Patron AMA

¶1Yo, it says we're live. We should be live. >> Yo. >> Oh, that sounds terrible. I think we fixed that.

¶2I think we fixed that. Okay. Sorry. This is my first time doing a patron AMA. What is going on?

¶3Wow. We've got four viewers. This is cool. Are we on Patreon as well? We are on Patreon.

¶4Okay. Well, how do I see your guys' comments? That's not Is this okay? How do I do that, man? Well, anyway, where where is that?

¶5Let's see. Sorry, y'all. Wow, 21 people here. This stream. My goodness.

¶6[laughter] I'm seeing some of your comments rolling. We all love Chelsea. No, none of us love Chelsea. We all hate Chelsea. This is not for the YouTube commenters.

¶7This is for the patrons. How do I see your guys' comments? This is crazy. How do I see comments in Patreon? Okay, live stream.

¶8We got We got to look this up, my peeps. Sorry, y'all. First patron AMA is not going as planned. To the right of the live stream. What?

¶9Okay, it's not on the Oh, it says settings. Maybe some of you know. Oh, we got new comments. Oh my gosh. [laughter] Oh man.

¶10I'm supposed to be working through this, but it's going to take me some troubleshooting. H. Okay. Take me out of the settings. Will this exit out the entire thing?

¶11I don't think so. Dundday. Oh, I just had to click start live. Who would have thought? Who would have thought that that's what I had to do?

¶12Okay, well, now I've got the the chat and the Q&A for patrons. Okay, that's wonderful. Whoa, some patrons joined. That's so cool. Okay, sweet.

¶13All right, y'all. So, this is the first patron AMA. Wow. Okay, shout out to Brazil, Francisco. Amazing.

¶14Um, no, this stream was not supposed to be only on Patreon fs or fness. Where's your Champions League, my dude? You got to stop. You can't rub that in. You can't rub that in.

¶15That's [sighs and gasps] That's unfortunate, but you know, where's your What's your Where's your 2026 Premier League? That's what I'm going to ask. Where is it? You can't Yo, Sanus Theology. Awesome.

¶16Nice to see you here. Um, okay. Am I a TLM guy? I have been to two TLMs in my life and they were beautiful, but I like Reverend Novasordos. Um, okay.

¶17Yo. Okay, cool. Okay, we got patrons here. How old am I? I I turned 26 in August, my friend.

¶18So, I am 26. But before I get to your patron questions, let's uh let's go through this document because some of you got to ask questions in advance. So, let's go through those. I'm going to stop looking at the YouTube questions and we're just going to go to this. Okay.

¶19So, this is the first patron AMA. I'm I'm hoping to do these once a month or so. We'll see cuz I mean, yeah, I'm very busy. So, it may have to be bimonthly. Uh by which I mean once every other month.

¶20I may have to do that. I mean, I I don't want to do that. I'd love to do this but uh we'll see. Right now the plan is once a month but vamos. Okay.

¶21So one question that I want to start out with start off with is like will I respond to others responses to my conversion videos cuz of course many people have made such responses. Uh but I am inundated. So eventually I hope to respond to those probably not to all of them but to many of them actually let me make sure. Can you guys even hear me? Hold on.

¶22This would be very bad. I'm sure I'm hoping you can hear me. I turned myself on mute. Wow, there are 100 people watching the YouTube thing. That's very cool.

¶23I'm just going to proceed as if you can hear me. Oh, yes. Thank you, Gemnox. Wonderful. What a beautiful thing.

¶24Oh, did someone say they started OCIA? Hold on. I got to see that. Thanks to your testimony and lots of other research. I start [laughter] based for release.

¶25I'm going to pray for you for Elise. Wonderful. Okay, that's beautiful. Praise God. Okay, so let's go through this document.

¶26But yeah, like right now, I don't know. I've got like two papers that I've got to review and two conferences to prepare for and like two books to read or at least significant parts of books. Um and then I've got a paper due for a special issue. So I I got a lot lot on my plate. So um responding to a few people on the internet is like not my top priority at the moment.

¶27Sadly, that's actually not sad. It's actually good, you know. Uh, you know, I'll get to I'll get this to responding to some of other people eventually, right? I probably won't respond to everyone just because there are too many, but so just stay tuned. That's probably months away, but don't worry.

¶28I will offer my thoughts in response to people. So, just be patient. Okay. So, first question from a patron. Um, you rated the argument from moral knowledge highly.

¶29Uh, this is referring to my dialogue with Cameron Batusi in person where I gave my new ranking of arguments for theism. You rated the argument from moral knowledge highly, but a Craig style deductive moral argument remarkably low despite William Lane Craig's report on its dialectical efficacy or effectiveness. And you implied the moral argument's conditional premise was weak. This is all true. I I suspect a major explanation for Craig's report there is that like ordinary folk don't know too much about like the many non-theistic accounts of what grounds moral properties as well as you know the non-theistic accounts of what moral properties are essentially.

¶30Um that again none of this is to say that I accept a non-theistic account. Um, but in order to run the moral argument in a way that is like dialectically effective, in a way that you're supposed to be like persuading people uh who aren't anticedently inclined to your conclusion and in particular dialectically effective against like the most sophisticated opponents or dialectical partners rather uh who are aware of these non-theistic accounts of morality. I just think you'd have to sort of, you know, either systematically proceed through all of them and just like show that they all can't be true, not only individually, but collectively, or at the very least just pinpoint certain features of the moral domain that are like much much better explained by like a theistic account than like all extant non-theistic accounts and not just extant ones, but like you know, future ones and ones in principle. So, I don't know. I just think it's it's going to be difficult to motivate that conditional premise by my lights.

¶31Uh, and the reason why I think it has a lot of dialectical efficacy for ordinary folk is that they they're just sort of unaware of the the metaethical terrain. Um, again, that's my own view. That's my tendentious view about the moral argument. You know, just because I, you know, just because I became a theist, just because I became Catholic, doesn't mean that, you know, I suddenly think that like all the arguments for theism and Catholicism succeed. You know, unfortunat I mean, it'd be nice.

¶32It'd be nice if that were true, but unfortunately I don't think it's true. So, um, yeah, and we've got to love truth above all else, my friends. Okay, by my lights, the argument for moral knowledge isn't that far above the moral argument because, well, what about combining the argument for moral knowledge with Macky's queerness objection? Moral objectivism would be queer on atheism to argue that objective morality is epistemically unlikely given atheism. So, I take it that by objective morality here, we just mean like moral truths, truths about what's good and bad and right and wrong.

¶33They're true independently of our preferences. You know, they're not made true by our preferences or our desires or our opinions or whatever, whatever psychological state you want to pinpoint. Um, that's like a stance. It's an attitude that we take toward a proposition. So, yeah, by objective morality, I take it that we mean that there are these yeah, facts out there that we discover rather than invent and that aren't like made true by our preferences.

¶34I mean to answer your question um you know what about combining the argument for more knowledge with Mackey's queen subjection? Um maybe that's a good move. I don't know. I'm a I'm a bit skeptical. You know Macky's argument is something like hey these kind of stance independent non-natural truths about what we ought to do or ought not to do or about what's required or immoral.

¶35Those would just be extremely weird, right? They would be weird. They'd be just like really strange if they were to exist. um if there are these things that aren't like part of the natural scientific world around us that's investigable by the tools of science. Uh there are these facts out there these properties out there which aren't reducible to yeah physical scientific going on but which like tell us what to do and they tell us what to do independently of our preferences and our desires like Macky's thought is that that seems just weird.

¶36It seems bizarre. It seems really odd. U and it's also just radically unlike anything else in our ontology, right? So it doesn't kind of fit with like a a scientific I mean it's a scientific world view right the proper uh world view of the intellectual the intellectuals among us right um so okay so that's Mackey's argument like there there are no such stance independent non-natural moral truths because you know they would just be really weird and they would be radically unlike other things that you know only respectable people admit into other ontology. Um, I think the the atheist has several responses up their sleeve and I'll get to all you guys uh eventually, you know, um, all you guys on Patreon.

¶37And I see that there are some YouTube commenters. Wow. Going through OCIL BL, which I blame Ethan Muse for. That's funny. Sunblaze base.

¶38Okay. Um, anyway, I got I got to get back to the got to get back to responding to my patrons who ask questions in advance. But I do think the atheist has several responses up their sleeves. So, I think first they could just go in for metaethical naturalism, right? They could just say that um no, these moral truths are not non-natural truths.

¶39Instead, they are natural truths. In other words, they're fully reducible to they're fully explicable in terms of they're nothing over and above natural truths that you know we can look around and observe with the tools of science. So maybe like yeah goodness just is say you know promoting pleasure or you know badness just is you know what badness is what moral badness is just is like promoting pain or something like that like that's a very crude um form of natural naturalistic moral realism but like you get the thought metaethical naturalists try to reduce moral truths to natural truths truths that are investigable by the tools of science so I mean that's one way that you that they could go in trying to respond to like you know Mackey's stands independent. Sorry, Macky's uh queerness argument cuz I mean like it's not queer at all that there are such natural truths you might think. Um and if the moral truths just are reducible to the natural truths, then it's not very queer that there would be such objective moral truths.

¶40And you know, this is an objectivist view. Um uh at the very least you can cash out metaethical naturalism in a way that is realist or objectivist um such that there are these truths about what's good and bad and right and wrong that are true independently of our preferences and desires. Um but it's just that yeah those truths are nevertheless just like you can cash them out in terms of natural facts um facts that are investigable by science. So that's one way they that the atheist could could go in response. I guess the second thing they could say is that like you know even if the atheist goes in for non-naturalism so that these are just like irreducible suigenous kinds of facts um these moral facts that exist out there.

¶41Um we might ask like I don't know why are objective non-natural moral facts queer under atheism? I don't know why what maybe you find them weird, Mackie, but like I don't know. I don't I don't find them weird, you might say. Um I don't know. They're a very a humdrum ordinary thing of our everyday experience where we just like are pretty acquainted with talking about morality and and moral facts and understanding them and we can reason about them and I don't know, maybe you just don't really find them all that weird or all that strange.

¶42Um you know, other non-natural facts don't seem queer. You might think you might think that there are certain like metaphysical facts about the conditions under which composition occurs. Uh or you might think that there are certain metaphysical facts about like abstract objects, you know, like propositions, are they structured or are they simple? Um or like the set theoretic hierarchy, you know, like these sorts of things, these sorts of metaphysical questions about abstracta or about composition or whatever. Uh a lot of these questions aren't really investigable by the tools of science, but we tend not to think that they're like weird.

¶43Like is it is it like queer that like particles compose my phone or something? Um, and you know, like again, strictly speaking, it's it's not a scientific question like the conditions under which composition occurs and whether there like really is like a phone that exists like over and above the particles. Now, of course, science may inform that um if science discovered that there were these like seemingly new causal powers associated with certain macroscopic objects, but um again, it's still going to be a metaphysical question. Um I think settling some of these disputes. So, I think some of these are like non-natural facts very plausibly, but they don't seem queer.

¶44And so like I don't know, you might just think like eh they're not queer. Sorry Mackey, but non-natural moral truths just aren't queer. Um, so that's the second thing they could say. I think a third thing they could say is that they could argue that like the relevant facts are equally queer under theism. You know, like to the extent that I'm attracted to the extent that one is attracted to the queerness objection to moral realism, conditional on atheism, not natural moral realism that is.

¶45I think like one would equally be attracted to it conditional on theism. Like why why does theism somehow make like uh stance independent non-natural prescriptivity like nonquer? I mean, if anything, I think people who are inclined to this argument are just going to think that you're adding like another queer entity in your ontology. You're like another another odd entity in your ontology that's different from other things that like oh we generally normally recognize in our scientific world view, right? Um so I think I mean again obvious that that like you know positing a theistic god is it involves any kind of objectionable querness certainly but I think that's one thing they might say.

¶46Um, and then four of all, even if objective non-natural moral facts are queer under atheism, you might just ask like, why does that make them unlikely? You know, like why are queer things thereby unlikely? Like, I don't know, maybe we should expect the world to be strange in all sorts of ways. I mean, like platypy are pretty queer. Like, they're pretty weird.

¶47Um, you know, I should say, you know, by by queer, we're not trying to use this as like a slur or anything. This is like the this is the term that's used in the literature and that Mackie originally introduced. The thought is like they just seem like weird or odd or strange or spooky sometimes. Um, so yeah, I mean like why why does queerness imply being improbable? Like maybe I don't know, maybe we should expect the world to be kind of strange.

¶48Um, and in fact, like here's another point. If objective moral facts are opery knowable, as non-naturalists would surely accept, then they're not improbable under atheism. Since any epistemic probability function should assign probability one to all operable that 1 plus 1 equals two or that like goldbox conjecture is true then you know the correct epistemic probability function or the set of correct equally correct epistemic probability functions are are going to assign you know probability one to all operate truths right um so yeah I I I don't really see why they would be the existence of moral facts under non-naturalistic moral realism would be like improbable conditional on atheism. Um especially given that non-naturalists are going to be inclined to think that uh objective moral facts are operable. So okay so that's what I want to say about that.

¶49Um this uh patron says this would justify thinking that the conditional premise is probable. And I can't think of a great atheist response to this justification um of the conditional premise that wouldn't involve attacking the argument for moral knowledge in some way. I don't know. I I don't really see how any of my above responses attack the argument from moral knowledge. Um, now maybe what you have in mind is the epistemic querness argument, which I'm going to get to next.

¶50But I don't really see how the responses that I just gave are going to like serve as responses to the argument for more knowledge. Um, wow, we've got 110 people viewing this. I'm so sorry, y'all. I'm going to um I'm going to get to your stuff. Wow, I'm so far behind.

¶51Please pray for my son. A start a confirmation. Everyone pray for defeating defeater's son. >> [laughter] >> amigo. Uh, let's see.

¶52Wow. It's Joe. It is Joe. [laughter] This is funny. Okay, sorry.

¶53I I need to get back. I'm just looking at your comments. I need to get back to responding to the patrons. This is this is for the patrons, right? This is this is not for the people.

¶54This is for the patrons. Okay. Um I've been focusing on ah yes. Okay. Back to here.

¶55After all, if it's true that moral properties are non-natural, if we use the human for our moral semantics. So, for people who uh don't know what the human ought, Hume famously distinguished between like uh what ought to be the case and what is the case, you know, like what is the case? Those are like descriptive facts that just describe how the world is. But Hume thinks that that's like it's a radically different question asking what we ought to do or what ought to be the case, right? There's the way things are descriptively.

¶56But it's a separate question the way things ought to be, the way things should be, right? Um and like Hume's thought is that or at the very least some people you know interpreting Hume may want to say that like okay this human is like an that is we're characterizing as irreducible to descriptive facts. So it's something that's like over and above the descriptive facts. We can't totally cash it out in terms of descriptive facts alone. It is this like suie generous new kind of um kind of like facts about we what we ought to do and not ought not to do and what we should do and what we shouldn't do.

¶57Um like again like there's you can always ask like okay it causes pain but should I do it or should I not do it like that whether it causes pain is a descriptive fact and it's a further question right it's like an open question whether or not I should or shouldn't do it. Um so that's what the human is. It's an odd that's irreducible to descriptive facts. Um, okay. So, after all, if it's true that moral properties are non-natural, um, if we use the human for moral semantics, um, without God, it seems we need something like supernatural clairvoyance to detect these invisible non-natural moral properties.

¶58And that seems queer enough on atheism to be far-fetched and unlikely. Okay, so I think I know where you're coming from now. Uh, I've been focusing on the metaphysical querness argument so far, right? And that just says that, you know, the objective non-natural moral facts or properties would themselves be queer. Um, but there's also like an epistemic querness argument which says that like our epistemic access to that domain of objective non-natural moral facts or properties would be very queer under atheism.

¶59Um, and if you were referring to that latter argument the whole time, then I think like there are a few responses the atheists can give. So first again they might not grant that like moral properties are non-natural, right? So they might just think like, okay, when we examine our moral discourse, um, we can actually find that, you know, we we can discern, we can discover that we're like, we're actually referring somehow to natural facts or patterns of natural facts. Uh, and it's not very spooky or strange or queer, how we could come to have knowledge of natural facts, right? So that's something they might say.

¶60They might give like a linguistic thesis together with like just the fact that yeah, it's not very strange how we can have empirical knowledge. Um, for various reasons that actually is highly implausible under uh under under naturalism at least, but uh I talk about that a little bit more in my uh in my comprehensive case video, comprehensive case for theism, but we're not going to get into that here. Second of all, they might say that, you know, a queer suie generous faculty by which we directly grasp the moral facts is not required for us to have knowledge of the objective non-natural moral facts since all we really need, so they might say, is some modal condition on knowledge like safety or sensitivity. So like um safety in like you know nearby worlds in which I believe the thing in question um I'm still correct. So like I couldn't have easily been wrong.

¶61Um and sensitivity just basically means that like you sort of track the facts. So like even if you know the moral facts had been different like your beliefs would have correspondingly been different. So like if the thing you believe were false you wouldn't have believed it. Um so like you're kind of sensitive to the facts. It's like a modal condition.

¶62Um and you might just think that like those modal conditions that's all that we need to have knowledge of these non-natural facts. we don't need some kind of like spooky faculty by which we can like directly grasp them and be in some kind of like explanatory contact with them. Um, and note that that would not undermine at least the probabilistic version of the moral knowledge argument since it, you know, it might still be very improbable though not queer. It might still be very improbable that we meet those modal conditions, right? Because it could be it could be very improbable that evolution just happened to take the course uh that gives us like safe and sensitive um moral beliefs or moral faculties.

¶63um even though it's like not queer that we have them given that like they only need to meet these modal conditions. So I I hope you're I hope you're tracking what I'm saying. I mean this is this was a philosophy grad student who asked me this question. So um [laughter] sorry guys I'm pro you know at least some of you I may be losing but you know that's that's that's the price that we pay. That's the price that we pay.

¶64I was going to say something stupid. I'm not going to say something stupid but I myself Okay, so this is what I favor. I favor non-natural moral realism of course. uh and I also favor an explanationist constraint on knowledge of some form. So yeah, I think that um somewhere in in the chain of um either inferences or like your beliefs themselves, I think you need to be explanatory connected up with the relevant facts in some kind of way.

¶65The facts that your beliefs are about um or at the very least the facts that you're that the facts such that your beliefs are based on something. I think the facts that that thing that they're based on need to explain why you have the thing that they're based on. So like an intuition or a perception or what have you. Um so I do like explanationist constraints of of some form. And so I do think that the naturalistic atheist would be saddled with positing some suie generous faculty by which we can like grasp the moral facts directly since there is no other plausible way by which non-natural moral facts could explain our moral beliefs about them.

¶66Uh and yes I do agree that is very spooky under naturalistic atheism. uh and like very improbable to boot. Um I argue that in my comprehensive case video. So ultimately maybe maybe we're not too far off here, my friend. Um maybe our views are somewhat similar.

¶67I guess I don't know. I don't really see how I mean unless you're going to go in for the epistemic querness way of running this argument, then I don't really see how the querness stuff is going to be too helpful. Okay, another question from a patron. Actually, before I get to this, let me look at some of the um some of the Goku or I don't even know what that means, my bro. What are the metaphysical themes and presuppositions of the Skibby toilet series?

¶68[laughter] Oh my gosh. Can you pray for my wife's boyfriend? Man, you guys have lots of prayer requests, but yes, I will. That's good. was a defense of icon veneration and when heretics used the argument that icons were not made in the early church.

¶69Check out Swan. Okay, so um check out Swansona's work on icon veneration. He has like hours long videos on this. Definitely check those out for icon veneration. I mean, as it turns out, I think they're also just um very credible um highly well-ec miracles that very strongly vindicate icon veneration.

¶70though my best friend here Noah McKay at Princeton is working on uh a post for our joint Substack Veritata Splendor where he goes through um the miracles of a contemporary mystic um named Mirna Nazour uh or Mir Miratnour right [laughter] or however it's pronounced in um Arabic or whatever um she's from like a a little neighborhood the Sufania neighborhood in um Damascus Syria. I talk about this in my like the miracles prove Catholicism video or whatever, however I titled it to get people to click on it. Um, so yeah, um, I talk about it in there and I think that like icon veneration is very clearly vindicated in that case. So I think like there's lots of miraculous evidence for it and um, you know, basically uh, check out Swansona's work. Um, what's up my homie?

¶71May I interest in you in some narcissism? No, thank you. may interest you in orthodox Catholicism. Um, when are you collabing with Alex Okconor with about my conversion? Well, we want to do well, we we have been messaging a little bit.

¶72We we have thought about doing something at some point. Okay. Nothing is set in stone, but um now I see why Tik Tok atheists say metaphysics is fake science. What are these terms, bro? [laughter] My dude, like this is like meta.

¶73Like what? Okay, there are moral truths, my friend. And the question is, you know, like, you know, you shouldn't torture children for fun. Like, okay, that's true. Um, you know, and like it seems like, you know, virtue is good and like, you know, self-sacrifice is like good and you know, you know, pain, excruciating agony is bad, you know.

¶74So, and there's a question, okay, we've got these moral truths. Are those just like purely descriptive natural truths that we can discover and investigate through science alone, or are they something over and above that? Are they something different from that? I don't know. That seems to make sense to me.

¶75It's not like uh it's like fake or anything. Ah, code name already said meta ethics. Good. Make the effort from communists. Um, objective morality is not queer on theism.

¶76I don't think they are queer under either. Why? Oh, yeah. Right. I mean, exactly.

¶77Well, yeah, the the objective moral facts themselves don't seem to be particularly queer. I mean, unless you've just like unfortunately embied this like materialistic, atheistic, scientismic world picture, but why have you embied that? Like, why are you playing around with those drugs? Like, get off those drugs, kid. They're going to kill you.

¶78Um, do you have a good Bible commentary app or a website? That's a good question. I mean, I don't really have an app. Um, I do have the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible though. Um, so you could check that out if you're interested.

¶79Um, apostolic objective moral properties like moral wrongness are invisible, non-natural, empirically undetectable. Yes. I mean, I think I think the point about supernatural clairvoyance is is going to be the most forceful, right? Because if they're non-natural and if we accept an explanationist constraint on knowledge, we're going to have to somehow spookily kind of like directly grasp these things. And that is really weird under naturalistic atheism.

¶80Uh so you know I argued this in my comprehensive case video but like yeah that that we just had like this sui generous faculty that evolution just burped up and it also happened to be like highly reliable. Um not very not very plausible seems like actually overwhelmingly fortuitous. Um, and like also, you know, you would need like bridge principles that are like these new super generous seemingly like fundamental principles that somehow link this irreducible faculty to like more fundamental states of the brain. Like it's a mess if you're a naturalist. Um, but anyway, I got to get to my patrons.

¶81Um, oh, as a question. Okay. So, I will get to my patrons after I finish this document. Do you play any video games? Well, not nowadays, but I used to play a lot of Xbox.

¶82So, I play FIFA all the time. I mean, my goodness, I could have killed each of you in FIFA. I'm telling you. Like, [laughter] I I was like I was a monster, I will say. Um I mean, yeah, in college, I kind of did it only sporadically, but like my goodness, in high school, I remember um I think it was like FIFA 17.

¶83Like, yeah. Anyway, I'm not I'm not I'm not gonna not gonna brag. I need to mortify my pride. So, anyway, I do I already bragged. I I was good at FIFA.

¶84I take myself to have been very good at FIFA. Um, okay. First person shooter. I've also played first-person shooter games. So, yes, I like like COD, Modern Warfare, Advanced Warfare with the Exos.

¶85Didn't you remember that? Only real homies remember the Exos. [laughter] Oh, man. H the group. I I was in so many like group calls or whatever they're called, group chats.

¶86um when we played search and destroy like 4v4 search and destroy and we got like with my friends. Oh my gosh, those were the days, man. Those were the days. Or like um was it Modern Warfare or maybe it was like one of the Black Ops like one v one me rust. I remember those days and like quick shots with the MSR and the LS119 or whatever it's called.

¶87I had like Anyway, I very much uh I look back upon this with fondness. Those were the days, man. Those were the days. take me back. Now I just like, you know, argue about whether we should torture children for fun.

¶88Okay. Um, question three. What's the syllogistic form of the contingency argument to omnipotence, which you alluded to in your cumulative case video, and how would that interact with branching actualism? Okay, branching actualism is the view that um any world anything is possible in virtue of being like you know the potential outworking of the causal powers of actual things. So like possibilities are ultimately grounded in the actual world and the actual causal powers of things and you know possible worlds ultimately they can only be possible by kind of like branching off from the actual world um through the exercise of the causal powers of things indeterministic causal powers.

¶89If we want to say that there is more than one possible world, which of course we want to say. Um, so that's what branching actualism says for those who are curious. What's a syllogistic form of the contingency argument to omnipotence? Maybe I shouldn't have started the AMA with these like highly abstract questions cuz then people are just going to drop off like flies. Um, and we don't want that because as we know from Matthew Adelstein, flies matter more than people.

¶90That that was a joke. I think that's very false. So, um, was it was there a Caleb present? Oh, you're referring to you're referring to a gay ex-friend. Hey, my friend.

¶91Hope you're doing well. I think I think you you emailed me like on the like the day of my conversion and I dude, I'm just so swamped with emails that like I have like hundreds over Yes, it is hundreds in my uh inbox that I just haven't even read. So, I'm sorry y'all to anyone who has emailed me. Uh, it's rough. And like, oh, and also messaged me on Facebook.

¶92I just I've just had to ignore so many of those. Um, and I've also had to Yeah, sorry y'all. I wish I had like 14 of me. I'm not Padre Pio. I can't boate.

¶93So, um, if we use the human aunt and our moral semantics. Hi Joe. Hope you're having a good day. Okay, I just want to ask how important do you think it is to read Aristotle on the metaphysics and the soul to understand Aquinus? I'm trying to learn Aquinus.

¶94I would I would start with like I almost sounded like uh Jordan Peterson now. I would I would start Well, Buckle, you see Buckle, that was pretty bad. The hierarchies within the hierarchies, the low offers. Um I would start with secondary material here, my friend. Um, I think just like diving into Aquinus or if I want to put on my LLM hat, delving into Aquinus is going to be a tricky, you know.

¶95Um, but no, I I think you don't you don't want to dive into Aquinus just immediately just like reading the primary material and then trying to also like read Aristotle like you should start you should start with like secondary material, right? So like uh go to like Whipple for instance and he's got like what the metaphysical thought of St. Thomas Aquinas or whatever it's called. Check that out. I mean, even that might be kind of kind of tough.

¶96Um, like, you know, Gavin K, check out his work. Um, Kerr, however it's pronounced. Um, like start with secondary work with like or or Elanor Stump, like definitely check out um her book on Aquinus. Uh so I would start if I were you with like secondary material and then only then once once you've sort of understood Aquinus through the lens of people who can kind of translate some of the stuff into uh the vernacular as it were uh especially for people who are like lay people um then that's a good start. Okay.

¶97Is Joe making an OF or not? No. That's a mortal sin, my friend. And mortal sins are to be avoided at all costs. Death rather than sin, right?

¶98Death, but not sin. Follow St. Dominic Savio. Um, okay. Okay.

¶99Now, we've got a debate. We've got a debate between Maverick Christian and a few others in the uh the YouTube the YouTube chats. Are you Catholic? Are you referring to me? You're surely No, you're not.

¶100Brazil loves you. Oh, thank you. I've always wanted to be loved by a country. >> [laughter] >> Dude, the entire country of Brazil loves me. [laughter] I'm so grateful to the entire country of Brazil.

¶101Um, and I I love the country back, you know. Um, your national anthem is very uh catchy. I just remember that. That was very good. No, I'm not going to say the slur.

¶102That would be terrible. Um, I'd like to speak to you, fallen soul. You'd like to speak with me? Well, you just spoke with me, so you've you've gotten your wish. Bonjour.

¶103Someone saying bonjour. Hey, the Pope the Holy Father is in France right now. So, that's cool. I've got I've got like at least one friend in France who saw him and sent a video. So, that's very cool.

¶104Young Sheldon debunked religion already. Oh, pack it up, boys. This is very true. Young Sheldon has um refuted refuted uh all of religion. All the internet religion micro celebrities are in the chat.

¶105I suppose this is true. Uh Joe Cathakra here. I love you, brother. Oh, beautiful. You help lead others in my family to Christ.

¶106God bless. Oh, praise God. Praise God. Dankus. Dankis.

¶107What a name. What is this? It's a It's a patron AMA. Except I'm also paying attention to the YouTube. I should I should pay attention to the patrons.

¶108Okay. Sorry. I'm getting to you guys in a second. I'll get it to all your comments and questions. Okay.

¶109But I just wanted to get back to the abstract highulutin philosophy. Okay. What's the syllogistic form of the contingency argument to omnipotence which you alluded to in your cumulative case video and how does that interact with branching actualism? Well, I already did define branching actualism. So you can go back to that to see uh my definition of branching actualism.

¶110I suspect you're referring to this passage. So I just went to my um script for the comprehensive case which uh patrons have access to. It's like 3 377 pages or something. Um I suspect you're referring to this passage. I say this is is totally zapped out of context.

¶111So, loento y'all. But um given that this foundation necessarily exists and is the ultimate source of contingency in the actual world, it's very natural to think that in any other possible world containing contingent things, it would also be the source of conting contingency therein. Especially if we grant that contingent things in any world have an explanation and there's only one necessary foundational thing. Um but then the foundation not only necessarily exists, but is necessarily the ultimate source of every contingent thing. That alone rules out most views incompatible with God's existence and is exceptionally well predicted by theism.

¶112What's more, if this foundation has the ability to bring about any possible contingent state of affairs, um that's at least very good evidence from omnipotence. I didn't include contingent in the original. I should have as I was reading this again I was like h technically speaking maybe it doesn't even it doesn't have the ability to bring about any sorry the contingency argument does not show that it has the ability to bring about any possible state of affairs because I suppose that there might be like states of affairs involving purely necessary things and the contingency argument itself uh does not again in and of itself license us to infer that this uh necessary foundation which is the source of contingency would also be the source of all the other necessary um things like abstract objects say uh so I suppose that technically speaking I should have said uh any possible contingent state of affairs but that's okay we we live and we learn don't we live and we learn okay so that could you wanted me to formulize this uh syllogistically so I mean I just did this like uh you know 20 minutes before uh I started recording so okay here here we go here's one way to formulate it again there are like different ways to formulate it depending on the principles that we use in the first stage of the principles that we first use in the first stage of the contingency argument but here's one way to formulate it Um, premise one, there's a necessarily existing foundational concrete object O, which explains the plurality of a contingent things in the actual world, and O is the only necessarily existing foundational concrete object. Premise two, if there's a necessarily existing object O, concrete object O, which explains the plurality of contingent things in the actual world, and O is the only necessarily existing foundational concrete object, then for any world W, O explains the plurality of contingent things in W. And by the way, that that might also include an empty plurality in the world in which there are no contingent things.

¶113So from those two premises, it follows that for any world W, O explains the plurality of contingent things in W. But here's the fourth premise. If for any world W, O explains the plurality of contingent things in W, then O has the ability to actualize directly or indirectly every possible contingent state of affairs. Seems very very plausible. So O has the ability to actualize directly or indirectly every possible contingent state of affairs.

¶114Um but and now here we bring in like BA's theorem um babe theorem um the probability that O has the ability to actualize directly or directly every possible contingent state of affairs given that O is omnipotent is much greater that than the probability that O would have that ability given that O is not omnipotent right because like omnipotent entails as much but not being omnipotent I mean certainly doesn't entail as much and actually it would be quite surprising we might think that the being is like that powerful [laughter] uh if if it's not omnipotent. There are lots of ways that a not omnipotent being could be. Um and this is a very highly specific way um only one way uh among many others. And we might just think like this is just significant evidence for omnipotence. It's just much better predicted um under the hypothesis that being omnipotent that it would be able to bring about any possible contingent state of affairs.

¶115Um uh and of course you know the seventh premise this is this follows from um B theorem together with the probability raising view of evidence. Um so for any E and H if the probability of E given H is much greater than the probability of E given not H then E is very strong evidence for H. And so the fact that O has the ability to actualize directly or indirectly every possible contingent state of affairs is very strong evidence that O is omnipotent. It doesn't imply it. Okay so sorry I need to slow down.

¶116It does not imply it right. After all, it is compatible. It as in the fact that O has the ability to actualize directly or indirectly every possible contingent state of affairs that is compatible with O just being some impersonal foundational thing which only indirectly explains like boatloads of contingent states of affairs. Like maybe it just produces the first contingent thing which then goes on to produce all the other things. Uh and so that's a very like tenuous sort of ability to actualize all contingent states of affairs because it's like super indirect and yeah that wouldn't amount to omnipotence.

¶117I I recognize that. So, um, the fact in question does not entail that the being is omnipotent, but like again, like surely it's evidence. Um, and I said it's strong evidence here. I maybe have to think very carefully about how strong it is. Um, you know, like whether or not there should be two greater thans instead of one here um to signify how strong the evidence is.

¶118But anyway, that's like a formulation for you, my friend. You wanted me to formulate it. I formulated it. You want the formulations. I got the formulations.

¶119I'll give you the formulations. I got formulations out the wazoo. um as for how this relates to branching actualism. Well, actually like branching actualism motivates um the second premise of this argument, right? That if there's a like a single necessarily existing foundational object which explains the polity of contingent things in the actual world um well like under branching actualism any contingent things could then only basically be they could only exist if they were like potential outworkings of the causal powers of this necessary thing, right?

¶120Uh and so that just that actually just like basically entails premise two there, right? So, branching naturalism is highly favorable to this argument. Um, okay. Okay. So, there's that patron.

¶121Okay. Let's go to the patrons on Patreon. Sorry, I've been uh neglecting all of you. Um, so great. I'm grateful that you're here.

¶122Uh, Mihillescu, I apologize if I butchered your name. I butcher many names. Uh, I think I already answered this one. How old am I? I I turned 26 in August, my friend.

¶123Wow. I've got like a foot in the grave, don't I? Um, you're a non-naturalist. Oh, that's interesting. Maverick, you're a non-naturalist and you don't accept that moral facts are opurally knowable.

¶124Um, I mean, even given the empirical facts, right? Like, so so suppose you had full exhaustive knowledge of of the empirical world surely. I mean, uh, do do you think, well, I don't I just I find that odd. Um, that that cuz like I mean, surely you have like an intuitionist epistemology, right? Like surely you think that like how do we know these moral truths?

¶125I will miscu I'll get there in a second. Um I uh surely you think that these moral truths are you know like we know them either by like directly grasping them so some kind of direct acquaintance epistemology or just through like seemings right through like moral intuition like those are like the two main going as I understand it going like epistemologies for the non-naturalist um at least if you accept some kind of explanationist well because intuitionists might actually they could reject an explanationist constraint anyway those are two at least prominent epistemologies and both of those it seems to me would kind of qualify as opiori modes of knowing the relevant non-natural facts, right? Um yeah, like it's not like we need to perform like scientific experiments uh to know that pain is bad. Once we have the concept of pain and of course may maybe we have to like experience pain to have the concept of pain. Maybe you think that um but you know the point about opioid no ability is like once you have the concepts right um once you have the concept of pain once you have the concept of torture and whatnot then you could just sort of reflect from the armchair and just like okay what is torture what is pain what would it be to recreationally torture a baby um and you could just see from the armchair right that it's that it's wrong right uh so I don't know um okay I'll call you Sebastian sorry my friend Um, okay.

¶126Wow. We got a lot of a lot of a lot of questions. Okay. Let's see. Many articles on Fatima Lanchiano were released on Substack in the last two weeks.

¶127Many people say that you guys messed up with Lanchiano, human animal tissue. Thoughts on all these? Have you found them evidentially significant? My friend, I have been focused on school these past two weeks. Like, I've got um and professional work.

¶128So, I've got like papers to review. I've got papers to comment on. I've got, you know, quizzes to grade. I've got things to do. So, I actually haven't been keeping up very carefully in the last two weeks with the the Substack discourse.

¶129Apologies, but um you know, I'll eventually return to it. So, um I will eventually return to it and Ethan will also eventually return to it. Like, I'm sure, well, I shouldn't say I'm sure. Well, I know that Ethan's going to like basically write tons of more articles on on Fatima. He's going to do like a comprehensive analysis of the alleged other sun miracles that people are using in this horizontal strategy.

¶130Um so he's he's going to very systematically comb through those and uh he's also I think probably going to work on a post with um or a post on um the apparition phenomena themselves and just like um countering puditive naturalistic explanations explanations of like the apparition phenomena themselves um to the children. And then he's going to he's just got a lot going. He's going to do like a post on the dealer stuff. Um like an in-depth post I think. Um and there's also a post coming out from I think uh what's his what's his name?

¶131Colin Colin Chvers I think is coming out with a post on on Fatima and the Damakaya thing. And um so anyway um yeah I mean lots of lots of stuff is going on but it's very hard to keep up with. You know I I just made like this 25 hour video and I'm like okay you know I spent so long with that but I've got lots of other things that I need to do that I just need to turn to. Right. Um, and so as you saw probably with my uh my YouTube post, community post maybe a couple weeks back or like a week back, like I don't know.

¶132I just need some patience. So, you know, I haven't really been keeping up with some of the the latest articles um on Substack and whatnot. Um, so but yeah, I'm sure and I'm guessing Ethan will get to the the launch stuff eventually, but that's up to him. I don't know. May maybe he will, maybe he won't.

¶133Um, but you know, he tends to respond to things very comprehensively. Um, but again hopefully hopefully at some point in the future I'll be able to get to them. Heavenly Philosophy asks, "How far along are you in God and argument or the Mir Nan Azour post?" Right. So um the the God and argument thing as you guys know if you watch the comprehensive argument comprehensive case for theism video is um sorry I just was looking at another comment. Um how far Yeah.

¶134So, for those of you who don't know, this is like a book that I'm writing with Matthew Aden, Amos Woolen, uh Dustin Kermit, Brian Cutter, and Philip Swenson. I mean, we have like uh at least two chapters done, and I am going to be finishing hopefully by the end of this semester. Um my remaining chapter. So, I I mean, I co-authored um one of the chap I co-authored a chapter on um the intrinsic probability of theism. Uh, a lot of us are like just have our hands in multiple chapters.

¶135I've got to write the chapter on like non-naturalistic alternatives to theism. Um, so like aesthetic theism, evil god, uh, limited god views, all that stuff. Um, so I got to write that. I kind of want to finish that by the end of the by the end of the year. Um, and I, you know, I think a lot of my colleagues are working on their stuff as well.

¶136Um, and so like hopefully hopefully by the end of the year we'll have like a significant at least a very significant part of it done. hopefully the majority of it. Um, whoa. Okay, I'm actually not taking these in order. I'm going out of order.

¶137I should have gone to the very bottom. Sorry, y'all. The evidential argument from gratuitous beauty doesn't require the atheist to accept aesthetic realism. Conditional ontheism. Oh, wait.

¶138Did I even answer the Minazour thing? No. Okay. So, the Munazour post, this one is primarily No. No is primarily working on it.

¶139I'm kind of serving as, you know, supplemental guy. I'm I'm helping him very in in some ways, but most of the credit there goes to goes to Noah. So, he's the one who's been working on that most. Um, and so then that's mostly a question for Noah. I mean, I have access to it and I've read it and whatnot.

¶140I mean, we we he has finished the portion on um establishing the fact pattern concerning the oil. So, its quality, its quantity, the order of sanctity, etc. Um he's also finished the section on explanations of it. So ruling out fraud, ruling out um you know uh misidentification, ruling out um demonic phenomena, etc. Um now he's on to the um the stigmata portion of it.

¶141Uh so I think he's sort of working on that right now. So that's how far along he is on that. Um but I should have gone in order, shouldn't I have? The [clears throat] evidential argument from gratuitous beauty doesn't require the atheist to accept aesthetic realism. Conditional theism.

¶142Aesthetically significant states of affairs are valuable. Aesthetically significant states of affairs are valuable. Good. Yeah. And God has reasons to actualize them.

¶143Good. The atheist has to grant that. The atheist has to grant that conditional on T. God desires to actualize valuable states of affairs if he if he wants to run the problem of evil. Good.

¶144There is no escape from beauty. Good. Sebastian, this is um this is a good point and I wish I had brought that up in my um I wish I had brought that up in my uh argument from beauty section. That just seems correct to me that that I think this is a very good point. Like again all that really matters is that um yeah this is really good because like uh you know this is this is what so okay so let me step back you know some some theists like Frank Turk are going to want to say that like oh you know like atheists can't run the argument from evil because you know under atheism there's no objective standard for good or bad or right or wrong or evil or whatever so they can't run the argument but um one one response to that which I think is successful that the atheists can give is to say that well Listen, conditional on theism, you know, all the suffering stuff is really bad.

¶145And so conditional on theism, the thought is it would still be very surprising that we see uh this pattern of suffering. Um because at least under theism, suffering is disvaluable, right? It's bad. Uh and so even if we granted that under atheism nothing is is good or bad or valuable or disvaluable, um it could still be the case that atheism better predicts the pattern of suffering than theism. Again, I'm not taking a stand on whether that that version of the argument succeeds.

¶146Um, but like this is the same style of response that you're giving here, right? Um, you're just doing it on behalf of the theist now. You're just saying, well, actually, like we don't even well actually [laughter] um we don't need to assume that things are objectively aesthetically valuable to run the argument. All that matters is that conditional on theism um you know like the beautiful structures that we see around us um are are either objectively aesthetically valuable um or even if they're not they're just like valuable simplicity right um and so like theism can still predict uh like the just gratuitous significant like susion of beauty in the world [laughter] um so yeah I think That's I think that's like a good and interesting response, Sebastian. Thank you for putting that on my radar.

¶147What do you think about the evidence for UFO phenomena and reincarnation? Have not studied UFO phenomena. Sorry. Um the reincarnation, the even the Ian Stevenson thing. Yeah.

¶148I mean um so that is interesting. I haven't actually uh read Ian Stevenson stuff, but I am familiar with uh the sorts of reports that you're that he covers. Um, one thing I'll recommend here is I think Jimmy Aken has covered Ian Stevenson's work, so on his Mysterious World podcast. Um, and I wish I could reduplicate what Ethan said to me when we talked about this. Um, but Ethan had some very plausible things to say um, in response when when I was kind of debating and talking with him about this because I think like even during like my my whole conversion process, this was like one of one of the objections or at least worries or concerns that I raised toward him.

¶149Uh, and I wonder if I rec I don't know if I recorded that conversation. I like to record the conversation so I could go back and study them. But um, I just remember finding what he said quite plausible, but I'm trying to remember exactly what he said. I mean, like one thing to say is like we need the reincarnation hypothesis to better predict the data than not just than relevant alternative competitors, right? uh in order for this to be well evidence for the reincarnation hypothesis, but also in order for it to be significant evidence, it needs to be much better predicted by the reincarnation hypothesis, but it's really not clear that that's the case.

¶150Um so there are like here are two competing hypotheses. I mean, one is like what the naturalist is going to want to go in for. So, you know, maybe there's some sort of like um memory contagion or maybe there's some sort of uh and I mean, you know, you might think like that doesn't really grapple with the actual empirical evidence. Um but or maybe you know they're like lucky hits and there's a selection effect which explains why we got um reports of those or maybe uh like the the relevant facts were somehow disclosed to the individual the child um or there was some sort of you know implicit or subconscious influence from the interviewer or leading questions or whatever. But so that the naturalist might try to say things like that.

¶151Um, but there's also another alternative explanation which is like the demonic explanation, right? I mean like hidden knowledge is like one of the things that like by the lights of uh I mean at least Catholicism, but like one of like the telltale uh like signs of demonic possession or demonic influence is like hidden knowledge, right? Um and so we would also need it to be the case that the reincarnation hypothesis better explains the data and significantly better explains the data than the demonic hypothesis. But we might think that um we might worry about that like cuz like reincarnation doesn't like somehow entail certainly that there would just be like these like what like transhistorical like memory beams that somehow like only occasionally show up very rarely and very tenuously and it's only like sometimes with like a few children. Um and it seems to only happen with like traumatic thing or like at least sorry I shouldn't say only happen but seems to like significantly involve um traumatic experiences in the past life.

¶152like you need to add lots of auxiliary hypotheses onto the reincarnation hypothesis in order to even predict this data. Um, and it's it's just it's not clear how like how any of these mechanisms are like remotely plausible, but also how they are like uh even like remotely well predicted under the core hypothesis of the reincarnation view. Um so this is all just to say that like it's actually not so clear that re the reincarnation hypothesis very swimmingly predicts the data. Um seems like you need some like pretty significant auxiliary hypothesis. Uh, and like yeah, the mechanisms here would be kind of thoroughly mysterious and kind of um unprecedented.

¶153You might think like seemingly um cuz yeah, like I mean well anyway I could go on and again like you're just you're asking this like off the top of my head and so that's like what I'm saying off the top of my head. Uh, [laughter] I'm sure much more intelligent things could be said if I sat down and actually like consulted his his work and um uh also if I went back um to try to sit down and try to recall everything that I talked with Ethan about. But anyway, that was a while ago. What do you think is the moral status of meat eating? Mortal sin?

¶154No, it's not going to be a mortal sin. So, I mean, listen, this depends on all this depends on your state in life, right? Um so like you know go back to first century Palestine you know it's going to be very hard to get a B12 uh on like a vegan diet right so like um and that's an essential nutrient right so you know totally justified for people back then I think to um eat animal products um now it's very different for you know someone who is who can very you know very easily afford a vegan diet nowadays um and who can get B12 in other ways. Now, I I certainly don't think that it's a mortal sin. Um now, maybe well, I'd have to think.

¶155I mean, yeah, maybe like actually like torturing the animals in factory farms like that that could potentially be mortally sinful. I'd have to think about that. Um probably Well, I'd have to think about that. I'm not going to specify that. Um, but I mean this is firstly it's going to be material cooperation here cuz presumably you don't will the suffering uh as such.

¶156You don't will the mistreatment of the animals. Um, you instead only will like nourishment or something like that. So you're not willing the evil. So it's not going to be formal cooperation. Uh, it's only going to be material cooperation in the wrongdoings involved in factory farming.

¶157And you know, given all the causal given the very significant causal chain involved, it may very well be like, yeah, pretty remote material cooperation. Um, and so, you know, you're just going to need like a proportionate reason to justify it. And I mean, again, that'll just depend on your state in life, your potential factors. But like when we're talking about like remote material cooperation, um like my my own judgment here would just be like if you want my own credential judgment, it's probably like I would regard it for me given my credential state given my state in life, I would regard it as probably vely sinful. Um and so that's why, you know, I well am vegan.

¶158Um I I think it's I think things are much more complicated. um if the animals live idyllic happy lives like if they're on like a regenerative farm or something like that the things are much more complicated um including you including for people who are otherwise you know including for lots of vegans so like I know that like Amos Wen thinks that that case is like pretty complicated I even think well no I'd have to I'd have to talk with Matthew Adelstein I I recorded a video with him on on veganism but uh it's much more complicated because like you might think okay they wouldn't have existed were it not for this process and they live very very very good lives. Um, and again like I don't I don't think they have like inalienable inalienable rights or anything like that. I don't think that you know it's impermissible. It's not like intrinsically evil to uh kill and eat an animal.

¶159So I I personally would just have to think much more deeply about um non-factory farmed animal products. I mean again I think uh the moral risk involved leads me to be vegan completely. Um, but that's another thing like the probabilities here can also um affect the gravity of uh what I take to be my own wrongdoing and eating animal products. But like hey like again like when you're you know I'm not like your confessor, right? So talk with like a spiritual director.

¶160I'm just giving you like given my state in life um that's how I would regard it. And I also think like given many people's state in life currently alive um in the western world uh I do think it's I do think it's wrong to participate in factory farming. So um super derogatory to be vegan. Um again it depends on exactly your state in life. And again like again your confessor should should matter more than me here.

¶161I just think that's my credential judgment. I've looked at the arguments for veganism and like I think the arguments are are or at least for sorry for avoiding factory farming and I think they're pretty strong. So um Adam Poutz released his response to the problem of harmonies last week. I don't find his critiques of theism good at all but it's striking to be conceded that consciousness and psychophysical harmony is some evidence for theism of dualism is true. Nevertheless he said that type physicists don't face any problem thoughts on his arguments.

¶162I suspect this is important for your dissertation. Good. Yeah. So I will almost certainly address this in my dissertation but I haven't read his response yet. So, um, Los Santo, I'm not going to be able to comment on it.

¶163Um, there's, again, there's a lot going on. Um, I know I know you want me to answer these questions, but um, and hey, maybe once I get around to it, you know, you can shoot me a message and I can, uh, I can offer you my thoughts, but um, but yeah, I mean, I want to read I want to read it, but um, haven't read it yet. What if you say that moral truths are necessary truths and that they are grounded in the divine intellect? Yeah, I mean I think that's it's like a reasonable way to go. Um this sort of like divine conceptualist maneuver.

¶164I mean you know there are some worries people have raised for divine conceptualism. Um like one of them is like the body thoughts objection like oh well you know if propositions are somehow like thoughts and divine intellect well uh there are some really nasty and and bad propositions so doesn't that mean that God is like thinking bad things? I don't know. I I used to kind of find that kind of plausible, but I don't really find that very plausible anymore. God's not like endorsing the content thereof.

¶165Uh it's more so just that these are like abstract content within his mind, you know. Um so yeah, I don't think it compromises his moral perfection or anything like that to just have those like in there as like abstract content like thinkables. Uh Bruce and Rasmmanson have interesting interesting arguments for that. Yeah. In their book, Necessary Existence in 2018.

¶166Um this has problems too but every view of abstractor that's true I mean every view of abstractor has problems um every view of abstractor has problems indeed the idea is that uh only god is the bedrock not physical universe plus necessary truths I think it helps for elegance and unifying force you know I mean I think it is a very unifying elegant picture of reality where you just have this one ultimate source and uh in some way God is somehow the source of abstractor or in some way they're like anchored in his in his being right Um maybe they're thoughts or ideas in the divine intellect. Maybe they are just like yeah possible imitations or participations in the divine. Um in the divine nature. There are lots of ways like there are lots of ways you might be you might go here but I do I do think this is a pretty elegant like unifying picture. Um so I'm kind of with you there.

¶167Um and shout out to Prussen Rasmmanson's 2018 book there. I mean like another another objection to some people some people speaking of myself from a while ago um like you know there is this question of like how exactly do we mesh uh this kind of divine conceptualist view with divine simplicity um but divine simplicity does not I mean uh does not require that there's no diversity whatsoever in God I mean for starters we know that God is trinitarian so there are um three distinct persons in one God right um what matters is there can't be diversity that introduces composition, right? And so we just need some kind of account or theory of um what kind of diversity introduces composition and then we need to then argue that under that account or at least under various plausible accounts of what kind of diversity introduces composition um the divine ideas would not fall into that like a diversity of divine ideas would not fall into that kind of um compositional diversity. So um and I I you know I think there may or will be ways to do that. Um [snorts] maybe you think that um like there has to be some sort of like dependence involved in composition and maybe you think that um like on the whole to the part but maybe you think that um in the case of divine ideas it's not like God's dependent on them and the fact they're dependent on God.

¶168That's one way you might try to go. you might instead try to go that oh well um you have to have some kind of like or one thing you might say is like you have to actually be concrete in order to be a part um and these like yeah these divine ideas these like they're not like concrete. So that's another thing you might say. Another a further thing you might say is you could just say um no in order to be um a part of God you have to be something that's like in some sense like well some people go in for like oh it has to be separable from God. know that that then divine ideas are not separable from God.

¶169Other people maybe you'll say, "Oh, it can't be a part if it merely like conceptually exists as opposed to really exists or something like that." So, you might introduce different kinds or modes of being. Um, I used to be pretty opposed to that. I'm starting to get a little bit more open to that. Um, I'm starting to be able to make more sense of that. And, uh, so I mean that's that's another way some that people might go, but anyway, I'm just ranting at this point.

¶170Okay. Many articles. Oh, I already responded that one. Do you think the argument from for agents with free will and moral responsibility still has force after updating on psychophysical harmony? You know, that's a good question.

¶171Um, I mean, it's going to have like less force because you've already updated on psychophysical harmony. You know, it's given that beings are given that like the conscious physical embodied creatures that exist are systematically psychophysically harmonious, that's surely going to increase the probability relative to at least baseline that there would be agents with free will, you know, because that like requires there to be psychophysical harmony. So, um, but it's certainly not entailed. So, I think it it still can provide it as in the existence of free will and and morally responsible creatures. I do think that can still provide further evidence for theism because yeah the fact that creatures are systematically psychophysically harmonious certainly doesn't entail that they're free and responsible.

¶172Um you know you need a kind of robust agency for that. Um like you know animals for example are systematically psychophysically harmonious but I don't think they have moral responsibility. I don't think you can appropriately blame them or praise them for what they do uh simply on account of the fact that they did it. Now, of course, there might be like forward-looking reasons why you can like blame your dog for something, right? Because it [laughter] um you know, it like induces good behaviors going forward, but um in terms of like yeah, dessert based moral responsibility, they I they certainly don't have that.

¶173Um and so yeah that is a further constraint in addition to psychophysical harmony that I don't know seems pretty fortuitous that there would be beings with that uh kind of moral responsibility conditional on naturalism together with psychophysical harmony. Um and again yeah like our our mental lives could have been systematically harmonious just without us having that kind of robust agency and moral responsibility. um like yeah maybe we just have accurate beliefs about the world but unfortunately we don't meet whatever conditions there are more robust conditions on um you know our actions ultimately being up to us like maybe that requires some kind of ultimate sourcehood that psychophysical harmony certainly doesn't guarantee and that would be pretty improb improbable under naturalism even given psychophysical harmony or maybe it requires leeway um and it is kind of kind of weird for to make sense to that under naturalism like maybe you think that there's as like Robert Kaine says there's some like indeterminacy in like the quantum mechanical aspects of like nervous systems which can somehow like percolate up to the macro level of the brain and like allow for significant leeway and choice. I mean it's like a just so kind of handwavy story seems highly fortuitous um that that would have developed. So anyway, um yeah, I do think listen, it will have less force after you update on psychophysical, but it's still kind of forceful.

¶174It seems to me I want to write a paper on that beauty thing. Do you think it's worth it? I I think so. I I mean, I think if you submitted it to a philosophy religion journal, I don't think it's worth for a generalist journal. Um I just don't think it's as significant a contribution to a generalist journal, but I think it's significant enough to to probably merit publication in a philosophy of religion journal.

¶175you know, you could submit that to JPR or something or like yeah, maybe even religious studies because I think it's like a cool and interesting point. Um, like, hey, a lot of people at the very least if you could show that a lot of people are assuming that arguments from beauty require like objective aesthetic value, you can be like, no, they don't. Check this. Like, that's kind of cool. Um, okay.

¶176So, let's go back to the document. Um, man, I am bouncing around. I'm bouncing all over the place. We got 96 viewers. This is kind of cool.

¶177I'm going to college at Aquinus. I'm going to college at Aquinus College to study theology. Okay, so I'm going back to YouTube here. And you've greatly helped inspire that. Oh, beautiful, Dangus.

¶178I'm just loving it. I'm loving this. Um, how do you know that there is free will, my dude? Well, there are many ways that I know we have free will. I mean, here's a fun here's a fun way.

¶179Like, God has manifestly vindicated the Catholic Church through miracles. So, Catholicism is true. And Catholicism teaches that we have free will, so we have free will. That's a fun argument, [laughter] but maybe, you know, that's a little indirect. So, um I don't know.

¶180We seem like a like blameworthy and praiseworthy for our actions. Um it seems correct to like, you know, when you slight me interpersonally, and it seems like you had your full cognitive wherewithal, it seems appropriate to blame you and praise you and it's hard to see how that we could appropriately praise you or blame you just for doing that if you didn't have free will. Um, now again, you might try to cook up some like forward-looking thing, but I just say even if we abstract from like, no, like even if I even if we blamed you, it wouldn't reform your behavior or anything like that. Still, I can blame you for punching me, dude. Like, um, it just seems really plausible.

¶181And if something seems really plausible, then in the absence of good reasons to think that it's false, we should default towards thinking that it's true. Um, I think that's just like a good epistemic principle, right? Um, you like I 1 plus 1 equals two. when I consider that proposition, it seems really plausible and and I don't have any good reasons to doubt it. So, I'm justified in thinking that it's the case.

¶182Um, and likewise with free will. I mean, like, you know, I I also just like I think I'm to be honest, just as I'm directly aware of being conscious, I think I'm also directly aware of being a free um agent who's responsible for their actions. Um, I think I just I'm directly aware of that in much the same way I'm directly aware of my consciousness. And so, it's like one of the things I know better than anything else to the contrary. Um, Schmidt, greetings.

¶183Hey, Joy. I'm agnostic theist who is leaning towards atheism because I just don't see God in my life at all. I barely pray. I barely go to church. What do you recommend me?

¶184My friend, I recommend you say conditional prayers every day asking God to lead you into the truth and to lead you um into greater love of neighbor and him. That's I recommend you do that and just say a brief prayer every day, that conditional prayer. Um, and you know, if you haven't watched my 25-hour long video [laughter] or three videos, I would recommend just like, yeah, sitting through that and just carefully studying it. And, um, maybe that'll help. Um, people don't see God because they don't look into the metaphysical outcome or the life they have.

¶185Love manifested. I'm curious. Do you feel like you have increased your credence in moral natural since converting? Seems like natural law naturalist is or most of the time. Good question.

¶186So one thing to say is like I I don't see yet moral naturalism. Yeah. I don't see that Catholicism requires us to accept natural law theory. I mean certainly we talk about the natural law but that's like um you know that I think that can be well you know people correct me if I'm wrong but I think that can be understood as basically just like referring to the moral law and like specifically natural law theory like timistic natural law theory as a normative ethical theory a global normative ethical theory um I'm not convinced that Catholics are committed to that so um I mean that's one thing to say but second thing to say is that you know natural law theory even timistic natural law theory as a global normative ethical theory um is I You're right. That's normative ethics, right?

¶187That's a normative ethical theory that's compatible with any view like any which view. Well, maybe not any which view it's, you know, but it's compatible with a range of views in metaethics, right? Um so you might think that um yeah, an action is you know wrong. Uh you know if and because you know it directs some natural faculty away from its natural end. You might accept that, but you might just think like, well, okay, what is wrongness?

¶188Wrongness is still like this non-natural property that's not like reducible to directing faculties away from their natural ends or something like that, right? Um, so you might still take like a robust non-naturalistic view of what wrongness is, what wrongness is, even if things even if actions instantiate wrongness, um, when and because they direct faculties away from their natural ends, right? Um but that because there is not expressing like an identity in the properties or like a reductionistic view where um the relevant normative properties are like somehow reducible to or identical to natural properties. Um they could instead just um I mean it could they could be irreducible but still um explained in some other way just like it's not a reductionistic explanation. Um can you respond to my comment please?

¶189I think I just did. Um wife's boyfriend. Oh, that's funny. I didn't even see that. Marsani [laughter] earlier.

¶190Someone says, "Pray for my wife's boyfriend." That's funny. I missed that. That's That's funny. Um, no, I don't bat an eye. I'm just going to I'm still going to pray.

¶191Yeah, of course. I'm dead. Y'all don't have to ask for that wise boyfriend prayer request. Thoughts on origin of Alexandria? I'm sorry, my friend.

¶192I don't have many thoughts. Matnur olive oil discourse has been really entertaining. Yes, it has. It's like Well, anyway, my priest mentioned your conversion story last Sunday. Oh, based.

¶193Praise God. Praise God. Praise God. That's beautiful. Not because of not because it glorifies me, because it glorifies God.

¶194Right. Um don't believe in God, but I do believe icons are pretty. Right. Right. I mean, literally right here, I got my icon of Our Lady of Kazan.

¶195This is what the uh Our Lady of Sufunnia icon is like a reproduction of. Um it's just so beautiful. I mean, let me Okay, but anyway, and I've got a ton of icons over here. I've got my patron saint St. Albert the Great and lots of other uber based holy people.

¶196Um what's your opinions on toism? I have gained a significant deal of respect for toism. Uh and I I genuinely think like I genuinely think uh and I had actually suspected this for some time after studying a lot of the stuff further that uh a number of my past criticisms many of them just don't succeed. Like Tim Paul and W Matthews Grant had this response for instance in my aloneess argument paper and it's like a good response. Um, and and I also just think like, yeah, the stuff about providential collapse I don't think works.

¶197Um, but anyway, those those are those are like opinions on the toistic model of God. Um, so I listen, I'm not myself a tomist. You don't have to be a toist to be a Catholic. Um, but like I respect tomism and again like I I dis I'm much less like metaphysically heavyweight than the toists. I personally am somewhat skeptical of my ability to like settle these like super highulutin abstract metaphysical debates.

¶198Uh, you know, and as a result I'm a little bit at least tentative in adopting like this huge metaphysical system that like the kind of airtilianistic system would would require. Um now I think that there are lots of theoretical virtues that the system does exhibit but I also think that there are various objections that I currently um don't yet fully see how to resolve. And so as a result I'm kind of in the phase of like listen I respect tomism. I'm not a toist. Uh, so I'm like I'm an Aquinus respector.

¶199Okay, you could put that on my shirt. Aquinus Respector. Certified Aquinus Respector even though I'm not myself a Tomist. Please collab with William Lane Craig. Alex Okconor should become an Orthodox Christian so they can be [laughter] about orthodoxy and Catholicism.

¶200[gasps] Oh man. Right. We should get what like Jay Dyer and Alex Okconor to debate me and who there is there a coral I don't know who's the coral area of Jay Dyer for Catholicism I'll let you guys answer that uh follow your heart no follow Christ submit to his lordship what do you think about Susan Wolf and Dirk Perboom trying to get a philosophy degree after going back to school any suggestions for a nontraditional education path I only have an as an interesting I mean, Dirk Perboom and Michael McKenna have the absolute best introduction to free will book that's ever been written. Um, I'm looking at it right now. Yeah.

¶201Um, free will, a contemporary introduction by Routledge. Um, I mean, obviously I disagree with a lot of Pureboom's views. Um, like isn't he a hard incompatibilist? Um, but anyway, uh, I mean, listen, he's a he's he's a great philosopher. Do you believe homosexuality is a sin?

¶202depends on what you mean by homosexuality. The inclination or the desire is not sinful at all. No. Um but it's directed towards sinful behavior. So yes, uh engaging in homosexual behavior like activity, you know, uh that is sinful and mortally so.

¶203Well, at least if you meet the grave matter and uh sorry, grave matter is met if you meet the full knowledge and deliberate consent conditions. Are you going to do more work on modal collapse and the various forms of it? No, because I killed it in my JPR paper now. [laughter] [gasps] Oh man, I'm I'm, you know, slightly being slightly ironic. Um, okay.

¶204Let's get back to the September. Okay, let's get back to this document. Joe, I don't know if you're going to answer, but I watch a lot of atheist content regarding your conversion. They point out that that was your first mistake. I'm watching a lot of atheist content regarding my conversion.

¶205No, I'm [laughter] kidding. They point out that you converted because you're Oh, yes. I just converted because I was born into a Catholic family and I was just left with I was left with an emotional vacuum when leaving the faith. I was just so empty and emotional. I was just this angsty teen, you know, who needs to go and cry to his mommy.

¶206Um, not my friend. I was super comfortable as an agnostic, you know. Uh, and for the longest time, I desperately did not want to change my life. Uh, I mean, as I say in in my kind of conversion video, like the conversion process significantly hampered and even ruined one or more relationships. Uh, I'm not going to say more than that, but and you know, it wasn't it was not easy that in that capacity.

¶207Um, it would be difficult for my career certainly. Uh, like this was like almost career what's the word? I don't want to get demonetized, right? So career self-life ending. Uh it's very bad for your career to do this sort of thing.

¶208Like very bad. Uh you know like I was on the I have all these fancy pants publications, all these fancy pants venues and all these fancy pants institution. Um and I could have gotten some fancy pants job. Um but like I suspect that you know going very public and defending all these views and like saying what I just said about homosexuality and like doing all this stuff. I suspect that that's very bad for my job prospects.

¶209But, you know, proclaiming Christ crucified is more important than my job. So, who cares about that? Um, I would mean that I've been massively scandal. Yo, yes. I mean, there's another thing that was difficult.

¶210I mean, I've been massively scandalizing and deconverting people for about a decade. So, that's like a huge barrier to becoming Catholic. I mean, my entire public persona was tied up with criticism of theism, Christianity, and various tenants of Catholicism. I would have had to change my life in lots of ways and stop pursuing various pleasures that I really enjoyed pursuing. Uh and you know perhaps most of all I had would have had to exhibit a profound amount of docility and just submission and readiness toward instruction which is like very difficult for you know a stubborn and prideful philosopher like myself.

¶211Um just like having to take on all the commitments um was difficult for me personally. Um also because I might I've I've been sort of leaning towards for a long while or at least very strongly suspecting that I shouldn't be eating factory farmed animal products. Um, it also would have meant that like and I have more I have like a significant amount of moral uncertainty personally concerning what I should do about non-factory farm products that like I personally judged that I would in order to avoid even venial sin I uh should become vegan if I become Catholic and I did not want to become vegan for a very long time. I did I loved chicken and eggs and milk and whatnot. Um, so but on the day of my conversion, I was like, listen, death rather than sin, like I'm just gonna I'm gonna comp completely vegan and even though I have so much uncertainty about non-factory farmed products, um, I'm just I can offer this up as a spiritual sacrifice, right?

¶212Like I can I can offer it up to God for spiritually solutary ends. Um and like yeah I mean the point about being born into Catholicism I mean like on the one hand like it was humiliating having to like admit that my parents were right all along. That was very humiliating. Um but also like yeah some people have been like oh isn't it such a coincidence that you concluded that the uh the true religion is the one you you grew up in. Um, I mean like I just don't think it's that surprising that like the true religion would be the one I grew up in if the one I grew up in is Cathol Catholicism because like it's like you know like the long like what like one of the most long-standing institutions in the world, one of the biggest religions in the world, one of like the baddest religions in the world got some like the holiest saints like some of the best philosophers that have ever been produced belong to this tradition.

¶213Um, and I don't know it just wouldn't be surprising even conditional on theism that if God is going to reveal something to humanity he's kind of going to succeed, right? Right. So like you know the true religion is probably not going to just be like some cloistered threeperson membered Amazonian tribes person like cult right that exists for thousands of years where it's like yeah three people like a dozen people in it like God kind of failed in like revealing himself to humanity if that's the true religion right so like I don't know um like the very fact that Catholicism has been like it just like seems to mog everyone >> [laughter] >> to be completely honest um actually like makes it not very surprising that it would turn out to be um the true religion I just think like even just from just from like almost common sensical reasoning like I don't know it's like a very big very longstanding very influential tradition uh and if I grow up in a tradition like that it shouldn't it shouldn't be too surprising that if there is a true religion then that one might be it um so and then of course you know we've got we've got the miracle goods to deliver Um okay. And how people are raised with belief in God later are much more likely to believe in God. Uh sure.

¶214Just as some people who are raised without belief in God are much more likely to later not believe in God probably. So yeah I mean like it's it's it's no one doubts that like earlier beliefs can influence our later beliefs. Um the question just is like uh does that somehow undermine the various arguments that I'm forwarding which this person goes on to suggest. So um in the book how God becomes real it is said how the human mind must actively use prayer and imagination to make any invisible entity feel tangibly real. She tried it with witchcraft that felt real to her.

¶215So they throw away all your arguments. But isn't you see how that's just like a ridiculous inference right? Like oh you know this person grew up in this tradition and was probably emotionally influenced so their arguments are bad. Walk me through it, bro. That's not how reasoning works.

¶216That's not how any of this works. Um, uh, they look into more the explicable miracles like Fatiman Zetune, bro. Since when are those explicable naturalistically explicable? What? [laughter] See my video.

¶217Also, see Kill Jackson's post coming out on Zetune. I'm very excited for that. They don't talk about Padre Pio having no bruises or anything on his hands after his death. Only how they could talk for a week about what was actually said in the medical documentation. I don't know why do they avoid talking about those kinds of miracles.

¶218Although I have talked with Chachi about the Calic miracles in your videos. It dismisses any supernatural explanation. Of course, it's going to dismiss supernatural explanations. Like these things are notoriously tend to remain non-committal about controversial topics like politics and religion and controversial ethical questions, right? So it's it's totally unsurprising even if this were supernatural that CHBT would refrain from saying so.

¶219Um it just says it's interesting because we seemingly don't have enough evidence to jump to supernatural conclusions. I disagree with that. I think we have overwhelming evidence for the Padre Pio case. uh the Padre Po Bruises case it said this wasn't performed in a modern lab so we can only say we don't know and it could be that science comes up with an answer for the miracles in the future and how we used to believe thunder was god or something right but remember like that was based on our ignorance of how thunder works right but we know how wounds naturally heal and if you've got full thickness perforations at multiple points in your life and there are multiple people who are like literally like yeah like looking at them and one of them is like palpitating all four of them on multiple occasions as he says Dr. for Roman Elliot or whatever.

¶220Um, and then you know later on in life they're like centimeters deep and like he has these for five decades. Like we know how natur we know how wounds naturally heal. We understand wound healing, right? And like those sorts of wounds are not going to be leaving it such that it's like basically perfectly new like baby healthy skin on on all your wounds, right? Um on the day of your death.

¶221So it's not based on ignorance like those. it's based on our understanding of how natural healing works. Um, and then like yeah, I mean it's it's just very implausible to say like oh you know we can't infer this because it wasn't performed in a lab like since when is being performed in a lab like a requirement on like running an argument that you know the best explanation for the the data that we do have is miraculous. Um it's not like like if you and I were together and like we both prayed for your amputated limb to get better and then it got better like it literally grew back before our eyes. that didn't happen in a lab, but still it's a clearly very powerful evidence for God's existence.

¶222Um, yeah, I just think it's like a a clearly unreasonable evidential standard to demand that like, oh, you know, I'm only going to accept this if it happened in a lab. Um, okay, so back to Patreon. Um, my goodness, you guys have so many amazing questions. I love all you guys. You guys are great.

¶223Love you, Sebastian. I love you. Uh, heavenly philosophy. Um, Sebastian says, "The next book about the existence of God with a brigade will be more technical or popular level." It will be more popular level. Will you guys cover the intrinsic probability of theism on the hypothesis that God exists necessarily?

¶224Maybe. Um, I'm not sure if we're going to get into that. I know Nevin Kimha is doing some work with that. Contingency style arguments plus arbitrary limits plus reasons that consciousness could be fundamental seem to boost the interesting probability. No, they do.

¶225I'm with you. Um, and that's that's sort of the the the the track that I took in my comprehensive case video because I think it's right. Like I I don't actually like the argument from arbitrary limits as a deductive argument, but I love it as just saying like, hey dude, like this is a very attractive like elegant picture of the foundation of reality. Um, that's quite highly intrinsically probable. And maybe I shouldn't say I don't like the deductive argument.

¶226I just think like there are some steps in there that I don't fully see clearly to be true. Um, that's what I should say. Favorite pope? Gosh, that's a good question. I I haven't studied the popes in in significant detail.

¶227Um, I mean, dude, I've only been alive for when was John When was John Paul II? Um, cuz I, you know, I'm tempted to say John Paul II death. Okay. He died in 2005. So, I was 5 years old.

¶228No, I was four years old when he died. Um, listen, I think John Paul II's probably up there. Um, there are these videos of him singing the patternoster in Latin which are just amazing. It's like, wow, this is so cool. Um, Peter's up there.

¶229Yes, Peter, the New Testament guy because he was the first pope. Um, so yeah, I think those are those are two good shouts. Um but also a psychologist looks at bad things and it is not immoral. What? Um did you convert to Catholicism the 4-hour conversation with either Christianity and then converted to Catholicism the day later?

¶230Okay. Okay. So I mean listen like all the evidence for Catholicism like it was Catholic miracles that were convincing me along the way or that were just like gradually increasing my confidence like you know Lord's well I mean Zetune isn't a Catholic miracle but I think it has implications for marology and saintly intercession um but Zetune definitely canonization healing miracles um Fatima etc. uh you know some of the Eucharistic miracles and whatnot. Um and it was basically it felt like betrayal almost to like be convinced by all the Catholic miracles which seem to have Catholic vindicatory implications but then just be like oh nope not going to go to like that [laughter] seems very implausible.

¶231Um, but yeah, to answer your question directly, um, I actually at the end of that 4-hour call, I I just decided like again, this was a years'sl long process, but at the end of it, I was like, okay, I I can't keep res, you know, I can't keep pushing back. I I think I've lost. Um, and if this dude, as I as I sort of was convinced of, if this dude is supernaturally reduplicating the passion woods of Christ, then it almost felt properly basic to me that sorry, the Christianity is through at that point. So like what am I supposed to do? So I I sort of concluded that at the end and then Ethan and I spent some time just going through at the end of that call just like my credences in the different sects um and just giving me like general tools by which I could think about those.

¶232And then it was just basically like it was that it was that the end of that call that conversation and I you know I'd already been thinking about these these issues really like leading up to this. Um and it was basically yeah it was I think the next day that I was like okay you know what what brand of Christianity am I going to am I going to choose and it's it's got to be Catholicism um so yeah it was it was technically the next day I was only convinced of Christianity first what's the best book investigating a miracle or miracles dumday zon books uh Eucharist book I mean I would recommend both of those certainly um I mean there are so many books out there so check out definitely the uh the conversion resource docu doument that I put together. I think that'll be really helpful. Um, I mean, Sufana has lots of like really good books as well associated with it. Um, and I mean, uh, Ethan cites Padre Pio books that he went through.

¶233Um, so but yeah, I mean the the Dums Day book is like a good start I think because you know he's a professional philosopher. He did very good research on the case. I think he he didn't even cover some very strong evidence for Zetune that that Caleb Jackson is going to cover in Caleb Jackson's forthcoming Substack article on this. Um but anyway, yes, I mean like you could check those out. Um I'm trying to see if there are any other ones that I would want to like immediately recommend.

¶234Um but yeah, check out the conversion resource document and like all the posts in there and whatnot because they they they link to like papers and books and whatnot. Um, your miracles have to update the uh, lots of Joe Nickel and extremely bad thinking is up there. Oh my gosh. Yeah, don't even get me started on the Wikipedia pages. They're so bad.

¶235Like the Colonda one as well is so bad. [laughter] [gasps] Um, there's a lot of gibberish there. No serious academic stuff there. Only debunking paranormal institutions that are much worse than Frank Turk style reasoning based. Yeah.

¶236[laughter] Yeah, dude. The Wikipedia articles on these things are so bad. They're like, oh gosh. Yeah. But I'm sorry.

¶237Sorry, I just have better things to do than like edit Wikipedia pages. But I would recommend other people, you know, to take those steps. Unfortunately, you know, Wikipedia is probably in the hands of like big skeptic. So, big form, big skeptic. So, like the, you know, the bad reasoning is about some of these cases is only probably going to prevail with Wikipedia.

¶238Will you deal with operatory fine tuning in your next book? Yes. What about divine psychology and theism's predictive power? Almost certainly. Do you still lean towards presentism?

¶239Uh, I think I'm agnostic on presentism and eternalism. I mean, I I think growing block is false, but between presentism and eternalism, I honestly don't know, my guy. I genuinely don't know. Richard Sasso, Joe, I hear you're interested in becoming a professor of analytical philosophy. Indeed, or at least I'm trying to discern what God wants to do with me.

¶240Um, and that's one option. I'm cur, you know, it's currently probably the leading option. So, I'm curious if the state of academia, higher education, and especially the plight of the humanities, American universities ought not give you some pause in that. I walked away when I realized becoming a professor at English at a university was virtually impossible. Listen, there are lots of things that are like orange cones, right?

¶241Where it's like, oh no. Um, you know, the job market's rough. We're minting way too many PhDs for way too few spots. Um you know I think there's definitely like uh ideological capture of certain um parts of academia which is unattractive. There are like massive budget cuts especially to humanities like the humanity the humanities have to justify their existence like philosopy has to justify our existence.

¶242It's like dude my goodness. I mean thankfully you know we're the best at doing that sort of thing so we can do [laughter] it now. Um but uh but yeah, no, I mean things are looking rough and especially with like I don't know with AI coming out like it's very it's very disconcerting. So I don't know. We'll see.

¶243But listen, like I view philosophy as part of living a flourishing life, right? So I think it's going to be hard to take me out of doing some kind of philosophy even if it's in a pastoral setting. So who who knows where God's going to take me? Do you think that if we incorporate the human ought into our moral semantics, this leads to deontic morality being non-natural? So if we stipulate that the ought that we are using in our moral semantics is the human ought such that it's not reducible to purely descriptive facts then yeah uh I do think deontic morality would then be non-natural because I think you know naturalism is basically a view on which we reduce the moral facts to the descriptive facts um that are investable by science because I think science only investigates descriptive facts.

¶244Um now of course you might Other people might say, "Oh, well, if we incorporate the human not into our moral semantics, then I'm going to be an error theorist." But obviously, I'm not going to go that route because error theory is like, you know, utter anathema heresy disgusting, you know, dark land. So, [laughter and gasps] um, I was talking about your objection at the necessary truths argument. Oh, yeah, you're right, Sebastian. Yeah. Yeah.

¶245The the body thoughts objection. That's what you're talking about. Yeah. Psychologists have to study bad things, but that that's not like immoral of them. It doesn't like detract from their character.

¶246It doesn't detract from their perfection. Exactly. Um, thoughts on Miles and Lynford debate, dude. Yeah. I'm sorry you're asking me about all this like new stuff that's coming out, but like we y'all, we got to keep in mind that I just made like I wrote like basically like a book like 377 page thing and then made like 25 hour content and then just now I've got a lot of work to do, right?

¶247I've got like I got school. I'm teaing to sections. I've got Yeah. So, I'm I'm kind of focused on school and whatnot. So, um I mean I am going to record um a very brief video actually in between my TA class that I'm taing for and then uh something else that I No, wait.

¶248Do I have something else after that? Anyway, I'm recording a very brief video with Noah Mccay and Matthew Adelstein on Monday in person. So, that'll that'll be fun. But it's literally like in between Noah and Matthew's uh like seminar and like my seminar. So, maybe it'll only be like 30 minutes long or something.

¶249But anyway, um yeah, unfortunately I do need like a little bit of a break from all this stuff about uh uh the the stuff. Oh yeah, the Brian Cutter interview. So I'm not going to I'm not going to answer that, my friend, because that's that's private. Okay. Uh that that's [laughter] you know that that's just for patrons to know.

¶250Um why not become a professor at Notre Dame or Baylor or Princeton later in your career? It's pretty much guaranteed to be accepted anywhere you want. No, you don't need to say that. Um um yeah, listen like uh Oh, are you asking about on Analytic Christian? Yeah, I mean that's going to be in I don't know when he's going to post that.

¶251He could post that in many many many months, but we're going to be recording that in like October 22nd or or somewhere around October 22nd um with Jordan at the Analytic Christian. That's going to be me and Noah. Um yeah, in terms of like becoming a professor, I mean, yeah, listen, that's an option, but I I don't know what God's calling me to do yet. And I mean right now again I'm like leaning towards academia but you know I just need to pray pray pray about this and it you know Catholics who are listening if you're out there please pray for my vocational discernment. Um I would very much appreciate that cuz just for the longest time I've just been following my desires.

¶252Um and academia is not the only place I can use my you know my god-given talents and my god-given propensities and my desires right. Um so again yeah that that's one option and again it's I think it's like the leading option right now but but we'll see. Um but yeah, as you're asking like why not become a professor at these places? It's not really up to us where we become a professor, you know, we have to go on the job market. So um okay, let's go back to the YouTubes.

¶253Okay, there are so many questions here that I'm so far behind. Um yeah, the screen may be frozen. Whoa, what just happened? Now I'm gone, but now I'm back. Oh um do you have plans to deep dive into classic flossy more in the future?

¶254Kajitan, Geragulrange, Sheban, etc. or really mainly stick to modern philosophy. I'm probably mainly going to stick to modern philosophy because that's what I know well. But dude, like I I really wish I cuz like yeah, I don't know. Um Gerugul, his stuff on like fundamental theology pertaining to miracles seems very good.

¶255Um from just like my my impression. So like I know that's not quite you're asking me about scholastic philosophy, but that's more like yeah, fundamental theology. But listen, like I guess I'm more interested in modern philosophy stuff, but I don't know. I I think I kind of at some point might want to take like a second look at, you know, scholastic philosophy. Um, and I mean, a lot of views even in contemporary philosophy are just like recapitulating things that the Scholastics have talked about.

¶256You know, like essentialism is like all the buzz nowadays in metaphysics. Um, and you know like these powers views and modality like positing causal powers and essences and natures and um being like a robust realist about lots of things. Like these are like super popular views these days. So um yeah, I mean I think maybe I'll be able to get to them eventually, but my current plan is to stick to modern philosophy. That's kind of my wheelhouse, you know?

¶257So I I just don't know as much about scholastic philosophy and there's a little bit of a translation barrier for my like dumb guy brain. Um, correct. I am streaming on my Patreon. He's going through YouTube comments, but it's behind. He answered mine.

¶258I am going through YouTube comments. This is supposed to be for patrons, but like, you know, I I'm here. I'm having fun. It's a Saturday night. You know, why not?

¶259Why not? Um, spread the love and respond to people on YouTube. And, you know, we got 95 people and let's go one v one in FIFA. [laughter] Joe was a ball and gun gamer. I see.

¶260You play haram ball in FIFA. [laughter] Oh my gosh, dude. Speaking of haram ball, what was it? Was it FIFA 16 or 15? Dude, only the real homies know what I'm about to say.

¶261It was either FIFA 14, 15 or 16 or 17, I forget. But it was the year where like uh you could so easily and effectively dribble around the goalkeeper. And I had footies, Sadu Dumbia up top together with I think like Ibarbo and like uh I forget I forget who else I had. But anyway, um so the footies are like the pink cards and oh my gosh, like I just my friends would get so angry cuz I would just destroy them just by dribbling around the goalkeeper or like you know there was a year where you could just like sweat all the time. You could just pass it across the goal and then shoot and oh my gosh I [laughter] was I completely abused all that stuff.

¶262Um, and yeah, I was definitely a pace abuser and um, yeah, dude. Oh my gosh. And I Oh, man. I remember the 41212 formation in FIFA 14 was so good. Yeah.

¶263No, I I Ultimate Team was what I always did. Um, so Oh, man. Black Ops 3 zombies, dude. I I have played zombies with my friends. That was it was kind of fun.

¶264How did you meet Matthew Levana? Matthew Lea? Um, how did I meet him? I don't I don't know. I think we were just going back and forth over Facebook DMs uh about Eucharistic miracles for a while, for a long while.

¶265Have you seen much of James Fodor on the bad apologeticsing? I think I mean I obviously won't be able to respond to the whole thing, but I think eventually when I catch up with responses, I'll try to condense their main criticisms which presumably have to do with like BA's bad, you know, or like, you know, that sort of thing with respect to natural theology. Again, I'm not going to speak speak to it because I haven't watched their stuff yet, but I suspect that's what they're going to say. Um, [clears throat] and I'll eventually hopefully um months down the line condense some of their main objections and then respond to them. Um, but you know, we'll see.

¶266We'll see. Again, right now I'm sort of prioritizing uh school and my professional work. Catholicism supports bug welfare. Um, listen, I I don't think bugs don't mean don't matter at all. Okay, that's not my view.

¶267They just definitely don't matter as much as humans. Sorry. Um, that's just like the common sensical view. So, thankfully we're in line with common sense here. Oh, Estabbon said, "Hey, Joe.

¶268Love you. I love you, Estaban. Thank you for all that you've done for me throughout the years. Have you seen much of I already said that. Um, plus you go to school." I do go to school.

¶269I am a I'm a school boy. Thoughts on Brainer That or Matrix being possible? Yeah. I don't know. I mean, those are skeptical scenarios and I just think uh I don't know.

¶270we're justified in having non-skeepical priors. I just think like it just seems obvious that I don't know here's here's a hand in the external world, here's another hand and I'm justified in accepting what seems obvious to me in the absence of defeaters. So, um and of course may maybe there are some explan you know explanationist arguments against these kind of radical skeptical views that might succeed. Um, just that like, you know, a stable, coherent, orderly world out there might be the best explanation of my stable, coherent, orderly experiences in here. Um, so, you know, maybe explanationist responses to skepticism are good.

¶271I like morian responses. I don't know how to make any sense of possible worlds without them being somewhere in some sense. Nah, come on, my friend. you know, you can make sense of like the Harry Potter world, like what happens in the Harry Potter world, even though it's it's not anywhere, right? There is no Harry Potter world.

¶272Um, so I don't know. I think we can make sense of these as kind of just like representational um even like just like heruristics, right? Like it's like a useful fiction or something like that. Um useful heristic um to talk about comprehensive ways that reality could be um or like you know maximal compossible collections of propositions or you know just view them as kind of like a book or a story something like that. Um, yeah.

¶273I mean, you're asking why would we expect something conceivable in a humano mind as real possibility? I mean, yeah, there's a real question of does conceivability entail possibility. That's highly controversial in philosophy. Um, yeah, Aquinus is hard to understand correctly if you don't have a philosophical background. Your impressions are usually good.

¶274That JP was awful. Dude, I I know my Jordan Peterson is pretty bad. It It is very bad. I'm much better at, you know, pure capitalist ideology, right? Those dirty those dirty utilitarians, right?

¶275And their bug welfare projects, right? Suma of the Suma. Oh, interesting. I haven't read that. Joe, how might I be able to defend myistic metaphysics against metaphysical anti-realists?

¶276Read David Odberg's real essentialism. Um, do you plan on responding to Nathan use of basianism on philosophy? Again, I'll probably get to that. That's my guess. I'll probably eventually get to that.

¶277Almost 2 a.m. hits hard in Europe. Oh, sorry. Sorry y'all. I think Scholastic Answers is wrong about piracy.

¶278We owe the creator of their content, their wage. That's a good question. I I I don't know. Um, yeah, that's a good question. I mean, I think uh with a lot of these academic books, either we're not getting paid.

¶279So for like my existential inertia and classical theistic proofs book um which you know I no longer agree with a lot of that but um you know I'm not getting paid for that. I mean they they gave me like some money upfront right but that was our contract. It wasn't like I'm not getting paid through getting it selling more right. Um so there are at least certain academic presses where like the author doesn't make money through through sales through further sales. Um, and you might just think like it's so contemptably minimal.

¶280Well, anyway, it it I'm not going to debate this. I don't know enough about Catholic moral theology to be able to say this. Just listen to your confessor on this one. Okay. And I I'm you know, I'm going to listen to my confessor.

¶281Can you respond to my comment, Joe? Dude, I I don't Maybe I already did. What's your opinion on toism? Already responded to that. Will you respond to Nathan?

¶282Will you respond to Nathan? Will you respond to Nathan? Will you respond to Nathan? Will you respond to Nathan? Um uh uh the Zena.

¶283Dude, Swing English, dude. That is a pull. That is a pull. That is a That is a good poll, dude. Dude, Swinglish, you are you are a true Majesty of Reason fan.

¶284Stan, actually. Wow, dude. I made that joke like what, like once or twice in like it was probably like two and a half hours into a video. Wow. Could I retain my coherentism and be a non-naturalist?

¶285Do you mean epistemic coherentism? My friend, if you're a non-natural apostolic atheist, ah, you're you're you know, you're amazing, my friend. You you got to become a theist if you're a non-naturalist. I mean, come on. Like, the moral the moral knowledge argument is is very very good.

¶286And it's especially good for people who are non-naturalists. Like, come on. Come on. Like, you got to get with the program. Like, it's very very spooky and weird for like, you know, a naturalistic atheistic world picture to have us like be in cognitive contact with these like Yeah.

¶287non-natural, irreducible kind of entities out there. You got to become a theist, my friend. Um, what are your thoughts on the privation theory of evil? Well, uh, I mean, I have some concerns relating that that Puce outlines relating to like false beliefs and pain. Um, uh, this is not my area of specialty.

¶288I just, I, you know, I watched a Pruce lecture on this. I know I haven't read David Odberg's book defending he has a recent book defending uh I think the metaphysics of good and evil where he defends the privation theory so I'm guessing he he responds to those objections therein but um listen I currently lean towards thinking that it's mistaken if the magisterium commits me to some form of it then I will you know retract that in in an instant but your opinion on the transcendental argument for God I mean as it's run by like standard priest apologists I don't think it's good um but I mean Like I think there might be certain like so listen the argument from non-skeepticism that I gave in my video um and that was inspired by things that Alexander Puce has written. Um it's related I think to something that um is it John Pitter has written in the journal Inquiry and it's also you know based on things that like Ethan Muse argued in his uh video with Pat Flynn on Suma Contra everybody which you know podcast I highly recommend. Um, you know, there there are versions of the non-keepticism argument which kind of kind of seem somewhat analogous to the transcendental argument um where basically like yeah like in order for us to have empirical knowledge about the world for instance, it needs to not be the case that like Boltzman brains are just like proliferating the world. Um, but you might think it's it's hard for the naturalist to secure that verdict.

¶289um and that you you may need something similar to God of the picture in order to secure that that um that condition on knowledge. Uh so it's not quite like a transcendental argument at least in the way that like presuppers tend to run it but I guess it's in the vicinity and I think those arguments may have you know indeed have some force. So um I'm trying to do research as an undergrad. I like you converted Catholicism after converting to atheism. What do you think the theism field should be looking to publish to advance?

¶290That's a good question. I would just recommend for you to just go to the latest versions of different journals like um International Journal of Philosophy of Religion, Faith and Philosophy, most importantly um Oxford Studies and Philosophy of Religion. Um did I already say religious studies? IGPR religious studies um faith and philosophy. Those are journals.

¶291And then Oxford studies and philosophy of religion. and then look at what's being published these days and like the last issues in the LA last few years and then you'll see some stuff that people are talking about at the edge of research right um you know or you could you could just become a a Joe Stan and just like go and you know start defending everything I say uh [laughter] um Caleb Jackson also working on Zetune yes Pope Leo is in France very good okay let me go back to the patrons I've been neglecting Oh, nope. Wait, the chat. Oh, whoa. We got some people in the chat.

¶292Hold on, hold on. Chat, chat, chat. Chat is active. Uh, do I score down to the bottom? Yeah.

¶293Okay. Hey, thank you, Kevin, for your prayers. Yes, I am open. Uh, I am open. Are you going to respond to the more methodological critiques of mira miraculous arguments?

¶294Maybe. Maybe on veritatus splitter. Also, given your epistmic interest, you might find this interesting. Um, read it way back in undergrad. H, okay, let me pull this up.

¶295Feeling pain and being in pain. Interesting. Thank you for sharing that. I probably won't be able to get to that. Um, at least, well, I probably won't to be fully honest.

¶296Uh, just cuz, you know, there's a lot on my plate. But I do appreciate you sharing it. Okay, I think I am caught up with the uh the patrons. Let me go back to YouTube. I don't know how much longer I'm going to be doing this.

¶297Maybe 10 more minutes or so. I don't know. I'm having fun. How much did you miss? Wow, I'm only at 7:45.

¶298Oh my goodness. Visual hallucination does not explain Fatima. Doesn't explain the convergence. doesn't explain how they sought it painlessly against a clear blue cloud the sky and I'm not going to get into this um suffering produces perseverance perseverance character character hope I'm naturally skeptical of anything supernatural I'm a recent Catholic convert wrestling with miracles and healings well hey my friend Cedar Rose you just again pray for God's guidance Um, and yeah, God doesn't spurn prayers for conversion of heart and conversion of mind. Joe, will you personally teach me everything you know?

¶299Well, if you come to my office hours, then maybe we could talk. Catholic denomination, my friend, there aren't Catholic denominations. We are the one holy, Catholic, apostolic, universal church. There are no denominations. We are the most unified, [laughter] you know, we mo everyone so we don't have those that denomination nonsense.

¶300Um I mean there are like different rights, right? Um there's like Byzantine right and western, you know, the kind of Latin right. I'm part of the Latin right I suppose. I mean I've been to Byzantine right uh divine liturgies and they're beautiful. Uh I love them and I love icons.

¶301Um you you guys you guys in the Byzantine right do do the sign of the cross a lot and it's like whoa. Okay. And then you what what are you doing standing during consecration? Bro, you need to get on your knees. That's sorry.

¶302I'm just I'm being jovial here. I'm not trying to say I'm not trying to promote Latin supremacism. Or am I? Um okay. Can you read Scott Alexander's article?

¶303Oh boy. Yeah. Yeah, Ethan's going to do a comprehensive analysis of of those other sun miracles. They're high. I think they're evidentially dissimilar in lots of relevant ways.

¶304Before science could explain physical mental disorders and dysfunctions, it was attributed to demonic possession. Sure. But that won't explain levitation, sudden supernatural changes in facial structure, eyes instantly changing color, you know, things flying around the room spontaneously without being physically propelled, to which we've got like oodles upon oodles of testimonies. um people in, you know, all different walks of life, etc. Is Joe vegan?

¶305Indeed, I'm vegan. Yes, he Oh, yeah. Right. Ethan Muse is debating Ryan from eatg.net right now. Uh, every morning everything that lives shall be food for you as I gave you.

¶306Poland. Oh, Poland as a country. It just It turns out that Poland as a country loves me. Thank you, Poland. Shout out to my polls.

¶307Um, yeah, Poland as a country. Thank you, Poland, for your your support. I I've always been a fan of Poland. [sighs] If non-human animals possess no inalienable rights, what grounds we possess a duty to them? Well, I mean, their interests can still, you know, morally matter even if like, you know, they're overridable.

¶308Um, you know, so like if they're capable of suffering, that suffering can be bad and that gives us a reason not to inflict that suffering. We need some kind of proportionate reason to inflict it. And then the question is, do do I have proportionate reason? Do you have a proportionate reason to contribute to the suffering involved in factory farms? And I don't think gustatory pleasure is a proportionate reason.

¶309And I think, you know, we can meet our nutritional needs needs otherwise. Um, you can make a good case that creatures with sensitive appetites ought to have rights that spare them from unnecessary cruelty. I mean, it just depend depends on what Yeah. what you mean by like a right, you know. Um [cough] [clears throat] I mean clearly their their interests you know in some sense give rise to claims on us right like you know they can't be you know you can't be cruel to them right without uh I mean obviously if you had to like it was the only way to save your life and you had to you know kill a chicken then that's permissible but um but you can't you can't do that for a human.

¶310Oh yeah. Noah McKay has a Substack post about Yeah, I would highly recommend checking out Noah McKay's debate with Dr. Brian Bong. Um, and Noah's Substack two Substack posts about um, veganism and the Bible. Um, I'd recommend checking those out.

¶31117 hours into my video on Catholicism. You've changed my life and turned me from agnostic to a Christian. Beautiful. Praise God, Mahil. I'm going to pray for you tonight.

¶312Mahil. Mahil. Mahil. McNeel. Praise God.

¶313McNeel. Mahil. I'm sorry if I'm mispronouncing your name. I'm not the greatest at pronunciations. So, um good.

¶314Yeah, consequentialism is not good. Um although [clears throat] I mean listen like I have not I yeah sorry there is this view where like you don't take consequentialism to be true as a global normative ethical theory but you might think there is this view and it's like a as I understand it like a respectable view of um in ethics where it's like deontology for um like rational creatures uh and consequentialism for non-rational creatures because there's something important about rationality um which grounds sounds um like absolute deontic prohibitions. Um now there could still be non-absolute like defeasible deontic constraints on treatment of animals. So that that's why you don't I think like the the Catholic basically is is should think either you know we should well let me let me take a step back. I'm not going to go down the route that I was just going to go down because it's complicated and I would want to uh probably sit down to write it out.

¶315Write some write things out before I say things say something that's wrong. But yes, you're correct. Consequentialism is false heresy as a global normative ethical theory. Utilitarianism bad. Very bad.

¶316Um, if you want to see some, you know, some of my favorite, some of my favorite like putitive counter examples, I mean, you know, the only sorts of objections to it aren't deriving solely from counter examples, but if you want to see some of those, you can go to like the moral problems portion of my third, actually, sorry, my latest video. Um, I have some fun in there. Highly infernalist flavor of Catholicism is good news. So, I mean [clears throat] it depends on I mean what do you mean by highly infernalist, right? Like if you go to my portion of the hell problems portion of my latest video, you can see how I think about hell, right?

¶317And I follow the church in thinking that it's a state of definitive self-exclusion from God, which involves everlasting suffering. But I mean the church as far as I know does not require or does not like positively teach that like there's like literal fire there like l physical literal fire that like like physically burns you or anything like that. Um now I mean there there is like some sense in which there's like spiritual fire that could be like the pangs of conscience say that like ring in your mind that you know you spurned all of God's graces and you definitively chose to separate yourself from him. Um you know you chose to embrace wickedness etc. And that can be like very painful and also just like realizing that you know it's your fault for not being united with the source of beauty, truth, and goodness for all eternity.

¶318Um so yes, there's definitely like pain and suffering. Um but that's also compatible with there being lots of objective goods um in hell. And even it's compatible with there being um pleasures in hell. And so it's compatible with people who who end up in hell, it's compatible with their lives being on the whole worth living. So I mean on the one hand if if you have that it's much it's that's not as you know intuitively unpalatable as you might have initially thought.

¶319Now of course you might still think yeah but it's still eternal suffering uh eternal conscious torment and so you might think you might have objections to that. I mean I go through that in my health problems but I mean in terms of how it's good news I mean like sorry to say my friend what Catholicism teaches that you know all of us that's the fate that we deserve as you know sinners basically you know like we don't we don't merit the botific vision we don't deserve that right you know you and I like underrepent mortal sinners deserve hell right and so it's good news that Christ has come to like save us from something that like we deserve and that we merit uh and that you we are so resistant to God that basically like it's only through God's grace and cooperating with God's grace that we have even like a chance you know at um you know being saved from our sin right and so like that's what that's what's good news like we were dead in our sins and we were uh meriting eternal separation from God like that's what we deserved and thankfully God has redeemed us from that fate um so that's I mean that's why it's good And also, I mean, just like there's this perfect being that loves you infinitely and that you can have a perfect relationship with for all eternity. I mean, that sounds really great. Uh, let's see. Oh, I didn't I didn't mean to click that.

¶320How do I put this off? Okay, there we go. Uh, uh, let me go back to Patreon because they get pride of place. the chat. Most convincing eucharistic miracle in my opinion.

¶321Let's see. Oh, that's a good question. Um, yeah, I mean, [clears throat] so I haven't actually, you know, again, there have been two recent posts on on launch, so I haven't actually read those. Um but like yeah I mean I don't I don't think Sakulka could be it because we just have the testimony from the two um what was it? Anatomical pathologists.

¶322Uh so I mean I think it's evidential certainly. Um it's very hard to see how they could be honestly mistaken and then like they're putting their professional reputation on lot you know on the line. So, I would feel at least very uncomfortable as a non-atholic having to just say that they they're just lying through their teeth or somehow like couldn't tell that this was these were myophibbrals even though they identified uh you know remnants of intercolated discs and you know that sort of stuff but I don't think sakula is the strongest you know I think like like me is pretty pretty strong just cuz like you know we we have some of the reports like and you know the reports say it's strided muscle fiber um and again I'm not a professional hystopathologist and in the past I have mistakenly overstated my histoological discernment abilities so me kulpa lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Um, but like to the extent that I can discern these things with my eyes, um, it did look like they had striations. Um, and so like, but again, like I'm not going to be able to I'm not going to say like that's a confident basis upon which to infer that there are striations.

¶323I'm just going to rely on what the actual professional said in this case, which is that there is striated muscle tissue in there and it looks like fragmented and whatnot. Um and I think they even said in that case that um you know it's most resembling of heart tissue. Um and you know they they were able to if I recall correctly the University of Roclaw did um tests uh they use like Grocott silver staining. They ruled out fungi. Um Saraphene at least reports that they ruled out bacteria.

¶324Um so you know like NEA is pretty strong. I think Tixla is also strong. You know we like have the actual um blinded laboratory reports from PatMed um where you can like yeah you can see it for yourself. You can see there his logical identifications. Um and then yeah, I mean Laniano just we have I think that's the one where we have the most tests on.

¶325Um so I don't know they're each kind of unique. So So I think th those those three apart from Sakulka are, you know, like at least epistemically forceful. I don't know if I'd be able to say which one's the most convincing. Thoughts on John Norton and his recent appearance on Donnie Hughes podcast, especially stuff on BA's induction? Also, I love you.

¶326Love you, James. Again, I haven't I haven't been keeping up with all this stuff. I mean, I would love to just, you know, watch this stuff and be able to follow it super closely and carefully, but I'm sorry. Working on other stuff. [sighs] Bunch of grad students were Catholic at UCIA.

¶327Oh, wonderful. There seemed to be less hostility there than what you described at Princeton. Oh, I mean, I don't think there's hostility per se. I just mean like um it's not really taken super serious. Well, it's it's not viewed favorably within academia.

¶328That's kind of what I mean. Um, what did a heart just show up? What? Oh, what are those hearts? My goodness.

¶329Welcome back to Patreon, James. James Anderson, what's going on? Uh, he said that he said before that if you converted to Christianity, you would be a myister mysterion about the Trinity incarnation. Are you a myister mysterion? Dude, that's hilarious that I said that, dude.

¶330That's so funny. I mean, it's kind of similar to like So, am I a myisterion? No, I don't think Well, I'd have to go back like what exactly did I mean by Mysterion at that point? Like Allah James Anderson? I forget James Anderson's exact views.

¶331I knew them way back. Dude, you're asking me about a question that I said like years ago. So, I really don't recall fully exactly what James Anderson's exact view was. Um, but I I do accept a kind of like minimalism about these things where it's like, listen, I accept what the magisterium says. So, you know, there are two wills in Christ.

¶332There's one, you know, there are two natures in Christ. Christ is fully God, fully human. They're united. Um God is three persons in one God. You know, the um the son proceeds from the father and from the spirit proceeds from the father and the son.

¶333Like all that stuff, I affirm basically what the magisterium says. And then in terms of like the metaphysical caching out of it, uh there I'm just kind of like agnostic. I don't think I would say like I'm a mysterian like oh this is like beyond us or anything like that. I just think like listen there are lots of different metaphysical models. There's like relative identity.

¶334There's like qua object approaches, there are constitutional approaches, there are like so there are so many things you can say. Um I don't know which one to say but there's enough and they you know it's fine by me to just go with the disjunction and I'm just going to accept what the minimal stuff that God has revealed and I'm going to be happy with that you know. Um you know you're right. It was it was it was a patron AMA sorry a Q&A about subscribers. You're right.

¶335Um, okay. Sorry patrons if I missed any of your messages. Uh, I'm going to go back to YouTube. My goodness. You guys are going He explained why he's convinced it's true, but I haven't seen him talk much of at all.

¶336And how it is good news, my friend. It is good news because we were lost. Humanity was lost. You and I were lost. But Christ has redeemed us.

¶337Right? He has set us free from the bondage of sin and death. That's why it's good news because we can have an eternal relationship with the perfect creator of the universe if we just cooperate with God's grace. If we just, you know, repent, believe the gospel. How do you respond to Detroit's Troy frictions, naturals, and versus bare design objection against fine tuning?

¶338Ah, go to my comprehensive case video. It's called like the best ever comprehensive case for theism or whatever. And go to the IP I spent like two hours or something on like fine-tuning and I I covered 17 objections. One of those is the stalking horse objection and I respond to it therein. Um, I just mean that under theism and infernalism it is by definition the best possible way things could be.

¶339Sorry. Nope. This is a way to get from if we're excluding nonhuman animals. Sorry, I'm just reading your comments, guys. Uh, let's see.

¶340I'm not sure. Wow, we got 130 people here. Nature can be more or less. Sorry. Uh, okay.

¶341We're at 808. Man, I'm still an hour off. Oh boy. Icons are beautiful. Yes, sunblaze.

¶342Icons are indeed very beautiful. I'm Catholic, but it seems obvious to me the church lies about miracles given all the incorruptible corpses they have to cake and make up. It's not hiding all the the decomposing. Let's see. Like I think you can even like read the signs and I think the signs probably even say like this is a wax covering, right?

¶343Like this this is not they're not lying. Um I mean again I I thought I've heard someone say that um I think they have signs if I recall correctly. Um let's see. Bonaventure. Oh, Bonaventure.

¶344That's what you were saying. Um let's see. Have a conversation with someone like Jordan Wood. What do I think of young earth creationism? Am I more confident in Catholicism than evolution?

¶345I am extremely confident in both. Um, how do I feel about the shroud? I talk about this in my um at the end of my miracles proof Catholicism video. Boo. My video was good.

¶346What is Man, lots of people are asking about the shroud. Or maybe it's just one person asking many times about the shroud. Oh, wow. Thank you for the love, people. I love you, too.

¶347That's true. Pope John the 23rd is the goat. This is This is apostolic atheist saying this. Vatican 2 is based. You're right.

¶348I mean, we got to read it. We got to, you know, listen, I I do think Oh, maybe I shouldn't shouldn't start opining on this. I do think there are some things where they just like should have written more clearly, you know, um so that we don't have to have some of these like debates um where things can be misinterpreted. So I think some of the things are like liable to misinterpretation. But if you give them a charitable interpretation and you work with a hermeneutic of continuity, it you know it makes complete sense and every Catholic should be on board with Vatican 2.

¶349So um so I'm with you there. The patrons demand blood. This is true. Oh yes, Pope Benedict. You're right.

¶350Pope Benedict is great. I mean, uh, Matthew Ramage went through some of his stuff on, um, biblical exesus that was kind of helpful for me in overcoming some of my biblical barriers to Catholicism. [laughter] Thoughts on the individuals that are suggesting you're having a manic episode? Can confirm I'm manic. Um, [laughter] [gasps] Amos one is here, bro.

¶351Joe was born manic. Oh, that's so true, bro. I was I've I've been manic since day one. Who can look at my past videos and think that I was never manic? Of course, a supreme being operates in this manner.

¶352Put in puts injuries on someone to reveal that they exist. Yes, of course. It's because you can unite our sufferings to Christ's passion. And you know what? Greater love h greater love hath no one than this that a man lay down his life for his friends.

¶353Right? So it's by voluntarily taking on acts of you know self-denial and discomfort that we can offer those up as spiritual sacrifices to God out of love um and thereby merit graces. So yeah love is costly my friends. Love is costly. I can't make any sense of presentism, my friend.

¶354Presentism just says present, you know, the only things that exist are presently existing things, right? So, I don't know. I can make sense of that. Any theology books you recommend? Uh, I can recommend philosophy.

¶355Uh, theology books that I recommend. Depends on what, you know, what are you interested in? [clears throat] Hey, Nicholas, I hadn't heard of you before your conversion, but I love your thoroughess and everything. Oh, thank you. Yes, welcome home.

¶356I appreciate it. Relative. Ah, well, if I thought you meant like you can't make sense of it. Yeah, you're saying relativity also seems to absolutely contradict it. Yeah, listen, there are some difficulties there.

¶357I mean, you know, presentists haven't been silent about that in the literature, but um what someone thinks is past blah blah blah. What a coincidence that the religion you brought up in is correct. Yes, indeed. What a coincidence. How is this how is celopism a thing?

¶358It's a thing. Philosophers I mean basically any view any conceivable view philosophers have taken it right. Um including the view that nothing exists. Catholic here will pray for Yes. Thank you.

¶359Praying brother. Oh, thank you guys for your prayers. Apostolic atheist, you need to do conditional prayers. Come on. Take my flare analogy.

¶360I'm being serious. I did them. Look where it took me. Okay, let's go back to Patreon. I can't I can't neglect my my my buddies.

¶361Dude, James Anderson views that given our epmic situation, the doctrinal analogy, there are apparent contradictions which appear because of our semantic limitations. Yeah, I I don't grant I don't grant that there are apparent contradictions. Um just because I think that there are lots of ways Well, I mean like if you just mean like the most bare surface level appearance then then maybe um but I just think like once you get clear on the semantics or once you get clear on the metaphysics uh or at least you see various metaphysical ways of cashing it out, the appearance dis disappears. Dude, I'm in the Q&A, my friend Sebastian, but I genuinely don't see the latest questions. Maybe it's because uh they're Oh my goodness.

¶362There are other questions that I missed. Thoughts on need go destroying Roman Catholicism right now. Okay. I I I missed I missed some of these because apparently you guys can like upvote them and I was only looking at the up votes. I these should be uh Is there a reason why Cutter didn't include subject harmony in the psychophysical harmony paper?

¶363I think it's because he only if you're referring to this paper with crit I think it's because subject harmony he only came up with it afterwards. Favorite thing you miss as a vegan? For me, it's steak and spicy fried chicken. Favorite thing I miss? Yeah.

¶364I mean, it's got to be It's got to be like It's got to be chicken. It's got to be chicken. Um I uh I loved chicken. Sebastian, I'm sorry. I don't really What about the testimonies at Zetune from people who claim to see nothing while standing right next to people who clearly see me?

¶365There are testimonies that cannot be explained through prosaic factors. I chatted a bit with Caleb, but he seemed to bite the bullet. He basically said it's neutral evidence, but that's not convincing. Yeah, I mean I talk about this with um Travis Dums [clears throat] Day in my video with Travis Dums Day. Uh yeah, so I mean I just think it is genuinely ridiculous to only posit a psychoggenic explanation just cuz we have like o such overwhelming evidence uh for objective phenomena, right?

¶366From like many many many many thousands, right? Um, and so in these cases, you can either chalk it up. So you could either go a try to give a naturalistic explanation for why even given that it's like a supernatural phenomena up there, why some people are not seeing it. I mean, this just like sometimes happens. Um, when you have large crowds of people, um, you know, some people for whatever reason, they might get into some sort of like delirious state of mind or whatever.

¶367um and it just for whatever reason um they don't perceive things as normally. They don't perceive things normally. So that's one way you could try to go. Um another way you could try to go is just to say that no, it just genuinely was variably intra sububjective uh at least at maybe the later portions of it. Um where for I mean whatever reason um perhaps even to heighten its supernatural character uh not everyone in the not every single person in the crowd at certain points were seeing it.

¶368So, I mean, you could try to cook up some kind of accommodationist approach to that, but I just think like like, you know, look at like the naturalistic explanations of this. Like, are they just going to try to only go purely cuz like look, if this is an objective phenomenon, they also are are saddled with the task of trying to explain the variable inter subjectivity and that's going to be very hard for them, right? Um, by contrast, if they want to go purely psychoggenic, then that theory is basically decisively disisconfirmed by all the overwhelming evidence to convergence. Um, and you know, all the undesigned coincidences, the photograph, you know, like all basically everything like um, so yeah, I I think that naturalistic explanations that are even remotely plausible don't fare any better than the miraculous explanation with respect to the variable intra sububjectivity reports. And I think those are actually like a small small minority if I recall correctly.

¶369I think some of the um and I think it's even it might even be a small minority just like later on um in the uh the apparitions where I mean again I'd have to I'd have to go back to see what Travis Dumsy actually says about it. Um but anyway, yeah. No, I I don't really take this to be a particularly serious objection. Um I mean it is odd. Um but you know, if it's a supernatural phenomenon, I I would expect there to be, you know, some odd things.

¶370Um let's see. Um did I miss any? Have you changed your views about the anthropic argument? Even Flowback says it's somewhat plausible. I may be wrong though.

¶371[clears throat] Listen, I think maybe given the self-inducation assumption, it's uh it's quite it's like a reasonable argument. I just I'm not convinced of the self-inducation assumption. I'm not convinced it's false either. I don't really know what to make about anthropics. Um I it just feels like each view has difficulties.

¶372So, uh, sorry. Oh, thank you, Sebastian, for your prayers. Beautiful that you're praying the Hail Mary. I'll be praying for you, Sebastian. Okay.

¶373Okay. Let me just make sure I've got all your questions. Ah, Raphael, I missed this. Ha, I'm glad I'm sticking around to get to these questions. Um, Joe, do you ever read Communo International Catholic Review?

¶374It's a peer-reviewed academic journal for Catholic philosophy and theology originally founded by Hodins von Balthazar, Henry De Lubac, and Joseph Ratziger. Plus, my favorite contemporary philosopher other than you. Ah, thank you. Um, unworthy, but thank you. Dr.

¶375Eric Van Versendall writes for it. He does a lot of work on love. Oh, interesting. Thank you for pointing me to this. I have not read this, my friend.

¶376Um, sadly, so I won't be able to comment on it. Um, let me make sure I'm not missing any Okay, I think I got to all of them. Your lrangee comment. Well, it was just a comment. I don't I feel like I, you know, I I should answer questions, but maybe not comments.

¶377Um, yeah, if I recall correctly, I think the surveys that Caleb goes through also for Zetune showed that um it was like, did other people around you see it? And I think like the yes was like an overwhelming majority. um something like I mean I forget I I I I just have like a memory of that. Okay. So my my memory is like memorialally presenting it to me to me as of that happening but I'd have to go back and actually look at the surveys.

¶378I thought that there was a question on that and that it garnered like overwhelming support from the participants in the survey. Um Lrange is still respected but he's no longer mainstream as Muse suggests. Has Muse suggest that he's mainstream? Uh, Lrange is no longer the titan Catholic thought. Vatican 2 was shaped by the new theology which is school of thought that came about because they didn't really like him.

¶379They had beef. Lrange was also JP2's PhD supervisor. Yeah. I mean you it sounds like you know a lot more about like the 20th century Catholic philosophy than I do. Sebastian.

¶380Um, I mean I have heard of Van Balthazar um or Hans Van or Balthazar, however it's pronounced. Uh, and of course, you know, I know who Joseph Rasinger is. Who doesn't? Um, but yeah. Um, yeah, I don't know.

¶381I mean, I don't have any comments on that just because again, you you know more about 20th century Catholic philosophy than I do. Uh, let's see. Man, I I should bae bad is true. No, it's not true. Oh, he's talking about that.

¶382Uh, Islam, one more fasting session to make everyone skinny and healthy. How do I interpret Vatican 2 saying Catholics and Muslims worship the same God? Well, Catholics and Muslims worship the same the same God. That it's just it's true. Like, that's how I interpret it.

¶383I mean, again, they're just referring to the same entity. I I talk about this in my um my live stream with Inspiring Philosophy. So go to inspiring philosophy, click on live at the little bar and then scroll down and click on the one where I was in it. And then I mean listen like liberals and conservatives have radically different views about Donald Trump. You know, at least some of the the very far right conservatives and the very far-left liberals, you know, some people are going to you can have very radically different views about someone and even disagree about like very essential characteristics and nevertheless still refer to the same entity because you're like causally hooked up to the entity in the right sort of way.

¶384Um, so it's a difference between sense and reference. So sense is like the yeah the cluster of associations or mental associations or like the descriptions that you associate with the thing. And those can be different between speakers even though they're referring to the same entity. Um, Alex Okconor is now calling his position on religious agnostic. Comment on this.

¶385Yeah, I thought that he may have been calling himself an agnostic these days. I I I I haven't I need to confirm that. But if he is, that's better, you know, closer to the truth than atheism. So that that's at least a partial win. We we got to get him further though.

¶386So we just pray for him, you know. Um reformed epistemology and the belief that God can be properly basic. Oo, that's a good question. That's a that's a good question. Um I don't know.

¶387I mean, I'm starting to become a little bit sympathetic to the thought that like Yeah. Like maybe we just have maybe like yeah you can just very easily come to know that God exists just uh I mean there are more internalisty ways to do this and more externalisty ways to kind of run this. You might think that yeah we just have some kind of faculty by which when it's functioning properly. Uh there are certain occasions in which it just like reliably produces belief in God. Um and maybe that can give knowledge that God exists.

¶388That's a more externalisty way to do it. um or when it's like properly functioning, you know. Um maybe I would want a more internalisty way, you know, where like you just focus on seemings and undefeated seemings. Um and you can just like have those seemings just when you like look out at the sunset or something like that and that can even ground knowledge that God exists. I definitely want to say that knowledge that God exists is not very difficult to come by.

¶389Um that's something that I I really want to secure in my kind of religious epistemology. Um and so there are different ways that you can try to deliver that to ziduratum. Um and oh by by not not very difficult to come by. I just mean like um you know there are there are some people for which it may be difficult but I just mean like uh you know generically speaking for a lot of people uh and you know like people who don't have the time to get a PhD in philosophy or like you know the Amazonian tribes person or whatever um like yes they too can come to know that God exists just by yeah looking at the world or something like that um and in such a way that doesn't require like this like you know gigachad uh sorry, like galaxy brain like 300 IQ argument. Um, and so, you know, reformed epistemology is one way to secure that, but I think there may be like internalist ways that are in the vicinity that I may want to uh adopt instead, but I'd have to think about that further.

¶390That's a good question. That's okay. Hey, apostolic atheist. If you ever respond to my video while I think I was respectful enough, maybe a little too blunt on a few points, if I could go back, I would have tuned down my cortisol. That's okay.

¶391We all We all make mistakes, including myself. So, I'll have as much compassion and forgiveness as I can possibly muster. Okay, another patron thing. Um, all right. Let's see.

¶392There was some sort of patron question. Man, this is a terrible I don't like this patron. How do I Oh, most recent. There we go. Oh, I see.

¶393It was a debate with Mullins. Okay. Okay. What do you think of this argument for human morality being queer on atheism? If we need supernatural powers of clairvoyance to detect these non-natural properties and these moral properties seem queer on atheism for the same reason that empirically undetectable non-natural dragon would be.

¶394I I mean I would probably just return to some of the things that I had mentioned like again they may say like well um again like we we don't they may just deny the anticedent right like uh we don't need supernatural powers of clairvoyance to detect these all we need to have knowledge of them is some sort of modal condition that's one thing might they might say um and yeah I guess you're just trying to say like well if we need some spooky epistemology to access these then aren't they themselves supposed to be spooky maybe Um but I don't know like plausibly if we follow the explanationist constraints we also need those faculties to access like mathematical facts and epistemic facts and metaphysical facts [snorts] modal some modal facts maybe and those don't seem those don't seem queer right so I don't know just because we need a queer faculty or some like supernatural powers of clairvoyance as he put it doesn't mean that the objects of those faculties are going to be queer under atheism. Um yeah, Sebastian, yeah, you can of course have objective phenomena but not marry. My point was just that uh any objectivist view, any view which posits objective phenomena is also going to very very much struggle with the inter subject intersubjectivity point. And so it's not going to be like a differential point against the miracle hypothesis um compared to like a naturalistic objectivist hypothesis. And I just think like the psychoggenic hypothesis is I quite frankly I think it's ridiculous.

¶395um like the pure psychoggenic explanation. Um I'm with you. Yeah, I'm I'm I'm not saying that there's no value in the 20th century Catholic theology works. I'm sure they're absolutely bangers. Um but it's just like I don't know, got lots of other stuff to read and write and do.

¶396Um um okay. So I'm gonna end it there for the patrons. I'm just going to scroll through the remaining YouTube comments. Sorry patrons, but that's we're we're closing it there. Um let's go back to the YouTube comments.

¶397The YouTubes. Yes. Gary Kotro, prayer for um agnostics and atheists and those uh with no faith or struggling. for those who drift away from the church that they find their way to Jesus Christ. Yes.

¶398Based. Oh, Apostolic case. You're a moral naturalist. That's unfortunate cuz moral naturalism is unfortunately false. Hey, thanks Justin Smart for your prayers.

¶399Why is Proof so good? God, praise God for giving Proof such talent. Should Catholics read analytic philosophy or is it a waste of our time? Um, my dude, it depends on your state in life. like you know if you have like five five children and you know you're just like a pharmacist or something and just trying to support your family then I don't know like it'll be better to just spend time with your kids than read analytic philosophy.

¶400Um uh I mean I think analytic philosophy is profoundly valuable and will give you lots of tools for thinking critically and rigorously and whatnot. Um, so you know, I love analog flossing. I recommend it to people, but yeah, I mean like presumably you have lots of other things to attend to as well. So, but yes, like if you have time then then read it. Yeah, of course.

¶401Um, but also don't neglect your spiritual life. like you know it'd be better to to pray a rosary if you know it'd be better to incorporate a daily rosary than to read a paper a day say like or like you know spend it'd be better if you have like 25 minutes of free time to add a daily rosary than to you know read analytic philosophy the correct apologetic method the correct apologetic method is whatever I too. J, you should visit Ox. Yes, indeed. Oh, my compatibles to libertarian.

¶402I also do talk about this very briefly. It's very hidden in my 25 hours of content, which I don't expect you to have watched, but no, I do expect you to watch it. You need to watch that immediately. Uh, let's see. Uh, I lean libertarian.

¶403Well, I I don't just lean. I am very probably a libertarian. Listen, I'm I'm honestly kind of open to compatibilism. Okay. Um, so like, yeah, I would say maybe I like significantly lean towards libertarianism, but I'm open to compatibilism.

¶404Um, yeah. I don't know. I don't know, dude. like well part of the reason for that is I just think like libertarianism makes a lot of sense for the kinds of theodysies that I like to deploy and the kinds of responses to problems of hell that I like to deploy. Um so I think it's like theoretically useful, highly theoretically useful posit for me.

¶405Um so that's one reason why I like libertarianism. Um but I also just think like there are you know some good arguments for it. I mean one is just like I I do think the phenomenological argument is kind of powerful like I'm sorry, dude. Like, come on. I just It really really seems to me like I could choose otherwise on a given occasion of acting.

¶406Um, and I just Are the objections to libertarianism strong enough to defeat that seeming? I very much doubt it. But, uh, so that's a that's one that's one thing to say. Um, okay. I know technically speaking, libertarian I'm talking about like leeway libertarianism, you know.

¶407Um, uh, because libertarianism technically speaking, you could be a source libertarian and you don't we don't need to get into this. Uh, and also, you know, like listen, Hitler ought not to have killed a bunch of people, right? That seems very plausible. And if we think like ought implies can, uh, it kind of seems plausible, you know, like if I can't do something, then why are you saying I ought to do it? Like what?

¶408You tie me to a chair. I can't save the person drowning over there. So if they drown, like don't say I ought to have saved them. I couldn't have saved them. Right?

¶409Um, so you might think that uh u implies can. Uh, and if Hitler ought not to have killed a bunch of people and ought implies can, then he could have refrained from killing a bunch of people even though he did. So he could have done otherwise, you might think. Um, so at the very least that gives us some kind of leeway, you might think. Obviously a controversial argument, right, with, you know, all the philosophers are going to pounce, right?

¶410Oh, watch out. They're going to pounce. Um, what do I think about American pragmatism? I'm so sorry, my friend. I I I think I know nothing about American pragmatism.

¶411I'm an I'm an ignorant person, right? Um, I mean, are you are you Well, are you talking about like Well, I'm not going to speculate. I mean, you know, I know. Well, I'll just leave it at that. Hour behind in the chat.

¶412Oh my goodness. Okay, y'all. I think uh it's getting a little late. I'm not going to be able to get through all your uh not going to be able to get through all your questions. I know.

¶413Um, I see there are many of you. [laughter] Okay, here's one. Have you had the pleasure of going over any Peter Michael Diamond content? I have seen some of those. This Eastern quote, Orthodox, unquote.

¶414[laughter] [gasps] Oh man. You guys have the most absurd language. It's absurdly gratuitous. Hold on. I hope I didn't just curse in Polish.

¶415Pska Pska Pers. Oh gosh. Ped. [laughter] Oh man. Was maybe I just like cursed or something or maybe that was some sort of like nationalist slogan.

¶416Uh I disavow any political associations. 10. Okay. Google translate. Let's get this.

¶417I should really shut I should really stop. Oh, Poland is taking over this chat. Apparently that's what it means. >> [laughter] >> Okay, good. Have you seen talks of Archbishop?

¶418Dude, my my parents went to the uh beatatification of Fton Sheen and I I I've seen the jaw, you know, like dude, we we've got the jawbones of Fton Sheen. Like, you know, boom, you've been refuted. Like, [laughter] Protestantism refuted. Like, we've got the bones of we've got the skull of Thomas Aquinus. Like, you've been refuted.

¶419like no consequentialism is very bad. Um, personally, virtue ethics seems more compelling than consequentialism, although honestly not the most familiar with deontologies. Well, virtue ethics can be a deontological view. I think virtue ethics is plausible, reasonable. Oh no, Poland is almost the fastest secularizing country in the world.

¶420That's kind of sad. If you're wrong, what sanctions do you think Man City Man City should get, [laughter] dude? Ban them from the league. Delete the club. That's what I think.

¶421Delete the club. Delete the club. [laughter] Okay. I I know I'm skipping a lot of your guys' stuff. Pat patrons are not first among equals.

¶422Patrons are they reside in love. Worthy of honor, worthy of praise, worthy of. Do you think? Man, you guys, you guys really popped off. We got 115 viewers.

¶423I don't know. I'm having some fun. Goodness me. I'm not going to I'm not always going to go two hours and 40 minutes, guys. These are going to be shorter in the future, you know, because I can't always keep this up, but I'm just having some fun.

¶424So, um, why did Genesis get everything so wrong? Why are you reading Genesis wrong? It's not meant to be like a literalistic depiction of all of history, right? It's like mytho poetry with like some historical elements sprinkled in like historical theological truth. But um greetings from Brazil.

¶425Hello Brazil. Why would availability of sin even exist? Well, maybe uh if we have significant differencem responsibility over whether or not we choose to follow God, that might make our afterles much better than the others would have been. I talk about this in my problem of hell. in my latest video.

¶426Uh uh uh must one be a Catholic to repent? Well, you you can I mean you can of course repent as a non-atholic. Um it's only going to conduce to the remission of your mortal sins if it's perfect contrition. So, you know, like contrition sorrow for your sins arising out of a a love of God above all things rather than say, you know, a fear of hell or what have you. But, you know, the distribution of that is known to God alone.

¶427The distribution of, you know, the grace of perfect contrition not known to me. You're welcome. debate Jire. Yeah, my friend. I'm not going to talk about my medications.

¶428[laughter] Oh, man. Are you uh Let's see. [cough and clears throat] Favorite miracle. Gosh, dude. You don't have to spam that.

¶429Hi Joe, can you make a video on why you chose Catholicism over orthodoxy? I'm trying to decide between the two and I imagine many other Christians are. Duck thingy, I will pray for you. Um, I mean, so one thing that I would recommend doing is, dude, I know it will take a lot of time, but if you're really curious about the truth, just like watch all 25 hours of my content, or at the very least, you can start with the miracles because you're pro you're already convinced of theism, right? So, start with start with the the 10-hour video and then go to the 7 and 1 half hour one, the my latest one.

¶430Um, there and I I go through the Catholic miracles. I think the miraculous case or Catholicism over orthodoxy is very very strong. Um, and also go to like the orthodoxy section of my um, conversion resource document. Um, and I also briefly talk about orthodoxy uh, in my latest video. Um, but yeah, I mean, check out the check out the Council of Florence video that I linked.

¶431Check out um, Ben Bowlinger, Ben Bowlinger. I don't know how to pronounce it. Sorry, Ben. Um, his Substack, you know, check out Eric Kbara's work. You know, lots of people.

¶432I know Scholastic Answerers has um videos on um orthodoxy. So, I'll be praying for you, my friend. Um, of course, I really think you should choose Catholicism, but uh Okay. Favorite miracle? Dude, I don't really have a favorite miracle, my friend.

¶433I mean, maybe it's like there's a place in my heart for Padre Pio because that was the sort of last straw that uh put me over the edge. Will you ever do the SCP series? I hope, man. I kind of hope. I mean, I'm very busy, but um dude, hello Joey.

¶434I've been following you for nearly a decade. I know there are some people who have there are I think I got an email once where like yeah I mean some people have known about me since uh oh my gosh dude I had like this cringe Instagram account when I was in high school like literally a decade ago probably when I was like 16 or 15 or something or yeah probably 16. And some people have probably been following me since then. So for like a decade which is kind of cool kind of scary. Um Oh my friend, [sighs] resistance to toism is one of the characteristic signs of a modernist.

¶435the modernists. No, Chelsea is better than Arsenal, dude. Like I didn't I didn't ask for like diluted people to show up. Do you think most layman are justified in believing in God or no? Like people are just bored of the church, don't get into philosophy.

¶436Yes, they're they're justified in believing in God in God's existence. They probably have all different sorts of experiences that were in fact reliably produced by God and they're also connected up with a reliable testimonial chain I think going back to Christ himself. So um and also you know they probably have various seemings about just like the world which probably confer justification on them. Um and again maybe there's some sort of externalist story about proper functioning to tell here as well. Um but again I'm kind of agnostic on that.

¶437What's it like to be a feckless coward in the face of a religious, meaningless existence? [laughter] It's beautiful, bro. I'm a proud I need a shirt that says proud feckless coward. That'd be great. [laughter] Oh, man.

¶438Best Catholic Arsenal player. Dude, I know that there are a lot of Christians on there. Are are there Catholics? Is Dude, is Jurian Timber Catholic? Hold on.

¶439Hold on. Hold on. Dude, I hope he's Catholic. Jurian Timber Catholic? Hold on.

¶440I got to find this. Is Jurian timber Catholic? It looks like the evidence supports evangelical Protestant. That's unfortunate. Well, I mean, it's great that he's Christian anyway.

¶441Please do work on definitively refuting the moto collapse objection. My dude, like read my JPR paper. I mean, just skip the last section, right? Cuz that's that's where that's where I go off the rails. But like earlier on, you know, I mean, I just I still stand by like those criticisms, the modal collapse objection.

¶442It's it's not a good objection. Watch the classical theism podcast, you know, look into there have been like so many responses from people, you know, that succeed. So, have you seen Quran miracles? Sorry, my friend. There are no such things.

¶443Um, go to bed, Joe. I know. I should go to bed. I'm having some fun, though. I got a little bit of fun.

¶444There's this There's this referee report right now that I have to finish and that I'm I'm very much and I was working on earlier today and that I really don't it's been a source of stress and annoyance. patron supremacy based Okay, my friend, have you read Brent Petri's book, Jesus and the Jewish roots of the Eucharist? I haven't read it yet. I really want to. Um, I've read his introduction to the spiritual life.

¶445I've read over I need to finish this. I read over 100 pages of his um Jesus and the Jewish roots of Mary, but I really want you to read this one about the Eucharist. Byzantine bro uh online, he actually has some really nice videos summarizing Rant Petri's book, I think. Oh, happy Sunday from Indonesia. Wow, it's Sunday there.

¶446Goodness me, you're in the future. You guys should have warned us about 9/11. Like, what are you doing? You're not warning us about 911 even though you live in the future. Like, come on.

¶447That's pretty bad of you. Patrons have universal jurisdiction. This is very true. Immediate ordinary universal jurisdiction over my time. Um, submit submit to Patreon.

¶448when are you going to Brazil so we can play soccer together, my friend? That would be fun. Has your Oh, Santos Theology says two minutes ago. Oh my goodness, I'm almost caught caught up with you guys. Patreon.

¶449Okay, the Q&A. You guys have still sent in two things, but any advice on where to look for resources to be a good teacher? Dude, I think Dan Corman has some good stuff. I don't know if he has stuff on being being a good teacher, but like he has lots of advice on his website and Liz Jackson has a lots of stuff. So, check out both of those.

¶450I mean, I'm sure like the advice for like, you know, being like getting into grad school is probably going to help with that. Um, and they have advice for giving talks. I just think like appropriating that advice is going to be helpful. Favorite philosopher whose first name is Wade? Definitely Wade Tisammer.

¶451Um, Sanus theology. Has your metaphysics changed at all? For example, have you taken serious moderate realism, St. Thomas and Scholastics? I mean, certainly my credence in those has increased.

¶452Um, and I'm much more comfortable now with like, yeah, just being like a I mean, I lean towards some kind of like substance ontology. Um, and yes, I lean towards thinking that um, like I lean towards thinking that, you know, universals exist in some sense. Um, like I'm some kind of realist about properties, I think. Um, and like I also think that yeah, like things uh, in some sense have natures. Now, I'm not willing to go with the full-blooded kind of scholastic or toistic kind of picture here, but um I've at least become more confident in in some of these, you know, at least maybe neoaristilian stuff.

¶453And for a while, I've actually been quite sympathetic with like powers theory. I mean, people who have been following me for a long time know that I' I've kind of liked a branching actualist view of modality. Um and I've liked P's theory of laws and just like theorizing in terms of powers. Um, so you know, if people want good intro to that sort of stuff, you can look at uh the atlas of reality by Coons and Pikamance. Um, that's a good one.

¶454And you can look at Alexander Pruce's book, Actuality, Possibility, and Worlds. Oh, my friend, we definitely meet the full consent condition many times. Uh, let's see. How much caffeine have I had? I've had zero, but I'm very like naturally I'm generally naturally caffeinated, right?

¶455It's like a I've got caffosis where like there's like a constant drip. There's like a constant stream of caffeine that's being dripped in my bloodstream 24/7. So, I don't sleep. I've never slept once in my life. Never.

¶456You see that bed back there? That's not for sleep. That's for my victims. Okay. My favorite saint quote.

¶457You guys are really digging deep. Will you convert Matthew Edelstein? Well, God can convert anyone. So, just pray for the conversion of Matthew Edstein. I'm I'm not kidding.

¶458Like, please pray for that. Catholic listeners. I mean, and Christian listeners, you know, pray for his conversion to Christianity. Your newfound faith will not save you in the next Monopoly game. [laughter] [panting] Dude, you always seem to beat me.

¶459You always seem to beat me in Monopoly. I don't I don't know how, but you always seem to beat me. Okay, y'all. Wow. Over 100 people tuned into this.

¶460Isn't that kind of cool? Um, well, I we're going to call it a day there. Um, thanks all for tuning in. That was the first patron AMA. We're not going this long in the future, but for this first one, um, for this first one, I, uh, think I think that's, uh, I think that's all we're going to do.

¶461Um, anyway, thanks all for tuning in and peace out.