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Jan. 10, 2023 - Dinesh D'Souza
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TROUBLE IN RIO Dinesh D’Souza Podcast EP492
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Coming up, I'll examine the turmoil in Brazil where huge groups of Bolsonaro supporters have taken over, took over multiple government buildings and offices in protest against Lula de Silva's installation as the new president.
Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy joins me.
We're going to talk about threats facing America and what we're doing or not doing to combat them.
Classified documents in Biden's possession.
Are we talking double standards here?
here I'll explain. This is the Dinesh D'Souza Show.
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Remarkable events in Brazil started just a couple of days ago in what might seem like a...
Startling parallel to January 6th, January 6th of 2021, you had thousands, maybe tens of thousands of Brazilians storming the Congress, the Supreme Court, And the seat of the presidency, which is the Planalto Palace.
And all of this occurred in a remarkable way.
Seems to have taken the authorities by surprise.
Now, over the subsequent 48 hours, the protesters, the objectors have been evacuated.
Apparently, there have been about 1,000 arrests.
And it seems that Brazil's political situation is in flux.
Now, there have been lots of people in America who are looking at the Brazilian situation purely through the lens of American politics.
Now, we have a tendency to do this And it is a tendency that should at least be somewhat resisted or we should be cautious about.
Why? Because things that are going on inside the United States often have a vocabulary and an understanding that doesn't really apply, at least not apply in quite the same way.
Even when we use terms like Islamic fundamentalism, it's a little misleading because fundamentalism is a movement inside of Protestant Christianity.
A kind of return to fundamentals in the wake of the 19th century movements of biblical criticism and the challenging of the literal truths of the Bible.
What's going on in Islam is quite different from that.
Even I remember during the 1980s when there was a Debates going on in South Africa over apartheid.
I would see analyses of those that interpret them exclusively through the lens of the civil rights movement.
And that's partially right.
I mean, obviously, there was a form of apartheid itself as a form of segregation, but not in the same way as in the American South and not with the same underlying premises or institutions.
Now, with regard to Brazil, The issue here is, and this is a parallel to January 6th, is the issue of the election.
Basically, it was a very close election, separated by just two points.
And Lula da Silva, who won the election, gets almost all his vote, or the overwhelming majority of his vote, in the Rio de Janeiro area and the surrounding areas.
And basically, Bolsonaro wins the rest of the country.
The...
What's somewhat odd is the number of people in America who have never been to Brazil, know nothing about Brazil, nevertheless assuring us that Brazil had a free and fair election.
And I'm thinking to myself, well, how do you know?
Or you'll see routinely stated in the New York Times and elsewhere, charges of election fraud in Brazil are, quote, unfounded.
And I'm like, you know, I've read this article two or three times.
I don't even understand what those charges are.
You don't specify what they are.
And second... Why are they unfounded?
No reasons are given.
So what you have is essentially a dogmatic insistence that this was a I haven't seen the phrase yet, most secure election in Brazilian history, but that can't be far behind.
And this is really not something that is demonstrated or proved.
It is merely something that is pompously asserted, and we are supposed to take it, well, let us say, on faith.
Now, interestingly, the Brazilian...
A military commission did an investigation of election fraud.
It was really a brief review because, of course, the election just occurred.
And basically what they said is that there are real and serious flaws in the Brazilian electoral system.
And the commission proposed a whole series of remedies.
So here's an article that I'm holding in my hand from the Associated Press.
Report by Brazil's military on election count cites no fraud.
So the implication of the headline very clearly is, no fraud in the Brazilian election.
But let's read the first line of the article.
A much-awaited report from the Brazilian military highlighted flaws in the country's electoral systems and proposed improvements, but it did not substantiate claims of fraud from some of President Jair Bolsonaro's supporters.
That's a whole different thing than what the headline said.
Because what it basically says is that Brazil has a deeply flawed election system for the simple reason that they've been using electronic voting since 1996 with no backup paper ballots.
It's only the electronic system, and there's no way to audit it and go back and compare the electronic totals with the ballots themselves.
So this is understood in America, all over the world, to be a less secure system than We're good to go.
Instead of just writing off the protesters, why don't you call it a disputed election?
Why don't you investigate the issues being raised by the protesters?
Why don't you test them for their legitimacy instead of basically saying, let's shut these people down.
Let's ban them. Let's lock them up.
So this kind of post-January 6th approach in America hasn't worked very well in America.
I don't think it's going to work very well in Brazil either.
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I'm continuing my discussion Lula da Silva has the support of the courts, and I say that because the courts have been, A, very dismissive of claims of election fraud, B, have actually apparently been complicit in social media censorship in Brazil.
This is a topic I want to talk about in more detail.
I'll probably pick it up tomorrow.
Twitter, for example, has been a major instrument of censorship for the, this is of course before the Elon Musk takeover, of the Bolsonaro people in Brazil.
So the court is on Lula's side, but the army and the military and apparently some of the police are on Bolsonaro's side.
Now the police were out in force, apparently intercepting a lot of the protesters, and of course they didn't, the protesters did need to be evacuated from any government buildings, but there was also the police cracking down on protesters on the street.
And so guess what happened?
I'm actually looking at a video of this in social media.
And that is that when the police began to deploy and force on the street to dispel the crowds, the army put tanks on the street.
To prevent the police from removing the protesters.
So all of this suggests that there's still a volatile situation in Brazil.
And Lula da Silva has his hands full in dealing with it.
Now, Bolsonaro, interestingly, is in Florida.
And apparently a bunch of left-wing Democrats, I'm thinking here of AOC, Ilhan Omar, Joaquin Castro, they're like, we have to extradite him.
We have to send him back to Brazil.
Well, first of all, Bolsonaro is not under accusation.
He didn't call for these protests.
In fact, as far as I can tell, he has been relatively quiet and in a sense accepting of the election outcome.
I say that because what does Bolsonaro do?
He basically packs up and goes to Florida.
I also saw somewhere that he is having some health issues and he might even be under health care or even in a hospital in Florida.
Nevertheless, these claims for extradition seem to me absurd and There are no criminal charges or charges of any kind, as far as I know, against Bolsonaro.
Now, Lula da Silva, a very bad guy.
Not only is this guy a far leftist, a buddy of Castro, a buddy of Maduro, a guy who came up through the radical left trade union movement in Brazil, but here is a guy who was also convicted of corruption and We're good to go.
vacated his conviction by saying that the judge who ordered his incarceration was biased against him. Now what's interesting about this is that the Supreme Court didn't say that Lula was not corrupt. It didn't exonerate him of the charges of corruption. They just said that because of the procedural bias of one of the judges, Lula should be set free. So this is all part of, I think, a troubling movement in Latin America to the left. We are seeing it in other Latin
American countries now. I saw a Brazilian commentator talking about this and he goes, look, Lula is not the same Lula.
He doesn't have the same kind of power that he did when he was in office before.
By the way, Lula has already served...
In office, an extended term, I think 12 years.
And he had a left-wing majority.
He was able to get a lot of what he wanted.
But according to this Brazilian commentator, this is not the situation now.
In fact, the Bolsonaro people control the parliament.
They have majorities in both The Brazilian houses of parliament, which is to say that Lula, in a sense, has his hands tied.
There's a limit to what he can do.
And so this does not mean that Brazil is doomed.
But nevertheless, the very fact that the Brazilians have put into office this far leftist cannot be a good sign for the future of Brazil.
Now, Brazil is a relatively young democracy.
This is, by the way, a difference between Brazil and the United States.
The United States has been a constitutional democracy since, well, 1789, I guess, when the Constitution was adopted.
Brazil has been a democracy since the late 1980s or the mid-1980s.
So, it's a relatively young democracy.
And frankly, there are a lot of people in Brazil who aren't even sure that democracy is the best form of government.
It's interesting that in America, they're questioning democracy.
Well, when you have a democracy that's relatively new, people do question it.
They go, listen, we have to test this system, which has now been operating here in this country for, what, 30 years, 35 years, against other systems that might, in fact, work better.
And also, even within democracy, there are multiple forms of democracy.
There's Of course, parliamentary democracy, there's presidential democracy, there's various forms of constitutional democracy, and so on.
Even in this country, we debate what kind of democracy do we have and do we want in the United States.
Certainly, we'll be watching the events in Brazil as they unfold with interest.
And tomorrow, I'm going to talk further about censorship in Brazil.
As in America, it is quite possible, in fact, I would say likely, that censorship on behalf of the left and against the right helped to shape the outcome of the recent Brazilian election.
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Guys, I'm really happy to welcome to the podcast my friend Frank Gaffney.
He's the founder and executive chairman of the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C. It's a think tank and a research foundation.
And Frank is also the host of Secure Freedom Radio, a nationally syndicated radio program.
I've been privileged to be a guest.
The website, centerforsecuritypolicy.org.
Frank, welcome to the podcast.
Great to have you.
So much going on in the world.
But let me start kind of at home, if I may.
We just had an anniversary of January 6th.
And I think you told me right before we came on the podcast that you somewhat jokingly refer to January 6th as Ray Epps Day.
Now, Ray Epps, of course, was not one of the honorees at the January 6th ceremonies, and yet he looms as an important, say, unanswered question mark around January 6th.
Talk a little bit about what you mean by why is it Ray Epps Day?
Well, first of all, thanks for having me, Dinesh.
It's great to reconnect with you.
You're one of the people I admire most in the world, so it's always a delight to have a chance to interact with you.
I call it Ray Epps Day because Ray Epps is the only person that I know of who was not only caught in the act of trying to precipitate the invasion of the Capitol, not only on January 6th, by the way, but on January 5th as well.
But he also, we learned just recently, buried in the bowels of that January 6th committee report, texted his nephew on January 6th that he was at the front with a few people and he, quote, orchestrated it, unquote.
And yet he has gone completely unindicted and Unprosecuted.
And in fact, that he wasn't at the White House getting honored is something of an anomaly because he deserves probably a lion's share of the credit for what went on on that day and what has flowed from it.
Frank, if you look at that transcript where Ray Epps is being interviewed by the January 6th people, he attempts to give an explanation for the phrase, I orchestrated it.
To me, the explanation made absolutely no sense.
In fact, he went on to say things like, well, my nephew and I frequently go hunting together.
I mean, irrelevancies that have nothing to do with what appeared to be...
A contemporaneous confession of his role in January 6th.
And then you had the really peculiar sight of people like Adam Kinzinger rushing to his defense.
He's evidently become their favorite insurrectionist.
Yes. Well, if there were an insurrection, it would be because of Reheps, which is very important, not only for the arc of our own nation's history, but I think we've watched in Brazil A hugely important nation in our hemisphere.
A reprise with a Marxist government, which for 70 or so days prior to the installation in power of Lula da Silva, saw peaceful demonstrations taking place all across the country where tens of millions of Brazilians were opposing his election on the grounds that it was fraudulent.
Much as people were doing on January 6th, of course, with Donald Trump's.
And unfortunately, I think there were once again Ray Epps types there, leftist provocateurs, and people who were associated with, or at least supportive of, the outgoing president, Jair Bolsonaro, were also there at the Capitol, the seat of the Congress and the Supreme Court in Brazil.
And they were engaged in violence, which is reprehensible and unacceptable.
But they are now, I think, setting up a similar kind of response to what we saw after January 6th in this country, with people incarcerated, people frightened, people losing their freedoms, people being told they couldn't say certain things, and the like. And it will be terrible for the people of Brazil, bad for the region, and I think bad for us if it goes that way.
I mean, a lot of South America, as you know, has had a dictatorial history.
Brazil itself is a relatively recent democracy.
I think what you're saying is that you fear almost a regression of dictatorial methods, but now under a democratic In other words, we have to fight the enemies of democracy.
Let's censor them.
Let's lock them up.
Let's treat them as domestic terrorists.
And, of course, in a country that has far more history of volatility than does the United States.
Well, it'll be taking...
It out of the playbook of Joe Biden, I think, and Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, if that goes that way.
And yes, Lula da Silva is a Marxist, make no mistake about it.
And he has been working for decades to turn the rest of the hemisphere into its playpen.
And unfortunately, today, I think it's fair to say, with the fall of Brazil, every major nation in our hemisphere, including our own, is now run by Marxists.
This is a very scary thought.
Let's take a pause. When we come back, we'll pick up this theme and pursue it a little further.
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I'm back with Frank Gaffney, Jr., founder and executive chairman of the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C., the website CenterForSecurityPolicy.org.
Frank, we're talking about Brazil, and you said that there is a kind of a Marxist wave that you think is sweeping across not just South America and Central America, but in some degree also washing across the United States.
How do we explain or understand this?
I mean, we lived through, when we were somewhat younger men, the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Francis Fukuyama wrote his book, The End of History, basically saying liberal constitutional democracy is now the kind of wave, not just of the future, but of the indefinite future.
History itself has kind of come to an end.
Clearly, that does not seem to be the case, but how do you account for an ideology that has Yeah.
Well, I should be interviewing you on this subject because you've done with your films, among other things, your books, more on this subject than anybody.
I guess my take on it is this.
There is no limit to the willingness of people To suspend belief based on past experience in the hope that things will be different if they're made to sound seductive enough.
And I think you're right.
There's been an unbroken track record of disaster at the hands of Marxists.
And yet there is this endless appeal to the idea that, well, It was just done badly in the past, but we're going to get it right this time, and it'll be fairer for everybody.
There will be equity.
It will be equal outcomes.
Everybody will prosper and so on.
It won't happen this time any more than it has in the past, but it has been the single-minded purpose of Lula da Silva personally to bring this about through what he calls the Forum of San Paolo.
Which was essentially the successor to the Communist Internationale, the Comintern.
And it has now metastasized throughout what some people call our backyard.
I call it our front yard.
It is our hemisphere.
And yes, it has in fact now got its roots firmly in places.
Again, you have done as much as anybody to document in our own country.
To say nothing of our neighbor to the north.
So as we're speaking, the three amigos are together.
Lopez Obrador of Mexico, Joe Biden of the United States, Justin Trudeau, rather, of Canada.
And I think they're celebrating the ascendancy of their ideology.
And I include Biden in this, whether he personally embraces this or it's just his administration's leitmotif.
But it unfortunately is this idea that The Marxist order of things will be better, fairer, and more workable under their tender mercies than it has been under those of their predecessors.
It won't. It'll be a disaster.
And interestingly enough, when the communists take over, as you know so well, the first thing they do is they liquidate all of these people who have been their fellow travelers and enablers.
Frank, one of the points that Debbie makes with her experience in Venezuela, and we see echoes of this in Brazil as well, is that you seem to have an international left that operates by using the same techniques, using the same language.
They're almost interchangeable.
If you just change the name of the country, you know, it's the same rhetoric.
It's the appeal to the future.
It's the attack on the class structure.
It's now got the racial element is now built into it.
But the right, on the other hand, historically, has been very different.
So if you take the right in England, the right in France, the right in Brazil, the right in America, you have groups of people who, A, don't talk to each other, B, use a completely different language.
My question to you is, do you agree with this?
And second of all, is part of the answer for the right...
To become a global movement?
To counter the global left?
What is going to stop this global left, if not that?
Boy, it's a fabulous question.
I don't know if we've got time to answer it in this block, but just quickly, I would say you have the collectivists on the one hand, which lends itself, of course, to exactly what you're talking about, which is a sort of standard I'm so happy that you mentioned Debbie's personal experience with one of these places that has been destroyed by the communists,
by the Marxists, namely Venezuela.
But its experiences are now being replicated in Peru, my wife's homeland.
In Chile, in Colombia, in Brazil, as well as in other parts of Latin America, Nicaragua and so on.
This is inevitable.
For the right, which is mostly not collectivist, mostly sort of rooted in individualism, it's inherently more difficult to work in concert.
To some extent you can, notably, you know, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, John Paul II. There are exceptions, but by and large, there's not nearly enough And I do think that you're absolutely right.
We need to be striving for more of that because, as Franklin famously said, we will hang together or we will surely hang separately.
Let's take a pause, Frank, and we come back.
I want to ask you about whether there is a post-Cold War broad framework through which we can understand the threats that America is facing in the world today.
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I'm back with Frank Gaffney, founder and executive chairman of the Center for Security Policy, website centerforsecuritypolicy.org.
Frank, when you and I were in the Reagan years, there was a kind of clear framework, the Cold War framework, which divided the world by and large into the free world and broadly the Soviet orbit.
And since then, there hasn't been an equally kind of easy way to think about the threats that America faces.
At one point, it seemed around 9-11, it was a resurgent radical Islam, for example.
Now, where do you see, how do you think about the world today?
Do you think that there is a kind of axis of evil developing with...
Perhaps China and Iran or the radical Muslims and then maybe Russia.
Are we looking at those powers kind of allying with each other and creating a formidable new threat to the United States?
Or do you think that our biggest threats are not in any of those places but actually come from within the United States?
Hmm. Great question.
Let me back the lens up just for a minute because you've introduced the Cold War, which was a formative experience for both of us.
In 1991, the then General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, Deng Xiaoping, observed what was happening in the Soviet Union, thanks to our old boss Ronald Reagan's deliberate efforts and strategy for destroying what he called the evil empire.
Deng said, The Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union is over.
The Soviet Union has lost.
A new Cold War is beginning between the United States and China, and China will win.
And he set in train what came to be called the hide-and-bide strategy.
And by that he meant, we will profess...
For the consumption of the United States, most especially in the West more generally, to be interested in just being another partner in the international community.
And we will use what resources we can get them to give us, technology and financing and other forms of support and legitimacy, to prepare for the day when we will destroy the West and we will rule the world.
And that has contributed, I think, materially to the lack of clarity about the kind of crisis that we now face.
Yes, from within, but also from the quarters that you've mentioned, most especially the Chinese Communist Party.
Never in this nation's history, never, I would argue, in the history of the world has there been a more dangerous power than that of the Chinese Communist Party.
And in part, It's because of that lack of clarity and because of all of the help that we've given them.
And by the way, that we are continuing to give them, by some estimates, Tinesh, three to six trillion dollars has been transferred by Wall Street, what China calls their old friends there, from American investors, mostly unwittingly.
Pension funds, 401k plans, mutual funds, index funds, exchange-traded funds.
To the Chinese Communist Party's various companies.
That has enabled, I believe, this threat to be made as formidable as it is and to become more so, including the threat now of kinetic warfare against us and our friends.
And they're doing it in concert, as you say, with Russia, with Iran, with North Korea.
And now, unfortunately, thanks to something else that we financed, Their so-called Belt and Road Initiative.
A whole host of other countries that they've essentially colonized and are now building infrastructure from which to project power.
So just to conclude, that is the mortal threat, what our boss Ronald Reagan would call the existential threat to freedom of our time.
I believe it's the worst in history, and we must be aware of it, clear-eyed about it, and addressing it as such.
And we have to understand that, yes, there is an enemies within this country piece of it that we have to attend to as well, that is enabling this threat from outside and is arguably making our situation vastly more perilous than, again, ever in our history.
When you alluded to Deng Xiaoping and the hide and bide strategy, I'm assuming you're referring to the famous statement by Deng where he goes, hide our strength, bide our time.
And it seems that the Chinese in that sense have been far more stealthy about this than the Soviet Union ever was.
Until recently, the mask has sort of slipped under Xi Jinping.
Yes. Let me ask you whether you think...
I mean, there are people who say that the Biden family has made a lot of money in China, not just Hunter Biden, but Frank Biden, James Biden, and Joe Biden himself.
Do you think that Biden's very soft policy on China can be at least in part explained by the fact that...
That can be explained by the fact of 10% for the big guy.
Yeah, I can. A colleague of ours by the name of Sam Faddis, a career undercover central intelligence agency operative who used to recruit and run assets for our country in some pretty awful places around the world for a living.
Describes Joe Biden using his own experience and the terms and tradecraft of espionage as a controlled asset of the Chinese Communist Party.
And do I think that has something to do with the fact that we're not only seeing him pursue policies that China clearly likes, but he's pursuing policies that are destroying our country, To the advantage of the Chinese Communist Party.
I think that's pretty much the consistent, you know, characterization of these policies, whether it's domestic, the border, our economy, our military, you name it.
Bad for America, good for the CCP. Very chilling.
Frank, I'm going to have to have you back to talk more about all this.
Thank you very much for joining me.
Really appreciate it. My pleasure.
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Plus, you get other exclusive content, including my weekly live Q&A. Sign up at dinesh.locals.com That's dinesh.locals.com When classified documents were found at Mar-a-Lago in the aftermath of the FBI raid there, Joe Biden said, this is, and I'm now quoting him, irresponsible.
And he went on to talk about how these documents contain valuable, top-secret information, all the dangers to national security if this information somehow became public.
And now, guess what?
Classified documents, apparently 10 in particular, found at Joe Biden's think tank.
And found when?
Actually found before the midterms, but apparently not disclosed.
In other words, we're only getting media reports about these classified documents now.
And guess why?
I think it has something to do with the fact that we have a Republican Congress that was going to find out about this, probably publicize it, and so as a form of damage control, they leak it to the media, and it appears now in CBS, and it appears here and there.
Oh, these documents.
Now, right away, as soon as I saw this, I realized that the whole idea, the argument that they've been making against Trump, oh, the fact that Trump is in possession of classified documents, it's extremely dangerous.
In fact, it's downright treasonous.
And this guy needs to be prevented from ever holding public office.
But... Of course, the left now has to figure out, what are we going to say now?
Do we apply the same logic to Biden?
So now begins the elaborate Fred Astaire tap dance to explain why Trump's possession of the classified documents is a horrific crime, is disqualifying for public office, whereas Biden's possession also of classified documents is really no big deal.
And, uh, so here we go.
Here's the Washington Post, almost on cue.
The case will likely draw comparisons to Mar-a-Lago, but appears quite different.
How? Let's see.
Officials have said that the Trump investigation concerns not just the possible mishandling of classified documents—I thought that was the whole issue—but possible obstruction of justice.
What obstruction of justice?
There's no obstruction of justice involved at all, or destruction of records.
There's no evidence that any records were destroyed.
When I put this out on social media, saying in one sentence, can anyone explain why Trump's retention of classified documents constitutes a serious crime while Biden's retention of those documents is benign and without consequence?
And someone goes... Because Trump actively lied about, he didn't lie about, and obstructed the return of those documents.
No, he didn't. In fact, the government was well aware that Trump was in possession of those documents.
The government, the FBI itself, said to the Trump people, listen, put a lock on this door.
And then the post continues, which says that the documents, quote, were kept in an unsecure location.
Wait. The Trump documents are at Mar-a-Lago.
Mar-a-Lago is under full Secret Service protection.
In what sense are those documents, quote, unsecure?
By contrast, Biden's documents are at a Biden think tank, where there's general access and there's no cordon of Secret Service protection.
So... This makes absolutely no sense.
And then there are desperate efforts by the media.
You see comments like, quote, A source familiar told CBS News the documents did not contain nuclear streets secrets.
Well, first of all, the Trump documents didn't contain nuclear secrets either.
Another important point to keep in mind is that Trump, as the president, has the ability unilaterally, on his own, to declassify documents.
Biden doesn't. Why?
Because at the time, Biden was the vice president.
So a vice president cannot, on his own, declassify documents.
So here you have, basically, this becomes a really interesting kind of test case statement.
For the administration of justice.
A lot of us suspect we have this two-tier system of justice.
Let's see how this one is pursued by Merrick Garland.
Because, hey, we had an FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago.
Why don't we now have some FBI raids on Biden's house?
I mean, that would seem to be appropriate.
Although one thing I can predict is that if the FBI raids Biden's house, they won't be sniffing Jill Biden's panties.
I'm beginning my discussion about how Christianity laid the foundation for modern science.
And I want to start by making this case by showing that Christianity is a creedal religion And it's a religion based upon reason.
Now I say this because you can look at other religions and you don't find the same thing.
What is the Hindu argument for the existence of God?
As far as I know, there really isn't any.
Same with Buddhism.
And even when you go to Judaism and Islam, you find a...
You find there are religions of laws and there's elaborate codes and commandments, but you don't have the same attempt to prove, based upon using the human mind, that nature or the handiwork of nature points to God.
But you do find this in Christianity, and I want to discuss briefly Aquinas' argument based on causation for the existence of God.
So, Aquinas basically says, look, every effect requires a cause.
And so, what is the cause of everything?
What is the cause of the world?
What is the cause of nature?
Now, Aquinas says that whenever you encounter something, some, let's call it A, it's typically caused by something else, B. But then B has to be caused.
Well, who caused B? Well, that's going to be C. And you can go on like this.
B causes A, C causes B, D causes C. But at some point, you can't have an infinite series, says Aquinas.
Aquinas, because if you did, then how would things get started?
Nothing would ever come into existence in the first place.
So, there has to be Aquinas as an original cause.
In other words, this chain of events has got to, you may say, start somewhere.
And to this first cause, Aquinas goes, we give the name God.
Now, A lot of atheists in the 20th century and early 21st century have tried to refute this by saying, well, they can't deny causation, but they basically try to push the argument one step further, and they go, well, who caused God?
So this is, here we have Sam Harris, if God created the universe, what created God?
You find pretty much an echo of the same point in Dawkins, Hitchens, Carl Sagan, the physicist Steven Weinberg.
So what they're saying is that God himself, like the universe, would require some kind of causal explanation.
And Dawkins concludes that since the theists don't provide that explanation, quote, the theist answer has completely failed.
Now, let's look at this a little more closely, because the real force of Aquinas' argument is not that every series, you know, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, has to have some sort of beginning.
But what Aquinas is really saying is that every series, if it's going to have some sort of being or existence, depends on something that is outside the series.
It's not a rebuttal to say that because everything must have a cause...
Because Aquinas doesn't believe that everything must have a cause.
He's simply saying that everything in the universe, every material thing, is caused by something else.
So, he's saying that the movement and contingency of the world cannot be without some sort of ultimate explanation.
Now, remember, God is not part of the universe.
And if God is not part of the universe, he's not subject to the same laws of causation that operate inside the universe.
So, the rules of the series, including the rules of causation, apply to the universe, apply to all material things.
They don't apply to God.
Now, this seems a little strange and a little obscure.
Let me illustrate it by means of an analogy.
Think of God as an author of a novel.
Now, the events inside of a novel have a certain coherence and logic, right?
Something that occurs in the beginning of the story, causes a crisis for one of the characters, in the middle of the story.
So, you have Raskolnikov's actions in the crime and punishment.
They cause the death of an old woman.
Now, there are causal events in the novels.
Something brings about the death of this woman.
Some sort of detective work brings about the apprehension of Raskolnikov.
So, causality operates in a very normal way in the novel.
But now think about this. But Dostoevsky is the cause of the novel in a completely different way than anything that happens inside the novel.
So the rules of causation applying inside the novel don't apply to Dostoevsky.
He is the creator of the novel.
He is the creator of the causation itself.
That operates within the novel.
So it makes... You can't read Crime and Punishment and go, you know...
You can ask about different characters.
If a character shows up, well, where did he come from?
How do you account for him? But you can't apply those questions to Dostoyevsky.
Where did Dostoyevsky come from?
How do you account for him?
So the point is that the author is outside the narrative, and his act of creation cannot be understood as an episode inside the narrative.
So I think this is really the force of Aquinas' argument.
Aquinas' argument is that there is causation within the world and causation of the world, but once you turn to that causal force, namely God, the question, what caused God, makes really no sense.
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