Ep. 244 - We're Christians, Not 'Easter Worshippers'
Horrific terror attacks against Christians in Sri Lanka yesterday. We’ll talk about the persecution of Christians and why it continues to be largely ignored in the West. Also we’ll try to figure out why certain prominent Democrats are going out of their way to avoid acknowledging that Christians are the ones who were attacked. And I have been smeared by a British publication for comments I made about gay adoption. It's a pretty outrageous and dishonest smear and I want to address it. Date: 04-22-2019
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Today on the Matt Wall Show, horrific terror attacks against Christians in Sri Lanka.
We'll talk about the persecution of Christians, which is happening on a large scale across the world.
And we'll try to figure out why certain prominent Democrats are going out of their way To avoid acknowledging that Christians are the ones who were attacked yesterday.
And I have been smeared by a British publication for comments that I made about gay adoption.
So I want to take a look at this.
We'll look at sort of the anatomy of a smear and how it works.
So I think this is a great example of one.
And it's a pretty outrageous example as well.
So we'll talk about that also today on The Matt Walsh Show.
Well, happy Easter, everybody.
I hope you had a good one.
And I'll say that my Easter was very good.
Great day overall.
Kind of ruined, though, I gotta be honest, at the very end, because I was waiting all day for my kids to go to bed so that I could go and raid their Easter baskets and take, you know, whatever candy I wanted, such is my tradition.
But when they finally went to bed and I, you know, I went to go carry out the the operation, I discovered that they'd eaten all the good
jelly beans, like all the red and orange ones were gone.
I mean, they somehow picked through all of them, left me only the purple and green ones.
And it was pretty outrageous.
I mean, everything I do for this family, and here I am left with purple and green jelly
beans.
And so there's a new a new rule that I'm instating in this household, which is you will save
the good jelly beans for dead.
Okay, that's just that's just the way it's going to be.
Now, I know you might say, well, you know, why don't you just go out and buy your own
bag of jelly beans?
You know, you could buy as much jelly beans as you want.
Well, and sometimes it does seem like we forget that we can do that as adults.
Like, you get really excited about stealing your kid's Halloween candy going through their bag when they're asleep and, you know, trying to find the little small snicker bars and stuff.
And it's almost like you forget that, well, you could just go to the grocery store and buy all the snicker bars you want.
You're a grown-up.
You can do that now.
But what you don't understand is that, unless you're a parent, it's hard to understand this, but stealing stolen candy from your kids Taste so much better than regular candy.
There's something about the act of stealing it that makes it just sweeter.
It's like a flavor enhancement.
I can't really explain it, but that's just how it is.
So now, unfortunately, no flavor enhancement can make purple jelly beans okay, and so nothing will ever balance out this injustice that I have suffered.
But I won't harp on that too much.
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All right, tragedy in Sri Lanka on Easter as 290 people have been murdered in a series of seven suicide bombing blasts, killing Christians at a number of churches.
There were also blasts at other places, including a hotel.
Government officials in the country have already pointed to an Islamic terror group called National Tawheed Jammat.
I'm probably mispronouncing that, but that's the Islamic terror group in the country that they're aware of.
and a bit on their radar screen and so that's who they're pointing to in the early stages here and
this is the reality for Christians okay for many Christians outside of the U.S. and it's easy for
us to get complacent in this country to forget that our Christian brothers and sisters have to
worry about these kinds of things when they head out the door
for church on Sunday especially on a day like Easter.
You know, we don't have to really worry about this.
I mean, there have been attacks in this country as well, including Just last year.
But generally speaking, it's not the same as it is in other parts of the world.
Especially, as I said, on these on these high holy days, you think about it was just two years ago on Palm Sunday in Egypt, well over 100 Christians were killed in suicide bombings at churches.
And now, of course, it's happening on Easter.
What I want to emphasize here, first of all, is that while this is an enormous tragedy, it is not a unique occurrence.
Okay?
Attacks on Christians, especially by Islamists, have been an utterly routine thing for a very long time.
The group Open Doors has some statistics on its website.
It says each month, okay, these are statistics, monthly statistics.
Each month on average, 345 Christians are killed for their faith.
105 churches or other Christian buildings are burned or attacked.
Over 200 Christians are arrested and detained without trial.
That's each month.
Okay?
So this, as I said, is a reality of life for many Christians worldwide.
And it's important for us to recognize that.
Christians are By far, certainly among the most persecuted group in the entire world.
And so think about even, this should be something that is a motivation to us, first of all, as Christians in this country, not just to pray for our persecuted brothers and sisters, which we should be doing, and not just to lend our help and our resources to them, which we should also be doing, So we need to be doing those two things.
But the third thing that we can do in response to the persecution suffered by Christians overseas is to stop being such lazy cowards.
That's another thing we could do.
I mean, think about how much of an effort it is for us to just get ourselves to get up and go to church on a Sunday.
And we're looking for a million excuses, and, you know, you'd rather stay home, sleep in, watch TV, whatever.
Meanwhile, for us, going to church, it's, you know, it's a 10-minute drive.
You go in, it's air conditioning.
Maybe afterwards, they have some, you know, food and drink in the church basement.
Or even, there might even be food and drink during church, depending on which church you're going to these days.
And so, it's just, it's all, it's a perfectly wonderful, comfortable experience.
No risk at all.
It takes an hour of your time, maybe a little bit more than that.
But still, somehow, it's too much for a lot of us.
We don't want to put that kind of effort into our faith and into communing together as Christians.
Well, think about overseas.
Not only are they going off into far less comfortable churches that are a lot further away, And a lot of these countries, places like Sri Lanka, okay, they're not going to have 10 churches on every block like we do in some places in America.
So you're going a lot further.
Church is going to be a lot less comfortable.
And most pressingly of all, you know that you live in a hostile environment where there are radical Muslim militants all around.
And it's just a matter of time before your church is targeted.
And yet they still go.
Even in spite of that.
Well, we just can't be bothered.
So I think that's something that we should be doing as Christians.
That's one way that we should be motivated to actually care about our faith, try to live according to it, take part in it, and expend maybe just a little bit of effort in being Christian.
That's one thing I take from it.
Another thing.
The fact that Christians are targeted so often and on such a wide scale, that's what makes it all the more important to actually acknowledge what's happening and who the victims are.
And that is why it's a problem when prominent and influential people refuse to do that.
Okay, so yesterday, shortly after the news broke of the attacks, several prominent Democrats released their canned statements of remorse.
But they all used a certain phrase that has since gotten a lot of attention.
Let me pull up the... So this is Barack Obama.
This is what he tweeted yesterday.
He said, The attacks on tourists and Easter worshipers in Sri Lanka are an attack on humanity.
On a day devoted to love, redemption and renewal, we pray for the victims and stand with the people of Sri Lanka.
Here's Hillary Clinton.
On this holy weekend for many faiths, we must stand united against hatred and violence.
I'm praying for everyone affected by today's horrific attacks on Easter worshipers and travelers in Sri Lanka.
Julian Castro.
On a day of redemption and hope, the evil of these attacks on Easter worshipers and tourists in Sri Lanka is deeply saddening.
My prayers today are with the dead and injured and their families.
May we find grace.
And there were several other tweets like that from Democrats.
Easter worshipers.
The word Christian doesn't appear in any of these statements.
They are Easter worshipers.
Now, if just one of them had used that odd phrase, not a phrase that you hear often at all.
I don't think I've ever heard anyone say that before.
Easter worshipers.
But if just one of them had used that phrase, then I would say, okay, well, it's a weird choice of words, not much else going on there.
The fact that Obama and Clinton and Castro and several other Democrats all seized on this one phrase at roughly the same time and phrased it basically the same way, that tells me that this is calculated.
Now, this has drawn some comparisons to Ilhan Omar's tweet about Notre Dame, the Notre Dame Cathedral fire.
If you'll remember last week, when that happened, she sent out a tweet talking about the art and architecture, but didn't specifically call it a church or discuss its spiritual significance.
She was getting a lot of criticism for that.
Now, I defended Omar on that because it was a perfectly normal and fine tweet.
And as a Muslim, I don't really expect her to extol the spiritual virtues of a church because she's a Muslim and it doesn't have any spiritual significance to her.
So, I thought that criticism was stupid.
This is different, though.
Okay, because this seems very much like a decision was made to avoid using the word Christian and instead to adopt a kind of bizarre euphemism.
Now, why do that?
Well, because Christians are not an approved victim group.
These people, Obama, Clinton, Castro, etc., they don't want us to immediately associate Christian with victim.
They want, if anything, the opposite sort of association.
They want us to associate Christians with terrorists and bullies.
But if Christians are victims, that throws a wrench in the whole narrative, and that's the reason why they chose Easter worshippers instead.
And I am 100% convinced that that was a decision, a calculated decision, that was made.
Now, of course, we all know, when they say Easter worshipper, we know what they mean.
We know that people who worship on Easter are Christians.
But the idea is to blunt the emotional, visceral reaction you get from hearing Christians were attacked.
They don't want that reaction.
Um, so the idea is to make it sound as vague and ambiguous as possible.
And yeah, that's a problem.
If you don't think it's a problem, think about this.
Imagine, um, the thing about after the, the Orlando attack at the, at the gay nightclub, uh, in Orlando back in, uh, 2016 or 15, um, Well, imagine if Obama had called it an attack on barhoppers, or on club attendees, or something in that vein, and had made no mention that they were gay people, chosen as victims for that fact.
Well, he wouldn't do that.
And he didn't do that.
Politicians, especially on the left, but on the right as well, made sure to specifically mention the LGBT community and homophobia and so on.
At the very beginning, they were making it about that.
And for good reason.
Maybe a better analogy actually would be, just because it's more recent, would be the attacks at the mosques in New Zealand last month.
Here's what, so two mosques were attacked in those horrible attacks, and here's what Obama and Clinton said after those attacks.
Obama said, Michelle and I send our condolences to the people of New Zealand.
We grieve with you and the Muslim community.
All of us must stand against hatred in all its forms.
Hillary, my heart breaks for New Zealand and the global Muslim community.
We must continue the fight to fight the perpetuation and normalization of Islamophobia and racism in all its forms.
White supremacist terrorists must be condemned by leaders everywhere.
Their murderous hatred must be stopped.
Well, that gives up the game right there, doesn't it?
There was obviously a decision that was made to make sure to mention Muslim and Islamophobia, white supremacism.
And there was obviously a decision not to mention specifics yesterday.
Okay, so you just you can't compare.
I don't see how anyone can compare Hillary's tweet about The church attacks to her tweet about the mosque attacks and not see a problem.
It's very clear.
Okay.
What she did not say what she made a point of not saying is, uh, this is an attack on Christians is, you know, Islamic terrorism must be condemned everywhere.
It's a worldwide scourge, even though that's true.
She didn't say it.
I mean, the very fact that the term Islamophobia exists, And Christophobia doesn't really exist.
No one really uses it.
Even though Christians are killed by Muslims for their faith.
Far, far, far more than the reverse.
That tells you everything you need to know right there.
It's all about narrative building.
And that's all that these Democrats care about in any given situation.
And the whole idea of victimhood is so valuable to them and so precious, um, that they, they guard it and they will not allow the wrong groups into that camp.
They, they just won't allow it.
And so even if there are hundreds of Christians being killed every single month for their faith across the world, and most of the time by Muslims, uh, they just, they can't, they can't acknowledge that they never will.
And that is cowardly and disgusting.
And I mean, it would be hard to go overboard in condemning it once you understand what this is really coming from, or what, you know, what the real motivation is.
Meanwhile, I think it would be hypocritical not to mention this as well, since we're on the subject of bad tweets on Easter.
Here was Donald Trump's Twitter message on Easter.
He said, Happy Easter!
I have never been happier or more content because your country is doing so well with an economy that is the talk of the world and may be stronger than it has ever been before.
Have a great day.
No mention of Jesus.
No mention of Christianity.
His Easter message is about himself.
And that's all he said on the subject on Twitter yesterday.
He spent the rest of the day talking about himself.
He spent the rest of Easter.
I mean, Easter Sunday.
He's just ranting on Twitter about himself and about Mueller.
He did send one tweet about the church attacks.
He also made no mention of Christians in his tweet.
He just said people were attacked.
Originally, he said 138 million people were killed.
And then, I mean, that's a heck of a typo.
Went back and changed it.
I mean, look, let's just be real here, guys.
If Obama had tweeted this exact thing on Easter during his presidency, he had tweeted out an Easter message that was completely about himself and his own successes and made no mention at all of any of the holiday's actual meaning or significance, we would have lost our freaking minds, and we know it.
Okay, so I'm not losing my mind over this, I wouldn't have lost my mind over that, but I don't lose my mind about tweets in general.
But it is stupid, narcissistic nonsense, and it shows yet again that Trump cannot manage to care about anything that does not directly relate to himself.
And I'm not a fan of that.
I don't think that's a good thing.
And I think it's a thing worthy of condemnation.
And I'm not going to let it slide just because it's a Republican.
I know most people will.
I'm not going to do that.
This tweet from a Democrat would send the right into conniptions.
And you know it, and I know it, and everyone knows it.
I mean, everyone right now, with an earshot of me, knows that I'm 100% right about that, right?
So I think it should, therefore, provoke at least some kind of reaction from us now.
Like, hey, you know, why not?
I mean, can you say something about what the holiday actually means?
You're supposedly a Christian yourself.
So, the Hillary and Obama tweets were cowardly PC nonsense.
The Trump tweet is narcissistic nonsense, and that's what we get.
Cowardice and narcissism from our ruling class.
That's all we can expect from them, as always.
Wonderful.
Okay.
Moving on.
Speaking of cowardice and nonsense and everything else, let's take a look at this.
Because I think it's interesting.
We can see kind of the anatomy of a smear.
It can be grotesque to inspect, but also instructive.
And in this case, the person being smeared is yours truly.
So let's back up for a moment.
A few days ago on the show, during the email portion of the show at the end, I answered a question from somebody who wanted to know how I could support the abolition of abortion while opposing gay adoption.
Now, if that seems like kind of a non sequitur to you, as if, okay, those two issues aren't related, well, you're right.
But I can tell you, I get this question a lot, especially during Q and A's on college campuses.
It comes up every single time without exaggeration.
And the logic is that, well, if we abolish abortion, We're gonna end up with a whole bunch of new babies in the adoption system, and then we're gonna need gay couples to come in and adopt some of these kids so that they don't end up languishing in the system for years on end.
So, as the logic goes, if you can call it that, well, you're a hypocrite if you oppose gay adoption while wanting to abolish abortion, because that means you'd be consigning these kids to the adoption system.
Which, even if that were true, That would still be preferable to killing them.
It's better to be in the adoption system than dead.
So let's just be clear about that, number one.
But there are a lot of problems with the question and the assumptions behind it.
And I answer the question the same way that I always do.
First, I pointed out that it's a myth.
That babies who go up for adoption could stay in the system for years.
They don't.
They won't.
It really doesn't happen.
It can be hard to get an older child adopted.
That's true.
But infants are adopted easily because there's a waiting list like 50 miles long of people who are of families who are qualified.
They've filled out all the paperwork.
They paid the money and they're eager to adopt an infant.
There's a very, very long waiting list of families in that position, and families will wait for years for the opportunity to adopt an infant.
It's more difficult to get, and that's, so in this scenario, where abortion is made illegal, and then there's supposedly gonna be this influx of children up for adoption, well, those are gonna be babies, right?
It's not like abortion is, Abolished.
And then that means everyone keeps their kids for five years and then puts them up for adoption.
So we're talking about babies in the system and babies get adopted.
The reason why, unfortunately, sadly, it can be harder to get older children adopted is, well, there are a number of reasons.
Number one, families, a lot of families that they want to adopt an infant so they can form that bond right away.
And of course, with older children, sometimes, you know, if you have already have kids, if you have younger kids and you're worried about There are just other concerns that come into play that aren't really there for babies.
So that's the first thing.
Second point, I pointed out that both mother and father are indispensable.
A child needs both.
So if we're talking about two men adopting, It seems that we're saying that the mother is expendable.
And if we're talking about two women adopting, then it seems that we're saying that the father is expendable.
We're saying, well, you know, you don't really need that.
I think that neither is expendable.
And that's a biological fact.
It's got nothing to do with any moral judgments about homosexuality or whatever.
The point being, you don't need to even You don't need to be a Christian.
You don't need to believe in, you know, biblical sexual morality to see the point here.
This is about biology.
That every single child has a mother and father.
Naturally, biologically.
And if their biological parents are unwilling or unable to care for them, Then the most natural and the healthiest thing is to find them a new mother and father.
Not two fathers or two mothers or one mother or one father.
Well, and as I said, you know, there are kids who obviously in this country end up in different sorts of situations.
There are kids who don't have a mother and father.
And I mean, there are plenty of kids who have just a mother and sometimes kids who have just a father, single parent homes.
Those kids are not, it's not like they're doomed to be failures in life and that their life is going to be miserable.
I'm not saying that.
What I'm saying is that is a disadvantage that they have to get over and overcome and succeed in spite of, which they can.
And so many of them do.
Thank God.
But, if a kid's in the adoption system and we're trying to find a situation for them, don't we want to find them the best possible situation?
To give them the best possible chance?
Well, one of the smear merchants over at Media Matters picked up on this segment, I guess because they monitor this show, so hi guys, by the way.
Great to have you.
They, they summarize this, this guy, Jason Campbell, his Twitter handle at Jason S. Campbell, C-A-M-P-B-E-L-L.
He, this is how he summarized the point that I made.
Here's the tweet here, I'll show it to you.
He says, So that's his characterization, okay?
It's not a quote, that's his characterization of what I said.
Well, the British publication called The Independent, They got wind of this, and they did their own article, and in their article, for the headline, they used that tweet.
Okay, they used the tweet of some guy giving a biased paraphrase of what I said, and they made that the headline, as if it was my quote, when it was that guy's quote about what I said.
So their headline in The Independent is, US conservative says he would rather a child remain in an orphanage than be adopted by a gay couple.
Well, here's the problem.
I didn't say that!
Okay, you could try to infer that.
You can assume that that's what I meant.
You can try to peer into my soul and read my mind.
That's not what I said.
So if you're gonna put it in the headline that, uh, That a U.S.
conservative says X, Y, Z. Well, it seems to me that the thing that you say that I said, I should have actually said, and I didn't say that.
That is what someone else said.
So here's a shot of the article by Greg Evans in The Independent.
And then they quote me in the article, verbatim, and their quote does not support the headline.
Here's what I said verbatim according to their own article.
I'll just read exactly what I said.
In my mind, every child needs and deserves a mother and father, and that's a biological need.
There is a reason why every person in history has been created by a mother and father.
So even if you don't want to use the word God, let's say nature clearly intends for a child to have a mother and father, which is why every child does have a mother and father.
What I would ask is, what I would ask you is, if we're talking about gay adoption, Which of the two is expendable, mother or father?
If we're talking about two gay men adopting a child, we can just get rid of the mother and say that a guy can do that.
Well, a guy can't do that.
A man cannot function as a mother.
A man can be a very loving father, but he cannot be a mother.
That is a role that he can biologically not fulfill, and there are certain emotional and psychological needs that a child has that, if he does not have a mother at home, will not be met.
That doesn't mean the child is doomed.
And can't end up being happy and fulfilled in life, but he will be happy and fulfilled in spite of that disadvantage.
Okay, so that's what they quote me as saying, but that's not what they put in the headline.
So the headline should be, U.S.
conservative says that mothers are indispensable.
That's the headline, right?
And that's a headline that everyone should be able to get behind.
But they didn't want to put that in there, because that doesn't make for a good headline, I guess.
And then they go on to say in the article, Walsh's radical comments have been met with derision online by people aghast at his views on gay couples fostering children.
Radical?
What's radical about that?
Anyone want to explain that to me?
Jason Campbell, since you've apparently pulled a short straw and you have to watch my show, you want to explain?
Do you want to stop being a misquoting coward and actually address the point?
You sniveling, conniving coward!
You want to actually give it a shot?
You want to use your brain for 10 seconds?
Explain to me!
Explain to me, what's radical about the idea that children need mothers?
Do you disagree?
Do you disagree that children... I'm saying children need mothers.
Mothers are great.
Mothers are indispensable.
Okay, it's kind of the message you hear around Mother's Day every year.
Does that scandalize you when you hear that, Jason Campbell?
Does it scandalize you to hear that mothers are indispensable and are great and children need them?
Do you disagree?
Well, explain to me why.
Just come out and say that, yeah, I mean, a man can do everything a mother can do.
You don't really even need mothers.
Um...
It left people aga- They're aghast that someone said children need mothers.
I am aghast at this biological fact that cannot be denied.
But this, of course, is how the media operates.
I'm not surprised by it, but that doesn't make it any better.
It's just, it's It's frustrating for me because I enjoy having discussions about these kinds of issues.
And so I would love if somebody would step up to the plate and provide some kind of counterpoint.
Because I would love to hear what it is.
I can't even imagine what it could be.
I mean, how could you possibly argue against the basic idea that the most ideal situation is for a child to have a mother and father?
I mean, it seems to me I've got everything on my side, including nature.
I've got nature.
I've got, you know, all of human history on my side.
I mean, it seems like I've got a lot going for me here in making this point.
So I'm just curious what the mothers are expendable crowd would say.
I don't even know what they would say.
Because they don't bother making any point.
All they do is just cry and freak out.
They go, did you hear what he said?
Oh my gosh, I'm a guest.
I'm a guest at this.
And by the way, that's how everyone in media matters.
That's how I imagine them.
That's how I imagine them saying everything is what they're just, they're constantly in the process of fainting.
So I'm waiting, you know, if anyone wants to step up to the plate and offer some sort of Rebuttal and I'd be fascinated to hear it.
All right.
Let's jump ahead to emails.
Matt Walsh show at gmail.com.
Matt Walsh show at gmail.com.
This is from JP, says, Dear Mr. Walsh, eventual dictator of America, I am taking issue with something you said on today's show.
You said that McDonald's is the best fast food restaurant, when in fact it is an undeniable fact that Chick-fil-A is the greatest fast food restaurant.
If your dictatorship is one that holds McDonald's above Chick-fil-A, I'm not sure it's a dictatorship I want to live in.
Well, JP, I have good news.
With this kind of insubordination, you won't have to worry about living.
Under my dictatorship.
I will take care of that problem for you swiftly.
I assure you.
Though probably not painlessly.
This is from Lisa, says, Greetings, Matt.
As a Catholic, do you believe that all the supposed real relics paraded by the Catholic Church, crown of thorns, pieces of the cross, nails from the cross, etc., are actually real?
If not, are you a rare form of Catholic in this regard?
Seeing as many churches claim to have certain relics that they couldn't all possibly have, how do you decide which ones are actually real and which ones aren't?
I could be wrong on this, but my understanding is that Protestants don't think those relics are real.
To be clear, obviously we acknowledge that they existed at one point, just not that they've necessarily been preserved and are on display in churches today.
Would be curious to hear a Catholic perspective on this.
Thanks and love the show.
Hi, Lisa.
I don't really have a blanket policy when it comes to relics.
I think that some of them are probably real and some probably aren't.
It depends.
I'd have to look at the history of any particular relic before I came to a tentative conclusion about whether or not I believe it's real.
But no, I don't just automatically believe that anything is an ancient holy relic just because someone says it is or because it's enclosed in glass somewhere at a church.
And it's not like we, you know, and we are We're not required to affirm that.
And I know you didn't make that claim, I just wanted to clarify.
Because it seems like there really are a lot of non-Catholics who think that as Catholics we are required to believe all of these random things.
You know, any claim that's made by any church, or any relic, or any miracle, we have to believe all that.
And that's simply not the case.
We, just like you, we are able to use our own judgment and decide if we believe these
things or not.
The most that the church will do with a lot of this stuff, including especially miracle
claims, and if someone claims a miracle, then the church will have a whole process of looking
And very, very often, probably 99% of the time, the church will say, no, you know, it doesn't appear to be a miracle.
And then you got that 1% of the time.
And in those, in those cases, most of the time, the most the church will do is say that, okay, you know, we've looked into this and this is a miracle worthy of belief.
You don't have to believe it, but we've looked into it and seems to be a miracle.
Um, but at the end of the day, you can, Form your own conclusion.
So that's kind of where I am with relics.
Here's an example.
This isn't really, I don't know if I'd call it a relic per se, but I was just talking to my family about this yesterday at Easter.
This claim, because some people in my family just came back from Italy, and I was asking them about this.
There's this claim that I only recently heard about that the Holy Family's house was airlifted out of Nazareth by angels in the 13th century and transported to Italy, where it stands today.
And people go and they visit it.
A pope in the 1200s announced basically that the Holy Family's house had appeared there in Italy as a miracle.
Angels had brought it.
So I was asking some people in my family about this, and we got into a debate about it.
Do I believe that angels transported a house to Nazareth?
No, I don't.
I really don't believe that.
I think it's kind of silly, to be honest.
I don't think there's any evidence, any reason to believe it.
There should be evidence for something.
Like, for instance, there should be, if this house existed in the Middle East for 1,200 years, Then people should have known about it, and then one day they should have shown up to pay their respects at the Holy Family's house, and oh, look at that, it's gone, right?
But I'm not aware of anything like that.
This house just appeared one day in Italy, and someone said it was the Holy Family's house.
So that, I don't believe that.
But do I believe, for instance, that Notre Dame had pieces of the Crown of Thorns?
Yeah, sure, I do.
I can't know for sure, but I think there is a history that you can trace.
And with a lot of these relics, not all of them, but with a lot of them, you can trace the history pretty far back.
You can look at a documented history that goes back to the early centuries of the church, and sometimes even more, and can get even closer to Christ than that.
And when you've got something like that, then I think it's worthy of belief.
And I certainly wouldn't go the opposite.
Could the opposite extreme and just dismiss all of that out of hand?
Because it makes sense, right?
That why wouldn't God have left us some relics, some keepsakes, if you will, for us to just have and cherish?
All right, let's see, this is from Connor, says, Hey Matt, Passover got me thinking tonight, and I think I managed to map out how reparations for slavery will work, and I wanted to get your opinion on it.
Step one, those with Egyptian heritage will pay all the Jews and Christians for starters.
Step 2, the Jews and Christians will then use that previously gotten money to pay those with African heritage, only if they're white of course.
Step 2A, Muslims will start paying each other for enslaving each other in the past.
Step 3, those with African heritage will use their previously gotten money from Step 2 to pay each other similarly to how it worked in Step 2A for past Africans enslaving each other.
Thank you for all you do from Connor.
Connor, I find your proposal totally acceptable and I say let's do it.
I think the goal here has to be that we all end up with exactly the same amount of money that we started with.
We'll just pass all the money around and then we'll end up in the end where we started to begin with.
This is from Garrett, says, Hey Matt, yesterday I had the best conversation I've ever had at a bar.
Me and two other young people had a deep discussion regarding Christianity and philosophy.
We mostly disagreed, but agreed on a few things and were incredibly cordial with each other.
Before this, I had been rather negative about the state of such fundamental debates in our society.
Though after this, I am optimistic.
Do you believe young people are talking about these things enough or is the education system failing in that respect?
Well, first of all, Garrett, you've stumbled on a fundamental truth, which is that the best philosophical and theological debates happen in dimly lit bars over a pint.
And I firmly believe that.
I do think that interesting and in-depth and edifying debates and discussions between people are very possible in our society, especially at a bar, but not only at a bar.
But I think you need a couple of ingredients besides beer.
Number one, the people who are conversing with each other need to actually respect each other as people.
Because if you hate each other, there's no hope for a dialogue, right?
So if you're sitting down for a beer with someone, that means that you respect them.
Because you wouldn't if you didn't.
So that's the first thing you need.
Second thing is you need to have some basic shared frame of reference.
You need some underlying principle that everyone agrees on, something that you can appeal to in the conversation.
Because without that, it can't go anywhere.
And that, I think, is why a lot of our conversations don't go anywhere in this country.
So in other words, I can have a fun conversation about football with any knowledgeable football fan, even if they, you know, are a bad fan who likes a bad, horrible team like the Steelers or the Jets.
Now, I think that there's something mentally wrong with Steelers and Jets fans.
I think that maybe, arguably, they're all sociopaths and cannibals and worse.
But we can at least talk and we can have a fun conversation, even in spite of that, because we have that underlying agreement that football is interesting and we'd like to talk about it.
But the conversation wouldn't go anywhere if we couldn't even agree on the basic definition of what football is.
Like, if I'm talking about football and he's talking about ping pong, well, that's not going to be a very interesting discussion.
And it's the same with deeper subject.
We have to agree on something.
You have to have some kind of agreement somewhere.
We can disagree on a million things, and we can argue about those things, and we can have an enjoyable argument, but there have to be a few basic starting points that we share.
And the problem in our society, even apart from the education system or anything else, the problem is, very often, you've got two people or two groups that are arguing with each other, and they have no shared starting point, they have no frame of reference, they have no shared values, no shared priorities.
Their fundamental The concept of reality is completely opposite from each other.
And so it's like you're speaking different languages.
And I think that's our problem.
All right.
But I'm glad that you had that conversation.
And I've had many of those myself and they are very enjoyable.
This is from David.
Says, Hi, Matt.
You talk a lot about space aliens and similar subjects.
That's true.
My feeling, though, is that exploring space is an enormous waste of money when there's so much on Earth that needs fixing.
How do you respond to that?
Can we justify dumping billions into space for no reason?
Just seems silly to me.
You know, I don't see anything silly about exploration, and I hear this a lot.
I think it satisfies an essential human need.
It's part of what makes us human.
This reminds me of the conversation we had about beauty after the Notre Dame thing.
And I was trying to make the point that, yeah, beauty is not practical, but it's more than practical.
It's deeper than that.
It's more transcendent, right?
There are needs that we have.
There are practical needs that we have that put us in the same camp as, like, squirrels and ants and trees and so on.
You know, we need water and we need oxygen.
Physical needs.
But then there are needs that we have that set us apart from all other known creatures.
The hunger for beauty and for transcendence.
That's what sets us apart from those other creatures.
And so we shouldn't stifle those desires.
We should follow them.
Even if it's impractical.
Even if it's expensive.
Even if it's risky.
It's how we become really human, really ourselves.
And I think the drive for discovery is like this.
I think if we were to stop discovering, if we were to stop surging ahead, if we were to stop seeking new frontiers, I think we'd stop being, we would stop essentially being a human civilization.
We'd be just like some kind of ant colony, right?
Obsessed with its own practical needs, its own basic survival, and nothing more.
And who wants that?
Who wants to be like that?
I don't.
So what do we gain from going into space?
Well, I could actually point to a whole bunch of practical...
Things that have come from space exploration.
A lot of everyday items that started with astronauts and with the space program.
But aside from that, we gain knowledge, we gain expanded horizons, we gain hope, we gain something to look forward to, something to dream about.
I mean, we gain more of what makes human existence worthwhile.
So we gain quite a bit, I would say.
Is it worth the money then?
Yeah, I believe it is.
It really is.
I think there's a modern tendency to see everything in – it's a tendency shared even by Christians – a tendency to see everything in materialistic terms, everything in practical, utilitarian terms.
Like, what is this doing for me immediately?
How is it helping my bottom line?
That's the question we all ask about almost everything.
But there are things that are bigger than that.
I mean, music.
Who needs music, right?
What do you need music for?
It doesn't do anything for you.
It doesn't pay the bills, most of us, unless you're a professional musician.
You can't eat it.
You can't drink it.
But it's another thing that's part of what makes life worth living.
It's part of what makes us a human.
All right, so we'll leave it there.
Thanks everybody for watching.
Thanks for listening.
Godspeed.
Today on The Ben Shapiro Show, devastating bombings by radical Islamists kill hundreds on Easter in Sri Lanka, fallout from the Mueller report continues, and Elizabeth Warren makes a radical proposal.
