¶1[music] It comes [music] [music] down. >> [music] >> going [music] [music] to die. The >> [music] [music and singing] >> the night. [music] Hey [music] Heat. Heat.
¶2N. [music] >> [music] [music] >> Hello John John Johnson. Hello no pub speed JD a poster Ryan Rosenberg YouTube connoisseur 3215 [music] if you're getting here now you're a little bit too late or remember [music] the first shall be last and the last shall be last. Okay. Should we get this show on the road?
¶3[music] What are we going to be reviewing today? This is the actual review I did. Um, obviously you all know I've converted to Russian Orthodoxy now, but I did a little video on that. Little video on that. So, you can check it out if you're interested.
¶4And this is the um actual video where I'm going to be taking a little look at um the conversion the purported conversion of Joe Mid. So people have been saying some let me know that that might be clipping. If that's if that's clipping a bit too much, let me know. I'll turn the gain down. Maybe maybe that's about right.
¶5Maybe that's about right. People have been saying that um something has changed about Joe. So I wasn't sure about this. So I thought what I would do first is check out his Patreon. So I was like it doesn't look like anything has changed with Joe to me.
¶6Um you've got like this level [snorts] one level two patron. This is patre.com/magesty of reason. Go subscribe now. A level four patron. Level five patron.
¶7This is all just like normal stuff, right? Uh majestic tier, ultra majestic tier, super ultra dope majestic tier. So, it's all just the same, isn't it? Isn't it just the same? Oh, hang on.
¶8There's a there's the top tier. There's a new top tier called Staintely Tier. Interesting. Hm. I don't know though.
¶9I don't know. Maybe maybe it's um I I don't know though. May maybe something else has changed with Joe cuz people, you know, just add adding a patron here isn't um isn't anything strange to do. Um so let's some other things. One of one of my sources sent me this.
¶10I just want to emphasize that I would I would die. I would take a bullet for anyone in the LGBT community. I would take a bullet for that. And I'm not lying. I'm not lying.
¶11That's how much I want to love them. That's how much I do love them. So that's I want to start with that so that people know that like and this is just like this issue matters a lot to me, right? And I' I've thought a lot about this. So and I struggled with it.
¶12I struggled a long time with it. So, how did I get over these hurdles? >> Okay, so the audio on that video isn't very good, but you know, I wasn't sure what this is. This is some, you know, this is like when you first come across a miracle, right? When you first come across a miracle, you've got this kind of like lowquality evidence.
¶13So, that was So, he said that he'd take a bullet for gay people. That all seemed a little bit strange. Never really seen Joe act in this way. Um, another there's another video that I came across, another video. Um, this one I have lived in the atheist mind.
¶14I've lived in the agnostic mind. I know how they think. I know how skeptics think. I thought exorcisms were ridiculous. I was the skeptic.
¶15I was the skeptic. So, I've been in their situation. I know how to appeal to them. And I can empathize with them. Yeah, >> I can love them.
¶16I was there with you struggling >> and like am I going to risk going to Jesus after I die? Am I going to risk seeing him and saying to his face, >> I thought >> that your mother was an alien? Am I going to risk that? How ridiculous am I going to sound on judgment day if there is such a thing? >> If there is such a thing.
¶17>> And at this point, I'm like, okay, I've got sufficient doubt that I really need to settle this. I need to investigate basically full-time investigating investigating Catholicism, investigating Christianity, full-time investigating uh the miraculous case. >> Your parents have any idea about what you're going through at this point? [laughter] >> Hang on. What?
¶18Uh to my shame, I systematically deceived them for about a decade. >> Okay. >> I'm good at keeping things hidden. I suppose >> you have a YouTube channel. I'm not going to let a conversation with Matt Frad be the first time that I I reveal to my parents that I systematically deceived them for a decade.
¶19>> All right. >> When I'm talking with Matt Frad about my conversion. >> Isn't that a cool providential coincidence? >> Jesus Christ. >> Okay.
¶20So obviously some of that some of the weirdness there is editing but some of that stuff was so weird that it's just weird you know um and the way that Joe is talking there first off doesn't seem true. So, I don't think anyone ever really knew Joe as like um a sort of hard-nosed skeptic. I mean the entire time that he has been in the uh philosophy space he's been very very into you know hardcore metaphysics which is towards the woo end of the philosophy spectrum also known as the autism spectrum by some um and you see I got I I'll catch myself saying things like that. Um, so the the point is I I think that um he's sort of telling himself porkies. I mean like I'm not I'm not saying that he's lying.
¶21I I don't think he's I think this is a thing that he is currently doing in his life. But what is going on in that mind of his is kind of strange because he seems to be slightly twisting the truth to himself. And the incentives to do that are obviously because it's exactly what that Catholic audience wants to hear, right? Um and it kind of bigs him up when he's able to present himself. Like I've I've lived in the atheist mind.
¶22I mean, I'm not personally I'm not even I'm not aware of any time where Joe has identified as an atheist, like where he's where he's actually said he's an atheist. He's always, you know, been agnostic. Um, and he's always kind of tread on the toes of atheists. And I'm not saying that that's a problem. I think it's a perfectly fine thing to do.
¶23But he has always tread on the toes of atheists by sort of saying that they should take um a more explicit um position that is you know the the denial of God's existence rather than a kind of like lack of belief version or anything like that. Um, and he's always kind of poked poked at naturalisms and physicalisms. He's he's done a pretty fair job in many in some respects, right? I mean, he he did a great interview with like Graeme Wy years ago. Uh, he did a philosophy of science video with K&B which was like pretty sympathetic to like various naturalistic views and uh, anti-realist views.
¶24And I would say those anti-realist views are often views that kind of undercut the what I would consider to be poor method methodology that both realist views and then typically um certain theistic metaphysical views sort of depend upon. So I don't I don't think it would be fair to say that Joe has never done anything right but never done anything towards the skeptical end or or he's only ever been sympathetic to Catholics but certainly there's always been a strong bias in his work towards a particular framework a particular methodology and metaphilosophy and and I'd say explicitly towards Christianity and explicitly towards Catholics right and so there's no real surprise that he falls on that side. But also this post hawk narrativizing of the past where he's saying, "Oh, I I was a hard like I was a hardcore atheist is a little bit uh you know, it's a bit of a an untruth. I mean, he he was always a little bit wet, right? He was always like, I went to Catholic school.
¶25My I was raised in a Catholic family. I went to a Catholic school." Like I mean how many people here studied like Thomas Aquinus and metaphysics in high school? Not many would be my bet. Whereas you know Joe's in that camp. So certainly there's a lot of formation and shaping there and he was always very inclined towards it.
¶26But he went through a period of his life where it all seemed a bit more dodgy to him I guess and and set himself in the agnostic camp. And all of that is fine but it I I think I think his current reporting about his history is just not very aware. It's certainly inconsistent with with things he was saying in the past. So, what I'll do now, and then I guess just generally there's like a kind of a bit of what appears to be mania, and it could be like the editing, but it could also be that he's kind of like trying to convince himself of some of this stuff because I do I do think Joe knows a little bit better. Um, and maybe he's going through some some things or whatever.
¶27Who knows? Who knows what's going on about, you know, behind it, it seems. So, here's his full video. We'll have a little watch of this and maybe provide some commentary. I'll put the speed on 1.5%.
¶28I no longer have Streamyard Pro, so the audio might not be amazing, but there we go. >> Big news. God exists. Christ is Lord, and he established the Catholic Church. You see, the way that Joe's face looks here reminds me of uh like the Heaven's Gate videos.
¶29It reminds me of like not that >> former army. say how thankful I am to do and T for helping me and taking me under their wing and and all my classmates been so great to me. And >> these last hours are only of joy and wonder at the thought of going home. >> Why am I here? Uh what is the meaning of life?
¶30Since I've been in the class, I've learned the answers to all of those >> and couldn't be happier about what we're about to do. [laughter] >> There's >> that kind of like manic weird like double think thing. So I I can't help but >> big news God exists. I obviously the speed the speed isn't is a factor but like you know put it to one >> Christ is Lord and he established the Catholic Church. I'm not kidding.
¶31I just converted to Catholicism. >> Well actually Joe, you're just a revert. So that's technically misleading. >> My dude, conversion is a change of heart and mind. >> Who who was that even?
¶32Who who what hypothetical interlocutor is that? >> I don't know. But and that just happened. For those of you who don't know me, shame on you. I'm Joe Schmid.
¶33I'm a PhD student in philosophy at Princeton University. And I've been an agnostic and public critic of theism and Catholicism for quite some time. But earlier this year, that all changed. So today, I'm just going to share my personal journey. Uh if you want my hours long comprehensive case for Catholicism, stay tuned.
¶34That's coming very soon. Oh, and I also have some cool things later on the video, so stay tuned. So, I grew up. >> The other thing, by the way, that makes me think this is like not uh just a bit is so he released this video the other day, like two days ago, but um he I need to put the top comments. [snorts] He had, for example, there was like a comment from Cameron on here that was like weeks older, militant tonist, um, classical theist, traditional trad man, trad 9,000.
¶35There's one from Cameron somewhere on here. Trust me, bro. But it's like three or four weeks ago. I don't know why I can't find it now because it's like a million comments which means that he had obviously shared the video beforehand and listed and when Cameron left that comment to be like I'm on the group but yeah anyway >> in a devout Catholic household. I went to private Catholic school from kindergarten through 12th grade.
¶36I frequented the sacrament. >> Yeah, there you go. So I didn't make that up. He did go to private Catholic school and and again it's kind of it's kind of like you know cuz some people have uh compared him to say Alex Okconor and obviously like Alex had some religious influences in his upbringing but like as far as I'm aware like Alex wasn't like confirmed in the church. Uh he wasn't attending a school like a religious school that had like tistic metaphysics classes.
¶37you just had like a bit of influence. And I think in Joe's case, right, it's like I'd put it I'd put it this way. If you're trying to if you were someone who is struggling to explain why Joe would land on this position, I mean, that stuff's just like obviously the reason why that's salient to him. But I would say in the case of this and all religious conversions in my view I think I think the rational paradigm is the wrong way to look at it and I think that is borne out by a lot of uh evidence in sociology and psychology about belief revision formation why people do and don't identify with religious communities and that that would apply both like also for for deconversions really as well but um yeah I think I the point being that I don't I've seen for example like I thought James' video was good in the sense of he criticized a lot of the reasons that Joe is giving for um why he's saying he's become a Catholic and I agree with James' points that those reasons are not good reasons and it doesn't seem like Joe has really engaged with some of the objections I would say this is something where I would distinguish myself from James. I'd say like metaphilosophical objections to some of these views.
¶38I I think that a lot of these arguments depend on very very weird commitments that only a very precise thin slice of philosophers have um in you know typically in philosophy of religion as well. But and and I would challenge all of those and I think that there are massive problems with them. But particularly the miracles stuff which is going to feature. I don't think he's rationally evaluated that very well at all. Um but I don't think it is anything to do with rationality, nor do I necessarily think it should be.
¶39My my main thing for like this whole thing is that I I like I hope that whatever this is a part of is a good thing for Joe and his personal psychology and his like mental spiritual health. My only worry and concern is that it won't be because the types of people, you know, the type of machine he's plugging himself into um particularly with his like conversion testimony. I mean, Matt Brad has literally just signed Pint with Aquinus is on freaking Daily Wire now. So, that that is a propaganda outlet for culture war nonsense. uh capturing Catholicism was making videos about like demon exorcisms and Trump prophecy.
¶40It's it's like there's a glaze of rational stuff and there's just like cultural nonsense and so much of this stuff is just adjacent to ingroup outgroup divisions. Um, and then telling like storytelling about like spiritual warfare and you know co the cosmic moral battle but through the paradigm of like contemporary culture wars. And my concern would be that um actually these people are predominant the kind of people that Joe's associating himself with and who are going to overall be like fairly immature adults who are not very well put together have like these weird uh group commitments that they have to sign up to and are going to exert like an unhealthy influence on Joe and his ways of thinking. And my I would say that you're already seeing the negative impact of that in the kind of manic way that Joe seems to be talking where he's almost trying to convince himself whether he talks this way particularly in that other video on the the Daily Wire and things I prayed all the time. I was totally into Catholicism.
¶41Everything was like smooth sailing in my face. In fact, I was like really out until maybe around like seventh or eighth grade when I had the first wobble. So in seventh or eighth grade, my Catholics school taught us evolution. And thankfully Catholics are totally down with science. So they're like, "Yeah, we teach you guys evolution." I mean there's like so much science to evidence for and it's totally compatible with Catholicism but it did cause me to start wondering like how do I mesh this with my commitments concerning I don't even genesis like how do I make sense of that and bubble didn't last too long because I came across the work of people like Francis Collins and the Bologos Institute defending theistic evolution and I also started appreciating that you know genesis although there are historical elements to its genre is something like mytho poetry with some you know theological and historical aspects sprinkled in and so I was like okay you know I can I can see accepting evolution together with what mytholism teaches about genesis and human origins but then nearing the end of ninth I really started reflecting further on the evolutionary process and in particular I reflected on the brutality of it.
¶42I mean for hundreds of millions of years animals were just like ripping each other to shreds and just suffering and languishing and it was just so hard for me to mesh that with belief in an all good all powerful >> Yeah. I'll be I mean James mentioned this in his video. I'll be interested to um hear his points that he makes about this in his longer video right when that eventually comes up. following God. This problem of evolutionary animal suffering just like gnawed at me for quite some time.
¶43Really bothered me. And you know, one thing led to another and soon enough I was just like voraciously consuming debates and content online concerning theism versus atheism and Christianity versus non-Christianity and and whatnot. You know, I'd say though I'd still say for my own positions, my methodological issues mean that I personally just find it really hard to rationally evaluate anything about that anything that's supposed to be about considering what like God means, would or, wouldn't do. And so that for me consistently counts in against a lot of the evidence that people put forward or the arguments people put forward um with respect to claims around like tunings like physical harmony creation whatever right um I was going to say um best to individuals existing trans you know identity [ __ ] but that also for me undermines a lot of the um reasoning about like evil and its consistency with God. But I do I do think if you're if if you don't share those methodological concerns that I have and you're you know you're you're in a paradigm where you're sort of like happy with some of these statements and you think that there is some like rational content some content that you actually think is is workable and worth thinking about and might make sense then you know I do think that those are problems.
¶44By the way I'm not just like drooling all over myself. That's my dog eating a bowl of slop. Um that you can hear maybe in the background. He's like um I can hear it and it's really triggering me. So I'm going to turn down my volume.
¶45But yeah, um [snorts] so I'll be interested to hear what he has to say about this stuff. And my guess, I'm going to make a prediction that the way he's dealing with some of that stuff will be a little bit kind of like handwavy or just to say like balance of evidence or something like that. >> So I was just like watching William Lane Craig debates and watching the new atheists like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, etc., etc., right? Those dirty new atheists. Hey SJ, welcome.
¶46Right. That was a joke. Okay, Dalma. Thmama. After some time that the problems for theism and Christianity just kept mounting and mounting and eventually I lost my faith.
¶47That happened sometime around 10th grade. I came to conclude that atheism is true so God does not exist. And I also thought that naturalism is true. So you know at bottom the world is just fundamentally indifferent. You know there's no fundamental purpose.
¶48There's no fundamental mindedness. At bottom as Richard Dawkins says it's just blind pitiles indifference. You know the natural world is all there is. At the time I thought that that was just the best explanation. I'm just going to comment on this.
¶49Um, again, my commentary is going to slightly relate to some of the things that James said. And James said he doesn't like when people give this quote because um, you know, it's kind of like a bit of a straw man of reductive views. And I I think he is right in a sense because even if you take those views and you don't think that value exists at the fundamental layer of reality, well, you don't live at the fundamental layer of reality, so it doesn't really matter. And I do think that people like uh Dawkins should be criticized for like bad philosophy if they because I think I think they do make I think sometimes people say Dawkins etc. is being strawman when he is quoted in this way.
¶50But actually, I do think that within the new atheist movement, people like Dawkins and Ricky Jace have just been, you know, like watching that really shitty cats animation by Ricky Jace and um on Netflix and it's got loads of critical reviews, right? And one of the main things that people are annoyed about with Ricky Jabvesa is that he's basically just rehashing like all of the same uh jokes that he has always made. And a lot of those jokes are sort of from this new atheist era and they're just basically him being like, "Oh yeah, get over the fact people die or like everything that's special and supposed to be magic to you is like bad." And my point being, a lot of these people did kind of make this like edgy nihilism and like I don't care about things that are special to you a part of their atheism and it did become a part of the atheist movement. And I I reckon probably for a lot of teenagers whose worldviews were impacted by use of the internet during that era that probably became like a part of their outlook on the world as well. Um, that's not me saying that it should be a part of a well-considered reductive view because I don't think it should.
¶51But it definitely is a part of that movement and a lot of what people think there. What so what I'm saying should people call it out more if they hold those views? Maybe. Um, but also I guess if you're if you're engaging in this kind of like rational space, whatever, you know, I'd expect people to do a little bit better and to um push back on some of that stuff. What's the other thing that I'd say um at Oh, yeah.
¶52The other the other thing I wanted to say which was not something that James commented on in his review was I don't I don't personally I mean I I don't consider myself a physicist or a reductive physicist and I don't buy into these kind of like metaph when people use these words in metaphysics of like the fundamental layer of reality or ultimately fundamentally um or like when when people talk in terms of like the bottom level of reality I you I don't think that I think that they are reading metaphorically off of their existence on the earth as beings like ourselves where gravity pulls things down and we build structures with like foundational levels upwards or anything. And I think that all these are are metaphors and I think that they're very unhelpful for people's reasoning. I don't think that reality, you know, hangs together, whatever that's supposed to mean. Um, from some foundational layer layer upwards. Um, I think that you can draw, you know, you can marry together um, theories that exist in different subjects and the closer that those avenues of inquiry are, the more you can marry with them.
¶53which is why say like physics, chemistry and biology, particularly microbiology can often be, you know, quite tightly interwoven because they're often drawing on each other's theories in their domains of inquiry. But overall, I guess I don't I don't think that there is like a a fundamental layer of reality that is studied. I mean like there smaller stuff, there's small stuff, right? Physics often studies small stuff. Um but that why does something being small make it more fundamental?
¶54Um I don't think it does make it more fundamental. It just depend you know fundamental to what right and you say fundamental to reality but reality doesn't have a point of view. Fundamental to your to yourself well that's presum to be intelligible to me that would be about what your uh aims and interests are in inquiry. And so, you know, what what are you concerned about? What are you trying to figure out?
¶55Um, and why? So, so what are you saying when you say it's like fundamental? I I think it's um a really misleading way of talking that plays way too much of a role in the way that people do metaphysics and think about um some of this stuff. And so given that, I would personally dispense with all of this like fundamentality and ultim ultimacy talk. And so for me in my perspective, there's no problem of like whether value or consciousness or whatever is or isn't the fundamental level of reality because there's no fundamental level of reality.
¶56There's just there's just the world as it is. Um and then you might ask like you know are there minds? It's just like yeah obviously right and there's not like these weird kind of questions. Or similarly you might say like do you value things? Yes, like that.
¶57And that's the end of the story and it's like very obvious and resolved and the this question of like well like fundamentally are the values like what you like you're just asking in nonsense anyway. But then in the summer before senior year, I stumbled across this YouTube channel called the world of view design and I was just captivated. Like I started watching these videos and I was like whoa was Josh's this is another thing which caught me as maybe um a rewriting of Joe's memory because I'm not certain that Josh Rasmus's channel was called Worldview Design at the time. It might have been but I don't think it was. These are like some new arguments for theism that I've never come up.
¶58>> And just to let people know how long I've been in that game, I follow Josh Rasmusen's dad's YouTube channel, which is um sermons that he gives in a very interesting church, shall we say, >> cross? And the host behind the channel was just like super loving, but also incredibly intellectually rigorous and sophisticated. So, I binged watched all of his videos and wo they just opened my eyes to this new world of like academic theist philosophy. So the person behind the channel, as I came to discover, was Dr. Josh Rasson.
¶59He's a Christian philosopher. And at the time, he was publishing a book with Alexander Poops called Necessary Existence, defending all these new and interesting contingency arguments for God's existence. And he was just like popularizing and publicizing that cutting edge work in his videos. And so, you know, after I binge watch these videos, okay, so this is another thing I want to comment on um is the work that this idea of cutting edge in philosophy is doing. Um, so philosophy is like so cont how how can I contextualize this for like what if you're a STEM lord or if you're like slightly rightwing or whatever.
¶60Imagine if someone said like cutting edge feminist studies to you, right? And you'd be like what a joke or imagine if someone said like this is cutting edge gender studies, bro, right? or like this is cutting edge um uh liberal arts or what you know like you would be like so when someone says like cutting edge metaphysics that's kind of the same sort of vibe in the sense that this isn't a field that has really earned its chops or does anything important or is looked upon fondly by people. um met metaphysics even within philosophy is generally viewed pretty poorly I would say. Um, and of course there's a criticism to be made here in terms of like the the political or the biases that exist within the domain of philosophy, but I'd say that people tend to take more seriously like epistemology or um like logic as domains of studies or like history of this, history of that kind of thing.
¶61but or or even ethics, political philosophy, but like metaphysics is seen as like the weird stepchild that like you know people kind of have to bring along but um they don't really you know like don't listen to them. And so when you know like to say cutting edge metaphysics it's not really a ringing endorsement. It's like saying, you know, cutting edge um sigh phen, you know, cutting edge sigh research or something or like um this is this is all obviously from within my way of viewing things. Obviously, they would disagree and and see things differently because they have a completely different outlook to me which embeds the commitment that metaphysics is like serious and important and methodologically rigorous and all that. But I don't hold that view.
¶62And so I I actually see like what these people are doing is just like some seriously flawed weird stuff when they trade on their kind of what they they call this method of intuitions, right? And I don't think that intuitions in the sense that they mean exist at all. I don't think that there is a kind of psychological faculty called an intuition which one can use to figure certain things out. I think that people produce the word intuitions as they say sentences um and [snorts] that that that's not connected to any like special method or something which um predisposes one to to say true things. It's really I think connected to how familiar or comfortable someone feels with asserting a sentence and and all sorts of sorts of things going on.
¶63Um and then within this kind of like method of intuition consultation um or Vulcan mindmelding what people do is they sit in their armchair and think about how they feel about say like modal adjectives or parts you know words from mathematics or something like this or words like truth or knowledge or whatever and they'll go oh you know like Um, what do I when I when I say the word infinity to myself, do I feel like this story is a the right one or this story is the wrong one? No. I wouldn't want to say that it would be possible to have a hotel with an infinite number of rooms where every person went into the room number that was two times the room number that they're in and then there would be an infinite number of rooms that was empty. I wouldn't want to say that. that feels wrong to me.
¶64Therefore, I now know that you can't have an actual infinity or I I know I know Joe's um argued against views about infinity, but I'm I'm saying that the methodology that he's employed in all of his work around metaphysics and in the work of these people that he respects is dependent upon this entire methodology, which I think is highly questionable. And you know, it's so underdetermined the conclusions that it will get you to because the only constraints on how you feel about words are like the social pressures that the people you hang around with exert on you. So if you hang around with like weirdos, you will become you will start to feel your intuitions will change such that you won't feel any shame or weirdness saying weird sentences, right? And I think that that's all there is to this stuff. um in in metaphysics.
¶65The reason that those these kinds of criticisms certainly exist in other fields like physics, biology, chemistry, psychology, whatever else, right? The absolutely people are socialized into pairing feelings of comfort with the theoretical terms that they use. Um and and that can be a bad thing. It can mean that people are sort of trapped in ways of talking that are unhelpful or unscientific or whatever. The difference is in those disciplines that they're also operationalizing the things that they're saying against other things that they do like experiments, experimental research that and world control which works or doesn't.
¶66There's nothing like that in philosophy. The only criteria for success are like getting on people's podcasts, people taking you seriously, whatever else. those things feature in other subjects, but the world control thing is like gold standard undeniable stuff. I was like, whoa, there's way more to theism than I had thought. Um, there are all these new and interesting arguments that seem really forceful to my mind, but hey, I still got some objections.
¶67So, I reached out to this mysterious person whom I didn't know at the time. I was like, "Dear Dr. Rafson, you know, I I recently been binge watching your videos, and I was like, I have some objections. Can you help me?" And so, then we just had this extensive email correspondence going all throughout my senior year. Uh, and you know, eventually I was like, yeah, there just is a lot more going for theism than I thought.
¶68And also, you know, just being introduced by a professional philosopher who knew a lot more than me, who was just like utterly mogging me intellectually just revealed to me that I think I prematurely judged the question of whether God exists. And so as a result of coming across these new arguments and dialoguing with Josh like so just to correct myself here he is saying that he went through a period of being an atheist but it doesn't it doesn't my point being it doesn't sound like that was like really a ser you know like it was pretty easy to convince him out of that. he just had to feel a little bit insecure about his intelligence for a bit and he never really like publicly committed to that identity which is of course an uh a thing that creates incentives. For example, like even if if Joe became convinced that Catholicism wasn't true today, he wouldn't be able to like really come out and say that for a long time because he'd have to like think of the optics of his channel and not looking like an idiot and sort of like convince himself of the best way to do it and manage all these relationships with people that are a part of, you know, his career in philosophy and his podcasting with other people. So basically the the point being that when you commit yourself to an identity, build an audience and all these things, it does create a kind of momentum around um certain ideas and that momentum makes it harder for you to change your mind about things.
¶69And I think the fact that Joe um that the fact that Joe has never really had that momentum with atheism, in fact, all of his time that's been spent online with his channel has been basically pretty critical of atheism. I would say um means that it's wrong for him still, even if he had this brief period where he'd consider himself an atheist, it's wrong for him to really say that that's like the significant part of his journey cuz I just don't think it was. Okay, [clears throat] I can no longer maintain my competent naturalism. I think I should suspend judgment on the question of whether God exists. So, I should neither believe that God exists nor disbelieve.
¶70And you know, the evidence at the time just seemed to me roughly counterbalance. Maybe it's difficult to tell which way the evidence points. But as a result of all this, I became a kind of subtle agnostic. Maybe somewhere around the end of 12th grade. And that state of agnosticism kind of just like stably persisted all the way up until grad school.
¶71But somewhere around the end of my first year of grad school or maybe the beginning of my second year in grad school, things started to change a bit. I started coming across these like new and interesting arguments for theism that like seemed to me pretty forceful. And I also started losing some objections that I previously had to theistic arguments that I thought failed. So over the course of my first, you know, one or two years in grad school, I started leaning towards theism. I started seeing theism, you know, the view that the fundamental nature of reality is just like pure limitless perfection.
¶72you know, there's this perfect being at the foundation of reality with every perfection to an unlimited extent. I started seeing this view as a, you know, a relatively simple, coherent, non-arbitrary, elegant. >> I just want to talk about the way that Joe here uses the word relatively simple and non-arbitrary. I I think that this is another case of using language in very very strange ways. Um, and this is again we we'll perhaps have to wait until his longer video to get a real defense of this.
¶73though of course he's talked about these things before and one criticism I've sort of always had with the framework that Joe's operating in is that he I don't think has ever really rejected this idea of sort of talking about simplicity um in the metaphysical realm by these like weird intuition criteria as opposed to operationalizing it in the way that it is actually it actually has to be done in science And I think that this is basically the difference between like scientific domains and and metaphysics again because there aren't any real constraints in metaphysics. In the scientific domain, what you do is you know you build your causal model and your causal model has like um certain like symmetry physical symmetries and things like that to it such that you can actually apply you know like me measurements to you. You can you can define the bits where you'll be like actually measuring something in the world. You can talk about like the error that might exist in those measurements. You can apply mathematical apparatus to like kind of like quantify how that causal space works and all those sorts of things.
¶74And actually makes it meaningful when you speak about like how simple one assumption is over another because it's been operation. You know, your simplicity has been operationalized. when you sort of like in the land of make believe and you talk about simplicity it's again just this kind of like feeling um it's not there aren't like rigorous criteria people might offer a kind of crit what I'd call like a criteria glaze where they might appeal to like razor or something like that and they might they might say like you know or making less assumptions but what does it mean to make an assumption or not make an assumption um well I I mean I don't think there is any principle to answer there are princip principled answers in the scientific disciplines about what gets kind of like left and and what's actually up for grabs within the methodology, but there isn't anything like that. So, for example, you know, if you have to and this is a point that I believe James made in his video, too, but if if you have to commit yourself to like a million claims about ways God's values are, like what he values and what he doesn't value. So let's say one claim per parameter of a fine-tuned universe model.
¶75Are those assumptions or are those not assumptions? Right? Well, why are they assumptions or not assumptions? You can't really say. I think I think what people basically do is they go, "Well, I kind of want the fine-tuning argument to work and if I said those are all assumptions, it'd really undermine it.
¶76So, I'm just going to pretend they're not." Or I'll say like axiology or this is valuable that and not think about it. But why why why do that? Why if you why not consider them assumptions, right? And if they are considered assumptions, how much are the harms? Well, you can't even I believe you can't actually quantify it either.
¶77So you can't actually even evaluate what the harms are. But even from the perspective of this kind of like loosey- goosey talking, I mean, that's a lot of stuff to assume, particularly when it's such a weird thing that you're bringing to the table. I mean, it's not it's not like you're even assuming um you know, like what's stuff we sort of like reason about quite commonly, like something getting heated and then acting a certain way or something like that. Um you I mean you're talking about a disembodied mind cause like causing physical parameters to what does it even mean to cause a physical parameter to be it is like I literally don't know what kind of cause that is. And so it's just it's just utterly bizarre to me to have this kind of like to to reason in this way at all and apply this really like lame criteria of simplicity to that.
¶78Okay. Now, now it's dropped my memory because obviously Rasmusen has this stuff and um it's that stuff about like arbitrary limits, right? And Rasmusen says, well, if you have a model with certain limits in it, those are arbitrary, but then it's simpler to not posit those arbitrary limits at all. But then the not not positing but but not positing those arbitrary limits isn't taken as not positing them. It's taken as positing something with no limits which is not the same as not positing arbitrary limits.
¶79That is to posit arbitrary limits but those limits are infinite in magnitude. Right? So they are they're just as arbitrary but they're posited with a magnitude of infinity rather which is a different thing from not positing any limit. Not not positing arbitrary limits. You posited arbitrary not limits right?
¶80hypothesis and not just that but a hypothesis that offers a unifying explanation of a vast and diverse array of otherwise highly striking data. Data that other hypotheses either have to explain peace meal or do a very poor job at explaining or have to take us through facts. And so like this kind of meta argument for theism that like on the one hand it seems to be a relatively simple elegant >> just everything everything bro >> just think of every this again just reminds me of that peep show um peep show bit let's get um where is it this this peep show a bit. Um, so let's play let's just play Joe again for a second. >> Very poor job at explaining or have to take us through facts.
¶81And so like this kind of meta argument for theism that like on the one hand it seems to be a relatively simple, elegant, coherent, non arbitrary hypothesis. And on the other hand, it provides this like wonderfully unifying explanation of a vast and diverse array of pretty like strikingly fortunate data. I started leaning towards theism. Yeah, this this to me just sounds like um this >> govern our moods and our actions. Negative or are the in really great book.
¶82You'd love the chapter on organs. >> Organs. >> Organs are the invisible molecules of universal life energy which govern our moods and our actions. Negative organs are the source of all the problems in the world. >> And you believe that?
¶83>> Well, how do you explain all the problems in the world? Well, I mean, I couldn't just There are so many historical and economic factors that >> Exactly. You haven't got a clue [laughter] >> every time. It's always the same things. >> And what data are we talking about?
¶84Well, there's too much to explain and I explain it all in significant depth in my comprehensive case for Catholicism. It's coming out very, very soon. So, stay tuned. Stay finely tuned. Come on.
¶85That was a good one. But just to give you a glimpse into some of the data that really started pulling on me. I mean, I already had in the background like a decently high confidence that there's some kind of necessary foundation to reality. So, some kind of ultimate reality that could not have failed to exist. >> See, we've got we've got those metaphors again.
¶86Ultimate reality. What does what does ultimate mean? Right? I I basically never hear people use the word ultimate outside of ultimate frisbee. And that is not that cool.
¶87That's not like better than like a lot of normal things. And I at least leaned toward that view on the basis of the various contingency arguments that I mentioned earlier on from Alexander Puce and Josh Rasmmanson and various other philosopers like Rob Coons etc. So I already had that in the background and then the question was well you know what is this being well maybe let's examine the character of its effect and when we look at the character of its effect it's just like utterly saturated with like extreme what is the character of its effect the the character of its effectly fortunate coincidences that had >> the character of its effect is saturated with coincidences that is just weird because coincident like how can a coincidence can't be a a feature of a thing because a coincidence is a feature of our ignorance, right, towards a thing, but >> like happened just right for basically anything interesting or valuable to occur in the world. So, it's striking to begin with that there are any >> and I I think that the again the the way that I would explain some of these things that Joe puts forwards as as coincidences is basically that it's um more a property of the salesman than it is of the problem. Right?
¶88because I I I think that there are some kind of like common patterns for the problems that um Joe talks about as being problems or coincidences in the questions. And th those come from sort of like creating what I consider to be peculiar ways of thinking about certain things, whether it be like laws or quote unquote consciousness. like I don't believe in consciousness as they mean it. Um, which then gives you which then once you've got like this very rudimentary engagement with some tools of statistics or whatever enables you to kind of like formulate these odd questions where okay, you've rarified like laws as things and you've raified like mental states as like things and now you think of it as like two pots of urns where you can like pick bulls at random like okay I'm going to pick a law now okay I'm going to pick a conscious state do they match together or something and um it's It's just like really weird where you you shouldn't be thinking that way, but the only reason you would come to think that way is because a philosopher sort of like inducted you into a conceptual space where you would think that way laws of physics at all. But let's suppose there are even then it's pretty surprising that those laws of physics have constants that even have life permitting ranges to begin with.
¶89I mean after all we can imagine hordes of different laws. Many of which >> everything in the world was pulling me to become a Catholic. my uh friend Cameron Petusi, uh Ethan Muse. You might you guys might not have I'll save that joke for later. Um >> yeah, >> are much simpler than laws that we actually have.
¶90>> It's really crazy, guys. I grew up in a private Catholic school. I spoke to Josh Rasmusen and I started a YouTube channel on philosophy of religion and just everything around me is like about Catholicism. It's just like God is clearly talking to preclude basically anything interesting or valuable happening. You know, basically like it is a law that there's a single particle which just like vibes for all eternity.
¶91You're not going to get anything interesting or particularly valuable in such a world. But we didn't get >> I had actually this reminds me of a thought I had when I was watching James' stream as well, which was like I I kind of think that something that would be good for Joe to do in all this genuinely would be just like work a normal job for a year. like get away from like philosophy or religion um and philosophy and religion and just like work down the minds. Uh it doesn't have to be down the minds but just like work a normal like ju just try like get on with your life away from this stuff for a bit and see if that changes anything like make some friends that don't care about this stuff or have anything to do with it and just see what happens. I think that that would be like a better experiment to run than sort of like being around all these people who are like t chronically into this stuff um and then being like wow it it's the same thing Justin Brley does with the um quiet revival stuff where it's like well people keep talking about how religion is declining in like Gallup you know poll whatever not Gallup poll um few research surveys but like I keep talking to people who are coming to Christ.
¶92It's like, yeah, you've got a podcast that's about that. That's why you're like the UK's like Christian podcaster, so obviously you like draw these people to you. Um, but you know, it's got nothing to do do with what's actually going on in the broader population world like that. Instead, the law structures that we have are at least compatible with life. And not only that, but these law structures, the form of these laws, they contain certain constants or fixed values.
¶93And those fixed values need to fall within exceedingly narrow ranges in order for life for basically anything interesting to develop. So like we sort of hit the complete cosmic jackpot there. And then even then we weren't done. In addition to that, the laws of nature actually match the contents of the universe. You see, we hit the complete cosmic jackpot.
¶94Did did we I mean you can ask like I need to come up with like a good example for this like off the top of my head. But where like um you know where where you know you can sort of like construct a question again out of your ignorance of the relationship between two things and where you know like you might you might say like um I don't know isn't it crazy a good one would be maybe like 1 plus 1 and two like isn't it crazy that like 1 plus 1 is two? I mean think of like all the numbers out there. Think of there's like an infinite number of numbers. There's an infinity of numbers but one and one is two in our world.
¶95Isn't that crazy? Like one one add one like one and one could have been anything but one add one is two. Isn't that crazy? And because you can you can produce this lution and if you have the confidence then people will feel like they have to sympathize with your point rather than thinking that you're weird. And there's a lot of things that are like that where the way of stating the question might just be like deeply mistaken because of you know like like someone who who hates me and doesn't want to understand the point they're making will say um oh well that's uh that's that's logical necessity that's metaphysical necessity or something and they'll appeal to these structures of different uh types of modality that they've constructed in language where this kind of like peacemeal cookie cutter approach to taxonomizing types of modality means that they have an answer right for why 1 plus 1 equals 2 that makes the question well couldn't 1 plus 1 not be two sound like oh no that's that's logically necessary.
¶96Um but the point the point being that actually you know you don't know that everything isn't like that. You don't know that um you the world might be like that. The the the constants in these models might be like that. the questions that people are putting forward when people say like um consciousness and laws of nature and the way that they fit together. the theoretical terms of that question might be like that where there's actually a framework for thinking about the question where it doesn't even make sense to pull the two apart and for example like you know I'm a behaviorist when it comes to mind and so when people talk about changing the behaviors and then having like different psychological predicates that is for example to me just absolute nonsense because the psychological predicates just are types of behaviors of organism So I mean that's that's another kind of example.
¶97So the the point being that um you know the these problems to me are not problems. Of course there's room for rational disagreement and maybe like you know maybe Joe's going to give all these great reasons in his uh longer video about this sort of stuff. But I basically never hear it because what I typically tend to see is that these people they they sort of like they engage with the criticisms that are sympathetic to the frame that they're operating in. You know, they they don't go these guys don't go to the paradigm level. That's one of the things Jay D taught me.
¶98um they don't want the method critique at the paradigm level because they know that they're in a vic that there's vicious circularity like um like Basel of Caesaria pointed out with the essence energy distinction in the spatal logo. So with um the point being I I would like I I don't even know that Joe has considered these things. I've seen him talk to like Brian Cder for example and they they point this out and they're like, you know, these arguments are going to be like a non-starter if you take some of these commitments, but then they just go, so we're just going to like kind of walk past these. But again, and this is where I'll sound more like James, in your rational, this kind of makes your rational evaluation um pretty questionable because if you've not bothered to engage with some of these views and some of these views would actually like deeply undermine your commitments, then that's that's like a problem for the position that you find yourself in, right? like how you should be saying, "How do you know that you're uh not wrong about these things?" And of course, you say, "Well, I don't know that I'm not wrong, and I've got to kind of take a position on something." But then, like, why is there never any interest in pursuing that avenue of inquiry?
¶99If that avenue of inquiry, presumably, if that avenue of inquiry would be the one that would undermine all this stuff, it would be the most important one for you to at least like, you know, invest some time in, right? and not just kind of have well we we don't take that seriously in this space because we don't take that seriously in this space would be most consistent with you actually just being in a community of people with some like massive blind spots for certain things right where you all encouraged each other to talk a certain way and think in certain ways so to result in temporal evolution and then even when you get temporal evolution it's surprising that conscious subjects evolve because we can imagine a world which is physically just like ours but where consciousness doesn't exist and so it's actually quite striking that consciousness exists and not only does consciousness exist but it's paired very fortuitously with the physical world. Our mental lives are strikingly orderly and coherent and intelligible and rational given our physical states functioning and behavior. If you think about like the vast horde of conceivable ways of pairing up conscious states with physical states only >> I don't believe in mental states or physical states. So this is all just kind of like nonsense for me exceedingly tiny portion of those actually lead to consciousness involving >> I'm not saying I'm not saying Joe has to agree with me but I'm also like not optimistic that he will have even considered like the kind of perspective that I have in his reasoning.
¶100He doesn't have to agree with me, but the point is I'm I'm going to be left like I'm going to be left lacking something and and being just on pure rational level thinking, oh, if I mean, if he could see this, he wouldn't take this so seriously. And even if you do buy into um sort of like physical states and mental states as things, is he gonna engage with the strongest versions of these kinds of objections or not? I mean, I hope he will, but I'm again not optimistic. >> Like rational agency and meaningful relationships and virtue and enjoyment and aesthetic experience and so on. And then we have moral knowledge.
¶101It's really difficult to see how that could be the case under naturalism because the moral facts don't explain our moral judgments under naturalism. And then we also have opioid knowledge that a bunch of different people are experiencing God. religious experiences and the beauty is just saturating the world. And so I just was reflecting on all these different pieces of data and all >> fallacy of unification. Um at best something like that would be an informal fallacy, but I I mean I I certainly there's um what I would consider to be a methodological or metaphilosophical critique of the kind of philosophy and that Joe engages in which is a craving for generality.
¶102So often what I think that people in these philosophical traditions do is they they often assume and then look for like some general way of tying very complicated things together. And that means that they lead away from lean away from and don't pay attention to many of the relevant details within which there are like key differences that don't quite sit within that overarching generalization very well or nicely. And I think particularly when it comes to things like sensation and psychology, uh, a lot of the consciousness stuff does that because people immediately apply this kind of meta theoretical framework within which everything is just packaged under this consciousness label and then they immediately begin reasoning from there without ever asking about the justification for the introduction of that word. And that means that they they don't pay attention to any of the details of like you know even even like perception or description and reports of perception and how they vary from one another or or development um organism development in different organisms or childhood development in in humans. um all you know there's so many relevant details and all of those details are directly uh you know have a direct bearing on what you should think about um topics related to like philosophy of mind whatever um but immediately people are just like well here's the word consciousness and now how what's your big metaphysical theory of like the fundamental consciousness or the not fundamental conscious you're like hang on what like do do you even know like you know do do you even know about like um this thing that can be done surgically or in psychology or like about different medical conditions and why we have like medical conditions of mind or like different ways historically people have conceptualized the mind.
¶103It's just straight into like heavy duty metaphysics. All the coincidences that I'd have to stack one on top of another in order to remain an atheist and that was just it was getting difficult. But I still didn't go all the way to theism. Why? Well, because I had all these barriers to theism.
¶104I had the problem of evil and various other difficulties and arguments against theism that pulled on my mind and those still just seemed so strong to me. But then in my second year of grad school, I started coming across overwhelming evidence for miraculous phenomena. I mean, it started with certain people making videos about like our lady of Zetune, you know, this apparition topic or >> Yeah, this is here's the big problem. The problem is that James and I never did about apologetics on the Zyun miracle. And so that is the reason that Joe decon converted.
¶105It was our failure to do a bad apologetics episode on Zu >> Orthodox Church that literally like hundreds of thousands of people saw in addition to tons of medically documented healing miracles associated with it. Another thing that kickstarted my journey here was that my friend Cameron Batuzi was interviewing a bunch of different >> I also something I noticed I've listened to this maybe like three times now or something is the way he refers to like my friend Cameron Batusi and and again you know like very validly people say you know you're over interpreting reading too much into this um I I do think that there is just an underalysis of the role that like friendships have to play and again you I've been I'm being sympathetic to Joe here because this is just him saying like I'm coming out, right? He can't come out in that way because he's now a Catholic. Booms. But sorry Joe if you ever watch this.
¶106Well, not sorry because, you know, maybe that's true because you're saying this stuff about like taking a bullet, but let's leave all that to one side. Point is, I wouldn't care about that. I'd be very friendly with you, but you know, those guys wouldn't. Anyway, leaving all that to one side, what I'm trying to say is I think that if someone is in a reasonable place to evaluate a kind of like change like this, they would be thinking about the kinds of influences that who I have around me has had on me or like the people that I'm talking to, who am I spending time with. And I I don't think he does really consider that like say the fact he's got a YouTube channel exerts an influence on him and the fact that he has chosen to do a PhD within the domain of philosophy of religion has a big influence on him and the fact that he is looking for jobs in philosophy of religion and the fact that there's a heavy leaning towards Christian metaphysics and theism within philosophy of religion has a massive influence on him and the fact that primarily the philosophy of religion jobs are in um you know like Catholic universities and things like that and go to theists that probably you know that that will exert an influence on him and the fact that he makes money and can have an audience online from people who are Catholic and that there are these big channels who take it seriously that exerts an influence on it.
¶107Even the fact that like say for um for James and I even though we've spent lots of time on it, I mean we joke about how stupid a lot of this stuff is and so we like we don't have a respect for the field, let's say. Maybe James has more of a respect than me. I don't know. I don't I don't want to be unfair to him. I don't want to he doesn't have to have the he doesn't have to be a horrible person like me.
¶108But the point is that I don't have like a respect for philosophy of religion or like a lot of this like miracle discourse stuff. I think it is genuinely ridiculous. But if you even affiliate with that, if you're trying to keep the discourse going and have the commentary and or or if you want to be seen as like smart and rational talking about this stuff, you can't affiliate with people who are saying it's nonsense. You can't you just can't do it because you undermine your own position just by the fact that there's someone who's not kind of like going along with the illusion of this whole thing of being like aed by, you know, just like a few people saying stuff. But how could how did people say that sentence?
¶109There must have been like Mary appearing as lights in the sky or something. like professional psychiatrists and deliverance ministers and exorcists and various other people who are on the periphery of deliverance ministry concerning demonic. >> Yeah, I've said um people get very upset. People say you shouldn't be psycho analyzing, Nathan. First off, I do that because like I'm I'm very good at it.
¶110But the second thing to say about all this is that if you think I shouldn't psychoanalyze a human being, then please go and tell all these philosophers they shouldn't psychoanalyze God. and shouldn't believe in any of these arguments because they have to do that. You know, here's one thing that's not okay. Psychoanalyzing another human being. Here's one thing that is okay.
¶111Psychoanalyzing why an unlimited disembodied mind would set a value in a physical model to be that value rather than some other value. Apparently, phenomena and manifestations that they've witnessed with their own eyes. And like here we're talking about like super recent in totally perceptually conducive circumstances with sane people sometimes in the context of like multiple or even dozens of witnesses. And like yeah when he says like sane people and stuff like this again I'm a little bit like what what does sane mean here? So sane might mean like people who are not having psychotic episodes or don't have any diseases or whatever that would affect their sensory functioning.
¶112But sane here doesn't mean like someone who is not a priest or whatever and prone to interpreting any experience through the lens of theological language for example or you know someone who is like a lay person. The point being again that the details in these cases are incredibly relevant. Like someone doesn't have to be insane to be a really unreliable uh reportee of their experience with respect to like demon reports or whatever. like someone doesn't have to be um like psychotic and institutionalized in order for them to like interpret weird lights as Mary a Marian apparition, you know, like there are a lot of people and particularly when people believe these kinds of things in the first place, they make sense of their experience in terms of producing these kinds of reports. And what adds an extra layer of um complexity to all this is not just the individual report but the social nature of storytelling.
¶113So when something like this happens, particularly if it's perceived as a sign, you know, of some theological statement or something, then people retell these stories in groups and there are social pressures to interpret that experience in terms of language that the group shares or to make sense of it in terms of like a paradigm that the group might share. And all of that stuff corrupts people's memories and distorts what they report and stuff over time. What what we don't see what we don't see, again, I think James put it better than me in his video, but what we don't see is people producing this kind of evidence in well-controlled conditions, right? in in well-controlled uh double I'm going to say double blinded because Joe puts a lot of emphasis on blinded in uh well-controlled double blinded conditions where the measurements are good and the uh data collection is good and there's like pre-registration and uh you know there's all all the relevant checks and things are in place for trying to control the things that would be a part of the explanation that some that actually very ordinary things happened here and people are able to form beliefs in completely ordinary circumstances or you might say even atypical circumstances but that are ordinary for the laws of physics and chemistry and so on, right? And and then the other thing that's going on here is like um well what are people like?
¶114I mean it it's super common for people to hallucinate, right? It's super common for people to like hear voices, see things, all that kind of stuff. And again, just knowing about a little bit of psychology with respect to all that stuff just really makes it kind of typical that people would produce these kinds of beliefs. And especially a lot of these reports, they come around from say like 100 years ago, 200 years ago, things like that sometimes. And I think what's often underappreciated is people, it is history.
¶115And people again often engage with um reports that they're given as if you're dealing with like a modern secular person rather than someone who's in an incredibly different historical context where it's perfectly normal to talk in like very supernatural ways about um any of their experiences that they have. So I I think again on all these fronts on the psychological scientific front and on the historical front Joe's just not in a good position to evaluate any of these things and it's a shame because again in uh his undergrad I know that Joe was taking some modules in biology and I know that he was enjoying those modules right and so I I don't think he's not intellectually capable of understanding any of these things um but he's I I just put way too much effort and emphasis into talking to the wrong people about these things. I'm not saying he has to talk to me or James, though, you know, maybe spending four hours sat with James in a Discord server instead of Ethan Muse might be helpful for Hinki on this stuff. But um certainly reading not reading like um apologists [snorts] whose Substack blog about this stuff but reading like textbooks about the psychology of site phenomena, the psychology of belief formation, things like that. Uh sociology of like oral tradition and and and how things change or history in the particular periods.
¶116he should be engaging with that stuff and not just apologetic content on it to evaluate that. And I I just don't see him doing that. >> Things that it seems like it's really hard to be mistaken about which are like these, you know, complex multimodal experiences where like, you know, the temperature of the room would just like instantaneously drop to freezing such that the person could literally see their breath and then become scorching hot such that everyone in the room just starts like sweating and testifying to things like, oh, you know, like a few days ago, I literally saw with my own eyes and multiple people present also saw it and they told me afterwards or like multiple things were just flying across the room of their own accord and various other like instant >> people told me things were flying across the room. again. Like it's possible like things fly across the room all the time.
¶117My girlfriend gets annoyed at me and will throw a thing at me. I can't get a re can't bet a reaction. Um, you know, it's possible for things to fly across the room in non-supnatural circumstances firstly, right? But then it's possible for people to believe things fly across the room when they didn't fly across the room. So like what again again it's just you can't rationally evaluate it based on this but I I'll wait I'll wait to see the evidence that he puts forward because like some guy told me that things [ __ ] fell across the room and I don't want to call him a liar.
¶118It's like okay you don't have to call him a liar though. You could be like maybe he saw something or there's just so many explanations. It's not worth me enumerating the infinite possible ways for someone to sincerely believe something flew across the room without something supernaturally flying across the room. Um, just to engage with like nothing, no evidence presented, >> supernatural changes in facial structure or eyes or various other things like levitation and so on. And I didn't actually believe these things for the longest time.
¶119I thought it was actually pretty implausible. But Cameron just kept pushing me. He was like, "Joe, watch the video. What's your explanation of this person's testimony?" You know, I'd like give these flailing kind of implausible natural >> the I'd give these flailing kind of implausible natural explanations. God did it.
¶120A demon appeared. Again, what the [ __ ] is that? Right. Sorry for the language, especially if there's any um Catholics listening, you will need to, you know, rub your rabbit foot or whatever. But like what compare and compare and contrast like it seems like a kind of combination of like schema theory and psychology, socialization, whatever would explain this versus this embodied mind that is unlimited chose to produce chose to what?
¶121chose to allow a demon which is a disembodied mind, an embodied mind, what to manifest. What does that mean? In the world at a point, why that point versus any? Because then that demon would throw a thing across the room and God wanted that. What is the comparison here is my point.
¶122How like sure you could like tell a plausible story maybe like like a story where you're not hedging your bets at all and you're not saying ah maybe it was this because it would you know like again this just isn't the way that people talk in those circles. You don't go like oh maybe God let a demon do it or maybe God let an angel do it or maybe God interacted uh directly because people don't do that. They just kind of assert confidently one thing somehow they think they know. But that in itself is is a a handwave and explanation because you've not provided an explanation. There's no there's no explanation if everything that you said about the explanation is more mysterious than the thing it's trying to explain.
¶123[snorts] More mysterious to me than my 5 L water bottle here levitating and going across the room would be how a demon could have done that. I don't know how how could a demon do that? What does it even mean? Like what what are demons to do that kind of thing? like what how how can they do like it just that is weirder to me than just I don't know with respect to that >> holistic explanations concerning which I have no independent evidence and you know basically I'm like having to divine from the armchair that these people are just like lying straight to their teeth and then also like all the other deliverance ministers are in these >> yeah you don't have to divine from the armchair though because what you could actually do if you think this stuff is worth taking seriously is construct experiments like interview people cross reference them um consult with theory about how people not necessarily lie but come to sincerely believe things that are mistaken and then you can try and test that within an interview framework that you could apply or see if it meets the criteria for being one of these these cases.
¶124But you know again that would be work to do something like that and then like also you know like the the government reports that we have to some of these phenomena are also like that the people who testified in those are just mistaken and like dozens of other I was starting to shift to my seat. I was starting to become uncomfortable and that was just like the first of my worries because over the course of my second and third year of grad school I was just utterly inundated with overwhelming evidence for miraculous phenomena and like the caliber of evidence that we're talking about here is not like oh I prayed and my headache got better. It's like okay okay Susie like I'm glad your headache got better but I'm not not quite sure that's a miracle. Instead we're talking videos photographs blinded well videos and photographs are like I don't I don't understand how a video or photograph can be good evidence of a miracle really. Like what does that mean?
¶125Like I'm okay, I can see an a video of like like what first off like what presumably it really matters what the contents of that video are supposed to be. But then there's like you know there's this layer between what you're seeing in a video, whatever that is supposed to be, and what happened in the world. Like so what is that? I mean, do you see like an ethereal looking being? Okay.
¶126Well, how can that happen? People can tamper with things. Maybe it's that uh there are artifacts. I mean people record video through cameras and there are artifacts that can appear in the video as a product of the chemistry, the electronics, the the the lens and the way that like like all of the details are so relevant to this. Like what do you like what does it even mean to just say someone videoed God?
¶127Like what does what does it even mean to say someone videoed a miracle? Like what does that mean? I I just don't know. laboratory analyses >> like laborator laboratory analyses in miracle. What does that mean?
¶128I I think he's maybe referring there to um claims of transubstantiation turning into like cardiac tissue or whatever. But there's like so many problems with all of this stuff because I mean you've got got to look into the the the specifics of the claims to actually go into the details and he's not done that. And this is like that Brandolini's law thing of like it takes just magnitudes more effort to um to to deconstruct [ __ ] than it takes to just like blame blindly assert. You just go, "Oh, scientific evidence, bro." And then you go into all the details and then even as you go into the details, someone just has to go surface level into the details and ass slightly more. You've got to like infinitely deconstruct the [ __ ] But the point the point being um there are all these problems with there being like so many motivated Catholics, Catholic universities and like lowquality predatory journals out there that can participate in these sorts of things and then it'll be like checked by like some other Catholic and like so it's just all these people giving themselves a pat on the back with their own biases and then it never happens in a way that there's just so many problems with all this stuff or you don't you know you don't know where the samples came from.
¶129The one of the best examples that I remember of this is like the shroud of choring thing where we, you know, like James and I looked at it in the bad apologetics on the shroud of churing where the STR team took those samples and then they get carbon dated to exactly the time when all of the historical evidence would say that the artifact should have come from except from the fact that the um error bars don't overlap because one of the labs did a slightly different thing. And then a bunch of people who don't understand how statistics works at all say that that discredits the whole thing even though they're all placed within the same like 200 year period around the the 1300s still just you know and just because you can perform some statistical analysis which says there's a problem doesn't actually mean that there's a problem with saying this is conclusively not from the first century [laughter] and and it's like that that kind of thing. So, so then it it goes to, you know, you get you get good stuff done by like labs that don't have issues and it shows that the claims aren't true that are made by the labs that have issues and then that gets like interpreted in some weird way and then some like crackpot comes along and pays to get something put in a predatory journal and then that gets like bounced around by all these like Catholic magazines and maybe like Cameron Batusi constructs an AI version of the person and and pretends to have an interview with them and people just are like, "Oh, wow. There's this novel X-ray dat." But it's it's like all just craziness and nonsense with nothing to do with anything. X-rays, you name it, we got it's like we got blinded laboratory analysis saying, "Yeah, this is suffering myioardial tissue." And what's that doing in a host that a Catholic priest just prayed over?
¶130Like if you see that, what am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to do? >> What What are you supposed to do? Um rationally evaluate it. Did Did you see that?
¶131No, you didn't see that. Okay. So what is the evidence you actually saw? >> Oh, when you see that it's like, oh no. And if it's on these healing miracles, it's like we got documentation to like complete instantaneous permanent remission of advanced multiple sclerosis in combination with an uncolapsed lung red.
¶132>> Just to say again about like so diseases like multiple sclerosis are like really complicated. Um, but you know, it's often to do with bad things happening to people's nerves and there can be recovery from that for people because the causes are so strange. And so like what again just I I can't engage with all this cuz it's so much nonsense. It it's so much all at once to try to even engage with. But like it's just not if you have a bit of background knowledge about the way that these diseases are supposed to work and what the causes are like you know that people do recover from these things and there can be like a billion reasons why that happened and you don't know which one of the billion it is without looking into the specific case of calf muscles an instantaneous removal of blindness at the same time.
¶133Oh, all in connection, by the way, with like a complex hallucination. I know actually like a religious experience of like a booming voice saying, "Get up my child and walk." Like that's the level of evidence that >> Well, people hallucinate all the time, though. And then even if they're not hallucinating, it's perfectly possible for people to reinterpret their experiences. Particularly, you know, if some if something happens like this and and someone like walks, for example, and that it's taken by a religious community to be a religious experience, it's perfectly common for that community to help the person make sense of that experience in a way where they will embellish and embezzle and sort of distort their own recollection of exactly what happened and you use language and maybe add artifacts that that weren't quite there we're talking about and then for some of the canonization healing miracles for which medical documentation is required it's like we got pictures of the dude beforehand with his severe bilateral congenital club foot we have pictures from his childhood you can see them and he's like we have testimonies from all like his friends and whatnot and his teachers like to the fact that he'd always have to like walk on the sides of his ankles and whatnot and we've pictures of him throughout childhood with that. Oh, and then he prays to one of these Catholic saints and then >> yeah, I'll have to look at this example.
¶134I don't know about it >> afterwards. >> But I mean like it just doesn't it sounds like there'll be something weird going on is my guess. >> Both of his legs are straight and completely healed. It's like, okay, this is insane. Oh, and it's like we've got X-rays afterwards and pictures afterwards.
¶135Okay, what's going on here? And then you just go through all these other cases and it's just insane. And I just can't believe the conspiracy that I would have to posit. >> I think you have to believe in any conspiracy. I think it's also perfect.
¶136I think it's like way more like what is the miracle mechanism even supposed to be? Like I I just I just don't get it. Like I don't think that there is an explanation here. And this is why for me I think that people should not try to make religion rational. Um I think that they should go with the heart, bro, if they're going to if they're going to be religious and not pretend that they're applying the tools of rationality.
¶137Because I think what the tools of rationality say you should say about something like that is I don't know. I don't know, bro. In order to explain them all away, it just seems like the universe was conspiring to make it look like God exists. God is performing certain miracles and not just miracles, but miracles that seem to vindicate distinctive Catholic doctrines. You've got, for instance, very well evidence eucharistic miracles.
¶138You've got extremely well evidence Marian apparitions like Fatima and Lords and Zetune where like Mary is like granting requests for conversion to Catholicism. She's saying get the holy father to consecrate Russia outside of his jurisdiction by the way to my immaculate heart thereby vindicating. I I don't even know what any of this even means. >> In the immaculate concept, >> I remember in uh in high school GCSE in religious studies, we had we had to like part a part of the um religious studies GCSE is some stuff on the reports of miracles at Lords. But like this stuff that he's saying about like what Mary said Mary said she's going to do something in Russia.
¶139What did she do? And what's that got to do with Russia? And how does that like what is supposed to have happened here? Like what is actually supposed to like is Mary going to Russia and persuading people or what? Like what only Catholics dog stmmatize?
¶140And of course, you know, she's like, as I said, granting petitions to >> and what like why not just think that this is some like weird political propaganda from a different century that might have been, you know, appealing to people at the time? >> People to Catholicism. She's like telling people to pray the rosary. pray the rosary. So she's like advancing the cause of praying the rosary which of course meditates on mystery.
¶141>> Yeah. Mary was like everyone get involved with Charlemagne, bro. Like >> is like the assumption and the coronation of Mary. Oh, and of course it's like it's Mary herself, the mother of God appearing to people. It's like it's just >> I tell you what would be also like a funny counter example here is I don't know but I'll probably look into it but I bet you could find examples from uh the the Third Reich of like miracles about miracles that were supposed to attest to the unification of Germany or of like the expansion of Germany to reclaim the lost lands or for Laban's realm into the east for the German people.
¶142like I I would I would bet a lot that there are reports of a similar evidential quality that you can find. Um which again would I have I have to look into it but um it would it would be funny and I' it'd be again interesting to see what people who buy into this sort of stuff think of that. Got through with Catholic vindicatory implications and there all sorts of reasons why naturalistic explanations aren't good and why demonic explanations aren't good and that's just phenomena. Like in lures we've got Mary telling St. Bernardet Subaru like or however it is like we don't know you want the bag >> someone speaks in French so it's more con like what what even is his point here I I just don't get it >> like >> you have like Maryu like Bronx explain that atheist well she's French so she speaks French like what what are you talking about or however it is like >> I am the immaculate conception that you speak French how do you explain that atheist >> we don't know you want the baguette the she's He's literally saying to St.
¶143Bernett, I am the immaculate conception. I mean, how much clearer could you possibly get? And then God just goes out of his way to perform like the most unprecedented string of like concentrated medically documented healing miracles in all of history at Lords. >> I have to look at them. >> Insane, you know, you want to be I want to be French.
¶144L Oh, and God's also going like out of his way on multiple occasions on multiple different continents and in multiple different centuries. He's going out of his way to like make sure that when like a Catholic priest Oh, it only seems to be Catholic priest. When a Catholic priest prays over some bread, it turns Oh my goodness, they're suffering myioardial tissue afterwards. And like we've got we got like scientific documentation. There's like blinded laboratories and like blind >> I think James raised a great point about this that the whole point of transpentiation seems to be that that doesn't happen right because the accidents remain the same.
¶145So why would it happen sometimes? And then you say well it happens sometimes as a miracle as a vindication of the beliefs. But then like for example, why does it only happen within Catholicism and not in like Eastern Orthodoxy or any other denominations? Of course, you could produce a principled answer. You say, well, they don't have the special powers because of laying on because the council of the Lateran council of so and so prevented that powers or something somehow.
¶146But like, you know, you could compare that to another explanation which would be that this is like a socialization thing that has caught on within Catholicism. And so that explains why the distribution of these reports occurs within Catholicism and not within these other denominations. But the scientists look at these things and we also have the pictures of them that we can compare. You can you can even ask AI to look at the pictures and it's like yeah seems like mus muscular skeletal or some kind of like muscular tissue. It's like hm and of course you know the miracle at hand simulates like precisely the onlogical change that Catholics believe in.
¶147And there are so >> well no it it doesn't right because they believe that the accidents remain the same. other things that I'm leaving out. But like finally in February this year, I sit down with Ethan Muse for like 4 hours to talk about the overwhelming evidence behind just in case uh people don't know. Um there used to be this uh YouTuber called Canadian Catholic who's not around anymore. Um but Ethan Muse is just the same guy basically.
¶148Um >> Padre Pio is mystical charisms. Like we have we have doctors who issue reports like immediately afterwards where they're like yeah I literally and they're describing in like tremendous detail their observations like like yeah I literally palpated his hands and >> or in like in like more popular circles I think he's known as like Gorlock the destroyer or something >> his feet and like he's like describing like yeah I felt a palpable void in between his hands and it was separated by thin membranes on both sides. Oh and another doctor on an earlier occasion was like yeah I examined it and there was like a complete hole going through his entire hand such that I could literally read things on the other side of the hand if I like if I put his hand up. >> Wait who? Sorry, I stopped.
¶149I literally zoned out, stopped paying attention. >> Like he's like describing like we have doctors who issue reports like immediately afterwards where they're like, "Yeah, I literally" and they're describing in like tremendous detail their observations like, "Yeah, they literally palpated his hands and his feet and like he's like describing like, yeah, >> so there's a report someone cuts >> I felt a palpable void in between his >> someone cuts a hole in their hands and feet >> hands and it was separated by thin membranes on both sides." Oh, and another doctor on an earlier occasion was like, "Yeah, I examined it and there was like a complete hole going through his entire hand such that I could literally read things on the other side of the hand if I like if I put his hand up against it." So, it's like, "Okay, what's going [laughter] on?" Oh, and then he has these for like five decades long with a bunch of other people seeing them. We have pictures of them. We have videos of them. Thousand, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, probably millions of people saw these over the course of those 50 years.
¶150Oh, and then, you know, like we've got pictures on the day of his death where he has no scars despite having deep wounds for five decades. And of course like the ideology and the character of these wounds. >> Wait, how long was it healed for apparently? Or is it just that there's this one picture? >> I don't know.
¶151>> It's something to look into in the future. You know, I've got so much time and obviously uh things to do other than endlessly investigate these kinds of claims, but I'm sure I'll get around to it. >> If there is naturalistic explanations that you might profer. And then that's just the stigma. And it's like we got so many medically documented healing miracles with him involving like the regeneration of eyes and also like this odor.
¶152>> And also why would any of this necessarily have to do with Catholicism, right? Could be anything. So like where we sometimes where he goes like we come in like why not think he's using future techn he's a time traveler with future technology. Why not think that um it's a Hindu demon having a joke waves this like massive beautiful fragrance that would like fill rooms and that would like stay with some of his relics for like years on end. Oh, and also like dozens of times doctors are taking his temperature and it's like getting naturalistically inexplicable readings.
¶153So like on one of the occasions >> naturalistically inexplicable temperatures, what are those? >> Doctor has a mercury thermometer, takes his temperature under his armpit with a mercury thermometer, it literally shatters. So then they It literally shatters. Again, the way that you report that would is you you might say like in a diary by so and so it says it shattered or you use the description that was provided because Joe here in being so excited or some might call it manic about his conversion is providing new descriptions that are not that go beyond whatever the evidence is that people should reason now for for for the initial claim. And so he is persuading an audience to believe something about what happened based on what his beliefs are.
¶154You know, he's saying, "Look guys, they put a mercury thermometer in a guy's armpit and it it exploded and shattered." That is not how you present something contentious like this to an audience if you want them to rationally evaluate it appropriately. What you do if you want them to do that is you present them with exactly what the evidence is rather than telling them what a synthesized explanation would be where you're yourself very excited about that and provide your own verbiage for what happened a professional bath thermometer and then take a temperature with it and then it reads 125 degrees. I mean it's just all your organs would just utterly fail at that point. I could go on and on and there are lots of reasons why all these have like Catholic distinctive vindicatory implications where like it seems like God is going out of his way to put his stamp of approval on distinctive Catholic doctrines. My broader point is that over the course of my second and third year of grad school, I just start getting inundated with evidence for miracles firstly.
¶155But right, but I mean you you could say in the third and fourth year of grad school when I'm predominantly talking to Cameron Batusi and other people and Cameron's just converted to Catholicism and those are my most like and like him, Trent Horn and a few other people are my most well-connected, biggest welloing video people that I talk to. Um, and I'm studying philosophy. I then start getting inundated by these claims. Why does that happen? Because of who you're hanging out with and who you're talking to about what and what the incentives are in your life, right?
¶156Also, miracles that seem to vindicate distinctively Catholic doctrines. And not just that, but just as theism offered just this like wonderfully unifying explanation of like a vast and diverse array of otherwise pretty striking and coincidental data, I started to see Catholicism in the same light. It started to seem to me that Catholicism just unifyingly explains all this miraculous evidence. the pattern of miracles, the individual miracles, and it also would make it not particularly surprising that I might be going systematically astray with respect to some of my moral intuitions or some my intuitions against hell. >> With respect to some moral intuitions.
¶157Guess he means there that he considered sleeping with a guy. Guess >> he's surprising that I might be going systematically astray with respect to some of my moral intu. >> He was like, "It's okay to be I I honestly think that he might have been I don't know this. I don't know this and I want to handle this and I think we should like this is a call for everyone to think about this if you think this might be right to handle it in a sensitive way. But from some of the other things he said about like uh trying to protect the gay community from people, I suspect he may be non straight and he may have been exploring or thinking about some of that stuff because it also sounds to me like he is trying to live in the way, you know, and I don't mean to like air this in a way that's like public or something.
¶158I don't have some insider information that no one has, but it would it would be really sad if this is right where he's also talking about trying to live in like a kind of celibate way, which is often the response that's given to um gay people who want to live within Christianity. and he's describing his feelings as moral distortions. And I just think that that would be like re a really sad thing if any of that is right. And it would also explain this hor horrific internal kind of struggle that he's dealing with in this and the kind of like manic jump. it just >> and it also would make it not particularly surprising that I might be going systematically astray with respect to some of my moral intuitions or some of my intuitions against hell or various other things like that.
¶159So I started to see Catholicism in much the same way that I saw theism. Of course I still had lots of objections to Catholicism. It was so hard to get through all of them. You know like I had objections to hell and I had objections to the Bible and I had objections to the moral teachings of the church and I magisterial objections and whatnot. But just over the course of yeah those two or so years I just started looking into the objections further and and they just started to wayne.
¶160So in addition to like reading like theology and philosophy and you know magisteriology in addition to all of that I watch lots of YouTube videos but also I would just sit down for like hours on end with my my good friend Ethan Muse and we would just go back and forth and >> my good friend Ethan Muse >> back and forth on these various objections and for the most part he was just like systematically coming out on top. So, I was like, "Oh, man. What's going on here?" Um, no, but like and his responses to my objections were actually quite powerful. I mean, ultimately, it was the the 4-hour conversation with Ethan Muse on Padre Peio that convinced me >> that's honestly crazy to me, but >> intellectually that Catholicism is true. I just said to myself, like, listen, I can't imagine if I died right now and I saw Christ.
¶161I can't imagine having to tell him what I'd have to tell him about my life as a non-atholic. And I was just not willing to bet my soul. >> Honestly, for me, for for me right now, if I died and saw Christ and he asked me about Padra Pio, I'd be like, that just sounds crazy, don't you think? And also, Jesus, I have to work like 10 hours a day very hard and I have to constantly learn things and I don't have time to endlessly investigate miracle claims. And unfortunately Jesus, people who keep putting forward these miracle claim arguments keep abusing tools of statistics.
¶162And unfortunately Jesus, I've been uh thinking a lot about uh measure theory, particularly um doing my masters in statistics and I just can't get past the way that people abuse these statistical tools. It makes it really hard for me to actually engage with what they're saying because I think that the claims that they make are literally meaningless a lot of the time. Um, so I'm just in a position to not be convinced based on that stuff. And also I can't even see why that would be explained by God or what. Like it's just incredibly bizarre to me.
¶163Oh well. And just like not only a single conspiracy, but just like a conspiracy of conspiracies that are just like conspiring to make it look as though Catholicism is true. And so the day after that call with Eden Muse, I did my examination of conscience covering a decade of my life away from the faith. >> I didn't see this. And then the following day I did my general confession.
¶164Praise God. Now I've been giving you the intellectual side of the story. But any conversion not only has intellectual uh he made a video mocking his announcement theorizing that he might be gay. Like he genuinely can't comprehend the dude just converted to his own means. Well, I think I think Joe has converted um to his own means, but I think he could possibly be gay and be perfectly fine with that.
¶165Um, and I think that him going to a private Catholic school is probably a bigger influence than the psychophysical harmony argument. You know, I think that's reasonable. I think that him being friends with Cameron Batusi and Ethan Muse and not with other people who then share their beliefs is going to probably be pretty big influence, probably a bigger influence than Contingency Argument. That's my belief. Um I think I'm I'm just not saying anything that's outlandish actuallyual elements.
¶166It has personal elements, spiritual elements, right? Because conversion is not just a change of mind. Conversion is a change of heart. And so what helped me change my heart? I mean ultimately it was God, right?
¶167But what what changed? Well, it started with St. Mary Grey. I watched this video produced by Gabby after hours on the story of St. Mary Ready.
¶168And long story short, you know, she's this 11-year-old girl whose 20-year-old neighbor takes an impure liking to her. And one day, this 20-year-old neighbor, Andrew Sarinelli, comes up to her and says, you know, unless you do what I want you to do, I'm going to kill you. And he's got this like long sharp object that he's pointing at her. And she says, no, I'm going to remain pure. And so he stabs her ultimately 14 times.
¶169On her deathbed the next day, you know, she's rushed to the hospital. Somehow she'd survived this even though he thought he had finished the job. On her deathbed, she's like offering up all of her suffering for the salvation of souls. She's enduring it patiently, not complaining. And she also says, "I forgive Andrew Sarinelli and I want him with me in paradise." You know, Andrew Sarinelli is caught.
¶170He's brought to prison and he's just like this ragingly hateful man. He's just like blaming her. He's full of resentment. Very relatable for me. Um faster.
¶171>> He's like being violent with his other inmates and whatnot. But then one night he has a dream and in that dream St. Mary Granny appears to him and hands him one by one 14 white liies which he of course rightly interprets as her forgiving him for each of the 14 times he stabbed her. He wakes up. >> Wait, hang on.
¶172I I again I kind of zoned out of this story. Is she Is she really doing that or is she a ghost? >> A completely changed man. He calls it >> or was it in a dream? I >> He confesses to having murdered St.
¶173Mary Grey and he radically transforms his life. >> Oh, wait. He had a dream and then changes his life >> to the point that now there's a cause for his canonization. >> Wait, is Joe killed someone? Why is that?
¶174I don't know who he like. When I reflected on the story, I was like, this is such a profound and beautiful story of radical forgiveness, radical love, radical purity. >> But like I I get what he's saying. Like that can be very beautiful and everything, but it it's like someone has a dream and then like that people have dreams about it's like whatever she's on, I want some of that. And so this is like one step along the path of kind of instilling within me a kind of magnetic pole, a kind of magnetic attraction to Catholicism.
¶175The same thing happened with uh St. Maxwell Kohley and of course I was already quite quite affected by the figure of Christ in the gospels. you know, he speaks with his authority. >> This is again just to commentate on this, like one of the things that um where I hope I hope the people around Joe won't be a negative influence on him because there are some who would politically be very on board with something similar to Awitz and would have their justifications for it. So um you know he's he's preaching like radical love of neighbor like radical forgiveness, radical self-sacrifice and that was already quite attractive to me.
¶176But the stories of some of these saints and there lots of others too like St. David and Malachi um really influenced me. And then in addition to that I had these like quasi religious experiences where I was just like I just be sitting in gym and I would just feel almost in waves just like this sense you could be a saint. You could be a saint. This is a worry because it feels to me relatively narcissistic.
¶177I don't think Joe generally I wouldn't describe him as a narcissistic person but from from within a Christian moral paradigm. I know I know that Catholics have this big thing about like being canonized the saints whatever but like this is sounding a bit odd saying I didn't actually like hear a voice in my head but I knew that that that somehow was what's being communicated to me. Right. I just felt this palpable call to saintthood and then I said it almost like in ways and at the same time I was being convicted of my sin. I was just seeing the manifold ways in which I seriously fall short of how I'm supposed to live.
¶178And so not just launching like a full frontal assault on me to get me converted. Right? >> Let's not be not being mean to use. I know. Okay.
¶179I've not been a good example, right? I've not I've not been a good example. I made a joke about but I'm just thinking let's not be uh mean putting all these like >> and myself. I'll try not to be in future and I apologize. >> Overwhelmingly beautiful, inspiring.
¶180>> I've been I've been morally converted by the story of um this girl in a in a dream >> stories on my radar. He's making them have a significant impact on me. Um he's like giving me these like quasi religious experiences kind of calling me the same. He's giving me this like weird almost indescribable magnetic attraction to Catholicism. Um and his frontal assault succeeded in changing my heart.
¶181You know, at some point in every conversion, someone goes from that reaction that I said earlier like, "Oh no." Like there's so much evidence for like, "Oh my gosh." You know, you look at the miracles and then you got this cognitive just like you're like, "Oh no." At some point, you go from that to like, "Oh man, this is so wonderful. This is so beautiful. You have a change of heart." And so God effectuated that within me. And so it was the combination of the kind of head factors and the heart factors that ultimately culminated in that general confession. God is good.
¶182So good. Don't write off who you take to be even the hardest of sinners because we're sin bound. Grace abounds all the more. Now, I said at the beginning of the video that I've got some cool things to share. So, one of those is a new channel intro.
¶183So, let's get into that. >> The the channel intro, this bit was the bit where I was like, "This has got to be a troll." >> Like, maybe not. I Is that Alex Malpass? >> That would be so funny. >> Or is that is that um this Padre Pio guy?
¶184Who's this guy? Is this a guy? Is it just some random guy? Who's this guy? Also, I I find this one funny actually because as it says the word goodness, it just like zooms in on this like random bold guy.
¶185So, we got Alex Mal and then it's like goodness, but it just it's like zooming in on just some black and white picture of some random guy. Goodness. But he's just got this expression on his face like It's just like unrelated concepts to find philosophy. Omega only his underhasizing the human nature there by cropping half the face. Oh no.
¶186There we go. Okay. Okay. Undone. Nathan Cthololis is a Do the two keys that mean anything?
¶187There's a gold and a silver one. Can I hear someone having sex? I don't know if I can hear someone having sex or if I can hear like geese. Could be geese. Could be geese.
¶188Okay. Yeah, that was that was uh odd for me. Sorry. I I don't have ADHD. >> Wow.
¶189Isn't that so cool? >> Yeah. I guess I aesthetic preferences may vary, right? >> I don't know. I love it.
¶190My friend Juan put it together. Thank you, Juan. Everyone say thank you, Juan. And then there are a few. >> That's a good Juan.
¶191Other very cool things coming up. So on Monday, my inerson interview with Matt Frad is coming out. And then throughout the rest of next week, there are lots of other mysterious Inerson interviews that are going to come out that I'm not going to talk about right now. You're just going to have to find out what those are about. and who they're with.
¶192Here are some plans for the channel going forward. >> General philosophy content, especially SCP Saturdays, but the major shift will be that I'm planning to focus on arguing for Catholicism, going through everything I went through in much more depth. It will take a lot of time, but I want to essentially create and compile together the best series of videos in history. Oh, this is that like saintthhood things got on arguments for God's existence and Catholicism. I can't promise it, but I'd like to do it.
¶193And your patronage would give me extra motivation and time to do this. So, any amount helps, especially the saintly tier of $250 a month. First, start with arguments for theism lower case this time. Systematically respond to the arguments for atheism. I mean, I would look forward to him definitely engaging with my points of view.
¶194Comb through the miraculous arguments for Catholicism. Comb through non-miraculous arguments for Catholicism. Respond extensively to all the objections to Catholicism issuing from atheists, Protestants, Orthodox, etc. develop an extensive body of videos criticizing other religion. I mean, that sounds a bit weird.
¶195That that to me just sounds a bit nasty. Develop an extensive body of videos criticizing other videos. I like it's going to be like um here's like oh god I can just hear this horrible go. >> She's disgusting. [laughter] She's disgusting.
¶196And then, oh, I got to turn down my volume again so I can't hear it. [laughter] I hate it. Grow it. Okay. Um, and then it's like, okay, today I'm interviewing Alexander Puce on his argument about why condoms don't condoms are immoral.
¶197And then tomorrow I'm just it's just going to be like, "Oh, Hinduism bad. Muslims suck, bro." I don't know. The thing is I I don't even believe that last bullet point is particularly required because there are many versions of Catholicism that are incredibly pluralistic and supportive of other religions. So, you know, he's he's weighing in on the Pashimama controversy already. uh debates and discussions continuing.
¶198I asked for patience going forward. Things are getting real busy in life as I need to go on the job market. Okay, so my theory about he's looking for a job confirmed. I need to dissitate. What does that mean?
¶199How does one do that? I need to figure out what exactly God is calling me to do with the rest of my life, etc. Just a few little things. Also ask for your prayers. Know that I'll be praying for you.
¶200How will how can you you you can't pray for No, you can't be praying for everyone cuz you don't even know the PE. 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.
¶201It 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 >> you can't you can't see it on the top of his um screen here, but the first bullet point is debate J. Start with arguments for theism, then systematically respond 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.
¶202Like again, this is all just like a dream of mine. I'd like to do that. >> Just a dream. It's just a dream for me to have like withering criticisms of all those dirty foreign religions. and we will see where the Lord takes me.
¶203Um, debates and discussions will be continuing and I also just ask for patience. You know, things are getting very busy and I also ask for your prayers. Know that I will be praying for you. And also stay tuned very soon. >> You'll have to debate Kyle Allander, the Christian idealist guy who I am told, I don't know if this is true or not, has become a Mahayana Buddhist.
¶204That would be a good one. >> For my many hours long comprehensive case for Catholicism, I I think I think you're really going to enjoy it. that's gonna be on my channel. So, definitely. >> Okay.
¶205I I think that video might be a candidate for a marathon bad apologetics. >> Of course, hit the subscribe button and notification bell and like give me like thousands of dollars in Patreon. Of course, hey, our time together has unfortunately come to >> it'd be funny if he was canonized and became and but everyone kept like spelling his surname wrong and they were like St. Schmidt >> to an end. That's my conversion story.
¶206It's ultimately a love story. >> Things are getting very busy. I keep being invited on like Daily Wire shows to talk about this >> and I hope it's the beginning of a similar love story on your end. Praise God. >> Praise be.
¶207>> I know. I mean, I'm not offended by him converted by the way um to put any speculation around that. Like >> I'm more than happy for him to be a Catholic. I just my like my my only concern is like will this actually help him love his neighbor better? And I'm sort of a bit critical of like I'm I'm very skeptical that it will.
¶208I think it's more likely to just draw him into like culture warns. Um and and maybe like the production of of weird propaganda um like Mark Felton's videos, which is why I'm not interested. Um, so we'll see. I I hope that this is again a good thing for his mental health and spiritual health, but he is seeming a little bit manic and maybe he isn't in a great place. Um, but time will tell.
¶209And um, yeah, I'm not I I think that all of this is pretty plainly explicable in terms of nothing to do with rational reasons, which is fine. I just wish that people didn't have to kind of pretend it did have stuff to do with that and there was a bit more engagement with the nonrational explanations maybe or or or introspection upon that kind of stuff which you know is it's not exactly out of the um question given Mr. San Austinine inventing the genre of autobiography, psychological autobiography. And uh yeah, that's it. That's it from me.
¶210We're coming up to two hours. It's your your last chance to donate money. You saying you aren't offended doesn't mean [ __ ] at this point, man. What do you mean it doesn't mean anything? I mean, it's a meaningful sentence.
¶211You I think what you mean is you don't believe me and you're welcome to not believe me. I don't care. Who are you? Yeah, I hope everyone has had a good weekend. Hope you enjoyed the coming week.
¶212Um, and I hope that this interview, this interview, this video, if you listen to it, hasn't been a negative thing in your life. I hope it's been a positive thing. It's people.