¶1Schmidt has converted to Catholicism. Hi guys, my name is James. I'm with the podcast and uh as an atheist and as somebody who tries to be open-minded and tries to be unbiased and tries to uh engage thoughtfully and meaningfully with um uh the big question of whether or not God exists. Um, I would just say that uh uh I've seen so far as of 8:2626, the only two videos I'm aware of is his 20 something minute announcement that he's converted to Catholicism and his other video on pints and Aquinus where it's about three and a half hours where he it's a longer it's not quite his 12-h hour whatever 10 12 hour uh video that uh it's come out, but if it's anything like his uh Pines and Aquinus showing. Um uh I don't know if I'm going to watch his 12 hour 10 hour super video or not.
¶2Uh I'm not sure if it's I I was um so first and foremost I'm going to invoke my good buddy who's Christian and I'm going to imagine he's in the room to help me maintain my my emotional state. though I was frustrated but not because my worldview was being pushed or I was really struggling with what he was saying. I was frustrated because I feel like I am witnessing Joe Schmidt abandon his philosophical nuance to embrace a um hard dogmatic uh Catholic catechism stance. Um, I think that he's already starting to engage in apologetic straw men. Um, I think that he's uh being a little arrogant and um, and I know that these are not kind things and that I'm coming across as um, attacking the person and not the ideas.
¶3So, allow me to give the case for it. So, uh, just to remind people with Joe Schmidt, if you're not familiar with him, this this whole thing is not going to change anything. And, um, you know, uh, but, um, if you are familiar with it, uh, Joe Schmidt is a Princeton philosophy major. He's working on his doctorates. Um, and that's incredible.
¶4I, you know, I've I I wish I found philosophy earlier and I think, you know, I just either way, I'm very uh, you know, he's an impressive young man. Um, he's probably going to know more about philosophy than I'll ever attain, but I'm just going to keep reading and we'll see what happens, you know. [snorts] Um, uh, kind of the insulting thing is is like I am I'm I'm not a philosophy major. Uh, I've been reading books. I like reading books.
¶5Uh when it comes to philosophy, I think that I'm closer to Kant. There's a couple of things that I I have uh in my worldview that I think Kant didn't. Uh but for the most part, uh Conteian meta ethics uh for me is incredibly superior to uh theistic because I told you so. you know, I just I just, you know, I just find it to be far more uh effective at helping me be a more ethical man than uh theism does when it comes specifically to the morality. And so the reason why I'm speaking about morality is because uh Joe I felt made a straw man that I thought was really shocking for a Princeton philosophy degree doctoral student.
¶6Right. I so what he said was he brought up this the the kind of the standard apologetic of uh it is a objective moral truth that uh torturing babies for fun is wrong. And then he goes, uh, naturalists struggle with this. And uh I maybe in a very philosophically technical term like how he's using the word naturalist. Maybe he has a point, you know, but uh there are people that look at things like um why it's okay to eat meat, right?
¶7Well, I dine on flora and fauna because when I die, flora and fauna will feast on me, right? Uh, does that make that objectively true? But you could say, well, there's a natural truth there. You know, we look at life and we see life consumes life. You know, it's a dog eat dog world out there.
¶8So, when it comes to morality, you know, consuming animals is okay because those animals would happily consume me. You know, it's a dog eat dog world. I just happen to be the successful predator today. It might be the successful predator tomorrow. You know, in a moral sense, there's no problems.
¶9Like if an alligator eats a human being, is there some grand moral travesty that occurred there? If we eat an alligator, is there some grand moral travesty that happens there? Uh I think that uh um we can look at things like well, you know, how do we know that why why are our intuitions that we shouldn't do this to children? We can look at it from an evolutionary standpoint, which I can't think of a more rational or realist uh or I'm sorry, naturalistic perspective. I would say look uh the humans that thought uh torturing their babies for fun often ended up killing their babies.
¶10Uh obviously they didn't feel a duty of care. Obviously they it would just be a drain on the resources to care for these kids especially if they thought torturing them was acceptable. Uh so I don't see how that you know those humans would survive whereas humans that said I do have a moral duty of care to my children. I do I have to pass on my genes which seems to be very much one of the prime motivators in nature. Uh therefore I think that we could derive moral duties and values by just looking at uh u kind of this naturalistic need to procreate and to pass on our genes.
¶11Uh and for humanity you know especially we're looking at well we have a duty of care to infants because infants are defenseless. can't survive without uh assistance until they grow to a certain age where they're finally capable uh of survival on their own. Uh we are tribalistic. So reality is is we are not you know um uh capable of surviving independently. We are we can't operate like sharks.
¶12Uh we do require other humans in order for us to survive. So we are tribalistic. This I think is fairly obvious. I think you think it's fairly obvious. >> [snorts] >> Uh and so I I find it odd that when we say, okay, look, you know, okay, I can see a duty of care to children kind of evolving naturalistically.
¶13Uh okay, I I see a duty of care like, okay, now we're treating children within a tribe. This explains a lot of our tribal biases. It gives us a lot of explanatory power really when we look at the kind of evolutionary naturalistic process. But maybe I'm using the word naturalism incorrectly. Maybe there's some other philosophical understanding that a PhD uh Princeton uh philosophical or I'm sorry, philosophy major could, you know, has that I'm simply not operating under.
¶14Sure, you know, whatever. Okay. Uh but uh to me, I I found this to be like a really off-handed comment and I really thought like and I even I kind of Googled like are there not, you know, people that can handle this that aren't just theistic? And there's plenty of like I think Kant uh can easily explain why cruelty and I'm hoping that word kind of jars something like why cruelty is not uh an acceptable thing to do. Uh we may even say well that child's not endowed with anything special.
¶15But we could say well you know um uh it's still harmful to ourselves because we're now rationalizing cruelty. We're now saying that cruelty is acceptable and how that affects our processes going forward. Uh, I think that's, like I said, pretty robust. So, um, uh, and I don't need, uh, a divine being telling me not to torture babies, you know. Um, it just seems really odd to me that, um, uh, saying naturalists really struggle with this.
¶16Now, if you want to say in the grander sense in a consciousness, naturalists uh, trying to explain how unconsciousness arises, you know, that's really difficult to explain. I mean, we all have theories. You may not find it objectively satisfying but that doesn't mean that it that those theories cease to exist. I myself think that all our our minds are is just emotivism is the core with you know a language overlay and that's how we that's our rational selves you know but we are primarily an emotional state and our language overlay is simply trying to uh parse out those emotions for us and that's that's all that's really going on. Um, I'm sure Alex Okconor as an emotivist would probably have a better job explaining that, but uh, I don't think like when we understand like evolution and why do we feel the things that we feel, I think that a lot of it does, um, you know, make sense in a naturalistic worldview.
¶17I I just found it a little surprising. But, you know what? I think it's okay that you find fine-tuning morality and um oh shoot my brain just went dead. Uh fine-tuning morality and the the rise of consciousness in a naturalistic in a fine-tuning universe. It's just it's just not real.
¶18I can't bring myself to objectively find it satisfying where God does, you know, or at least the the the divine making like you know the the grand plan. Okay, fine. It's fine that that is compelling. Uh, but I found it to be insulting that it resulted into a a little bit of a straw man there and tried to act like just, you know, no one can. It's it it made me immediately think of atheists can't answer this question.
¶19And, you know, just a little while ago, you would have been like, ah, I hate it when I see these atheists can't this or atheist can't that, and it's some moral quandry. Uh there's plenty of people working on this stuff and there's plenty of people that have written on it and there are plenty of people that will write on it and I find it extremely dishonest for somebody who I know knows better uh to kind of to make that kind of off-handed comment. But, you know, it's it's a it's a podcast and even though you're extremely familiar with it, you could just be extremely nervous because you were so hostile to the church and now you're back and maybe you're just kind of fish out of the watering and maybe that was just a uh a moment for you and okay, but uh I I do think you need to be more careful in the future. Uh, and I would highly recommend uh say whatever you want to say, but try to be humble. Uh, and um, anyway, moving on to the the the grand pooa of the issue.
¶20Um, succinctly, can you honestly say, let let's just take a moment to be self-aware. Let's just be self-aware. You are a Princeton philosophy major going for his doctorates in that field. Are you sure genuinely that you have the tools to verify these miraculous claims and to truly determine if they are 100% legitimate? Do you genuinely think you have those tools?
¶21Like honestly, I know your one friend was bugging you like, "Hey man, what's your response? I just want to hear your response because here's how I see it. Let's pretend you have never seen a magic show. You've never seen any kind of slide of hand. You've never read anything that said to make you suspicious that it may not be real.
¶22No knowledge of it. And your buddy shows up and says, "I am with the circle of magi and uh I'm really interested in getting you to join me." You say, 'Well, how do I join you? He says, 'Well, you got to believe magic is real.' And you say, 'Well, I'm I've never heard of this magic. I've never seen magic. I'm just, so, you know, inherently skeptical.
¶23Okay, I'm going to take you to a magic show and it will change your mind. And you say, "Okay." And you go to a magic show and there a magician up there is breathing fire. You've never seen a human do this. And you can't figure out how he does it. And you're like, "Well, it's just one thing." Okay.
¶24And then he does a card trick, you know? Uh you go up there and you pick your card. It's the ace of spades. And he says, "Lose it." And you shove it somewhere in the deck. Is this your card?
¶25It's the ace of spades. Blows your mind, but you think, "Wow, that's just a 2% chance." And he says, "Oh, just 2% chance." Okay. What's And boom. You know, ace of spades again. And you're just like, "Okay, what are the odds of 2% and 2%?" Right?
¶26And he goes, "Oh, I got you again, fam. Sh. Ace of spades. Shh. Ace of spades.
¶27Does it a hundred times. What are the odds of that? Astronomical. You can't even fathom how big that number is. You know, it's magic, right?
¶28You go back, you've just witnessed a hundred repeated examples of magic. You just saw him breathe fire. And now he's making things appear and disappear. You don't understand how it's happening. you know, he's able to to get birds to to bend his will and you just again, you don't under you just like, how is he doing this?
¶29And you leave with your buddy and you have watched miracle after miracle after miracle after miracle. You have no ability whatsoever. You all looked on the up and up. You have no ability because you're a layman. You don't know anything about magic, right?
¶30You go out and you're like, "Holy cow, you're right." You or maybe you're still skeptical and you're like, "I'm going to go home and think on this." You go home and you're just like, "Right, mind totally blown. You can't resolve it." And your buddies every day, you believe in magic, ready to join the circle of magi. And finally, you're just like, I I had all these objections to magic, but I I've witnessed it. I know it's real. I've seen it.
¶31You join the Circle of Magi and then Pen and Teller shows up and says, "That's really weird. You know it's all tricks, right?" And you say, "No, man. I've seen it. It's magic." Oh, this show. Yeah.
¶32Yeah. We know how he breathes fire. We can actually imitate it right here. And we'll even show you step by step how the trick works. Oh, produce the ace of spades.
¶33Man, it's just a shuffling trick. It's This is a well-known shuffle in the magic community. You can make the same card appear every single time. Hey, did you inspect the cards? There's another way you could do it.
¶34Every card's the ace of spades. You know, there's a certain way of like, you know, shuffle the card as long as I know what the bottom card is and I've got mirrors on my ring. I can just look at it. I can do this stuff. You don't have any of this knowledge.
¶35You don't know. And he's literally debunking all of these things that you took as miracles as pure evidence of magic. And you're now going, "Okay, yeah, you know what? Uh, you're right." Now, here's the question, Joe. What are you gonna do when that happens?
¶36If or if that happens, what are you going to do if somebody comes along and debunks it? So, you have one of two pivots, right? Maybe this is a false dichconomy, but let's just say it's one of two pivots. Pivot one, double down. Well, you know, and you invent more magical stuff like, well, there's demons and uh demons don't want us to know God exists, so they're out there erasing stuff.
¶37Okay, the men in black exist. They're flashy thinging people, so they forget. The only reliable news source, tabloids. That's another possibility, right? So, that's that's one thing.
¶38or you realize I didn't have the tools at the time to look at that evidence and really objectively know for a fact what I was seeing was actually real or it was something that was manufactured to convince me something was real. Now again, this gets into the grand conspiracy. Well, James, the reason I don't believe that is because that would require a grand conspiracy. I've got a couple of things to say about that. uh one uh what would the conspiracy be of keeping the truth contained?
¶39You know, arguably we could say miracles happen around the world. They've happened throughout time as long as humans have been around Jesus, God, the Holy Ghost, whatever, or any combination of it has been interacting with humanity. Uh you know, for whatever reason, it seems to be ultimately where uh rare, very rare for some reason. Um, obviously we're going to have to rely on probably some kind of free will defense, you know, uh, to to maintain that. Um, but are we already starting to see kind of a problem?
¶40Like, well, we need to reinvoke the free will defense. I have to invent angels and demons to, uh, explain why this data is, you know, not around. Um, isn't it just coincided that, you know, this is deeply private and deeply personal and we can't bring a camera in, so that's why we don't have evidence. that's super compelling, you know, uh that it's just super duper compelling, right? And and I get it like saying, "Sure, that sounds rational, but the issue is is that if you're going to convince me on this evidence and you're going to rationalize why all the weaknesses don't exist, well, it's it's deeply personal.
¶41It's humiliating. Uh you know, demons are destroying the rest." And so, we just kind of get these little shards and it must be true, you know. Uh that's a problem. I think there's another problem. Uh we sit here and we we're saying it's either a global conspiracy or they're telling the truth.
¶42I think a lot of these people are telling the truth in their worldview. I believe they believe. You know what I mean? And I think and I know you know what that means. I know you know what that means.
¶43So I believe they believe. Let's talk about some armchair we don't have to go anywhere ideas. That kind of gets us to a place where we should be at least a little skeptical. Remember, we don't we both acknowledge neither one of us has the tools to look at every evidence and say, "I can solve this mystery. We can look up at the clouds and you could say, "I see an angel." And I look up and I go, "Oh, I see the angel." Right?
¶44That's its wings, right? And we kind of do that kind of cloud checky thing, right? And while we're talking about it, somebody overhears that you saw an angel. And they look up and they see an angel and they say, "Oh, wow. It really is an angel." And a bunch of people look up and everybody's starting to get really blown away.
¶45So, it looks like an angel. It must be a sign. How do you disprove this? Right? But what do we know about clouds?
¶46One, there's tons and tons of them. Two, they're amorphous. They're, you know, three, humans project, you know, anthropomorphic projections onto things. We see patterns and things that do not have patterns. Clouds do not have patterns.
¶47But we will look up at clouds and say, "Ah, I see a bunny rabbit or I see a rhino." But a lot of times what's interesting is we put an idea of what we see up there and then somebody looks to confirm that that's the thing. And so they're looking for that same pattern. So when your brain looked up there and saw a pattern, another brain could look up there and see a pattern and then another brain could look up there seeing a pattern. But they're all seeing the pattern that they want to see because your pattern said it. And now their brains are looking for that pattern in an amorphous cloud.
¶48So I'm not saying that this is proof about all these evidences. In fact, it may not even be a single claim that's up there. But what it gets to is that you can have lots of people. They're not lying. They all genuinely believe what they're saying on something that is objectively amorphous.
¶49It It's not an angel. It's not in the shape of an angel. It's it's a cloud. And you know, even if it was somehow in a shape of a cloud, how many clouds are up there? And how many of them and we all know they take all sorts of shapes and sizes and all sorts of things just statistically.
¶50How often are we going to kind of be like, ah, it kind of looks like a, you know, you know what I mean? Like immediately tells you something. Uh, when we talk about like uh Fatma, right, in the sun dancing, uh, so there's a medical phenomenon. When you just stare at the sun long enough, it will start to dance, right? You shouldn't stare at the sun.
¶51It will damage your eyes. But if you do, you know, it will start to do that. Interestingly enough, no one else saw it, right? There's no scientific apparatus that identified that the sun was doing something funny and weird. Nothing.
¶52Nothing. We just had a bunch of people staring at the sky so long that they started to see some really funny stuff. And we see things. We've seen all sorts of weird things. People like with the dancing disease.
¶53What's going on with that? All these people were dancing. Their feet were hurting. They were in a lot of agony. And yet they kept having to dance.
¶54What's going on? Must be possessed by demons, right? Like there's weird stuff that has happened that we as lay people have no knowledge of. We have UFO sightings on military fighter jets. Incredible technology.
¶55Look at how precise this stuff. We can we can land a warhead on a fly's butt, 200 miles away or whatever. Incredible. Their instruments are showing them something impossible. Something is moving so fast you couldn't explain it.
¶56Uh at altitudes that are unheard of. Uh and they're just trying and they're like, I'm trying to stay ahead of it. I'm trying to stay ahead of it. It's gone. I don't believe it.
¶57What was that? It must have been aliens. Right. We recently saw a whole spat of UFO sightings that the government had. Notice how you speak a lot about government documents.
¶58And the government had experts go through it and they explain the math of how they know this thing was just a weather balloon and how, you know, compared to the water, compared to the sky and they start showing all this stuff. And again this gets back to the fact that you can have very smart people convinced of things that is rational for them to conclude that way. Uh but ultimately was misinterpreted or you know uh the uh evidence was or the uh you know devices taking the measurement were wrong or this or that and they they come to these conclusions. We say oh okay this is within tolerance. Okay.
¶59So this actually isn't something supernatural. It's just kind of another It's just an oddity that happened with the instrumentation on a special night. Yep. Yep. Yep.
¶60Uh and the fact is I I I think that I I I think that's really what it just comes down to. And I don't want to belabor the point. I think that, you know, we lack the tools to look at X-rays and discern anything from them, you know, other than looks like an X-ray, you know, especially when we're looking at oddities. We don't know the full chain of custody. You know, we're taking the testimonies of one guy and we're saying to ourselves, well, he's a pre a Princeton doctor.
¶61He has no reason to lie. So, you know, why would he make this stuff up? And, you know, I don't know. I'm not sure. I believe he believes until he proves to me otherwise, you know, but, you know, some things, yeah, I don't know.
¶62I can't explain, you know. And to sit here and say, "Well, obviously you should believe then because these are all Catholics." And I'm like, "Buddy, there's weird stuff that happens everywhere all the time in all denominations. Everybody has their miracle claims. Everybody has their miracle evidences and you discount all of them but Catholics suddenly or you're going to have to rely on demons or, you know, God's just, I guess, playing a trick on the other ones. Ah, those Hindus think that Shiva is real.
¶63Watch this. This will really blow their mind. Why? While God is a great comic jester, you know, those poor guys are going to not be laughing for the rest of eternity, right? But I I just felt like uh uh I I don't know, man.
¶64I I just I would recommend you pump the brakes. Finish your doctorate. um and uh pump the brakes and really uh um while you're in Princeton, see if you can find some medical doctors uh or talk to some professors and you know and just say I really don't understand uh if this is true we should all be like completely convinced right you know I don't know man like you talk to some people and and really try to see what's going on there and I would honestly say look man you you know that relying on demons to explain away why evidence is poor is extraordinarily weak. You know, it's just an unverifiable added supernatural thing uh that only comes with other problems like, well, why aren't the angels intervening or why isn't God intervening? And you know, it it immediately just adds another question, right?
¶65It doesn't solve anything. It just makes things even crazier. I think you know that. I I don't think you're dumb. I I know you know these things.
¶66So, um, man, like I think I think really you should you should pump the brakes. I I really think this really wasn't exciting or inspirational or I really just kind of walked away thinking um that uh you became convinced by the doss or the the the the tons of miracle claims. You don't have the tools to verify the veracity of them. you became convinced and it basically uh you just brute uh accept the uh the catechism because these these were Catholic miracles and you know that proves Catholicism and that like I said that just led you to Brit like I said I to me it makes a causal chain sense [snorts] but um uh I think that that's really the most powerful thing that happened for you because I I the way it fundamentally shifted your uh your philosophies And it is seemingly overnight or at least within this year. So within the past 7 months and this is a major change.
¶67I don't know, man. Finish your doctorate. Pump the brakes. That would be my recommendation. But uh obviously, you know, say whatever you want, but I I wasn't impressed.
¶68All right. Thank you. Have a good night. Uh and of course, if you have any comments, concerns, questions, uh hit me up in the chat. if I was disrespectful, rude, or uh uh whatever, um holla at me and let me know what uh uh uh and I'll try to do better and I'll take it down, make a new one or something.
¶69Either way. All right, guys.