Pints With Aquinas - 144: Are faith and reason incompatible? With Dr. Michael Gorman

Episode Date: February 5, 2019

Today I sit down with philosopher Dr. Michael Gorman to discuss faith and reason. What a great episode. Great a beer, here we go! SPONSORS EL Investments: https://www.elinvestments.net/pints Exodus 90: https://exodus90.com/mattfradd/  Hallow: http://hallow.app/mattfradd  STRIVE: https://www.strive21.com/  GIVING Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mattfradd This show (and all the plans we have in store) wouldn't be possible without you. I can't thank those of you who support me enough. Seriously! Thanks for essentially being a co-producer coproducer of the show. LINKS Website: https://pintswithaquinas.com/ Merch: https://teespring.com/stores/matt-fradd FREE 21 Day Detox From Porn Course: https://www.strive21.com/ SOCIAL Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattfradd Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfradd MY BOOKS  Does God Exist: https://www.amazon.com/Does-God-Exist-Socratic-Dialogue-ebook/dp/B081ZGYJW3/ref=sr_1_9?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586377974&sr=8-9 Marian Consecration With Aquinas: https://www.amazon.com/Marian-Consecration-Aquinas-Growing-Closer-ebook/dp/B083XRQMTF/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586379026&sr=8-4 The Porn Myth: https://www.ignatius.com/The-Porn-Myth-P1985.aspx CONTACT Book me to speak: https://www.mattfradd.com/speakerrequestform  

G'day there, you little buggers. How's it going? Welcome to Points with Aquinas. My name's Matt Fradd. If you could sit down over a brewski with Thomas Aquinas and ask him any one question, what would it be? Today we're going to talk to Aquinas about faith and reason. How do I live out my faith in a secular age? Is faith contrary to reason? What do we do when apparent conflicts appear and things like that? So it's cool. We're joined around the bar table by an awesome bloke. First time him and I ever chatted was in this interview. This is Dr. Michael Gorman, and he teaches philosophy at the Catholic University of America, and he's just a super cool dude. yeah yes how's it going i'm gonna write to my mom she always says you sound like

a bloody yank matt sound like a bloody yank. Of course, she thinks that all Americans are yanks. She doesn't make the distinction between those who live in the Northeast and those like myself who live in Georgia. But nevertheless, I sound like a bloody yank whenever I speak to her because my accent has become diluted. I have a theory about how accents become diluted. You know, like you arrive here, right, as an Australian, you're like, you know like you arrive here right as an australian you're like you know hang on and people find it charming but they often don't understand you uh and so at first that's kind of comical and fun you know but after a while you're like oh bugger i don't want to keep being misunderstood so you start to say things more clearly and precisely and all of a sudden you

sound like a bloody englishman, which is an Australian's worst nightmare, to be fair. Um, yeah. All right. So today's episode was bloody fantastic. When you run an interview, run an interview, lead an interview, you often don't really know what you're going to get, especially when you don't know the person. So I didn't know Dr. Michael Gorman. So I didn't know what to expect. I knew we were going to talk about faith and reason, but we'd actually never spoken before. So I wasn't really sure what his personality would be and how things would go. You know, sometimes you interview people and they have a lot to say and you can kind of sit back a little bit. Sometimes you've got to draw a lot more out of them. Sometimes people are very official and they're worried about, you know,

coming off a certain way. And some people are people are super relaxed well i just have to say that this episode i think um represents what i hope pints with aquinas just is as as a whole you know it's like kind of illustrative of the sort of episode that i would want in general and that's just two blokes sitting down having a brewski and chatting about stuff so you know we kind of launch into the chat. I start talking about faith and reason specifically, thinking it was going to go in a specific way. And then we just started chatting. And it was a beautiful discussion in which we talked about just being a Catholic in today's day and age and what that looks like and how not to leave your kind of reason behind and how to

how to be a catholic in a secular world that sort of looks at you like you're bloody bonkers for believing certain things so it was just a really beautiful interview you know there were times i would ask dr michael a question and he just like pause have a sip of his beer and and at first i was like a little uncomfortable with some of the silences. But I thought, no, this is just how bloody conversations go. You know, it's nice. So I think you're really going to enjoy the episode. That's what I'm trying to say to you.

Anyway, so just sit back, you know, relax, get a beer and really enjoy the show. Thanks so much for tuning in. Here we go. Dr. Gorman, great to have you on Pints with Aquinas. Thanks so much, Mr. Fratt. Yes, Mr. Fratt, I appreciate that. Yes, it, great to have you on Pints with Aquinas. Thanks so much, Mr. Fratt. Yes, Mr. Fratt, I appreciate that. Yes. It's great to have you. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Well, I'm a philosophy professor at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC.

I've been teaching at Catholic U since 1999. So I'm finishing my 20th year. Fantastic. If I make it till next year, then I'll have free parking. Yeah. That's the big perk. You're not serious. What? About the free parking? It's true, actually. Wow. The things that we do. Hopefully, that's not the only reason you work there. No, no, no. I live in Maryland in a parish called St. Jerome's, about three miles from Calvacute. I have kids. I have grandkids.

And yeah, I can't complain. That's good. And you get a great beard. Thank you. I'm always jealous when I encounter people with good, hearty beards, because I cannot grow one. Today we're going to talk about faith and reason, and Aquinas, his thoughts on the issue. First of all, are you really drinking a beer? I am. What beer are you drinking?

It's called Pints with Aquinas. I'm drinking a stout that I made myself. Oh, that's very impressive. If I'm going to drink beer, it has to be a stout. Okay, well, that shows well. Yeah, I'm not a beer beer, it has to be a stout. Okay. Well, that shows well. Yeah, I'm not a beer drinker, despite the name. It's all a ruse. I actually like whiskey. But if I am going to drink beer, it does have to be a stout.

I guess shots with Aquinas doesn't sound as good. No, no, it doesn't. And you don't want to be drinking your whiskey by the pint. No, no. So I just got water with me today. But all right, terrific. All right, well, let's talk about this, faith and reason and inquiriness. So, you know, aren't faith and reason at odds? You know, the more we learn about the universe through the sciences, shouldn't that cause us to trust less and less in this supernatural stuff. Pete All right. So, it's hard to know where to begin. Let's just start by talking a little bit about what faith and reason are, and then I'll come around to an important argument that Aquinas gives for why they aren't at odds, why they can't be at odds. So, first, let's talk about what they are.

Reason is a power that humans have. It's a natural power. And we use it for understanding the way things are and for understanding what we should do. So, insofar as we use it to understand the way things are, that's theoretical reason or speculative reason. It's not immediately oriented towards action. It's just for the sake of understanding. And then when we think about what we ought to do, how we ought to act, that's practical reason. Now, so this is a power that humans have by nature. It belongs to them just because they're human, because they have the human nature or human essence. So, if we're unable to reason, something's gone wrong. Now,

faith is something different from reason and something beyond reason. Faith means accepting the revelation that God has given us. So, there are things that God reveals to us through scripture and through the teachings of the church, and we, so to speak, take his word for it. We accept that this is the way it is, and that is accepting it in faith. Now, many of the things that God reveals to us are things that reason could never have figured out. So, for example, the doctrine of the Trinity, that God is one but also Father, Son, and Spirit. The doctrine of the Incarnation, that Christ is God and man. These are things that humans could not have thought up on their own. But there are other things that God

reveals that, in theory, reason could have figured out. So, for example, a very clear example from Aquinas is the existence of God. In theory, we ought to be able to figure this out for ourselves. out for ourselves. It's within the scope of human reason. But what Aquinas says is that it takes a really long time, and only a few people have the free time to do it. And even people who are really smart and have lots of free time, they'll make a lot of mistakes. And God doesn't want our salvation to hang on whether or not, you know, we're brainiacs with a lot of free time. So, he just tells us, he reveals that stuff too. So, that way everybody has a shot at it. So, those two are faith and reason. Now, I'll come to the last point that I've been driving towards, which is about their conflict.

This is a very important topic, and we'll probably end up talking about it more. But before saying anything else, one might say this. From Aquinas' point of view, they can't conflict because they both come from God. They're both ultimately gifts from God, and God is not going to contradict himself. So, it may look as if faith and reason conflict, but we ought to be able to see that they can't. They can't really. Yeah, I'm looking here in the Summa Contra Gentiles. He's got some great things to say here on faith and reason. And yeah, it's so true.

It's like even if we could reason to the existence of God, we might end up coming up with a lot of errors. I mean, Aquinas thought that Anselm was wrong in the ontological argument, and not just that, but yeah. And since, obviously, the beatific vision, like the point for which we are, is a pretty important thing, then it's very good of God to kind of tell us about himself and how to have eternal life. And what's beautiful about, I don't know if it was Chesterton, many things get attributed to Chesterton, I'm not sure if he said them or not, but something to the effect of the

beautiful thing about the Catholic faith is that it's shallow enough for a mouse, deep enough for an elephant, you know, sort of bathe in. That sounds like the kind of thing Chesterton might have said. So I think of my beautiful grandma, you know, who never took a theology class, you know, but loved Jesus Christ, had a little prayer books, was very faithful to her devotions. And then there's other people like yourself who have made this, you know, something that you're academically pursuing. Aquinas says that in the next life, people will have differently, some people will see God better than others. And he says, what is that in virtue of? Like, what was it about their previous life that explains that difference? And he rejects the view that it depends on how much they knew about God in this life.

It's not that. It's rather how much they loved God. Pete Okay, now, that sounds very sweet, but I want to know what that means. You know what I'm saying? Like sometimes people say things and you want to nod sagely because like, yeah, to the degree in which you love, you've somehow opened something and you have a greater capacity, but let's break that down philosophically. Why is it that some people will see, be closer to God as it were, or filled with God, or more like God than others? Pete Well, that's a good question. We've joined

ourselves more to Him. God offers Himself to us, and we have to respond with our will. And how we think is also a matter of our will. One of the points he makes is that how, what we think about and how we, where we turn our minds is a function of decisions that we make. So, there's a way, and you could be a very smart person, but also kind of a morally corrupt person. I was taught, I had an episode recently in which we talked about theosis. Yeah. This idea of becoming God, becoming more and more like Him. Sort of like the analogy we thought of was sort of like the steel in the fire, the iron brand lying in the fire that in a sense becomes like the thing it's surrounded by. That's really fascinating, especially for someone as brilliant as Aquinas to say that it was based on how we love and not on what we knew.

as Aquinas to say that it was based on how we love and not on what we knew. Right, that's right, because if anybody could have tried to say, well, actually, it is how smart you are, he could have gotten away with that. But we can't love what we don't know, correct? That's right. I think you're quoting Augustine there. That's right. So, it's important to know as much as we can. This is a tricky thing, because on the one hand, you don't want to make people feel that if they don't go off and study philosophy and theology, their lives are going to be pointless. On the other hand, you don't want to give people the idea that it's okay to just sort of phone it in and not bother knowing. Yeah, Frank Sheed talked about this, not in Theology and Sanity, but in his shorter work.

Yeah. Something to the effect of, while it's true that, say, a simple Irish person, peasant, may love God a lot more than a theologian, that isn't to say that that was the reason he loved God more, because he was a peasant or something. Yes, yes. And it turns out, too, I think, I mean, it just goes back to what you were saying before. Like, you can't love what you don't know. And so, it sort of applies towards, go ahead. Sorry, and then you hear people say, and you cannot know God and not love him.

Like, if you know the Father, you will love the Father. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think if you can, you get a chance to know some more, you should take it up. You should try to learn more. Partly just because you should. You know, if you really loved somebody, and then it turned out you didn't really care about their life much, or, you know, they started sharing their life stories, and you're like, whatever, I don't really care about where you grew up. That would be strange. We just do want to know more about the people we love. But also, in a sense, in practical terms, if you don't know what's going on about God or about God's creation, you're going to make mistakes. You're going to do things the wrong way. It's just inevitable. So it's better. It's important for everyone to get some strong kind of, you know, catechesis and to learn.

And the more responsibility you have, the more you should know. I don't know if you've been noticing this. I certainly have. I don't know what you want to call this era in which we live in a sort of modernist, maybe not postmodernist yet, but I'm seeing a lot of evangelicals disparage And this usually comes up, of course, when we're talking about obligations or sexual morality. Right, right, right. Yeah. Yeah, I know. Yeah. I mean, there's a time and a place, rhetorically, so to speak, for saying stuff like that, right? Because you're trying to sort of humble yourself and remind yourself. There's the famous story about St. Thomas when he seems to have had some sort of vision. And then afterwards he said that, you know, everything I have written is like straw.

Okay, great. But that's not actually true. So, yeah. Yeah, if I was Reginald, I'd be like, sweet. Get over it, suck it up, and just crank this baby out That's right, that's right Please try to finish that Summa Theologiae Hey guys, you have two days left

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Yeah. It can be also a kind of laziness when you just say that you don't understand things. And also, I think you're quite right that this can have an effect in morality, because although certainly Christianity gives us moral teachings, it doesn't fill in every detail for us. We do still have to think. And if you just say, well, it doesn't really matter as long as I love Jesus and do whatever I want, you know, as long as I just trust in him, then that could just be an excuse for living a really kind of lazy or even self-indulgent life. I don't know. I just think that's dangerous. Most certainly. a dangerous talk.

Yeah. And I know all of us can fall into this. So this isn't me picking on the Mormons in the story I'm about to tell, but I had an ex-door neighbor and we got to talking about Joseph Smith and the claims of Mormonism and the church and things like that. And I was making what I thought was some pretty good arguments. And I got the sense as I was talking to her that she didn't know how to respond. And it wasn't because she was stupid or because I was brilliant. It's just whatever. I've certainly been in conversations where I was on the other end. I'm like, I don't know how to respond to this. But at one point, she left the conversation, but the next day she had this big smile on her face and she said, look, all I know is like,

I love, I just love Jesus. And what's most important is that we just love Him. And you think, yeah, that sounds good, but love should entail action. And if the Lord has a preference as to what you do, shouldn't that matter? Like, it's just like, if I tell my wife, I love you, and she's like, oh, that's awesome. Hey, would you do this and this and this for me? And if I do none of it, you know, but of course, this is disanalogous, because we're not talking about my wife, we're talking about the Lord. Yeah. Yeah. how I want to put this, it's having some rational knowledge, philosophical knowledge, let's say, also turns out to be useful in theological contexts. So, when you meet people who are theologians, and it turns out they're saying stuff that doesn't work very well, if you probe,

usually they're just not that good at philosophy. That's what's underneath. And so, you can't make your way around, like, revelation can't be properly understood unless you understand a sort of series of a sort of series of philosophical concepts like nature and person, causation, a bunch of things like this. And you can try to sort of reverse engineer them out of the theology, but in a way, you're already philosophizing when you do that, and you're not really going to understand it unless you come to it with a knowledge of philosophy. So, in that way, everybody's always doing some philosophy, and the question is whether you're going to do it well or badly. Yeah, this reminds me of a conversation I had recently with Dr. Christopher Frey. I was speaking to him, you know, we're talking about death before the fall, and Aquinas talks about,

you know, that there was death. Obviously, animals didn't change their nature after the fall and begin preying upon other animals. But, you know, you could just see yourself having an argument with somebody who says, no, there was no death whatsoever before the fall. And you might just ask them a very seemingly simple question, namely, well, if we want to know what death is, we should know what life is. So what is life? Good luck with that. You know, it's actually not that easy to answer. You have to delve into deep philosophical waters. if we want to know what death is, we should know what life is. So what is life? Good luck with that. You know, it's actually not that easy to answer. You have to delve into deep philosophical waters.

That's right. And you can't just say, well, we'll just keep flipping around in the Bible, and it will give us the definition of life. It's not going to be like that. Yeah, gosh. I mean, I love my evangelical friends, and I learned so much from them. But sometimes I think they, and even Catholics, we treat the Bible like it ought to be just like a, like a list of aphorisms that gives us good ideas for life, you know? And cause you hear people say like, do what the Bible says.

Don't just, you know, like which bit, and don't you have to consider the context? Like it's actually a really difficult, complicated book. It really is. and just to say here you go go for it uh it's um yeah we we want things to be easy and simple and perhaps when we

come to the conclusion that they're not we want to throw our hands up in the air with all this religious thing and yeah put it on side yeah how did you become a catholic or how did you get interested in your faith if you weren't as a youngster? away. So, I'm not a revert either. But, and I've always been moderately serious about it. But I do remember early in my undergraduate studies, reading a book and reflecting on it and suddenly being struck with the thought that God wants everything from us. He just wants everything, not, you know, an hour on Sunday or whatever. And there's a way in which I know, and I knew then too, that I really got it because I found it frightening. Like, I wasn't giving lip service to it in this sense. I thought, Oh yeah. What does this mean for my life? Right. So, um, so in that, so,

but like when I was in high school and college, I was already pretty serious about this kind of stuff, I guess. I feel fortunate in that way, you know, that for whatever reason, I don't think I get any credit for it. I was never like way, way far off. A lot of people are, and they come back. And I think, you know, in God's providence, they get a lot out of that. I mean, it sounds like a slightly crazy thing to say, but I think you know what I mean. Yeah, I think for me, I often say like I abandoned the youth of my childhood, or I used to say something like that. But I don't know if that's true, because in order to abandon something, you have to possess it in some sense.

And I don't know if I ever did. And I have to say that the priests I grew up with, those who represented the Catholic faith, I only ever had actually quite good experiences with them, in the sense that they were nice guys, and I'm sure some of them were quite holy. That said, it was a pretty banal experience going to Mass. We would play music on the tape recorder. They would press play and

project the words up. I remember thinking, this is bloody awful. I'm so bored. This is really ugly. And then when it came to things like sexual morality, honestly, it was like, do what makes you happy. And some people said hell existed. Some people said the church has done away with that teaching. You have to believe it. So I'm like, I don't know what I believed. It was just a mishmash of things. And the only solid thing that sort of represented the Catholicolic faith to me was my grandma who was like one of the most strong and beautiful persons i had ever met but wasn't that interested in the intellectual side of it yes yes you know so it's easy to kind of dismiss like atheism wasn't yet a shorthand

way of saying i'm more intelligent than you you know like it does apparently today or maybe did i think atheism sort of burned itself out a little the new atheism yeah yeah yeah do you think so um i'm not sure that's a good question um i know i like that suggestion that might be right i was just i was just thinking that when i was sort of the relevant age i think the cooler thing would have been to claim to be an agnostic me too it seems sort of more spiritual in some way without having to commit. That's why I said I was an agnostic, actually. Yeah. Yeah, I was one way in which I feel really fortunate. Well, yeah. So, I mean, I was brought up Catholics, you know, my parents took us to church and all that stuff. And, but here's the one thing I think that was particularly unusual. So,

I was born in the mid-60s. I graduated from high school in 1983. And I feel like I had a sort of rare privilege that in my high school, I got a pretty good theological – like, our religion courses were really good. Like, they were very solid, and we learned a lot of really good stuff. And I think for someone my age, that's pretty unusual. And I've always been very grateful. Yeah, it's amazing. I mean, when I was in high school, though, we, you know, we took Buddhism and other world religions more seriously than we did our own. Oh, yeah, we never, I don't think I ever took any of that stuff. Oh, yeah. We never – I don't think I ever took any of that stuff.

How have you found as a philosopher responding to the New Atheist movement, which as I say – the reason I say it feels like it's burning it out a little bit is in part due to the Jordan Peterson phenomenon. Yeah. You know, because you had the four horsemen of the new atheism, you know, and Richard Dawkins was really big and Christopher Hitchens. And that was really rocking. And it sent all the Christians, you know, we all got rather terrified. And thank God for people like William Lane Craig, who kind of came to the defense of the Christian faith. But whereas now, if you go on YouTube and you just see the things that are popping and really popular, it's less the God debate. It's almost like, I mean, maybe I'm wrong. It seems to me that people have had their fill of that stuff. So you think it's sort of just burning out and also, I thought you meant like the Peterson is like engaging with the new atheists. I think you mean more that he's

just sort of displacing them. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Not that he's refutingists. I think you mean more that he's just sort of displacing them. That's right. Yeah, not that he's refuting them. I mean, he hasn't kind of come out and said whether he believes in God or doesn't. But it's almost like we don't really care anymore. It's almost like, yeah, but let's just talk about other things, you know, the supposed patriarchy and postmodernism and what's going on in these university campuses and free speech. Maybe it's just the little corner I inhabit on YouTube that makes me think that this is what most people are talking about. I'm not sure. That's a very I'm trying not to find out too much. Good for you.

You know what I mean? Yeah, it's so true. I mean, sometimes you'll hear people say if Aquinas was alive today, just think of how much more he could have written. And I think, no, he'd have his brain scrambled by porn and netflix he'd be or he wouldn't look or what or he would just stay away from it that's right i don't think aquinas would have had a twitter account do you have a twitter account i do not i uh i do but somebody else runs it oh well that sounds cool so i don't even i don't even have the password because unless they go That's amazing.

They could destroy my life in five minutes. They could destroy your life. That is so true. I don't want to ever get them on my wrong side. Yeah, or get on their wrong side, rather. Wow, that is really scary. Yeah. Well, how have you seen that as a professor, as you've seen students over the last 20 years come through?

Have you noticed a considerable difference? Well, I think that the internet – okay, so I remember – you see, when I was in college, nobody had cell phones. I mean, maybe real estate agents had cell phones or drug dealers or something. I'm not sure. But nobody had cell phones. had cell phones or drug dealers or something? I'm not sure. But nobody had cell phones. And they came in over the course of time. And so I've sort of watched that transition happen.

What I remember when my wife and I were in grad school, I remember asking her, what is the World Wide Web? It's wonderful. And she said, I don't know, but I think it's the internet with pictures, which is actually a pretty good description. Yeah. So at that time, what we were used to was email and file transfer. Yeah. there was already these um email lists where people had already learned that the internet was a really great place for having savage uncharitable irrational arguments with one another so that pre-existed youtube column boxes yeah but anyway um i think that the the um this trend this technology i'm not saying anything particularly original or clever – but this technology has been extremely transformative and I think mostly in a bad way.

So just having the internet at your disposal and then somewhat more recently having the internet in your pocket in the form of a smartphone. having the internet in your pocket in the form of a smartphone on, I mean, I know there's good things about it, but on balance, I think it's been very destructive because people are distracted all the time and they just keep, um, having their attention broken up into tiny little bite size chunks. And then you think, wow, it's hard to read a book. It's hard to pray. Well, of course it is. Anything that takes longer than about 20 seconds is hard now. I think this is just a hugely important social phenomenon. It's just one of these technologies that just changes a lot. I mean it's like the pill or the automobile.

It's so true. I gave up the internet for all of August. No emails, no cell phones, the whole thing. My listeners are throwing up as they hear me say this because I've said it so often. And I gave up the internet for a week, a couple of weeks ago. And I actually take my phone and computer to a friend's house and drop it off. And I say to them, I'll be back next Friday. If I'm back sooner, you have permission to mock me.

And it's amazing just how much I can read and end up relaxing after I slow down a bit. But what do we do? Because there's times that I'm like, screw this. I just want to take my phone and throw it on the ground. But then I'm like, but no, I can't do that either because there's like some really practical things like maps and audio books and podcasts and checking in for flights. Yeah. And it's getting to where some things are harder to do without the internet. Like, you know, there was a time when you could say,

well, I could buy my fishing license online or I could go to the sporting goods store. Now, I mean, I guess you could still go to the sporting goods store, but like it's getting to where the internet's the only way to do certain things. So in that way, you can't really have nothing to do with it. Yeah, it can't be hot and cold. It's like you've got to regulate your usage, which is really difficult. I think that's right.

I mean, I think the thing is that people don't – I think actually in the past few years, people are starting to realize what a dangerous technology it is. Like I feel like 10 years ago, people would say, well, it's a tool. You can use it well or you can use it badly. There's nothing wrong with it. But I think what people are starting to realize and that we need to reflect on more and more is that it's a tool that's extremely hard to use well. You have to think of the internet as alcohol and of yourself as an alcoholic. And you just have to, this is an incredibly alcohol and of yourself as an alcoholic. And you just have to – this is an incredibly dangerous thing for me. And I should not deceive myself about how much time I waste this way.

That's so excellent. You said a moment ago that Aquinas wouldn't have a Twitter account. I'm not sure if you've actually given that a lot of thought and then kind of decided that or if you just sort of set it off the cuff. But tell us why you think that might be true. Because there's a lot of people you speak to and they say, well, you know, this is the modern way to evangelize, you know, like St. Paul would be online, you know, on Twitter. And I kind of hope that that's not true. I just don't know the arguments for why it might not be true. Well, mostly what I had in mind is that the kind of work that Aquinas was most intensely involved in, a life of prayer and then deep, deep, deep thought, requires immense concentration and focus of mind. And when you're always going click, click,

click, click, click, oh my gosh, what did that person say about me? You're not focused in the right way anymore. And you sort of have to choose what you want to be good at. There's a great book that's actually put out by the Catholic University of America, The Intellectual Life. Oh yeah, that's a wonderful book. It's brilliant. And, you know, I forget the name of the author, the Dominican. Sertiange. Yeah, that's why I forget it. I can't pronounce it. But he talked about something And, you know, I forget the name of the author, the Dominican. Sertiange. Yeah, that's why I forget it.

I can't pronounce it. But he talked about something like, you know, throwing pennies in the street or something. You just get fragmented and distracted and pulled in a hundred different directions and nothing. I mean, we're talking about faith and reason today. I mean, how have you seen that the internet and the phones are really kind of hurting our ability to reason? Well, I think, yeah. I mean, I think the – let me see. Gosh.

Well, one thing I think is something that we've mentioned already. It just – it makes it harder. You train yourself to focus on small items for small amounts of time and keep moving from one to the next. And it's a good thing to reflect on the fact that often the thing that you focus on next is not something that you chose to focus on, but something that was suggested to you by some algorithm. And that means that someone else is deciding what you think about. And they have reasons of their own. And there's no special reason to hope that they have your best interests in mind. So your mind is constantly turning from one thing to another,

and probably not to good things. So that's part of it. Also, there's something that is, I don't understand very well, but there's a kind of psychological and sort of almost emotional addictiveness to the internet. It's hard to understand why this is. But, you know, if you put something on, I don't know, Facebook, then you worry, like, what if someone like wrote something snarky? So then you want to go back and check. It's so true. And that's one of the things I think would be horrible to have a Twitter account. I would feel like I was a slave to it because I would always wonder whether somebody had retweeted it or dissed it or I had managed to anger someone and now I have to

go back and try to defend myself or double down or whatever. And it would just be a huge sort of psycho-em emotional cost. Well, I mean, I don't know much about academia, but I understand that you have to publish to stay quote unquote relevant. And it's almost like everybody now has that. Like, unless you're posting regularly on Twitter or Instagram or Facebook, there's the fear of becoming irrelevant. I see. Well, I mean, in academia, you can do it at a much, much slower pace. Right. Like, I don't, you know, like you could publish something once a year and that's, that's fast enough. You don't have to do it every five minutes. Yeah, that's right.

Here's my lunch. Here's me working out. Oh gosh, I'm embarrassed. I'm embarrassed to be human. So, I mean, it's easy to point at young people and say, like, look at them. Look at them. But obviously, it's just as addictive to older people. So, how do you personally regulate your internet use? Do you have to put a lot of effort and energy into regulating your internet use so that you can reason uh you know with a good deal of energy on these hard topics yeah so the first thing is i just don't carry a cell phone at all you are wonderful my wife and i have you are my hero we sort of share so like if i go out of town i'll bring it and um but i don't carry one around

so that way people can't call me and but more importantly because not that many people would call me oh you don't have a cell phone right but more importantly i can't keep checking now well of course when i'm is that is that a conscious decision that you've made is that like a more an increasingly difficult decision to make it is increasingly difficult in the beginning i was just too cheap i was like you got to be Is that like a more, an increasingly difficult decision to make? It is increasingly difficult. In the beginning, I was just too cheap. I was like, you gotta be kidding. $20 a month? No way. And, um, but at a certain point I started to realize, you know, I would be better not to have it. I don't want to do it. So, um, but yeah, I mean, it is harder. It gets harder and harder in certain ways. Like I used to be like, there's almost no pay phones anymore.

So I actually am that guy every once in a while who says, sorry, can I borrow your phone? I do that sometimes. So I feel like a bit of a freeloader. That's bad. Yeah, but it's hard though because like you do your work. Like you say you want to write. So you sit down at the computer. Well, your computer is also your gateway to the internet.

So I have like some of that software that cuts down the amount of time, you know, that prevents me from using the internet more than so and so many minutes a day or whatever. And what's crazy is like there's now a huge market out there, you know, for mindfulness and apps that help you meditate and be calm. And there's now – there's this new app called Calm where there's adult bedtime stories where you can listen to people. And I'm like, ah. Wow. Like technically I think that's fine, but it feels weird that we now have coloring books and bedtime stories for grown-ups. Yeah. And I'm not saying it's not even necessary for people, because maybe we've gotten to the point where we're all so high-strung that this is the inevitable consequence of that.

But I think in a way, even if some of these solutions don't seem like the best, they are at least responses to the problem. So in a certain course I teach called Nature and Human Nature, I often enough will have like one day out of the semester, we'll talk about this stuff, about the internet and cell phones and stuff. And I've noticed that over, over the, especially in the past few years, students seem much more responsive to this. And one thing that's occurred to me, like, it's not, so it's all very well for me. So I'm 53 to say, oh, these young people, but number one, like I'm the age of their parents. So in a way it's our fault, right? We're the ones that raised them. So if in a way, it's our fault, right? We're the ones that raised them.

So, if they're so bad, whose fault is that really? That's the first thing that we should remind ourselves of. And the second thing is, again, like a lot of them, they're starting to be aware of this and to really think about it. And it is a challenging thing. thing because it's just clear that this technology has found some sort of weakness in human nature and exploited it in a really really sophisticated way like there's some geniuses out there in silicon valley and they know your weak spot and they are really really good at exploiting it i heard somebody say that the cell the ip iPhone or the smartphone is less of a news feed and more of a poker machine. Yeah. I've read now that electronic slot machines are optimized to

basically create addictive behavior. Right. How could that not be true? Right. If you have a vested interest in making money through creating these gambling machines of course you want to make it addictive and same thing's true with apps and phones and yeah yeah so have you noticed like to go back 20 years come back today have you noticed a significant difference in how people can concentrate on difficult issues or not I'm not sure. It's tempting to just say yes, of course. That's right.

It is. The thing is, I don't think of myself as having a very reliable memory. And, you know, like 15 years ago, like how well – like I'd have to find papers that those students wrote and read them. You know what I mean? I'm not sure. Yeah. But, yeah. So that's a hard question to answer. wrote and read them. You know what I mean? I'm not sure. But, yeah. So that's a hard question to answer. Yeah, I appreciate your honesty there, because it is,

as you say, tempting to be like, absolutely, and we're all going to hell, we're all in a handbasket, and that, I think, is probably true. But anyway, this is a fascinating discussion. When it comes to the faith part, are you glad to be Catholic? Because we've just spoken about this, you know, the Bible doesn't interpret itself. Yes. journey where I've kind of become fed up with different aspects of Catholicism or things that I thought were what Catholicism was teaching. I went through a period of scrupulosity where I kind of wished, I wished once saved, always saved was true. But if I'm ever tempted, it's not often that I'm tempted, but if I am ever tempted to kind of do away with this Catholic thing, then I'm stuck in this conundrum where I'm like, okay, well, I mean, do I have to go through every single Christian doctrine and decide which one's Orthodox and which one isn't? I don't have time. I don't have time to do that.

I've got Netflix to watch. I was talking to someone once, a philosopher, a very smart guy, a philosopher, a very smart guy at a conference. He was a Christian, and it turned out that he was an Apollinarian. So, he thought that Christ had a divine mind and a human body, but not a human mind. He just had a divine mind. Now, that view that Christ didn't have a human mind, that view was condemned by the first council of Constantinople in 381. That's a really long time ago. In case you were wondering. thinking to myself, I felt bad for that guy because he had to, basically he just had to take the Bible and then all these other documents, which were not really authoritative for him, and he just single-handedly had to figure it all out. And why believe that you could do it?

And so that made me just, that conversation, I went out of the conversation thinking, wow, I am so glad I'm Catholic. And I do think, I mean, there's a sort of Cardinal Newman argument here. If you start from the view that God has created us and has revealed himself to us, and he wants there to be a sort of ongoing church, then there's got to be some structure in place to settle it when things get confusing. There just has to be. And it can't be the scriptures, because as we've said, the scriptures don't interpret themselves.

I mean, this is partly why there's so much vitriol on YouTube and over email, and that's because text is tone deaf. Yes. Yeah, that's right. I don't know if that person meant that in this way, or I can't tell unless I ask them to clarify, but I can't really do that with scripture. And it's not as simple as saying, now, obviously the scriptures ought to agree, and so we can't, you know, cherry-pick this Scripture when the rest of the Bible says something against it. Yeah, I mean, it's a slow, bumpy process by which, over the centuries, the Church responds to further questions and clarifies things. I mean, it's easy to, if you just sort of look back and someone says, here are these

councils, they settled all these questions, like Christology is one of the areas I'm interested in. That's why I keep giving these examples. But if you like look into the history of these councils, like people actually died. It was ugly. And it took a long time. Which can be maybe consoling for us during times when the church seems to be not totally having to act together. I have no idea what you're talking about.

No, yeah. I'm just thinking theoretically. Yeah, right. Yeah. Anyway, and it doesn't mean it's okay. The fact that things have been messed up before doesn't mean it's okay that they're messed up now. I don't mean that. Yeah.

But anyway, it's a bumpy process, but the alternative is no process at all. And that's basically just I take the Bible and you take the Bible and we don't agree. So we either – I mean, thinking what Newman says, either if you don't have a doctrinal authority to settle things, then either you just keep watering down the doctrine. You just keep saying, well, we'll agree to disagree on this. It doesn't matter. See a lot of that. Or the churches keep splitting. I say, listen, we can't agree, so one of us will leave and found his own church.

But if you want to keep the church together and you don't want to water doctrine down, then you have to have an authority. Right. This is a thought that's going to get me in trouble with some people, but do you think this is why some people, and maybe all of us at one stage or another, become really particular about devotions? Because it's something safe that we can kind of control, understand, wrap our mind around.

And I'm not sure if that makes sense. Like I'm a big fan of devotionals. Right. The scapula, the rosary, the Jesus prayer, all of that. Love it. Love it. Big fan. But you do sometimes encounter people that seem way too hung up on one particular. On a particular one. And I wonder why that is. And I wonder if that's because it simplifies things. Oh, I see. And so, it's sort of sort of here at least is something that is certain and secure.

That might be right. That's a good speculation. I'm not sure. That's a tricky matter. I mean, I'm thinking I was recently reading, you know, the practice of the presence of God, Brother Lawrence, this Carmelite, right? So, his line is kind of, all of, none of, anything practically is a means to the end of sort of dwelling in God's presence. And you shouldn't get hung up on methods or – what's his name? Cossad, the – what's that book?

I don't know. If I said it, The Sacrament of the Present Moment. You know I haven't heard of it. Okay, yeah. So – I should check it out. Yeah. I have Brother Lawrence's little book.

I need to pick that up again. So, yeah, Brother – that's a's little book. I need to pick that up again. So, yeah, Brother Lawrence, that's a really great book. Every once in a while I think, this guy's kind of extreme, but mostly it's pretty great. What do you think's extreme about it? But anyway, what was I saying? Oh, yeah. So, in theory, we should be sort of loose about those, right? Like, if you like this devotion and I like a different devotion, we don't necessarily have to argue about that. But sometimes people do get attached to them. And I guess it would take a lot of discernment to know, is it a bad attachment? Like, it's not easy to tell from the outside, I would think. Right. And it's also very difficult. Like, even if you're right that somebody has a

quote-unquote bad attachment to a particular devotional, how is anyone going to receive that? If you tell me I have a bad attachment to, say, the scapula, then clearly you're at fault, aren't you? You know, it's like... Yeah, what am I going to do, tear it off your back and see there? Yeah. Like, what's the point of that? Sometimes people say, back to this idea of faith faith and reason that, you know, we should leave our minds at the door, you know, when it comes to church. And, and maybe some people think that

about Catholicism, even more than different branches of evangelicalism, you know, this idea that we have it all figured out for you. So there's no need, uh, we'll just tell you what it is. And there's a lot of criticisms online with regards to Thomas Aquinas, that this is why we ought not to take him seriously as a philosopher, because he was under the thumb of the church. Oh, I see. You know, I mean, I think in a way, people who, well, all right, what I want to say is that when the church's intellectual life is functioning well, it's nothing like that. So, of course, there are doctrines. There are, so to speak, lines around the edge of the playing field that you're not supposed to cross over,

but there's lots of space inside. So, first of all, it always makes sense to ask questions about the doctrines. Why is that? What does that mean? Just because you're asking those questions doesn't mean that you're harboring some sort of evil doubts. I'll mention Cardinal Newman again, right? He distinguishes problems and doubts. You can have a problem with a doctrine, meaning something about it that you don't understand. And you can have thousands of problems, but he says they don't add up to even one doubt, because it's just a different kind of thing. So, there's tons of room for people to ask questions about the doctrines themselves, and then beyond that, even if you did think, and it would be a sort of fantasy, even if you did think that you had a full understanding of the doctrines themselves, they leave undetermined further questions that can be asked. So, I mean, I don't know. I think of the Christian religion as giving a beautifully rich space in which one can engage

in intellectual inquiry. Yeah, I thought of this the other day when somebody emailed me, and they said, you know, if hell is the absence of God, and God is the ground of being, then does that mean hell is non-existence, and the people there are not? And sometimes... That's a good one. Yeah, it's a good one. And to get to your point about, you know, there's a lot of space here, I thought to myself, I'm like, well, it can't mean that. It can't mean that God – it can't mean that we're ontologically sort of autonomous from the ground of being because that would be true of Satan and the demons. And so, therefore, whatever it means to say that in hell there's the absence of God, it can't mean that.

Do you know what I mean? There's a lot of space to play in there. That's right. That's right. And the reasoning that they're engaging in, which is a nice kind of, in a sense, philosophical reasoning, to say, well, if it means the utter absence of God, then you wouldn't exist. Like, that's a good move. They're right to bring that up.

Yeah. And it's important. I mean, I think if someone's in a position of being a teacher, and of course, a parent is a kind of teacher, it's okay when people ask questions like this, and they shouldn't be shut down or discouraged as if it were impious to ask these sorts of things. What have you done in the past to deal with certain questions that you have? I mean, there's a lot of listeners, I'm sure, out there right now who are like,

there's probably questions they don't even want to raise because they're so scared there isn't an answer. Like, was there really an original Adam and Eve? Like, hasn't science kind of done away with that? And let's say that there isn't, then doesn't that do away with original sin and the need for Christ? And doesn't that unravel everything? But I think in the back of many of our minds, especially those of us who are interested in these intellectual things, there are those sorts of things that we just don't know how to reconcile. What do you do with that?

I think in a way, well, this reminds me of something that we were saying much, much earlier in our conversation, that what Aquinas says that faith and reason can't actually conflict. Now, but that doesn't mean that we know how, okay, so if they can't really conflict, then that means that if there is an apparent conflict, it must be only an apparent conflict. It must be actually resolvable. But that doesn't mean that we personally can figure out how to resolve it. And it doesn't necessarily even mean that anyone alive now will know how to resolve it. Like maybe, like, it'll be hundreds of years before somebody figures their way through this one. That could easily be the case. And I think it's important to learn how to live

with that kind of uncertainty. You know, I have, so one of my colleagues in philosophy at Catholic U, Robert Sokolowski, he says in one of his books that the proper punctuation mark for philosophical judgment is exclamation point question mark. So, the exclamation point means wow, and the question mark means there's lots more, there's more needs to be said. And he said one way in which philosophy deteriorates is that that exclamation point question mark becomes a mere period. And then you just have this but all little claim. And so, it needs to be revived. And I'm here in this answer, I'm sort of focusing on the question mark part. It's just part of philosophy and theology that the things we're studying are bigger than we are. And so, we should actually expect that

there's a lot of stuff that we don't understand, and that's just okay. You know, we talked before about the church being sometimes in a rotten position, and then you say, but what's the alternative? And it's something similar here, I think, because if you say, well, there's all these questions that I haven't fully reconciled when it comes to faith and reason. Okay, what's the alternative? Well, I'm going to leave the faith. Okay, now have you reconciled everything? Well, no.

There's all sorts of things that I don't know about. And you mentioned Chesterton earlier. He says somewhere, I guess it's in Orthodoxy, isn't it, where he says that at a certain point he just saw the church was a truth-telling thing. Oh, I like that. So you stick with it, and I don't remember whether he says this in that context. Yeah, he was still a Protestant when he wrote Orthodoxy, I believe. Is that right? I believe so. Yeah.

All right. Well, anyway. Could be wrong. I'm wrong about many things, which is why I need higher authority. We could go look it up later. But anyway, my point is that you can think, you know, the church is where the truth is simultaneously with just realizing that means that I don't – like I have questions that I don't know the answer to. And I've asked a lot of people and they don't seem to know the answer to. And some of the people who think they know the answer clearly don't.

So that means I don't know. But that's okay. I really just think it's okay. How do you let that not affect your faith though? For some of us, you just begin to spiral i see and you and then you're standing there at liturgy and you're like what am i bloody doing right isn't this just the sort of thing that homo sapiens do because we've evolved to do it that there's something that ought to be worshipped for some weird reason and all of this is bullcrap yeah yeah yeah no i know you could get into those into those um but but those ways of thinking but then i think of lewis who in his book what was a you know the

screw tape letters yeah where where the the advice from the senior demon was to keep all of these things fuzzy in his brain, like not actually think them through. You just feel, like you feel the argument, like, isn't this bull crap? Like, didn't we just evolve to do this? But you don't actually pursue it, and so you can never resolve it. Whereas if you did pursue it, you'd be like, well, no, that's not a sufficient, that doesn't do away with arguments for the existence of God and things like this. No, it's true. I mean, doesn't do away with arguments for the existence of God and things like this. No, it's true.

I mean a lot of those things are just fuzzy feelings. You just have this sort of feeling that – well, like that evolutionary one, right? That sounds pretty good. If you get into a certain frame of mind, you'll just be really freaked out. But being freaked out isn't an argument. Yes, that's it. And there are actually problems, right? Because people have pointed this sort of thing out. I have to add this. If being freaked out isn't an argument, then we need to strip Twitter

almost entirely of its hysterical comments, because apparently they are not arguments. of its uh hysterical comments because apparently they are not arguments yeah um yeah no i mean often it does help to um to go further with these things especially if if you're able so you know if um if if you think that evolutionary theory shows that your views probably don't really track the truth at all, but instead, for some weird reason, this is a selected for trait that you sort of act really reverentially towards imaginary beings or something, right? You say, oh no, what if that's true, you know? But then, why not turn that around and apply it to the theory of evolution itself? Apparently, the theory of evolution has – evolutionary pressures have led me to believe in the theory of evolution. So then all of a sudden now, I don't have any good reasons to believe in the theory of evolution either.

So now that argument is starting to not sound so good anymore. Yeah, it's like you employ reason to discredit reason. Yeah. It's a funny thing. I mean, I have been wondering about, how do I want to put this? I think it's a funny thing that for some people, and sometimes I'm one of those people, you can have a sort of weird relationship with screwed up ideas where you're pretty sure – you don't actually believe them, but you somehow feel obliged to hang around with them. I don't know. They're like friends who were really bad for you, but you can't just cut them out of your life.

Now, that could sort of be intellectually fruitful, but it could also just be a way of, I don't know. It's just like being in a bad relationship. Like, no. You think, give us an example. Well, I mean, you can, you can, um, okay. So this is something that, um, okay. I'm just totally sure.

And I'm sure this is correct that, um, I'm a human being with consciousness and reason. And so are you. And we're having a conversation right now. Now, I can sort of like flip a switch in my mind, and then it will appear to me as if you are just a physical system, and you make air pressure waves, and then they get transformed into these electrical currents, and then they come out and make air pressure waves over where I am. And when you think of it that way, neither of us is a person. Now, I can do that, and if I dwell on it, then it starts to freak me out. But so what? That doesn't make it true. It just doesn't make it true.

Yeah, or you, sometimes you begin to think, well, all of this thing we call reality is just the result of a computer programmer, you know, 5,000 years in the future. You know, he's the creator. Or you fall into solipsism. I did that as a teenager. I didn't know the term, but I did go through a stage where I seriously doubted the existence of my friends when they weren't in front of me. Wow. That must have been stressful. Yeah, it was weird.

I remember talking to my friend in the library who got seriously worried and said, I promise I exist. And I said, well, you would say that. Exactly. Exactly. Where you were being a good philosopher there, I'm afraid. Yeah. I mean, in a way, you were following the dialectic well. That's what I mean.

Yeah, no, absolutely. Well, but it just goes to show, though, I actually do like Plantinga's, and it's not just his, didn't originate this idea of properly basic beliefs. Yeah. You know, so it's like I don't necessarily come to God as a conclusion. It just seems that he exists like it seems you do, even though we've never met. And unless there's something, and that's not an argument for God's existence, but it might be justification for me believing in God. And unless there's any good reason to think, you know, that experience is wrong, that I can go ahead and keep

believing it. But imagine a person who gets obsessed with solipsism and begins watching YouTube debates with who knows who they are, right? They're not people apparently, but if you're right, that would seriously get in the way of loving your wife and children and interacting with human beings. And I think likewise, just going down the rabbit trail of YouTube debates can also really get in the way of you loving God, you know? That's really true. I mean, and one thing that, this is a sort of dark side of philosophy, perhaps. One thing that philosophers, skillful philosophers can do is they can pretty much defend anything. And if you say to them, well, here's my objection, if they want to, they can just incorporate it into their theory. So,

they say, well, blah, blah, blah. So, in other words, you're the only person. And they go, okay, I'll take that, right? In philosophy, we call that biting the bullet. And some people just like to bite bullets, and they'll just bite entire boxes of mortars. No problem, right? And as long as it's consistent, then everyone else will applaud and say, that was really skillful. And it's true. It was really skillful. It was a wonderful performance. But it doesn't mean that what you're saying is true. Descartes talked about this, I think, or Pascal, I forget which one. Something like, there's been no idea so crazy that some philosopher hasn't dreamed it up and defended

it. Because you get notoriety if you can put forth and and sustain a you know pretty patient insane view i guess i guess the there's a reason why um philosophy and sophistry kind of arose together in ancient greece there's a certain weird relationship between them, even though obviously they're sort of the opposites. Yeah, it is true, because there's a certain pleasure we get in sitting around having a beer, discussing things we don't fully understand. And sometimes that pleasure comes in being able to respond to somebody and even kind of show them up. And sophistry is good for that, or can be good for seeming like kind of show them up. And sophistry is good for that. Or can be good for seeming like you're showing them up.

I read an article a bunch of years ago about some philosophy professor had had the – he was sitting in his office and a student came by who had taken his class the previous semester or whatever. And she just wanted to thank him again for how great it was. And he was really glad. And she said, yeah, it was really great, just sort of sitting around BSing. And he suddenly realized that what she thought that, like, it wasn't a serious activity. You just sit around and you say stuff. And then he was really upset because he's like, wait, what have I been doing? I thought I was teaching philosophy and I've been trying to, but apparently it's not getting through. Well, maybe we could begin to wrap up on that point because it feels like we do have, we do not revere the human intellect like Aquinas did. When did that go

off the rails? Like when do we, is that like Hume cunts? Like when did we just stop giving credit to human reason? Oh, that's an amazing question. I think it would be a complicated question. There's more than one thread. So Hume in a way, yeah, is somebody who wants to cut – there are important – this is a really interesting question. Let me think. So, we're always used to saying that the Middle Ages was the ages of faith, and then in the modern period with the Enlightenment, everything turns to reason. Now, that's not utter nonsense, but there's an important thread in a lot of modern thought that involves cutting reason down to size.

So one of Hume's messages is you're not as rational as you thought you were. A lot of your – and he's sometimes making good points. But in the end, you go away thinking that reason is not that important. And Kant, in one way, exalts reason, but in another way, a lot of what you, when you thought you were thinking about the world, you really weren't. You just were thinking about the world as it appears to you. So, there are these important strands. I don't know, I think in a way, a really important thing to reflect on here is the so-called Regensburg Address that Pope Benedict gave. That was the one where he made some remarks about medieval Islamic theology that made everybody angry. That's right.

But that wasn't the important part of the lecture. The important part of the lecture was that nowadays, we tend to think of theoretical reasoning, reasoning for the sake of knowing, as being basically physics and mathematics. And we tend to think of practical reasoning, reasoning for the sake of action, as basically just being economic reasoning and reasoning for trying to find means to ends. But you can't reason about the ends. You can't reason about the goals. So you just find your passion, choose your goal, and then use reason to get there.

And, you know, all these people who we think of as relativists, a lot of them aren't relativists. Actually, they are total absolutists about physics and math. So, what I'm trying to say here is that it's not that we don't believe in reason, it's just that we don't think it actually addresses itself to the big questions in life. It doesn't address the questions of whether God exists, what our human nature is, and how we ought to live. It just addresses all the smaller... It's so true. I mean, there's millions of YouTube videos about pursuing your passion and living your dreams and deciding what you want and going after it. And then it talks about some virtuous things about like waking up early and exercising and you know, it's, but it's still like, what the hell is

the point of any of this? Yeah. So I think if it ends up in the wash, you know what I mean? If it just, if it's all nothing in the end. It's like, okay. So, yeah, yeah, yeah. So somehow we have to recover. Okay, now this will be a paradoxical way of phrasing it maybe, but a kind of faith in reason, right? We'll have to like get back to actually believing that reason can do more than just those things. but also it can tackle life's biggest questions. Now, it may in the end need help from faith to do that, but it can get a start on it. I remember

when I was reading Pope Benedict's lecture, I was thinking, this is such a crazy thing. What would Voltaire have said? You know, He must be spinning in his grave because the Pope is defending reason. The Pope is the biggest fan of reason in the world. What have we come to? Oh my gosh. I tell you, this has been such a fantastic chat. I really appreciate it. I would love to actually have a beer with you one day.

So thank you. I hope it happens. This has been really fun. Thanks for tuning in to Pints of the Quintus this week. I hope you one day. So thank you. I hope it happens. This has been really fun. Thanks for tuning into Pints with Aquinas this week. I hope you enjoyed it. Do me a favor and click the link at the top of the show notes, which will take you to our merch page where you can check out all the cool Pints with Aquinas merch we have for two days left. I want to say a massive thanks to everybody who supports me on Patreon and makes this show possible, who makes the Matt Fradd show possible, who makes Bible

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To carry you.