Today on the Matt Walsh Show, we'll discuss the epidemic of groupthink in our society. People are less and less willing to think for themselves, and form their own ideas and opinions. We will analyze the problem. Also, Jussie Smollett’s lawyer comes up with a hilarious alibi, PETA embarrasses itself again, and I deal with the claim that Jesus was a polite, nice guy who never would have insulted anyone. Date: 03-29-2019
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Today on the Matt Wall Show, I want to discuss the epidemic of groupthink in our society.
People seem to be less and less willing or even able, perhaps, to think for themselves, to form their own ideas and opinions and perspectives.
And I want to analyze that problem.
Also, Jussie Smollett's lawyer has come up with a really hilarious, but also pathetic, alibi.
PETA embarrasses itself yet again.
And I want to deal with the claim That Jesus was just a polite, nice guy who never would have insulted or confronted anyone.
We'll talk about all that.
packed episode today of the Matt Walsh Show.
So I want to say something at the top here.
You know, I was watching another documentary about flat earthers last night.
The second one that I've seen, because I find these, this one was on YouTube, and it's just, it's fascinating.
It's fascinating in the same way that, you know, staring at a mangled car wreck is fascinating, but as I As I thought more about it, I realized how fitting and perhaps inevitable it is that flat-eartherism should enjoy a renaissance in our day and age, which appears to be what's happening here.
We have all of the information in and about the world available to us, and any amount of critical thought or independent research will reveal the truth about our spherical planet to anyone who feels like expending that sort of mental energy, but the problem is that some people don't want to expend that mental energy, so they just buy into this.
We have become a country of intellectual tribes, I think.
And the Flat Earth tribe is especially embarrassing and weird and stupid, but the other tribes aren't much better, honestly.
And I think we need to stop and think about ourselves.
Am I part of one of these tribes?
It seems that the availability of information and the possibility of becoming really informed and really knowledgeable is just, it's too much for some of us to bear, for some of us to handle, so we retreat into a hive and we let the hive do our thinking for us.
I think that Donald Trump has done a lot, mostly unintentionally, to expose this dynamic in our culture, and it's really been something to behold.
So those who are in the resistance tribe, they of course automatically adopt the opposite of whatever Donald Trump says or believes.
Whatever his opinion is, they just say the opposite.
But then there are those who are in Trump's tribe, and they cling to him like barnacles, and they defend passionately.
Whatever he says, and they believe whatever he says, and that's all there is to it.
Both groups are united by their vacuous hive minds, by their inability, unwillingness to think for themselves.
That, by the way, is why I've never been much of a fan of these Trump rallies, like the one that was in Michigan last night.
I know that this is an unpopular view, especially from a conservative, but to have all of these fawning swarms of people who are hanging on the president's every word and applauding whatever he says and treating him like he's a boy band or something, that's not the kind of relationship that we're supposed to have with our politicians.
That's just not it.
That's not what it's supposed to be.
It is another symptom of the groupthink disease that is infecting our culture.
And we are well familiar with the other manifestations of this disease.
College students, you know, who collapse into puddles of tears when they encounter an opposing idea.
Pitchfork mobs that panic in unison over the trendy outrage of the day, whatever it happens to be.
Cable news audiences who sit for hours listening to their tribe's talking points repeated to them over and over again.
People who reflexively shout labels like racist and sexist at their opponents and so on.
These are all people who are in intellectual tribes, people who don't want to think for themselves.
We have become a nation of parrots.
At precisely the moment when independent and critical examination of issues is easy and accessible for everyone.
We carry around in our pockets these devices that give us access to all of the information in the world.
And we could use this tool to become really critical independent thinkers, but it's had the opposite effect.
Scrolling Facebook or Twitter should be a window into a diverse array of interesting and challenging and different and unique ideas.
But instead, what you get is a selection of two or three ideas presented in slightly altered form by millions of different people.
Now, it's understandable that social media would become inevitably a toxic Disturbing, pornographic garbage heap.
We knew that was going to happen, but it has no excuse to be boring.
Okay?
It should not be a boring, toxic, disturbing, pornographic garbage heap.
Yet, everyone is saying the same thing about everything.
So, it is boring.
Here's my point.
The most remarkable thing about being a human being is that we can think.
You know, we can analyze.
We can be critical.
We can come up with our own views and ideas and perspectives, and that is such a beautiful, amazing, mysterious thing.
As far as we know, we're the only species on planet Earth that has this capacity.
As far as we know, we're the only species in the universe with this capacity.
We certainly know that a worm or a goat or an elephant can't ponder the issues of the day and develop their own unique insights on these subjects, but we can.
But we don't.
You see, we farm that job out to CNN, or Fox, or Trump, or our favorite YouTube conspiracy theorist, or a political party, or the social media mob, or whatever.
The goat has no choice but to be a goat.
What's our excuse?
If we won't think for ourselves, if we won't really think for ourselves, and try to come up with our own ideas, then we waste our lives.
It would have to be said, although it probably wouldn't be said, at least not at the eulogy, that a man who dies without ever trying to develop his own ideas has squandered his existence.
His entire life was a joke, a waste.
It was one big wasted opportunity, because he never did with it the one thing that he and no one else could do, and that is use his mind.
That's the one thing.
No one else can use his mind.
It was given to him.
So his physical death in that case is much less of a tragedy than the fact that he never had an intellectual life to begin with.
So I think it would be a good practice, and I challenge myself to do the same, it would be a good practice for all of us to stop and run a mental inventory, right?
And think, how many of our thoughts and ideas have been adopted or inherited or passively accepted
rather than established through a process of independent inquiry.
Of course, look, we have to accept some things on authority.
We have to accept some things based on a quick and logical assumption.
Otherwise, we wouldn't be able to function.
If you drive up to a bridge and you see a bunch of cars crossing the bridge, you're going to assume a very quick assessment that the bridge is probably safe.
You're going to drive over it.
You don't have enough time to do an investigation of the bridge and all of that.
You don't have the expertise to do it anyway.
So you have to rely on the authority of the people who have built this bridge and the ones who are supposed to maintain it.
So yeah, that's one thing.
But as for our deepest convictions and our deepest held beliefs and values and opinions, when it comes to that, we should do our own work.
We should use our own effort for those.
I suspect that almost all of us could rattle off a list of principles and priorities that we supposedly hold.
But few of us, I think, could convincingly answer a very simple follow-up question, which is, why?
Why do you think that?
Why do you believe that?
And so I think we need to figure out our whys.
That's what we all should do.
All right.
Jussie Smollett, I'm not going to spend very much time on this at all, but there is an update that I can't just, we've been talking about this all week, I can't just pass over this because Jussie Smollett has found himself, fortunately for him, he has found himself the sort of shameless hack lawyer that I suppose a man like him needs at a time like this.
So his lawyer was being interviewed yesterday and she came up with A very interesting explanation to account for the fact that Smollett claimed that two white dudes assaulted him and now they're admitting that no, it was his two Nigerian friends.
So I'm going to play this for you.
Watch this.
According to the court records, Smollett was very clear with police on the night of the attack that his attackers were white.
He said they had masks on and gloves, but he saw their eyes and he saw the skin surrounding their eyes.
Was that a false statement?
So, just to be clear, he only saw one of the attackers.
One of them he didn't see.
He saw one through a ski mask.
Again, he could not see their body.
Everything was covered and he had a full ski mask on except the area around the eyes.
He did tell police that he, from what he saw, he thought it was pale skin or white or pale
skin was I think what he said.
And that was what he, and that's why he initially did have a hard time.
Why did he say that?
He could have said, I don't know.
He could have, but this again, he's being truthful.
But if it's the Ossendiro brothers, what are the chances that that's the case, that he
saw somebody with light skin?
Well, you know, I mean, I think there's, obviously you can disguise that.
You could put makeup on.
There is actually, interestingly enough, a video, you know, I think police did minimal investigation in this case.
It was, it took me all of five minutes to Google, you know, I was looking up the brothers and one of the first videos that showed up actually was one of the brothers in white face doing a Joker monologue with white makeup on.
And so it's not, it's not implausible.
So there you go.
Uh, sure.
The guys were wearing Joker makeup and a ski mask.
That really is, it, it, You can't satirize this.
You can't make any jokes about it.
That's how absurd it's gotten.
I guess they also went to voice acting lessons because they would have needed to disguise their heavily accented voices as well.
I don't have anything else to say about that.
It's just the stupidity of this case.
And speaking of people not being able to think for themselves, if you go online, there are still people who are clinging to this idea that, yeah, well, maybe he's telling the truth.
And we still have people in the media saying, I don't know.
I don't know what to think about this.
It's all so confusing.
It's absurd.
Moving on, Jordan Peele, I've been wanting to mention this for a few days now.
Jordan Peele, who's the director of Get Out and now the horror film Us, which just came out I think last week.
I haven't seen either movie to be honest with you.
But he has announced that he probably will never cast a white man as a lead in his films.
Let me read a little bit from the Daily Wire report.
It says, according to the Hollywood Reporter, fresh off the box office success of the horror movie Us, director Jordan Peele said he does not see himself casting a, quote, white dude as the lead in one of his future films.
He said at an appearance at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater in Hollywood, I don't see myself casting a white dude as the lead of my movie.
Not that I don't like white dudes, but I've seen that movie.
And then, of course, apparently that comment drew loud applause and shouts of agreement.
And then he goes on from there.
You know, I've seen some people complaining about this comment where he's saying I'm not going to cast white dudes.
I have no problem with it.
Honestly.
They're his movies.
He can cast whoever he wants.
He's obviously coming from the perspective of a black man.
He is a black man, right?
And so as a director, it makes sense if his actors and his characters reflect that perspective.
So I have no issue with that.
It would be dumb for me to have an issue with it.
It's dumb for anyone to have an issue with that.
He can cast who he wants and his movies are going to reflect his unique perspective, but it just doesn't work.
It doesn't make sense to say that Peel is totally in the right when he swears off casting white male leads.
And we obviously know, it goes without saying, that if a white director had made the same kind of comment about how he's only going to cast white male leads, then that person would never get another job in Hollywood again.
So it doesn't make sense to say that it's okay for Peel to make that announcement, But then to say that there's something necessarily wrong with, for instance, you know, keeping James Bond as a white male.
Now, I don't personally care if they cast the black guy as James Bond.
Doesn't matter to me.
I don't care about the race of the lead characters of movies that I watch.
It makes no difference.
It would be lame if they made, you know, James Bond into Jane Bond, made him into a woman.
But I don't care what his race is.
But what if someone is of the opinion that James Bond is a white guy, that's who he is, that's the character, and so he should stay that way.
It doesn't make sense to call that racist, yet to say that Peele is not a racist, when he categorically declares that no white male will ever be the lead in one of his films, no matter who the character is.
That's what doesn't make sense.
It's the double standard.
And people need to understand this.
I think liberals who are used to going around and blaming white males for everything and constantly complain, cutting down white males, demanding that we apologize for everything and everything's our fault.
We're the villains of history.
It's like they really don't understand that you can't, that message, it's just, it doesn't work.
It's not going to resonate.
You can't expect an entire group of people to simply accept double standards.
They're not going to do that.
Now, I wanted to get into an email a little bit earlier in the show than usual because it brings up a subject that I want to discuss.
I have a bunch of emails I'm going to answer towards the end of the show, but there's this one that I wanted to mention here because It requires a little bit of a longer answer.
So let me read the email to you.
It says, Hello, Matt.
You claim to be a Christian, but the Spirit of Christ is not within you.
You constantly cut people down, mock and criticize.
Jesus would not insult and mock as you do.
Your demeanor is not of Scripture.
It is of the world.
I think you do a disservice to the faith by representing it this way.
I will pray for you.
Which, by the way, the whole thing that Christians do where you say you're gonna pray for someone passive-aggressively, can we stop doing that?
That's one of my least favorite things.
Because the thing is, if you're going to actually pray for me, then great.
I appreciate your prayers.
But I think most of the time in that context, when someone says, I'll pray for you, they're not actually going home and getting on their knees and praying for that person.
It's just something that they say.
It's their way of saying, I am literally holier than you.
You may as well just cut to the chase and say that.
Now, I've gotten many emails like this over the years.
As it may not surprise you to learn, emails and tweets and messages and so on just a few days ago.
Well, here's the setup to that.
A few days ago, United Airlines announced a new policy that it will officially let you declare whatever gender you want when you when you buy a ticket.
Now, I'm not sure that I really want to fly on an airline run by a company that doesn't know the difference between men and women.
So that makes me a little bit uncomfortable.
But I responded on Twitter saying, OK, well, then I'm going to identify as first class.
I thought, you know, that's a loophole, right?
If we can identify as whatever we want, then I'll be first class.
And someone responded by telling me basically what this emailer said, saying, I'm mocking.
Jesus wouldn't mock.
He would never do that.
It becomes clearer and clearer to me that 90% of the people who say what Jesus would do or wouldn't do have never actually picked up the book and read it.
I mean, actually read it for themselves.
That's the theme here.
Thinking for yourself, reading for yourself, doing your own work.
And I think there are so many people who go around and say, well, Jesus would never do that.
They haven't read it.
They've maybe lifted a quote here and there, or they've listened to someone tell them what's in the book, but as far as picking it up to read it themselves, they haven't do that.
Because if you actually pick it up and read it, this image of the meek and mild Jesus, who would never utter a harsh word to anyone, evaporates immediately upon actually reading the book.
Jesus in the Gospels.
Calls people snakes, vipers, hypocrites, liars, thieves, adulterers, fools, Satan.
So Jesus wouldn't use an insult?
Well, what is it then when you call someone a snake?
Is that supposed to be a compliment?
He certainly wasn't a literal statement.
He wasn't observing that they weren't actually snakes.
That seems to me to be an insult that Jesus actually used.
The entire Bible is filled with scorn and insults heaped on degenerates and idiots all over the place.
It's all over the Bible.
That's the reality.
Now, I'm not telling you what to think about that reality.
I'm not telling you how to interpret it, but that's the fact.
Just pick it up and read it.
In the Old Testament, prophets are constantly haranguing people, calling them essentially prostitutes and fools and perverts, and on and on and on.
God in the Old Testament is famously less than gentle in his words and actions.
The apostles, Paul especially, followed in this tradition.
Paul has some very choice words that he uses.
In fact, at one point he's talking about people who still advocate circumcision.
And he says that he hopes that those people castrate themselves.
All right, that's his response to those people.
Again, that seems like kind of an insult.
And if I were to ever say that, if I were getting heated about a topic and I said about the people who disagree with me, I hope they castrate themselves, I would get tons of emails from people saying, yo, that is unbiblical.
How dare you use language like that?
No, it is literally biblical.
It's right in there.
So, the polite lovey-dovey thing, there just isn't a lot of support for it in the Bible.
It's not there.
If you read it, you'll see that.
Christianity is a rough, militant, confrontational religion.
Whether we like it or not, that's what it is.
Any honest reading of Scripture will bring you to this conclusion.
I'll put it this way.
The Crusaders had a lot more biblical justification and precedent for their actions than did, say, the Quakers.
A lot more.
Now, does that mean that we have carte blanche to go around insulting people?
No.
But it does mean that God apparently isn't very squeamish about a bit of tough language, because it is all over the Bible.
So do I apologize for the language that I use on this show, or On social media or in my writing.
Do I apologize for it?
No.
Because when I read the Bible, I see that there certainly is a time and place for it.
And I would encourage everyone to pick it up and read it sometime.
Okay, before we get to some other emails, I wanted to check in with our good friends over at PETA and I want to show you something that they posted this week, all right?
Now, we know that PETA, I mean, they don't really do anything in terms of actually helping animals.
Their whole goal is just to get attention to themselves by these ridiculous publicity stunts.
And so probably the best reaction to PETA with a publicity stunt is just to ignore them, but I'm not very good at ignoring trolls, so here we go.
And this week, PETA is speaking out against milk.
So I want you to look at this.
Look at this picture.
This is what they tweeted.
It's a picture of a cow in the shape of a woman.
Very disturbing.
And the cow is breastfeeding what appears to be an elderly man.
And then the caption says, Looks weird, right?
It's what you're doing if you drink cow's milk.
Raise your hand if you know that humans shouldn't be drinking cow's breast milk.
It was made for their babies, not you.
Alright.
Here's my only question.
And I've wondered this.
About, you know, vegans.
For the people who think that we shouldn't be eating cows or drinking their milk, and, okay, well, if that's the case, then that means that the cows shouldn't be on farms, right?
I mean, we're not going to keep cows on farms if we're not harvesting their milk and their meat.
So, alright, so, what then?
Let's say that PETA and the vegans, let's say they win.
And everyone says, never mind, don't want hamburgers and milkshakes anymore, let's be done with that.
Now, I personally would fight, I would literally fight to the death before I would give up hamburgers and milkshakes, but just going along with the hypothetical for a minute for the sake of argument, let's say we all swear it off, well then what do we do with the cows?
What happens to the cows, PETA?
So we release all the cows into the wild and then the whole species goes extinct in like 15 minutes.
What do you think is going to happen to the cows?
These are big, dumb, docile, slow, meaty, delicious animals with no defense mechanisms.
What does a cow do if you're coming after it and it wants to defend itself?
There's nothing it can do.
The only safe place in the world for a cow is a farm.
That's the only, literally the only place that a cow could survive.
Unless we're gonna set up some sort of island for them, Cow Island, and send all the cows off to Cow Island, but then who, you know, they're gonna eat all the grass, all the grass will be gone, who's gonna feed them?
I mean, they need to be taken care of.
So it's really for their own good, I guess is what I'm trying to say.
It's for their own good that we eat them.
That's my point, PETA.
All right, let's get to it.
I got a bunch of emails, some really interesting ones, so I'm going to get to those now.
You can email the show, mattwalshow at gmail.com, mattwalshow at gmail.com.
This is from Jake.
It says, good afternoon, Matt.
I enjoy listening to your show and agree with you on most things you say.
I appreciate seeing fellow young Christian people speak out proudly about their Christian beliefs and conservative views.
If I'm being 100% honest, though, yours is my second favorite podcast to listen to.
I listen to Ben Shapiro's before yours every day.
How dare you?
He is your boss, though, so you must approve.
That's a good point.
You spoke about C.S.
Lewis recently and how his lord, lunatic, or liar argument was not his strongest theological argument.
I, being a Christian, have obviously heard a lot about C.S.
Lewis, but I never actually read any of his books.
I know what you're thinking.
Are you even a Christian if you've never read C.S.
Lewis?
Contrary to popular belief, it is possible.
I'm interested in becoming a real Christian, though, and was wondering if you could suggest a book to start with.
If it is too late for me, then I will begrudgingly accept my fate as a less-than-average Christian.
I will forgive you for having never read C.S.
Lewis.
I guess the sort of standard starting point, at least for his apologetic work, would be mere Christianity.
That's what everyone would say.
Start with that.
That's not his best work, by a long shot, actually.
But it's a good place to start.
And then from there, I would go to, I've talked about the book many times, A Great Divorce.
His sort of vision of the afterlife, I think, is very powerful.
I would read that next.
Problem of pain.
deals with his answer for the, you know, the problem of pain and suffering, which we've also talked about on the show recently.
So I would, I would read those three and then, and then branch out from there.
This is from, uh, I'm going to try to pronounce this correctly.
Lailani, I think is, I'm sorry if I am mangling that.
It says, my name is Lailani and I have a few questions for you.
One, I'm 16 and I live in Hawaii, but I lean toward the right.
Do you have any advice on staying alive in a deep blue area as a conservative?
I have noticed in my classes my teachers are openly left-wing.
Occasionally I will speak up to offer a different opinion, but I usually don't say anything.
Is it worth speaking up?
Two, how-slash-why do you think conservatism became counterculture?
And three, I've heard you talk about vegetarianism-slash-veganism.
I just did, a second ago.
Briefly, when you were talking about how certain animals are seen as normal to eat, whereas others are not, I was wondering, given your take on that, would you ever consider veganism or vegetarianism?
I doubt you will ever see this, but if you do, thanks for reading.
Thank you for your show.
I try not to be a fangirl about anything, but I am a big fan of your show.
Hi, well, great to have you all watching all the way from Hawaii.
I'll try to tackle your questions one at a time here.
So, number one, you ask if it's worth speaking up to oppose the insanity you see around you.
I'm going to say yes, of course, I think it's worth it.
But you should do so with prudence.
You know, you aren't called to spend every day all day shouting your opinions into the sky like I do.
This is something, I was on the backstage show last night, I mentioned this, that people who are in this line of work, the pundits and commentators who are in front of cameras or on the internet, I think we often get way too much credit.
Because people will say to us, oh, you're so brave and courageous.
You're speaking your mind and sharing your opinion.
Well, yeah, but that's my job.
This is what I do.
So I don't have to worry about losing my job or having my whole life be blown apart because I state a controversial opinion.
It's literally what I do for a living.
If it's not what you do for a living, then I understand that you're in a bit of a different situation.
So you have to be prudent about it.
One of my favorite movies, which I would recommend watching, which was originally a play, it's called A Man for All Seasons, and it's about St.
Thomas More.
Long story short, Thomas More was a close friend and advisor of King Henry VIII.
King Henry wanted to divorce and remarry, which is against the rules in the Catholic Church, so eventually the king decided to start his own church for this purpose.
He wanted to start a church basically just so he could divorce and remarry.
Yet that church still exists today, which began for the purpose of divorce.
Anyway, and he wanted Thomas More to come out and support this move.
But More was a Catholic and couldn't do that.
But here's the thing.
Thomas More didn't go out of his way to martyr himself.
He didn't go around screaming from the rooftops that the king is a heretic.
He wasn't doing that.
He wasn't begging to be a martyr.
He took a more prudent approach, trying to advise the king privately, going through those channels, and doing everything he could to remain loyal to the king, while also not betraying his beliefs.
There's a great scene In the movie where he's explaining his approach to his daughter.
And this is what he says, he says...
Listen, Meg, God made the angels to show him splendor.
He made animals for innocence and plants for their simplicity, but man he made to serve him wittingly in the tangle of his mind.
If he suffers us to come to such a case that there is no escaping, then we may stand to our tackle as best as we can.
And yes, Meg, then we can clamor like champions if we have the spittle for it.
But it's God's part, not our own, to bring ourselves to such a pass.
Our natural business lies in escaping.
Meaning that he wasn't going to deny his faith, or do anything dishonest or cowardly, but he also wasn't going to throw himself under the guillotine blade.
Though eventually, despite his prudence, he did end up getting beheaded.
Which, fortunately, isn't going to happen to us these days.
So all of that to say, stick to your principles, never lie for anyone's sake, never pretend that you believe something you don't.
Speak up when you feel moved to do so and you feel like it's the right time.
But also at your age and at your station in life, one of your most important duties is to get through school, succeed in that environment, get into adulthood.
So it's okay sometimes to say, you know, I'm not going to inject myself into this controversy.
I'm not going to weigh in on this.
And yeah, look, I've been through it too.
You're sitting there in class and you hear your left-wing teacher say one lie after another after another.
It's very frustrating.
But if you're arguing with your teacher every day, all day, and interrupting her constantly, that's just not going to be a key to success.
It's probably not the prudent approach.
So you just kind of choose your spots.
And don't feel like you're being cowardly or something if you're not constantly begging for confrontation.
Number two, counterculture.
Well, of course, the counterculture is whatever is against the general movement of the culture.
Whatever stands against that tide, and the tide has shifted left rapidly, and so now if you're heading right, then you're going to be counter to it.
You're rebelling against it, which, aside from the difficulties that we've just talked about that come with being counterculture, it's also kind of exciting, isn't it?
It's fun to be a rebel, and especially when you're young.
You know, young people We don't want to just... I'm gonna lump myself in with a young person as well.
We don't want to just... Typically, youth is when you have that energy to be rebellious, and you don't want to just go along with the flow.
And so, that's the advantage of being a conservative these days.
And then, as for vegetarians, I guess I just answered that.
I respect vegetarianism, as long as you don't shove it in people's face all the time.
I totally respect it.
I could just never do it.
I couldn't.
I really could not live that way.
All right, this is from Nathan, says, I just wanted to say I've listened to all your episodes, and during yesterday's episode, when trying to read responses to Cardi B's apology, you said your first on-air, I can't even, which essentially counts as a type of baptism.
Congratulations, you finally earned your millennial card.
Yeah, Nathan, I guess I finally understand that phrase.
Sometimes you really just can't even.
Even, you might not even know, it's not, you don't even know what you can't.
It's just, you just can't.
That's the only response possible.
So I do finally understand that.
Let's see here.
We'll do one more.
Alright, we'll do this.
This is from Rick.
Says, Matt, I was...
Following your comments about Calvinism on Twitter a few days ago, I knew you weren't a Calvinist, but I was surprised by some of what you said.
Do you really think that God doesn't have the right to decide who goes to heaven?
That's what I picked up from your statements.
No, that's not what I think, Rick.
Just to get everyone else up to speed, on Twitter a few days ago, we were—I don't remember how it started.
I think honestly I was on a flight and I was just entertaining myself by having a theological argument on Twitter.
And so the discussion turned to predestination, which we've talked about before.
And I said that I reject the idea, I reject absolutely the idea that God would send people to hell Without any choice or involvement of their own.
I reject the idea that God makes some people and then destines them to hell from the beginning, you know, from even before their conception.
They're already destined for hell, regardless of what they do or believe or anything.
And I heard from a lot of people saying something similar to what someone who emailed the show yesterday said, which is that, well, you know, none of us deserve heaven.
We all deserve hell, so you can't really complain about it.
Well, the word deserve in this context is a little bit tricky.
So I'm not, you know, I certainly am not going to sit here and say I deserve heaven.
I'm not going to say that.
But everyone deserves hell automatically.
So a four-year-old who dies of leukemia deserves hell?
Based on what?
What kind of an idea is that?
Do you really believe that?
People say this kind of stuff.
I don't believe that you believe it.
I can't believe that you believe that.
I can't believe that you can look at a child dying of cancer and say, yeah, yeah, the child deserves hell.
Because that's what you're saying.
You say, well, everyone deserves hell.
Some people are predestined.
They can't complain because we all deserve it.
What?
I understand that might be your doctrine, but does it actually make any moral or logical sense to you at all?
And if it doesn't, then maybe there's a problem.
You know, I can make sense of the doctrine of hell if it's something that people essentially choose of their own free will.
They reject God, they don't want anything to do with Him, and so they don't get Him.
So, I can understand that.
But as a destination of eternal conscious torment that a supposedly loving God makes people in order to send them to?
No.
Because that's how predestination would work.
God makes people, puts them on a one-way street to eternal suffering.
They have no choice, no role.
They are made to suffer for all time.
And it does no good to say, well, they don't deserve heaven, because even if I agreed with that, well, then why make them in the first place?
What was the point of that creation?
What's the point of creating something simply to suffer forever?
And then you're going to tell me that such a God would be loving and merciful?
As I've said before, you know, come up with a definition of love and mercy that includes that, because I don't think you can.
So I reject that, absolutely.
Actually, I'll do one more really quickly because this has to do with the backstage show last night, which was a lot of fun.
This is from Mike.
It says, I really enjoyed your discussion on Daily Wire backstage about the importance of marriage and staying married.
You make a great point about how going into a marriage, just as you're entering adulthood, strengthens the bond and the likelihood that the marriage will stand the test of time.
For those who do get married later in life, what is your opinion on prenuptial agreements?
I know that most people go into marriage with the best of intentions, but it's difficult not to look at it in a very practical way, in knowing that there is always a possibility that it could end in divorce.
So, when large sums of money are tied up in wealth and assets that could potentially be divided, it creates a wicked incentive for divorce if the marriage is failing, especially when lawyers get involved.
I've personally seen friends and family negatively affected by this, and it terrifies me to even think about not having a prenup going into marriage.
I know this is probably not a very popular point of view among religious folks, but I am awfully curious what you think about it.
So yeah, Mike, we talked about this on the backstage about divorce and everything.
I understand The inclination towards a prenup on, as you said, a practical level, it does make practical sense in a certain way.
We can all say that marriage is indissoluble.
It'll be until, you know, you stay married until the bitter end, until death do you part.
But the reality is you can't actually stop your spouse From up and deciding to run off and leave you ten years into the marriage.
This does happen to people.
If it happens, it happens.
You can't stop it.
So then you think, on a practical level, well maybe I should just be prepared for that.
Just in case.
I don't think it's going to happen, but in case it does, I should be prepared.
But, I think in the end it just doesn't, that just doesn't work.
It can't work.
You both have to go into the marriage absolutely committed to it, absolutely determined to stay in until death.
If you have any escape plan at all, any plan B, That will obviously make it clear that your commitment is not absolute.
It might be serious, but it's not absolute.
And you can't go into a marriage without that absolute commitment.
Because then, at that point, what's the point of the marriage at all?
If it's not going to be an absolute commitment, and if you're allowing for the possibility at the very beginning that maybe this thing will fall apart, then I would say, why even get married?
Just don't get married.
Yeah, without a prenup, a divorce might be a whole lot messier, more expensive, more disastrous and everything, but maybe that's a good thing.
Because maybe that's all the more incentive not to bail.
Divorce should be a horrible, expensive, catastrophic thing because that's what it is.
This is kind of how I think about it.
Imagine that you're sitting on a plane.
Waiting while everyone else boards the plane, and you're sitting there, of course, praying that no one sits in the middle seat next to you.
And then you see the captain board the plane wearing a parachute.
And you say to your flight attendant, why the hell is the captain wearing a parachute?
And then she says, oh, don't worry.
It's just a precaution.
It's just in case.
Don't worry.
It probably won't be needed, but in case it is, if things go wrong, well, the captain needs to be able to bail out because he doesn't want to die, obviously.
Well, see, that answer is not going to be acceptable to you because What you want from your captain is an absolute commitment to not crash the plane, right?
That's what you want from your captain.
You want your captain to be absolutely committed to death to the proposition that he will keep the plane in the air.
And you want that commitment even though you know that planes do crash.
It does happen.
It happened recently.
It's a tragic thing.
It does happen.
Even in spite of that, when you get on that plane, you need to know that that captain is 100% committed and would literally die before bailing on the plane.
Um, and I think in a marriage, you need the same sort of commitment where I will, I will die before this ends with my death.
Uh, and I would die before I would give up on it.
Also, to extend the metaphor a little bit, let's remember that in this metaphor, I suppose, you know, if marriage is the plane, then you and the spouse are captain and co-captain.
Well, who are the passengers?
That would be the children, right?
In most marriages, there are children involved.
In most divorces, there are children involved.
Well, you know, so you're flying the plane.
The kids are running around back there.
They're there.
You might have a bailout plan.
You might have a parachute.
But the thing is, in a marriage, even if you have a parachute for yourself, there really is no parachute for the kids.
The kids are going down with the plane.
There's nothing that's going to stop a divorce from, as Andrew Klavan put it backstage last night, from blowing up their world.
A divorce blows up the kids' world.
Nothing is going to make it.
Maybe the prenup makes it easier for you.
It's not going to make it easier for them.
As far as they're concerned, their family was just obliterated.
So that's another reason to, I think, be careful about prenups.
And we will leave it there.
Thanks for watching, everybody.
Hope you have a great weekend.
Godspeed.
Today on the Ben Shapiro Show, President Trump loses it at a Michigan rally and it's pretty hilarious.
