¶1Joe Schmidt is a Christian, bro. >> Big news. God exists. Christ is Lord and he established the Catholic Church. >> Bro, Joeid.
¶2[laughter] Let's go. Let's go, bro. Joe Schmidt is a Christian. Not only is Joe Schmid a Christian, Joe Smith is a Catholic. Now, I need you guys to understand something because I know that there's going to be people who see this video and they're going to be like, "Okay, cool.
¶3that some atheist became Christian. No, no, no, no, no. You're not downplaying this. You don't understand how crazy this is because you might not be really involved in the sphere of like philosophy of religion and natural theology and classical theism and all of that. No, if you're not in that whole world, you're probably not going to understand like who Joe Schmidt is and why this is such a big deal.
¶4>> For those of you who don't know me, shame on you. Joe Schmidt isn't some like random atheist Tik Tocker who watched like three Richard Dawkins videos and then decided that God was around. No, this dude is a PhD candidate in philosophy at Princeton, one of the most prestigious institutions in the world. And not only that, he's published actual peer-reviewed philosophy. He's written books.
¶5He's interacted with some of the best philosophers and Christian thinkers in this space. William Lane Craig, Trent Horn, Gavin Kerr, Josh, Ryan Mullins. This dude is a beast. Go ahead, watch his full video and break down the things that bought him to Christianity, the things that brought him to Catholicism. I'll link that right up top.
¶6But Joe, he was an atheist earlier in his life. He lost his faith around the 10th grade. He became an atheist and then eventually he read some works by like Alexander Pruss. those works works started to make him reconsider like atheism and things like that. And by the end of high school, he wasn't really an atheist anymore and he had moved more into agnosticism.
¶7So for much of that time, people online knew Joe Schmidt as this agnostic atheist philosopher who was this serious critic of theism, Christianity, Catholicism, and especially a lot of forms of classical theism. Now, when I say that he was a serious critic, I mean he was a serious critic. Joe. Joe is a problem, bro. Now, I I can't tell you the amount of conversations that I have personally had where somebody was trying to argue with me against classical Christianity and they'll pull up Joe Schmidt.
¶8Muslims have pulled up Joe Schmidt or me. Atheists have pulled up Joe Schmidt. Christians who reject classical theism have pulled up Joe Schmidt because Joe was producing arguments that are actually doing they was doing damage in the streets bro [laughter] they was doing damage I'm not going to hold right for example right his work on um existential inertia now I won't turn this into like this twohour metaphysics lecture but I'll try to make it simple so a part of um like a traditional aristotilian toistic arguments for God is that things don't merely need a cause to begin existing right but they need a cause to continue existing and the idea is that right now at this very moment the existence of contingent things meaning things that don't necessarily exist has to be sustained now you don't like wind up the universe like a clock and then just walk away and now it sustains itself but then Joe comes along and he like, oh well, like why should I accept that? Like why can't a concrete thing once it exists just continue on existing unless something causes it to stop existing? That's existential inertia.
¶9And that matters because if you can't establish that things require this continuously concurrent sustaining cause, then you've potentially cut into one of the most like major foundational proofs in proving this like purely actual being. And Joe wasn't just making YouTube videos about this. This dude was publishing papers on this. Now, now should I just Should I just act like a scholastic and just leave this objection unanswered for a while or should I just answer it right now? Ah, f it.
¶10We're celebrating, right? We're celebrating. This is a good day. So, the basic idea behind existential inertia, it's pretty simple, right? It says that once something exists, why do we need to assume that uh it needs to be continuously sustained in order to keep on existing?
¶11Maybe it just keeps on existing unless something causes it to stop existing. But the toistic response to that is that it already assumes the thing possesses existence in itself in a way that Aquinus is denying. So uh for Aquinus like finite things they don't have existence through themselves or in themselves. Their existence is received or it's participated in. So you could think about it like light from the sun, right?
¶12A object, it doesn't get illuminated by the sun once and then it stores that illumination inside of itself and then it stays illuminated on its own. No, it's illuminated because it's presently like right now receiving light from a source of illumination. And that idea is similar with existence. A finite thing, it doesn't receive existence once and then independently hold on to it. If its existence is something that is received, then at every moment it exists, that actuality is still dependent upon a source.
¶13And you can't really answer that by saying, well, it continues to exist because nothing destroyed it. Because all that really tells me is why its existence wasn't interrupted. But it doesn't tell me why it exists at all right now. It would basically be me like saying that the thing continues to exist because the thing continues to exist. Jeez, sorry, I had something in my eye.
¶14But yeah, it would be basically be saying like the thing continues to exist because it continues to exist. So existential inertia doesn't really disprove the toistic argument. It just says that like I reject the metaphysics behind the toistic argument. And that's fine. But now we have to debate something a lot deeper.
¶15And you have to explain why a finite thing whose existence is received can somehow possess existence independently once it gets it. And some people have this idea about existence like rentnesses to a chair. And there's a fantastic video. It's a short video by Gavin Cerr who's a fantastic Thomas. I'll try to link that up up here or in the description if I'm able to.
¶16Um but yeah, so pretty much existential inertia. doesn't really disprove the tomistic argument. He writes another paper where he writes against the neoplatonic proof. He eventually co-authors an entire book called existential inertia and the classical theistic proofs. This dude's not playing.
¶17And then after that, if that wasn't enough, you have the aloneeness argument with Ryan Willins. Oh. Oh my days. I you you guys couldn't even you couldn't even understand. You couldn't even understand this argument.
¶18It It hit the streets so hard. It was nasty. It was disgusting work that was being done. I'm not going to hold you. Nasty work that was being done.
¶19So, pretty [snorts] much what the argument states is that the classical theist believes that God could have chosen not to create anything. Right? So classical theist those are classical Christians um believe that God doesn't have any parts. God is immaterial. You know they believe in divine simplicity.
¶20That's a classical theist. So uh we believe that God could have chosen not to create anything. Right? God didn't necessarily create the world. He chose to create the world.
¶21So pretty much what they say is imagine a possible world where there is literally nothing except God. God is alone. And even in that world, there are some contingent truths, meaning that there are some things that are true that don't need to be that way or don't need to be true. So, for example, it would be contingently true. Uh meaning it's not necessarily true.
¶22It could have been otherwise that God chose not to create. God is omnisient. So, God knows that truth. But if there's literally nothing outside of God in this world, then what Joe Schmidt and Ryan Mullins argue is that this contingent knowledge cannot be grounded in something outside of God. And then they'll say that it has to be intrinsic to God.
¶23But now you apparently have something intrinsic to God that God possesses contingently. And that looks like an accident. And divine simplicity says that there are no accidents in God. So now the argument is that you have like this tension between God's simplicity, God's omniscience, and God's freedom not to create. That's the level of argumentation that we're talking about.
¶24Like this isn't, oh, who created God? This this isn't even if God real, why bad things happened to me? No, this dude is pulling out like these super metaphysical philosophical arguments against classical theism and asking where whether this entire system is coherent in the first place. But there is something that I do respect about Joe and I think that everybody really respects about Joe is that he wasn't just throwing arguments at Christianity because they reached a conclusion that he wanted. Like in his work on the modal collapse, right?
¶25He actually argues that there are certain popular modal collapse arguments that don't work against classical theism. Just think about that, right? He's a critic of classical theism, but then he's telling other critics, no, that argument doesn't really work. And then he essentially says that there may be a stronger problem somewhere else. But [snorts] that tells you something about his character, about the man himself, right?
¶26He's trying to follow the argument. He's trying to figure out whether something is actually true. Bro, this is amazing. Like, this is amazing, bro. So the the part that I really want everybody to understand, I'm not saying that Joe becoming Christian means that Christianity is true, right?
¶27That'll be an appeal to authority. Although there have been a fair share of people that have said, well, Joe Schmidt said it, so it must be true. So what are they going to do now? No, but for real, right? Smart people become Christians.
¶28Smart people become atheists. smart people become smart people could be wrong. Right? That's not my argument. Right?
¶29I'm also not saying that because Joe became Catholic then he must now believe in every objection he's ever made to classical theism was wrong cuz we need to be fair. Right? Becoming Catholic doesn't automatically mean that you're a Tomist. Right? He may still believe some of the arguments work.
¶30I don't know. He may still reject certain formulations of classical theism. I don't know. He may still believe particular toistic proof spell. I don't know.
¶31I actually want to hear Joe explain where exactly his views have changed. But here's what make this objectively interesting, right? One of the smartest and most technically capable critics of classical theism and historic Christian uh Christian metaphysics in the online philosophy space now believes that God exists. He now believes that Christ is Lord. He believes in the Trinity.
¶32He believes in the incarnation. He believes in the resurrection. He believes in the sacraments. And not only did he move, he didn't move to like some generic theism. He has embraced actual historic Christian tradition.
¶33And now listen to what he wants to do with his channel. I'm still planning to occasionally produce general philosophy content. There will be a major change though. So the major shift is that I'm planning to focus on arguing for Catholicism and theism going forward. I'll be going through everything I went through in this video in much more depth.
¶34It will take a lot of time, but I want to essentially create and compile together the best series of videos in history on arguments for God's existence and Catholicism. Uh I I can't promise it, but I'd like to do it. So, first I'd like to start with arguments for theism, then systematically respond to arguments for atheism, then comb through the miraculous case for Catholicism, comb through the non-miraculous arguments for Catholicism, respond extensively to all the objections to Catholicism issuing from atheists and generic theists and Protestants and Orthodox, etc. I want to develop an extensive body of videos criticizing other religions. Like, again, this is all just like a dream of mine.
¶35I'd like to do that. Um, and we will see where the Lord takes me. Bro, he said that he wants to start making arguments for theism, responding to arguments for atheism, making the case for Catholicism, responding to atheists, responding to Protestants, responding to Orthodox Christians, responding to all these other religions. Do you understand how valuable that is? Somebody say it's like KD going to the Warriors.
¶36Like it's just such an addition to an like Christianity is already true. We already have fantastic thinkers. It's just such an amazing testament and testimony to the veracity of the evidence for Christianity and specifically historical Christianity, right? Apostolic Christianity. Like this is so valuable because now you potentially have somebody defending Christianity who knows the objections from the inside.
¶37Bro, you can't walk up to Joe Schmidt and hit him with some beginner objection to divine simplicity that like he's never heard it before. Bro, he broke the objections, right? You can't you can't just say, "Well, like what about existential inertia?" But that's his argument. You can't like casually bring up the modal collapse, bro. My brother in Christ, this man was publishing papers on the modal collapse, right?
¶38You you can't say, "Oh, well, classical theism has this problem concerning divine knowledge." And bro, Joe, no, he developed the argument. He developed the problem. So, if Joe eventually starts working through these issues from his new Christian perspective and begins explaining what he now thinks the responses are, yeah, that could be extraordinarily useful. Think about how many atheists respected this man's philosophical ability. How many skeptics watched him?
¶39Think about people like Alex Okconor who have repeatedly brought Joe onto his platform specifically because he is extremely knowledgeable in philosophy of religion. Think about all the people online who have been citing Joe Schmidt against Christianity for years. And now the dude that they were citing is saying, "Yeah, God exists. Christ is Lord. I'm Catholic.
¶40That's crazy. That's bro. And now, hold on, hold on. Now, the dude who used his reason to bring, I'll say it, amazing objections against Christianity, not saying that they all succeeded, but they are amazing objections. Not only does he have his reason, but he has the Holy Spirit, too.
¶41Oh my, bro. He's OP. He's OP, right? Oh my days. All right.
¶42All right. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Cuz I don't I don't want like Christians to be weird about it, I guess. I don't want to I'm I'm like low-key like spazzing because this is exciting. It's amazing.
¶43And like watching his testimony, it got me fired up. I won't hold. Right. But I want I do want to finish with this. We aren't to turn this man into a trophy, right?
¶44We're not going to go underneath atheist post saying, "Hi, you're you know, your philosopher is Christian now." That's dumb. Don't Don't do that. It's It's, you know, it's funny, but don't do it. Joe's conversion is not like just a touchdown for team Christian. But this is a genuine human being who has spent years and [snorts] years wrestling with some of the deepest questions that you could possibly ask, right?
¶45Does God exist? Why is there something rather than nothing? Why is reality intelligible? Why is there evil? Can divine simplicity work?
¶46Can God freely create? Can Christianity withstand historical scrutiny? Is Catholicism true? Are miracles true? And after years and years and years of wrestling with those things, he says he's become convinced.
¶47Praise God. Right? Whether you're Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, whatever, if you affirm historic Christianity, then there's something very beautiful about watching someone who genuinely seem to care about truth follow what he believes the evidence is telling him, even when it completely changes the public position he has built for years. Cuz that takes humility. Especially when your name is attached to papers criticizing the position you're now moving toward.
¶48especially when thousands of people know you as the guy who raises these objections. And I think Christians should learn something from that, too. We should be willing to follow truth wherever it leads, even when it's uncomfortable, even when it costs us, even when it forces us to admit that we were wrong. So, yes, Joe Schmidt is a Christian. Joe Schmidt is a Catholic.
¶49And if his future content is anything like the philosophical work he has already produced, then the apologetic space may have just gotten a very interesting new player. To God be the glory. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And Joe, welcome home. Welcome home.
¶50Welcome home. And God bless all of you.