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July 23, 2019 - The Matt Walsh Show
52:29
Ep 301 - Twitter Protects Predators

Today on the show, we’ll talk about the impotence of the outrage mob. Also, we’ll discuss Twitter banning women who stand up to a male predator. This is the most egregious example of social media bias. And Cory Booker went on Seth Meyers to fantasize about punching Donald Trump in the face. Date: 07-23-2019 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Today on the Matt Wall Show, we're going to talk about the impotence of the outrage mob.
What is the best way to deal with the outrage mob?
Well, it's not to surrender and collapse into a puddle and give them everything they want.
I think it's to ignore them.
We're going to talk about that.
Also, we will discuss the most egregious thing Twitter has ever done.
The most egregious example of bias.
That I think a lot of people are ignoring, but we should discuss.
We'll do that today.
And finally, Cory Booker fantasizes publicly on camera about punching Donald Trump in the face.
Just more love and tolerance from the loving and tolerant left.
We'll discuss that today also on The Matt Walsh Show.
Well, I love this story because it perfectly emphasizes a point that I've been making for years, and I love it when I'm proven right, which happens from time to time.
A woman by the name of Allie Ward visited a Macy's in New York.
A couple days ago, and she found these gimmicky little plates that have these concentric circles on them, with the outer circle saying, Mom Jeans, and then the next circle in says, Favorite Jeans, and then the next circle in, the smallest circle says, Skinny Jeans.
And the joke being that if your food makes it out to the Mom Jeans circle, then you've got too much food because you're going to be fat.
So if you want the skinny jeans, you've got to have that little circle in the middle there.
Obviously it's a joke.
I don't think it's meant to be taken all that seriously, but for some reason this was offensive.
For some inconceivable reason it's offensive to have these circles on a plate.
And so Ward tweeted, A picture of the plates and then said that she wants to have the plates banned in all 50 states.
Now, I'm sure the banned thing was, well, I would hope the comment about having them banned was hyperbolic, not meant to be taken totally literally, but the point is she was upset about the plates.
She didn't like the plates.
They're bad plates, not good plates.
Okay.
Well, within four hours of that tweet being sent out, four hours, Uh, just one person, one person complained and that complaint had less than a thousand retweets.
Okay.
So it was not, it was not like this thing had gone viral or something.
And 40,000 people had retweeted it.
It just less than a thousand retweets.
Just that one complaint, which that hardly anyone had noticed.
And Macy's responded by saying they were going to remove the product.
It only took one complaint.
Now, on one hand, it's just played, so who cares, right?
You know, and I kind of understand you, you can understand on one level when a company says
they get a complaint about a product and they say, all right, like it's not worth the trouble.
It's just plates.
I, you know, I didn't even feel like dealing with this.
Uh, so we'll just get rid of the place, you know, when, when companies act like pushover, um, parents who end up with spoiled bratty kids, where they, the every, they just don't feel like fighting about anything or taking a stand ever because everything, everything in and of itself seems too petty.
So you're just like, yeah, whatever you do, do what you want to do, what you want.
Now as parents, we all do that sometimes.
And so I understand sometimes when companies do that, where you just you had a long day, you're tired, you don't feel like dealing with it, you know, they want a snack, you said no, they start crying, you're like, fine, just take the friggin snack, take the snack.
But the point is, if you do that all the time, you're going to end up with horrible kids.
And when companies do that all the time, Which they do now.
Companies are so absurdly, pathologically, unreasonably risk averse that any complaint will bring them to their knees and surrender.
And when they do that, it has the unfortunate side effect of empowering these whiny morons who get offended by plates.
And it's probably, I think there's a connection here, actually, because the kids who grow up with parents who are always saying, fine, whatever you want, turn into the kinds of adults who get offended over plates.
And they still get the, fine, whatever you want, response.
I mean, at a certain point, just on principle, someone has to stand up and say, you know what?
No.
I don't care what you want.
Yeah, it's just plates.
Just deal with it.
I don't care if you don't like the plates.
You know what?
We're going to sell more of these plates.
We're going to put these circles on every plate.
Just because you complain.
How do you like that?
But here's what Macy... Now, if it was me and I was the head of Macy's, that's probably how I would have responded, which is probably why I'm not the head of a major corporation and never will be.
That's probably what I would do.
If I get a complaint, I was like, okay, I'm going to do more of that now.
How do you like it now?
In fact, our whole business now is just going to be selling those plates.
But no, here's what Macy's could have done, probably more reasonably, is they could have just done nothing.
Uh, nothing.
Ignore it.
And you know what the consequences would have been?
Nothing!
There would have been no consequences!
Not the slightest bit of consequence!
The tweet would have got a few more retweets, people would have complained, oh, the plates, I don't like them, it's body shaming!
And within like 12 hours, 24 tops, everybody's moved on, nobody remembers, nobody cares, you just do nothing, you ignore these whiners, and nothing happens.
And that's the case with the vast majority of complaints and outrages these days.
I would say 99% of the time, when a company or a person is the target of mass outrage, 99% of the time, they could simply ignore it and nothing would happen.
It won't amount to anything.
You could just pretend it's not happening.
People are outraged about 47 things a day.
They don't have time to stay focused on just you.
They've got another outrage scheduled for 2 o'clock, and they don't want to be late.
They've got to get to it.
So, just ignore them.
You can yawn in their face, like, oh, you're upset about that?
Okay.
No apology, no nothing, just, all right.
Okay.
I mean, you could be offended.
That's fine, if you want to be.
Not going to stop you.
All right.
Nothing happens.
I have trended on Twitter because people are mad at me about something I said.
It happens all the time.
It happens on a monthly basis, at least.
And you know what?
It's never mattered.
It's never amounted to anything.
I've never apologized.
I've never backtracked.
I've never groveled.
Honestly, I never have.
Even in times when I tweet something and there's a huge outrage, and then I go back and I look at it and I say, yeah, maybe I could have just not said that, maybe.
But you know what?
On principle, I'm not going to apologize.
I'm just not going to.
I don't care.
I mean, even if I was wrong, I'm not going to apologize.
Because you people, you outraged whiners, you don't deserve to hear it.
If I owe an apology, I will apologize.
I'll apologize into a... I'll say it into a shoebox.
And I'll put a lid on it.
And I'll just keep that apology in the corner.
For myself.
Because you don't deserve... What, just because you're upset, I have to apologize to you?
No, you weren't hurt by it.
You're not the hurt party.
Now, if I've really hurt someone, if I have hurt a particular person, if I've done damage to a particular person, then yes, I should apologize.
But just because you happen to be upset about something, when you're not even really upset, it's just, it's performative.
And I'm going to come out and say, I'm so sorry, please.
No, I don't care.
No, I'm not going to.
Never.
That's what companies should do.
I maybe have more to say about this.
There's a lot to talk about today, actually, but before I do, I can't forget, I have to mention, very important, Noom.
You know, Noom is great because the whole task of being healthy, eating healthy, staying in shape, well, maybe those plates could help you, actually, but Macy's took them away now, so now we're all going to get fat, if not for Noom.
Because, you know, that whole task can seem very overwhelming.
There are so many elements, so many things it seems you have to keep track of, and so many things you have to count and everything.
And that's what it is for me when I start thinking about, okay, I want to get healthy, I want to do all that.
But then it's just, it seems overwhelming.
Well, Noom puts it all together, makes it easy, so easy that even someone like myself can do it.
So imagine, what if you could use one program for all your health and weight loss needs?
No more hunting for training apps, workouts, calorie trackers, meal plans, where you've got to put all this stuff together.
No more of that.
You know, you add a goal specialist, community members to keep you motivated and accountable,
and you also have a workout partner.
It's all kind of rolled into one.
You have this all in one place.
You know, for me, I know that my goals, partly it's just to eat better, to be healthier,
because if I'm not on top of it, if I don't have someone holding me accountable,
I'm going to slip into just the worst diet you could possibly imagine.
It's a miracle that at this point, I don't weigh 650 pounds.
I don't know how I don't.
I'm kind of expecting one day, I kind of think that all the weight
is just lodged in my body someday, somewhere, and then one day I'm going to wake up
and I'm just going to, you know, it's all going to come out.
So I've gotten lucky so far, but I want to stay healthy.
And that's part of what Noom does for me, And the other thing is keeping your energy up, especially with three kids.
I've got a fourth on the way.
I want to stay energetic.
I want to have all that energy, and Noom is great for that as well.
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All right.
Uh, just fixing my collar here.
All right.
Professional operation.
Okay.
Um, Well, I think I made my point on the outrage thing.
Maybe we'll move on from that.
But I just, I do think that it's, it's so, it's, I just wish people would understand this.
That most of the time you can just ignore.
One of my, one thing I'll never forget, I remember the time when I tweeted something and people were upset about it.
I don't even remember what it was, but people were outraged.
But then I went on kind of a mini vacation, and so I didn't check my phone for three days.
When I came back and I went online, I saw sort of the remnants of a past outrage.
That had since passed, had long since passed.
You know, it went on for a day or two and people moved on.
So, the great thing was, I said this thing, people were crying about it, yet I was out fishing, completely oblivious to it, and I come back and they've all moved on, and so I see it and I say, oh, okay, all right, well, so that happened.
Think about all these people, Wasting their time being upset at you, mad at you, while you just don't care.
You know how empowering that is?
You want to talk about empowering?
That's empowering.
People are so used to, when someone gets upset, you start cowering, you surrender.
It's actually an opportunity for you to feel, to be empowered.
When you have all, it seems like everyone is so upset and they're crying, and you just don't care.
You have no power over me.
None!
Your outrage amounts to nothing!
How does that feel?
Cry about it some more!
All right, let me say, I don't wanna, here's a topic we talked about yesterday.
I don't wanna leave it just yet, because I think it's important And it may be a threshold kind of story where, as a society, we either draw a line, finally, and retreat back into some semblance of sanity, or we cross the line, we cross the threshold, and we give ourselves up irretrievably, irrevocably, to full-fledged insanity.
I think this issue is that, maybe.
And this is the issue of the man who goes by the name Jessica Univd, identifies as a woman, allegedly, and I'm not even sure if I believe, actually, that he... I think there are a lot of transgender people, men, who identify as women and are confused.
They have a mental illness.
Of course, they're not really women, but they might actually think it because they suffer from a delusion.
I also think, inevitably, you're going to have some men who aren't even confused.
I mean, they know what they are.
They're just pretending to be confused.
They're pretending to identify as something that they don't identify as in any way, shape, or form.
I think potentially that's what's happening here with Jessica and Yannick based on
what we found out about this gentleman.
But this is the guy that's in Canada, as we talked about yesterday,
he's suing various salons in Canada for refusing to wax his testicles.
These salons only do Brazilians for women.
Doing it for a man is a totally different procedure, different thing, different wax, different equipment.
They don't do it for men.
But he insists that they do it for him because he claims to be a woman, even though he's not one.
He's trying to use the power of the state, essentially, to force their hands down his pants.
Which is sexual assault, no matter how you slice it.
And that's why this guy, before we even get into the specifics about him, we know this guy's a predator.
Because he is trying to legally sexually assault women.
Which is self-evidently ridiculous, of course.
Nobody has a moral right to anyone else's labor.
Least of all, do you have the moral right to the labor of a professional genital waxer?
And even less than that, do you have the right to the labor of a professional genital waxer who specializes in waxing the genitals of the opposite sex?
As I mentioned yesterday, the Postmillennial publication in Canada has been on top of this.
They've done a deep dive into Yaniv's social media postings and leaked text messages and chat room messages and so on.
And what they discovered is revolting, predictably so.
Yaniv is, for one thing, is a proud bigot where he's complained about dirty immigrants
who are liars and they make things miserable.
He said that's one of the reasons he joined a female gym is because there are too many immigrants at the male gym.
Now that's kind of interesting, isn't it?
Because he says that he's a woman and so if you're really a woman then you don't need to cite your anti-immigrant beliefs as a reason to join a woman's gym.
You think you would just join it because you're a woman.
But no, his reason, at least part of his reason, is that he wants to avoid the dirty immigrants according to him.
So, he clearly has ulterior motives for joining a women's gym, which he admits to.
What are his ulterior motives for wanting to be in women's bathrooms and locker rooms?
Well, I outlined some of this yesterday, and the post-millennial shed some light on it.
Yaniv, in posts and messages, has, I think, made it clear what his ulterior motives are.
And there's too many for me to read them all.
Talked about, he's wondered about how many naked women he's going to get to see.
He's asked people about this, basically like how many, you know, how many breasts, using a different phrase, is he going to be able to see, he's talked about.
He's shown this weird preoccupation with girls on their periods, wondering if he's ever going to have the chance to help a girl with her tampon.
All kind of stuff like that.
He is trying to organize Oh, another thing I don't think I mentioned yesterday.
He showed up at a hotel where a bunch of young girls had arrived for a beauty pageant.
They were doing a beauty pageant for young girls.
This dude shows up and starts taking pictures of the girls.
And this was so disturbing that the organizer of the event, a woman by the name of Charlotte Millington, she was so frightened by his behavior and his presence that she threatened to call the cops if he ever showed up there again.
And his response to that on Twitter was, LOL.
He laughed at her.
He's also trying to set up an event at a local pool for LGBTQ youths 12 and over.
And he specified two things.
That at this event, the 12 and over children can go topless.
And second, that no parents will be allowed.
So this is a grown man who wants to gather with half-nude children at a pool without their parents present.
I mean, what else do you need to know?
His motivations are blatantly clear.
He could not be clearer about it.
So, to put it bluntly, Yaniv is a disgusting creep, and a predator, and just a monstrous... Well, just a monster.
We'll leave it there.
We went over most of that yesterday.
Here's the thing I want to focus on today.
Because attached to this story, I think, is by far the most egregious thing Twitter has ever done.
Now, we know about the biases of the social media giants.
We know about the things that Facebook has done, Twitter has done, to discriminate against conservatives and all of that.
This, I think, is the worst example, by far the worst example.
And Twitter has not gotten nearly as much backlash over this as they should.
Because Twitter is going out of its way to protect someone who is clearly a predator and likely a danger to children.
Two women, Megan Murphy and Lindsey Shepard, have been banned permanently from Twitter for standing up to this guy, Yaniv.
Two women have been shut down, silenced, for the sake of this pervert.
It's incredible.
The first was Megan Murphy.
Now, months ago, Megan Murphy, back in the fall of 2018, Murphy was calling attention to the fact that Yaniv is a disgusting, predatory pervert, talking about these messages and his behavior and everything.
She correctly labeled him a man while doing so, and so she was banned.
Murphy, by the way, is a feminist, and she and I probably disagree on every conceivable issue except for this one.
But she is brave enough and lucid enough to see the truth with this transgender stuff and to say so, and so she was silenced for it.
Now, you know, this is something I've been saying for a while, that feminists generally, I mean, the transgender agenda is an intensely, inherently anti-feminist agenda.
Everything feminists have worked for is being undone by these men in dresses claiming to be women.
Some feminists are realizing that and are saying, now, hold on a second.
Really?
We're going to just forfeit everything we've worked for all this time?
All of our arguments, we're going to toss them out the window because a small percentage of confused men want to wear dresses and enter the women's room?
We're really going to give it all up for them?
Some feminists have said that, Megan Murphy being one of them, but the reason why more don't say it And I think almost all of them know the truth.
I mean, almost all of them feel in their hearts and probably say to each other in private how crazy this is.
But the reason more of them don't say it publicly is because of this.
Meghan Murphy, her platform was taken from her permanently.
Even that is not egregious as what happened last week.
Lindsey Shepard, free speech activist, obviously a woman, real woman.
Uh, she got into a back and forth with Geneva over all this stuff and she was calling him out.
He came back by mocking her and accusing her of having a quote, quoting from him, loose vagina.
And then he said that he claimed that his, he talked about, he referred to his own genitalia, claiming to have female genitalia, which of course he doesn't, and said that his was not loose.
Okay, I'm trying not to be graphic, but I need you to understand what this guy, how disgusting this guy is and what he actually said to this woman.
So that was his first comment.
She responds.
His next response is making fun of her for a condition that Shepard has called a septate uterus, which causes sort of a separation of the uterus.
It's a lining in the uterus that kind of separates it.
And it causes miscarriages and other problems.
Well, Yaniv mocked her, again in a sexually degrading way, for this condition.
And said that Trump built a wall in her uterus, referring to this condition she has.
So Shepard responded by saying, well, at least I have a uterus, you ugly fat man.
Okay.
Well, her comments are completely accurate.
He is in fact an ugly fat man.
And as I said, a monstrous predatory pervert.
But also importantly, she is responding to sexually degrading, explicit, sexist insults from a male predator.
Think about this.
He checked every box here with this comment.
It's ableist.
In that he's making fun of her for a condition, for a disability, essentially.
It's sexist, because he is making fun of her in a sexually degrading way.
It is, it's, you know, harassing.
It's everything.
I mean, this is everything that Twitter says you're not supposed to do.
And what happens?
She gets banned permanently, and he's still on Twitter.
Not only is he on Twitter, but he's on Twitter advocating for things like half-nude swim events without parents for children and himself.
I mean, he is using his platform to prey on people, not to mention harass and insult women.
Twitter bans the women who stand up to him, silences them.
And in order to keep this guy on.
I mean, it's... This is... For the third time, I think it's the worst example of bias by Twitter.
It is so absolutely indefensible.
There is just no defense for this.
I mean, the most you could defend would be banning both of them.
Now, if it were up to me, I would ban this Predator, and I would definitely keep both of those women around, because they're defending themselves and standing up to a bully, which they have every right to do.
I mean, you know, honestly, with this guy, with the way he's acting, with the way he's talking to women, Lindsey Shepard's response to him, totally appropriate, totally right.
Like, you ugly fat man, shut up.
You're not one of us.
I'm actually a woman.
You're not.
You poser.
That is exactly the appropriate response.
Exactly.
And they were shut down.
I mean, Twitter has to answer for this, at least.
And they haven't.
But they need to provide some... Give us an explanation.
Explain to us, Twitter, why that woman is gone, but this guy's allowed to stay, given the things that he's been saying.
Explain that to us.
They couldn't possibly do it!
And look, as I said, I know this guy's a predator based simply already on the fact that he's trying to force women to touch his genitals by law.
That makes him a predator in my book.
We've seen some of his messages and the harassing that he's done.
That makes him a predator.
Whether or not He's actually done anything in the real world illegal.
I don't know.
But I'll put it this way.
I wouldn't let my children within 50 yards of this guy.
And if my daughter was in the bathroom and this dude walked in to that bathroom, we're going to have serious problems.
But the point is, you know, if anything ever were to happen or does happen or has happened, And Twitter has been protecting this guy and giving him a platform, and not only that, but shutting down people who call attention to it.
I think Twitter has put itself in not just moral hot water, but legal hot water.
So this is something that I think we need to be talking about.
And when we talk about bias in social media, this should be our first example.
And we should continue talking about it until, at the very minimum, Twitter provides us with a justification.
All right, let's see, um, Cory Booker was on, uh, was on, um, I even forget the guy's name.
This guy is, is, is just so devoid of, of personality and so humorless that I can't even read the late night guy.
Uh, the one that's I think after Fallon Seth, what's his name?
I really can't remember his name.
Seth, uh, Not McFarlane, no.
Seth.
Not Green.
Seth, what is it?
Now it's going to bug me.
Anyway, I mean, but this guy, I honestly, I don't understand how this guy has a late night show.
I've tried a few times to watch it.
And this isn't a political thing.
It's not just that he complains about Trump all the time and that bothers him.
I don't care if people complain about Trump personally.
But he's just, he's never done anything funny or said anything funny.
I mean, there's nothing funny about this guy.
And he's got a late night show.
Anyway.
So.
Booker went on with this Seth, one of the Seths, and watch what Booker had to say.
In all seriousness, insofar as we talk about politeness, which will be an interesting thing in this campaign going forward, you talk about civic grace and you talk about courageous empathy.
Can you speak a little bit to what you mean by those ideas and also the difficulty in expressing those and practicing those at a time where the opponent will likely not be using those?
I was running on an Iowa stage and we were so psyched.
Hundreds of people there.
I'm about to jump up and this guy sees me, the former tight end from Sanford University.
He's a big guy.
He puts his arm around me and he goes, dude, I want you to punch Donald Trump in the face.
And I stop in my tracks and I go, dude, that's a felony, man.
And, you know, Donald Trump is a guy who, you understand, he hurts you.
And my testosterone sometimes makes me want to feel like punching him, which would be
bad for this elderly, out of shape man that he is, if I did that.
A physically weak specimen.
But you see what I'm talking about?
That's his tactics.
And you don't beat a bully like him, fighting him on his tactics, on his terms, using his
turf.
He's the guy that shows tries to drag people in the gutter and I this is a moral moment in America and to me What we need from our next leader, especially after the time of moral vandalism that we're in right now, is we need a leader that's not going to call us to the worst of who we are, but call us to the best of who we are.
Seth Meyers!
Okay, that's what I just, I looked it up while that was playing.
So, Seth Meyers, on Seth Meyers.
Now, I love that clip because...
It's just so phony.
You see the phoniness of it where, I mean, in the span of like 60 seconds, Booker transitions from body shaming Donald Trump by calling him elderly and out of shape and a weak specimen.
I mean, if that's not body shaming, then body shaming doesn't exist.
That's body shaming.
So he goes from body shaming the guy, and saying he wants to punch him, to, like, ten seconds later, saying that Donald Trump is the only one who body shames, uh, that's his thing.
You know, we're not gonna, it's like, I wanna punch him in the face, this, uh, this, this old fat man.
I wanna, I wanna punch this old fat man in the face, uh, but I'm not going to, because, you know, he's the one who body shames and is violent.
I would never do that.
How dare you body shame you old, fat, miserable lump of clay.
That was essentially his message.
And they get away with it.
Of course, Seth, I forgot his name already, Seth didn't call him out on that.
They never get called out on it.
Amazing.
All right, let's move on to emails.
A couple good ones here.
I want to leave a little time for it.
mattwalshow at gmail.com mattwalshow at gmail.com This is from Shane.
Hey, Mr. Walsh.
I hope your Sunday is going well.
I saw someone that looked exactly like you at mass today.
He had a beard, glasses, looked to be about six feet tall.
However, I knew it wasn't you because he exited mass.
When he exited mass, he didn't go in his car and yell into a camera for 20 minutes, so that gave away the imposter.
Just wanted to let you know there's a guy in Delaware trying to steal your identity, so be wary.
With that knowledge, I hope you have a nice day.
You know, I get emails like this all the time from people saying that they saw someone who looks like me.
These are all imposters.
There are people who are clearly trying to steal my identity.
And even if they just so happen to look like me, it's not intentional, they still are stealing my identity.
And I think it's up to them.
It's their responsibility to do something to change their appearance.
Whether they want to, let's say, cut themselves in the face, give themselves a huge scar.
Whatever they want to do.
I think it's up to them.
It's their moral responsibility.
Because this is me.
I look like this.
I don't think it's fair for anyone else to look how I look.
You see?
So I think it's up to them to do something.
They can cut off an arm, for instance, so that they could be the one-arm Matt.
It's up to them.
I'm just throwing out suggestions.
All right.
This is from Brianna.
Says, I'm a new listener to your podcast.
Love your sarcastic and cynical humor.
How dare you accuse me of being cynical.
Four years ago, I was a radical feminist who believed the Republican Party was identical to the KKK.
I would have called you racist, homophobic, all the phobics, and basically every horrible word in the feminist new dictionary.
However, during my time in college, which I know is strange, my mind changed.
I began questioning if I ever had a unique thought or if I was just repeating garbage I heard.
I converted to Catholicism.
My family is atheist and then became pro-life after reading the science and seeing that it was truly a baby.
I began to question transgenderism.
The problem is I feel like a fraud whenever I visit my friends.
They're all like me four years ago.
They truly believe CNN is an unbiased news source, Hillary Clinton is honest, and abortion is needed for women to get ahead somehow.
They knew me before I changed and grew as a person, but I love them as friends.
I have so many memories with them.
How could I come out to them as a conservative, come out to them As a conservative, I used to behave very badly towards conservatives, and I am afraid of the backlash and verbal assault.
Also, playing the victim card, I recently got my victim license.
I am a mixed race Mexican and Middle Eastern woman whose father was a refugee and mother an immigrant, so you can only imagine the array of questions and verbal assaults that I will get if I say anything good about conservatism.
I mean, you've got some cards there to play.
You know, we talk, and I'm sure you've noticed this, Brianna, but when I talk about the victim cards and the victim hierarchy, the thing is, it's just sort of, it should be understood, it goes without saying, that all of that only applies to liberals.
And in fact, the interesting thing is, and again, probably you've noticed this, if you, you know, someone like yourself, mixed race, refugee father, immigrant mother, woman, If you're as a feminist, as a liberal, you have a ton of victim cards to play.
You weren't at the top.
I mean, you didn't say if, you know, there are levels above you.
But then when you change and you become conservative, everything kind of flips over and you actually end up below white men.
And on the left, you're seen as a greater enemy, even than me, as a straight white Christian male.
Because there's the added thing of where you're viewed as a traitor.
So that's what's interesting.
And so, I don't even mean to make a joke of it, because that is actually what happens to women and to minorities who don't follow the party line, so to speak.
And so I can understand why you're hesitant.
But what I would say is this.
You know, I have friends.
I've always basically been a crazy right-wing nutjob.
But, so my friends, even from back in the old days, you know, friends I knew in high school, who I still keep in touch with, they already knew that about me.
But even some of those friends are, some of them, very liberal, in fact.
And we disagree about pretty much everything.
But the way I look at it, we still get along.
And get along well, I think.
And the way I look at it is, um, even as we both continue to change and so on, but the way I look at it is, is, you know, if, if you changing your mind about something in an intellectually honest way, even if they disagree, the fact is you've been thinking about these issues, you've come to a different conclusion.
If they can't accept that.
Um, if they're going to hate you for that, then they're not, they were never really friends to begin with.
It's just, they were kind of these default people who you happen to gravitate towards each other because you were similar.
That's not really a friendship.
I don't think friendships are built solely on similarities.
I think friendships are deeper than that.
And so if there is, so it's kind of a good test actually, that, um, You tell them how you actually feel, you talk about it.
If they're not interested in talking about it, they don't want to be around you, they don't want to see you, they reject you, then that's a good test and you see that there was never that deeper thing, that actual real friendship that was bonding you together and so you're not losing much.
I know that's not much of a solace, not much consolation, when you're losing people who you've known a long time and your whole life is sort of shifting and all of that.
It's not much consolation, but It is true.
At least you know that.
That if you do lose friends over it, you didn't really lose friends because they weren't to begin with.
But I congratulate your courage and also your just intellectual honesty.
To actually think about these issues and be willing to change your mind.
I have so much respect for people that can do that because so many other people on both sides are unwilling, will not do it, can't do it, will never do it.
And so the fact that you do and have and will is, I think, really great.
All right.
This is from Daniel.
Big fan of the show.
You recently did a mailbag segment.
And answered a question about the ontological argument for the existence of God, you answered that existence is not a predicate and therefore renders the argument invalid.
I would like to offer a rebuttal to this.
Although it is accurate to say that existence is not a predicate, that doesn't actually affect the argument.
Because the thing in question is not merely existence, but necessary existence, an attribute that only a maximally great being could possess.
As such, a few implications follow.
These implications, which when stated as premises in a syllogism, form the current iteration of the argument.
It just so happens that St.
Anselm's version has been supplanted by Alvin Plantinga and is constructed as follows.
1.
God is, by definition, the greatest conceivable being.
2.
If such a maximally great being is even possible, then it exists in some possible world.
3.
If it exists in some possible world, then it exists in every possible world by the necessity of its own nature.
4.
If it exists in every possible world, then it exists in the actual world.
5.
If it exists in the actual world, then it exists.
6.
Therefore, God exists.
I know you think it sounds like a too-good-to-be-true argument by the way you so cavalierly dismiss it as an attempt to conjure God in a word game, but the premises are purely deductive.
They follow from each other inescapably, and no atheist has ever been able to refute them.
For example, William Lane Craig has been using the argument for decades, and even his most formidable opponents seem to only be able to dismiss it in the same manner without actually addressing any of the premises.
You know, I've gotten a lot of email about the ontological argument.
I didn't realize it's so popular.
So that's been news to me.
That's been interesting.
Apparently, this is a popular argument.
A lot of Christians like it.
I still don't.
Apparently, I didn't do a very good job of explaining why I don't like it.
Let me try again.
Obviously, it goes without saying, I agree with the conclusion.
Number six, therefore God exists.
I agree with that part.
But I don't think the argument works.
I don't think the argument gets you there.
I don't think the argument proves the conclusion, and I'll try to explain why.
Now, obviously, if I can prove that there are problems with any of your premises, then I've proven that the argument, as constructed, is invalid.
I mean, obviously, your conclusion flows from the premises.
If the premises don't work, then the argument is invalid, even if the conclusion is ultimately correct.
So, let's go through this.
First premise, God is by definition the greatest conceivable being.
We already have a problem.
I think you've got a problem there.
I think we could stop right there, really, because is that the definition of God?
I mean, that's your definition.
That's my definition.
I believe that's what God is, but there are other plausible and logical definitions of God.
So, in order for this argument to work, you are assuming a definition of God that works for your argument, but that's not the only definition.
You need everyone to just accept that definition for the argument to work, but first you have to prove it first, and you haven't done that.
You've got a whole other argument you have to make to prove that God is the greatest conceivable being, which is a problem because you're trying to prove the definition of something that you haven't yet proven exists in the first place, yet you need it to be defined in order to prove that it exists, and so you have a circular argument.
You're going in circles here.
There are plausible, logical, There are plausible definitions of God that do not include things like omniscience, omnipotence, perfect morality, all good, all loving, and so on.
There are plausible, possible definitions of God that don't include those things.
In fact, it is plausible, though I don't believe this, or I should say possible, it is possible That God is inferior to his creation in certain ways.
That is a possible definition.
Now, when I say possible, I think you know that I say possible in a strictly philosophical sense.
I say possible in the same way that I would say it's possible that unicorns exist.
They don't exist, but it's possible.
It's not logically impossible.
So that's what, in a philosophical sense, just to clarify for anyone who's confused, when I say it's possible that God is inferior or God is not all-powerful and so on, I'm not saying that I believe that or that I think it's likely or anything.
I'm just saying that it's not logically impossible.
So a God who is not all-powerful is not the same as an unmarried bachelor.
An unmarried bachelor is logically impossible.
A god who is limited in his power is not logically impossible.
Maybe the deists are right and God is a force that just got the ball rolling and then sat back and does nothing now.
I mean, maybe God got the ball rolling and then disappeared and doesn't exist anymore.
I mean, in that case, he's not omniscient, not omnipotent, doesn't need to be, certainly doesn't need to be all-loving, probably isn't if the deists are right.
There could, in that case, be beings in the universe who are more loving, more knowledgeable than God, possibly even more powerful than God.
I mean, in order for, at the most basic definition, the only thing God needs to be able to do is get the ball rolling on the universe.
He doesn't need to have any other powers aside from that.
Maybe the Greeks were right, and God is a pretty powerful being, but he's also petty and jealous and kind of stupid sometimes and not all-knowing.
In which case, you know, you could argue that a virtuous human being is greater than God, at least in some sense.
Maybe the Pantheists are right, and God is just a force, like love, you know, an abstraction.
I don't believe any of that, but I think your argument fails because you've ruled out those possibilities to begin with without proving that they should be ruled out.
Premise two.
You say, if such a maximally great being is even possible, then it exists in some possible world.
The problem is that you haven't defined exists.
Okay?
Does love exist?
It doesn't exist as a thing.
It isn't a person.
It's a sort of abstract concept.
It's a force, okay?
What if love is God?
What if the universe is bound together by the energy of love or some such crap?
Something like that.
I mean, something that some New Age moron would say.
It's not logically impossible.
Premise three.
You say, if it exists in some possible world, then it exists in every possible world by the necessity of its own nature.
We got a big problem here.
I don't see how you've proven that God is necessary by his nature.
Just because he's a conceivable being who is perfectly great, though not necessarily perfectly great, as I've established, I don't see how that proves that he's necessary.
I think you've just kind of snuck that into the premise without proving it.
I mean, I think if you're presenting this to an atheist, I think he could stop you right there and say, why is he necessary?
What do you mean?
Just because he's... Even if I accept that God, by definition, is the greatest possible being, that doesn't make him necessary.
Doesn't make him necessary for reality to exist.
The premise is an assertion that also needs to be proven, unless you're defining greatness in part as necessity.
You know, a perfectly great being has to also be necessary for reality.
But that's special pleading.
You're putting your argument into the definition.
It seems like you're doing that all over the place with all these premises.
You're just supplanting assumptions from your conclusion into all of these arguments, which you can't do.
It's not valid.
It's not a valid way of arguing.
So it seems, for this argument to work, you've assumed, you've asserted from the get-go, without proving it, that God is both maximally great and necessary.
Circular, I think.
Now, I see what you've done here, or what planting has done.
You've subbed out the whole bit about how God's greatness means, you know, he must exist because it's greater to exist than not exist.
That was Anselm's formulation, which is what I responded to.
So you've gotten rid of that, but instead you said, well, he's necessary by his nature.
But again, you haven't proved that he's necessary by his nature.
You've dropped that into the premise without proving it.
So I think you need to stick with the assertion, with Ansel's assertion, that a great being must exist because it's greater to exist than not exist, and that's where you get the necessity from.
But that doesn't work, because it does treat existence as a feature, as a trait.
And it assumes that existence is necessarily greater than non-existence, which It probably is, but you've got to define the word great, which you haven't done.
I mean, at a minimum, before you begin this argument, you've got to, what do you mean by great?
I mean, is it possible for something that doesn't exist to be greater than something that does?
I mean, I don't know.
You could potentially make that argument.
And that argument also doesn't work because it can be used to prove the existence of literally anything.
Let me show you what I mean.
Using most of your argument, only taking out the necessity bit and putting in Anselm's formulation, because I think that's the only way this works.
But it doesn't work because of this.
Premise one.
A superhuman basketball player is, by definition, the greatest conceivable basketball player.
He can, for instance, hit every shot.
He's got a 100% shooting percentage.
I think we can all agree that the greatest conceivable basketball player, at a minimum, can hit every shot.
Two, if such a maximally great basketball player is even possible, then it exists in some possible world.
And it is possible.
It's not logically impossible that you could have a guy that hits every single shot, even from 100 miles away.
It's not logically impossible.
Three, if it exists in some possible world, then it exists in every possible world, because it is greater to exist than not exist.
Plus, you can't really hit a jump shot if you don't exist.
Number four, if it exists in every possible world, then it exists in the actual world.
Five, if it exists in the actual world, then it exists.
Six, therefore, the NBA better go find this guy because he's so far gone undrafted.
Is that a reducto ad absurdum argument?
Well, you're absolutely right.
Of course it is.
And that's a problem.
If I can use your argument intact, To prove things that we all know are not true, like for instance that a basketball player with 100% shooting percentage exists, that means your argument is flawed.
It doesn't mean your conclusion is flawed, it means your argument, the way you got there is flawed.
And, I mean, you could sub in, really, anything.
You could use this argument to prove anything.
Unless, again, You're setting the argument up in such a specific way that it could only possibly apply to God.
You're setting it up so that this form of argumentation is invalid when applied in any other circumstance, but that is special pleading.
You're setting up the argument specially so that it only will prove your conclusion.
There's one last problem here that I'll mention, just as kind of a warning.
Okay, if you're going to try this against atheists, here's another thing that's going to happen.
Even if they let you get away with the whole bit in premise one where you're saying God is maximally great by definition, He's all-knowing, He's omniscient, omnipotent, all good, all of that.
Let's say they accept that.
Well, the next step, if they're smart, is they're going to say, well, hold on a second.
Because then you go to premise two and you say that if such a being is even possible it exists in some possible world.
What they're going to say is, well that being is not possible actually.
That's an impossible being.
Not that there could be some version of a god that's possible, but that particular version that you're using here is not possible because it's a logical contradiction.
And what they'll say is that omniscience and omnipotence are logically contradictory.
Because if a being knows everything, if he's omniscient, then he knows what he's going to do in the future.
If he's omnipotent, then he can do anything.
But if he's omniscient, he knows what he's going to do in the future, which means he
can't not do the thing he knew he was going to do, which means he's not omnipotent.
And if he can really do anything and make any choice at any moment, then he's not omniscient.
Now that, to me, that argument, obviously I'm a theist, so I don't think that argument
disproves God.
It is an interesting argument.
It's an argument you better have an answer for, and a good one, because you're walking right into that.
Now, you know, I think we're getting into areas where it's just beyond our comprehension as human beings.
But you can't—see, here's the thing.
That's my belief.
I think it's beyond our comprehension.
You can't do that.
If you're trying to make a logical argument, if you're trying to play this game on a philosophical level, And an atheist comes back with something like that, you can't say, well, yeah, it's beyond our comprehension.
You can't do that.
You can't just say, well, this part, your objections are beyond our comprehension.
Let's move forward with my logical argument.
You can't do that.
So you better have an answer.
Maybe you have an answer.
I don't, you know, I've thought about that question a lot.
I don't exact.
I think the answer you might go with is you might say, well, he's outside of time and space, so there is no going to do.
You know, God is all now, all action, all present.
There is no—it's not like he's looking into the future and knows what he's going to do.
Then the problem is that you have just said that God exists outside of time and space.
And so the next question is going to be, well, if something is outside of time and space, by definition it doesn't exist.
You know, provide a definition of existence that could include the possibility of not being in time or space.
And that's going to be a difficult challenge as well.
So, which again, I think you could do, but you better have an answer for it.
A good one.
If you want this to work.
So there's a lot of stuff you got to sort through before you can even get to this argument.
And I think once you've gotten there, you still have problems.
And that's why I just don't think it works.
I think it's the kind of theistic argument, if I could say so, that is impressive to theists.
We like it because it sounds smart, but I don't think you're going to find many atheists who are impressed by it.
And ultimately, if you're making a logical argument for God, then who are you making it for?
I mean, you're not making it for yourself, right?
Unless you're trying to convince yourself.
You're making it for people who don't believe.
So, you know, it's got to be compelling to them.
And for all the reasons I've stipulated, I don't think it is.
Alright, that was a very long discussion of that.
We will leave it there.
Thanks for everybody for watching.
Godspeed.
Miss World USA dethrones Miss Michigan for refusing to wear a hijab.
And three Democratic presidential candidates choose their preferred pronouns.
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