WEBVTT

1
00:00:00.080 --> 00:00:02.560
That could make me laugh, and
I think that's what we need in this

2
00:00:02.720 --> 00:00:10.240
very serious world. So with us
Jay Dyer, author of Esoteric Hollywood One

3
00:00:10.279 --> 00:00:13.880
in two, Welcome Jay, Thanks
for being here. Yeah, thank you.

4
00:00:13.960 --> 00:00:17.320
I think we had to talk a
few months ago about gnosticism and Hollywood.

5
00:00:17.719 --> 00:00:20.280
That was a good chat. We
went on for a couple hours.

6
00:00:20.280 --> 00:00:23.559
I really enjoyed that, so I'm
glad to be back. Oh well,

7
00:00:23.640 --> 00:00:28.320
great, Yes, it was a
great interview and very enlightening with old Hollyweird

8
00:00:28.960 --> 00:00:34.600
and with us too. We've also
got Scott Smith, author of God Reconsidered.

9
00:00:34.759 --> 00:00:39.320
How you doing Scott, hailing from
West Hollyweired. There you go,

10
00:00:39.399 --> 00:00:42.960
you are in the middle of Hollyweird. I forgot about that. Wes Hollywood

11
00:00:43.960 --> 00:00:47.719
so awesome. And as always with
us helping out, we've got the Moondog

12
00:00:47.840 --> 00:00:52.439
Vans. How you doing, Vans. I'm fine. I'm gonna be watching

13
00:00:52.439 --> 00:00:56.960
this with great interest in If anybody
is not friendly, I'll start parking.

14
00:00:58.600 --> 00:01:02.439
Yes, events will take care of
the chat room well wonderful, And I

15
00:01:02.520 --> 00:01:07.560
have just a few notes again,
this will be available for all. It

16
00:01:07.640 --> 00:01:11.439
will be of course, it will
be on YouTube. After we're done.

17
00:01:11.680 --> 00:01:15.640
I will put the audio version on
iTunes and iHeartRadio and all those good places.

18
00:01:17.079 --> 00:01:19.680
There will be no member section because
this is a special show. I

19
00:01:19.760 --> 00:01:26.159
want to put the entire thing there
for you for everybody's well benefit. And

20
00:01:26.280 --> 00:01:30.319
please, but please, of course, always support support this show anyway you

21
00:01:30.400 --> 00:01:37.159
can, Patreon, PayPal of course, please support Jay and Scott us independent

22
00:01:37.280 --> 00:01:42.760
broadcasters and researchers and writers. We
are much better than the alternative out there

23
00:01:42.760 --> 00:01:46.760
in the mass media, regardless of
what stance you might take. And it's

24
00:01:46.799 --> 00:01:52.400
great that we can have civilized,
friendly conversations on the internet. Also too,

25
00:01:53.239 --> 00:01:59.159
we will have super chats. If
you do a superchat, Vance will

26
00:01:59.200 --> 00:02:01.640
take your question and write down your
question. At the end of the debate,

27
00:02:01.760 --> 00:02:07.120
we will address your question. Please
address it to either Scott or Jay.

28
00:02:07.200 --> 00:02:12.199
Please keep it on topic and as
I talked to both Scott and Jay

29
00:02:13.199 --> 00:02:16.520
will the money will be split in
half for super chats. I don't know

30
00:02:16.520 --> 00:02:20.120
how much is going to be,
but we'll give it to charity because I

31
00:02:20.120 --> 00:02:23.599
feel we need to give a little
bit back to the world and those who

32
00:02:23.680 --> 00:02:28.439
are definitely in a much more need
than all of us. Here, so

33
00:02:28.919 --> 00:02:36.159
and any other house cleaning notes here, No, yeah, please stay civilized

34
00:02:36.719 --> 00:02:42.639
in the forum. And yeah,
the format today will be simple. We

35
00:02:42.680 --> 00:02:46.039
will start with opening statements. I'll
try to keep time ten minutes, and

36
00:02:46.120 --> 00:02:52.159
after that we will move on to
the Odyssey five minutes unless a guest wants

37
00:02:52.240 --> 00:02:57.479
to rebut the other guests, and
then we'll move on to my notes.

38
00:02:57.560 --> 00:03:00.960
My notes. Then we'll move on
to the nature of Christ for five minutes.

39
00:03:01.000 --> 00:03:05.400
Again, we can go a little
off topic if the guests so decide

40
00:03:05.919 --> 00:03:10.240
no says versus faith five minutes and
then audience questions. Of course we can

41
00:03:10.280 --> 00:03:15.960
go longer if everybody feels they still
need some had some points to address.

42
00:03:16.319 --> 00:03:21.919
So with that in mind, why
don't we start with Jay, Jay,

43
00:03:22.039 --> 00:03:29.879
please give us your opening statement on
where you stand orthodoxy or why gnosticism is

44
00:03:29.879 --> 00:03:32.159
wrong or both. Go ahead,
Flora is yours? All right? And

45
00:03:32.479 --> 00:03:37.319
it's for how long? Ten minutes? Ten minutes more or less you're gonna

46
00:03:37.319 --> 00:03:39.680
go less or you a little bit
over. We're fine, We're loose here.

47
00:03:42.199 --> 00:03:45.960
Yeah, well, I would say
that I'm definitely on the side of

48
00:03:46.080 --> 00:03:52.240
Orthodoxy. I affirm Orthodox Christianity.
That would be the canonical Russian, Greek,

49
00:03:52.719 --> 00:03:55.960
Serbian, et cetera. Orthodox churches
throughout the world, found also obviously

50
00:03:57.039 --> 00:04:02.240
in America. I've been Orthodox for
several years now, and I find Orthodoxy

51
00:04:02.240 --> 00:04:09.879
convincing for many reasons. I think
that it's the faithful, historic, biblical

52
00:04:09.919 --> 00:04:14.800
presentation of Christianity. I think orthodox
Christianity is what we see throughout the first

53
00:04:14.879 --> 00:04:17.319
millennium of the Church before it splits
into the East and the West, and

54
00:04:17.399 --> 00:04:23.480
so therefore the papacy I see that
as an aberration. I see the papacy

55
00:04:23.519 --> 00:04:29.839
as something that is a political and
anti Christian development, and I see Orthodoxy,

56
00:04:29.879 --> 00:04:33.360
therefore, in the second millennium really
being faithful to the Christian vision of

57
00:04:33.399 --> 00:04:38.839
the first millennium. Thus, I
do believe that Christianity in the first millennium

58
00:04:38.959 --> 00:04:42.800
is a coherent whole. I don't
believe that Constantine created a church. It

59
00:04:42.839 --> 00:04:46.079
was significantly different than the church after
the Council of Nicea in three twenty five.

60
00:04:46.120 --> 00:04:49.399
So I think we look at,
for example, the post Apostolic fathers.

61
00:04:49.439 --> 00:04:53.079
I know that this is not a
proof against gnocissism per se, but

62
00:04:53.519 --> 00:04:58.120
I just want to kind of debunk
the prevalent idea that constantly created some sort

63
00:04:58.160 --> 00:05:01.480
of new imperial church or Catholic quote
unquote church, it didn't exist prior to

64
00:05:01.519 --> 00:05:04.519
three twenty five. So if we
look at say Justin Martyr, if we

65
00:05:04.560 --> 00:05:10.319
look at the post Apstock fathers,
Saint Ignatius his letters, we look at

66
00:05:10.319 --> 00:05:14.360
Saint Clements letters, if we look
at Saint Cyprian, if we look at

67
00:05:14.959 --> 00:05:19.240
the writings of any of these pre
Nicene era fathers, they back up all

68
00:05:19.279 --> 00:05:25.759
of the what we might call Orthodox
doctrines. So they believed in the real

69
00:05:25.759 --> 00:05:29.800
presence of Christ and the Eucharist.
They they're citing the same Biblical canon text

70
00:05:29.879 --> 00:05:32.639
that we cite today. They have
a liturgical worship that we still use today.

71
00:05:33.079 --> 00:05:39.199
Many of these ancient liturgies were actually
instrumental in how the canon came to

72
00:05:39.240 --> 00:05:42.680
be and was chosen. It was
not something that say Constantine to sort of

73
00:05:42.800 --> 00:05:47.720
randomly picked at the Council of Nicea. It was a long process that involved

74
00:05:47.800 --> 00:05:53.639
many centuries actually, and even up
into the eighth century century with the famous

75
00:05:53.879 --> 00:05:58.519
eighth century church father John of Damascus, who's known for his exhosition of the

76
00:05:58.639 --> 00:06:02.199
Orthodox faith found of none and defense
of Holy icons. The canon was still

77
00:06:02.199 --> 00:06:05.439
being debated even in his day,
and for us as Orthodox, that's not

78
00:06:05.480 --> 00:06:10.879
really a big issue, because it's
it's something that we're not Protestants, that

79
00:06:10.920 --> 00:06:15.120
we don't actually base the entire practice
of the church on having a specific,

80
00:06:15.319 --> 00:06:19.360
perfect canon to have the church.
The canon does come to be, it

81
00:06:19.439 --> 00:06:24.560
is closed. There's no new books
or anything like that. So when we

82
00:06:24.600 --> 00:06:29.639
look at that canonical collection of texts, when we look at I'm speaking of

83
00:06:29.639 --> 00:06:33.399
the Orthodox canon here, when we
look at the Creeds and Confessions prior to

84
00:06:33.519 --> 00:06:39.560
Nicea and after Nicea into those next
seven eight councils, we see a consistent

85
00:06:39.639 --> 00:06:44.120
doctor. We see the same Christianity
being presented. It has the reverence of

86
00:06:44.160 --> 00:06:46.279
saints, it has relics, it
has prayers for the dead, it has

87
00:06:46.319 --> 00:06:51.000
all these elements that many Protestants consider
Catholic, and many Catholics well, who

88
00:06:51.079 --> 00:06:58.399
knows where Roman Catholicism is today.
But regardless, Orthodox Christianity still teaches those

89
00:06:58.480 --> 00:07:00.800
same things. Nothing has changed.
We don't have innovations, we don't have

90
00:07:00.839 --> 00:07:04.240
any of these new, weird ideas, and we actually believe, and this

91
00:07:04.319 --> 00:07:09.160
is going to sound pretty shocking,
I think to this audience, perhaps we

92
00:07:09.160 --> 00:07:13.399
actually believe that our theology is in
continuity with the Old Testament. And this

93
00:07:13.519 --> 00:07:15.639
is I think a big point and
probably the point of departure in this debate,

94
00:07:16.000 --> 00:07:19.040
which is that when we look at
the revelation of God in the Old

95
00:07:19.040 --> 00:07:24.040
Testament, the way that God reveals
himself. Say to Moses in Exodus twenty,

96
00:07:24.959 --> 00:07:28.639
when Moses goes up on the mountain
and God says, you may see

97
00:07:29.240 --> 00:07:31.680
one of my attributes. You may
see my goodness, but you can't see

98
00:07:31.680 --> 00:07:35.600
me directly, because to see me
directly would be for you to die.

99
00:07:35.959 --> 00:07:40.920
And so Moses sees God's goodness.
If Orthodox Christianity, that means Moses saw

100
00:07:41.079 --> 00:07:44.480
one of God's energies. For us, energies are not new age things or

101
00:07:44.560 --> 00:07:48.519
not created things. They're the uncreated, real presence of God within time and

102
00:07:48.560 --> 00:07:54.680
space. We see in all of
these logos of the Angel of the Lord,

103
00:07:54.800 --> 00:07:58.839
or these manifestations of the logos in
the Old Testament. That's how we

104
00:07:58.920 --> 00:08:01.680
view it. We view those as
Jesus present in the Old Testament. It's

105
00:08:01.759 --> 00:08:07.639
Jesus who's present at Mount Sinai.
It's Jesus who's in the burning bush saying

106
00:08:07.720 --> 00:08:09.800
I am that I am. And
we see those as personal statements. So

107
00:08:11.000 --> 00:08:16.439
our order theologias is called the beginning
of our order theology begins with the personhood

108
00:08:16.439 --> 00:08:18.879
of God. We don't believe in
God as an impersonal force. He's not

109
00:08:18.920 --> 00:08:22.000
a giant algorithm. He's not a
mathematical principle per se, or simply,

110
00:08:22.439 --> 00:08:28.279
he's first and foremost personal and therefore
covenantal So, these many manifestations of the

111
00:08:28.319 --> 00:08:31.159
logos, to these many Old Testament
saints who by the way they worship,

112
00:08:31.240 --> 00:08:35.200
they worshiped as logos. We see
that as a second personage. We also

113
00:08:35.200 --> 00:08:39.039
see in many Old Testament texts the
presence of the whole trinity father, son,

114
00:08:39.080 --> 00:08:41.600
and Spirit president. In the Old
Testament, for example, in Zechariah

115
00:08:41.639 --> 00:08:46.240
one, two and three, all
three persons of the Trinity are present,

116
00:08:46.720 --> 00:08:52.200
and they're given divine personhood later on. Yes, it's true the Church utilized

117
00:08:52.399 --> 00:08:56.960
aspects, terms and ideas and concepts
that were in use in Greek philosophy,

118
00:08:58.039 --> 00:09:01.039
from Aristotle, from other Church fathers. You do have the idea of the

119
00:09:01.159 --> 00:09:05.399
essence introducedinction. You do have the
usage of the idea of houpostosis. In

120
00:09:05.440 --> 00:09:09.200
these different terms like logos right in
John one, we see those as the

121
00:09:09.279 --> 00:09:13.679
appropriating of terms. But those terms
are given a new meaning in our theology

122
00:09:13.799 --> 00:09:18.720
that's in perfect harmony with the Old
Testament revelation. In fact, if we

123
00:09:18.759 --> 00:09:22.679
were looking at something like Dionysius the
Areopagite in the Divine Names, he's often

124
00:09:22.720 --> 00:09:28.159
cited as a source for something like
Neoplatonism. Actually, the majority of the

125
00:09:28.159 --> 00:09:31.360
citations in Dionysius's Divine names are actually
from the Old Testament and from the New

126
00:09:31.360 --> 00:09:35.799
Testament. So we see that as
again a harmony. Here, he's not

127
00:09:35.840 --> 00:09:43.759
principally a quote Neoplatonist. He's actually
rejecting the formative central thesis of Neoplatonism and

128
00:09:43.799 --> 00:09:48.639
Greek Hellenism, which is that the
RK first principle is absolutely one and absolutely

129
00:09:48.639 --> 00:09:52.360
simple. We don't believe that.
We believe that God is both one and

130
00:09:52.519 --> 00:09:56.440
many in a perfect harmony. God
is not more one than he has three,

131
00:09:56.440 --> 00:09:58.600
and he's not more three than he
has one. And that's how the

132
00:09:58.679 --> 00:10:03.320
trinity is. That's how the Trinity
exists in the Old Testament, in that

133
00:10:03.360 --> 00:10:05.720
revelation, in the Old Testament,
in many places, again, the Angel

134
00:10:05.720 --> 00:10:07.840
of the Lord is present many times
throughout the Old Testament. He's worshiped.

135
00:10:07.919 --> 00:10:13.159
Jesus identifies himself in the Gospels as
that Angel of the Lord, that messenger

136
00:10:13.240 --> 00:10:18.200
the Lord. This doesn't compromise the
unity of God because we believe that it's

137
00:10:18.360 --> 00:10:24.639
revealed to us that God's unity is
something that the Father conveys to the Son

138
00:10:24.120 --> 00:10:28.679
in the Spirit. Right, so
the Father is the beginning of the God.

139
00:10:28.720 --> 00:10:31.600
He transfers that unity of divinity to
the Son and to the Spirit.

140
00:10:31.879 --> 00:10:37.480
And also because of what parent caureesis, that is that the three persons in

141
00:10:37.559 --> 00:10:41.759
dwell on another perfectly. So the
perfect indwelling and the perfect origin of the

142
00:10:41.799 --> 00:10:46.600
person of the Father is our beginning
point for theology. By extension, then,

143
00:10:46.679 --> 00:10:50.039
when we look at the New Testament, we see that Jesus many many,

144
00:10:50.080 --> 00:10:56.000
many times, consistently cites the Old
Testament as his foundation. The Father

145
00:10:56.080 --> 00:11:00.919
of the Old Testament is his father. Jesus says to the woman at the

146
00:11:00.919 --> 00:11:03.639
well in John four, that you
will be worshiping the same father that I

147
00:11:03.720 --> 00:11:07.440
have, the Father from the foundation
of the world, who is the father

148
00:11:07.519 --> 00:11:11.799
of the Jews the Old Testament.
He says that the Jews had the legitimate

149
00:11:11.840 --> 00:11:15.320
worship right. So in Jesus's mind, at least in the Gospel of John

150
00:11:15.480 --> 00:11:18.559
and many other places I can go
to many many more, he consistently cites

151
00:11:18.639 --> 00:11:24.080
the law. Jesus consistently cites Genesis. Jesus consistently cites Adam and Eves as

152
00:11:24.440 --> 00:11:28.679
real historical personages. Paul says the
exact same thing, and when he goes

153
00:11:28.679 --> 00:11:33.120
throughout Romans and Romans five, he
cites Adam and Eve as historic instances.

154
00:11:33.120 --> 00:11:35.519
He such Christ as the new Adam
in his in first Grade Das fifteen.

155
00:11:35.720 --> 00:11:39.879
None of that would make any sense
if the Old Testament were purely allegories,

156
00:11:39.919 --> 00:11:43.480
if it wasn't viewed as historical.
In our theology. It is, and

157
00:11:43.519 --> 00:11:48.159
so what we say is a consistent
harmony of the Old and New Testament,

158
00:11:48.600 --> 00:11:52.840
totally in perfect harmony. For example, in Matthew five, when Jesus says

159
00:11:54.120 --> 00:11:58.279
that you've heard him, you know
you shall love your enemy, he believed

160
00:11:58.320 --> 00:12:03.639
that Jesus is actually citing Leviticus nineteen. Did you know Leviticus nineteen says you

161
00:12:03.720 --> 00:12:07.679
cannot hate your enemy. So we
don't think that Jesus is giving some new

162
00:12:07.879 --> 00:12:11.759
law like Marcian thought, that's in
contrast to this evil, mean god of

163
00:12:11.759 --> 00:12:15.080
the Old Testament. Actually it's in
perfect harmony. What Jesus is doing is

164
00:12:15.120 --> 00:12:20.639
rebuking the phariseical misunderstanding. Of the
law, and this Pharisaic tradition is what

165
00:12:20.679 --> 00:12:24.480
would become the rabbinical Talmudic tradition.
So in our review, there's a perfect

166
00:12:24.480 --> 00:12:28.320
harmony. Another way to understand this
from our perspective is to look at the

167
00:12:28.360 --> 00:12:33.639
Biblical covenants. The New Testament will
actually cite all the Biblical covenants to the

168
00:12:33.639 --> 00:12:39.679
Old Testament as a perfect linear harmony. They're not viewed as a total discontinuity.

169
00:12:39.080 --> 00:12:43.120
Now sometimes, yes, Paul will
use terminology and language to contrast the

170
00:12:43.200 --> 00:12:46.960
Old Testament sinai to the New Testament. He does this Singalatian spot. But

171
00:12:48.080 --> 00:12:54.919
the allegory of Spore is actually based
in the historical presentation that Paul presupposes.

172
00:12:54.919 --> 00:12:58.200
In other words, he assumes that
Hagar and Sarah and Abraham were actual historic

173
00:12:58.279 --> 00:13:03.200
personages. That's the basis for the
allegorical level of interpretation, and in fact,

174
00:13:03.679 --> 00:13:07.639
throughout the history of the Church fathers, this modus operandi of hermaeutics,

175
00:13:07.679 --> 00:13:13.399
or how to interpret the scriptures,
it becomes a pattern of four layers,

176
00:13:13.480 --> 00:13:16.120
the four levels of what would be
called medieval hermauticts. Right where we have

177
00:13:16.240 --> 00:13:20.720
the historical, we have the anagogical, we have the tropological and we have

178
00:13:20.799 --> 00:13:24.879
the allegorical right these four layers of
hermeneutical interpretation of the Old Testament. They're

179
00:13:24.960 --> 00:13:28.559
never set out of accord with one
another. And eventually, by the way,

180
00:13:28.039 --> 00:13:33.840
the Church rejects the originist interpretation at
the sixth Ecumenical Council. This is

181
00:13:33.879 --> 00:13:39.200
the confessional Saint Sophronius which was accepted
at the sixth Council, and it completely

182
00:13:39.320 --> 00:13:43.000
refutes and rejects from our perspective originism. So that's my ten minute opening sit

183
00:13:45.600 --> 00:13:50.080
Well, thank you very much,
Jay was Scott please give us your opening

184
00:13:50.240 --> 00:13:56.799
statements. First of all, just
to set the stage here, I've read

185
00:13:56.840 --> 00:14:01.200
the Bible many times. I was
a missionary. I believed in intelligent design

186
00:14:01.440 --> 00:14:09.120
for evolution. I'm not a philosophical
or theological or even political liberal, but

187
00:14:11.159 --> 00:14:18.360
over time I became aware of what
I felt was very sound biblical scholarship that

188
00:14:18.480 --> 00:14:24.360
did not support the fundamentalist point of
view. Now these are not just wild

189
00:14:24.519 --> 00:14:31.600
liberal opinions. If you want to
look at two scholars who I think are

190
00:14:31.799 --> 00:14:39.919
very fair as well as informed,
Art Ehrman's Jesus Interrupted and also the more

191
00:14:39.000 --> 00:14:48.440
recent Richard Smoley's How God Became God? They go into considerable detail about the

192
00:14:48.559 --> 00:14:54.720
problems with both the Old and the
New Testament. Those of us who grew

193
00:14:54.919 --> 00:15:05.240
up believing the Bible literally understand and
that effectively we are so culturally brainwashed that

194
00:15:05.159 --> 00:15:15.519
the contradictions and the problems in the
Bible are not really obvious. We grow

195
00:15:15.639 --> 00:15:20.080
up, let's say, as my
family did, having little Nativity scenes in

196
00:15:20.159 --> 00:15:24.440
the home on Christmas, and the
wise men and the shepherds are there at

197
00:15:24.440 --> 00:15:28.440
the same time, and so forth. So you know, there have been

198
00:15:28.559 --> 00:15:35.120
efforts to kind of smooth things out, and the most sophisticated evangelical and fundamentalist

199
00:15:35.120 --> 00:15:41.039
scholars have tried to come up with
answers. But I would challenge anybody who's

200
00:15:41.120 --> 00:15:48.240
neutral, as I was back in
my uninformed days, to look at Airman's

201
00:15:48.720 --> 00:15:54.600
comparison of the first week of Jesus'
life and his last week. The contradictions

202
00:15:54.879 --> 00:16:03.879
between the different gospels. Radical contradictions
are very obvious once you put these things

203
00:16:03.919 --> 00:16:07.320
together. It's just that they're not
lined up in a way where it becomes

204
00:16:07.480 --> 00:16:19.240
obvious the details. You can take
anything from the lineage of Jesus back to

205
00:16:19.399 --> 00:16:25.840
David, or what happened after the
crucifixion, during the resurrection or any of

206
00:16:25.919 --> 00:16:33.240
these things. There are so many
just logical problems and evidential problems. Obviously,

207
00:16:34.279 --> 00:16:40.720
the Gospels were not written by eyewitnesses. That becomes very apparent. Paul,

208
00:16:40.879 --> 00:16:47.440
who wrote probably the earliest books from
fifty to sixty AD, well before

209
00:16:48.279 --> 00:16:51.960
the Gospels were written, he doesn't
even mention them, so apparently they weren't

210
00:16:52.200 --> 00:16:59.679
even known. But he barely mentions
Christ's life before. Gospels are really obsessed

211
00:16:59.759 --> 00:17:07.960
with and focused on jesus life or
John Warsaw about his death. But Paul

212
00:17:07.079 --> 00:17:14.200
basically doesn't say much about his life, and he only quotes Jesus twice.

213
00:17:15.640 --> 00:17:19.799
One of the times is about divorce, which I think modern Christians have conveniently

214
00:17:19.920 --> 00:17:26.359
ignored. I frankly don't think if
Jesus came back today that he would recognize

215
00:17:26.440 --> 00:17:36.119
modern Christianity. But let's just take
an example of the doctrine of the Trinity.

216
00:17:36.599 --> 00:17:41.559
It's really not to be found in
the New Testament. This notion that

217
00:17:42.160 --> 00:17:49.319
Jesus and God and the Holy Spirit
are one is really confusing what it actually

218
00:17:49.519 --> 00:17:56.759
says. Now in John seventeen twenty
and twenty one it's explained what they're referring

219
00:17:56.880 --> 00:18:03.119
to when they talk about oneness,
where he says they may all be one,

220
00:18:03.359 --> 00:18:07.200
as he's talking to the disciples,
as you and the Father in me

221
00:18:07.359 --> 00:18:11.440
and I am one, may they
be with be in us. And he's

222
00:18:11.519 --> 00:18:17.119
talking about in love and spirit.
Obviously he's not talking about the apostles becoming

223
00:18:17.759 --> 00:18:22.160
part of the Godhead. And throughout
the New Testament is very clear from the

224
00:18:22.240 --> 00:18:29.400
Lord's prayer that he's praying to God
the Father. Matthew, Mark and Luke

225
00:18:30.240 --> 00:18:33.519
the young man comes and talks to
Jesus and calls him good Master, and

226
00:18:33.519 --> 00:18:41.319
he says they're none good but God. So the bottom line is that many

227
00:18:41.440 --> 00:18:47.359
things, including the Trinity, but
also the whole concept of the atonement,

228
00:18:47.880 --> 00:18:52.200
the notion that somehow, because of
the sin that Adam and Eve committed,

229
00:18:52.960 --> 00:19:00.319
you know, we're all entering into
mortality and we were sinners, and why

230
00:19:00.359 --> 00:19:06.680
should Christ die. Well, there's
half a dozen theories for that. Christianity

231
00:19:06.759 --> 00:19:11.920
has evolved, and in the early
years the early Church, so called Church

232
00:19:11.079 --> 00:19:17.400
Fathers, the Winning faction, were
alarmed by the number of Christians who did

233
00:19:17.440 --> 00:19:25.000
not follow their point of view.
So you can say early Christianity is represented

234
00:19:25.160 --> 00:19:32.920
in Orthodoxy or Catholicism or Protestantism today. But if you go back and see

235
00:19:33.000 --> 00:19:38.480
the differences on faith and works and
some of the other debates, it's really

236
00:19:38.599 --> 00:19:45.079
hard to find modern Christianity in the
New Testament. Now with regard to the

237
00:19:45.200 --> 00:19:51.599
Old Testament, there you know obvious, I would say the majority of Christians

238
00:19:51.640 --> 00:19:56.559
today do not take the Old Testament
literally. I think one would have to

239
00:19:57.200 --> 00:20:03.079
dispense with the evidence for evolution to
do that, and I think that if

240
00:20:03.160 --> 00:20:11.480
you look at the progress of evolution, there's no evidence for intelligent design.

241
00:20:11.200 --> 00:20:18.680
On the contrary, where the Gnostics
had their first insight had to do with

242
00:20:18.799 --> 00:20:23.759
the nature of the Creator who put
us into these bodies. And David Bracki,

243
00:20:23.880 --> 00:20:30.519
the religion scholar you've had on before
Miguel said, keep is convinced that

244
00:20:30.599 --> 00:20:37.319
there really was this idea the Gnostics
had of gnosis or insight, because it's

245
00:20:37.440 --> 00:20:41.720
hard to believe Jews would have come
to the conclusion that the God of the

246
00:20:41.759 --> 00:20:45.359
Old Testament, or Jehovah, the
demi Urge, whatever you want to call

247
00:20:45.440 --> 00:20:52.839
him, was incompetent or evil.
But if you look at prehistory and history

248
00:20:52.960 --> 00:21:00.440
going back five hundred million years,
the amount of purposeless suffering and innocent suffering

249
00:21:00.680 --> 00:21:07.759
is hard to explain using the basis
or the rationale of orthodox religion. I

250
00:21:07.839 --> 00:21:12.519
mean that in the broadest sense or
East or West mainstream religion. The black

251
00:21:12.640 --> 00:21:18.920
deaths, wallpak, malaria, cancer, Alzheimer's, the four hundred types of

252
00:21:19.079 --> 00:21:32.960
emotional and mental disorders, the birth
defects, differences in IQ. If you

253
00:21:33.079 --> 00:21:36.839
go back and read Jared Diamonds,
guns, germs and steel, you get

254
00:21:36.920 --> 00:21:41.599
a little sense. Even at that
late date in the Middle Ages and after

255
00:21:41.759 --> 00:21:48.400
that, just how many people died
in childhood about a quarter of the one

256
00:21:48.519 --> 00:21:52.200
hundred and eight billion people who ever
lived. So then one has to ask,

257
00:21:52.359 --> 00:21:59.279
if God is all powerful and all
knowing and benevolent, you know,

258
00:21:59.359 --> 00:22:03.559
why would he hold the knowledge of
germs and ANESTHESIATI the late nineteenth century,

259
00:22:04.240 --> 00:22:11.920
and I think that Gnostics had this
flash of insight, this gnosis that the

260
00:22:11.519 --> 00:22:15.400
God of this world, the creator
of this world, was not the high

261
00:22:15.559 --> 00:22:22.400
transcendental God. Now gnosticism recognizes there
are contending forces. On the one hand,

262
00:22:22.880 --> 00:22:27.359
we have the Marian visions, we
have the miracles that the saints performed.

263
00:22:29.599 --> 00:22:32.920
You know, there is a divine
intervention. I think you can get

264
00:22:33.200 --> 00:22:36.519
help from the eons or the angels, or whatever you want to call them.

265
00:22:37.200 --> 00:22:40.839
I'm a believer in healing, miracles, divine intervention, the power of

266
00:22:40.920 --> 00:22:45.160
prayer. There's that side. On
the other hand, there's a tremendous amount

267
00:22:45.240 --> 00:22:51.359
of evil. Obviously the forces of
good don't seem to be able to stop

268
00:22:51.400 --> 00:22:56.400
it. But this fits with what
gnostics say about the dualistic nature of this

269
00:22:56.759 --> 00:23:02.559
dimension. So what I did in
book God Reconsidered is I shared my journey

270
00:23:02.599 --> 00:23:07.200
over the last fifty years forty eight
years to be exact, I'm sixty nine

271
00:23:07.279 --> 00:23:12.759
now, and how I finally went
through all these different religions and finally decided

272
00:23:12.799 --> 00:23:19.039
the gnosticism was the only path that
really made philosophical sense. Well, thank

273
00:23:19.119 --> 00:23:22.599
you, Scott Jay. Would you
like to have a rebuttal? I know

274
00:23:22.720 --> 00:23:26.039
we said five minutes. If you
need longer, then we'll just match.

275
00:23:26.240 --> 00:23:30.920
I'll have Scott match the timeline so
everybody can say what they want. I

276
00:23:30.960 --> 00:23:34.400
would definitely like to rebut to that. So I noted several points I think

277
00:23:34.640 --> 00:23:41.000
in his opening statement. Obviously he
is free to give the open statement that

278
00:23:41.079 --> 00:23:45.160
he wants, but the opening statement
kind of ignored pretty much all the points

279
00:23:45.240 --> 00:23:49.519
that I made, most of which
actually covered his responses or his points.

280
00:23:49.599 --> 00:23:57.440
So, for example, he sets
what he calls fundamentalism over against whatever gnostic

281
00:23:57.599 --> 00:24:02.559
version of Christianity that he has,
I would actually say that, you know,

282
00:24:02.640 --> 00:24:07.559
this is really a mischaracterization because any
position, any worldview, actually has

283
00:24:07.599 --> 00:24:10.960
its own version of fundamentalism. You
could say, in fact, I've even

284
00:24:11.039 --> 00:24:17.920
heard mister Smith critique scientism as being
a kind of fundamentalism. So really any

285
00:24:18.000 --> 00:24:22.200
position could fall into quote fundamentalism,
because any position will have fundamental starting points

286
00:24:22.200 --> 00:24:30.279
and presuppositions that it won't actually question. It's actually impossible to have no starting

287
00:24:30.319 --> 00:24:33.920
point, no foundational assumptions, and
complete neutrality. So I would actually have

288
00:24:33.960 --> 00:24:38.640
to disagree that he may believe that
he's philosophically neutral, and he may have

289
00:24:38.920 --> 00:24:44.480
striven or may strive, we may
strive to be neutral, but actually neutrality

290
00:24:44.720 --> 00:24:49.599
is fundamentally impossible to achieve. There's
no perfect neutral position because we're all conditioned

291
00:24:49.960 --> 00:24:55.000
in some sense by our worldviews.
All of our views are theory laden in

292
00:24:55.079 --> 00:24:57.119
other words, is what I'm trying
to say. So the fact that he

293
00:24:57.359 --> 00:25:00.599
has cited bart Ehman, that he's
the site of these people who talk about

294
00:25:00.599 --> 00:25:06.359
Bible contradictions. There are many competent
scholars who have replied to bart Erman and

295
00:25:06.480 --> 00:25:10.759
others in many competent scholarly works,
such as doctor Craig B. Lomberg's book

296
00:25:11.160 --> 00:25:17.039
The Reliability of the Gospels. I've
done talks on the amazing historical veracity and

297
00:25:17.119 --> 00:25:21.039
testimony that we have in five thousand
plus manuscripts of the first, third,

298
00:25:21.359 --> 00:25:26.160
three and fourth centuries of the Church. That's a tremendous attestation that's much higher,

299
00:25:26.279 --> 00:25:30.440
magnitudes higher than what we have for
Plato's dialogues. And as a grad

300
00:25:30.480 --> 00:25:33.200
student in philosophy, I know a
lot about Plato, and I can tell

301
00:25:33.200 --> 00:25:37.880
you that the latest document about that
we have a Plato is Oxford manuscript be

302
00:25:37.000 --> 00:25:41.440
of the Middle Ages. That's the
earliest, excuse me, the earliest document

303
00:25:41.640 --> 00:25:44.680
that we have of Plato's writings.
So we have within the first three or

304
00:25:44.680 --> 00:25:49.640
fourth centuries over five thousand manuscripts even
back to the first century that are largely

305
00:25:49.680 --> 00:25:52.759
in harmony. There's something of a
ninety five ninety seven ninety eight percent of

306
00:25:52.839 --> 00:25:59.200
harmony in the different textual collections and
manuscripts that we have. So now that

307
00:25:59.319 --> 00:26:02.160
itself doesn't prove the religion. I'm
just saying, when it comes to the

308
00:26:02.240 --> 00:26:04.920
textual issues, it's a bit of
sleight of hand to talk about fundamentalism,

309
00:26:06.279 --> 00:26:10.480
to throw in barn ermin when it's
actually a lot more complicated than that.

310
00:26:10.720 --> 00:26:14.680
So are there difficulties in texts,
Yeah, there's difficulties in text but actually

311
00:26:14.680 --> 00:26:21.400
there's difficulties in any religion. So
as if this constitutes some sort of fundamental,

312
00:26:21.599 --> 00:26:25.079
like destructive argument to our position,
I don't think it does, because

313
00:26:25.119 --> 00:26:29.400
any position, any religion, any
worldview, is going to have difficulties.

314
00:26:29.480 --> 00:26:30.519
Right, He's going to bring up
the problem of evil. He's kind of

315
00:26:30.519 --> 00:26:33.680
already hinted at that. That's I
mean, I'm going to give you an

316
00:26:33.799 --> 00:26:37.559
argument for the problem of view.
Well, when we get to that question,

317
00:26:37.960 --> 00:26:41.079
when we get to the Odyssey.
But actually pointing out these kinds of

318
00:26:41.119 --> 00:26:45.279
problems itself isn't an argument. We
can point out fundamental problems, it can

319
00:26:45.359 --> 00:26:48.880
point us in a direction, but
just talking about problems in a position itself

320
00:26:48.079 --> 00:26:52.079
isn't that strong an argument in my
view. He says that Paul doesn't say

321
00:26:52.319 --> 00:26:56.000
much about Jesus's life. Well,
this just assumes that Paul wasn't being chosen

322
00:26:56.079 --> 00:27:00.599
by Christ to be an apostle to
the Gentiles, and that there wasn't,

323
00:27:00.640 --> 00:27:03.880
in God's providence, already going to
be gospels written about Christ's life. In

324
00:27:03.960 --> 00:27:07.599
other words, it's assuming the thing
that is kind of one thing that we

325
00:27:07.720 --> 00:27:11.039
need to be proven from the outset, which is that Christianity is false whatever.

326
00:27:11.200 --> 00:27:14.759
He's assuming that Christianity is false in
order to argue against the Gospels.

327
00:27:15.119 --> 00:27:18.480
But we need to know why Christianity
is false in order to disprove the Gospels.

328
00:27:18.559 --> 00:27:22.680
That's the thing that he has not
yet shown. So just because Paul

329
00:27:22.720 --> 00:27:26.039
doesn't talk about Jesus's life assumes that
there must be a standard by which he

330
00:27:26.119 --> 00:27:30.440
will accept Paul's writings only if he
talks about Jesus' life. Well, maybe

331
00:27:30.519 --> 00:27:33.160
Jesus didn't commission Paul to talk about
his life because there's already four gospels that

332
00:27:33.200 --> 00:27:37.839
are going to be written talking about
Paul's or talking about jesus life. When

333
00:27:37.880 --> 00:27:41.279
he talked about the Atonement, he
gave a Protestant definition of the atonement,

334
00:27:41.359 --> 00:27:45.599
which is not held by Orthodoxy.
You could read Saint John Damascus's book Exposition

335
00:27:45.680 --> 00:27:48.519
of Orthodox Faith, where he goes
into great depth in the book. In

336
00:27:48.599 --> 00:27:53.839
book three, discussing how we don't
believe in the idea that Christ's death was

337
00:27:55.079 --> 00:27:59.359
like one person had to be damned
by another person in the trinity or something

338
00:27:59.400 --> 00:28:03.559
like this that paid off God.
That's the Western and Sealmian and then later

339
00:28:03.640 --> 00:28:07.160
Protestant doctrine orzox Christianity does not believe
in the doctrine, as it would necessitate

340
00:28:07.200 --> 00:28:12.440
a form of Nostorianism. He says
that we would have to dispense with the

341
00:28:12.559 --> 00:28:17.160
evidence for evolution. Actually, I
debate evolutionists all the time, and there's

342
00:28:17.240 --> 00:28:21.799
not much evidence for evolution. There's
evidence for adaptation, sure, but adaptation

343
00:28:22.000 --> 00:28:26.000
is not the same thing as this
grand scale narrative of Darwinian evolutionary theory.

344
00:28:26.039 --> 00:28:30.680
So I'll be happy to debate any
of the points that relate to the grand

345
00:28:30.759 --> 00:28:33.240
scale narrative of Darwinian theory, and
we'll be happy to dispense with them.

346
00:28:33.759 --> 00:28:37.640
So he talks about pointless suffering.
I imagine we'll get to that when we

347
00:28:37.680 --> 00:28:42.119
get to the Odyssey, because the
Odyssey actually presupposes a standard by which to

348
00:28:42.279 --> 00:28:47.519
judge right and wrong, good and
bad suffering. Why suffering is bad,

349
00:28:47.880 --> 00:28:51.079
and what we need is justification for
why there are those standards, and of

350
00:28:51.119 --> 00:28:55.720
course I believe that the Orthodox philosophy
gives a justification for that. When it

351
00:28:55.799 --> 00:28:59.559
comes to New Testament citations for the
deity of Christ, I actually I already

352
00:28:59.559 --> 00:29:03.160
gave one. Christ says many times
in the Gospel John I Am. He

353
00:29:03.279 --> 00:29:06.759
identifies himself with the I am.
This is why the Jews want to stone

354
00:29:06.880 --> 00:29:11.680
him, right Isaiah. In John
eleven, John cites Isaiah six or Isaiah

355
00:29:11.759 --> 00:29:18.200
sees the majesty of the seraphim covering
the face of God. It's identified as

356
00:29:18.240 --> 00:29:22.000
God. John specifically identifies that as
Jesus, So the so called gnostic Gospel

357
00:29:22.279 --> 00:29:26.279
John, many people thought John in
the early Church might be a gnostic gospel,

358
00:29:26.359 --> 00:29:32.799
ironically identifies Christ as God. John
one begins with in the beginning was

359
00:29:32.839 --> 00:29:33.759
the Word. The logos of the
Word was with God, and the Word

360
00:29:33.920 --> 00:29:37.279
was God. In John one eighteen
it says that he is the only begotten

361
00:29:37.400 --> 00:29:41.079
of the Father. So we believe
that Christ quite literally is God. And

362
00:29:41.119 --> 00:29:45.519
there's many many other case. I
did a three hour talk just on citations

363
00:29:45.559 --> 00:29:48.759
from the Old and New Testament.
You can find that the whole talk if

364
00:29:48.799 --> 00:29:49.680
you want to go into that.
I'm obviously I have talk about that.

365
00:29:49.680 --> 00:29:53.680
Now it's called is Jesus God?
Is God? A trinity? And it's

366
00:29:53.680 --> 00:29:59.640
a response to Rocking Mystery, the
well known YouTuber. So lastly, as

367
00:29:59.680 --> 00:30:02.640
my winds down here, trying to
fit this sin as quick as I can,

368
00:30:03.519 --> 00:30:10.519
he says that he why would God
withhold knowledge of germs? Well,

369
00:30:11.599 --> 00:30:15.279
this is a bizarre argument because really, again this will be an argument that

370
00:30:15.480 --> 00:30:19.440
I think would befall any position,
as in other words, it's a kind

371
00:30:19.440 --> 00:30:25.519
of an unanswerable question for anybody's worldview. It's like saying, why would we

372
00:30:25.759 --> 00:30:29.200
would we not have knowledge of you
know, why did Jesus not talking about

373
00:30:29.200 --> 00:30:33.160
computers? I don't find that a
very convincing argument, because if Christianity is

374
00:30:33.200 --> 00:30:37.920
true, then in God's providence,
God knows and has a delineated period within

375
00:30:37.000 --> 00:30:42.440
which he does lead man to certain
levels of knowledge. Again, depending upon

376
00:30:42.519 --> 00:30:48.240
God's foreknowledge and God's providence. There's
nothing within the Christian worldview where that's inconsistent.

377
00:30:48.319 --> 00:30:52.000
So I'm not sure why that's a
suitable argument, because it just assumes

378
00:30:52.039 --> 00:30:56.640
that God is evil or bad for
not letting people know about germs a long

379
00:30:56.720 --> 00:31:00.200
time ago. But again, now
we have to know why on what standard,

380
00:31:00.440 --> 00:31:03.359
on what basis he's going to judge
things evil and badness. Leads me

381
00:31:03.400 --> 00:31:06.359
to my final point, which is
that when he says that he is a

382
00:31:06.400 --> 00:31:11.359
believer in divine intervention, how does
he know or by what standard does he

383
00:31:11.640 --> 00:31:17.079
have an ability or a way to
judge whether these divine interventions, these mystical

384
00:31:17.119 --> 00:31:21.400
experiences, these ideas of why he
should or should not do this thing,

385
00:31:22.160 --> 00:31:25.160
are absolute, or maybe they're not
absolute, and they're not absolute and they're

386
00:31:25.160 --> 00:31:29.960
relativistic. Then on what basis does
this mystic position that he has give him

387
00:31:30.000 --> 00:31:37.480
any better standing, any better philosophical
stance than any other position than atheism or

388
00:31:37.559 --> 00:31:41.640
than Christianity at all. It seems
that it would just reduce to pure relativism.

389
00:31:44.119 --> 00:31:47.599
Thank you, Jay. Yes,
it looks like Evans. Everybody's behaving

390
00:31:47.720 --> 00:31:51.440
in the chat room. Can I
make a comment, Yeah, I'm gonna.

391
00:31:51.440 --> 00:31:53.079
I just wanted to interject, Yes, we'll let you. I just

392
00:31:53.119 --> 00:31:57.599
wanted to check everybody's behaving. I'm
amazed the reaction of my vaping is getting

393
00:31:57.640 --> 00:32:04.079
from people. But I only smoke
crack outside, so but that's where we

394
00:32:04.279 --> 00:32:07.960
are. So everybody's behavior. Yeah, I'm amazed how the word Boomer has

395
00:32:07.000 --> 00:32:12.519
become such an insult. I'm gen
x. I'm gen x. But anyway,

396
00:32:12.599 --> 00:32:15.640
Scott, please give us your rebuttal. Jay went about seven minutes,

397
00:32:15.720 --> 00:32:19.480
so please seven minutes. I don't
have a lot to say, except that

398
00:32:19.640 --> 00:32:22.839
I wanted to clarify a few things. First of all, when I say

399
00:32:22.920 --> 00:32:30.240
fundamentalism, I'm distinguishing that somewhat from
the evangelical point of view. I'm not

400
00:32:30.640 --> 00:32:36.799
saying that none of us have some
presumptions I explained in God Reconsidered how I

401
00:32:36.880 --> 00:32:39.759
came to my decision. People can
read it and they will either agree with

402
00:32:39.920 --> 00:32:47.279
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