Joe Schmid Became Catholic... What Happened to the “Majesty of Reason”?

¶1Hello everybody or nobody, I don't know because I haven't done a live stream on this uh channel for an awful long time. This is a channel that has gathered all sorts of cobwebs, my atipling philosopher philosophy of religion channel. Uh but I am super excited to talk today again to my friend Derek Lambert from Mythvision and hopefully maybe Neil from Gnostic Inform a little later, possibly even Aaron Adair. Uh but we are going to be talking about probably quite a few different topics because there's a lot in this single idea of Joe Schmidt and we we'll talk about who he is and and what has happened in a second. Uh but this this topic pertains to many other things as often is the case with philosophy and especially when you're talking about psychology and sociology as well which we will be.

¶2Uh but anyway Derek really good to see you. Haven't seen you for ages. How are you my friend? >> I'm good man. I'm doing good.

¶3I'm I'm just working my butt off as usual. >> Yeah. Yeah. That's the way these things uh these things go. Well, um uh we'll have Aaron Adair joining us, I think, fairly soon.

¶4Uh but we're going to talk about Joe Schmidt. Uh could do you want to just let the audience just remind them or or let them know very quickly who Joe Schmidt is and what has just recently happened because you've been dealing with this quite a bit. Yeah, he's a a young very bright philosopher um who, you know, has been putting a lot of time and energy into uh his education. He's at Princeton. He's teaching.

¶5He's doing all I mean, he's not just a student. Like, this guy's a PhD now. He's he's teaching. And um look, I haven't had enormous amounts of time with him. I've interviewed him a few times for my channel.

¶6He's always been a very kind person. I still [clears throat] think he's obviously a very kind person. Uh though I have a little bit of a story based on my interactions and I can only interpret between the trying to guess between uh some of these events uh what was going on because about a month and a half two months ago I crafted a script that is dealing with free will and in fact the person who's sponsoring that documentary is a big Joe Schmidt fan and they're an atheist right Joe Schmid agnostic and like not too long ago Joe Schmid was talking about free will and determinism, like what what's the case? And he had on people that were trying to debunk the idea that determinism is a case. He's had on people who do the opposite.

¶7Like he's he talks about these things all the time and they wanted me to run it by Joe to get Joe's personal thoughts before we send the script in to be edited. So I reached out to Joe and I, you know, I'm friends with him on Facebook. I said, "Hey Joe, you going to check this out? Um, check out this script, bro. Like we're going to want to do this documentary and we'd like to get someone smart like you by any chance.

¶8could you do it? He said, "Hey, I'm going to have to pass. I'm working 9 to9 or some crazy hours, like ridiculous time of of doing things. I don't have the time to even check it out." And I said, "Well, hey, listen." I didn't give up yet. I said, "How much would it cost to get your time, you know, to be able to evaluate this this paper real quick and tell us what you think about it?

¶9Read it over and just give your two cents on it." And uh he uh thanks a lot, but I think I'm going to I'm going to pass. And I'm like, "That's odd. That was a very odd thing, but it was like whatever. Sometimes people have things, Derek. You know, it is what it is.

¶10>> A month later, there are all these recordings. He had made plenty of time to fly around and do all of these Catholic recordings to have the launch date of his conversion publicized. And he couldn't have time for me to just look over this free will document. And I thought to myself, damn. Now, that's my personal subjective opinion and observation.

¶11I don't know everything that goes on in his life, but after I saw how whackadoodle the conversion took place and how honestly whackadoodle is the word I would use, it seemed he was about it. Like this guy went all in. I thought it was a freaking joke. I thought he was bullshitting, bro. >> Some people did originally.

¶12So, just to let people know, so Judge Schmidt Majesty of Reason was his is his YouTube channel. uh very famously sort of agnostic agnostic atheist but but very uh fair with the arguments and was always uh willing to look at both sides of the argument but was really a bit of a champion in the kind of atheist community if you like even if he wouldn't himself declare himself fully like atheist and whatnot >> right >> he he then publicly deconverts by basically being interviewed by some particular channels uh and to release this this news and then releases what 28 eight hours of of 25 hours of analysis of the arguments as to why he has converted. Uh and it this is why do you think this is important? Why do you think Joe Smith's uh conversion is important? >> I think it's important because for me anybody could do this.

¶13It it goes to show you that no matter how sophisticated you are in philosophy, um you know, anybody who's smart could easily go down certain paths. And I think a lot of people think, "Oh, smart guy converts to smart religion. He wouldn't have done it if it was dumb. He would have only done it if it was sophisticated or something like that." And I feel like it's also a lot of people in the atheist world who maybe saw Joe Schmidt as a a partner or in some way a teammate uh felt a bit betrayed by the process. And I I hate to break it to them, but I would not be shocked because I didn't have so much so social social interaction with the guy if he he kept a um a circle of people around him that were very much religious often.

¶14So, you know, the whole time he may have had a lot >> our friend Caleb Jackson um was uh I believe integral. I spoke to Caleb yesterday cuz I asked him to uh endorse a new book that Aaron and Dare myself have just about completed on the Exodus and he said, "Well, it's not my expertise, but I'll definitely have a look at it." By the way, just to let you know, I was I've just been involved in providing Joe Schmidt, I think, with a bunch of of the because I've had I've interviewed Caleb um Joe Schmidt previously as you have and he's he's a really, as you say, really lovely guy and Caleb Jackson is a really lovely guy. I've uh yeah, I've debated him about miracles on your channel, right? Previously. In fact, I I think I've had two interactions with him and that one on my my channel.

¶15But um we like he is big on miracles and so it doesn't surprise me that Joe Schmidt would have been surrounding himself with those sorts of people who are going to be uh I guess using miracles as a vehicle to get him to convert. And like I would say this is a really big deal because this is a PR loss for atheism if you like. Not that atheism is some kind of homogeneous thing but but >> do you know what I mean? Like there are a lot of people who are not happy uh about this and then of course all the religious people are cocka hoop about this because this is like yeah this is our big win and they are letting you know it. >> Yeah.

¶16Yeah. Yeah. Again I never feel that way. Uh, again, I kind of got disenfranchised a while back on, you know, I guess you'd say having legends in the community. If they convert, decon convert, it doesn't matter to me.

¶17I I know how to research. I look at the evidence myself. There's a social pressure pressure, I think, that you see online. In both worlds, okay, you have deep thinkers that are atheists and you somehow have pop level people who don't dive deep. They look to the deep thinkers and that's their avenue in which they go, I have smart people on my team and smart people on my team agree with me and the day they disagree is a betrayal to to the to the average atheist online and vice versa.

¶18In fact, I find it more often that Christians online. What's up, Aaron? Welcome, brother. >> Yo yo, >> I find it more often online, and maybe you can give me your two cents on this, too. Christians constantly egg me on to debate and they act like if you don't debate we won.

¶19Uh and they in their mind if you can have a rhetorical sword fight you win right? As long as you sound convincing. And even if the guy on the other side is rhetorically better they're still going to say you lost because your arguments don't agree with their conclusion. So um to me that's how it works too. So when a Christian decon converts they're betrayed.

¶20It's a social thing. This is a human phenomena. I think works in any area, politics, everything, right? You name it. You know them, you know that a lot better than I do.

¶21And I I just think for me, Joe, it didn't feel so much of a betrayal as much as it was like I immediately thought of psychology, dude. I could not help but think that something else was going on. Dude, >> I I went I went straight to that. And so what I want to do with this conversation before I um introduce Aaron here, my esteemed co-author, uh I I I want to look initially at the psychology and the sociology involved possibly probably almost certainly involved in this conversion event. And also have some caveats like we are armchair psychologizing or or we will be.

¶22And >> yeah, >> it's dangerous because we're not in his head. And we are going to be making some speculative claims that might be not disingenuous, but you know, is fraught with issue because he's not here to defend himself. And we are going to be joining some dots that may or may not be accurate to to do. I I think that even if if you could almost forget Joe Schmidt in this as a particular example because I think we're going to talk in in terms about some generalities and and I was really impressed Derek when I saw a couple of your videos that I I thought were were really really good on this topic. So one is the one you're seeing there and I'm going to play a little bit of a clip from that.

¶23Okay. A and the other was uh your own video. So that was when you were actually hosted, although this is one that you you have mirrored onto your channel, but another one you were just on your own and you gave a really really good I've just watched all of this and you gave I thought an excellent um breakdown of the miracle side of this and some arguments particularly about miracles. But the this first video here was more about the psychology and the sociology and really what the function of God is. But before I go and talk more about that, Aaron, welcome and thank you for for popping by.

¶24>> Thank you for having me around. It was just a minor miracle that I could join you. >> Hey, I see what you did there. Um, [snorts] what what are your thoughts initially on uh Joe Schmidt's conversion and why it it might be deemed impactful. I continuously find the thing about miracle stories is the people who believe it are the ones who very much want it to be true for what they personally need.

¶25And when people outside are skeptical, boy oh boy is it easy to find all the holes. Um I was just looking at some other old cases um including an interesting one in your backyard uh Jonathan. uh in Suriri England a few centuries ago there was a woman giving birth to rabbits and it was validated by the physician to the king of England. Are you aware of this story? I'm not aware of this but you know uh making like rabbits I suppose is is something that that happens but yeah >> yes but this was like literally she is outputting rabbit parts from her yes from there uh and a medical doctor literally doctor to the king of England coming and validating and saying this woman is giving birth to rabbits uh her name was Mary to uh lived in Siri England lots of records about it And like I say, if you just stopped there and said, "Look, a medical doctor came in and said, "This is real.

¶26This woman is giving birth to rabbits." And decided not to dig any further, you probably wouldn't realize, "Oh, this also was investigated by others and basically said, hey, this is a laughingtock. She confessed." Uh, if you want to look for the details, you're going to find out, oh, this probably doesn't hold up under critical examination. But put it in an environment where people want to believe that people are giving birth to rabbits or legs are regrowing or people come back from the dead under particular religious contexts. Oh, somehow these things start looking completely legitimate and nobody is criticizing it and then it becomes a weapon to use against all the other critics. Um, >> and and this is and this is something that um that Derk has said before in in the aforementioned videos that actually when we're looking at same evidence, it it's clear that if you believe the complete opposite to what I believe, then there's going to be a lot of psychology involved in this.

¶27Like we are we are both pretty r and Joe Schmidt is very rational. And yet, you know, there is something going on here that that means that he's finding these miracle claims far more powerful than we are and is according them more rational weight. Uh, and I would argue then that we need to look somewhat at psychology. Um, can I can I just play a clip from uh the video of uh so I I don't know her name. Is it Britney?

¶28She's a former Mormon. Noonsense spirituality is her is her moniker. But I thought this was absolutely brilliant as a kind of analysis because this is exactly what I thought. >> Yeah. So I um for me personally, I resonated with Joe's experience because it's something that I had done previously in my life.

¶29So I was raised Mormon. Uh really struggled with so many aspects of of Mormonism, lost my faith as a teenager, got kicked out of my home. Um, and then later in life f like late like in early adulthood found like nuanced Christianity and CS Lewis and nuanced Mormonism and Mormon philosophy. And I was like, "Oh, this Mormonism thing." At the time, I know like this isn't a a Mormon channel, so this is going to sound really stupid to anyone who wasn't Mormon, but for me, when I was in my early 20s, I got enough like, oh, this was a stronger argument or there stronger arguments for Mormonism than I originally thought. And once intellectually I could do that, emotionally I wanted to reconcile with my family and my childhood faith.

¶30And I wanted to go back to church and I wanted to have meaning and purpose and order and structure and community and ritual and my family back in my life because I had missed that. And so what I saw in Joe is like once you kind of pass and and now looking back I I I see the data on this too and I also work with people who go through this process. Uh what can happen is when you're raised religious and you leave if you don't fill in everything that religion was doing it leaves quite a bit of a vacuum which is why most of the atheists that I find or skeptics who go back when you look at their lives they hadn't replaced meaning and purpose and community and ritual and all the things that the religion was doing. So it leaves this vacuum and then once intellectually you get good enough arguments that you don't feel that stupid like you you don't feel like um this is the craziest idea ever once you cross that threshold emotionally you feel better returning to often your childhood faith and I talked about this with Rain Will. >> Okay.

¶31And I I just thought that was a really really succinctly put well put because just to let the audience know that Joe Schmidt came from or comes from a very committed Catholic family, right? So he went he came from this position of a social familial um scenario of having something that's greater than himself anyway. this this belief system that that that created a narrative and a story and gave him sort of social familial uh functionality, psychological functionality. Then disposed of that through his philosophizing but then as at some point returned to that and miracles was a vehicle that got him back there but arguably there was a lacking in his life in terms of filling his his his kind of psychological needs, purpose so on and so forth. Is that a fair a fair conclusion?

¶32Do you think she she was right there, guys? >> Aaron, >> uh I feel she was very spot on that when you are looking for answers, you will find the answers you are looking for. Uh I think that's uh astute. >> Yeah, I I agree. I think, you know, once you know a little bit about Joe's story and he kind of hints at it, he he he kind of treats himself like the prodigal son.

¶33And here's why I think what she said not only resonates but makes sense of what we're looking at with Joe. Like I wouldn't count myself as the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I'd say I'm sharp. Okay? And I'm sharp enough to know that even now, even now, today in 2026, there is a hole in me. Okay?

¶34There is a hole in me because my mother I'm a mama's boy. My mother's a Christian woman and she would want nothing more in this life than to see her son come back to Jesus. Okay, >> that hole can never be completely fulfilled until either my mother kind of, you know, gets satisfied and comes to a conclusion where she's like, "Okay, I'm not buying it anymore." And I feel a lot more like comfortable in that kind of situation or I finally go, "You know what, Mom? I that hole is there." Okay. And I'm being honest.

¶35That's why when we go to psychoanalyze him, I have to speak from my own experience and others that I've spoken to. And at the end of the day, I do think that she hits the nail on the head because if I've said this before, there's only two things that could possibly get me to convert. A miracle happens to me. Well, guess what? At that point, I don't mind if I look crazy cuz I know now the truth, okay?

¶36Or I know what what seems to be the reality, at least if I'm reasoning through it. And there are several witnesses and an amputee grew an arm literally right in front of me. Okay? Uh and I know they're an amputee. I know for decades they've been an amputee and next thing you know a miracle in the name of a particular god happens.

¶37I still couldn't necessarily prove that's the god that did it. It could have been a demon. A devil could have tricked me making me fall for a false religion. But I'm an ape on a rock, dude. So if all that happened in front of me, you can't fault me for assuming this is probably the case.

¶38Okay. So that's one. The other would be psychological. I gave up. I'm tired of fighting.

¶39I'm tired of trying to get, you know, these, you know, I almost use the word primitive, but I want to use superstitious creatures using the psychology like the believing brain Michael Shurmer wrote about and others who've talked about how the brain is so highly wired for agency, etc., etc. And you know, I'm I gave up the fight. It's so much easier to just drink the Kool-Aid with everybody else than it is to damn fight the uphill battle and swim upstream. So, one of those two things would be the main reason. And even then, I might try to sound like I'm justifying it in intellectual ways, but truth is, one of those two paths would have to happen.

¶40Either it really is true and it happened to me, but if I didn't have the miracle happen to me like Joe Schmid, then guess what? I want to make it sound smart because I'm a smart guy. I'm going to make my case as sophisticated as possible, but really all the social pressures and everything else are the underlying factor driving that for me. That's my opinion. >> Yeah.

¶41I I just think it it's it's really it's really interesting to look at the difference between someone who has been born and brought up in a religious household as Joe Schmidt was and someone like myself, like my dad is normally Christian. He'll go to midnight mass. Uh but essentially I mean he'll say he's a Christian but he doesn't think about God I don't think on a daily basis whatsoever. Right. And so I came from a effectively a kind of secular household or a household that didn't think about religion.

¶42I then went to boarding school. My parents lived abroad and like no one was was Christian at all really. It was not a thing that you talked about. You would have like chapel on a Sunday through the school but it would be like just something you had to do and it wasn't anything that was surrounding me with my friends and family. And so I've never had this longing for going back to like I've never been in this situation.

¶43So I've always created my own purpose and meaning in life and and my own narrative and stories that that that maybe lack in sense of the grandeur or or the scope of of a religion, right? Or of the belief in a god. Uh but but I've never felt I needed to go back to something. had that been part of my childhood and had I been fed stories of of grand and and I think stories and narratives are really important here because atheists don't really have stories and narratives and and there is perhaps a a missing part of I don't know if it's missing but but it's atheists are on the back foot when it comes to competing against theism generally speaking for in terms of attracting you like I can't promise you life after death right if you fear here. If you have high mortality salience, if you're worried about dying, I can't comfort you with a story that you're going to go to heaven and that's like the literally the greatest thing in human conception.

¶44Or I can't scare you with going to hell, which is the worst thing in human human conception. But I I'm just like this is we we're going to have a heat death of the universe and and that's that. Sorry, mate. Uh do you know what I mean? So, so talk to me a little bit guys about whether you think um atheism like can provide a narrative and whether that's a real disadvantage.

¶45>> Atheism on its own, atheist simplicity definitely can't do that because it's just saying no to one question. If you want to have a total worldview, you have so much more work ahead of you and there aren't the institutional uh structures out there to help give you that narrative quickly and easily um repeat it to you every Sunday um have songs about it. There are attempts by it like some of the humanist groups like uh uh you know because I'm in the Boston area there's like the humanist group at Harvard and things like that but um they don't have exactly the numbers as some of the other religious groups around here in Boston to put it mildly. uh one way or the other we aren't creating a narrative that attracts people in the same sort of way even though um people are leaving organized religion but mostly because they are just seeing how well in general in the US and probably a lot in the west there's just a kind of a falling away from organized anything um for better or for worse um and it's not that people are now becoming secular atheists they're just like um I'm going to go and be wooi on my own uh we we're going to have a lot of work ahead of us if we want to actually have a a compelling powerful narrative. I think there's much we can do.

¶46Again, my background is science. The reason is there is because the narrative of seeing the entire history of everything over billions of years from uh stardust to uh proteins to tiny mammals to the earlier versions of us to civilization to today to the amazing future we could have. That feels like a comparing narrative to me, but uh it's really hard to put that into a psalm book. >> Yeah. And yes, uh I I think there's an element of awe there which is I know Brit talked about in that conversation with with Derek and the host there talked a lot about sort of spirituality or um the these kind of ideas that maybe some atheists who are completely obsessed with the big T truth and like you know don't don't want to entertain the notion that we're going to replace God with some kind of other spiritual woo or something like that.

¶47So I think this is is maybe splitting the atheist community somewhat. I I think it's a really interesting discussion to be had. But but in terms of like Joe Schmidt, I I would imagine this would have played a part that that there is an attraction of both returning to your family like what Derek was saying, that's got to be huge to have your mother take you back in that that kind of way and also to feel like God is taking you back that that there's that comfort you are going to get and and then you just start postto rationalizing or changing the waiting of all your pre previous arguments that you may have said well this is 6040 atheism. Now, you just change a couple of the inputs going in. You're like, actually, it's 60/40 uh theism now.

¶48And and and you just start rearranging things because I guess you've got the the psychology um demanding that that you you come back into the fold. What do you reckon, Derek? >> Yeah, I mean, I think that plays a part. There's no way to like be able to rehearse the timeline for Joe, but I I would a few comments here. Um, my experience as this conscious being that I call myself Derek here, uh, I feel like life's like a story.

¶49I think the reason humans put stories, you know, out there, tell campfire stories before writing ever existed and then eventually stories on writing itself is that humans are experiencing as conscious beings a narrative in their lives. Their memories rewrite their past, etc. All sorts of stuff. And we're storytelling creatures. And this is kind of what I did prior to that episode.

¶50I don't know if you caught this, but I did a video prior to me grouping up with Britt and uh and uh Brandon is I I highlighted some of the things humans have done long before any of the established religions we see today that are human that are not necessarily oh that dogma that dogma because what happens when we when we leave a religion I see you have people like who's popping for example they were never religious and they never planned to be they wouldn't have the same experience as someone who was deeply entrenched in indoctrination and then left. >> There is a vacuum. Okay? You're not born into this world thinking, you know, in rational atheistic terms and like purely not worried about a narrative. You were born with a narrative.

¶51You lived your whole life with a narrative and now you have no narrative. Narratives need to fill that gap. Um, and I realized that even those staunch atheists show up to Comic-Con. They wear the Lord of the Greens outfit. They play games.

¶52They they indulge themselves in purposeful fictive activities that give them purpose and meaning and value and community and all these things that religious communities do as well. They still participate because it's a human thing to do. >> We need community and we need ritual as well. >> Yeah. And I think the problem happens is when we become atheists, we want to sanitize superstition, but part of our what we think as inputs of what is religious uh h happens to be human and not purely religious because Christians it's like it annoys me, you know, Christian how many times have an apologist told you we got our ethics and morals from Christianity >> and you're like dude, are you kidding me?

¶53You almost want to go do something that is non-Christian because it pisses you off. You're like, "Dude, we didn't get our ethics for you from you, dude." Like, sure, there's some influence because for no doubt, Christianity dominated the majority of the world by default. But >> you're you're ignoring how much Greco Roman Jewish prior thought, how much paganism influenced the Jewish thought, etc. Like, >> funny you should mention this. Eron and I have just putting the finishing touches on our book on on the Exodus and and one of the chapters is on uh legal codes and whether like the legal codes in the Bible are kind of on their own as some kind of castle in the air or whether they're actually dependent on you know Uranumu lipshar all these other you know the code of Hamarabi all these other legal codes that pre-existed them and and of course it's part of the evolution it's not just on its own as some kind of special pleading entity It's a development and and when you're existing in the period where as you say Christianity was a default in the western world or in the European world then of course any kind of moral development of humanity can be confused with the moral development of humanity as as contingent upon Christianity where it's not the case it's a correlation fallacy >> and that's the problem I'm I'm finding is that some things are just pre you know pre the religion that you once left and you're trying to sanitize you know hey I I don't I don't believe this anymore.

¶54And we get so far that a lot it becomes a big problem in the atheist community. There are splits on how to how to actually deal with this problem. But um I just think that sometimes we have to just realize we are we are apes. We are absolutely primates that evolved on this planet. And sometimes part of being a primate is not being a super robot rational absolute logic on everything kind of thing.

¶55And I know that could be that's a slippery slope if you allow things to be harmful to slip in. And we had some conversations about examples of that in that long stream that you watched, John. Uh but I I would I would say this too about Joe. U Rajot was bringing up in the chat. Fear.

¶56I my only push back to what Rajat's saying about fear is I think the only time fear became an issue with Joe and Joe mentions this fear of God. Fear is it really worth the punishments of hell? He had >> Pascal's wager. He say I've heard him. Yeah.

¶57>> Yeah. My [clears throat] only push back, and I'm not I agree with Rajat here about where Joe's at now. What got Joe to start actually thinking the fiery furnaces of hell are real to begin with? What made him start to come to this conclusion? Because I guarantee you it wasn't just Pascal's wager that got him to like push over.

¶58I think other psych psychological means caused him and the social people around him, probably Ethan Muse and others constantly going and maybe he buckled. Maybe he finally just went, "You know what? This is it. Mom's Catholic. I'll be back at home.

¶59I don't want to risk it just in case it might be true. I'll rationalize." And it it seemed so apologetic that you had vindicatory miracles and then everyone else's miracles also work for you, too. And it's like, dude, >> can you just explain that to the audience? Vindicatory and non vindicatory miracles. Just just to define that.

¶60>> I'm going to straw man it a little on purpose. My Catholic Church did miracles. This proves Catholicism. Hindu did miracles. Buddhist did miracles.

¶61Every other religion did miracles. And it proves Catholicism true, too. Okay, that's the straw man. But really, really what it is is every other claim of every other religious miracle. Their god gave you a a a pass, go collect $200, but when you come back by, remember to give us credit.

¶62So the Catholic Church is vindicated when a Catholic miracle happens, but when every other miracle that's ever happened in any other religious setting, it's still Jesus doing the miracle, but he can see it's for like some greater good. It's such a [ __ ] excuse. I saw Ethan Muse do in an interview once and I'm like so what if I reversed it and just said actually it's the Hindu goddess that's giving Jesus a little credit street cred here and it's really vindicating Hinduism. You don't realize it but it's really that goddess. It it dude it's such horshit to be honest.

¶63>> So so let's let's then go down the miracle rabbit hole here as we've already talked about rabbits. Uh so the uh let's give birth to a conversation on miracles. Okay. >> And the first place to go, I guess, is like I would have expected if if you were to say to me, "Oh, Joe Schmidt's converted, right?" First thought would have been without knowing anything else is that he would have gone to deism because here's a guy that's dealing with all the philosophical arguments about the existence of God like in real great depth. I mean, he is a great thinker.

¶64He's a very careful thinker. And I would never have have thought that he would dive into a particular denomination, right? I would have thought you are going to go to deism. So you would have suddenly thought that actually these arguments are particularly strong and I can't I can't find a decent atheistic argument against this and and but he's gone to Catholicism. What does it say that he has moved to Catholicism which by the way is the religion of his parents?

¶65So, um, yeah, Aaron, >> um, I was going to say I wanted to, you know, show some credit to Schmidt because I happen to have the book that he and Dan Ler wrote a couple years ago on effectively an atheistic argument uh, for uh, like one of the arguments from Aquinus was you basically need to have some sort of essence keeping things um, alive and going. And this idea of in this case it says here existential inertia basically kind of the idea of Newton's first law things keep doing whatever they're doing unless acting by outside force things keep existing unless something comes along to change it. Uh so saying hey then you don't need a thing. So like say hey it's literally Joe Schmidt while still in undergrad working with another professional philosopher writing a book for Springer. You don't do that without knowing how to do philosophy really really well.

¶66So absolute credit. he's uh he's going to be 10 times the philosopher I am while he's asleep. Um >> yeah, >> so I want to be careful there. But boy oh boy, it's also the case that I've seen brilliant folks use everything in their powers to get the conclusion they want. Just to shift away from Joe, let's talk about everyone's favorite Christian philosopher, but who's going to hell for not being Catholic, Bill Craig, >> right?

¶67uh because um you know when he comes into my wheelhouse of physics um he has to do a whole lot of interesting leg work because his main argument for the uh his great proof for the existence of God being the column cosmological argument it requires a particular version of a theory of time that isn't consistent with our current theory of time and yes I yes uh uh Jonathan has uh written a thing or two about this to put it loudly. Um, [laughter] >> uh, did God create the universe from nothing? Countering William Lane Craig's calam cosmological argument which which is one of the best argu best. [laughter] >> Yes. And I only highlight this is that Craig knows that everything he's trying to do with the colum requires going against general relativity.

¶68And so he goes out and he finds like the three or four fringe physicists who try to find some way of incorporating some other version of time onto there and say one way or another we're going to say that this is legitimate. This is at least just as good as the uh the uh uh Coca-Cola classic of general relativity and use that so that way he can even begin to make his argument. You don't do that sort of thing unless you are extremely motivated. I'm gonna upend modern physics just to start my argument. >> It's motivated reasoning.

¶69So the straight away this is the psychology of motivated reasoning. I have a motivation in order to reason in this particular way to towards this conclusion. And I think you know that's so he's he's ended up at traditional Catholicism here. >> But that's the odd part you're bringing up is like how the hell did he get from I'm not sure to all as as Rajat says in the chat trad Catholicism. It's not even like a liberal like I read Catholic theologians that are I mean bro brilliant.

¶70They they they they tread that line on virgin birth where you know in private they probably go it's a legend but like for the sake of the Catholic Church they're like you know I can't comment on whether this happened. >> The nativity of critical examination. Sorry. Sorry about the book. Carry on.

¶71>> Shameless plugs baby. Um [laughter] but seriously like you're how did he get from that to that? And again, all I can think of is the crowds that he put himself around, the friends that he had. This is the other thing about psychology, too. Who were his friends?

¶72When you think of Joe Schmid, like like what group did he actually fit into? Like I would expect if someone who wasn't actually in some way socially pressured into thinking this way by debating or arguing or being surrounded by people who also fit this category that he's just now happened to publicly convert to. Like I would have thought a sophisticated form of disism, some way in which he would have reasoned to at least theism in general, then eventually he would have maybe gradually made moves and been in some liberal form of an educated Catholic uh Catholic church, which allowed him to get back into, you know, good graces with his parents. No, this dude's full fundamentalist Catholic now. And I I want to use the word fundamentalist because when you listen to him speak about it, he is like absolutely sure this is the true religion.

¶73The religion is confirmed by the miracles. He thinks all the philosophy backs him up on this. And is it worth he puts a challenge to you. Is it worth you, you know, risking your soul, etc., etc. And I'm like, whoa, what the hell?

¶74Like, I don't >> What are his views on hell? >> I imagine it's eternal conscious torment because he I mean, if it w maybe it's annihilation, but I doubt it because the way he went on um pints and acquaintance and I didn't watch the whole thing, but I watched some of the clips. He justifies the what he thought was an immoral thing, the problem of evil of like how do we deal with hell with God? And you know what his honest answer was in a nutshell? Well, I think my intuitions are flawed.

¶75>> So like clearly the answer isn't this is wrong of God to give an eternal punishment for some temporal bad thing that could have happened from a mortal ape that evolved on a planet that God made. No. No. cooking them for all eternity is just my intuitions have to be off. He found himself.

¶76Yeah. >> Well, if you start with the idea, so this is where you get into loads of problems. If you start with the the conclusion that omniod exists, so God is all loving, all knowing and all all powerful, then like every bit of data in the world has to support that God is all loving, right? And so you cannot so you just have to say it's the whole idea. I've I've made this argument so many times.

¶77I would plug another one in my book because [laughter] I I talk about all this stuff loads in 30 arguments against God. I did a series on on this with you, Derek, heaven, hell, Satan, and divine design. But it's really important because like you one of the things I I I really belabor is is the idea that that every piece of data in the world as horrible as it is whether you stub your toe or whether you a million people have malaria or 240,000 people die in a tsunami has to be explainable by point of fact that God is all loving, right? And and that doesn't really jive too well. But but if that's what you believe, if you're starting with omniod, then yeah, he it has to be that hell has to make sense because and has to be morally acceptable and therefore my moral intuitions or my moral evaluations must necessarily be wrong.

¶78I have to doubt myself before I doubt God. >> But that creates a different problem. And you and I would agree, I'm sure Aaron would agree here, and I thought this through. If you now have to doubt your intuitions and your own perceptions of things, then how can you be so confident in your perception of believing that this is the true religion? Because at this point now all things interpretations of the Bible.

¶79>> Exactly. And this God and in fact I used the Bible in that video you watched of me. >> Yeah. Talking about deception >> against him to show your own Bible has God do deceptive things and false prophets will come and do signs and wonders to lead people after other gods. Ask a Jew today if the Trinity is another God.

¶80They're gonna tell you this is a different God. This is not our God. Okay? Now, I'm I'm just using that as an analogy to make the point that in the New Testament, many people will claim that they're doing this in his name and that in his name. Okay?

¶81So, at where is your intuition trustworthy enough that you're actually making a case that you should trust that this is the true religion? If you're willing to forfeit your own faculties and think that cooking them in an oven for all eternity that he made is good and just and he he's only doing good, you you forfeit all reason to even trust that this is the true religion in my estimation. >> Yeah. I I think just if we I mean there are so many arguments against uh miracles and and I mean it it seems to me that his entire conversion or his entire uh belief in God appears to hinge upon the miracles being true. I mean the miracles are doing an awful lot of leg work in his conversion, right?

¶82And hence the it was a third of the amount of 25 hours of video that he of video that he recorded, right? The miracles are super super important. >> Miracles was the longest portion, >> right? 12hour clip. The first was seven and the last was around seven or so or eight, but uh 12 hours of miracles, bro.

¶83Uh yeah, >> that's doing a lot of work. And actually I would say that has to be the weakest of any arguments for the honestly like and this is where I get a little bit not annoyed but but exasperated that someone you know Majesty of Reason is the name of his YouTube channel. He's a lovely guy. I've spoken to him. He's a careful thinker.

¶84He we went through some of the arguments in here. We we we looked at them in in real uh honest way and I I came away thinking you know he's a really honest thinker. And then to then to like jump into religion through miracles is like the weakest way to get into belief in God in my personal opinion. Is that something you'd agree with guys? >> Yeah, >> I would say that because every time I have decided to deep dive a miracle claim, I keep coming back frustrated about just how often I have to find out the facts I was told weren't actually facts.

¶85the primary sources weren't primary sources over and over again. I keep finding out how much I wasted my time. And if I was told, "Hey, I'm exploring folklore." That would be interesting. Being told this is the truth and you are a sinner for not investigating this. Duck you, you mother ducker, no matter what quacks out of your >> Yeah.

¶86By the way, the I got a Padre Pio documentary that I'm working on uh that someone helped fund. If you guys have any insights on this, help me out. I'm I'm all game. I I'll >> So, yeah. I I sorry I know Aaron this when I spoke and debated with Caleb Jackson and since Caleb said he was instrumental in uh Joe's conversion right then Caleb Jack Jackson's an interesting person to talk to now when I debated him I knew that he put a lot of store in the miracle of calendar right which is and I don't know if Joe mentioned this one in his uh conversion accounts but the miracle of calendar that Caleb was putting all this amount of store in I did a bunch research.

¶87In fact, I've got it here. I've got pages of the research I did like four years ago or whenever it was. And the miracle is just utterly debunkable. It's just completely debunkable. But the idea that this is some kind of major cornerstone of of Catholic belief or or religious belief based on this what I think is an incredibly dubious miracle claim.

¶88It is ridiculous. And then Craig Keen wrote a book on miracles some years back that loads of people bang on about. And I remember looking into a couple of miracles with a guy that used to contribute to my blog called Andrea Schuler and and we did some research into uh some libations or something some some physical um supposed miracle um biological kind of healing miracle and we're like that is just an absolutely terrible account like coming it was from an African Christian community in in Africa and and like the the provenence of the claims was I'm not trying to be anti-African or anything here but claim was completely speurious and I was like seriously like people are giving all this to you Craig Keenina and and your book here and and that's one of the accounts you're giving and if those if that's a level of of um you know argument then I don't and and level of evidence then it really does frustrate me. >> Well, think about what they need too. think about the problem like before we even get into the miracle stuff and I want to hear Aaron's thoughts about certain miracles I'm sure he knows about too is that what kind of um what for them counts.

¶89Okay. And if you go back to the Matt Deah Hunty stuff I want to get into a little bit of the beef that happened. Joe Schmid and Matt Deah Hunty had beef in a sense over a video and it was uh you know a little debate argument type beef. What was it? Well, Matt says, you know, a claim, you know, a testimony, someone's claim isn't really evidence, right?

¶90What he meant was it's not good evidence. Is my that's my takeaway of what I think Matt was trying to say. And with that, I agree. But him and then he had Alex Okconor in a recording together were talking about a claim is evidence, but that it's not like you have to then take that evidence and see if it's good evidence or bad evidence. And I agree with that, too.

¶91But I think they were talking past each other mostly. However, that I think gradually in the process of him doing that video with Alex Okconor, he's already now in circles with Catholics probably finding ways in which testimonial evidence to him is persuasive. And I just think that humans, when you know enough about how humans are, you know how bullshitting we are, you know how easily deceptive we are. You know how easily we are misunderstanding what's going on. all of these factors.

¶92When someone tells me something, this is why hum is important. I think when someone does say something that is up here, if you told me you walked your dog yesterday and a car swerved and hit it, I'd believe you. Uh as long as you're not like a known liar to me, I'd probably believe you cuz that happens. It may not be like like so so common, but it's common enough. You told me that, hey, listen, we were running from a guy was trying to attack us.

¶93There was a 20ft wall. My dog jumped over the 20 foot wall and didn't even touch the wall once. I'm gonna think you're full of [ __ ] I hate to break it to you, but >> this is the difference between naturalistic naturalistic miracles. The idea like people go into remission. So Caleb when we were debating talked about David Kent, I think it no David Bill Kent Bill Kent who was a paraplegic and then got up uh in in church one day and walked from his his wheelchair and he's like this is definite evidence of God.

¶94I'm like, well, how many other times have people stood up been in remission and stood up after being paraplegic but not been in a church environment and they don't. So, the idea that that when you have prayer involved, I' I've written on this quite extensively previously, but and and I've got some anecdotes to properly support this, but I won't go into them. But the idea is if you're always praying for something to happen and then it happens, you are going to go that A caused B, right? But when that happens without prayer, you you don't say, "Well, it therefore it was nothing to do with prayer type thing." So So people go into remission all the time, but we don't go, "Ah, therefore, I don't know, atheism or therefore God or whatever." It's just like that's what happens in the world, right? Uh but when they're in church and they get up and do it, and then of course it could be deception, there could be fraud, there could be all sorts of things going on as well.

¶95uh but but you know when you're showing something to have naturally happened it's very easy to connect it to relig religions because these people are always praying for them so people are always going to say I prayed for that to happen and it happened therefore god and there's something called littlewood's law so littlewood's law is the mathematician littlewood said look >> if if you define a miracle as you know a naturalistic miracle something that could happen naturally not like regrowing an amputated limb but but if it could naturally happen Then let's say you know a miracle therefore was something with a 1 in a million chance or 1 in 10 million or whatever it is like really astoundingly small probability chance. He says okay but you know if if winning the lottery is one in a million and you buy a million tickets you're going to win a lottery right? So you know if things happen all the time like think of how many billions of things trillions of things happen every second every every wave function every particle hitting you know stuff happens all the time frequency of stuff happening all the time is is immense right so so you are going to have miraculous events happening each and every day all around the world all the time they aren't miraculous they're just very low probability but when enough stuff happens they don't become low probability they become almost certain so you are going to have all sorts of seemingly miraculous things happen all the time and if someone prays over it then suddenly it's it's God's worked in in this way rant over. >> Yeah. Uh and it's so often the thing that makes the thing sound miraculous is when certain context is taken out that might have made you realize oh this is another plausible explanation.

¶96It's like oh my goodness the uh curtains in my uh room are moving but the window is closed. How could that be happening? Um, if I forget to mention, oh, there's an air vent right below there when the air AC kicks on. It's like, leave that one little detail out and all of a sudden I make it sound like there's a ghost. Um, and this, I find, is often what's going on there.

¶97There are things that could have been checked, should have been checked, but were not or were left out if it's more deceptively done. Um, I'm also remembering an interesting example. It it stuck in me when I went through Keg Kener's book like a decade ago. And when I say book, it's actually like two giant volumes. So, it's more of a doors stop than a book based on its size.

¶98And he goes through a bunch of weather miracles. And the one that stuck out to me the most was just telling me just how bad Kenir was in researching any of these things. He gives the story of um a missionary says he was told that um this uh uh priest figure in one of the tribes there said, "Hey, um we've been having drought, but I predict that there is going to be rain tomorrow." And lo and behold, there was rain tomorrow, but there wasn't rain in the other nearby village. Therefore, the miracle. Now, first off, when was this report made?

¶99Uh, well, the person who was selling it was telling it 40 years later, 4 years later. So, my first thought is, okay, that's a a gap there. Two, how did this person know where it rained in one place but not in the other nearby village? How did that person check if that's the case? Three, how often does this sort of stuff happen?

¶100Four, how often does this sort of person make these sorts of predictions? All this sort of stuff that would just be the most basic context you would want to gather to show this is even the least bit miraculous rather than uh your weatherman just occasionally is right. And what did he do any of that? No. Did he actually substantiate any miracle?

¶101No. He basically just jumps from one thing to one thing to one thing and anytime he tries to imagine what a skeptic might say, he then jumps to a different miracle where he thinks that explanation won't work. So he can't actually stay in one point and drill down and show really well, this one definitely happened. We can prove it. It's just constantly running because once you stand in place and you really scrutinize, you realize, oh, nope.

¶102>> Well, let me let me let me teach you real quick here with an example. Padre Pio, because this is a big one for Joe, Padre Pio, the stigmata, all of that. Uh, in 1919, my documentary is going to go into this. Maria de David Devidito D and then last name Veto Vi. Um she returned to her hometown Fogia or Fogia F O G I A uh carrying a confidential missive intended for Padre Pio.

¶103Um and seems that they wanted four grams of carbolic acid in private. Don't tell anyone. Can you get me carbolic acid? Because she's a chemist. Um, I believe it was her that was a chemist, but I know that for a fact he was trying to receive according to this testimony.

¶104Now, remember, we're dealing with testimony all the freaking time. We're always this he said, she said. This has been in the Vatican archives for 90 years or whatever. And like recently, it was published by a 2010 book where the guy goes into this Padre Pio, Miracles and Politics in in a secular age by Sergio Luzado. And he highlights that like dude, we had people at the time very early on in his ministry as a frier approaching him or approaching trying to get carbolic acid and pure carbolic acid and it was stored away.

¶105They went to the Catholics and said, "Hey, look, uh, just so you know, they told me not to say this, but he was trying to get acid. That's that's where the stigmata stuff comes in." Um, why doesn't that factor in? Why is that not a serious thing to go, "Holy [ __ ] we have a noble frier in the name of our God and he was on our side. I'm sure he was a wonderful guy if you bumped into him. He's probably super kind to you." You know, most most Catholics were.

¶106Most fathers you bumped into were when you went to church on Sunday, but they were also secretly molesting children. Sorry for YouTube, but you know, there was a lot of this stuff that was going on at the same time. They're nice to your face, but that you how do you know what everybody's doing at all times, right? Um they just have so much trust like these are saints in their minds and there's so much psychology behind that whole thing. And I'm like, as soon as I heard that there was carbolic acid being attained by this guy, I'M SORRY.

¶107EVERYTHING YOU WANT ME TO believe is out the window until I have really certain evidence of something like like if I >> is this because I don't know the story. Is this because the acid was being used to give um stigmata in in the palms and whatnot? Yeah. >> Yes. But then they went beyond the claims.

¶108So again, the test the stories they tell about him are much they even [ __ ] the stories about the guy that they don't need to, but they do. Like as if his the holes go all the way through like you could stick your finger through the hole like it's a it wasn't a hole like that. No, it was it was a known open wound that supposedly consisted as an open wound for 50 years. But I've got some more evidence that I'm going to bring up from testimonies of people who went in and said he smelt very good like perfume. He had like constant fragrances that made him smell like he didn't because you would think 50 years of a wound it would have a nasty odor, right?

¶109But if there are chemicals being used, I don't know about you, but I use chemicals to wash my floor. The floor smells great, the room smells great after I use a lot of chemicals. Like common sense goes out the damn window, guys. And then there's exaggeration. in anyway.

¶110>> Well, I was just going to say like the whole principle of of evaluating these claims is extraordinary uh claims require extraordinary evidence and and I and I would I contest any religious person who denies this because it is the maxim that we use so so frequently. If you're at the water cooler and someone says like you were saying earlier, uh Derek, you know, someone said, "I went shopping yesterday." You're like, "Yeah, okay. Completely. I've got a cat." Yeah, okay. I've got a table.

¶111Brilliant. Whatever. You say, "I went to the moon last night on a on a unicorn." You're like, "Oh, hang on. I don't believe you unless you provide me with a ton of evidence." So, the evidence has to be commensurate with the claim. And this is obvious.

¶112So, then when you have really outrageous claims, and this is the same about the resurrection and the Exodus, you know, miracles involving Moses and whatnot, you these are massive, massive claims, right? uh you need to provide us with not just some evidence or this bit of testimony and then someone said this and this and I'm believing that. No, I want way better levels of evidence for that. And I'm sorry if you don't have those levels of evidence, you are not justified in believing that. And and and and the and the problem is and I I'll hand this back over to you guys, but I want to then go on to talk about uh what I call the biblical hermeneutic circularity.

¶113And you actually talked about circularity as well, um, Derek, in one of your videos, and and I think it's really super important. But, but just in terms of extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, I presume neither of you have an issue with that. >> I know apparently Joe Schmidt does because he also tried poo pooing um, Hume, but >> yeah, but two things quickly on that. Uh, one, uh, to also go with what Dererick was saying because I imagine some people are like, well, what are the chances someone would want to burn their hands? And I'm just like, go to the Philippines every year where people literally nail themselves up to crosses to reenact that.

¶114And I'm talking not faking it. Like literally nailed through the hand. If people are willing to do that on a regular basis, yeah. Uh a holy guy, you know, uh you know, doing a little extra scrub. Scrub isn't absurd.

¶115Um okay. Uh so I remember one of the things that came up in one of the clips of Joe basically arguing that uh you know, Hume is wrong. He's disastrously wrong. he's the wrongest wrong whoever wronged. Uh and you know having to basically deny the uh fact that natural science has been working extremely well for 400 years with an extremely consistent view on how things work.

¶116And every time we go and we try to test it, it just keeps coming out stronger and better. And the exact opposite has happened every time we've investigated something supernatural. So when he argues that we don't actually have this uniform testimony of nature, he just basically has to deny, you know, the last 4 500 years of what we've been doing well as humans to take the stuff that is the crappiest evidence that we've ever produced as humans. Um, and secondly, I saw it came up in your video as well, Derek, uh, the quote that keeps going around from John Earman, a philosopher who goes and says that uh, Hume was catastrophically wrong. I've read that book.

¶117I've read responses to it. It's ultimately an argument about how Hume should be interpreted. Um whether he's right or wrong, I can't say. But guess what? Also believes that miracle claim testimony is crap and he just puts it in a basian framework rather than Humes, which is basically Hume's version on steroids and made more rigorous.

¶118So it's like, yeah, he doesn't take you, he takes Super Hume. That would be like saying, well, I believe in Einstein, not Newton, therefore gravity doesn't exist. What the [laughter] [ __ ] >> Yeah. Hey, real quick to this. You brought the comment up carbolic acid or phenol phe n o l uh the costic antiseptic of that era.

¶119Yes. Uh but there's even a another thing the there's a letter that bore a second request like the first uh for veritrine another costic drug. So the village pharmacist decided he'd best report that request to the Vatican. So like this is not like oh I just typical carbolic acid. four four grams of pure carbolic acid along with veritatrine which is another costic drug.

¶120So it was enough for the chemists to want to report this and it's in the Vatican archives. But guess what? Hush hush sweep it under the rug. And yet I even in this documentary I have a pope that called this a the straw idol was not buying uh Padre Pio's BS. So we even have a pope on record saying it's [ __ ] But many Catholics who are saying, "Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

¶121It's happened. It's true. It's true. It's true." And I'm just sitting here going, "Man, like >> it's odd that this it's like even if you knock down this one, and I can already predict it. There's too much weight in everything he just did going public, he can't go back.

¶122If I knock down every one of these miracles he brings up, it won't matter. He'll find more. He'll do whatever." You know what I mean? Like, I can't see. >> Two things to that.

¶123I mean, you mentioned Brandolini's law. So, that's the what's known as [ __ ] asymmetry. the idea that that he's put in 25 hours of of this kind of uh video output. But to unpick each of those miracle claims that he deals with comparatively actually fairly quickly given, you know, the amount of work you would need to do to unpick them, it just means that that the work that has to be done to debunk his claims is far far more ownorous than the work to just put put that out there. And that that's an issue.

¶124And the other thing, um, Aaron, you were just talking about this, but actually Derek talked about this in one of his other videos, and it's the idea of supernaturalism, uh, trumps, uh, sorry, naturalism trumps supernaturalism every every single time. Richard Carrier very many years ago had a debate, and he used an analogy. I think you might know it, Derek, which is that that, you know, if if you're going to back a horse that that's won 10,000 times, then that's pretty justifiable to in the next race. But if you're going to back a horse that's lost 10,000 times in a row uh and and back that horse for the next race, then you're being a bit of an idiot. And the idea is is that naturalism has supplanted supernaturalism every single time.

¶125Like we no longer believe that lightning and thunder is is the eye of Thor and he's smacking his Mongol hammer or whatever it is. We go, "Oh, charged particles this and that and that." And but not once has it gone the other way where we've we've explained a phenomenon uh in in naturalistic terms and then supplanted that with a supernaturalistic explanation. So, you know, if you're going to back the the supernaturalist horse here, then you're in in in hot water with regard to inductive reasoning. Anyway, I just thought I'd throw in there. >> Yeah.

¶126By the way, uh I love what uh Roat just wrote. Joe also cited Tim Mcgru. [laughter] >> Yeah. It's like, wow. >> Yeah.

¶127Yeah. Uh yeah, I saw the dots that he cited for like the case for the resurrection Lydia Mcgru and Tom and Mlache. uh people who um are definitely not experts in this field to put it extremely mildly. >> I debated Lydia Mcgru on uh Premier Christian Radio on Unbelievable over the nativity and I got insanely frustrated and actually this may be relevant here because she really relied on probability ergo possibility sorry possibility ergo probability which is the idea that if it's possible conceptually possible therefore it happened. So she'd say look, you know, I'd present all of these arguments against why the nativity couldn't have happened from a historical point of view.

¶128You know, the census couldn't have happened in this way. This couldn't have happened that, that year couldn't have been that, this person couldn't be ruling at that time. And she said, well, it could have been this, this, this, and come up with some really contrived argument and then go, right, I've won the argument. It's like, no, you've got to present something that is not just conceptually possible, but it's plausible and historically actually probable. Otherwise, you are just going, it's possible, therefore it happened.

¶129and and that is, you know, and the same with kind of miracle claims. It's like, well, this it might have happened like this, therefore it did happen like this. Well, no, let's let's compare it against all the other thesis, all the other theories here and see which is the most probable. And always, and and Derek, you've said this many times, always the most probable. It doesn't matter how like you talked about this with the swoon theory recently Derek that I saw you know it doesn't matter how probable improbable you think the swoon theory which is the idea that Jesus like passed out and then on >> and none of us believe that that hypothesis is the case I'm simply using it as a model but go ahead please >> but yeah just the idea that you might think it's completely unrealistic that he had kind of pass out on the cross and then three days later he kind of comes to and he's like and actually that explains how the tomb was empty Like, but as improbable as you think that is, it's infinitely more plausible than the idea that there's a God man spirit thing dying on a cross as an incarnate human and then being resurrected and blah blah blah blah blah.

¶130Like that is far far less probable than the swoon theory. Right. So anyway, so so when it comes to miracle claims, like the least probable explanation is that that this particular denomination of Christianity has some kind of vindication through this miracle rather than actually fraud or, you know, poor memory or exaggeration or this and that. >> Yeah. And one comment on that and I'd love to have Aaron uh piggyback this is they their own religious tradition backs this interpretation about miracle claims because why would it be a miracle if it wasn't something supposed to be out of the complete extraordinary which would mean the prior probability of it being a thing that happens is the least likely.

¶131That's why it's so um you know wow this isn't supposed to happen. That's why it's a miracle. Um, and I I think that when you factor that in, every natural, like it should be the default. Everyone should have the default be the natural until either you yourself, and I think that would be the best measurement. You and a group of people with with good ways of actually um setting up controls, right, to be able to actually see it happen.

¶132At that point, you could convince me. You could convince me if a guy with a nub had an arm grow back. But anyway, I just thought I'd make the comment that their own tradition like when you say that, hey, the prior probability that a miracle is not the the the higher probability, it's the lower probability. And they they give you like they want to mouth back about that and it's like, dude, you would think that you would concede this point, but you see the problem with it. >> The problem.

¶133Yeah. >> Yeah. Because it shows that they're weak. Yeah. Yeah.

¶134they they have to deny the the rigor the kind of strength of that argument because otherwise they have to admit that they're on on a really weak footing when it comes to using miracles as evidence. >> Yeah. >> Um I I was going to mention biblical hermeneutic circularity. This is something I wrote about years and years and years ago, which is the idea that there's a big circle here that's a problem. So you look at if you're a Christian, right?

¶135You you've already you believe in in in God, right? and and miracles and and then you see a miracle happen and you're like, "Oh my goodness, right? This has got higher probability because of my belief in God. Therefore, this miracle happened." And then that feeds back into your belief in God because you're like, "Miracles have happened. Therefore, you know, go God exists." And then you have the miracles of the Bible and you say, "Of course, I know that miracles happen so I believe that these miracles are more likely." And and then but that's what's underpinning your belief in those miracles.

¶136So you got this this circularity that goes on where where you're like you're justifying the conclusion the whole time whether it be like individual miracles or the miracles of the resurrection and and your belief in God feeds into the miracles which then believe in feed into your belief in God and you're like hang on that this is self-reinforcing and there's a really big problem there. Anyway, I just think that's that's an important point to make. I don't know if anyone has anything to say on that. There's there's definitely there's definitely the matter of yeah stuff that's real self-reinforcing. So, uh I just remembered >> there is an interesting miracle story that happened just down the road for me.

¶137Uh if any of you guys are familiar with uh Christian Science, >> yeah, exactly. >> The basically the founding miracle that happened to Mary Baker Eddie happened literally just down the road from where I currently live. Like there's still like the house there that she lived in where she had uh first taken this really bad fall and then 3 days later she miraculously figured out that actually everything in reality is an illusion and so all of sickness is actually an illusion and once you realize that all sicknesses can go away and this is like the founding insight uh and discovery of Christian Science by Mary Baker Eddie. And like I say literally just half a mile down the road from me is where this miracle happened. And Christian scientists when they get together every time they are supposed to give testimonies about what miraculous thing happened to them this week.

¶138So if you want to just go and be credulous and collect testimonies and testimonies and testimonies like I say just down the road I could probably go get a lot of papers to just show you right now. Um, I only bring that up because one, there's the self-reinforcement mechanism, and two, Joe also takes the argument that because the Catholics have this apparatus for finding the miracles, the Catholics having that apparatus isn't self-p proof of the Catholic Church because wouldn't God want to make a church that does that? And it's like, talk to the Mormons, talk to the Christian Scientists, talk to uh the people at the Ecclesiastius temples because they were already doing that. And either you're going to say mysterious ways or demons or mysterious demons. >> Yeah.

¶139Yeah, but this was the blueprint for what you're describing was already being created at the very outset of Christianity because when you get to Kelsus or Celus, however you want to pronounce his name, uh, Pfrey, you get to Julian the Apostate, every person who was an apostate or a fighter against Christianity brought up the alternative miracle claims from other cults, from other religious mystery religions, from other gods in history and what they did. And the Christians would have to fight this. And their way of fighting it often wasn't to discount the other miracles and to pretend they didn't happen. They couldn't do that according to their own standards. They went, "Well, here's the deal.

¶140We know that some of them tried to poo poo the Essipian ones, but they would go, well, we know, look, today, to this day, to this very present day, people are claiming miracles in the name of Jesus." That they they're claiming these miracles are happening on a regular. So now you have outside cults competing with different gods and their miracles. They had to create a system that was able to document and prove and give more validation to their own religion. Especially when you go and imagine how many imagine how many movements that we don't have documentation of that the Catholic Church either by by hook or crook sword or word went to other cults, other groups that were out there in the middle of the woods. We don't have writings about that.

¶141They had their own superstitions, their own miracles, their own divine uh I don't know experiences and whatnot that they had to confront. Like when Spain came to the Americas, I guarantee you there was something going on between the different kinds of human phenomena, between their religious systems and belief systems and whatnot. They had to have developed these kinds of things in order to dominate the world. You need to keep record. You need to have this kind of testimonial thing.

¶142to him it's self-reassuring that it proves God is back in the Catholic Church. I find it I find that so so silly to me. And then when you take actual accounts when you investigate some of the accounts that the Catholic Church dismissed that carries the same weight of evidence that the ones they accept, >> they they're selective. So it's like, dude, I I don't trust your whole, you know, system here. It's rather fertuitous that anyone that has these miracle experiences only has a miracle experience of the religion they know.

¶143Do you know what I mean? Like it it seems rather coincidental that you're going to see in your piece of toast or a watermelon in pips your particular god. Like no one experiences no one's like in in the Amazon rainforest is is presented a miracle of Christianity without having been in touch with Christianity first. You know do you know what I mean? I don't know.

¶144Correct me if I'm wrong, but I know of no account where someone has been given a miraculous vision or been involved in a miracle that gets them to convert to a religion that they didn't already know about. And and this this to me seems like very very spirious to me. And then I just like the distribution of miracles. It's all rather kind of John Loftus wrote a really good book, The Outsider Test for Faith where you know if you're going to start you got you've got to take yourself outside of your own religious belief to to start looking at it from an outsider and looking in and and criticize it as if you weren't a member of of that faith because you just get stuck in your own little uh world. You need you need to assess it as someone from the outside.

¶145And I think it it's particularly uh I I think coincidental that everyone has an experience of of the uh of the religion that they are themselves involved in or know of. Um but anyway, I don't know if you have anything to say about that. >> There are mirror. >> Well, just to show that I just have some evidence here of a u uh a culturally less explicit but very clear version of getting a divine message. I have it up on share screen if you want to show that.

¶146>> Yeah, I'm just trying to do that. So I would do you know when I said this right I I have you ever seen Have you ever seen what that's from? Do you know what that's from? >> Uh Michelin Web Mitchell Web look. >> So when I mentioned I never would have mentioned watermelon had I not uh had I not known of that sketch.

¶147So that's a British comedy show where where a guy um cuts his watermelon and then that's what he sees and then he's like oh my god there is no god. And then the whole it just turns the whole thing on its head. is it is chef's kiss of a of a sketch that is really really good. >> That is funny. I wanted to say about your uh about your your point about them not having experiences outside of the cultural context that they know.

¶148So um it's really interesting. I remember when I was working for the Christian bookstore this I'm a teenager like >> young maybe I'm not teenager maybe young adult. Okay. Um DVDs were coming in. I used to love buying their DVDs and watching the debates.

¶149William Lane Craig and then videos with Ravi Zachcharias and you know I'd watch uh I I was watching this was back when um what was his name he did a case the case for Christ and the case for creator and Lee Stroble >> Lee Stroble yeah >> I watched like all this stuff all his CDs I mean I was at the Christian bookstore working and buying these things when they come in there was a DVD that showed all these testimonies of people who had you know visions and dreams of Jesus that came to them and uh most of them were Muslim And like as a Christian, I'm a young Christian watching this going, "Oh my god, this is so true." Like, and then listening to their testimonies, I believed already. So, it was just confirming what I already believed. And like later, I realized how influential Jesus and Mary was to the Islamic world already. And how long the debate between Islam and Christianity was active. Like, they're they're they're brushing shoulders all the time.

¶150So, it was like at the time it sounded so good. The music in the video was so well. It was so like testimonial and powerful proving my Christian faith. I didn't realize how much Jesus played a role in their own religion. You know, we didn't factor that in, at least at the time.

¶151So, yeah, I didn't find some, you know, person completely foreign to all of the outside world who had all of these experiences and knew the name and could tell you the story and all of that. Like, no, there's never been a confirmation anything like that. So >> in in in my book I I spend this one the yellow one 30 arguments against the existence of God. I spend a lot of time talking about omni God obviously because it's an argument against this idea of God is all powerful, all knowing and all loving. Uh but fairness like if God is all loving then God would surely be fair.

¶152I mean surely fairness is is is an element of you know perfection and and lovingness. And when it comes to miracles, I I think there's and I've written on this previously, the argument of sporadic miracles is an argument against this kind of God existing. And it's the idea that only certain people have miracles in certain places at certain times. And they aren't particularly powerful. Like I would have thought, you know, a a miracle that would have changed the the view of like 200,000 people or rather than just one person or two people rather than one person or or or a miracle that could do a little bit more like, I don't know, stopping 240,000 people dying in a uh in a tsunami.

¶153I I would think, well, isn't it weird? You've got these random odd miracles that oh, someone's just started. Someone's now able to walk when they're a quadriplegic. Oh, that's brilliant. You've forgotten about malaria, mate.

¶154Uh do do you know what I mean? Like the these you get these really sporadic miracles that are so haphazard that it just looks like, well, this is just natural phenomena that people are ascribing to miraculous uh events. So, I don't know. I I I think the the whole idea that God is unfair with the way that that miracles are distributed around the around the world, I think is is a is is a good argument against the existence of omniod. Anyway, I don't know if you >> I agree.

¶155I I I the only thing I can add is when I did my little video just briefly at the introduction of Joe Schmid's he would do he did a short video before he did his long 25h hour thing where he was just saying, "Guys, good news. Catholic Church is true. Jesus Christ is Lord." I thought it was a prank. I thought it was a joke. Um, and I wrote him.

¶156I'm like, "Dude, you're freaking hilarious. I love you, man. What's next? You're gonna be on Cameron Batusi's channel, bro." He was on [ __ ] Cameron Btusi's channel and I didn't even know it. And I was like, "Oh my god, I thought you were joking." I wrote him in private message.

¶157I have all the images of all of it. I'm like, "Dude, I thought you were joking. I didn't know this was real." And he's like, "No, no worries." You know, and he wrote me back and stuff. Um, but in >> gone really deep then. I mean he's really like which is unsurprising when you go and sorry to cut you off but like when you are so strong in your belief not that his agnosticism was particularly strong maybe in the way that like a militant atheist would be.

¶158But when you are like completely in this world and then you come out of that world then you is when you kind of evangelize for in his case maybe reason and philosophy and and um reasonable agnosticism. You spend all that time and effort doing that. Then when you come out of that, you're in that allin as you were when you're out of it. And I and I think that's really common thing to see. Sorry, carry on.

¶159>> No, you're good. Zon, I just make the comment that when Zun happened uh and all these people claimed to be seeing m Mary and of course dismissed and who gives a [ __ ] about the people who were standing there and didn't see anything or those who actually purposely tried to see it, said they could and then when they you know they're atheists and like I saw a light and then I thought I saw like what they're trying to see and then when I told myself, hey, hold on. Are you really seeing this? and they really weren't seeing it. So, they were able to psychologically kind of be, I guess you say, memesmerized by the group think of trying to see something that's there when it's not.

¶160Um, at the same time that happens, guys right across the border are claiming God is helping them defeat them in in war, right? So, the whole Zun thing happened in the trauma aftermath of the Coptics getting blamed for the defeat that's happening between Egypt and Israel. ISRAEL'S OVER HERE GOING, "YEAH, YAHWEH. [screaming] YEAH, WE KICK THEIR FREAKING ASS AND GOD'S ON our side. And sure enough, the miracle was that here's this small people against surrounding enemies and they overwhelmingly win like flying colors freaking win this battle.

¶161God's on their side. That's how the humans there interpreted it. And like a little light hanging out over a Coptic church that they think might be Mary is their miracle that God's helping them. And I asked the question, well, who's God helping? the people who actually won this war are the people who are over here sitting here saying they're seeing a light.

¶162It was really weird. Plus, I love what um I just want to comment about what Rajat's saying here. Spinosza's quote. I think Spinosza would puke if he heard his name being used in such a way if he was alive. But also uh the idea that Ethan Muse explicitly said that critical Bible scholars are writing fanfiction.

¶163And I would just argue, listen, critical Bible scholarship is doing the best they can with hypothetical models that work to try and make sense of a terrible evidenced past that they're trying to reconstruct. Um, but nobody has a greater fanfiction than the church itself's stories in which they tell themselves. That's the biggest of all fanfiction. So, if there is some fanfiction, which there could be, I mean, look, a lot of Bible scholarship, you, you, me, Aaron, we could both sit here and talk all day about the crap we find within Bible scholarship or like things we just don't find convincing that academics might say or, you know, whatever. But nobody has a bigger fanfiction than the religious story that the b that the Catholic Church is trying to sell you in my view.

¶164And yeah, anyway. >> Yeah. >> I I think that like one of the issues still is that there's no miracle of an ampute's leg growing back or arm. Do do you know what I mean? We we still get back to like all of these miracle claims are distinctly naturalistic in in flavor.

¶165Like the calendar one is interesting because that is supposedly a an ampute's leg being reattached, but you get I think it had the scar and anyway like that is so debunked and it happened >> 1800s. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

¶166The reports from 1640. I was just trying to do some digging there this morning. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

¶167So, the calendar, honestly, it is such a poor poor example of a decent miracle claim. And yet, this is at the heart of of some people who are who are really strong on on basing their belief on miracles. And I'm just like, this is the weakest of the weak. And and why why would God not grow? Like why would you have miracles that could be interpreted so easily in in a number of different ways?

¶168Like what is the o what Okay, here's a question to you guys. What do you think the objectives would be for a god doing a miracle? It probably depends what the miracle is, but what are your what are your different end goals? >> Say that again. >> What do you think the objectives would be for a god creating a miracle?

¶169What are the different um things that you're going to get out of it as a god? I would say the two things that come to mind is one writing a wrong that requires your intervention that wasn't happening with the systems already there and you're trying to send some sort of clear message to your subjects about uh how they need to get their acts together. >> Yeah. And and persuasion. owe that persuasion in there >> or or you know like like in the case of uh again it's hard for me not to think of the human side of this and try to pretend like I can only see the god side but think about was I tuned when this happened after the aftermath of a terrible defeat war that took place and the Coptics are being persecuted by Muslims at this time blamed for the for the failure of Egypt not winning the war.

¶170So now you have a traumatized Christian church that is being blamed politically and being persecuted publicly. Uh what better than to have Mary come out in a glowing light which both both religions honor her, Muslim and u Christians. And there's Mary, you know, standing up. Distract them. It's almost like look over here.

¶171You know what I mean? It's like the Epstein files. Hey guys, let's start a war over here. Forget what happened over here. You know what I Like I'm just it's hard for me to see what the God would be trying to do, you know?

¶172>> I mean it part what Aaron was just sort of saying right or wrong. I mean part of the problem with kind of doing miracles is almost like reacting to something that's not already you know like perfectly in place or something you know if God I mean here's a problem without wanting to sidebar this too much. Here's a problem I have with the whole Noah's flood scenario, which is if God is omniod and has full divine fornowledge, I think full divine fornowledge, by the way, is one of the biggest problems for the philosophical understanding of this kind of God. But if God knew of all things in advance and created what he's created anyway, uh then you know, everything should be fine, right? God God is is a perfect creator and knows what he's doing and shouldn't need to go like he did with the nurse flood.

¶173Oh my god, I've made a right [ __ ] up. Let's start again. and he just like clears the the table where he's got his model going. He's like, "Oh, this one's crap." Just clears it and then has a flood, you know, and then starts again. It's like, "Sorry about that.

¶174I cocked up that first one." Well, you're not very much an omni God if you did that. Uh, but this is the idea that miracles are just writing a wrong or like tweaking here, tweaking it here, and tweaking it there. Well, you know, you're not much of a uh of a designer, are you? You're not much of a perfect god if you're constantly having to come down and tweak this and tweak that and do this and do that. But but it depends what what you believe the objectives are for these different um these different uh miracles.

¶175Well, >> it's hard to do that without having you know the the the biblical text which you know we have to come back to which seems to say he desires all people to be saved. He desires you know it's trying to give you God's motives in some text and then other text he's deceptive. So again here we are we're trying to read a book that's not really one book with one idea about what God's supposed to be saying or thinking. And the ones who have that optimistic view, it doesn't match nature. It doesn't.

¶176It doesn't match what we see around us. If it's this omniod, it matches that crazy [ __ ] that we see in the Old Testament much more than it does this idea of an omni loving wanting you to be in here. He cares so much about you kind of God. In fact, the other day when I was watching the horrific natural atrocity that happened with the uh the lands, oh my god, watching that on camera, my my skin crawled >> and I did a post. I said, "Wow, where was God?" You know, in this and some someone actually commented and said, >> "Yahweh is right there.

¶177Don't you see him?" uh like like that God that is clearly doing all sorts of horrific Old Testament uh atrocities and wanting to destroy people's that's him and you know they were not they're not a believer but they're making the point that look at how bad yeah that that fits the description is their point and it's like oh [ __ ] I didn't really >> think about that. [laughter] What happens to Joe Smith if um if all of these miracle cases that he has documented are shown to be incredibly spirous? Like so if if Derek does a documentary on one particular miracle case or if there's a series I've I've seen already a couple of videos on certain ones like he he he didn't reference the name but the miracle claim the way he described it was one of Barbara Kaminsk's someone did a video on on that and he's like well this is one of the ones that that he did and then takes it apart right so if every single miracle claim is like completely debunked in a way that most rational people would go yeah the the belief that this is God doing this and it's the particular Catholic God uh is is the least probable explanation of this and most any rational person would would believe that. Then where does that leave Joe Schmidt? Do you think it's like it doesn't really matter that that he's just in there?

¶178It's now more about psychology rather than actually playing with the evidence. I think we have evidence of from different areas about where that would be because when I, you know, did my deep diving for our book about aliens and religion, I had to look at all the various claims of UFOs and over and over and over again when I, you know, >> don't do it. Don't do it. >> It's another book. >> Do it.

¶179>> Yeah, [laughter] we narrowed it there. >> Yes. Yes. Uh, but I had noticed that pretty much any sort of time that maybe some sort of UFO claim could be shown to be, oh, this was a drone, this was a cloud, this was a weather balloon, this was the moon, etc., etc., over and over again, they'll say, ah, but you haven't explained this one. And so long as there's always something where the evidence is just really crappy that you can always point to and say, "You haven't disproven this one." That will just be the new lynch pin.

¶180So, it's always going to be a game of jumping from claim to claim to claim. And you realize, hey, there was never actually a good reason to jump here. There was just whatever was needed there to psychologically make it available. And now that you've made the jump, now it's just now we're building the wall. We're going to defend this position uh from, you know, whatever uh slings and arrows are fired against it.

¶181We're going to protect the belief no matter what foundation we happen to have built our wall on. >> That's what I called out in my video. Uh, literally I point out that he already sets up in his framing of the miracle video, like if he was much more like gradually coming to this conclusion and thinking through this very carefully, he would have not had the the rhetoric he uses in the miracle video uh, in any of those videos. He's clearly fully on the other side 100%. [snorts] >> Really deep.

¶182>> Deep. He's deep. He's not coming out of this hole. I can't imagine him coming out of this hole. Now, I'm not going to say down the road life happens.

¶183[ __ ] happens. He has time to process new relationships around him, other psychological factors. Okay, cool. But right now, he's so deep that he sets himself up for an unfalsifiable kind of system because he already poo pooed and lowers the probability of of hoax, of fraud, of human, you know, just motivation and and and people with misperceptions and making up stories after the fact and inventing details, whatever. I mean, even if it's accidental or intentional, like he he makes that the lowest.

¶184Like, are you kidding me? Cuz he acts like there's so many miracles. You're going to tell me it's all a big conspiracy. You know, he he words it in this way. And that's not what we're saying.

¶185That's a straw man of what any natural person who's approaching this would do. Every case needs to be taken case by case to understand what's going on in each case and where are limits of what we can know because we're going to hit limits. It's not like every one of these has exhaustive resources for us to be able to falsify them. No, a ton of them are unfalsifiable, but at the end of the day, you have to rely on what testimony by the people want this to be true. We don't have that.

¶186In fact, that's the problem we have a lot with the New Testament. >> You know, if we had a Kelsus for the New Testament, >> okay, we like a couple Keluses or Celticuses, you know, the the critic of Christianity for the New Testament during the time this was being produced. Sorry, can I interrupt? So to people don't know, Kelsus Celsus was a Jew that criticized Christianity, but we only know about him from the counterarguments made of him by was it origin? Um >> yes, by origin.

¶187But Kelus himself was not a Jew. He was another uh philosopher uh Greor Roman philosopher. He invents a or he says he talked to Jews or invents a Jew character to put words into their mouth one way or the other. But nonetheless, the only way we know anything about what Kelsa said is what Origin happened to copy paste in the attempts to refute him. >> His original stuff.

¶188Yeah. >> Yeah. But this is second century. Imagine we had this for whenever the gospel material was written at the time by an alter by a opponent. What do you have?

¶189You have Christianity apologists today making arguments for a case for something that all we have is fanfiction of the team. We don't have the other side. So, a lot of these miracles we're going to encounter, um, we'll be blessed, if I can use the term, to find someone who's a naysayer, okay? Cuz like in Padre Peio's case, we have someone who reported to the Vatican, hey dude, he's buying costic acidic, you know, materials from me, uh, multiple kinds, not just one, but several. And I figure I just notify you.

¶190And >> and just to let just to get this straight, is it is the Padro Pio account one that Joe Schmidt puts a lot of Is this one he mentions? >> Yeah. Yeah, he mentions it and then he mentions others too. He mentions it, the lady of Lords. Yeah, bro.

¶191>> So that's why >> I can't believe it's just Sorry. Sorry, mate. I'm actually just like ah like it just annoys me that someone that is so particular so careful with their thought over time can just like jump in on these sh miracle claims and be that as as the seemingly or at least the veneer of the reason as to why he converted. It's obviously psychological stuff I I think we've established going on underneath. Sorry I interrupted you.

¶192>> No, you're fine. I agree. >> I agree. >> And I should also note that uh Joe himself said the conversion is also a heart issue. So he even also says there's a psychological aspect though he uses different language.

¶193I do want to jump on one thing that combines a combination of things that you Derek and you Jonathan said when it comes to both fairness and when we investigate um and I don't know if Joe actually addresses this when we have actually done the careful scientific studies of the effects of prayer and healing from those effects um because the biggest most rigorous versions of that find that there is no positive effect >> and that is obviously a bit weird because if God is coming in and trying to do, you know, things to, you know, send a message to write wrongs or things like that, you'd expect it to happen more often than just at the level of chance. That's pretty consistent with there being no such thing. Why is it the case that every time we become more rigorous in our search for the supernatural, the evidence disappears. That is the exact opposite of someone trying to send a clear message. That is someone who can only ever talk to you through the fog in the opposite direction while whispering in another language.

¶194and you're just there trying to figure what you heard and pretending that was clear. That is so often how I see anytime there's something miraculous. It's just that actually let's clear this off. Let's get these cobwebs out of the way. And when we look rigorously, we found out over and over and over again there's no there there.

¶195>> In one of the big step surveys or or um pieces of research on prayer, actually they found the mortality went up with the with the prayer group. Uh, in other words, it w it it wasn't that there was no result. It was actually in one case it was a it was a negative in a statistically significant sense. So >> I I tried to be careful there because I don't think it I don't think it uh survived statistical significance. At least it was edge case.

¶196But either way, there was definitely no positive signal once you >> regress. 100%. Yeah. Yeah. And so one thing I wanted to note as well and I really picked this up and maybe it's cuz I was listening to it at two times speed uh Derek but when when you were putting loads of clips of Joe Schmidt giving his accounts arguments talking about miracles and whatnot I really did feel like he was like completely almost like wideeyed evangelical like he was really um that there was more than just like a careful calm going considered approach of going through and maybe it's cuz he'd been recording for too long, but I do do you know what I mean?

¶197I get a sense that he there was there's almost a fervor I think is is the right word. He had a real fervor like a real proper evangelical of his position and and I thought that's interesting because that's that's the that's anathema to his kind of previous self which was this very calm and considered approach and looking at uh at evidence very carefully. Is is that am I fair in saying that? >> I think so. I mean that's my opinion.

¶198I I think the opinion you have I share. I think he went head in and then got excited about it and drove the nail in deeper. I mean, look, if he's willing to justify things like eternal conscious torment because miracles, >> mind you, that that what ultimately sold him on God because he's like, even if this is what he says in this first video practically, if nothing I convince you of here philosophically gets you moved, wait till you watch my miracle videos. because he at one point he conceds he's like you know I had these problems like animal suffering and the problem of evil and like divine hiddenness and some of these problems real issues that I really struggled with and then he goes but then the miracles there's so many miracles there's so many miracle cases that that >> makes me angry >> it makes him like turn off all of the criticisms he had and he was able to go well damn it there's too many miracles to account for it >> speous miracle claims against like the problem of evil particularly the Darwinian problem of evil and animal suffering is actually like that's the maybe the strongest uh iteration of the problem of evil argument the idea that God is all powerful uh would be able to do something about suffering all knowing would know what to do about it and is all loving would want to do is caring enough to want to do something about it why is there so much suffering well actually when you start looking at evolution or or um biology over time when you've got um predation baked into the system you've just in insane amounts of animal suffering going on each and every year necessarily as part of the designed system that he supposedly designed. Like this is an in my opinion an an intractable problem.

¶199Like honestly I I I don't think you can get to God without without doing some serious work on the problem of evil and Darwinian problem of evil. But to then go, hey, don't worry about that. Wait till you get to miracles and then just give a bunch of spirious miracles. I'm going back to the same point that that just really bloody enrages me that that that manages to trump some serious freaking um philosophical arguments. >> Yeah.

¶200>> Damn it. >> That's why if we knock down I said this in my video I launched today. I think it was today because I did one today. I'm leading up to the documentaries I'm going to do that are individually on these miracle cases. the ones I feel like I can really can like deal with.

¶201And the ones that I don't know if we're going to have great evidence to support or to to to falsify, um, I'm I'm gonna have to make like a video that does a compilation of video of of miracles that I don't have much data for to be able to point out. You're left in the dark here. It's trust me, bro. That's where we're at here on these. Um, but in today's video, I ultimately say, um, I say I honestly believe that nothing I'm going to do, nothing I'm going to do to show you evidence of the contrary, to give you good reason to doubt these miracles happen, is going to move the needle for these uh, Catholic apologists.

¶202That includes Joe. I think Joe's so deep in right now there. I don't think he's coming out. The fact that he did the rounds on all these Catholic channels too to make this huge stunt of change like that that [clears throat] I think so. What are your thoughts, Aaron?

¶203>> Yeah, there's definitely there, you know, that was definitely coordinated because, yeah, that wasn't going to happen half-hazardly. Not to mention making like 24 hours of video material. You you can't do that in a short period of time. I've tried editing video and it's like just to make 5 minutes of video takes like 10 hours, even if okay, maybe I'm just really crappy at it. But either way, um I do want to note one other thing just because um it's not going to be just the Catholics at it.

¶204And because anecdotes are the best form of evidence, let me give a couple of anecdotes of what I've seen when it comes to the use of miracles in um Protestant apologetic literature stuff. So when I was still in grad school um uh Mike Lacona came and gave a talk and one of the things that he had brought up for showing the truth of miraculous things the supernatural life after death is he brought up this story of this out of body experience by a certain Maria who allegedly uh left her body was able to see the shoe on a ledge in a place that wouldn't have been possible where she was and this was like >> yeah uh it's a little bit different from remote viewing but I mean it's still kind of the same idea that you're seeing things that shouldn't have been possible with your human eyes. You'd have to have spiritually left somehow someway. And Lacona brings that up and I had remembered it's like I just read uh the report that was done by Skeptical Inquirer like 10 15 years before that where they went and said actually everything that we can tell about there uh didn't require anything supernatural. This alleged shoe, you could see where it was.

¶205They couldn't even find the person who allegedly had these out-of- body experiences. I think uh the only person who ever reported this was the nurse seeing her and only reported it like seven years later and so on. It's like you know the worst kind of reporting but this was stuff that Mike Lakona was using in his talks to promote this. Now it's not just there. Um last year when I went to um the Society of Biblical Literature meeting I sat in on one of the talks that were supposed to be more like social science sociology applying it to the Old Testament and this person was you know going to talk about like the miracle claims around Jesus.

¶206I was thinking like, "Oh, this could be kind of interesting." And what does he bring up? He brings up the scientific evidence for the supernatural powers of Urie Geller. >> The magician >> bending spoons is not >> Yeah. >> Are you kidding me? >> This was >> No, I'm not.

¶207He literally brings up like, "Hey, here's the study from Nature about this back in the 70s." Uh, and uh, also the stuff that was done by Project Stargate. This was the CIA attempts to like do remote viewing, things like that. If you saw the movie The Men Who Stare at Goats, it's based on that. >> I've read the book >> and he's literally citing that and saying, you know, and here shows that the supernatural stuff is real or the paranormal stuff is real and so we should be looking at the gospel stories in that kind of light. And um I didn't face palm there, but internally I was constantly face palming um that this was first off, it must have been a bad year for SPL if this particular talk got through.

¶208Um not still it's like this is the stuff being passed around Catholic, Protestant, what have you. Uh I'm sure if we there was all sorts of uh I forget the name of the person but there was a uh miracle event that happened at some statues in India where it looked like uh the Virgin Mary was crying and they found out actually no was the toilet upstairs leaking. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> U things like that.

¶209[laughter] Um >> and the skeptic was chased out of not just out of town he had to he had to leave India for his own safety. So like all around the world, we're all capable of coming up with these crappy stories and um it's not going to stop and it's not going to be just Joe Schmidt. Our work is going to be cut out for us because James Randy completely debunked Erie Geller. And now a couple years after uh Randy is in the ground, people are still citing the exact same crappy miracles done by a legitimate magician as supernaturally real. >> We got a lot of work ahead of us.

¶210It's really frustrating that that people are just very susceptible. I remember going up a mountain, tactless mountains, uh in Slovakia near my mates backpackers and um we just went up went up this mountain and it was one of those times where the clouds were really low in in in around where we were walking. We were basically walking through the clouds and then there was a bright sun coming through the clouds and it was a really eerie um beautiful and had I been religious I would have said God is here. this like it was I cannot explain it. Words don't do it justice.

¶211But but the whole um kind of feeling of of this I could imagine if I was if this is 3,000 years ago and I was a fervent believer in something this would have spoken to me on a religious level that I would have got I would have been like I am up with God here. This is amaz the the radiance and the light and the way that the in being in the cloud and the way it was was just absolutely insane. But I was like oh this is mental. I really appreciate this from a yeah I'm a committed atheist so no problems here but I was just thinking had I been religious I know I would ascribed some kind of religiosity to this we're just really susceptible to that kind of thing look I one thing I wanted before we sort of wrap things up um one thing I wanted to mention was what Rajat here says so Joe Schmidt apparently has deleted videos that he recorded with Ryan Mullins and Eric Ritan on universalism and universal salvation which is really interesting because Caleb Jackson is involved in his conversion. Caleb Jackson is a very uh committed well at least he was when I last spoke to him years back a universalist.

¶212So he doesn't believe or didn't believe that in in eternal um torment and and torture, eternal conscious torture. So like that's really interesting that he started deleting videos which speaks to me of like not being about freedom of thought anymore which is astonishing if this is true. Um, so I is there um sorry and just one more. Uh, he deleted his rigorous videos criticizing Catholic natural law theory as well. Uh, is this is this true?

¶213Is is this something that's happened? Derek, do you know about >> I think he did purge, but go ahead. >> There was also one I saw was mentioned a bunch of times on Twitter as well and I think uh um Schmidt on Twitter is also confirmed. So, uh, I particularly there was a video there was a debate about abortion if memory serves and that was also taken down and I think Joe put up a message saying he wants to, you know, make sure that he doesn't accidentally provide stuff out there that might lead people to sin. That was his way of explaining it.

¶214So all the stuff that would take away from, you know, his new dogmatism, >> you know, can lead to sin and so we can't have that out there. So we also have to get rid of Galileo because we might start sinning now that we're geocentrics or not not uh geocentric anymore. know, I don't know how deep this rabbit hole goes. I'm sorry. It's always with rabbits with me.

¶215Um, [laughter] >> yeah, he always jumping around. >> Purge. He did purge a lot of his uh um content that he felt would cause others to stumble. He felt like he has committed a sin. That's how deep Joe has gotten to the point where he feels he has sinned.

¶216And you know he wants to remove anything that could cause others to doubt and not come to the truth of the Catholic Church. That's why it's dangerous. >> How can you think the wonderful um art of reasoning and investigating ideas even if you end up not believing what you did believe before to get rid of it like that? That is your thought process that you had. And it this is like all that that it just looks like um censorship from a dictatorship.

¶217Like that's what you would expect. Honestly, I would I would put these things together like a dictatorship does that to protect its own power base, right? And the Catholic Church will make you do that or make you feel like you have to do it, you know, either actively or passively um make you do that because of you're afraid of the power of that or the power of your go. I don't know. It just I have a real issue with getting rid of of genuine um intellectual uh pursuit content of intellectual pursuit.

¶218It it it does not sit well with me. >> Yeah, >> I don't know. >> I'm with you, man. >> Agreed. >> So, uh just two two comments I want to just react to.

¶219One from Rajat said this is when I was talking about how God with divine fornowledge perfect God in all and every way wouldn't need to intervene. But he said I would push back on that John because and one plausible way someone can allow omniod could intervene is simply because he already thought of intervening before even creating. Uh yes, but it's really weird that all of these so the Noah's flood issue is still a problem because he's recognized he's done wrong, which is odd that that his creation wasn't as he is he expected it to be, which is kind of weird. Uh so I would disagree from that point of view, but also like all of these periods of intervening appear to have just essentially stopped in the way that they existed in the Bible just after the Bible was put together. like the idea of like God coming down, you know, iron chariots and, you know, rivers of blood and all these kind of crazy big things and striking people down for looking the wrong way, turning people into pillars of salt and then it suddenly stopped and you're like, "Oh, so God intervene loads until God didn't intervene and then uh and then we got video cameras and then God intervenes even less now." I I I don't know.

¶220I have a real problem with an intervening God for all sorts of reasons, but I don't want to go down that rabbit hole. >> Yeah. Um and and I'll also say that um back in the day when u I had my Catholic upbringing but also big on the whole science thing. I remember in college the way I was referring to myself was as a Catholic deist because I'm thinking like hey uh naturalism you know the natural law seem to work really well and wouldn't the perfect engineer, the perfect clock maker not have to come in and like jam up the mechanism every so often? It's like no it would be perfectly working exactly right from the beginning.

¶221That's what a perfect clock would do. So the idea that there are no miracles seemed completely expected on my worldview and it took a philosophy for me realize yeah I guess I really don't believe that theism stuff at all. >> Yeah. Yeah. Interesting.

¶222Um and Derek this is nothing to do with the topic at hand but artisan artifact says ask Derek of myth vision. You are the great Derek of Mythvision. Uh how he feels about Calvinist CRC pastor Paul Vanderlay using his clips using clips and images from Derek's videos to support his Christian apologetic propaganda. I'm not aware of this. I don't know anything he's talking about.

¶223>> I I know Paul. Uh I've had a conversation with the guy years and years ago. I didn't know that he was doing that. I was looking that up trying to see what the questioner what the person's talking about. I haven't watched any of it, but uh based on the thumbnail I'm seeing of this is the conversation you watched of me, Britney, and Brandon, um it looks like I could only guess from here that he sees me hedging a bit of going so far beyond trying to assume being human.

¶224Uh that humans are going to uh need meaning, need ritual, need these kinds of things that a lot of atheists have thrown out. And I guess he's using that as brownie points, I imagine, to try and WIN OVER NO CALVINISM'S TRUE OR some [ __ ] which is absolutely not what I'm saying. Um, I'm simply saying maybe we've thrown out some natural things that humans have and some of that is good to throw out because we look at things, we go, you know, we used to sacrifice our firstborns. Uh, let's throw that [ __ ] out. I get it.

¶225Um, but then there's some things I think that, you know, are human that I think we get icky and the atheist community looks at as superstitious or is like, "Oo, don't do that." And I think, well, it's natural. And the example I gave was talking to your dead loved ones when they go. Maybe not everyone copes the same way. And that's true, but when you go to talk to actual psychologists about this, and there's there are studies on this, one of the ways of coping with the death of a loved one is to still communicate with them. uh to still actually have conversation with them.

¶226Are they listening? I don't think so. But there's a coping mechanism for you. It used to be man up, get over it, move on. But no, what we need to do is actually uh process this as primates on this on this earth.

¶227And it might sound like, well, hold on, that's irrational. Why are you talking to your dead loved one? But in a sense, you're actually helping yourself get through the process. So, we weren't we didn't evolve for capital T rational truth is my point. We're we evolved for survival and some of these things are useful even though we are on a pursuit of truth.

¶228And I think he's using that stuff probably if I were to guess uh to try and go see we need to believe in [ __ ] that we don't see and we don't believe you know really that's not what he would say but you know what I mean. >> Um so Duzu lives in London now. Uh um Caleb has become Catholic. I didn't know this. So Caleb Jackson, >> that's news to me.

¶229>> Substack post, how Joe Smith led me to Jesus. Caleb [laughter] Jackson, August the 21st, 2026. And I began to pray the rosary is obviously a quote from that. So my goodness. So that would be that would mean I presume he's rejected universalism, which is I think honestly terrible.

¶230Like I for I I have a like I think eternal conscious torment is one of the most egregious characteristics of of an omniod that uh is like the the sort of omniod that's being referred to here. Like if you believe that God is going to uh decide ahead of time because he's got divine fornowledge, knows ahead of time, has a whole bunch of people and has a subset of those people that he knowingly is creating in order that they go to hell such that he can torture them. I think that is absolutely [ __ ] disgraceful and I'm sorry to swear, but but I absolutely think that is sickening. Now, if you are moving away from some kind of humanism that I would hope that that an atheist would would adhere to towards a a version of reality where a god pre-ordains a number of people, a whole bunch of millions of people, maybe even billions of people, pre-ordains them to be tortured in hell for eternity consciously. I think that is absolutely sick.

¶231and and and so like that just upsets me that someone with with such a a great grasp of philosophy and reasoning would would go, "Yeah, that's what I'm going to go for." That kind of tra Catholicism. If that if that's a form of thinking that he's adopted, then that really pees me off. >> It's It's sad. And I think, you know, there's one thing I'm a little surprised that hasn't come up in these conversations when it comes to running to the Catholic Church, that this is God's ordained instrument for the world. This is the same Catholic Church that did run an international conspiracy to protect the graping of boys on multiple continents, and that had to be figured out by secular organizations.

¶232So, um, I'm sorry. If this is God's instrument on earth, no thank you. Clearly, this, you know, the the meager moral fruits argument, I think, comes out here and it shows, >> oh, it is not just rotten, it is poisonous. >> Yeah. And like this is my mate Rob um just saying who Rob's got a really interesting uh philosophical and and religious uh journey.

¶233Used to be an evangelical Christian, now is more of an idealist uh that believes in in God, but maybe as a God as an ultimate power. We're all part of that. So some kind of very different way of thinking. But I think one of the most important things about Rob's journey has been the rejection of of of that form of um belief to universalism. So he was he was big on and and honestly if I was a Christian I or any kind of religious belief I would have to be some form of universalist.

¶234are just there's no moral way if if you think that God has divine fornowledge and all these omni characteristics there is no way that you can have a god that's just going to commit people to to sorry to repeat myself but it just it's just unconscionable um but there you go agree >> uh look um I really uh oh my god but maybe maybe Jesus is watching well no but the Jesus is watching is is the universalist one so you know hopefully I'll be all right anyway um or I just won't exist which is which is fine Because you cannot compare existence to non-existence because non-existence has no value. It is nothingness. So you can't say non-existence is better or worse than existence. This is a big problem people have. They often think well it's better to existence to not exist.

¶235You can't actually compare them because something of no value can't be compared to like 1 6 4 whatever. It has no value. It's not like >> Yeah. If I had a choice between actually having to suffer and then don't have any of that and I'm trying to assume the comparison of what I felt before I was born, which I didn't feel anything because I don't remember a damn thing. I'm cool with that than the model that Christians have painted.

¶236You see what I'm saying? >> Yeah. It's just like, you know, why would I want to adopt a a form of belief where there's a really really high chance that I'm going to be eternally uh tormented? Well, brilliant. Woohoo.

¶237Look, I reckon Derek, you should do a um a video documentary on the calendar one. Uh miracles. That's something to look into. You know, I've got loads of notes here that are just like, yeah, it's it's an absolute >> I'm going to reach out to you for that because I am going to want to cover it. I'm looking for people who want to sponsor to do those because it costs money to get these polished version of documentaries edited.

¶238I did one of you guys' Moses material, well, part of it way back when. Y'all been working for this book for a while and um I want to do one for the miracles so someone could come. I I I didn't realize I was just going to sit in front of my camera back here like I usually do and then just go, "Hey, okay, here's Padre Peio." But then it dawned on me when I was scrolling through YouTube. I saw Cameron Batusi on his Capturing Catholicism channel. Not his other channel, Capturing Christianity, but capturing Catholicism.

¶239He did a documentary about a month ago called the greatest Padre Pio documentary and it's an apologetic 40ome minute pretty much apologetic Padre Pio for Catholic miracle that's the stigmata this proves the Catholic church kind of [ __ ] and I thought you know what I'm going to counteract these and they're getting lots of views because they're polished. I'm going to counteract this [ __ ] with polished documentaries and I'm going to try and do individual cases like Ziton uh Lady >> because they're evergreen. Yeah. >> Yeah. Evergreen polish [ __ ] I'm gonna hit you guys up for some ideas since you guys have been in the same avenue as well.

¶240>> And you know, some of the cases we get to, >> we may not have as good a data and that's going to be an important point as evidence >> for why you should reserve and not have conclusion, >> you know, on belieing today. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's really important point actually that what you you know it is incumbent upon you to only jump you know waist deep head deep into these kind of beliefs if you've got good evidence to support that.

¶241If the evidence is like then hey you should be your your evidence should be commensurate to the amount that you believe this stuff but of course because you have already committed to all these other ideas and it's in for a penny in for a pound and >> yeah yeah >> well look guys it's been an absolute pleasure it's been too long since I've had these kind of conversations I know you've got to go and buy kids clothes um Derek so it's the beginning of the school year uh you've got things to do uh but just any final thoughts on on this matter hopefully we you know we've been and our houses. Uh it's been a free- flowing conversation. Uh is there anything we we've missed out on? Is is there anything you think you'd like to add? >> Uh I would just end on saying this.

¶242We've done a lot on the Bible. Uh all of us have like completely examined this stuff and turn it upside down. We're going to constantly, you know, go through that kind of stuff. But I think it's time we start shifting gears. I'm encouraging those out there that are skeptical, critical.

¶243Uh, there are some who've already been making YouTube videos and dealing with Catholic miracles. I think it's time we start dealing with stuff that's not just in the Bible, but dealing with stuff throughout the history of the Christian church. Go and find other religions that have claims of miracles as well. Bring that data forward if you're trying to combat this kind of BS because it's not like, hey, I'm just a liberal general Catholic and, you know, I've I've converted. There is a strong move of evangelical Catholicism here.

¶244I want to call it. This is a hardcore version of Catholicism. >> We're seeing more of that actually. >> Yeah. >> Yeah.

¶245And Yeah. And I think the Brendan's law though it will clearly it's clearly going to take you it's going to be a longer documentary than the one that you are fighting against. I just want to say before we go over to Aaron, uh thank you all. Don't forget to get an intro to pro professor Stavoca Paloo from Derek. I already I was due to interview her a couple of years ago and I just never got round to it.

¶246It was my fault for not like following up on that, but I did want to interview her. I was going to interview her on her book, The Anatomy of God, which I have up there, but I hadn't I just Yeah, I got too busy, >> which fortunately is referenced at least once in our upcoming book. >> Yeah, she's very she's very difficult to get a hold of and and to to schedule, too. >> So, that is a very like I I tried for years and finally got her. >> I only got I think I got her twice ever >> and I've tried way more than two times.

¶247I can promise you that. you know what I mean? >> Yeah, I was on we were we had it we we had a time frame to schedule it and then I don't know what happened life got in the way or something. >> Um but I just want to say that I'm really excited about the book that Aaron and I have co-authored on the Exodus. We're going to send it to you, Derek, to have a little look over.

¶248But I, as I said, you know, David Fitzgerald, who wrote the forward to uh my um nativity book, so he's done a lot of work. He he's been writing books in the intervening period, a lot of them. But he's super super excited. And it's really lovely because I always get the imposter syndrome, but it's really lovely when another um author is reading stuff and saying, "This is absolutely gold. This is diamond.

¶249Really really love this." And and I don't know how you feel about that, Aaron, but it's like, yes, we we've done something that that's not not ridiculously bad. So, I'm really happy with that. >> Yeah, there's a lot of stuff there I think is good. And uh um it it wasn't also my intention, but in a few places, I think the two of us combined forces, and in a few places, we even outgring things. So, Derek, you're going to uh hopefully like what you see.

¶250>> I'm going to like it no matter what. Even if I have I know you guys. I love your books and I love the way you read you. >> Oh, actually it's going to open up and say we've actually converted completely to Catholicism and Moses wrote these books including where Moses died. >> I'm burning [laughter] that [ __ ] >> Um Aaron, final words, my friend.

¶251[sighs] Our battles to be critical, to be scientific, to be reasonable, to actually have reason be the one with the majesty is continuously ongoing. And whether it's in popular culture, whether it's in politics, whether it's in religion, we are continuously, sometimes fighting the same battles over and over again. Apparently, astrology is now popular again. And it's not like because the evidence somehow turned in favor of it. Nope.

¶252It's just we are continuously as skeptics, as atheists, as scientists, as critical investigators finding out over and over again this stuff is hard. And the only thing that is going to keep us as a species, as a society a little bit closer to truth is continuously pushing, researching, and telling the stories that compel people to look at the evidence and say, "I've learned something. I understand better." >> Mhm. >> Let's keep going. >> Yeah.

¶253I really want to I I really want to invent another word that isn't amen, brother. Like I I really want to say something that's a bit more secular, but amen, brother. Uh like well said. And and that's to both of you. Thank you so much for all the work both of you do and thank you for agreeing to come on, Derek and Aaron, at fairly short notice.

¶254I do really appreciate it. Apologize for the change of time and Neil was unable to commit to the change of time. Um but uh yeah, thank you for for being here and uh you keep an eye out to see what happens with Joe Schmidt. He's he's I do hope that the last thing I say is I really hope that there's no kind of financial he is going to get a financial gain out of this and he'll get an awful lot of support from big institutions. He'll be supported by big players and and publishing houses and all sorts.

¶255Uh so that he he's he's going to be made for life. But I you know that always makes me go ah that's really frustrating that that there's all these conflating other like variables going on as well. But but you know I hope that eventually uh the majesty of reason will actually win out where it's taken a bit of a back seat. Anyway, that's just my thinking. Uh take care everybody.

¶256Stay on the line and thank you very much for the people in the live stream. It's been a long time since I've done this so we've only got a handful in the live stream but thank you for being here nonetheless. Big love to you all.