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That could make me laugh, and
I think that's what we need in this

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very serious world. So with us
Jay Dyer, author of Esoteric Hollywood One

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in two, Welcome Jay, Thanks
for being here. Yeah, thank you.

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I think we had to talk a
few months ago about gnosticism and Hollywood.

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That was a good chat. We
went on for a couple hours.

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I really enjoyed that, so I'm
glad to be back. Oh well,

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great, Yes, it was a
great interview and very enlightening with old Hollyweird

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and with us too. We've also
got Scott Smith, author of God Reconsidered.

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How you doing Scott, hailing from
West Hollyweired. There you go,

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you are in the middle of Hollyweird. I forgot about that. Wes Hollywood

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so awesome. And as always with
us helping out, we've got the Moondog

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Vans. How you doing, Vans. I'm fine. I'm gonna be watching

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this with great interest in If anybody
is not friendly, I'll start parking.

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Yes, events will take care of
the chat room well wonderful, And I

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have just a few notes again,
this will be available for all. It

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will be of course, it will
be on YouTube. After we're done.

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I will put the audio version on
iTunes and iHeartRadio and all those good places.

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There will be no member section because
this is a special show. I

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want to put the entire thing there
for you for everybody's well benefit. And

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please, but please, of course, always support support this show anyway you

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can, Patreon, PayPal of course, please support Jay and Scott us independent

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broadcasters and researchers and writers. We
are much better than the alternative out there

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in the mass media, regardless of
what stance you might take. And it's

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great that we can have civilized,
friendly conversations on the internet. Also too,

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we will have super chats. If
you do a superchat, Vance will

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take your question and write down your
question. At the end of the debate,

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we will address your question. Please
address it to either Scott or Jay.

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Please keep it on topic and as
I talked to both Scott and Jay

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will the money will be split in
half for super chats. I don't know

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how much is going to be,
but we'll give it to charity because I

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feel we need to give a little
bit back to the world and those who

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are definitely in a much more need
than all of us. Here, so

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and any other house cleaning notes here, No, yeah, please stay civilized

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in the forum. And yeah,
the format today will be simple. We

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will start with opening statements. I'll
try to keep time ten minutes, and

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after that we will move on to
the Odyssey five minutes unless a guest wants

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to rebut the other guests, and
then we'll move on to my notes.

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My notes. Then we'll move on
to the nature of Christ for five minutes.

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Again, we can go a little
off topic if the guests so decide

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no says versus faith five minutes and
then audience questions. Of course we can

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go longer if everybody feels they still
need some had some points to address.

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So with that in mind, why
don't we start with Jay, Jay,

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please give us your opening statement on
where you stand orthodoxy or why gnosticism is

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wrong or both. Go ahead,
Flora is yours? All right? And

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it's for how long? Ten minutes? Ten minutes more or less you're gonna

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go less or you a little bit
over. We're fine, We're loose here.

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Yeah, well, I would say
that I'm definitely on the side of

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Orthodoxy. I affirm Orthodox Christianity.
That would be the canonical Russian, Greek,

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Serbian, et cetera. Orthodox churches
throughout the world, found also obviously

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in America. I've been Orthodox for
several years now, and I find Orthodoxy

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convincing for many reasons. I think
that it's the faithful, historic, biblical

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presentation of Christianity. I think orthodox
Christianity is what we see throughout the first

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millennium of the Church before it splits
into the East and the West, and

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so therefore the papacy I see that
as an aberration. I see the papacy

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as something that is a political and
anti Christian development, and I see Orthodoxy,

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therefore, in the second millennium really
being faithful to the Christian vision of

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the first millennium. Thus, I
do believe that Christianity in the first millennium

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is a coherent whole. I don't
believe that Constantine created a church. It

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was significantly different than the church after
the Council of Nicea in three twenty five.

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So I think we look at,
for example, the post Apostolic fathers.

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I know that this is not a
proof against gnocissism per se, but

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I just want to kind of debunk
the prevalent idea that constantly created some sort

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of new imperial church or Catholic quote
unquote church, it didn't exist prior to

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three twenty five. So if we
look at say Justin Martyr, if we

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look at the post Apstock fathers,
Saint Ignatius his letters, we look at

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Saint Clements letters, if we look
at Saint Cyprian, if we look at

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the writings of any of these pre
Nicene era fathers, they back up all

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of the what we might call Orthodox
doctrines. So they believed in the real

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presence of Christ and the Eucharist.
They they're citing the same Biblical canon text

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that we cite today. They have
a liturgical worship that we still use today.

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Many of these ancient liturgies were actually
instrumental in how the canon came to

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be and was chosen. It was
not something that say Constantine to sort of

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randomly picked at the Council of Nicea. It was a long process that involved

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many centuries actually, and even up
into the eighth century century with the famous

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eighth century church father John of Damascus, who's known for his exhosition of the

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Orthodox faith found of none and defense
of Holy icons. The canon was still

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being debated even in his day,
and for us as Orthodox, that's not

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really a big issue, because it's
it's something that we're not Protestants, that

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we don't actually base the entire practice
of the church on having a specific,

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perfect canon to have the church.
The canon does come to be, it

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is closed. There's no new books
or anything like that. So when we

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look at that canonical collection of texts, when we look at I'm speaking of

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the Orthodox canon here, when we
look at the Creeds and Confessions prior to

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Nicea and after Nicea into those next
seven eight councils, we see a consistent

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doctor. We see the same Christianity
being presented. It has the reverence of

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saints, it has relics, it
has prayers for the dead, it has

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all these elements that many Protestants consider
Catholic, and many Catholics well, who

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knows where Roman Catholicism is today.
But regardless, Orthodox Christianity still teaches those

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same things. Nothing has changed.
We don't have innovations, we don't have

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any of these new, weird ideas, and we actually believe, and this

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is going to sound pretty shocking,
I think to this audience, perhaps we

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actually believe that our theology is in
continuity with the Old Testament. And this

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is I think a big point and
probably the point of departure in this debate,

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which is that when we look at
the revelation of God in the Old

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Testament, the way that God reveals
himself. Say to Moses in Exodus twenty,

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when Moses goes up on the mountain
and God says, you may see

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one of my attributes. You may
see my goodness, but you can't see

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me directly, because to see me
directly would be for you to die.

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And so Moses sees God's goodness.
If Orthodox Christianity, that means Moses saw

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one of God's energies. For us, energies are not new age things or

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not created things. They're the uncreated, real presence of God within time and

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space. We see in all of
these logos of the Angel of the Lord,

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or these manifestations of the logos in
the Old Testament. That's how we

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view it. We view those as
Jesus present in the Old Testament. It's

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Jesus who's present at Mount Sinai.
It's Jesus who's in the burning bush saying

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I am that I am. And
we see those as personal statements. So

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our order theologias is called the beginning
of our order theology begins with the personhood

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of God. We don't believe in
God as an impersonal force. He's not

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a giant algorithm. He's not a
mathematical principle per se, or simply,

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he's first and foremost personal and therefore
covenantal So, these many manifestations of the

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logos, to these many Old Testament
saints who by the way they worship,

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they worshiped as logos. We see
that as a second personage. We also

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see in many Old Testament texts the
presence of the whole trinity father, son,

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and Spirit president. In the Old
Testament, for example, in Zechariah

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one, two and three, all
three persons of the Trinity are present,

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and they're given divine personhood later on. Yes, it's true the Church utilized

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aspects, terms and ideas and concepts
that were in use in Greek philosophy,

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from Aristotle, from other Church fathers. You do have the idea of the

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essence introducedinction. You do have the
usage of the idea of houpostosis. In

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these different terms like logos right in
John one, we see those as the

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appropriating of terms. But those terms
are given a new meaning in our theology

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that's in perfect harmony with the Old
Testament revelation. In fact, if we

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were looking at something like Dionysius the
Areopagite in the Divine Names, he's often

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cited as a source for something like
Neoplatonism. Actually, the majority of the

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citations in Dionysius's Divine names are actually
from the Old Testament and from the New

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Testament. So we see that as
again a harmony. Here, he's not

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principally a quote Neoplatonist. He's actually
rejecting the formative central thesis of Neoplatonism and

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Greek Hellenism, which is that the
RK first principle is absolutely one and absolutely

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simple. We don't believe that.
We believe that God is both one and

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many in a perfect harmony. God
is not more one than he has three,

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and he's not more three than he
has one. And that's how the

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trinity is. That's how the Trinity
exists in the Old Testament, in that

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revelation, in the Old Testament,
in many places, again, the Angel

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of the Lord is present many times
throughout the Old Testament. He's worshiped.

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Jesus identifies himself in the Gospels as
that Angel of the Lord, that messenger

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the Lord. This doesn't compromise the
unity of God because we believe that it's

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revealed to us that God's unity is
something that the Father conveys to the Son

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in the Spirit. Right, so
the Father is the beginning of the God.

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He transfers that unity of divinity to
the Son and to the Spirit.

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And also because of what parent caureesis, that is that the three persons in

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dwell on another perfectly. So the
perfect indwelling and the perfect origin of the

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person of the Father is our beginning
point for theology. By extension, then,

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when we look at the New Testament, we see that Jesus many many,

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many times, consistently cites the Old
Testament as his foundation. The Father

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of the Old Testament is his father. Jesus says to the woman at the

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well in John four, that you
will be worshiping the same father that I

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have, the Father from the foundation
of the world, who is the father

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of the Jews the Old Testament.
He says that the Jews had the legitimate

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worship right. So in Jesus's mind, at least in the Gospel of John

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and many other places I can go
to many many more, he consistently cites

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the law. Jesus consistently cites Genesis. Jesus consistently cites Adam and Eves as

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real historical personages. Paul says the
exact same thing, and when he goes

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throughout Romans and Romans five, he
cites Adam and Eve as historic instances.

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He such Christ as the new Adam
in his in first Grade Das fifteen.

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None of that would make any sense
if the Old Testament were purely allegories,

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if it wasn't viewed as historical.
In our theology. It is, and

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so what we say is a consistent
harmony of the Old and New Testament,

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totally in perfect harmony. For example, in Matthew five, when Jesus says

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that you've heard him, you know
you shall love your enemy, he believed

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that Jesus is actually citing Leviticus nineteen. Did you know Leviticus nineteen says you

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cannot hate your enemy. So we
don't think that Jesus is giving some new

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law like Marcian thought, that's in
contrast to this evil, mean god of

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the Old Testament. Actually it's in
perfect harmony. What Jesus is doing is

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rebuking the phariseical misunderstanding. Of the
law, and this Pharisaic tradition is what

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would become the rabbinical Talmudic tradition.
So in our review, there's a perfect

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harmony. Another way to understand this
from our perspective is to look at the

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Biblical covenants. The New Testament will
actually cite all the Biblical covenants to the

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Old Testament as a perfect linear harmony. They're not viewed as a total discontinuity.

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Now sometimes, yes, Paul will
use terminology and language to contrast the

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Old Testament sinai to the New Testament. He does this Singalatian spot. But

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the allegory of Spore is actually based
in the historical presentation that Paul presupposes.

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In other words, he assumes that
Hagar and Sarah and Abraham were actual historic

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personages. That's the basis for the
allegorical level of interpretation, and in fact,

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throughout the history of the Church fathers, this modus operandi of hermaeutics,

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or how to interpret the scriptures,
it becomes a pattern of four layers,

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the four levels of what would be
called medieval hermauticts. Right where we have

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the historical, we have the anagogical, we have the tropological and we have

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the allegorical right these four layers of
hermeneutical interpretation of the Old Testament. They're

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never set out of accord with one
another. And eventually, by the way,

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the Church rejects the originist interpretation at
the sixth Ecumenical Council. This is

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the confessional Saint Sophronius which was accepted
at the sixth Council, and it completely

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refutes and rejects from our perspective originism. So that's my ten minute opening sit

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Well, thank you very much,
Jay was Scott please give us your opening

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statements. First of all, just
to set the stage here, I've read

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the Bible many times. I was
a missionary. I believed in intelligent design

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for evolution. I'm not a philosophical
or theological or even political liberal, but

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over time I became aware of what
I felt was very sound biblical scholarship that

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did not support the fundamentalist point of
view. Now these are not just wild

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liberal opinions. If you want to
look at two scholars who I think are

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very fair as well as informed,
Art Ehrman's Jesus Interrupted and also the more

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recent Richard Smoley's How God Became God? They go into considerable detail about the

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problems with both the Old and the
New Testament. Those of us who grew

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up believing the Bible literally understand and
that effectively we are so culturally brainwashed that

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the contradictions and the problems in the
Bible are not really obvious. We grow

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up, let's say, as my
family did, having little Nativity scenes in

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the home on Christmas, and the
wise men and the shepherds are there at

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the same time, and so forth. So you know, there have been

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efforts to kind of smooth things out, and the most sophisticated evangelical and fundamentalist

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scholars have tried to come up with
answers. But I would challenge anybody who's

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neutral, as I was back in
my uninformed days, to look at Airman's

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comparison of the first week of Jesus'
life and his last week. The contradictions

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between the different gospels. Radical contradictions
are very obvious once you put these things

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together. It's just that they're not
lined up in a way where it becomes

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obvious the details. You can take
anything from the lineage of Jesus back to

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David, or what happened after the
crucifixion, during the resurrection or any of

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these things. There are so many
just logical problems and evidential problems. Obviously,

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the Gospels were not written by eyewitnesses. That becomes very apparent. Paul,

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who wrote probably the earliest books from
fifty to sixty AD, well before

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the Gospels were written, he doesn't
even mention them, so apparently they weren't

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even known. But he barely mentions
Christ's life before. Gospels are really obsessed

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with and focused on jesus life or
John Warsaw about his death. But Paul

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basically doesn't say much about his life, and he only quotes Jesus twice.

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One of the times is about divorce, which I think modern Christians have conveniently

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ignored. I frankly don't think if
Jesus came back today that he would recognize

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modern Christianity. But let's just take
an example of the doctrine of the Trinity.

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It's really not to be found in
the New Testament. This notion that

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Jesus and God and the Holy Spirit
are one is really confusing what it actually

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says. Now in John seventeen twenty
and twenty one it's explained what they're referring

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to when they talk about oneness,
where he says they may all be one,

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as he's talking to the disciples,
as you and the Father in me

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and I am one, may they
be with be in us. And he's

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talking about in love and spirit.
Obviously he's not talking about the apostles becoming

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part of the Godhead. And throughout
the New Testament is very clear from the

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Lord's prayer that he's praying to God
the Father. Matthew, Mark and Luke

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the young man comes and talks to
Jesus and calls him good Master, and

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he says they're none good but God. So the bottom line is that many

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things, including the Trinity, but
also the whole concept of the atonement,

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the notion that somehow, because of
the sin that Adam and Eve committed,

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you know, we're all entering into
mortality and we were sinners, and why

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should Christ die. Well, there's
half a dozen theories for that. Christianity

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has evolved, and in the early
years the early Church, so called Church

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Fathers, the Winning faction, were
alarmed by the number of Christians who did

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not follow their point of view.
So you can say early Christianity is represented

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in Orthodoxy or Catholicism or Protestantism today. But if you go back and see

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the differences on faith and works and
some of the other debates, it's really

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hard to find modern Christianity in the
New Testament. Now with regard to the

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Old Testament, there you know obvious, I would say the majority of Christians

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today do not take the Old Testament
literally. I think one would have to

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dispense with the evidence for evolution to
do that, and I think that if

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you look at the progress of evolution, there's no evidence for intelligent design.

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On the contrary, where the Gnostics
had their first insight had to do with

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the nature of the Creator who put
us into these bodies. And David Bracki,

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the religion scholar you've had on before
Miguel said, keep is convinced that

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there really was this idea the Gnostics
had of gnosis or insight, because it's

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hard to believe Jews would have come
to the conclusion that the God of the

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Old Testament, or Jehovah, the
demi Urge, whatever you want to call

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him, was incompetent or evil.
But if you look at prehistory and history

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going back five hundred million years,
the amount of purposeless suffering and innocent suffering

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is hard to explain using the basis
or the rationale of orthodox religion. I

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mean that in the broadest sense or
East or West mainstream religion. The black

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deaths, wallpak, malaria, cancer, Alzheimer's, the four hundred types of

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emotional and mental disorders, the birth
defects, differences in IQ. If you

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go back and read Jared Diamonds,
guns, germs and steel, you get

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a little sense. Even at that
late date in the Middle Ages and after

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that, just how many people died
in childhood about a quarter of the one

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hundred and eight billion people who ever
lived. So then one has to ask,

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if God is all powerful and all
knowing and benevolent, you know,

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why would he hold the knowledge of
germs and ANESTHESIATI the late nineteenth century,

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and I think that Gnostics had this
flash of insight, this gnosis that the

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God of this world, the creator
of this world, was not the high

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transcendental God. Now gnosticism recognizes there
are contending forces. On the one hand,

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we have the Marian visions, we
have the miracles that the saints performed.

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You know, there is a divine
intervention. I think you can get

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help from the eons or the angels, or whatever you want to call them.

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I'm a believer in healing, miracles, divine intervention, the power of

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prayer. There's that side. On
the other hand, there's a tremendous amount

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of evil. Obviously the forces of
good don't seem to be able to stop

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it. But this fits with what
gnostics say about the dualistic nature of this

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dimension. So what I did in
book God Reconsidered is I shared my journey

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over the last fifty years forty eight
years to be exact, I'm sixty nine

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now, and how I finally went
through all these different religions and finally decided

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the gnosticism was the only path that
really made philosophical sense. Well, thank

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you, Scott Jay. Would you
like to have a rebuttal? I know

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we said five minutes. If you
need longer, then we'll just match.

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I'll have Scott match the timeline so
everybody can say what they want. I

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would definitely like to rebut to that. So I noted several points I think

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in his opening statement. Obviously he
is free to give the open statement that

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he wants, but the opening statement
kind of ignored pretty much all the points

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that I made, most of which
actually covered his responses or his points.

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So, for example, he sets
what he calls fundamentalism over against whatever gnostic

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version of Christianity that he has,
I would actually say that, you know,

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this is really a mischaracterization because any
position, any worldview, actually has

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its own version of fundamentalism. You
could say, in fact, I've even

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heard mister Smith critique scientism as being
a kind of fundamentalism. So really any

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position could fall into quote fundamentalism,
because any position will have fundamental starting points

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and presuppositions that it won't actually question. It's actually impossible to have no starting

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point, no foundational assumptions, and
complete neutrality. So I would actually have

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to disagree that he may believe that
he's philosophically neutral, and he may have

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striven or may strive, we may
strive to be neutral, but actually neutrality

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is fundamentally impossible to achieve. There's
no perfect neutral position because we're all conditioned

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in some sense by our worldviews.
All of our views are theory laden in

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other words, is what I'm trying
to say. So the fact that he

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has cited bart Ehman, that he's
the site of these people who talk about

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Bible contradictions. There are many competent
scholars who have replied to bart Erman and

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others in many competent scholarly works,
such as doctor Craig B. Lomberg's book

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The Reliability of the Gospels. I've
done talks on the amazing historical veracity and

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testimony that we have in five thousand
plus manuscripts of the first, third,

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three and fourth centuries of the Church. That's a tremendous attestation that's much higher,

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magnitudes higher than what we have for
Plato's dialogues. And as a grad

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student in philosophy, I know a
lot about Plato, and I can tell

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you that the latest document about that
we have a Plato is Oxford manuscript be

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of the Middle Ages. That's the
earliest, excuse me, the earliest document

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that we have of Plato's writings.
So we have within the first three or

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fourth centuries over five thousand manuscripts even
back to the first century that are largely

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in harmony. There's something of a
ninety five ninety seven ninety eight percent of

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harmony in the different textual collections and
manuscripts that we have. So now that

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itself doesn't prove the religion. I'm
just saying, when it comes to the

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textual issues, it's a bit of
sleight of hand to talk about fundamentalism,

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to throw in barn ermin when it's
actually a lot more complicated than that.

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So are there difficulties in texts,
Yeah, there's difficulties in text but actually

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there's difficulties in any religion. So
as if this constitutes some sort of fundamental,

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like destructive argument to our position,
I don't think it does, because

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any position, any religion, any
worldview, is going to have difficulties.

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Right, He's going to bring up
the problem of evil. He's kind of

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already hinted at that. That's I
mean, I'm going to give you an

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argument for the problem of view.
Well, when we get to that question,

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when we get to the Odyssey.
But actually pointing out these kinds of

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problems itself isn't an argument. We
can point out fundamental problems, it can

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point us in a direction, but
just talking about problems in a position itself

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isn't that strong an argument in my
view. He says that Paul doesn't say

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much about Jesus's life. Well,
this just assumes that Paul wasn't being chosen

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by Christ to be an apostle to
the Gentiles, and that there wasn't,

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in God's providence, already going to
be gospels written about Christ's life. In

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other words, it's assuming the thing
that is kind of one thing that we

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need to be proven from the outset, which is that Christianity is false whatever.

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He's assuming that Christianity is false in
order to argue against the Gospels.

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But we need to know why Christianity
is false in order to disprove the Gospels.

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That's the thing that he has not
yet shown. So just because Paul

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doesn't talk about Jesus's life assumes that
there must be a standard by which he

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will accept Paul's writings only if he
talks about Jesus' life. Well, maybe

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Jesus didn't commission Paul to talk about
his life because there's already four gospels that

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are going to be written talking about
Paul's or talking about jesus life. When

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he talked about the Atonement, he
gave a Protestant definition of the atonement,

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which is not held by Orthodoxy.
You could read Saint John Damascus's book Exposition

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of Orthodox Faith, where he goes
into great depth in the book. In

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book three, discussing how we don't
believe in the idea that Christ's death was

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like one person had to be damned
by another person in the trinity or something

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like this that paid off God.
That's the Western and Sealmian and then later

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Protestant doctrine orzox Christianity does not believe
in the doctrine, as it would necessitate

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a form of Nostorianism. He says
that we would have to dispense with the

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evidence for evolution. Actually, I
debate evolutionists all the time, and there's

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not much evidence for evolution. There's
evidence for adaptation, sure, but adaptation

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is not the same thing as this
grand scale narrative of Darwinian evolutionary theory.

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So I'll be happy to debate any
of the points that relate to the grand

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scale narrative of Darwinian theory, and
we'll be happy to dispense with them.

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So he talks about pointless suffering.
I imagine we'll get to that when we

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get to the Odyssey, because the
Odyssey actually presupposes a standard by which to

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judge right and wrong, good and
bad suffering. Why suffering is bad,

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and what we need is justification for
why there are those standards, and of

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course I believe that the Orthodox philosophy
gives a justification for that. When it

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comes to New Testament citations for the
deity of Christ, I actually I already

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gave one. Christ says many times
in the Gospel John I Am. He

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identifies himself with the I am.
This is why the Jews want to stone

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him, right Isaiah. In John
eleven, John cites Isaiah six or Isaiah

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sees the majesty of the seraphim covering
the face of God. It's identified as

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God. John specifically identifies that as
Jesus, So the so called gnostic Gospel

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John, many people thought John in
the early Church might be a gnostic gospel,

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ironically identifies Christ as God. John
one begins with in the beginning was

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the Word. The logos of the
Word was with God, and the Word

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was God. In John one eighteen
it says that he is the only begotten

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of the Father. So we believe
that Christ quite literally is God. And

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there's many many other case. I
did a three hour talk just on citations

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from the Old and New Testament.
You can find that the whole talk if

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you want to go into that.
I'm obviously I have talk about that.

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Now it's called is Jesus God?
Is God? A trinity? And it's

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a response to Rocking Mystery, the
well known YouTuber. So lastly, as

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my winds down here, trying to
fit this sin as quick as I can,

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he says that he why would God
withhold knowledge of germs? Well,

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this is a bizarre argument because really, again this will be an argument that

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I think would befall any position,
as in other words, it's a kind

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of an unanswerable question for anybody's worldview. It's like saying, why would we

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would we not have knowledge of you
know, why did Jesus not talking about

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computers? I don't find that a
very convincing argument, because if Christianity is

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true, then in God's providence,
God knows and has a delineated period within

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which he does lead man to certain
levels of knowledge. Again, depending upon

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God's foreknowledge and God's providence. There's
nothing within the Christian worldview where that's inconsistent.

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So I'm not sure why that's a
suitable argument, because it just assumes

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that God is evil or bad for
not letting people know about germs a long

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time ago. But again, now
we have to know why on what standard,

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on what basis he's going to judge
things evil and badness. Leads me

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to my final point, which is
that when he says that he is a

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believer in divine intervention, how does
he know or by what standard does he

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have an ability or a way to
judge whether these divine interventions, these mystical

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experiences, these ideas of why he
should or should not do this thing,

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are absolute, or maybe they're not
absolute, and they're not absolute and they're

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relativistic. Then on what basis does
this mystic position that he has give him

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any better standing, any better philosophical
stance than any other position than atheism or

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than Christianity at all. It seems
that it would just reduce to pure relativism.

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Thank you, Jay. Yes,
it looks like Evans. Everybody's behaving

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in the chat room. Can I
make a comment, Yeah, I'm gonna.

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I just wanted to interject, Yes, we'll let you. I just

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wanted to check everybody's behaving. I'm
amazed the reaction of my vaping is getting

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from people. But I only smoke
crack outside, so but that's where we

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are. So everybody's behavior. Yeah, I'm amazed how the word Boomer has

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become such an insult. I'm gen
x. I'm gen x. But anyway,

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Scott, please give us your rebuttal. Jay went about seven minutes,

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so please seven minutes. I don't
have a lot to say, except that

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I wanted to clarify a few things. First of all, when I say

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fundamentalism, I'm distinguishing that somewhat from
the evangelical point of view. I'm not

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saying that none of us have some
presumptions I explained in God Reconsidered how I

401
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came to my decision. People can
read it and they will either agree with

402
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my logic or they will decide that
I'm wrong. I'm simply saying that Jay's

403
00:32:47,559 --> 00:32:55,920
position is a very conservative one within
Christianity. There are lots of other faithful,

404
00:32:57,519 --> 00:33:01,799
scholarly Christians who would disagree with him
on many of these things. The

405
00:33:01,920 --> 00:33:07,119
second point is with regard to the
manuscripts. I didn't say anything about the

406
00:33:07,240 --> 00:33:14,160
manuscripts. Yes, there's great consistency
between the manuscripts. What I'm talking about

407
00:33:14,519 --> 00:33:21,440
are the dramatic contradictions that are obvious
to anybody once your eyes are opened.

408
00:33:22,359 --> 00:33:30,480
And I think anybody who wants to
understand this should read Richard Smolly's How God

409
00:33:30,599 --> 00:33:37,119
Became God, in which he addresses
why Christ was crucified. He says it's

410
00:33:37,200 --> 00:33:40,920
because he probably did convey the idea
that he was the Messiah, and he

411
00:33:42,079 --> 00:33:49,680
explains what the Jewish concept of the
Messiah was, and bart ehrm Jesus interrupted,

412
00:33:49,920 --> 00:33:53,000
I think makes a very very clear
case. There's not a book that

413
00:33:53,079 --> 00:33:58,319
has ever been written that doesn't have
its critics, and people can choose their

414
00:33:58,359 --> 00:34:02,359
sides. But I'm very confident that
most people who approach this subjectively will realize

415
00:34:02,440 --> 00:34:07,000
that the New Testament and the Old
Testament are not infallible. Now, with

416
00:34:07,119 --> 00:34:14,559
regard to the Atonement, I didn't
say what. I didn't get into any

417
00:34:14,679 --> 00:34:17,880
details about which theory. There's half
a dozen theories of why Christ had to

418
00:34:19,000 --> 00:34:30,119
die, But as far as Paul's
does not lack of discussion or even reference

419
00:34:30,880 --> 00:34:37,400
to Christ's life. Paul, if
you just take the seven letters that everybody

420
00:34:37,480 --> 00:34:45,480
agrees or the legitimate ones Paul had
opinions about, everything wasn't always clear.

421
00:34:45,320 --> 00:34:52,199
But what is clear is the only
sites Jesus twice, and he barely makes

422
00:34:52,239 --> 00:34:57,599
any reference to his life, which, again the contrast with the Gospels is

423
00:34:57,760 --> 00:35:02,440
enormous, But the gospels don't agree
among themselves. The contradictions are garmous,

424
00:35:02,519 --> 00:35:08,559
and rather than go any further into
where we have some disagreements here about suffering

425
00:35:08,599 --> 00:35:13,719
and so forth, believe that when
we get on to theodicy, so let's

426
00:35:14,079 --> 00:35:17,920
move on, all right, Well, then let's move on to theodicy.

427
00:35:19,079 --> 00:35:22,239
Jay, would you like to talk
about that or rebut any of Scott's points,

428
00:35:22,760 --> 00:35:25,400
The one thing I would say is
that again, I mean, the

429
00:35:25,679 --> 00:35:31,440
alleged contradictions have been dealt with to
appeal to what is an obvious contradiction or

430
00:35:31,519 --> 00:35:36,639
what should be obvious. It's very
similar to the way that higher critics approached

431
00:35:37,320 --> 00:35:39,679
the Book of Genesis. For example, they would argue things like, well,

432
00:35:40,000 --> 00:35:43,599
if you look at the fact that
there's two different names of God being

433
00:35:43,719 --> 00:35:46,639
used, say in one chapter Genesis
as opposed to another chapter, or the

434
00:35:46,719 --> 00:35:52,480
way that the Leviticus texts utilize a
different name, the presupposition there is that

435
00:35:52,559 --> 00:35:55,800
that had to have been different authors, and therefore we could deny Moaic authorship

436
00:35:55,920 --> 00:36:01,480
or deny later redactions by Joshua,
and therefore or the whole manuscript tradition would

437
00:36:01,480 --> 00:36:07,199
fall apart into the documentary hypothesis and
so forth. But the problem is that

438
00:36:07,239 --> 00:36:10,840
the documentary hypothesis rests on presuppositions.
And what's ironic is it? In the

439
00:36:10,920 --> 00:36:15,039
twentieth century, the latter half of
the twentieth century, the documentary hypothesis about

440
00:36:15,039 --> 00:36:21,639
the Old Testament itself is no longer
in favor. The hypothesis of Q that

441
00:36:21,760 --> 00:36:24,639
there was this mystical, mythical Q
document that was served as the basis for

442
00:36:24,800 --> 00:36:29,440
perhaps Marke's earliest gospel, for what
mark being the earliest gospel, and so

443
00:36:29,559 --> 00:36:31,840
forth, Q is no longer in
favor. Favor. You can go watch

444
00:36:31,920 --> 00:36:37,800
a Yale University's YouTube channel, the
latest lectures at Yale. They'll tell you

445
00:36:37,920 --> 00:36:40,159
that this is no longer in vogue. And when it comes to textual scholarship,

446
00:36:40,199 --> 00:36:45,360
so actually, textual scholarship of bart
Erman and the liberal variety is a

447
00:36:45,440 --> 00:36:51,000
shifting sand. It's always changing,
much like Darwinism is a shifting sand that's

448
00:36:51,039 --> 00:36:55,719
always changing. In fact, think
about something like junk DNA. Junk DNA

449
00:36:57,119 --> 00:37:00,239
according to you, say Richard Dawkins
fifteen years ago, it's the strongest proof

450
00:37:00,840 --> 00:37:07,880
of Darwinian theory and evolution. And
then there's a clip of Dawkins not too

451
00:37:07,960 --> 00:37:12,519
long ago, saying that junk DNA
is one of the strongest things that he

452
00:37:12,679 --> 00:37:15,119
now rejects. He never supported junk
DNA. In fact, there is no

453
00:37:15,239 --> 00:37:19,480
junk DNA, and people have put
the two clips of him side by side.

454
00:37:19,519 --> 00:37:22,599
Now, I'm not trying to say
that a tribute to mister Smith Dawkins's

455
00:37:22,599 --> 00:37:25,840
position, but I know that he
is a critic of scientism, as I

456
00:37:25,880 --> 00:37:30,039
would be as well. But I
would just simply point out that this accusator,

457
00:37:30,199 --> 00:37:37,000
this critique about the alleged disharmony in
the Gospels, has been dealt with

458
00:37:37,360 --> 00:37:39,320
since the beginning, right the church
fathers have dealt with this. Augustine wrote

459
00:37:39,320 --> 00:37:44,119
a whole book about the harmony of
the Gospels, and this partly gets into

460
00:37:44,199 --> 00:37:46,760
again difficulties when it relates to textual
traditions. He says he wasn't interested in

461
00:37:46,920 --> 00:37:52,840
talking about different textual manuscripts, but
it's actually relevant because there's a distinction that

462
00:37:52,880 --> 00:37:57,320
we would make between the autographa,
which is the text that the apostles and

463
00:37:57,760 --> 00:38:02,559
the disciples actually penned, and then
the later copies or manuscripts that come to

464
00:38:02,719 --> 00:38:09,079
us in these different textual codex's codeses
right, Codex about Ecanus, Conaticas,

465
00:38:09,079 --> 00:38:13,599
et cetera, et cetera, the
received texts and so forth. So that's

466
00:38:13,639 --> 00:38:17,440
a big difficult issue. I don't
deny that. But setting aside that question

467
00:38:17,559 --> 00:38:23,000
of presuppositions, when it comes to
textual manuscripts, there's an amazing again connection

468
00:38:23,199 --> 00:38:30,400
between countless Messianic prophecies that Christ specifically
fulfilled. How would Christ have fulfilled those

469
00:38:30,480 --> 00:38:37,159
prophecies if I mean none of that's
what we would expect if these were inspired

470
00:38:37,239 --> 00:38:40,400
documents. And again Christ himself refers
to himself as the fulfillment of those many,

471
00:38:40,440 --> 00:38:44,159
many many prophecies. So again I
have a whole talk on that.

472
00:38:44,239 --> 00:38:46,840
I know we're not going to get
into fulfilled prophecies, but you can look

473
00:38:46,840 --> 00:38:52,199
at Daniel seven, Daniel nine.
Daniel talks about the exact empires under which

474
00:38:52,239 --> 00:38:55,280
the Messiah would be born, the
temple would be destroyed, the sacrifice will

475
00:38:55,320 --> 00:38:59,639
be done away, and of course
in seventy eighty that's exactly what happened.

476
00:38:59,719 --> 00:39:02,960
Christ dies, right, and then
seventy eighty the temples destroyed by Titus west

477
00:39:04,000 --> 00:39:07,400
Asian, the temple administration is taken
away. Daniel says, this is wo

478
00:39:07,519 --> 00:39:12,320
happened when the final era comes upon
us. We live in that Church era

479
00:39:12,719 --> 00:39:15,599
which all of the prophets of the
Old Testament, almost all of them said,

480
00:39:15,960 --> 00:39:21,119
what would mark that Messianic era would
be the Gentiles worshiping the God of

481
00:39:21,199 --> 00:39:23,559
the Jews, the God of the
Israelites. And that's exactly what's happened.

482
00:39:23,559 --> 00:39:29,719
In the last two thousand years.
The apostles and their followers have gone out

483
00:39:29,760 --> 00:39:32,360
and converted the gentile nations to worship
the One True God. And that's what

484
00:39:32,519 --> 00:39:37,280
we say, Jesus is now when
it comes to the Odyssey, what I

485
00:39:37,320 --> 00:39:40,400
would say is that this is where
I think it's going to get very hairy

486
00:39:40,519 --> 00:39:45,719
for the opponent, because I listened
to many of his talks, actually most

487
00:39:45,760 --> 00:39:47,800
of the ones that I could find
on YouTube, in preparation for this debate.

488
00:39:47,880 --> 00:39:51,039
So I don't want to be unfair
to him, but I noticed many

489
00:39:51,159 --> 00:39:54,159
times where when he laid out his
worldview, what he said was something to

490
00:39:54,199 --> 00:39:59,199
the effect of, for example,
he said, we can have a Hindu

491
00:39:59,639 --> 00:40:06,880
Boodh shaman conception of a religion that
we kind of formulate like a cafeteria.

492
00:40:07,000 --> 00:40:08,760
We can kind of put it together
the way that we want to do it,

493
00:40:09,239 --> 00:40:13,000
and he says, then we can
somehow get like a version of good

494
00:40:13,039 --> 00:40:15,239
and evil. And I would just
simply say that number one, his position

495
00:40:15,800 --> 00:40:21,719
cannot give any coherent explanation of what
good and evil is. And so therefore,

496
00:40:21,760 --> 00:40:25,519
when he would attempt to critique Christianity
on the basis of O Jehovah is

497
00:40:25,559 --> 00:40:29,400
a mean god of the Old Testamer
or something like the all Debay off right,

498
00:40:29,480 --> 00:40:30,679
the demiurge, or whatever, I
would actually say that he has no

499
00:40:30,840 --> 00:40:36,559
grounding and no fundamental basis by which
to critique good and evil at all,

500
00:40:36,679 --> 00:40:39,039
because in his worldview good and evil, as best I could tell from the

501
00:40:39,159 --> 00:40:45,159
many many lectures and interviews of his
that I listened to, it's purely subjective.

502
00:40:45,239 --> 00:40:50,039
If it's purely subjective, then there's
no basis it's objective to critique our

503
00:40:50,159 --> 00:40:53,440
god on. You need some kind
of metaphysical absolute, the concrete absolute,

504
00:40:53,719 --> 00:40:59,480
The good or something has to be
objectively a transcendentals necessary category. And if

505
00:40:59,519 --> 00:41:01,280
you don't have that, if you
don't have a philosophical justification for that,

506
00:41:01,840 --> 00:41:07,000
then your position is just relativism.
It is pure subjectivism, and it actually

507
00:41:07,039 --> 00:41:13,360
can't say anything at all, all
right, thank you, Scott. I

508
00:41:13,440 --> 00:41:16,559
think Jay went about seven minutes.
If that's which won for the rebuttal on

509
00:41:16,679 --> 00:41:21,440
theodicy, I must say somebody did
mention in chat that you look like a

510
00:41:21,639 --> 00:41:25,079
thin Bruce Dern. I think that's
a compliment as far as I'm concerned.

511
00:41:25,239 --> 00:41:30,159
But well, that beats the person
who posted on Facebook that I've already converted

512
00:41:30,199 --> 00:41:37,840
them to Orthodoxy from my currently just
bylf okay, I am not a relativist.

513
00:41:38,920 --> 00:41:44,000
I am a believer in evil.
By profession, I'm a journalist.

514
00:41:44,079 --> 00:41:52,800
I've written extensively about Hitler, Stalin
malt stay Tune, all the great evil

515
00:41:52,559 --> 00:42:00,719
leaders in the world. I've studied
prehistory and history, and what I'm defining

516
00:42:00,880 --> 00:42:09,159
as evil or let's say bad,
is not subtle. I lived in Germany

517
00:42:09,239 --> 00:42:13,679
for a while. I've been to
a death camp. I would call the

518
00:42:13,800 --> 00:42:22,800
Holocaust evil. I think that any
god who created a reality where a quarter

519
00:42:23,159 --> 00:42:30,280
of the children would die in childhood
for all the suffering and the innocence and

520
00:42:30,800 --> 00:42:36,360
the grief of the families. A
god who would create a world where there

521
00:42:36,519 --> 00:42:43,800
is famine, where people weren't even
literate until recent where nobody had any idea

522
00:42:43,920 --> 00:42:49,239
what the Black Death was caused by
forty percent of Europe in the Middle Ages

523
00:42:49,639 --> 00:42:55,079
died of that and it was an
excruciating, horrible ebola like death, cancer

524
00:42:55,480 --> 00:43:04,639
is not proportionate. Both religions East
and West, in their desperation to justify

525
00:43:06,360 --> 00:43:10,039
a god or a power like karma
that would have us come into this world,

526
00:43:12,119 --> 00:43:15,440
they try to blame the victim,
and they try to say one of

527
00:43:15,559 --> 00:43:22,519
several things. Either it's all relative. How can you say that you know

528
00:43:22,599 --> 00:43:27,920
there's good or evil, which is
what the liberals usually do. Or they'll

529
00:43:27,960 --> 00:43:30,920
say, well, it's a mystery. You know, we don't we can

530
00:43:31,079 --> 00:43:36,440
we can learn things from our suffering. You know, they've done studies and

531
00:43:36,519 --> 00:43:40,599
it shows that in three months almost
everybody can on average, bounce back from

532
00:43:40,639 --> 00:43:45,519
adversity, whether it's being in a
death camp or a divorce or you know,

533
00:43:45,719 --> 00:43:51,480
getting a cancer prognosis, whatever it
is. And human beings are very,

534
00:43:51,599 --> 00:43:55,639
very resilient. And I'm an expert
on adversity. My my day job

535
00:43:55,800 --> 00:44:00,679
is very mundane. I write about
I interview c and find out how they

536
00:44:01,239 --> 00:44:07,679
succeeded, and you know, resilience
is part of that formula. So what

537
00:44:07,880 --> 00:44:15,039
I'm saying is that if you in
order to understand whether Genesis is correct.

538
00:44:15,280 --> 00:44:19,760
When God rests on the seventh day
and said that his creation is good,

539
00:44:20,239 --> 00:44:24,039
you have to see what that means. Now, if you believe in the

540
00:44:24,159 --> 00:44:28,960
dinosaurs who were around for one hundred
and fifty million years, it's a little

541
00:44:29,039 --> 00:44:34,800
hard to understand why God or the
aliens or whoever was in charge of the

542
00:44:34,880 --> 00:44:39,639
creation process, if it didn't happen
six thousand years ago, why they hung

543
00:44:39,719 --> 00:44:43,119
around for so long? Did God
finally say, well, you know,

544
00:44:43,639 --> 00:44:46,280
after one hundred and fifty million years, this doesn't seem to be leading to

545
00:44:47,039 --> 00:44:52,119
human beings, who kind of modern
humans really only appeared about sixty thousand years

546
00:44:52,159 --> 00:44:55,559
ago. You know, what was
the purpose of this long, long,

547
00:44:55,800 --> 00:45:02,000
very very slow creation by any definition? And then he brought in the asteroids?

548
00:45:02,280 --> 00:45:09,840
How do we explain the purpose of
volcanos, hurricanes, tsunamis what it

549
00:45:10,039 --> 00:45:15,280
looks like is exactly what we see
day to day accidents, chaos from the

550
00:45:15,400 --> 00:45:25,280
quantum level up to industrial accidents.
The fundamental problem with all mainstream religions is

551
00:45:25,360 --> 00:45:30,000
this notion that and this is in
the East too, is that you know,

552
00:45:30,119 --> 00:45:35,000
we get born here for a purpose, let's say, to learn how

553
00:45:35,039 --> 00:45:38,480
to learn the truth, and you
know, Christians don't even agree on what

554
00:45:38,679 --> 00:45:45,360
that is. Obviously, bart Airman
and his critics don't agree on what the

555
00:45:45,480 --> 00:45:52,119
New Testament is saying, or whether
you know, there are certain doctrines like

556
00:45:52,239 --> 00:45:57,400
divorce should be ignored. You know, is abortion should abortion be a major

557
00:45:57,559 --> 00:46:05,079
principle of modern Christianity or is it
should it be a minor one? The

558
00:46:05,199 --> 00:46:08,280
bottom line is that it's very,
very hard for people to find the truth.

559
00:46:08,320 --> 00:46:13,960
And this is after people have become
literate. What about the tens of

560
00:46:14,079 --> 00:46:20,000
thousands of years when most people spent
their entire lives farming. The irony of

561
00:46:20,079 --> 00:46:23,840
this notion that God places us here
in order to exercise our free will is,

562
00:46:24,199 --> 00:46:30,920
first of all, it completely denies
the fact that God is responsible for

563
00:46:30,079 --> 00:46:37,119
creating us, that we are largely
products of genetics and environment. If you

564
00:46:37,199 --> 00:46:43,760
read a book like Harvill Hendrix's Getting
the Love You Want, you learn very

565
00:46:43,840 --> 00:46:47,400
convincingly that it's in the first months
of life, certainly the first year of

566
00:46:47,480 --> 00:46:53,079
life, that we largely get programmed
and we end up picking inappropriate spouses and

567
00:46:53,719 --> 00:46:59,119
we are subconscious. Even Paul said, I do things that I don't really

568
00:46:59,159 --> 00:47:02,599
want to do. Well, we
don't understand ourselves. Very few people have

569
00:47:02,760 --> 00:47:09,039
been through psychotherapy to become more self
aware, be more objective. And the

570
00:47:09,159 --> 00:47:16,000
bottom line is that somehow God waives
this magic land that says you have free

571
00:47:16,039 --> 00:47:21,519
will. Therefore, whatever you do, you're going to be held accounts accountable

572
00:47:21,639 --> 00:47:27,320
for. And yet nobody can really
hardly even find the time to search for

573
00:47:27,480 --> 00:47:30,800
truth if it were easy to find. I mean, our lives are a

574
00:47:30,880 --> 00:47:37,719
third taken up with you know,
commuting, work, study, third is

575
00:47:37,800 --> 00:47:43,360
taken up with sleep, a third
with games and eating and you know other

576
00:47:43,480 --> 00:47:49,320
things. Very very little of anybody's
life, especially if you go back sixty

577
00:47:49,400 --> 00:47:55,119
thousand years, is taken up with
any opportunity to quote unquote exercise free will.

578
00:47:55,480 --> 00:48:00,880
But free even free will becomes subject
to the acts of the world.

579
00:48:00,280 --> 00:48:07,039
The chaos in the world is everywhere. So I'm innocent. Person a mile

580
00:48:07,119 --> 00:48:13,360
away gets killed by a bullet,
a person who didn't know that a building

581
00:48:13,519 --> 00:48:15,639
was going to collapse is killed,
and so forth and so on. There

582
00:48:15,840 --> 00:48:21,000
just really isn't any rhyme or reason
for the notion that this world was created

583
00:48:21,039 --> 00:48:25,519
by a benevolent God. Well,
thank you, Scott. Well Jay,

584
00:48:25,719 --> 00:48:30,639
would you like to rebud I think
we're on the odyssey, but I think

585
00:48:30,760 --> 00:48:34,599
free will might be another. Why
we gravitate to religions? Why is there

586
00:48:34,719 --> 00:48:37,000
evil? And do we have a
free will at all? Or go ahead?

587
00:48:37,079 --> 00:48:40,159
Tell us what you go ahead?
Well, the first thing I noticed

588
00:48:40,320 --> 00:48:45,920
was that when he responded on the
matter of the odyssey, he basically responded

589
00:48:45,960 --> 00:48:49,920
that, well, children die,
God lets a lot of people die,

590
00:48:50,119 --> 00:48:57,239
and therefore that's just not nice.
That's so you can make an emotional appeal.

591
00:48:57,440 --> 00:49:01,000
But in debate, and emotional appeal
is fallacy, is not actually a

592
00:49:01,320 --> 00:49:06,159
valid argument. So I would again
reiterate the point that I asked before,

593
00:49:06,199 --> 00:49:08,039
because I know that he says he
does believe that there's evil, he believes

594
00:49:08,079 --> 00:49:13,159
that there is some way to adjudicate
between these. But what I was asking

595
00:49:13,239 --> 00:49:15,880
for is what precisely is the means
by which we adjudicate between good and evil?

596
00:49:15,920 --> 00:49:20,960
How does he know when such and
such mystical experiences. Maybe it was

597
00:49:21,000 --> 00:49:24,119
in a demon and maybe it was
an evil spirit, maybe in ARCon deceived

598
00:49:24,199 --> 00:49:29,000
him into believing that this experience that
he had, his mystical experience, is

599
00:49:29,039 --> 00:49:31,519
talking to whatever entity. How does
he know that it wasn't an ARCon deceiving

600
00:49:31,639 --> 00:49:35,800
him. In other words, he
needs a standard by which to judge between

601
00:49:35,840 --> 00:49:37,960
the good and evil. I specifically
asked what that standard is, and I

602
00:49:38,039 --> 00:49:40,519
didn't hear one, even though I
said, even though I did hear him

603
00:49:40,519 --> 00:49:44,039
say he believes that there is evil, I would like to know what the

604
00:49:44,119 --> 00:49:49,800
epistemic justification is for whatever his standard
of good and evil is. When he

605
00:49:49,880 --> 00:49:52,599
says he's not a relativist, so
that's good. I'm glad to hear that,

606
00:49:52,679 --> 00:49:55,280
but I'd like to know how he's
not a relativist. Next. I've

607
00:49:55,320 --> 00:49:58,559
heard him say, and I could
be wrong. Maybe it wasn't him,

608
00:49:58,599 --> 00:50:01,960
but there was other people talking in
different interviews. But I did hear somebody

609
00:50:02,079 --> 00:50:07,440
mentioned in one of the anviyte shows
that we could look at reality as being

610
00:50:07,480 --> 00:50:12,800
grounded in mind. I actually make
this argument quite often. I don't Again,

611
00:50:13,039 --> 00:50:15,199
it may not have been his arguments, so forgive me if it wasn't.

612
00:50:15,199 --> 00:50:16,800
But if it was his argument,
I would reiterate that I agree that

613
00:50:17,000 --> 00:50:21,360
reality does seem to have mind at
its fundamental basis. And in fact,

614
00:50:21,400 --> 00:50:23,519
this is a classical argument that many
Church of Authers made to Maximus, a

615
00:50:23,559 --> 00:50:30,280
confessor made this argument that reality manifests
logos, the logie of reality, the

616
00:50:30,440 --> 00:50:32,800
essences of things. You could think
about this kind of like Plato's forms the

617
00:50:34,440 --> 00:50:37,840
essences of things right. And numbers
could be another example of this. In

618
00:50:37,280 --> 00:50:43,760
material invariant abstract entities like numbers,
they seem to go beyond the mere physical.

619
00:50:44,000 --> 00:50:46,760
Where are they though? How are
they interacting in this world? But

620
00:50:46,880 --> 00:50:51,840
also beyond this world? Right,
also outside of the fluxa space and time.

621
00:50:51,920 --> 00:50:54,599
Well, the Church of Authers and
many theologians in the Orthodox tradition have

622
00:50:54,679 --> 00:50:57,800
said, well, the answer to
this is the divine mind. Right,

623
00:50:57,920 --> 00:51:01,239
the logos is the fundamental basis of
all reality, and therefore reality is at

624
00:51:01,320 --> 00:51:06,920
base personal. And so the reason
I bring that up is that this is

625
00:51:07,000 --> 00:51:10,800
not just an abstract thing about trying
to prove arguments for math problems. It's

626
00:51:10,840 --> 00:51:15,960
actually pointing to the fundamental nature of
reality being personal, and not just humanly

627
00:51:16,039 --> 00:51:21,840
personal, but divine personhood, and
that's unique to Christianity. You could read

628
00:51:21,880 --> 00:51:27,000
Father stein Eloy's great books Orthodox Dogmatics. This is the central apologetic argument he

629
00:51:27,119 --> 00:51:30,440
makes in that work, which is
to demonstrate that the fundamental grounding of reality,

630
00:51:30,599 --> 00:51:35,840
contrary to most world religions and orthodoxy
is that God is personal. This

631
00:51:36,000 --> 00:51:39,199
is again this sets us off against
Protestantism and Roman Catholicism as well. So

632
00:51:39,559 --> 00:51:45,440
he mentioned the fact that free will
doesn't seem to make sense in the way

633
00:51:45,519 --> 00:51:50,159
that perhaps God put us in this
garden and so forth. I would actually

634
00:51:50,199 --> 00:51:52,760
flip that around and say that really, the Christian worldview is the only worldview

635
00:51:53,000 --> 00:51:57,159
that can give an account for free
will, and not just free will,

636
00:51:57,239 --> 00:52:02,800
but a host of other fundamental philosophspical
things and ideas and principles and transcendentals and

637
00:52:02,880 --> 00:52:08,519
categories and metaphysical realities that we absolutely
have to have within a worldview to have

638
00:52:08,639 --> 00:52:13,039
a coherent worldview, such as,
for example, the idea of archade,

639
00:52:13,119 --> 00:52:15,840
the idea of the beginning point to
things, the idea of telos, the

640
00:52:15,920 --> 00:52:21,119
idea of things having a purpose,
the idea of causality cosmology, things having

641
00:52:21,320 --> 00:52:24,719
causal relations, the idea of change, the idea of identity over change,

642
00:52:24,800 --> 00:52:29,800
identity over time, the idea of
meaning, the idea of also chaos.

643
00:52:30,159 --> 00:52:32,280
How can we make sense of both
order and chaos in reality? And I

644
00:52:32,360 --> 00:52:37,400
know he says that, well,
I don't see any basis for their being

645
00:52:37,480 --> 00:52:42,159
designed in reality? Well, to
be able to say sentences presupposes that there

646
00:52:42,280 --> 00:52:45,440
is some degree at least of design
and meaning in reality. You couldn't say

647
00:52:45,519 --> 00:52:49,960
sentences if there was no design in
meaning an order in reality at all,

648
00:52:50,039 --> 00:52:52,880
if it was all pure chaos,
right, which is, to deny that

649
00:52:52,960 --> 00:52:57,920
there's any tels in reality, would
be to resort to some worldview of pure

650
00:52:58,000 --> 00:53:00,239
chaos, which would then negate the
pass ability of debate at all. So

651
00:53:00,320 --> 00:53:02,880
the fact that you came to a
debate would show that you don't actually believe

652
00:53:04,159 --> 00:53:07,039
there's no tilos in the world,
no design, no logic, and no

653
00:53:07,159 --> 00:53:12,039
purpose. So that would be I
would say, a fundamental tension presuppositional conflict

654
00:53:12,079 --> 00:53:15,639
within his worldview. Now within the
Christian worldview of Christianity is true, which

655
00:53:15,719 --> 00:53:20,320
is the transcendental argument that I argue, it makes perfect sense why there's telos,

656
00:53:20,400 --> 00:53:22,920
It makes sense why there's arca at
beginning point. It makes sense whether

657
00:53:22,920 --> 00:53:28,280
there's logos, law or patterns in
reality, how mathematical objects can interact into

658
00:53:28,360 --> 00:53:31,360
a world of flux without being blended
into the world of flux. He mentioned

659
00:53:31,400 --> 00:53:36,920
dualism in a world in his worldview, a fundamental dualistic problem. I would

660
00:53:36,960 --> 00:53:38,480
just simply say that. Well,
if you're familiar with Plato, you would

661
00:53:38,519 --> 00:53:43,880
know that one of the chief problems
in the Platonic worldview is precisely the dualism,

662
00:53:44,199 --> 00:53:47,320
the fact that a realm of the
immaterial, the realm of the spiritual,

663
00:53:47,440 --> 00:53:52,519
the realm of ideas. How can
that relate, How can it interact?

664
00:53:52,559 --> 00:53:55,440
How can we have any bridge between
that world and this world, which

665
00:53:55,519 --> 00:54:00,039
is flux change, right, constant
motion, et c. This is the

666
00:54:00,079 --> 00:54:05,480
ancient problem that plagued the Greek philosophers. I would say that that's a fundamental

667
00:54:06,079 --> 00:54:09,760
problem for any worldview that's dualistic,
and it's so fundamental that it's actually destructive

668
00:54:09,840 --> 00:54:14,960
to that worldview as a whole,
for it even being coherent at all.

669
00:54:15,199 --> 00:54:17,639
There's no possibility of coherence in a
worldview like that, and that's why we

670
00:54:17,679 --> 00:54:21,760
can't be Platonists. Now, I
know he doesn't believe or he thinks that

671
00:54:21,800 --> 00:54:24,440
there's a good critique of reincarnation.
I would agree, because that was Plato's

672
00:54:24,519 --> 00:54:29,559
only way to relate the realm of
the ideas to this world was a transmigration

673
00:54:29,639 --> 00:54:32,159
of the souls, and that you
were perhaps remembering an ancient world, an

674
00:54:32,159 --> 00:54:38,599
ancient for primeval foregone, you eternal
before, and that's how we have knowledge

675
00:54:38,639 --> 00:54:43,400
of reality. That doesn't work all
right, So again, Christianity is neither

676
00:54:43,960 --> 00:54:47,199
Platinium. It's neither Ariskitilian, it's
not neil Platinian. It might have terminology

677
00:54:47,239 --> 00:54:51,239
that comes from those different world views, but actually it gives a basis for

678
00:54:51,800 --> 00:54:57,880
reality being fundamentally personal reality, having
the possibility of free will. I would

679
00:54:57,880 --> 00:55:00,119
say, if God, if we're
made in God's image, we can have

680
00:55:00,280 --> 00:55:02,199
free will. And free will is
necessary to a coherent worldview. This is

681
00:55:02,199 --> 00:55:07,800
why we hold people accountable for their
actions and why we have ethics. We

682
00:55:07,880 --> 00:55:09,920
couldn't have ethics that there was no
free will. This is actually a fundamental

683
00:55:10,360 --> 00:55:15,960
refutation of materialism and determinism, right. It's called the determinist fallacy. Right.

684
00:55:17,360 --> 00:55:22,000
So I would say that this is
one of the strongest arguments for Christianity.

685
00:55:22,000 --> 00:55:23,559
In fact, is that all of
those principles that I listed, those

686
00:55:23,679 --> 00:55:29,639
transcendental categories, they're coherent within a
Christian worldview. But if we have the

687
00:55:29,719 --> 00:55:34,000
kind of worldview that I get from
the opponent, I don't see how any

688
00:55:34,000 --> 00:55:37,960
of those things are coherent at all. Thank you, Jay Well. Scott

689
00:55:38,199 --> 00:55:44,679
would you like to rebut perhaps I
think I have a couple of comments.

690
00:55:45,159 --> 00:55:53,159
First of all, evil is debatable. We're not going to all agree on

691
00:55:53,320 --> 00:55:57,760
what is evil. But I take
a common sense approach to it, as

692
00:55:57,800 --> 00:56:01,239
I explain in the book and my
lecture and the interviews on Eon White,

693
00:56:01,760 --> 00:56:07,880
which anybody can look up. And
for example, I'm willing to go on

694
00:56:07,079 --> 00:56:13,599
record to say that now Setune murdering
forty five to seventy million of his own

695
00:56:13,719 --> 00:56:22,360
people is evil. I think torture
for any reason is evil. Abortions controversial.

696
00:56:22,559 --> 00:56:24,519
You can find people on both sides. I don't think it should be

697
00:56:24,719 --> 00:56:31,039
the big issue it is among evangelical
Christians, but it certainly is an important

698
00:56:31,079 --> 00:56:38,880
ethical issue that should be debated.
So don't I think most people can agree

699
00:56:39,199 --> 00:56:43,639
on ninety percent of what is evil? What you should do about evil?

700
00:56:43,679 --> 00:56:46,400
Do you give somebody the death penalty, a life sentence, you know that

701
00:56:46,599 --> 00:56:51,840
sort of thing? How do you
decide how much free will they had?

702
00:56:51,960 --> 00:56:54,800
Were they victims? Those are different
things. But I do believe that there

703
00:56:55,119 --> 00:57:00,599
is evil, and much of it, most of it can be now the

704
00:57:01,119 --> 00:57:07,519
problem. And incidentally, I go
into some of these things on my Facebook

705
00:57:07,559 --> 00:57:12,440
page for God Reconsidered. I go
into some detail about these points. I

706
00:57:12,880 --> 00:57:17,000
would say that with regard to how
do you know that you're not being deceived

707
00:57:17,000 --> 00:57:21,880
by a demon? Yes, we're
all aware of the problem. You know,

708
00:57:22,159 --> 00:57:25,199
how do we how do we get
to the point where we can make

709
00:57:25,239 --> 00:57:30,639
a decision about what is true for
us? So the whole point of God

710
00:57:30,800 --> 00:57:35,480
Reconsidered is to take people through the
journey that I went through looking at Eastern

711
00:57:35,559 --> 00:57:39,280
religions, Western religions, Islam.
I spent quite a bit of time in

712
00:57:39,400 --> 00:57:46,559
Muslim countries. I've talked in New
Age advocates and all kinds of cults.

713
00:57:46,639 --> 00:57:52,119
I knew many of scientologists very well. I tried to look at everything with

714
00:57:52,199 --> 00:57:55,559
an open mind, and I take
people through all these issues like free will,

715
00:57:55,960 --> 00:58:01,239
whether there's intelligent design and evolution,
et cetera, and I show how

716
00:58:01,360 --> 00:58:07,239
I arrived at these conclusions. So
it isn't simply based on a mystical experience

717
00:58:07,320 --> 00:58:14,559
where some alleged angel appears to me. I mean, obviously, if you

718
00:58:14,639 --> 00:58:19,800
believe the Virgin Mary's apparitions, then
you're supposed to be Catholic. All I'm

719
00:58:19,880 --> 00:58:25,239
saying is there are many manifestations of
the saints or the angels. And I

720
00:58:25,360 --> 00:58:30,559
think that one thing that I admire
about Orthodoxy is the use of icons and

721
00:58:31,559 --> 00:58:39,039
chanting and meditation and some other things
in constant prayer. I think that these

722
00:58:39,079 --> 00:58:46,280
are techniques where somebody can bring some
inner peace and arrive at a spiritual path

723
00:58:46,400 --> 00:58:52,800
for them. I'm all for whether
it's Buddhism or Orthodoxy. I know the

724
00:58:52,880 --> 00:58:58,840
har Krishna is very well. If
people find something that resonates for them and

725
00:58:59,000 --> 00:59:05,119
works for them, that's a good
thing. And I have actually a forewarning,

726
00:59:05,239 --> 00:59:07,760
not a forward to God reconsidered,
where I say, you know,

727
00:59:08,320 --> 00:59:15,280
don't read this book if you're not
really seeking for another path. But I

728
00:59:15,400 --> 00:59:21,039
do think that you can use logic. My training and journalism helped me kind

729
00:59:21,079 --> 00:59:24,280
of try to sort conflicting sources out, and there is a way to do

730
00:59:24,400 --> 00:59:30,280
it. And you know, we
could Jay and I could spend the eternities

731
00:59:30,599 --> 00:59:34,800
debating some of these things and going
back and forth and you know, getting

732
00:59:34,800 --> 00:59:39,119
into the menu shape. But I
do think that you can make some common

733
00:59:39,199 --> 00:59:45,599
sense decisions that you can become more
aware of your biases. Certainly, earlier

734
00:59:45,840 --> 00:59:52,119
in my life, before I discovered
gnosticism, I was becoming more desperate because

735
00:59:52,840 --> 00:59:58,280
every time I looked at a religion
in depth, I started seeing what the

736
00:59:58,360 --> 01:00:04,840
flaws were. For example, we've
talked just about in a passing way about

737
01:00:04,920 --> 01:00:08,440
reincarnation, and I'm probably the most
controversial thing I've ever talked about on Eon

738
01:00:08,559 --> 01:00:14,719
Byte, based on all the stones
thrown at me on the virtual reality is

739
01:00:14,800 --> 01:00:17,760
reincarnation. I've argued against it.
Now. I had no bias against it

740
01:00:17,880 --> 01:00:22,679
when I started, but I feel
kind of like I'm a lone voice on

741
01:00:22,800 --> 01:00:28,199
that point, and I you know, if people want to believe in it

742
01:00:28,360 --> 01:00:30,039
and they think that that makes sense, great, but I give my arguments

743
01:00:30,079 --> 01:00:35,000
against it and then people can decide
whether they want that or not. I've

744
01:00:35,000 --> 01:00:39,119
been a missionary in my life.
I'm trying to hold back and attract people.

745
01:00:39,199 --> 01:00:45,760
As Jesus said, let he who
has ears here, And we do

746
01:00:45,960 --> 01:00:50,960
these podcasts, all of us because
we want to share something. And obviously

747
01:00:51,639 --> 01:00:57,039
the listeners can post their comments,
their criticisms, their agreement, and nobody

748
01:00:57,199 --> 01:00:59,760
is going to agree with everybody else, so we have to, you know,

749
01:01:00,159 --> 01:01:06,119
a little room for disagreement within shall
we say, the Christian fold or

750
01:01:06,280 --> 01:01:10,960
the spiritual groups? Well, thank
you Scott, Well, Jay, why

751
01:01:12,000 --> 01:01:15,599
don't we move on to the idea
of noses versus faith. Obviously really comes

752
01:01:15,679 --> 01:01:21,519
down to what salvation is in your
view versus Scott and other religions. And

753
01:01:21,639 --> 01:01:23,960
of course, if you want as
we can keeping it loose. If you

754
01:01:24,039 --> 01:01:28,159
want to rebut anything Scott has said, go ahead. I'll time it and

755
01:01:28,199 --> 01:01:30,840
then give Scott the same amount of
time to be fair. Right, So

756
01:01:31,559 --> 01:01:37,199
I noticed in the response there he
said that murder and torture he would agree

757
01:01:37,280 --> 01:01:38,760
are evil. I would agree with
the murder and torture evil. Of course,

758
01:01:39,480 --> 01:01:43,360
I have a basis as to why
I think murder and torture evil,

759
01:01:43,400 --> 01:01:47,039
and that's of course the holistic perspective
of the Christian Orthodox worldview, which again

760
01:01:47,639 --> 01:01:52,079
man accept that, y'all mean it, accept that, but at least gives

761
01:01:52,119 --> 01:01:54,800
a coherent basis as to want.
Now, when I heard him give his

762
01:01:54,960 --> 01:02:00,760
response, he said, most people
can agree on what's what evil is,

763
01:02:00,000 --> 01:02:05,639
or society can come to an agreement
about evil. That's actually the appeal to

764
01:02:05,880 --> 01:02:08,519
massive fallacy. So that would be
the appeal to consensus fallacy. Then he

765
01:02:08,599 --> 01:02:12,760
later said something about appealing to common
sense. That's also a fallacy. So

766
01:02:13,320 --> 01:02:15,320
I keep hearing the logical fallacies,
And as a philosopher, I'm not trying

767
01:02:15,320 --> 01:02:19,119
to be rude. It's just my
job as a philosopher to call out the

768
01:02:19,159 --> 01:02:22,920
logical fallacies. So I don't think
that those are coherent arguments as to why

769
01:02:23,159 --> 01:02:27,880
his position should be accepted. Now, again, we may not like the

770
01:02:28,000 --> 01:02:31,039
Christian argument, we may not think
that God is what we want him to

771
01:02:31,079 --> 01:02:35,679
be, but that's precisely what we
would expect in a position where we are

772
01:02:35,760 --> 01:02:39,719
required to be humble. We're required
to submit ourselves to what's revealed, and

773
01:02:39,800 --> 01:02:44,880
that's actually the path to true So
Saint Maximus actually has a work where he

774
01:02:45,000 --> 01:02:49,880
talks about true nosis. And I
think if a person was a Gnostic,

775
01:02:49,960 --> 01:02:53,199
they might find Saint Maximus appealing as
maybe an entry way into Orthodoxy because he

776
01:02:53,320 --> 01:03:00,760
combined in such a mystical way,
you could say rationalism or scholasticism in a

777
01:03:00,880 --> 01:03:07,159
proper way, academia, mathematics,
logic with the mystical. For in his

778
01:03:07,360 --> 01:03:10,760
mind, those things were not in
opposition, they were not in dialectical tension.

779
01:03:12,280 --> 01:03:17,880
So he was very excellent at doing
both apologetics showing inconsistencies, being trained

780
01:03:17,920 --> 01:03:22,599
in Riscyitanian logic, as was Saint
Gregor Polo laws as well as being grounded

781
01:03:22,679 --> 01:03:25,800
in mysticism, and so we don't
see those things as out of a chord.

782
01:03:25,880 --> 01:03:30,599
So if I were to transition into
talking about faith versus nosis, I

783
01:03:30,639 --> 01:03:36,440
would actually say that that orthodoxy is
the perfect synthesis of faith and nosis.

784
01:03:36,519 --> 01:03:38,639
In fact, we would say that
the only way to true nosis is faith,

785
01:03:38,840 --> 01:03:42,159
and we don't think those things are
out of a chord, because number

786
01:03:42,159 --> 01:03:47,360
one, we wouldn't necessarily accept the
modern Western post Schleiermacher post Kantian idea that

787
01:03:49,199 --> 01:03:52,960
faith is accepting things merely on the
base of authority, and then reason is

788
01:03:53,119 --> 01:03:57,000
logical and so forth. In fact, that doesn't make any sense when we

789
01:03:57,119 --> 01:04:01,360
understand that philosophy shows us and has
shown us. I think in all modern

790
01:04:01,400 --> 01:04:06,519
philosophy since con has shown us that
all perspectives are theory laden. So classical

791
01:04:06,639 --> 01:04:12,320
foundationalism hasn't. Epistemology is not really
workable anymore. We have to get rid

792
01:04:12,360 --> 01:04:15,920
of that. It doesn't work.
We can't just appeal to common notions,

793
01:04:15,000 --> 01:04:21,559
common sense ideas, common philosophical categories. There are no common philosophical categories because

794
01:04:23,000 --> 01:04:28,079
all those categories and conditions are Excuse
me, transcendental categories, et cetera.

795
01:04:28,199 --> 01:04:30,880
They're all theory laden, they're all
interpreted within our paradigm, within our worldview.

796
01:04:31,639 --> 01:04:39,480
So therefore what we need is a
worldview, a theology that makes sense

797
01:04:39,519 --> 01:04:45,440
of philosophy. Maximist Confessor, for
example, wrote many treatises on Aristotle.

798
01:04:46,079 --> 01:04:51,000
In fact, he utilizes Ariostota a
lot in his Centuries on Theology. That's

799
01:04:51,039 --> 01:04:54,880
a book. He wrote Centuries on
theology, two hundred chapters on theology,

800
01:04:56,079 --> 01:05:00,119
and he goes in depth into analyzing
logic, analyzing rkat, all these great

801
01:05:00,159 --> 01:05:04,079
principles, and then he goes into
talking about virtue and mysticism and union with

802
01:05:04,199 --> 01:05:09,360
God. So in his mind those
things were not intention There's nothing wrong with

803
01:05:09,920 --> 01:05:14,480
logic. What we say is that
the realm of logic, the realm of

804
01:05:14,639 --> 01:05:18,719
mathematics, the realm of what you
might call the noetic realm, the realm

805
01:05:18,760 --> 01:05:23,519
of the mind. There's nothing wrong
with that realm. But sometimes, as

806
01:05:23,599 --> 01:05:27,239
humans, we get tricked into thinking
that, yes, there is a higher

807
01:05:27,280 --> 01:05:31,000
realm, and so we're right to
not believe in pure materialism. But sometimes

808
01:05:31,079 --> 01:05:34,559
we get tricked into thinking that that
next level up, that next dimension,

809
01:05:34,800 --> 01:05:39,079
is itself God, and this is
what we would say is the eraor that

810
01:05:39,119 --> 01:05:44,119
the Pythagoreans and the Platonists fell into. There's actually a great essay that the

811
01:05:44,280 --> 01:05:48,280
Perennialist, he was kind of orthodox, sort of orthodox perennials philosopher doctor Philip

812
01:05:48,280 --> 01:05:54,000
Tirard wrote against Platonists. Neil Platonists
were saying, why would you got orthodox

813
01:05:54,039 --> 01:05:57,440
and not neo Platonists, And so
he wrote an excellent essay that if anybody's

814
01:05:57,519 --> 01:06:00,440
interested in Perennialism or neil Platonism,
I would say read his I say,

815
01:06:00,599 --> 01:06:03,719
logic and the Absolute, where he
shows that we have to understand that God

816
01:06:03,920 --> 01:06:09,480
is even beyond just numbers, right, And I know that Gnostics would say,

817
01:06:09,519 --> 01:06:12,440
well, yeah, but that's the
ultimate high God. Perhaps it's beyond

818
01:06:12,639 --> 01:06:15,159
you know, that level of reality. That's fine, I understand that.

819
01:06:15,239 --> 01:06:16,480
But I'm just trying to make a
point that for us, in our in

820
01:06:16,599 --> 01:06:21,320
our deepest theology, right, whether
it's Maximus a Confessor whoever, he's probably

821
01:06:21,360 --> 01:06:30,840
our deepest theologic we don't see a
fundamental disharmony or tension between understanding mathematics and

822
01:06:30,000 --> 01:06:35,119
numbers and that realm, that noetic
realm, and God, who is even

823
01:06:35,199 --> 01:06:41,039
beyond that and that that noetic realm
can still image to us aspects of the

824
01:06:41,119 --> 01:06:45,119
divine mind without totally encompassing the divine
mind. We don't. We don't equate

825
01:06:45,199 --> 01:06:50,199
the divine mind with numbers and geometry. So there's there's there's there's a sense

826
01:06:50,280 --> 01:06:54,599
in which we will always be.
For example, Saint Gregor and Innissis says

827
01:06:54,679 --> 01:06:58,280
moving up into God, learning God
right for all of eternity. I'm just

828
01:06:58,360 --> 01:07:01,039
making the point that if a person
it was a Gnostic or interested in Gnosticism,

829
01:07:01,079 --> 01:07:06,559
they might actually find a great pathway
into Orthodoxy through Saint gregort Nissa or

830
01:07:06,760 --> 01:07:12,880
Sat Maximus, and particularly Maximus on
the doctrine of the logos and the logi,

831
01:07:13,079 --> 01:07:17,400
because I think what gnostics are looking
for in terms of a deeper sense

832
01:07:17,480 --> 01:07:24,760
to reality into metaphysics, they would
actually find in the metaphysical structure of logos

833
01:07:24,920 --> 01:07:31,480
and logi. All right, well, thank you, Jay Scott. Would

834
01:07:31,519 --> 01:07:36,639
you like to rebut about seven minutes? Okay, So, first of all,

835
01:07:39,280 --> 01:07:47,159
I did not say that I'm using
some kind of elevated logic to argue

836
01:07:47,320 --> 01:07:54,039
for being good or you know,
on good behavior. I would point out

837
01:07:54,599 --> 01:08:00,599
that the Gnostic mass movements that the
Church, early Church file others were so

838
01:08:00,760 --> 01:08:06,280
worried about, like the Marcianides and
the Valentinians, and then the later Manicheans

839
01:08:06,400 --> 01:08:15,760
and Cathars. They were noticeably praised
by even their religious enemies for what we

840
01:08:15,840 --> 01:08:20,960
would call their good behavior. And
all I'm saying is the Gnostics do not

841
01:08:21,199 --> 01:08:29,720
have a dogma about which commandments to
obey. Okay, but I think when

842
01:08:29,880 --> 01:08:40,640
you get the sense of inner peace
that comes with accepting that maybe there is

843
01:08:40,680 --> 01:08:48,199
a transcendental God, because you feel
that connection, which Gnostics claim that it

844
01:08:48,760 --> 01:08:58,760
leads naturally to better behavior, It's
not something that can be argued at an

845
01:08:58,840 --> 01:09:04,800
ultimate level because Christians don't agree on
the big issues. Should you have big

846
01:09:05,000 --> 01:09:12,079
tax cuts? Will that create prosperity? Should abortion be treated as murder?

847
01:09:12,119 --> 01:09:15,000
I mean, you can go through
the whole gamut and you get left wing

848
01:09:15,119 --> 01:09:21,000
and right wing points of view about
issues that are very, very important from

849
01:09:21,159 --> 01:09:29,600
any point of view in terms of
public morality and private morality. So since

850
01:09:29,680 --> 01:09:36,079
we don't have a set of commandments
to follow, what I think leads to

851
01:09:36,479 --> 01:09:42,880
what I would call a somewhat Saint
Francis type of life in its ideal state,

852
01:09:43,000 --> 01:09:47,199
or certainly a fairly gentle. The
Gnostics have a fairly gentle track record

853
01:09:47,399 --> 01:09:55,479
compared with the Catholic Church, for
example, on any measurable level. From

854
01:09:55,560 --> 01:09:59,840
the records that we have, they
didn't go around persecuting people killing people.

855
01:10:00,079 --> 01:10:05,039
Were generally known as quote unquote good
Christians. So I simply pointing out that

856
01:10:05,520 --> 01:10:14,159
most Christians of any faith would agree
about probably ninety percent of you know,

857
01:10:14,359 --> 01:10:19,039
the appropriateness of murder and torture and
incest, and you know, many many

858
01:10:19,119 --> 01:10:27,000
other things. But it's true,
you can't really Christians among themselves can't seem

859
01:10:27,159 --> 01:10:33,439
to prove morality. From my point
of view, the evangelicals are really proof

860
01:10:33,520 --> 01:10:41,560
texting and trying to develop a modern
morality based on, you know, half

861
01:10:41,640 --> 01:10:45,800
a sentence from Paul or the Old
Testament or something like that. But it's

862
01:10:45,840 --> 01:10:48,840
subject to debate. And that's the
point. We're left in this world with

863
01:10:49,000 --> 01:10:54,680
a tremendously difficult task, even for
those of us who are actively involved in

864
01:10:54,760 --> 01:11:00,079
trying to figure out what the truth
is. So the bottom line is that

865
01:11:01,199 --> 01:11:09,079
four Gnostics we claim to have come
to the insight one way or the other,

866
01:11:09,199 --> 01:11:20,439
whether it's mystical experience or study or
listening to somebody who words resonate,

867
01:11:20,520 --> 01:11:29,159
whose message resonates. We don't have
diaries from the Manichean ordinary followers, we

868
01:11:29,279 --> 01:11:33,920
kind of know the public record,
and the bottom line is that it's led

869
01:11:34,000 --> 01:11:41,960
to what I would call, for
most historic Gnostics, a life that would

870
01:11:42,000 --> 01:11:47,560
be compatible with what Jesus taught in
the broadest sense. But we feel a

871
01:11:47,800 --> 01:11:55,079
connection, a divine connection, a
direct divine connection. We see Jesus as

872
01:11:55,239 --> 01:12:00,039
an enlightener. Now, the ancient
Gnostics disagreed about exactly who Jesus was,

873
01:12:00,319 --> 01:12:05,880
and I think Richard Smooley's How God
Became God goes through the whole gamut of

874
01:12:08,359 --> 01:12:12,720
who the Jews and the early Christians
thought he might be, and of course

875
01:12:13,119 --> 01:12:23,680
Jesus was famously cryptic about who he
was. But that revelation, while we

876
01:12:23,840 --> 01:12:30,359
can't prove that it comes from God, does give each of us who experience

877
01:12:30,479 --> 01:12:35,399
it a sense and an insight that
puts us on a different path. And

878
01:12:36,960 --> 01:12:43,600
in my blogs on my God Reconsidered
Facebook page, I go into some greater

879
01:12:43,760 --> 01:12:47,399
detail about why I think this form
of Christianity makes a lot more sense.

880
01:12:48,199 --> 01:12:53,359
But you know, we're not going
to be able to win debates about exactly

881
01:12:53,880 --> 01:12:57,520
you know, what good and evil
are and which commandments dovey because frankly,

882
01:12:58,399 --> 01:13:03,000
most Gnostics do their best, in
my opinion, to try to be good

883
01:13:03,079 --> 01:13:06,840
people. But we're not hung up
on the commandments. You know, we

884
01:13:06,960 --> 01:13:12,319
don't have churches that have dogma and
tell us what to believe. I don't

885
01:13:12,319 --> 01:13:15,560
believe in astrology, but you know
a lot of the ancient Gnostics did.

886
01:13:15,319 --> 01:13:20,600
So we're free to believe pretty much
whatever we want. But the track record

887
01:13:20,680 --> 01:13:26,279
of narcissism in the so called real
world is really good when it comes to

888
01:13:27,079 --> 01:13:32,520
ethical behavior by any standards. I
mean, the Catholic priests praise the cathur

889
01:13:32,840 --> 01:13:40,199
leaders for their behavior. So the
bottom line is if somebody, in my

890
01:13:40,439 --> 01:13:48,960
opinion, the key to gnosticism or
gnosis is not necessarily a mystical experience,

891
01:13:49,039 --> 01:13:57,680
it's coming to the insight that,
as David Brackie said, that the creator

892
01:13:57,800 --> 01:14:01,000
God is not the same as the
trendental God. And you know, we

893
01:14:01,039 --> 01:14:04,680
could spend all night talking about the
problems in the Old Testament and stuff,

894
01:14:04,720 --> 01:14:10,520
and we're not going to resolve them
in this discussion. But I explain,

895
01:14:10,640 --> 01:14:14,560
and God reconsidered how I came to
this conclusion, and people are free to

896
01:14:14,640 --> 01:14:19,119
disagree with it and hopefully they find
something that works for them. Well,

897
01:14:19,239 --> 01:14:24,319
thank you well, Vencea. Do
we have any questions from the audience.

898
01:14:24,399 --> 01:14:29,079
I think I saw one about three
hundred people, but nobody super chats or

899
01:14:29,159 --> 01:14:31,600
questions. A lot of shit talking
over there. There's a lot of stuff

900
01:14:31,680 --> 01:14:34,680
going on. I got involved in
it too. I'm saying a few things,

901
01:14:34,760 --> 01:14:39,800
but nothing that I can report right
now. Okay, Actually I had

902
01:14:39,880 --> 01:14:45,239
one question from a super the individual
Jazz Maine. She wrote it down,

903
01:14:45,319 --> 01:14:48,399
but she didn't address it. She
said, I'm new to Gnosticism and I

904
01:14:48,560 --> 01:14:54,760
often find myself wondering why did gnostic
tie themselves so much to the Christian narrative?

905
01:14:56,479 --> 01:15:00,359
Is? What is the source?
Jay? Do you do you see

906
01:15:00,439 --> 01:15:04,760
narcissism as a pre Christian Do you
think it just came out of Christianity in

907
01:15:04,840 --> 01:15:10,119
its early days? Second century,
third century? What? What would you

908
01:15:10,239 --> 01:15:13,840
say? Then? Scott can answer
is give his take right Well, I

909
01:15:13,920 --> 01:15:18,159
did a video critique of narcissism a
couple of years ago to a fair amount

910
01:15:18,199 --> 01:15:21,079
of views. I would say,
if anybody's interested in a fuller treatment of

911
01:15:21,159 --> 01:15:25,600
my critique of the systems of narcissism, I would said they could watch that

912
01:15:25,760 --> 01:15:29,720
video just type been Jake higher gnocissism, it'll come up. But my central

913
01:15:29,920 --> 01:15:33,159
issue would be that there's not really
a singular gnosticism. There's many gnostic systems,

914
01:15:33,199 --> 01:15:36,920
and so I think actually Iran Ais
and Against Heresy's would be vindicated insofar

915
01:15:38,079 --> 01:15:41,479
as that was one of the chief
points he made was that there's not really

916
01:15:41,600 --> 01:15:44,640
a gnosticism, there's a there's a
whole bunch of different systems, and so

917
01:15:44,720 --> 01:15:48,319
it's kind of just a cafeterias mortess
board type of thing. And I'm sure

918
01:15:48,319 --> 01:15:50,840
that you would you would disagree perhaps, or you would say, well,

919
01:15:50,920 --> 01:15:55,640
Christianity has all these same problems.
I don't agree with that, but I

920
01:15:55,640 --> 01:15:58,840
would just simply say that it has
a lot of influences. It seems to

921
01:15:58,880 --> 01:16:03,199
have an influence from Platonism for Eastern
thought, as well as a lot of

922
01:16:03,399 --> 01:16:09,439
maybe the sectarian movements within the Roman
Empire, all kind of converging. And

923
01:16:09,520 --> 01:16:13,000
so when we read like the first
three hundred pages of Against Heresies, we

924
01:16:13,119 --> 01:16:17,479
see all kinds of different gnostic groups, and some of them were radically ascetic,

925
01:16:17,640 --> 01:16:20,560
some of them were more like eyes
watch shut meetings. I mean,

926
01:16:20,680 --> 01:16:23,680
it seems to be all over the
place, So I don't really think there

927
01:16:23,760 --> 01:16:27,439
is a singular Gnostic system. I
mean, is it the Pisto Sophia,

928
01:16:27,600 --> 01:16:30,359
is it the Gospel of Judas,
is it the Ogdoad? I mean,

929
01:16:30,840 --> 01:16:34,159
it's all over the place. And
so to me that just suggests that,

930
01:16:35,079 --> 01:16:41,479
as with many cultic type of movements, sectarian movements, they're a smortus board

931
01:16:41,760 --> 01:16:45,600
of people piecing together different ideas.
Thank you, What about you, Scott?

932
01:16:45,760 --> 01:16:51,600
What would be your theory of why
Gnostics were so attached to Christianity and

933
01:16:51,720 --> 01:17:00,760
Jesus. Yeah, I think that
Stephen Heller Ecclesiagnostica, and you can see

934
01:17:01,800 --> 01:17:10,239
what there is available about him and
that at gnosis dot org makes the case

935
01:17:10,479 --> 01:17:15,000
that there are things binding many of
these movements together. There were differences between

936
01:17:15,039 --> 01:17:20,600
them. They did have in common
the notion of a creator God or really

937
01:17:20,880 --> 01:17:30,880
kind of like a demi God called
the Demiurge, or an angelic power involved

938
01:17:30,960 --> 01:17:34,359
in the formation of the world.
That is kind of central. Not all

939
01:17:34,439 --> 01:17:40,800
of them believed in a mystical experience
where you find that direct connection with God.

940
01:17:41,159 --> 01:17:46,239
Most of them seem to have had
that. There were differences between them,

941
01:17:46,680 --> 01:17:56,159
but by and large they rejected the
Old Testament, and the Christian Gnostics,

942
01:17:56,800 --> 01:18:05,359
who can continue today in that tradition
and has laid in the Middle Ages

943
01:18:06,159 --> 01:18:14,079
with the Cathars, did view Jesus
as the enlightenment Bringer, and they had

944
01:18:14,159 --> 01:18:18,279
different ideas about, you know,
whether he was really crucified on the cross

945
01:18:18,439 --> 01:18:24,439
or not. But again, when
you go back and you look at the

946
01:18:24,560 --> 01:18:30,840
mishmash of the New Testament, even
before it was formed, Christians had lots

947
01:18:30,880 --> 01:18:36,479
of disagreements on on you know,
what the core of Christianity was according to

948
01:18:36,760 --> 01:18:44,039
the early Church fathers. Apparently a
majority did not adhere to what became the

949
01:18:44,159 --> 01:18:48,800
Catholic faction. Or you might say, Jay would say the Orthodox action goes

950
01:18:48,840 --> 01:18:54,319
back to the early Church Fathers.
But I think if you if you read

951
01:18:54,439 --> 01:19:00,520
the Gnostic literature. For example,
I'm reading right now Burger Pearson's Ancient Gnosticism.

952
01:19:01,239 --> 01:19:08,039
He shows all those early strains and
influences. Now, the point of

953
01:19:08,159 --> 01:19:14,880
God Reconsidered is to say, how
do we, as modern mystics and Christians,

954
01:19:14,960 --> 01:19:23,600
how can we adapt those ancient streams
of different early groups that felt that

955
01:19:23,760 --> 01:19:28,079
the Creator God was not the transcendental
God. How can we adapt that to

956
01:19:28,479 --> 01:19:33,000
our belief system now, and I
think there is I go to Ecclesiagnostic and

957
01:19:33,119 --> 01:19:39,880
Los Angeles, and there are others. Because I value the mass. I

958
01:19:39,960 --> 01:19:45,199
think there is value and ritual and
prayer and meditation and other things. And

959
01:19:45,840 --> 01:19:53,640
I think many Christians would find some
of the modern Gnostic churches very traditional in

960
01:19:53,800 --> 01:20:02,239
terms of their ritual and the way
that they carry on Christian tradition that's recognizable

961
01:20:02,359 --> 01:20:10,560
is at least a cousin of mainstream
Christian Did you have something, Oh,

962
01:20:10,600 --> 01:20:15,920
yeah, there's a question from the
chat room, which is do you see

963
01:20:15,000 --> 01:20:20,439
narcissism as embracing the alternative holy feminine, the love of the collective rather than

964
01:20:20,479 --> 01:20:24,960
individual, which was written out.
I'm much already met by that exactly,

965
01:20:25,079 --> 01:20:30,439
but that I guess the gist of
it is that the feminine is celebrated more

966
01:20:30,479 --> 01:20:35,079
in narcissism. We're talked about more
than in orthodox Christianity, and so I

967
01:20:35,119 --> 01:20:44,279
guess for Scott and j One,
you yeah, I would say there is

968
01:20:44,319 --> 01:20:48,560
a sensem which I think that's true. I think that the rise of feminism

969
01:20:49,720 --> 01:20:57,760
is tied to the rise of gnocissism. Theist the Sofia principle, is it

970
01:20:57,800 --> 01:21:00,520
an attempt to give the idea of
con sort to God or something like this.

971
01:21:00,800 --> 01:21:03,199
I mean, we definitely think that, you know, Mary is the

972
01:21:03,279 --> 01:21:06,000
queen of Heaven, she is the
Theo Toko, She's she's you know,

973
01:21:06,560 --> 01:21:10,880
chosen by God. But she's always
and will always remain a creation. She's

974
01:21:10,960 --> 01:21:14,119
never going to be a fourth person
of the Trinity or something like this.

975
01:21:15,119 --> 01:21:19,159
So there's always a limitation. We
don't believe that that God the Father is

976
01:21:19,239 --> 01:21:27,560
identical to biological uh, masculinity,
but there is an imaging of you know,

977
01:21:27,640 --> 01:21:30,640
obviously Christ did come as a as
a male. Christ will always be

978
01:21:30,840 --> 01:21:35,680
incarnate in that same body that he
came into human into into time and space

979
01:21:35,800 --> 01:21:40,039
with, so he will never lose
that. He doesn't shed his humanity or

980
01:21:40,079 --> 01:21:43,680
anything like that. And that's why
we actually believe in the goodness of creation.

981
01:21:43,840 --> 01:21:48,079
So we see male and female as
symphonia harmony. We don't see them

982
01:21:48,119 --> 01:21:53,600
as dialectical tensions, and we we
just simply think that God has the right

983
01:21:53,800 --> 01:21:58,079
and the authority to establish relationships between
male and female. And when those things

984
01:21:58,119 --> 01:22:01,279
get out of balance, when you
get the inversion of things, that's when

985
01:22:01,319 --> 01:22:05,079
you start to see the decay of
society and civilization is when things get inverted,

986
01:22:05,239 --> 01:22:08,920
and so for us there is natural
law, there is moral law.

987
01:22:09,039 --> 01:22:12,680
The Ten Commandments are good. All
religions need and have to have some kind

988
01:22:12,720 --> 01:22:16,720
of binding doctrines or dogmas. It's
impossible to have no dogmas. I mean,

989
01:22:16,720 --> 01:22:18,439
I think he said something like,
you know, we don't have any

990
01:22:18,479 --> 01:22:21,000
dogmas. I'm just wondering, is
it a dogma that there's no dogmas?

991
01:22:21,079 --> 01:22:26,319
I mean, it's impossible to have
no dogmasm to be totally sort of in

992
01:22:27,199 --> 01:22:30,319
up in the air. All right, Scott, do you want to answer

993
01:22:30,479 --> 01:22:39,319
this about the divine feminine? Also? Yeah, Emil gave ten dollars,

994
01:22:39,600 --> 01:22:45,000
and I'm assuming this question is for
you because Jay's already talked about the prophecies

995
01:22:45,039 --> 01:22:48,199
of Isaiah and Daniel. But he'es
are there any prophetic revelations that can be

996
01:22:48,399 --> 01:22:55,359
attributed to Gnostic writings? For example, Christians will frequently point to prophetic writings

997
01:22:55,399 --> 01:23:02,319
of Isaiah, Daniel Exeta, improving
Jesus Christs. I would say, first

998
01:23:02,399 --> 01:23:11,000
of all, partly due to the
fact that the Gnostics were driven out of

999
01:23:11,079 --> 01:23:18,479
business and because of the tremendous loss
of the ancient manuscripts, we don't have

1000
01:23:18,600 --> 01:23:25,800
a lot of the Gnostic writing,
so it's impossible. But because the Gnostics

1001
01:23:25,880 --> 01:23:30,520
didn't look back on the Old Testament
is something that was part of their tradition,

1002
01:23:31,840 --> 01:23:36,560
and because they had a different understanding
of God's interaction in the world,

1003
01:23:38,239 --> 01:23:43,399
they never got into the business of
prophecy and trying to interpret. I think

1004
01:23:43,600 --> 01:23:48,439
certainly all of the interpretations of the
Old Testament, prophets, or the New

1005
01:23:48,520 --> 01:23:56,239
Testament are debatable. So no,
we were not in the prophecy business.

1006
01:23:57,159 --> 01:24:01,319
But I will say one of the
problems is that if you believe God is

1007
01:24:01,640 --> 01:24:12,039
all knowing, then it goes back
to the scripture that talks about how God.

1008
01:24:12,279 --> 01:24:16,159
I think it's in revelation God God
knows you know who is going to

1009
01:24:16,279 --> 01:24:26,880
be saved, and certainly Calvinism and
to some extent other aspects of Christianity believe

1010
01:24:26,960 --> 01:24:31,560
that God knows who will eventually be
saved. And I don't think that allows

1011
01:24:31,640 --> 01:24:38,119
for free will, because if you
know something at advance, whether it's a

1012
01:24:39,000 --> 01:24:45,760
prophecy or whether you know somebody's personal
faith, that means there cannot be any

1013
01:24:46,039 --> 01:24:51,600
other outcome. So what you might
think is free will is actually baked into

1014
01:24:51,680 --> 01:24:58,760
the cards because the end result is
inevitable, and this is not something that

1015
01:24:58,960 --> 01:25:03,439
is easy to understand. And I
have been very critical of these new age

1016
01:25:03,560 --> 01:25:08,720
quantum theory interpretations that basically say,
you know, we've got time travel,

1017
01:25:08,840 --> 01:25:12,079
and you know we can go to
these multiple futures and stuff like that.

1018
01:25:13,279 --> 01:25:18,920
I am a believer in the material
reality that science has shown, and I

1019
01:25:19,000 --> 01:25:25,000
don't think we're going to time travel. I mean, even the great physicist

1020
01:25:25,920 --> 01:25:31,520
Leslie Smullen said there is a timescale. The universe's fourteen billionaires old, roughly

1021
01:25:32,640 --> 01:25:36,399
the end of the universe is not
going to come before the beginning of it.

1022
01:25:36,720 --> 01:25:41,680
And if you believe in that flow
of time, then I do believe

1023
01:25:41,800 --> 01:25:45,760
that there is at least freedom in
the chaos. There are choices that we

1024
01:25:45,880 --> 01:25:50,800
can make, and we should try
to make better choices by contemplating things,

1025
01:25:51,399 --> 01:25:58,359
because they've done some studies that show
if you ponder something, you're probably going

1026
01:25:58,520 --> 01:26:02,840
to come to a better decision than
if you act impulsively. So the bottom

1027
01:26:02,920 --> 01:26:10,359
line is prophecy assumes that something is
inevitable, and I think there is very

1028
01:26:10,439 --> 01:26:15,279
little that's inevitable in our world.
Wonderful, wonderful. Well, if there

1029
01:26:15,399 --> 01:26:20,439
are no other questions, this has
been a really great conversation. I think

1030
01:26:21,399 --> 01:26:27,439
for the first one, as I
was telling Scott and Vince before the interview,

1031
01:26:28,239 --> 01:26:32,840
my wife is migrating from Catholicism into
Orthodoxy. I think I told that

1032
01:26:32,920 --> 01:26:38,600
to Jay once. So the kids
will be raised little Orthodox. So this

1033
01:26:38,760 --> 01:26:43,319
is kind of a microcosm of what
our household will be, but actually won't

1034
01:26:43,359 --> 01:26:45,159
because I'll just keep my mouth shut
if I know better, I think,

1035
01:26:46,520 --> 01:26:49,279
so this was good to hear this. I can pretend in my head I'm

1036
01:26:49,359 --> 01:26:54,920
arguing with my wife while I'm are
we going to have a final status because

1037
01:26:54,920 --> 01:26:57,720
I had a few yes, yes, says I would, I didn't mention

1038
01:26:57,880 --> 01:27:02,600
this apology, so please and then
good, please give your final statements before

1039
01:27:02,760 --> 01:27:06,920
we sign off. Yeah, I
would say, if we think about one

1040
01:27:08,039 --> 01:27:11,039
last point I wanted to test on
that he covered was that when we look

1041
01:27:11,039 --> 01:27:15,000
at the world, we don't see
design. I think that for us,

1042
01:27:15,159 --> 01:27:19,079
the doctrine of the Fall is very
important, and the Orthodox doctrin of the

1043
01:27:19,159 --> 01:27:24,479
Fall is different than the Roman Catholic
doctrine. There's some nuances that are important.

1044
01:27:24,600 --> 01:27:28,560
One thing that we stress along with
Romans eight of Paul, is that

1045
01:27:28,800 --> 01:27:32,199
the Fall affected the entire cosmos,
and so all of reality is subject to

1046
01:27:32,319 --> 01:27:36,119
decay, bondage, corruption, as
Paul says in Romans eight, because of

1047
01:27:36,600 --> 01:27:40,680
man being put in a position of
stewardship, and then when he fell that

1048
01:27:40,760 --> 01:27:45,119
affected all of reality. So the
fall is much more cosmic and metaphysical and

1049
01:27:45,199 --> 01:27:49,960
scope for us. And therefore when
we think about the result of the fall,

1050
01:27:50,319 --> 01:27:54,039
one thing it does for us in
our theology, at say Matxmu point

1051
01:27:54,119 --> 01:27:59,159
out, is that it puts things
into tension that aren't necessarily inherently intension.

1052
01:28:00,039 --> 01:28:03,520
After the fall, we see things
intention We see a predator praier relationship introduced

1053
01:28:03,520 --> 01:28:09,239
into nature that's not strictly speaking natural. It's actually unnatural. Death for us

1054
01:28:09,399 --> 01:28:13,399
is unnatural. Death is the enemy, Paul says, and God has allowed

1055
01:28:13,439 --> 01:28:16,880
it to be permitted it. We
believe in what St. John Damascus calls

1056
01:28:16,920 --> 01:28:23,279
God's permissive will, which is different
than his pure omniscient fore knowledge. So

1057
01:28:23,359 --> 01:28:26,640
he does permit things. We accept
that on the basis of revelation. We

1058
01:28:26,720 --> 01:28:30,039
can't give you all the exact reasons
as to why, because first of all,

1059
01:28:30,079 --> 01:28:32,439
we're finite. No world view and
no position can give you all the

1060
01:28:32,560 --> 01:28:36,640
explanations and answers for all of those
problems, it's actually impossible. So to

1061
01:28:36,800 --> 01:28:41,800
ask that, or even to expect
that of any worldview is really an impossible

1062
01:28:41,880 --> 01:28:45,079
task. And I don't think really
even much of an argument at all.

1063
01:28:45,399 --> 01:28:49,279
So I would say that all beliefs, all religions, all churches, all

1064
01:28:49,359 --> 01:28:53,600
sex, all groups, all God, they all have some dogma. Even

1065
01:28:53,600 --> 01:28:57,039
if the dogma is that they're total
relativists and subjectivist. I'm not saying you

1066
01:28:57,119 --> 01:28:59,760
are, but even if they are, there still is a dogma that you

1067
01:28:59,840 --> 01:29:01,840
have have to be a relativist.
Right, So I couldn't come into a

1068
01:29:02,199 --> 01:29:06,880
relativist meeting like a college class and
like that, right, a secular college

1069
01:29:06,880 --> 01:29:10,840
philosophy class. I had many of
those, and I was the one guy

1070
01:29:10,880 --> 01:29:14,079
who wasn't a relativist. I wasn't
welcome there. They didn't like me there

1071
01:29:14,159 --> 01:29:16,399
because you have to believe relativism to
be in that class. Right, So

1072
01:29:16,880 --> 01:29:21,960
even relativism is dogmatic, and so
there's no position that may be again perfectly

1073
01:29:23,079 --> 01:29:28,439
neutral. So he said that the
majority of the church fathers didn't believe in

1074
01:29:28,560 --> 01:29:33,760
Orthodoxy, maybe during one period of
the Arian crisis. Otherwise that's I don't

1075
01:29:33,760 --> 01:29:39,039
think that's correct. But again,
are our theology isn't necessarily always determined by

1076
01:29:39,079 --> 01:29:43,239
the majority. So that really had
no point that there's nothing I see,

1077
01:29:43,399 --> 01:29:46,520
no relevant in that, no relevance
in that point. He mentioned Jesus's teaching

1078
01:29:46,560 --> 01:29:49,680
in the broadest sense. I mean, if we accept jesus teaching. Jesus

1079
01:29:49,720 --> 01:29:53,800
said, you accept all of it
right if you if you love him,

1080
01:29:53,840 --> 01:29:57,920
you'll keep his commandment. There's no
shortening it, you know, cutting off

1081
01:29:58,039 --> 01:30:02,000
and boiling it down to you know
something where it's always just this unless you

1082
01:30:02,079 --> 01:30:05,000
want to say that you know,
love God with all your heart, soul,

1083
01:30:05,079 --> 01:30:08,840
mind, strength, and keep the
commandments right the law Jesus, that

1084
01:30:09,680 --> 01:30:15,359
is what sums up the entire mosaic
law. Jesus says that following him is

1085
01:30:15,439 --> 01:30:17,640
the keeping of all of the law, and all the law the ten commandments

1086
01:30:17,680 --> 01:30:20,000
are summed up in love God with
all her heart, soul, mind strength.

1087
01:30:20,079 --> 01:30:24,319
That means that Jesus is teaching the
same thing as the Old Testament.

1088
01:30:24,760 --> 01:30:28,439
Jesus is who gave the ten commandments. In our review, so he said

1089
01:30:28,760 --> 01:30:32,760
Christians don't agree, so what Gnostics
don't agree doesn't that's not an argument.

1090
01:30:33,960 --> 01:30:39,640
He says that Gnostics were praised by
their enemies. Perhaps he's right about in

1091
01:30:39,640 --> 01:30:42,920
the Middle Ages when he talks about
the Cathars. Malcolm Lambert has a big,

1092
01:30:42,960 --> 01:30:45,319
six hundred page book that's really good
on the Cathars. By the way,

1093
01:30:45,319 --> 01:30:47,079
it's called medieval heresy. I do
recommend that book. But when it

1094
01:30:47,119 --> 01:30:50,720
comes to the early Church, no, they were not praised, especially not

1095
01:30:50,840 --> 01:30:55,479
by aaron As or any of the
other church fathers. Tertullian who did right

1096
01:30:55,560 --> 01:31:00,199
against the Gnostics at length. Perhaps
Origin was Gnostic and was praised. He

1097
01:31:00,359 --> 01:31:03,439
influenced the Cappadocians, but regardless,
he's later rejected. By the time of

1098
01:31:03,479 --> 01:31:08,720
the Six Council. Explicitly Gnostics were
pacifist. Perhaps he seemed to say,

1099
01:31:09,000 --> 01:31:12,039
I'm not convinced of that. Maybe
some of the Gnostics were. But again,

1100
01:31:12,079 --> 01:31:15,680
this is seems that there's a kind
of singular body of Gnostics. He

1101
01:31:15,760 --> 01:31:18,000
admits that much of the Gnostic runnings
were lost, and so now it's what

1102
01:31:18,199 --> 01:31:23,760
been restored. I don't know.
I'm not sure I believe that the modern

1103
01:31:23,840 --> 01:31:28,960
restoration of Gnosticism is legitimate. The
Gnostics I don't think agreed amongst themselves.

1104
01:31:29,600 --> 01:31:35,199
He mentioned no coherent moral theology from
Orthodoxy. I would totally disagree. We

1105
01:31:35,399 --> 01:31:40,720
have what's called canon law. For
example, most of the canonical Orthodox churches

1106
01:31:40,720 --> 01:31:44,399
in the world will believe in something
like canon This is a great heritage that's

1107
01:31:44,399 --> 01:31:48,560
been handed down. The idea of
canon law influenced modern law theory, whether

1108
01:31:48,640 --> 01:31:56,760
it's Eastern canon law or Western canon
law. Modern jurisprudence is irrevocably influenced by

1109
01:31:56,920 --> 01:32:00,159
canon law. The rights of the
accusers becuse me of the accused. That's

1110
01:32:00,239 --> 01:32:04,399
actually from church canon law. Civil
canon law in the history of the West

1111
01:32:04,479 --> 01:32:09,119
and the East didn't tend to do
that. It was the church that tempered

1112
01:32:09,159 --> 01:32:14,520
the state and gave the individual the
right to have a fair trial and to

1113
01:32:15,079 --> 01:32:19,119
have rights as accused. That's all
from church canon law. And these are

1114
01:32:19,279 --> 01:32:25,039
well known developments in the history of
the West. We founded science. Science

1115
01:32:25,199 --> 01:32:29,600
comes out of medieval universities. This
may be totally lost on modern people,

1116
01:32:29,720 --> 01:32:33,560
but no, Actually, modern science
comes out of universities. Guess where universities

1117
01:32:33,640 --> 01:32:39,960
come from. Byzantium? What is
the theology of Byzantium Orthodoxy? The longest

1118
01:32:40,119 --> 01:32:43,760
running empire, the most successful economic
empire in the history of the world,

1119
01:32:44,159 --> 01:32:47,119
was Orthodox. It was Byzantium,
so we give the universities, we a

1120
01:32:47,199 --> 01:32:54,399
civilization. All of these things come
from the treasures of Orthodoxy. So I

1121
01:32:54,439 --> 01:32:59,119
would say that we can prove that
our morals are theologists from God. I'm

1122
01:32:59,119 --> 01:33:01,760
not saying that just because of history
it proves it. I was just rebutting

1123
01:33:01,880 --> 01:33:06,239
certain points that he made about history. We've actually built civilizations Canada. Laws

1124
01:33:06,319 --> 01:33:11,159
very important in the history of law, the history of law theory. Universities

1125
01:33:11,199 --> 01:33:16,159
come from Orthodoxy. So when we
reject dialectics and dialectical tensions and the presuppositions

1126
01:33:16,199 --> 01:33:20,880
of dialectics, which are the very
root of all gnostic systems are all built

1127
01:33:20,960 --> 01:33:25,680
on dialectical tensions and the assumptions of
dialectics all the way back to Plato.

1128
01:33:26,279 --> 01:33:30,439
When we reject that's what we're left
with is a unique revealed anthropology and a

1129
01:33:30,600 --> 01:33:35,439
unique metaphysic, a unique worldview,
a unique ethic that is not just in

1130
01:33:35,640 --> 01:33:42,760
theory, it's actually been proved and
stamped into history in the longest empire in

1131
01:33:42,840 --> 01:33:48,520
the world. All right, thank
you, Jay Scott closing statements please.

1132
01:33:50,479 --> 01:33:58,479
So I've enjoyed this discussion, and
I'm shocked that Jay and I cannot resolve

1133
01:33:58,560 --> 01:34:03,239
all our differences in or in forty
minutes, who knew that Christians can disagree

1134
01:34:03,319 --> 01:34:10,960
on one or two things. I
think that at least the people who are

1135
01:34:11,079 --> 01:34:19,159
tuning in to this program are seekers
who are looking for fresh ideas on whatever

1136
01:34:19,319 --> 01:34:25,239
path they've chosen. I think that
that's a healthy thing. I would hope

1137
01:34:25,319 --> 01:34:29,800
that those who really are interested in
these kind of discussions, they would go

1138
01:34:30,680 --> 01:34:34,840
to the God Above Good dot com
and look at all the other interviews you're

1139
01:34:34,880 --> 01:34:40,479
doing, Miguel, because it is
tremendously rich, and they should join and

1140
01:34:40,680 --> 01:34:46,640
also join the Facebook Inner Sanctum of
Gnosis. And I see all the extra

1141
01:34:46,760 --> 01:34:51,680
material that you have there. My
own website, godreconsider dot com and the

1142
01:34:53,079 --> 01:35:00,319
Facebook God Reconsidered really have a wealth
of other material, blogs in our and

1143
01:35:00,439 --> 01:35:03,239
so forth, and there is a
way to contact me if you have questions.

1144
01:35:03,279 --> 01:35:10,279
I'm happy to answer them wonderful yes. And for the audience, I

1145
01:35:10,399 --> 01:35:15,439
will have Scott and Jay's information in
the show notes at the website, their

1146
01:35:15,600 --> 01:35:19,520
websites, that their books and all
that. Highly recommend you check out both

1147
01:35:19,560 --> 01:35:24,359
of their works. Make up your
mind again. I've enjoyed both of their

1148
01:35:24,439 --> 01:35:28,239
works, and I will continue to
enjoy their work as they put it out,

1149
01:35:28,319 --> 01:35:30,159
but I think we're at the end. Thank you for the audience who

1150
01:35:30,319 --> 01:35:36,239
participated tonight to very lively looked like
a whole bunch of little ben shapiros.

1151
01:35:36,359 --> 01:35:41,000
I destroyed you. I destroyed you. But there was also a lot of

1152
01:35:41,079 --> 01:35:46,720
good conversations. But Evans, thanks
for keeping the natives controlled, no problem.

1153
01:35:46,760 --> 01:35:49,840
Actually enjoyed hanging out with them.
And by the way, the results

1154
01:35:49,880 --> 01:35:55,239
are in the Jehovah Hotline. Just
called me. They've been watching this and

1155
01:35:55,399 --> 01:36:00,279
they say the Jehovah's witnesses are actually
they were correct ones. I thought I

1156
01:36:00,359 --> 01:36:02,560
was going to become a Mormon.
Oh well, we'll just have to wait.

1157
01:36:02,760 --> 01:36:08,279
But yeah, Jay, thank you. In second, Jay, really

1158
01:36:08,359 --> 01:36:11,079
appreciate you coming here. I forgot. Yeah, I can not plug my

1159
01:36:11,159 --> 01:36:14,079
website too, I do know,
please do, please do. And now

1160
01:36:14,359 --> 01:36:16,479
the YouTube channel, ja do you
can come me on YouTube so if you

1161
01:36:16,520 --> 01:36:18,920
want to follow my work there,
and then I have my books for at

1162
01:36:18,960 --> 01:36:23,199
my website and the shop. Thank
you awesome. Well, we appreciate you

1163
01:36:23,319 --> 01:36:26,640
coming on and keep doing what you're
doing. And Scott, thanks for joining

1164
01:36:26,720 --> 01:36:30,840
us on this very civilized and fun
debate. As always, I appreciate the

1165
01:36:30,880 --> 01:36:35,520
opportunity. All right, Well,
good night everybody, and uh we will

1166
01:36:35,600 --> 01:36:39,359
talk to each other soon. Take
care, and yes, I have to

1167
01:36:39,399 --> 01:36:43,119
say, the empire never ended.
And thank you very much