¶1One thing that my Catholic education instilled in me was just a love of truth. I don't know exactly how to describe it, but somehow that was just badgered into me. It's just like truth is something like sacred, you know, like you need to pursue truth at all costs. And so it wouldn't be surprising at all if I just am making some mistake in my assessment of the hell arguments cuz those were just like it's theoretical speculative philosophy and I don't know, maybe there's something I'm missing. Still, I wanted to dent its evidential [music] force in my mind and there were various things that did that.
¶2But fundamentally how I got over it was I am a finite limited [music] fallible creature. God has manifestally vindicated his church and maybe I don't know exactly how to respond to it but I submit my intellect [music] and will to what is being manifestally promagated to me as truth with divine stamp of approval. Even if you can't resolve your particular difficulties with purgatory you know like again God has manifestally vindicated the Catholic Church so you should submit to Rome TM. There is an objectively grave obligation that everyone has to submit to Rome. an obligation whose culpable violation dams you if you don't adequately repent.
¶3Or you could think that maybe uh I don't know what the church says about the [music] following. So I fully submit my intellect and will to the magisterium. If what I say is against the magisterium, then take a lighter and burn it. Put it on a hard drive. Burn it.
¶4And I will be the first there to celebrate the burning. Okay. I know what you're thinking. This is another video about Josh's conversion to Catholicism. You have probably watched five of them by now.
¶5But hear me out because I want to compare Joe's intellectual standards before and after his conversion as a window into the frailty of human reason and the power of cognitive bias. Something that other content creators might not have touched on. This video is not just about Joe. It is about why all of us should be more mindful of our own thinking processes when making major decisions, especially decisions involving strong emotions. My channel is called Mindful Living for a reason.
¶6I'm not here to persuade people to give up their religion. I'm here to promote a more introspective way of living, one that makes us more aware of what is happening inside us, including what shapes our emotions and decisions. We humans are very good at selfdeception. We may tell ourselves that we make decisions rationally when in reality our emotions make the decision first. We then rationalize that decision afterward to preserve our self-image.
¶7Nobody wants to admit that they make important decisions impulsively or based on primarily on feelings. Most of us want to see ourselves as reasonable and prudent. But in some forms of religion, acting on faith or surrendering our intellect is treated as perfectly normal, justified, and sometimes even celebrated. I completely disagree with that mindset. Today I'm going to use Joe Shim's conversion as an example of what I mean.
¶8Joe said that prior to his conversion, he valued truth. He regarded it as sacred and believed that we should pursue it at all costs. One thing that my Catholic education instilled in me was just a love of truth. >> I don't know exactly how to describe it, but somehow that was just badgered into me. It's just like truth is something like sacred, you know, like you need to pursue truth at all costs.
¶9This version of Joe resonated with me. I would recommend that everyone listen to this version of Joe. We should prioritize truth. We should want to live according to what we have good reason to believe is true. That is the heart of skepticism.
¶10We do not believe something merely because someone tells us is true. We make an effort. We investigate. We critically evaluate the evidence and then accept what the process suggests is true. even when we do not like the conclusion.
¶11That is what the scientific method is designed to do. It tries to filter out human biases and arrive at conclusions that are as objective as humanly possible. Before his conversion, Joe demonstrated a rigorous commitment to skepticism. We can see that in his book, The Majesty of Reason, he writes, "The ultimate aim of this book is to inspire. It is to inspire your curiosity, your wonder, your hunger for knowledge.
¶12It is to inspire an impassion and flaming love for truth, an appetite for learning and an appreciation for the majesty of reason. We are explorers, seekers with the tools of rational and critical thinking in hand. We embark on our journey towards truth as chewing tribalism and us versus them thinking. He also emphasizes relentless intellectual perseverance. Intellectual perseverance is a committed rejection of intellectual laziness.
¶13Those with intellectual perseverance see barriers, hardships, and obstacles in their intellectual life as challenges to be overcome and opportunities for growth. Instead of giving up their pursuit of truth when it gets tough, they dig even deeper into the issues, read and investigate further, and grow in knowledge and understanding. That is beautiful. I'm sold. I also want to pursue truth without becoming intellectually lazy or allowing motivated reasoning to determine my conclusions.
¶14I would have loved to be friends with the former Joe because he understood something deeply important. Many Christians accuse skeptics of being hypers skeptical as though no amount of evidence for a miracle would ever persuade us. That is not fair. I'm cautious about miracle claims partly because they appear to violate our established understanding of nature and there are no scientifically confirmed cases of that happening. But that is not the only reason and also cautious because of the sheer number of alleged miracles that have been exposed as false.
¶15The prevalence of religious scams in both Christian and non-Christian traditions. the remarkably poor evidence supporting many miracle claims when we should expect much stronger evidence if they were true and the undeniable fact that many people are persuaded by claims that later turn out to be false given how many miracle claims are accepted credulously caution is appropriate and it's not only skeptics who should be cautious everyone should be if you are religious you may need to be even more careful because someone can deceive you by using religious ideas and language that are already familiar and emotionally meaningful to you. So, I do not think what I'm advocating on this channel is controversial. I like the Joe before his conversion. I like his willingness to put in the effort, critically examine claims, evaluate the evidence, draw reasonable conclusions, and guard against allowing cognitive biases to determine what he believes.
¶16And then everything changed. Joe recently announced that he had converted to Catholicism. >> Big news. God exists. Christ is Lord and he established the Catholic Church.
¶17I'm not kidding. I just converted to Catholicism. >> Not [clears throat] merely a theist, not merely a generic Christian, a Catholic. And he's not just saying that Catholicism is the tradition he personally prefers while other Christian traditions are equally acceptable. No, he explicitly says that God has refuted Protestantism.
¶18God has disproven Protestantism. Mary's appearing to people. She's granting requests like saintly intercession. Like if you're a Protestant, you don't believe in saintly intercession. Again, like God has refuted you.
¶19>> So much for his showing tribalism and us versus then thinking which the former Joe preached against in his book. What changed? Did Joe finally discover Catholic miracles that survived his philosophically rigorous scrutiny? Does he now have sufficient evidence to conclude not only that God exists, but that God specifically endorses Catholicism over Protestantism? If so, I would genuinely like to know.
¶20As I said at the beginning of this video, I'm pursuing truth. If the Catholic God is real, I want to know. But I was extremely disappointed. For some reason, Joe lowered his standards. He allowed poor evidence to pass and even filled in gaps in ways that favored Catholicism.
¶21He did things that his former self would not have permitted. What do I mean by that? For example, Joe places considerable weights on Marian apparitions, claiming that they vindicate Catholicism. 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.
¶22You've got for instance very well evidence eucharistic miracles. You've got extremely well evidence Marian apparitions like Fatima and Lords and Zetun where like Mary is like granting requests for conversion to Catholicism. >> Let's talk about Zon for a moment. I already have a video about Zun which I will link in the description. So I will not spend time here explaining why I find the case suspicious.
¶23But let's grant for the sake of argument that something genuinely miraculous happened. How would that vindicate distinctive Catholic doctrines? The apparition supposedly appeared above a Coptic Orthodox church if God intended this miracle to vindicate Catholicism specifically. Why did Mary not appear above a Catholic church? Remember, Joe did not merely convert to Catholicism.
¶24He believes that Catholicism is the tradition God endorses. He explicitly says that God has disproven Protestantism. I doubt Joe would similarly claim that God has refuted Coptic Orthodoxy since Catholicism recognizes the Coptic Orthodox Church as apostolic even though it is not in full communion with Rome. Still, if Joe were consistent, he should acknowledge that Zaiton supports Coptic Orthodoxy at least as much as it supports Catholicism and arguably more. It makes no sense to claim that an apparition above a Coptic Orthodox church specifically vindicates Catholicism.
¶25When Joe discusses Fatima, he says it vindicates Catholicism partly because it occurred within a Catholic context. If he applied that principle consistently, he should say that Zun vindicates Coptic Orthodoxy. After all, that apparition occurred above a Coptic Orthodox church. So why does he classify it as evidence for Catholicism instead? What does that tell us about his mythology?
¶26What would the former Joe have said about this apparent double standard and the tribalism behind it? Actually, we do not even need to compare the current Joe with his earlier agnostic writings. We can simply apply the framework he now uses when evaluating miracles in other religious traditions. >> At least for my research, they fall into three broad categories. one is um they're just like relatively easily naturalistically explicable.
¶27So there just are natural explanations of the relevant phenomena. But secondly, even if there aren't naturalistic naturalistic explanations, it may very well be the case that God is performing certain signs in other religions, not in confirmation or vindication of distinctive doctrines that are incompatible with Catholicism, but just out of compassion for people. Like that's what a healing miracle in a Protestant service is, right? And they do happen in Protestant services. They happen all the time.
¶28medical documentation for them of course but that's not that's not vindicating distinctively a protestant can heal someone in the name of Jesus and there can be eucharistic miracles >> yes exactly yeah god's love for humanity or just compassionating people out of god's mercy like yeah healings happen to Muslims when they pray to Allah because they believe in the same God >> in other words according to Joe the Catholic God can refute Protestantism while still performing miracles in Protestant settings out of compassion those miracles do not necessarily vindicate ate Protestantism. So Joe sees that a miracle occurring within a particular religious context does not automatically vindicate that tradition. But if that explanation is available for miracles in non-atholic settings, why does he not seriously consider it when evaluating miracles that he wants to claim for Catholicism? Zu makes this inconsistency especially obvious. The apparition occurred above a Coptic Orthodox church, not a Roman Catholic church.
¶29More importantly, the apparition reportedly remained silent and delivered no doctrinal message. If the apparition had instructed people to submit to the Roman magisterian, I would agree that Joe had some basis for saying that it vindicated Catholicism. But nothing like that happened. Imagine that Joe encountered a compelling miracle in a Protestant church and immediately declared that it vindicates Catholicism. People would understandably ask how and why.
¶30Yet that is essentially what he does with Zaiton. He fills in the doctrinal blanks in favor of his own tradition and then list Zun alongside Fatima Padra Peio and Eucharistic miracles as evidence for distinctive Catholic doctrines. >> Hm. Where where does it look like the manifestation of the superior efficacy of God's power is? Well, it's with all these Catholic miracles.
¶31>> Yeah, >> it's with like Fatima and Zetune and Padre Peio and Eucharistic miracles and all these like seemingly things that vindicate distinctive Catholic doctrines. >> This is sloppy and it looks like a clear case of motivated reasoning and confirmation bias. Joe applies different interpretive standards depending on whether a miracle can be placed in a Catholic column. Ambiguity in non-atholic miracles becomes a reason to deny that they vindicate the surrounding tradition. But when he wants to claim an ambiguous miracle for Catholicism, that send ambiguity becomes an invitation to fill in the missing message himself.
¶32This is a symmetrical skepticism, scrutinizing rival traditions while interpreting uncertain evidence as generously as possible when it supports his own. Even Joe's good friend Cameron Bertusi, who is also Catholic, but does not share Joe's formal background in philosophy, recognizes the problem with reading a distinctively Catholic message into Zaiton when the apparition itself delivered no such message. >> I agree. The apparitions don't come with like a doctrinal statement or a list of denominational requirements. Protestants, Catholics, Orthodox, even Muslims witnessed the event.
¶33So while Zetun undeniably supports Christianity, it doesn't settle every theological debate within Christianity. >> So this is not simply a skeptic objecting to Catholicism. Even another Catholic can see that Joe is claiming far more than the evidence supports. And that's not all. It gets worse.
¶34Joe's third explanation for miracles in non-atholic settings is demonic activity. >> And the third option is like, oh, it's just it's just prednatural, so it's demonic forces doing it. And of course, you know, like within our tradition, we have like we have various biblical tests by which we can tell whether or not someone is >> Yeah. It's not it's not an arbitrary explanation we throw out there. >> No, like there's Jesus gives us the fruits test.
¶35So, you know them by their fruits. Christians commonly claim that they can determine whether a miracle comes from God or demons by examining its fruits. But this is a questionable interpretation of Matthew 7:15-20. That passage is primarily about recognizing false prophets, not authenticating miracles. Jesus warns that false prophets can be recognized by their fruit.
¶36He does not say that apparently good fruits prove that a miracle comes from God. Other passages such as 1 John 4:1-3 tell Christians to test prophets by examining what they teach, including whether they confess Jesus Christ. In other words, the biblical test for false prophets concern both their teaching and their fruits. But Joe is using this test to answer a different question. How do we determine whether a miracle comes from God?
¶37The Bible repeatedly makes clear that miracles are not self- authenticating. Deuteronomy 13 says that even if a prophet produces a genuine sign or wonder, that prophet must still be rejected if he leads people to worship another god. The miracle does not authenticate the prophet's teaching. The teaching must first be tested independently. This matters because the Bible also teaches that people who do not come from God may still produce impressive signs.
¶38Matthew 24:24 says, "For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and produce great signs and wonders to lead astray, if possible, even the elect." 2 Corinthians 11:14-15 similarly warns and no wonder even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is not strange if his ministers also disguise themselves as ministers of righteousness. So the biblical logic is effectively the reverse of Joe's arguments. Joe uses miracles to establish that Catholicism is true. But if apparently good miracles can come from deceptive spiritual forces, then Christians must first establish which doctrines are true and use those doctrines to evaluate the miracles.
¶39You might find an apparition or miracle claim impressive. But according to these biblical warnings, appearances and apparently good fruits are not enough. It could still be a deception. Here's the problem. If deceptive spiritual forces can perform miracles and appear righteous, Joe cannot simply point to an impressive miracle with good fruits and conclude that God is vindicating Catholicism.
¶40He must first establish independently that Catholic teaching is true and then determine whether the miracle conforms to that teaching. But Joe does not do that. He treats the miracle itself as proof of Catholicism without first ruling out the very demonic explanation he applies to miracles in other traditions. Do you see the problem? I can honestly say that I'm shocked.
¶41I have not seen more Catholic apologists challenge the methodological flaws Joe is promoting. Instead, the Catholic apologist around him appear to be rallying behind him and encouraging this approach. That is seriously troubling. I know how Catholic apologists respond to skeptics. They say it will be strange for marrying operations to be works of Satan when those apparitions encourage people to believe in Jesus, pray, repent, and submit to God.
¶42I have already said that one biblical method of testing spirits is to examine whether they teach the correct doctrine. But even that test is not as clear-cut as it sounds because an evil spirit could tell the truth or combine truth with deception. Acts 16 gives us an example of an evil spirit directing people toward Paul and his message of salvation. It says, "One day as we were going to the place of prayer, we met a female slave who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners a great deal of money by fortune telling. While she followed Paul and us, she would cry out, "These men are slaves of the most high God who proclaimed to you the way of salvation." She kept doing this for many days.
¶43But Paul, very much annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, "I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her." And it came out that very hour. So according to the Bible itself, an evil spirit can say something true and direct people towards someone preaching the correct way of salvation. Simply encouraging belief in Jesus does not establish that a spiritual sign comes from God. Some Latter-day Saints could make the same argument about Joseph Smith. He taught people to believe in Jesus.
¶44So, how could his visions and miracles have come from Satan? But once you accept that deceptive spirits can mix truth with deception, that defense is no longer secure. The uncomfortable truth is that there may be no clear and reliable way to determine whether an apparent miracle comes from God. The safest approach is to determine which doctrines are true through independent reasoning and then avoid giving miracle claims too much weight in deciding between competing religious traditions. But even if we adopt Joe's standard and allow miracles to confirm doctrine, his use of the fruits test still creates a problem.
¶45Joe and other Catholics point to Joseph Smith's polygamy as a bad fruit that undermines his credibility and cast doubts on his religious claims. Yet, Catholicism hardly has a spotless historical record. We do not need to search the distant past. Consider the documented sexual abuse and institutional coverups within the Catholic Church. These scandals were not merely isolated personal failures.
¶46In many cases, church authorities protected offenders, concealed abuse, and failed the victims. External investigations, public exposure, and legal accountability played a major role in forcing institutional reform. How does that not count as bad fruit? These scandals do not automatically prove that Catholic miracle claims are false. But if Joe uses the moral failures surrounding Joseph Smith to discredit Mormon miracle claims, then consistency requires him to consider whether serious moral failures within Catholic leadership should also count against Catholic claims.
¶47He needs a principled reason for weighing the bad fruits of rival traditions who are excluding the bad fruits of his own. But you are unlikely to hear Tren Horn, Ethan Muse, or Joe Schmidt seriously consider whether the Catholic Church's scandals should count against the miracles they present as evidence for Catholicism. Negative evidence from another tradition becomes disqualifying. Negative evidence from Catholicism is treated as irrelevant. That is the double standard.
¶48Joe, for reasons I will get to later in this video, was strongly drawn toward Catholicism and miracles gave him a way to justify that conclusion. But his method applies skepticism selectively, explains away problems within Catholicism and interprets ambiguity in Catholicism's favor. That is motivated reasoning, not the rigorous critical thinking the former Joe promoted. Let me clarify, this video is not a general attack on Catholicism. I'm examining how Joe Schmidt's approach to religious claims has changed.
¶49He used to emphasize rigorous critical thinking, intellectual perseverance, and resistance to tribalism. But in evaluating Catholic miracle claims, he has lowered those standards and accepted conclusions that the evidence does not adequately support. Now let's discuss Patrick Pio's stigmata because Joe specifically says that this was what convinced him intellectually that Catholicism is true. For him this is not merely an interesting miracle claim. It is powerful evidence for Catholicism.
¶50>> I mean ultimately it was the the 4-hour conversation with Ethan Muse on Padre Peio that convinced me intellectually that Catholicism is true. So what exactly about Padre Peio's stigmata led Joe to conclude not merely that Christianity is true but that Catholicism specifically is true. >> Padre Peio in is it like 1918 or something around there. He has a mystical vision of Christ after mass uh and where Christ says I unite you to my passion. And thereafter immediately he has Christ's passion wounds in his palms.
¶51He has a laceration wound on his side and he has wounds in his feet. We have testimonies beforehand afterhand. He didn't have it before. He had it after. >> I find this extremely underwhelming.
¶52Catholics are not the only Christians who believe that Jesus was crucified. Even if Patrick Peio's wounds were genuinely miraculous, why would they vindicate Catholicism rather than Christianity more generally? It's not as though the wounds themselves declared Catholicism is true. God has revealed it Protestantism. The reported message, I unite you to my passion, contains nothing distinctively Catholic.
¶53As with Zun, Joe is reading a specifically Catholic conclusion into a miracle claim whose message does not establish that conclusion. There's another problem. We do not know historically that Jesus was nailed through his palms rather than through the wrist area. There is considerable debate over where the nails would have been placed and many scholars consider the wrist at least equally plausible if not more likely. Traditional Christian artwork may therefore be mistaken about the precise location of Jesus wounds.
¶54That would not necessarily make Patrick Pierce wounds less unusual, but it would make their interpretation as a supernatural reproduction of Jesus actual wounds considerably more complicated. As Trent Horn said, the message is ambiguous. >> I was initially convinced of Christianity like for a for like a day. Like convinced of Christianity as a result of Padre Pio cuz like dude, come on. He's supernaturally reduplicating the passion wounds of Christ.
¶55>> The message is ambiguous. >> Like what could this possibly be? What could this possibly be saying? >> I know Tren is being sarcastic, but from my perspective, the message really is ambiguous. We cannot be confident that Padre Peio's wounds reproduce the actual location of Jesus wounds.
¶56What they clearly reproduce is the traditional Christian depiction of those wounds. And even if the phenomenon were genuinely miraculous, it was still not clearly vindicate Catholicism over Protestantism. Joe is moving from these wounds are extraordinary to Catholicism is true without establishing the crucial step between those conclusions. Once again, he's overstating the evidentiary value of an ambiguous miracle claim. You might ask, even if this miracle does not specifically affirm Catholicism, it is still a miracle, right?
¶57Let's examine how Joe describes the evidence. >> He had a kind of difficult relationship with the church at certain points. The church was like a little bit skeptical. They sent a bunch of like scientists to investigate him and whatnot. And like we have seven different scientists who investigate his hands like up and close.
¶58And we like we literally have like the letters written like right afterwards of these people describing in meticulous detail what they saw. So they're like okay there's no edema or swelling around them. They're like basically entirely circular which of course we also have photos of this. We have videographic evidence of this. We have you know one of them is like yeah um I palpated his hand so I felt it >> and I could feel a palpable void.
¶59There were just thin membranes and I could touch my fingers on the other side. we have these doctors saying that one of the doctors said that earlier on so like they they have a kind of they change in interesting ways um throughout his life basically um and uh one of the earlier doctors when he looked at he said it was a complete perforation such that I can see things on the other side uh and then like uh the way that changed was that then a little kind of membrane formed and so that's where you have I think it's Dr. Festo who's like palpating his hand and saying, "Yeah, there's a void in there." And there are various reasons why this is just like utterly naturalistically inexplicable. >> That sounds impressive, right? It becomes considerably less impressive once you examine how Joe has compressed, exaggerated, and selectively presented the evidence.
¶60In Etham Muse's article, not everyone who examined Patrick Peio's wounds was a scientist or a physician. Joe says that one of the doctors reported a complete perforation through Padre Pew's hand and could see objects placed on the other side. But the source of that particular cane was Father Benedetto. He was not a medical practitioner. He was Padre Peio's spiritual director.
¶61Joe has apparently upgraded a priest's testimony into medical testimony. That is a significant exaggeration. I'm not saying that someone must be a doctor to notice a hole in another person's hand, but Father Benedetto was Padre Pio's own spiritual director and was already committed to a religious interpretation of what he saw. That is highly relevant information. His testimony cannot simply be presented as though it were an independent medical finding.
¶62What about Joe's claim that seven different scientists examined the wounds up close and described them in meticulous detail? Muse thus discussed roughly seven medical professionals who had some involvement with Padre Pio's stigmata, but they did not all conduct the same kind of detailed hands-on examination. Joe makes it sound like they did. Only three clearly performed substantial examinations of both the hands and the feet and produced the detailed findings Joe is summarizing. Romanelli, Binami, and Festa.
¶63Angelo Marina examined the wounds, but Muse explicitly describes his examination as incomplete. Luigi Pankaro examined only the wound on the one hand and then declined to inspect the others because he became emotionally overwhelmed. Alberto Caserta was a radiologist who took X-rays rather than conducting the kind of close visual examination and pulpation Joe had just described. Jose Pesala was Patrick Pio's physician later in life and is cited mainly in connection with the womb's condition and disappearance near Patrick Pio's death. So Joe has taken seven medical professionals who interacted with the case in very different ways and rhetorically presented them as though seven scientists independently conducted the same detailed examination and reached the same conclusions.
¶64That is not what the evidence shows. The reports also conflict over depth and nature of the wounds. Father Benedetto described complete perforations through which objects on the other side could supposedly be seen. Romanelli reported the sensation of void beneath thin membranes. But Binami described the lesions on the hands as involving only the epidermis and perhaps the most superficial part of the dermis.
¶65He described the foot's lesions as extremely superficial. Fesa also reported that some wounds were superficial including the wounds on the feet and the leion on Padre Peio's side. So the evidence is not seven scientists consistently documenting deep perforating wounds. It is a collection of examinations of very different scope conducted at different times producing significantly different descriptions. Joe smooths over those differences and presents the strongest claims as though they represented the medical evidence as a whole.
¶66That is exaggeration and it conceals the uncertainty that a careful investigator should acknowledge concerning the cause of the wounds. Dr. Pinami believed that they may have begun as a pathological condition and were then artificially maintained possibly through the use of iodine. That is an important medical opinion. Yet Joe leaves it out of the summary while presenting the case for a miraculous origin.
¶67In short, the examiners agreed that marks or lesions existed. They did not agree about their depth and they certainly did not agree about their cause. Joe also emphasizes that we have photographs. But photographs of what? We have photographs showing circular marks on Padre Pew's hands.
¶68Those photographs establish that the marks existed, but they do not establish how the marks were produced. A photograph of a wound is not evidence that the wound was inflicted supernaturally. Calling the marks stigmata already assumes the very conclusion that needs to be demonstrated. Again, this is sloppy. I do not think the former Joe would have tolerated this kind of selective presentation.
¶69In [snorts] a majesty of reason, he writes, "We are all susceptible to confirmation bias, the tendency to selectively attend to sources, ideas, and evidence that support or confirm our pre-existing beliefs and ignore or downplay sources, ideas, and evidence that contravene them. But a genuine love, dare, I say adoration for truth can help combat confirmation bias. Don't make defending a position your primary aim in intellectual pursuits. Instead, make discovering truth your foremost goal. Now, look at what Joe is doing.
¶70He highlights the most dramatic testimony, upgrades a priest's observation into medical testimony, presents very different examinations as though they formed one consistent body of scientific evidence, emphasizes the photographs without explaining what they actually prove, and leaves out a physician's naturalistic interpretation. That is almost a perfect example of the confirmation bias he once warned his readers about. There is much more I could say about Padre Peio, but this video is not primarily an attempt to debunk every miracle claim. My purpose is to expose the inconsistency between Joe's intellectual standards before and after his conversion and to remind all of us to watch for the same tendency in ourselves. I'm not even arguing that becoming a Christian necessarily requires someone to lower their intellectual standards.
¶71Perhaps some churches encourage that, but it's not my main point. My point is that Joe appears to have restrained his own skepticism. He has blunted the very tools that once helped him cut through exaggeration, and false claims. The tragedy is that those tools are still available to him. He simply is not applying them consistently anymore.
¶72Even when I was a Christian, I was cautious about extraordinary claims that supposedly made Christianity look more credible. I remember preaching the gospel to one of my schoolmates, Eric, when I was in high school. He started attending church with me, eventually converted and was baptized. One day, he came to me and said, "Did you know that Noah's ark has been found?" I said, "Yeah, I heard about that." He asked, "Why didn't you tell me? I would have believed sooner." I [snorts] looked at him and said, "Because I wanted you to build your faith on Jesus, not on some archaeological discovery." What I meant was that if someone's faith rest on a piece of supposed material evidence, that faith may collapse when the evidence turns out to be false.
¶73Even in high school, I understood that we should be cautious about using poorly established claims to promote Christianity. And guess what? I was right to be cautious. I later learned that Ron Wyatt's alleged discovery of Noah's ark did not withstand serious scrutiny. That was also one reason I was never convinced by stigmata claims.
¶74Even when I was a Christian, I certainly had the motivation to believe them. If genuine, they would have supported my faith, but I was cautious enough to recognize that this was not the kind of evidence Christians should place in a spotlight. If a highly promoted miracle claim later collapses, people will not simply say, "You made one mistake, but your other miracles are probably fine." They will begin questioning your standards. They will wonder what else you have exaggerated, what other inconvenient facts you have omitted, and whether your other miracle claims are supported by equally poor evidence. That is precisely the conclusion the former Joe reached after investigating Catholic eukaristic miracles.
¶75In 2025, when Joe was still an agnostic, Catholic chemist Dr. Stacy Trasenos asked what he thought about the evidence. His response was later published in her article. Joe said that some investigations suffered from poor methodology, mixed results, and questionable practice. He says, "Some of the investigations behind the miracles are marred by poor methodology, mixed and inconclusive results, and questionable practices.
¶76While some of the findings are suggestive, my general takeaway is that many popular presentations of the miracles are infested by distortions, blatant exaggerations, and suspiciously convenient omissions of key facts. The pernicious effects of these distortions, exaggerations, and omissions extend well beyond ukaristic miracle investigations. To my mind, they damage the credibility of the Catholic apologists, influencers, websites, videos, and organizations who propound them. When I see a Catholic defending some of these exaggerations or omitting some of these inconvenient facts, I immediately become more suspicious of their other claims and arguments. In short, I become less trusting of their Catholic witness.
¶77After all, they evidently haven't done their due diligence concerning a matter they are publicly defending. So why should I put much stock in the other Catholic miracles or arguments they are publicly defending? This, I think, is why much more rigor, caution, and intellectual humility are needed in this sphere. Reputation, credibility, and general trustworthiness are on the line. I could not have said it better.
¶78The former Joe nailed it. That is why I'm so baffled by the change. I'm not baffled merely because he converted to Catholicism. I'm baffled because his entire approach to evidence seems to have changed. Previously, Joe condemned exaggeration, selective presentation, and the omission of inconvenient facts.
¶79Now, he promotes Patrick Peio and Eucharistic miracles as credible and compelling without clearly explaining how the methodological problems he previously identified have been resolved. Worse, in presenting Patrick Peio, he now appears to commit the same errors he was criticized in other Catholic apologists. Joe has lowered his intellectual standards. He has become sloppy. That is what concerns me.
¶80If you must apply weaker standards to the evidence supporting your new beliefs than you applied before accepting them, what does that say about the strength of the evidence? And what does it say about your commitment to intellectual integrity? Speaking of intellectual integrity, I am baffled by Joe's repeated insistence that people should submit their intellect to the Catholic magisterian. I'm going to play several clips. Pay close attention to his language.
¶81Joe is not merely saying that we should use our intellect to determine that Catholicism is true and then act consistently with that conclusion. That would make sense. If you become persuaded that something is true, you shouldn't live accordingly. But Joe goes further. He says that Catholics should submit not only their will but also their intellect to the magisterian.
¶82They should become childlike, dosile and differential toward the Catholic teaching authority. After these clips, I will explain why I think this is a dangerous advice. >> You know, I'd have to just stop engaging in lots of behaviors that I really want to engage in that I really like. That's difficult. It's a difficult ask and especially intellectually like the docsility like I'm a free thinker.
¶83I'm like this. I'm I'm intellectually autonomous. I can think what I want. Uh, and you're asking me to be like docel to the magisterium, like a teaching authority like this is this is ridiculous, you know, like sap nulioba, nothing in words. Like dare to know, dare to question, nothing in words.
¶84I mean, ultimately that spirit took me to Catholicism. >> But still, it's a spirit that's sort of fundamentally at odds with a kind of humble deference and childlike difference to Christ in the magisterium. >> So like it took a radical intellectual reorientation to get to that stage. Or you could think that maybe uh I don't know what the church says about the following. So I fully submit my intellect and will to the magisterium.
¶85If what I say is against the magisterium, then take a lighter and burn it. Put it on a hard drive. Burn it and I'll be the first there to celebrate the burning. Okay? If it's uh you know inconsistent with the magisterium, do do away with it.
¶86Cast it into the flames for it contains nothing but sophistry and illusion. I will absolutely 100% humbly submit to the magisterium the moment I learn that it's inconsistent with anything that I say. Fundamentally, how I got over it was, I am a finite, limited, fallible creature. God has manifestally vindicated his church, and maybe I don't know exactly how to respond to it, but I submit my intellect and will to what is being manifestally promulgated to me as truth with divine stamp of approval. Even if you can't resolve your particular difficulties with purgatory, you know, like again, God has manifestally vindicated the Catholic Church, so you should submit to Rome, TM, there is an objectively grave obligation that everyone has to submit to Rome.
¶87an obligation whose culpable violation dams you if you don't adequately repent. Come on guys, you got to submit to Rome, my friends. You got to submit to Rome. Come on guys, you've got to submit to shame. My friends, you've got to submit to shame.
¶88So if you haven't subscribed yet, now is the time. You're already here, so why continue resisting? Hit that subscribe button. I would deeply appreciate your submission. Don't worry though, failure to subscribe is not a grave sin.
¶89Jokes aside, I see at least two serious problems with Joe's approach. I know this video is becoming long, but these points matter to skeptics and religious people alike. Christians can take things seriously without abandoning or compromising their faith. Here's my first concern. Once you accept a religion and recognize its leaders as authoritative, deliberately submitting your intellect completely to that authority makes you more vulnerable to accepting poorly supported claims within the religion.
¶90You are disabling the mechanism that would allow you to recognize and correct an error. There is an important difference between changing your mind because the evidence persuade you and deciding in advance that the authority must be right whenever you disagree. The first is rational revision. The second creates epistemic closure. Suppose the church teaches eternal punishment and you accept it simply because the church teaches it.
¶91How could you ever discover that the teaching might be mistaken? Suppose the church requires beliefs in the assumption of Mary despite the complete absence of direct historical evidence for the event. You respond, I submit to the magisterian. I believe it because the magisterian teaches it. What evidence could ever persuade you that the magisterian has made an error?
¶92Any contrary evidence could simply be dismissed because you have already decided that the magisterian cannot be wrong. The belief system becomes sealing and effectively unfalsifiable. At that point, your primary obligation appears to have shifted. It is no longer to pursue truth wherever the evidence leads. It is to bring your beliefs into conformity with what the church teaches.
¶93But what if the church is wrong? You may answer that the church is divinely protected from error. But what if that belief is itself wrong? How was the church's protection from error independently established? Did the figure at Zun announced that the Catholic magisterium was protected from error?
¶94No. The apparition said nothing. Did the Mary publicly announce that doctrine where the miracle of the sun occurred at Fatima? No. Not even Lucia claimed that the figure gave her that message.
¶95So how do these miracles establish that the magisterium cannot air? At most Joe is interpreting ambiguous events through a Catholic framework and then using that interpretation to justify complete submission to the same framework. The magisterian's own claim to divine protection cannot independently prove that the magisterian is divinely protected. Unless Joe can establish that authority without assuming it, total intellectual submission creates a closed loop. Trust the magisterium because it cannot air and believe that it cannot air because Catholicis.
¶96How solid is that? The former Joe advocated intellectual humility because we are always capable of making mistakes in our judgment. But by fully submitting his intellect to the magisterian, the current Joe is insulating one crucial judgment from further correction. His original conclusion that God has given the magisterian divine authority and protection from error. Joe may not call that initial judgment infallible, but in practice, he treats it as though it cannot be seriously reconsidered.
¶97Once he accepts the magisterian as protected from error, any conflict between his reasoning and the magisterian must be blamed on his reasoning. That is not a stance a skeptic should take. I am an atheist. I live as though no god exists, but I remain open to correction because I know that my mind is finite, limited, and fallible. Perhaps I'm wrong.
¶98Perhaps some kind of God really does exist. Joe says that he is also finite, limited, and followable. So how can he be so certain that his original judgment about the Magisterian was correct? If he can be wrong about other major questions, why could he not also be wrong when he concluded that God protects the magisterian from error? The former Joe would have been deeply uncomfortable with what the current Joe is doing.
¶99In the majesty of reason, he writes, "Developing intellectual responsibility is a matter of taking charge of your pursuit of truth. Intellectually responsible individuals try to minimize deferring their beliefs to the hands of authority figures. Instead, they seek to equip themselves with justification, arguments, evidence, and reasons." What a contrast. But it is not only the former Joe who creates a problem for the current Joe. One of Joe's present beliefs also sits very uncomfortably with his attitude of total confidence and submission toward the magisterian.
¶100I have to thank Syncratic idealism for bringing this point to my attention. He deserves the credit. According to Joe's divine hiddenenness model, God does not provide evidence so overwhelming that doubt becomes psychologically impossible. God provides enough evidence to make faith rational, perhaps even rationally obligatory. who are leaving enough ambiguity, counter evidence and apparent anomalies to preserve the possibility of doubt.
¶101>> Basically, the divine hiddenness model is a model for how kind of God generally interacts with the world. And that the thought is that he epistemically fine-tunes the evidence so that there's enough objective evidence out there to make the ascent of faith rational and perhaps even rationally obliged, but also enough kind of darkness, enough sort of counter evidence, enough kind of peripheral anomalies sprinkled in, enough counter like intuition sprinkled in to preserve the psychological possibility of doubt. If there are psychological and sometimes rational considerations pushing against Catholicism, but the objective evidence is also very strong in favor of Catholicism. When you're in that sort of situation, you can kind of like almost freely >> embrace the truth of Catholicism or reject it. I just came to have such strong evidence for Catholicism, but also like good but not conclusive evidence against it.
¶102It was just causing this massive cognitive dissonance and almost making it like a choice which way I could go. And it was like, oh man. And Catholicism was then just like basically calling me out. It's like calling my evidential situation out. It was almost exactly predicting the sort of evidential situation I was finding myself in.
¶103To put it differently, even if Catholic inherency were true, we would expect there to be apparent credible errors in the biblical text. >> We would expect there to be [clears throat] apparent credible errors in the biblical text. >> Do you see the problem? Evidence for Catholicism supports Catholicism. But evidence against Catholicism can be absorbed into the model as precisely the ambiguity and counter evidence that God intended to leave behind.
¶104Evidence that the Bible is accurate supports biblical inherency. But apparent credible errors in the Bible are also treated as something we should expect if biblical inherency is true. I'm sorry, but I cannot say that with a straight face. [snorts] Joe wants to have his cake and eat it too. His model threatens to become self-sealing.
¶105Evidence in favor of Catholicism counts for the theory while counter evidence is prevented from counting decisively against it because the theory already predicts that counter evidence will exist. But that is not my main reason for bringing this up. If Joe believes God deliberately permits credible apparent errors, anomalies and counter evidence within the evidence for Catholicism, why assume that this uncertainty stops when he reaches the magisterium? To be precise, Catholics do not believe that every statement made by a pope is infallible. And I'm not claiming that they do.
¶106I am referring specifically to teachings that the church proposes as binding and protected from error along with other authentic magisterial teachings to which Catholics are expected to give religious submission of intellect and will. Joe allows that miracles may contain ambiguity. He allows that scripture may contain credible apparent errors. But when a magisterian issues a definitively binding judgment, he rules out the actual error in advance. So already in scripture we see an infallible teaching office protected from error when it issues definitively binding judgments.
¶107>> But why should the magisterians claim protection from error be exempt from the same fallibility and uncertainty affecting Joe's other judgments? What if Joe was mistaken when he concluded that this teaching office is divinely protected? What if the doctrine of magisterial infallibility is itself false? Once Joe has decided that definitively binding judgments cannot contain error, he has deprived himself of any practical way to recognize such an error. Whatever conflict he discovers must automatically be reclassified as an apparent error arising from his own limited understanding.
¶108That is the trap. His own divine hiddenenness model says that God leaves credible counter evidence and apparent errors within our evidential situation. If Joe has created one protected category where counter evidence can never establish actual error, the definitive teachings of the magisterian. If you decide in advance that those teachings cannot be false, how could you ever discover that your original judgment about their infallibility was mistaken. Joe has not thought through the implications of his own model.
¶109He introduced divine hiddenness to explain away ambiguity and counter evidence. But that same model undermines the confidence required for total intellectual submission. He's shooting himself in the foot. The second problem with Joe's submission of intellect to the magisterian is that his evangelism can work only if people outside Catholicism refuse to adopt the same attitude toward their own authorities. Suppose a Muslim says, "I submit my intellect completely to what I understand to be authoritative Islamic teaching.
¶110Whenever my reasoning conflicts with Islam, my reasoning must be wrong." How could Joe rationally persuade that person to become Catholic? Any arguments against Islam could be dismissed as the product of limited human reasoning? Any evidence for Catholicism could be rejected because it conflicts with the authority to which that Muslim has already submitted. For evangelism to work, the other person must remain open to the possibility that their current religious commitment is mistaken. They must be intellectually humble enough to examine the evidence and reconsider even their most fundamental beliefs.
¶111But Joe demands an openness from others that he no longer seems willing to practice himself. He expects Muslims, Protestants, atheists, and everyone else to question their present commitments while he submits his own intellect to the magisterian. He could respond that Catholic authority is true while those other authorities are false. But that is precisely the issue under dispute. He cannot assume Catholicism at the beginning of the conversation and then demand that everyone else place their own beliefs on the examination table.
¶112Intellectual honesty requires reciprocity. If you expect other people to expose their deepest commitments to criticism and possible revision, you must be willing to do the same with your own. Do you see my point? Again, the former Joe recognized the danger of excessive confidence. When Joe was still an agnostic and Cameron Partusi was Catholic, Joe criticized Cameron for assigning too high a probability to theism.
¶113He argued that Cameron had not adequately accounted for higher order uncertainty. >> We're also just like completely taking out of the picture higher order uncertainty like you know like uncertainty about this being the right method for going about doing philosophy. uncertainty about, you know, your ability, your competence about these things. Uh uncertainty deriving from the fact that epistemic superiors of you disagree with your numbers assigned and disagree that this is the right sort of methodology to approach these issues with. Higher order uncertainty deriving from all sorts of different things.
¶114Uh which would then considerably open up the door to these alternative hypotheses being taken seriously, at least in my view. >> That was an excellent point. Higher order uncertainty means recognizing that you might be wrong not only about your conclusion but also about the method you use to reach it. You might have evaluated the evidence incorrectly. Your confidence may be inflated.
¶115Intelligent and informed people may disagree with you for reasons you have not properly understood. But now Joe has become remarkably similar to the person he once criticized. I cannot get over the irony. Where is the higher order uncertainty now? Where is his uncertainty about whether miracle claims are the right methods for identifying the true church?
¶116Where is his uncertainty about whether he interpreted those miracles correctly? Where is his recognition that intelligent and informed people may examine the same evidence and reasonably reject his conclusion? Once Joe identifies the magisterian as divinely protected, this agreement no longer seems to matter. No matter how intelligent or informed the dissenter may be, that person must ultimately be wrong whenever they conflict with definitively binding Catholic teaching. Joe is no longer presenting his conclusion merely as the followable judgment of one philosopher.
¶117He speaks as though he knows what God has endorsed and he places the centers under a moral obligation to submit. >> There is an objectively grave obligation that everyone has to submit to Rome. an obligation whose culpable violation dams you if you don't adequately repent. The mother of God appearing to Catholic shepherd children, granting requests to convert people to Catholicism, saying basically vindicating, authenticating, confirming the immaculate conception, the rosary, the papacy, etc. God has disproven Protestantism.
¶118But how could he be so confident about what God communicated through this miracle account? Did God come down and tell Joe directly the Catholic Church is right and the Protestants are wrong? No. Did the apparition at Zaiton say it? No.
¶119He said nothing. Did Patrick Pierce W say it? No. Joe supply that conclusion himself. And what about the shepherd children at Fatima?
¶120The fact that Catholic children reported the vision using Catholic concept does not independently establish that God endorsed Catholicism. The crowd that witnessed the alleged miracle of the son did not hear Mary confirm the papacy, the rosary, or the immaculate conception. The public phenomenon and the children's private messages are separate claims. Yet Joe treats the first as divine authentication of the second. That is exactly where higher order uncertainty should make him cautious.
¶121Instead, it disappears at a precise moment when he needs it most. And there is another practical problem. Why should people find your religion intellectually attractive if joining it means becoming obligated to submit your intellect to its teaching authority whenever that authority demands ascent? Why would the true religion discourage its members from continuing to scrutinize its claims? If it is true, rigorous examination should not threaten it.
¶122Yet Joe says that everyone has a grave obligation to submit to Rome and that refusing to do so can lead to damnation. Once disagreements carry that kind of moral and eternal threat, the pursuit of truth is no longer entirely free. It becomes pressured by obedience and fear. The question gradually changes from what is actually true to what must I believe to remain obedient and avoid condemnation. This is another reason I believe this video should matter to Christians as well as skeptics.
¶123If you are serious about evangelism and want your family, friends, and colleagues to reconsider their beliefs and come to Jesus, then model the intellectual openness you expect from them. Show them that you're also willing to question yourself, examine uncomfortable evidence, and change your mind when your reasons no longer hold up. Be someone they can respect even when they disagree with you. Do not follow Joe Jew's present approach. He may have already become a prominent figure in Catholic apologetics, but his recent change has damaged his credibility among many skeptics.
¶124I am not the only person who has noticed it. A growing number of people have expressed concern about his new standards, his selective treatment of evidence, and his repeated insistence on submission to Rome. He increasingly sounds less like an independent philosopher pursuing truth and more like someone defending conclusions that Rome has already settled for him. That is why people now question his intellectual independence and integrity. It's sad, but given his backgrounds as an agnostic and his previous warnings about authority, bias and overconfidence, he should understand why people are reacting this way.
¶125So if you are Catholic, please do not imitate this approach. You do not strengthen your faith by weakening your standards. You do not make Catholicism more credible by treating submission as a substitute for critical thinking. We have finally reached the central question, what happened to Joe? I find it difficult to believe that exposure to Catholic miracle claims alone explains his conversion.
¶126As I showed earlier, Joe had already investigated Eucharistic miracles and came away disappointed. He said that poor methodology, exaggerations, and convenient omissions damaged the credibility of Catholic apologetics more than they supported it. So what changed? What new evidence resolved those methodological problems? How did the miracle claims that once made him less trusting of Catholic apologist later become so credible and compelling to him?
¶127At this point, I have to speculate. I'm not claiming that I know exactly what happened inside Joe's mind. I'm raising this possibility because what happened to him could happen to any of us. Honestly, when I learned about Joe's conversion and saw how dramatically his standards appear to change, I broke out in a cold sweat. I realized that nobody is immune to this kind of intellectual decline.
¶128Not Joe, not me, not anyone watching this video. There's a saying that there are no atheists in foxholes. That is obviously not literally true of every atheist, but it captures something real about human psychology. Under extreme fear, grief, desperation, or vulnerability, people may reach for certainty and abandon standards they once considered essential. Could circumstances in my own life push me to do that?
¶129Absolutely. Put me in a right foxhole. And perhaps my commitment to reason would also begin to collapse. Perhaps I could experience what Joe experienced and end up rationalizing beliefs that I desperately wanted to be true. That possibility frightens me.
¶130I'm not looking down on Joe from some position of intellectual safety. I'm looking at him and recognizing something that could happen to me. So what might have contributed to Joe lowering his evidential bar? Joe says that watching videos about Catholic saints profoundly changed his heart. >> Looking at lies of the saints and just watching some saint videos and whatnot.
¶131I start like watching some videos just about saints. I don't know how exactly I came across them. I watch that and afterward I just ball I ball my eyes out and I'm like this is so beautiful. >> God was here just launching like a full frontal assault on me to get me converted. putting all these like overwhelmingly beautiful and inspiring saint stories on my radar.
¶132He's making them have a significant impact on me. You know, he's given me this like weird almost indescribable magnetic attraction to Catholicism. I don't know whether Joe investigated the historical details of these stories after watching the videos. He does not report doing so, but he identifies short devotional videos and even a cinematic dramatization as important sources. He says that these stories made him cry, convicted him, and were significantly responsible for opening him to Catholicism.
¶133That should concern us. Joe allowed highly curated devotional stories to exert a substantial psychological influence on him without telling us that he critically verified what those videos presented. He then interpreted the resulting emotional transformation as God working to convert him. This was precisely the kind of situation that demanded intellectual caution. When a story moves you deeply and seems to confirm something you are becoming attracted to, that's when confirmation bias and motivated reasoning becomes most dangerous.
¶134Instead of increasing his scrutiny, Joe appears to have allowed the emotional force of the stories to increase their credibility. I cannot blame him for being moved. I understand it completely. If a story made me cry and gave me a powerful sense of purpose, I would also feel the temptation to accept it without carefully checking every detail. Emotion can overpower reason.
¶135That is part of being human. But being emotionally moved by a story tells us how the story affects us. It does not tell us whether every detail is historically accurate, whether the supernatural elements are true or whether God placed that story in front of us. Joe also reports having what he calls quasi religious experiences. >> I had these like quasi religious experiences where I was just like I'd just be sitting in gym and I would just feel almost in waves just like this sense you could be a saint.
¶136You could be a saint. I do not pretend to know what exactly Joe experienced but I understand the psychological attraction of feeling called to something greater than yourself. I experienced that many times when I was a Christian. I believed that the world desperately need Christ and now God has entrusted me with the task of preaching the gospel. It felt like the most important mission in the world.
¶137I experienced that sense of calling as a teenager and it was overwhelming. The experience was real in the sense that I genuinely felt it. But the intensity of a feeling does not establish its source. Feeling called by God is not the same as demonstrating that God called you. Feeling drawn towards Catholicism is not evidence that Catholicism caused the feeling supernaturally.
¶138Our minds are capable of producing extraordinarily powerful experiences of meaning, conviction, guilt, purpose, and transcendence. Those experiences can transform our lives, but they can also shape how we interpret evidence afterwards. Again, I do not know whether the saint stories and quasi religious experiences caused Joe to lower his standards so that he could embrace Catholicism. I do not want to pretend that I can psychoanalyze him from a distance, but his own accounts present a recognizable psychological sequence. He encountered emotionally powerful devotional stories.
¶139He felt convicted and magnetically attracted to Catholicism. He interpreted those feelings as God acting upon him. Afterward, Miracle claims he had previously approached with skepticism began to look overwhelmingly convincing. That does not prove that his conversion was irrational, but it gives us a serious reason to ask whether his emotional change influenced his evaluation of the evidence rather than merely following from it. I appreciate Joe's openness in sharing his story because it can serve as a warning to all of us.
¶140Pay attention to what is happening inside your mind. Notice when fear, longing, guilt, beauty, belonging or a sense of purpose begins pulling you toward a conclusion. Emotions are not enemies and we should not suppress them. But we should not confuse emotional intensity with evidence. When something affects you deeply, slow down.
¶141Separate this story moves me from this story is historically true. Ask what evidence would change your mind. Seek out the strongest criticism, not merely the most inspiring presentation. Apply the same standards to claims that comfort you as you would apply to claims from a rival religion. Your capacity for critical reflection is one of your last safeguards.
¶142Do not surrender it to an authority, a community, a charismatic speaker or a powerful emotional experience. Once you give someone permission to tell you [music] what you must believe, you also give that person enormous power over how you understand yourself and the world. Now it is your turn. What do you think about Joe's apologetic approach? Do you think it is commendable that he let go of what some might describe as intellectual pride and submitted himself to God?
¶143Or do you think his approach is as problematic as I do? This video has focused on Joe's [music] submission of intellect. In the next video, I will examine his submission of moral intuition to [music] Rome and explain why I believe that may be even more dangerous. If you are interested in that discussion, subscribe [music] so you do not miss the next video when it is released. Thank you for watching.
¶144I will see you in the next one.