Speaker 1: Welcome to the Guant Debet Podcast. I am your host, Trevor.
Speaker 1: How's going everybody. Thank you to everyone who reached out
Speaker 1: to me worried that I was quitting the show. You
Speaker 1: had good reason to worry, because I basically said as much.
Speaker 1: But I think I think I'm gonna hang in there.
Speaker 1: I think, you know, I think, when it comes down
Speaker 1: to it, I do enjoy doing the show. I might
Speaker 1: just do it a little less frequently, but I think
Speaker 1: I'm gonna keep doing it because I feel like, and
Speaker 1: you've told me as much, my core one hundred, my
Speaker 1: critical mass of listeners. I think the show fills some
Speaker 1: niche niche, niche niche that needs to be filled. It's
Speaker 1: I don't think a lot of people live in this niche.
Speaker 1: I think it is a small audience of people who
Speaker 1: fit this the particular offerings of this show. But I
Speaker 1: do think it is an underserved group speaking from experience,
Speaker 1: looking for content oop sorry, looking for content to sort
Speaker 1: of satisfy my curiosities. So we're gonna keep it going.
Speaker 1: But yeah, if you know someone, maybe yourself or maybe
Speaker 1: another podcast you listen to, If you know somebody that
Speaker 1: you think just has the gift of GAB and would
Speaker 1: enjoy contributing to a show like this. Let me know,
Speaker 1: email me, because I think we could benefit from a
Speaker 1: co host. I don't know. I've done it both ways.
Speaker 1: I've done shows with co hosts, and I've done this show.
Speaker 1: There's pros and cons to both. Maybe we can mix
Speaker 1: it up have some guest co hosts every once in
Speaker 1: a while. I don't know. Anyway, I had kind of
Speaker 1: a cool experience today. I don't want to pat myself
Speaker 1: on the back too much, but one of the folks
Speaker 1: in the discord, we do have a discord. I always
Speaker 1: forget to pace the link in the show description. I'll
Speaker 1: try to remember today. There aren't many people in there.
Speaker 1: Most of the people there migrated there from the Brothers
Speaker 1: of the Serpent Discord. I did an interview with them.
Speaker 1: Probably my most watch interview was with them on YouTube
Speaker 1: on physics and consciousness and neuroscience. Anyway. So there's maybe
Speaker 1: like ten fifteen twenty people there. And this particular individual
Speaker 1: very not in like a malicious way, but just very
Speaker 1: not Christian, you know. And of course I have total
Speaker 1: respect and appreciation for having doubts, you know that you
Speaker 1: arrive to on like a cognitive basis. I don't like
Speaker 1: atheists or atheists for emotional reasons, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: like childish, petulant reasons. But to be fair, I felt
Speaker 1: I've gone through those stages too, so maybe I should
Speaker 1: be kinder. But but if you're just sitting there like
Speaker 1: where is he? You know, like show yourself. You know,
Speaker 1: there's so many good movies with that line with someone
Speaker 1: just screaming at the sky like why, like what does
Speaker 1: it all mean? What's the lesson? You know, what's the point?
Speaker 1: The nihilistic existential angst so many of us feel. I
Speaker 1: totally get it. So you know, I'm just barely I
Speaker 1: just barely have that part of my life in the
Speaker 1: rear view mirror. So I'm certainly not want to judge.
Speaker 1: But he text or he messaged me on Discord today
Speaker 1: and I don't even know if he listens to the show,
Speaker 1: but he said, hey, what's a good Bible translation? And
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, buddy, here we go. And he
Speaker 1: assured me he wasn't becoming a Christian. He's like, I'm
Speaker 1: not I'm not becoming Christian. I just I just want
Speaker 1: to see what it says, you know. But honestly, that's
Speaker 1: that's the rational perspective to have. It's like, well, what
Speaker 1: does it even say? What what is this thing that
Speaker 1: I reject even say? You know? Anyway, so I thought
Speaker 1: that was pretty cool. So I started I started like
Speaker 1: getting all the into all these nuances about, you know,
Speaker 1: Protestantism versus Catholicism. I was like, hey, you know, most
Speaker 1: Bible translations are Protestant translations, so I that's fine, unless
Speaker 1: you want the dudeo canon, then you might want to
Speaker 1: get a Catholic or an Orthodox Bible. And he also
Speaker 1: wants like the Book of Knock and stuff, so I
Speaker 1: was like, should probably just buy those separately. And he's like,
Speaker 1: what's Protestant? Does that mean Catholic? And I'm like, oh boy,
Speaker 1: I forget how much of the stuff I'm recently interested
Speaker 1: in is not common knowledge, you know. And so I
Speaker 1: was like, no, Protestant just means you're not Catholic. Basically,
Speaker 1: it means you're in protest like you're trying to reform
Speaker 1: the Catholic Church. There's this Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth
Speaker 1: century with Martin Luther nailing the Theces to the door. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I quickly realized that was just all too much information,
Speaker 1: So I said, get the NIV. You know, there's a
Speaker 1: ton of scholarly consensus around it. It's easy to read
Speaker 1: or get the English Standard version. Now there's like all
Speaker 1: sorts of problems with the English Standard version, but it's
Speaker 1: readable and so like, I don't know, I think that's
Speaker 1: maybe the most important thing anyway, which brings me to
Speaker 1: my next topic. Well, two points on that one. That
Speaker 1: was kind of a good encouragement for me to keep
Speaker 1: doing the show because I think that that's we're talking to,
Speaker 1: like the kind of person who can listen to a
Speaker 1: neuroscientist talk about consciousness for two hours, but also kind
Speaker 1: of curious about, you know, the last two thousand years
Speaker 1: of Christian history, because it's this is the civilization we're in,
Speaker 1: you know, we're in the Western world. It gave us
Speaker 1: hospitals and universities and just safe society and cathedrals and
Speaker 1: arts and the Enlightenment. Like like what it's not cool
Speaker 1: to just hate your culture. I mean, this is something
Speaker 1: we've been poisoned with for so long. You know, going
Speaker 1: to elementary school in the nineties, it was like everything
Speaker 1: was bad, Like we're oppressors. We're colonizers, we're dirt bags,
Speaker 1: you know, we we just are need to repent for
Speaker 1: the sins of our ancestors. And like it's just it sucks.
Speaker 1: That's a terrible way to live. I think we should
Speaker 1: learn from the past, acknowledge our mistakes and try to
Speaker 1: do better. You know, just do the next right thing.
Speaker 1: That's a frozen that's a Frozen two quote. But hey, listen,
Speaker 1: Disney gets it right. Sometimes just do the next right thing.
Speaker 1: You know, evil means or good means, never justify evil actions.
Speaker 1: So and just do the next right thing. And so
Speaker 1: I think part of that is knowing, like knowing the
Speaker 1: history of Christianity. To me, it's fascinating. And so that's
Speaker 1: point one. So I'm gonna keep doing the show. We're
Speaker 1: going to keep talking about consciousness, physics, neuroscience, and God
Speaker 1: because I think, what do all these things have in common.
Speaker 1: It's a quest for the truth. And if you think
Speaker 1: God is truth, then these things sort of should converge.
Speaker 1: And that's been my experience. I mean, everything I learned
Speaker 1: about science to me points to the truth of some
Speaker 1: rule maker, some system builder. I think what happens is
Speaker 1: people confuse Christians with Christianity with Jesus Christ. And so
Speaker 1: that's kind of this I want to get into today
Speaker 1: because I've been having some long text based theological arguments
Speaker 1: with one of my best friends, who is He lives
Speaker 1: across the country now, but he is a Seventh Day Admonist.
Speaker 1: And Adventists are like a week kind of a strange
Speaker 1: breed because they don't really fit neatly into any category,
Speaker 1: you know, which I think they're probably proud of and
Speaker 1: maybe they should be. They're, you know, pretty literal readers
Speaker 1: of the Bible. They have a lot of views that
Speaker 1: are controversial, but I think are kind of kind of
Speaker 1: makes sense, you know, if you just pick up the
Speaker 1: passage and read it, which is cool. But they don't
Speaker 1: really fit into like the Protestant framework, you know. So
Speaker 1: we've been having a lot of debates. It's been interesting,
Speaker 1: and I've been reading a lot about church history. I
Speaker 1: don't know how you can't be fascinating with this. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's got everything. It's got Rome, you know, it's got knights,
Speaker 1: King Arthur's in there somewhere somehow. You know, it's just
Speaker 1: got it all. Man. We've got war and just crusades,
Speaker 1: and counsels, and how could you not be into that?
Speaker 1: And if you claim to be a Christian, like, how
Speaker 1: can you not Why wouldn't you care about you know,
Speaker 1: the first Christians? What do they do? What did they think?
Speaker 1: You know? So I thought we kind of get into that.
Speaker 1: I thought we kind of tell maybe like a history
Speaker 1: of everything, a history of Christendom in fifteen minutes, which
Speaker 1: will be kind of a difficult to ask and listen.
Speaker 1: I'm no historians, so please write in if you disagree,
Speaker 1: if you agree, And I think the best way to
Speaker 1: tell this is to sort of do so in a
Speaker 1: way that leaves us with some understand standing of the
Speaker 1: state of Christianity today, you know, the Catholic Church, the
Speaker 1: Orthodox Church, the Protestants, mainline Protestism versus Evangelicalism, you know.
Speaker 1: And so that is that is the goal. And I
Speaker 1: meant to have a clip queued up, but that's okay,
Speaker 1: we'll get to that in a little bit. So I
Speaker 1: think let's just start. We should probably just start with
Speaker 1: I think really what we should talk about is how
Speaker 1: the Bible got here, because one of I think the
Speaker 1: key differences between Protestants, especially including like non denominationals and
Speaker 1: Evangelicals and Catholics and Orthodox, which will sort of put
Speaker 1: in one group for now, is the Protestants sort of
Speaker 1: treat the Bible like a supernatural object. You know. I've
Speaker 1: even heard Catholics go so far as to say they
Speaker 1: make an idol out of the Bible. And the Catholics
Speaker 1: have a very different view. They almost don't treat the
Speaker 1: Bible as if it were inerrant, which is interesting. That's
Speaker 1: kind of shocking to a Protestant. Again, I'm not a Catholic.
Speaker 1: This is just I'm doing my research, doing my research,
Speaker 1: but that is kind of some that's appealing to someone
Speaker 1: like me who you might come across something in the
Speaker 1: Bible where you're like, I don't know, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of seems like a contradiction or it doesn't seem morally consistent,
Speaker 1: and of course you don't want to read it through
Speaker 1: you know, your modern lens, but you know the idea
Speaker 1: that this is basically this is what happens. You'll ask
Speaker 1: a Protestant to explain something they believe and you'll say, well,
Speaker 1: because it's in the Bible, and it's like, do you then,
Speaker 1: But that's the extent of their understanding. It's like well,
Speaker 1: where did the Bible come from? And they're like, well,
Speaker 1: came from God. And it's like okay, but you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, let's be real, like where did it actually
Speaker 1: come from? And that might sound like you before before
Speaker 1: I started learning about Catholicism and Orthodoxy, Like to me,
Speaker 1: I felt like that was like an anti Christian perspective
Speaker 1: to say something like that. But something I've really enjoyed
Speaker 1: recently is learning like, no, you can be you can
Speaker 1: be a real person, like you can have real questions
Speaker 1: and you can lean on history and not everything is supernatural.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's one of the interesting things I'm learning
Speaker 1: about Orthodoxy and Catholicism is that you really just have
Speaker 1: to believe in the one supernatural thing, which is that
Speaker 1: an aspect of the Triune God, the creator of the universe,
Speaker 1: stepped in to his creation two thousand years ago. And
Speaker 1: if you can believe that, everything else is an extension
Speaker 1: of that, right like the miracles who performed the resurrection,
Speaker 1: this is all an extension of the fact that he's
Speaker 1: God incarnate. And if you believe that, that's really all
Speaker 1: you need to believe. Everything else is an extension of that.
Speaker 1: You don't need to believe you don't need to have
Speaker 1: like amnesia when it comes to history. You don't need
Speaker 1: to ignore archaeology, and you don't have to come to
Speaker 1: like crazy conclusions about the shape of the earth and
Speaker 1: the age of the Earth and stuff that's sort of
Speaker 1: like loosely implied in the Bible, because you're not treating
Speaker 1: the Bible like the supernatural object. And I kind of
Speaker 1: like that. That's appealing to me. Now, I don't know
Speaker 1: call that what you will, but let's explore why I
Speaker 1: think that's okay. Why I think you can feel that
Speaker 1: way about eighth century Moses. Maybe perhaps that's the belief
Speaker 1: started writing what we call the Old Testament as Christians,
Speaker 1: and he's writing about things that happened, you know, thousands
Speaker 1: of years earlier in some parts of the Bible, and
Speaker 1: things that happened in his lifetime and other parts of
Speaker 1: the Bible. And for the stuff that happened thousands of
Speaker 1: years ago, he's leaning really heavily on older texts. Now,
Speaker 1: this can make people uncomfortable if you're a Protestant, because
Speaker 1: I think the Protestant view is like he's literally channeling
Speaker 1: God when he writes. And I'm open to that okay,
Speaker 1: But I'm also open to the idea that.
Speaker 2: He is.
Speaker 1: He has some connection with God and he will writing
Speaker 1: things based on his real divine experiences, but that he
Speaker 1: is also giving some like historical context based on older
Speaker 1: source material, you know, like like Genesis. Specifically, much of Genesis,
Speaker 1: like it or not, is some retelling of older texts.
Speaker 1: You know, this call him the Sumerian texts, which are
Speaker 1: maybe what four thousand years older, no, three thousand years older,
Speaker 1: something like that, two thousand years older, somewhere in that range.
Speaker 1: You know, the civilization that invented writing, the first real
Speaker 1: civilization that we know of. How cool that we have
Speaker 1: a story from that civilization, the first civilization anyway, and
Speaker 1: that there's a whole week could go, We could spend
Speaker 1: a year talking about all that stuff, you know, on
Speaker 1: an Aki and leol Anki, all that. But certainly there
Speaker 1: is a retelling of that sort of I would say
Speaker 1: a correction of that. You know, it's presented in what
Speaker 1: Moses and the Jews would call it the correct way,
Speaker 1: and this is information that's divinely inspired, right, Okay, So
Speaker 1: then we have a series of profits Jewish prophets and
Speaker 1: this divine revelation gets recorded and texts all the way
Speaker 1: up into like the second century or third century somewhere
Speaker 1: in there, and then we kind of have a period
Speaker 1: which sometimes called the Intertestamental period or the period of silence,
Speaker 1: where there is no new there are no new profits.
Speaker 1: And I think this is kind of cool, you know,
Speaker 1: I think this is cool that we have this religious
Speaker 1: authority that would benefit from their being profits, so they
Speaker 1: have every incentive to identify and record new books, you know,
Speaker 1: but they don't. Just apparently there's no divine revelation. It's
Speaker 1: kind of interesting until the coming of the Jewish Messiah,
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ. And so Jesus comes, we don't. I mean,
Speaker 1: we have a sort of an interest. We know a
Speaker 1: bit about his childhood, not a time, but we know
Speaker 1: a lot about his ministry on earth, which lasted for
Speaker 1: about three years or so, maybe from about the age
Speaker 1: of thirty to thirty three. Then he's crucified, he resurrects,
Speaker 1: he spends I think like fifty days if I have
Speaker 1: this right, with the apostles, you know, the people he
Speaker 1: chose to help him spread his message. He assents to
Speaker 1: heaven or maybe he sends to heaven sooner anyway, at
Speaker 1: some point, I think fifty days after the Resurrection, the
Speaker 1: Holy Spirit descends on the apostles and it gives them
Speaker 1: abilities they're basically they have. They're able to do things
Speaker 1: that Jesus did. You know, They forgive sins, they perform miracles,
Speaker 1: they can speak in whatever language they need to speak in.
Speaker 1: That's pretty amazing. This is a misinterpretation of this passage
Speaker 1: is where we get like Pentecostal churches speaking in tongues,
Speaker 1: you know, like anyway, So we get that and that's
Speaker 1: basically it. Then the you know, over the next three
Speaker 1: hundred years, Rome goes from this, you know, pagan polytheistic,
Speaker 1: a sort of sex obsessed state, to the Holy Roman Empire,
Speaker 1: still probably equally sex obsessed, right, human beings are followed,
Speaker 1: but we get the Holy Roman Empire, we get the
Speaker 1: Catholic Church. Now there's a lot that happens in that period.
Speaker 1: You know, you get persecutions of Christians. Christians are getting
Speaker 1: their eyes pulled out, They're getting fed to lions if
Speaker 1: they won't sacrifice a chicken to Apollo or whatever. So
Speaker 1: there's immense persecution. Christians aren't hiding, they're communicating with letters
Speaker 1: to one another, and much of those letters are in
Speaker 1: the New Testament. And so the question is, okay, where
Speaker 1: the Bible come from. Well, the Bible wasn't really put
Speaker 1: together as such until much later, until like the time
Speaker 1: of Constantine, who made Christianity legal, which was a big
Speaker 1: deal that Christians could come out of hiding. Some of
Speaker 1: them are like missing hands, Like some of the first
Speaker 1: bishops are like missing hands, you know. And there's this
Speaker 1: like tradition of martyrdom where you know you're going to
Speaker 1: get burned alive, but you refuse to recount your faith.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's pretty amazing, right, pretty freaking amazing. And
Speaker 1: there's a series of Catholic counsels and stuff, and then
Speaker 1: we get the Bible. So Protestants sort of view all
Speaker 1: this as like, I don't know, like not happening, Like
Speaker 1: there doesn't seem to be like a rich historical knowledge
Speaker 1: base amongst most of the like Evangelicals. It's funny because
Speaker 1: like mainline Protestants don't like to include evangelicals, but we're
Speaker 1: gonna just say everyone who's not Catholic or Orthodox, but
Speaker 1: we would still call Christian, so like not not Mormons,
Speaker 1: not scientologists, We'll call them Protestant, Okay, because they sort
Speaker 1: of reject Rome or they reject the Apostolic Uh, we
Speaker 1: got to start to finding some of these words. I'm getting.
Speaker 1: This is my first time talking about this, so I'm
Speaker 1: not practiced. It's not like talking about neuroscience for me.
Speaker 1: So anyway, they kind of view this in a vacuum.
Speaker 1: They're like, why do you believe that? Well, the Bible says,
Speaker 1: so it's like, okay, now, let's contrast that with Catholicism
Speaker 1: and Orthodoxy. Both the modern Catholic Church and the modern
Speaker 1: Orthodox Church, they view themselves as the Church of the Apostles.
Speaker 1: You know. Jesus instructs, he says He's building a church,
Speaker 1: you know, and it's a very controversial line. He says
Speaker 1: to Peter, he'd renames Simon Peter, which means rock, and
Speaker 1: he says, upon this rock, I will build my church
Speaker 1: and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it.
Speaker 1: And you know, that's a cool that like that bar
Speaker 1: goes hard if you're living in fifty a d. But
Speaker 1: to be living in twenty twenty six AD and the
Speaker 1: fact that the Catholic and Orthodox Church just still exists
Speaker 1: today and basically practice the same thing as the Apostles.
Speaker 1: It is pretty amazing, it really is. I mean, you
Speaker 1: can't say that about any other religion. I well, maybe
Speaker 1: I don't know about like Buddhism or Hinduism, but I
Speaker 1: mean Judaism has radically changed over the last two thousand years.
Speaker 1: Maybe radically is a stretch, but we have like a anyway,
Speaker 1: we'll set that aside for a second. Islam is only,
Speaker 1: you know, twelve hundred years old, and there's a million
Speaker 1: different factions. Protestantism is only five hundred years old and
Speaker 1: there's a million different factions. You know, some people have
Speaker 1: trans women preachers marrying to dudes, which I'm not making
Speaker 1: any political statements right now, but it's obviously very different.
Speaker 1: It's new, it's modern, it's progressive. But Catholics and Orthodox
Speaker 1: they basically do the same thing. I mean, I'm not
Speaker 1: saying that means anything. It's just interesting. It's it's interesting anyway.
Speaker 1: So we have that statement. He makes his statement Catholics
Speaker 1: and Orthodox believe they are the actual continuation from that church,
Speaker 1: and the fact that there's two different groups making the
Speaker 1: same claim actually is not a contradiction. Because the way
Speaker 1: it works is they have a written record of you know,
Speaker 1: if you're a bishop, who made you a bishop? Right,
Speaker 1: there's this idea in the Bible of you lay hands
Speaker 1: and you need to be careful who you choose to
Speaker 1: become your disciple, your Christian disciple, and you actually lay
Speaker 1: hands on them. And I don't know the details, but
Speaker 1: it's a ritualistic thing. They have a documented chain of
Speaker 1: people of bishops going all the way back from current
Speaker 1: day to the disciples of the disciples, all the way
Speaker 1: back to what we would call the the patriarchs, the
Speaker 1: church fathers. It's pretty cool. So it's a historical claim.
Speaker 1: Now a single guy could make disciples of multiple people, right,
Speaker 1: So it's it's okay that this has branched off a
Speaker 1: little bit. And in Catholics and Orthodox they sort of
Speaker 1: recognize the validity of one another. They recognize their apostolic claims.
Speaker 1: They just have different views, like Orthodox priests can get married,
Speaker 1: which I think is a good thing. You know, personally,
Speaker 1: A slight detour on that. Excuse me, let me take
Speaker 1: a sip of water. This is why I normally play clips.
Speaker 1: It gives me a chance to take a break hold on.
Speaker 1: So I was watching an interview and it was a gay,
Speaker 1: pretty fairly young man, like maybe twenty two gay guy
Speaker 1: who was a Catholic and isn't anymore. I don't know
Speaker 1: if he's an atheist or a Protestant or with the dealers,
Speaker 1: but he describes his like knowing from a fairly young
Speaker 1: age that he was attracted to men, and sitting in
Speaker 1: the Catholic church and realizing he would not again, who
Speaker 1: knows if you're reflecting on how you felt when you
Speaker 1: were ten, this is sort of a story you tell yourself.
Speaker 1: You know, it's informed by your memories, but you know,
Speaker 1: who knows? Anyway, Sorry, I'm typing in. I can't multitask.
Speaker 1: It's a curse. Okay. So he's sitting in church and
Speaker 1: he's realizing like, oh, I will never be able to
Speaker 1: have sex with a man, which is what I would
Speaker 1: like to do. That's my inclination. So my only option
Speaker 1: is to become a priest because they're celibates, and so
Speaker 1: that this is the way that I can live a
Speaker 1: life that is not since And the guy he was
Speaker 1: talking to is also a Catholic, and he was like, great, yep,
Speaker 1: totally totally like well tread path like, yep, we totally
Speaker 1: that's how it works, you know, And I was like,
Speaker 1: oh boy, I don't know if I like that. You know, like, hey, listen,
Speaker 1: I'm not like saying you should necessarily act out on
Speaker 1: your gayness or whatever. I'm not making I'm not saying anything.
Speaker 1: Don't send me any emails. I'm just In science, we
Speaker 1: would call this enriching for something like if you're recruiting
Speaker 1: a study population and you want everyone to have a
Speaker 1: certain genotype, you would enrich you would select people with
Speaker 1: that genotype. I don't know if you want to like
Speaker 1: select your priests, like, I don't know if you want
Speaker 1: your priest class to be like enriched for homosexuality, you know,
Speaker 1: specifically repressed sexual maybe of any kind. It doesn't even
Speaker 1: necessarily need to be repressed homosexuality, just repressed sexuality in
Speaker 1: general seems I don't know, it kind of seems like
Speaker 1: a recipe for trouble. But you know, fortunately we've never
Speaker 1: had any scandals about homosexuality and the Catholic Church, so
Speaker 1: I listen, obviously a joke. I think maybe the Catholics
Speaker 1: get beat up a little bit too much. Now, listen,
Speaker 1: Don't get me wrong, Like some of the scandals that
Speaker 1: have happened are horrible and people should be punished to
Speaker 1: the fullest extent of the lie. I just I don't
Speaker 1: know if it's always necessarily good to like attribute fallen men,
Speaker 1: like attribute their crimes to the institution. But in this case,
Speaker 1: I think it is sort of like a natural consequence
Speaker 1: of having celibate priests. So I don't know. Anyway, the
Speaker 1: joke is, you know, the only place more dangerous for
Speaker 1: a child than a Catholic school in terms of molestation,
Speaker 1: and the answer is a public school because actually there
Speaker 1: the rates of you know, sexual crimes in public school
Speaker 1: is actually higher than in Catholic schools. So but what
Speaker 1: you would want as a Christian institution would be for
Speaker 1: that number to be basically zero, right, So it's uh,
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously you wanted to be zero. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I'm just saying, like, but still it is less than
Speaker 1: what is norm and that's because predators go where the
Speaker 1: praise and I think they should all be put in
Speaker 1: a rocket and launched it to the sun. So don't
Speaker 1: misunderstand me anyway. So that was a weird tangent. So
Speaker 1: I'm just saying I kind of like the fact that
Speaker 1: Orthodox priests marry wives. You know, I think that's more natural. Anyway,
Speaker 1: how do I get on this topic?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 1: Okay, But they recognize each other. They just have these
Speaker 1: little differences, you know about like the priests, about the pope.
Speaker 1: The Orthodox don't have a pope. They have like a
Speaker 1: a brotherhood of bishops. You know, there's no like king pope.
Speaker 1: And they have a magisterium, which is like a they
Speaker 1: get together, they meet and they decide how to interpret
Speaker 1: scripture and stuff. Anyway, Protestants look at that and they
Speaker 1: say that's all bad. You know, this is all bad
Speaker 1: like and they have specific they have little things like
Speaker 1: you know, the Catholics changed the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday,
Speaker 1: which isn't actually true. Catholics believe the Sabbath is Saturday.
Speaker 1: But the first Christians, even in the Book of Acts
Speaker 1: in the Bible, would break bread which is a euphemism
Speaker 1: for the Eucharist on Sunday, which they called the Lord's
Speaker 1: Day because that's when the Resurrection happened. Anyway, they say
Speaker 1: that's not biblical. This is more that's more of an
Speaker 1: adventist thing. The pope is not biblical, even like baptism
Speaker 1: and the Eucharist. They've got all of these things, a
Speaker 1: long list of critiques, and the Catholic response is, well,
Speaker 1: where do you get this from? Where do you get
Speaker 1: these beliefs from, to which the Protestant would say, obviously
Speaker 1: the Bible. And I actually think it's okay to treat
Speaker 1: the Bible that way. It's okay if you want to
Speaker 1: treat the Bible like this inerrant inspired thing, as if
Speaker 1: the writers are like literally channeling God when they wrote,
Speaker 1: That's okay. But I think then you also need to
Speaker 1: treat the tradition that produced the Bible the same way.
Speaker 1: And what was the tradition that produced the Bible Apostolic secession,
Speaker 1: So you know, one apostle made an apostle, decades go by,
Speaker 1: that apostle makes an apostle, and there's sort of an
Speaker 1: oral tradition, because keep in mind, this stuff wasn't written
Speaker 1: down until maybe you know, fifty to one hundred years
Speaker 1: after the Resurrection, and then there was two hundred years
Speaker 1: of persecution, and then we get to the formation of
Speaker 1: the Catholic Church, and there's a ton of books, a
Speaker 1: ton of books that are claimed to be scripture, like
Speaker 1: the Gospel of Thomas, for example, Now, Protestants would reject
Speaker 1: the Gospel of Thomas as heretical. But then you got
Speaker 1: to say, well, where do you get that from. You
Speaker 1: can't say you get it from the Bible, right, The
Speaker 1: Bible doesn't say the Gospel of Thomas is a false gospel. Right,
Speaker 1: You get that from the Catholic Church. You know, the Apostolics,
Speaker 1: secession of the Catholic Church, the council that decided what
Speaker 1: was canonical. Anyway, maybe that's an overstatement, that's just how
Speaker 1: it looks from an outsider looking in. But I think
Speaker 1: even you can use the Bible itself to sort of
Speaker 1: discredit the claim that the Bible is like literally a
Speaker 1: divinely inspired text, because the New Testament just does not
Speaker 1: read that way. That is not what the New Testament is.
Speaker 1: I think you can say the authors and the characters
Speaker 1: in the New Testament are perhaps guided by God, by
Speaker 1: the Holy Spirit, but they are not literally like channeling God.
Speaker 1: They're not recording God's word necessarily. Now it's different if
Speaker 1: we're talking about like the Gospels, where people are literally
Speaker 1: writing down what Jesus said, right, And I think you
Speaker 1: can just you can sort of prove that just by
Speaker 1: the way it's written like most of the New Testament
Speaker 1: is letters between churches. These are just people writing things down,
Speaker 1: mostly Paul, but even like Luke. I've got my I've
Speaker 1: got my ESV here on the desk. This is the
Speaker 1: first paragraph of Luke. And as much as many have
Speaker 1: undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have
Speaker 1: been accomplished among us, just as those who from the
Speaker 1: beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered
Speaker 1: them to us, it seemed good to me, also, having
Speaker 1: followed all things closely for some time past, to write
Speaker 1: and orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you
Speaker 1: may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.
Speaker 1: All right, So what does this mean? This Luke? Luke
Speaker 1: is literally saying, listen, I wasn't there, but I'm deeply
Speaker 1: interested in this topic. And he might even be sponsored
Speaker 1: by this guy, because keep in mind, writing was not
Speaker 1: like a simple thing in this time. You needed money
Speaker 1: to write. I mean this you would write on the
Speaker 1: animal skins or papyrus quick tangent. I mean when he
Speaker 1: found the dead sea sculls, they would DNA test the
Speaker 1: animal hides. That this text was written on the ones
Speaker 1: that were written on text or on you know textile
Speaker 1: like pay you know, skin or papyrus, and they would
Speaker 1: match all the fragments that like came from the same
Speaker 1: animal together because the assumption was like these were written
Speaker 1: at the same time and are probably we should match.
Speaker 1: So it's pretty cool. Anyway, took a lot of money,
Speaker 1: took a lot of money and a lot of work.
Speaker 1: So someone probably sponsored Luke to do this, and some
Speaker 1: people think that might have been Theophilus, and people don't
Speaker 1: know who he is. He could have been a Roman.
Speaker 1: I mean, he's referred to by Luke as most excellent Theophilus,
Speaker 1: so he could have been like a Roman authority. It
Speaker 1: could have been a Jewish high priest who was converting
Speaker 1: to Christianity, and so he was. He was a physician.
Speaker 1: We think he was a traveling companion of Paul, and
Speaker 1: so he's basically wandering around interviewing people we think, you know,
Speaker 1: reading texts, and he compiles the Gospel according to Luke.
Speaker 1: So even Luke is being very pragmatic about what this is.
Speaker 1: And of course Matthew is the same way. He's an eyewitness,
Speaker 1: he's a biographer. He's writing what he saw. He's like
Speaker 1: a journalist. We don't know who wrote Mark John. We
Speaker 1: think was written by John the Apostle, So perhaps another
Speaker 1: Eyewitness Acts was written by Luke, and almost everything else
Speaker 1: was written by Paul. So the point is like that
Speaker 1: these are not prophets, okay, these are just these are
Speaker 1: men who saw something incredible, some of them and others
Speaker 1: who heard something incredible or who saw like a divine
Speaker 1: apparition of Jesus who spoke to them like Paul. And
Speaker 1: the only thing that gives I guess this is my point.
Speaker 1: The only thing that could make in my opinion, the
Speaker 1: Bible inerrant is if this Apostolic secession were also inerrant.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know how you can say the
Speaker 1: Orthodoxy and Catholicism is silly. Who cares about history? History
Speaker 1: doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is this book.
Speaker 1: And it's like, well, this book is a product of
Speaker 1: four hundred years of you know, Apostolic secession, persecution, smuggling
Speaker 1: texts and like underground networks and the Romans. We're trying
Speaker 1: constantly lighting christian you know, like book repositories on fire.
Speaker 1: You know, a lot of this is oral tradition, and
Speaker 1: so anyway, I just think it's kind of a kind
Speaker 1: of a we I think Protestants. The quote is, you know,
Speaker 1: to be a Protestant is to cease to care about history.
Speaker 1: And I think there's something to that. Man. I think
Speaker 1: I think if you love history, like if you view
Speaker 1: history as real, which like these are real things that happened.
Speaker 1: Jesus really walked on water, and people really saw it
Speaker 1: and really wrote it down and really told their friends
Speaker 1: about it, and they really passed this tradition on and
Speaker 1: they really were you know, meeting at night to avoid
Speaker 1: the Roman authorities, and you know, pulling money together to
Speaker 1: buy papyrus and you know, find someone who knew how
Speaker 1: to write Greek and write it down, and you know,
Speaker 1: find sponsors like Theophilus to sponsor a trip through you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know where he went. But
Speaker 1: if you like, if you really think that really happened,
Speaker 1: then how then how can you not like take this
Speaker 1: seriously that there are these two churches who claim to
Speaker 1: like be the product of that the series of historical events.
Speaker 1: You know. Anyway, that's just my opinion. I think, you know,
Speaker 1: I think Protestantism they just have a different view. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: none of that really matters, you know, because this is
Speaker 1: like a spiritual world and their spiritual warfare, and you know,
Speaker 1: we just believe that this is like a spiritual manifestation
Speaker 1: of God's word. By this, I mean the Bible, and
Speaker 1: I think there probably is an aspect of that that's true.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I just I to me, it feels
Speaker 1: like Protestantism. Man, I'm really making enemies today. I don't
Speaker 1: I'm not even baptized, so I don't know. It's up
Speaker 1: to you whether or not you want to take me seriously.
Speaker 1: But to me, it's just like it's a type of pride,
Speaker 1: Like you don't want to submit to an authority. Now
Speaker 1: I get it, there's only one authority and that's God.
Speaker 1: But even the Bible talks about, you know, submitting to
Speaker 1: theropriate authorities on earth. That Paul writes a lot about
Speaker 1: this about you know, about yielding to the bishop, right,
Speaker 1: your bishop, Because I think, I don't know, I just
Speaker 1: I think what happens is you sort of make an
Speaker 1: idol of your own interpretation. And you see this all
Speaker 1: the time. You see this with people who are just
Speaker 1: like really obsessed with certain like nuances of the Bible,
Speaker 1: you know, like my I got my buddy who's a
Speaker 1: flat earth and I know another flat earther, And it's like, well,
Speaker 1: the Bible says the Gospel spread to all four corners
Speaker 1: of the earth, and the the Bible is an errant,
Speaker 1: it's infallible. And it's like, well, clearly that's just a
Speaker 1: figure of speech, you know, Like I don't I don't
Speaker 1: think they're making like a geographical claim. You know, first
Speaker 1: of all, there's clearly more than four corners of the
Speaker 1: continent is in one giant square. There's you know, seven continents.
Speaker 1: So like or like the you know, the firmament thing
Speaker 1: and the waters above the waters below space is fake.
Speaker 1: It's like, to me, this is what happens. This is
Speaker 1: what happens when you make an idol out of words.
Speaker 1: You know, words are symbols, but they came from somewhere.
Speaker 1: They came from real people, real people who who I believe,
Speaker 1: saw something real and wrote it down. But that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that those individuals are inerrant, are infallible. It kind
Speaker 1: of comes down to this because like Catholics will claim
Speaker 1: that the pope can't teach infallibly and that's really offensive
Speaker 1: to them. But I think they're kind of doing the
Speaker 1: same thing with the Bible because they're not really saying
Speaker 1: the Bible is infallible. They're saying their specific interpretation of
Speaker 1: the Bible is infallible. And the reason you know this
Speaker 1: is true is there's Protestants who think different things. Lutherans
Speaker 1: believe in infant baptism, Others believe baptism is just like
Speaker 1: an optional outward symbol. Some people eat the you know,
Speaker 1: the grape juice and the little crackers, some people don't.
Speaker 1: Some people really you know, the Catholics take it very seriously.
Speaker 1: The Orthodox take it very seriously. Like I think that
Speaker 1: is one of the things that is appealing about the
Speaker 1: Orthodox is like they take the super In the Catholics,
Speaker 1: they kind of do a quick tandent quick break. I'm
Speaker 1: referring to like the official teaching, like the best a
Speaker 1: version of these religions. Because there's a Catholic church on
Speaker 1: the street and I just googled it to see like
Speaker 1: what it looks like inside, and all the pictures they
Speaker 1: had like a like like a giant like almost like
Speaker 1: a pinata style like thing on an easel, and it
Speaker 1: was a Raider's logo, and I don't under I don't
Speaker 1: know the context, like it was just a giant Raiders
Speaker 1: and it's like, okay, yeah, not. You know, when I
Speaker 1: say Catholics, I don't mean every random Catholic. I just mean,
Speaker 1: you know, everybody their best. You know, they do seem
Speaker 1: to like the Orthodox are a little bit more mystical
Speaker 1: about it, Like they it's very serious, like there's no
Speaker 1: fog machines, there's no rock band, there's a priest and
Speaker 1: the crazy get up with like bread that they like
Speaker 1: actually think has the essence of the body of Christ
Speaker 1: in it. And it's like, okay, say what you will
Speaker 1: about that, but it's like it's it is serious, and
Speaker 1: it's consistent, and it's two thousand years old. I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's kind of cool so to say, well, none, none
Speaker 1: of that matters. And the book that that group produced
Speaker 1: is completely infallible. It's like, I just don't feel like
Speaker 1: you can have it both ways. You know, it doesn't.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it makes sense. And I think
Speaker 1: one of the like the fruits of this of like
Speaker 1: maybe making an idol of your own interpretation of the
Speaker 1: Bible is stuff like flat earth and Young Earth creationism.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna play a clip. Tell me what you think.
Speaker 1: This is Trent Horne. I don't know what I think
Speaker 1: about him. Listen, I got I got issues with the
Speaker 1: Catholic I actually think a lot of people become atheists
Speaker 1: because of anti Catholic arguments. Like I remember listening to
Speaker 1: like Zeitgeist and all the anti Catholic arguments of the nineties,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, yeah, yeah, Christianity is done. Like you
Speaker 1: don't really separate Catholicism from Protestantism because Catholicism was the
Speaker 1: first church. You know, you learn from the da Vinci
Speaker 1: Code that that the Council of Nicee I made the
Speaker 1: Bible and they took all the they all the cool
Speaker 1: stuff out and they just used it to maintain power
Speaker 1: and authority, and it was all political and you go, yeah,
Speaker 1: forget it. So I think that is one thing that
Speaker 1: Protestants don't realize they're doing with all the anti Catholic stuff.
Speaker 1: But I will admit I kind of do share some
Speaker 1: of the skepticism about like the Pope and about the saints.
Speaker 1: You know, I've told the story many times of praying
Speaker 1: to Saint Anthony for my lost shoe at my Catholic
Speaker 1: friend's house when I was like eight, So I totally
Speaker 1: get it. But I also think treating the Bible as
Speaker 1: like a supernatural object and your interpretation of it as
Speaker 1: infallible is also has its own proper shoal.
Speaker 4: We're discussing the legend of Saint George the dragon Slayer,
Speaker 4: and at one point Hall claimed that medieval depictions of
Speaker 4: dragons were actually depictions of dinosaurs that survived Noah's flood.
Speaker 4: Other Young Earth creationists also claim to have evidence of
Speaker 4: dinosaurs living among human beings quite recently that allegedly disproves evolution.
Speaker 4: And today I'm going to talk about why that's a
Speaker 4: bad argument that Catholics shouldn't use because of the harm
Speaker 4: it can cause. First, I want to address something Hall
Speaker 4: and Marshall said about Catholic answers and the theory of evolution.
Speaker 2: If I were on a Catholic interest thing and I
Speaker 2: was like, hmm, you know which question infant baptism, Like yo,
Speaker 2: let's talk about that, you know, or let's talk about
Speaker 2: you know. But if you say, if you come in,
Speaker 2: you're like, theistic evolution is false, Like they get kind
Speaker 2: of dogmatic about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Now, if Marshall just said evolution is false, we wouldn't
Speaker 4: be dogmatic about it. Some Catholic answers staff members might
Speaker 4: agree with him and others might disagree. But if he
Speaker 4: said the church teaches theistic evolution is false, then I
Speaker 4: will be very dogmatic because that's not what the church teaches.
Speaker 4: I want to make it clear that the Catholic Church
Speaker 4: does not have a teaching about the theory of evolution
Speaker 4: or the extinction of the dinosaurs. You can be a
Speaker 4: faithful Catholic and deny or accept the theory of evolution.
Speaker 4: You can be a faithful Catholic and believe the Sun
Speaker 4: revolves around the Earth. The Church doesn't teach on these
Speaker 4: scientific questions. Now, Hall does say he does not want
Speaker 4: to dogmatize Young Earth creationism, and I appreciate him saying that.
Speaker 4: He just asks that people like me, not you, evolution
Speaker 4: to evangelize.
Speaker 5: No, you cannot evangelize with evolution.
Speaker 4: Evangelism means to share the good news of salvation in Christ,
Speaker 4: and part of that good news is that a loving
Speaker 4: God made the world and we can use things the
Speaker 4: Church does not teach to show that's true. For example,
Speaker 4: the Church doesn't teach that atomic theory is true and
Speaker 4: that the universe is composed of four fundamental forces that
Speaker 4: are finely tuned for our existence. But this can be
Speaker 4: really helpful improving the gospel truth that God made the
Speaker 4: world to prove it to an atheist, even though the
Speaker 4: Church doesn't have a teaching on this. Paul may be
Speaker 4: referring to this article by chemist Stacy Tresenkos, where she
Speaker 4: explains what she means by evangelizing through evolution. She writes,
Speaker 4: we should be evangelizing through science, showing others how the
Speaker 4: ubiquitous order and beauty and creation from electron orbitals to
Speaker 4: human life to cosmic galaxies in.
Speaker 1: Real I just want to interrupt. Obviously this is appealing
Speaker 1: to me in what we do at this show, right,
Speaker 1: so I think this is cool? Come on, like how
Speaker 1: like why why would you why would you want to
Speaker 1: throw out this stuff? You know, Oh, just because just
Speaker 1: because there's a genealogy between Adam and Jesus that's four
Speaker 1: thousand years long, we have to throw everything we see
Speaker 1: or you know, like this is this is applying way
Speaker 1: too much literalism to like to the creation account, way
Speaker 1: too much literalism. This is why. I like that it's
Speaker 1: sort of viewed as mythopoetic by Catholics and Orthodox like
Speaker 1: it's about something true, but it's not true in the
Speaker 1: sense like the historical biography is true, or true in
Speaker 1: the sense that the Gospel accounts are true like eyewitness accounts.
Speaker 1: It's it's a condensed retelling of events, set of curtive
Speaker 1: or vast time scales, like we don't have to throw
Speaker 1: this all away. We don't have to throw the truth
Speaker 1: away to believe in the truth of the Creator. Like
Speaker 1: they go together, they fit together. So I just think
Speaker 1: it's silly to reject all this.
Speaker 4: Huch his faith and points beyond the physical realm. Also,
Speaker 4: if Hall wants Catholics to not use evolution to try
Speaker 4: and prove Catholicism is true, I would just ask him
Speaker 4: to reciprocate, don't use bad Young Earth creationist arguments to
Speaker 4: try and prove Catholicism is true. Now, this is anything
Speaker 4: I have personal against him or anyone else. This is
Speaker 4: just something I see among many more Catholics using these
Speaker 4: kinds of arguments. And it's concerning because you don't need
Speaker 4: those arguments to prove Catholicism to a Protestant or a
Speaker 4: niece and orthodox Young Earth creationist, because those people already
Speaker 4: believe in a Young Earth. It's other doctrines like the
Speaker 4: papacy that are the major stumbling blocks for them. But
Speaker 4: in using these arguments with non really just people, you
Speaker 4: create stumbling blocks for those who lack and encounter with Christ,
Speaker 4: the people who truly need the Gospel. This is especially
Speaker 4: true if you try to convince someone to abandon atheism
Speaker 4: by saying evolution must be false because we know dinosaurs
Speaker 4: and human beings lived side by side a few hundred
Speaker 4: years ago. One way Young Earth creationists argue for this
Speaker 4: is by pointing to ancient and medieval depictions of creatures
Speaker 4: that they say are actually dinosaurs, even though modern people
Speaker 4: would say they're depictions of dragons. I once saw a
Speaker 4: Catholic Young Earth creationist appeal to the supposed dinosaur of
Speaker 4: Taprome in northwest Cambodia. One of the reliefs in this
Speaker 4: Cambodian temple supposedly depicts a stegosaurus that lived among the
Speaker 4: Cambodians about a thousand years ago, But the only part
Speaker 4: of the relief that makes this look like a stegosaurus
Speaker 4: are the alleged flaps on its back, but when you
Speaker 4: zoom out, you see that these are not flaps. They're
Speaker 4: decorative pedals that can be found throughout the entire higher relief.
Speaker 4: If that's what they are, then the creature in question
Speaker 4: could be an iguana or a rhinoceros because it doesn't
Speaker 4: have traits unique to Stegosaurus like tail spikes, and its
Speaker 4: head is.
Speaker 1: Far too small.
Speaker 4: Or it could be a mythical creature because at the
Speaker 4: bottom of the relief there is a half monkey, half
Speaker 4: dog mythical.
Speaker 1: Do you see what I mean here? Like why are
Speaker 1: we going here? You know? And listen, there are Catholics
Speaker 1: or are Orthodox who do believe this stuff. So it's
Speaker 1: not really like it's not really a Protestant Catholic thing,
Speaker 1: But I think it tends to be more of a
Speaker 1: Protestant thing because Protestants tend to treat again, treat the
Speaker 1: Bible as a supernatural object that's infallible. And so if sorry,
Speaker 1: I just had a run downstairs to get groceries, I
Speaker 1: got a breath. But yeah, so if there's a four
Speaker 1: thousand year genealogy, then it's the Earth is six thousand
Speaker 1: years old, right, because or you know, if it's a
Speaker 1: four corners of the earth, well that means it's flat.
Speaker 1: And it's like me, maybe you're like assigning too much
Speaker 1: to these phrases. You know, let's let our actual rational
Speaker 1: minds that God gave us kind of inform and fill
Speaker 1: in the gaps. You know, parts of the Bible that
Speaker 1: are clearly meant to be taken literally, like the Gospels,
Speaker 1: let's take those literally. But parts of the Bible that
Speaker 1: don't seem to be meant to be taken literally, let's
Speaker 1: like use our reason and judgment. Oh and I know,
Speaker 1: maybe an apostolic tradition that goes all the way back
Speaker 1: to people who knew Jesus. And think about this, the Apostles,
Speaker 1: they spent like every waking moment with Jesus first three years.
Speaker 1: So like this little like tiny little book of Matthew,
Speaker 1: it just hits the highlights. Like they clearly knew so
Speaker 1: much and they shared that with their successors, and over
Speaker 1: time this turns into like a tradition, a way of
Speaker 1: doing things, And it's that tradition that gave us this book.
Speaker 1: And you could say, well, it was still through God's
Speaker 1: will and stuff, Like I totally agree with that. But
Speaker 1: we don't have to, Like, we don't. We don't have to.
Speaker 1: What's do you think you guys get what I'm saying, Like,
Speaker 1: we don't. We don't have to like agonize over like
Speaker 1: what does it mean waters above waters below? Or what
Speaker 1: does it What does it mean that there was light
Speaker 1: before the before God made the sun, or what does
Speaker 1: it mean that the Bible says the sun and the
Speaker 1: moon were each their own light? Oh my god, I've
Speaker 1: had this conversation with my friends so many times. He
Speaker 1: insists that the moon is not reflecting the Sun's light
Speaker 1: because the Bibles, what is it? The sun and then
Speaker 1: are their own light. Let's read it got some NASA
Speaker 1: propaganda And I'm kidding, Okay, why don't Why does AI
Speaker 1: just not give me the scripture? Just tell me the
Speaker 1: Genesis one sixteen. Here you go, Here you go. God
Speaker 1: made two lights, the greater light to govern the day,
Speaker 1: in the lesser light to govern the night. He also
Speaker 1: made the stars. And I read that, I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is just a description of the cosmos. It makes sense.
Speaker 1: The sun has light, the moon has light, the stars
Speaker 1: produce light. But then like someone like my friend who
Speaker 1: again treats this like an infallible supernatural object. Is like, well, no,
Speaker 1: it says God made two great lights. That means the
Speaker 1: moon is its own light source. It does not merely
Speaker 1: reflect the sun like bro Like okay, but like explain
Speaker 1: the phases of the moon and eclipses. And it's like, Nope,
Speaker 1: I don't need to. I don't need to explain that
Speaker 1: because I have the ultimate source of truth and everything
Speaker 1: I could possibly need to know about the world is
Speaker 1: in this book. And it's like, well, clearly that's not true.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's it's it's limited. It's the best thing
Speaker 1: we have. And I take I take it seriously. Don't
Speaker 1: get me wrong, Like, I take it very seriously, but
Speaker 1: clear we were meant as rational beings to like explore
Speaker 1: beyond the context of this book that is only you know,
Speaker 1: seventeen hundred years old, not even or no, sixteen hundred
Speaker 1: years old, and was produced by an institution that you
Speaker 1: claim to hate, you know, the Catholic Magisterium. So I mean,
Speaker 1: he would say it wasn't produced by them, and he'd
Speaker 1: be right. You know, it's produced by the authors, but
Speaker 1: it was compiled by this and books were removed and
Speaker 1: books were included, like the Book of Hebrews, for example.
Speaker 1: We don't know who wrote that. A lot of people
Speaker 1: didn't want to include revelation in the Bible. Martin Luther
Speaker 1: wanted to take it out during the Protestant Reformation. So
Speaker 1: like it was decisions made by members and councils of
Speaker 1: the Catholic Church. That's why the book looks like this.
Speaker 1: And so I just don't understand. I'm sorry, I'm going
Speaker 1: to shut up. Clearly this has been on my mind.
Speaker 1: I hope you find this interesting. It's not my typical wheelhouse,
Speaker 1: totally out of left field. Let's keep going with the creature.
Speaker 4: This image certainly doesn't prove Stegosaurus has lived among the
Speaker 4: Cambodians a thousand years ago, especially since no Stegosaurus fossils
Speaker 4: have been found in Cambodia. This being a mythical creature
Speaker 4: also explains images of dragons and other creatures found in
Speaker 4: ancient and medieval artwork. Consider Kennedy Hall's claim that a
Speaker 4: medieval Chinese dragon is actually a dinosaur.
Speaker 5: This is a picture from the fifteen hundreds. It's a
Speaker 5: Chinese picture. It's a Chinese picture of what's a dinosaur?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 5: This is just a you know, something that's in the
Speaker 5: Annals of History. This is just one example. It's in
Speaker 5: the Shanghai Museum and it was painted around five hundred
Speaker 5: years ago during the Ming dynasty, and it's just clearly,
Speaker 5: I mean, what does that look like. It clearly looks
Speaker 5: like something like a dinosaur. I mean, you know, and
Speaker 5: China's not a Christian country and it never really was,
Speaker 5: so I mean, this can't be chalked up to fundamentalism.
Speaker 4: People in the past also made pictions of creatures like
Speaker 4: the phoenix or the minotaur, but that doesn't mean that
Speaker 4: phoenixes or minotaurs really existed. Why not think that this
Speaker 4: image is also of a mythical creature. The source hall
Speaker 4: used for the alleged Chinese dinosaur is an article at
Speaker 4: the Colby Center entitled Historical Evidence for Dinosaur and Human Coexistence.
Speaker 4: They say it's supposed to be a colophysis, but it
Speaker 4: barely resembles it. Medieval Chinese artists were able to accurately
Speaker 4: draw horses, deer, and bears, So why would they give
Speaker 4: this weird, inaccurate interpretation of a dinosaur. Well, probably because
Speaker 4: they weren't trying to draw a real animal. In ancient
Speaker 4: culture's most Mythical creatures are combinations or exaggerations of existing creatures,
Speaker 4: and that's what we see here. One of the other
Speaker 4: examples the article gives is Bishop Bell's Behemoths. It says
Speaker 4: the following. This brass engraving was made over five hundred
Speaker 4: years ago and decorates Bishop Bell's tomb in England. The
Speaker 4: two animals depicted are very unambiguous soropods, but were probably
Speaker 4: known to the locals of the time as dragons. The
Speaker 4: animal on the left has a tail that ends in
Speaker 4: a spiked club, just like the soropod shun Asaurus. It's
Speaker 4: fascinating to consider that these dinosaurs were probably roaming the
Speaker 4: hillsides of medieval England. First, this looks like two lions
Speaker 4: or cats fighting. But even if you don't know what
Speaker 4: these creatures were supposed to be, since they could also
Speaker 4: just be mythical creatures, we can know what they're not,
Speaker 4: and they're not giant souropods. For example, Cetiosaurus, a soropod
Speaker 4: whose fossil was found in England, was almost fifty feet long.
Speaker 4: If these creatures lived in England until the time of
Speaker 4: Martin Luther, why didn't anyone write about them. For example,
Speaker 4: wolves went extinct in England in the seventeen hundreds due
Speaker 4: to overhunting, and before that they were frequently discussed in
Speaker 4: medieval literature. One tenth century Anglo Saxon king demanded tribute
Speaker 4: be paid to him in three hundred wolf skins, and
Speaker 4: a medieval text called the Anglo Saxon Chronicle describes how
Speaker 4: January was called wolf Monath, the official month of wolf hunting.
Speaker 4: And don't be shocked, but absolutely none of these texts
Speaker 4: describe people hunting giant soropods that were twice as big
Speaker 4: as a London double decker bus. However, Hugh Owen, the
Speaker 4: director of the Colby Center, which is committed to promoting
Speaker 4: Young Earth creationism, says these historical sources do describe dinosaurs
Speaker 4: in medieval England. He cites the creature Grendel in the
Speaker 4: tenth century English epic poem Bale Wolf as an example.
Speaker 6: Those dinosaurs that could survive the harsh environmental conditions and
Speaker 6: were any kind of a threat to human beings or
Speaker 6: livestock were hunted down. And if you've read the poem Beowulf,
Speaker 6: Grendel perfectly matches the description of some kind of t
Speaker 6: rex dinosaur. In fact, Beowulf kills Grendel because he's able
Speaker 6: to get in close to her and rip one of
Speaker 6: her little arms out of its socket so that she
Speaker 6: bleeds to death. And these are not fantasies. Beowulf is
Speaker 6: talking about historical people, and all over the world we
Speaker 6: find very accurate drawings, sculptures, mosaics, cave paintings of all
Speaker 6: different kinds of dinosaurs.
Speaker 4: Okay, First, Grendel is a male, not a female, and
Speaker 4: Beowulf rips out his arm and kills him before killing
Speaker 4: Grendel's mother with a sword. Second, it's silly to say
Speaker 4: that this means Grendel was a t rex with stubby arms,
Speaker 4: and a human being really killed a Tyrannosaurus Rex in
Speaker 4: this way. The idea that Grendel was a Trannosaurus Rex
Speaker 4: attacking seventh century Danish people in real life comes from
Speaker 4: creationist Bill Cooper's book After the Flood. The problem is
Speaker 4: that at contra Owen and Cooper, Grendel is not specifically described.
Speaker 4: In Beowulf. Grendel is said to be a descendant of
Speaker 4: Cain and that he is larger than any other man,
Speaker 4: and Grendel's mother is said to be in the form
Speaker 4: of a woman. There are probably some kind of hominid
Speaker 4: or human like monster. They definitely were not a pair
Speaker 4: of t rexes. Other evidence Young Earth Catholics present for
Speaker 4: human dinosaur coexistence isn't as obviously false as a medieval
Speaker 4: British Bronosaurus or t rex, but it's still faulty. At
Speaker 4: this twenty twenty four Colby Center conference, a speaker listed
Speaker 4: as doctor Kevin Mark gives evidence for dinosaurs and humans
Speaker 4: coexisting by citing the Piluxi River tracks, which claim to
Speaker 4: be fossilized footprints of a human and a dinosaur next
Speaker 4: to each other.
Speaker 3: If it wasn't enough seeing a human footprint or handprint
Speaker 3: and cretaceous rock one hundred million years old or one
Speaker 3: hundred and twenty million years old, having it right beside
Speaker 3: a dinosaur print is very difficult to explain.
Speaker 4: Now shown that the alleged human footprints at the Pluxi
Speaker 4: tracts only look human because of erosion. This evidence for
Speaker 4: human dinosaur coexistence is so bad that even other Young
Speaker 4: Earth creationists have rejected it. Answers in Genesis list it
Speaker 4: under evidences to be avoided, and back in nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 4: John Morris, the son of Henry Morris, one of the
Speaker 4: founders of modern Young Earth creationism, said it would now
Speaker 4: be improper for creationists to continue to use the Poluxi
Speaker 4: data as evidence against evolution. So what does this all mean?
Speaker 4: If you want to believe that the Earth is only
Speaker 4: thousands of years old and humans coexisted with dinosaurs even
Speaker 4: just a few hundred years ago, you're free to believe that.
Speaker 4: If you are not Catholic, and you're also firmly convinced
Speaker 4: of this, you can keep believing that if you become Catholic,
Speaker 4: which I hope you do become Catholic. You could also
Speaker 4: believe a more defensible claim that dinosaurs didn't go extinct
Speaker 4: a few hundred years ago, but were wiped out right
Speaker 4: after they got off Oh's Ark. But I do strongly
Speaker 4: caution you to not make the claim that evolution is
Speaker 4: false because t rexes lived in medieval Denmark or bronosauruses
Speaker 4: lived in Reformation era England as an apologetic argument for
Speaker 4: the faith. At best, this will only reassure other Young
Speaker 4: Earth Christians who don't need to be convinced God exists,
Speaker 4: and it will alienate people who think religion is an
Speaker 4: uncritical fairy tale. Saint Augustine dealt with a similar controversy
Speaker 4: in his own time when debating pagan philosophers. Here's what
Speaker 4: he said. It often happens that even a non Christian
Speaker 4: knows a thing or two about the earth, the sky,
Speaker 4: the various elements of the world, about the movement and
Speaker 4: revolution of the stars, and even their size and distance,
Speaker 4: about the nature of animals, shrubs, rocks, and the like,
Speaker 4: and maintains this knowledge with sure reason and experience. It
Speaker 4: is offensive and ruinous, something to be avoided at all
Speaker 4: cost for a non believer to hear a Christian talking
Speaker 4: about these things as though with Christian writings as his source,
Speaker 4: and yet so nonsensically, with such obvious error that the
Speaker 4: non believer can hardly keep from laughing.
Speaker 1: I think we'll wrap up right. There is that last
Speaker 1: line that's so important, Like the idea of using Christian
Speaker 1: writings to make these like crazy claims. It doesn't like
Speaker 1: you don't win a prize for being like the most
Speaker 1: literalistic interpreter of a passage. You know, all you do
Speaker 1: is discredit the writing itself, so it doesn't make any sense,
Speaker 1: and there's no need. There's no need to do this,
Speaker 1: Like you don't need to believe that this stuff is
Speaker 1: meant to be taken a certain way. There are things
Speaker 1: that you do need to believe to be, like to
Speaker 1: consider yourself a Christian, but that's not one of them.
Speaker 1: A young Earth is not one of them. A flat
Speaker 1: earth is. You can believe in evolution and be a Christian.
Speaker 1: I mean I think a lot. I just I think
Speaker 1: it's I don't know how gotten here. Actually I do
Speaker 1: know how we've gotten here. It is a it is
Speaker 1: a idolization or a again, like basically the theme of
Speaker 1: this whole episode. There are Christians that I would say
Speaker 1: mostly Evangelical Christians, but of course there are Catholics and
Speaker 1: Orthodox who feel this way too. They've they've they've turned
Speaker 1: this into like a supernatural object. You know that it
Speaker 1: actually like holds power. And you see this in people
Speaker 1: who like like Sean Ryan famously put a Bible under
Speaker 1: all four corners of his podcast studio, you know, and
Speaker 1: it's like, this is idolatry. I know it sounds crazy
Speaker 1: to say that about the Bible, but it's not. It
Speaker 1: is It is a book. It is a book. The
Speaker 1: information it contains it's a historical record of our Lord,
Speaker 1: and therefore it should be taken very seriously. It's it's
Speaker 1: difficult for me to take someone seriously who treats this
Speaker 1: like a supernatural object and then just completely rejects the
Speaker 1: institutions that created it. And again that's that's like a
Speaker 1: theological argument are probably not prepared to have. And I'm
Speaker 1: not a Catholic. I don't know what I am. I'm
Speaker 1: on a search. I think I'm headed in the right direction.
Speaker 1: And so I think that's what this show is for.
Speaker 1: I think this show is for people who want to
Speaker 1: believe that this is actually true. And if it's actually true,
Speaker 1: it should concord with what you know, we see with
Speaker 1: our with our eyes, and like what are rational minds
Speaker 1: tell us, you know, And we don't need to make
Speaker 1: a similar mistake with science. We don't need to like
Speaker 1: treat science like a supernatural object that it can answer
Speaker 1: any question and that it can you know, cure all
Speaker 1: that ails us and make us a mortal and like, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying the truth should
Speaker 1: sort of be like a concordance of these two things.
Speaker 1: And so when you say the moon is its own
Speaker 1: light source, Like, but it isn't, you know, So you're
Speaker 1: putting me in a position to like, are you telling
Speaker 1: me I have to believe the moon is its own
Speaker 1: light source in order to take this seriously? That's crazy
Speaker 1: And I reject that. I reject that interpretation so that
Speaker 1: I get I think that's where I'm going with this.
Speaker 1: Thanks for going on this journey with me. One thing
Speaker 1: I'm left with reading the New Testament, Like, one thing
Speaker 1: that strikes me is that Jesus didn't actually leave us
Speaker 1: with the Bible. He left us with apostles. He left
Speaker 1: us with the church, and those apostles they wrote, and
Speaker 1: the institution that they founded on Earth put those ridings together.
Speaker 1: And now you can go on Amazon and you can
Speaker 1: buy a copy, Okay, And that's pretty amazing. That's I mean,
Speaker 1: that's pretty amazing. But I'm not going to like draw
Speaker 1: AsSalt circle on my on my wood floor and like
Speaker 1: candles and sit Indian style in the middle of it
Speaker 1: and open this book to a random page because it
Speaker 1: isn't it's not a what do they what do they
Speaker 1: call it? Like? What do witches have? What are those called?
Speaker 1: I don't know, you know, like the spell book or whatever,
Speaker 1: there's a word for it. Anyway, It's not that's not
Speaker 1: what it is. It's this is a historical document, and
Speaker 1: I think it explained things that really happened. But there's
Speaker 1: parts of it that are biography. There's parts of it
Speaker 1: that are poetry. There's parts of it that are song
Speaker 1: like psalms. There's parts of it that are apocalyptic visions,
Speaker 1: like revelation. Like it's it's not all the same thing.
Speaker 1: It's not. It's not an encyclopedia, you know. So if
Speaker 1: you're agnostic, I guess I'm here to reassure you, like
Speaker 1: you can explore this stuff without abandoning reason, And actually
Speaker 1: I think that's the only way you should explore it,
Speaker 1: like take it seriously, you know. So, all right, everybody,
Speaker 1: Hopefully I did more more good than harm with this episode.
Speaker 1: I think I did. I got people texting me asking
Speaker 1: for Bible translations, all right, so cut me some slack, No,
Speaker 1: I have to say. I don't. I hardly ever get
Speaker 1: any like pushback from Christians, which I think really breaks
Speaker 1: the stereotype that most Christians are like rigidly dogmatic finger pointers.
Speaker 1: At least the Christians in my audience. That's not been
Speaker 1: the case. Now. I've had push back from atheists and
Speaker 1: gnostics and people who think, you know, they're inventing new
Speaker 1: physics with Claude and stuff like. I've gotten angry emails
Speaker 1: from those people, but not from Christians, which is pretty
Speaker 1: I think, like that's pretty amazing considering how like open
Speaker 1: we are on this show about these ideas. So I
Speaker 1: think if you're harboring a lot of like anti Christian sentiments,
Speaker 1: I think it's time to re examine those sentiments. Welcome
Speaker 1: to twenty twenty six. It's a brave new world out there.
Speaker 1: Rational atheism is sort of waning. People are interested in
Speaker 1: the deeper meaning of life. What is time to be alive?
Speaker 1: All right? Everybody email me at God's I view Book
Speaker 1: at gmail dot com. Until next time, stay safe out
Speaker 1: there and God bless