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July 19, 2019 - The Matt Walsh Show
45:07
Ep. 299 - The Minimum Wage Should Be Zero

Democrats pass a bill to raise the minimum wage to 15 dollars an hour. I’ll explain why it should be zero. A measure passed in California allows thieves to steal with no consequence. And the scariest movie trailer of all time was just released. I’ll play it for you. Date: 07-19-2019 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Today on the Matt Wall Show, Democrats just passed a bill to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour.
I'm going to explain, and it's going to sound cruel and heartless, but actually it's not.
I'm going to explain why the minimum wage should actually be zero.
Also, a measure passed in California a few years ago that has now made it so that thieves Uh, can just walk into any convenience store they want and steal whatever they want, basically without consequence.
We'll discuss that.
And the scariest trailer of all time was just released.
And it's not the IT trailer.
I'm not talking about that.
It's something else.
Much scarier than that.
I'll play that for you today on The Matt Wall Show.
You know, I have to say I'm pretty upset today.
I just read the news that Berkeley City Council is getting rid of a bunch of offensive words from its city code, which is great.
For instance, the word manhole is gone now in Berkeley.
It's going to be replaced with maintenance hole.
And that's, I mean, thank God, right?
Because I can't tell you, as a father of a daughter, I can't tell you how many times my daughter has broken down in tears because she's being excluded from the language we use to describe sewers.
It's very traumatizing for her.
So they're solving that, but it's not all good, you see, because Berkeley has also gotten rid of any mention of men and women from the code, instead replacing it with the word people.
But wait a second.
People?
People?
Language like that is highly, highly offensive to furries like Beto.
How do you think it makes them feel?
Can you imagine how excluded you would feel if you identified as, say, a six-foot-tall chicken, and now everyone's going around using a word like people?
I think individual or entity, I think it's probably even more, you want to be as ambiguous as possible.
Entity, right, would be the more progressive choice.
So it's, Berkeley is, they're getting there, they're, you know, on the right path, but they have not progressed nearly enough, for my taste anyway.
So I just wanted to mention that to begin with.
Okay, much to discuss today.
We're going to actually revisit the discussion of furries a little bit later because there's going to be a big hit movie coming out, a musical all about furries, which is another sign of our decaying culture.
We'll talk about that later though.
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All right, so, let me...
Let's begin here.
Not going to spend much time on this, which is what I always say before I ramble about something for 57 minutes.
I'll try to have a better follow-through this time, though.
We've talked this week quite a bit about Trump and Trump-related issues, and I have criticized Trump, God forbid.
That's something that I do on occasion, maybe you've noticed.
But as always, when those occasions arise, people get upset.
It has, I guess, been decided by people other than myself that my job is to obsequiously justify and defend everything Trump does or says.
That's my job, according to them.
Now, personally, I would rather be dead than sacrifice my intellectual integrity for the sake of a politician.
If I'm going to sacrifice my intellectual integrity for anything, it's not going to be for a politician.
I would choose death over that.
I really would.
I just, I can't, who would want to live like that?
So, that's just a difference of opinion, I suppose, me with other people.
The point is, I've gotten a lot of feedback, shall we say, this week, and a lot of people asking, a lot of people asking, saying, you know, so are you a Trump supporter or not?
What are you, one of those dastardly never-Trumpers?
Is that what you are?
What's up with all the criticism?
And so on.
It seems kind of late in the game to be having this conversation almost three years in, but I guess it still needs to be had, so that's fine.
I want to just briefly, for those who have been asking, explain my strategy, or maybe my philosophy of Trump.
Philosophy of Trump.
That's what I'm going to explain.
It's very simple.
It goes like this.
When it comes to Trump, I will criticize him when I think he's wrong.
Which he is wrong, sometimes.
And that's because he's not God.
He's not a perfect being.
He can be wrong.
He's fallible.
And so when he is, I say so.
When he's right, when he does and says a good thing, in my opinion, I defend him.
And he is right sometimes because he's not Hitler.
He's not Satan.
He can be right.
And when he is, I say so.
And that's it, really.
That's the whole thing.
That's the whole... That's the kit and caboodle.
Super simple.
Agree, I say so.
Disagree, I say so.
There you go, the end.
That's all.
It's not virtue signaling.
It's not putting on a show.
It's not trying to appeal to this or that group.
No, it's just, I say what I think.
If I disagree, I say it.
That's it.
That's really it.
Am I a never-Trumper?
No.
I don't even know what that label means.
That's the dumbest label.
He's in office, maybe you've noticed.
He's president, so even if I wanted to be a Never Trumper, I wouldn't know how to be one.
What do you mean, never what, exactly?
He's there, he won, so what do you mean never?
What am I never, if I was a Never Trumper, what is it that I'm never doing?
It's not like we have to go and vote for him again every single day that he's in office, so that's not an issue.
On a day-to-day basis, while he's in office, what would being a Never Trumper entail?
If it entails, if the Never, Means never support him, never agree with him under any circumstance, then that's just insane.
And there are some people, some so-called So maybe former conservatives who have taken that approach and have decided basically to become liberals, I mean really become liberal, and to accept liberal ideas and to support the Democratic Party because they hate Trump so much.
I guess that's what an ever-Trumper is now, and that is just a ridiculous point of view, that this idea that you're going to now accept an entirely Different philosophy and ideology just because you don't like one guy who subscribes to the other, ostensibly subscribes anyway, to the other philosophy.
That doesn't make any sense.
So I'm not that.
But am I a Trump fan?
No, I'm not a Trump fan because I'm not a fan of any politician.
As I've said many times, fandom and politics don't mix.
You want to be a fan of someone, then be a fan of a sports star, be a fan of a sports team, be a fan of a rock star, be a fan of a band.
But pom-poms don't belong in politics.
Leave your pom-poms at home when it's time to talk about politics.
I don't think that we should ever be a fan of any politician, period.
Am I a Trump supporter?
Well, even to that I would say no, because of this.
My support for Trump, just like for any politician, is completely conditional.
I have no loyalty to politicians.
None whatsoever.
I'm loyal to my family.
I'm loyal to my wife, to my kids.
There are people to which I am loyal.
There are situations where I think loyalty is important.
But politics is not one of them.
I am absolutely not loyal to any politician because they work for me and they work for you.
They work for us.
That's how this is supposed to work.
They're supposed to earn our support on a day-to-day basis, continue earning it.
The bank account is basically always empty because they earn it, but they could lose it the next day.
So they're really not, as politicians, they're not building up much, you know, they're not accruing much wealth in that department.
They have to keep earning it every single day.
Because the thing is we know about politicians is they can flip-flop.
They can change.
They can betray their promises.
They can do all that.
Politicians do it all the time.
Which is why I think we should never stake out a position as, well, I'm a supporter of this person.
I support them in this situation right now, given what they're doing, but that could change tomorrow, in which case I'm going to kick them to the curb.
Because I have no emotional attachment.
I have no affection.
It is totally transactional.
You're doing what I want right now.
I agree with you right now.
I support you.
But if you stray, you're done.
That's my approach.
That's my formula.
That's how I approach, as I said, every politician, period.
This is the way I look at it.
I don't make exceptions for anybody.
And I think that, look, we all have our own approaches.
I, of course, am biased in favor of my own, but I do think that this is actually kind of the right way of going about it as an American.
I think this is what our founders had in mind.
They had in mind for us to be skeptical of anyone in power.
Be skeptical of anyone in power for the simple fact that they're there because they wanted to be in power.
If they have power in America, it means they wanted power, and so we should be skeptical of them.
That's sort of the catch-22 of politics, is that, you know, you could... I forget the quote from someone.
Who, uh, now I've totally forgotten it, so I'm going to completely mangle it.
But you know, the, the people who are least suited for power are precisely the kinds of people who would pursue power.
And that's, that's just, that's the catch 22.
So the very fact that someone would pursue it means that we should be skeptical because we should be saying, well, what, what, hold on a second.
What are you so desperate to be in charge for?
What's going on here?
And so we always maintain that skepticism at all times, I think.
That's just the way I look at it.
Democrats in the House yesterday passed the Raise the Wage Act, which would hike the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour.
It's not going to be taken up in the Senate, so it's not going to become law, but it could become law eventually if Dems take control.
This is one of the many horrible things they plan to do.
And I do think it's horrible.
I know it seems on so many democratic policies, especially in the economic realm, It seems on the surface compassionate and like they're concerned about working Americans and so on, but when you stop to think about it for just five seconds, you realize how bad it really is.
So a couple of thoughts here on the minimum wage, since it's being discussed.
I do support a minimum wage, but the minimum wage that I support is zero.
I think zero is the baseline.
Zero should be the minimum wage.
I definitely don't think the minimum wage, it shouldn't go below that.
Okay, so there shouldn't be a negative.
Nobody should be charged money to work, so I'll say that.
But zero is the cutoff.
Zero is the baseline, should be the baseline wage for work, because that's the baseline amount of effort you can put in.
Um, it's possible for someone to do zero work, which means that they have earned $0.
Do zero work at $0.
I think that makes a lot of sense.
But when you skip from zero and you go all the way up to say $8 an hour minimum wage, $10 an hour, $15 an hour, 20, 25.
I mean, there's, there's no limit to it.
Once you do that, it doesn't really make any sense.
Um, Because what you're suggesting is it's basically impossible for someone to do less than that amount of work in an hour.
You're saying that if the minimum wage is $15 an hour, you're saying that it's impossible that anyone in America could do work for an hour and the work they perform could be worth less than $15.
You're saying that's impossible.
All the work that's being done across the country in any given hour, all of it is worth at least $15 an hour.
I don't think that's true.
I'll give one example.
We could all point out examples, but just one example.
I went to McDonald's the other day.
As I have the unfortunate habit of doing on occasion.
And at McDonald's now, most of McDonald's I go in now have those automated things where you can order the touchscreen things.
But I usually avoid those because they're touchscreen.
And so you can see the finger smudges on them.
And it's, I don't want to touch that thing.
I mean, how often are those things washed?
It looks like they're never washed.
I don't want to put my hand on a thing of a hundred other people have touched right before I'm about to eat.
It's gross.
Um, when I can see their gross, greasy, disgusting hand marks on it.
So then I, I went to the, to the cashier and, um, so here's how that interaction work, that interaction went verbatim.
And as I said, we've all had interactions like this.
So I walk up, the cashier goes, can I help you?
Uh, yes, I'll have the large, uh, number one, please.
Thank you.
That it?
Yes.
That's $6.57.
Oh, actually, sorry, can you change that to a medium?
OK.
And that's how it went.
Now, let me ask you, somebody like that, someone who, that's all they do.
They can't even be troubled to enunciate their words.
They can barely even put in the effort to speak.
They're barely sentient.
You're almost watching them melt in front of you into this just lump of matter.
They're barely even there because of just how utterly disinterested they are.
And not only disinterested, but ticked off that you're there.
You know, the kind of person where you go into one of these places and they're so unpleasant and so miserable that they make you regret coming in.
You are less likely to come back because of people like that.
They make you feel guilty for being there, where you start to question yourself.
You start saying, oh, geez, maybe I shouldn't.
You start feeling bad, like maybe I should have just gone and hunted for deer or something for my lunch.
I don't want to.
I feel like I'm putting this person out or something.
But this is their job.
This is what they do.
They came in, they put on the visor, they put on the name tag.
This is all they can do.
This is what they're getting paid to do.
You might as well put a little effort in.
They don't want to put any effort in.
So with someone like that, are they worth automatically worth doing that?
Sighing, rolling your eyes.
Is that automatically worth $15 an hour?
Especially when there's a machine that can do exactly that without the attitude and speaking clearly?
I mean, how could it possibly be worth $15?
It's not!
It's not worth $8 an hour.
Somebody like that.
I guess the company, the restaurant, the store, Has some need for them.
That's why they're still there.
So, you know, they're what are they worth 50 cents an hour at most 25 cents.
They're worth very close to zero, maybe not zero, but very close to it.
And so that they should be paid.
That's what they should be paid.
People should be paid according to the work.
They do now on the other hand.
You do have occasions, and usually this happens in a Chick-fil-A as we all know, but not always.
There are times when you go to a fast food place, And the cashier is super nice and helpful and cheerful and they've got a smile on their face and they, you know, something's screwed up or you have to make a change and they're just very accommodating and welcoming and they make you feel good.
They make you feel, they make you want to order just more food just to reward them.
Which, they make you want to come back.
They just, they're, they're, they have, they're doing, they're putting in maximum effort.
Right? I mean, you're punching things into a cash register.
The way that they make these things, it's like they're just pictures of the things
that you don't even have to read.
So someone like that, they know they could be putting in almost no effort.
Instead, they put in all of the possible effort they can into this job because they're saying to themselves, look, this is what I'm doing.
It's not what I want to do with the rest of my life.
I don't particularly enjoy it.
I wouldn't do it for free.
But since I'm doing it, since this is what I'm getting paid to do, I might as well do a good job.
And so that's what they do.
Now, someone like that, I think those are people who, I mean, they could be worth $30 an hour, they could be worth $50 an hour.
If they're that good at their job and they make you as a customer want to come back, they're worth a lot of money to the company because they're making money for the company.
So I think you get rid of the minimum wage, and here's what the situation should be behind any fast food counter.
It should be a situation where there are people working back there who are making $35 an hour, and there are people who are making 35 cents an hour.
That's how wide the gap should be between wages, because that's how wide the gap in effort is.
And the wages should reflect that.
So this isn't just about punishing the fast food employers or the minimum wage employees who put in no effort.
It's not just about, not even punishing, it's not about simply encouraging them to do better, although that is part of it.
But it's also about rewarding those who are worth a lot more than $8 an hour or $15 an hour or $20 an hour.
When you have a minimum wage, what ends up happening is because the company, the restaurant, you know, they've got these employees who are worth almost nothing.
They have to pay them though $8, $10, $50 an hour, which means they've got to take that potential income away from the employees who could be worth more.
You get rid of the minimum wage and now, yeah, there are going to be people who lose out and deserve to lose out because they're just lumps of of matter sitting there. But then those who are worth more,
now you've freed up that capital and they can be paid what they're worth. So I think it's then
if you work at a Burger King or something and there's no minimum wage and you find that all of a
sudden you're getting paid two dollars an hour because you're just a miserable employee who puts in
no effort and makes everyone around you you feel terrible just for being there.
Well, then you could look at your co-workers who are making so much more, and you could say, oh, I want it.
That's what I want.
It's very simple to get there.
All you have to do is put in the effort.
All right.
What else do we have here?
This is an incredible story I wanted to mention from NBCLosAngeles.com.
Let me just read a little bit of this.
It says small business owners in San Diego County are sounding an alarm over thousands of dollars in losses to shoplifters.
The problem is that these shoplifters don't appear to be facing any consequences.
A 7-Eleven franchise owner told NBC7 that every single day shoplifters come in and take what they want if they can keep it under a certain amount.
The owner hopes the city will step in to do something.
The reason why this is happening under prop 47, which passed in 2014, anything stolen below a $950 value keeps the crime at a misdemeanor, which means that, uh, and, and people aren't getting arrested for the misdemeanor.
So under this, under this prop 47, California, what that means is that people, you know, if you, if you steal under $950 worth of, worth of stuff, that's a misdemeanor and you're just going to get a citation.
Which means people are just strolling into 7-Elevens and other convenience stores in California and taking whatever they want.
In fact, what brought this to my attention is that there's a video which I can't play because there's so much vulgarity in it that I'd have to bleep it out.
You wouldn't understand what was even being said.
But somebody took a video, I think it's from a 7-Eleven, where this guy, this punk, strolls in and just take something and leaves and no one
stops him because they can't.
The most the police can do is just, oh, you shouldn't have done that, and issue a citation.
That's it. This is crazy. And it shows again that you have these policies that are supposed to be
compassionate and, oh, you know, we're trying to prevent, we don't want to lock people in jail for
for nonviolent crimes.
But these supposedly compassionate policies, look what they're doing.
Where is the compassion for the business owners who are now losing merchandise and are living in fear because they know that anyone can walk in and take their stuff at any time?
It's outrageous.
All right.
Speaking of outrageous, I'm moving along here kind of quickly.
Mostly because there are some great emails I wanted to get to on a Friday.
One other thing.
A bunch of new trailers came out yesterday for some reason.
And one that a lot of people have been talking about is the trailer for the new Top Gun movie with Tom Cruise comes back and reprises his role.
And now I have to admit, I have to confess that I have never seen Top Gun.
I don't even know what Top Gun is about.
I gather that he flies a plane.
I don't know what To what end?
I mean, what's the central... Does he fight aliens?
Is it an alien thing?
If so, I'll watch it, but I get the impression that there's no aliens, and it's not even... He's a fighter jet pilot.
Is he fighting anybody?
Does he... Is there... Are there... Does that even happen?
From the little brief glimpses of Top Gun I've seen, I just don't understand the point of... I've never seen it.
I have no interest.
But that's coming out.
There's also something else.
The film version of the musical Cats is coming out and this trailer was released.
It honestly isn't I've got to give a parental warning here because a warning for everybody trigger warning.
This this looks like the most disturbing terrifying film unintentionally.
But potentially the most disturbing and terrifying film that has ever been made.
I thought that The Exorcist was the scariest movie of all time until I saw this trailer.
killer. Watch this. I haven't seen you before. Have I? Open up and take me in. I'm not afraid.
Open up and tell me if you find me.
We've got it.
We're about to begin.
I'm gonna be a good girl.
Touch me, it's so easy to leave me.
I'm in love with the memory of my days in the sun.
If you touch me, you'll understand what happiness is.
A new day has begun!
Are you going to try for a different life?
A new day has begun.
See that? That's horrific, isn't it?
I mean, what is that?
It does, first of all, look like Furries the musical.
It looks like a musical.
That's what it looks like.
But also, what is this?
Is it a joke?
I mean, who would watch that?
Completely terrifying.
I mean, it disturbs me down to my core.
I can't even describe it.
Who could like Cats enough?
I mean, Cats the animals, to watch that?
Really, really awful stuff.
But I figured I had to endure that, so therefore I'm going to make you endure it as well.
All right, let's go to emails.
MattWalshow at gmail.com.
MattWalshow at gmail.com.
This is from Jonathan.
Says, Dear Mr. Walsh, I know this is kind of late.
I've been falling behind on yours and Mr. Shapiro's videos.
How dare you, Jonathan?
Get your act together, okay?
What are you doing with your life?
However, this is about the whole Ariel casting controversy.
I wanted to know if you ever thought that some people like me are upset not because we are racist, but because it is portraying a character that we already have a physical image of and what we grew up seeing.
I personally don't like it when Hollywood changes the images of the typical character on any film such as Spider-Man changing three times.
I also wanted to mention that I am not white, so by the leftist logic, I cannot be considered a racist for not liking the fact that they casted a black actor.
I grew up with Arielle being white, and now they want to change it for political correction.
I personally like to see characters portrayed as they are when it's first imaged.
That's all.
Thank you for your time, and Godspeed."
Yeah, I mean, there's a perfectly reasonable... Of course, it doesn't matter that much, as I'm sure you would agree, but there's a perfectly reasonable justification for being not a huge fan of the fact that they changed
Ariel too.
I, in fact, I've heard one thing I've heard was we talked about this,
whatever it was last week, two weeks ago.
Um, I heard from several women who said that they have red hair.
And so Ariel was the only Disney princess with red hair.
And as little girls, you know, that meant something to them.
So they liked the fact that the princess looked a little bit like them, had red hair.
And so, yeah, they don't like the fact that they changed her for that reason.
Which, yeah, I can understand that.
It's kind of like, yeah, they're fictional characters, so it doesn't matter.
They can look like anything.
But it's sort of like...
When you've got a long-running show and one of the actors bails or is fired or whatever, quits, and so they bring in a different actor to play that same role, which you don't find happening that often these days, but I think it used to happen more often.
The one example that pops to mind, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, which, of course, is a great show.
I loved that show growing up.
But Aunt Viv, they changed midway through.
They changed actors and brought in a totally different woman to play the same person, And yeah, that throws you for, I wasn't a fan of that.
It throws you for a loop, even though it's a fictional character.
It's still like, that's, this is a different person.
It doesn't look like the other person.
How am I?
You've, you've broken the fourth wall.
You've now made me remember that I'm just watching some, some fake thing and that's not good.
It takes away enjoyment.
So yeah, I can understand.
I can understand that.
Generally, if you're going to do the live adaptation of a cartoon, it makes sense that you're looking for someone who looks sort of like the cartoon just to, just to keep that continuity going.
Right.
I am dating myself as a listener of yours, but I remember on a post you made back on the Matt Walsh blog entitled, I wasn't ready for marriage and how you met your wife on eHarmony.
I'm a 26-year-old grad student who is also looking in coaching and working in coaching and I'm having a hard time meeting nice young available men.
I've been very hesitant in trying online dating as I can never figure out how to answer tell-me-about-yourself questions.
I also have a hard time believing that an authentic friendship could build with someone you met online due to a common interest like biking or the Green Bay Packers.
I signed up for Catholic Match Now I have an inbox full of messages from guys in my area that are all basically asking me, Hey, it's cool that you like blank.
Tell me more about yourself.
And I'm feeling pretty hopeless.
How were you able to find someone you really clicked with and eventually married on a dating site?
How can online dating not be basically self-marketing?
Also, maybe could you ask Ben to make a Daily Wire dating site for its listeners?
I just love these shows, and I'm sure a bunch of us like-minded Daily Wire-ians could pair up and breed a formidable conservative army.
I like that idea.
So we're breeding—forget about conservative army, I don't care about that—we're breeding new listeners so that we can dominate for decades.
So we're just gonna keep—so that's a good idea.
Maybe I'll talk to Ben about that.
As far as the dating sites, well, first of all, I would say the messages you're getting from guys on Catholic Match Seem do kind of seem kind of boring and bland.
It could be worse though from what I've heard from women.
If you were on some other sites, the messages your inbox may be filled with other sorts of things.
So maybe I would look at the bright side there.
Yeah, it does look I'm a big believer in online dating.
That is how I met my wife.
I think it's, um, this was eight years ago that the scene has changed quite a bit with online dating evolved or maybe devolved.
So I, on one hand, I can't speak to it that much because I just haven't seen it.
I haven't been in it for, for, uh, so long, but I do think that, uh, this is just how, in fact, I, I saw a chart.
I wish I had the chart in front of me.
I saw a chart.
Um, Recently, that was charting going back to like the 50s, charting how people met their spouses.
And there's all these different options like met him at work, you met him through connections with family, you met him in high school or school, or you met him online.
And of course, back in the 50s, nobody was meeting online because that didn't exist.
But what you find is that the internet comes onto the scene in the mid 90s.
And then people meeting their spouses online is just shot through the roof, where now it's one of the most common ways for people to meet.
It's just it's incredible how this thing has changed.
This fundamental aspect of human existence, how we meet our mates, right?
And I do think that it's when you think of all the potential ways to meet someone.
And when I was dating before I was married, I met people through work.
I met people through school.
It's just like anybody else.
Um, but I think online dating provides you, at least for me, here, here was the thing for me.
I got to a point where, um, I wasn't looking to just date anymore just for the sake of dating.
I was looking to get married.
I was looking to move on to that next stage of my life.
I wasn't just going to marry the first person I came across, but I wanted to get into a relationship where that is the end goal, where we're kind of both trying this out to see if we want to get married, and where we both have that end goal in mind.
We're both serious, mature adults, and that's where we want to head, if it works out.
That's what I was looking for.
And I found that if you find the right online dating site, it works for that.
And so for me, when I met my wife, we, you know, I knew within like a week that I probably were going to get married.
Because I think that when you meet someone, you kind of know, and when you click like that, at least for me, I think you figure it out pretty quickly.
Just like if you think of all the failed relationships you've been in, even if you dated someone for years and it ended up not working out, if you think back, you probably knew really soon that this probably wasn't going to go anywhere, even if you stuck with it for a while.
For me, the way that I cut through all the noise is that I was just with my wife, and she was the same with me.
When I met her, we were very upfront with each other.
Um, we, we didn't waste a lot of time with small talk.
We got, we kind of got down to talking about the serious things, what our goals are.
We were very upfront.
We were both upfront about our end goals.
We were looking for someone, we're looking for, for marriage, for a serious relationship.
We were, we were open about that with each other.
Um, I don't know on our, on our, they say on first dates, you're not supposed to talk about politics or religion.
That's pretty much the only thing we talked about.
We talked about things like that.
And the fact that We lined up so much there, but also that she wanted to talk about those things.
That, for me, told me, okay, well, this is the person.
So, I don't know if that helps you at all, but that was my own experience.
All right, this is from Nicholas.
It says, Hi Matt, what are your thoughts on Kant's critique of the ontological argument for God's existence?
The ontological argument claims that if it is possible that God exists in any possible world, then he exists in all possible worlds.
Kant's criticism of this argument is that it falsely treats existence as a predicate and that it therefore does not follow from his possible existence in any possible world that God exists in all possible worlds.
Do you agree or disagree with this critique?
I think I've talked about the ontological argument before.
I agree with the critique.
I think that the ontological argument is absurd.
I think a lot of brilliant men have advanced this argument.
It was originally formulated by Saint Anselm, who's Was clearly a brilliant man.
But I think that it's not a brilliant argument.
It is absurd.
It's absurdly weak.
Because it seems to try and conjure God into existence through word games.
That's what it seems like.
It seems like a word game.
That's how it strikes me.
Where you say to someone, okay, imagine the greatest possible being.
And they say, okay, I'm imagining it.
And you say, well, that being must exist.
Why is that?
Because it's greater to exist than not exist.
Yeah, but that doesn't make any sense.
Well, you said you imagined the greatest possible being, didn't you?
Yeah.
Well, then he has to exist.
Otherwise, you didn't imagine the greatest possible being, but you did imagine the greatest possible being, so then he exists.
That's how the Ethological Argument works.
It's one of those arguments that it's almost hard to rebut because it's so bad.
Because you don't even know where to begin when you're trying to figure... It's so self-evidently wrong that you almost don't... It's like if someone asked you to define the word, the.
It would take you a second.
It's so obvious that it's hard for a minute to break down.
My favorite response to this argument is the earliest one.
When Saint Anselm first developed it, a monk, I forget his name, but a contemporary, pointed out that you could use this argument to prove the existence of literally anything.
And the example he gave is the greatest possible island.
He said, well, you can imagine what would constitute the greatest possible island.
And by this argument's logic, That would mean that that island must logically exist because you imagined it and that's just not how it works I think maybe a more modern example would be And one of the problems with that rebuttal is that well an island is not a being it's not a person and so what constitutes being the greatest island is very different from the sorts of things that Would require you to be the greatest possible being or person.
So let's let's let's use a an example of That I think relates more.
Imagine the greatest possible basketball player.
Greatest possible basketball player.
He's nine feet tall.
He can jump across the entire court.
He can hit any shot from any distance.
He's faster than the speed of light.
I mean, he's basically Superman, except for the nine feet tall bit.
That's the greatest possible basketball player.
Well, by the ontological argument, if you have imagined that basketball player, he must exist because it is greater to exist than not exist.
And therefore, if he's the greatest possible basketball player, then he has to exist.
But so it doesn't make any sense.
That basketball player doesn't exist.
He's imaginary.
So you might say so if now, as you mentioned, this argument treats existence As an attribute, as a personality, or a characteristic, almost.
Where you say, well, the greatest possible being has to be all-loving, all-knowing, all-powerful, and he also has to have the trait of existence.
Well, that's not really what existence is.
Existence is not a trait.
It's not a quality.
Existence just is.
Existence is to be.
That's what existence is.
So to say that greatness, or I'm sorry, to say that existence is a quality that falls under the umbrella of greatness, that to me doesn't make any logical sense.
And besides, who says that it's greater to exist and not exist?
I don't know.
I mean, maybe it's greater not to exist.
I don't know.
Superman is pretty powerful because he doesn't exist.
You can be whatever you want him to be.
So if you're saying that existence is a necessary contingent for something being the greatest possible being, then maybe that simply just means it's not possible to imagine the greatest possible being.
That's all that means.
That's all you've really proven, is that you can't actually imagine the greatest possible being.
That's true of God.
When you say, imagine the greatest possible being, you can't really imagine God.
You don't really know what that means.
We can say God's all-powerful, God's all-knowing, but we can't really comprehend that or imagine it or understand what it means.
So there's a problem there too.
The only thing I will say about the ontological argument In its favor, I suppose, sort of, is that it is an argument that tries to establish the logical necessity of God.
And in theory, I understand the attraction to that kind of argument.
So I think that that's a good sort of argument to make, a logical necessity argument.
I just think that this is the wrong one.
This doesn't do it.
But the attraction to a logical necessity argument is that it's much stronger.
If you can successfully make an argument that God is logically necessary, then you have proven He exists, because He is logically necessary.
As opposed to most of the arguments for God that you hear, especially from most apologists out there, like William Lane Craig or any of those guys, if you watch one of their debates, they're not making arguments from logical necessity.
They're making arguments—they're making evidentiary arguments.
They're making arguments—they're saying, okay, well, here's all the evidence, and I think that that leads to the conclusion that God exists.
But, because it's not logically necessary by those arguments, you are allowing the possibility that maybe he doesn't.
So what you're really saying is, when you point to the fine-tuning argument, or the argument from first cause, or any other argument, what you're saying is, based on these facts, it is more likely than not that God exists, or it is most plausible that God exists.
Which I think is still a good argument.
But I think the reason some people are uncomfortable with it is that it's, well, more likely than not, still leaves the knot.
Because you can't really point to fine-tuning and say, I have proven, based on this, 100% God exists.
Because you haven't.
Someone could come up with a thousand different potential scenarios.
They may not be plausible scenarios, they may not be true, they may not be likely, but you could come up with scenarios to explain the fine-tuning that don't involve God.
And so I think with the logical necessity argument, you're trying to cut all that out and say, forget about that, let me make this logical.
So logical necessity is like, if I were to say that Every square in the world has four sides.
That is a statement of logical necessity.
It's not evidentiary.
It's just by definition every square must have four sides.
Otherwise it's not a square and so I'm right.
I have proven it.
I've proven my point just by saying it.
That's what the ontological argument is trying to do.
I respect the effort and I like the idea of making logical arguments for God's existence.
I just don't, as I said, I don't think that does it.
That's not it.
That ain't it, Chief, as the kids would say.
Alright, we will leave it there.
Have a great weekend, everybody.
Godspeed.
Today on The Ben Shapiro Show, President Trump disavows the send her back crowd chant and the media prove their hypocrisy.
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