Pints With Aquinas - Gavin Ortlund & Trent Horn AGREEING on Stuff

Episode Date: March 3, 2023

Matt sits down for a post debate chat on Sola Scriptura, Catholic/Protestant apologetics and God's existence with  @TheCounselofTrent  and  @TruthUnites ​ Covenant Eyes: https://coveyes.com/fradd1 Everything Catholic: https://everythingcatholic.com Hallow: https://hallow.com/mattfradd

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And the customer support staff are all up in Michigan. So they're there, willing to help. Covenantize.com. Covenantize.com. Trent, Gavin, hi. Howdy, bro. How will you feel? This is great to have you in the same room.

Last night was an excellent debate. You both did really well. That was super fun. What's it what's the. What's it like coming down off of a debate, because I'm sure you get amped up. I know for me, I'd feel like a ton of anxiety, hoping that I'd do well, knowing I'm not going to be able to say everything I want to say. Yeah. How do you how do you feel right now after that?

After a debate, my first craving is to go to McDonald's. It has become like a debate ritual for me. I'm just like- You really treat yourself. I do. I'm just like, you know what? I have an adrenaline crash right now. Is that what you do?

After every debate, like I'll tell Laura, especially I do a lot of them on Zoom at home. And then when it's done, it'll be late like eight or nine o'clock at night. Cause usually I don't eat like a big dinner before a debate. Like, you don't want your stomach all weird. I'll have like a little tiny salad. But then when it's done, you're like, all right, I'm done.

That's over. I can relax now. My adrenaline's crashing. Just super hungry. And I want something bad for me that will like put me in a coma. So I want two double cheeseburgers and two small fries cause they have the $3 bundle at McDonald's.

It's a great deal. Yeah, I feel peace and relaxation afterwards. It's kind of like after a sermon, you've put it all out there and you're just sort of calm. The challenge will be a few days later when you watch it and you think this is what I could have said differently or that kind of thing. But afterwards there's great reassurance.

There's always that. You're just like, ah, to go back and do this different or that different. But that's kind of like, it's kind of like anything when you do books or when you do a sermon. There's this phrase, art is never finished, it's only abandoned. So it's like you work on something,

you'll always go back and be like, ah, to do it different. But life goes on. How many debates have you done? This is number six. Formal, not kind of discussions, but formal time. This is the first live one. Yeah. The others have been over a computer,

I think four or five other ones. That was my main feeling about this one, is how much more enjoyable it was to be in person. I love doing them live. It makes such a difference. Cause you've done 8,000 debates now, I think. Oh, no. I mean, I've done enough.

I've done enough. Do you feel a lot less nervous and anxious than you did the first say dozen? Yeah, I think I've done more than 12. So I'd say I've done over a dozen. And yeah, so I do feel like, I didn't really feel like I got into a groove of debates until like doing four or five of them.

But like I'm always, I'm always learning. And it's just like, with different people, you get a different experience and learn different things of what you would, you were glad you did things you would rather do differently. So I'm going to, I'm totally going to make Laura mad. She's gonna say, don't talk about jujitsu. I'm like, I'm gonna talk about jujitsu. Here we go. Totally. She's like, you're always talking about it too.

You're always talking about it. It's like the other woman. Totally. It's similar. Or if you do a martial art, it's actually kind of similar in that respect. Like if you go- It's awkward. You suck at it.

So, well, at the beginning, yeah. At least I do. But I did jujitsu for about three weeks and then I was like, I just cannot. No, you gotta stick with it, man. You gotta push through it. But that's the thing, you're gonna be bad at the beginning. Yeah. I do I did you did see for about three weeks and there's like I just cannot know you got to stick with it man But that's the thing you're gonna be bad at the beginning. Yeah But so you but the more you but you the more you do it you get better and also like if I do jiu-jitsu

Or you do martial arts, I wonder whatever it is different opponents will test your different approaches and you'll get different feelings Right because like you're very what's the word? Just kind and humble. Like people really love that about you. Like I was watching last time, like I think you're the most likable person I've ever encountered. So like if you took a going for the jugular approach, you would have just looked like a jerk because I know I mean,

whereas if maybe you were debating someone more inflammatory, say James White or someone like that, maybe something like that would be more. I would never go for the jugular, but I would go for the carotid to quickly put them to sleep with a rear naked choke. So I wouldn't go for the jugular, but the carotid artery, yeah, definitely. And what about you?

Like is there this sense in which you're like, okay, how do I convey this well? How do I expose what I believe is false in the other person's position and yet maintain that charity towards the person? It's gonna be a difficult line to walk. The video that I put out before was very much on that tension of on the one hand,

you want to really lay into the arguments and not hold back at all. At the same time, how you argue is part of the content you're trying to get across. If, it's just 1 Corinthians 13. Without love, it's a clanging gong or resounding symbol without love It's not just insufficient. It's Counterproductive I believe that now that I think that'll be expressed differently in a debate than if you're having a dialogue

So you have to be mindful of the format you're in but I Really think that's true. You can you can alienate people Now but love doesn't mean you're not sharp in your rhetoric And so that's the thing that's interesting to me about debates is it's such a different kind of format That's the one thing I don't like about debates Is that for the audience the rhetoric will often be more influential than the arguments and you have to be mindful of that? And that's kind of a bummer, but you also hope people, you hope people out there will slow down and actually think about what's being said.

Sometimes it seems as though they're just looking for that one little sharp turn of rhetoric. And that's why I tell people like why I do debates. Like I don't think a debate ends an issue. That for me, debates don't end issues, they begin them. That like, because there's a lot of rhetoric involved

and personality, I like debates, especially live debates people go back and forth, is because it gets people excited about the topic being debated. Whereas normally like, you and I could like write a book on like solo scriptura and we exchange and we've got like the written replies back and forth. And not as many people necessarily pick that up and go through it versus like watching the clash.

And there's rhetoric and there's, you know, back and forth. But in watching it, my goal at the very least is people to say that other guy had a really interesting point. I want to go and look into that more. Or I want to I want to read the different sides of this and really get into this more. So that's why I do debates where I think like, if you make a decision of what to believe in based on watching one debate, that's not a sound epistemology because the ability, because I'm sure like the apostles lost debates with their Jewish opponents. Probably you could have gone up against,

you know, a Judaizer who's just like sharp as, you know, can quote the Torah like nobody's business and, you know, go and engage other people. But, and that's, but debates have a good virtue to them because you read the New Testament, you see they debating in the synagogue, Stephen could not be refuted by his opponents. But the goal for me in doing them is like, it's gonna get people excited about this topic to wanna investigate it and come to their own conclusion and look at each side. What I like about debates, just to add onto that,

is the structure, because it guarantees this kind of objective process where each party has equal time, and there's something that emerges from the objectivity of that process, and you just let it run its course. I think I compared it to a job interview process where many times you don't know how it's gonna go

at the beginning. And I found you have to kind of submit yourself to the process and just be okay with not knowing, you know, halfway through. And a debate is kind of like that. There's this dynamic that emerges through that objective process that helps us discern the truth.

How have Catholic and Protestant debates evolved over the last 20, 30 years, would you say? I'd be curious for your thoughts on that. I mean, my feeling is in some respects they have gotten more respectful. I wonder if the culture has changed and become more hostile in certain ways such that many Roman Catholics and Protestants are able to get along a bit better and because we feel we have a common enemy at times. Well, yeah, you think back to like, especially like the late 80s, early 90s, kind of like the heyday of Catholic,

well, I guess if you look at it, so after the Second Vatican Council, so in like the 1960s, you have like a modernism movement, you have Time Magazine has that cover, God is Dead, you know, in the modern age. And so you have a revival, especially within Protestantism, like the Jesus Freaks, the 1970s, like these kind of revival movements. And from that, their big goal, like in the 80s and 90ism, like the Jesus Freaks, the 1970s, like these kind of revival movements. And from that, their big goal, like in the 80s and 90s, is like rescue Catholics. And like, you know, so you have,

and so there's this big response, which would encourage like Karl Keating and others, and Scott Hahn and Pat Madrid to answer these arguments. And so you first time you have this clash coming together, where you have people where, yeah, it's, where the only thing we see is just like each other and we're going at it. But then after the early 2000s, when you have like the rise of the new atheism,

suddenly it's like, and not just the new atheism, but like you see where cultural morality has just like cratered. We suddenly realize, hey, we have a lot more in common than we think, we gotta work together. It's also interesting though, in terms of the content of debates, if you go back and watch a solo scriptural debate

30 years ago, I think we were just saying this before we started, a lot of the basic issues are the exact same. The same arguments get rehashed, and so in some ways, you'd almost think, you'd almost feel discouraged that we've not made more progress on some of the basic talking points. But I like what you said, each debate is an unfinished process, and so over time you make

progress if you're listening. If you're just trying to score a rhetorical point, you're probably not going to make any progress. If you're really sincerely concerned for the truth, I do believe we can make progress over time. From my vantage point as a Catholic, and I'd love your feedback on this too, it felt like Catholics were just kind of sitting ducks for Protestants.

We didn't know our Bible as well. A lot of the kind of, there's a lot of anti-Catholic rhetoric. I don't know what I mean by anti-Catholic. Well, I think by anti-Catholic I would mean like, you are actually a force of evil in our culture, not just you're wrong. And there was a lot of like horror Babylon and you worship Mary.

Just real quick. Yeah. And so it was actually really nice, I think, for Catholics to see people like Pat Madrid come out swinging. And we really appreciated that finally somewhat. That's it. I think that's why I appreciate that more aggressive type of apologetics. And then maybe what we did is we misunderstood Pat Madrid's arguments and then we straw man the Protestant position. And then we found out, OK, things are a bit more complicated.

It would really be nice if they understood us better instead of straw manning us. And be good if we understood them better. And so I think that. Yeah. Well, I was just going to say that I agree that I try to be careful with labels. Just because someone is critical of Catholicism, I don't wanna give them the label an anti-Catholic. Certainly not, yeah. Just like I wouldn't wanna be considered an anti-Protestant.

It's like, you know, I'll refer to people as maybe like a Protestant apologist or a reformed apologist. One who defends a particular position will involve being critical of other views of disagree. But anti whatever, I think there's some kind of like, not necessarily malice, but just like perpetuating almost like hateful attitudes. What would an anti Protestant be? Yeah, I mean, perpetuating a hateful attitude

is kind of the thing that comes to my mind, but the question you asked kind of raises a perennial tension that I wrestle with is how do you even gauge the other side? Because the noisiest voices that will seem anti-protestant don't represent the majority of people. This is something I experienced last night. Very warm, very hospitable, very gracious people. Every single person that I spoke to, most of them, most of the people there, most of the people commenting are Roman Catholics, every single person is very gracious.

But the people who are not gracious, who are anti-Protestants, are more vocal and it's easier for their voices to be louder. And I'm sure it's the same in the opposite direction. So that's another one of those tensions as we talk to each other, is not allowing the most vocal voices to represent the entire tradition,

the majority of which may not be well represented by that. The thing that's just in my heart about all this is that I do believe we can make progress with time, and I think it does take time to understand each other. If the only goal you have is simply to denounce, we will misunderstand each other. If the only goal you have is simply to denounce, we will misunderstand each other. There are beliefs about Protestants that have taken me 20 years to understand

that only through patient dialogue, or you might become friends with someone who's of a different political view, and it might be 20 years of friendship before you really understand why, like their backstory, their values, why they're coming to that conclusion. So I have a respect for patient dialogue without taking away from the substantive argument because the truth is not relative, but we're all very finite.

Giving each other the benefit of the doubt is a very difficult thing to do, especially when you're convinced you're right and you're convinced that what this person is saying has been refuted soundly. But and so we're tempted to say things like, well, this person's lying. And I think that too, when I watch trans activists speaking, I think I was listening to somebody that I'm like, OK, I think this person like really does believe this. I was listening to somebody that I'm like, okay, I think this person like really does believe this. So trying to understand what they're saying and kind of responding, giving them an off ramp as it were, I think is the way to go.

Just sort of saying you're a liar. Well, I am, there's something that reminds me, I think it's called Heinlein's razor. And it's just an adage, don't attribute to malice what can be attributed to ignorance. Yeah. And so I try to err on that. Like, for example, and this happens all the time, like we've gotten this nice pattern of like rebuttal videos, like we'll put out a night, here's my thoughts on

something. Here's why I disagree with you. And rebuttals to rebuttals. Oh, yeah. And rebuttals to rebuttals. And that is why I have my rule. My rule is always like one rebuttal, then you get a dialogue debate. It's a good rule. Not for every rebuttal. Some people all rebuttal, I just wanna put it out there. I'm not really interested in dialogue and debating them.

But I want something to break the infinite cycle and a face-to-face dialogue is a great way to do that. But it's often, we can be tempted to say like, oh, this person misrepresented me. When I think our first instinct should just be this person misunderstood me. We always want to, I think, to attribute to people because that can happen when we're trying

to understand each other and language can be ambiguous and what people say versus what they mean. We should always start with that we are ignorant or misunderstood or hopped over something, but the idea of like misrepresenting or this person is lying about something. Or it's just- Or at least you could say they misrepresented me

because they misunderstood me. Exactly. Because you may need to say they misrepresented me. Right. If your position is this and what they said is this, and if their video gets five times as many views as yours, you might need to point that out. But one thing I want to say is just, my value is ironicism, I know I talk a lot about that.

One thing that I have to remember and I think is so important is that doesn't mean you don't, I mean, there are times, I think of Christ with the Pharisees, so if Christ is our model of love, there are times, I mean, he calls them broods of vipers. So just the other day I put out a tweet about mocking people and how basically if you mock someone on Twitter, you will gain a greater following. And I was saying we have to resist that pressure to become scornful because of the rewards of the algorithms. And, but I edited it before I put it out to say,

frequently mocking people. Cause there are those times where you have to sort of rise to the challenge. It's like salt. It's something that should be done sparingly. When you overdo it, it sours everything. Cause yeah, I love like in the Old Testament, for example, the prophet Elijah mocks the prophets of all.

And he's like making fun of them about how their God can't get the job done. And he's on vacation. And, and so the problem is some people take these particular instances as a license to just make that their modus operandi. And that's where I think you get a problem. Are there people that I'm sure there's people you've heard debate and you're like, Oh, please don't please don't debate. You're not good at it. You know, like you must have had some natural aptitude for conflict and engaging on these

issues before you stepped in the ring. But what would your advice be to people perhaps on whether they should begin to debate or not? I think knowing the different medium. So it's kind of like preaching a sermon versus giving an academic presentation. If you don't understand academics and you're just used to preaching,

you need to learn this is an entirely different kind of discourse to do an academic presentation. Similarly, pastoral ministry, academic work, those are both completely different from debate and apologetics. Right. It's a completely different style of discourse. So you just have to learn the rules. I mean, that's hard. It takes time. I did debate in high school, and then I didn't do debates after that until a few years ago.

But just learning the value of preparation, I think preparation is 95% of a debate. You just, you can't do it in the moment, unless you're a super genius. You have to be basically prepared for whatever you're gonna encounter beforehand so you're just ready to go in the moment. And then thinking about sound bites and rhetoric and succinct expression that will catch the ear.

I think those are some of the values. So people just need to learn, you know, I think through, am I good at those skills, I guess. Yeah, it's hard because I don't want to tell someone you have to bat a thousand, like you have to be perfect. Like I've done debates or I'm like, I probably would have done that a little differently or, you know, always being self-critical. But at the same time, I have seen some debates, whether it's a Catholic or just a Christian, like a Protestant. I've seen Protestant Christians debate atheists and I've watched and it is highly unfortunate to watch a train wreck with your side.

Yes. It's just like, oh, that's what prevented me from watching the Hitchens Craig debate. I had watched a few people debate Hitchens and he just skewered them. And I thought, I cannot, I can't watch another debate where my guy loses. But I watched it and I was obviously pleasantly surprised. Of course. Wiped the floor with him. But yeah, and so like when I disservice, you can do a disservice to the gospel. If you're too prideful to be able to acknowledge that I'm not good in this format.

Well, I think if you want to do debates and dialogues, uh, you have to treat it sort of like boxing. Laura's going to be rolling around her head. Stop it already. My only other hobby outside of apologetics is like your first round can't be with the heavyweight champion. Like you're going with other people in your division. So if you're someone who's like, I want to do debates like trainer Gavin does. So like, okay, go on like a smaller YouTube channel and give that a try.

Like I watched a debate once with a Protestant Christian debating a very, it was clear it was like his first debate. And it was with an atheist apologist who had done like 60 debates. And so it was like watching Mike Tyson go up against a total rookie. And it was just like, it was just pain. And the person also didn't have a particular aptitude

for a debate like with the manner in which they spoke, for example. So I think if you do it, you have to be humble, recognize your limits and also have, the book of Proverbs says that a plan with many counselors succeeds. So like to have other people who will honestly tell you if you're on the right track,

like you don't have to be perfect, but they should be able to see you have a knack for it. And as you do it, there's a trajectory of positivity, but you gotta have those people who are not yes men who are willing to tell you, I don't know if this is the gift you're called to, is the same you might encounter someone who's they could be like a brilliant Theologian and you've probably had this you meet Protestant authors brilliant theologians and they give a sermon and it's just it's a dreck Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah

And one thing that we can do is just if someone out there is wondering should I do debates you can do one That's not public right you can find an atheist friend and just spar with them. And then things grow out of that. But if your motive is, I wanna be known and I want people to watch this and that kind of thing, you might just dive in too quickly. So that's another thing. Not every one of our conversations

has to be for the cameras. We can just talk without, and taking away the public audience really depressurizes things. It's a great way to learn You say 95% is prep. So here's a question for each of you. What is something in your preparation? Because obviously you're kind of Studying perhaps what Trent's written and vice versa

We'll start with you Trent. How are some what are some ways that Catholics? Misunderstand what Protestants are saying about Sola Scriptura? What would you like Catholics to stop saying because they haven't better understood it? Yeah, here's a classic one. I've seen a retort to Sola Scriptura is, well, why would we believe in Sola Scriptura when the Bible itself says there are many things that Jesus did that were not recorded? So they'll say, well, how can Sola Scriptura be true? Look in John's gospel. It says that hyperbolically, you know, there's so many things that Jesus did. There aren't enough books in the world to record them. So Sola Scriptura must be false. And the obvious rejoinder to that is we don't need the Bible to record everything that Jesus did. The fact that there are things Jesus said and did that are not in the Bible is not a threat to solo scriptura because one could just say, well, look, the Bible contains within it those things

that Jesus and the apostles want us to know. And that's what's important. So, and the same with either side. I have seen different arguments when I go through, I'm like, oh yeah, I don't, that that would be one misrepresentation, that scripture contains like a totality of knowledge, or even a totality of theological knowledge, would be beyond what its defenders claim. There are so many. On both sides. I mean, there are just so many.

That's where, yeah, that's where you hope for more of that patient dialogue and understanding while we keep arguing because so often the criticism, we're just, it's like missiles being shot that don't hit the target in each direction sometimes. I think for Protestants, sometimes we just don't understand that advocating for a high view of Scripture is not enough. I mean you hear Protestants argue like this all the time, that well, you know, they'll quote verses in Scripture that are saying positive things about the Scripture

as though that established sola scriptura. And I'm kind of amazed when I hear hear that and you just think, you know, a Roman Catholic will agree that the Scripture is the inspired Word of God, that it is infallible. You need to go more further than that to get to that. The other thing, sometimes Protestants are so overly ambitious and they think that you can, you know, get the entire idea from one verse or something like that. And so, yeah, there's a great need for caution. And that's a difference in approaches that I found compared to yourself. Like, if I was to engage people on Sola Scriptura, there are going to be different approaches. Like some Protestant apologists will say,

well, I've got this in the bag. It's in second Timothy three 17, which I didn't even mention in my you. Yeah. And I was prepared for that because I didn't know if you'd want to throw that out there like, oh, you know, you never know what will happen. But there are some that will say, look, let's look at the Greek second to me, three 17. It's all right there. We're set games or folks. Let's head out and get a cigar, versus more of the prolegomena epistemological approach that you take. So you have to understand that people

will take different approaches to these things. How do we hold to things that we don't feel fully certain of? You know, in the 13th century in Italy, let's say, you probably had Catholics and then you had those Muslims over there. You felt pretty set that you were right. It's difficult today interacting with a whole slew of people who hold a whole variety of

opinions that conflict with yours and you know, they're not stupid. And so you, I don't know, I can see that in a time of like confusion, we desperately seek certainty. And maybe that's why we get into polemics. Like you're just an idiot because then I can be right. But there are a lot of issues. Like if you and I were to go back on solo scriptura now, I don't think I'd come close to sounding coherent. And that's maybe that's true with you of other people, you know, and I don't know if you or not, but how, um, like how do we hold to things that? Yeah, that this is one of the comments I see most frequently that I have a lot of compassion

for when someone is saying, wow, both sides seem intelligent, both sides seem compelling. How in the world am I to make up my mind on this and have a conviction and live in light of that conviction when I don't have the time to become an expert on this and have a conviction and live in light of that conviction when I don't have the time to become an expert on this. There's all these different options. And I think if someone is having that struggle in the way that's a good thing, because they're grasping the complexity of these issues,

one of the things I like to encourage people is that study is important, but I believe the piece that comes from your convictions isn't mainly from study. I think that's a piece of it, but I think it's this sort of holistic engagement at every level of your being. And when that is your approach to truth, it leads to a kind of peace. So if people are thinking, well, if I just study more, then I will be settled. You know, a lot of people are trying to find their identity and their beliefs, and so when they have that uncertainty, they will feel like their very identity is threatened. And I often wonder if that's where

a lot of the more ugly polemics come from. It's like, this is threatening the core of my being because I found my identity in all these things. So maybe the better approach is you find your identity in the core of your faith, the gospel itself, and then different beliefs. Some will be very close to that. Some will be very important, but there'll be a spectrum of importance and you don't put so much emotional loyalty on these things out in the periphery. That at least helps you get started a bit, it seems. Does some of the piece too come from knowing that you're being honest with yourself? Like, you know, to the best of my knowledge, to the best of my study, this makes sense to me. I don't know

how to have this not make sense to me. I know I could engage with somebody on this issue and maybe they would refute me and I wouldn't even understand what they're saying, but... Oh yeah, I mean, it's a comforting thought the way Christ is so responsive to faith. And I believe God values sincerity. So if you are full-blooded, wholehearted into, with every level of your being seeking truth, I think we know we have a God who will honor that. Yeah, I'd like you to respond to about that, having peace when you, there's a lot of people who disagree with you,

but I take tremendous comfort in reminding myself that Christ isn't looking to damn me, you know, that he desires all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. And the idea that there's some historical technicality that I haven't carefully considered and therefore, yeah. Well, I think we have to understand that for any position, of any major position, you're gonna find

an intelligent representative of it that you don't feel capable of refuting. So it doesn't follow from that. That doesn't follow from that, that none of them are true. You know, so clearly some of them have to be right by process of elimination, like either atheists or theists are right about God. It's mutually exclusive. Christians or non-Christians are right about the resurrection. Catholics or non-Catholics are right about the papacy.

So someone has to be right. And I think that, yeah, it is important to realize like you can know something is true, even if you can't show it to other people, and to not completely get lost in the books, well, study is important, but to pray, to draw close to God, especially among Christians trying to discern where is the fullness of the gospel,

where is God fully given the deposit of faith? And I think whether it's Christianity or Catholicism, there can be, if you're 50-50 on the fence, you're just like, I can't make a decision. I'm 50-50, whether it's like, I really wanna be Christian, but I'm not fully convinced, I'm right on the fence, or I'd like to be Catholic, but I'm like on the fence, I'm not sure.

Sometimes there is merit in just living out that thing that you want to be true, even if you are, you're just straight 50-50. And if the evidence could go either way, well, just pick the one you want to be true. And then it might settle a bit after that. That's a bit how I thought of the goal of my book on the existence of God, which I gave you the wrong title for last night. Sorry, but that was my fault, not your.

Yeah, good. No problem. Bad butchering your title, but it was in there. No worries. In my own mind, the way I thought about that book, and Pascal was the great influence on this, is if I can get the reader to 65% probability that God exists, I'll be happy.

But what I want to do then is layer on top of that this sense of, wow, that would really be an expansive, wonderful thing if God does exist. Because I don't think you need to get people to 100% to move them at a practical level. But especially if you're touching the heart, that's my great interest with arguing for the existence of God right now.

If you take theism and atheism and you look down the road at all of the implications, I believe atheism is a dehumanizing worldview. I believe it robs us of those values that almost no one can actually fully be consistent in embracing that. What that means for love, what that means for our conscience, what that means for how you relate to your children. If you really think through the implications, it is a devastating worldview. So I think helping people see the affective dimension helps and reduces a little bit of the pressure on the intellectual certainty that we might feel we need to maneuver someone towards. That's good. I'd like to move into this conversation about God's existence. It'll be nice to have

the two of you on the same team. But I do want to have just one more question here. Sure. And it's kind of a challenge to Catholics. And that is, I remember listening to Pat Madrid debates back in the nineties and him saying like, look, how divided you are Protestants, but we have this infallible church that's able to sell these claims. I mean, that kind of came back to bite us, didn't it? I mean, look at how divided Catholics are, like our vitriol isn't for Protestants anymore, it's for each other. Like you pointed out last night, I mean, you ask a Catholic about salvation or the death penalty or who the Pope is, you know, you're

going to get a lot of different answers. So I don't think we have this infallible church to save us from the, from the chaos that we perceive in Protestantism. No, I think we do. But as I mentioned in the debate last night, that the magisterium exercises infallibility rarely, uh, compared to your example about the break glass in the case of emergency. Yeah. And that typically, you know, it offers that, um, and I think we can find a similar parallel in Scripture, that Scripture might teach

something, but it doesn't follow its taught it as a perpetual norm for the church, like what Paul says about women wearing veils in 1 Corinthians 11, for example, that even when, you know, so there's a similar analog there when it comes to Protestants and the authority of Scripture. So, I think as Catholics, we should not oversell to say, look, there are disputes among Catholics. And some of them are, you know, about issues of prudence, like, was this a good idea? Was this a bad idea? There are theological matters the church hasn't weighed in on. Who's right about God's foreknowledge? The Thomists, the Molanists, or maybe other people off in the way? The church hasn't given an answer to that question. But I do think it's worth exploring more,

and I'm happy to explore more in a lot of venues, just exactly what are disagreements among those who use Sola Scriptura as a epistemology versus those who appeal to sacred tradition or to sacred tradition in the magisterium? What are the essence of the differences there? Because you're always going to have people that disagree. But I do think one can objectively determine the amount of disagreement

between these different epistemologies and find some to be more or less. I certainly don't want to open up another debate on this topic, but feel free to feel free to respond from commenting. All right. Yeah, fair enough. All right. So the two of you have written books on God's existence. That was one of your first big ones, wasn't it? Answering Atheism. Answering Atheism.

How do you feel that's fared? What do you mean? Would you go back and say, oh man, I would not make that argument today? Gavin has five kids and I have three kids. And I think what you learn is with your first kid, you make all the mistakes. And you're like, oh yeah, man, what was I thinking?

That was, then with your fifth kid, you're just like, ah, I'll be fine. You know, I don't even, but I remember. I'm just gonna ask for some questions from my local supporters. Of course, yeah. I'm not bored. No, no, well, when it comes to answering atheism, I actually, I have learned a lot in the past 10 years

of doing debates with atheists, of reading atheistic literature. So I am in the point now, in the next, over the next two or three years, I have a few different book projects on the table. One of them, I'm thinking of calling like the new case for God. And I might do two books. One is more of a higher level book and the other is kind of a very popular level. And they may end up replacing Answering Atheism. I love Answering Atheism, but I've learned a lot since I wrote it, both about

like how I would engage atheism and just how to write a book, frankly, is my first one, that I think, because there's been a lot of arguments done recently, like I love the work, like what Ed Faeser has done, Rob Kuhns, David Oderberg, Alex Pruss, Josh Rasmussen, who is an excellent Protestant philosopher actually. He really is, yeah. To really take the arguments that I had been using and refine them, and they've been refined as I've done debates with different atheists,

to like, in every debate I do, it's sort of like in The Incredibles, when Syndrome's master plan with the Omnidroid, is like he builds them and he has the supers fight them to find their weaknesses, and he just repairs them so that it keeps getting better and better for each super that they fight. So like with my arguments, I have arguments, whether it's for God or for Christianity, whatever,

the more debates and engagement I do, it's like, oh, there's a weakness there. I can fix that and then it'll fare better the next time I go out and engage people. So yeah, when it comes to that, I like answering atheism, but instead of doing a second edition of the book, I'd like to do just like one that's like highfalutin tootin, maybe like eight people will read it.

And then just something more distilled. And a lot of authors are kind of doing that. William Lane Craig does that. He'll write his like book that for a German press that's like ridiculously thick. And then like the popular one for people. Just real quick, that self-effacing joke you made about William Lane Craig last night It was hilarious. Can you? Reiterate that when you're saying I don't want to have to debate William Lane Craig and thankfully I don't have to that was excellent

Well, he he's got the the bait chops. I will say this when we talk about people like doing debates Be the best version of yourself as a debater I've actually read articles of, and my friend Randall Rouser has talked about this, I've read articles about it, where people at Biola and Talbot will like, they will study to do debates, Christian debates. And all they study is William Lane Craig. And so, like, when they're doing their debates, they unintentionally adopt, they unintentionally adopt his mannerisms, his quasi-Midwestern accent. So they call him Craig clones as a result.

So it's like, if you want to do debates, don't be a Gavin clone, don't be a Trent clone. You can learn from other people, but be yourself. Yeah, fair enough. And then your book recently came out. Tell us about that. Yeah, it came out fall 2021. It's called Why God Makes Sense in a World That Doesn't. It's an argument for the existence of God. It is casting traditional arguments in a narrative frame. So it's going through these classical arguments, the moral

argument, for example, cosmological argument, and casting them as the basic building blocks of a story. So it's saying we can look at the universe as a story and So the moral argument is the drama of the story the Christological argument is the hope of the story and then it's drawing attention to both the basic Intellectual argument but also the beauty of theism so I'm saying look down the road at naturalism The philosophy that there's nothing beyond physical nature, and theism, just to take those two options, which one is more plausible as a story about the world, but which one is just a better story. I start off the whole book with

the passage about Puddlegum in the silver chair, or basically to really whittle it down. He's saying, you know, if a naturalistic way of looking at things was true, I would absolutely hate it. I wouldn't want to give myself to it. There's nothing of nobility or value in that that draws me to it. So it's kind of getting into what people call the axiology of theism, the desirability of it. And I just, so it's trying to hit the head and the heart. I will say since then, now my interests have kind of pushed in a different direction into what we call cultural apologetics.

And what I'm really interested in is how we address the despair in our culture. I'm actually really curious what you guys would think about this, but I just have the intuition that there's a lot of hopelessness right now and I think most people wouldn't walk around saying I'm in despair Yeah, but I think deep at a sort of semi-conscious level I think most people in a secular culture struggle with feelings of a lack of transcendence in their life, loneliness, lack of community, a restlessness,

a spiritual restlessness, these deep things going on underneath the surface. So I'm really interested in kind of asking, what do we do about that? How do we speak differently in light of that? What does an apologetic look like that touches those dynamics going on in the human heart in the culture right now. It's been interesting to see how the new atheism had its heyday, you know, around 2008-10 something. Then it felt like it dropped off and it felt like

Jordan Peterson, who's not a Christian, right, kind of stepped in and pushed back against the overreach of the atheists. And I think stop arguing about God and clean your room. It's like a don't be a, don't be a lobster about God. He's like a gateway drug to Christianity in some ways, because people are, he is, I think, addressing in some ways that kind of despair. Well, I think sometimes what it's, it's interesting. I remember once I was talking with, uh was talking with an atheist friend about this.

Well actually, oh no, I was discussing this with John Steingard, who was, he was previous, he's a deconstructed evangelical. He was previously a Christian Protestant. He was the lead singer of this well-known Christian band, Hawk Nelson, and then he left the face, had a deconversion, and now he's on a journey again, and he's more, he's very open to theism now, and he's still wrestling with a lot of issues. And he brought up a point to me he found interesting.

He said, you know, I think it's so interesting when Christians will debate, like they'll just debate whether God exists or not. They're not willing to debate like, hey, here's all of Christianity is true. I'm gonna show God and hell and all of this stuff. They only like focus on one little thing, like proving just that God exists.

And my reply to him was, this was in the interview we did a while ago. I said, yeah, but I think atheists do the same thing. Like many atheists who are materialists who believe in a reductive view of the world that only matter exists, won't do a debate where they'll say, guess what? The only stuff that exists is matter.

They'll just debate, well, God exists or he doesn't exist. And because it's easy to say, oh, well, here's, you're this being God does not exist. It's easy to poke, oh, well, here's, this being God does not exist. It's easy to poke holes in like one statement. It's a lot more difficult to construct a worldview and to say, this is the way reality is. And this is important for us to understand, like we've talked about Catholics and Protestants misrepresenting each other and misunderstanding. If someone's an atheist, I don't understand their worldview just by knowing they're an

atheist. Because you could, I know people who are atheists, like you have for example, Philip Goff I think is an example, he's a philosopher who's defended the fine-tuning argument for God. I'm pretty sure he is an atheist or at least non-religious, but he believes in cosmic teleology. So he thinks, so he's almost like a pantheist a little bit. Like he believes the universe has an order to it that neat that

It has an inbuilt teleology. It does it's not not purely reductive. So you'll have some atheists who are just yeah It's just materialism others will say yeah, there are immaterial things and there's realities a bit richer and deeper But I think it's more like what you're saying about telling a story It's like the story of materialism is a rather grim one I'd rather not be a character in. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm curious if you guys sense this, but my intuition is the needs in apologetics are changing somewhat. I don't want to overstate that because at the end of the day, you still need to have

just good classical solid arguments. But there's so much deconstruction right now. I don't know if you see this as much in your circles, but in evangelical circles There's a lot of people leaving the church the percentage of religiously unaffiliated people in the United States 30 years ago is about 5% Today it's almost 30. They go from one out of 20 Who's an atheist or agnostic or not affiliated with one religion to almost one out of three and it seems to me the main causes of that have more to do with people who have been wounded by the church, people who have concerns of a moral nature. I mean, I think we still need to make good classic arguments, but it's not like, oh,

we just haven't been doing good classic arguments. I think there's these cultural and moral dynamics that we have to think about. How do we give the best apologetic right now? That's just an interesting question to me. It's kind of nice to not prejudge exactly what is needed, but to actually talk with real people. And in the context of that, a real evangelism and apologetics emerges. a real evangelism and apologetics emerges. So it's kind of an exciting project to think about. It's almost like Paul in Acts 17 versus in Acts 13. In Acts 13, he's in the synagogue.

He just quotes scriptures and says Jesus is the Messiah. In Acts 17, he's in Athens and he gives this, he starts way further back. And he essentially is starting with the doctrine of God and he's, you know, he's giving you the entire framework. And I almost feel like that's more than need right now. You need a whole framework. Sometimes you might even need to start with just the idea of truth before you can even argue about God.

Do you think we're so tired of the God debate that we're not even willing to give it a hearing? But if on Joe Rogan's show, someone talks about us being characters in a video game and that that's what reality is like, okay, okay, this is new. And I'm open to hearing the arguments that make sense to me, given how AI is developing. It's just, that seems like a more plausible idea for many people than God. Or I think, well, people, they crave novelty. Like as human beings, we are naturally wired

to seek out that which is new, often to our detriment. But so like that desire for novelty is also conjoined with a bad habit we have of not, what am I trying to think of here? It is kind of like a lack of appreciation for, oh, this is the phrase, familiarity breeds contempt. Familiarity breeds contempt. And join with the desire for novelty.

It's like, oh yeah, I heard all the God debates. I heard all the souls, I've heard all that, I heard all that. And the same with scripture. Oh, I've heard that passage, oh, I've heard this. And so you've become familiar, but it happens in everywhere. It's like when people don't take their spouses and their children, uh, value them as much, they become so familiar. They, there's all, there's not just like they take them for granted, but there's like a contempt and you seek out

something new instead of realizing, no, the things that are important to us will be familiar, but we're always mining them for like God. Our relationship with God, it's infinite to plumb the depths of the divine mystery, but we can treat God as something so familiar. We just have, oh, what does God want me to do? We have that contempt almost. So I think, when I was bringing up the new atheists earlier,

it's like, yeah, they poke fun a lot at God, but I think there's a waning there because people desire what is the big story? And new atheism is great at Ripping the other stories, but it's like what's the story you're telling and I liked what Gavin said about like the moral argument and talking about human beings That's why I want to explore in my new book a very specific moral argument saying that from my pro-life background That I think that atheism has a very difficult time background that I think that atheism has a very difficult time affirming things like the intrinsic dignity of human beings or human equality, not just

morality in general but like these very specific features of human existence that even like non-religious people will swear up and down by. Like yeah of course you should not discriminate and humans are equally valuable and all of this, like yeah, but where's the ultimate foundation for that? Yeah, I like your point though, right? Because this is perhaps why the moral argument, I'm not sure how old the moral argument is

in its current iteration, iteration, quietness wasn't offering it, you know? Like at what point did we become more subjective, perhaps more inward looking, that we're much less convinced by the cosmological argument, but we find the moral argument very, very gripping. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There is a book by, I think it's David Baggett and one other person that gives a history

of the moral argument. There might be Walls, but yeah, the history, it's a great book. That's right. It's Jerry Walls. But just to that point, I mean, and to Trent's point, there are so many people in our culture who will embrace a secular worldview while still wanting to retain certain values that are extremely difficult to ground within that worldview and I think one of the helpful things we can do is draw attention to those points of

tension individual human rights human equality that has not been a self-evident truth to all human cultures at all times. It's really hard to ground in a naturalistic worldview. Justice. Is there any hope for moral justice? Is there any? And is the- That's an injustice right there, interrupting us.

Will it be righted in the future? future the judge of the whole earth make make things Right. I'm sure Right like I love your point about like human equality like we take it for granted like yeah, you should treat people equally Why throughout most well racism is evil why but here's the thing we agree We ought to treat equals equally and unequals unequally, right? That's why like people like I just really can't understand spending like $70,000 to get like the third kidney transplant for your cat I mean, there's people who do like that kind of stuff and I love what the catechism says about animals

We ought to show compassion for them, but not give them the care that is due only to persons. So not to get on people who are on their third kidney for their cat or whatever. But so when you look at, you treat equals equally, unequals unequally, it's important. So if we're gonna treat humans equally, we have to ask, well, what is equal about us that justifies that?

Because we're all different, especially in things that we normally associate with value, like cognitive development. Even the potential, because some atheists have told me, well, we all have an equal potential for cognitive development. So that's why, equal potential for rationality,

that's why we should all be treated equally. Now, one, if you're gonna run with that, then you should really be pro-life, because fetuses and embryos have that potential too, just as much as an infant does. They're not gonna be rational for months or years. Two, there are human beings who don't have that potential, like someone who is severely disabled.

Like, you know, you've meet someone who has a very difficult severe disability who will permanently lack rationality or someone with Alzheimer's or dementia, yet we don't treat them as just like disposable goods. But why when we have cognitively superior non-human animals, we do use them instrumentally? Well, if the only thing is the difference is,

well, they're biologically human, well, why does our little, why is the fact that we have those four chemicals in our DNA, ATGC or whatever, why does that matter? And I think we've got to get a more metaphysical transcendent ground for that. The two areas that I love to press into are justice and love.

What I want to do is help the person feel the implications of their worldview. So think about the greatest injustice that ever happened in your life. How did that feel? What rose up in your heart against that? Now think about that feeling as purely the process of evolution.

And I'm not saying that the alternative can't have a role for evolution, but if it's reductively explained by evolutionary factors, the only reason you feel those feelings that injustice is wrong is because it helped animals survive. We could have evolved completely differently, such that our moral intuitions about what is just and unjust would be the opposite of what they are, so there's no objective referent for that longing for justice, and there's no transcendence to it, there's no significance to it, it is purely a survival mechanism.

It is only there. Now, if you really think about that, I would say that's devastating. I would say that's hard to live with, and the same for love. How does it feel when you hold your child in your arms? I remember that feeling for my first child. How does it feel the way you feel about your spouse, your friends? Okay, now that's only there because it helped

your animal ancestors survive. Can you live with that? Which isn't the same question as saying, therefore it can't be true, but that's also a helpful thing to really press people to feel because I would say it's devastating. Well, yeah, it reminds me this, I have kind of a similar,

there's this youth afro dilemma for Christians. Is something good because God says so, or does God say so because it's good? And the idea is that either God is arbitrary, or morality is above God, like he has to consult a rule book. Now, I think the dilemma is answered easily. If you say, well, no, something is good because God is good by his very nature.

So everything he commands will be good. But I've thought about like kind of a similar kind of dilemma for atheists when it comes to morality. And I would pose it this way. Is morality true because it's useful or is it useful because it's true? And so if it's true because it's useful? Or is it useful because it's true? And so if it's true because it's useful, there's all kinds of useful moralities

to achieve social ends that we'd probably be pretty horrified by. And some of it, and people have used that, like euthanasia for marginalized groups and incapacitated people that's been done throughout history. So if it's true because it's useful, well, now we're at the mercy of like utilitarianism. if it's true because it's useful, well now we're at the mercy of like utilitarianism. If it's useful because it's true,

because that's the idea of the evolutionary explanation. Well, we have these moral beliefs because we evolve them. And I agree with you, that's probably the case. Like to say, but that doesn't mean that evolution caused them, like the reason we have mathematical skills is that our hunter gatherer ancestors, if you were bad at counting tigers, you didn't last very long,

but it doesn't follow that we invented mathematics. We did evolve to get better at it, but math is prior to what we evolved to figure out. Similarly then, so if it's not useful because it's true, if it's, sorry, it's not true because it's useful. If it's useful because it's true, then we have to ask, well, what makes it true? And it's not the fact that it's not true because it's useful. If it's useful because it's true, then we have to ask, well, what makes it true? And it's not the fact that it's useful to us.

We have to look for a more prior explanation. I like that. That's a nice twist on the moral argument. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I also think it helps to get creative. And, you know, in my book, I give an argument from music and an argument from math.

Okay. And I'm really adverse. Do you think you could break that down for us, the music one, or is it two? I've heard like Craig on math, but I'd love, give me the music one. That seems, I love that. Just to say that my point about the argument

that I'll lay it out is that, I'm very adverse to triumphalist approach to apologetics. So I go into things trying to be very careful not to ever outpace the actual argument. So I was very skeptical that you'd ever be able to build an argument from math, music, anything like that. That's the second chapter, arguments from math, music, and love. But what was, well my main point about this was different people find different arguments helpful. They're very modest arguments. They're what are called abductive arguments.

It means inference to the best explanation. I'm not proving God, but I'm saying he's a better explanation. And I've been amazed to find some people who won't find the more logically crisp arguments compelling actually are touched by these different kinds of arguments. So just a reminder to be creative. I like that because I think my inner skeptic goes up whenever somebody tries to show me an airtight argument. There's something in me that's like, yeah, but,

but if you're saying, oh, I'm not even trying to do that. I'm not even trying to convince you. I'm just saying like, wouldn't it make sense if, oh, okay, my guard goes down. Oh yeah, the way I like to say it in the book is I give the skeptic, I show them the back door. If you want to reject this argument, here's how you can do so. Good. That's helpful.

So they don't feel like the deer in the headlights. But you're inviting them to consider which worldview is the better explanation. So with music, the basic observation is that music conveys transcendence and meaning in this very mysterious way. And what first got me open to considering this is that all of the top philosophers of music are puzzling over the question. That's why where people just reject the argument

out of hand, you say, go read the philosophers of music and tell me you're smarter than all these people who have no idea How does music convey meaning it conveys meaning in a non representational manner? So unlike language the words don't refer or the the music doesn't refer to specific objects But music can convey meaning music can convey sadness it can convey Jubilation yeah, and it conveys transcendence. Almost everyone understands there are times

when you're listening to music when it at least feels significant. It feels important in some way. And so then you, so you, basically in the book, I just walk through, I describe that probably better than I just did, and then you just ask the question, what's the worldview that can better account for that, both emotionally but also intellectually? And I share from Lord of the Rings, Chronicles of Narnia, this Thomas Aquinas, this whole Christian

tradition of thinking about music as the first language. Peter Crave, you've interviewed many times, says music is the original language. And this is a Christian way of thinking about music is that it's the, it's the language by which God created the world. Um, for the naturalist, you're stuck with the evolutionary mechanisms and there's greater mystery and greater uncertainty as to where does it get this transcendence and how does it convey meaning? And you just go through the, the explanations within evolutionary psychology for music. And there's so many different ones of them and people are just uncertain.

They just don't know why is music so powerful. So I just think that's interesting. So it's a, it's an abductive argument to say this world gives you, this worldview gives you better tools to make sense of our experience of, of music. Very good. Do we have, can we have a break Thursday? We're going to have a break. We're going to come back and we've got a bunch of questions about God's existence from our local supporters. And we're also going to put links to Gavin's book on God's existence in the description

below. So please go pick that up. And we'll also have, of course, Trent and Gavin's YouTube channels below. So be sure to subscribe to them. Good. Thank you. You gotta play the ads. subscribe to them. Good. Thank you.

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Oh good for you. Alright, so we have questions from our local supporters There's a lot I only asked ten minutes ago is a ton So we're not gonna be able to do justice to these questions So just forget about it there has to be some kind of justice to them eventually and we also we also very good Yeah, we also don't you don't have to both answer so feel free to take one or not Okay, amateur Catholic says good for him for knowing, does recognizing human dignity or morality prove God's existence? Sure. Next question. You wrote it, is this in your book? You talked about objective morality.

Not directly, but a bit. I mean, it comes in with the moral argument to some extent. I mean, we were talking about this a little bit earlier too. I would say yes, I think the challenge we can put to our secular friends is simply, what is a human being in your worldview? And what gives a human being intrinsic value? And I think those are challenging questions to answer. Jared George says, former Jehovah's Witness here with a question for Trent Gavin, what's the most compelling argument youhovah's Witness here with a question for Trent Gavin. What's the most compelling argument you would use when speaking with a Jehovah's Witness? I've tried many with my Jehovah's Witness family and haven't had any luck. Yeah, I find it's difficult, like, just engaging in biblical exegesis.

Like, I actually don't recommend Christians just start going through the Bible with them, just saying, like, because they've, they like study all the time about how to interpret things and get into the Greek of John one, one, and you can leave your head kind of spinning. I like to make it more personal, just ask some like, okay, well, why are you a Jehovah's witness? What were you before?

And why do you believe the Watchtower Bible and Track Society has this authority, this divine authority? Why should I trust them? And then bringing up things like they've made like these routine failed predictions and they'll end up saying like, well, this is the fallible light and things like that. But pointing out, I think problematic areas of one of wondering, and this would go to anyone, like, I think, problematic areas of wondering, and this would go to anyone like,

why would you trust the Bible in the first place? Why would you trust the Catholic Church? But I would just say like, the defeaters to the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, like reasons that make me skeptical of them, and then why do you think they have this authority to tell you what the Bible means in the first place? Any thoughts?

We can pass on that one. Does the deliciousness of beer prove God's existence? Okay, do you drink? I do. Okay, Liesl H. I only asked that because I knew you were a Baptist, so I didn't know how universal that was. Well, when the debate was gonna be in the cigar lounge,

I thought about going up with a big cigar in my hand just to betray the stereotype of the Baptist minister. He probably likes cigars and beer more than I do actually. I don't like beer either. I know it's the show's so based around it but. I only drink liquor to look more, be more like a grown-up with people when I'm out, otherwise. Liesl H says, question for Trent, when will Laura start releasing daily sketches?

She's hilarious and the best channel on YouTube, no offense. It's better than my channel at least. So daily sketches, we'd probably, maybe if we started Patreon to get babysitting money, we could afford to do. Does she shout at you the way Christian Bale shouts at that guy who walks across the set? Oh, good for you.

Laura has never raised her voice at me in our entire marriage. Not at all. You're probably right All right in one of Trent's debates a while back the atheist had that twist on the problem of evil regarding animal suffering I'd love to hear a more in-depth breakdown of that argument I'll admit that I don't think the normal response to the problem of evil does a good job covering that of animal suffering Well, I mean the idea of the problem of evil is that there's things in the world we wouldn't expect. And I'm interested to see how you handle,

do you cover evil a bit in your book? Yes. Yeah, so it's like evil and suffering is at first what we wouldn't expect if God existed. And the question is, how do we reconcile that? And so we see some evils and it's like, oh, like if humans commit evil, we can see a good reason God has for it,

like to give us free will. And I think the complaint is, all right, but what are the good reasons for animal suffering? Like, it's not for animals to have free will because they don't have free will like humans. So some of the responses for some evils, I agree, like the good reasons God would have to justify some evils, there's going to be a multitude of reasons. In fact, you don't have to give specific reasons. You can just say, look, God's all powerful and all knowing. Why should I think he lacks those reasons? But yeah, with animal suffering, I think that you can provide a wide variety of reasons as to why God would do that. Well, that animal suffering is just a necessary consequence of creating a material world where, that's Aquinas' answer, where, you know,

the lion gets more perfect as the zebra gets less perfect when they're eaten. And that things like animal pain, like pain, they will go, I can't God just make animals that don't feel pain. And I would say, I really, would they be animals? They would, they'd seem more like, like, how would they know to respond to danger in the natural world? Like, how would they know to eat when they're hungry? How would they know to respond to danger in the natural world? Like how would they know to eat when they're hungry? How would they know to run away if they're on fire, they touch something hot or something's biting them? If God just programs their brains to always act

in a survival manner but not in response to stimuli, they'd be more like furry robots than actual the goodness of animals. So there's a lot that would go in there. And I've also explored the possibility that animals, one, well, if they don't have conscious awareness of their own pain, it's not as much of a problem. And two, if animals do have conscious awareness

and they're suffering, maybe it's possible that God will compensate animals in the afterlife by resurrecting them, not with, you know, by just reconstituting them. And that's something that some theologians have explored. I think the problem of animal suffering is actually one of the toughest ones for us to respond to because the, as Trent pointed out,

the traditional theodicies or responses to the problem of evil don't always apply to the same degree. In some cases, they don't apply at all to the animal realm because animals are before the human fall and So I have done I think CS Lewis's chapter on this is still helpful in the problem of pain chapter 9 on animal pain I I take a little different approach I think the thing that is so hard is people can always just say look in Heaven on the new earth God is going to make a perfect world that doesn't have a crocodile eating a gazelle

in which the gazelle slowly agonizingly dies or something like that. And so the person can always ask the question, why didn't God set it up like that to begin with? Right. That's my concern with the limitation of appealing to kind of natural laws. My approach is kind of, well, I wrote an article many

years ago saying the Satanic fall may have influenced the natural order and that's the approach I take which is kind of as crazy as that seems. Some really smart people have believed that. Catholic theologians like, I'll just give a few examples, Catholic theologians Hans Urs von Balthasar, one of the greatest Catholic theologians of the 20th centuryalthasar, one of the greatest Catholic theologians of the 20th century, he advocated for that. Alvin Plantinga, one of the greatest Christian philosophers, advocated for that, C.S. Lewis.

Tolkien's The Silmarillion basically envisions that. That's the story. It's the evil angels fighting with the good angels, and that affects nature. So that's not my argument in actual apologetics with a skeptic, because it's not my argument in actual apologetics with a skeptic because it's not gonna gain much ground. Have you read Tolkien?

Do you believe in Satan? Yeah. But as a Christian, I actually think that there's at least a possibility there. Sure. Speaking of Thomas, he says that herbivores wouldn't have become carnivores because of the fall, that there were carnivores prior to it. Yes. Oh, right. Yeah, no, he- So it wasn't the fall that affected animals. because of the fool, that there were carnivores prior to it. Yes. Oh, right. Yeah, no, he- So it wasn't the fool that affected animals.

Yeah, he believed that they retained their carnivores and predators existed prior to the fall, which is- Can I ask a question about that then? So this has always been my biggest problem with theistic evolution, is that it seems that it has to allow for pain prior to the fall, like animal pain prior to the fall.

It is interesting that Thomas didn't have a problem the fall. Is there an explanation for that? Because I just can't get over that. What Thursday's asking about is my personal greatest intellectual struggle in my journey of faith of just this process by which we all came about seems so brutal, so clumsy. It's pain. Are you talking about evolution?

Yeah, the whole problem, yes. But even if you don't have evolution, so I just say the problem of pre-human natural evil. Because even if you're just an old earth creationist, same problem. You've got death, disease, pain, and apparent futility. And there's one quote from a skeptic who says, any three-year-old can see this whole process of reproducing and killing by the trillions is not

an efficient way to create. So, but I think there are some responses and that, you know, that response about the satanic fall at least gives you some conceptual space to say this, you don't necessarily have to say this is exactly how God set up the world you can't because we all believe there's been another fall before the human fall we all think evil began before human beings and so that at least gives you that conceptual space for a kind of fallenness the odyssey for pre-human natural evil there's more to talk about with this. We'll talk more. Yeah, I think you're concerned there.

There would be two arguments about pain before the fall of man and death. What I would say is that scripture teaches that human death came into existence at the fall, not necessarily death itself. So I don't see a contradiction there in Revelation. The concern would just be, would God have a good reason for allowing animal suffering to exist for, well, I guess if you're

an old Earth creationist, it's tens of thousands of years. If you're a theistic evolutionist, hundreds of millions of years, would God have a good reason for allowing that to take place? And that's something I've engaged in other work and I hope to engage at a greater length in my next book. Just real quickly, I want to point people to Kyle kelts is book Tom ism and the problem of animal suffering I've had him on the show before and I enjoy what he had to say. Okay logical okay Jared Peters says logical arguments for God's existence aside what is the time in your life when you most experienced God's existence. What is a time in your life when you most experienced God's existence? Mm-hmm. I think when I was praying at the site of Golgotha in Israel, I went on a pilgrimage there with my wife about 12 years ago,

before we were married, went with the group before we were married, and just praying there and putting your hand on the rock of Calvary, like just something about, and there is good historical evidence. The church of the Holy Sepulcher is, it's the correct site. Like there, there is the, there's the Protestant tomb of Jesus in Jerusalem, which is very picturesque and beautiful garden doesn't have the historical claim, but when you're in the church of Holy Sepulcher, and like when I was like put my hand there and

just like I don't know just like Bringing everything together that our faith is not just like a great story But one rooted in a time and place so I can read the Gospels and I love just like all the references to the Reign of Tiberius and this is when and where all this happened different when you read other myths that are once upon a time, you know, and just making it so real, concrete and historical. Uh, that was a big deal for me. The two things that come to my mind would be just very specific answers to

prayer that are very hard to account for. And just the experience of that and the sense of God's provision through that, and then seeing God at work in people's lives in the context of ministry. There's ways that people change way down deep that it's just hard to explain apart from the truth of the gospel. What if, says Dr. Rosemary Peter, everything we believe about God is a figment of our imagination? That would suck. But what if, what if everything we believe about reality is a figment of our imagination? Uh, possibilities are cheap and so they shouldn't bother us.

Um, there's, there's all, what if, who is that? Sorry, keep going. Well, what if your spouse doesn't really love you and they're just pretending? Yeah. What if she's a Russian agent? What? Yeah. She's part of the dis just pretending. Yeah. What if she's a Russian agent? Yeah. She's part of the disinformation campaign there. That's the thing. Any, there's lots of possibilities. Just because something is a possibility,

it shouldn't, it shouldn't trouble you. I mean, it's probable. Yeah. Any thoughts on what if we all live in the matrix? Yeah. We can keep going. Yeah. I actually went through a bout of solipsism when I was about 16 and I didn't know what the word meant. I'd never been introduced to it. Every teenager thinks that the center of the universe. I was also afraid I was infallible. Anyway.

Okay. M. Mandillo says, I found some atheist friends will use an argument of continual expansion and regression, i.e. multiple big bangs to prove that the universe had no beginning. How do we navigate this understanding of an infinite past? That is why I like to make the cosmological argument or the argument for God as the first cause not just about the beginning of the universe. So this is the Kalam version that William Lane Craig has popularized. The universe began to exist. Everything that begins to exist has a cause. Therefore the universe has a cause.

It's a great argument, but you get sucked up into these technicalities of what if our universe began from another universe or from the multiverse. And now you've got to engage with that. If you just go to some of the other varieties of the cosmological argument where you're just arguing back more generally, not from the beginning of the universe, but from contingency to necessity. You kind of avoid all of that. Yeah, I want to remind people I actually we paid Dr. Ed Faser to record a seven part video

series for our locals members. So if you become a local support, you can get access to all those videos. But basically the first way isn't dependent on hierarchical causality. So even if Aristotle was right in the universe, never had a beginning, his argument would still show that there must be God. And I would agree. I think the cosmological argument does not depend on the universe having a beginning. You can make arguments for the universe,

having a beginning using philosophy. So I like variants of the Kalam argument, especially those related to the work of Andrew Locke, L-O-K-E, I kind of like his variant of Kalam that I'm working with, that I've used in my previous debates who people will see with atheism. I've modeled some of these arguments, Locke's argument and Pruss's argument from causal finitism, the idea that causal chains just can't be infinite.

And because of that, the past must be finite. Even if there were expanding universes prior to ours, there couldn't be an infinite series because infinite causal chains are contradictory. And then finally, I would say that there are scientific observations that would preclude this infinite oscillating model, that it seems like there is enough dark energy

in the universe and given its expansion, that there will never be a point where there's enough gravity gravity to cause a reconstruction of the universe to prevent that, that perpetual oscillation. The catacuman asks, is it logically possible for God to not exist? No, I would say no. No. No. I would say no. No. So what that would mean is, because God is logically necessary, there is no possible world where God does not exist. In order for something to be logically possible there must be a possible world where God does not exist. So for example, I mean, it's logically impossible for a married bachelor to exist.

So that means there cannot be a possible world where there is one. Every possible world lacks one. So yeah, so there are people who believe, there are philosophers like Richard Swinburne who believe God is factually necessary, like he's indestructible, but there could have been a world without God. But I think the arguments from contingency, the other arguments, certain modal ontological arguments show it is actually impossible for there to have been a state of absolute nothingness.

Given that something exists, there's a necessary being, so there always would be at least just God. And just one sentence, Anselm has a great line in his book, The Procelegeon, where he basically just says, God cannot even be thought not to exist. You can't even think of it. And yeah, true on that. Well, what I would say there with Anselm,

someone said, well, I can think of God not existing. It's not hard at all. I'm like, well, are you? Or are you just thinking of a blank black canvas with a sign that says God does not exist? Because in philosophy, there's a difference between epistemic possibility and metaphysical possibility. So just because you can conceive of something, it doesn't follow that it could obtain in reality. So for example, there's mathematical

formulas like gold box conjecture, whether every, try to remember, is like every even number is the sum of two primes, I think, is something like that. And so, is it true or not? There are unsolved problems in mathematics. They're either true or false. And you could imagine it being true, and you can imagine it being false, but, you know, it can't be both.

It's only metaphysically possible for one or the other. So when people are thinking of nothing, usually they're not actually thinking of nothing. Right. They're usually thinking of blackness. Or empty space. Yeah. But that's not nothing.

We're not good at these thoughts, Terrence. If I said to you, like Matt, what would it feel like to sit in an empty room? Yeah, I wouldn't be empty if I was there. Well, let's say you were there, but it's a room that's completely empty. Like, how would it feel to be in a room like that? Okay, this isn't a trick question. Okay, so you're actually not like there's walls and a floor.

Okay, it would feel, I don't know what it would feel like, quiet, lonely. They'd probably feel asphyxiating. It doesn't have oxygen. You bastard. So, but the problem is we have these ambiguities. And so like, we're not good at imagining these things. And so when it comes to God, yeah, you might epistemically try to imagine it, but it turns out given that things do exist and they need this necessary foundation, what we believe is epistemically possible and imagining God's non-existence turns out to be metaphysically impossible.

Katie asks, what is divine simplicity? 20 seconds. This is great. Why is it important for Catholics to believe it? This is so, I'm so pumped that this is asked because this is, go ahead, you know. Well, okay, so 20 seconds, right? No, I'm joking, take your time.

Divine simplicity is the doctrine that God has no parts. You can state that in a couple different ways. One simple way to get at it is to say God is whatever he has. The reason that it is so important is because it protects other doctrines that are right at the heart of the creator-creation distinction. So it protects God's absoluteness,

that he's not conditioned by anything external to himself. It protects his aseity, that he exists only from himself. Because if you say God isn't his attributes, that there's love and righteousness just out there somewhere external to God, God happens to come along and just conform to these things that exist externally to himself, then where did love and righteousness come from?

And that punctures divine absoluteness. Well, what I was excited about, why I asked this, is because a lot of people think of divine simplicity as just a Catholic doctrine, but there are. You're hold to it, correct? Oh yeah, well it's a historic Protestant doctrine. I mean, it's in all the Protestant traditions, pretty much everywhere, until,

it's only changed in like 19th to 20th centuries. Right, and so like like, I remember, like, Cameron Bertuzzi, when he was going through his conversion experience, like, one of his objections to Catholicism was that the fourth ladder in council infallibly teaches that God is simple. Now, people have different models of simplicity. Doesn't mean that there's, doesn't mean that you, if you accept divine simplicity, you must accept, like, Thomas Aquinas' model. But what makes it so fascinating is like, if that's your problem, well, the church defines that, but it's not a strictly Catholic belief,

because like you said, magisterial Protestantism, people have accepted this for a long time because it goes to a classical tradition. If God is composed of, if something is composed of parts, there's something prior to the parts that puts them together as to why they're together and not separate. So if God has parts, well, what puts all of them together in God? And if there's something more basic than God, then that's God. And so that that's where you get a lot of problems. Nicole Claire says tips on how to

approach people who don't care if there is a God or not. They aren't even agnostic. They're just bored with the entire topic. We've touched on this, but they are the hardest nuts to crack, in my opinion. 100%. And this is partly what was playing into the discussion earlier of some of the shifting needs with apologetics. And that question is right at the heart of it for me, is many people just don't want to have the conversation.

And I think we have to start further back, just like in Acts 17, Paul starts way back with the idea there is a God. I think we have to start further back. I think a practical suggestion would be to find out what are the things that your friend cares about, and try to look for those points of tension between their currently held values and a secular worldview. Try to help them to feel. You want to be careful not to push them into despair too precipitously, but you also want them to feel the tension. Do you have a worldview that can ground the things you currently love and value and make life meaningful for you?

There's a lot to explore there. Well, it's like when Jesus says, where your treasure is, there your heart will be. So sometimes when you're engaging people, it's like they have to treasure something. Like what do you treasure and try to relate that to God, I think. OK, Matt McCloskey wants to know, does the beauty and deliciousness of Cuban cigars? He obviously, Cubans are his favorite, clearly, prove God's existence. We've already done this. They could be part of a cumulative, abductive weighing of the evidences. What's your opinion on the contention between belief in God and science?

Why does this keep coming up? Probably because there's these loudmouth celebrity atheistic scientists that don't represent the many, many faithful scientists and scientifically inclined people that are in the world, frankly. Another factor is overly literalistic readings of scripture, I think, hurts us. But yeah, it does seem like it's more apparent and at popular level than substantive and actual. Yeah, I think if you asked a lot of college students, I don't mean, I'm sure they're brighter than I,

give them credit for perhaps, but what do you even mean by science? That could be an embarrassing question for people. There's all that we know, it's like, well, it's just truth or Fauci or something. Yeah. Well, I think Elaine, I think Eccles is her last name. She wrote a book, I remember citing and answering atheism, looking at scientists who did not believe in God. And like, there's this common idea that like, oh, when you get into science, it shows you God doesn't exist and naturalism is true. And what she showed in her research

of the beliefs of scientists is not that science is more likely to make you an atheist. It's more that atheists are just more inclined to want to pursue the sciences in many cases. So it doesn't follow that science leads them to atheism, but that when you survey many of these people, especially scientists, as the science becomes more fundamental, when you survey many of these people, especially scientists, as the science

becomes more fundamental, when you get down to biology, chemistry and mathematics and physics, you're more likely to find people who believe in God versus those who might study like a social science, like psychology. I was with my children in Guatemala and beautiful place son, Peter, pointed to this volcano. And there was a cloud above the volcano. He said, I think God's right there, Dad. I think that's where heaven is. The beautiful thing to say.

But it also made me think, gosh, is my faith just bullshit? Sometimes you get asked a very simple question like that. Oh, God, maybe it's maybe this is just wrong. And we were talking our children into something that's insane. Well, let me finish. I don't think that's right. And here's how I answered. And I gave a good answer.

I said, well, imagine and this is Peter Craves analogy. Imagine two fetuses. What's the plural fetus fetus? Two fetuses in the womb. And one says to the other, do you think there's life after after the womb? No, no, this is all there is The other one says I well if there was laughter what what might it be like? Well, it would just be a very large soft warm place much warmer than this

Like they have no conception of what it might be like the other thing I said, and I think this comes from Pascal is Trying to explain to a child how we get to heaven can sound like science fiction, but surely it's a lot more difficult to get from nowhere and nothing to here, which we've done, than from here being something to somewhere else. I think, because yeah, I love having little kids because they, and Gavin's been in this boat too, I'm sure.

The best philosophers. They are, well, they ask these questions. So I, what I try to do in our house is teach them to be little philosophers. They'll come back to haunt you. Poor Laura. She's going to stay at home with little Trents. No, the problem is now with, especially with our oldest son, he's a little lawyer and he

argues with us and he often wins his cases and it makes us feel like... He texts me over Slack. Yeah. Sorry. He's trying to... Slack is down, Matt. He puts forward this case that makes us feel like a rule or a punishment was truly unreasonable We have to rescind it and so I'm concerned at his arguing abilities at the age of eight

But I might ask them. Why do you think God lives there? Like why there instead of down here? Well, cuz it's high up. So God lives in a high up place. What might be higher up than that volcano? Yeah, could we go higher? So you're like, God's not here, he's over all of this. How could we get higher than that? And then I might play around with drawing a stick figure on a piece of paper. Edward Abbott has a great novel from the 19th century called Flatland, the Tale of Interdimensional Romance.

And to help people understand, well, what is God like? It's like, if you drew a stick figure in a house, you know, it's like for that two dimensional figure to understand us, like up and trying to get beyond that. But to know there's something beyond what your limited finite view is. That's really helpful. But have you not ever had that experience that I've had

where somebody asked you a simple question, and you're like, oh my gosh, I've somehow talked myself into this elaborate myth Oh gosh in defense of myself here, and I think Lewis talked about this as well He said the importance of faith It helps you to be sort of steady and whatever you happen to hold to he's like there were times when I was an atheist But the whole thing the whole belief the whole idea of atheism seemed very improbable now that I'm Christian I have those moods as well I think it helps to just be able to acknowledge that and not feel that there's a shame factor with having a stab of doubt now and

again. Yeah. That that's actually perhaps a sign of a healthy faith, shows how much you care, it shows your thinking about it. I think, I think it was Tim Kelly talked about every good faith has some doubts, your body needs antibodies, you need some, you know, if you don't have any doubts ever, that's not a healthy faith probably. And, but what you said of just going, it's a comfort in those moments to go back to the basics. So one of the things you mentioned is, okay, think of the alternative. Doesn't it take a lot more faith to think that something came out of nothing? And you go back to those basic, like to me it's like the metaphor I use is when you're walking up a steep staircase

and you put your hand on the railing and you kind of steady yourself. There's a couple of arguments that are like that steadying for me. And the cosmological is one of them. That's a great, I like that analogy a lot. I like what you said about the antibodies because it's like if you always protect yourself from doubt,

that like you think like, oh, I've never had my faith challenged, like I'm gonna be really healthy. It'd be like somebody who like never let themselves get a cold or like never went around anyone who is sick and always like was shut up and hypochondriac. But then it's like, oh, I'm really strong now. It's like, really?

Or will the slightest breeze send you into the hospital? Like you're just not prepared to engage any of this. Real quick, Pascal used to talk about how, I used to struggle with this so much. Why doesn't God make it clearer? Why doesn't he just make his evidence so plain that we all see it so clearly? But Pascal talks about God set up the world the way it is

because there's something that is good for us and not do we really need total clarity? Would that be what our soul needs? Or is there a good purpose that can come about through there being moments of ambiguity and struggle like that? And that that so yeah, Pascal is a comfort in that way. Daniel says Daniel James had argued the existence of God with somebody who will only accept physical evidence. He says science scientific physical evidence. So to broaden a little more, but often we do treat God like this. I think sometimes what I might say is so you want me to prove the non physical creator of everything with only physical, like with only physical evidence.

Like, I guess I would ask them, what do you mean? And just try to make sure we're having a fair engagement. I guess I might say, well, why does it have to be physical evidence? Why can't it just be evidence? Like why? And then ask for a reason. And I think in that circumstance too,

you can show that the physical, it doesn't explain itself. Right. So you can show basically that's an arbitrary limitation because the data set you've limited yourself to is not self-explanatory. The other thing is you can still make an argument for the resurrection of Christ. That would be within the realm of what they're limiting themselves to and I've been amazed. That was another one that I went into skeptically thinking, ah, historical arguments like this, it's probably way too difficult to assess levels of probability. I was blown away by how strong a probabilistic argument you can make that the best explanation

for the launching of the Christian church is the resurrection of Christ. I like this little story. Imagine if you said a man goes down to his child's sandpit with a metal detector and after an hour and a half of painstaking going over every square inch, comes up, wipes the sweat from his brow and says to his wife, that settles it. There are no diamonds in that sand pit. And of course the problem is it's not meant to detect diamonds. Or Legos.

And yeah, okay. And science, an inductive method of investigation we've invented to discover truths about the natural world isn't meant to. It's the wrong tool. You're going to need something something else. Good. I think I think we're I think we're through them all. Oh wow. Yes he's a good one. This comes from H.J.C. one probably not their real name.

How does your belief in God inform the most important aspects of your life. What is your belief in God inform the most important aspects of your life? Most important aspects of my life? I think it's like I was I was bemoaning this the other day that sometimes we all of our mental energy goes into events that we have no control or authority over and thereby robs us of the things we ought to have authority and control over. So if I spend all day wondering what Pope Francis said on an airplane or what Joe Biden just did. But I ignore my children and my wife. It's like my circle of influence is shrinking while my circle of concern grows and And so I say for me personally,

I hope it is to remind myself that I, you know, I have to love my bride, I love my children and be faithful and good to them and not let the peripheral things. But I think my faith in God inspires that. For me, um, what we mentioned a moment ago about those stabs of doubt. One of the things that comes with that is the sense of meaninglessness if God does not exist. And that's one of those things that stabs at you sometimes in a moment of doubt of does your life really matter?

Are you really making a difference? To answer this question, it's an incredibly enthralling thought that as we believe God does exist, the opposite is true. Everything matters. Every single moment of your life is filled with meaning. If you believe in eternity, that we're all funneling towards heaven and hell, that everything is pushing towards this great divide, and that what we do in this life affects that, every single minute of your life matters. There's a great passage in C.S. Lewis where he talks about this, but just that idea that

the way you treat anyone in your life has literally eternal consequences. And so it's almost like you look down the road at each of these worldviews in an atheistic worldview, it is hard to ground meaning in any robust sense. In a theistic worldview, meaning is just infinite. Everything matters. And I think that's another one of those points to leverage in our culture where people are so thirsting for meaning. Thanks. Yeah, I, it'd be pretty similar that in looking at my life, it's, it's not just some accident. It's not happenstance.

I guess one of the biggest things, as a father having three children, it's like, the reason these particular individuals exist is because they were entrusted to me. The reason that I have encounters with friends and strangers is, I mean, obviously we have free will, but also there's a divine providence that orders the world so that I have these encounters with other people that have immortal souls and that matter in that regard. And just being able to take a step back and look at everything, I think someone once said that

coincidences are just God's sense of humor. To be able to see the larger drama in the world and the value, especially in the other human beings that I interact with. And then yeah, it just gives a great sense of hope and knowing that I just, I haven't actually, because I think that you could maybe come up with meaning if it turned out God didn't exist, but it'd be a meaning of your own making if you worked really hard at it. You know, well, it's a kind of playful nihilism.

If you're really sturdy about yourself, maybe you could sail through it. But the idea that like, I don't have to like prop all of that up. It's like, I can just take comfort in knowing there is a bigger drama unfolding that I am a bit player in, that I am a bit player in that I am a bit player in

And I'm grateful to just to play the part God God gave me and I think that if I don't know what well What are my lines? Love the Lord your God all your heart mind and strength love your neighbor as yourself And if you run with that you can't really go wrong I'm concerned that sometimes I treat God more like a philosophical argument that's accurate than an omnipotent being who's very, very aware of what's taking place in the world. Does that make sense? This is why I love charismatic people. I personally probably aren't what I would consider charismatic, but I love people like that because they act as if God exists. Whereas I'm afraid that sometimes I act like a syllogism is true. I think I'm a highly, highly introverted charismatic.

So like I believe in all of that, but I'm just deathly terrified of praying like this. But otherwise I'm just the charismatic who's like, hmm, yes, yes. All right. Yeah. Final question. This comes from Daisy Strongin. Thoughts on the stoned ape theory.

Basically the theory that biblical visions were a result of natural psychedelicsics like a Joe Rogan thing. Yeah, it does sound like that. I don't have any thoughts. So you are, are you talking about religion or Christianity? Cause I know, I know Rogan did the, like the mushrooms stoned ape theory. It sounds like they're referring to kind of biblical characters who purport to have communed with God.

Well, I mean, I think there's some people who, when they think that they have interactions with the divine, it may have a natural explanation, either psychological defect or some kind of hallucinogen. It doesn't follow that because that's explained in some cases that all of the cases are explained that way. Yeah. follow that because that's explained in some cases that all of the cases are explained that way. I think also you would just look at, you just take a prime example to say, look, was Jesus just like a stoned first century carpenter? And goes back to the trolema, right? CS Lewis. So I guess if you're like quadripleg, Lord liar, lunatic,atic or and now I can't pick pick an L with laid back

Laid back man. It's all good. He's well when you know people who are disconnected from reality Through psychedelic drugs they tend to lack the virtue of wisdom Usually they they and when they do speak about things They might talk about things like what the philosopher Daniel Dennett calls deep it ease It's just it sounds like a deep thought but then you listen to it. You're like that actually doesn't make any sense at all So he was like there's no objective truth like it sounds great when you maybe we mean maybe what we are is what we will be Yeah, that's right But it's just like stuff like that. Yeah, exactly

Yeah, that's right. But it's just like stuff like that. Yeah, exactly But when you listen to the prop the scripture prophets, especially just our Lord listen to Jesus He just doesn't sound like your stoned out friend in the college dorm spouting things. Yeah. All right. Well as we wrap up What do y'all go on the horizon? What's what's new for the two of you? This has been my last of several trips for the early part of this year, so I'm looking forward to being home more consistently. I'm gonna finish a book that I'm working on right now, it's called Why Protestantism Makes Sense, The Case for an Always Reforming Church, due to the publisher at the end of May that releases from Zondervan Reflective August of 2024, so it'll little a little

bit of a delay before it comes out next summer. This summer I'm going to be taking, I'm gonna be throttling back and doing some personal sabbatical because it's been such an intense about two years. What will that look like? Well, I'm still thinking that through, but the thing that I struggle with

is when I take a break from YouTube, I'll have this desire to do something. And it really doesn't feel like it would be a tax upon me. I don't know if you've ever experienced this. And so then I say, well, is it a worse thing for me to sort of be so disciplined that I can't make a new video or something like that? Is the more restful thing to just not feel like I need to.

And so I think what I'll probably do is maybe about one video per month, something like that. But just really throttling back, spending time with my family, this fall I'm going to start a new project, two things, one on divine hiddenness and one on what I mentioned earlier about the problem of modern despair. So the sense of nihilism that is kind of resonant throughout the modern West and how that gives us an inroad to the Gospel. So those are my two projects. The general tilt will be a little bit more towards cultural apologetics this fall. Thank you. Probably just helping Laura make more too far with Lorhorn. That's the important stuff. Best use of my time. Yeah, probably just, you know, continue to engage with non-Catholic

distinctives, whether it's other Protestants or non-Christians or atheists or moral issues on the Council of Trent. I really want to start working on this atheist book. I've already written several chapters. It's going to be, it's so difficult because each subject I address could be a whole book in and of itself, but I'm hoping to do that over the next 18 months or so, and maybe one or two other book projects on that. Sabbatical sounds like so much fun.

How long are you doing it for? June and July, just those two months. Does that mean you go into the office, or that you stay home the whole time? Well, see, when I say Sabbatical, this is why I need the Sabbatical. I'm a full-time pastor and we have five kids, and then there's the book, and then there's YouTube videos, and then there's other writing projects and other things I've gotten roped into. So sabbatical

doesn't mean actually sabbatical, it just means stopping like two of those things. Oh, I see, yeah, yeah. So I'll still be pastoring, preaching every week. Nothing will change in terms of my actual full-time job. But in terms of YouTube and writing, it's so much fun, but I really believe in the health of just taking breaks. So if anyone wants to do attack videos on Gavin Orland, June and July is what you want to do.

Aim, line them up, cue them up. That's right. Good stuff. Well, thanks so much. I mean, last night's debate was really terrific. And if people who are watching right now didn't watch that, please be sure to watch that debate. We'll get the audio up. Do we have the mp3 up yet? Or today we'll get that up.

People can listen to it if you'd rather do that. Yeah, I need to rip it still. Rip it. Nice. And thanks for coming into the studio. It's been great. Thanks for having us.