¶1[music] Oh my god, Joe Schmidt just converted to Catholicism. If you don't know who he is, this is like one of the smartest guys on the YouTube philosophy of religion sphere. In fact, on the I think on the entire philosophy of religion scene in general, he has published papers, books and and all of that. And you know, I want to say something. I felt so inspired by Joe that I actually decided to convert to Christianity myself.
¶2I decided to become a Mormon because I always like the idea of having multiple wives. No, just kidding. I'm not going to convert to Christianity yet. But now, you know, in all seriousness, this is a big thing. You know, I do I'm not going to lie.
¶3I think I feel kind of sad because I do think that this is like a a blow to to YouTube atheism. Like imagine if Michael Jones from in Spanish philosophy suddenly said, you know, guys, I I don't believe in Christianity anymore. I don't think the the case for Christianity is really that strong, right? So I don't personally believe in it. I mean that would be a huge blow to Christianity like in in YouTube, right?
¶4And well the same thing kind of just happened to us in in reverse, right? So I do think we we lost like one of our brightest guys in in a sense, right? You know, I back then when I first started watching George's videos, I I say I thought to myself, you know, this guy is really smart. I think he could be like the next Gramopie or something like that. guy was being serious, especially because he's so young and he's so smart and already knows so much about this.
¶5But anyway, and the the interesting thing is that Josh may not be the only one. You know, Alex Okconor recently made a video where he says that he thinks there is a 45 chance% of God existing, right? So he like really on the fence of you know God may may just exist right and that's like huge you know imagine if Alex converts that will be like okay you know we kind of have that this year okay I have to recover from from Josh first you know I'm going to be be honest you know when we're talking about this whole converting thing I've also have my been having like my doubt hopes about you know atheism. Now the now I'm not joking like before like sometimes I I do lean toward the like I have said this sometimes like for me what what makes the makes it the case is like arguments about consciousness or the origin of life they seem to me like the strongest pieces of evidence that point towards God right but I don't I don't want to like uh you know come out of the closet in a sense because I don't want to have to change the name of the channel, right? Or also I'm not sure if my audience may still like me if I came out as gay.
¶6I mean, you know, so yeah, I'm not sure about that. But so I would nowadays I say that I'm like open-minded agnostic, right? Anyway, but uh let's go back to to Josh. It's very interesting that he became a Catholic of all things because he's the one who has done a lot of work responding to to Thomas like Edward Fer and to arguments for classical theism. He came up with this go the aloneless argument for God against classical theism which is really good in my opinion.
¶7And he also he was one of the guys who done who has done the most responding to trend horn who is a big Catholic apologist on the existence of God like they go back and forth like a lot [sighs] right so that's very interesting now I don't want to jump the gun here real quick and say he is now a classical theist because maybe he's not right there are some Catholics that are not classical theists one notable example is Thomas Apologia is a very smart guy, has a YouTube channel, is Catholic and has done a lot of work on arguments against classicalism. So, we will see. I'm curious what he's going to to say about this. Also, it's I mean, I didn't expect him to go all the way to Christianity. Actually, I I knew from for over a year ago, I I kind of knew that he was leaning theism.
¶8He he has say that and he had there were many hints about it right he said yeah about he thinks that the argument from sophysical harmony is very strong that funing is very strong and you kind of saw that coming but I didn't imagine he will become a Christian right I thought he will become just like a this you know like Anthony flu you know personally if I decided that there is a god for me it will be much more likely that he's some kind of this god or universalist kind of God instead of the Christian God. I don't I don't ever see myself becoming a Christian to be honest. For me, the reason is like Christianity just has way too many absurdities like at some point. It's not even like one big thing. It's like there's a ton of problems with the Bible, with this doctrine, with this with original sin, with the trinity being illogical.
¶9It's like a ton of stuff like the like the basic postulation itself of Christianity for me sounds so ridiculous when you look at the whole Adam and Eve and this is how humanity came to be an original sin and Jesus has to die for our sins you know that the idea is really central to Christianity that's why Jesus came and I like how can he pay for how could someone else pay for somebody else's sins that's not possible you cannot this the idea is contrary to justice Right. The the atone the atonement for me is just obviously contrary to justice and and so obviously absurd on its face that I I don't think I will ever become a Christian. Right? And in addition there are like a million problems in the Bible with slavery with this contradiction this and that. There are a ton of them and you have to come up with a with a dozen ad hocs interpretation and and excuses for each of them.
¶10So, I'm I'm yeah, I don't I don't think I could be a Christian, but I'm curious to see what how Joe is going to defend this. Now, he's saying that uh he want now wants to dedicate his his channel and his life basically to defending Catholicism. So, I'm very curious what he's going to how that is going to look like because the guy is really strong. I mean, he's an he's an intellectual giant really. So he I think cat YouTube catalyst is just got a a really strong defender, you know, this year like like Italan Muse becoming popular wasn't enough.
¶11Now the catalyst got another massively intelligent guy that is now working on on defing Catholicism. So I'm I'm curious of how he's going to do like uh responding to atheist objection about the Bible to Protestant objections to talk about the historical evidence for the resurrection because so far he has he hasn't really done much on these topics. These are know like his topics but he if he wants to defend catalysis I think he kind of has to get into that at some point. I don't know. So yeah, I'm curious to see what he's going to bring to the table, you know, knowing that he's so intelligent and so good at this.
¶12Also, yeah, also he says that for him, what really drove him to Catholism was like the case for miracles. And well, to be honest, I don't really know much about this. I'm not really super interested in the the miracles things. I'm more like a philosophy guy because the reason why is that for me is like this is the way I see it. If I like as a skeptic, if I really want to analyze this miracle, let's say I want to analyze a miracle like Luke Bandata's uh miracle who got got his intestines healed, you know, seems like I will have to if I really want to analyze it like completely to to I will have to call the hospital.
¶13I have to go check if is if is this X-ray real or not like you have to do an in a kind of work there will be like so much work right it's like I kind of analyze this if this true if this is true or not right like that sounds like an insane amount of work and that is like the job that a journalist does not the the kind of work that a philosopher does so that's what personally I'm not like super interested in in these kind of uh cases you know Fatima and and Pio and miracles and all that. Not really my thing, but uh yeah, I will be interesting. I will be interested in engaging with him in maybe other kind of arguments for God. I don't know if he's not going to defend the to doistic ways or or whatever, but yeah. So, speaking about it, now that he's like on the other side, so to say, I think it would be pretty interesting to to debate him at some point.
¶14You know, that would be very cool. I'm not a I'm a very small guy. He's much much bigger than me. But you know maybe maybe if I grow someday I I think I would really like to debate him on the logical problem of the trinity. If you uh are a regular of this channel, you will know that I'm super interested in this topic and and I'm now going to planning to focus more on this.
¶15Like don't worry, it's not going to be like the only topic, right? I'm also going to do other topics, but I I do want to become like a YouTube authority on this topic. And Josh Mid, as far as I know, he hasn't done much work on this, but now that he's a Catholic, maybe he will. And this seems super interesting because he's comes from the analytical philosophy tradition. And most of the guys you see online defending the trinity, many of them are like tomist or from the scholastic traditions.
¶16And to be honest, talking to these guys can be very frustrating for me because it's like you need to be really familiar with the whole scholastic automistic terminology to even make sense of what they are saying otherwise it's going to a lot of what they say is just going to sound like girish. So sometimes he's like what are you even saying? I don't I really don't like don't like that. But Joe coming from the analytical philosophy tradition, maybe he's going to be able to to like make a more interesting case like explaining more precise modern analytic philosophy language why the logical problem of the trinity can be solved. So I yeah I will be really love to see him like chiming in on this this topic.
¶17If you know just me tell him I will be I would love to delay him on the LPT. No, just and this is this is supposed to be a an uh like a this kind of thing when you openly challenge somebody and you kind of force them to accept the debate. No, no. I just I'm just just uh throwing that out out there. Right.
¶18So anyway, that was my reaction to the the big news in the YouTube atheist community. These are this a huge thing. Every everyone made a the day that the Friday when Joe made this post like every single person freak started freaking out and making community posts about it uh making videos about it. Okay. This like wow.
¶19So, okay. Anyway, this was my own reaction to that. Thank you for for watching. Uh please subscribe to the channel. Go subscribe to Joseph Mick's channel.
¶20I think he's a very smart guy. So, if you haven't done that, I think he deserves more subscribers. Uh, and yeah, see you next time. Bye. >> [music]