Ep. 304 - You Can Be Pro-Life And Pro-Death Penalty
Today on the show, federal executions are being reinstated. This fact has caused much anger and consternation, especially on the left. One claim we keep hearing is that it is hypocritical for people who call themselves pro-life to support the death penalty. Is that true? We’ll talk about it. Also, a drag queen story hour goes in an even creeper direction than usual, and that’s saying something. Date: 07-26-2019
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Today on the show, federal executions are being reinstated.
This fact, of course, has caused much anger and consternation, especially on the left.
And one claim we keep hearing is that it's hypocritical for people to call themselves pro-life and yet be pro-death penalty.
Is that true?
We'll talk about it today.
Also, a drag queen story hour goes to an even creepier direction than usual, and that's saying quite a lot.
So we'll talk about that today also on The Matt Wall Show.
So this is always fun.
It's always fun when the Democrats pretend to care about the sanctity of human life.
Most of the time, they don't bother.
But every once in a while, they'll go on with this whole charade of pretending to care.
And that's what they're doing this week, as the Attorney General Barr has decided to move ahead with federal executions again.
It's been almost 20 years, I think, since the last a prisoner in a federal prison has been executed.
There are about 60 or so people on death row in federal prison, but for the past,
well, really for the past 30 years, since 1988, I think they've executed maybe three prisoners in that time.
The reinstatement of the death penalty on the federal level has prompted the predictable reaction
from the expected people.
The left is up in arms.
Democrats, as I said, Democratic presidential candidates especially, are pretending to be upset about the taking of human life.
Kamala Harris, who is such a huge fan of abortion that it would almost qualify as a fetish, came out and said, this is what she said, this morning the Department of Justice announced they would resume capital punishment.
Let me be clear.
And let me be clear.
Let me stop there for a minute.
The phrase, let me be clear, is the most overused phrase by politicians.
You gotta take that out of your... The minute you say, let me be clear, I know you're about... Whatever's gonna come next is BS.
I know that.
You're just advertising it.
Let me be clear.
Capital punishment is immoral and deeply flawed.
Too many innocent people have been put to death.
We need a national moratorium on the death penalty, not a resurrection.
Cory Booker said the death penalty is not justice.
It is an immoral and ineffective form of punishment that has killed innocent people and is biased against people of color, low income, and those with mental illness.
Warren says our criminal justice system has blah blah blah.
She's against it.
Sanders, there's enough violence in the world, he says.
The government shouldn't add to it.
When I am president, we will abolish the death penalty and so on.
So you get the idea there.
Now, it should go without saying, but I will say it anyway, that to oppose the death penalty yet support abortion is just about the most morally deranged position you can possibly hold.
Bernie Sanders says there's enough violence in the world, yet he supports crushing the skulls of children.
Okay, so this makes no sense.
There are only two basic reasons to oppose the death penalty.
One is this concern about executing innocent people.
But, and you hear, you've heard that mentioned, but that's not a reason to object in principle to the death penalty in every case.
That's a reason to be careful and to be certain about it.
But that's not a reason to oppose the death penalty across the board, because then you're suggesting that there's no way to ever be certain that someone committed a crime, when of course there is.
You know, because if we can't ever be certain, if we can't ever know for sure that somebody committed a crime, then I guess we shouldn't even be putting them in prison, right?
Yeah, I mean, if you put them in prison and they spend 30 years in prison, then you find out they're innocent, at least you didn't kill them, but that's 30 years of their life that you took from them, that they can't ever get back.
So, the way people talk about the death penalty, they act as though it's a flip of the coin.
Ah, 50-50, maybe they did it, maybe they didn't.
Yes, there have been innocent people executed, which is a terrible tragedy.
But I think these days you've got DNA.
If you have DNA, if you have a body, if you have a confession, I mean, sometimes you can have all of those things.
Then I would say we could be pretty well certain that this person is guilty.
Does anyone think that Jeff Jeff Bundy might have been innocent.
Timothy McVeigh might be innocent.
Charles Manson might be.
Does anyone think those people might be innocent?
Of course, Charles Manson is not being executed.
But does anyone, do you hear anyone say these people are innocent?
No, we know that they did it.
Most of the posthumous exonerations that you hear about, which again are tragic, but most of the time that's from DNA evidence that at the time we didn't have the technology to analyze and now we do and we see the mistake was made.
But that's the point.
Now we have that technology.
So I think the real reason then to oppose the death penalty in principle.
Okay, is is let's because let's just for the sake of argument.
Let's say we have someone who's been convicted of a terrible crime and we know they did it.
You know, just for the sake of argument.
Let's say we've got a confession, we've got DNA, we've got a body, we've got witnesses.
I mean, all of those things.
Let's just say for the sake of argument.
Um, would you still oppose executing that person?
If so, then you have a problem with the death penalty in principle.
And the only reason to have that issue with the death penalty in principle is if you, um, are stating that, well, we just have no right to kill somebody.
Life is sacred.
Uh, there's a right to life and we have no right to take it.
Well, there just is no way.
To apply that principle to convicts, but not to babies.
There's no way to do it.
That is an argument that cannot be coherently made.
You cannot coherently make the argument that, yeah, we can't kill convicted murderers, even if we know they did it, because life is sacred, right to life, can't kill people, but then support abortion.
You can't do it.
You can, but you can't do it rationally and coherently.
If the life of a convicted child rapist is sacred, if even he has the right to life, then I don't see how a child could ever be said to lose it under any circumstance, period.
No matter the manner of their conception, no matter anything.
As I've shared before, I've gone back and forth on this issue, not on abortion, but on capital punishment.
And I have been, even somewhat recently, I've been against the death penalty, and my reason was this.
I opposed it in principle based on this, about the right to life, the sanctity of life, and all of that.
But I've always been against abortion also, so there was no conflict there.
I have most recently changed my mind on the issue because I've realized that the concept of a right to life Is a bit more nuanced than I'd made it out to be in the past.
Now, in the past, I would have said that a right to life is absolute.
Everybody has it.
It can't be lost.
Um, it, I've, I've realized that that's just, that's just not the case.
In fact, even when I have, even when I said that a right to life is absolute, I didn't really believe it.
Not that I was being dishonest, but I just, I hadn't thought it all the way through.
I had, I was, I was being inconsistent.
Because the fact is that our rights can be lost.
We all know that.
If you go to prison, Pretty much all of your rights are either gone forever if you're in prison for life or suspended.
You don't have free speech in prison.
You don't have the right to bear arms in prison.
You don't have property rights in prison.
You don't have any protection against search and seizure in prison.
You don't have privacy rights in prison.
You don't have the right to assemble in prison.
You don't have voting rights in prison.
On and on and on.
And we all realize that it has to be this way.
We couldn't have prison without suspending those rights.
Obviously, you can't have a prison where the Bill of Rights is still totally intact.
You couldn't do it.
So you can't have prison without suspending those rights, and you can't have a safe and civilized society without prison, and so that means that we have to be able to suspend those rights if somebody is convicted of a very serious crime.
So then, once we've established that, the question is, well, we can suspend or eliminate all of these other rights, potentially, if someone commits a horrible crime and they're convicted of it.
Can the right to life also be lost?
And it seems to me that it can be.
And that is a conclusion that we all, to some extent, agree with.
I mean, if somebody breaks into your house, you have the right to shoot them.
You have the right to defend yourself, which means that an intruder in your house, while he is an intruder in your house, has essentially forfeited his right to life.
If we're going to say that his right to life is absolute and it cannot be lost ever, that means you can't shoot him, even when he's in your house, because he's got a right to life.
You're taking away his right to life.
If you think that it could be okay to shoot an intruder in your house, then you believe that the right to life, in effect, can be lost or suspended, given certain circumstances.
So, if you believe that the right to life can be lost, and if you believe that all of the rights enshrined in the Bill of Rights can be lost, then it just seems logical that, yes, I mean, the death penalty in principle could be acceptable, given those two facts.
Um, it took me for some reason, a long time to put all that together and realize that, oh, okay.
Um, that's it.
So, and this is why, uh, there, there is a conflict, a contradiction in supporting abortion, but not the death penalty, but there is no contradiction in supporting the death penalty, but not abortion.
You could obviously argue reasonably.
Seems to me that a child raping killer loses his right to life.
Uh, you know, that a child raping killer retains his right to life, but the child might lose his right to life.
So that you can't do.
I mean, I, so that's, that's the point.
That's why there is when people say, well, you support the death penalty.
I thought you're pro-life.
No, I'm explaining here how that works.
It is perfectly possible.
It is perfectly reasonable to say that, well, of course a baby can't lose his right to life, but, uh, but if you kill somebody, you might.
You just but you can't do the other way where the baby can lose his but the convicted killer can't.
That doesn't make any sense. In terms of sanctity of life, I mean you could argue that the most
extreme penalty is necessary for those who so terribly violate the sanctity of life.
You could argue that the sanctity of life in fact demands that we have the death penalty, because if somebody else violates the sacredness of another person's life, then in order to reinforce and protect that sanctity, we must have the death penalty.
So that's where I stand.
That's the way I see it.
That's the way I see it now anyway.
And, um, and I think when it comes down to it, some crime, you know, just to, I guess if you were to summarize this in, um, in one sentence, some crimes simply warrant, simply necessitate, uh, the death penalty.
I think maybe it's as simple as that.
Some crimes just cry out for it.
And I'll show you what I mean.
There are five people now in line for executions in federal prison.
These are the people that the Democrats are crying tears of sadness for, asking us to feel sympathy for.
Well, the DOJ released info about the crimes that these people committed.
And so I'm going to read the information that DOJ released about these people and the crimes they committed.
Of course, I warn you, it's very disturbing and graphic.
If there are little kids listening, maybe turn it off for now.
But I do think it's important that we remember what these people did to deserve this.
You can't talk about the death penalty without talking about the kinds of things people do to warrant it.
You can't leave that aside like it's irrelevant.
Um, so I think it's important for us if we're, if we're saying that five people are in line now for the death penalty, well, I think we should, it's, we should ask, what did they do?
And you have to ask that, I think, before you decide whether or not you support the death penalty in their case.
So, here they are.
Daniel Lewis Lee, a member of a white supremacist group, murdered a family of three, including an eight-year-old girl.
After robbing and shooting the victims with a stun gun, Lee covered their heads with plastic bags, sealed the bags with duct tape, weighed down each victim with rocks, and threw the family of three into the Illinois bayou.
Lesmond Mitchell.
Stabbed to death a 63-year-old grandmother and forced her nine-year-old granddaughter to sit beside her lifeless body for a 30- to 40-mile drive.
Mitchell then slit the girl's throat twice, crushed her head with 20-pound rocks, and severed and buried both victims' heads and hands.
Wesley Ira Perkey.
Violently raped and murdered a 16-year-old girl that dismembered, burned, and dumped the young girl's body in a septic pond.
He was also convicted of bludgeoning to death an 80-year-old woman who suffered from polio and walked with a cane.
Alfred Bourgeois, physically and emotionally tortured, sexually molested, and then beat to death his own two and a half-year-old daughter.
And then Dustin Lee Hunkin shot and killed five people, two men who plan to testify against him and a single working mother and a 10 year old and six year old daughters.
All right.
Um, so that is, um, yeah, it's not an emotional argument to say that you, you listen to those crimes and to say, well, these people just don't deserve to live anymore.
That's not an emotional argument.
I think that's just reasonable.
You know, these people are monsters.
These are monstrosities.
These are abominations, and they do not deserve to live.
Least of all, do they deserve to be cared for?
by the state for the rest of their lives.
That's the other part of this, because the only, if we're not going to execute them, the only other option, clearly, is to keep them in prison for the rest of their life.
Not only keep them in prison, but given the horrific nature of their crimes, I mean, you take this guy, Alfred Bourgeois, who raped and beat to death his own two and a half year old daughter, okay?
That's someone who, if you just throw him into the general population in prison, he himself is going to be raped and tortured and beaten to death, for sure.
Now, personally, I would say maybe that's That's just Darwinism at work there.
That's the natural consequences of your actions.
My point is, I don't know if I necessarily support giving protective custody to people who are only given protective custody because their crimes were so horrific that even the other prisoners don't want to be around them.
I think that's the consequence.
If you don't want to be stuck in prison with a bunch of people that want to beat you to death, Then don't beat children to death.
It's pretty simple.
I mean, it's just simple.
If you do that, then you know what?
That's your problem.
That's my attitude, but that's not the attitude that the state has.
And, you know, maybe for good.
Also, the other problem is it would be dangerous for the prison guards.
When you create this chaotic environment, it becomes a feeding frenzy.
And so it becomes dangerous for other people, including the prison guards.
So, which means that as much as this Alfred thing Uh, might deserve himself to get the same treatment that he gave his daughter.
Uh, you know, that, that just can't happen.
So if we're not going to execute him, that means that we're keeping him in protective custody for the rest of his life.
Uh, which special treatment, more expensive.
We're spending more money to feed and house and care for this man because he raped and tortured his own daughter.
That to me is unjust.
That's just, it's, it's unjust.
It's not right.
I mean, The, for some of the, you take Dustin Lee Hawkins, shot and killed five people, including a mother and 10 year old daughter, her 10 and six year old daughters.
The family members of those victims are among the people who have to pay money to keep this person alive in protective custody.
It might not be that much money.
I mean, their share of the bill isn't going to be much, but the fact that they have to put out a dime in tax money, To keep this guy alive and protected in jail, I think is unjust.
So that's just another reason.
You do something like that, I think maybe this is the way we look at it.
We should have prison, okay?
We have prison, treat everybody the same.
You know, everyone goes, but if your crime is so horrific, That we can't even put you in a regular prison?
That you need special treatment in prison?
Well, then that's someone who should be executed.
Maybe that's the way we look at this.
That, to me, seems reasonable.
And, you know, it's pretty simple.
If you don't want to be executed, then don't go and rape and kill children, or murder women, or just don't do that.
It's the easiest thing in the world.
It is the easiest thing in the world to avoid being executed by the state.
In this country, anyway.
Just don't do those things, and it won't happen.
But if your crime is so terrible that we can't even put you in a regular prison, if that's what a monstrosity, if that's what an animal you are, then that is a crime that cries out for the ultimate punishment, in my view.
Which, as I said again, I admit, has changed.
But this is where I stand now, and I think it's the most reasonable point of view.
And I fully admit, and I admitted in the past when I was against the death penalty, that my reasoning Well, it had a lot to do with, um, with the sanctity of life and all those things, but it was also an emotional thing as well, where I just, I had a gut reaction to the, to the idea of going in and, um, taking someone who's in prison and just bringing them into a room and killing them.
It just, it makes me sick to my stomach to think about it still does.
It's not something I would want to see, but the more I think about it, I think it's just, it's unavoidable.
You have to have it.
All right.
Let's see, what else?
Well, we've talked about these drag queen story hour abominations on the show before.
There was recently one of these things at a library in Oregon where Men dressed as women, you know, that's the drag queen story hours.
Men dressed as women come and read stories to children, okay?
And they recently have one of these in Oregon, and you know if it's in Oregon, it's going to be... I mean, these drag queen story hours are happening across the country, not just in crazy places like Oregon, but the ones they have in Oregon, you know, are going to be way worse than... they're going to be even worse than the ones you find in other places.
And that's the case here.
LifeSiteNews took some screenshots of what happened at this story hour, which the library had originally proudly published on the internet for all to see, but then took them down.
And so here, I'll show you these pictures.
So here are the pictures you see.
Those are children laying on top of a cross-dressing man.
Uh, while their parents stand by and just watch now.
And that always is, is the headline with stuff like this.
The headline is these parents.
They're the first ones responsible.
They're the first culprits that they would bring their children into this environment.
Can you even imagine that?
I mean, what's going on in your head as a parent?
Where you say to yourself, you get up in the morning and say to yourself, I'm going to get my kids into the car and I'm going to bring them to a place so that men in dresses can read them stories.
I understand the idea of going to a story time or reading a story yourself to your kids.
I mean, that makes sense.
That part of it makes sense.
But of all the different ways to Involve your children in a storytime activity.
Why go to the one where it's men in dresses?
Why?
Even if you're so progressive that you don't see a problem with it.
Why though?
Can you give me a reason?
I've asked this question before, I've never... To some parent who's brought their kid to a drag queen, why?
Why did you need a man in a dress to read the story?
And not even just a man in a dress, but a man dressed up to look like some weird Tim Burton-esque caricature of a woman.
Okay, if you want someone dressed like a woman to read a story, you can go to any other kind of story time at a library and the librarian, usually a woman, will read a story.
Why do you need it with all the face paint and everything and the grotesque, weird, creepy, like, what's the point of that?
But then to have this man lay on the floor and you say to your kids, Oh yeah, why don't you go drop, jump on top of that man?
They're laying there with the, with the skirt on.
Yeah.
Go, go, go, go climb on top of him like a jungle gym.
What's again, what is going on inside your head as a parent?
Do I even want to know?
So that's, uh, that's just abuse on, on their part and on the part of this cross dresser.
Um, and.
There's a reason why the library.
Well, this is what's so disturbing is that the library has taken the pictures down now because they were getting backlash about it.
But originally they took these pictures and put them online.
Like they didn't see a problem.
They didn't even think it'd be a controversy.
What kind of delusional fantasy world do you have to be living in?
Where not only do you think it's okay to have men in dresses and weird face paint reading stories to kids and then having the kids lie on top of that man.
Not only do you think it's okay, but you don't even think anyone will have a problem with it.
All right, finally, I've been meaning to talk about this.
A few days ago, I tweeted something that got a bit of a reaction.
Here's what I said.
I said, I'm told that gender is a social construct, but my six-year-old daughter loves to help clean, cook, and take care of her baby brother.
Meanwhile, my six-year-old son loves to run, climb, wrestle, and make fart jokes.
It's almost like this stuff is innate or something.
Then I went on in a couple of the tweets and said, part of the problem is most millennial progressives who push gender theory don't have kids and have little experience with kids.
Their theories are just that, theories.
I have three kids with a fourth on the way.
Our first two were boy-girl twins.
I watched in real time as they naturally gravitated to interests and hobbies that are stereotypical for their gender.
We didn't force it.
They just did what they wanted to do.
So this is just, now in fact, I, I, the reason why I tweeted that is, is, um, I just was thinking about it because I remember it was a few nights ago and, um, it was exactly that happening where my, my daughter really wanted to go.
I was about to put my, my, my son, my youngest son to bed, uh, two and a half years old.
She really wanted to go and read him a story, get some pajamas for him.
And you know, she wanted to do the whole bedtime thing.
She really wanted to do that.
And so I said, of course, I came in after she was done and, you know, but, um, but so she, she was in the room doing that, reading the story to the baby, you know, playing, playing mommy, which, which she loves to do.
Meanwhile, my oldest son is, uh, literally trying to scale the walls in our living room.
And he actually did it.
I don't even know how he, how he does it.
It's like almost like Spider-Man.
I don't even know how he did it, but he was able to on the corner of the wall, kind of scale it to the, uh, To the ceiling and then kind of like grab onto something in the ceiling and just sort of hang there.
That's what he was doing.
And I was noticing this kind of dichotomy and it's just, it's so stereotypical where you've got the boy literally climbing the walls while the girl is, you know, reading a story to the baby.
I didn't force them to do it.
It's not like I said to my daughter, hey, put the kid to bed and hey, you climb the walls.
I didn't say that.
They're just doing what they wanted to do.
Um, which is interesting to see.
And so I, I made that observation.
Now, of course there was outrage, yada, yada.
A lot of people insisting that their own experience with their kids has been different, which, which fine.
Okay.
I'm not saying that my experience is remarkable.
That's it's not, that's exactly my point is that it's not remarkable.
And I'm not saying that this sample size with my kids somehow proves something.
My point is simply that with my kids, this little small sample size, it fits in so perfectly with the larger sample size, which is the general experience of human civilization since the dawn of man.
Boys tend to act a certain way, girls tend to act another way.
And I have observed that myself.
Which is just interesting, I think.
When you see these things that you're told that are the product of conditioning and are just these arbitrary constructs, but when you have kids and you're not forcing any construct on them, you're not forcing them to act one way or another, but you just see them naturally gravitate to that, that is interesting.
I mean, and again, parents, many parents, not all, There are exceptions, but many parents have observed this where, I mean, you've got kids that are two years old that are already, there is something, it's not a coincidence that the vast majority of little kids who play with baby dolls are girls.
It's not like, it didn't just happen that way.
And it's not because parents are forcing it.
It happens at such a young age that we couldn't force it on them even if we wanted to.
There's just something, even before the age of two, just something at a very early age, very early, where you find most little girls, just something clicks.
And they like the baby dolls, they like the bright colors, that sort of thing.
With boys, it's at a very young age, they like the trucks, they like the superheroes.
They get into the fart jokes and the bathroom humor.
Yeah, there are girls that do that too.
But with boys, it's almost inevitable at a certain age, again, it's like a switch is flipped.
And that's how they act.
My own kids have largely fallen into those same tendencies, but not completely.
I mean, my kids are not embodiments of stereotypes as if that's all they are.
They are also unique and individual people, but generally speaking, they fit into these so-called constructs.
Now, there are two things that I noticed from the reaction to these tweets and from the conversation.
One is, as I mentioned, People thinking that exceptions disprove the rule.
And this is one of the reasons why conversations in our society are so frustrating, where people just they don't understand the concept Of speaking in generalities, which we have to be able to do in order to have a discussion about things that are happening in society.
We need to be able to speak in generalities.
Now, when you speak in generality, you're not saying that this is universally true across the board for everybody.
But for some reason, people don't get that.
So I'll say, you know, it's interesting.
Boys tend to like trucks and superheroes and girls like baby dolls.
You know, I'll make that statement.
General statement.
And then all of all these people's like, what do you tell?
So you're saying that every single girl in history has wanted to play with baby dolls?
Well, I've got news for you.
My daughter doesn't like baby dolls.
What do you say about that?
I don't say anything about that.
I didn't say that every, yes, that's great for your daughter.
Fantastic.
She's kind of the exception.
Most girls do.
That's my point.
And so we ask, why do most girls gravitate?
Is it really just a society's forcing it on them?
Is it some sort of conspiracy?
Or is it possible that there is something innate within girls?
And is it possible that we could call that innate thing femininity?
Which you can find in boys and girls, which you can find in girls and masculinity in boys.
You can find it even at the youngest ages.
That's the point.
Also this, again, it's a general statement.
I say, well, millennials are not having kids or having kids a lot later.
And so they don't have experience with kids.
And for them, they talk about kids in this sort of theoretical way.
Now, once again, I had people, well, what are you talking about?
I'm a millennial and I have kids.
Your whole point is invalid.
I obviously didn't mean that no millennial has had kids.
I'm a millennial, sad to say, and I have kids, so clearly there are exceptions.
but it's a statistical reality that my generation is waiting much longer to have kids and there's a
large percentage of my generation that has had so far had no kids and a percentage that say
they plan on they don't ever plan on having kids. So that's just the fact.
And I do think that that factors in.
I think that there's a connection here, where we've got these gender theories, these ideas about how little kids can choose their own gender, gender as a social construct, all this stuff.
All of this stuff is becoming popular, especially within a generation where a lot of the people in that generation aren't having kids themselves.
I think that there's a connection there.
Because in many cases, when you actually have kids, you start to learn something about kids.
It's funny how that works.
When you've got kids in your house all the time, it's not just that you've done some babysitting or something like that.
You have your own kids who you know intimately, right?
Once that happens, you start to learn a few things.
You start to see some things.
One of the things that you learn when you have your own kids, one of the things you learn is, oh geez, little kids are incapable of making choices for themselves.
Now, again, there could be exceptions.
Maybe you have, maybe you've had a, maybe your three-year-old is very unusually decisive and very good at making choices.
Most are not.
I mean, most three-year-olds or four-year-olds, you take them even to get some ice cream, and you give them three options, vanilla, strawberry, chocolate.
They're flummoxed.
They don't know.
They have no idea.
So you have to kind of make the choice for them, or you have to tell them.
Based on what you know about them, you have to tell them, oh, well, you like chocolate, so I'm going to get you chocolate.
But even a choice like that, most kids at three and four years old, they can't make that choice.
They just, they're not capable of it.
The idea that they could choose their own gender when they can't even choose their own ice cream flavor is completely absurd.
But I think, now this should be obvious to people who don't have kids.
But if for some reason it's not, if for some reason you're confused about it, if you actually have kids, the reality all of a sudden presents itself to you.
And yet a lot of these people that propose these theories have never had kids, and so that's where these delusional ideas come from, I think.
All right, we'll move on to emails.
mattwalshow at gmail.com, mattwalshow at gmail.com.
This is from Greg, says, Matt, I've enjoyed your recent discussion on St.
Anselm's ontological argument to prove God's existence.
Like you, I feel this argument comes up short and it feels like question begging or something.
However, if you happen to read this email in time, Ed Fieser is going to be debating an atheist on the Aristotelian proof of God's existence.
Tonight the debate will take place on YouTube on the Capturing Christianity channel at 6 p.m.
This is much more solid philosophically, and Aristotle reasoned his way to an unmoved mover hundreds of years before Christ.
Yeah, Greg, I didn't catch the debate, but I'll go back and watch it.
I like Fieser a lot.
I've been asked before about which modern Apologists and theologians I like and I always forget to mention Fieser, but he's he's a very good one This is from Virginia says hello, Matt.
I love your show at your elbow Please tell us about bust hell wide open and who was Nathan Forrest?
I think the book at the bottom of the pile is titled Solzhenitsyn reader I haven't been able to even guess the title of the book on the top of the pile That said I do pay attention to everything you say and agree with most of it.
I'm an atheist Virginia thanks for asking actually yes this So these are my books that I've got here.
This is Bust Hell Wide Open, Nathan Bedford Forrest.
You were right.
You did correctly identify that.
Nathan Bedford Forrest was a Confederate general on the Western Front of the Civil War.
Fascinating figure.
Complicated figure, though.
Slave trader.
Founding member of the Klan after the Civil War was over.
He did later denounce the Klan, but he was definitely a violent um complex sort of figure yet he was a man of raw military talent and genius remarkable physical courage as as were many men on both sides of the civil war so i find that interesting um and then the soldier eastern reader is a collection of uh of his essays and passages from his novels which i think is a necessity
If you've never read, to dive into something like the Gulag Archipelago, to go in cold, so to speak, not having read any Solzhenitsyn, I think might be daunting.
So to read something like that first to get you warmed up, I think is a good idea.
And then this here is a book by my friend Matt Fradd called Does God Exist?
And it's a great, easy to read distillation of Aquinas' Five Proofs of God.
So I'd recommend that book as well.
All right, that was my random pitch for books I didn't write.
This is from Nick, says, Hey Matt, the name's Nick.
I'm a big fan, longtime Daily Wire follower and recent listener to your show.
You're the funniest contributor on Daily Wire, but I digress.
I am a Christian at heart and I have an interest in theology.
I'm harboring a lot of hate towards an ex of mine.
It's been a year since she randomly decided to leave me after four years together.
I was genuinely in love and had plans to marry her.
Once she left me she turned into the antithesis of herself, sleeping with lots of guys, getting a butt cheek tattoo, drinking all the time, having no regard for consequences.
I have no idea how to forgive her and just move on.
I'm much better than I was, yet I still randomly get nostalgic moments, then immediately seethe about it, and I know hating is sinful as well as being vengeful.
I've been to therapy, took up meditation, started seeing other people.
How could I truly forgive her and stop polluting my mind?
Well, Nick, first of all, sorry to hear what you're going through.
Also, sorry in advance that what I'm going to say is cliched.
I get these sorts of emails a lot and I don't usually respond to them only because I know that I'm going to simply say the same stuff you've probably already heard a million times.
Now, as far as you hating this girl, maybe it's presumptuous for me to say, I'm betting you don't actually hate her.
Maybe you do.
I can't see inside your heart, but I think there's a good chance you don't.
So you could put your mind at rest a little bit.
There's a good chance that you feel very angry and very hurt and very betrayed, and rightly so.
Not just by the fact that she left, which obviously she had the right to do, especially you guys weren't married yet, so relationships end, and so of course she had the right to leave you, but you're still going to feel betrayed.
Probably, but more even than that is the fact that she changed so much.
And so that makes you start to feel like, well, was it all a lie?
This time I had with her, this person that I knew, was she faking it the whole time?
Um, and so you're angry about that and you're angry at her and that's fine.
That's natural.
Let me ask you though, if you could press some kind of magical button and with no consequences to yourself, this button would cause your ex to suffer.
I mean, really suffer.
Would you press it?
What I mean is, do you wish suffering on her?
Maybe you do.
And if you do, then yeah, you hate her.
And that's something you need to, as you know, get control of.
But I think many times we talk about hating people or we think we hate someone and we don't really because we don't wish that on them.
We don't want them to suffer.
Now you might wish that she would learn her lesson about the way she's living now and stop and live a better way.
Do you want harm to befall her, whether physical or emotional?
If the answer is no, then I don't really think that's hate.
I think that's just anger.
And I think it's important that we distinguish.
It's possible to be really pissed at somebody, really, really angry, and yet not hate them.
And I think that's the difference.
If you're super angry, if you're really, really angry, but you still want what's best for them, then it's not hate.
In fact, it seems to me that part of the reason why you're angry is that you want what's best for her, and you see her live in this way, and you know it's a miserable way to live.
You know it's self-destructive, and that's what makes you angry.
So again, that's not hate.
That's kind of the opposite of hate.
That's actually love.
You still love this girl, and that's where the pain comes from.
And that's the other thing.
Especially in a breakup situation, if you really hated her, Then I don't think you wouldn't be missing her.
You wouldn't be nostalgic.
You wouldn't be having these moments where it brings you back and you just want her back and all that.
If you're having those moments, that means you don't hate her.
If you really hated her, that would be you have utter disregard for her.
You wouldn't care.
That's what hate is.
And so I don't think that's hate.
That's just me.
Not saying that, you know, I mean, you don't want to stew in anger either, but anger is natural and you shouldn't feel guilty about it.
As far as getting over the person, look, I mean, here's where the cliches come in, but it just, time is all, is all there is.
It just takes time.
That's the only thing that I think works in situations like this.
You go to therapy, that's good.
It's not going to hurt, obviously, but I think time is As the cliche goes, time heals all wounds, but it does heal wounds like this in almost every case.
But it's a slow process.
Eventually, you will get to the point where You know, driving by that place where you guys used to hang out or where you had your first date or whatever, or catching, you know, hearing a song that you both liked or catching a whiff of something that for some reason reminds you of her.
You'll reach a point where those things don't bother you anymore, where eventually she's really just your past.
Something that's over now, something that holds no power over you.
It's just it's something you can think back to and think, oh, that was an interesting time in my life. And eventually you get to the point,
especially when you do get married, where that you'll remember back to that it'll feel like someone
else's life, like it wasn't even you.
Eventually you'll get there, but it just it takes time. And I think four years is a long time to be
with somebody. And so it's going to be a long process of getting past it.
All right, let's see.
From Sarah says, Hi Matt, I love your show.
I just heard your criticism of the predestination doctrine and I was cheering internally all the way through.
In college, I dated a guy who was a Calvinist and it felt as though we were worshiping two completely different gods, though we both called ourselves Christians.
This turned out to be the main cause of our eventual breakup.
We debated the issue constantly and I would use the same arguments you presented.
His response to the what-is-the-point-of-the-Bible-if-you-don't-believe-in-free-will question was, it isn't meant to change anyone's mind.
The Bible exists purely to show God's glory and wisdom and to instruct those already predestined for heaven in basic day-to-day life.
Basically, he said, it just tells the salvation story so that those who are predestined for heaven can all applaud God's perfection and it increases our gratitude for his having chosen us.
When I would ask, then, what is the point of missionary work if we don't need to change anyone's mind, he would answer, well, God wants to include us in the process of helping people realize their predestined eternal salvation.
They felt like such lazy arguments, but always had just enough truth to them to make it difficult for me to contradict.
It didn't help that I am not the greatest at articulating my thoughts, especially when emotions get involved.
What would you have said?
Well, Sarah, I think you articulated it well.
Those are lazy arguments, as you said.
Those are not conclusions drawn through the use of reason and scripture study.
Those are rationalizations meant to justify a conclusion that he already Drew, or probably more likely a conclusion that was given to him by his Calvinist parents or his Calvinist preacher.
And so he already had that in mind, and now he's just looking to kind of navigate these questions and get around them, not actually address them or think about them.
And so it is lazy, I think.
He has reduced missionary work to a sort of symbolic effort.
Where you aren't actually helping to convince anybody of anything.
You aren't actually helping to save their souls.
It's just sort of symbolically going through the motions.
God is letting you feel like you're doing something.
Patting you on the head.
There, there.
Very nice.
Oh yeah, you're doing a lot.
Good stuff, big guy.
Very patronizing.
But you're not actually doing anything.
That's what he's saying.
It's an utterly dismal view of life.
What's the point of studying scripture?
It's just to show God's glory and to instruct us in basic day-to-day life.
Well, again, what do we need instructions for?
It's all predestined.
We're on a track.
We can't get off of it.
Why do we need instructions?
And also, the other thing is, the Bible actually, it's not a day-to-day life manual for every step of the way, giving you specific instructions on how to navigate everything you might encounter in life.
That's not what the Bible contains for the most part.
Um, but the Bible does have a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of moral instruction and command and exhortation and warning.
And you know, do this, don't do this.
If you do this, this is going to happen.
If you do this, this other thing, this one, there's a lot of that in the Bible.
And if it's all predestined, if we don't have a choice, then all of that is pointless.
At the end of the day, it doesn't matter that you can't get around it.
Your boyfriend couldn't get around it as, as I'm sure you apparently noticed.
You can't get around it without reducing it to something totally patronizing and symbolic and pointless.
And then, well, you got to help people realize their predestination.
Well, okay, first of all, how do you realize what your predestined?
So if you think you're predestined for heaven, that means you automatically are?
No, I'm sure he would tell you that there are people who think they're predestined who aren't.
And so first of all, how do you realize it?
And what good does it do when you do realize it?
If you realize, if somehow you realize that you're predestined for heaven, which again, someone has to explain to me, how do you realize that?
I mean, who told you?
And is it possible for someone to think they're predestined and not be?
And if it is possible, then couldn't you be one of those people who's mistaken?
Oh no, it couldn't be you.
You couldn't be.
These other people can be mistaken.
Not me.
I know.
That doesn't make any sense.
But anyway, even if it is possible for someone to realize, well then what?
Uh, so if you're predestined for heaven, then okay, you're going to heaven.
I mean, you can't lose it.
Nothing, you cannot lose it.
Period.
Nothing you do will take it away.
So just, I mean, who cares?
Live your life.
Have fun.
You're going to heaven anyway.
But what if you realize you're predestined for hell?
What if, what if someone realized that?
Predestined for an eternity of torture.
And then you're going to tell this person to still bask in the glory of God?
Why?
To give thanks to God for what?
To give thanks to God for making me so that I will be tortured forever?
What exactly am I giving thanks for?
I can't even give thanks for my very existence, because to not exist would have been so much better.
So it just doesn't make any sense.
I mean, you're turning everything into a mockery.
At best, you're turning faith and religion and the Bible into a pointless, symbolic, patronizing husk of what it actually is.
At worst, you're turning it into a total mockery, or something in between.
So, I think you're exactly right.
There's just no way.
Now, I have gotten a fair amount of emails as we were talking about this from people saying, okay, well, you know, you say life is pointless if it's all predestined.
Well, but God, you know, it's this whole conundrum, this whole chestnut about, well, God has perfect knowledge, God is omniscient.
So he knows what's going to happen to you, and because he knows what's going to happen to you, that has to happen.
Because if he knows what choice you're going to make, and then you make a different choice, then he didn't know it, therefore he's not omniscient.
That's not what we're talking about.
That's not predestination.
The fact that God, who exists outside of time, knows all that is happening, or We say God knows what is going to happen.
Well, He exists outside of time.
So for Him, all is now.
So He knows what is happening.
Yes, I believe that.
I believe that God's omniscient.
So He does know what, quote unquote, will happen to you.
We'll just phrase it that way for the sake of argument.
I believe that.
That's not the same thing as predestination.
Being predestined means that God engineered it that way from before you were even conceived.
He himself had already put you on a track before you ever existed, before you made a single choice, before you ever did anything.
He had put you potentially on a track to suffer forever in the fires of hell.
That's what predestination, predetermination, that's what it means.
If you're talking about anything other than that, then you can call it predestination,
but that's not really what it is.
So, predestination, if it is pre-destination, as in you are predestined, as in you had a destiny
that was given to you by a force outside of you before you ever existed.
If that's what we're talking about, then I think it is a horrific doctrine, actually, that undermines the whole point of everything.
And, you know, the whole concept of hell Of people being eternally punished is already difficult for any thinking person to wrap their heads around, right?
I mean, that's something.
I think anyone, any Christian who's thought about it, who's actually sat down and thought about it, has struggled with it.
If you say you haven't struggled with the doctrine of hell, then that just means you haven't thought about it.
Or you're lying.
There's two options, right?
So, it's already difficult.
You've just made it impossible by adding in this element of there could be people who are created for the purpose of suffering forever.
That just makes it... No.
I don't accept that.
I can't.
It's impossible to accept.
And it's certainly not biblical.
because the Bible really seems to indicate over and over again that there is a way for you to avoid
that eventuality. And that involves your own consent and your own choices.
So it was all predestined, then the Bible lied to us.
But I don't believe that.
All right, let's leave it there.
We gotta head into a weekend.
I hope you guys all have a great weekend.
Godspeed.
If you prefer facts over feelings, if you aren't offended by the brutal truth, if you can still laugh at the nuttiness filling our national news cycle, well, tune on in to The Ben Shapiro Show, where you'll get a whole lot of that and much more.
