questions for you to think about and when we understand what sex is then we can understand how we ought to treat one another in these various ways so I asked some well here's one weird thing I've found about it I can enjoy many bodily pleasures by myself mm-hmm you know the other night I flew in for the interview and I went to Freddie's and I got the steak burger and you know the whole string fries and those were wonderful and I don't have to think about other people to enjoy my food but even when people when it comes the pleasure of sexuality people really want to seek that with other people right even though if you limit it to its most biological level it's essentially muscle spasms and the secretion of bodily fluids which can be accomplished by one one's own doing but even when people do that you mean masturbation yes when people when people do that they're usually either watching pornography mm-hmm or they're thinking about other people they're thinking about engaging in sexual acting about being alone usually no they're they're not and so that's strange like even when someone's alone doing that they're thinking about other people that's a very interesting point but why why does this particular bodily pleasure it feels like because you've even necessarily enjoyed the pleasure that that terrible fast-food gave you more if I was with you I mean it may have been it may have I would had someone to commiserate with yeah it would be nice to share it together but it's not like the food going down was any less pleasurable always I was it's not it's not rapturous because Matt fried Matt fried makes everything rapturous I guess does his best he does his best my wife with sexuality it's so different yes why is that then I asked him another question say well I guess you guys another question why why is it the case that if a man were even to ask his girlfriend or fiancee or wife do you care if I sleep with this friend of mine on Saturday she's very attractive and I have I've been doing a lot of good work around the house so I mean I think I enjoy a little time to myself even asking to do something like that is completely out of bounds to do that that affairs cheating is considered to be something is just catastrophic to most relationships yeah but why should we think that if sexuality is just especially if it's only about the biological pleasures involved imagine if you know you if you said your wife oh you know I'm gonna go out with some friends work or go to happy hour or we're gonna go get drinks so we're gonna you know go to movie together your wife be like oh okay that's fine she said no you only do that stuff with me yeah totally jealous and possessive but he said hey I'm gonna go out with some co-workers we're gonna have an orgy mm-hmm your wife would be quite justified in saying I'm gonna have to draw the line right here and yet it's so there once again it's like well wait a minutes that means sex and I think the reason for that is when you understand what sex is for I believe some people ask me why sex wrong what is sex for I am I one sentence summary is sex is for the expression of marital love and so I would ask what is marital love and it seeks a kind of bodily union with another person it seeks a full and complete union with another person not just one that's emotional but one that's also physical and so when we misuse sexuality it doesn't form this bodily a real union and real union means you're ordered towards an end beyond yourselves when the dentist puts his fingers in my mouth to you know to deal with my cavity we're not forming we're not becoming one flesh we're not being United sticking rod a and a slot B is not does not necessarily form a union but rather when you're ordered towards a good beyond yourselves then we actually have that biological Union so that's why there's more about this I could I could talk about reference people but when you ask me things that I've changed my mind on things like that when it comes to understanding how to defend and articulate our faith yeah there's different schools of thought and how to articulate one's faith so the argument I'm presenting to you is a little bit derived somewhat from Pope st. John Paul the seconds personalism a theology of the body but it's also comes from what's called new natural law okay explain that to us yeah so when it comes to natural law we can understand at the most basic level that theology there there is a natural there's an end for things right within the universe that Aquinas defines the natural law as the rational creatures participation in the eternal law of God and so when God has a plan for the universe rocks and trees can't participate they doesn't act in accordance with their natures but we have freewill we can we can choose we're rational you can see reasons and so we can participate with that or choose not to and so that's natural law now understanding how natural law works the older view would follow st. Thomas Aquinas and be really firmly rooted in two mystic metaphysics saying that the understanding sexual ethics comes towards seeing the natural Telos or end of our bodies looking at particular body parts and saying they're their final cause and being rooted in understanding very rooted heavily into mystic metaphysics but in the mid 20th century there were some scholars Germaine grows a is one of them others would be John finis Robert George and I think like Ryan Anderson and Sherif Girgis and they've are they've read Aquinas and take it from in a different interpretation of understanding natural law as being something where God has created the world and there's particular kinds of basic goods that he has created things that are good in and of themselves that one should not act against so you know why is money good well money's good because you can spend it on things you can acquire things to do good with but money's not good in and of itself but there are things that are just good in and of themselves so pleasure why why do you want to feel pleasurable because I just do what I want to and so the the grisaia finish George these that there's things that have a similar kind of basic good property about them things like friendship play even and marriage would be one of these basic goods and that it should there's a basic principle of reason that you should not act against one of these basic goods and so one argument against contraception is that contraception is wrong because it is anti life and that life itself is always a good it is something that is good in and of itself and so to act against it no to directly act against it so it doesn't just because something's a basic good doesn't mean we always have to go about promoting it producing it or acquiring it we just ought not act against definitely shut it down yeah no new natural law theologians also say the truth is a basic good that we ought not act against they have a very strict view against lying their example and you guys did Aquinas yeah the the the ethics for that and so they that comes into when you see people I Patrick Lee be another example of this who argue for marriage and what marriage is will say well marriage just is the conjugal union that exists between a man and woman and we should not act against that here are the reasons to understand this is what it is and they're put forward and so actually Leila Miller and I we talk about natural law in our book made this way but that book was really written for parents to get a handle on church teaching and explain it to other people and we include natural law both elements of new and old do us a favor to help break this down folks who are watching um give us the sort of strict natural law argument against contraception and then give us the new natural law argument against contraception and show us how they differ yeah and the thing is there are different people who would put different arguments they might articulate differently they might articulated differently yeah so I think that if you took kind of an older view of natural law you would just say that we can we can understand our and I'm not saying old the old natural law view is necessarily wrong either I'm I'm open to both and I've just tried to find things that make sense the people I try to share them with and so yeah I see what you mean when you talk about jump with a second and sort of phenomenology and kind of appealing to people's experience of things yeah to better convince them victim so I think there's important that there can be arguments I think are completely true and helpful but we also have to look to see how does this person receive those arguments so let me give you let me give an example you tell me what you think's right with this or wrong with this ok so eating the end of eating is nutrition it's not pleasure pleasure is a consequence may be a motivating factor but if I ceased receiving pleasure from eating I would still continue to eat in order to be nourished right with the sexual act there seems to be at least two ends the good of those coming together and an openness to life right if I naturally thwart the end of eating say through bulimia I've perverted the act of eating if I naturally thwart the end of the sexual act through take contraception or masturbation or something like that I've thought add one or both ends and therefore it's disordered or perverted so that seems to me yeah the additional way of arguing against it right and a good resource on that for people who want kind of more that classical natural law exposition edward phasors written a paper called defense of the perverted faculty argument and that's where he goes against these arguments and against objections are put forward because some people will say well you know if I can't you know if I have to always reach these ends and I can't act against them would holding my breath you know would that go against the end of breathing and would that be doing how long were you held it for right yeah it has if you if you held it and killed yourself some hell through a device so something that forced you to hold your breath anyway yeah and so there are different objections that'll be put forward here but that's one that be routed towards once again we look at like the structure of our body what things are naturally ordered towards it has a very teleological element to it and the big difference here is that the classical view would say that you can derive aught from is in a more straightforward way this is what the body is for this is what our sexual organs are for therefore this especially for this procreative end and to strip away that end would be to act against reason it would be unreasonable to do that and the good that we pursue would be the end of reason itself and so in pursue that if we were to act in an unreasonable way that would be wrong or that would be evil and so we would be we become disordered in that way and I do think that the example of eating that it's fine let's say you want to lose weight you choose to not eat at certain times or intervals that would be a healthy thing to do similar to how if you do not want to become pregnant you choose to not engage in sexual activity at various intervals but to try to achieve the good of pleasure from the act divorced from its proper end would end up being disordered in that way now I guess a counter to that that some atheists will put their 1980 I seen people to disagree with classical natural law might say well things like bulimia are wrong because simply because they cause harm to the body and so I just don't believe people really believe it I mean if believe me if it was discovered that you could be bulimic in a way I don't think anyone would say it's not disordered would they well I yeah I'm not sure you don't say I think that's some would that I think that's I think that's an intuition that yeah that people will will have in that regard and I think that's a fair reply to say well let's let's consider it more is something that you would that you would really do even if it doesn't seem to cause any kind of physical harm and here I would just try to appeal to other things that a person would consider to be disordered yeah even if they're not injurious to the person yeah and sometimes sexual paraphilias are helpful to appeal to here so paraphilia being was also called a fetish yeah and Fozzie's all this sort of first is my room furry except I got the word wrong yeah let's okay because now people will not think mat frat is he he's just aware of these things I mean there's um I believe it's rule I think it's rule 34 and that is a rule for the internet which is if it exists there is pornography of it but but it shows that when you you know when you get past just I mean it's sad the world that we live in when you get past the generic adults oriented things like we talk about pornography and I think people have just like a subset of like four or five different things they consider under pornography that first come to mind when were like let's say people were debate you know whether pornography should be banned or things like that I think you have that subset yeah but then remember we live in the it's a big tunnel it's a big hole big pit are those analogies it is a it is a large that's though it's the worldwide wild west of the web basically and they're just horrible so perverted things that eight-year-old children are stumbling upon and here you can point to say even if these things are not necessarily injurious to a person you say this is probably disordered so that yes that do classical natural law and then give us the cut I said that's more classical one could you think of a yeah so the new natural law when you look and so the the purveyors of this would be people like Alexander press who is a philosopher at Baylor and he has a great book called I think it's called one body or one flesh I can remember I've topped my head it's one - Alex press one body or one flesh William may is a Catholic moral theologian who I believe is embraced more kind of new natural law what they would say about contraception is that when we look to see that if life is a basic good and marriage is a basic good we ought to act towards the particular ends involved these things and not act against them so if sex just is for expressing marital love and marital love is the complete gift itself that forms a true union with another person then you actually can't form that kind of Union what marital love is when you have sterilized the element of the act that that's open to life itself whether you put a barrier up or use a chemical contraceptive that the the act itself is reduced almost to a sense of kind of mutual masturbation when you have purposely prevented the union that's supposed to occur in this act and you go in the reasoning would go back even further when you say that sex is for experiencing marital love love is for achieving particular kinds of union and I think that makes sense when we think about sexual ethics like when we I think when we love anything we seek union with it I mean I love a good double dollar or yeah beer the double double so what we want to union with it at a digestive level we when you love a friend we want union with if you say you love someone but you never call him on them ever want to spend time we know sometime with them do you really or a beautiful landscape through climbing a mountain in a sense there's that being one with that right so when we love something we seek union with it and so what makes marital love different from other kinds of love is the seeking of not just emotional or spiritual you but really the seeking of bodily union with the other person that's the only thing that makes sense as to what what marital love is and so that's why when people debate about marriage and can it be two men or two women or I like to take the question back and ask well what is marriage yeah what is it you use this term because for me if marriage is just the relation between adults yeah if it's just a relationship between adults that the state recognizes you could have all kinds of prefixes in front of that you absolutely could but if the word marriage has something intrinsically bound up in it between men women and the children that proceed from that union then you can't have prefixes like same-sex any more than you could have a prefix like solo marriage or to marry ya oneself which you know you find on Hampton post or BuzzFeed some people do from from time to time so I try to understand what what is it I actually there's a philosopher John Corvino he was at Wayne State University a while back I don't know if he's still there and he is in a relationship he may be married now with another man he identifies as being gay and he's a very kind person you could converse with and he puts forward philosophical arguments in defense of homosexual behavior and it's funny so he's debated the issue he was involved with debating the issue same-sex marriage so-called same-sex marriage back in the day he did a book with Maggie Gallagher called debating same-sex marriage and what I find funny in corvino's position is that he's asked well what is marriage tell me what it is and he almost kind of his take takes taken it back as if that's not really that important of a question but he says look if I have to give a definition I'll say that marriage just is a relationship involving more than one person where sex is permissible it's a very Phyllis that's a very philosopher's definition of marriage because if you because I'm were once I talk with a guy who just said you know marriage I mean if so that means if I go to a club and hook up that was a marriage that was tonight adults where sex was permission and I think I think what more jeopardy to it yeah but although I think that with no-fault divorce or things like that what minimal amount of time would make something really marriage normally I think we're Corvina would add is that there's a social L there's an element of social recognition to it that if I hope you hook up with someone in the club it's not socially marriage consistent having it socially recognizing and I would agree with that because it's good for this society to recognize which men and women are having sex with each other and which children that flowed from the union are theirs yeah it's important to especially to connect fathers throughout I mean when a child is born it's pretty prior to IVF and all this other stuff throughout human history it's been easy to figure out who the mom is right dad has always been a bit trickier yeah so that's why we every society on earth or virtually every society on Earth came up with this institution so that - to unite mostly not just men and women but men more with their children so but I think Corvino with his definition what's funny about it you know so you can't so he's even open to polyamory at least in principle but he still includes in their sex is permissible like it can't you know it that marriage has a sexual element to it that's in other words when you talk about sex in marriage I want to ask people weird questions why does marriage have sex why does sex have something to do with merit exactly yeah why yeah why can't we just be affectionate people like Bert and Ernie I mean there's there's the different theories that you need to CDC online I think Saturday Night Live did a trailer where they made fun of Joaquin Phoenix's Joker but it's a hit Sesame Street all right yeah give me the ducky man no that's a great video my wife so I was like what do you have time to come up with these philosophical arguments and watch so much oh my god yeah well you know it in that way I wouldn't I just spiral into a YouTube yeah frenzied beautiful so but think about with corvino's definition and when I ask people like when you when you bring up the idea well it can a father marry his own son and it's important when we bring up these counter examples people will become indignant very quickly once again it's not about just winning the argument it's important to present truth to people but I want to win the person so I don't want to rapid-fire things so and also preface them I'll say well I am NOT comparing this directly comparing this to a marriage between two men or two women but suppose a father were to marry his son for example what about marriages between family members and most people are taken aback by that because they assume that I'm talking about sexual behavior between family members right well what about two elderly sisters who want to marry each other so that they can have property rights visitation rights medical rights you know I have all their there a household that that's committed to one another there are two elderly sisters there all they have in the world but you know say well we could domestic partnerships or something you know people will try to get around this but they'll see that that marriage we use terms like the marital act the marital bed even secular people agree marriage and sex have something connected to them even though the rhetoric around so-called same-sex marriages love is love what why are you standing in the way of love but here we the vast majority of people we love in life but not married we do not have sex with yeah that's in fact many people we love it would be immoral to have sex with them so that connection there of love and sex is not as strong as people may think sex should always be love but love often is not expressed through sex yeah yeah and so here even in corvino's definition and say okay marriage it's funny even just allows you don't have to have sex necessarily he just says it has to be permissible if you were to choose to do it you have to but why and here I think that the the conjugal view of marriage that what marriage is for is and I would be leaning towards more like the new natural law view but the old natural law view would explain this as well it's for that particular union that can only exist between men and women ordered towards the good of procreation and the good of union so I think that when we when we present these to people you know sometimes people just throw out all the least arguments or they'll they'll throw out things it's easy to step on a landmine and once again get inside the other person's head and think of what your words will will mean to them it's hard you have to think before we speak as soon as you learn the lessons the hard way in Colossians 4:6 st. Paul says let your speech always be gracious seasoned with salt so you know what to say to everyone to every man and for example I was born this way I was born this way so I don't see anything wrong with that and the retort is you know pedophiles say that they're born that way does that make pedophilia okay yeah a bit abrasive well because what the other person hears from that is oh so you're basically saying I'm like finally I am a pedophile or I'm no better than you had a file right and so here asking questions once again asking question though because I want them to grapple with it there we're if you just throw out the the defeater to the argument the rebut er yeah you can have the backfire effect ah yeah yeah but I want to ask some questions so here I might say it will help me understand and the questions you don't have to like well I can't think of this amazing insightful question Trent horns gonna come up with you don't have to do that ask them what do they think why do they think that and is this what you meant anyone can do those three things what what do you think about this why do you think that and is this what you meant I'll give us an example with that I would say okay help me understand it what do you think about homosexual behavior and here they've given an argument so I might just ask a clarifying question it sounds to me like you're saying there's nothing wrong with engaging in homosexual behavior because I'm not choosing this this is a feeling that I've had for a very long time maybe since puberty or even before that is that what you're saying mm-hm now here I think what happens in our discourse sometimes we think okay we both know that's what the person is thinking so here's my rebuttal argument yeah yeah let's slow down just a little bit because I want it to be explicit to that person for them to really think it through in that regard so I'd say all right help me understand we are coming from so then that's that then would you agree then the larger principle are you saying that it's okay for a person to engage in a behavior because they they have always felt inclined towards that behavior for a very very long time is that what you are saying yes and notice this approach is gentle gentle and I'm just trying to see the person they see where you're going but you're not going there right away not going there right away and it's coming from a genuine spirit of I'm trying to understand you right and make make sense of the argument and the reasons you're putting for it and then and then I might have a more specific challenge and I'll try to think of one that's less abrasive so with with that I was born this way two examples that I put forward are I would say that many men feel a polyamorous orientation ever since puberty they want to sleep with anything that can move basically it's some some guys are and yet that doesn't mean they should always act on that orientation especially if they're in a committed relationship or a marriage and the person could see they could have this very you have this very very strong feeling you may not want to act on or another example I'll give is some people will have very very short tempers I mean there are some people you view if you have known them from infancy they have had a short temper yeah the ligament on their Irish super-awesome or they could literally say I was born this way I was angry the moment I came out of the world of the footage of it when I was one yeah or even one week old one day old and yet just because you may be predisposed in that way doesn't mean it would be right for you to bite somebody's head off or to throw a tantrum or things like that just because we're wired a certain way doesn't mean we ought to act on it and then of course then there will be a reply say well those other examples they harm other people I don't see how this is harming anyone okay well let's talk about that so now we've set aside one issue and then another issue Rises let's let's ask where do you why do you believe that do you think there could be exceptions to that it could it could it lead to in philosophy we call this reductio ad absurdum and so I wouldn't say let's do a reductio ad absurdum to show what you believe is crazy that's not going to be inviting but to say I'm trying to understand where you're coming from and if it's true I would believe it but I'm concerned that what you believe would lead to these other beliefs I'm very very uncomfortable with right I think you may be uncomfortable with as well can you help me see how maybe it doesn't lead to those beliefs or maybe I shouldn't be uncomfortable with those beliefs and then and then I walked them through the the argument you can do this with sexual ethics with abortion I do that I mean I do that count against is live all the time yeah and you can do this also I mean we've touched on a lot of different ways of defending the faith even when you are a Catholic talking to a Protestant friend mm-hmm I think many Catholics this is the Cardinal paradigm attic example of the when they say you say mentality my Catholics have been taught for decades when it comes to apologetics oh if a Protestant says this you need to point to this Bible verse in this Bible verse a lot of Catholics just and I even I myself I'm not super great at memorizing chapters and verses right I'm just not you could ask questions I want to shift if that's okay I want to shift gears a little here sure I wrote an article for Catholic Answers magazine awhile ago I think I called it the the apologetics mansion or something and the point is that you have three floors in this mansion the first floor is theistic apologetics the second is Christian apologetics and the third is Catholic apologetics sure and the reason I was thinking about this is it seemed to me that sometimes we as Catholics if you keep that analogy in your mind are shouting out of the third window to those outside the mansion and those would be a theist say about transubstantiation or something and all they hear is get off my lawn yeah but of course trying to explain transubstantiation to an atheist is like trying to explain an advanced algebra to someone who denies basic arithmetic and so I thought well I think Christ can reveal himself to somebody so that they know that God exists and that they should you know worship Him um usually as we do apologetics involves first coming to believe that God exists then has God revealed himself in Christ then has Christ established a church and what can we know about that church right well I'd love to do with you is to sort of mosey on from from the first floor up to the up to the third floor because you're very gifted at doing this in fact your book why we're Catholic yes is a fantastic introduction I'd say it's the best book to hand to anybody who is even open to Catholicism and that's the thing when I wrote why were Catholic the reason I wrote that book was because prior to it I did not know one book say what is a book I could give someone who's not Catholic right and you don't know who it might be maybe it's an atheist maybe it's a Protestant do you give to someone who's not Catholic because there's lots of books out there that explain at the time I wrote the book a few years ago still our there's lots of books that explain why the Catholic faith is true mm-hmm but the tone they're written in it's written for hey Catholic our faith is true and here's how you can know it and you can tell company theists and Protestant here's what you should say to them and that's good that's helpful but those books become awkward when you give them just a Catholic phrase like an son trial here's what's wrong with what the Atheist says and the Atheist is reading this like that's actually not what I think yeah yeah so I wrote with why we're Cavs like I tried very very hard to write it as if I'm more speaking to someone who's not Catholic or even non-christian here are the reasons and then kind of by osmosis a Catholic reading it will kind of pick up the reasons along the way and I have other books in the future I want to ride along that that frame but yes that's why I wanted the lead people is similar to what you said with the mansion Wyrick Catholic starts with truth and God goes through Jesus in the Bible Church and then ends with the moral issues give another example of why I thought of this analogy of the mansion is sometimes I'll have somebody come up to me after a talk and say I don't believe in God and I'll say why and they say because the scripture is filled with contradictions but of course that's a non sequitur maybe God exists but the Bible is false so again kind of starting on we're meeting them where they're at that's important to bring up when you talk to people you don't always have to refute what they have to say as you might think I don't know how to answer these Bible contradictions yes but if they say well I don't I'm not Christian my thoughts I don't believe in this well you could say okay well why couldn't you just be a Christian who thinks the Bible might have errors you happy I'm not one of those Christians but you could be exactly why was I think asking the question what's the most this argument proves right and then yeah so let's deal with that lecture that's kind of begin with the kind of atheist question we've touched upon earlier in the talk but the conversation but what is an atheist what is a theist was an agnostic getting our terms right this is hard and I think it's important to listen to people especially atheists because I think you know the most contentious division between Christians and atheists or theists and atheists is one does God exist and then two what is an atheist very heated divisions of the classes working the word theist comes from the Greek word Thais which means God and traditionally a theist is someone who affirms that God exists or that the proposition God exists is true and traditionally an atheist is one who says God does not exist or proposition God exists is false that's traditional an agnostic would be someone who would say well I'm not gonna say yes or no so sometimes I'll say well look does God exist there's three ways you can answer the question yeah yes no or or I don't know yeah you could maybe quibble with those a little would say likely no or probably yes yeah and but I would say yes no or maybe or I don't know theists would be yes atheists would be no and I don't know where maybe would be an agnostic right so look two people two of those have the burden of proof and one doesn't right because one just suspends judgment around the question could be so I've never heard about this I've read about it I can't make a judgement on at this time or I'm not not going to but I think most atheists you talked to today will say that an atheist just someone who has a lack of belief in God so it's not defined propositional II like this statement is true or false is to find psychologically an atheist is just someone who lacks a belief in God right and so I'm not a big fan of just arguing with someone like you're not really an atheist yeah and whatever they're gonna use whatever term that's referred them and I'm gonna try to walk them through so a better definition that I use I think most atheists I would say would you agree with this definition an atheist is someone who lacks a belief in God because they don't think there's any good reason to believe in God right I think that's it because there are many people who lack a belief in God I mean there's many infants animals who lack a belief in God there could be adults who have never heard of the Western concept of God and they lack a belief in it but they're not atheists they're I think a terminus when use like a low guests they just have no knowledge of the of the debate whatsoever yeah and so lacking a belief I'd say also if a theism is just a lack of belief it's not that interest Asafa Cleon interesting yeah well why do you lack a belief that's what I really want to know and I also want to figure out well how is the world the way it is what's the real nature of reality so they're I would say an atheist just if I'm talking with someone and I think most atheist agree with this they would say look I don't believe in God because I don't see any good reasons to think God exists okay okay then it sounds like what you're looking for are good reasons and so here you know we could we've talked about the arguments for contingency and but I think that sometimes you know our listeners to this may say well I don't know those arguments under my fingertips what was doing these circumstances I would ask questions yeah and so one question I would ask here is okay so why should I believe there are no good reasons to believe in God well you prove it to me well I I've heard the different reasons and I have a different reasons to believe in God that may not be a good reason to you but there's lots of different reasons can you help me see why should I believe there are no yes good reasons why should i another question I've heard you ask you might be getting to this is I think this is an excellent question they'll say oh I don't believe in God because I've never encountered any good arguments for God's existence and I say okay well there's a lot of arguments for God's existence which do you think is the best one obviously you think it still fails but out of all of the arguments you've clearly assessed which is the best one and why does it fail that one meets with a fair amount it depends on who I'm talking to a good question yeah you'd think so it's a good question and it may not work well but the the point is it often exposes that the Atheist really hasn't I mean not always but I think there are many atheists who really haven't looked into arguments for God's existence and their response to that there's a few that will tell me there's because I could answer it in Reverse to them I would say the most argument against God's the problem of evil yeah but here is why I here's why I don't find that to be compelling here's why I don't find ultimately compelling to me I've had a theist when they when they put that when I've put it forward I've heard say there is there there is no best argument they're all bad I'm like well there'd be one of the better ones yeah they're like they're all equally terrible I mean that that doesn't seem right most philosophical positions that people hold there can be better or worse argument there are bet that you know there are better and worse arguments for for atheism yeah you know the problem of evil is better than my priest was mean to me when I was five or I had religious parents that never let me go out with my friends you know one of those is gonna be yes better than the other so sometimes hell I'll try very hard with this I'll say well what's the least bad argument you come across there's a nice all phrase that what's the least bad now when I've heard you do this on Catholic Answers life though I've never heard a compelling response I've just heard something that exposes them and again I'm not saying this of all atheists are obviously very intelligent atheists who the truth I think yeah and I think we don't want to have these questions is like gotcha moments it's more like help me understand like in order to say there's no good reasons to believe in something you could either have not looked at the reasons and hence you haven't found any or you've looked at the reasons and found them wanting now a retort to me might be what's the best reason to believe in Bigfoot mm-hmm yeah and I think there's this idea that something if something is what they'll say is I think I know I always learning I always wanna get inside people's heads so one thing I think honestly Matt I think many people are atheists because they think that if there were good reasons they would be universally believed mm-hmm and like all the smartest scientists in the world and we would all accept this and yeah that we would agree but that's just not how it works with philosophical topics people disagree like life well yeah or like let's take Efex moral philosophers disagree about whether we should follow contour be utilitarians or virtue theorist even atheistic philosophers disagree about very important ethical truths yeah there's no scientific way to resolve that Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris disagree about whether free will and determinism are compatible and there's no scientific way to resolve their dispute philosophical questions by their nature you're gonna have disputes where you can't get a majority on it because the question is is so pointed now when it comes to asking people about you know those what is the best or lore least bad argument like though the retort will be you know let's say the the Bigfoot example and what I would I would say here is well I think the best reason to believe in Bigfoot might be personal sightings people have claimed to have and the I what to call Robertson the Patterson the Patterson film there's this footage of this appears to be a humanoid creature that looks like Bigfoot walking and people have analyzed it so I would say well I don't think that's the best reason for but ultimately a difference is you're not the one claiming that there are no good arguments for Bigfoot whereas they are claiming there are no good arguments that's right and so what they but what they would say is that just as we casually dismissed Bigfoot we should just casually discuss God like most people don't sit around really thinking this through show and so my reply to that would be well I think most people take for granted they believe things about the world based on scientific consensus and they don't figure this out for themselves like if I asked most people to prove equals mc-squared yeah 900 less than point zero zero one percent could do it maybe a theoretical physicist could prove e equals mc-squared okay but most people accept it because they saw Neil deGrasse Tyson talk about it and he's just hilarious and interesting or Sean Carroll you know you you know it's in my science textbook and it's consensus and we follow that and so I think sometimes when atheists put forward an art it's argument from cryptids you don't believe in dragons you don't believe in Bigfoot you don't believe in Loch Ness monster well I think that speak you you haven't looked at these arguments to yourself either and you should do the same in Jamaican or yeah as you have absolutely yeah and I've looked at it as well because I wanna believe I have an open mind it's possible there you know how you believe in Bigfoot well there's a lot of forest out there right and there's also I mean there's people who said there weren't black swans and you're from Australia yes Road I've said those the first ones I saw actually I know I advise I met someone I was when I was there and people thought for a long time there weren't yeah there were no black swans people told me but I would say well there okay so those are the best reasons for but I would say they're counterbalanced by reasons against like if there were this population of hominids in this particular region we would expect to find carcasses droppings more sightings yes because we do not find these empirical observations for unicorns or Bigfoot or Loch Ness or whatever then I think it's safe to agree with the scientific we'll follow the consensus among zoologists about saying these creatures do not exist but the existence of God is not like the existence of cryptids which are disputed animals its God is not a something in the is not a being in the universe that you try to find there's no field of science dedicated to determining whether God exists and it's a philosophical explain what type of people why is this not a scientific question exactly I would say it's because science is devoted to finding natural causes and explanations for things we observe in the physical universe so science is committed to understanding physical and observable phenomena in the universe that science explains things according to regular laws of nature that are applied so science is good at finding basically material things or at least things that constitute the material universe but when we're talking about whether certain immaterial things exist hmm there's no scientific test and it's not just God I mean do other minds exist yeah freewill numbers all affects moral facts mathematicians dispute whether numbers are real some are platanus think numbers are numbers really do exist because math is universal and you can't change it yeah you know every culture on earth does not have a story of Batman but every culture on earth has two plus two equals four it's not a truth we invented it's a truth we discovered but if we discovered it where is it yes and also even if the universe well it's not you know it's not an abstract object cuz it just describes things in the universe one cup and one cup is two cups it's the description physical reality I don't think that's the case cuz we can do mathematics with things like infinite sets mmm we can talk about adding infinite sets together or that the the set of natural numbers is equal to the set of even numbers they're both infinite and yet you see in any infinite sets out there and for us that is describing physical things in the in the universe itself so once again science deals with especially material things within the physical universe but if we're talking about immaterial things within the universe or realities beyond the physical universe itself those are philosophical questions and they can include lots of things what if there are they're parallel worlds you know that are causally disconnected from our universe I think David Lewis is his name he put up a view called modal realism so it's like if I say this is called explaining the truth of counterfactuals so I guess I can I can share this with you you're gonna you're gonna go talk to William Lane Craig tomorrow and I'm super jelly that's a joke WLC he's an awesome guy I would have loved have gone with you yeah so Matt if you had told me that a month ago I would have rearranged my flight and made arrangements so I could actually go and say hi to dr. Craig as well and so I'm disappointed you say well do you feel disappointed trend you can't possibly know you would have done that how do I know that counterfactual is true I've never seen it I can't scientifically observe it yet we talk these kind of counter factors all the time oh you went to lunch if you would have told me I would have told you to get me a yogurt or something yeah but that moment is long since gone but we talked about these truth you know what makes counterfactuals true and I think Lewis proposed or some people proposed along with it and modal realism they're true because they exist in some possible world where it really does happen Wow and so we can say that now could we ever scientifically prove causally disconnected universes exist no if they're causally disconnected yeah you can't do that but it's something we could philosophically speculate about so with God what's hard is I think some people think you know they want to restrict their epistemology or they're coming to understand knowledge and what's true through the scientific method mm-hmm and that has a virtue to it and I think it's important to affirm people that I think it's good that people focus on a method that avoids false beliefs yeah that's a good thing but you don't want to do it so much at the expense of not accepting true beliefs and so if you if you restrict the filter too much you're gonna leave out many important things or you're gonna think the questions that can't be answered to scientifically are not important right and talk about the problem of scientism and yeah well that's just the basic idea that if you make that if you take this epistemology and you make the radical claim that it is the only valid method of knowledge you could say it's your preferred method of knowledge or it's what you prefer to understand the world it's what you find most trustworthy and to say it's the only is to it's the self referential incoherence yeah because then I would say well how can you scientifically prove that the only knowledge that we can have is that we just gather the scientific method and if you can't then you have to reject it so it's self refuse yeah and so what I try to do here is instead of just kind of throwing that out there I try to ask questions and say you know do these questions have good answers I think it's worthwhile questions even though you clean answer them scientifically one basic one would just be as science important mm-hmm I think most people would agree with that but that's not a scientific question it's a value judgment and I think it's not a purely subjective one it's not like you know a purely subjective one about fashion or food prep that some people will think that anything that's not scientific is subjective and it's just your opinion yeah but as soon as you try to answer the question why is science important you're engaged in philosophy yeah you talk about very basic facts and morals and ethics are the the same way even if you try to use a scientific method to say well morality is about generating well-being and we can use psychology and sociology to show how to generate well-being in people sure I'll give you that but you still need the basic moral framework of what is well-being you know what does why should it be promote why should it be promoted what kind of well-being matters does it matter based on species as a matter based on circumstance so lots of different questions that we ask our other ones might be metaphysical ones that are more down-to-earth people think about metaphysics I love philosophy I love philosophers since I was 18 years old at Scottsdale Community College fighting artichokes taking my intro to philosophy class just thinking about those two questions and you people think metaphysics like Oh universe space-time it's too far out there a more deeper metaphysical question is like personal identity so like what am i what am i well you're a human being okay is if that's what I am if I am a human being and you could say the person is it wrong to kill me yes was it always wrong to kill me sure was I always a human being yeah so was it wrong to kill me when I was in the womb well you'll hold on just a minute because then people will say well no you what you or what you are like let's say I am in a persistent vegetative state to directly kill me or starve me to death would be wrong because I'm a human being yeah and that's where I think many people who have you know maybe more of a scientific atheism and things like that will maybe say well no what you are is a collection of mental states you are a mind that's what you are and so before you had in mind as a fetus yeah you weren't a person if you ceased to be able to use this you lose your mind yeah and so these are these are about questions of personal identity which are philosophical questions right that's we could do a fun thought experiment with this this comes from Derek Parfit okay so I'm just a collection of psychological states okay suppose I were in an accident and half my brain half my brain was damaged but the other half is still work just fine and let's say you tis impossible yeah well you can you can cut half of a person's brain their corpus callosum and they'll they'll act in a strange way but it could be possible to have half the brain well damaged and the other half still perform functions and even retain a sense of personal identity so imagine you know I I would still be me especially if I still had my identity questions I can answer if I put that brain in another body an empty cadaver shell would that still be me now what I would say from my philosophical view is you know well it gets difficult that I would say that the brain would be you know you could you could COFF my finger it's me you can cut off my hand it's me yeah but like the brain is the most indispensable organ that I that I have but parfaits example is this what if we cut the brain in half and we put it into two different bodies two different cadavers and they both woke up and they said I'm Matt Fred yeah the question I then the question becomes which ones you yeah and so that then so that makes people think well what what am i and so what's his name I think it's shelly kagan he's a professor at Yale University's got a wonderful open lecture series Yale on philosophy is an excellent debate we blew in mind Craig actually they did very well in that one one of the few did I yeah he did a good job question on on Kagan yeah ka GaN and he poses his examples and I think at least at the time of the recording of that lecture Kagan said that he holds to the body feel that I am the body I am my body so to speak that I'm not just my mind because then you can give to all kinds of problems if you were your mind and then do you cease to it you know do you cease to exist when you suffer from amnesia or when you when you do this this split brain example now I think if I look at the split brain example if that were to ever happen in real life I mean I have to think this through a bit more I would be tempted to want to say that math for the original Matt Fred died and two new organisms came into existence that happen to have his yeah similar to when we try to figure out with twinning what happens to an embryo when it twins mm-hmm and it could be that it could be that the original embryo dies and two embryos come into existence or it could be that embryo continues to exist and another continues to go on with it but the point I want to get respect to atheism soon yeah yeah my point is these are these are important questions about you know Who am I how should I live yes what's the nature of the world around me why am I here why am I here where am I going all these questions and they're just not saying they're not scientific and yet they're important yeah they're important and we should end philosophers will agree they're important even atheistic ones and so we should ask them and ponder them Allen planting us as philosophy is just thinking hard thinking really hard about something and we and we should we should do that and I would just say when it comes to God look don't treat it as just like Bigfoot or unicorns or just science we'll figure it out and that's the end of the story treat it more like do we have free will you know do we have other minds what what ethical system is correct these questions that there's a lot of disagreement among very smart people and look at the end of the day it's up to you to see what makes the most sense to you you can't just run off to consensus in a pejorative way and yet there's no consensus to just go to yeah just think it through for yourself and figure it out and I and I hope you will do that and at the very least you know virtually every civilization the history of mankind has believed in something like God and so to kind of wave it away like that without even examining the evidence I mean that's a very different thing to not looking at the evidence for Bigfoot and concluding that he probably doesn't exist yeah and I think that we should be careful of course that you know 40mil you know 50 million Elvis fans can't be wrong you know that's true he's not he's not still alive yeah but at the same time into popularity but it but it should be assessed yeah there are and I think that if there are important questions we should just have open mind yeah we should have open minds and all right wait sitter done give me your best argument for God's existence then what's that what's the one used are we going back to the former days of apologetics now what kind of give me a good argument for God's existence and let me see if I can pick holes in it yeah I think that well I mean we could play around with the contingency argument I'm showing more and more of a what is it well it's just basically what we said before that if the when it comes to whether the universe has an explanation or not it either has no explanation it explains its own existence or it's explained by something else and I'm we both agreed that those are the only three options options and I believe that it is explained by something else is far more plausible than the other two first to say simply that the universe has no explanation seems to violate what we call the principle of sufficient reason okay that when things exist we look for the reasons why they exist and this principle seems to govern our lives it's what the science is founded on science you know scientists say they don't just say well then maybe there's just no explanation for why this thing exists even if you have things like quantum particles that pop into existence yes we we may there may be an explanation that is indeterminate so we don't know the exact causes behind it but we understand the causal framework that these virtual particles come into existence because of the properties that can be seen in a quantum field or a quantum vacuum and so it is within those special circumstances this object can come into existence even though we can't necessarily predict when the field will emit these virtual particles just as we can't predict when Matt Fred will say what he does on his podcast atoms that are that are indeterminate but but here another example I sometimes give is from just this poison for one second so in this regard that would be like saying we we look around at everything in the universe and we say it must have an explanation but then when we get to the universe itself we say well no explanation is needed and that's what you're saying we probably shouldn't we probably shouldn't do because I would say that once again and this is to borrow from another philosopher I think his name his last name is Taylor he says you know if you found a glowing orb on the ground you'd wonder what is what is it what why does it exist if it was larger it was the size of a planet you wonder why it exists as the sides of the object gets larger our sense of wondering why it exists only expands and there's no reason why we should stop asking that question when we get to if it was the center you know size of the universe we would we would still ask the right the same question okay so do you want going I guess the last one might be when it comes to X the nature of explanation itself I mean if the principal sufficient reason wasn't true we would expect there to be many more unexplained things yeah pop things popping in and out of existence for no reason yeah but we don't experience that the universe is extremely regular in that regard and I believe that provides more evidence that the principle of sufficient reason this is true in undergirds reality as we know it Sherlock Holmes once said which was actually quoted by Spock in one of the Star Trek movies he says an ancestor of mine once said when you when you eliminate the impossible whatever remains however improbable must be the answer now if P SR wasn't true the we say that is psi is the principle of sisian reason that things that exist now I'm not saying everything that happens as an explanation okay now an object I know it well because you could make an objection that sometimes things happen for there's not really a reason for certain events so if you have a ball on a perfectly sharp point an infinitely sharp cone and there's a ball sitting here yeah and it rolls right or it rolls left why does it go right instead of left and it's infinitely sharp I don't know there may not be a reason for why that event happens mm-hm but I'm psyching the reason that a thing exists as existence rather than non-existence it's a limited principle of sufficient reason I think then that there are they're good there's good reasons to believe that that's true so with Sherlock Holmes you eliminate the impossible whatever remains however improbable who knows there could be no explanation that would always be on the table and we could have so so I think that and I other atheists that have looked at this looked at the universe and looked at this argument I know some of them said sure maybe there there is an explanation okay but I'm not saying that it's God okay but now this gets interesting now we're moving into yeah well what do you say to those who say there is no explanation it's just a brute fact what does a brute fact mean and how does that violate the well that would just be a way of saying once again it's know as donation the brute fact is just something that is true and we accept it and just the reason that's just the way that's just saying there's no explanation that yeah it's just it's a way is this another way of saying it so the next step would be to say well reason the universe exists is because it's necessary it has to exist okay it's just impossible for the universe what's another example of something that has to exist well that's where it gets tricky because most things were used to don't have to exist they could their contingent they depend on other things in order to exist I think a lot of people would say that if numbers exist they would be necessary that any universe any universe any possible world there would be something true there would be the same truth in any possible world that would be there is one possible world so you'd have the number one you have that you can start doing other mathematical truths though numbers would be an example something that are considered to be necessary so if the universe exists necessarily could it be you if that were the case then it could not be different to the way it is now is that true well well let's dive through this a little bit I would say the universe could certainly be very different especially in the sense that it doesn't have to exist because I would ask how do we know other things are contingent contingent means it depends on something else to exist it could have not existed or it could continue to fail to exist so we usually we can imagine that those things don't exist we can conceivably yeah that they do not exist and in our own universe we can conceive of less and less and less as in it yeah until we get to basically nothing existence now I think somebody would say well yeah the universe could have been different mm-hmm but there would still be a universe of some kind it would still have the same fundamental components the universe is like a Lego bin you could make different Lego creations but you'd have the same Makos in the bit I see much the same way you'd have the same fundamental particles so if we rewound the kind of film of evolution and played it forward all sorts of other creatures may have existed sure that wouldn't be to say that the universe isn't necessary it could just be necessary but different yeah the elements could be rearranged and even here I don't think that's that's the case why should I think these fundamental particles are necessary I can conceive of them being different they're quarks are one of the fundamental things physicists say make up the universe I think there's six different types of them up down top they have different properties like spin surely those could have been those could have been different there's nothing of about the universe like for example when it something's necessary if I ask you why is that rock warm mm-hmm that's a question worth asking I so cuz it's by the fire right but I say why is that fire warm you'd be like as it just is now you would think fire yeah you think that's not a question yeah and so or the same thing like with a triangle why does that triangle have three sides because that's just what triangles are yeah when we ask the question why is there a universe it does not seem to be a a straightforward question like why is fire hot or why is a triangle three-sided it seems to be a question worth asking yes like why is this why is this triangle blue why is this rock warm and we proceed to try to figure out the answer many intelligent people throughout history have tried to find yeah the answer to that so I think that when all of that is put together the option that the universe is necessary has to assess Bertrand Russell position isn't it didn't he say that universe just exists and that soul it was brute fact he I don't think he said it was necessary okay the universe is just there and that's all that's all yeah yeah and and that's just that's not really accepting the explanation that's it what if what if then the Atheist says okay maybe there's an explanation but I don't know what it is and you don't either I'd say well let's try to figure out what the explanation is let's try to think that through and determine some of its properties and this is something I also do with the Kalam argument that when for many atheists Matt what's funny is we don't necessarily debate on Kalam whether the universe began they'll say even if it began I don't think it's God hmm well I'll say okay but let's go through the list of candidates is could it be another universe that's possible yeah I am open to the idea that there is a multiverse I mean that would be that could be very interesting God is a grand creator who knows he could create another universe as possible I don't know how many or if he did but even if our universe exists because of another universe that once again we're back to the original argument what explains that universe evos yeah and so it would be the same as asking why is that chandelier up there hanging over our heads well there's a chain why is that chain another chain why that chain another chain an infinite number of chains doesn't explain why it's hanging up at all you need something that exists in a knot chain like way the anchor and the ceiling much the same way a bunch of universes or an infinite number of universes doesn't explain why any of the universes exist at all why is there this entities concedes that and says okay there must be an explanation it must be necessary but that's a long way away from saying it's the Christian God or even even a personal being mm-hmm sure and what I would say here is then we have to go through the different categories what kind what kinds of things are there that do exist we could see this thing if it's necessary yeah then it's not something that is spatial or temporal well because well because those things are they're contingent they're they're dependent on other things in order to exist within a space-time framework okay so anything that's material is going to be depending on other material forces and entities to keep to constitute what it is bring it into existence to be within space and times be bound by those things you would be dependent okay and so it to be material means you depend upon space to exist there's no space there's no view then if we if we go forward from that we would say okay whatever this causes it's immaterial it's timeless it's necessary it just has to exist in some way it cannot be dependent on anything else if it were to depend on something else for its existence whatever this cause is it would not be necessary it would be it would be contingent and it would have to have causal power because it's the reason things exist so it can't be an abstract object it could is that still true if the universe is infinite in the past does it still have to have causal power because when we think of causal specially in the Kalam cosmological argument we're thinking of it in the Domino sort of effect so when you say causal power you're referring to sort of hierarchical theories of court I mean is in the sense that it is able to sustain something in being that it's able to when people think of cause today they usually think before off we think temporal temporal yeah even if the universe were eternal we would still say why does this exist because of X well X must have some property then of granting existence to something or making it the case this thing exists rather than and exist so that's necessary thing you're saying wasn't we're not necessarily talking about bringing the whole shebang into existence but that it's causing it now to exist yeah but I do believe also there's good arguments that it did bring the universe into existence and so here what's funny is so sometimes I remember once I was talking with an atheist on Catholic Answers live and I said well okay this cause of the universe then this is for Kalambo it would apply to the contingency argument this cause is either material or immaterial hmm it was funny and he would not give me an answer to that question which is funny because I'm at once again it's the law of the excluded middle it's got to be material or not material well it could be a third thing no it cannot be like they're they're exclusive yeah because of its it can't be material if it made space and time right and then if it's immaterial we're really running out of candidates here for immaterial things that mmm that can be causes of other things the two examples we think of immaterial things that we are aware of our abstract objects and minds abstract objects though are causally a feat they can't make things happen so now we have a plausible can't to be some kind of good luck wouldn't you first have to grant the mind is immaterial for that to be an option I'm sure there's people who might say that the mind that we seem to experience is purely an illusion so we might say well you reach that conclusion because you think that the brain is what creates all of our mental experiences or illusions of mental experiences because some people will say that the mind exists and it's immaterial but they'll say it's wholly dependent on the brain the brain is like the projector and the mind is the screen and so you know you destroy the projector you don't have the images anymore but those people don't necessarily believe in in a soul or anything like that I'd be like property duelists for example but I would say they even of those people but here if we have an example of of mind that is that satisfies the immaterial canon and there's no material sources for its existence then we've got something good here to work with also when we look at the dependency issue something to be necessary it cannot depend on anything and else to exist we can kind of talk about divine simplicity that traditionally Catholics and even actually some Calvinists and others have held to this view that God is simple he's not composed of parts and I think that actually helps us understand God and rebut some atheist arguments because if this cause were composed of parts there has to be something prior to it that puts the parts together yeah now why is that well we because we would say what is the difference between something being whole and something having parts okay the difference is there is something that unites parts together into a whole we there's there's division yes there because we would ask well what is the difference between being a part and being a whole right even parts of things you look at now are made of other parts of things yeah well we would see parts have to be united in some way to make a whole otherwise if they weren't united you would just have them call them pops you and call them parts it would just be the whole so here I would say that this cause then there would have to be simple and so it wouldn't be composed of any parts and it couldn't have any any limits upon it because then it would seem to be dependent on other things to have these limits imposed upon it so now what it comes when you do these kinds of arguments and I think this is the big challenge that is facing theistic apologetics and defending the existence of God that is often sometimes overlooked these arguments and even I could do more work on this to confront skeptical objections is to get from a conclusion of a theistic argument to all of the divine attributes and so that is where some arguments like Thomas's first-mover you know talking about the argument from motion a weakness of the argument is that you really have to be committed to to mystic metaphysics Aristotelian right metaphysics about act and potency yeah but if you are committed to that and you reach the arguments conclusion it's very easy to get at something that's pure act and has you can figure out these divine attributes coming right from it then when you get to other theistic arguments you're on a little bit shaky er ground to get the other divine attributes yeah out of them but I do believe that they can be inferred from that in different ways that are applause all the people and of course the gap between God not existing - maybe something necessary exists once you if you've made that jump if you've gone from being an atheist saying okay something necessary exists which explains the universe I don't know what it is there's a necessary immaterial timeless cause causally powerful being yeah that doesn't sustain the name atheism at that point it gets very close so if my point is to jump from there to okay there are certain attributes he has that sound like the Christian God is a much smaller thing to jump yeah it is and then you can conjoin other arguments so you could talk about principles of morality well and then what do you say to people who say well really we're not epistemic alee even in a position to assess these arguments i go online i see for and against and I at least am not in a position to assess them all so for most of us isn't agnosticism the most respectable view the one can have is agnosticism a respectable in the sense that I'm not I'm not choosing to side one way or the other because both could be true and saying I don't know is at least the most honest response to the god question I think it is an honest response when you are in a position where you have not tried to investigate the question okay but I think that we should be honest but it should not be an excuse to choose to not do the hard work of thinking about the question because you could just say oh there's all these people that disagree I'm not even gonna try - yeah wait into that yeah yeah I say well you should you should you should think about it and then you may peruse the arguments and try to weigh it and still at the end of the day because this is sometimes when I ask atheists for example you know what when it comes to God I live assassinated say you don't believe in God whoa what is the probability God exists is it zero it's impossible yeah I think there's really like three options for them it's like impossible highly improbable or 50/50 yeah and I really always want to know with an atheist like like for me there's some things I would say like Bigfoot Loch Ness highly improbable for me and there's other but there's other things I'd say you know is there other intelligent life in the universe yeah I'm kind of 50/50 on that I don't know but I but I want an atheist I would like if I'm doing an apologetic some people think I gotta get this person to believe in God if I can get him from highly improbable to 5050 I'd be extremely happy about that and I would be a huge yeah jump to getting towards the truth for people and so and so that's why I want to get someone so let's say even you were at 50/50 what I would say here is then I might put forward a pragmatic art totally and then just say maybe this is something that sometimes is misused I'm sure you talked about in the podcast before Pascal's wager and atheists misunderstand Allah the ark most people miss put it forth in a way that you treated it is like you know what you can't go wrong on God yeah believe in him and you won't go to hell yeah that's not Pascal's wager he never mentions hell he doesn't rather his point is for someone who has looked at the question and for that person the only live options are Christianity and atheism yes and you cannot decide between the two there's no harm in living out Christianity and making a pragmatic decision there's some cost there is some yes there's there's no overall harm right because there's cost but there are also benefits and also when you look at people like Rodney stark and others have done surveys to show that religious people on average tend to live longer they tend to be healthier they tend to be other elements that go along with religious worldview that are good for people psychologically overall no that's not the reason I would sell the faith to someone because sometimes believing our faith can be very very difficult and trying but I would you say for someone who's on their way to truth a pragmatic argument can be helpful here you say just go ahead well I don't feel it I don't feel it all the time either yeah really and that's where I can help you have scale says do those practical things like using holy water attending Holy Mass and these sorts of things do the things that religious people do yeah and I would even say if you were an atheist or agnostic really really on the fence just have just kind of you don't have to address God just in the morning just look up and say thank you at the end of the night say how could I have done this better and and look up or look within and it's always our view like I wish I could believe I just and faith is is a gift that is given to people Thomas talked about being a theological virtue that is infused but we of course cooperate with God to receive his Grace's we make we can predispose ourselves to receive them give ourselves open hearts and open minds I would just want someone to yeah you could take something pragmatic here if you are 50/50 and we do that all the time with other important things I mean someone could look at the arguments for and against freewill yeah for and against the world being real for and against whether life is worth living and say well these are actually tough arguments but you know what I'd rather live in a world with freewill if I'm 5050 I'm going to act as if that is true or life is worth living or following all other important ethical or metaphysical questions the other interesting point I haven't heard you talk about is that if they're only live options for me are atheism or Christianity yeah it does ever occur to you let's say there's a 50/50 there the atheist will never know he's right you know rather than a Christian while he's no he's wrong yeah but he cut he may come to know that the Christian is right I mean because if God exists Christianity is true that I'm going to experience an afterlife but if I'm a hardcore atheist I will never actually definitively know that I was right or not because once I die its lights out I won't be in a place consciously well you only sorry you you will be able to know you were wrong not that you were right if Christianity is true right if an atheist or even atreus and I die I never discover that I was right all along that's right yeah and so and and we shouldn't portray Christianity here as just being we're playing at the cosmic roulette table right and we want to get a good outcome and a dealing with human beings who have pragmatic interest in these sorts of things and that it can help yeah and I think that it's important here to understand where Christianity comes in and that's where theism is helpful to get people to understand God is present God exists but that God is immediate and cares for us that is where I believe the Christian gospel is so helpful and we need to be able to share with people so that with Pascal's wage and other things our deacon at our parish give wonderful homily the other day and he said salvation is not about how to get to heaven it's about how to get how to get into heaven it's about how to get heaven into you and so does we mean by that well the idea that it's not just about trying to get the right ticket to get to a certain destination but rather is about in this life growing in holiness and about having the light participating in the life of God and participating in that and becoming adopted sons and daughters of God and growing in that as a child of God and that this life that life is not about trying to escape a particular kind of judgment and get to heaven that our spiritual life is kind of more like pregnancy and that when we receive the gift of faith you know it's more like that we have received this this seed so when Thomas talks about the virtues he says that faith contains the seed of faith where Jesus said that faith is like a mustard seed you just need a little bit it contains virtually within it everything that we are hoping for mmm the so and hope of course is we wait for those things that that we have faith in that we desire and so we just have that in a very small amount now and it grows and grows more with this we have God's divine life in a small way now as his children and we grow in that sacramentally through prayer okay by uniting with him and to grow more and more in that in this life as part of his adoptive family to spend eternity with him let me throw one kind of atheistic objection to you and I think that's the problem of hiddenness which you might say as a subset of the problem of evil right if God exists if it's true that he loves me that's true that he wants a relationship with me then he would see to it that I would come to know he exists because in order to love him I have to know that he exists he's playing hide and seek with us surely if he wanted me to love him he would see to it that I that I could at least believe he exists and there are many atheists of goodwill now maybe you deny this maybe a Christian would deny this who if God existed they would believe him and they would want to believe him the fact that God hasn't revealed himself these two people is a good indicator that maybe he doesn't exist after all yeah and I think that approaching the problem of divine hiddenness the problem can be posed as a philosophical argument to try to show God does not exist and it can also be proposed as a question a person has a very legitimate and thoughtful question or it can be proposed as a question that's designed to try to tear down the Christian faith I find sometimes in Christians and atheists talk to one another sometimes atheists do not make arguments against the Christian faith they more pose questions for us a question isn't allowed and they'll say that and it comes from the discussion that if the Christian cannot successfully answer the question therefore Christianity is false but that doesn't follow all that shows that that person is not able to answer that question or we may not have the epistemic resources we may not have the answer to that particular question but it wouldn't follow yeah that the the worldview is false I mean there's many scientific conclusions and hypotheses we don't have answers for people try to understand the nature of consciousness and let's say well I don't know how matter can be conscious or have intentionality and and so I wouldn't argue like well okay so that means that atheists can't explain consciousness well I wouldn't just pose a question and say cuz you can't answer it therefore it's therefore it's false if you put forward an argument analogy with that is the problem of evil with someone say if that exists why would he allow good things to happen to bad people that's a question not yet an argument that's right why does God let this stuff happen you said I don't know yeah but I don't think that that shows he doesn't exist and I believe that the problem of divine hiddenness is a subset of the problem of evil that one evil that we endure in this life evil is an absence of good that's you know we look at metaphysically what evil is it's an absence of good evil is parasitic upon yeah the good you know a bad coffee a bad coffee cup has a crack in it but that crack can't exist without the coffee cup yep it doesn't exist by itself and couldn't it's parasitic on the good a bad person has to have goods at the very least the good of existence and organic life so it is bad that we do not have the fullness of God's revelation in this life it is bad we do not possess the beatific vision in this life so okay then that's kind of under the problem of evil why does God let this bad thing happen and the traditional answer the problem of evil is that God can allow bad things or evils if he has good reasons for doing so if he has a good reason he could if he can bring a greater good or to greater evil then he's justified in doing so so sometimes with these arguments similar the problem of evil some people think the problem of evil is something that Christians have to explain away it's a Christian problem well it is but it's an atheistic argument and so an atheist bears the burden of proof with all the premises and the Christian can say but you left out this premise which is God has no sufficient reasons for allowing evil to exist much the same way I could be justified in saying you've left out a premise God has no sufficient reasons for allowing someone to remain an on belief hmm and so then I would ask the person so I've turned it around why should I believe that God could not have a sufficient reason you say well if God loved people he would make himself known and I go you could turn that on problem of evil if God loved people he wouldn't let them suffer perhaps but then again sometimes when we love people we allow them to endure suffering for a while because there is a greater good that'll be accomplished you and I both have children we let our children try to do something on their own even though it's frustratingly difficult for them because if we were to do it for them that would actually it would prevent a small you will now be make a greater evil later and so this argument from divine hiddenness it really does parallel the problem of evil so I would just turn it around and say why should I believe that I may not know why God does not allow why God does not make his existence more obvious for a certain person or people in general but I can pose different plausible reasons that ok God could have some morally sufficient reasons for allowing people to not believe in him and if I have enough of these this is no longer a problem anymore and so I can think of a few one might be that God wants there to be particularly made his existence obvious one good would be the good of sharing our faith with other people the good of being able to help lead someone to knowledge of God in Christ to evangelize and to share that with others that is a very good thing that we are able to God trusts us to do that and so it's the same as like you know if you you know letting your children do things for you whereas you could more comp do it for them because you love them you allow them to do that and they become more United to you in the process and to others and that's a beautiful thing we're able to do a second one might be that God wants our decision to follow him and to embrace him and to choose to be united to him to be one that has a decent amount of freedom to it and so if God made his existence overwhelmingly obvious that could compromise for some people right our freedom to be able to choose to follow him it's like when you go driving down the highway and you see a police officer you know you don't think to yourself that is a reminder I have a moral duty to care from my fellow motorists and I ought to slow down Toofer they're good and if you do because you don't want to get caught and isn't it a true isn't it true according to Christianity that there was a time where God did make his existence more plain say in the time of the Exodus that's right and that isn't necessarily the case that the Israelites followed God they may have believed in his existence but that doesn't it doesn't follow from that that they would love him well there yes and there there's an objection the some atheists may say well God seemed to make himself pretty obvious to Adam Eve to Moses to Abraham and that didn't overwhelm them and so why wouldn't God do the same for us now well I think we have developed in our understanding of who God is since then and so most atheists would say that if God existed they would worship Him because God just is Allgood all-knowing necessary omnipotent perfect being itself but you go back to the time of the patriarchs God's are kind of a dime-a-dozen gods were protective deities you know for certain regions and certain people's and so even if God existed there was still a temptation to follow other gods the the very first believers the the first heap the Israelites were he no theists they believed Yahweh was the mightiest God of all the other gods I mean and that's clear because they go and worship a golden calf they are tempted to worship other gods so they they clearly but now when you get to the time of the prophet Isaiah God has revealed some people come to understand God more to see God is mightier than the other gods in power and existence what's the difference between he know theism and polytheism polytheism is the belief there are many different kinds of gods many different gods and you can kind of worship whichever one you want or whichever one whose region you happen to be under if you're out at sea beside might be a good bet and you know monotheism is the belief there is only one God so you're saying the original Israelites weren't monotheists well there it seems that at least within the first believers especially in like the Mosaic Covenant for example we see the Hebrews are tempted to do some worship of gods is worth so he know theism then he know theism also called manometry okay she know theism is the belief there is there are many different gods but there is only one God you ought to worship gosh this is the God who deserves your worship alone you ought not give worship to the other gods and so that and that was something you know that the children of Israel grew in their understanding of God to see though it's interesting it so the great understanding by the time the prophet Isaiah even if not long before there was there were monotheists before this time show you see for example in Egypt there was a pharaoh akhenaten who had a brief reform and put monotheism within Egyptian worship though it was later it was later dropped later on in the dynasty I would also say that the the authors of Sacred Scripture of the Old Testament when you read it like Ben Sumner sandler who is a Jewish scholar he says that the Bible while the ancient Israelites many of them probably practiced Hino theism the Bible itself is a monotheistic book so it's interesting here is that the sacred authors of Scripture even though they're dealing with people who are running off to worship other gods when you look in the Bible especially in the Old Testament those other gods are never acknowledged as to having real existence you never see Yahweh having a conversation with all right knowing that never that never occurs you never even hear about Yahweh like destroying Baal or something like that you just see at best poetic descriptions of God destroying this the serpents the Dragons monsters that you know isn't it the case so that we should think of the Old Testament gods is deemed demonic as being demonic yeah like all being a demon right but you you never but you never see them described as being deities in their in their own rights as having okay either equal standing with God or even beings to talk to now we know later on in the New Testament st. Paul talks about how idols are really demons or at least one way to understand idolatry like for example some people will say you know well what about other miracles and other world religions doesn't that disprove Christianity well not necessarily God could be intervening in those cases to try to bring someone to the truth where it could be demonic elements that are performing these kind of supernatural activities so my points when we go back to divine hiddenness that even though God's existence like Yahweh was you know as obvious he existed to the Israelites it wasn't obvious to them you know that let's say that he's all-knowing in the sense that he's immediately present but he they didn't have our exacting philosophical definitions of God that so it would be easier to put God out of your mind he's up on that mountain and he's not gonna bother me yeah you know whereas today I think that it would be very different so okay yeah so when we we look at divine hiddenness I would just say I believe it is a subset of the problem of evil the other element I would add in here is that if it is not guaranteed that if it is possible for someone to die and never have acquired explicit knowledge of God but to still have eternity with God because if you say because God is merciful towards that person and they were always pursuing him as pursuing the truth and trying to get closer to him if God is merciful - that's person and they're not automatically condemned because of their lack of non belief then I think the problem loses a lot of its force because they'll still have infinite happiness with God in the next life it's not a guarantee of course those who died an on belief will be saved so if it's a possibility then we don't have to send them as a problem where is it that the church teaches that someone can not have explicit faith and yet be saved and has the church developed its understanding of this well when we look for example in lumen gentium paragraph 16 of the Second Vatican Council we see the church articulate that it is possible for those it says possibly those of no knowledge of Christ or his church to still saved if they are following the revelation that God has given them primarily in nature and in conscience right so the question is does this person have is what is kept in them from God some kind of an invincible ignorance something that they cannot overcome now if it's something they could have overcome by investigating the matter and giving it serious thought and they cavalierly dismissed it because they feel there are more important things in life than whatever God is that may not bode well for them in the next life but if it's something they're an honest seeker about and they're trying to find then I do believe God will eventually reveal themselves to this person but it's also possible that a person could have other kinds of cognitive defects that prevent them from coming to know God the catechism even talks about how one thing that can create vincible ignorant sin atheists are the examples of Christians the Catechism says that sometimes Christians are poor examples of the faith they teach it improperly and present a poor example of it that others don't want to ya have anything yet to do with whatsoever and so that would be there if you're a Jew raised in Nazi Germany and your only experience of Christ is that of the Third Reich yeah or here a Jew living in the Middle Ages and you're being charged with blood libel and you're you're consigned to a to a ghetto ghetto but I would say that this understanding that non-christians can be saved it's not a unique one that's modern I think you go back to like Pope Gregory the Great he talks about how there is no one who is kept from receiving the the fruits of the atonement of Christ's death on the cross this is something to benefit everyone now as the church articulated this principle there is no salvation outside of the church it was primarily understood to mean that those who have come to know what the church is and reject it there is nothing else that is going to save them and so it's directed at Jews or pagans or even Muslims who have encountered Christians who have you know interacted with the faith and have rejected there's nothing else to provide them salvation God Himself in Sims paragraph 1257 in the Catechism says that this salvation is bound to the sacraments specifically baptism but God Himself is not bound by the things right and so God is able to be merciful towards people and take an understanding of whatever epistemic position he has placed them in okay but then the church came to see an understanding that there were people like in the new world Native Americans who could not possibly have not what our Mormon friends notwithstanding could not who believe that Jesus appeared to the Native Americans that's a whole different topic to talk about could not have possibly known God and yet and yet I would say that it would it would just seem to me to be such an injustice for it would be similar to the Calvinist doctrine of double predestination hmm where that's interested decides who goes to heaven and who goes to hell and God has made it the case that certain people no matter what decision they make in this life will be consigned to hell I would say that's really not that far from double predestination where God decides now all Christians believe in predestination right the Bible talks about it and in paragraph 602 the Catechism it says that God all moments of time are known to God in his immediacy but he God is able to make our free choices a part of his predestined plan that's the essence of what paragraph 602 the Catechism says and so the point being what the Church teaches on predestination is more what you can't believe you just can't believe that God doesn't know the future mm-hmm he is omniscient but you can't believe that we don't have free will God knows the future he has chosen us he's given us grace we did not choose him that's a great way to put it he's chosen us but we also say yes to him right it's not we were not just we're not dragged kicking and screaming around dragged into the kingdom we say yes to him and sometimes we say no you gotta back is a yes again but God I mean the two mystic view and I guess the Catholic view is if we go to heaven we have no one to thank but God if we go to hell we have no nothing but ourselves right and so when it comes to how freewill and predestination work together in God's foreknowledge and freewill that's where Catholics there's disagreement yeah you'll have people who have the two mystic understanding of predestination which is anybody close to Calvinism but important in important respects and then you have more views down the line like Molin ISM the Jesuit priest Luis Molina who says that God gave sufficient grace to people for them to be saved but the grace that he's given to people who that he chooses he chooses those that he knows and his counterfactual foreknowledge will say yes if he were to offer them fair enough salvation and of course in there no calvess can disagree among themselves on the on those things and I'm not even fully settled I lean towards mullen ISM not completely settled on the issue but the point is we have with with predestination that God has this plan for us but it includes our free choices within that plan how do we were talking about the hiddenness of God there's people who don't know but to say like okay God has made it so that they're born chance of hearing the gospel I can't accept the idea that God would make it the case that someone could exist and there is not a single choice they could have ever made in this life there's not a single choice they could have ever made in this life to avoid being separated from God for all eternity that to me would seem to be very very Catholic is sort of disgusted at the kind of Calvinistic idea that God can predestined someone to hell then they as you say it doesn't seem too far off to say people here in the new world had no chance of hearing the gospel in a sense he has predestined them to hell if you want to say strictly speaking if he's given them no opportunity to make a decision whether it's to recognize his existence in nature or to follow the revelation he's given them to conscience and you go back I mean for gravy go back to Romans chapter 2 Romans 2 14 through 16 st. Paul says even though the Gentiles don't have the Mosaic law written on stone they have the law written on their hearts and God will judge them by their conscience which will either accuse or excuse them on that day yeah so I believe there's this why had a principle to show that God reveals himself to different people in different ways but I think at the end of the day for us for you and I who go to Mass who have the sacraments who have so many resources available to us for our spiritual growth it really leaves us without excuse no yeah totally I mean that's so we should pray for people salvation we should Evangel yeah so sometimes people will say to me well if you think that people can be saved if they're never evangelized but not evangelize you're just giving them a chance to reject God yeah and I would say here well no I'm saying a possibility is not the same as a probability just as possible these people can be saved I was not a guarantee yeah it could be that we still live in a sinful world where a person can be ensnared by sin and choose to flee from the good I mean it's still so you're running muscle you're in a much better place generally speaking if you've heard the gospel proclaimed - you've been baptized and accepted yea then if you've never heard at all especially if you're baptized and you've accepted it because upon being baptized you're pure and undefiled all the stain of any sin original or actual has been removed there's nothing to hinder you from being entering the kingdom of God immediately after baptism now you know yeah we go on in life and we sin and then we have to be reconciled to God but let's move up to the next level of the mansion is your okay you'll take a break no we can let's keep pushing on let's keep going Christian apologetics so let's say somebody says alright I believe that maybe I believe that God exists I'll accept that that there is a personal creator of the universe but I cannot accept Christianity you know someone might say the story of Christianity it's it's sort of like um I don't know trying to supernatural eyes the natural and it ends up being overly complicated it's sort of like when you say well father Christmas exists and you accept that and then you have to kind of explain all these little things about why the carrots on the front lawn that you left for the reindeer would work even though the choice that an Australian thing yeah oh yeah father Christmas and we eat the parents chew on the carrots it's a bit gross actually that was my first objection to why Santa must exist because I said what are you saying my parents would go and eat a care of the lawn that's so gross you saw it like five an atheist now you know things like well why can't I see the toy shop well it's because it's invisible and it sounds like sometimes I think that Christianity you have to do all these sort of cartwheels to kind of get around the obvious this is what someone might say right they might say okay Adam and Eve I mean that's probably not true or modern you know genetics says that the the human population couldn't have come from Oh from a pair or and I that just seems like even the idea that the the that you talk about multiple worlds now in multiple planets so that seems to kind of like go against the Christian message like it seems like it would make a lot more sense if the earth was the center of the universe and make us we don't know if it is or not because you can't see the sides right well if this I can't see the size of the universe maybe the earth is the center well that's possible kidding my point is yeah as we've learned more as an alleged frame of reference yes we're getting into physics yes in theory but as we learn more about the universe it seems like we are kind of insignificant and it just seems like more and more militant militates against the Christian message even evolution I mean the idea that we've all evolved now and it sounds like the Christian has to keep coming up with explanations for oh no no no no we never said that like if you look at Genesis it's just mythical and so this still fits in with the story and so I can see some atheists they look at the Christian story and they say it's like the story of Santa Claus where you have to keep you know filling in what was left out in the original presentation of the of the Father Christmas gospel good questions let's try to go through each one yeah it's a problem here too with the Fallot the shotgun fallacy - maybe we should point out well it's not even a fallacy it's just this is also ironically this is a method that and I think atheists who use this method ought to be careful because they don't like it when Christians do the same thing this is actually called a Gish gallop G is H as named after Duane Gish who was a very famous young earth creationist and he would do these debates against biologists and he would and he did really well in these debates actually to show creationism was true because what he would do he would list off two dozen problems that evolution with evolution is true if evolution is true why aren't there more fossils in the Cambrian explosion why don't we have these transitional forms why do we find this why that why this and then he lists off a dozen problems and the biologist said you know it takes him ten times as long an answer than list a problem he can't possibly get through them all and so Gish says he wins the debate at the end by just here's all the problems and look he couldn't even answer this or that you know you see the evolutionist he's just trying to explain away all these difficulties and I think what he would say is well no I'm not trying to explain away anything there is data and we try to make sense of it some things we can understand now other things we don't have an explanation so what I would say within a thesis is well look all these difficulties in Christianity well that's an easy that's an easy thing to say when you don't have your own belief system to defend because atheism when it's a belief system is really just not having a certain belief system but I would say all right if you are a naturalist yeah let's say you defend the claim that only material things exist which I think many atheists actually believe but they're not willing to go that far I could do the same thing you believe materialism how do I have a mind how can my mind be about things you know objects can't have intentionality how about this what about this problem what about these things and an atheist to say just cuz I don't know how to answer it doesn't mean my core thesis has been refuted just because I haven't reached an answer to the problem yet so the fact that there are difficulties is not an objection to Christianity it is an objection to any coherent belief system that sets out to try to understand the world so because yeah it's easy if you just operate from the sense of I'm just saying Christian she's not cheating yeah but when I say what do you believe what is the fundamental element of reality what is the good how do I determine whether an action is right or whether it's wrong you any moral ethical system you try to say is the true system will lead you to very difficult dilemma situations that's just how it goes any when you try to build up a coherent belief system to explain reality they're gonna be difficult patches in it that it's easy to take it down then to build up exactly so I would say first the presence of difficulties is not something to show that Christianity is false it just shows that we have to think hard about these questions that arise and we should put forward explanations yeah that aren't ad hoc that aren't contrived out of nothing but but makes sense second I don't think that the analogy from Santa Claus is a very good one so and I mean we could do a whole different show on Santa Claus and all that but when I hear that I say well if you're gonna make an analogy about belief you want to make sure it lines up properly with what you're talking about but here like with Santa Claus with Santa Claus so parents to do this and I don't frankly notably yeah so when my kids have started asking about I know I say you know San Santa is a really neat story it's a fun story people tell about and you know people have fun with lots of stories like you know Frodo and Thomas a train and you know there is no island of sodor there's you know things like that with Santa Claus there's there's extreme dis analogies to belief in God here's the most obvious one people who believe in God are sincere yeah like you don't think that God's not real right and you just tell your kids because you think it's a good story for them and then when they grow up you tell them guess what God doesn't exist but it's a great story for you to do first communion you sincerely believe that it's true yes so it's not like Santa Claus second with Santa the reason we don't believe in Santa is because of overwhelmingly obvious positive evidence of evidence that's if Santa existed if Santa existed there would be clear things that would be different and the most obvious one would be that we wouldn't have to go Christmas shopping the the they would appear under the tree without us knowing that the the presents there and so and then of course of the tracking Santa his workshop I mean you could even try to explain away that like the workshops invisible but why why do I have to buy the presents and it's the same presence you know that are that are there now I guess an atheist could say well Santa shows up and he swaps out your presence with the exact exact way that he does that and and what I would say is know that when the explanations get that far they are trying to explain away yeah positive evidence but I would say that an atheist has not done the same thing with God that he you know I I haven't posited that that would be on par with me saying you know with the to answer the problem of evil by saying well actually God exists but what we think is evil is not really happening because it's an illusion and we're not experiencing pain at this time what you think people experience is not really and we'll be compensated for this in heaven the next life so there's no problem that to me would be I say we dramatically try to explain away the problem instead of invoking the limits of my my epistemic humility to say well I don't always know why God would have a good reason to allow an evil but I we allow evils for good reasons like we don't put surveillance cameras in every home in every building to prevent crime because we like want people to have the good of privacy so I could see how God would want some goods like freewill and virtue to exist and along with those will come evil so that okay makes sense there's a lot of problems with a Christian story then so let me just but yeah but there are still problems and we can still we should still address them ya know everything we said but we shouldn't be overwhelmed by the presence of problems it just gives us something to think deeply about well let's do one what about the you know the slaughtering of the Canaanites by the Israelites can you explain that problem and show us how you might respond to that yeah so this is the problem of Old Testament violence and I think for many people it is case closed when it comes to the Bible like I can't be a Christian if you worship Yahweh and he ordered the Israelites to kill not just the army of another group not just the Canaanite army but to lay waste to other you know to the non-combatants involved to the women and to the children and so how could God order something like this that shows that he's evil he's bloodthirsty I want to have nothing to do with a with a God like that and so how could you worship a God like that and Christians have offered a variety of responses to this argument not every I don't endorse every response present but I think it's important for people especially an atheist who was working through this to be aware of the different responses okay so on the one in the extreme I'm not extreme I guess one response might be that well this is just something that is a purely human device that represents the barbarism of ancient peoples and that was not inspired by God God never did anything like this whatsoever and that's just a part of the Bible that we determined is not relevant today and it was you know it's it's an error within the Bible and so it's something that you know we don't accept everything but that that's just an error that's one view it's not a view that I would endorse but those who say this I would say like you said before what does that prove it doesn't prove that we should it doesn't prove Jesus never rose from the dead it doesn't prove God doesn't exist it doesn't prove God never revealed himself so at best if you were you know I mean I know Christian theologians who hold a view like this this is just an erroneous part of the Bible and yet they're Christians they believe Jesus is fully divine and so that could be a live option for that atheist you know if you're firmly committed to believing in the person of Jesus yeah I would rather you believe in Jesus and you're trying to develop your biblical theology then just they'll throw the whole thing out right point they said that's not a view that I'm that I would endorse but I think it's one that could be on the table and for some people they may they may accept that another view and this would be the view that st. Thomas Aquinas takes it's a view that says that their God has the right to take life and so if God has the right to take my life you're your life then he also has the right to deputize others to he has the right to choose different methods to take human life and so he's trying to show you know in exercising a judgment against this group of people that just as God would exercise judgment against Nations against Egypt against other nations that had plagues the plagues probably killed men women and children as well and God here God used microbes to do it he used small microbial soldiers to kill men women and children and it possibly may have been more suffering from a plague than from being killed by an by a soldier you know so I mean it's still a difficult terrible thing but God chose to end these people's lives and have a judgment against their their civilizations because of the grave depravity of evil they engaged and I think that in the book of Genesis like Genesis 15 God prophesized to Abraham that his people his descendants will be kept in bondage in a land that's not their own referring to the Exodus and that it will take 400 years before the and vomits out the canaanites to wait till their iniquity grows to know what's coming to the gross the fullness wonderful it's Amazon but they left again the benefits is video if the lost Canaanite coming in here to have his say you know sorry continue yeah so that the the idea here is talking about the amma rights and that it's just fifteen that four hundred years will pass until they're vomited from the land that their iniquity grows to you know they've reached their maximum level of sinfulness child sacrifice by fire think things like this they were engaged in and so if god is allowed to take human life and he's allowed to use various methods to do that then doesn't he have that right as the author of human life and so that is another option that that can be taken that's historical another option that we could take is to say that these passages in the old testament do not literally describe actual killing of non-combatants that these are what you would call exaggerated warfare rhetoric that they don't actually narrate these events happening that they were written centuries later during the United Kingdom of Israel and the purpose of these passages you know leave none that breathe slay man woman and child the purpose of these passages is to underscore for the people of Israel at that time which is long after the Canaanites is to have nothing to do with with pagan influences now some will say well look you're just coming with that because you can't stomach the literal sense so you have to make this up to make yourself feel better and only that's the case because when you read the actual biblical text I believe you can arrive at this conclusion that many of these passages you find them in books like the book of Joshua and the book of Joshua has a lot of warfare rhetoric it's about the conquering of the promised land but then when you go into books like the book of Judges you get a very different story about the Amalekites and the Canaanites they're not completely destroyed they hound Israel for a very long time and rather their religious shrines are torn down and they're driven from the land they're vomited out of the land so it's really more of a matter of typical ancient near-eastern warfare conflict and that these descriptions leave none that Bri would be on par with saying how the basketball game go oh we slaughtered them that doesn't mean they're wiping off blood from the basketball court a good book on this is written by Paul Capano matthew flanagan called did god really command genocide okay and i think it puts forward a decent argument that it is that the the non-literal view of the passages makes sense of our our understanding of it and neither another resource I'd recommend though would be Pope in at the sixteenths Apostolic exhortation verbum Domini in there he talks about the dark passages of Scripture and the Catechism mentions this how there are elements of scripture that are imperfect and provisional that are meant as temporary rules and directives for God's people until they can reach the fullness of what God wants to offer them in Christ the prime example that would be divorce God allowed in the law Deuteronomy allows the evil of divorce to prevent Aquinas said it was to prevent the greater evil of wife murder that was his belief that God you have hardened hearts I'm gonna give you an imperfect law so you can fall snuffer out yeah but it's not forever and we do this the same today like how could someone do that like well I might have to say you know what abortion is legal in the case of rape but it's illegal in other cases why did I give that law if I'm a legislator because I know it's the only one you guys will follow if I ban abortion in all cases on the law will just be ignored or I'll be voted out but isn't there a difference between allowing divorce and commanding genocide okay sure and so the difference here is that when you have things that are that are required based on certain historical contexts once again we would go back to that God did not say that the Israelites could make a judgment for themselves about you can take human life whenever you feel like in the sense of now that it would be even worse I'd say to allow genocide in the sense of you can end the life of any human being you feel as necessary just like you can write a writ of divorce in fact God specifically commanded Israel to not go to war with other nations to leave leave to not get into fights with Moab the Moabites for instance but here God is restricting and exercising his authority that he rightly has to take human life if that is what he did to exercise it in a very did circumstance rather than giving some kind of a general command or an allowance but I leaned towards the view that it is that it's non-literal based on all the elements in the passages okay but finally what I would what I would put forward here is that if there's an atheist who is struggling with this and believes atheism is a better option I don't think that's the I don't think that's the case because this reveals that the person has a deep sense of moral revulsion to certain kinds of evils they believe that there are these moral facts that God is apparently in violation of and so its morality is not just someone's opinion then it would be okay so you're where is the foundation for you for you believe in moral fact that you should like do you believe you should never kill non-combatants in war to directly target them that it's always wrong to rape for example the problem here is that if you're an atheist I'll ask you well what is your moral system what is your what is your foundation for morality and any foundation of morality can lead to these kind of repugnant consequences hmm so this doesn't refute Christianity it more refutes objective morality because I would say well what's something goes say well whatever's reasonable whatever promotes the most well-being yep flourishing you know whatever there's lots different things you could hash out so I said okay then under your view all right if genocide or rape promoted the most well-being in certain cases it would be justified to engage in those activities so they if they believe it they have to say yes so they could try to say well yeah but that would never happen and I might say how do you know that given the the billions of different moral decisions people have to make throughout the world how can you be so confident that these particular acts would not create not improve well-being in certain situations you'd have to be omniscient to make some kind of a claim like that so what's interesting here is that any moral system you have it could lead to these kinds of consequences now I believe that because God just is the good itself and he's written the good within our hearts and within our natures we have a firm foundation at least to the specific moral obligations that we have to one another can we have to other kinds of morality that are present but I think when people object to this what I would you know I would say to them is what is your ultimate standard for good and evil itself and then I think that the theistic understanding about the Christian understanding of it answers the question in a better sense but I think if we look at that yeah this is a this is a problem but I do not believe that when we look at this it certainly makes us ask very difficult questions that we should ask but it's not an insoluble one and there are different valid proposals that are offered that do not require someone to shed their Christian faith and so I I think that we should just see which of those proposals one should one should take but once again the presence of difficulties does not show a belief system is false it just shows it's a belief system okay it doesn't not necessarily could be false but we got to think hard about it well let's ask the question then why it suppose I believe that there's an explanation to the universe which is personal why should I choose Christianity of other religions why are you a Christian well I would say that I am a Christian because Jesus Christ vindicated his claims to divinity through the miracles he performed through his teaching through his radical sense of identity of claiming an exclusive relationship to the Father one of being the father's divine son and that he ultimately vindicated those claims by rising from the dead I think that when it comes to choosing Christianity we are now moving from the area of philosophy to the area of history we're making a historical analysis ok and we see as God entered into history and revealed himself and I think that there are good reasons to believe that God became man and he taught and did the things that are described in the New Testament and including making claims to divinity and claiming to be the father his only begotten Son and then rising from the dead to vindicate those claims so it all goes back to Jesus it all goes back to him and this is helpful because I think that sometimes some Catholic students like say high school students go to college and they go out and they look down the Memorial Union or wherever and they see at orientation all the different clubs and organizations and for some may have been their first time to have been exposed to other religions there's the Protestant group there's Hallel the Jewish group there's the Muslim group the Hindu group and suddenly you're like well Who am I to say that all these people are yeah well how can I pick this religion out of all the others where would I even begin if I tried to pick a different religion and I had to do this I had to look at different religions and I did look at the different major religions but feeling might so I you're gonna look at every single yeah belief system in the world well I I there's one I can start with most major belief systems have a belief about Jesus mm-hmm so Islam would say that Jesus is the Prophet ISA but he did he's never claimed to be God they believed he was born of a virgin didn't claim to be divine and didn't rise from the dead Jews would say his eccentric rabbi never claimed to be God didn't rise from the dead Muslim or Hindu other Eastern practitioners would say that Jesus is a guru but he's not the only God become man he didn't experience a bodily resurrection so for me if I go through this belief about Jesus wait a minute if I can show Jesus is divine and did rise from the dead well then I've got it I've got the religion to be a part of and all of these other ones all these major ones are off the table because they do make claims about Christianity that are contradictory rockem so so why think what Christianity says about Christ is true why should I believe a story that was written 2,000 years ago that I can no longer investigate someone might say well then here when I had these conversations people once again this goes back to what we discussed earlier I want to have conversations and ask people questions I always want to see what standards do you use to determine what is true or not and are you applying those standards in an even way and frankly Catholics could do this too there I mean they give a little bit of not self criticism but just for us I think sometimes Catholics are more than happy to accept pious fictions about saints yeah like just to say that any story a person hears about a saint and they just love that story they just immediately accept that it's true when it may not be the case just because the church canonized as an individual for example it doesn't follow that single-storey talked about that person is true that the church endorses it so I think that sometimes that even Catholics and this goes back to we said earlier about confirmation bias we all suffer from it and so that's why being a gadfly and makes people upset I write I wrote the book what the Saints never said oh maybe I can make more people mad maybe I can write of a call what the seats never did yeah I guess an example you probably know some examples what are some things that Catholics would be upset were you to tell the night if every saint didn't do this or that I've been doing a study on on early church history for example and going through I'm making a historical series for my subscribers at Reverend podcast.com I'm hoping to do it as like kind of a class for our school of apologetics and so I think I've got up to I'm starting at the fourth century now but I reading stories of the the early same well let me ask you one if you come well I have one it's st. Agatha she was the twelve-year-old girl who she was brought forward for being a Christian by suitors that she wouldn't marry them because they believed because they weren't religious and then she was condemned but the story goes that as she was like being dragged away like her hair miraculously grew long enough she was dragged away naked through the streets and her hair grew miraculously long enough front to to cover her body parts and just other other things with the Saints there's different stories about them you know miracles being associated with them no I'm not opposed I do believe that Saints can perform miracles can happen throughout church history I firmly believe that but the problem is that many of these stories are told hundreds of years later and we lose a connection to that that primary source and so here like I think reading the homily of st. Ambrose which is written probably about about 50 years after Saint Agatha he confirms the major biographical elements of her martyrdom I believe that she existed and was martyred there's a good case for that but she he doesn't mention like the other miraculous elements and we see this other stories about saints that get embellished hundreds of years later but when we come to the person of Christ and we come to the testimony of the Gospels and of the Apostles we see the testimony is is very early within the first few decades of the church's existence and it fact within the first few years of the church's existence we see belief in Jesus's resurrection from the dead that's far too short to have a legendary development what creed before we talk about where the Christ rose from the dead we have to decide whether the New Testament documents are reliable so why should I think the New Testament documents are reliable well I would say that it is possible to believe Christ rose from the dead even if you are skeptical of the reliability the New Testament documents even if you accepted the view of the New Testament documents were and this is the view that I had before I became Christian even if you believed that they were just the writings of human beings and they have errors in them that doesn't mean that they're historically bankrupt I mean look for example at ancient Roman historians in the Great Fire of Rome it's recorded by three sources Tacitus Swit Aeneas and Cassius Dio record when what was Nero doing when Rome burned you here the Nero fiddled while Rome burned but those three sources give us very different interpretations of what happened to Nero some people say he was at the Tower of my sin a some people say he started the fire as I said he was he was away from the city at the time but those differences don't mean there was no fire in Rome at that time gotcha that you know that doesn't discount the course I'm generally reliable even if there are errors within it right and I'm not saying the New Testament has errors in it what I'm saying is if you approach it like I did as a skeptic I'm saying okay these are some Greek manuscripts that are attesting to the existence of the Jesus Movement of the first century led by a rabbi named Jesus with these apostles and disciples connected to him what are the bedrock historical facts that I can take from this what is what can I drill down and be certain of John Mayer is a Catholic scholar though he doesn't embrace everything that the Church teaches he's kind of moderate / liberal on some things and in his book of marginal Jew he talks about what would you do imagine you got a Christian an atheist a Jew in you lock them in Harvard library and you ask them I want you to write a book on Jesus and don't come out till you agree with each other what would that book say it's interesting and so that has been kind of the motto behind the the quest for the historical Jesus the idea that all right even if you don't believe Jesus rose from the dead so you don't believe this is the Bible's inspired Word of God you can believe it's a collection of historical documents what is the bedrock you can you could take from it now I do believe you can take from that that it is a generally reliable set of documents when you compare them to other documents written in the ancient world I believe that we can know who the authors were of these documents and that they wrote in a time and place where they would have had access to these truths I guess I'll go through a list of things that make me think there they're generally reliable first I think that the Coletti selection of the authors at least for the synoptic Gospels bodes well for their authenticity that later in church history when forged Gospels were composed like the gospel of Peter the Gospel of arrived when people would choose very famous authors to forge but if you were making up a gospel why would you pick Matthew who is one of the lower rung of the Apostles former tax collector he's on the lower rung of authority and who were Mark and Luke they're not even apostles why would you even pick these people well because there's a solid tradition evinced in the writings of st. Paul Paul talks about Luke the beloved physician he talks about Marco traveling companion companion but it would make sense that okay these make sense reading through these documents that these are the people who wrote them and they have connections to the Apostles themselves they also reveal things within the Gospels that don't sound like legendary things or hearsay so when you read other ancient documents at this time like not at this time set at this time to give a good comparison there was a in like the third century I think whose several hundred years later there was a biography composed of a real Wonder worker who was believed to have lived at the time of Jesus named Apollonius of Tyana and so he was said to have raised the dead and performed miracles and that he himself rose from the dead but the problem is there's only one source for Apollonius who came from a city that no longer existed I think it was Demetrius there was one source for Apollonius it was written two or three hundred years after the events of reports to describe and it was written in competition with gianna tea was written by a Roman ruler at the time who wanted a competitor to the Christian story even within the document itself it's very vague it says things like it is said that Apollonius did this and some say Apollonius did that and even Apollonius his resurrection from the dead it's just the end of the story a Polonius's followers after he dies are drawing geometric shapes in the ground and thinking to themselves and one of them wakes up from sleep and says that Apollonius he's alive and he's appeared to me and that's basically just like the end end of the story there it's not like what we have in the writings of st. Paul or in the Gospel accounts so we don't have these exaggerations these hearsay we don't have legendary embellishments Jesus doesn't perform mere it's not like the gospel say and then Jesus performed this mighty miracle and raised the temple ten feet above the ground and yet the Jews still would not believe in him you know there's a man rising from the dead more of an argument than the temple rising from the ground I mean I could see someone pushing back on you and saying it absolutely does contain these these mythical embellishments you're just not thinking them of them as myth no because when you compare them to let's take the gospel of Peter for example what I mean by mythical is written in a way purely to as an apologetic written purely as a way to convince people of the story rather than to transmit that the story is true for example in the gospel of Peter the resurrection which was written the hundred hundred fifty years later where legends are starting to creep in there at the resurrection at Jesus when Jesus rises from the dead the Romans are there the Jewish leaders are there the crowds are there so hey they were there they saw Jesus walk out of that tomb and not just Jesus angels come down and the angels or 500 feet tall and Jesus is like a thousand feet tall and that actually I when I used to share this story changed my mind on things I used to say that the cross came out of the tomb and it said have you preached to those who sleep in the cross says yeh but I was reading an article a year ago by mark good occurr who was a wonderful New Testament scholar and he is he wrote a book called the case against Q which is dealing with New Testament source material really good guy and he thinks that the best better translation of that is it's not talking about the cross but the crucified one I or Jesus enough so but here but once again I I believe one thing but I'll follow evidence where it goes and will change how I approach certain things so that in that account of gospel of Peter it's very legendary and embellish whereas when you look at the Gospel of Mark yes very much it's reserved it doesn't even mention like it says a young man in white doesn't even say he's he's an angel though that seems to be what's implied there and only the women go to the tomb to sue is that not even the other apostles so it has those elements such as the idea that women are the first ones to discover the tomb which even someone like Dale Allison who wrote a good book on the resurrection of Jesus I think he's still agnostic on the question but he says that is powerful evidence to say that why is this testimony included that women discovered the empty tomb unless that's just what happened it's very wise why was that a embarrassing detail well it's embarrassing detail because at that time women's testimony was generally considered to be unreliable especially within first century Judea within a Jewish context Second Temple Judaism under the Talmud a woman could only testify in court whether her words were only considered trustworthy if she was verifying whether she had achieved the age of menstruation or whether her previous husband had died if there was a dispute about her her current marital status but otherwise the examples in ancient literature of the testimony of women considered to be reliable is very slim I mean some critics have tried to say well Josephus includes the testimony of women who survived the Battle of the fortress of Masada I think but even there the reason Josephus includes it is he tries to beef up their credentials to say that oh they're the daughter of this important person to show they're trustworthy and they were the only survivors so we have to go with what they say because they're the only ones that made it out of there but so that's important that that adds elements of especially the fact that it's embarrassing lends to its credibility yeah it lends to its credibility we also have multiple sources we don't just have one source we have the different gospel accounts especially the resurrection and even if you weren't as open to the accounts of the Gospels which I believe they're they're good evidence we have the writings from st. Paul and this is very helpful Paul is a skeptic who is converted he had first-hand knowledge the other apostles he knew these people so I think many atheists have a kind of historical very historically skeptical like if I can't see it on YouTube I'm not gonna believe it but that's just not how we do ancient history yeah we have a lot like if you look at like the story of you watch Braveheart you know William Wallace right movie it is a great movie but our first source about William Wallace is like a hundred and twenty years later from a blind minstrel and yet no one's like a exist he'd never existed that movie never I think it's in the Scott a cronic on we get our first decent account of who he is but many of these other individuals throughout history there's there are significant time gaps or limited witnesses to to describe it whereas with Paul I mean we there are I mean there there are new to there's sorry there are scholars when it comes to saying whether Jesus even existed there's there's a consensus among New Testament scholars I think there may be only like I could count on my two hands the people with the relevant PhDs who say he didn't exist when it comes to saying Paul never existed even those guys who say Jesus never existed they'll say Paul existed it won't go that far so we know Paul existed we know he wrote at the very minimum Romans first second Corinthians and Galatians we know what a bare minimum he wrote these letters and that's just not to speed in the academic world and that here we have in Corinthians Paul 1st Corinthians chapter 15 st. Paul transmits to us what appears to be a creed that he had received from others possibly when he went to Jerusalem to confirm the gospel he talks about this in Galatians 1:19 he went up to meet he went up to meet the apostles but he saw Peter and no one else except for James the Lord's brother kinfolk some say cousin some say I'm inclined to the view stepbrother we could talk about in the Catholic stuff but another thing I changed my mind on a little bit forward to that so when we when we look at that okay he's interactive the apostles he gives us this Creed Jesus died he was buried he rose again on the third day and he appeared to Peter dealer disciples to to what the twelve five hundred others then finally to to him himself mhm and so we've got all this and when we put it together I think that other hip-hop sieze don't explain the data as well I don't think that basically the two biggest competitors are hallucination versus resurrection like the view that Jesus faked his own death or that the Apostles faked it I don't even think many I don't find many skeptics embracing that view I think most will say it was some kind of a hallucination they thought Jesus rose from the dead and they went out to preach that and for me that really doesn't explain why a skeptic like Paul would convert he wouldn't have a grief and do the ideas they felt they were really sad and to console their grief the Apostles thought Jesus rose from the dead yeah to console them so matter how you or I might have a grief induced vision of a bereaved person yeah but the thing is most of us even today people who have grief induced bereavement visions grief induced hallucinations of the Dead I had a very vivid dream after a friend of mine died I gave the eulogy at her funeral this is actually I had before I gave before the funeral when I first heard about it I had this dream that I thought was real oh well I thought the dream was real and then I woke up now that was what I was just a dream but even in those bereavement visions people don't think their loved one has risen from the dead they don't they they think like oh they're in heaven and they're okay why wouldn't we think that the Apostles would have said oh Jesus is in Abraham's bosom he's okay why would you think that there's a resurrection Jews believe that the resurrection wouldn't take place until the end of the world anything their past experience with failed messiahs wouldn't even necessarily lead to grief if I were you know we had the passion the movie Mel Gibson's the passion it's a great movie Mel Gibson might be kind of a squirrelly guy but man he knows how to direct films I couldn't he's a great actor he is terrific I love him and in ransom you remember the old movie ransom is kinky so his kid gets kidnapped and he's on the phone like you're not gonna get a cent me is on the phone he's like get me back by sidon yeah he's so great he's great but with the passion you had Peter I remember that scene it's like raining and he's weeping ya know that's kind of more like Mario I would think it'd be firmly it would make perfect sense actually that if Jesus is supposed to be the Messiah and he's been killed that is not supposed to happen to the Messiah he's supposed to be a conquering hero okay if I repeat I had mad I left my family I left my livelihood I followed you for three years and look what's look what's happened now the objection is people will say people follow people all the time now and to preserve their cognitive dissonance see my mind is always pinball they wouldn't have arguments and this is I know you're debating people are out here that's great but that's important for us when we committed our choice and you always want to try to think what is the counter that can be given to this and what is the strongest position I could be dealing yeah people have followed but it's true some people have followed cults and the prophecies done don't come true some of them leave in they're angry and realize they were duped other people continue and they have cognitive dissonance and they try to make an explanation up for it but here the explanation I would make up would just be that he's he's raining in heaven not that he's actually risen from the dead because it's great is that's not falsifiable at all they they preached in Jerusalem that Jesus has risen from the dead you could go and in a semi-arid climate like Jerusalem Jesus's body would still be fairly recognizable even if the apostles didn't believe this you would think there would still be a record of sort of a polemic interest the Jews saying we have found his bones and he is still with us much as saying that even in the time of Justin Martyr in the second century he wrote a dialogue with the Jewish rabbi tri fo or Truffaut and in their rabbi Truffaut says to Justin Martyr while those disciples they stole jesus' body and this is what we know and so even in the second century the polemics against Christianity were you had the disciples stole the body yeah was the Jewish critique the pagan critique by people like Celsus when origin is writing against Celsus was you believe the words of hysterical women mm-hmm so even then the words of women were not considered yeah reliably the time of celsus and so here it's like oh well then we would expect if they were simply making this up or it hallucinate 'add Jesus in heaven is better than an actual risen bodily resurrection for Jesus and so in any case they weren't preaching that Jesus was in heaven they were preaching resurrection honest Aussies and for Jews especially for Paul who was a Pharisee the resurrection was physical Philippians 3:21 Paul says he will transform our lowly bodies the resurrection is not just getting a spiritual body and some critics will say what Paul means the 1st Corinthians 15 as Christ rose from the dead but only in a spiritual body but and it does say he has a spiritual body but that's like saying you know the Bible is a spiritual book but if I throw it at you it's gonna hurt you no it just means that's its orientation not in substance so the idea is he has a spiritual incorruptible body because God's Spirit now animates it as now he's now filled with it it's a resurrected glorified body and we all because what Paul is dealing with in Corinthians when he's talking about the resurrection of Jesus he's not arguing that Jesus rose from the dead his argument is that no we will rise from the dead because Jesus rose from the dead because Jesus rose from the dead we can know that we will rise from the dead all right Jesus is the firstfruits of the resurrection and he's also dealing with people in Corinth who think that so if I rise from the dead then am I gonna be as like a zombie or the bones and the bone box is gonna come out and it's gonna be like the skeletons and jason and the argonauts a wonderful old film by the way you should watching our kids got the great claymation skeleton warriors how do you have so much time to watch YouTube and do apologetics I don't know but he's telling the Corinthians no you're not gonna rise is like zombified corpses you are going to have spiritual incorruptible bodies this perishable has to put on the imperishable that but we will be transformed he says in things like Philippians 3:21 in 1st Corinthians 15 and so Jesus is the same way he was raised and his body was transformed into his glorious resurrected body and that's why the resurrection is something we can look forward to okay and so when I when I put all of this together I don't think the hallucination hypothesis explains the fact that they're preaching a bodily resurrection and for me if I thought my friend rose from the dead I would check her coffin if it was empty I'd have questions the empty tomb which I think there's there's good evidence for that the the fact that Jesus was seen not just by individuals but by groups of people that collective hallucinations are exceedingly rare thing that all goes together for me that I think that even if the New Testament you just looked at it as a bunch of historical documents I think it points the fact that Jesus did something that that he rose from the dead vindicated who he who he is and for me and my conversion experience when I looked at other religions I did not see similar kinds of miracle claims I just know I like for example you look at Buddhism Buddha refused to do miracles the first miracles that are ascribed to him in a collection of works called the Pali Canon they were written like 400 years after after he lived he refused the biographies of him said he refused to do miracles he said they're not they're not important so why do i why would I believe in them yeah you go to Muhammad and the the Muhammad the alleged miracles Muhammad did were written far later in a collection of traditions and stories called the hadith but the Quran itself does not ascribe miracles to Muhammad it says you are a messenger you are but a messenger the miracle that purports to establish the truth of Islam is that the Quran is apparently something that is so beautiful and unique no person could have possibly composed it well I also look like how my declaration of love to my wife just won her over she didn't need any other evidence it was how I spoke it to her yes it I do mr. Crowl right like has to be divinely inspired but just because something's unique doesn't be right just because something is unique and the idea is you can't imitate the qur'an's beauty prose style and though people have have done that just because something's unique it doesn't follow that it's divinely inspired I mean I think avatar was really unique movie but I don't think Steven Spielberg was sent by God so you know so I think that and then you go to other and I've tried and I think it's important I've looked at the evidences for other worldviews and and I don't think they're as strong as for what Christianity offers same with Mormonism and the testimony of Joseph Smith I do not think is as reliable as the testimony we have for Jesus's resurrection and it's also there's there's there's evidence against that view this is this is a bit of a bit of a tangent but I want to ask it because I've been dying to ask somebody you know Louis famously talks about the trilemma either someone who claims to be God is either a lie lunatic or Lord yes Joseph Smith claimed to receive a revelation so what do you say is he a lunatic a liar or a legitimate prophet what we have to or demonically influenced it seems like those would be a four options doesn't it there are different options to explain Mormonism and the alleged original revelation or first vision of Joseph Smith and we didn't have to go all the way down this we don't we don't have to I'm not gonna go to super far down point yeah I think here we have to understand that Lewis's trilemma deals to the fact that Jesus is making very radical claims Jesus is not merely claiming to be a prophet if Jesus were claiming that I have received a message from God well that's something there's another option you could put in there I was honestly miss unless they were on golden tablets or something well you said like you felt like you were praying and you felt like you heard God's voice speak to you like that's not that far out the realm of responsibility to put you into lunacy okay I think that you felt you heard God speak to you but if you think you're God that's a bit of a territory so that was Lewis's point that he's not just a good teacher or even a prophet who is this point was that the claim Jesus makes is so grand yes yeah so one could believe that they are hearing God's voice and they might not necessarily be a lunatic right but if you're claiming to be divine the God himself I say that gets a bit more detached from reality fair enough so like it's possible Muhammad thought that he had received revelations from God as the Quran in prayer and he wrote them and he wrote them down when we look at Joseph Smith there's a variety of I haven't done I've written a booklet on Mormonism but I haven't done I'm probably gonna write a book length treatment of it in the next few years or so because we really need one of the reasons when I pick my books Matt what ones I want to write I think to myself am i interested in the subject now and have other Catholics written on it and it really amazes me there are so many things Catholics have not written on you know I am just baffled okay you got a lot of work to do others well right then yeah and I don't know why we can't but we need a updated book on all these things so I probably do more of a study on Mormonism in the future but the revised Joseph Smith one he could be a charlatan we know that he was a treasure hunter before and he engaged and he's engaged in behaviors and things that you know trying to acquire for himself many wives as possible and engaging in behaviors that would question his moral conduct so he could be something a deceiver or charlatan he could be someone who wanted to try to lead people to God and so he thought he was genuinely receiving a vision from people I mean even if I grant everything a Mormon would propose saying that well he discovered these golden plates and tried to translate them maybe he did discover some kind of artifact it doesn't follow though that it actually these golden plates really describe God actually yeah I'm sending Jesus to North America to witness to the Native Americans or the ancient Israelites traveling from Israel to the new world on boats it also makes me skeptical that because five years before the Book of Mormon was published in 1830 there was another book published at the time called a view of the Hebrews that says that the Hebrews came to the new world on boats and that's the Native Americans came from so I'm like that's not that original thesis so I think it could be a combination of theories but but all of them and also some people say well Joseph Smith couldn't have come up with this story on his own well actually his mother does say that he was as a child he was very good at telling stories fanciful ones about living with Native Americans stuff like that but it's also possibly could have had helped other people may have helped him compose the Book of Mormon fair enough in case my point is I examining it I I do think that there are plausible natural explanations and also I guess the big problem I have with Mormonism is not just even not just well there are natural explanations for what it claims but what it claims seems to be contradicted by a wide variety of evidence such as the lack of archaeological finds in the new world to say there was because Mormon isn't unlike Christianity Mormonism makes the claim that there were these large civilizations that existed in the new world that did certain things that archaeologists haven't find for example if you take a bunch of atheists and you ask them you take atheists non-christians whatever and you give them the Bible and you say can you tell us if this stuff happened or where this took place a theist could take the Bible and say this is the general area where these things were believed to have happened and we have found Jericho we have found different sites within the ancient Aries to verify these biblical accounts and even atheist will say it was basically in this area okay but Mormons from the Book of Mormon cannot even agree on the general location of where the events took place some will say that it took place between North and South America some say it took place in a very small part of land in Central America some people think it took place all around like the Great Lakes but they're not an agreement that just shows I think that what is transcribed in the Book of Mormon is not a divinely revealed history of the new world but rather a series of fictional stories that were put together fair enough and so and so for me I don't see that same kind of objection but following the New Testament when people try to say mark got this wrong or Luke got this wrong when actually when we do more archaeological evidence we actually find a lot of corroborating evidence to talk about yeah they actually to get it right is it true that the New Testament is the best attested work of antiquity that we have and what does that mean well we me my best attested we're usually talking about manuscript evidence so we're talking about the science of textual criticism so some people will say well how can we trust the Bible we don't have the original documents and that's true they've been destroyed they're written on papyrus they've faded away they're gone and we don't even have the copies of those we have copies of copies of copies how do we know that we can trust you can let him in nail if you want my dog the dog let's just hope it doesn't come in and knock over the lights continue right yeah papyrus they've been destroyed we so we do degree need copies but that is the case for any ancient document we don't have homers original Iliad right we don't have the Herodotus of home or we don't have the annals of the Roman historian Tacitus we don't have those originals or any copies near them but we can know what the original said by taking the surviving manuscripts and piecing them together you have this manuscript you have that manuscript this copy that copy and you compare them to one another to find what is the the best reading where do all the texts agree what the words are supposed to say and from there you can reconstruct the original text so my argument is that if we generally trust other ancient texts have been preserved to us to the present day then we should have more confidence in the new testament because we have more manuscripts so I think the best the second best attested work in the ancient world would probably be the Iliad Homer's Iliad penned around the Year 800 ad the oldest manuscript copy I think has been dated to about 400 AD so the first like fragments might be about 400 years later but but the ultimately the amount of fragments we have of the Iliad I think are about close about 1200 1200 manuscripts of varying sizes and the first complete manuscript is Venna tus a which was from the Middle Ages which is like 1500 years 1800 years better contrast that with the the Bible we have it look at this this little dog sit down sit hmm now you'll find love it look at this guy can I see him stay you know what you is you're a Catholic you should name him a nassima you can say anathema sit I know that joke is pretty well worn it was an Australian who said when I have a dog I'm gonna name him the people so that at least once a day I can say I'm going to feed the people and it'll just make me feel good that we can keep going yes we certainly can so when we when we load up at him I don't start patting him he won that is so it I feel like we're on the set of like mr. Rogers or Sesame Street he's like a muppet who's popped his head up to the top with us so we're gonna go to the when we compare the New Testament documents it's different we have close to 6,000 ancient Greek new manuscripts dated at very various intervals but we have a decent number of manuscripts within even just the first few hundred years you compare that to the Iliad the first fragments are four hundred years later the first complete copy of the New Testament is three hundred years later there's many manuscripts before that the earliest copy earliest fragment we have would be p52 it's a credit card sized manuscript of the Gospel of John and it's been dated to about 125 ad found in Egypt but there are scholars who thought that John was written in the year 150 and so that little fragment destroyed all of those hypotheses it couldn't been written in 150 there's a copy in Egypt by 125 so when you so when you have all these and that's not to mention there are thousands of more copies in slavonic Latin dick we have so many and then the final icing on the cake is we don't just have the manuscripts to find out what the original said if you got rid of the New Testament manuscripts you could reconstruct almost the entire New Testament through quotations my church fighters is that accurate yes yes there is a the quote I have from that comes from the book called the textual transmission of the New Testament by Bruce Metzger and Bart airmen mm-hmm so Bruce is a very conservative New Testament scholar and Bart is agnostic to say the least so he doesn't consider the New Testament that reliable but he's willing to admit where the reliability we have on the textual transmission comes from that you could generally reconstruct it from and so these writings from the Church Fathers do help us to find out when there are certain variant readings of the text but usually these are even when it's minimal yeah they're minimal at the most trivial ones are when a name is misspelled or there's a different location of the words because in Greek the location of the words not as important as its spelling right English the location is very important freaka sighs okay similar to Latin so but when you but when there are differences they're not even that big and people try to blow them out of proportion like in the Gospel of Mark beginning of Mark's Gospel it says at the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God mm-hmm and there are some manuscripts that do not have the phrase son of God in it so some people will say oh well they they added son of God later just say Jesus is divine a mark never did Mark never thought Jesus was son of God I was it was added later it's not in some of the manuscripts all right tight to the right to kick the dog out man the dog sinks and actually got some scotch did you need the sky I didn't need to it just it just happened it's a great scotch and then we looked at the clock we've been so in that you know wrapped up man this is fantastic this is such a gift I could not believe it's two o'clock now at a time we were Lahaie him all right so we were talking about we were wrapping up the whole Christianity bit we by the New Testament documents reliable we talked about the attestation yeah and so there are there are differences in the manuscripts but they don't compound or you know risk any major doctrines we believe and many of them are understandable I gave the example at the beginning of Mark's Gospel some manuscripts don't call Jesus the Son of God but we should not conclude that Mark didn't believe Jesus was the son of God or it's a foreign concept in mark chapter 15 the Roman centurion says surely this was a son of God now the term son of God in the ancient world could just mean a divinely favored person is not necessarily a confession that someone is is fully divine or anything like that but also there's only a few manuscripts that lack the term and the best explanation for why they do is that the words in Greek crease do is in the I think be in the genitive case so the O and you or the the omicron the epsilon the O and the you that we would transliterate the Greek alphabet or increase two and son of God would be a Oh Theo so they end in the same letters so a copyist just accidentally okay I've skipped it and so that happens in mein serious when you have a lot of manuscripts you're able to cross-reference them and get the best kind of reading so if you look in your Bible like look in your RSV Bible you'll see maybe a few words here are they're in brackets or there's an asterisk at the bottom it will say some manuscript manuscripts say this yeah but overall when you compare it to other works I mean it's it's mind-boggling you look at the works of Tacitus I think the first five books of the Roman histories of Tacitus we have one copy from like the 11th century the 10th century a thousand years later right we can't compare it to any we've got good reasons I think the New Testament documents are reliable yeah it's before you agree with whether what's written in them is right or not right a correct or not yeah the manuscripts don't show the original is true it just shows it's been preserved okay so if it's been preserved well that's when Louis's trial EMA kicks in right and also that yeah so it's not a legend not an accretion over time and so when we see who Jesus says I think the best evidence from manuscripts from history put forward is that he was who he claimed to be the Divine Son of God who rose bodily from the dead and he established a church and so for me I started out after accepting that being Protestant for a while until I saw that ultimately that theology and worldview did not work for me and the Catholic perspective just made a lot more sense fair enough so let's talk about Catholicism yes let's do Catholicism man it's been it's viewed so differently by so many groups but I mean this is too much of us but everyone agrees if you've got a demon you need to get a Catholic priest yeah that's right no one's calling the first local Baptist whatever right the the local Methodist guy can you get down here yeah my wife's climbing on the ceiling well let's address kind of the maybe the elephant in the room or the biggest topic first and it doesn't have to do with where's purgatory in the Bible where's Pope in the Bible but why on earth be Catholic when it seems today that the Catholic Church is in many ways a very corrupt organization we've had bishops and laypeople and priests and popes in the past and even today perhaps who have made really bad decisions evil decisions have covered things up yeah I mean shouldn't we just call it quits shouldn't we just I mean why still be Catholic we should call it quits if the church is a social club okay we should leave if the point of being Catholic is this is how I was raised these are where my friends are this is how I like to spend my my Sundays it makes me feel better about myself if that's what you think the Catholic Church is for if it's a social club yeah you should probably be heading on your way out you know but what if it's more than that though then why the only way to ask should I quit has to be related to the question why would I stay so anything you quit whether you quit a job whether you quit a marriage whether you quit anything I would say we should say okay what are the reasons for quitting and what are the reasons for staying there's always going to be reasons to quit anything okay but then we have to say are the reasons for staying stronger do they outweigh them so like let's say oh the marriage what I would say is no you should not quit your marriage you made a promise to love another person and to be with them for the rest until death do you part another maybe extraordinary circumstances for preventing abuse of children for example to have something like a legal separation and that's a whole different issue but the end of the day you know my co-author Leila Miller has written oh she wrote made this way with me wrote a great book on divorce called primal loss yeah so you know there even when things are difficult you know it she talks about how the adult children of divorce suffer 10 20 30 50 years later from the trauma of divorce that some studies have shown divorce has a more traumatic impact on children than the death of a parent you know because at least if my parent died it's not like they left me yeah you know so my point to get back to that is yeah there's reasons to quit but you always have to ask what is the reason to stay and compare them so for me when I look at being Catholic what's the reason to stay well why is the reason I joined why'd it become Catholic I was moved by the Holy Spirit to see this is the church that God created this is the place where I can go to receive the Eucharist this is where I can receive the teachings of the Magisterium but the Holy Spirit will prevent from formally binding the faithful to some kind of an error or heresy and I when we deal with the issue especially of it seems like you can't you know you turn on the news or your web browser there's always kind of bad news out there we but we have to take things with a grain of salt that there is a book that I forget the author's is a book that just came out called the power of bad and it's a new book that's come out that negative thinking can overwhelm and our lives when it shouldn't it's like how I'm sure with the podcast it's like you could get a hundred comments on this episode like that was great but you've got one like but so he really dropped the ball it's all you think about but that's irrational why would you do that why don't the hundred other comments give you a bigger there's no amount of positive comments to give you that lift than more than the negative one does that's such a weird irrationality that we have but that's who we are the bet the power of bad overwhelms our lives and we irrationally give it more of a pedestal than what the power of good mm-hmm ought to have and so I would say you know when you look at the church and you're discouraged I would say one it's okay to be angry st. Paul says in his letter to the Ephesians be angry but do not sin don't give the devil an opportunity in your life it's okay to be angry I just don't recommend dwelling on because that's when it becomes cynicism and if Fester's in the soul rather turn it into something positive to pray for our church to pray for its continued renewal and to give God Thanksgiving for the good things what about the people that became Catholic at the Easter Vigil what about the family that's the couple that's celebrating their 50th renewal their wedding vows in church what about the baby they're baptized last Sunday like we don't feel the power of good from that like when we read another bad article citing bad things happening in the church we need to let that be present too for us now I am NOT saying we need to stick our heads in the sand and just avoid things that's not the case but I will say we should not allow it to take our peace that's something that we have no control over mm-hmm can if there is some controversy within the church that we do not have control over whatsoever should we let it take our peace absolutely not not if God exists in his sovereign and not at all and also we should not let it so we should pray for those who are involved and pray for growth and holiness in our church but then we should also ask just mentally philosophically why would I doubt the Catholic faith that Christ established this church even though there are there are problems within it there's no reason to think that the church would be free of a scandal or abuse or that we should always do things to protect people and always move towards good the church is always in need you know people always say oh the Reformation was a terrible thing and well I would say what Luther did was not a Reformation it was a revolution Reformation is a good thing just as the individual believer must always grow in holiness and sometimes we just really drop the ball yeah and you got to come to God and have reconciliation the body of Christ as a whole the church as a whole always has to reform and grow in holiness and sometimes the church you know really drops the ball I mean you look at the 10th century in the history of the church the name the nickname historians give to those pontificates of that century is the poor nah cracy like it was just dreaded but there's some examples oh goodness well you you had this examples of popes who had concubines mistresses you had I think it was Benedict the ninth who sold the papacy and then he got it back later another Pope dug up his predecessor and put him on trial you know so yeah yeah but in spite in spite of human weakness but then again that kind of fits in the pattern of who God chooses in Salvation history I mean if you think about it God picked Jeptha to help deliver people from bondage in the book of Judges and he ended up sacrificing his own child epyck Gideon who fell later into a dolla tree he picked David who was a murderer and an adulterer he picked Peter who was a coward that he he redeemed Paul who was a murderer who had persecuted Christians so God works with us and works through our brokenness to accomplish as good in the world and we have to turn in to ourselves and say God I'm gonna offer myself to you the good and the bad and when we're worried about things just remember what st. Peter wrote in 1st Peter chapter 5 he said cast all your anxieties on him for he cares for you so I think that there's things to be concerned about but they don't show that the church does not have a divine origin or foundation it shows that we need prayer and fasting and a commitment to personal holiness but also we have to remember that if you want to get away from sin and corruption and abuse it's not gonna happen yeah because even if you left amaz your with you that's right it was I think it was Groucho Marx who said I wouldn't join any club that would have me as a member and but that's that's the thing that if you look at the the data also that the the problems we see and look at the problems we see in the church you see financial scandals sexual abuse hypocrisy congratulations that's the human condition that's what we would that's what we we see everywhere you leave the church you're going to find that in Protestant churches Jewish temples there there are atheist conferences you go to that people have to sign a pledge saying they won't sexually harass people at the conference because they're always dealing with that anywhere and there are a hand I could think of a bunch of atheist rap top of my head who have been accused of sexual misconduct impropriety all this shows is that sin is a human problem but it does not have a human solution so my so the reason to stay what was the solution God gave us he gave us his church he gave us sacraments he gave us baptism to wash away original sin he gave us reconciliation to be able to come back to God when we've royally messed up and he gave us spiritual food in the Eucharist to sustain us on that journey I'm not leaving it I can't leave it and so I will ask God for help too to endure through that so we should have a realistic concern where there are problems but we also must not allow the power of bad to give us a distorted view of the world and this is anywhere I mean you ask people today people think that violent crime is that all those school shootings and crime and all this stuff actually according to the FBI statistics violent crime is at an all-time low but the problem is we live in a 24-hour news cycle and if it bleeds it leads so they have to fill it with stuff and people will tune in to bat so what would your recommendation be to those Catholics listening to this or watching this who maybe feel like they are spending too much time keeping up all the scandals in the church let's turn it off you pray you wolf I don't know what it is how am I gonna pray for the church well you pray for people all the time and you don't know what's going on in their lives if it is taking away your peace say again you have to determine now I'm not saying like nobody look what's happening know we can have a sober look at things but here's the thing it doesn't maybe people in the church you are putting a spotlight on corruption I think that that's that's fine when someone especially when someone is in an investigative investigative capacity I know people for example who are on review boards for diocese who review allegations of misconduct and are involved in investigating that I think the church would benefit a lot more from having these kinds of transparency to allow people to be - to have review and then you have this everywhere you always have whenever people have power you always have that the old Latin phrase who guards the Guardians yeah you have to have these safeguards and this accountability and that's everywhere but you had you find corruption in hospitals you'll find corruption in police departments that doesn't mean I'm gonna not call the cops when someone breaks in my house or I'm not gonna go to the doctor when I'm sick like sometimes I have to put up with if there's there's problem here and this is not new Saint Peter Canisius during the counter-reformation in the 16th century he's trying to get people out of Lutheranism and back to the church and most people left because the church was in it was terrible most priests couldn't read they had wives or concubines in violation of the celibacy regulations they were they were swindlers they were greedy and Kennedy said yeah you got a legitimate point here he said but you know what if I had a basket here with fresh fruit in it and the basket is is dirty and mangled but you're starving and you need this food just ignore the bats couldn't take the fruit and that's what he told people when it came through to the Eucharist so I had a guy call Catholic Answers live once and he said I haven't been to church in years I think the whole thing is messed up I said you know there's a lot of things messed up but I won't you know I don't want to go down the road but once again I don't I think that a lot of that is distorted by the power of bad biases but I agreed with him just for the argument yeah a lot of things are messed up then I asked him a question suppose you walk down the road and you found a diamond on the side of the road but it was covered in dog poop what would you do he said why would I guess I would stick my hands in it would suck but I'd wash it off and yeah I go to the diamond I'm like okay so you're willing to to wade through the muck to get something valuable as I asked him is God more valuable than a diamond yeah is God in the Eucharist is that Jesus on that altar every Sunday yeah so here's the thing to get to get to that diamond you don't even have to go through dog crap you just probably have to just sit through kind of a banal liturgy gather us in but for me you know what's funny about that I have a about liturgy I go you know I go to Byzantine right Byzantine I love it it reminds me of I love the Byzantine Rite because it feels like a continuous prayer it feels like when I go to Mass I have just said one single prayer I love it it's glorious and so and I go although sometimes I can't attend that or it's a daily Mass and I'll go to a Novus Ordo and yeah the music can be cheesy has other stuff I'm like what is going on here and so sometimes I'm like well there's Jesus up there and that's ultimately what matters but then other times I think sometimes we just have have an openness to that I will admit there are some songs that are sung at the Novus Ordo that I love in the same way that I love Phil Collins I don't feel collins isn't good but man it just makes me happy true ed zone I would sum with someone they bust out awesome god I am that 17 year old back at youth group and I'm like oh God is it awesome god he reigns simon brothah yeah well hand all the hands oceans but I know now I'm like that's not my preferred but I can appreciate it for for what it is but in any case away from from liturgy stuff yeah and he said yeah I think maybe I need to I need to go back and so here once again it's not saying like you got to go back this is Jesus I'm asking a question for that person to really confront the issue and so I think for that elephant in the room it's like look this is something the church has always dealt with and will always deal with while we are gripped and sin the Bible calls the devil the god of this world so we referred to in Corinthians the question is are we going to stand firm and hold fast so the graces God gave us through this church or just tell him he hasn't really done a good enough job with us so I think there's a balance to find in all of this okay here's another question because you reference baptism Eucharist confirmation sure why aren't you Orthodox wine I used to northa Doc's yeah and there are people Roger air is an example of this so Roger air is a conservative commenter and he left the church over the scandal which i think is a poor thing to do because frankly you look at studies I read one study that said this is as bad if not worse in Protestant churches and it's probably even worse in public schools so I'm sure you when you see these scandals in Jewish Orthodox temples of sexual abuse I'm sure they're skeletons hiding in the Eastern Orthodox closet right you know however decked out it is and like old like candles and stuff yeah you'll find this stuff everywhere it's not going to go away but drer tried to defend it by saying well i looked at the evidence for papal infallibility in the papacy and it's not all there it's inflated and I just disagree with that I think the biggest difference of course between being used Eastern Orthodox the and you and I belonged to Eastern Churches the Byzantine church is Eastern and after the Schism of 1054 which it wasn't a moment the Turks were growing apart for centuries but after that because there were people even in the year 1200 who thought that they were still part of the Catholic Church but we're in the East like what happened nobody tell me right yeah well they didn't have the bad news to log on the internet every day so but then after the schism there were a large segment of churches in the East who came back to Union the Orthodox came back to Union with the Pope and for me the papacy is a gift that God has given the church that makes sense it's one of the important things in being Catholic because you might say well I could have all that with you stern orthodoxy but here's a problem with that if the church is the kingdom of God you know Jesus says that the kingdom of God is now among us the kingdom of heaven now this is the kingdom of God on earth and shouldn't this kingdom be organized similar to the kingdom God also ran which was the Kingdom of Israel when we look at Israel God was the key of the king of Israel obviously God is sovereign over all the you had a king like David but then you also had the Prime Minister the fizzy R so in the sec 22nd chapter of the book of isaiah it talks about the the wicked shebna who would be replaced by the righteous alaya came as the prime minister he he is under the king but his authority over the kingdom is massive what he opens none shall shut what he shuts none shall open I shall give him the keys to the kingdom I believe Isaiah 22 22 actually even uses the phrase the house of in chapter 22 uses the phrase the house of David which is something actually rare to find in the Old Testament except in certain prophecies it's very important to talk about here so in of course if you recognize that language I give you the keys what you open done shall shut then you go fast forward to Peter and what Jesus does with Peter in Matthew 16:18 you were the rock I give you the keys to the kingdom on this rock I build my church and of course Catholics and Protestants will disagree process and say well no Peter's not the rock his confession of faith is the rock and actually the Catechism says the rock can refer to Peter and his confession of faith it has dual meanings my argument to that counter reply to that is this well if Peters not the rock why did Jesus change his name whenever God changes somebody's name and script the name is a clue to their destiny Abram becomes a Brahim the father of many nations you know people's names change and the same is true for for Peter why bother changing it has nothing to do with being the rock in the first place so so I would see it would make sense then that if Christ established his church who is the pastor of that church who's the pastor that any other even when human beings make organizations there's one guy on top there's the supreme is a general a president a prime minister it's like that episode of the office where Jim and and Michael are Co managers it's like you're with your co managers and Oscars like of course who wouldn't make co-managers what would Catholicism be without the Pope's right but that makes sense because that's what you have Eastern Orthodoxy because all of the bishops have this kind of equal Authority the church becomes fragmented and so what happens is there's a lot of stasis and so things can't possibly change or grow in the sense of authentic growth so to give you an example since the schism the Orthodox have not had an ecumenical council they can't call one they can't possibly do it no one I've talked to Orthodox friends they'll say well that's because the Pope would never agree to be a part of something like that I said okay well why not a pan Orthodox Council of just the Orthodox bishops well one guy can always just kind of they can't and so you're not able to address there's you don't have that unity that a person who is given a special authority from Christ to be you know the the first among bishops on the Orthodox say the bow has that title but it doesn't really mean much but when you go back to the New Testament it seems clear to me and even to many non Catholic commenters that Peter was given special Authority in the early church JND Kelly was an Anglican collared scholar says that Peter was undoubtedly the leader of the early church and this is mentioned more than anyone else put together he speaks for the group in Matthew chapter 10 when the Apostles are listed this is kind of funny Pete well you look at the Apostolic list and almost all of them who is last Judis mm-hmm and then who is who is first is Peter and in Matthew I think it's Matthew 10 - it uses the Greek word I think protei first you know first Peter but when you look at that word in lexicons it doesn't just mean first like in a numerical list it means like chief hmm like chief and if they're arranged that Judas is last the least important apostle then then Peter naturally is seen as the most important what's funny is even when people like the Orthodox or Protestants try to find examples in Scripture that try to show Peter did not have this Authority or he was not infallible it actually goes the other way like in Galatians chapter 2 Paul rebukes Peter at that Antioch and that was because Peter was preaching the gospel but he wouldn't go and eat with the Gentile he didn't want to he didn't want to offend the Jews with him and Paul's like come on man you say one thing and then you're not gonna dine with the Gentiles are setting a bad example Paul used the phrase he was not he was not ortho PO Dusen he was not walking upright in the faith well like you go to an orthopedic surgeon means get your back straight that's what Paul was saying you're not walking with a straight back you're not walking upright like this but here's what's interesting because it shows he's not infallible no it just shows Peter as he's want to do gaffes the Pope can make mistakes gee haven't we be talking about that one for a while but it doesn't take away from his authority in fact what's interesting here the fact that Paul in Galatians what he's trying to show people is not he is not beholden to human authority over and over again he says I didn't get the gospel as some mere human tradition I got it from God I got the gospel now I confirmed it I went to Peter in Galatians 1:19 it says that Paul went to Peter and Jerusalem to do a his story sigh which we get what word from you know history him that's right history sigh and Greek is a fact-finding mission he went to confirm it he's not beholden to human authorities as the ultimate source of his revelation said they do they don't bully him around Paul will stand for the truth and he'll even stand up to Peter now why he made wise make note of Peter because Peter has the most authority right I will even oppose Peter when he's wrong because he's not right about everything even though he is he has the most authority here and in the church and for me historically when you look at the writings of Ignatius of Antioch the letter of Clement the writings of st. Irenaeus going forward even among eastern father's like Maximus the Confessor I see a very clear historical trajectory that the apostolic orders are to continues to be apostolic succession but that one of the Apostles had Authority special authority of the others not in a tyrant not as someone who can boss everyone else around is like a dictator but as someone to provide leadership to the others to provide a cohesive whole and there's an element of this and in the Gospel of Luke if you remember the Apostles are debating amongst each other and they say they go to Jesus and say who's the greatest and now products and Protestants will say well Jesus should have said Peter he's the Pope or the Apostles should have known Peter is the Pope who's the greatest among us but notice what Jesus does not say he doesn't say there is no greatest your equals he says the greatest among you shall be a servant to the others and then immediately after that which we lose because it's Luke 22 Luke 23 yeah but after that section in Luke it's not chapter break it's a heading break because it's in the same chapter but we usually add a heading in America to show it's a different you know different thing that's being talked about it goes to where Jesus says to Simon Simon Simon Satan has wants to sift you like wheat you all as the plural in the Greek he wants to sift all of you y'all but I have prayed for you singular for your faith and then he tells him to go and strengthen his brethren so that so what's interesting here is that section takes place immediately after the greatest who is the greatest among us well the greatest shall be a servant and in fact since the the early church one of the titles of the papacy is the servant of the servants of God a great encyclical I'd recommend for especially you have an Eastern Orthodox listeners or others who might struggle with the papacy I would recommend pope saint john paul ii wrote an encyclical on this called bhoot unum sinked it's UT un UMS intu dunam seent that talks about how the papacy can provide unity in the church but without stamping out legitimate diversity and liturgy and other things like that and that's nice a painful lesson we had to learn in church history yeah I mean you have people saying like you can't you know use leavened bread or you can't do this in your liturgy no God is allowed a diversity of ways to be able to worship Him that each communicate different truths all while being United around very core truths that have been revealed to us so that's excellent well as you wrap up tell our listeners where they can learn more about you what book you're working on what if there was one book that you wrote that you would have them get what would it be sure go for it I'm working on if they want to learn more about what I'm doing I would recommend trend horn podcast comm I do three episodes a week two on apologetics and theology and one on Fridays or I just get to have fun so all kinds of all kinds interesting Sevigny the last one I did is some episodes there I talked about nuclear power what to do if you're arrested the worst movie lines in history but then that takes but then the other episodes during the week are on how to explain and you have conversations with non Catholics and I'm doing more videos actually on YouTube you can visit the Council of Trent YouTube page it's in its infancy right now so we'll put links up to these yeah description and if I forget text me and then I'll probably do it so check out Trenor and podcast com for more on that and to support what we're doing there I have a book on socialism coming out can a Catholic be a socialist I wrote that with an economist Katherine bucolic from CUA and the answer is no but we we explain more what does it mean to be a socialist were the problems we history theology economics great book it should be out here in a month or two and then the next books I'm writing got a lot on the plate I if there's one book I'm I'm thinking of working on is a book for atheists yeah I'm writing a book and I want to write is it's gonna be a free book it's gonna be book you could download on Kindle for free you could just order it a dollar a copy we'll get it underwritten and I want to be a book you could give to an atheist because I don't really know a book like why were Catholic would work like I have so people if there's one book of mine to get just get why we're talking like I'm agree with that's excellent even if you know all of its contents inside and out why we're Catholic it's an introduction you should get it because it's the perfect book to give away to another person it really is I would rather have people sitting here rather than read another apologetics book ask someone who's not Catholic why what do they believe and why do they believe that and to have that conversation you can give them the book and just say I like this book it was helpful for me I want to see what you think of it in fact the reason I was very careful with the title why we're Catholic because I didn't I wanted this book to be something you could give to other people and so I was worried if it was like why be Catholic like imagine you know you got a book like why be moment why be Mormon why be atheist like I don't to be Mormon I want to be a just I don't want to be these things but if you got a book it's like why we are Mormon why we're a notice threatening you might be like I wonder why they are Mormon I wonder why they are atheist and I want to walk them through that so I would definitely recommend that but you can yeah Trenor and podcast calm and then definitely get my book wire a Catholic at the very least to give away to someone and to have those conversations with them alright so what we're gonna do now is we're gonna take a pause here on YouTube and all of my patrons go over to patreon combat Fred I'm gonna talk to Trent about communism socialism capitalism and this sort of thing so thanks for being here sounds good thanks Matt you

Channel: Pints With Aquinas

Views: 126,007

Rating: 4.8924799 out of 5

Keywords: Podcast, Catholic, Trent Horn, Fradd, Catholic Answers, Apologetics, Atheism, God, Does God Exist, Faith, Talk show, Christian

Id: 4GX7nTqGglI

Length: 236min 36sec (14196 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 10 2020