Pints With Aquinas - 95: Why does every atheist misunderstand your 5 proofs for God's existence?

Episode Date: February 27, 2018

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Welcome to Pints with Aquinas. I'm Matt Fradd. What is up with you today? How you going? This is Pints with Aquinas. Are you new to Pints with Aquinas? If you are, it's really good to have you. What's going on? Hey, here's the premise of the show, okay? If you could sit down over a pint of beer with the big man, that's Thomas Aquinas, and ask him any one question, what would it be? us and ask him any one question, what would it be? In today's episode, we're going to ask Thomas, why does every single atheist misunderstand your arguments for the existence of God? Here we go. G'day, good to have you with us. Sorry about that dramatic intro. Today we're going to be discussing, as I say, Aquinas' five ways, five proofs of the existence of God, and why it is that apparently every atheist ever seems to misunderstand them.

Okay, that might be a bit of a stretch, but what we're going to do is basically go through what Dawkins, maybe because they've read him and they're regurgitating his stuff, or maybe because they just make the same mistake he does, probably the latter, I think. But this will really help you, I think, understand why most atheists totally misunderstand Aquinas' five proofs for the existence of God. Now, as you know, I've just come out with a new book on Aquinas' five ways. It's called Does God Exist? A Socratic Dialogue on the Five Ways of Thomas Aquinas. You should go get it. Seriously, you should go get it. Or you should support Pines to the Aquinas on Patreon, and I will send you a signed copy of the book for free. How about that? You should do that, I think. Because, you know, you want to support this and I'll give you a book and it'll be signed, which means at your next

garage sale, it'll go for more money than if it wasn't signed. That's a joke. It's a bad joke. Okay. So here's what I want to do in this episode. I want to read a paper that I wrote back when I was doing my master's in philosophy on why Richard Dawkins' attempt to refute Thomas Aquinas' five proofs of the existence of God fail. Now, you might be thinking to yourself, isn't Dawkins a rather out-of-date character? And I think, yes, he is. I don't think many atheists worth their salt today rely heavily upon Dawkins' rants, diatribes against the existence of God. He's not a very sophisticated atheist because he's a poor philosopher, as we'll see in today's episode. That said, I think he illustrates just how people misunderstand Aquinas' five ways. So, usually when people read papers, it's rather boring,

but because you're an interesting person, you'll no doubt find my paper interesting, and I'll also pause throughout to make jeering remarks at Dawkins, which should make this somewhat more interesting. Okay, so Dawkins, in his 2006 best-selling book, The God Delusion. Have you read it? I tweeted at him a while back. I saw his book in the philosophy section, and I took a photo of it, and I said, the humorous moment when you find Dawkins' book in the philosophy section. And he tweeted back, oh, go on, be honest. Have you read it? No, of course you haven't. Well, I have, and that'll be evident in this paper. But anyway, so he wrote the book, The God Delusion, and it responds to Thomas Aquinas' Five Proofs of the Existence of God in the Summa Theologiae. Now, kudos to him because he's one of the only atheists, one of the four horsemen they refer to

themselves as, or someone referred to them as. He really takes on the five ways, even if it is in three pages, but well, at least he does it. But anyway, he makes this bold claim, right? He says that these proofs are, and here's a quotation from him, easily exposed as vacuous. Wow. Okay, that's a pretty bold claim. Well, before I show you why he doesn't refute Thomas' arguments, I need to point out two problems with Dawkins' general approach. And this is the problem that almost every atheist I've seen online makes as well.

approach, okay? And this is the problem that almost every atheist I've seen online makes as well. First, Dawkins seems unaware, or at least fails to mention, that these five proofs are, drumroll, summaries, right? They're summaries that Thomas expands upon in his other works. They actually weren't meant to be comprehensive cases for the existence of God that address every possible objection against them, right? Instead, they conform to the Summa Theologiae's mission to treat, and this is from the introduction, Aquinas says, quote, whatever belongs to the Christian religion in such a way as may tend to the instruction of beginners. So here you go, you've got summaries for beginners, and that's what Aquinas is trying to refute. All right. So look, this is a common mistake and it's not made just by atheists,

it's also theists. And that's why Thomistic scholar Edward Fazer, who we've had on the show before, says, quote, Aquinas never intended these five proofs to stand alone and would probably have reacted with horror if told that future generations of students would be studying them in isolation, if told that future generations of students would be studying them in isolation, removed from their immediate contact in the Summa Theologiae, and the larger content of his work as a whole, end quote. Now, Dawkins's failure to understand the context of Thomas's arguments, including the foundational metaphysics in the Summa they rely upon, compounds Dawkins' second misstep. Okay, what's that? Well, throughout his entire argument, Dawkins never directly quotes Thomas. Instead, he just summarizes what he thinks Thomas' arguments are, and as a result,

he ends up attacking a straw man or a weakened version of Thomas's arguments. And again, this is something that I see happening again and again online. Atheists who try to take down Thomas's five ways, not only do they make the first mistake of Dawkins and think this is all he had to say on the matter, but they never quote him directly. It's like they've read an anthology written by somebody else about Thomas's arguments and respond to them. So, look, I think we should say, even though Dawkins is an accomplished biologist, all right, granted, and a very good writer, he is not a skilled philosopher. And that is a severe handicap when confronting a philosophical issue

like the existence of God. In his review of the God delusion, the renowned philosopher Alvin Plantinga had this to say, quote, you might say that some of his forays into philosophy are at best sophomoric, but that would be unfair to sophomores. The fact is, great inflation aside, but that would be unfair to sophomores. The fact is, grade inflation aside, many of his arguments would receive a failing grade in a sophomore philosophy class, end quote. Hashtag burn. Okay, so now let's examine each of Thomas's five ways in order to understand how Dawkins' arguments end up receiving such a bad grade. So let's first look at the first three proofs, okay? Dawkins' response to Thomas's first three proofs begin with the claim that,

quote, this is Dawkins here, they are just different ways of saying the same thing, end quote. Okay. Really? Really? Why? Why would he waste his breath and ink, you know? Okay. So it's true that each proof ends with the conclusion that God, of God is the ultimate cause of the world exists, but they do not reach this conclusion in the same way. All right. So the first proof, or the argument from motion, proceeds from the Aristotelian analysis of change as the actualization of a potentiality. It shows that only a reality that is pure act can explain the chain of motion we observe in the universe.

The second proof proceeds from the existence of efficient causes and shows that only an uncaused cause can explain this chain of causation in the universe. And the third proof argues from the existence of beings that can fail to exist and shows that only a necessary being could be keeping all of these contingent things, beings in existence, all right? So rather than engage each proof based on its analysis of motion, causation, or contingency, Dawkins merely says that all these proofs, quote, rely upon the idea of a regress and invoke God determinate it, end quote, which he claims is dubious and arbitrary. He thinks that something like a Big Bang singularity is more parsimonious of an explanation for the beginning of the universe, and that makes God an unnecessary conclusion. However, aside from the problem with making a finite and contingent part of physics the ultimate explanation of reality, Thomas is not claiming to prove from reason alone that God

created the universe from nothing in the finite past. Okay? Did you know that? Hopefully you do. I'll say that again. Thomas is not claiming to prove from reason alone that God created the universe from nothing in the finite past. According to Thomistic philosopher Ralph McInerney, quote, Aquinas spends a good deal of time showing that there is nothing internally inconsistent in talking of a created eternal world. Dawkins evidently does not realize this, and so he completely misunderstands each of these proofs. So he says of the first proof, quote, something had to make the first move, and that's something we call God. Of the second, he says, this causal chain has to be terminated by a first cause, which we call God. And of the third, he says,

quote, there must have been a time when no physical things existed, but since physical things exist now, there must have been something non-physical to bring them into existence. And that's something we call God. End quote. Now, listen, listen, listen, listen, listen, listen. All of this is precisely, I wish I could emphasize this more. I don't know how I could. Maybe I need like a symbol or something to bash. Here, here's a wine bottle. Ready? Listen, are you listening, internet? All of this is precisely what Thomas isn't arguing. Thomas claims that even if these causal chains or contingent realities existed eternally into the past, there must still be a final or ultimate cause that explains not just the past existence of those things, but even their current existence, which is something a Big Bang singularity cannot do.

All right, so in order to grasp this point, it's necessary to distinguish between two different kinds of causal series, okay? And those two types are accidentally ordered series and essentially ordered series, all right? So let's talk about these two types of causation. An accidentally ordered series of causes is one in which one independent object interacts with another independent object and causes it to move or change. All right. Similar to a series of dominoes falling one after the other. So there you go. If you've ever heard somebody try to explain one of these ways online by talking about dominoes, that's a clear indication that they haven't understood the point, because they're talking about an accidentally

ordered series. In an accidentally ordered series of causes, these changes take place over a period of time, whether short or long. So dye, for example, is applied to hair. Okay? After a few minutes, it changes color. That's an example. Here's another example. A man drinks several beers and is eventually drunk. All right?

So what these changes have in common is that the past parts of the series do not directly affect the future parts. So you can throw away the hair dye bottle and the cans of beer, but you'll still be a drunk person with blue hair. All right. Now, an essentially ordered series of causes, on the other hand, occurs when the motion or change in the series is dependent on every past member in the series. For example, imagine Thomas Aquinas' great works are sitting on a table. These books can be positioned as they are because there is, well, a table underneath them. The table in turn is able to hold the books because the floor supports them. But the floor rests on a foundation that lies on the earth and so on and so on. Everything in the series is essential to the end result, which is the book sitting on the table. If you took away the table, the book would not be sitting on it.

If the house no longer had a foundation, then the floor, the table, and even the books would ultimately collapse. Another example of an essentially ordered series would be that of gears. In an accidentally ordered series, like a set of dominoes, would be that of gears, okay? In an accidentally ordered series, like a set of dominoes, the previous members of the series could be removed or destroyed and not affect the motion in the latter part of the series. But in an essentially ordered series, like a set of gears, any tampering with a previous member stops the whole series from changing. If you remove any part of the past gears in the series, every other gear will stop turning as well. So, examining a hierarchical series helps us to see God as the first mover. When we consider a series

of causes that all exist at the same time, we immediately recognize that something holds the series together. So the earth holds the foundation of the house. And you might say, well, but who holds the earth? And maybe someone would say, well, gravity. But what keeps gravity in existence? Eventually, in every hierarchical series, we trace all the causes back to a first cause, a power that supports and holds everything together in existence, or what Thomas calls God. Now, here's how we know, okay? Because you might say, well, that's terrific, but how do you know Thomas was talking about essentially,

sorry, a rather hierarchical series of causation? He never says that. Well, he doesn't say it explicitly, but we know he's describing an essentially ordered causal series because of the examples he uses. So, for example, in his explanation on the argument from causality, he says that, and here's a quote from him, quote, subsequent movers move only in as much as they are put in motion by the first mover, as the staff moves only because it is put in motion by the hand. Therefore, it is necessary to arrive at a first mover put in motion by no other, and this everyone understands to be God. an infinitely long series. Hang on, hang on. Ready? Listen, I hope you're drinking. This will make this a lot more interesting. Okay. This is really important. An infinitely long series

cannot explain the motion of the staff, right? That Aquinas is referring to here in his example, because adding members to the series, even an infinite number of them, doesn't explain why there is any motion in the first place. As the Thomist Gary Goulegrange once quipped, quote, to do away with a supreme cause is to claim that, as someone has said, a brush will paint by itself, provided it has a very long handle, end quote. All right, so that's a bit of a summary on the first three ways. Let's move on to the fourth proof. So in the fourth proof, the argument from degrees of being, Thomas argues from the idea that there is a great chain of being in which creatures become more perfect. For example, rocks, then animals, then man, then angels, and so forth. For example, rocks, then animals, then man, then angels, and so forth.

But if this chain is to be meaningful, says Aquinas, there must be a perfect being, or what we call God. Now, a modern understanding of this argument would ask if goodness is a real attribute, or just a label we arbitrarily assign. If it's real, then to what objective standard does it correspond? Of course, some people will ask, how do we know there is an objective better? Aren't all value judgments subjective? To which philosophers Peter Kreeft and Father Ron Ticheli have a witty reply. They say, quote, the very asking of this question answers it, for the questioner would not have asked it unless he or she thought it really better to do so than not, end quote. So, if the increasing degrees of goodness are real, then what's the standard we use to show that they are real? Logically, we must have a standard that includes perfection itself. But Dawkins, you see, not understanding this line of reasoning, simply responds,

and here's a quote from him, right, very well written, but again, missing the point entirely. That's an argument? You might as well say people vary in smelliness, but we can make the comparison only by reference to a perfect maximum of conceivable smelliness. Therefore, there must exist a preeminently peerless stinker, and we call him God, or substitute any dimension of comparison you like and derive an equivalently fatuous conclusion. End quote.

Okay. Well written, but misses the point okay dawkins's refutation fails because he misunderstands thomas's concept of perfection and how it only relates to having more or less being imperfections or evils in the world come from a lack of being uh we have gas in our intestines for example example, because we lack the proper food or bodily abilities to make digestion happen without waste. But the chain also goes in the other direction. A better being would be one without gas, and then one that needs no food, and then one that is not encumbered by a body. In fact, a being that is not limited by space or time itself would be superior to all these material beings. Crave and Tichelli summarized

Thomas's conclusion this way, if these degrees of perfection pertain to being and being is caused in finite creatures, then there must exist a best, a source and real standard of all perfections that All right, so let's look at the fifth proof. Thomas begins his fifth proof by talking about things that lack intelligence, but which routinely act for an end that is good. The Latin text that's often translated as designedly in the fifth way is ex intentionae, which in other passages, Thomas identifies with the natural inclinations of non-intelligent things. Since these things lack intelligence, they cannot choose to act towards a good end any more than an arrow can send itself to the bullseye of a target. But because they routinely act in that way, we can rule out chance as the explanation.

The only other explanation that makes sense is that natural things act this way because of a natural inclination they have, and an intelligent cause or God must give them this inclination. Now, again, Dawkins mistakenly thinks, all right, and many atheists do online, they all seem to think this has something to do with evolution, and we'll see it has nothing to do with it. He mistakenly thinks that the theory of evolution has made Thomas's fifth proof obsolete. Here's what he says. Quote, there's probably never been a more devastating route of popular belief by clever reasoning than Charles Darwin's destruction of the argument from design. End quote. But Thomas is not arguing that really complex beings need an explanation for why they are so complex. Evolution can explain that, I agree. Rather, Thomas wants to know why unintelligent causes reliably move towards intelligible ends. this applies not just to living things you understand but also to non-living things okay so for example electrons by nature are attracted to protons if electrons didn't have this natural

inclination then none of the elements on the periodic table would form which means none of the physical life forms we experience including, would exist anywhere in the physical universe. So, not only is evolution an insufficient response to Thomas' fifth proof, evolution would not even be possible if the building blocks of the universe didn't have the right kinds of natural inclinations that only God could provide. As Leo Elders concludes in his work, The Philosophical Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas, quote, the terminus of the fifth way is God's intellect as the author of the order in the world, and so it implicitly refers to the supernatural order which surpasses whatever men may conceive, end quote. All right, now let's talk a little bit about the divine attributes because he has a swipe at what he thinks these five ways are meant to prove, and this is something common among YouTube

atheists as well. Dawkins thinks he can undermine Thomas's proofs by claiming they are non-sequiturs and on sequitur basically just means an argument of which the conclusion doesn't follow the premises all right so this is what he says here's his quote quote even if we allow the dubious luxury of arbitrarily conjuring up a terminator to an infinite regress and giving it a name simply because we need one there is absolutely no need to endow that terminator to an infinite regress and giving it a name simply because we need one, there is absolutely no need to endow that terminator with any of the properties normally ascribed to God, omnipotence, omniscience, goodness, creativity of design, to say nothing of such human attributes as listening to prayers, forgiving sins, and reading innermost thoughts, end quote. All right, first we have to say Thomas's arguments do not prove.

Listen, listen, YouTube atheists. Thomas's arguments do not prove every truth about God that Christians believe, but that's not their purpose. Philosopher Andrew Yunin, who was actually my very first philosophy professor back in San Diego, he makes this excellent point. Listen to this. Quote, Aquinas is not saying some things move. They're moved by others. This cannot go on to infinity. Therefore, baby Jesus will hear your prayers and heal your grandmother.

End quote. Okay. It's kind of funny. hear your prayers and heal your grandmother, end quote. Okay, it's kind of funny. This objection is, like seriously, this objection that Dawkins makes, it's on par with someone replying to Dawkins' argument for evolution by saying, even if we allow the dubious luxury of a common ancestor, that does not explain how life first began on earth or how the universe began to exist for that matter from nothing. Now, just as Dawkins would rightly say that the theory

of evolution was not meant to explain all the mysteries of the universe, Thomas would say his proofs were not meant to prove all the mysteries of God's nature. Instead, they were only intended to prove the existence of the God of classical monotheism or the infinite eternal act of being itself. All right. In fact, Thomas, actually, this is kind of interesting, and this is another reason why I think Dawkins has actually never picked up the Summa Theologiae, Thomas does argue elsewhere for the divine attributes that Dawkins accuses theists of taking for granted. In fact, on the very next page, seriously, I'm not joking here, this isn't hyperbole, the literally the very next page of the Summa, Thomas asks if the first cause of the universe has a body and if he's

composed of matter and form. Thomas then uses logical arguments to show the cause of all existence must be, to get to the attributes Dawkins mentions, right? Omnipotent, omniscient, all good, that he possesses creativity of design. I mean, he begins to address this in the fifth way, right? Later in the Summa, Thomas shows from divine revelation that God listens to prayers, that he forgives sins, and that if God's omniscient, then yes, he can actually read innermost thoughts. That Dawkins seems to not know this, quite honestly, it should make us wonder whether he read Thomas in the first place, or as I said earlier, just a summary of Thomas's proofs from a secondary source. The Summa Theologica, or Summa Theologiae, is a systematically constructed

argument for the truth of the Christian faith that begins with God's existence and works its way up to the person of Christ and the role of the church, right? Like a majestic skyscraper, it is built with tremendous precision from its foundational questions. Does God exist? You know, what can we know about God? All the way up to the heights of Christian revelation. What is the Trinity? You know, did God, who is immutable, change when he became man and so forth? Now, complaining, as Dawkins and so many atheists do, complaining that the five proofs do not reveal everything about God. That's like complaining that the foundation of a building doesn't reveal who took the last Coke in the vending machine on the observation deck.

Concerning the divine attributes, Dawkins also says this. Incidentally, it has not escaped the notice of logicians that omniscience and omnipotence are mutually incompatible. If God is omniscient, he must already know he is going to intervene to change the course of history using his omnipotence. But that means he can't change his mind about his intervention, which means he is not omnipotent. So let's just address this quickly, shall we? It's precisely because God is perfect in knowledge and power that he cannot change his mind. Okay. Only by failing to understand these attributes can anyone make a case for their contradicting

each other. So let's say a word about that. Okay. So like omnipotence refers to the ability to make any potential reality an actual one. Any potential reality, you'll notice I say an actual one. This doesn't apply to impossible states of affairs that can never become actual, like square circles or married bachelors or imperfect perfect beings, like a God who changes his mind. So think about it. When a person changes his mind, it's usually because one, he learns of a better way of accomplishing X than he had

previously not known about, or two, he is prevented from accomplishing X due to something out of his control, and so he does Y instead. The first example can't apply to an omniscient being since God already knows all things and therefore he does not need to learn anything. The second example also can't apply to God since nothing is outside of his omnipotent grasp of reality. So if someone objects, as Dawkins appears to, that since God can't learn, he's not all powerful, the objector fails to understand that learning implies a deficiency in knowledge, and because God is perfect, he has no deficiencies of any kind. All right? So, up until now, we have seen that Dawkins has not undermined the evidence for the existence of God in his supposed refutations of Thomas Aquinas' Five Ways. But there is something else Dawkins has failed to do in the God delusion. And here it is. In what Dawkins calls his central argument, Dawkins says that the popular design

argument for God actually refutes God's existence because if the universe's complexity requires God to explain it, then God's complexity would require an explanation to explain him. Here's what he writes, quote, a designer God cannot be used to explain organized complexity because any God capable of designing anything would have to be complex enough to demand the same kind of explanation in his own right. God presents an infinite regress from which he cannot help us to escape. All right. But Thomas tells us that God is not complex. In fact, the reason God is the ultimate explanation of the universe is because he is not composed of anything.

If he were, then the reason God is composed in one way or another would indeed require an explanation. Instead, God just is infinite, undivided being. God needs no explanation for his existence because he just is existence itself, pure and simple. So, asking why God exists is like asking why fire is hot. Okay? Seriously, listen to that. Tweet this, somebody, would you? Asking why God exists is like asking why fire is hot.

It's because that's the nature of the thing itself. Now, Dawkins seems to be aware of this reply because he says elsewhere, quote, a God capable of continuously monitoring and controlling the individual status of every particle in the universe cannot be simple. His existence is going to need a mammoth explanation in its own right. Worse, from the point of view of simplicity, other corners of God's giant consciousness are simultaneously preoccupied with the doings and emotions and prayers of every single human being. End quote. Okay, so how do we answer this? Once again, Dawkins imagines that God is just a huge immaterial person like a cosmic genie.

He's an omnipotent being with an impressive mind that has successive thoughts, that God keeps track of, in the same way that you and I do in our minds. But God, it's important to recognize, and as Thomas points out, is not an infinite person. God does not belong to any genus or kind of being because he simply is being. Now, I admit that this is hard to understand, but so is any concept in philosophy or science, like quarks or Big Bang singularities that attempt to be a final or ultimate explanation. that attempt to be a final or ultimate explanation. But unlike those finite temporal realities, God's immaterial and eternal nature are capable of being self-explaining, or what philosophers call the property of aseity. So, the atheistic philosopher, Eric Wielenberg, even says this.

Here's a quote from him. Now, remember, he's an atheist. He says, the central weakness of Dawkins' gambit then is that it is aimed primarily at proving the non-existence of a being that is unlike the God of traditional monotheism in some important ways. In light of this, I must side with those critics of the God delusion who have judged Dawkins' gambit to be a failure. Okay, end quote. So divine simplicity also answers other objections that atheists like Dawkins love to bring up. For example, when Christians say God is the ultimate standard for morality or that God explains the existence of moral truths, atheists like to invoke the so-called Euthyphro dilemma, which is named after one of Plato's dialogues where it first

appeared. For our purposes, this is the dilemma, all right? It essentially boils down to, is something wrong because God says so, or does God say so because it's wrong? Now, that's a dilemma, you see, because if it's wrong because God says so, then God could say rape and murder were right, you know, but that seems crazy. But if we say, well, God says it's wrong because it's wrong, then morality is independent of God, right? Who should be sovereign overall? So, the answer to the dilemma is that an action is wrong because it contradicts what Thomas calls the eternal law. And this comes from the mind of God. God is not an omnipotent tyrant who could command any old thing. Since God is simple, his power is identical to his knowledge,

which is identical to his goodness. According to Thomas, quote, in God, power and essence, will and intellect, wisdom and justice are one and the same. Whence there can be nothing in the divine power which cannot also be in his just will or in his wise intellect, end quote. So, what have we learned? We're coming to the end of the paper now. First, we should realize that Dawkins' central argument against God doesn't work because it's not even addressing the strongest, most logical conception of God that is believed by theists like St. Thomas Aquinas. His objections to the theistic arguments in favor of God also suffer from similar misunderstanding and logical gaps. Dawkins erroneously believes the

first three proofs merely assume that God brought the universe into existence out of nothing. As a result, he fails to rebut how they prove God is the ultimate foundation of a chain of essentially ordered causes. Dawkins also misunderstands the fourth way and thinks it has to do with any dimension of comparison and not a comparison of being and its relation to perfection. Finally, Dawkins thinks that the fifth way is about complexity and not the regularity we perceive in nature that can only be explained by a designer of the universe. Therefore, that's the last time I'll bang this, I promise. Therefore, we should conclude that Dawkins' attempted refutation of Thomas' five proofs are, in Dawkins' words, easily exposed as vacuous. All right, so that sums up my thoughts on

Dawkins' apparent refutation, supposed refutation, which fails, Aquinas' five ways. But it's not enough just to understand how people misunderstand Aquinas' five ways. We need to understand them ourselves. And that's why I have co-written this book that I mentioned in the beginning with Robert Delfino called Does God Exist? A Socratic Dialogue on the Five Ways of Thomas Aquinas. This is written in a real fun style. As I said earlier, it's a Socratic back and forth between an atheist and a Christian in a coffee shop. So it gets into some pretty dense philosophy, but it's done in a fun way. And I really believe

that you're going to enjoy it and it's going to help you understand not only Aquinas' five ways, but it'll really help you as you dialogue with atheists in your life so that you can do it in a respectful and intelligent manner. So if you go to Amazon and type, you know, Does God Exist or just type Matt Fradd, you'll find it. I'll put a link up in the show notes. I'll put links all over my social media and everywhere. Please get a copy. And then, you know what would be just huge for us? Because to be honest, we're publishing this book through a small publishing house. So it's not going to have a large reach unless you help us. So we actually have, we say something in the introduction. We say we're trying to get

this out to a larger audience. So if you get this book, take a photo of you holding the book. By doing that, you'll get access to an exclusive hour-long interview that I do with Robert Delfino. And you can also ask us any one question you want about the book and we'll respond to it. So we're just trying to get the word out. In addition to that, if you could leave us a review on Amazon, that would be hugely appreciated. Thank you so much for tuning in to Pints with Aquinas week after week. I sincerely hope that what we're trying to accomplish here has been and will be a blessing to you and many others. We just got a message the other day from a couple who are coming into the Catholic Church. They are evangelical Protestants,

have been listening to the show for a long time, and they said that this show is the primary reason that they're now converting. So, glory to Jesus Christ, because this has nothing to do with an Australian banging a wine bottle and spouting off his opinions. This has far more to do with the Holy Spirit at work in the heart of those who listen to this. So in addition to those who are supporting me financially on Patreon, which means the world to me, please continue to pray.

Maybe every time you pray your rosary, just mention Pines with Aquinas. Pray for the listeners listeners because without prayer, I truly believe that this show will be ineffective and I don't want to waste my time creating a fun podcast that isn't going to have supernatural eternal consequences, quite frankly. So there you go. God bless you. Check us out at pintswithaquinas.com. When you tweet, tweet hashtag Pints with Aquinas, and we'll retweet you when we can. God bless you. Thanks a lot. Chat with you next week. I took you in

Too many grains of salt and juice Lest we be frauds or worse, accused Hollow me too deep and in you Whose wolves am I feeding myself to? Who's gonna survive? Who's gonna survive? Who's gonna survive?