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Feb. 5, 2019 - The Matt Walsh Show

39:27

Ep. 191 - Media Suddenly Won't Report Unsubstantiated Rape Allegations

On the show today, the media had no problem running with uncorroborated allegations against Kavanaugh. But when Justin Fairfax, a Democrat, is accused, suddenly they get cautious. This is why conservatives hate the media. Also, I’ll answer an email from someone wanting to know how to respond to claims that Jesus never existed. Date: 02-05-2019 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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	Today on the Matt Wall Show, Justin Fairfax, the Lieutenant Governor of Virginia, is accused of sexual assault.
	The media didn't want to run with this story.
	They said it's not corroborated, so we're not going to run with it.
	But wait, they did run with the Kavanaugh story, even though the Kavanaugh allegations were far less credible than the allegations against Fairfax.
	So we'll try to sort through this, talk about that today.
	Also, I'll answer your emails, including a really interesting email from someone who wants to know how to respond to claims that Jesus never existed.
	So we'll talk about that today as well on the Matt Walsh Show.
	Thanks for being here.
	Thank you for listening.
	Justin Fairfax, Lieutenant Governor of Virginia, as you've heard, has been accused of sexual assault.
	The accusation comes in the midst of all the Ralph Northam stuff and the governor in the midst of his, you know, people calling for him to resign because of his sordid history of blackface and moonwalking.
	When really, he should just resign because he supports killing babies after they've been born.
	Now, personally, I don't think it's a coincidence that all of this,
	I don't think it's a coincidence, first of all, that the Northam stuff came out,
	with the blackface stuff and the yearbook, all of that, that came out only days after Northam had committed
	the cardinal sin of embarrassing the pro-abortion position, embarrassing it by actually being honest about it
	and taking it to its logical conclusion.
	So he committed that sin.
	That's not gonna go unpunished if you're a Democrat.
	I don't think it's a coincidence.
	And then, of course, it's obviously not a coincidence that as Fairfax is on the eve of potentially being elevated
	to this position, that this comes out about him.
	So it would seem like Democrats maybe leaked the stuff about Northam in order to get Fairfax in there,
	then Northam leaked the stuff about Fairfax in order to keep himself in there.
	And then so it's just, I don't know, you know, I don't know, but it's just, it's a mess all around.
	So what are the allegations against Justin Fairfax?
	basically the accuser.
	says that she was forced to perform sex acts on Fairfax at a hotel during the 2004 Democratic Convention.
	She apparently went into his room, they started kissing, and then she was forced to perform the act.
	That's what she claims, right?
	Allegedly.
	It's worth noting that the Washington Post was told about these allegations a year ago and decided not to run with the story because it's uncorroborated.
	Hmm.
	Now, as for Fairfax, he forcefully denies it.
	He even, I would say, angrily denies it.
	I mean, he's angry in his denials of this of this charge, which really raises questions about temperament.
	I mean, you have to ask, is he fit to be governor with a temperament like that?
	A guy who would get angry at rape allegations if he didn't do them.
	That's just, well, we can't have that, right?
	That's scary.
	That's weird.
	And of course, that's the inevitable comparison here to Brett Kavanaugh.
	I mean, I'm being Now obviously I think it makes sense.
	If you are innocent of a rape accusation, it makes a lot of sense to be angry about it.
	So I think actually anger and emotion, that makes me even more convinced of your innocence, because that's how a regular guy who is innocent would actually respond.
	But that's not what the left said about Brett Kavanaugh, is it?
	And remember, the Post had no problem running uncorroborated claims about Brett Kavanaugh.
	No media outlet had a problem with that.
	Yet with Fairfax, they suddenly have this great caution.
	They suddenly are, oh, we can't do that, it's uncorroborated.
	What the Post said is that they looked into it, they tried to find other witnesses and people that could back up the story, and they couldn't find that, so they didn't run it.
	Well, they couldn't find it with Brett Kavanaugh either.
	In fact, it's worse than that.
	Not only could they not find corroborating witnesses for Brett Kavanaugh's accuser, but they actually found witnesses who were more on Brett Kavanaugh's side, who actively denied ever seeing this happen or being in the same room as these people.
	So they actually found witnesses that actively contradicted Christine Ford's claims, yet they ran with that anyway.
	But not only was the media uninterested in these allegations against Fairfax a year ago, they still are uninterested.
	The media has already tried to move on.
	I went to CNN's homepage this morning and, I don't know, as of this morning on CNN's homepage, there was not a single word about Justin Fairfax on the entire homepage.
	And we're talking about dozens and dozens and dozens of stories get crammed onto a homepage, on CNN's homepage, and they couldn't find room for this story at all.
	Which is insane, of course, because this is a big story.
	This is a big, meaty, twisted, kind of weird political story.
	This is the definition of news, and it's happening in Virginia, in the media's own backyard.
	Yet they've already tried to move on from it.
	How long did it take them to move on from Kavanaugh?
	They were talking about that for weeks, but for Fairfax, a day later, they're already done with it.
	How do these allegations, because now that we're in the middle of this comparison, how do these allegations stack up against Kavanaugh?
	Well, let's think about it for a minute.
	Christine Ford didn't know the year or the location of her alleged assault, and she waited 30 years to tell anybody.
	Um, this accuser waited only 13 years and she knows the exact date, time and location.
	And on top of that, Fairfax, I believe, admits that he knew the woman that even they had a sexual encounter.
	Um, only he says that it was consensual.
	Whereas in Ford's case, Kavanaugh denies even really knowing her, being around her, and they couldn't find anyone that could even corroborate that they'd been in the same room together.
	So, you see, that's the problem here.
	That it's very clear that the allegations against Fairfax are certainly more credible than the allegations against Justice Kavanaugh.
	On every level.
	When you do a point-by-point comparison, there is not even one single point where it would seem like Ford's story is more credible than the story that Fairfax accuser is giving us.
	Now, all things being equal, I would have no problem with the Washington Post Passing on Justin Fairfax's story.
	Passing on the story of his accuser.
	I would have no problem with them passing on that.
	In fact, again, all things being equal, that would be the right thing to do.
	That would be the responsible thing to do.
	Because even though these allegations are certainly more credible than the allegations against Kavanaugh, they still are uncorroborated.
	She has no witnesses.
	She has no evidence to provide, apparently.
	At least none that she's come forward with yet.
	So, It's only one accused.
	I mean, how could you run with this?
	So it's the responsible and right thing to do to say, no, we're not going to do anything with that.
	The problem, though, is that, of course, they don't pass on similar stories about Republicans.
	So their decision not to run with the Fairfax thing, that wasn't them being responsible or them being cautious or them trying, you know, it wasn't that at all.
	It wasn't journalistic standards.
	No, it was just, this is the wrong political party.
	The media wields sexual assault allegations as weapons against their ideological opponents, which is so despicable that it is almost beyond description.
	You know, I'll sometimes talk to people, people who are more on the left end of the spectrum, and people who still don't really understand why conservatives hate the media so much.
	And they think of it as kind of this silly thing, that we're always complaining about the media.
	And they think that we're kind of fabricating this conspiracy.
	We're all a bunch of paranoid lunatics who have this conspiracy theory that the media is out to get us.
	They really just don't get it.
	Well, if that's the case for you and you're watching this, And you want to understand why conservatives hate the media so much?
	Well, this is the reason right here, okay?
	Just compare the way Justice Kavanaugh's accuser was treated, and the way those allegations were treated, and the way that they were amplified, and then compare that to more credible allegations against Fairfax, but the way that those are treated, and rather than amplified, buried.
	Just look at that.
	And then tell me, I mean, can you honestly tell me that there is not political bias at play here?
	What other explanation could you come up with other than that?
	All right, one other thing I wanted to mention in this realm related to the Virginia mess.
	Yesterday I said that I don't think Northam should resign because he wore blackface 30 years ago.
	I don't think he should resign for that reason.
	I think he should resign because he advocated infanticide last week.
	That's the reason I think he should resign.
	I heard from several people who kind of took issue with that, and they accused me of downplaying the blackface thing, or even justifying it.
	I was accused of justifying blackface, which of course is not what I said.
	My point simply is that, once again, all things being equal, I would not support the political destruction of a guy over insensitive behavior from his college days decades ago.
	Now, it is very bad to wear blackface, of course.
	And he was old enough to know better.
	And the incident was recent enough.
	It's not like this happened 70 years ago.
	I mean, this was in, what, the 80s?
	So that was recent enough that the whole, well, it was a different time excuse doesn't hold up as well.
	I mean, it was a different time, but it was still the 80s, and everybody knew in the 80s that you weren't supposed to wear blackface.
	So that's all true.
	But I still think that a man can do stupid, offensive, inappropriate things, even racist things, when he's young, and then he can grow and change, and he can become a decent, respectable adult.
	We have to allow, as a country, we have to allow people to grow.
	We have to allow them to change, especially over... Now, it's one thing if someone does something horrible yesterday, and then the next day they're claiming that they've undergone some sort of Some sort of epiphany or whatever.
	People don't change that quickly.
	So that's true.
	You know, you have to understand human nature.
	But people do change over the course of 30 years.
	And it's very common for a guy in his 50s to be completely different.
	To be almost a different person entirely from the person that he was in his early 20s.
	Or even for someone in their early 30s to be totally different from how they were in their early 20s.
	It's a very common thing.
	People grow.
	And sometimes it can be pretty sudden and happen pretty, not overnight, but oftentimes you just look at the difference between someone who's, say, 28 versus someone who's 23.
	It's only a five-year difference.
	But it could really be night and day.
	And so we have to allow that.
	We can't always be forcing a person's younger self on their older self.
	And trying to put them in this box.
	Keep them contained in the box that they built when they were young and never allow them to break out of it.
	The difference though with Northam is that we know that he never grew into a decent and respectable adult.
	Now, perhaps he stopped moonwalking with shoe polish on his face, although, who knows?
	But he has since graduated to much worse offenses, and now he's out there advocating for killing babies.
	So, in his case, we know that he didn't grow that much, at least not morally, if he's advocating infanticide.
	But I do think it's an important point, generally, for the next time something like this happens.
	Because the truth is, even though he's a Democrat, if it weren't for the infanticide thing, Even though he was a Democrat, if this thing had come out about the blackface, I would be saying, no, I don't think you should resign over that.
	Now, if you can prove to me that he was wearing blackface yesterday, then we have a different story.
	But if it's apparent that it happened back 30 years ago, hasn't happened since, then he's just changed it.
	He changed it, let him apologize, let him repudiate his past, and then move on.
	But again, it's different in this case because of the infanticide issue.
	But I do feel the need to stipulate that when I call for him to resign, and I do call for him to resign, not that it matters what I say, but it's because of the infanticide thing.
	And that's what I think we should all be focused on.
	Speaking of infanticide, let me see if I can pull this up really quick here.
	Daily Wire, story, on Monday, Senator Patty Murray, blocking a Senate
	bill that would require doctors to give aid to babies who
	survived abortions, objected to the Born Alive Abortion Survivors
	Protection Act, and her one vote was enough to prevent the Senate
	from passing the bill in a unanimous consent vote. So we don't need to dwell on that because we know this is where
	the Democrat Party is. But this is just to highlight the fact
	that this is where, this is what the Democrat Party has become.
	Thank you.
	That you can't even, this was a bill that was, it wasn't an anti-abortion bill, this was just, if a baby is born alive, you have to give it basic medical care, that's all.
	It's really got nothing to do with abortion.
	But even that couldn't get past the Democrat Party, which is just terribly despicable.
	All right, I want to get to the inbox now and check a couple of emails.
	Actually, I'm going to answer two emails, both theological, or one theological and one more historical, I guess.
	But they're really interesting questions, and I want to leave myself time to really get into them, so we'll do that now.
	If you want to send an email to the inbox, mattwalshow at gmail.com, mattwalshow at gmail.com.
	All right, this is from Maddie.
	She says, Matt, I really appreciate your show.
	Thanks for what you do.
	I had a sort of random question that maybe you won't feel like answering on your show.
	I was recently talking to a Calvinist friend of mine who claimed that some babies who die end up going to hell.
	She said that the Bible backs her up.
	As someone who has had miscarriages, this was very upsetting to hear.
	I then went and researched it and found that she's definitely not the only Christian who thinks this.
	Apparently, even some of the great theologians in history have taught this.
	I find the idea very hard to stomach.
	What is your take?
	Well, first of all, I have also encountered this idea, and Maddie, I hope you don't mind, I mentioned your email on Twitter last night, not by name, but just that someone had brought this subject up.
	And what I found is that now, you know, this is just kind of anecdotal, but most of the people responding on Twitter were definitely against this idea.
	But there were certainly a few, maybe more than a few, who also feel the same way.
	Not only believe that babies could be sent to hell, but seem to be somewhat attached to the idea.
	They insist on it.
	Insist that we must at least be open to the idea that this could happen.
	Which is very strange to me, that somebody would not only believe it, but insist upon it, passionately.
	Now, also, this is not exclusive to Calvinists, and I think that most Calvinists probably reject it.
	I think most members of any denomination or branch or type of Christianity reject this idea, but there are people, as I said, Christians of all stripes who do feel this way, or who think that babies might not go to hell per se, but are denied entrance into heaven.
	And so, essentially, they enter into some sort of cosmic solitary confinement for all eternity, which is the same thing as hell.
	That's as much a hell as hell.
	So, you know, this effort to find an in-between spot for all eternity, where the babies will just linger there forever, Separated from God.
	Well, that's the same thing as them going to hell.
	Here's what I'll say.
	I absolutely reject this notion.
	And I think that you should too.
	And I think everyone should.
	And I think you're perfectly safe in rejecting it.
	And not taking it seriously.
	I find it to be repulsive, insane, incoherent.
	I don't care what theologian taught it.
	I don't care that St.
	Augustine held this view.
	St.
	Augustine was very brilliant, a lot smarter than me.
	But I think he was horribly wrong about this.
	When people start name-dropping theologians, okay, well, they can be wrong, right?
	They're fallible.
	They're not right about everything.
	And this was an idea that was, you know, gained popularity, I guess we could say, if we call it that, in the Middle Ages, and has since fallen out of favor.
	So I would look at it more as just a kind of trend of thought in the Middle Ages, and that's all.
	We don't have to lend it any more credence than that.
	Now, it's true that the reason why there are some Christians who say, well, I don't think that God would do that, but I'm open to the idea that maybe He does.
	And the reason why Christians say that is because the Bible doesn't explicitly address this question.
	And that's true, the Bible does not.
	It doesn't explicitly answer.
	Now, there are a few verses you could cite and go to to talk about God's approach to babies and all of that kind of thing, and that's fine, but I also feel like I'm not going to start throwing verses at you, because verses can be thrown back and forth.
	And when you have an issue like this where the Bible doesn't explicitly answer it, then you end up with this quote-mining, this kind of cherry-picking, proof-texting thing where people are just ripping verses out of context here and there and throwing them back and forth like a food fight.
	And I think it's totally fruitless and it leads to nothing in the end.
	So I think with a question like this, rather than proof-texting and ripping out quotes and just throwing them and saying, there, you see?
	Um, I think we can use our faculties of reason, actually, to figure it out.
	Because God does give us our faculties of reason.
	This is something that God has given us, so we can use it.
	Now, that doesn't mean that our faculties of reason are infallible, or that we can always trust what we happen to think.
	But we can use our reason.
	And in fact, even when you go to the Bible, you're using your faculties of reason to understand what it is telling you.
	So someone who says, well, we can't trust our reason at all.
	Well, then what do you even do?
	Why are we having any conversation about God?
	Why would you ever read the Bible?
	Because you're using your reason to... Look, dogs and cats can't read the Bible because they have no faculties of reason, at least not in the way that we do.
	So you must be able to trust that or there's no point to anything.
	So using our reason, I think we come to a definitive answer.
	And it goes like this.
	God is all-merciful, all-just, all-loving.
	If He is not those things, then our faith is wrong, and our faith is hopeless, and everything is hopeless.
	Right?
	So, if we have our faith, then we must believe that God possesses those attributes and possesses them perfectly.
	We must also believe that we as humans have some understanding of what those words mean.
	Now, people will say, well, we humans can never know what God's mercy is like.
	We can never understand God's mercy.
	Well, we can never fully understand it.
	That's true.
	But when we say we can't understand it, that's a matter of degrees.
	We're not saying that we literally have no idea what the word mercy or love even means at all.
	We're not saying that, or we shouldn't be saying that.
	Because if we don't know what those words mean at all, it's true we don't have a full understanding.
	We may even have just a small smidgen of understanding.
	But if you're saying that we have no understanding of those words, then it's incoherent to attribute them to God.
	If we have no clue what the word mercy even means, then to say that God is merciful is like saying God is flippity-floop.
	It's a word that has no meaning.
	Why are you even saying it?
	It's nonsense.
	It doesn't mean anything.
	Also, if we don't know what those words mean, then we have no business saying that we love our kids.
	We have no business calling others to be merciful.
	We have no business punishing anyone in the name of justice.
	Also, if we have no idea what those words mean, then Jesus was incoherent in what he said.
	Then it was incoherent for Jesus to exhort us to be loving and to be merciful and to be just, which he did.
	The fact that he's telling us to be those things must mean that we can understand what those words mean.
	Otherwise, again, he might as well have just said, uh, yadda yadda, blahdy blah, blahdy blah.
	That's basically, if you say we have no idea what those words mean, you have reduced Jesus' words to that.
	Just complete nonsense, because we can't even begin to grasp them.
	But the main point, again, is that we...
	If we don't know what love and mercy and justice are, if we don't know at all on any level, then we cannot have any confidence that God actually is loving and merciful, because those words are meaningless to us.
	So we must trust, we have to trust, that our fundamental basic understanding of those words contains some framework of basic truth.
	And according to that framework, a framework that, again, we must be able to trust on some level, or else everything is nonsense, A framework that God Himself gave us, an understanding that He endowed in us.
	According to that, it is the very definition of unjust, unmerciful, unloving, to punish infant children with an eternity of conscious torment, or even an eternity of cosmic separation.
	To punish infant children eternally According to any definition we can conceive, is totally unjust, unmerciful, unloving.
	It is, in fact, abjectly evil.
	If it is not evil, then how can we call anything evil?
	We have no business calling anything evil, if that is not evil.
	Because then our idea of evil is also, who knows?
	And, If we must have a definition of mercy, if the definition of mercy has to include trillions of years of separation or torture for babies, then the word mercy ceases to have any meaning at all.
	So, that's all.
	Because of that whole progression of what I think is logic, we can conclude that if we believe that God is loving, merciful, and just, then babies go to heaven.
	I mean, that's because there is no... anything else would be the opposite of mercy and justice.
	And I don't... just because the Bible doesn't explicitly say something, I don't think we need to entertain the notion that God would do something horribly evil, like punishing babies for eternity.
	By the way, there's another problem here, you know, because imagine that babies are sent off to hell or to, you know, wherever, all floating in space somewhere, separated for all eternity, and then you get to heaven, and, you know, you're looking around for your children that have died, and they're nowhere to be found, right?
	Now, I know I'm speaking in human terms here, but you get what I'm saying.
	And then at that point, I assume you would have some knowledge of the fact that, oh, babies are actually being tormented for all eternity.
	Well, heaven is supposed to be a place of perfect joy and perfect love and perfect happiness.
	How could you possibly, as a thinking and compassionate person, find joy knowing that every moment of joy that you experience, there are babies suffering eternal torment?
	In order to still have joy, you would have to basically be a sociopath.
	You would have to say, yeah, yeah, I don't care about that.
	I got mine.
	I'm good.
	So again, there's another logical problem here.
	That the sort of people who would get to heaven would be exactly the sort of people who could not possibly have joy knowing that that is happening to babies.
	And then what do you do?
	Are you cast out of heaven, too, because you can't figure out how to have joy because you're too worried about the babies?
	And so you're punished then for your compassion?
	It just doesn't make any sense.
	It's totally illogical, totally irrational, and I would absolutely reject it.
	All right, from Ashley, she says, Hi, Matt, love the show.
	I was hoping you could help me with something.
	I was talking to someone yesterday who claims that Jesus never existed at all.
	I've heard people claim before, obviously, that Jesus was just a prophet or a revolutionary or whatever, but not the Son of God.
	This is the first time I've found myself arguing with someone who denied He existed at all.
	He had a lot of facts that seemed impressive, and I didn't have a good response because I hadn't studied all the arguments he presented.
	I'm wondering how you would deal with this argument.
	Thanks.
	Hi, Ashley.
	Yeah, this is called the mythicist position, or mythicism.
	It definitely is a minority position, even among liberal New Testament scholars and historians.
	Almost everyone who studied this issue has come to the conclusion, at a minimum, that Jesus existed.
	Even guys like Bart Ehrman, who's an atheist and one of the most prominent New Testament scholars, he believes at least that Jesus existed.
	So that's the first thing I would point out to your mythicist friend.
	It's not an argument from authority.
	It's not like you're saying, well, all these people over here believe it, so you must.
	It's just a way of putting their position into perspective.
	They might not realize how out there their position is.
	And I do think that when you don't have a lot of knowledge and you're not very informed, and then you go and you look and you see that people who are very informed on this topic disagree with you, We can call it an argument from authority, fine, but that should, if you're a smart person, that should give you a reason at least to think twice when you look and you say, oh, everyone who knows more about this than me disagrees.
	You know, maybe I'm wrong.
	But aside from that, as far as the arguments, I've read the mythicist arguments.
	I've read guys like Robert Price, Richard Carrier, probably the two most well-known mythicist historians.
	I don't know any others.
	I know those two.
	And here's what I'll say about them, about this idea that Jesus never existed.
	I actually agree to an extent with the way that they frame their argument.
	Obviously, I don't agree with the conclusion, of course, but I agree with this part, because this is what they say.
	If you are, this is basically their argument, that if you're going to reject the supernatural elements of Jesus's life, if you're gonna throw out the miracles and the resurrection and the atonement and everything, if you're gonna throw all that out, then you really have to throw out Jesus too.
	You can't really separate him from the supernatural.
	That's what the mythicist would say.
	It just doesn't make any sense to do that.
	And this effort to kind of sculpt a regular, non-supernatural, non-miraculous Jesus from the big stone block of the Gospels is absurd.
	That's what mythicists would say, and I agree with them on that.
	I was listening to a debate recently with Robert Price, and I forget who he was debating.
	It might have been William Lane Craig, I can't remember.
	But he basically said, look, once you get rid of the miraculous stuff, there really isn't much left.
	There's not much left to work with there after that.
	And that's true.
	Because think about it.
	Let's go through Christ's life for a second.
	So you start with the infancy narratives.
	Obviously.
	Well, if you're a naturalist rejecting the supernatural, then that whole thing is a miracle top-to-bottom, the whole infancy story.
	So you got to throw all that out.
	You know, virgins, virgin birth, angels appearing, stars traveling across the sky, so on and so forth.
	So you got to get rid of that if you reject the supernatural.
	And then we have nothing at all for Jesus for the first 30 years.
	We have that one incident when he's 12 years old in the temple.
	But again, from a naturalist perspective, you got to get rid of that because without any kind of divine involvement, it doesn't make any sense.
	You'd have a 12-year-old boy teaching rabbis in the temple for three days.
	So you throw that out there.
	So we've got nothing until we get to Jesus' public ministry.
	Then you have the baptism.
	Well, maybe you keep the baptism, but then you have God from the heavens saying, this is my beloved son.
	Obviously, you get rid of that.
	So then the baptism just becomes sort of a non-event.
	It's just one baptism among many others.
	Then Jesus goes into the wilderness.
	He's tempted by the devil, so you throw that out if you're a naturalist.
	And then in John's gospel, around this time, we have him cleansing the temple, which I think you have to throw that out, too, because without divine intervention, it doesn't make any sense that Jesus wouldn't have been arrested right there on the spot and killed right then and there for doing it.
	So that's gone, and then we have the Sermon on the Mount, and this is where the kind of liberal historians who still believe in a historical Jesus, this is where they kind of latch on to this sort of stuff, and they say, well, okay, now here's where we have a real Jesus, where he's giving his teachings, and Jesus was just a teacher, he wasn't the Son of God.
	Well, there's a problem there, too, because the full Sermon on the Mount given in Matthew is several pages long.
	Matthew's gospel wasn't written until 30 or 40 years later, so unless we believe that Matthew had a big papyrus scroll there on the hillside and he had his pen and he had brought up a table and was transcribing everything as it was happening right there on the hillside, which probably didn't happen, then it wouldn't make any sense from a naturalist perspective that 30 or 40 years later he could remember verbatim this three or four page speech that Jesus gave.
	It makes sense from a supernaturalist.
	If you're a believer, if you're a Christian, then you believe the Holy Spirit guided him.
	But again, I'm saying from a naturalist perspective, that doesn't make any sense.
	So I think you have to throw that out too.
	And then, you know, then we have a whole bunch of miracles.
	We have exorcisms, so all that goes out.
	In the end, what are you left with?
	You're left with a guy who got baptized, got into some arguments with the Jewish mucky-mucks, high priests of the time, and then was killed.
	The end.
	That's your whole story.
	But why would such a person inspire all of these extra legends?
	Why would you need such an irrelevant, simple, boring life as the template for the extravagant mythology that followed him?
	It doesn't make any sense.
	Think about it.
	In the ancient world, you know, you had guys, because this is the liberal kind of theory, is that Jesus was a normal guy and then legends attached to him, like barnacles on a ship or something.
	Well, that would happen with guys like Alexander the Great, someone like Cleopatra or Julius Caesar, people that were already significant and great.
	And known throughout the land.
	Those are the kinds of people that you have this legendary embellishment that gets attached to them.
	It didn't happen with just normal guys.
	It didn't happen with, like, just the Joe the Plumber of the ancient world, which is what Jesus would be if he was not the Son of God.
	So it doesn't make any sense.
	Not to mention, if you reject the supernatural, then why would you trust anything in the Gospels in the first place, because there's supernatural stuff on every page and every paragraph?
	So my point is, what we really have, rather than C.S.
	Lewis' famous trilemma, where he talked about Jesus was either liar, lord, or lunatic, we actually have a dilemma.
	I think it's more of a dilemma.
	Jesus was either lord, or he didn't exist.
	I think those actually are the only two options.
	Lord or legend.
	The middle ground is non-existent, for reasons I've explained.
	So you have to choose between the two.
	But if you choose the latter, if you choose legend, you've got serious problems.
	First of all, how is it that a person could have been invented out of whole cloth that quickly, and then his existence believed by everyone, and this character worshipped, all just out of the blue and practically overnight?
	That's not how mythological characters are usually, that's not how it works.
	With characters who are really invented and then later believed, it doesn't happen that quickly.
	Like someone just makes them up out of the blue, and then everyone says immediately, oh yeah, sure, okay.
	Second, why is it that we have no record of any critic of Christianity in the ancient world, and there were a lot of critics, ever accusing the Christians of inventing Jesus out of whole cloth?
	Nobody ever accused them of that.
	They accused Christians of lying.
	Or, you know, hiding the body or whatever, but nobody, nobody in the ancient world argued that Jesus didn't exist.
	That wasn't a theory that anyone held, even people who hated Christians, and there were a lot of them.
	Nobody ever said, well, this guy never existed.
	What are you talking about?
	You made him up.
	Nobody said that.
	Third, how do you account for Paul?
	No rational person denies that Paul existed.
	No serious scholar denies that Paul authored at least six or seven of his epistles, although really he 4.
	authored all of them that are attributed to him. Everyone agrees that Paul was operating as a
	Christian within a few years of Christ's death. Everyone agrees that Paul knew and worked with
	Peter. So how did Paul come to believe in the existence of this imaginary character? Fourth,
	who made the story up and when and why? Remember, the Gospels were written decades after Paul's
	epistles. So there was a community of people who believed in Jesus before the Gospels were written.
	So we can't say that the Gospel writers made him up.
	The Gospels came after the story was already out there, which means that the Gospel writers Couldn't have made it up, which means that some person would have just had to make it up, and then pass it along as oral tradition, and then it turns into Gospels.
	Again, this is not how it usually works with mythology.
	Fifth, you have Josephus and Tacitus, who were Roman historians of the time, and they never, you know, they both mentioned Jesus, they both affirmed his historicity, they never made any mention that he didn't exist, or that anyone thought he didn't exist.
	So, In order to reject that Jesus existed, you must reject everything in the Gospels, everything in the epistles, the documentation of Josephus, the documentation of Tacitus, the testimony of non-canonical epistles like Clement.
	All of that you have to throw out completely, which brings us to another problem.
	Is that once you've done that, once you've summarily dismissed all of this evidence and all of this documentation, how can you justify believing the existence of any ancient figure at all?
	Because at that point, you know, that is more attestation for, at a minimum, Jesus's existence than we have for the existence of many ancient characters or ancient figures, I should say.
	So, if you're going to do that with Jesus, then you have to hold every person in history to that standard, which means you've ripped history apart, and it's like history just started 200 years ago at that point.
	It just doesn't make any sense.
	So, in summary, it is impossible to separate Christ from His miracles.
	It is also impossible to separate Christ from history, which seems to leave us with only one option, whether we like it or not, which is that Jesus not only existed, but was and is the Son of God. That actually is what I
	would say the next time that comes up.
	And I will leave it there. Thanks for watching, everybody.
	Thanks for listening. Godspeed.
	Hey, everybody, it's Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show.
	You know, political correctness is a one-edged sword.
	It is meant only to silence those of us who believe that each individual American has the right to think, say, do what he wants.
	It is meant to silence us, to leave the field open to those who want government to run everything.
	So we're going to keep talking on The Andrew Klavan Show.

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