¶1Welcome to the Council of Trent. My guest today is Joe Schmid from Majesty of Reason. Uh you may have heard that Joe has found himself back at the Catholic Church, back in the Catholic faith. Uh I have titled this episode, One of My Smartest Critics is now Catholic. We'll put an asterk there.
¶2But I'm very excited to be able to sit down with you because we have had interactions over the past few years before this. Uh Joe has his channel Majesty of Reason that previously he had covered philosophy and religion from an agnostic perspective offering you know very high level analytic philosophy takes on arguments for and against God. We've gone back and forth uh but now you've been sharing with people that you have you've returned to Catholicism. We'll get into that but first welcome the Council of Trent. >> Thank you so much for having me.
¶3I actually do have a uh responding to Trenhorn playlist. That's how much I have responded to you Trent. It was just hilarious being here being on I mean we were always on the same team, right? We were always just trying to pursue truth together, but like now like really on the same team in some sense. So that's pretty fun >> and and that is helpful.
¶4That's why I am I'm excited to have you here to be able to talk because I remember I forget when but it was like a few years ago that this kind of started. I mean the very first book I ever wrote was answering atheism. That was back in 2013. I've always had an interest in trying to engage in philosophy of religion, you know, arguments for and against God and try to do it, you know, in a pretty somewhat rigorous way, I would hope. And I put forward these arguments.
¶5And then I noticed this other channel, Majesty of Reason, and here's someone going through with a well-laidout PDF responding to the the arguments that I made. And the the thing that I appreciated about your work when I would go through it's like, "Oh, this is not like just regular atheists who respond to me because I'll see other atheists and mostly it would just be them." Their response is like crossing their arms like, "Well, maybe it could be this or what about this or I don't know." But you're citing peer-reviewed papers. You're citing Mackie Oppy. You're going through a list of pointing to other philosophers. and someone who hasn't myself who has a masters in philosophy seeing where you're going to I'm like oh this guy knows this stuff.
¶6So I guess my question though as this was going through this turned into a pattern where I would put forward you know an argument for theism or engage atheism you'd make a reply to me. I always thought to myself, I'm like, how did I turn into this guy's philosophical punching bag? Because I noticed I didn't see too many other I'm like I didn't see like Frank Turk or like a lot of other like Christian when it would be the the the I was like the your favorite theist to want to like go after which I was like, "Oh, okay. He must like going after me some reason." How did I guess it turned into that a little bit? How did that happen?
¶7>> I think it was a few things. One was like the scope of topics that you talk about or like the kind of topics that you talk about. So they were just things that I was really interested in and just doing like active philosophical research on, right? So like models of God, classical theism versus non-class theism, like more classical type cosmological arguments for God's existence or >> just the calam and various other things that like I do active philosophical research on, right? Uh so that was one thing is just like you and like lots of others were actually taking the philosophical research from people like Alexander Puce, Josh Rasmmanson, Richard Swinburn, some of the best theists and like improper coons, you know, I could go on and the list goes on and on and on and you were just taking them and breaking them down for a popular audience and um I was interested in those topics.
¶8I was researching them. So just it the topics that you covered was one reason. I guess the second reason is just like the way that you covered those topics, right? So you always did them in an ironic fashion, a way that was like not tribalistic. you're not trying to like bash the other side or, you know, say that uh everyone who disagrees with me is automatically evil or irrational or like demonic or something like that.
¶9And so that was like a very >> or treating Yeah. treating it like the dumb atheist. >> Right. Yeah. Exactly.
¶10>> My favorite by I've seen some people on X who will I've certain Catholic accounts that traffic in the inflammatory and they'll say things like atheists are so dumb. Uh how could anyone be an atheist? And I would I would write under them something like, uh, would you have my friend Ben Watkins on from Real Atheology? Why don't you have him come on your show and talk and just, you don't have to debate him. Just talk to him about atheism.
¶11Or, I know an agnostic, Joe Schmid, why don't why don't you talk to him to see if it's dumb. And it's so funny. I feel like when you don't know very much, you get this bombastic confidence, but when you read the literature and see everything that's out there, you definitely are much more measured when you respond to people. >> Yeah. And I mean, you just you at the very least you you show love towards the other person.
¶12I sort of saw that in you. I saw your non-tribalistic approach and that was uh yeah a that was magnetic and that's the sort of that's the sort of person that I wanted to interact with and not other sorts of um super condescending super tribalistic approaches to these uh debates. Um, so >> well I appreciate it and if that helped uh to ease your path back into the Catholic faith, then I'm super grateful and that's something I am always trying to share with people here on the show. And and when I give talks, I always tell people I would rather have an evangelist who has maximal charity and minimal knowledge versus an evangelist who has maximal knowledge and and minimal charity. Because if you interact with a Catholic who is maximum, it makes me think of I love I can nerd out with you about stuff by the way.
¶13It reminds me of that paper by by Ferdoso and Flint on omnipotence. There's always called maximal power. >> Yeah, it's like you know they talk about omnipotence like maximum charity. Uh but if you think like if you interact with someone who's like that and they don't know a lot of they can't answer your arguments but you're still really impressed with their behavior and their disposition, somebody else can come along and be like, "Oh, and here are all the reasons." And it's like, "Oh, okay, great." But if you meet someone who's got all these arguments, but man, they just rub you the wrong way with their attitude. I feel like that's a lot harder to repair when you're sharing the faith.
¶14I don't know if you >> Yeah. No, and I think that's right. And I mean, we should still distinguish between like confidence level and just like the way with which you put ideas, that you communicate with people, and that you treat others, right? Like I think we can be very confident, very, very confident that God exists, that he established the Catholic Church, that Catholicism is true, and whatnot. In fact, I think we can like show that's the case through various arguments for theism and uh miraculous arguments for Catholicism and whatnot that we can get into later, right?
¶15But that's different from like treating those that you disagree with, right, >> with a kind of hatred or condescension or mocking or things like that. And I just think manifesting the love of Christ to others is something that certainly I need to work on. I'm a work in progress, but I think we all should try to work. >> That's all of us. That's our whole lives.
¶16Well, that's why I always try to live by um 2 Timothy 2:25 where it says that we are to correct correct opponents with gentleness and kindness so that they may be rescued from the snare of the devil. >> Right. >> And so I think that when you have that attitude, it's helpful and I've learned a lot from you in your rebuttals and and it has helped uh in my own path and trying to grow as an apologist and as a philosopher. It was funny. I remember once I did my I did a reply to Steven Woodford because he he made a video saying like theism is irrational and even when you were an agnostic.
¶17We both disagree with Stephen because in order to be an agnostic on the existence of God, you have to hold that at least theism is rational even if you even if you don't accept it because that's why you're because if something's irrational, you're not going to be undecided about it, right? >> You clearly reject the the thing that's irrational. Rather, it's just well I'm just undecided between two rationally competing worldviews. So I replied to him. It was so funny your reply to me.
¶18You would say things like, "Well, yes, Trent does adequately rebut Steven's argument, but I could do this." And I'm like, I'm like, "Yeah, I know. Okay, now I'll get to your argument. I did my best to, you know, have his stuff." But I appreciate So, you know, it's like what Proverbs says, iron sharpening iron, >> right? >> And that's super helpful. Um, we'll nerd out more like we can nerd out as much as we want.
¶19uh like you were helpful for me in kind of my progression on the like on the calam argument >> whereas now I basically have instead of like the classic argument that like William Lane Craig defended now I've kind of transitioned to which I would I would say that I I well even back in the early days I was more about the sequential argument versus the primary actual infinite argument for the past but now thanks to your criticisms and reading other things and why the article you share with why theists shouldn't be causalitude. >> My enrich FJL. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> I'm like, oh, this is great.
¶20And it's helped me to see, oh, this is my new argument that's more rooted in a causal fitist case, things like that. So, that's why I've been super grateful from seeing, you know, your work pointing to different areas. >> So, that so that's how for everyone listening, we we've interacted and now it's so funny. People always ask me like, do you think exerson will ever become Catholic? Do you think exerson will ever convert?
¶21you know these critics I respond to and people had asked me that about you and I had said I I am hopeful. I I had a lot more hope with you than other people and I will tell you the moment why. Uh well there was one moment I remember you were talking about divine hiddenness and your analogy for understanding how one could have interaction with God while not formally knowing God and so overcoming the hiddenness objection. You made an analogy to uh the last battle by CS Lewis. Um if you want to catch people up on that.
¶22>> Yeah. So I think um there was there was someone in the story named Emmett. I think that's Hebrew for truth. >> Yes. >> Uh and EMTT was serving Tash kind of evil character uh his entire life as it were.
¶23>> Um but sort of at the end of his life or maybe in the escaton or something um he meets Alan and of course EMTT he didn't actually know that he was kind of serving evil his whole life and in fact like his heart was in the right place. He was as it were good faith, you know, he was trying to >> trying to serve beauty, truth, and goodness to the best of his knowledge. Um, and he finds out that he was mistaken about that. And he sees Alan and he's like, "Oh, no." >> Yeah, right. >> I'm cooked.
¶24I'm cooked. So, he's he's he sees Alan and he's like, you know, he's like bowing down and he's all humble and whatnot, which is already showing that he's got the sort of dispositions um that are like actually loving, beauty, truth, and goodness and loving um the kind of Christ figure there. Um >> he just has to he just has some cognitive errors, >> right? Right. He just has some like non-culpable cognitive errors.
¶25So then when he he finds Aelen, he's like, "I'm I'm not worthy to be in your presence." Basically, that's kind of what he says. And he's like, "I'm sorry. I've been serving Tash all my days." And Aeline lets out this lets out this big roar. And like, of course, EMTT freaks out. He's like, "Oh no, I'm about to be condemned.
¶26Like this is terrible." Um, and as Len says, um, you know, I account all the service that you gave to Tash unto me because nothing >> that's done like in in good faith it can be done to >> unto Tash and so it's I accounted on my service and so then he's kind of in a relationship with Alan. And in fact, he was kind of in a relationship with Alan the whole time. He just didn't really know it. He was kind of in a sort of implicit relationship. Um, so that's just like an illustration of of something that is like one approach to divine hiddenness.
¶27You know, one approach to divine hiddenness, this problem of like, well, uh, why are there so many people who don't seem to know that God exists? Why does God seem hidden to so many people? Um, well, maybe for at least some people, they are at least in some kind of implicit relationship with God's existence. And maybe that can come to fruition at the moment of death where they can kind of have uh a more explicit uh recognition that they were pursuing God the whole time. uh or maybe you can appeal to certain things in the afterlife.
¶28We have to get a little bit careful about like is this a salvific relationship and then is can there be salvation by implicit faith. You get into the technicalities there the nitty-gritty details but the point is just that people can be in some kind of interaction which is valuable and which sets them up for at the very least some kind of salvific relationship. >> Well, it's a way of answering. So this is a somewhat newer argument philosophy of religion from Shelonburgger saying that if if God shelon sorry Shelonburg uh saying that um if God exists and he's perfectly loving then all rational beings would have this explicit relationship and then to say well no an all good allloving God could allow creatures maybe to have just this implicit relation with him. at least temporarily.
¶29Right. Exactly. And you just need sufficient reasons. And maybe um the fact that some people are um currently in a state of not knowing that God exists, maybe that not maybe it does allow for other people to make a significant difference in the lives of others by sharing the truth about the gospel, by sharing um arguments for against God's existence, by showing and manifesting love across deep ideological barriers, by like you know like think about my story, right? God permitted me to be about a decade of uh away from the faith, away from um belief in God and whatnot.
¶30Uh but like look at the various goods that are coming about as a result of that like forging relationships. >> Perfect bridge, right? >> Let's go to that. So take take us to the beginning. I want to get I want to get the background to where you where you started.
¶31So you you grew you grew up in a Catholic family, right? >> I did. Yeah. >> All right. Tell us about it.
¶32>> Yeah. So I grew up very devoutly Catholic. Um my family is uh super based, super super into the faith. Um >> Deuse Vault indeed, very much so. Um so yeah, I mean I went to um Catholic school K through 12th grade.
¶33Um I remember uh you know and I was I was totally into it. I was praying every day. I was frequenting the sacraments. You know, my um my school would have mass three days a week and then I'd go with the family on the weekend on Sunday, right? Um, you know, I remember uh in fourth grade I got my iPod touch for the first time and you know, of course, I downloaded various other things like Doodle Jump and this like game where you can like balance ice cream that falls and you you have to like miss the frogs and whatnot.
¶34It was really fun. But I also uh as I said, I downloaded Instagram and I found myself on all these like really kind of robust uh platforms for like debating questions about uh religion and abortion at the time cuz my parents are, you know, super pro-life, also very based, you Okay. So, this would be like mid mid2010s. Fourth grade I would have been um tens that would have been 2010. >> Okay.
¶35So, beginning of 2010s. All right. Yeah. >> Um so, >> that's also like kind of Reddit atheism trying to people go back in time. It's so funny how things have changed.
¶36It's like when you look at like the online landscape now in 2026, like a lot even who are younger may not know like in like the 2010 era way different. >> Oh my gosh. Totally different. So, you know, I was entering this kind of fierce battleground. But somehow I found myself on platforms that actually people were like engaging in pretty substantive good faith back and forth dialogue about these topics.
¶37And you know, in like fourth grade and fifth grade and sixth grade, I would just debate on that all the time. Um, and that kind of just cut my critical teeth. It cut my argumentative teeth. It trained me in the argumentative arts. Um, and ultimately set me up to become a professional philosopher.
¶38Um, and you know, my dad >> doing this in the fourth grade. I was playing I was doing fourth grade playing pogs and I had a great eightball slammer and everything but okay precocious I love it but you're you're but well you're >> how good I was I mean >> but you you have the desire for it >> right I mean >> the only thing I was trying to do is clear fourth grade I was trying to clear a 96 exits on Super Mario World which I still did all right if you look my response to redeem Zoomer people can see I still know the secret backdoor star world route to Bowser okay so fourth so end of elementary school. You're getting into philosophy, arguing about these big questions. >> Yeah. And my you mean my dad from even kindergarten because it's a a private school.
¶39We don't have like a bus. So my dad would actually drive me to and from school every day in carpool and he'd always play Catholic radio to and from school. So I would hear people you were probably on there like or somehow you probably came up on whatever we were listening to. And so people were always calling in and debating about the faith and people would object, people would respond. So I was that was always in the air for me.
¶40>> Um >> so >> yeah. And then we also had theology classes basically every day. um taught by you know Orthodox Dominicans um so you know I was just trained to think about kind of philosophy, religion, theology from a very young age >> and you know maybe around 7th 8th grade because Catholics thankfully love science. So my Catholic school was totally chill with teaching us evolution and the overwhelming evidence in favor of it, >> right? >> Um and that was kind of like I encountered the first sort of wobble in my faith at that point because I was like >> how am I to mesh this with the Genesis story of Adam and Eve?
¶41Like how does that work? You know, like hundreds of millions of years, kind of gradual development, but like what does Genesis seem to depict? It's like God created in seven days. It seems >> So, first it's just a textual question. It's just does the meaning of this text correspond to what we see in reality.
¶42>> Right. Exactly. So, this was seventh grade. I'm just wondering how do I mesh these beliefs? Um and you know I just I talked with my some of my teachers and I just researched things a little bit further and I found the work of like Francis Collins who led the human genome project and his book like the language of God and I found the Bologos Institute and I was like oh okay you know I can see you know I started reading up on how actually you know the Catholic Church is um totally to its teaching is totally compatible with evolution and actually like lots of popes more recently have been super open to it including in like official church documents and whatnot.
¶43So I was like, okay, you know, there's there must be some way to make sense of this. And so looked into it further and I was like, oh, okay, maybe God guided the evolutionary process and then maybe he like, you know, picked two of the ancestors in a kind of biological human organism population and then endowed them with like an immortal material soul, rational intellect and then um they fell. And there are even more liberal proposals than that. But I was like, okay, you know, I can see how to mesh this with my faith. And in fact like if you look and even going back to people like Augustine people have looked at what genre is Genesis and it's like it's almost like mythop poetic history.
¶44There are like elements there are historical elements in there but there are also lots of like in the technical sense like mythical elements poetic elements that are meant to illustrate certain theological truths. Um so I was like okay this actually isn't even intending by the text's own lights by its own genre. it isn't intending to be a kind of strict and literalistic historical account of um >> at least in all of its details of you know human origins. So I was like okay >> I've sort of survived this first wobble in faith. This is around 8th grade >> but you know I'm like it sort of shook me up a little bit.
¶45So >> sure >> that's that's up until 8th grade. Now the decon conversion comes in ninth grade. I don't know if you have further questions about my Catholic upbringing, but >> No, I I think so if we place it through there. Yeah. And that would have been around that time for you would have been around like the beginning of my getting a feel for being an apologist to Catholic Answers because that's when I was doing the early like 2010s.
¶46So you get So you get to high school and then you get another challenge. >> Yeah. So, I mean, actually, all pretty much all throughout 9th grade, I'm still like super into the faith, you know, like I'm like going up to my theology teachers after class and like talking with them about all this stuff and um you know, reading about the faith and whatnot and just thinking about it deeply and I'm I'm still totally into it. Um but maybe nearing the end of 9th grade, you know, I started hanging out with some some friends who were um we always talked and debated about politics as well, so I was into that. Um, but we, you know, were kind of questioning things, a little bit skeptical, and we started questioning the faith a little bit.
¶47We're like, um, I think that the the thing that really got me was thinking more deeply about the evolutionary process, you know? So, I just started thinking more deeply about, okay, even if I can mesh this with the Genesis story, it just seems to be so fraught with suffering, you know, the evolutionary process, it's just like hundreds of millions of years of animals just ripping each other to shreds and praying on one another and parasitizing one another. It just seemed really difficult for me to mesh that with the view that like this was the providential working of an all powerful all knowing. >> So now it's it's not a textual problem. It's a variant of the problem of evil.
¶48>> Yeah. It was a problem of evolutionary animal suffering that kind of kickstarted it. And so then I'm starting debate with these friends near the end of 9th grade into the summer before 10th grade. We're then starting to like watch a bunch of YouTube debates and whatnot. I started like looking at some of the new atheists a little bit and then you know they're emphasizing this like disorienting contingency to your uh religious beliefs like hey if you had grown up elsewhere you would have believed other things and it's like why do you believe what you do you just been taught this your whole life what exactly are your rational >> goals the argument from geography and it's always hard it's just like if you see something in the past that kind of took you in and then later you're like how was I taken in by that right >> yeah I guess if I was born 3 years ago I I you know I wouldn't think I wouldn't be a Christian but I also probably wouldn't believe in a globe earth either like you know but it's although you one could stren one could try to steal man that argument and it would get you back to Shelonberg's divine hiddenness that God would find a way that everybody knows about him in some form but it's always funny it's like you knock down the shallow one then something stronger comes and you got to face it but but it seems like back then you were starting to be taken in by like okay I have questions and now there's all these other doubts are starting like >> oh yeah thing it just basically one by one everything just started crumbling.
¶49I mean like as I looked into these debates I started finding all these like biblical problems. There seemed to be like problematic passages in the Old Testament that I was really struggling to make sense of. And then there all these like lists of like puditive divine puditive biblical contradictions. And so I found that and then I'm thinking more deeply about like the problem of evil and I'm starting to find all these aological arguments and just like you know just even as like a psychological point not even like the rational force of the points that some of the new atheists raised but as I was like watching some of these compilations like Richard Dawkins destroys religion and like just these cringe compilations at the very least it starts like I mean of course there are various psychological factors you know like I liked being this like kind of vanguard intellectual you know kind of playing the skeptic and like oh yes I have this I'm among the enlightened few who of like broken away from uh the the dogmatic upbringing and you know like there are all these poor benided folk around me who haven't kind of become enlightened. Um, so there's certainly that kind of teenage >> I think especially when you're young when you're a teenager bit even for older people succumb to this.
¶50It can be hard when you see someone who smartness or intelligence is just a defining feature of them in general. And so you think, oh well, here's someone I just respect for being intelligent in general and they're ridiculing religion. And so I already kind of looked like you look at, you know, Dawkins is a biologist. Hitchens is Christopher Hitchens is just a very ariodite literary critic. Like a lot of these people who will you saying, "Oh, I respect them for their intellect and now they're ridiculing this." You want to like follow them in things.
¶51And I think that's just a natural impulse. That's why I think it's very important for Christians to cultivate um a life of of showing people that we can be intellectual yet humble and relatable. for people to see like for someone to see like with a Christian to impress not just how holy they are but like they're really smart. Here's a and there's a lot of like Christian philosophers I say really embody that you've already mentioned people like Alex Press Josh Rasmusen like when when I went to capturing Christianity when I debated Watkins a few years ago capturing Christianity was a ton of fun I was brought in at the last minute because they had a guy to debate him and he dropped out so I go and we had a great exchange but I remember going to dinner at the Mexican restaurant the night before with all the speakers and I just got to sit next to Josh and we just start going going at it and it's like finally someone who can run on the treadmill with me and we're just you know how it is when you when you meet someone who's also in the philosophy circle and you're just throwing arguments back and forth and citing people and when you meet you're like whoa this guy is smart >> and it's like I think it's so important >> I really hope and I think that you especially could help cultivate that for people like for Christians to have we should have a reputation not even just for it shouldn't have to be picking charity or knowledge it we can have both really should but so you're going through this though and you're seeing these people and you're kind of taken in by that rhetoric Yeah. And I mean a lot of it just there are these psychological factors at play as I mentioned like I like feeling like I was among the enlightened few.
¶52Um you know I liked being like among like the the critics around you know just like pinpointing all the problems in the other people's beliefs and just like even psychologically for for me um that's called being a teenager. Yeah, I know. Exactly. But also just like psychologically, you know, when you're young and you're taught to believe these things, like you oftenimes aren't given like the direct rational grounds, you know, it's not like I was walked through all the evidence for like Padre Pio's mystical charrorisms, for instance. You know, I I I was just like taught to believe this sort of thing.
¶53>> Here's the story, >> right? Like, yeah, here's the story. This is what we believe. We do this, do it, you know? Um, and so when I started learning that, you know, oh, there really are all these other religions out there and, you know, had I been brought up elsewhere, like it just psychologically affects you.
¶54Um, it makes you think that you didn't have particularly good rational grounds for accepting what you did. And then I was getting all these mounting considerations against theism. Um, and maybe what solidified it was coming across the work of, um, uh, Paul Draper, who actually was one of my letter writers for grad school. I love Paul so much. Um but in high school I sort of watched this debate between Jeff Lauder and Frank Turk um on like which best explains reality naturalism or theism.
¶55>> There is a tad bit of a lopsided debate. Someone who is who someone who edits a popular journal of philosophy popular level articles on philosophy of religion is well versed in them and Frank as much as I like him you know more of a popular speaker and evangelist is is not meshed in the same thing. Yeah. So, there was a big disparity there and just like the basian method wowed me. I was like, whoa, we can actually think really rigorously about these things.
¶56We can use um like actually math because I love math at the time. Um we can actually use math and apply them to these arguments. And so then that kind of >> I graduated from the kind of new atheism into a kind of philosophical >> little bit of trivia on that. By the way, uh one time when I was doing Catholic Answers Live, we were doing Why are you an atheist? We're doing call-in and this guy calls Jeff and he starts talking about well I think we have to understand naturalism and the prior probability and this would be my reasons and I say and I'm like is this Jeff louder and he's like yes yes it is but like I but I recognize it from this just the same like the terminology and that's so fun because especially if you're into cuz I see a lot also it reflected myself and you like so when I was uh 10 years old I I was in the young astronomers club and like we got to go on a field trip once to Pasadena, California, and we got to see the Cassini spacecraft.
¶57They're like they're all in the white suits, the white bunny suits putting it together. And and so the idea like, oh, I love like math and science and like you can apply it to these arguments. And when you do like B theorem, probability theorem, it's like it's like a crazy thing. you it's like that Jackie Chan mind blown meme when you because you can apply base theorem to just like you know what's you know epidemiology and statistics and like you start looking at the world it's like you've unlocked something to understand how the world works based on these things that people kind of intuit it >> but they don't fully grasp you know prior and post probability and when you see it these are things just people like barely intuitit in their own lives it's almost like for you it' be like oh man I've unlocked something >> yeah and that that's that's exactly what it felt like and So just encountering the kind of and after I encountered uh Jeff Lauder, I went into the work of like Paul Draper that he was citing, I started reading the stuff and you know Paul Draper was talking about like evolutionary animal suffering and various other things. And so then that just kind of like solidified my deconversion.
¶58So by by the maybe somewhere around 10th grade, I don't know exactly when, but um I became a kind of naturalistic atheist. I was like a metaphysical naturalist. I positively said, "Yeah, God doesn't exist. naturalism is the best explanation of reality. Um and lost my faith.
¶59So >> that was the whole kind of decon conversion process. >> Okay. So you do that and then you um you graduate high school. >> Well, not quite graduated uh when I started becoming agnostic. So actually >> Oh, even before that you Yeah.
¶60Oh, because I made an assumption that you had shifted into agnosticism a little bit later. So you're a hard atheist in high school, but you don't leave high school a committed atheist. >> No, I don't. What happens there? I mean, listen, I one thing that my Catholic education instilled in me was just a love of truth.
¶61>> I don't know exactly how to describe it, but somehow that was just badgered into me. It's just like truth is something like sacred, you know, like you need to pursue truth at all costs. Like, and that's sort of like what the martyrs are, you know, like we're given all these martyr stories and like no, they wouldn't they wouldn't even give the the the pinch of incense to the the emperors or the false gods or anything like that. like no Christ is Lord and I will die for that you know and because they're they're even willing to die for the truth instead of and they'll forego like all these temporal worldly goods and pleasures and whatnot. So it's just like truth is sacred in Catholicism and that always kind of just it always just captured me and somehow that was instilled into me.
¶62I was always like, you know, I'm on this intellectual journey and I'm not going to just like end it now. Um, now that I've become an atheist, like I still need to pursue truth. And I I could be wrong. Like maybe it's helpful like some more some other Christian institutions you might have gotten the feeling of what matters most is believing this thing we're teaching you. >> And but maybe it was helpful in your journey that it's just even if it wasn't like even not necessarily what we're teaching you, but you should believe it.
¶63It's the truth that matters. We're convinced this is the truth, but above all else, you should follow the truth. And that's good. At least that was like instilled that, you know, there's an objective truth to find somewhere, >> right? And so for that reason, I just never really stopped the inquiry.
¶64So the inquiry continued even after I became a kind of like, as you said, like hardened atheist or anything like that. >> Um, so then, you know, I persisted in that state. you know, I debated friends and tried to decon convert them and talked with like my theology teachers and like was still reading all this stuff and I went on like the, you know, internet infidels and the secular web and like all all this stuff and reading and still watching debates like William Lane Craig and various other people. Um, and then in the summer before senior year, >> yeah, >> I stumbled across a YouTube channel called Worldview Design and I was like, "Oh, this is really interesting." >> Josh is Josh >> Josh. So, I didn't know that at the time, but I was like I watched one of the videos and it was just like this animated video about this new contingency argument and I was like, "Whoa, I've never come across this.
¶65This is interesting." Uh, and in fact, like unbeknownst to me, so this is, you know, this is in like 2018 or so. This is like right when their book Necessary Existence, Puce and Rasmusen, their book Necessary Existence is like coming out, which contains like all these new and interesting cosmological arguments from contingency. It's like Josh is actually like popularizing and publicizing his like >> totally uh new philosophical arguments and he's just doing that for a popular audience, right? >> Uh so like I'm like whoa, this is cutting edge research that I'm just watching and this is so cool. And I and I like I had some objections but as I watched more and more like he was responding to some of the objections and I still had some other objections in the background but I was like whoa this is like a philosophically rigorous robust theism and theistic arguments that I haven't really come across.
¶66So I binge watched like all of his videos that summer. >> Yeah. >> Um and I after I did that I was like I've got to reach out to this guy. So I you know I go I find whoever this is like Josh Dr. Josh Risonson.
¶67So like I type a little email to him and I'm like dear and I still have the email. Um I was like dear Dr. Rasmmanson. This is in like like July of 2018. I'm like dear Dr.
¶68Rasmmanson I I just finished binge watching all your YouTube videos and I I found them really interesting but I have some questions and I'm hoping you can help me with them. And so then I just like list off my various objections to his arguments. And then he responds super cordially and kindly and lovingly with like really rigorous responses with like a really long email. And so then I respond in turn with a really long email. And then he responds in turn with a really long email.
¶69And soon enough >> we're going back and forth. Good. >> We're going back and forth for like dozens upon dozens of emails. Like he's just giving me so much time as this random high schooler um that he didn't even he's never even met. Yeah.
¶70Um, so we just forg I forged a relationship with Josh in that kind of way. Um, and you know that that continued up all the way through my senior year of high school and I was just talking to him about all my objections and uh going back and forth about his arguments and whatnot. Um, and you know he was pointing me to his book Necessary Existence. So I picked that up. He was pointing me to the work of Alexander Puce.
¶71So I started reading um the principle sufficient reason of reassessment from Alexander Puce. I started reading Pruce's other books like actuality, possibility in worlds and I started just like delving into Pruce. I love that you, by the way, were at a point your senior year of high school, you've leapfrogged into highlevel graduate philosophy because if I had met someone like you, even now, if I met a high schooler in your position, >> I would have referred them to What's funny you say in 2018 because it was a year later Josh released his popular level book, How Reason Leads to God, which is just very solid book and great great for your I would say your average high schooler who's interested into this, but you you're you're going right for the >> Yeah. And I listen I don't pretend to have understood everything. >> But you were excited about that.
¶72>> Yeah. Know I was excited and I just I was like whoa there's this like whole new world. >> You know when I felt I felt that way in my studies of trying to want to go deeper philosophy religion >> for me that was when the Blackwell companion to natural theology came out. So for me that would have that was about 10 years before your time. That was like my first taste of like oh an anthology of really thick um you know theistic philosophy.
¶73I think they came out in like 2008 or 2009. And I remember when it came out, I was a college student. I couldn't afford it. It was like 150 bucks. So I so I I downloaded a pirated PDF on the internet and I always felt guilty afterwards.
¶74So now I'm glad I have a real copy on my shelf to like pay them back now that I have it. But like I love that like seeing that you're seeing like oh and now but but like the Puce and Coons and Rasmuse and stuff. Yeah. That wouldn't come out that a lot of that said it took another decade for that to come out. >> Yeah.
¶75So I just it opened up this whole new world of like new and interesting theistic arguments like all these contingency arguments and like modal arguments from contingency and then I started like reading up on um like Josh's stuff on like arguing for a kind of uh distinction between mind and matter you know so like mind is not ultimately reducible to or identical with material going on in the physical world. I was like, "Oh man, there actually are some interesting and plausible arguments here, but I have various objections and I still got the problem of evil and I've got all this stuff." Yeah. And then I, you know, I picked up um Alexander Pruce's book, Infinity, Causation and Paradox. And so I got into all the causalism stuff and I was like, "Okay, whoa, there's a lot more to theism >> than I thought." Theism has a lot more going for it. And also, you know, just like these little different like higher order points were just like sprinkled throughout.
¶76So this isn't like first order evaluation of the evidence, but like these higher order points about like peers and about my fallibility and about like the fact that there are lots of these like really smart intelligent theistic philosophers who are able to kind of answer a lot of my objections and whatnot. Like that in of itself, that kind of higher order realization was like, okay, I think I was a bit premature in concluding that God doesn't exist. And so then that kind of happened throughout maybe the course of 12th grade as I like was reading these books and I was uh talking with Josh like almost non-stop. Thank you Josh. >> Um >> and yeah, at the very least by the end of 12th grade um maybe by the beginning of freshman year of college, I was like, "Okay, I've got to be an agnostic." So um it was it was the combination of new and interesting first order arguments for theism that were starting to pull on my mind.
¶77>> Yeah. together with these higher order considerations about the fact that there are these really smart people uh with whom I disagree and who can kind of basically just like mo me you know in a debate. So it was those sorts of things that uh really got me questioning my my atheism and then I was like okay I need to suspend judgment and I'm just going to go on this kind of inquiry this journey to try to find whether or not god exists. >> I mean that's that's been my all-consuming pursuit my whole life. So it becomes so you move to more unde and that's why like for me if I engage people who are atheists like I I do try to be realistic in trying to move people and I think it should be very realistic say look you should go from a confidence that there is no god just to like I don't know treating it like you might treat the question of extraterrestrial life in the universe it's like you wouldn't just oh no of course not for most regular people you'd be like oh I don't know but that I think the new atheist I think what's hard is like you know in the 2000s and the 2010s, it's like you have the new atheists and then maybe more popular level especially evangelical apologists rebutting and it gets caught in this sort of loop and like you go and I remember reading secular web internet infidels that was back when when I started reading that in my conversion I'd say that was around 200 one I I didn't I I found some audio of Craig debates I think I read like the Craig Washington debate the transcript of it not nearly as much access as like stuff that you had but it's just the same like column fine-tuning very basic moral argument and we're dishing it out and like all the other interesting stuff is just like a tumble weed but now these other philosophers bring it in and just for yeah just for people to see hey there's a lot out there you should really approach this the question of God really from more open-minded perspective it's it's not just a silly idea like it's a the idea of there just being an infinite complete ground of reality that's a normal thing to at least have as an option out Yeah.
¶78And then I mean just as like a social proof like I mean the vast majority of humanity has believed in such a higher power, you know, like am I saying that all these towering intellects of history have just been like silly or just ignorant or something like that? >> Fixing the argue. I might do an episode on this soon. We could collaborate. That would be fun on um retooling the argument from common consent.
¶79>> Uh that that is one because I think there's another I don't know if he identifies as an atheist or agnostic. Emerson Green. Uh he, you know, he's a non-religious YouTuber and he's even said like the argument from common consent, the idea that, you know, lots of people believed in God and lots of people usually aren't wrong about things. It's it's a stronger argument than people give it credit for. Now, people can overplay their hands.
¶80I I read I think >> when you were going through I loved your episodes and maybe one day I do a full response to them. Uh for people who go on Majesty Reason, you can see Joe's channel. He has like an 11-hour video on all the arguments for God, surveying them, which I'm sure you'll revisit at some point. >> Yeah. I mean, so when this video is out, this, you know, my full-blown comprehensive case.
¶81Yeah. So, we'll everyone I don't know how long it is, but maybe it's going to be like 6 hours or something where I just comprehensively defend theism and then all the like the miracles for Catholicism and then I like address the biggest objections at least that I had towards Catholicism. So, everyone should check that out. It's almost like my renewed comprehensive case for my current beliefs. So people should check that out if they're interested.
¶82But sorry I wanted to >> Oh, absolutely. So we'll make sure be sure people are listening if you want to see Joe's full cases, full conversion, full click below. We'll have the link to that. Be sure to go and check it out. But I remember when you were going through your your 11 hour your 11 hour video.
¶83Uh >> I think it's actually 12 hours. It's 11 hours like 55 minutes or something. >> Totally. Yeah. 100 arguments about common consent.
¶84Uh pointing to a pure uh a article about it. And I think the main objection that guy made was the problem is that belief in monotheism may not originate from common consent. That could be the result of missionary activity that spreads it. It doesn't monotheistic belief doesn't necessarily originate spontaneously, you know, disperate culture, things like that. So that's why I take the common consent argument and say well at the very least I think this is a very strong argument again against like materialism that there's that human beings have spontaneously across cultures recognize that you know there's more than just the material or something like that.
¶85>> Listen, I'm not going to I'm not going to make claims about how strong it is, but like at the very least like it should like affect your prior majority of humanity has believe something including towering intellects from the past. Maybe you shouldn't think it's like a silly like ludicrous like absurd hypothesis from the get-go. like you should at least have some don't be dismissive like there had to be there's some kind of reason and you should investigate what that reason was you could find out the reason was bunk sure whatever but it shouldn't it it's not just like some kind of cuz people will make comparisons to fairies or to other cryptids things like that which are have nowhere near as universal belief as like especially not just universal but like you said among people when you read um you know even if you read like earlier philosophers you know people respond who responded to Hume people like Paley people going up toppel and all the others like oh there's there's a lot here of course >> yeah I mean you could just like do the whole litany like my monities a veroise Aquinus Augustine anomori balerment like you could just go all these towering intellects who if they were alive today would totally like mock most of us so anyway >> so then like is there something there so now by the end of senior year you're at an agnostic position and you're just kind of exploring the philosophy around it >> right so then um I go into college I actually uh I I worry about being able to get a job in philosophy. So I was like, "Okay, I'll major in biology because I loved evolutionary biology. I just thought it was so fascinating." Um, so I'll major in biology.
¶86I'll minor in philosophy and I'll just have philosophy as like a, you know, a side gig. That'll be fun. >> But then, I don't know. And like the first at the end of my first year in college, I was like, hm, >> okay, I I on the one hand I've got these classes where I'm like, no disrespect to biology, like I love biology, but I've got these classes where I'm like having to memorize the reproductive parts of a plant. And on the other hand, I've got like investigating the fundamental nature of reality and like whether God exists and like whether there's an afterlife and whether we have souls.
¶87Like there's like a clear winner here in terms of which one is like more interesting to me >> to you what you're wired for cuz some people they want to know about the plants, man. >> Right. And and go for it. It's God's creation. It's beautiful and we need people because you know you can find out like potentially you know we've found out so many cures for things by people just investigating like you know worms and like flies and whatnot.
¶88So I'm all for it. But for me I was like >> you weren't wired that way. >> No I'm not wired that way. So I was like, "Okay, I can't do this biology thing." And I had some to like to teachers out there and to and like professors like if you've got a student who you think can make it, tell them tell them like, "I think you can make it in a discipline cuz it'll affect them." So I had some teachers along the way who are like, "Joe, >> I think you can do it. I think you could get a job." And so they're so like, "Okay." And the thing is if I had you as a student and seeing the work like I see your work in responding to me, for example, and like oh when you were responding to me, I mean I had students like I was teaching at Holy Apostles.
¶89I had philosophy undergrads that I was like grading papers things like that a lot I mean a lot of people I would say yeah you can pass this class but you probably are not going to be a philosopher but I would have told you if you were in my class yes you can be a philosopher and what's funny is I understand your concern by the way because when I was doing my undergrad I I got an undergrad in history I was going to become a history teacher I loved philosophy I thought I would just get a minor or maybe like a double major in it but I never thought like Oh, what do you people ask, what are you going to do with a philosophy degree? I'm like, probably be unemployed. >> Contemplate the fundamental nature of reality. Like, you know, I'm basically going to exercise and manifest and cultivate intellectual virtue and like that's more important than, you know, and I'll I'll do that even if it costs me, you know, like, >> right? But so there's a but there's a legit concern.
¶90I know a lot of people what's hard with philosophy I always I'll put it this way like when you're in undergrad class and you go to chem 101 and the the teacher starts talking about chemistry there's rarely someone who stands up and is like oh I know chemistry better than this teacher let me give you my thoughts on chemistry people are usually nervous and just taking notes but like philosophy freshman intro philosophy there's always just some yokal oh I understand that like they think they're already experts in it when get to the way more that happens in like philosophy than in like a hard science because people think although I think philosophy is a universal discipline. I think it was Alvin Plantinga who once defined philosophy well he said it was it's thinking really hard about something although I think he he um fine-tuned it a bit to something like um ask answering attempting to answer questions that everyone asks and I think that's a good definition of philosophy like what makes it different not everybody asks what are the fundamental parts of this pea plant like people in indigenous tribes don't ask that but even in indigenous tribes they'll ask questions like what am I supposed to do? Where did everything come from? What am I? So there are questions no matter what culture you are in the culture will ask those questions and it is the job of philosophy to answer them.
¶91>> Right. >> And you found yourself in college. I want to answer those questions. >> Exactly. >> And there you go.
¶92>> So yeah, now we're basically in college. I mean I'm after my first year I decide I'm going to pursue philosophy. This is too cool. And it's basically like I don't know it in some sense you know our intellect is like the highest part of us you know it's the highest faculty that we have it distinguishes us from animals and um the rest of the material created order and so like I was like ah man this is sort of like what I was made for is just like think about the fundamental nature of reality very rigorously and cautiously with kind of systematic rigor and just try to try to find things try to better understand the nature of reality. Yeah.
¶93Um so I going back to the kind of story I persisted in a state of agnosticism basically up until maybe my fir at the end of my first year of grad school going into my second year as well. So like you know I would get some arguments here and there some new and interesting arguments for God's existence that I would think oh yeah maybe these have some force uh throughout like my second year of college my third year of college and my gap year and grad school and whatnot. I'd get some arguments for theism I thought, oh yeah, these are interesting. Maybe they pull me a little bit, but I would also like to lose some arguments for theism that I thought previously were plausible. So, you know, like I kind of had a 180 turn where I was like, "Oh yeah, I find some of these arguments for causalism plausible, but then I was like starting to lose those as I went on and um studied further." Um, and then like, you know, same thing with atheism.
¶94I maybe I'd start to gain some arguments that I thought were kind of plausible for atheism, but then I'd lose some arguments that I thought were plausible for atheism. So, like, yeah, there were some shifts here and there, but for the most part, things were kind of stable. you know, I was in a kind of stable agnosticism up until I don't know exactly when, but maybe the beginning of my second year of grad school or something like that. >> When when did you start the channel? >> Was that it?
¶95It was a It was a co baby. So, it was uh uh actually April 20th. I remember 420 420. Um >> same Oh, same for Council of Trent. It was I remember I uploaded something in my office like we're closing down the office hopefully for just a few weeks that lasted a lot longer than I realized and that was about when Council of Trent started up.
¶96Okay. So, you started the channel though. >> Well, you were an agnostic when you started your channel. >> Uh, yes. Yeah.
¶97I mean, I started that in my I think maybe my So, 2020, >> let's see. I graduated high school until I was 19. So, that means 1920 would be my freshman year in college. So, this would be would have been the end of my freshman year in college. I started the channel.
¶98>> Okay. So, while you're So, while you're in undergrad, you're doing Majesty of Reason and you're you're an agnostic during this period. >> So, what what motivated you want to do the channel? I've always just, you know, I've get out there. Yeah.
¶99I want to get out there. >> You're a philosopher. >> I'm a philosopher. And like I want I want to defend my ideas in the public sphere. I want to like convince other people of things that I think are important.
¶100>> YouTube is the public sphere, >> right? Exactly. YouTube is the public sphere. And also, it's just like there are so many reasons like I I already had like, you know, I wrote this like informal uh book called The Majesty of Reason, a shortcut to critical thinking and philosophy that I just self-published. And I was like, okay, you know, I could sort of talk about that on the channel.
¶101I already had a blog which was called naturalistically inclined cuz I was a naturalist when I made it in high school and I just blogged about arguments and whatnot in philosophy. Um and then Josh, it's so funny actually Josh when I was emailing him and starting to get into his work he was like I suspect you're going to you're going to change the name of your blog. Uh and it was so funny cuz like it actually happened because I like I read his work like he had a confidence in his argu like a kind of subtle confidence in his arguments that they would convince me um that like they actually kind of did and they made me an agnostic. So I changed it to majesty of reason after this quote from Brookspinosa. What altar of refuge can a man find for himself when he commits treason against the majesty of reason.
¶102>> So I always thought that like reason was just this kind of it's something that's like owed honor or respect and it's almost like majestic, you know. >> It it it almost needs a a more uh fitting word for it. It's this logos. Yeah. Right.
¶103If you will. >> Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Um, and yeah, I just, and that goes back to just finding truth sacred, you know, like this is this is really like a recurring theme as I look back is like this this the sacredness of truth and reason and whatnot.
¶104Um, and just it's it's majestic and beautiful character. Um, so yeah, that so I changed the name in in uh college or something like that or maybe at the end of high school and then agnosticism just persisted up until maybe my >> beginning of grad something like the second year of grad school. >> Second of grad school. Okay. >> Something around there.
¶105>> Um, but we could talk about what kind of led me to what kind of kickstarted the the shift to and then >> Absolutely. >> Absolutely. Because I mean this would have happened. I mean you had been had your channel, you'd interacted with some of my work. I'd seen that you had gone on other channels.
¶106Uh uh sometimes you're taking shots at theistic arguments, sometimes you're taking shots at atheistic arguments. But then when you're getting through about second year of grad school, things start to click a little bit more out of agnosticism. Was it was it back just to theism or was it kicking you towards something particular? >> It was a really gradual shift. >> Okay.
¶107>> So like I just gradually started like inching towards theism just like very gradually over the course of maybe my second year. And the reason is because I mean there are a few reasons. Um I think there are maybe three primary ones. First, I started losing some of my objections to the fine-tuning argument. Um, I previously had certain objections and I was like, hm, those don't really seem to work.
¶108This actually does seem to be a good argument. And I was like, oh man, okay, >> I don't care about these electrons in love. That doesn't disprove anything. >> Right? So, then my second uh the second thing that sort of made me gradually shift towards the is like there's this new and interesting argument that's being published by uh or that was published at the time by Brian Cutter and Dustin Kummit called the argument from psychophysical harmony.
¶109and that came out in um Oxford studies in philosophy religion um and it was forthcoming at the time but like they had the paper up on field papers and so I read it and I was like hm and I was really like clawing I don't know I was trying to p like pinpoint holes in it for the longest time but it just nagged at me just this new and interesting argument for God's existence just from the the seemingly fortuitous way in which consciousness pairs up with the physical world. Um, so that and then also maybe around my second year of grad school, I just came across here and there. It was only sprinkled in, but I just started coming across some like seemingly powerful reports of miraculous, supernatural, and patternal phenomena. And at the time, I didn't really take them too seriously, but it was like hard for me to like rule them out. Like they were these all these seemingly honest people testifying to things that happened super recently in perfectly totally conducive perceptual circumstances.
¶110uh where these people like seem honest. Uh so those three things together, losing some of my main objections to a pretty powerful argument for theism, finding this new and interesting argument for theism together some other interesting arguments like nomological harmony and various other things that like Brian Cutter and Dustin Kromit and some others were working on and then also just like sprinkling in some testimonial reports including some like >> like medically documented healing cases and various other things where it's like oh man like maybe maybe there's something going on. It's like hard for me to rule these out from the armchair. I've got all these speculative reasoning, but like I don't know, um this person is testifying to, you know, just like a cup just like last week, just like when they were talking with someone who was purportedly possessed, like the cup would just go up and then fly across the room and it would shatter on the wall. And I was like, "Okay, that's something that's hard to be wrong about whether or not that happened." >> Yeah.
¶111This this isn't um uh because I think a lot of times people talk about spooky things or aliens and things like that. in the midst of the night and I woke up and this crazy thing happens. Uh well that could just be sleep paralysis for example >> sort of hypnogogic hallucination >> but it's like you were clearly awake aware of your surroundings not under the influence of some kind >> and there are multiple people in the room who see the exact same thing and they'll come and testify to that sort of thing and it's just like and then like you see this sort of thing being testified to over and over and over again by people who are within deliverance ministry by people who have been through deliverance ministry by people who are like just you know uh like a a hospital staff worker like being reported in like official government report seeing these sorts of things it's Am I really gonna like I I started shifting in my seat, you know? So like those those things together, the kind of philosophical side and starting to get some little sprinkles of some like supernatural phenomena that was hard for me to write off made me like, okay, maybe there's a little bit more to theism than I thought. >> You know what's funny?
¶112I feel like a lot of atheists sometimes when they hear these things, they don't realize that they're kind of in a little bit of a circular reasoning that they will say, "Well, I'm an atheist because there's there's no good reason to believe in miracles." And then when people are given miracle association, you know, reports, it's like, well, I don't believe that these miracle reports actually happen, you know, because I'm an atheist. There's no God that causes this. So, it almost, I feel like, turns into a kind of looped explanation where like, you know, I I I disbelieve miracles because I'm an atheist. Then when I'm presented with the the evidence or I'm an atheist because I don't think there are miracles, but then when I'm given miracles, I write them off because there's no God that causes these things. There's a point, this is similar to a point that like GK Chesterton makes where it's like um uh you know, why don't you believe in miracles?
¶113Well, because like there's no good like no good reason to think that, but then you just you point out to like these testifiers and like all these seemingly and not just test testimony, but like also like medical documentation and pictures and all this stuff, but also um just like you point out to the testimony, it's like why don't you believe these people? It's like oh because they're they're they're crazy or they're stupid or they're unreliable. Well, why? Oh, because they believe in miracles. So, it's like this like circular like you don't believe in miracles ultimately because you don't believe in miracles.
¶114It's like so this is kind of circularity that GK Chester didn't point out which is kind of funny but >> yeah but and and just the idea that I feel like a lot of like the new atheists and other people will create and I think this has been helpful and I think there's a I'm hoping that there's a lot of people who you know fall under this sway of atheism and agnosticism and secularism. I'm hoping that like the new atheists and what they've kind of devolved into, which I would say like Matt Dillah Hunty sort of turns into like the logical end if you stick to that kind of new atheism that you you basically be end up having a really unrealistic unworkable epistemology that is when you're presented with all of these reports that I feel like a lot of them just take Hume when it deals with miracles and just create this impossible evidential bar to surpass. pass that I could only believe in a miracle if everybody on earth observed it at the same time or or something like that. Uh so much so that you get like Dillah Hunty saying things like claims aren't evidence. This is like the most mind-numbingly like if you know anything about epistemology and philosophy is just a giant face pal for someone to say something like that that like I feel like a lot of these atheists it's like >> well I'll believe in God when a peer-reviewed journal says God exists >> in science or something in nature.
¶115It's like, come on, people. It's like, I'm not going to believe even if there's multiple people that saw this paranormal thing happen. Not good enough, >> right? >> But then it's like, okay, but by that standard, if that is your standard for believing things, you can't believe like almost any historical facts or just anything you you would have to be totally agnostic about the world around you. But they don't live like that.
¶116They only apply that standard to religion >> because they don't want to believe it. I I don't mean to be too brash to them, but I think it's true for a fair number. >> Well, I mean, it was certainly true for me. So, we'll get into like the more personal side of things, but in any conversion, you don't just need a change of mind. You need a change of heart.
¶117So, I really definitely want to get back to >> later for what exactly caused a >> but you're seeing things that are making in your head, you're being like, "Oh, this is concerning." >> Yeah. And exact the way you put it there. It's concerning. It didn't convince me. That's the thing.
¶118It didn't convince me initially. I'm just shifting in my seat at this point, you know, around maybe something like my second year of grad school. I've got these arguments and, you know, I just I want to be cautious. I want to be careful. I want to investigate these arguments.
¶119So, I'm like starting to correspond with like Brian Cutter. I'm having him on my channel and whatnot. I'm like thinking about these arguments like what could I object to? I'm consulting my friends. Turns out like they're being starting to become convinced of theism like Matthew Idlestein and Nameless Woolen by because of lots of these arguments and I'm like >> and I'm consulting others and the objections just I try to profer certain objections but they just get like swatted down and whatnot and it's like that's not really a plausible objection.
¶120So like very gradually this was a really gradual process. I'm like starting to lean towards theism. >> Mhm. Um and yeah, I mean I guess going through the second year of grad school like it started like ramping up like the force of some of these arguments. So I remember um I uh actually interviewed it's still up on my channel.
¶121I interviewed um in person Brian Cutter about the arguments from psychophysical harmony and nomological harmony and I was like throwing all these objections to him and worries that I had and whatnot but he was just able to like very forcefully and cogently respond to them. Yes. Yes. >> And so actually that night, this was at like a conference, I went to bed and I was like, "Ah, maybe God exists after all." >> So I was like, "Maybe God, maybe you exist. Maybe." Um, so I was like really I was really starting to open up um starting to shift and and at the time that was kind of like exciting because I thought that that would have been like like given my plausibility structures at the time that was like like good news.
¶122cuz I thought, you know, there's like a perfect being at the foundation of reality who loves me and who's probably going to like reward everyone with like an everlasting beautiful life and whatnot. Like I just I had a lot of my kind of plausibility structures had I guess embied a more kind of like liberal Christianity type view of God where um you know like it's kind of universalism and like the Bible is like super unreliable but still it's like you know full of good stories and like Jesus was a good guy or something like that you know um that my plausibility structures aligned a little bit more with that. So, I saw just like even generic philosophical theism in like a good light. So, I was like, you know, this this would actually be good news. >> You're starting to believe in the God that many secular philosophers would like to exist.
¶123>> Mhm. >> Right. Um or at least starting to lean that way. It's funny, I didn't actually like really kind of say that I believed in God until I got so much miraculous evidence. >> Um cuz like >> always in the background, the problem of evil was just there and it was just nagging at me and it just felt so forceful, Trent.
¶124It just felt so forceful. of course. >> Um, and it was just, you know, I just had lots of mounting evidence for theism, but also just like this seemingly gargantuan objection to theism. >> Do you think also, so your particular problem of evil, it's always interesting to see what what sways people and part of that psychological of things that that people have different um, affectations for, I guess. uh like I think for example you have a particular affectation for the suffering of animals which is why you're which is why you're a vegan and you're still you're still committed to that and so a instance of whereas other people they don't have as many affectations so the gratuitous suffering of animals may not be what pushes them away from god it could be rather some kind of gratuitous suffering involving humans uh where you might say oh well philosophically we can human suffering we can imagine a lot of goods for that and >> like you know they can develop and manifest virtue And it gives us opportunities to help one another and like that can cultivate relationships for all of eternity.
¶125And it was like I don't know it's like plausible under theism that God might be able to give us an an afterlife where the goods can be sorry where the evils can be like defeated such that the evils are actually kind of integrated into this narrative hole such that the whole is actually better because it included the evil in question and the people in the afterlife come to actually kind of like endorse the kind of life that they lived um and they they wouldn't wish away the evils and what not. It is an imperfect world becoming perfect has more goods than a perfect world. >> Yeah, exactly. And so like I could see, you know, like some reasons why God might permit um human suffering, human wrongdoing and whatnot. But like when I thought about the animals, it's like it's not like the pig is there and it's like, "Oh yes, I'm going to cultivate my virtue in response to this suffering." And it's like >> I love that you I love that you're a pig is basically Swinburn.
¶126>> Well, because it's like I'm imagining a cognitively sophisticated pig and Swinburn is very cognitively sophisticated. True. Um, >> yeah. So, like I don't know. It just had a particular force on me.
¶127Human suffering did like I mean the Holocaust like I would read about the Holocaust. I would read about like >> particularly horrific instances of suffering and I just got this like >> sense that like you know no good god could allow that, you know. >> So like >> that that was a palpable influence on me. Um, but yeah, I just felt like there was this big monstrous objection to theism that was really hard and I didn't really have a good really hard to respond to and I didn't have a good response to it. But I was like starting to mount uh my arguments.
¶128>> Well, it's like imagine um a seessaw, right? And the So for your evidences, the problem of animal suffering is weighing it down, but people keep dropping things over here. Yeah. >> And it's starting to turn the seesaw a little. >> Exactly.
¶129Exactly. And that that's that's really how it felt. Um, and so then maybe again somewhere around the second year of grad school, maybe nearing the end, I start to get inundated with evidence for miraculous phenomena and just like supernatural and prednatural phenomena and whatnot. >> Yeah. >> Um, so I mean I think it started out just like with um because I've always been like good friends with Cameron Batusi, right?
¶130And so it started out with him making videos about Our Lady of Zetune and just like demonic phenomena where he just like uh invites on different exorcists and other people in the deliverance ministry and like psychiatrists like Dr. for Richard Gallagher and just various other people who just testify to things where like seem it's like very hard for them to be honestly mistaken where these people have lots of professional credibility. Um and where >> basically if if anything remotely resembling their testimonial reports happened it's like naturalism is just like demonstrabably falsified. So like it's like you know it makes and like I could just like divine from the armchair that these guys are all mistaken and or there's some kind of like significant conspiracy theory or people just like confabulating on cosmic proportions like they're like >> even though they're like totally psychologically sane and normal in in every other context. >> Just for for our listeners here, I'll include links below.
¶131I've covered some of this in previous episodes, but you have instances where thousands or tens of thousands of people see an extremental uh phenomenon outside of themselves. Uh the miracle of the son of Fatima 1917 would be one. the apparitions of our lady at Zatun at a Coptic church in Egypt in 1962 is another you're referring to along with also just the the reports you mentioned about you know deliverance ministries groups seeing uh supernatural events occurring around possessions so you're adding so just to catch up our listeners a lot of things you're referring to which I'll link to below it's it's like oh wow it's really hard to explain all this in a even Dawkins makes a um a quip about that in god in the god delusion I think about the miracle of the that it's just like it's pretty hard to explain how like that many people could be hallucinating the same thing, right? So like you know again just at the start it was like demonic phenomenon. Our lady is Zetune and like Zetune hundreds of thousands of people witness this.
¶132We have like medical documentation for like healings of um blindness, muteness, paralysis, like palpable tumors, um gangrronous fingers coming back to life. to a dead finger coming back to life. Like all all different sorts of that things we have like it's just so much like converging evidence in these cases where it's like it's it's I'm really starting to shift to my seat now. But again, I'm not I'm still not at theism. I'm just like starting to lean towards these and I'm getting more and more uncomfortable.
¶133>> Yes. >> Um >> and um and like again as I just research further and one thing like that Cameron did which was really good is he was just like pressing me Joe. He's like Joe what is your explanation? >> Give me an explanation. Like actually say something right like put your put your feet on the line.
¶134Yeah. >> Um I was like, "Okay." So I I was like flailing about for like imp like really implausible hypotheses that could explain it. I was like, "Yeah, okay. Granted, these are implausible, but like a miracle is also super implausible, right? There's like some kind of suspension of laws of nature or something like that." So I had ways to try to push back.
¶135Um but as time went on, I just got more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more evidence for miraculous phenomena. And you don't want to dig yourself in with a bad epistemology because I think it's like Bartman in his debates has said like the definition of a miracle. He says a miracle by definition is the least pro is just whatever is the least probable explanation for a phenomena. which already begs the question to say, "Oh, well, a miracle is just whatever is least likely to be true to explain something rather than a more classical definition of, oh, well, it's the suspension of the laws of nature for a deity to communicate a sign or a message of some kind." Because if you already define it as just like, you know, it's it's just what doesn't happen. Well, of course, it's not going to happen.
¶136>> Exactly. Um, so like these miracles are mounting and mounting and like again I'm still not quite a theist and it's it's only after getting introduced to like Eucharistic miracles and then I start like investigating those and like after I read like Saraphene's book but and then I started watching the debates between like the skeptics and people like Matthew Leva and various other people and I started like reading up on what some of the best skeptics online are saying and then reading up on what Ethan Muse is putting out and it's like oh man like actually the skeptical objections aren't that good. Yeah. Um and then so the eucharistic miracles come in and there's like other Marian apparitions now that are starting to come in and flood me with evidence like Fatima and um Lords and various other things. So actually I only became a theist and I was still only like 70% or 80% confident in theism after seeing like looking at all the demonic stuff looking at Zetune in tremendous depth looking at Eucharistic miracles examining the debates there.
¶137Um and then finally Caleb Jackson who does lots of he's a Protestant currently >> currently a Protestant. We we'll see where things go. Um >> uh he was doing work on like Lords and various other medical medically documented healings. It was only after reading some of his um forthcoming stuff on Lords that I was like I just read that stuff and I was like okay >> I can't explain this away. Like we have case it's just insane when you look at the Lord stuff.
¶138So there's like a St. Beluga article which goes through some of the more recent ones. Yeah, >> but just we have overwhelming medical documentation for things that are just naturalistically inexplicable. So like just to give you two examples in like the 19th century um uh what's her name? Wim de this is one of the officially recognized Lord's miracles.
¶139She had this like massive gaping ulcer on her leg. It was about 12.5 in from like the um the bottom of the knee to the ankle and like the skin was totally off and you could even see exposed like muscle and tendons and whatnot. So this massive gaping uh wound. We have like a medical like report, medical documentation a week before she goes to Lurs describing it in like grotesque detail from her primary physician. Um, week later she goes to Lurs.
¶140She goes into the bath with she has like a bandage around it. She goes into the bath. >> She comes out and witnesses around start seeing like the bandages shrivel and they come off and there's new pink skin. >> Yeah. >> Over this gigantic gaping like gash like wound.
¶141uh this ulcer and like it's like oh my gosh. Okay, so like gigantic ulcer, no gigantic ulcer. And so then we have like uh testimony from the people there who saw it with their own eyes. We have like tons of different testimony that like uh the the church collected concerning this. Um she went back home.
¶142We have like a telegram about this. She went back home to see the primary care physician a week later after she went to Lords and he writes like she's healed. It's like what is going on? It's like week before, week later medical documentation. Another case, Marie Le Maron.
¶143Um, this is another one of the official Lords cases where she has this like lupus vulgaras with gigantic ulcers that are like eating away at her face. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Um, >> she goes to Lords, enters the baths, and once again, she comes out with new pink skin all over her face. And again, we've got like >> it's like a it's like a dozen testimonies to this and like medical do medical reports.
¶144It's just insane. >> And like these are the sorts of things that we're talking about. Like demonstrabably not naturalistically explicable. And like it's hard to be wrong about whether there's a gigantic like ulcerus all over someone's face that you saw just immediately go away, right? Um >> so I was like really shifting in my seat and just looking into the evidence there.
¶145I was like, "Oh man." And there were other medically documented cases in like Protestant services and whatnot that I was like, "Okay, God probably exists at this point." Um I wasn't I wasn't ready for Christianity yet. Um but I was like, "Okay, maybe 70 80% likely that God exists." >> I still noticed I was only 70 80%. But hey, it's better than 50. Still still very good. But it's so funny you weren't ready there because the primary thing motivating you are very distinct Christian miracles.
¶146Yeah. >> And yet you're still hesitant about Christianity when it's >> you would the point of the miracle is to probably communicate that message. But you're like at least there's something here. >> Yeah. There's something fishy going on.
¶147It's like I don't know the the exact explanation, but it seems like you know God exists. He cares about us. He's healing people. And I'm getting like all these new interesting arguments for God's existence. Um Oh well.
¶148Well, what's interesting is if you at least are um aware of theism, this actually shortc circuits a common atheistic I think a lot of atheists and this happened in my discussion with Alex Okconor on premier unbelievable when we talk about the resurrection when I said you know one of the evidence to resurrection is these like Marian apparitions I think to borrow basian reasoning that is something you would really expect if the resurrection hypothesis is true and if the resurrection hypothesis is not true those things would be very unexpected and Alex just kind of like handwave them away >> he's like okay but let's not talk about marriations. Let's go to the Mormon. >> Let's talk about Mormons. I'm like, wait, but you you still got to So, and I think what atheists will say is, well, look, there's all kinds of people make paranormal claims and they can't all be true. So, I guess they're all just false.
¶149And I think that's a way they try to like sidestep these kind of miracle claims. But what's interesting is you could take your approach and be like, "Okay, I'm at least there's just a God. At least there's a God doing all this stuff. We'll figure out the theology later. We But we definitely shouldn't be atheists." >> Right.
¶150Exactly. I was like, I I certainly can't hold on to naturalism anymore. So, I was just like, okay, naturalism is gone. >> So, at the very least, I want an atheist like watching this, if you see this by these things, like, okay, if even doesn't convince you to be a Christian, you should really be skeptical of naturalism right now. >> Right.
¶151Right. Exactly. So, at at this point, you know, I've come across Eucharistic miracles, which I mean themselves were like, if I accept these, it seems like it's like like really powerful evidence for Catholicism because I was like, a Catholic priest prays over some bread and it turns into suffering myocardial tissue. It's like what am I supposed to do with my life then? >> What kind of message is being communicated?
¶152>> Is it all goes to mind? >> It's impossible to to discern what exactly um what would be communicated. Um >> so that one was I didn't quite accept them. Um I wasn't just I just wasn't ready, you know, cuz it just it would require Catholicism and I was not ready for Catholicism. >> I definitely not ready for Catholicism.
¶153>> I believe that that's a t-shirt that should be given to every person who goes to OCIA. I was not ready for Catholicism because it is like this big cathedral of a thing with 2,000 years of history and theology behind it and well articulated thought of belief. I reminded of a um it was interesting though I remember that Graham Oppy did a review of JP Morland's a book he did on like evolution and creationism and there's a line in there when he talks about theology. He says honestly though the Catholic Church is probably the best developed and most developed theology in all of Christianity. Even if Voppy gives you a little bit of kudos there, it's like, yeah, but there's a lot there.
¶154You're like, "Oh, boy." >> Well, yeah. I mean, a lot of It seemed like a lot of commitments at the time. Yeah. But also just like >> if I were to become Catholic, I would have had to change my life in a lot of ways. >> And for you though, return >> and return.
¶155Yeah. to admit that I was like wrong, that my parents were right the whole time and that like you know like all that super embarrassing stuff. Even though I've I just started I've been publishing stuff like actively criticizing the Catholic model of God and Catholicism like for like such a long time. >> I would ra I would rather stay here and eat from the pig's trough than return to my father's house. >> Right.
¶156Exactly. Yes. Exactly. So I was like and also just like it had so many teachings that are like these hard sayings like there is such a thing as hell. >> Mhm.
¶157homosexuality impermissible or at least act you know acting on homosexual tendencies impermissible >> teachings on sexual ethics teachings about es esquetology >> yeah those were those were the two biggest ones the sexual ethics and the esquetology I was like it's just it can't be right like this stuff >> it's so implausible and also just so great against my moral intuitions and also it's just like this huge comp seemingly huge complex edifice that I'd have to buy into >> I just I was not ready and I did not want to be Catholic and I had so much resistance so many psychological barriers and again I just have to very significantly radically change my life if Catholicism weren't true. >> It's like it's like a huge big ask. >> Yeah. >> Um and I'd have to like get rid of certain relationships that I was in at the time and various other things like that. I could not it was really tough.
¶158>> It was really tough. I couldn't couldn't get myself there. And so this is where like you know the intellectual factors are building and building and building. Uh the psychological for Catholicism because all these miracles they seem to be vindicating distinctively Catholic doctrines which we can get to. Um, but I just had so many psychological barriers in the other direction and like genuine rational barriers in the other direction because I had so many objections to hell.
¶159I had so many objections to the to the morality that the Catholic Church teaches. I had so many >> objections and whatnot. >> So, I mean, there are a few places we could go next. I mean, it's like how exactly there's the intellectual side which culminated in the conversion and then there's like the the personal side and whatnot which is kind of like almost like seamlessly interwoven with the intellectual side. >> We'll tease them both out.
¶160I I I want to unte though because you've got all these. Was it just Seesaw is turning with all the positive evidence because I find one way and this is a way that that I find helpful both intellectually and personally dealing with the problem of evil. I mean it's an approach similar to what like Brian Davies offers in his 2006 book uh the reality of God and the problem of evil which is basically like you know uh if gratuit I mean you could do it with anything problem of evil argument is just if gratuitous suffering exists uh god does not exist so the atheist will say there is gratuitous suffering so there is no god but you could just run a modus tolins and say well yeah if grat if gratuitous suffering therefore no god >> but god >> so the suffering is just not gratuitous that whatever we think it is it it doesn't exist because we know God exists and so whatever we think is gratuitous it just it isn't. So like is that kind of like when it comes to the problem of animals suffering since they developed complex it's like I'm like it's not billions of years of suffering but yeah millions I'll give you when they have complex nervous systems that arise through evolutionary process. Um you know so there's there there's a suffering there.
¶161Was it for you like okay but we know God exists and then was it maybe some other like theodysies to help explain that to like get that boulder out of the way? >> Yeah. I mean so it it never it as in the problem of evil never quite went away. >> It should never it should never go fully away for believers, >> right? Yeah.
¶162>> Cuz it's there. It's a problem. >> Yeah. And it was really just a matter of like denting its evidential force. Yes.
¶163so that I could uh appreciate the just overwhelming evidential force of of the miracles and the arguments for theism and whatnot. So, it's I think I was sort of getting getting to the place where I like I could see myself kind of accepting theism and kind of just dealing with at least some evidential hit from evil, >> but just mitigating the evidential hit through just a huge disjunction of different things that that one could say. So like Trent Dhy has this book on uh animal suffering. It's called like the problem of animal pain, a theodysy for creatures great and small where he proposes that um like there is a kind of afterlife for animals. And it's not saying that the Narnia theology.
¶164>> It's not saying that they're actually going to enjoy the botific vision, but like you know the lion will lay down with the lamb in the escaton. So like why can't God just make those very lions and lambs that exist today? >> If they have if if animals have mental states that persist through time, then maybe they could still persist in the next life somehow. >> Right. Right.
¶165Exactly. So maybe God could like reconstitute them or something like that and then basically bring about some kind of defeat of their suffering that they um experienced while on earth. And again it's like sure that may seem implausible to the atheist or something like that. But firstly when we're evaluating arguments we need to look at how probable is the evidence conditional on theism. >> Yeah.
¶166>> And then how probable is the evidence conditional on atheism or naturalism. So we actually can assume that like in the background when we're trying to assess how probable the evidence is under theism we can assume that God exists. And like if he can give like a good afterlife to animals, like why not? Like God's a perfect being. He's motivated by considerations of value and just like bringing about good things like he perceives the good and then is motivated by the good.
¶167Um so like if God could do it, I don't know. It doesn't seem terribly implausible that he might do it. Again, may seem implausible, but like it seems like that's something that God could achieve. Yeah. >> Uh so I don't know.
¶168It's like >> to quote Peter Griffin, he's Jesus. He can do anything. >> Right. Exactly. So there was that.
¶169And then there's this new paper by Brian Carter. Again, Brian Cutter, he's huge in the story. He's like one of my favorite philosophers. Yes. Um there's this new paper by um Brian Cutter and Philip Swenson on the omissions the Odyssey which basically um gives like yet another even like separate explanation for animal suffering.
¶170Basically like there were agents who just culpably omitted to guide the evolutionary process in a in a benevolent direction. And there are all sorts of reasons why that's actually not terribly unlikely conditional on antheism that they go through in their paper which we don't need to get into. But like, okay, now I can basically get like this junction. Either >> uh Trent Dherty story or Philip Swinson and Brian Cutter story or maybe there's some like there's some secret third thing that I'm not aware of. Like it's it given the vast cognitive chasm between God and us.
¶171>> It wouldn't be too surprising >> that maybe there are some reasons that God has for allowing this stuff of which I'm just not privy or I'm not aware. And that doesn't destroy natural theology. I'm not saying like, oh, I'm totally in the dark about all of God's reasons or I'm to That's not what I'm saying. You do not want to go to hypers skeptical theis. >> No, that would be a very bad bad.
¶172I don't want to do that. But it's like a very modest skeptical the like it's just not hopelessly unlikely. Yes. >> That maybe there are just reasons that God has of which I'm unaware and which justify this. That's not like a terribly unlikely hypothesis given the co cognitive chasm between us.
¶173And given that that just puts a cap on the force of the evidential problem. I've always thought for someone who I if they find it at least like okay I can see the plausibility in replies to gratu examples of allegedly gratuitous human suffering. Well, I mean if God you can say oh I can see how God could bring it about. Even though there are stark qualitative differences between humans and non-human animals, there are still a lot of similarities and enough including like the persisting mental states and things like that. If God is all powerful enough to overcome the evil that affects human organisms, really what's to prevent him from doing that for the non-human organisms?
¶174>> Yeah. And so I'm just getting this huge disjunction of things that are like each of which is actually not like hopelessly unlikely conditional theism. And then like the disjunction actually like makes it not terribly unlikely that there would be animal suffering. So we've got like I was also becoming aware of like certain multiverse theodysies. Like there multiverse theodysies.
¶175There's like the animal afterlife that trend dory's proposing. There's like this modest skeptical theism. There's like this uh Brian Cutter Philip Swenson type omissions theodysy approach. I was like ah there are so many different approaches. Uh and like if someone's lupus vulgaras is basically like instantaneously being healed like okay maybe >> tipping that's tipping well the boulder's been chipped away enough the seesaw can tip the other way.
¶176>> Right. Exactly. So like I was just chipping away at the evidential force of evil. Um and >> and then I just got so much overwhelming evidence on the other side I was like okay I can see myself just accepting this. And then another just higher order realization that I had is like lots of the arguments for atheism aren't probabilistically independent such that they don't actually compound in force when you put them together.
¶177So like once you once you update or once you take into account the evidential force of let's say one instance of particularly horrific suffering right >> um or like a collection of instances like the Holocaust. Once you update on that, sure, theism will take some kind of evidential hit and we can mitigate that ev evidential hit in various ways, right? >> But then once you have that in the background that God is allowing something like that, it that's then going to it's it's not going to be nearly as surprising then once that's in the background that there would be other bad things in the world. And like a lot of the atheistic arguments are just like, oh, here's a bad thing. Oh, here's another bad thing.
¶178Oh, here's another bad thing. Or here's another sub-optimal thing. Yeah, we know. >> And those aren't Yeah, exactly. We know after we updated on the first instance.
¶179And so that and then that'll basically yeah again we might take an evidential hit. But then the view the package that you then have is going to be theism together with God's going to have to have some sort of story for allowing that particularly horrific instance of suffering. But then given that God has that story it's not terribly unlikely that he would have stories to explain these other things. So these these these problems these arguments for atheism including like divine hiddenenness and religious diversity and confusion whatnot they're not actually probabilistically independent. And that's different from theism >> because yeah, if you multiply instances of gratuitous suffering or hiddenenness, it doesn't make the problem worse for theists marketkedly.
¶180But if you multiply the number of miracles for naturalists, that does marketkedly increase the problem of maintaining natural. >> Yeah. Like explaining eucharistic miracles won't help you explain Padre Peio. It won't help you explain Zetune. And even if you explain those, you still got fine tuning.
¶181>> You can't shuttle your explanations from one to the other. They're they're independent. They build the force more. >> Right. Exactly.
¶182So then I was starting to see that like theism offers this like really attractive, elegant, unifying explanation of like disunified phenomena in reality, like fine-tuning and like the fortuitous pairing between consciousness and physical states and the fact that we have like moral knowledge even though evolution easily could have gone astray under naturalism and like the moral facts don't even play into the explanation of our moral beliefs under naturalism. And so then like I've got those sorts of considerations, the fact that there are any contingent things at all. Um, and like I got all these miracles which are just stacking up one on top of another which are seemingly proistically independent and theism just offers this like beautifully elegant unifying explanation of all of these and then there's just like one class of anomalies which we can significantly dent in evidential force by taking this disjunctive approach and at that point I'm like okay there is a lot going >> it's a simple explanation it's not ad hoc >> right it's like there's just a being with every perfection the fundamental nature of reality extremely simply compactly specifiable highly uniform highly it's not like oh the being knows everything except for the number of blades of grass on some particular lawn like that's like a hopelessly arbitrary ad hoc hypothesis. >> Oh that's like Rasmusen's argument from limits a little >> exactly and I just think that significantly affects the prior probabilities such that like actually theism is like a live serious option before even looking at the evidence and then it just like unifies so much evidence um exceptionally well. >> So then like I'm really starting I'm like we're now really starting to lean towards theism.
¶183Um, and at this point I'm basically like, yeah, after I after I look at Lords, um, and like Fatima's kind of there in the background like nagging at me and kind of like thinking like maybe Catholicism is true, maybe Catholicism is true. And then the Eucharistic miracles are there nagging at me in the background, which are like seem to be manifest vindication of like transubstantiation. I was like, "Okay, yeah, theism is true and and Christianity seems to be the most probable version of theism given the miracles." And I I wasn't quite ready for Catholicism yet, though. >> Um, so again, like we're building up. There's like Fatima.
¶184I started really appreciating the force of Fatima. Started really appreciating the force of Padre Pio, which was the last kind of like the last uh domino to fall before my conversion. Um, and then just kind of like alongside all of this, because I had all these psychological barriers, somehow the Holy Spirit needed to to remove those. >> Yeah. Because Okay.
¶185So, he's he's getting in there and they're starting to come down. >> Yeah. The psychological barriers are starting to come down. So, like I'm starting to find, of course, like some like reasonable things to say in response to my problems concerning hell and sexual ethics and whatnot. Um, but also just like, you know, very gradually I'm starting to there's like a shift in in in like mental perspective.
¶186There's like a gestalt shift where you go from, oh no, Catholicism might be true. There's like a shift from that to whoa, Catholicism is like Catholicism may be true. That's about it. >> Yeah, that's that's beautiful. This is wonderful.
¶187So, some sort of shift had to happen >> um in in like the heart. So, maybe I'll talk about like the heart shift and and then we can talk about Padre Pio and whatnot. Well, >> you go right ahead. Yeah. What's going on there?
¶188>> So, like it's basically two main things. looking at lives of the saints and just watching some saint videos and whatnot and then just like having some like almost like quasi religious experiences. So um along this path I start like watching some videos just about saints. I don't know how exactly I came across them. Maybe it was because um like again like Cameron introduced me to like Father Carlos Martins and then I know he he had this video on Gabby after hours which was on St.
¶189Mary Grey. Mhm. >> So I watched that and after it I just ball I ball my eyes out and I'm like this is so beautiful. So St. Mary Greddy was she I think she died at the age of 11 I think in like 1902 or something like that.
¶190>> Mhm. >> So she's this uh young Italian girl and um she lived on a farm and it was like next to another family who I think were like the farm owners or something, the Serinellis. Um and I think his name was Andrew Serinelli. it was like a 20-year-old um neighbor of um the Gerrettes. Um and he took an impure liking to her, >> right?
¶191>> Uh when she's, you know, just this 11-year-old girl. And so know it started with these like kind of, you know, sexual harassment type stuff, you know, like just comments that made her feel uncomfortable, but it was very evident that she was uncomfortable and she, you know, because she's committed to purity. Um, and so it started with comments, but like gradually it they the efforts ramped up to try to get her to >> engage with her uh sexually, >> right? >> And so one day when St. Mar when St.
¶192Marie Grey is uh in her home, she's home alone, Andrew Sarinelli's next door. He takes this like sharpened knifeike object and he goes he goes to her and he puts it at her and he says, "Unless you do what I tell you." >> Mhm. >> I'm going to kill you. >> Yeah. >> And she says, "No, >> I'm not going to give up uh my virginity.
¶193I'm going to remain chased and I will die." This is not what exactly what she's saying. This is, you know, going through her mind. I will die a martyr for Christ, you know, for purity, for chastity. And so he stabs her nine times. So much so that like when he when he puts the the knife in her, it's like it's like this like crude kind of instrument.
¶194Like sometimes it goes through her stomach and pierces the other side of her back. And sometimes he also hit her um >> her spine such that like the knife thing like dented. So he does that nine times. She drops unconscious. He thinks he's killed her.
¶195So he leaves. She actually consciousness comes back. And so she's like in this dazed state. She's like, she's tries to get help. So, she like crawls over to the to like the door.
¶196She opens up the door wanting to get help. She opens up the latch. Andrew Sarinelli hears that. >> So, he comes back and and he thinks he finishes the job. So, he stabs her five more times.
¶197>> And so, she's she's bleeding there. And actually, it turns out she doesn't even die from that. It was those five stab wounds that would eventually kill her 24 hours later, >> right? >> But so, basically, for whatever reason, she didn't die at that particular like right after being stabbed five more times. Um I think maybe her family comes home or something like that.
¶198They have to call an ambulance. Um the ambulance comes and picks her up and um she actually she's like super thirsty because she's being dehydrated from the loss of all the blood and whatnot. Um but they can't give her the water because like uh she'll get like peritonitis or something. The same sort of um you know sickness that you would get if your appendix burst cuz like it would sort of go through like the perforated. Yeah.
¶199And it would go and it would just it would exacerbate things. Um, so I think there was a priest with her as well, uh, either on the ambulance or maybe when she got to the hospital. Um, and you know, the priest was like, you know, no one gave Christ water when he was suffering on the cross. So will you offer this up for the salvation of souls? And she says, yes.
¶200>> So she from there she offers that up for this suffering for for the salvation of souls. >> And then um they also couldn't so they were going to perform surgery to try to save her when she gets to the hospital, but they couldn't give her any anesthetic. Mhm. >> Uh because they thought that that just would have stopped her heart. >> So she also uh I think was either asked or said that you know I'm going to offer up all this suffering for others.
¶201>> Um and so she didn't let out any like screams or anything even though she could feel every single like suture every single every single move that the doctors were making on her on her inards that are just like spilling out as she's dying. And then um basically right when she's about to die, she says um I forgive Andrew Zerinelli >> and I want him with me in paradise forever. And then she dies. >> Wow. Okay.
¶202So of course it has been said the story continues. I love love love your friends and hate your enemies. I say to you love your enemies and pray for them. There is it's it's almost like a mini miracle in and of itself but it's evidential value. >> Exactly.
¶203And the story continues. So like >> Andrew Narinelli >> uh you know he no one no one so of course they find out that he's the one who stabbed her and you know he goes he goes to prison like full of hatred in his heart. He's like if none of this would have happened if she just would have done what I told her, right? >> You know none of this would have happened. So she's like he's like blaming her.
¶204He's saying I didn't do this. She actually came after me. Um so he's like lying and you know defaming and all all this stuff columnating her and her image. Um so he goes to prison >> and he's like super violent in prison. and he's just full of hatred.
¶205But one night when he's asleep, he has a dream and St. Maria Grey appears to him in a vision picking 14 white lily flowers from a garden and then handing them to him one by one >> which of course is a sign that's the number of stab wounds. >> The number of stab wounds was 14. >> 14 stab wounds. So, of course, he interpreted this rightly as I'm forgiving you for each of those wounds.
¶206>> Yeah. >> Radical forgiveness. So, he wakes up, he's like, he's convicted of his sin. >> He's like, I need a priest. So, he confesses to murdering her and he just radically changes his life such that now there's a cause for his canonization up and running.
¶207So, he radically changes his life. He's like uh he starts like volunteering at different like monasteries or whatever and he's like um promoting her cause for canonization and he goes to like her mother and he's like will you forgive me for what I did to your daughter and she's like >> listen God has forgiven you >> St. Maria Grey has forgiven you so how could I not forgive you? So, it's just this story of radical love, radical forgiveness, and it's just so beautiful. Like, and I was like, I want what I want what she's on.
¶208>> Whatever she's on, whatever she's having, whatever is infusing this kind of divine life in her, I want that. >> Yeah. >> Sign me up for that. So, that wasn't quite my reaction immediately, but I was like, this is it. Like, this is the stuff.
¶209>> Yeah. >> This is the stuff. So then that was St. Mary Grey and then another kind of saint who came along um and whose intercession ultimately led me to uh just this change of heart and change of perspective was um St. Maxmine KBY.
¶210>> Ah yes. >> So Gabby after No, is it Gabby after hours? No, no. So there's just this video. It's like it's like a seven or eight minute video.
¶211Yeah. Not by Gabby after hours. He has one on St. Maxine KBY. Um which is very excellent.
¶212But um there's another one where it's just like it's like a cinematic depiction of what happened to St. Maxim KBY. Mhm. >> So, you know, he's praying at his whatever it's called, monastery or whatever. Um, and so he he's a a 20th century saint.
¶213He's putting out like he's fighting back against the Nazis, uh, cuz, you know, they're pedalling all this disgusting anti-semitism and whatnot. And he's pushing him back against that. But one day, the Gestapo show up at his door and he's like, "We hear that you've been, uh, you know, pedaling anti-Nazi propaganda. You're going to Ashvitz." So, he he goes as a political prisoner to Ashvitz. Um, and one day someone in his squadron or whatever escapes Ashvitz.
¶214And so as a kind of collective punishment, they get all the people in his squadron together, make them line up, and they say, "We're going to take 10 of you to go to the starvation bunker, and there you will die. You will starve to death." So the Nazi guards are going through, and they're like, "You, you, you." And they eventually get to someone who, you know, he's like tearing up as they come to him and they say, "You." And then he starts breaking down. He's like, "No, I've got a wife. I've got three kids and I'm never going to see." >> Seems like Pierre Franchesc I think >> something. He's like, "I'm never going to see them again.
¶215>> My wife, my child, >> I'm never going to see them." >> And so he's crying. And so they're like, "Shut up." And they take him. >> Mhm. >> And so Maxim KBY breaks rank, goes up and says, "Take me instead. >> Take me instead.
¶216Starve me. He's got a wife and kids. I'm just a priest. Take me. And so they do.
¶217>> The reason of course we know about this is because that guy in God's providence survived Ashvitz. >> I know >> reunited with his child and he was a guest of honor at St. Maximleian Kby's canonization ceremony and he was like speaking there. He was invited by the pope and whatnot. So this is why how we know his story.
¶218And so you know St. St. Maxim KBY is taken to the um you know the starvation bunker and you know there he's like preaching to the his fellow people who are being starved. He's like praying with them. I think he was probably even like teaching them the rosary and whatnot.
¶219Yeah. >> Um such that they all can can have like a happy death, you know, um in a state of sanctifying grace. And so he's teaching them like forgive their enemies and whatnot. Um and he was actually I think the last to go. He wouldn't die.
¶220Uh so they had to come and inject like carbolic acid or something into him. Yes. Um and then um he died. So like oh and actually earlier on like he early on in his life he had like a vision I think of um of Mary who appeared to him and offered him like two crowns a white crown and a red crown. And I think she explained to him that like the red crown represents martyrdom and the white crown represents purity.
¶221Which do you want? I think he said I'll take both. >> Why not? >> Why not? Why not both?
¶222>> Right. So that story, man, it's like >> they convicted me. >> What kind of a greater love hath no man than this that a man lay down his life for his friends? >> Mhm. >> So I was like again, whatever he's on, I want it.
¶223I want that. That's the sort of life that I want to lead. And so it's like those saint stories that were at least significantly responsible for me just like opening up >> to Catholicism and lots of other saint stories as well that I well maybe not lots but like at the very least like St. Damian of Malachi you know like um volunteering to go to this leper colony like the the the sickest the most downtrodden and the poorest place that no one wants to serve and he just goes to this Machai is that like a Hawaiian island or something? >> It was a leper colony in Hawaii.
¶224>> Hawaii. Yeah. So lep le leper colony and he goes there of course it's basically a death sentence but he you know gives them the sacraments he evangelizes he prays with them and he's there with them he comforts the sick he's there with the afflicted yes >> and he succumbs to leprosy he dies so like look at these saints that God is like raising up >> and look at these like exemplars like again I want what they're on so that opened me up and then I also just had like these quasi religious experiences along the way so like you I, you know, I still am like a wicked sinner and at the time I was even a greater wicked sinner. Uh, and I was just being convicted of my sin. Like I would just be >> like sitting in the gym for instance and I would just get like feel waves upon waves.
¶225I don't even know how to describe it. It's like >> it wasn't like linguistic. I didn't hear a voice in my head, but I just felt it in waves like you could be a saint. You could be a saint. You could be a saint.
¶226So, I just felt this like really weird ineffable, palpable call to saintthood >> that was like washing over me. That's how it felt. >> Um, and I was also at the time just being convicted of my sin. I was like, you know, I I really do have it in me to cooperate with God's grace to not open up this adult app and do a particular activity. Right.
¶227I have it within me, but I would still succumb to it. >> Right. Sure. And like with God's grace, you know, like I haven't even touched that stuff. >> But you feel like it's like I could be this other person.
¶228>> Yeah. I could be and you know, I can stop living for myself. I was number one. >> There's the old me and the new me. I want to be the new me.
¶229>> I was the and Yeah. And I it's just I was number one, right? I was looking out for me first and foremost. >> I was, you know, just like hoarding wealth and like doing all this other stuff. And like I just felt like this.
¶230I was convicted of my sin, you know, like >> I I I couldn't be a saint and I could stop all this stuff. >> Um, and so like those quasi religious experiences together with the >> I would call them quasi I would call them religious, right? Relig Yeah. Because I think a lot of people think like unless I have a see a burning bush or I I levitate and fly around like St. Josephino I'm not like no a person because I've even heard other people like Ben Watkins other say well you know I would convert if I had a religious experience but one not ought to set the bar so high that it's like you can you can experience there is something that is resonating with me that is beyond me communicating a message that's not merely of natural origin and that can that moves and convicts people and that and a person should be free especially in your case say I had a religious >> experience that's just that's what they are that's the most typical ones people do have and they should listen to them, >> right?
¶231Um, I mean, as it happened, I didn't quite listen to it, but it was just like affecting me, you know? I mean, I did listen to it, but like my point is like that didn't convert me at all. Like, I still had to get through all these objections to Catholicism. >> People are messy. Everything has to come together in a has to come in their own time.
¶232>> Yeah. Exactly. And I I didn't want to change my life in all those ways. So, that was also just it took a process of God just like working through me. And like again, like none of this is my own effort, right?
¶233It's God's grace all the way through, right? Um, so yeah, then I I those kind of opened me up on a kind of heart level to Catholicism and then I think I started appreciating Fatima more. Um, you know, Ethan Muse had his modab credibility post on the first post on Fatima and then like even like the best skeptical attempt by Scott Alexander to respond to it I just think has so many flaws that that Ethan points out in his follow-up response to Scott. Um, and like even Scott's admitting that like uh man there's like an impressive degree of convergence uh of their of like the experiences of what like the hund roughly 100,000 people who are there. Of course we've got like roughly 150 testimonial reports in English right now.
¶234Um from like you know educated people from Leel from skeptics from all these sorts of things and he's like yeah it's about what you'd expect if there were if it was an objective event. And then it's like you know we've got like all this photographic analysis and we can like see images of the people with like selective bands of drawing and all them are testifying their clothes like just very rapidly drawing and then there are like these healing miracles in connection with it and like like the craziest stuff going on. So much evidence is starting to just pile up and pile up and then finally uh Ethan Muse is working on his Padre Peio post and before the post comes out I just sit down with him for four hours and he just like systematically goes through the evidence. >> Yeah. And it's just insane, you know, like there they're literally doctors who are like palpating his wounds like all all four of them with his like his hand his stigma.
¶235Exactly. So he supernaturally reduplicated the passion wounds of Christ and we've got like so many doctors reported on this. >> Yeah. No, like we've got photos and videos of this. >> Yeah.
¶236>> We have photos of him with his stigma. We have videos of it and then like on the and like we have testimony from tons of different doctors and other people who like felt them, palpated them. Sometimes they were like centimeters deep. Sometimes they were like like you could feel a palpable void that some of the doctors like again how are you honestly mistaken about that? And he's like giving this super detailed um description.
¶237He is in Dr. Fesa who examined them and talked about like how I could feel a palpable void when he put his hands um when he like felt them with his hands. It's like how are you honestly mistaken about that sort of thing? It's just like not plausible. And then like oh maybe seven doctors all of them think about.
¶238Okay. And then like what about all the like the dozens of people who took his temperature sometimes in sequence using different thermometers all of which gave naturalistically inexplicable readings like of like 125 degrees for instance like oh and then what about like the odor of sanctity which literally thousands of people like experienced where like they were just this like overwhelming >> beautiful scent that would accompany him and sometimes his relics for literally years on end, right? >> Uh or that would sometimes just like spontaneously and instantaneously like fill a room or just come in waves. Um, and like he just he's losing like so much blood all the time and he's like he's healing people with these insane medically documented healings with like eyes themselves regenerating. >> Yeah.
¶239>> So it's like okay um just at the end of that conversation with Ethan I was like I can't do it. I can't get myself to believe the conspiracy that I have to posit to explain away all this data and not just Padre Peio but the Eucharistic miracles and Fatima and Lurards and Zetun and all this stuff Barbara Schneider and >> well the only way though Joe is that to believe this miracle that the denial of the evidence would have to be a greater miracle than the miracle itself and you're like it kind of is the thing it is. It is >> the universe is just conspiring just the biggest conspiracy to make it look exactly as if Christianity is true and Catholicism is true. And I think that's where you end up getting to a point. I think for many people in their conversions, it gets it gets to a point when I see especially a lot of your if you a common thread I'm seeing here miracle claims, cosmic fine-tuning, psychophysical harmony would just be it uh you have two options.
¶240Either reality really looks like it was crafted for a particular grand story and it was or it really looks like it was crafted for a grand story and it's a giant coincidence. gigantic and it's not just a giant coincidence, it's coincidence upon coincidence upon coincidence. >> It's just I couldn't do and I wasn't going to risk as well just like waking up and seeing Jesus and it's like why didn't you believe and I was like well you see I just thought that all these doctors were wrong all the medical reports were fabricated all so one tiny cherry of Pascal's wager on top. >> Yeah. So Pascal's wager then kind of came in and it was like Joe you've got enough for the practical commitment.
¶241You got a job. >> And that's what the wager is for. It's not for someone who's just the hardened atheist. It's for the person who is really even past 50%. Especially if they were like 50/50, it's like if you want it to be true and you're on the tipping point here, might as well step over.
¶242>> Yeah. And it's not just even if you don't want it to be true, I mean like decision theoretically that's the rationally obligatory thing to do. Like I actually think Yeah. And that's another thing just like if you sprinkle in Pascal's way on top just just to get you over the line for the practical commitment. >> Um then it was enough.
¶243Um, so yeah, basically at the It's funny. I was initially convinced of Christianity like for for like a day like convinced of Christianity as a result of Padre Peio cuz like dude, come on. >> He's supernaturally reduplicating the passion wounds of Christ. >> The message is ambiguous. >> Like what could this possibly be?
¶244What could this possibly be saying? It's like I I can't look at that and not be Christian, >> right? and like oh the mother of God is like appearing on top of like a Coptic Orthodox church and like appearing to like Catholic children and telling them to pray the rosary and saying healing people and like obtaining specifically conversionist to Catholicism and saying like you know I am the immaculate conception to St. Bernardet at Lords and like only Catholics believe in that. Hm.
¶245And then like you know the the Eucharistic miracles like seems to be at least the public ones seem to with good evidence seem to only be happening in a Catholic context and it's simulating exactly what Catholics believe in and not you you guys else because it's like like an onlogical change that's being simulated. It's like I'm really excited about the work seeing in the past few years of what Muse and yourself and other Catholics combining this evidence of kind of a new evidential apologetic based on more contemporary miracles. So, I'm really excited to see the fruit that will come from that both for moving people to Christianity and to Catholicism. It's something I've also been trying to work on as well because I think just the the biggest challenge I think coming would be people to say, "Well, there are other non-Christian miracles that have the same evidential value, but you don't believe them. So, what do you do with that?
¶246Just be like us and reject it all." But I've been cataloging and going through a lot of them, and I believe that claim is actually false. that either the the events do not have the same ev like the rainbow bodies of the gurus in the east and because I went through Dale Allison's book on the resurrection and he has a he has a lot of just peppered accounts they're not in depth but it's just peppered through so you got to go back to the sources to see what what are people claiming >> yeah just for the like Lydia Mcgru on her YouTube channel has combed through what Dale Allison said about these yeah so definitely check out Lydia Mcgru's criticisms of that >> yeah exactly so I'm like okay it's easy to make a lot of these claims like well there were a bunch of kids in England that saw gnomes driving cars in a swamp. And I'm like, well, they were also sneaking around at night and were all high on themselves of just like childhood mischief. It's a lot different. But I think what's important, and this will go through, and that's why I love their apologists and philosophers and historians going through this, like, okay, no, either these other claims, they don't have the same evidential value, or maybe there's other explanations to them within a supernatural worldview.
¶247>> Yeah. I mean, at least for my research, they fall into three broad categories. one is um they're just like relatively easily naturalistically explicable. So there just are natural explanations of the relevant phenomena. I mean like this is the thing we do have to be very cautious, very careful in accepting miracles like the like for some of the eucharistic miracles.
¶248It's like we've got two independent blinded laboratories who do tests and like I you can look at the images and compare them with like a textbook image of like a myioardial inffection and they're like also doing tests and it's like both of them get that it's AB blood, both of them like they test positive for human heal and that sort of thing. Like we have laboratory tests, we have photos, we have videos, we have like a photo of Padre Peio on the day of his death where >> there are no scars at all anywhere on him. Even though for what five decades he's either like carving himself or apparently according to like the using a skeptic would just say he's inflicted the wounds, but if that were true, we would see >> naturalistically impossible for him not to have scars at the end of his life. Naturalistically inexplicable. >> Yeah.
¶249Uh and of course like also the self-infliction hypothesis can't explain basically any features of their morphology or their ideology or their changing through time. Um and of then of course you just got all the other miracles and whatnot. And then like medical documentation to eyes being supernaturally regenerated in connection with like a mystical experience of Padre Pio like you're just going to posit like coincidence upon coincidence upon coinc. It's just not plausible. It's not credible.
¶250Um so like again we got videos, photos, medical documentation, that sort of thing like blinded laboratory analyses. So like if you don't have like come to me, come to me when you have that. >> So like that's one thing I'll say. So at least often times in other sects or other religions or whatnot, um there just are relatively relatively plausible naturalistic explanations of the relevant phenomena. But secondly, even if there aren't naturalistic naturalistic explanations, it may very well be the case that God is performing certain signs in other religions, not in confirmation or vindication of distinctive doctrines that are incompatible with Catholicism, but just out of compassion for people.
¶251Like that's what a healing miracle in a Protestant service is, right? Yeah. Well, Craig Keenir has a two volume book on miracles >> and they do happen in Protestant services. They happen all the time. We have medical documentation for them.
¶252Of course, but that's not that's not vindicating distinctively. >> A Protestant can heal someone in the name of Jesus. And there can be eucharistic miracles. >> Yes. Exactly.
¶253It's not like we have it's not like we have Martin Luther appearing to people and saying, "Don't pray the rosary and you need to you cannot submit to Rome." We don't have that. >> The closest Yeah. The closest I found were apocryphal stories of pictures of Luther that that thrown in a fire that didn't burn, but they seem to be apocryphal and don't have good historical. It's called the combustible Luther. But you're right, if we and that was um uh Ouija boards also don't burn when you put them in, but anyway.
¶254>> Yeah. Which could also explain, you know, there's demonic >> and he was also I mean Ethan Ethan Muse has pointed this out like he also had certain interactions with with the devil during his life, but we don't need to. But that remind but the Tyler McNab has it's called like a Cinductive argument based on Fatim has a paper on that where he says yes if we had figures like Luther and Calvin appearing and giving messages like Mary gives in these circumstances pray the rosary get the holy father to consecrate something that's outside of his jurisdiction do a formal consecratory religious act that's somewhere outside of his jurisdiction orthodox and the holy father the holiness of his office and the father to the universal church consecrate Russia to my immaculate heart the immacul conception only we have dogmatized she says conception or whatever to St. burned it through. I am the immaculate >> even the Orthodox miracles, the unique ones kind of come up short like the holy fire like >> you even have higherups admitting that that's fake.
¶255Like >> Jimmy Aken has a good video of that. People can go and check that out. But back to the category. So like either they're relatively easily naturalistically explicable or they're not vindicating doctrines incompatible Catholicism. So they could very well be divine signs but just like you know vindicating the gospel for instance >> or God's love for humanity.
¶256>> Yeah. God's love for humanity or just compassionating people out of God's mercy. Like yeah, healings happen to Muslims when they pray to Allah because they believe in the same God. >> Which reminds me, by the way, that the fact for you when you're in the brief period, if you're going from theism before Christianity, like when I've debated people like, do Muslims and Christians worship the same God? I don't like that language, but I like that, you know, they're both worshiping God.
¶257Like even if you don't have a complete knowledge of God, you can worship him. That was like I had my when I was dealing with Jay Dyer and I was saying like well if Dyer's view is correct that like any worship of God outside of Christianity is demon worship then if you were like a theist and said should I pray God show me if you exist I would have to tell you no don't you're talking to a demon because you don't believe in Jesus yet. That's silly. Of course you you recognize God exists and you're still trying to figure out all the attributes and nature of of his essence. >> Yeah.
¶258I mean, we can refer, you and I can both refer to one in the same individual, even if we have pretty significantly divergent conceptions of the attributes of that individual. So, like, you know, liberals and conservatives have very different conceptions of Donald Trump. One of them is like orange man bad, and the other one is like, you know, this is basically like uh God incarnate. >> Yeah. Well, there's Well, no, but there's like a liberal who' say this is the the fascist in charge, another who says he's the kind of messiah.
¶259Yeah. >> The good old sense reference distinction. >> Yeah. Yeah. So, they have different they have different like conceptions of the being, but they're both referring to the being.
¶260when when a non-Christian is pray, you know, praying to God for a miracle, the difference there is is in sense for them, but not reference. It's the same creator of the universe they're appealing to who might mercifully answer their prayer. >> Yeah. I mean, like so long as they're, you know, I mean, there are maybe certain like conception constraints like if you don't think that this is like the creator, then presumably like you might just be talking about a lesser deity or something like that. >> Yeah.
¶261There are certain things that are intricate to the package of belief to because as you know being well versed in philosophy sense reference it does get in the nitty-gritty of like teasing the two out. So there could be that that's the second option third option then the third option is like oh it's just it's just predal so it's demonic forces doing it and of course you know like within our tradition we have like we have various biblical tests by which we can tell whether or not someone is >> yeah it's not it's not an arbitrary explanation we throw out there. No, like there's Jesus gives us the fruits test. So you know them by their fruits, right? So like uh is it someone who is a serial liar, a serial fornicator, a serial adulterer who's like claiming that um God I know you know you know who I'm talking about.
¶262I know exactly what you're talking about. Who's like literally claiming that uh uh polygamy is like an abomination to God, but then is like having polygamous relationships at least 33 wives. And then he's also like um like sacrificing a sheep to a demon. And then also he's like engaging in all these occult practices that are explicitly forbidden. And even though God commands the polygamous activities, he hides it from his wife and is not forthright about it, >> lies about it publicly.
¶263>> Well, and I believe that that is the the weakest link in the Mormon case that they're they very much do not want to talk about the moral character of Joseph Smith, which is relevant. Like we could have popes that have poor moral character. They're not the prophetic foundational elements of our faith. But if like if Jesus or or even like St. Peter and the apostles had these kinds of moral flaws.
¶264>> Yeah, they're serial fornicators, adulterers, liars. They're like, you know, lying to people. They're saying that like, oh, something is an abomination to God, but then doing it and lying. >> The worst thing is Peter is a coward, but that actually provides evidential quality to say that the fact that he is willing to boldly make this proclamation in spite of that moral defect of his of cowardice is best explained by the truth of the testimony he's giving. Yeah.
¶265Whereas, but if yes, if they were just using it to try to game the system and do these horrible things, any non-Christian would bring that against them. >> Yeah. And maybe suppose that they're using like these occult sear stones to like, you know, basically uh dictate their the the relevant scriptures and whatnot. Um and like suppose that >> like it wouldn't be credible if if that's the founding of of Christianity. >> And that's not and that's not what these Catholic divine leates are like.
¶266They pass the fruits test like Justinta, Francisco and Lucia, the Fatimaers are like like giving up their lunch for the poor and they're like entering lives at least Lucia the other ones die early but like even on their death beds they're like reaffirming what they saw and they're like offering their suffering up and like Lucia enters like seclusion and she's not seeking fame or anything like that and like St. Bernardet Subaru is like literally a saint and Padre Peio is like >> like the most holy man since like Christ basically, >> right? So like >> the Catholic the Catholic divine leggings, the people who are claiming to speak on behalf of God and then call forth signs in witness to their divine message are indeed profoundly saintly individuals. They pass the fruits test in scripture with flying colors. And of course, you can't use like some sort of question begging um like some question begging criterion there because you might think, oh, it's like confirming Catholicism or it's confirming this like um you know, acts of reparatory satisfaction on behalf of others.
¶267Like no, that doesn't that doesn't make the fruits test a pract practicable test so that you can know who a divine leot is because the Pharisees could have said the exact same thing. Oh no. Um Jesus doesn't pass the fruits test because he's advocating for all these different practices that go against the Torah. So actually it's really bad. But no, you're presupposing the theology in the background to evaluate the fruits test.
¶268No, what Jesus is talking about is like is someone like Mohammad or is the person like you know Joseph Smith or are they like Padre Peio and St. Bernardet Serberu and like venerable Lucia and whatnot. So >> our our divine or claimed divine legates >> something where even a disinterested observer could note the moral quality >> and where you don't have to presuppose theological disputes from the get like abstract highutin theological disputes about which you may very well be mistaken from the get-go, right? Uh it needs to be a practical test. So uh that's that's like uh one like our our our divine leates people who are claiming to speak on behalf of God and promulgating relations revelations claimed revelations which God puts a stamp of miraculous stamp of approval on they pass the fruits test with flying colors.
¶269They also pass uh the other test in scripture Deuteronomy 13:18 are the people claiming to speak in the name of God the creator. Well then the test that you the test that you use according to Deuteronomy 13:18 is whether the sign that they call forth comes to pass. Hm. Did did Fatima come to pass when it was predicted three months in advance? Yes, indeed it did.
¶270>> And then like just like the demonic MO doesn't really make any sense. These are just like uh you know this is like a lapsed Catholic country. People are like falling to secularism and liberalism and whatnot and like it's primary effect is to bring these lapsed and lukewarm Catholics and skeptics and atheists to Christ. And of course this person is like telling like obtaining conversions to Catholicism like uh it's just introducing a christocentric prayer into an otherwise like marry and devotion you know like oh my Jesus forgive us our sins save us in the fire as hell lead all souls to heaven heaven especially those most in need of thy mercy uh so like they pass the fruits test they pass the old testament test they pass I mean also another old testament test um is when Moses and uh Pharaoh brings in Pharaoh brings in the magicians to try to like mimic Moses' signs and they actually are able to to to do some some science But even in that context, God makes it clear. He has Moses's rod swallow up the >> serpent.
¶271So God makes clear >> Yeah. >> the superior efficacy of his power when there are competing signs. So then basically like if you look at the total pattern of miracles, hm where where does it look like the manifestation of the superior efficacy of God's power is? Well, it's with all these Catholic miracles. >> Yeah.
¶272It's with like Fatima and Zetun and Padre Peio and Eucharistic miracles and all these like seemingly things that vindicate distinctive Catholic doctrines. Like God God has failed to make the message clear cosmically. And in fact, he's made it he's gone out of his way to make things actively unclear to make religious truth inaccessible if Protestant is true. There's no other religion that boasts any similar number in quality or quantity of miracle claims because if because if there were they would throw it in our faces. >> And that's always been the sign for me like when I am engaging like Muslim apologists or apologists in other religions if they had the goods they would show it.
¶273And this is the thing. Some people would be like, "Oh, well, there's some sort of like selection effect going on." Like the church is basically just mogs everyone else because it's like it's it's so good at like recordeping and whatnot >> and other people can't keep records. >> No, I know. Like, dude, for a Eucharistic miracle, all the Orthodox bish all the Orthodox priest has to do is like hand it over to a laboratory. >> Yeah.
¶274>> It's all you need to do. You don't need like this complex bureaucratic system to do that. But no, you still don't have like it seems these public wellicated Eucharistic miracles. And also, God isn't limited by a selection effect. If God wants to get a message out there, he's not going to be frustrated or thwarted by those pesky Catholics who can keep really good records.
¶275>> So like the very fact that God hasn't gotten the message out there for other religions is itself a testament to God's vindicating Catholicism specifically. And this is the thing, >> the evidence for the Catholic miracles is just manifestly better than the evidence that we have for the resurrection. I'm not saying that the evidence for the resurrection is poor. That's not what I'm saying. But it is me.
¶276If you disagree with that, if if the listener disagrees with that, you are either uninformed about the Catholic miracles like go read motivates like literally like dozens upon dozens hundreds thousands of pieces of testimony evidence like videos uh like again the videos of Padre Pio medical documentation blinded laboratory analyses you are either uninformed about the evidence or you're irrational if you disagree with that. No, I this happened to me. I when I had my debate with Doug from Pine Creek a while ago on the resurrection and he asked me about Fatima in the debate as like you know well what do you think about the evidence for Fatima and I said in some respects it is better than and he he acted like it was a gotcha but I'm like well no it cannot be because while critics skeptics might try to cast doubt on whether there were group appearances to the apostles it is impossible to cast doubt on the group appearances at Fatima there recorded in a newspaper again. >> Yeah. Oculo was like >> days a few days late like there's photographs of everyone together.
¶277We have photographs and we know that it was raining going up there. We have tons like tons of testimonies to like the clothes rapidly drying and we have pictures of them like with like dried clothes even though we know from meteorological data that it was like pouring going up to it. It's like what are you talking about? And we have like photographic analyses and like all these pictures like blinded laboratory analyses. So, like to the Protestants listening, like compare the evidence for the resurrection, which is good, but it's nowhere near as good as the evidence for these distinctive Catholic miracles.
¶278And that should give you extreme cognitive dissonance if you're >> That's why I wrote a book a few years ago called When Protestants Argue Like atheists. >> Oh my gosh. Yeah. >> So, I I'll give you I got it in my shelf. I'll give it to you when you leave.
¶279But as you go through, you will it will once you see it, you can't unsee it. >> No. because it's the same methodology that is used to reject those miracles and but we but we can have a consistent uh framework >> right and listen like I don't accept like late dates and whatnot for the gospels and all the all the critical historical scholarship but like the mainstream view the going view is like listen we've got like what four or five testimonial reports from people decades after the fact like four of whom are like copying each other verbatim almost or like you know at certain points they're not probabistically independent they're like being reported given to us decades after the fact. They're like, >> "You think that's compatible with like literally like hundreds like hundreds of like hund hundreds of thousands of people seeing the mother of God on top of a church? >> We have photographs.
¶280We have photographic evidence. >> Yeah, we have photographed laboratory. We don't have that for bib. We don't need it, but we don't have it. So, if if the reports in scripture move you based on that evidential quality, and that's just always how it is when you're assessing claims.
¶281It's like, well, if I believe X because of evidential quality Y and Z has evidential quality Y plus 100 or a,000 or 10,000, I really should believe Z too. >> Yeah. And we should distinguish evidential quality, evidential significance from like religious significance. So like again, neither of us are saying for the audience, neither of us are saying that, you know, Fatima or Lur or Zetun or Guadalupe or Padre Peio or Eucharistic miracles or like all the other dozens of things that I could mention. Neither of us are saying that those are more religiously significant >> than the resurrection.
¶282>> Than the resurrection. No, of course not. That's the mo it's like the most important event that has ever occurred and that ever will occur basically, right? So obviously that's like far more religiously significant. But that's distinct from how much evidence we have for it.
¶283>> There's much more evidence that you talked to me on this day than like Peter talked to Jesus after his crucifixion. There's obviously there's more evidence for this interaction than that interaction, but that interaction is of course much much more important. But you're right that the the evidential quality is not a direct correlation to the religious quality. But I if you do have high evidential quality for something and it also has high religious quality, you should let them go. Let them go together and don't let a previous theological prejudice blind you to that.
¶284>> Right. So, well, I think we've we've come through a lot and this is we just scratched the surface, but I'm I'm really excited to for people I think you could be a good down the rabbit hole for people. I'll have the links below to your entire, you know, your your recounting of your conversion and and also your interview with Matt uh that should be up also where you you go and this is I love how this will be complimentary because when you your talk with Matt Frad, you went through a lot of the arguments more. So if you guys want the media arguments, I'll send you back there. Click the link below.
¶285But this is a nice with that to see how they they come together. So >> yeah, we covered the personal side. We covered some like the explanations of Catholic miracles. I didn't really get much into the explanations with with Matt. So yeah, I think this is nicely complimentary.
¶286>> Excellent. I I am excited. So I guess now Well, what are my last question, I guess, is what are what what's what's in the future for you? What lies ahead? >> Well, that's a good question.
¶287>> As much as as much as you can uh know or reasonably guess about. >> Yeah. I mean, what is in the future? So, I mean, there's the channel stuff and then there's life stuff. So, life stuff, I mean, I've sort of just taken the path of least resistance so far.
¶288like you know I just loved philosophy and I was like okay I can >> Well, you're finishing up your PhD. >> Yeah, I'm finishing up my PhD. So I'm going into my fourth year um at Princeton University and just doing my PhD on like harmony problems. So like psychophysical harmony nomological harmony harmony this cool like psychonomic harmony that I kind of working on. Um and hopefully I'll have hopefully I'll have something coming up on that.
¶289Um so working on um just the PhD but like yeah what am I supposed to do with my life friend? I mean I >> do you want to be a professor? Well, that was why do you want to be a philosopher? >> Well, the thing is that was the goal. It was the goal and still tentatively is the goal, right?
¶290Is just to become a professional philosopher and to, you know, go into academia. But like, you know, uh, who wants to hire a conservative Catholic, you know, like in especially in philosophy? That's what I'm saying. Like it's a very liberal, very secular, very atheistic discipline. >> But you know what's nice?
¶291So, if you get the right department of philosophy right chair, they're also usually pretty eccentric people. It's not like the light and fluffy social sciences like Right. That's true. And the thing is you've got you've got the goods. Your your papers speak for themselves.
¶292Anyone can go search search for you on Phil papers. >> I mean it's it's just and you also have peer reviewed. You did a whole book on classical theism and things like that. Like I I mean obviously you got to pray. God will let you know where you need to go.
¶293>> It's discernment, right? So I just I so far I've been following the path of least resistance and because I've been agnostic, I haven't been Catholic. So I've just I haven't been praying at all. But now I'm just hearing like what am I supposed to do with my life? Like am I am I actually called to go into like philosophy?
¶294It's actually a period of discernment that I need to engage in. Like I I genuinely I don't know. I mean again a path has been laid before me and I have certain talents. I'll sort of tentatively follow that but I need to I need to prayerfully discern what I'm supposed to do with my life. So actually I kind of don't know right now and I'm sort of just if the audience can pray for me I would very much appreciate that.
¶295>> Let's ask them I will ask them to certainly do that. But my personally though, I would be thrilled if you and it doesn't even have to be like a huge school or like a super liberal school. But I think of all I know like to have a faithful academic out there. Someone who understands somebody who who can speak to the faith well and not embarrass them. I mean the lowest bar for me is just don't embarrass yourself when you talk about the field.
¶296Like the fact that you can that other philosophers say, "Oh yeah, he really gets this stuff." So if you can be I mean there's people like I mean Ed Faser is a great Catholic philosopher. He teaches at Pastina City College. You've got great guys who are down at Baylor, Alex Press, Frank Beckwith, wherever you may be like being able to say I am I am a because like I don't I I don't call myself a philosopher or to me to to be a philosopher theologian you need a terminal degree in that subject unless you've proven yourself by changing the world by writing a book. Yeah. Like if if you proved yourself with something that changed the field, you get to call yourself philosopher.
¶297Otherwise, you got to have a terminal degree. So, I like to do philosophy. I like to do theology. I'm not a philosopher. I'm not a theologian.
¶298You are a you're a philosopher. You're basically there. So, to have a Catholic philosopher out there, I' I'd be jazzed to see that wherever you end up, but God will lead you where you need to go. >> Just got to discern got to discern that. >> So, that that's life and discerning that discerning what my like personal vocation is.
¶299um my my profession. So yeah, and then yeah, for the channel, I mean, it's just going to like I don't know, just shift gears to talking about Catholicism and like philosophy and like arguing for theism and arguing for Catholicism and just like doing, you know, arguing against Protestantism and against orthodoxy and those sorts of things. So, um yeah, there'll definitely be a marketked shift in the the direction of the channel. But >> as long as as long as it keeps its rigor and it keeps the faith >> and as long as and you have a good heart to keep it. But just remember, you're going to be attacked a lot.
¶300That's just how it goes in this territory. Oh, yeah. But I hope our audience will pray for you and I am very excited to see what what comes ahead for you, Joe. >> Absolutely. Yeah.
¶301All right. Thank you guys so much for listening. Check the links below for more of Joe's great work. Check out his YouTube channel, Majesty of Reason. And I hope you all have a very blessed day.