¶1Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Desert Spring. So, today we're going to be jumping on the bandwagon of Joe Schmidt. I'm always intrigued by this, honestly. Um, you know, I don't understand why people kind of go back to Christianity. And so normally uh normally I can understand if like they didn't really know that much about it and you know first-time conversions that that kind of stuff makes sense.
¶2But person who grew up in Christianity I don't know that much about Joe's experience of Christianity but we're going to see. So we're just going to watch his conversion story. Wow. Sorry for the laggginess of that um on why he converted to Catholicism. Now once again we cannot ignore the irony that half of the Christians are going to point at Catholics and say that Catholics are going to burn in hell.
¶3So and once again I already know my church is pointing at this guy and he says, "Oh, he he converted from Christianity to or converted from being atheist to being Christian. He was so close or to Catholic. He was so close to getting it right, but he wasn't Baptist. So he's still going to burn in hell forever and ever." So, I always get intrigued by those videos. I was trying to figure out what I wanted to record today and I saw, well, I wanted to make a video.
¶4I had saw a video about a church secretary who was embezzling funds. I was thinking it'd be fun to make a video about why is it that whenever um and you know, embezzling a bunch of funds, police are called, the entire church is working with each other. they're helping the the, you know, policemen build a case against this woman and they end up in prison. And and I uh I do just a quick Google search to find out that that's a very common thing uh for churches to call the police. And I think it's interesting that it's only whenever it's surrounding money, but whenever it's surrounding any sort of abuse, any sort of, you know, you guys already know, when it's surrounding any sort of sexual abuse or if it's surrounding any sort of um you know, uh what's the other um spousal, what do you call that?
¶5Um domestic domestic abuse or anything like that. You know, it's like, well, we're going to keep it inside the church and stuff like that. But whenever it comes to the church's money, the money, the church is going to call the police 100% right right at the second they notice something's happening, right? Um, but I mean, I kind of understand because it happens. It typically happens over years and it totals to hundreds of thousands of dollars, but what happened to your forgive and forget?
¶6[laughter] Hold on there. So, anyways, we're going to get into this uh really quick. Um, if you do enjoy the channel, you do enjoy the content that I make here, please don't forget to like and subscribe. Um, down in the description, if you'd like to see some of the content that I put out that I don't post to YouTube, because I don't want to confuse the algorithm. It's a bunch of content surrounding, you know, meditations and healings and uh not meditations and healings, but meditations and exercises that you can do that as you're leaving Christianity, you can kind of step into more kind of an an embodied safety and stuff like that.
¶7Um, so the description, uh, you'll see the website link there and then you can click that and it takes you over to my website. Um, and of course, if you ever have any questions, if you don't necessarily know what you can do, you can always call u, book an introductory call with me and then I can kind of walk you through everything that I'm kind of creating over there. So, right now everything is free. So, take advantage of it while it's free. The only thing that's not uh free with me is is one-on-one coaching sessions because they do take up uh quite a bit of my time and I have to do a lot of work to kind of um create a specific program for a person.
¶8But with that being said, um right now what we're focusing on is why on earth with all the evidence would a person go back to Christianity, right? It's almost like that uh like that abusive spouse, right? Why would you go back? That's what we're going to find out right now. Let's get into it.
¶9Big news. God exists. Christ is Lord and he established the Catholic Church. Now, I'm not going to, you know, I'm not going to go I I never go harsh on the person itself, but we are going to look at the beliefs and stuff like that. Okay?
¶10Now, once again, keep in mind that just because he converts back to Christianity and chooses Catholicism, one that obviously doesn't mean anything. Uh because Christians are always going to argue about who's actually right. And so, you know, it's it's not really that big of a deal that he converts back to Christianity because the whole of Christianity is going to point at him and say, "You picked the wrong religion, bud. Sorry, you're going to burn in hell." That's just the the fact of of the matter between judgment between the denominations. But, um, I'm I'm, you know, I'm I've got nothing but love for this guy.
¶11And, uh, so we're going to see. Let's get into it. >> I'm not kidding. I just converted to Catholicism. Well, actually, Joe, you're just a revert, so that's technically misleading.
¶12>> I dude, conversion is a change of heart. And that just happened. For those of you who don't know me, shame on you. I'm Joe Schmidt. I'm a PhD student in philosophy at Princeton University.
¶13And I have been an agnostic and public critic of theism and Catholicism for quite some time. But earlier this year, that all changed. So today I'm just going to share my personal >> Now one time uh one thing I do feel I should mention here I'm not an atheist. I'm a theist. Um but I walked away from Christianity a long time ago and the only reason why I maintain theism is because of the specific route uh that happened.
¶14If you're curious about that you can look back into my videos and look up it says my dark story and it's basically where I tell at least I do the best. I mean, obviously it's, you know, life is an incredibly long thing and to make a video about it would take hours, but I tell the story on how I left Christianity, and so you could kind of understand why I would maintain theism in that situation. But let's uh let's see why why he's decided that theism is is right for him or not theism really, but just Christianity because I think there's like a sep I think there's a difference between theists and and you know, Christians, you know. I for me theism is kind of like or I guess I guess may it more it would be more like agnostic or something like that where it's just like you know there is this thing that we don't understand that exists out there that is the creative idea of why everything exists and that's about all that we know right um some people claim that they know every little tiny thing about that being and that they know its very desires and that they know every little tiny detail and everything that it's ever done and everything that's ever happened on this planet, you know, but uh but we'll see. Let's let's give this guy a chance to speak >> personal journey.
¶15Uh if you want my hours long comprehensive case for Catholicism, stay tuned. That's coming very soon. Oh, and I also have some cool things later on in the video, so stay tuned. So, I grew up in a devout Catholic household. I went to private Catholic school from kindergarten through 12th grade.
¶16I frequented the sacraments. I prayed all the time. I was totally into Catholicism. Everything was like smooth sailing in my faith. In fact, I was like really devout until maybe around like seventh or eighth grade when I had the first wobble.
¶17So in seventh or eighth grade, my Catholic school taught us evolution. And thankfully Catholics are totally down with science. So they're like, "Yeah, we can teach you guys evolution." I mean, there's like so much scientific evidence for it. It's totally compatible with Catholicism. But it did cause me to start wondering like how do I mesh this with my commitments concerning Adam and Eve and Genesis like how do I make sense of that and bubble didn't last too long because I came across the work of people like Francis Collins and the Bologos Institute defending theistic evolution and I also started appreciating that you know Genesis although there are historical elements to its genre is something like mythop poetry with some you know theological and historical aspects sprinkled in.
¶18And so I was like, okay, you know, I can I can see accepting evolution together with what Catholicism teaches about Genesis and human origins. But then [sighs] nearing the end of 9th grade, I really started reflecting further on the evolutionary process. And in particular, I reflected on the brutality of it. I mean, for hundreds of millions of years, animals were just like ripping each other to shreds and just suffering and languishing. And it was just so hard for me to mesh that with belief in an all good, all powerful, all knowing God.
¶19This problem of evolutionary animal suffering just like nod at me for quite some time. Really bothered me. And you know, one thing led to another and soon enough I was just like voraciously consuming debates and content online concerning theism versus atheism and Christianity versus non-Christianity and and whatnot, you know? I was just like watching William Lane Craig debates and watching uh the new atheists like Sam Harris and Richard. >> You know, a really quick note on the whole idea with, you know, the brutality of the natural animal kingdom.
¶20Um it's just kind of life here on this planet, right? Um Christianity takes the takes the approach that there was this one specific deity that completely formed this perfect process. And I don't think that at all. I really don't think that at all. Um I you know what exactly was the beginning of existence?
¶21I have no idea. But uh it's very clear that an evolutionary process happened on this planet and it did take a long long time. Um certainly more than 6,000 years. Um, and the thing that's always interesting to me is, you know, the whole topic of the brutality of consuming, right? That's just kind of the evolution of this planet.
¶22And it may very well be the evolution of other planets that we have no idea about, right? It's kind of it's kind of a um a a uh I would say an unrealistic thing to expect that this planet that we have here in this very galaxy is the only planet in the entirety of the universe. Just because we haven't found something doesn't mean that there's not thousands of them that exist, right? I mean, have you guys Well, you know, I guess that's not a great example, but I was going to say, have you guys f happened to find a a winning jackpot lottery ticket? You know, and obviously there's a ton of those things out there because people win it all the time, but just because you haven't found it, but that's not a great example, right?
¶23I was just thinking about the odds whenever that example popped into my mind. I was just thinking about the odds of of you coming across one, right? So, maybe if you were like the entirety of Earth, whatever. But the truth of the matter is that we live in a system that is constantly consuming, right? Whether you are consuming plants, whether you are consuming animals, cell death is typically required in order to sustain life.
¶24Unless you're like a single cellled organism or something like that living by an ocean vent or, you know, maybe you're maybe you're some sort of plant that just magically doesn't require any minerals from the from the earth and can just live off of sunlight alone. Of course, there are some that are like that floating around in the ocean and such, but at the end of the day, we are all these little tiny walking laboratories. And so [ __ ] gets eaten. Things have to die, you know. And when it's small and when we don't really like it, we tend to not see that as brutal, right?
¶25Whenever I go and I stomp on a cockroach, nobody's bothered by that. When I, you know, set a a trap for, you know, a mouse, nobody's bothered by that. But if I go and I set a trap for a golden retriever, now there's a problem, right? and suddenly we see the brutality of nature and all this kind of stuff. But the the truth of the matter is that we live on a very very natural evolving system that requires, you know, consumption uh in order to survive.
¶26And that's just the system that we're a part of, right? And so I don't see how uh I don't see how the brutality of death is something that's just like I wrestle with my feelings of Christianity and all this kind of stuff because of the brutality of death. Yes, death is brutal, but that's the system that we're inside of, right? I don't I don't know. You guys tell me what you think about that.
¶27I don't necessarily see it as a bad thing because we all run to go fishing and we all grab a fish and throw it on our plates, but we're not considering the brutality of that, right? Just because the fish doesn't have fur or it doesn't moo or it doesn't do, you know, these things. Maybe it doesn't show affection doesn't change the fact that we're still ending a life, right? Even in the case of plants, you know, plants are very, very conscious things. I mean, they have electrical signals.
¶28They help each other in the forests. They often help each other with donating nutrients to each other. When a specific plant is low in nutrients, all of the other plants around it will support it and and and all this kind of stuff. So, plants are just as much um plants are just as much aware. Plants are just as much a part of, you know, the system.
¶29And whenever you connect electric electrodes to plants and you start chewing down on your salad, that salad leaf that's been sitting in the refrigerator is still very much alive. And when you connect a couple of um EMGs to that salad leaf and you start munching, you will see the electrical activity in that leaf going crazy. Right? This is a known thing. Um, and it it's just kind of an example of no matter what no matter how non brutal you think you can make life, even eating a a cup of yogurt, you're killing millions of bacteria.
¶30So, cell death is required. The the, you know, the shape that the cells take, it it's it's kind of it it doesn't really matter. You know, at the end of the day, we have to consume something, right? So, I don't I don't really see how that would be such a big, you know, problem. I guess if you were throwing up the idea that, you know, God was this perfectly loving God that wanted absolutely no one to suffer ever, then maybe that would be the case.
¶31But I just I don't I don't see that. >> Dawkins and Daniel Dennard, etc., etc., right? Those ride that was a joke. Okay. Palma Palma.
¶32After some time, the the problems for theism and Christianity just kept mounting and mounting and eventually I lost my faith. That happened sometime around 10th grade. I came to conclude that atheism is true so God does not exist. And I also thought that naturalism is true. So, you know, at bottom the world is just fundamentally indifferent.
¶33You know, there's no fundamental purpose. There's no fundamental mindedness. at bottom, as Richard Dawkins says, it's just blind, pitiles indifference. You know, the natural world is all there is. At the time, I thought that that was just the best explanation of the data.
¶34But then in the summer before senior year, I stumbled across this YouTube channel called the world of view design, and I was just captivated. Like, I started watching these videos, and I was like, whoa, these are like some new arguments for theism that I've never come across. and the host behind the channel was just like super loving but also incredibly intellectually rigorous and sophisticated. So I binged watched all of his videos and wo they just opened my eyes to this new world of like academic theist philosophy. So the person behind the channel as I came to discover was Dr.
¶35Josh Rasmson. He's a Christian philosopher and at the time he was publishing a book with Alexander Poops called Necessary Existence defending all these new and interesting contingency arguments for God's existence. and he was just like popularizing and publicizing that. [laughter] >> I I don't understand this. This is the thing that that I don't understand, you know.
¶36Um I don't get how, you know, first of all, I don't think God is this singular being. Um I tout that all the time. I think that is just this, you know, this eminence, this neutral eminence that we don't understand that comes from a higher place that we also don't understand. and we exist and we don't understand that, right? I think it's all very kind of, you know, like, you know, what the hell is this universe?
¶37What the hell are all these planets? What the hell are all the different beings in this? What the hell is all of this for? Right? I feel like that's kind of more, you know, the existence of the existence of God and stuff like that.
¶38But I don't like to use the word God because that in my mind that shrinks it down into a singular point. And that's not that's just not at all what I think. Um, but I don't understand why when a Christian says God exists that it automatically assumes that this book is the most accurate representation of that God. A god existing does not mean that this is true. This has been disproven how many times right even by biblical scholars they show that the book of Genesis is just a compilation of a whole bunch of ancient texts right they show that even the pastoral epistles are just forgeries you know this this is not a singular vocal thing and so I I don't understand why why is it that you know I I watched a video with um I forget the guy's name all the time.
¶39I was just doing a live on Wednesday. Um, by the way guys, I do lives on Wednesday night. If you'd like to support and have a chat with me and we can talk about some of the issues that you're experiencing while you're walking away from Christianity, feel free to show up and I'll have my phone number on the screen. You can call me. Um, but still that's uh that's not it was um I forgot the guy's name already.
¶40But basically, um, this theist was arguing with this, you know, kind of, uh, evangelical apologetics debater kind of thing. And the fact that he was a theist really tripped up the person who was debating him because I'll just have to do a reaction to that video. That way you guys know what I'm talking about and then I could just reference it in the future. um you know the theist was t you know was not convinced that God doesn't exist which was apparently the stance that the apologetics guy was constantly used to arguing and so whenever this guy came with this idea that you know sure God you know there is some sort of existence that exists and that existence can be a loving thing sure but that doesn't mean that this is true and it takes a hell of a lot less faith because one of the arguments that he says is that it takes less faith to believe in a god than it does to believe in atheism. And the theist was like, well, it takes less belief to believe in some deity existing and leaving it at that than it does to believe in Christianity.
¶41So why wouldn't you leave it there? Right? And it was a really hilarious video, maybe like 20 minutes long, 15 minutes long, something like that. And he just goes and and the he has to like double team on this theist. And then whenever they couldn't logic their way out of it, they had to emotional their way out of it.
¶42So then this girl walks out on stage and she's just like, "Well, what happened? What hurt you? Why are you?" It's just like there is no explanation. They don't know how to understand the idea that something can exist and then be completely wrong. Like they just happened upon the one exact right religion.
¶43Even though, like I said at the beginning of this video, they're constantly at each other's throats. I was raised independent fundamental Baptist. I would have pointed at him as a Catholic and said he obviously is still going to burn in hell. He's being deceived by by Satan. He's being deceived by false light because that's what we were taught as as as Baptists was that Catholics were going to burn in hell forever and ever because Satan ruled the Catholic Church.
¶44Oh my god. It [laughter] just sounds like oh my god, guys. And so I don't I don't understand why, you know, and it's just like the whole flood thing, you know, they always say, "Okay, yeah, look, there's floods. There's evidence of floods all over the planet." Okay, even if there was this big massive event that completely swamped the entire planet, that still does not mean that this is true. You know what probably happened there?
¶45whatever swamped our planet probably happened and then they were just like, "hm, we need a story to explain why this happened. Let's make it and put it into this thing." Right? It's just, you know, they they go around and they look at all these they look at all this stuff and they say, "Look, here's evidence. Here's evidence. Here's evidence." And it's just like stories don't come first.
¶46Events come first. stories follow the events that happened, right? These things happened for whatever reason and they decide that they're going to control the narrative because every religion has a flood myth. Every aboriginal tribe, every indigenous culture, everybody has some sort of myths of big floods. The times, who knows when the times, maybe they're the exact same time, maybe they're at different times, right?
¶47Maybe there were local events, maybe it was a global event. Even if it was a global event, I don't think it was, but even if it was a global event, it does not mean that this is the absolute correct 100% right story. It I I just I don't understand that. I don't understand how they can look at at these things and just not see like, oh, you know, okay, so this thing happened. Maybe that means, you know, like I was I was chatting with somebody and we were kind of having a nerdy conversation about, you know, ETSs, UFOs, and all that kind of stuff.
¶48And uh and I told him that that was one of the reasons why I just believe that there is a lot more, you know, to this planet than we understand. And he goes, "Well, just because, you know, another life form exists somewhere in the universe and they're intelligent still doesn't mean that a god exists." And I was like, damn, that's true. You know, [laughter] it's just like, you know, we just may be living in a universe that's teeming with life, which seems to be the case here on Earth. Every time we say that there's no life there, you know, we do some drilling, we do some digging, and sure enough, there's life there, right? But, um, it just it it was just so funny.
¶49I was just like, "Oh [ __ ] you know, that makes perfect sense." But yeah, we live in an incredibly mysterious universe that nobody understands. And so we don't have to define that. We don't have to make it meaningless either, right? just because it's like, oh yeah, you know, uh okay, so you know, God doesn't exist and you know, we we just we're just this kind of freak of the big bang and and you know, life has evolved all over the universe and we're not the only ones here and there's life all over, you know, and all of these things just happen to develop over time. And I always hear people say all the time, well, if there's life elsewhere, why wouldn't they try to contact us?
¶50And it's like, do you see how we treat each other? Why would they want to intervene? Why would they even want to touch down? We are mean as hell to each other and all we do when we disagree is we kill what what species would want to interact with humans? Let's be real about that, right?
¶51Uh but that's another topic for another day. But it's just it's one of those things where it's like, you know, what we have exists. the events happened, these things happened and then the stories that were told after are so insanely dogmatic, right? You don't whenever uh the stories of the the tragic Texas flood that happened that killed the uh on the river uh that killed the a bunch of children um in a church camp, right? The stories that came after the event, the event just happened.
¶52Okay? Because we live in a natural world and we live on a planet that occasionally experiences flash floods and all these crazy things. And why you would put a church camp on a flood that has flash flooded before in the past and killed Christian children before in the past, why you would rebuild doesn't make any sense in that same area, in that same flood zone. Okay. Um, so I'm going to stand up for the kids a little bit on this thing.
¶53They shouldn't have put the damn camp there if it's happened before. But uh you know the stories that followed that were God knows what he's doing. You know um what what's the what's the Christian thing? It's the um the Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord and all this kind of stuff.
¶54And it's just like you built a church camp on a river that is known to have these massive massive historical floods and you put a church camp right there. This is just a a state of not planning. This is not thinking at its finest. Right? And it happens.
¶55These things just happen, right? There is no meaning. sometimes things just happen, right? Um, and it's it's yeah, it's just it's such a crazy thing. But, you know, just kind of on his thing of of you know, the whole theist thing, I don't understand why, you know, people are like, "Oh my god, God exists, so Christianity is true." No.
¶56No, that doesn't ne it doesn't mean that, right? It doesn't mean that any religion is true. Hell, there's probably no religions out there that are true, period. Right? It could just be that the experience of consciousness in and of itself is the experience of, you know, this divine intelligence.
¶57Who knows, right? I just I don't I don't get it. >> Cutting edge work in his videos. And so, you know, after I binge watch his videos, I was like, whoa, there's way more to theism than I thought. Um, there are all these new and interesting arguments that seem really forceful to my mind, but hey, I still got some objections.
¶58So, I reached out to this mysterious person whom I didn't know at the time. I was like, "Dear Dr. harassing, you know, I I I recently been been binge watching your videos and I was like, I have some objections. Can you help me? And so then we just had this extensive email correspondence going all throughout my senior year.
¶59Uh, and you know, eventually I was like, yeah, there just is a lot more going for theism than I thought. And also, you know, just being introduced by a professional philosopher who knew a lot more than me, who was just like utterly mogging me intellectually, just revealed to me that I think I prematurely judged the question of whether God exists. as as a result of coming across these new arguments and dialoguing with Josh doesn't mean that Christianity is true. Just because something exists doesn't mean Christianity is true. And even then you got the wrong denomination according to the faith that I grew up with, according to the faith of Church of Christ, according to every Protestant.
¶60Because just about every Protestant that I know, including Pentecostals, all that kind of stuff, they all point at Catholicism and say that they're being led by Satan. So just because you were able to preh to to prove that there was some sort of intelligent, you know, essence in the universe does not mean that it's the Christian God and the Bible and the King James Bible. That's right. It just means that okay, you have data that seems to elude that there is some sort of essence out there. That's all that you have, right?
¶61I I don't I don't understand that. >> I was like, okay, I can no longer maintain my content naturalism. I think I should suspend judgment on the question of whether God exists. So, I should neither believe that God exists nor disbelieve. And you know, the evidence at the time just seemed to me maybe roughly counterbalance.
¶62Maybe it's difficult to tell which way the evidence points. But as a result of all this, I became a kind of settled agnostic, maybe somewhere around the end of 12th grade. And that state of agnosticism kind of just like stably persisted all the way up until grad school. >> If there's anybody who is wondering why I'm drinking my coffee by holding it by this, it's because there's words down here at the bottom and it seems to be some sort of company. And uh I don't know what you know how that how that is handled on YouTube.
¶63So, just in case y'all are curious, >> somewhere around the end of my first year of grad school or maybe the beginning of my second year in grad school, things started to change a bit. I started coming across these like new and interesting arguments for theism that like seemed to me pretty forceful. And I also started losing some objections that I previously had to theistic arguments that I thought failed. So, over the course of my first, you know, one or two years in grad school, I started leaning towards theism. I started seeing theism, you know, the view that the fundamental nature of reality is just like pure limitless perfection.
¶64You know, there's this perfect being at the foundation of reality with every perfection to an unlimited extent. I started seeing this view as, you know, a relatively simple, coherent, non-arbitrary, elegant hypothesis. And not just that, but a hypothesis that offers a unifying explanation of a vast and diverse array. >> There's no way. There's no way that this consciousness or whatever the hell it is is a perfect being.
¶65There's just no way. Because if it was, you know, unless it was just utter perfection and it enjoyed creating non-perfection, then okay, maybe. But there's it's look at the universe. The universe is sloppy, you know? I mean, it's it's it's more in tune with a with a child's mind experiments and play than it is in tune with this absolute perfection that never does anything wrong.
¶66It it's just, you know, I mean, I if if the universe were utter perfection, you would never have a person who had six toes, right? The the DNA would never be able to be um uh what do you call it? mutated by something as simple as gamma rays coming from the solar uh from the solar radiation, a gamma particle passing through your body and damaging your DNA and suddenly it's able to cause skin cancer and all this kind of stuff. Like if if there was utter perfection, there's a lot of sloppy [ __ ] going on here for it to be utter perfection, right? It's it's it's interesting.
¶67I'm you guys let me know what you think about the whole perfection idea. I just think it just doesn't hold up. The idea that this entire experience is perfect or that the entire, you know, the entire consciousness of God is completely perfect. I I don't see that. I I really don't see that.
¶68I think it's more uh and of course this is just thinking thinking thinking opinion opinion, you know, it doesn't matter. Um, but I genuinely do think that it's more of an exploratory creative thing because in exploratory creative thinking, there's plenty of mistakes. There's plenty of [ __ ] that doesn't make sense. There's plenty of things that accidentally get hurt while you're, you know, just exploring different options and you're exploring these different idea, whatever the hell, who even knows, right? But um but yeah uh it's it's kind of crazy to think that that you could be 1 billion% certain on you know this being being absolute perfection, you know.
¶69Um yeah, I don't know. I don't I don't think that's the case. Even with me as being a as being a kind of in the ground, stuck in the ground theist as I am, I just don't see I don't see that that being utter perfection, right? Maybe you could argue that it's, you know, with all of the stuff with uh with people's experience of stuff. Maybe you could argue that it's, you know, uh just an eminence of love or something like that.
¶70Um but utter absolute perfection, I just don't know about that. I don't think that that's the case. but >> of otherwise highly striking data, data that other hypotheses either have to explain peacemeal or do a very poor job at explaining or have to take us through facts. And so like this kind of meta argument for theism that like on the one hand it seems to be a relatively simple, elegant, coherent, non- arbitrary hypothesis and on the other hand it provides this like wonderfully unifying explanation of a vast and diverse array of pretty like strikingly fortunate data. I started leaning towards theism.
¶71And what then are we talking about? Well, there's too much to explain. And I explain it all in significant depth in my comprehensive case for Catholicism that's coming up very, very soon. So stay tuned. Stay finely tuned.
¶72Come on, that was a good one. But just to give you a glimpse into some of the data that really started pulling on me, I mean, I already had in the background like a decently high confidence that there's some kind of necessary foundation to reality. So some kind of ultimate reality that could not have failed to exist. And I at least leaned toward that view on the basis of the various contingency arguments that I mentioned earlier on from Alexander Puce and Josh Rasmmanson and various other philosophers like Rob Coons etc. So I already had that in the background and then the question was well you know what is this being well maybe let's examine the character of its effect.
¶73And when we look at the character of its effect it's just like utterly saturated with like extremely fortunate coincidences that had to like happen just right for basically anything interesting or valuable to occur in the world. So it's striking to begin with that there are any laws of physics at all. But let's suppose there are. Even then, it's pretty surprising that those laws of physics have constants that even have life permitting ranges to begin with. I mean, after all, we can imagine hordes of different laws, many of which are much simpler than the laws that we actually have, which would preclude basically anything interesting or valuable happening.
¶74You know, basically like it is a law that there's a single particle which just like vibes for all of eternity. You're not going to get anything interesting or particularly valuable in such a world. But we didn't get a world like that. Instead, the law structures that we have are at least compatible with life. And not only that, but these law structures, the form of these laws, they contain certain constants or fixed values.
¶75And those fixed values need to fall within exceedingly narrow ranges in order for life or basically anything interesting to develop. So like we sort of hit the complete cosmic jackpot there. And then even then, we weren't done. In addition to that, the laws of nature actually match the contents of the universe so as to result in temporal evolution. And then even when you get temporal evolution, it's surprising that conscious subjects evolve because we can imagine a world which is physically just like ours, but where consciousness doesn't exist.
¶76And so it's actually quite striking that consciousness exists. And not only does consciousness exist, but it's paired very fortuitously with the physical world. Our mental lives are striking. >> This this is where I disagree uh with atheists all the time, and this is where I I agree in particular with him. Um, I don't think it's necessarily this big magical thing that, you know, consciousness exists inside of these kind of creatures that have just developed naturally out of these random chemical reactions.
¶77Um, you know, everybody likes to everybody likes to uh, you know, pile on the hydrogen uh, not the hydrogen, I'm sorry. Uh, everybody likes to pile on the double slit experiment. Oh, double slit experiments being debunked. All this kind of stuff. Uh well, they've redone that in China and they've done it on a more nano scale where they're essentially creating two slits um using you know uh I want to say oh what was it oh I I forgot what the what the study was what was it I forget I forget what materials but they were using you know you know tens of atoms to create a double slit and they were shooting uh singular atoms or subatomic particles not singular atoms are shooting singular electrons and they were able to show that at the subatomic level at the very min you know minuscule level that the hypothesis of the double slit experiment still holds.
¶78Right? I see everybody on YouTube running around with lasers trying to prove that the double slit experiment doesn't exist because they've got a laser pointer. And it's like, you know, no, a laser pointer is not the same as a single electron fired through a slit that is so small that a human can't uh that a human can't observe it. That's kind of the whole purpose of the slit experiment is observation, right? Um, you know, feel free to to argue with me as much as you want there.
¶79But uh in in those specific situations when the experiment is performed at the nano scale these you know these hypotheses do indeed hold up and you do get both interference and non-inference patterns and stuff like that. Um and so you know I see everybody running around on YouTube with lasers and cardboard and it's like no you can't you can't fine-tune one single electron at a time. uh through a single, you know, through a single piece of cardboard and say that you've debunked the double slit experiment. Personally, my belief is that consciousness exists within the particle and we don't understand that. That's uh and and that's why you can take these tiny particles and put them together and create these atomic structures, molecular structures, um single-sellled organisms, multisellular, whatever.
¶80and they have a touch of consciousness in them, right? Uh whether they develop an eye spot, whether they uh develop, you know, light sensory organs or whatever. Um as far as like, you know, different ciliates and things like that and and and kind of these, you know, primordial pools. Um but you know if you if you live in a universe where the very beginning of existence was just this consciousness and this consciousness decided to um express itself in some sort of particle of energy then and your consciousness is expressed in every single particle of energy. Then whenever these particles of energy come together to form larger cellular beings and cellular organisms, then those cellular beings and organisms are just going to contain are still going to contain consciousness.
¶81Consciousness that you're unaware of, right? Just like you don't have to focus on making sure that your body digests it food. Just like after you die, you don't have to focus on making sure that your body properly decomposes, right? There's a lot of things that are happening in the natural world um that that are going on. We are inside of a system.
¶82It is very clear we're inside of a system that is continuously taking care of itself and breaking itself down, which is the reason why people die, which is the reason why things have to eat, right? Um I I get I kind of chuckle about it all the time when people talk about you know how uh how it's so horrible for for you know some sort of existence to create cancer and you know the response to that is just how horrible for you to you know swatted a gnat or kill a mosquito or all this kind of stuff right it's like it it does not change the fact that you know a specific spec of consciousness exists And that existence eventually dies. But when it dies, it doesn't just immediately disappear. It merely changes forms, right? But those cells still contain consciousness.
¶83For instance, this body that I'm inside of right now, right? This thing is made up of atoms that have existed since the beginning of time. So technically speaking, this body is 4.8 billion years old, right? It's organized in the face and the body and the expression of John. But in a few years when this body is done, it will be either reabsorbed into the ground, the atoms will go back into the ground, or if I do get consumed by a bear in Alaska, it's very probable, you know, I will become something else in some form.
¶84And so it's it's you know it's just kind of this ebbing and flowing of of you knowformational consciousness what that is how that's expressed it it who knows [clears throat] they're studying that let them study that it doesn't mean Christianity is real it doesn't mean Christianity is true you know um and and so just because the just because you know this whole experience of life is so incredible, which it is. I mean, especially, you know, I I studied biochemistry in college. Um, holy [ __ ] If you go on one of these um, uh, biochemical pathway maps and just look at a biochemical pathway blueprint for any specific being, even the very smallest of beings have these massive stores of just huge amount of chemistry going on. in order to sustain this thing that is unaware of itself. Right?
¶85When I say unaware of itself, I say I am the human being that looks out of these eyes. Well, I'm not that, right? But there is the human being that looks out of these eyes and perceives. Okay? And then there is the cellular bits of me that run around and making sure that my body stays okay.
¶86I am completely disconnected and unaware of that aspect of myself. But that aspect of myself influences the aspect of me that is responsible for actually being aware in the in in the world, right? Uh when I get hungry, what is it? All of the microbes inside of my digestive system have decided that the body is in need of some sort of of of sustenance and so send off these hormone, you know, hormone receptors into the bloodstream and allow those hormone receptors to be, you know, uh to go to the brain, pass through the blood brain barrier, go into the brain and interact with the hormone receptors that exist inside of the brain, inside of the neurons. The neurons then do their whole thing and they say, "hm, body hungry.
¶87Let me send signal for hunger." So then your tummy rumbles and then you think, "Oh, I want to eat." And finally, you've reached the consciousness of the one that peers out of these eyes, right? But then the question is, well, who are you in that whole situation? Right? You have the one that peers out of the eyes. You have the one that takes care of the body.
¶88You're completely unaware of the the one that takes care of the body. Your body is the one that takes care of the body. You are a big mass of of beings that are keeping you alive, right? And even then when you shut your eyes and you close your mind, you have the voice, you have the thought, you have the person who is aware of the voice and the thought and all of these things from inside the mind. And then you have the awareness who just sits back and looks out of the eyes and looks at the thoughts and sees these things.
¶89And so the awareness itself, well, what is that? Right? Which one am I? And so I think it's really um I think it's really healthy to enjoy the beauty of this existence that we are. I don't think it's healthy to say that this existence that we are is all dictated by this one little dude who is incredibly bipolar, who kills his own people, who when his own children are hungry sends down serpents from heaven to kill them.
¶90who accepts virgin uh baby sacrifices or virgin child sacrifices, who uh decides when he gets bored and he wants to play a game of craps in heaven, he allows Satan to go and kill off an entire family of his most beloved servant Job. So, how is it that you have this beautiful mass? You have this beautiful universe that we exist in. And trust me, if you're struggling in your life to find beauty, I highly recommend purchasing a telescope. If you really struggle with the with the point of being alive, buy a damn telescope.
¶91Go to a place dark and just look just look at the moon. Look at the stars. Look at how vast. And remember this entire system that exists is so beautiful. Yet you as the individual are so insignificant to the entire system.
¶92Now if that bothers you, I'm sorry. That shouldn't bother you. That should put you in awe of how beautiful life itself is. And so why is it that you can't just go through life and just appreciate that beauty? Appreciate the beauty in yourself.
¶93Appreciate the beauty in in in the in these things that are around you that you know these these um these atoms that are you know uh you know these these atoms that are uh that are structured in very specific ways that allow your life to be better that allow you to take in information that you know these different thing like every little thing right there is beauty in every little thing. Why is it that this guy was unable to see that? Right? There's beauty and there's love and everything. Why is this guy unable to see that?
¶94Why is this guy unable to look at the person across who maybe had a disagreement with him and say, "You know what? I still think that you're an absolutely brilliant and beautiful um chemistry experiment that's going on." And the fact that you even exist and the fact that your body is even able to exist is so beautiful. I'm just going to allow you to live your beautiful existence. No, this thing says, "Oh, we're just going to kill half the planet whenever we get a little pestered." It and this is where this is where I get annoyed all the time with people who are just like, "Oh, well, don't you know uh this this thing, this this thing, this idea, that idea. This proves that God exists.
¶95Something exists. That does not mean that this is true. This is very clearly fabricated and it's been proven that it's been fabricated. So why why refuse to let go of this? Well, because now we've arrived to something else.
¶96Now we've arrived to tradition. Now we've rei we've arrived to the mind. Now we've arrived to it's always been done that way. We've arrived to having to deal with the fears and confront the fears. You know, now we've arrived to the cellular experiments.
¶97I I mention these experiments all the time where the rats are inside of a um the rats are inside of these little tiny um containers and they would inject the scent of orchids inside of the containers that the rats or the enclosures that the rats are in. And then they would shock the rats every single time orchids were brought uh the scent of orchids were introduced into the into the cages. And the rats would freak out. They would panic. every single time they would inject the scent of orchids and then they would shock the hell out of the rats.
¶98Those that those rats then went and had kids, right? So these rats were able to reproduce and their children who had never experienced being shocked by uh the scent of orchids or the scent of orchids linking to physical pain. their very children when presented with the scent of orchids were just traumatically afraid and started to act in very erratic ways. Right? So now we can see how the things that your parents were afraid of, the things that your grandparents were afraid of and not just afraid of but deathly afraid of something like hell is going to be passed down to you.
¶99It's not something that's just an inorganic fear. It's an organic fear. If they were very very serious about it and incredibly scared about it and they had some sort of fear, this intense, you know, thing in their life that happened like you go into a Baptist church and you're getting the hellfire and brimstone, you know, [ __ ] sermon every damn week, you know, um that fear is going to naturally transfer to you. And so you're going to go as a little child as you're as just happy go-lucky life and somebody brings up hell and what it is and all of a sudden that fear is triggered and that fear that that thing that's scary is what holds you back, right? Um but but yeah, it's it's just just because there is something just because you're able to prove that there is some sort of intelligence just because you know whatever does not mean that that intelligence is your specific god.
¶100Right? Let's get back to this >> orderly and coherent and intelligible and rational given our physical states functioning and behavior. And if you think about like the vast horde of conceivable ways of pairing up conscious states with physical states, only an exceedingly tiny portion of those actually lead to consciousness involving goods like rational agency and meaningful relationships and virtue and enjoyment and aesthetic experience and so on. And then we have moral knowledge and it's really difficult to see how that could be the case under naturalism because the moral facts don't explain our moral judgments under naturalism. And then we also have operatory knowledge and that bunch of different people are experiencing God.
¶101They have religious experiences and that beauty is just saturating the world. And so I just was reflecting on all these different pieces of data and all the coincidences that I'd have to stack one on top of another in order to remain an atheist. And that was just it was getting difficult. But I still didn't go all the way to theism. Why?
¶102Well, because I had all these barriers to theism. I had the problem of evil and various other difficulties and arguments against theism that pulled on my mind. And those still just seemed so strong to me. But then in my second year of grad school, I started coming across overwhelming evidence for miraculous phenomena. I mean, it started with certain people making videos about like Our Lady of Zetune, you know, this apparition of topic Coptic Orthodox Church that literally like hundreds of thousands of people saw in addition to tons of medically documented healing miracles associated with it.
¶103Another thing that kickstarted my journey here was that my friend Cameron Bertusi was interviewing a bunch of different like professional psychiatrists and deliverance ministers and exorcists and various other people who are on the periphery of deliverance ministry concerning demonic phenomena and manifestations that they've witnessed with their own eyes. And like here we're talking about like super recent in totally perceptually conducive circumstances with sane people sometimes in the context of like multiple or even dozens of witnesses and like things that it seems like it's really hard to be mistaken about which are like these you know complex multimodal experiences where like you know the temperature of the room would just like instantaneously drop to freezing such that the person can literally see their breath and then become scorching hot such that everyone in the room just starts like sweating and testifying to things like oh you know like a few days ago I literally saw with my own eyes and multiple people present also saw it and They told me afterwards where like multiple things are just flying across the room of their own accord and various other like instantaneous supernatural changes in facial structure or eyes or various other things like levitation and so on. And I didn't actually believe these things for the longest time. I thought it was actually pretty implausible. But Cameron just kept pushing me.
¶104He was like, "Joe, watch the video. What's your explanation of this person's testimony?" You know, I'd like give these flailing kind of implausible naturalistic explanations concerning which I have no independent evidence. And you know, basically I'm like having to design from the armchair that these people are just like lying straight to their teeth. And then also like all the other deliverance ministers are internet, these psychiatrists are internet. And then like also, you know, like the the government reports that we have to some of these phenomena are also like that the people who testified in those are just mistaken.
¶105And then like dozens of other I was starting to shift in my seat. I was starting to become uncomfortable. >> Okay, [sighs and gasps] Mr. Uncomfortable, let's talk about it. So I have had a lot of experiences in my life which is one of the reasons why uh I was atheist for a touch of time but ultimately ended up relaxing here as a theist because I've experienced a lot of the things that he's spoken about.
¶106Okay. Uh this is where we're going to get into the more spiritual aspects of the ultimate experience of what the hell all this is. Okay. there is a very neutral spiritual approach that makes a lot of more sense, a hell of a lot more sense. Um, and you know, all the all this kind of stuff.
¶107Now, um, for some of you watching, you may not believe in any of this, uh, in any of these kind of experiences and things like that. Um, a lot of these experiences have to do with da da da da, you guessed it, the mind. Um, if you are curious about my experience of life, it was incredibly demonic and it was incredibly dark, which is the reason why the video that I have where I tell my story about why I left Christianity and how I was led out of Christianity um, is the title to that video was my dark story because it is not a happy one. It is not one that is filled with Christian joy. It was filled with Christian torment.
¶108Okay. So, about these dark beings and all this kind of stuff, right? Um it's it's a topic that tends to scare people. It it's a topic that, you know, makes people turn away and all that kind of stuff. You know, this is my experience of stuff.
¶109Okay. Uh when I walked away from Christianity, I did not walk away. I walked toward uh I walked toward God is where I was headed. So uh go watch that video. I tell the entire story, but well as much as I can.
¶110I mean obviously it's an incredibly you know it's it's hard to condense you know 30 years of life down into a couple hour video or 1 hour video. I don't remember how long it was. But here's the thing. Um, just because we live in a universe that is incredibly uh interesting, you know, I mean, you take a Tesla car, you drive it to the cemetery, and all these people pop out of nowhere, right? What is that?
¶111Because when you drive a Tesla car anywhere else, it doesn't seem to pick up on these imaginary people. But when you drive it to the cemetery, it picks up on all these imaginary people, all this kind of stuff, right? Um if you are ever curious you can go and research um the Monroe Institute. The Monroe Institute is a great place for people who want to experience um the being outside of your body. And that's the reason why I said earlier that I am not this thing.
¶112I've experienced being outside of my body before uh both with the attempt on my life that I did for myself um and as well as just whenever I was walking down my own path. Now, with that being said, let's get to the dark stuff, right? The demonic, the dark, all this kind of stuff, right? Because uh you know, the the atheist perspective is obviously going to be that this is a bunch of mental health issues. Um, and there's going to be plenty of cases where that indeed is the case.
¶113Um, you have to remember how powerful your mind is. You have to remember how powerful your belief is. Okay? If you believe subconsciously that walking away from a religion equals demonic possession, how do you think your body is going to react when you start walking away from Christianity? in the very institution that your great great great great grandparents, your great great grandparents, your great-grandparents, your grandparents, and your parents were all deathly afraid of.
¶114How do you think your body is going to react as you walk away from that institution? Do you think it's going to react with rainbows and sunshines and nothing's wrong? False. Very much false. No, that is not how your body is going to react.
¶115You know how your body will react? It will create the very things that your body expects. That is why when you walk toward Christianity, if you grew up Christian, right, if you ever wonder about any of this, you can ask a person who is Buddhist and who grew up Buddhist. You can ask a person who is Hindu, who grew up Hindu, right? [gasps] When you walk away from Christianity, you have years of programming that tells your body to run the script of demonic possession.
¶116You have years of conditioning that tells your brain to run the script of Satan is pulling you away. You have years of conditioning that uh that suddenly the smallest noise, right? And yes, your brain will create hypnogoga hallucinations while you are awake. Just complete auditorial hallucinations while you are awake. This is the power of your mind.
¶117Your mind takes the reality that exists around it and it interprets it into a framework that it thinks is the correct framework. Right? So, you have this extremely uh you have this extremely um intense fear-based religion where when you walk away from Christianity, you are meeting Satan. Okay? You have not dealt with any of that emotionally, internally, you know, kind of sematically in your body, right?
¶118You've not addressed any of that. When you go to bed at night and you're walking away from Christianity, what do you think your dreams are going to be of the subconscious, the program that's running in the back of your mind is I'm walking towards Satan. What do you think those dreams are going to look like? Right? What do you think that those beings that come visit you in the middle of the night?
¶119What do you think they're Do you think they're going to be angels saying, "Oh, you're doing such a great job. We're so proud of you." No. Your brain is saying, "This has been taught to me for decades. It is very much in my DNA that when I try to walk away from this, fear kicks in. All of the things kick in.
¶120The alarms go off. The endocrine receptors go crazy. I'm [ __ ] scared. Get back in the goddamn fold before you get us killed." Right? You're going to have us ostracized by the community and we're going to be uh, you know, out in the street starving and, you know, whatever.
¶121Right? you have that mechanism that is that is subconscious that is focused on your survival. Okay, that mechanism kicks in. Okay. Now on experiences, yes, there are situations where you can have these very physical experiences that are, you know, that are um witnessed by people outside of a uh that are witnessed outside of you, just like a single person, right?
¶122I had an experience with my ex-wife when we were driving to a town for an anniversary dinner and this big massive thing that I would, you know, I would say it's something ET personally, but whether it was ET or whether it was something else, I don't know. Um, but this thing just kind of popped up beside us, followed us for a little bit, and then shot off into nothingness and collapsed into nothingness and then it was just gone. If you're curious about that, my dark story, I'm pretty sure I tell that story there. If not there, then you can go to the other time I told my story and that's where I open up about a lot of the the ET stuff. That does not mean once again that you know just because this thing happened does not mean that there is a Satan that there are all these things that there is a burning hell that there there just means all it means is that there is more to reality than we understand that is it right and that's that's where I stand there is a hell of a lot more than we understand and there's a lot of people who you know who channel who say that this is what those things are this is what is this is the nature of reality.
¶123This is how we do this in the in the spiritual community and stuff like that. There's all these people who have all these answers but ultimately we will not know until we cross over, right? If we know anything at all, right? If you cross over and it's just blackness and darkness, then you've got your answer, right? [laughter] And in in which case, if you do cross over and it was blackness and darkness, you just wasted an entire life tithing to the church.
¶124Um but so you can create these things in your mind right scared in the middle of the night and you start hearing these voices your mind can create this right that this is this there's nothing outside of the ordinary in that now the physical things that are witnessed by other people because that's happened plenty of times in my life right um those things once again just because there's more to reality. And personally, I just think that there are so many different beings in this universe, and I think that there's a bunch of beings that are significantly far more intelligent than we are. Um, and so, who knows? Maybe you're just interacting with some sort of surveillance system. Who the hell knows?
¶125I mean, look at the way that we surveil animals. I mean, we literally send in robots that look exactly like those animals with like weirdass eyes that are cameras, right? I mean, it's not unrealistic or unreasonable to assume that there's not something out there in the universe that's doing the exact same to us. I mean, it it's just not unreasonable. Um, but you know, once again, just because you have these situations does not mean that uh does not mean that Christianity is true.
¶126Right? There's a there's a principle and the reason why I why I say that is because whenever I was um in Alaska I had a uh Buddhist friend and uh we were roommates and of course I took advantage of that. He grew up Buddhist knew nothing but Buddhist. Absolutely nothing about Christianity. And as a person who has a bunch of Mayan DNA and [ __ ] like that inside of me, you know, maybe there's maybe it's kind of a genetic thing.
¶127Who the hell knows, right? Or maybe I'm just kind of predisposed to these, you know, kind of darker experiences because of the culture. I don't know. Whatever. I asked him, I was like, "Have you ever had these experiences, these darker experiences in your life?" And he says, "Of course I have." And so I say, "Okay, who do you pray to?" You would be shocked.
¶128He didn't say Jesus. What? He didn't say Jesus. No, he prayed to the Buddha. You ask a Hindu person, "Who do you pray to?" Right?
¶129And and you ask him, "Well, what happens? You have these dark beings that are around you. You pray to the Buddha and what happens? The Buddha comes and he saves you and he scares away these dark beings and all of a sudden you're in the loving light of the Buddha. K the Hindu, you're in the loving light of Krishna.
¶130K still doesn't prove Christianity, right? And and and all of these kind of like these spiritual experiences where oh these these magical things happened and you know the these magical things happened and you know there's a lot of magical things that have happened in my life. Um once again you can go to my dark story. Um there's a lot of magical things that have happened in my life. Does not mean once again that your specific religion is correct.
¶131All that means is that there is more to nature than we understand. That's it. It's nothing to be afraid of. It's nothing that should make you unsettled. It's nothing that should make you stay up at night.
¶132It just means that this place that we have been existing in for thousands and thousands of years, we have not figured out yet. Big deal. That does not change that when the first of the month comes around, your rent's going to be due, right? It doesn't change that. And and and it's not something to stay up at night over.
¶133The whole idea pondering Christ, pondering reality. Oh my god, is is Christianity true? Is it not true? I don't want to burn in hell. I don't want to displease this, you know, crazy psycho god that kills his own children.
¶134I I I don't want to do that. You know, I have a message for for people who are experiencing this fear. Life is not that deep. It's just not that deep. Right?
¶135Even in all of my experiences and all the path that I've walked, right? The conclusion is it doesn't matter because life itself is beautiful and the person watching this video is beautiful, right? The eyes that you are peering through to hold this little tiny electronic device that you don't even understand how the hell it works. There's beauty in it. You can focus on the fear.
¶136You can focus on the crazy. You can focus on, "Oh my god, the world's [ __ ] falling apart." But take a second to just look in the mirror and look at that beautiful little freak of creation called whatever the hell this is and just look at it and look at it smile and look at it cry and look at it feel itself. Look at it just right there. There is beauty that exists here. So why would this guy want to drown every single one of them?
¶137Why would this guy want to kill his own? Why would this guy want to damn his own to hell? Why would this guy create a system that inevitably is completely unjust? Right? Just because existence is beautiful does not mean that this is true.
¶138That's it. It is qu It like literally it's not that deep. It's not that deep. Life in and of itself is not that deep. You have an experience.
¶139We love this experience. You know what? One of my favorite experiences in life is taking a warm goddamn chocolate chip cookie, dunking it in milk. That is my favorite [ __ ] experience in this life. Especially when the cookie is warm or hot and it's fresh and it's gooey.
¶140Right. That is as deep as life needs to get. You know what's a beautiful experience? When you help somebody and they're appreciative and you get to share a moment of joy and just being and and and right when you when you hand a person a pizza. I used to do this a long time ago and I do it every Thanksgiving which if you guys you know if you guys are open to help me with that I'd love that.
¶141Um, what I love to do is I used to love to get pizzas. I just rung ring up a thing with Little Caesars, run up a tab of a couple hundred bucks, give me as many pizzas as you can get me, and I would write basically love letters on the insides of the lids of these pizzas, and I'd pass them out to homeless people. Right? I'm not a Christian. When I did that, I walked away from Christianity and decided that my guiding light in life was going to be the beauty and joy in every moment that I can create for myself.
¶142Well, it was going to be in the beauty and joy of sharing, in the beauty and joy of experiencing helping people and experiencing receiving from people and experiencing embracing a person through their hurts, through their pains, holding them when they're in their darkest of moments. That is my guiding light. And I'm absolutely passionate about that. Right? My guiding light is not I need to convert as many people as I can to this very specific fear-based crazy idea about this dude who's up in the world or who's up in the clouds probably buttass naked, doesn't even know how to put proper clothes on or match a wardrobe, and he's just running around hailing serpents at the very people that he is supposed to care about.
¶143killing the very people he's supposed to care about. Says in Isaiah that he is the very creator of evil and of darkness. And everybody says, "Oh, well, God is just being a No, no, no. Read the damn Old Testament. He's the creator of evil and darkness, right?
¶144You don't have to sit here and try to make that make sense. This book doesn't make sense. It's pretty easy to not make it make sense." Okay, I'm rambling. Sorry. Let's get back to those.
¶145And that [clears throat] was just like the first of my worries because over the course of my second and third year of grad school, I was just utterly inundated with overwhelming evidence for miraculous phenomena. And like the caliber of evidence that we're talking about here is not like, oh, I prayed and my headache got better. It's like, okay, okay, Susie, like I'm glad your headache got better, but I'm not not quite sure that's a miracle. Instead, we're talking videos, photographs, blinded laboratory analyses, X-rays, you name it, we got it. It's like we got blinded laboratory analysis saying, "Yeah, this is suffering myioardial tissue." And what's that doing in a host that a Catholic priest just prayed over?
¶146Like, if you SEE THAT, WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO? What am I supposed to do when you see that? IT'S LIKE, OH NO. And if it's on these healing miracles, it's like we got documentation to like complete instantaneous permanent remission of advanced multiple sclerosis in combination with an >> That's actually something that I've been wanting to do because I know all the time that the that the Catholic people say that whenever they do the whole prayer over thing that it literally turns into the actual flesh and blood of Christ. And I'm just like I call [ __ ] [snorts] I've got an amazing phase contrast microscope.
¶147I'm about to go through every single cell of that red wine. [laughter] You know, if you are a Catholic and you do indeed want me to go through every single cell of your red wine, please hit me up because I genuinely would be interested in doing that, u you could give me a small sample and I could run it to see if there's actually any blood tissue in there. But there has to be a um strict uh you know scientific controls. I have to provide the wine. Um, and I have to provide the glasswware and I have to make sure that all you are doing is just blessing the wine and nothing else.
¶148And then I'll take a sample and we'll see. Uh, because I'm not going to have any sneaky [ __ ] going on in there. [laughter] >> Uncolapsed lung, redefinition of calf muscles, an instantaneous removal of blindness at the same time. Oh, all in connection by the way with like a complex hallucination. And I know actually like a religious experience of like a booming voice saying get up my child and walk.
¶149Like that's the level of evidence that we're talking about. And like for some of the canonization healing miracles for which medical documentation is required. It's like we got pictures of the dude beforehand with his severe bilateral congenital club foot. We have pictures from his childhood. You can see them and he's like we have testimonies from all like his friends and whatnot and his teachers like to the effect that he'd always have to like walk on the sides of his ankles and whatnot.
¶150And we've got pictures of him throughout childhood with that. Oh, and then he prays to one of these Catholic saints. And then afterwards, both of his legs are straight and completely healed. It's like, okay. >> And the exact same stories exist for every other religion.
¶151The exact same stories exist for Buddhists. The exact same stories exist for people who go to Tibet and they have these miraculous miracles in Tibet. The exact same things exist for these monks. the exact same things exist for uh the Hindu culture and for the people who uh who are Hindu. Um you know the exact same things the exact same stories uh are involved with the Native Americans.
¶152The exact same stories are uh are you know for for every single place on this planet. Just because some sort of miraculous thing happens once again does not mean that the Bible's right. All it means is that there's more that we don't understand. And let's not try to rush to make it mean something that it doesn't mean. Right?
¶153I don't agree with denying the data if it's if it's data that was collected in a clean manner. Right? like that that whole situation with a with a miracle with this person, you know, you know, okay, maybe he had secretly had surgery in Mexico or some [ __ ] like that, right? But I I'm you know, we don't have to argue with that kind of thing. We don't have to argue that this experience didn't happen for this specific person.
¶154I'm wholly and willing to accept that it happened for the person does not mean that this is why, right? Uh, if you ever are a big fan of Whitley Streber, you can ask and read and see about some of the more fun little ET healings. I wonder if you go into that at all. Right. People who say that they have some sort of alien encounter and suddenly they're healed.
¶155Right. The grays took away my cancer. [laughter] Like it wasn't Jesus. Jesus is gray, right? All that means is that we live in this experience that we don't understand.
¶156That's it. All that means is that the experience of consciousness is more complex than we realize. That's it. That does not mean that Christianity is the one true religion. Right?
¶157This is this is where I say that just because you are able to prove that a miracle exists, right? I've had a lot of things happen in my life. I've had what I would classify as miracles happen in my life. if you're curious, my dark story. Uh, and if not my dark story, then the one prior to that where I open up about my story.
¶158I, you know, I typically will retell my story, you know, once a year or something like that or maybe once every couple every few months, once every six to eight months, I typically retell the story. Uh, so if you're curious about that, you can go look for it. My dark story is just the most recent one that I've done. And you can look at those experiences and be like, "Oh my god." But guess what? It wasn't, oh my Christianity.
¶159It was just, oh, my experience of whatever the hell this experience is, right? That's it. You don't need to get all deep about it. You don't need to get all Christian about it, right? Um, there's a fun book by uh Whitley Streer.
¶160What's the name of the book? Uh, it's right here. Little Soul School. That's not it. Communion.
¶161Yeah, Whitley Streamer. Communion. Right. You want to love it, you want to hate it, I don't care. Doesn't bother me because like I said, I've had my own experiences.
¶162And so to me, um, I don't I don't debate about the whole ET thing because I, you know, for me, it's like debating a flat earth. It's just you're going to get nowhere with a person who just believes in a flat earth, you know, and and to be frank, we live in a universe that's just teeming with life at every speck everywhere that we look, you know. Oh, we haven't found it yet. Just because you haven't found something doesn't mean that it doesn't exist, right? So, with that being said, um uh yeah, so things happen, right?
¶163There's there's this there's this thing that happens. There's these miracles that happen. There's these experiences that happen. I've had plenty of experiences myself. And it's funny that my experiences actually led me to walk away from Christianity.
¶164you know, um I had Well, I'll open up about this one. Do I have the book with me? Yeah, it should be right here. Yeah, right here. Um so, I had um I was afraid.
¶165I was walking away from Christianity. It was during my deconstruction and I was extremely scared. I was extremely extremely scared. Um and I remember just thinking to myself, I've gone too far. the things that I've learned, the things that I now believe are way too crazy.
¶166There's no one, there's no way that any of this is true. Um, I feel like I've I'm about to go to hell in a hand basket, right? The fear in me is being triggered. The fear of hell, all that stuff is being triggered in me. Okay, now it's funny.
¶167I would have reverted back to being Baptist, not because it was true, but because it was comfortable. Notice how this man went back to what was comfortable, not to what was necessarily true. Okay? I prayed and I said, "God, I think I've gone way too damn far. If you want me to continue on this journey, if you want me to continue going down the specific path that I was going, which was more of a path of enlightenment, teachings, and things like that.
¶168If you want me to continue going down this path, I am going to need to see Jesus in a [ __ ] place he just doesn't belong." I Okay, I didn't say it like that. I think what I said was, I need Jesus to show up for me in just a weird way. In just a weird [ __ ] way, a way that is not supposed to happen. A way that is not supposed to be Jesus is showing up like this. Right?
¶169And essentially it was just I need to see Jesus in a in a extraordinarily not Jesus way. Right now, if you're atheist, just bear with me. It's just a story to toss to the wind because like I said, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter. It does not matter. Okay.
¶170I went and I got a massage and uh while I was having a conversation with a masseuse, he got on the topic of um the different practices, yoga, things like that. And I told him that I often found a lot of the other practices really interesting. And so we started to talk about the different practices, Taichi, all this kind of stuff. And he mentioned Chiang. And I was like, "What the hell is Chiang?
¶171I've never heard of Chiang before." And he goes, "Uh, oh, Chiang. It's an ancient Buddhist whatever, whatever. I'm not going to lie. I'll be 100% real with you guys. I bought the book and you scrolled through a couple of pages and never really read it, but I had the book to reference." [laughter and gasps] But um there's a bunch of people who do the same [ __ ] They just like buy the book and they're like, "I have it now.
¶172Time to go listen to the audio book." [laughter] Um but uh but so I I was really intrigued by the whole thing and I said, "Man, you know what? I I really want to go research that." Now, mind you, you know, I Okay, I saw a picture of Jesus at the thrift store. Doesn't count. That's not special enough. You know, driving by, I saw a picture of Jesus on the side of a car.
¶173that's not special enough. You know, Jesus is posted freaking everywhere, right? I need to see Jesus in a place where he doesn't belong, right? That was kind of my whole thing. Um, and I went to the store and I decided I was going to go and research a book on Chiong, just see what they had available and just buy whatever they had at the used bookstore there.
¶174He came up with about three Yeah, he had three different books for me. Three different books. One of them was really thick. One of them was this one. And then another one was another one uh a smaller book, but it was more of like the practitioners behind Chiang and it wasn't really a ch and I was just looking from like a more introductory book.
¶175Okay? Because like I said, the path that I was walking down that I was being led down was towards kind of the more enlightenment teachings, right? And so as I walk down this path, I come across this book and um or the three books and it's pick one. And so I've looked at the other books and I'm just like, you know what? I like the green book.
¶176The green book feels good. I'm going to go with the green book. This book, The Root of Chinese Chiang. And as you can see, it is the Buddha meditating underneath the whatever tree. I forget the name of it all the time.
¶177and um and I take it home and I pop it open and I'll be damned if this thing didn't fall out of it whenever I was opening it, which was a picture of Jesus. And what did it say? It said, "Jesus, I trust in you." Right? This is just an example of the experiences that I've had. I've even had, you know, kind of TV things turn on in the middle of the night and put on very, very specific videos that involve trusting God's process.
¶178Make that make sense. how a TV just turns itself on in the middle of the night, turns on YouTube, and then puts a very specific video of a old black woman pastor preaching about trusting God's process even though you are scared and to continue to walk the path he's laid before you even when you are scared. Right? So on my side of the street and on my experiences of everything, the divine that he is claiming is showing him to be the exact way is the exact same divine that is leading me away from Christianity. Right?
¶179And I can already hear all the Christians in the contents. You weren't being led away by Jesus. You were being led away. Okay. Well, first of all, you tell me which one is the right denomination and which one's actually the right denomination.
¶180and then you know maybe I'll take your comment serious because you can't even agree on which denomination is right. Okay, there's plenty of people who are watching this video of this guy's recon conversion and saying that he's still going to burn in hell. So, uh you know, right over my head with all those arguments. So, but that's my thing, right? All that means is that this reality, this experience of what life is is more complicated than we understand.
¶181And it's and it's that simple. You leave it there because that's what we know, right? You don't extrapulate you don't extrapolate these things that happen to mean these extravagant things, right? You go into a canyon and it looks like this big massive wash out for just hundreds and hundreds of miles. Oh my god, there must have been a big flood here.
¶182My religion's right. No, that's not. All you do is you say that and you say, "hm, there must have been a flood here." And you leave it there. Right. It's it's it's Yeah, it's it's a bit crazy to me.
¶183Anyways, let's get back to this video. >> This is insane. Oh, and it's like we've got X-rays afterwards and pictures afterwards. Okay, what's going on here? And then you just go through all these other cases and it's just insane.
¶184And I just can't believe the conspiracy that I would have to posit in order to explain them all away. It just seems like the universe was conspiring to make it look like God exists. God is performing certain miracles and not just miracles, but miracles that seem to vindicate distinctive Catholic doctrines. You got, for instance, very well evident Eucharistic miracles. You got extremely well evidence.
¶185>> I have to call the hard [ __ ] on that one. I just, you know, the the whole idea that the universe is going to support Catholic doctrine, the universe, your brain is going to support whatever you want it to support and you are going to go find evidence to make it support that, right? That's that's just that's just the truth, right? Am I completely opening to the idea that there is no such thing as a god? Of course I am, right?
¶186Because ultimately when we die, that's whenever we actually see the true fabric of reality. Are we just going to turn into dirt? Are we going to actually walk out of our bodies? Right now, if you are curious about walking out of your bodies, you can go over to the Monroe Institute and you can learn how to go through that path there. Um, yeah, I'm not going to say anything else about that.
¶187Um, so just because you know we live in a supportive universe where the guy who focuses on making money his entire life makes a [ __ ] ton of money. The guy who focuses on, you know, Buddha his entire life meets the Buddha. The guy who focuses on, you know, building the biggest businesses in life creates the biggest businesses. It's almost like we just find the data that we want to see and we create it to make it work for us, right? Um yeah, you guys let me know down in your comments in the comments section what you kind of think about this whole thing.
¶188I mean, I think it's a bit ridiculous to think that this this system, this experience that we're having has, you know, has these um, you know, has these uh, what do you call it? Um, these specific, oh, I can't think of the uh, the word like it wants you to walk in a specific religious path versus another religious path, you know. Um but nonetheless we'll continue >> Marian apparitions like Fatima and Lords and Zetun where like Mary is like granting requests for conversion to Catholicism. She's saying get the Holy Father to consecrate Russia outside of his jurisdiction by the way to my immaculate heart thereby vindicating the immaculate conception which only Catholics stmmatize. And of course you know she's like as I said granting petitions to convert people to Catholicism.
¶189She's like telling people to pray the rosary. pray the rosary. So, she's like advancing the cause of praying the rosary, which of course meditates on mysteries like the assumption and the coronation of Mary. Oh, and of course, it's like it's Mary herself, the mother of God, appearing to people. It's like it's just shot through with Catholic vindicatory implications.
¶190And there are all sorts of reasons why naturalistic explanations aren't good and why demonic explanations aren't good. And that's just fanma like it lures who got married telling St. Bernardet Subaru like or however it is like we don't know you want she's literally saying to St. I am the immaculate conception. I mean, how much clearer could you possibly get?
¶191And then God just goes out of his way to perform like the most unprecedented string of like concentrated medically documented healing miracles in all of history at Lords. Just insane. Or you know, if I want to be I want to be French L. Oh, and God's also going like out of his way on multiple occasions on multiple different continents and in multiple different centuries. He's going out of his way to like make sure that when like a Catholic priest Oh, it only seems to be Catholic.
¶192Oh. Oh, shut the [ __ ] up. Hold on. >> Oh, shut the [ __ ] up. Oh my god.
¶193[laughter] Sorry. I just I just I had to stop that [ __ ] right immediately. Only Catholic priests. Really? Only Catholic priests?
¶194Because now we're right back to the same [ __ ] where it's like, "Oh, the Catholics are right. The Baptists are wrong. The Pentecostals are wrong. The Orthodoxy are wrong. The Jewish are wrong.
¶195The Muslims are wrong. These people are wrong. That people's wrong. The Lutheran are wrong. The Mormons are wrong.
¶196The, you know, everybody else is wrong. It's only the Catholics that have the right [ __ ] translation. You are never ever going to change my mind on that ever. Okay? It's stupid.
¶197But in general, once again, uh, notice the focus. the focus is on let me go find all of the evidence that supports my religion. Right? If you go to the Hindu culture, right? If we get out of the United States and we go and explore a different language, which oh my god, I would love to do that.
¶198I would absolutely love to travel around the world and just be like, "Tell me your healing stories so that we can get this Christian [ __ ] over with, [laughter] you know, like let's let's go to the Buddhist teachings and all this kind of stuff. Let's go. Uh teachings of enlightenment, teachings of unattachment, teachings of you know that that you are a part of this divine experience and that you are a part of this system that is beautiful creation and that when you meditate you can reach these different altered states of consciousness uh that allows you to experience the different beauties of your own experience of life. Right? And then we can listen to all the miracles all of the miracles.
¶199Right? Whenever I had the Buddhist uh roommate, I asked him about miracles and he had story after story after story after story after story after story about all of his miracles. Right? I on my spiritual journey of investigating. I ended up in a very interesting very interesting I almost don't want to call them out, but it was kind of creepy.
¶200[laughter] I'm not going to lie. It's like but you know it was a very it was an offshoot. I don't even know what it was. I just know that there was a lot of chanting and I was very uncomfortable inside this building. I was like okay maybe I shouldn't explore this much.
¶201[laughter] But um nonetheless I was not in any danger that I knew of. But uh why did they believe in their specific religion? Because it was still a religion. Why did they believe in their specific religion? Because they made a lame person walk.
¶202A person who had been wheelchair bound their entire life now can now walk. No Jesus necessary. Just I I don't even I'm not even going to act like I know what the hell, right? Uh but you know their focus on channeling the consciousness of whatever the [ __ ] this experience is into healing that person according to them is what healed that person, right? Um and uh and yeah, it's just, you know, every religion has their stories.
¶203Just because you found a bunch of Christian stories that seem to fit your thing does not mean that you can encapsulate the entirety of the consciousness of the universe into the Bible's right. Right. I often say that if you did write a book about the universe, it would have to be uh or if you did write a book about, you know, what kind of the divine consciousness one, it would have to be two books. It would have to be a book that was completely blank and had nothing in it because that is how simple getting it right in life is. You exist.
¶204Congratulations. You got it right in life. Well, John, that doesn't make sense. What about all the horrible people? What about all the horrible things that happen?
¶205What about all these atrocities? Well, didn't last week you just went out and took a bunch of poison and poisoned like six different ant colonies that were sitting around your lawn. Are you not a part of the atrocities that happen in the universe? Right? Like let's not let's acknowledge that people are kind of [ __ ] They're a little [ __ ] crazy.
¶206And you know, for some reason we enjoy fighting and killing that that's just whatever it is, whether it's an evolutionary thing or whatever, right? Um but uh I forgot where I was going with that. But still the the point is is very similar. You know just because you can prove that mysterious things happen. You are laser etched in making your religion the right one.
¶207Right? Because once again, if you go back in the channel and you look at we I did a reaction video where a Mormon and a Protestant, I don't know what the hell, maybe he's Baptist, probably Baptist. A very Baptist thing to do to want to fight with other Christians. Um the Baptist boxers, right? Um it's, you know, he sits there and he has the same [ __ ] book.
¶208He's got the King James version. This lady's got the King James version. when they're going back to back with each other, using the same damn book, telling each other that they're going to burn in hell and that they have the right interpretation and that they have all of the right evidence and that they have spiritual manifestations and that they have all these miraculous things that happens inside. Yet, both of them are pointing each other and they saying that they're going to burn in hell forever and ever and ever. We just did the video where I was out of lack of sleep, [laughter] but we just did a video where, you know, these seven denominations are secretly Satan, right?
¶209You can't even agree on what's right. So don't expect us when we can clearly see that you can't even agree on what's right to be like, "Oh, suddenly you have the right thing." You know, I've I've been wanting to do a series uh for a very long time on, you know, what are, you know, the pre-Christian beliefs, the pre-Christian, all that kind of stuff. I've been wanting to go kind of like in the native side of things, right? not all the things that we already know, the things about, you know, all of the uh the European religions, the the pagan stuff, the the Buddhist stuff, the the the the Hindu stuff, you know, all the Eastern religions. I've been wanting to focus on the Americas, right?
¶210There's the Mayas, the Aztecs, the Incas, the the native u the Cherokee, all these kind of, you know, and so there's a a wealth of spiritual questions here to be answered, too, right? And I' I've been wanting to just hear the stories, kind of see what the perspectives are, right? At the end of the day, you know, I I always hear, well, the Aztecs, they were sacrificing humans to their gods. Okay, so then what's Jeepa? Why is it that your God here also needs blood?
¶211What's the whole deal with Abel, right? When God decided that, you know, or when God decided that he was going to curse the entire planet, a loving God curses his own creation and then complains about it and then destroys it and then continues to curse it and even after he's forgiven it, continues to curse it, right? uh a a a loving being is supposedly killing his own and he's cursing his own and he's accepting sacrifices, blood sacrifices, right? He didn't even get three generations in before he had to have something die. He needed blood.
¶212Why? Why is it that when somebody wrongs me, I can just forgive them and I can just accept that they made a mistake and I can accept that they missed the mark in a specific aspect when interacting with me and I can forgive them and I can love them and I can move on with my life. I don't [ __ ] go after their hamster and say that [ __ ] hamster needs to die. That guinea pig, give me the damn guinea pig. [laughter] the damn guinea pigs.
¶213[laughter] Did you see the eyes? John's taking them away for animal sacrifice because blood needs to be shed in order to forgive some [ __ ] Really? No. No blood needs to be shed. It's kind of Yeah.
¶214>> The priest prays over Sabrina. It turns, oh my goodness, there's suffering myocardial tissue afterwards. like we've got scientific. >> Did the priest sneeze while he was praying over the bread? Was he spitting on the bread?
¶215[laughter] Was his epithelial tissue cells being falling into the bread? And then they sampled that, right? >> Documentation there like blinded laboratories and like blinded scientists who look at these things and we also have the pictures of them that we can compare and you can can even ask AI to look at the pictures and it's like oh yeah like seems like mus muscular skeletal or some kind of like muscular tissue. It's like hm. And of course, you know, the miracle at hand simulates like precisely the ontological change that Catholics believe in.
¶216And there are so many other things that I'm leaving out, but like finally, >> okay, guys. So, we've arrived. The Catholics are the only ones that are right. It's only the Catholics. Now, we all have to convert to Catholicism.
¶217So, I'm going to have to let all of my family who are missionaries know that no, you need to become Catholic now because it's not just, you know, I knew I know I know that we were Baptist, but apparently we were wrong because it's only Catholics and apparently only the priests, the same priests that are touching little boys, uh, are the ones that are, you know, the the ones that God are moving through. So, we have to become Catholic. Now, it's like, okay. In February this year, I sat down with Ethan Muse for like four hours to talk about the overwhelming evidence behind St. Padre Peio's mystical charrorisms.
¶218Like we have we have doctors who issue reports like immediately afterwards where they're like, "Yeah, I literally ended describing in like tremendous detail their observations like like yeah, I literally palpated his hands and his feet." And like he's like describing like, "Yeah, I felt a palpable void in between his hands and it was separated by thin membranes on both sides." Oh, and another doctor on an earlier occasion was like, "Yeah, I examined it and there was like a complete hole going through his entire hand such that I could literally read things on the other side of the hand if I like or if I put his hand up against it." So, it's like, "Okay, what's going on?" Oh, and then he has these for like five decades long with a bunch of other people seeing them. We have pictures of them. We have videos of them. thousand, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, probably millions of people saw these over the course of those 50 years. >> You know, there's another idea that kind of flies around different spiritual camps and stuff like that is that the Old Testament God is actually some sort of just race from another, you know, from another planet.
¶219It's just a race from another thing. Now, that would make sense, you know. Now, we would understand that if it was just a species from another planet, that doesn't necessarily mean that that species is the divine creator of the entire universe. That just means it's another species from another planet. You know, how we occasionally will take, you know, a chicken and a dog and try to make them have sex and see what happens.
¶220You know, anybody ever do that? No, I was the only one. I'm just kidding. I was not the only one. Wait, no, I [laughter] didn't MEAN IT LIKE THAT.
¶221I DIDN'T mean that. I was not the only one. I mean, I didn't do that. That's [laughter] so funny. Oh my.
¶222I was clearly not the only one doing that experiment. [laughter and gasps] Doing that experiment. No, but you know, I mean, yeah. You know, we play around with different species, right? There are scientists who have these little beers filled with E.coli and they change their DNA.
¶223They add these different scripts. They add these different proteins. They add these different environmental pressures and they see how these different E.coli uh change based off of their experimentation. They see how these E.coli, okay, we put in this specific gene into the genome of this specific E.coli ecoli and now whenever this specific ecoli is exposed to this external environmental pressure it should start to run this script for this specific gene that should then start producing this specific protein right that kind of stuff right we do the same damn thing so it's not unreasonable to see that in this massive universe that is filled with that is just absolutely teeming with life that there couldn't be some other thing come from some other place and decide to have a little experiment here on Earth. In which case, then you could argue, okay, yeah, maybe those [ __ ] beings are [ __ ] psycho as [ __ ] and they are actually kind of [ __ ] crazy and they do in fact kill their own people.
¶224And that would make sense because, you know, at the end of the day, when we are finished with an experiment, what do we do? We exterminate everything that we've created, right? When you you exterminate the E.coli, E coli, you exterminate the mice. You exterminate all of these things. We do these things.
¶225We create these things. We run these experiments. And then at the end of those beings lives, we kill them, right? And so that can make sense, right? And so, you know, that's one possible, you know, argument as to the reason why, you know, this whole situation is so crazy and [ __ ] But you know when it comes to that kind of thing I think there is a much more physical you know physical answer to these things.
¶226Now once again this is not something that should unsettle you. Trust me you know the universe has been here so much longer than we've existed here. So just like you slept safe for the last 20 to 40 to 60 years of your life. You will sleep safe tonight. you know, just like you've had to pay your bills for the last 20 to 40 to 60 years of your life, rent is still going to be due on the first, that is not going to change, right?
¶227So, that's kind of this this whole thing. It's like life is not to be taken this serious. Okay? It's not unreasonable to assume that there is some sort of other thing um that is acting and that other thing could have been recorded you know Elijah's wheel and a wheel in a wheel or you know uh you know the Israelites being led by this you know pillar of light at night whatever you know I would be much more open to it accepting uh to accepting a a um I'd be much more accepting uh open to accepting an explanation like that than I would be to accepting that the ultimate creator of this entire experience of the universe is that random race of people from that planet. Like that's not right.
¶228Um and so you know if you're not really a big ET or if you don't believe in UFOs, you know, I'm sorry you had to listen to all of that. Um, I I don't try to hide the topic. Um, I just I I think it's kind of pointless at this point in time. Uh, but if you do think that I'm crazy, feel free to think that I'm crazy. Um, I, you know, you just get worn out.
¶229And sometimes you just don't care. And you're just like, you know what? This is me. This is how I am. These are the things that I've experienced.
¶230You want to argue it, go ahead. I just don't care. Right? Um, and so I've I've reached that because like I said, you know, I've been doing this channel for a few years now and I used to try to like, oh, I you know, I'm I'm kind of tippytoing around these topics and I don't want to make it seem like this and I don't want to and it's just like at this point it's like look this is me. This is who I am and these are the things that I've experienced.
¶231And so for me, you know, if you did want to make this make sense, you could argue that this is some other being from some other planet. Okay, now this makes sense. does not mean that that being from that other planet is the ultimate divine creator. Because there's plenty of times where Jesus in the New Testament points at the Old Testament God and says he's [ __ ] psycho. He tells the Pharisees, who the Pharisees, who are they worshiping?
¶232They're worshiping Yahweh. He tells the Pharisees that you've been worshiping the devil and that ye's been a murderer from the beginning. Really? Because Satan himself in the Bible has only killed a few pigs and maybe Job's family. But he only killed Job's family with the authorization from God.
¶233So how can Satan have been a murderer from the beginning if the very first person to kill anyone is God himself? Right? God killed everybody on the planet. Everybody on the planet. Right?
¶234God killed his own children in after they've left Egypt. They were hungry. They've been eating this magic bread forever and they wanted some fresh food and God said, "You want fresh food? Take some [ __ ] snakes." And a lot of them died. Funny enough, whenever Jesus is saying, "What cruel evil father?" In the New Testament, Jesus is saying, "What cruel evil father when their son asks for food sends serpents and snakes?" Yet here we are with serpents and snakes being offered up at the buffet of this all knowing condition all unconditionally loving God.
¶235Right? Just because these things happen does not mean that this is right. Okay. Oh, and then you like we've got pictures on the day of his death where he has no scars despite having deep wounds for five decades. And of course, like the ideology and the character of these wounds is just totally incompatible with various naturalistic explanations that you might profer.
¶236And then that's just the stigmata. And it's like we've got so many medically documented healing miracles with him involving like the regeneration of eyes and also like this odor of sanctity. So like where he sometimes where he goes like it would come in like waves. this like massive beautiful fragrance that would like fill rooms and that would like stay with some of his relics for like years on end. Oh, and also like dozens of times doctors are taking >> I've got I've got some odors after a long workday that's going to stay with some of my relics for years on [laughter] end.
¶237[gasps] I'm just kidding. >> His temperature and it's like getting naturalistically inexplicable readings. So like on one of the occasions a doctor has a mercury thermometer, takes his temperature under his armpit with a mercury thermometer, it literally shatters. So then they get a professional bath thermometer and then take his temperature with it and then it reads 125 degrees. I mean it's just all your organs would just utterly fail out.
¶238>> Once again does not mean Christianity is true. There is a sect of Buddhists that are focused on communicating with other beings in other galaxies and stuff like that. And they've recorded the phenomenon where when a person is meditating with the intent of communicating with another being from another planet, they're Buddhist, their body heats up to these ungodly hot temperatures, right? Does not mean Christianity is true. It just means we don't understand the experience that we're in.
¶239That's it. We don't have to. Right? Understanding this experience does not change the fact that you can still love a person completely when you meet them. This idea that God from the from the Old Testament is unconditionally loving.
¶240Really unconditionally loving. Well, then why does it seem like every step of the way he just has this long [ __ ] list of things that we have to do in order to be accepted by him? Right. Well, it's unconditionally loving. It's not unconditionally accepting.
¶241Okay. you fair fair argument but still an unconditionally loving if it was true genuine love what is love is this kind of like eminence this kind of care like I love you so much I care about you I don't want something bad to happen to you I you know you're this you're this beautiful thing in my experience and I just want to just hold you in this beauty right like this that's kind of loving kind of eminence right and if obviously you've got romantic all that kind of crap but we're talking about just kind of like general you know godly love kind of thing, right? You can have that experience with anything, everything. Right? Unconditional means no conditions.
¶242I hear this from guys all the time, and it really honestly just kind of annoys me when people are like, "The only people on the planet that experience unconditional loves are dogs and women and children." And it's like, no, they don't experience unconditional love either. Why? Because you or you are not providing them with unconditional love. Okay? You may be thinking that you're providing them with unconditional love, but you're loving them under the condition that they are your spouse.
¶243You're loving them under the condition that they are your dog, right? You're not going to love somebody else's pet that you don't know. You're not going to love somebody else's pet that just bit your pet, right? You're not going to love somebody's somebody else's spouse that just cursed out your spouse, right? So, you under the flags of unconditional love are still loving conditionally, which is what we see in the Old Testament, right?
¶244We have this person who's flying under the flag of unconditional love, but yet he kills half of his own people and he intentionally plays games with his own people and he lets Satan just run them up and he allows it. He he he basically, you know, like with the story of Job, Job said, "Hey, I know you have this little golden retriever puppy that you love so much and you just got him and he's so beautiful and you love the way he wags his tail, but I'm willing to bet you that if I killed every single one of those puppy siblings that the puppy's not going to like you anymore. Will you let me do it?" Who the hell would be like, "Yeah, kill every single one of those puppy siblings and I'm going to sit here and I'm going to watch and let's see if that puppy still loves me." And you go and let's get graphic here. We can't get too graphic because it's YouTube, right? And we're going to kill every single one of these puppies.
¶245And all of a sudden, uh, you know, we're going to we're going to kill every single one of these puppies. And all of a sudden, your crazy ass cousin comes back and says, this puppy still loves you and you were just like, "Yeah, I know the puppy will love me no matter what you do." And he's like, "Really? Well, what about if I beat the ever living [ __ ] out of the puppy?" You guys always like, "John, that's aggressive." Has life been easy on you, right? Have you not have experiences in your life where you felt like you've been beat the ever living [ __ ] out of? You know, how was that divorce?
¶246How was that portion of your life where you were completely poor and you were looking up at the sky saying, "Please fix this. Help me. I need some help in some some way." Right? And the God of the Bible is going to say, "Yeah, [ __ ] it. Let him have a couple of rips.
¶247Let Let my cousin have a couple of rips at that puppy. Let's see if he still loves me. Really? That's not That's completely psycho, right? Um Oops.
¶248What did I just do? It's It's completely psycho to to see that and say that that is the embodiment of unconditional love. It's not. It's the embodiment of unconditional manipulation. Right.
¶249>> Right. I could go on and on and there are lots of reasons why all these have like Catholic distinctive vindicatory implications where like it seems like God is going out of his way to put his stamp of approval on distinctive Catholic doctrines. My broader point is that over the course of my second and third year of grad school, I just start getting inundated with evidence for miracles firstly, but also miracles that seem to vindicate distinctively Catholic doctrines. And not just that, but just as theism offered just this like wonderfully unifying explanation of like a vast and diverse array of otherwise pretty striking and coincidental data, I started to see Catholicism >> and and for some reason you decided only to look at the Catholic's perspective of everything on a planet where there are thousands of different religions and thousands of different spiritual practices and even ancient spiritual practices that go back thousands of years. You decided to look at only the Catholic ones.
¶250Right? If you're going to be a spiritual seeker, you have to look at everything. Right? You have to what did these people teach? What were their beliefs?
¶251What were their miracles? Are these miracles verifiable? That kind of stuff. What are these people? What did they teach?
¶252What were their miracles? Are their miracles verifiable? And you have to go on the entire planet. So much so that you have to ask a goat, excuse me, sir. and he's all like [laughter] and you hold up the microphone and he just starts eating it.
¶253[laughter] You know, my sister my sister was laughing because uh she she passed me her newborn baby and I grabbed the newborn baby and I'm just like tell me you were just over there like Bane. What is the secret? [laughter] That was absolutely a butcher. That was so butchered. But [gasps] yeah, I really did like and stare this little tiny kid in the eyes and be like, "Tell me the truth right now before you forget it." Too bad he didn't speak English.
¶254He was just a baby. >> In the same light, it started to seem to me that Catholicism just unifyingly explains all this miraculous evidence, the pattern of miracles, the individual miracles. And it also would make it not particularly surprising that I might be going systematically astray with respect to some of my moral intuitions or some of my intuitions against hell or various other things like that. So I started to see Catholicism in much the same way that I saw theism. Of course I still had lots of objections to Catholicism.
¶255It was so hard to get through all of them. You know, like I had objections to hell and I had objections to the Bible and I had objections to the moral teachings of the church and I I magisterial objections and whatnot. But just over the course of yeah those two or so years I just started looking into the objections further and and they just started to wayne. And so in addition to like reading like theology and philosophy and you know magisteriology in addition to all of that I watch lots of YouTube videos but also I would just sit down for like hours on end with my >> there is a you know when it comes to the spiritual aspect of life there is a point at which I say you just have to kind of put the books away and understand that this experience is unknowable. This is it's it's that simple.
¶256We can see it. We can test it. We can throw things into beers and see how they react. And we create and we can create these hypothetical chemical reaction pathways and we can test those hypothetical reaction pathways to see if we get the different products that would support the idea that it's taking this specific pathway and all this kind of stuff, right? But when it comes to the whole of the universe and what this experience is, there is just a big huge question mark at the top, right?
¶257what exists at the very very top. It's a big, [laughter] you know, it's like even even if you had these beings that visited from other planets, you'd be like, "What is the ultimate divine experience?" And and what is it? They would be like, "We're trying to figure that [ __ ] out, too." But in the meantime, die. [laughter] You know, it it's just Yeah. So the the universe is vast.
¶258Yeah. When you peer through a telescope, it is just the most awe thing that you could ever experience in your life. Peering off into space, you feel so you just get the immensity and the vastness and the tininess and the how not serious this experience is. And even though we as a human being with our specific consciousness want everything to be so damn important ultimately it isn't right. You don't have to believe anything.
¶259You don't have to walk anything. You don't you can just exist and say you know what to me the ultimate uh eminence of the divine is love. And I am just going to walk in love and I'm going to love everybody and love everything. If everybody took that mentality of I am going to exist as the love that I expect from this eminence uh that I'm you know that this is just I'm going to walk and be the embodiment of this love that I expect from this eminence because I've decided that this eminence is love and I'm going to embody that for myself. Imagine if everybody on the planet took that exact same idea.
¶260Where would where would you have room for the stories where God allows people to rape each other and then take them as as their wives? Where would that fit in? Where in that system would God asking or people asking God for help and God responding with serpents and killing, where would that exist? Where would when Cain and Abel were in the garden and Abel brought what he did for a living, which was a [ __ ] shepherd, and when Cain brought what he did for a living, which was a [ __ ] farmer. Where in that system would it be okay for God to reject Cain's offering and call it an abominate?
¶261Okay, he doesn't call it an abomination, but he says for Cain's offering, he had no respect. Creating the first vendetta, creating the circumstances for the first murder on the planet. Make that make sense, right? We as human beings are at a point where we understand just because something comes from another star system does not mean that that is the ultimate creator of the universe. We are at the point where we understand that that is just another animal that exists in the universe and that is a part of the natural universe.
¶262We are at that point. We understand that right? Which is why I say just because there is something else does still you could still argue that there is no room you know as far as like the atheistic perspective just because something else exists in another part of the universe you can still argue that there still is no god right which is why it doesn't bother me you know I I I don't have a problem with any of that because I mean truthfully it doesn't matter anyways right you know the whole purpose of Christianity is keeping you out of hell so when you realize hell hell doesn't exist, then there's no reason for Christianity. There's no reason for all the fear. There's no reason for all the churchgoing.
¶263There's no reason for all the tithing. There's no reason for, you know, abusing your family. There's no reason for abusing your spouse. Shout out to Pastor Steven Anderson, right? There's no reason to to do all of these crazy intense things when hell doesn't exist.
¶264The purpose of Christianity is to keep us out of hell, right? >> My good friend Ethan Muse. And we would just go back and forth and back and forth on these various objections. And for the most part, he was just like systematically coming out on top. So I was like, "Oh man, what's going on here?" Um, no, but like and his responses to my objections were actually quite powerful.
¶265I mean, ultimately, it was the the 4-hour conversation with Ethan Muse on Padre Peio that convinced me intellectually that Catholicism is true. I just said to myself, like, listen, I can't imagine if I died right now and I saw Christ. I can't imagine having to tell him what I'd have to tell him by my life as a non-atholic. And I was just not willing to bet my soul on just like not only a single conspiracy, but just like a conspiracy of conspiracies that are just like conspiring to make it look as though Catholicism is true. >> Okay.
¶266Now, before we get on the betting soul, before we're wagering the soul here, okay, before we're putting put we're going all in. Okay. What if the idea of hell and that hell is just a separation from God? Okay, that why am I scared of that? Right?
¶267Why am I scared of that? That's the apologetic argument all the time is that hell is not this place that God that people are actively suffering that people are screaming and they're in torment and they're just existing on a frying pan that's never turning off. And for millennia, you were just going to burn and burn and burn and burn. And you're going to have all of the physical sensations of torment. You're going to have all the auditory sensation of torment.
¶268You're going to have all the emotional sensations of torment. And that's going to go off for eternity. Right? You can have that, but biblically speaking, that's not supported. Right?
¶269There's a video Dan Mlullen puts out about that. all that kind of stuff, right? Hell is a construct. It is created, right? Uh, you know, Jesus often used the fires of Gehenna, and there's plenty of arguments to say that Gehenna was just a trash heap.
¶270It was just a dump where they went to set everything on fire and it was just kind of stinky and it was gross and it's just a trash heap. Okay. So, there's a part of the universe where it's just kind of dark and kind of pointless and there's kind of disgusting. Sure. And there's a part that's relatively neutral and there's a part that's, you know, maybe happy and more joyous, whatever.
¶271Okay, we know that life is gradients. There is never anything that is completely black and white. We live in a world of gradients. Everywhere you go on this planet, you have gradients, right? So it's it's you are wagering that you have the correct definition of hell because if hell is just genuinely God is that light that's all the way to hell over there but it doesn't change the fact that I still enjoy my existence over here then eternal separation from that light is not a big deal.
¶272It's just not. Yeah. In which case there's still no reason to absolutely devote your life to some crazy intensely controlling thing if you know the punishment is just going to be oh you're just going to have to look at a light bulb instead of existing inside of the light bulb. Once again it's not that deep. It is not that deep.
¶273Right. Um yeah. Well, let's get through this. I'm gonna let him just finish speaking because I've already been going for pretty long. >> And so, the day after that call with you, the muse, I did my examination of conscience, covering a decade of my life away from the faith.
¶274And then the following day, I did my general confession. Praise God. Now, I will give you the intellectual side of the story, but any conversion not only has intellectual elements, it has personal elements, spiritual elements, right? Because conversion is not just a change of mind. Conversion is a change of heart.
¶275And so what helped me change my heart? I mean ultimately it was God, right? But what what changed? Well, it started with St. Greg Ready.
¶276I watched this video produced by Gabby After Hours on the story of St. Greg Ready. And long story short, she's this 11-year-old girl whose 20-year-old neighbor takes an impure liking to her. And one day, this 20-year-old neighbor, Andrew Zinelli, comes up to her and says, "No, unless you do what I want you to do, I'm going to kill you." And he's got this like long sharp object that he's pointing at her. And she says, "No, I'm going to remain pure." And so he stabs her ultimately 14 times.
¶277On her deathbed the next day, you know, she's rushed to the hospital. Somehow she survived this even though he thought he had finished the job. On her deathbed, she's like offering up all of her suffering for the salvation of souls. She's enduring patiently, not complaining. And she also says, "I forgive Andrew Sarinelli and I want him with me in paradise." You know, Andrew Sinelli is caught.
¶278He's brought to prison and he's just like this ragingly hateful man. He's just like blaming her. He's full of resentment. He's like being violent with his other roommates and whatnot. But then one night he has a dream.
¶279And in that dream, St. Mary Granny appears to him and hands him one by one 14 white liies which he of course rightly interprets as her forgiving him to each of the 14 times he stabbed her. He wakes up a completely changed man. He calls him a priest. He confesses to having murdered St.
¶280Greg Gray and he radically transforms his life to the point that now there's a cause for his canonization. It's like when I reflected on this story, I was like, "This is such a profound and beautiful story of radical forgiveness, radical love." And you as even a person who doesn't believe in God or even a person who doesn't believe in Christianity, as an atheist, are you not capable of radically forgiving? Are you not capable of radically loving? Is that to say that the best aspects of Christianity can only be found in priests? Because I think that's also where we find the darkest aspects of Christianity, is it not?
¶281It's it's it's interesting to see how this beautiful story of forgiveness and love is commandeered to mean that the faith is correct. This man had a dream. He did something. He was arrested. It's clearly fresh on his mind.
¶282And the brain creates symbolism, right? I talk down in my website. Uh if you go into the um into the meditations and exercises, I talk about how you can communicate with your body to bring up things that you specifically need to deal with. You can communicate with your body and ask your body, "What is something that I'm holding on to that is weighing me down that I need to deal with?" and you can go to bed and you can set a little notebook beside your bedside and you can just have that communication. That doesn't make any sense.
¶283Of course, your mind is turned off. So now you're not taking in data and trying to perceive. Now your mind is shifted to introspection. What's going to happen? This is where your cells are going to communicate.
¶284At least I think I like to think that that's what's going on. I have no idea what's going on. But you can look at the imagery and you can see what comes up and you'll be surprised how many times specific relationships with people will come up. Right? Set the intention before you go to bed.
¶285What am I holding on to that I'm absolutely refusing to get rid of that's affecting my life? Set that intention and go to bed. You don't need to be Christian to do this practice. What's going to happen? You're going to have a dream about your ex cheating on you.
¶286You're gonna have a dream about, you know, your boss firing you and how that was so wrong. You're gonna have a dream about how you did something to this person and you've you've refused to forgive yourself, right? Just because these things happen just because these radical forgiveness and radical love because guess what? It exists in Buddhism. Guess what?
¶287It exists in Hindu. Guess what? It exists in the natives. It guess what? It exists in every in every aspect of the planet.
¶288Radical forgiveness and radical love. Do we not see that from our dogs? You get mad, you get angry, maybe you hit the dog, and guess what? The dog loves you anyway. The dog forgives you anyway, right?
¶289Is that not so? So So what? The dog is Catholic now. Funny story on that. I have seen pets who refuse to eat their food before praying.
¶290I think it's the cutest damn thing, you know, and obviously that is very much trained into the animal. I mean, let's just be real about it, okay? Um, but uh it's it's so it's so cute to see that [ __ ] though. I'm not going to lie. It's so [ __ ] cute.
¶291Um, but but yeah, you're saying that only Catholics are capable of this radical forgiveness. I've completely walked away from my relationship with Christianity, completely abandoned the religion and on my path where once again you can go to my dark story all this kind of stuff and I talk about how I was led out of Christianity when I devoted myself to God. I was very much led out of Christianity. It was funny how on my path, walking away from Christianity, how forgiveness and letting go of things that were coming up in my life and blocking my life and interfering with my life still came up to the forefront. Funny.
¶292That's a Catholic thing. Radical forgiveness. Me for forgiving my mom for the time that uh oh man, there there's just a billion things that just rushed into my mind and I'm like, "Okay, hold on. Which one am I going to focus on?" [laughter] Right. uh me forgiving my mom for the time that she barged in on me and my ex-wife um doing the deed premaritaly and instead of backing away from the room, she's decided to try to force her way into the room so that she could preach at both of us while we're buttass naked in the room.
¶293Right? You'd be surprised how long a person wants to hold that against a person. Right? I did not want to forgive my mom for that moment. Period.
¶294But you know what's funny? As I was walking down my own path and I was as I was just walking down the path that was led before me or not led before me, maybe I was leading myself. Who the [ __ ] knows, right? As I was going down this path that came up, John, you need to forgive absolutely everything and everyone if you want to be the best eminent, most loving version of yourself. Okay.
¶295And I said, and I and I went and I and I would have these days where I, okay, you know, I'm going to communicate with my body. What is the one thing that's keeping me from being able to accept love in my life? And I'll be damned if I didn't have a reoccurring dream about my mom busting into my room while I'm in there with another girl and she refuses to leave. And I lose my [ __ ] in the dreams. Every single one.
¶296And it's a reoccurring dream. What is it? It's my body telling me you're not letting go of this [ __ ] There's still a mind map, a dendritic connections of all of these nervous uh of all of these neurons. There's still this imprint of hatred and you're asking us the cellular existence what the thing is that's holding you back. This is what's holding you back.
¶297Right? When you ask your body, what is it that's keeping me from becoming successful? And your body shows you a dream of somebody offering you something and you reject it and somebody else accepts that same opportunity and you get pissed and mad and annoyed at the fact that they accepted that opportunity even though you rejected it. when you you know whatever you know you don't need to be Catholic you don't need to be Christian you don't need to be Buddhist you don't need to be Hindu you don't need to be Muslim to live a beautiful experience you don't need to be Catholic Muslim Buddhist whatever to forgive a person you know last I checked when my dad forgave me for something I did. He didn't demand that one of my pets die.
¶298He just forgave me and then he let it go, right? Radical purity. It's like listen, whatever she's on, I want some of that. And so this is like one step along the path of kind of instilling within me a kind of magnetic pole, kind of magnetic attraction to Catholicism. The same thing happened with uh St.
¶299Max Py. And of course, I was already quite quite affected by the figure of Christ in the Gospels. You know, he speaks with his authority. um you know he's he's preaching like radical love of neighbor like radical forgiveness radical self-sacrifice and that was already quite attractive to me but the stories of some of these saints and you learn there lots of others too like St. Wai um really influenced me and then in addition to that I had these like quasi religious experiences where I was just like I just be sitting in gym and I would just feel almost in waves just like this sense you could be a saint you could be a saint I didn't actually like hear a voice in my head but I knew that that that somehow was what's being communicated to me right I just felt this palpable call to saintthood as I said almost like in ways and at the same time I was being convicted of my >> the same palpable call that Christians say oh I I've told the stories before.
¶300The same palpable called it. God did not want this specific person to treat his cancer because God was going to set him as a miracle to show that God could heal him from his prostate cancer. He was going to forego the surgery because God wanted him to hold on to his ability to procreate. Even though he already had seven [ __ ] kids, God wanted him to hold on to his ability to procreate. And after 3 years of a bunch of running around and all of these fake therapies and all of these tens of thousands of dollars that were raised by all sorts of people from different churches, the end result ended up being, well, now ga God has called me to have the surgery when I'm stage four and I'm fighting for my life and I'm starting to sit with the realization that God's not going to show up for this guy and uh he's about to die and in every last ditch effort he's going through chemotherapy because now God has sanctioned that uh that that chemotherapy is what's the right path for him.
¶301And now God has sanctioned that the the surgery to remove his prostate is what's right for him. And at the very very end and and God was going to use him as a miracle to uplift God and he died. And now he's left a widow that had to pick up life the hard way because he was one of those people who believed the women stay home and work and they're uneducated and they stay uneducated. Really this is this is what I say that just because these stories exist these stories exist everywhere does not mean that you and this book are factual. It just means that there are some aspects that we don't understand.
¶302That's all. my sin. I was just seeing the manifold ways in which I seriously fall short of how I'm supposed to live. And so God was here just launching like a full frontal assault on me to get me converted, right? He's just like putting all these like overwhelmingly beautiful and inspiring saint stories on my radar.
¶303He's making them have a significant impact on me. Um he's like giving me these like quasi religious experiences to kind of call me the saint. He's giving me this like weird almost indescribable magnetic attraction to Catholicism. Um and his frontal assault succeeded in changing my heart. You know, at some point in every conversion, someone goes from that reaction that I said earlier, like, oh no.
¶304Like, there's so much of it in circumcision like you're like, "Oh no." At some point, you go from that to like, "Oh man, this is so wonderful. This is so beautiful. You have a change of heart." And so, God effectuated that within me. And so, it was a combination of the kind of head factors and the heart factors that ultimately culminated in that general confession. God is good.
¶305So good. Don't write off who you take to be even the hardest of sinners because we're s of bounds. Grace of bounds all the more. Now, I said at the beginning of the video that I've got some cool things to share. So, one of those is a new channel intro.
¶306So, let's get >> Okay, so I'm going to stop the video right there. I don't know where to go with this. I I don't know where to go with this, you know. I I I just don't know where to go with this, you know. Um, I I'm not left speechless.
¶307Oh, look, John was left speechless. No, I just don't know whether to go on the consistency of doesn't mean he got the right denomination. I don't know whether to go down the path of just because he's creating these things in his mind and he's focusing on these things and he's researching these things with all intensity that these things are in his awareness and now he's looking around and he's seeing these little oddities that exist out in the world and he's meaning and creating those little oddities to mean in his experience that it is it is what God wants him to do. And he's been studying saints and all this kind of stuff. And so obviously he's really intent in this and and he has this maybe this ego thing where you know maybe as a child he didn't feel now I'm not saying this to ridicule I want to make that very clear but maybe as a child he's felt like he's supposed to be special in some way and so maybe that's the call of the saintthood kind of thing right I'm not making fun of him okay every single person with childhood trauma when you don't deal with that childhood trauma and when you don't address that childhood trauma and you don't address the emotions.
¶308Your ego creates these situations where it just I want to be special. I want to be seen. I want to be unique. I want to be loved. I want to be heard on my specific path toward the enlightenment teachings.
¶309Once again, it hurt. Why? Because on my path, I had to accept I'm not unique. I'm not special. I'm just me.
¶310I'm just this human being having this experience. And this is the stuff that I love to do. And so, I make these videos. I had to confront the fact that when I look in the mirror, I can't see a person who's better than everybody else. When I look in the mirror, I can't see a person when I when I look at another person who who's a millionaire.
¶311And then I look at a person who has nothing. I can't see that person who's a millionaire as worthy and more valuable as a person who has nothing. I can't look at a person who has this beautiful relationship, this beautiful spousal agreement or partnership with a person and a person who's been single and who's never been able to hold down a consistent relationship and hold one over the other. It's just this experience. That is it.
¶312We move through life. We choose the things that we decide is for us. Well, John, I didn't choose this relationship. My husband was abusing me. The the the only reason why this is on my mind is because the widow that I'm that I'm helping to get back to Alaska to prepare her for wintertime.
¶313I'm leaving in a couple of weeks. This relationship was abusive. this shouldn't have happened to me and I hear you and I'm sorry that you felt that way but you stayed. Right? It hurts to hear that.
¶314Right? Whenever there's growth, it's from looking at your patterns. It's from looking at your flaws. Yeah. Okay, guys.
¶315I'm going to end the video there. I hope you enjoyed the video. I uh really enjoyed making this video. Um like I said, I didn't know what kind of I wanted to react to today and so um I was just kind of scrolling through things and then the Mind Shift uh Mind Shift's a great channel. Brandon's a really cool guy.
¶316He popped up on there and then I remember seeing this video and I was like, "Oh yeah, I should do a reaction to that." So, okay guys, thank you so much. Um like and subscribe. I do appreciate it. Down, if you'd like to interact with me, you can go down in the comments. There's my website, obviously, my email.
¶317Hold on, let me put it right there. My email is right here. If you'd like to be a part of the show and share your experience on how you left Christianity, then of course I'm always welcome with open arms and an open heart to hear your story and to honor whichever direction you've decided to walk in. So guys, thank you so much. We will see you in the next one.