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Trump gets nominated for Speaker of the House, a Democrat congressman takes the oath of office on a comic book, and scientists find no biological basis for “gender identity.”
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It has finally happened, the moment we have been waiting for in the House Speaker race.
No, Kevin McCarthy has not yet won.
No, we still do not have a speaker.
But finally, after days of anticipation, someone finally nominated Donald Trump.
McCarthy.
Gates.
Donald John Trump.
trunk Gallagher McCarthy.
Matt Gaetz, absolutely love it.
And frankly, Donald Trump would be a great House Speaker.
For this time in history, the only job of the House Speaker over the next two years, while Democrats hold the White House and the Senate, is to gum things up for Biden.
Nobody would do that with a greater aplomb than the Donald.
The anti-Trumpers would get him out of the 2024 presidential race, probably.
Maybe he'd just run for both.
The pro-Trumpers would get him two heartbeats away from the Oval Office.
And most important of all, we would get to watch him make snide remarks and funny faces at Joe Biden during the State of the Union.
Matt Gaetz, I am sold.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
Welcome back to the show.
My favorite comment yesterday is from Grip, who says, regarding the vote for speaker, see how hard it is to rig an election when there's no drop boxes and you verify the identity of everyone who's voting?
It's amazing.
It's so weird that there's a different set of rules when the congressmen want to vote than when we, the hoi polloi people, get to vote.
When the congressmen vote, there's definitely election security.
They know who's voting, that's for sure.
And they got the precise numbers and they keep doing it until they get it right.
With us, though, they don't really take those kinds of measures.
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Also, I should wish everybody a happy January 6th, a really, really wonderful day.
Obviously, it's wonderful every single year that we celebrate January 6th.
But just to imagine how glorious it must have been to be there at that blessed event, that day when wise men came from all over to worship their leader, the true leader of us all.
It's just so fitting and so right.
So I hope everybody is enjoying a blessed feast of the Epiphany, and I look forward to it next year.
Already, on this January 6th, this glorious blessed day, I am already looking forward to January 6th.
By the time that rolls around, we might still be voting for the Speaker of the House.
There is no evidence that this is going to be resolved anytime soon.
Don't forget, the establishment told us that this was all going to be over on the first ballot.
Kevin McCarthy was the anointed Speaker.
He was going to get it.
Some of the House Freedom Caucus people could throw a fuss about it, but it didn't matter.
Kevin McCarthy had the votes.
And then he didn't have the votes.
And in part, this is because the red wave that was supposed to take place in November was not quite so red, not quite so wavy as we thought it would be.
So all of a sudden, McCarthy needed the votes of those 20 members of the Freedom Caucus, and they were not so ready to give up their votes since the negotiations apparently broke down over the summer.
So if you want to hear more about the machinations behind all of this, I conducted an interview yesterday with my friend Lauren Boebert.
That's on YouTube.
It's on the RSS feed as well.
And obviously, of course, on Daily Wire Plus.
So now here we are.
First vote, McCarthy doesn't get it.
Second vote, he doesn't get it.
Third vote, doesn't get it.
They adjourn.
Next day.
One, two, three.
He doesn't get it.
They adjourn.
Next day.
Now we're on the 10th or 11th ballot.
They're going to be voting again today.
And people are pulling their hair out.
This is terrible.
It's the downfall of American democracy.
This is the fall of our sacred democracy.
Oh no.
It's amazing that they would say that on January 6th.
Amazing how history repeats itself.
And yet when you look at history, it's really not all that unusual.
1923, so 100 years ago, it took 9 ballots to elect a speaker.
1833, 90 years before that, it took 10 ballots.
1839 took 11 ballots.
1821, 12 ballots.
1819, 22 ballots.
1859, 44 ballots.
1849, 63 ballots to elect a Speaker.
And 1855, it took 133 ballots to elect a Speaker.
This has happened before.
It's okay.
It will be all right.
We will end up with a Speaker of the House.
House, it just might not be the anointed Speaker of the House that the establishment has rallied behind.
It might not be.
And you can make all the arguments in the world for why Kevin McCarthy deserves it and why Kevin McCarthy has labored in leadership for years and years and how Kevin McCarthy is much more conservative than John Boehner or whoever.
It's fine.
I'm not sure.
I'm not even disputing those things.
The job of the speaker, the job of someone in congressional leadership, is to lead.
The first test of that is, can you get enough votes to put yourself in office?
If you can't, then you're probably not up to that job.
Now, speaking of potential Speaker Donald John Trump, one consequence of this Speaker fight is it does suggest that Trump's Hold on the GOP is slipping a little bit because Trump has vocally supported Kevin McCarthy.
He has campaigned actively for him.
He has called the members of the Freedom Caucus who are the holdouts and begged them to switch their vote to McCarthy.
And it hasn't worked just yet.
So I'm not saying that that means that Donald Trump is not going to be the nominee in 2024.
I'm not saying that Donald Trump is not the most important Republican or the head of the party.
I'm just saying that kind of a situation would not have occurred in 2018.
In 2018, if Trump picks up the phone and tells you to do something, you're going to do it.
So it means that there is a lot more at play.
That the party is not just operating as a kind of deterministic machine where we the people have nothing to say about it.
And I think that's a pretty good thing.
If we're going to live in a democratic republic, then give it to me.
Don't give me a facade that seems like it's a republic, but actually it's just some corrupt kind of oligarchy.
Give me the real thing.
I want campaigning.
I want electioneering.
I want fighting on the floor of the House of Representatives.
I want congressmen yelling at one another and wheeling and dealing and smoking cigars in back rooms.
I want all of it.
I think there's a reason that you saw a lot of this in the 19th century.
There was a raucous Kind of democratic culture in the 19th century.
A little bit too raucous toward the middle of the 19th century.
But it was a real period of change within the parties and within the relationship of the people to their government.
And so, I'm all for it.
That's fine.
Give it to me.
If we're going to live under a democracy, I guess that's what we're going to have.
Now, speaking of the congressmen and Democrats, Democrat Representative Robert Garcia...
Whenever we get a Speaker of the House, plans to take the oath of office not on a Bible, but on a comic book.
Representative-elect Garcia has said that he is eschewing the Bible.
He's going to swear his oath of office on the Constitution, on his citizenship papers, on a picture of his dead parents, and on a Superman comic that he borrowed from the government.
Very childish, obviously, to take the oath of office on a comic.
It's embarrassing.
It's humiliating for our whole country, and certainly for this guy.
There's something deeper going on, though.
The shallow take on this is just, wow, this is an overgrown man-child.
What a joke.
Our Congress, we're living in clown world.
But there's something deeper going on because the purpose of swearing the oath of office is that you are swearing by that which you worship, that which you hold most sacred, that to which you feel most accountable.
The whole purpose of the Oath of Office, it's not just some empty ritual that we do because people used to do it in the old-timey days.
We do it because what you were saying is, I promise that I will work for the common good, I'll defend the Constitution, I won't be corrupt, I'll pursue good and avoid evil, and I'm swearing, by my God, may God.
God help me if I do not do that.
And so if you believe in God, if you believe that such a vow matters, you're more likely to keep your promises.
But for the modern lib types who don't believe in God, it's not just that then there is a void.
It's that you swear by other gods.
So the gods that he is swearing by here are the gods of the state, his citizenship papers, even the Constitution.
The fact that he would swear by that means that what he holds most dear, what he holds most sacred, is the state, his ancestors, and And a myth.
I won't even just call it a child's story, which Superman is, but a myth.
That is valuable.
There is great value in the state.
There's great value in your ancestors.
There's great value in myths.
But it's a sorry comparison to God.
And it's pagan, too, is the other thing.
In pagan societies, in godless societies, people swear by the state.
The state is held as the supreme thing.
Or one's ancestors.
People, when they give up God, they engage in a kind of ancestor worship.
Or myths.
You think of the old Greek and Roman myths, which are different from true religion, which worships the one true God in a way which is logical.
That's why we have theology.
The pagan myths do not have theology.
The The pagan myths are not identified with the logos.
actually see this going back all the way to the ancient Greek writers, distinguishing between the kind of story, the mythological stories of the gods and the true God, the truth, the logic, the first mover, the creator.
This is a natural consequence of a society that is giving up God and specifically giving up Christianity, which has animated our civilization and has allowed our civilization to become the greatest in the history of the world.
And as we give that up, expect a lot more confused people taking their oath of office on a comic book.
And I tell you, I don't want to put the good of my society, my future, my family, my state, my country, I'm willing to stake that on God.
I am not willing to stake that on a comic book.
I trust that God will see us through.
That's where I put my trust.
We write that on our money here.
In God, we trust.
That's our motto.
It's in the national anthem.
In Superman, I do not trust.
Now, when you want to put your faith in God, I strongly recommend you check out the Bible in a Year podcast.
Right now, go to ascensionpress.com slash Knowles.
If you're someone who has always wanted to read and understand the Bible, but you're not sure where to start, then check out the Bible in a Year podcast from Ascension.
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I'm on day 190, so it's probably going to be more like Bible in two years for me.
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Speaking of comic books...
I don't read comic books.
I don't go see the comic book movies, except when the Daily Wire forces me to.
I'm not a big fan.
However, I have to defend the comic books a little bit.
Because there's a new hubbub over DC Comics, in which apparently it's a Batman comic.
I used to really like Batman when I was a kid.
And in the Batman comic, the Joker, who is a man, becomes pregnant and gives birth to a mud monster.
Who transforms into a child version of the Joker and who he then adopts as his son.
Apparently, some other villain in the comic book pushes the Joker into a big pile of mud and the curse that this character puts on the Joker doesn't work and the Joker becomes pregnant.
And now some people are reacting and saying, this is DC Comics going woke.
This is pushing the transgender agenda in our comics, and this is terrible.
And I actually have no problem with this.
He's the Joker.
He's the bad guy.
It's okay, I think, in artistic depictions and certainly in mythological depictions, which is what the superhero stories are, I think it's okay when disordered experiences and desires and states of I think it's okay when disordered experiences and desires and states of being are represented in the I would not be so placid about it all if Batman became pregnant.
That would be pretty weird.
That would probably be pushing a woke thing.
But yeah, the Joker is a pretty disordered guy and it's pretty disordered for a guy to get pregnant.
I have no problem when Milton in Paradise Lost represents Satan as giving birth through his head to sin and death.
It's kind of trans, I guess, but not really.
It's a mythological depiction of something that's quite evil and quite disordered.
So, I... If the comic books want to portray transgenderism as just bizarre and wrong and evil and something the Joker does, okay, that's fine.
Something you should avoid.
Now, if the Joker becomes the hero, then I guess we have a problem.
Speaking of gender identity, there's a group of scientists that has just discovered that there is no biological basis for transgenderism.
Can you believe that these people get paid to do this?
Can you imagine how much these scientists got paid, the funding they had to conduct this study, to know what every three-year-old knows?
That's amazing.
But it's good that they're doing it because our culture is so crazy that it takes courageous scientists to go out and buck the politically correct norm.
But this is an international group of over 100 clinicians and researchers who have attested that there is no biological evidence for gender identity.
They've observed that no laboratory test can distinguish a trans-identified person from a non-trans-identified person.
What they write, quote, the assumption of the core biological underpinning for gender identity and gender dysphoria remains an unproven theory.
While biology likely plays a role in gender non-trans-identified Okay, I'm glad that they're debunking this idea.
That you'll sometimes hear this among the most eccentric and incoherent transgender activists.
They'll say, well, you know, the brain of a man who identifies as a woman, it's actually closer to a woman's brain.
Which is funny, because the libs for years told us there's no difference between the brains of men and women.
Do you remember that?
Do you remember in the days of feminism when we were told there absolutely no, the only differences between...
Boys and girls is a few secondary sex characteristics, but the brains are exactly the same.
How dare you say that women have different brains than men?
Until they wanted transgenderism, and they said, no, of course, the brains are totally different.
But there's never been any scientific evidence for that.
The reason that some transgender activists have made that argument...
It's because they're materialists.
And they're atheists.
And they don't believe in the soul.
And they don't believe in metaphysics.
And so they can't discuss these issues of anthropology in a sophisticated way.
The only thing they can talk about is just stuff and matter.
So they have to ground the soul, which is what they're really trying to talk about, in something physical.
And they know they can't ground it in the visible physical attributes of a person.
So they say, oh yeah, it's somewhere in the brain.
Somewhere in the brain that you can't see, that's where you find out that a boy is really a girl.
But that never made sense.
And the more serious and intellectual transgender activists will be more honest.
And what they will say is, there's a difference between sex and gender.
And sex is your physical state, and gender is your non-physical state.
So physically you could be a man, but metaphysically you're a woman.
And what they're really talking about there is the soul.
And these guys are a little more sophisticated and intellectual in the way that they're talking about it, but it still doesn't hold up because then you have to ask, okay, well, what is the relationship to the body and the soul?
And the relationship between the body and the soul is that the soul is the substantial form of the body, that the body is a symbol of the soul, and so the two are linked.
And the technical term for this is hylomorphism.
This is how Aristotle describes the relationship between form and matter, between the metaphysical stuff and the physical stuff.
And very quickly, not to go down a long discourse on ancient Greek philosophy, but very quickly, this conversation goes over the heads of the transgender promoters.
Because they want to talk about the soul when it gives them some way of justifying their absurd idea that a man can really be a woman.
But they don't want to go so far as to have a serious conversation about the soul.
They're not capable of doing that.
Because when you do that, when you raise this possibility that the soul is entirely different from the body, that the soul can be in total opposition to the body, their argument, I think at that point, falls apart.
But then it especially falls apart because if you're saying, okay, these two things are entirely distinct, and you want to bring them into conformity with one another, well, then that raises the obvious question, okay, if my soul is one thing and my body is this other thing, why do I have to change my body?
Why can't I just change my soul?
Why can't I just change my mind?
Is really the question that comes up.
If I look like a man, but my mind tells me that I'm a woman, well, just change my mind.
I change my mind about things all the time.
I say, hey, I want sushi for lunch.
And then my buddy says, hey, actually, I want to get burritos.
I say, okay, let's get burritos.
There we go.
I just change my mind.
It's very easy to change your mind.
It's very hard to change your body.
It requires extremely painful surgeries, extremely expensive surgeries, sterilizing yourself, grafting off your skin from your legs and your arms to create this grotesque caricature of genitalia.
Why don't you just change your mind?
All of that falls apart.
All of which to say, getting back to the scientific document, debunking the biological basis for gender identity, yeah, obviously that's true.
Obviously there's no biological basis for these sexual delusions of boys who think they're girls.
It's important to establish that.
But it doesn't answer the question.
The question of transgenderism is not, is it physical?
The question of transgenderism is, is it real?
Yes, I know gender identity is not in your brain somewhere, it's not in your hands, it's not, yes, but not every real thing is physical.
Love, language, geometry, most things that we hold dear are not physical, but they are nonetheless real.
So I think conservatives have fallen into this trap, too, and I suspect a lot of these scientists are relatively conservative compared to the culture, and they want to ground everything following the Enlightenment and following the scientific revolution and following modern liberalism.
They want to ground every single thing in something physical and say, well, if it's not physical, if I can't see it under a microscope, then it's not real.
Okay, I guess that will help you make certain calculations about certain physical phenomena, but most of the stuff that we care about in the world is not physical.
We all behave every moment of every day as if we believe that there is more to the world than just the physical world.
So then we have to ask ourselves, okay, what is the nature of the metaphysical world?
And is there such a thing as gender identity there?
Is the soul totally distinct from the body?
What religion are we living under?
Okay, and because we, for most of our country's history, we took those questions seriously and came to relatively reasonable conclusions about that, namely various interpretations of Christianity, some far more precise, some a little less precise, but that was what animated our country.
That's what our founding fathers said.
That's what the men who developed not only our country, but our civilization said.
Okay, I get that.
That gives me a grounding of who we are and what we're all doing here together.
As that has fallen apart because of our ignorance and sin and vice, as that has fallen apart, now we're very, very confused.
And men are chopping off their genitals, and equally confused men are taking the oath of office in the U.S. Congress on a comic book.
Not great.
We've got to turn it around, or else this country's going to die.
And one thing I can tell you is we all individually will die someday.
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Speaking of our advertisers, and speaking of getting back to Christianity, Bible in a Year, which you've heard me mention on this show many times, heard me mention today, Bible in a Year remains one of the top podcasts in the country.
Bible in a Year right now is the number three podcast in the country, according to the charts.
Do you know what the number two podcast is?
The Bible Recap, which is another Bible podcast, this one put out by D Group.
Do you know what the number one podcast in the country is?
Catechism in a Year, also with Father Mike Schmitz, who does Bible in a Year.
This one Catholic priest is the host of two of the three most popular podcasts in the country.
One of which is on the Bible, one of which is on the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
And then the podcast that's wedged right in the middle of those two is the top three is also a Bible podcast.
This is great news.
I know there's all terrible news in the culture and in the politics.
This is great news.
What that tells me is not that our country is totally fine right now.
Not that actually we're still a serious Christian country that has our act together.
It doesn't tell me that.
But it tells me that there is a longing in the country to return to that which is true and good and beautiful.
There is a longing.
We're not there right now.
If we lived in a country that had its act together, spiritually, personally, politically, I suspect that Bible in a Year and Catechism in a Year probably wouldn't be the top three podcasts.
I suspect you might have some religion shows as the top podcast.
It might be Father Mike Schmitz, but they would be more advanced.
They would be on the lives of the saints.
They would be on the doctors of the church.
They would be on more technical aspects of the faith, I think, probably.
Because we would all know our Bible really, really well.
We would all know the catechism really, really well.
The Bible in a Year podcast is edifying for people who have been in the church their whole lives, but it's also totally acceptable to people who are just questioning, who don't even know what they believe.
Catechism in a year is that primer.
Okay, what does it mean to be in the church?
What does the church say?
What has the church taught for 2,000 years?
It's totally open and accessible and can be very basic for people, which is a wonderful thing, because it's people who have been raised basically without religion who recognize, wow, Something has gone horribly wrong here.
Whatever, I don't know what it was, but something broke in the last 70 years.
And I want to get back to that thing that we lost.
That's absolutely great news.
Speaking of enduring things, the oldest woman that had been living in America just died.
She died at the age of 115, and according to nurses, her final words were...
I have information that will lead to the arrest of Hillary Clinton.
It's true.
No, that part's not true.
But the oldest woman, the oldest living woman in America, did die, 115 years old.
And her actual last words were not, I hope were not about Hillary Clinton.
I don't know.
Her actual last words, though, it seems, were about hard work.
In the later years, not her very final breath that she uttered, but in the final years of her life, people kept asking her.
How did you live so long?
And she kept coming back to this answer, hard work and the love of my family and good genes and all of this, but working hard.
And this is really, really important for us to remember because a lot of people in our modern culture believe that the reason that we go to work is so that we can have the weekends.
For your career, the reason that you go trudge along all day at your job, that maybe you like it, but maybe, probably more likely, you don't like your job all that much.
The reason that you do it is because you have to do it to make a little bit of money so you can get to the weekend, and then you can watch some TV, and you can chill out and eat some potato chips, and then you've got to go to work again on Monday.
And we're going to do that for 50 years, and then maybe if we're lucky, we get to quit our jobs and sit on the couch and eat potato chips until we die.
And that view, we're all tempted by it at different times, but that view is not in accordance with our nature.
We are made to work.
Ever since Adam took that fateful bite, humanity has been kicked out of the Garden of Eden, and by the sweat of our brow will we earn our food.
And it is good.
Some people in my family and friends have done just fine in retirement.
More often than not, people go crazy in retirement, and there are statistics on this that people very often will die shortly after they retire because they lose a sense of meaning and purpose.
We are meant to work.
And there's even a strange phenomenon that I have even noticed in the new year, which is that in the lead up to the holidays, people usually slack off a little bit.
People stop showing up to work as much.
You kind of slow down.
Okay, we'll get started again.
And then you hit the ground running at the beginning of January.
And what's weird is, I have found, during the periods in my life where I'm slacking off a little bit, I'm far less energetic.
Maybe I'm sleeping more, maybe I'm relaxing more, but I have lower energy than when I'm working hard and not sleeping that much and I've got a thousand things that I've got to do.
We are meant to work.
Take that advice from the oldest woman in America.
I'm not saying you've got to just put all your efforts to trudging away in the widget factory or something.
Far from that.
But you're working for your boss to make your paycheck and you're working for your family.
And then you're working for God.
There's a reason that there is that old maxim that we all know is true in our lives.
Idle hands are the devil's playground.
Do not be idle.
People write in all the time about vices that they have.
They'll say, oh, I've been an alcoholic.
The main one that people write in about is porn or the hookup culture because sex is so central to our nature.
They'll say, oh, I'm addicted to drugs or I'm addicted to social media or, oh, I'm addicted to that.
What's the common thread here?
The common thread to all of those things is that you do them when you're not doing anything else.
That's when we just sit around and doom scroll.
So you've got to work.
And it's a new year, and people make all sorts of resolutions that they immediately break.
But when you look ahead to the year, you have to ask yourself, what are we doing?
What are we going to do?
Frankly, I see this reflected in the leadership fight.
As I've said, I'm not a member of Congress.
As far as political battles go, this one is not super high up on my list.
I think leadership fights really are just for the members to decide, and they involve a lot more than political issues.
But I like seeing this fight.
I am glad that the Republicans are not just sleepwalking idly into, well, this is what we're told we're going to do, and we don't really have any say over it anyway, and so we're just going to keep on doing the same old thing.
Okay, I'm going to go do my TV show hit, and then I'm going to go back and fundraise, and okay, whatever.
No, I want to see my representatives engaged in real fights, getting real concessions out of one another, talking about real issues.
That is not a bug of our system.
That is a feature.
Last year, Jordan Peterson joined Daily Wire Plus.
He has been putting the rest of us to shame with his output.
You want to talk about energy, that guy is like the Energizer bunny.
Seems like every day there's something new from Jordan, and it is very high quality too.
Specials such as Logos and Literacy, a special on marriage, and brand new episodes of the biblical series Exodus.
As I am speaking, Jordan right now is probably recording something new for us, If you want to see it, you have got to become a member because you will only find it on Daily Wire Plus.
So head on over to dailywire.com slash Knowles to become a member and watch all of this and more.
That is dailywire.com slash Knowles today.
Finally, finally, we have arrived for the first time in the new year at my absolute favorite day of the week.
That would be mailbag day.
Let's take it away with the voice mailbag.
Hello there, soon-to-be Speaker of the House Michael Knowles.
I listen to your show pretty much every single day of my life, and I hardly ever disagree with you.
But the other day you brought up New York's new burial composting law, and you said that it's a degradation, that it's disrespectful to the dead, that we absolutely shouldn't do it.
But as a conservative guy myself, I've always thought that that's the right thing to do.
I've always wondered why do we pump bodies full of formaldehyde?
Why do we screw their jaws shut?
Why do we bury people in concrete tombs to preserve them forever?
It just doesn't make any sense to me.
It seems that the natural thing that God desired was for...
Us to return our bodies back to the earth, to give back to his creation so that future generations can have the nutrients the earth needs.
So where's the disconnect here?
Thanks.
The question I would ask you, first of all, thank you, not only for listening to the show, but for your clear wisdom on who the next Speaker of the House should be.
Not that I would ever want it.
I've never sought that office.
I would only accept it if the Congressman elected me to it.
The question you have to ask yourself on the composting is, why do you believe that God intended for us to be thrown into the garden and have tomatoes grow out of us?
You said, it seems to me that God just wanted this to happen.
Why do you believe that?
Is there a scriptural basis for why you believe that?
Probably not.
Is there a basis in the tradition of the church that would have you believe that?
Certainly not.
Why do you believe that?
Maybe you believe it because God says, remember man that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return.
Yeah, that's certainly true.
But that's true whether you're put in a coffin or whether you're thrown to the dogs in the garden or chopped up like mulch.
You will return to dust.
That's just a fact of the physical world.
The question is, how do we treat dead bodies?
Do we treat them as the remains of dead?
People made in the image and likeness of God, and beloved family members, and with some reverence, with some respect, or do we treat them like fertilizer?
The composting law chooses the latter category.
The composting law is based on an anthropology that denies the soul, I think.
That at least implicitly denies the soul.
It's based on a theology that is not Christian, at the very least, I think we would say.
There have been other religions in history that throw people to the dogs.
Sorastrianism would throw people to vultures or to the dogs.
But that's not our view.
That's a different religious view.
And so...
I don't think that you need to embalm the dead.
I don't think you need to pump them full of formaldehyde or put them in special makeup or build a giant mausoleum for them.
But I do think that we need to treat dead bodies with respect and reverence.
And we shouldn't just intentionally accelerate the process of them turning into tomatoes so that we can eat them in some bizarre pagan ritual like cannibal indigenous people do, where they'll eat a piece of their relatives or something.
That would be disordered and disrespectful, I think.
And likewise, I don't think that we should burn our dead either.
It's certainly less egregious an offense than composting them.
But I also think it's quite pagan to burn the dead.
I think it makes a mockery of the idea of the resurrection of the body.
Next question.
Hi, Michael Arun here.
You recently explained objective reality as not being the only aspect of reality.
For example, you explained that the Sun may be the center of the solar system for the purpose of calculation, but in a very real sense, the Earth is really the center of the solar system.
Now, I like this idea, and I agree that we may give a bit too much primacy to the idea of objective reality as opposed to, I guess, metaphysical reality.
But what do we do about the truth claims that are made by various religions?
Just to use an example from your faith, St.
Paul says that...
Jesus is risen from the dead in a real sense, and if he is not, then your faith is in vain.
So my question for you is, do you believe that Jesus is risen from the dead in the same sense that the sun is the center of the solar system or in the same sense that the earth is the center?
I think this will help me to much better understand this distinction between objective reality and metaphysical reality.
Thank you, as always, for your wisdom.
Arun, continuing to prove yourself one of my absolute favorite members of the Michael Knowles show.
And a really, really intelligent question.
Not that we would expect anything less.
A little bit of a correction here, though.
I think you're falling into the language trap that I'm trying to avoid, which is conflating scientific reality or physical observation with objective reality.
And I think certain things can be objectively perceived in physical reality, but certain things are also objectively true metaphysically.
So I wouldn't say that the physical world, that's the objective reality, and the metaphysical world is subjective.
That's actually the thing that I'm arguing against.
But the rest of your question, I think, acknowledges that fact.
So the point, as you summarized it, is...
Yeah, it's true.
When I look up and I make some calculations and I make some scientific experiments about the physical world, I can discover that the Earth revolves around the Sun.
So that means the Earth is not at the center of the solar system or at the center of the universe.
But, metaphysically speaking, because man is the meeting of the physical body with the rational soul, man is, in a deeper sense, the center of the cosmos.
So which is it?
Is man the center of the universe or not?
Well, because metaphysical reality is more fundamental than physical reality, physical reality is contingent on metaphysical reality.
That's why it's metaphysical.
It's beyond physics.
I think it is truer and more profound to say that man is the center of the universe.
But for the purposes of making certain physical calculations, I think it's fair enough to say that the Earth revolves around the Sun.
Now you ask about...
My religion.
What about the resurrection of Christ?
Is that metaphysically true in some sense?
Is it kind of a really nice metaphor, but it didn't actually physically happen?
Or did it physically happen?
It's not a metaphor, but it physically happened.
In the person of Christ, you see uniquely the perfect meeting of the physical and the metaphysical.
They are both true simultaneously in Christ.
Christ is fully man and fully God.
He Metaphorically feeds 5,000 people with just a few loaves of bread.
He also literally fed 5,000 people with just loaves of bread.
He metaphorically turns the water of ritual into the wine of celebration and marriage.
He also literally did that.
He metaphorically saves us.
Metaphorically rises from the dead and is resurrected.
That also physically happened.
In Christ, it has to be the perfect meeting.
Earlier on in the show, I talked about the silliness of taking the Oath of Office on a Superman comic and pointed out that this is kind of a pagan practice.
That the pagan myths are just myths.
What distinguishes the pagan myths from the Christian story?
Even according to the self-understanding of the pagans, in most cases.
The myths are metaphorical.
Christianity is the true myth.
The myths partake of literary genres such as poetry or myth, I guess, or fable.
Christianity, the gospels, are journalism.
Along with all the other genres, too, but it's journalism.
This man...
At this time, did these miraculous things and these other physical men who were born in bodies and dates and times and real place actually saw them happen?
And there were 500 eyewitnesses to the resurrection and there were 12 apostles and they went all around the world and they spread this thing that actually happened.
In Christ and in the sacraments that he institutes, we see this perfect meeting of the physical and the metaphysical.
Next question.
Greetings to you, Nostradamus from the Rio Grande Valley.
Often you discuss how men ought to be men, how we should be leaders for our families, and that as men of faith and good character, we should exercise, with discretion, executive authority in our relationship or marriage.
Where, if any, have you made concessions with your wife, and why?
Also, do you have tattoos?
Thanks.
Love the show.
I only have tattoos when I'm playing guitar at the Ryman.
That's when I have tattoos.
The rest of the time I do not have tattoos.
How does that work?
Well, it's a profound physical and metaphysical conundrum, which I'm sure we can explore at some other time.
In terms of making concessions to your wife, of course, we all make concessions to our wife.
I've certainly done that.
And when I think of my day-to-day life, sweet little Elisa makes most of the decisions.
Ultimately, I guess I'm the decider, to quote George W. Bush.
But practically speaking...
Elisa makes most of these decisions.
What are we going to have for dinner?
Where are we going this weekend?
What are the kids wearing?
What am I wearing, frankly?
She makes most of those decisions.
But because the husband is the head of household and man is the head of wife, husband is the head of a wife as Christ is the head of the church, there is this leadership role within a marriage.
So what does that look like in practice?
One decision where Elisa and I did not totally see eye to eye, and I just delegated it to Elisa because why not, was our bedroom furniture.
Our bedroom furniture is a little more modern than I like.
It's still pretty trad, but Elisa, look, she spends more time than I do in the bedroom.
She doesn't spend most of her time in the bedroom, but she spends more time than I do because she's there with the babies and she's in the home.
That's okay.
She has a vision for how the bedroom's going to look.
Okay, that's fine.
The rest of the house where I spend more time, I had a little bit more to say about those things.
But beyond these little disputes that are inevitably going to arise in any marriage because two people are different, I think the more important thing is that not only do you have to You get this room and I get this room and you got this dinner and now we're going to this place.
You want to mold your wills to be in accord with one another.
It's not merely that you need to come to some kind of contractual conclusion about the particular things you're going to do.
Marriage is also about transforming the will.
So that your desires are actually ever closer to one another.
I mean, that is how you become one flesh, more and more so over time.
And this is also, by the way, to get back to the analogy that marriage is.
Marriage is a symbol of the relationship between Christ and his church.
You, broadly, you and your wife, in your marriage, in your whole church, want evermore to conform your will to God's will.
So it's not just that you're going to do the things that God tells you to do grudgingly, but you actually want to cultivate the desire to do what God wants you to do.
And you want to tamp down the desire to do things that are contrary to God's will.
I mean, this is...
Of all the beautiful images in Dante's comedy, in the Divine Comedy, this to me is the most profound and enduring and transformative, which is that you're actually turning your will toward God, whose will is the love that moves the sun and the other stars.
Next question.
Hey Swarthy Mike, it's Damaris from Arizona, and I have a dating slash relationship question for you.
I am a young college age girl.
I'm very religious and I don't hide that or make a point to hide it.
I tend to be very modest in my dress and my behavior and my thinking and in my speech.
And by all of today's standards, it would seem that I would be considered outdated and obscure.
With that in mind, I know you get a lot of questions about what girls look for in guys, but I really like your perspective on what does a guy look or find most attractive in a woman, and maybe more specifically a religious woman.
I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Thank you so much for all you do.
Thank you for the show, and proud to be a creme de la creme for the rest of my life.
Wonderful to hear from you.
Thank you for writing in.
I'm glad you specified at the end what does a guy look for in a religious girl.
Because when you say, what does a guy look for in a girl?
I think you've got to be a little more specific.
You've got to be more specific about the guy, his perspective, time of life.
What's he looking for exactly?
What's he looking for in a girl like you, Damaris?
I think what one would look for is a serious woman.
You should be fun.
You should make yourself look pretty, as one does.
You should do all of the kind of normal things that go along with dating.
But one thing that I always found to be a real turn-off with women, and I continue to find to be a turn-off with women, even though I'm not on the market anymore, I still chat with plenty of women and The one thing that I just think, oh, get this lady away from me, is when women play a lot of games.
You know, when they're all sort of just trying to play these little frivolous sort of games.
I find that in just my daily life very off-putting, and certainly in my dating life when I was single, I found this very, very off-putting.
And the thing, there are many things that I love about Sweet Little Elisa, but one of them in particular is Sweet Little Elisa.
She's a serious girl, okay?
She's one of, if not the funniest woman I have ever met.
Which I do find important, actually.
And...
One of, if not the most perceptive women that I've ever met.
But she takes herself seriously.
She isn't blown away on fads and games and passions.
I find that to be really, really important.
And when you look at depictions of love, particularly from the courtly love tradition where...
When we think about the literary tradition of love, this is really where we take it from, Middle Ages.
That is what these women are like.
I mean, these women are serious women.
I just mentioned Dante.
When you look at Dante's great love, Beatrice, Beatrice is a serious woman, okay, who is beautiful and graceful and feminine and all of these things.
And also, when Dante steps out of line, she kind of gives him a look.
You know, when Dante starts crying at the end of purgatory, because he's about to lose his buddy Virgil, his guide throughout hell and purgatory, she goes, hey, non piangere ancora, non piangere ancora.
Stop crying.
We gotta go.
We gotta go up to heaven.
We gotta go to God.
That's something to look for.
Just be Beatrice.
Is that so hard?
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