Democrats and the media are now blaming the US and Trump for the fact that Iran shot down a passenger jet. Their continued defense of our nation's enemies has gone from merely despicable to borderline traitorous. Also, a video of animal rights activists "rescuing" a dog by stealing it from a homeless man perfectly encapsulates our culture. We'll discuss why so many people value animal life over human life. And we'll debate the ethical implications of Justin Trudeau's beard.
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I just saw this thing in USA Today celebrating the 100th anniversary of a woman's right to vote.
It says, when women won the right to vote in 1920, the world changed.
Please join USA Today in commemorating this milestone by nominating outstanding American women who inspire you.
You can submit your nominations here and then there's a link.
And I've seen a lot of media articles about the 100th anniversary of a woman's right to vote, and we'll be seeing many more, I'm sure, in the lead up to August, which will be the official 100th anniversary of when the 19th Amendment was ratified.
But here's the problem.
This is my point.
And as we see this more and more, and you know what I'm going to say at this point.
If you watch this show, you know what I'm going to say.
You know what point I'm about to make here.
But I have to say it.
Women's right to vote.
What are women?
What does that mean?
What do you mean women won the right to vote?
What is that?
What do you mean by that?
I mean, I know what a woman traditionally means.
I know what it means scientifically.
But according to left-wing gender theory, there's no such thing as a woman, really.
So how can you celebrate it?
In fact, according to left-wing gender theory, women had been voting all along.
Women didn't win the right to vote in 1920.
They had been voting all along because a lot of males are actually women.
And a lot of men, in fact, were prevented from voting because a lot of women are men.
So, women's suffrage is not really women's suffrage, mostly because women don't exist as their own distinct category, it turns out.
Women's rights in general really are men's rights, and men's rights are women's rights, and none of this means anything.
This is the implication of left-wing gender theory, I'm afraid to say, and I just, I have to point that out.
And I'm going to continue pointing that out as this, as we, As the celebrations continue.
It doesn't make any sense.
The most you could say is that it wasn't that women won the right to vote in 1920.
It was a certain body part did.
So those who happen to possess traditionally female reproductive organs won the right to vote.
But those people aren't necessarily women.
They're also men or they could be any of the other 172 genders.
So that's, if we want to be specific, that's what we're really talking about now.
All right, well, as you know, switching gears here, for days after Trump ordered the strike on the global mass killer Qasem Soleimani, Democrats in the media have been heaping praise and adulation on the dead terrorist, as we've talked about on this show and chronicled, while fretting that the president had inaugurated World War III.
And perhaps fretting is not the right word.
Maybe hoping might be more apt.
And then Iran began launching missiles at our bases in Iraq, and at that point these same people assured us that the dreaded or perhaps longed-for moment had finally arrived.
It was World War III.
But then, that attack claimed no American casualties, caused little damage, and was revealed to be nothing but a symbolic face-saving measure by Iran.
And when that happened, we were told by the left that, in fact, in the words of Code Pink, the Iranians were being, quote, the adults in the room.
The benevolent Iranians decided to spare us the destruction and death that they could have rained down upon us.
At every step, of course, No credit whatsoever was given to Donald Trump or the American military.
They were painted as reckless bumblers at best, to paraphrase Democratic Representative Joyce Beattie, who said it was reckless, or nefarious assassins at worst, according to Democratic Representative Pramila Jayapala.
Who called Donald Trump an assassin, says it was an assassination.
Every step of the way, Democrats in Congress and their mouthpieces in the media were more than willing to propagandize on behalf of the Iranian government if it gave them an opportunity to land a blow against Trump.
As always, oppose Trump at all costs is the motto, even if that means openly siding with America's sworn enemies.
Now, this whole performance, as we have discussed over the past week, has been disgraceful enough, but it hardly even prepares us for the developments yesterday.
Now it appears that Iran accidentally shot down that Ukrainian passenger plane, which is not a surprise when we found out that a Ukrainian passenger jet crashed, taking off from Tehran, On the same night that Iran was sending this barrage of missiles.
And Iran, of course, is still claiming it was engine failure.
But now we're hearing from sources in the United States that, no, they shot down one of the planes, probably accidentally.
But, of course, that's what it was.
Because, by the way, to have dual engine failure in a passenger jet, minutes after takeoff, Or at any time during the flight.
And for that to crash the plane, that is almost unheard of.
Not completely unheard of, but it almost never happens.
Extremely rare.
But obviously that clearly wasn't the case here.
Now, this is a terrible tragedy and an additional moral outrage brought about by the Iranian regime's disregard for human life.
At least, that's how people with common sense and a love for America will see it.
But Democrats in the media are not burdened by either of those things, a love for America or common sense.
So, shockingly, well, it should be shocking anyway, but it's not, they have placed the blame for Iran shooting down a passenger jet on the United States and Donald Trump.
Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg ...declined to condemn Iran for doing this and instead said that it was an, quote, unnecessary and unwanted military tit-for-tat that caused the downing of the jet.
Democratic representative Jackie Spier called the tragedy collateral damage from the actions that have been taken in a provocative way by the President of the United States.
Then various members of the media were online yesterday calling it crossfire.
The jet was caught in the crossfire.
You know, very conspicuous because you had members of the media online, on social media, on Twitter, using this phrase, caught in the crossfire, almost simultaneously, as if a memo went out, which I wouldn't be surprised if it really did.
There was an actual memo.
They all started saying, oh, the jet was caught in the crossfire.
This was in the Canadian media personalities, and there were a number of Canadians who were killed
in the plane crash, and Canadian media personalities were also
putting the blame on Donald Trump.
Seth Abramson, as a media guy and just an all-around hack,
never willing to lose a who's the biggest hack contest, he pointed the finger at Donald Trump and Sean Hannity.
Abramson suggested that the Iranian government may have been spooked by what Sean Hannity was saying
on the night of the missile attack, and then in a panic shot down a plane.
Now, how does that work exactly?
I don't know.
How can we suggest that what a cable news host was saying in America could somehow cause a plane to be shot down?
Well, that's his theory.
This, obviously, is all nonsense.
There was no crossfire because the United States wasn't returning fire.
There was no crossfire.
Trump has expressly declined to participate in a tit-for-tat, as Buttigieg called it.
Trump ordered the strike on Soleimani because he was a dangerous terrorist who had killed many Americans and had, just days earlier, staged an assault on our embassy.
The justified and lawful killing of a war criminal in a war zone in Iraq on January 3rd clearly cannot cause a plane to be shot down in Iran on January 8th.
If Iran is too incompetent or too reckless to launch missiles without running them into passenger airlines by mistake or on purpose, the fault lies completely and totally with them, obviously.
Keep in mind, the missile strike was nothing but a face-saving measure in the first place.
So, Iran then blew up 176 civilians in an effort to soothe their bruised ego, which is only a further indictment of them, our enemy, not us.
Of course, I shouldn't need to explain this.
And I don't.
The media understands it.
So do the Democrats.
But they are both possessed of this pathological need to hate Trump and blame America at all costs, under all circumstances.
And normally, with this kind of stuff, we can shrug it off.
But I don't think we can shrug this off, because they're providing PR cover to a foreign enemy That has murdered an American, attacked our embassy, and now blown up a commercial aircraft, all in the span of a month.
And these people, the Democrats and the media, are giving them cover.
This is despicable bordering on treasonous.
That word treasonous, traitor, has been lobbed by the left at Donald Trump quite a lot, but what do you call it?
When you've got American politicians, American officials, American media members, who are running to the defense of our enemies, an enemy who has been staging attacks against us over the last month.
They are aiding and abetting the enemy.
What do you call that?
And this further demonstrates why Democrats can never be given control of the government because they don't have the interests of Americans at heart, they don't love our country, and we can't trust them.
One other quick thought about this, that, you know, Democrats have been very upset that, they're still upset, that Trump didn't consult with them before doing the strike against Soleimani, and they want to make sure that in the future they're consulted.
Well, this proves exactly why Trump can't consult them.
In a perfect world, I would agree that the president should consult with Congress.
There should be that sort of check in place before something like this.
But these are not normal circumstances.
He can't tell them because they'll sabotage it.
It's very clear from this.
They don't want him to have a victory.
They don't really want America to have a victory.
They have no problem taking Iran's side.
Do you think these people are above sabotaging it, leaking it ahead of time to try to, or worse?
I mean, who knows what they would do with the information?
You just can't trust them.
We can't trust them.
Trump, of course, can't trust them.
That's the situation we're in.
I don't say that lightly because it's a horrible thing to think, but The fact is, you got an entire political party now, on the national level, on the federal level, that cannot be trusted.
We as Americans can't trust them.
So I would hope that in the future, if there's anything like this that comes up again, I would hope that Trump does not consult them.
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Well, a report in the Daily Wire says, in the latest development, prosecutors on Thursday told a judge overseeing the trial of Epstein's former cellmate, accused murderer Nicholas Tartaglione, that surveillance footage of the hallway during Epstein's failed alleged suicide attempt no longer exists because of, quote, technical errors, according to the Associated Press.
So the footage is, uh, it doesn't exist.
Technical errors.
Perfectly fine.
Perfectly normal.
Perfectly fine.
Nothing to see here.
No conspiracy.
That's all.
Don't be a conspiracy theorist.
This is all totally normal stuff.
Speaking of totally normal, here's some video footage that's gone viral online over the last few days.
And I want to show this to you, what you're about to see here.
Pretty upsetting.
What you're going to see here is a video of animal rights activists Throwing a homeless man to the ground and stealing his dog.
They're doing this to, quote, save the dog from the horrors of homelessness.
And here's how that worked out.
out. Watch this. Now it turns out that this footage is from a few years ago and
just now going viral for whatever reason.
Fortunately, the dog, just to give you the happy ending, the dog was returned to the owner eventually, and those scumbags were arrested, thank God, though I don't think that they actually spent any time in jail.
But I wanted to show this because, to me, it's a perfect Morbidly perfect, tragically perfect encapsulation of modern culture, isn't it?
Save the dog, leave the human lying in the street.
That's, I cannot think of a better, if you wanted to, I couldn't think of a better 10 second clip of video that would encapsulate and illustrate modern culture than that.
She's yanking the dog out of the hand of a homeless man, leaving him lying there and going off to save the dog.
Now, some people who've defended the animal rights thugs have said that, well, look, the man was not in a position to care for the dog, so this was necessary.
We had to do it for the dog.
Okay, but what about the man?
What about the actual human?
You've taken what is probably the only companion that he has, the only joy he has in life, and you've taken that from him.
Somebody online said that the dog was his psychological lifeline, which I thought was a great way of putting it.
And you're taking that lifeline away from it.
To be homeless, aside from the physical strains of being exposed to the elements, not having food and all those very necessary things you don't have, aside from that, I think the worst thing about it is the dehumanizing effect.
Of feeling alone, feeling like nobody cares, feeling alienated, ostracized, rejected by society, and not having companionship.
And so I think, especially for a homeless man, to have a dog, to have that companion, is very meaningful.
You come and literally rip that away from him.
You think about what that would do psychologically and emotionally to a man in that position.
Now, if you're concerned about the dog not living in the right conditions, why not find the dog and the man a place to live?
If you're that concerned about it.
Why not prioritize his welfare?
But we live in a culture where animal life is often prioritized over human life.
And animals tend to engender more sympathy, more compassion, than humans do.
It's true, when you think about it.
Think about how people would react if you're walking down the street, downtown, and you see a homeless dog sitting off on the side of the sidewalk by itself, shivering, hungry, cold.
Now, of course, there are plenty of dogs in that situation, but that's my point.
Normally, those dogs, when they're found, they get cared for and adopted.
Because people, when they see a dog suffering, they react viscerally to it.
It seems instinctive.
Yet, when we see humans lying in the street, we're more able to step over them and ignore them.
I think that's the honest reality of it.
A lot of people, walking down the street, you see a human being lying on the sidewalk, versus you see a golden retriever lying alone on the sidewalk, shivering, For a lot of people, the golden retriever is just going to be more sympathetic.
That's going to make you stop and go, oh my gosh, look at this beautiful dog.
Now, it's true that with a dog, you can take a dog to an animal shelter, and it's not always, of course, that easy with a human being.
There are homeless shelters, but If the human doesn't want to go there, you can't sort of scoop them up and take them the way that you could with a dog.
So it's not always as simple as that, but still my contention is that people these days in this culture, many people sympathize more with dogs than humans, much of the time.
I've been talking about this for a long time.
I believe that that's the case.
And I know it's the case because people admit it.
People are pretty direct about it and unapologetic.
People admit, in fact they're proud, it seems like.
You hear people say things like, dogs are better than people.
You hear this a lot.
People say this all the time.
Or my personal favorite, we don't deserve dogs.
That sort of thing.
We don't deserve dogs.
That to me is Nails on a chalkboard.
I cannot stand that.
It is so grating to hear people... We don't deserve dogs.
What kind of... We don't deserve them.
What do you do?
Think of all the things you do for your dog.
You feed it.
You take it outside.
You clean up its poop.
You do everything for your dog.
You wait on your dog hand and foot.
And you're really sitting there saying, I don't deserve you.
You're, you're, you're outside cleaning up your dog's crap.
And you're thinking, I don't deserve this.
No, I would be thinking that maybe in a different, but in a different way, I don't deserve this.
That's maybe how I would think it, but, but you, it's how I don't do it.
This is such a blessing, such a blessing.
Oh my goodness.
Much of the time, I would say it's sort of the other way around.
I think dogs don't deserve the way that we treat them, in the sense that they get pampered in a way that no other animal does.
So, maybe they don't deserve all that.
Now, if you want to talk about we don't deserve, you know, how about, and this is my point, and there's nothing wrong with loving dogs, okay?
People get upset every time I talk about this.
People get upset.
I'm simply saying Things should be proportional.
And there is a disproportionate focus and love of dogs at the expense of, and prioritized over, people.
And that's a problem.
People do this with their own children.
You know, you hear people talk about Some people have dogs and kids and talk about their dog as if it's just a second child or a third child.
So if you want to talk about we don't deserve, I think saying something like, we don't deserve the love of a child.
Now that, yeah, that I can relate to.
I've often felt that way about my children.
Because young children are so loving, so naturally forgiving, They look up to you, they adore you, they want to be around you.
And it's not as though, okay, they're not animals.
So it's not, it's actually not as though they don't recognize your flaws or anything like that.
In fact, I think with children, they do recognize the flaws, but they're naturally forgiving of them.
And parents, we've experienced this.
A recent example for me, there's so many examples I could point to, but recently, You know, it's at the end of the day, I'm in a, I've had a bad day.
I'm in a bad mood.
I have a short temper.
And, um, and you know, as parents, we, we, that's how we are.
Sometimes we're just a little bit of a short fuse, not proud of it.
And at the end of the day, my kids are in bed and I'm, you know, I'm, I'm feeling guilty.
That I've squandered this time with them at the end of the day by just being in a bad mood.
So I go up to see if they're still awake.
My daughter's awake.
It's an hour after bedtime.
She's been upstairs.
She hands me a picture she's been working on.
And she said she made me this picture.
It's a gift for me because she could tell I was having a bad day and she wanted to cheer me up.
And it was a picture of me and her fishing.
And I could tell that she'd been working on it for an hour.
Now, that's the kind of thing as a parent that it just destroys you.
It's this mix of joy and pride, but also guilt and pain, because you think, oh my gosh, on one hand, thank you for this.
That's amazing.
Thank you.
On the other hand, now I feel like an even bigger piece of crap.
So as a parent, I can relate to that feeling.
When you compare this pure love of a child with the selfishness of adults, right?
And, you know, adults can be petty, selfish, malicious.
You just don't see that in young children.
But I can't relate to that in relation to a dog.
You know, the idea that a dog could bring that same feeling out of you?
Dogs are not capable of loving the way that humans do.
A dog might have some capacity for comforting, some capacity for that sort of thing, which is why I'm saying stealing that dog from the homeless man was such a horrible thing.
Horrible for the person, because I'm focused on the person, the human.
Horrible to him.
So dogs do have that capacity, but not nearly to the same extent that human beings do, that children do.
Um, and I've had pets and I've had, and I have kids and the difference is extremely obvious to me.
And if it isn't to you, then I think your mind is kind of warped.
Uh, I think you have a problem.
I don't even mean that as an insult.
It just, it, there is an issue there.
By the way, this is not something we can just chalk up to the human condition.
It's not like it's natural and instinctive for people to worship dogs this way, because you go to so many other places in the world, so many other cultures, they don't have this.
This is kind of a distinct Western thing, where we have put dogs on this pedestal, and household pets in general.
I think in other parts of the world, you'll find they have respect for animals, They believe, just like we do, we should treat animals with dignity, and I believe that too.
But they still recognize that animals are animals, they're not people.
It's really in Western culture that we've elevated animals above people in so many ways.
Well, Western cultures and pagan cultures that literally worship animals.
So, you know, you find that continuity there, which is very disturbing.
And it's not just about attitudes either, it's about the law.
I mean, as we know, Every animal in existence has more legal protection, according to our law code, than babies in the womb do.
Because babies in the womb have essentially zero legal protections.
Any animal, every dog, has more protection than human beings.
So this is not an exaggeration.
It's not only about our attitudes, it's also about how our laws are set up.
It is codified into law.
That animals are worth more, have more worth, more value, more dignity than babies in the womb.
Because babies in the womb, according to the law, have zero worth and zero value.
And this obviously is not a coincidence.
It's not a coincidence that so many people now have begun to see dogs as being better than or above people, while at the same time our law has actually codified that.
That's not a coincidence.
And you see how law can affect people's attitudes and their beliefs and the way they see the world.
Politics are downstream of culture, but sometimes it's the other way around.
Sometimes it's a little bit of both.
So, let's... We can love our dogs, we can love our pets, that's fine.
But we should always, and every time and every circumstance, we should be putting people above animals and their needs, and what's best for them comes first.
So animals should be subordinated.
The needs of animals should be subordinated to the needs of people.
Not the kind of thing that anyone should need to actually argue for or explain, but that's where we are.
All right, let's go to emails.
mattwalshow at gmail.com, mattwalshow at gmail.com.
This is from Redacted.
Dear Supreme Dictator over all, thank you for so accurately pointing out in your supreme wisdom that The Road by Cormac McCarthy is the best novel of the 21st century so far.
I wholeheartedly agree and it's my all-time favorite novel.
I first read it as a 16-year-old and thought I liked it because it was a nuclear apocalypse book.
I'm reading it again after discovering that my wife is pregnant and it turns out I love this book because it's about fatherhood.
My question is, what are your reasons why it's the best novel of the 21st century?
Why do you personally love it?
Why did it resonate with so many people as to win a Pulitzer?
As always, thank you for your wit, your curmudgeonly charm, and your willingness to talk about matters people actually
care about, like abortion and family values, rather than the same old boring political prattle.
Yeah, I think that... where were we even talking about this?
Oh yeah, so I posed the question on Twitter a couple days ago.
What do you think is the best novel of the 21st century so far?
I'd be interested to hear your responses to that.
Part of the reason I asked the question, actually sort of selfishly, self-interestedly, I was looking for suggestions of recent novels, because part of the thing is, yeah, I think The Road is my favorite novel that I've read that was written in the 21st century.
I also haven't read that many novels that were written in the 21st century.
I've read a lot of books in the 21st century, but most of them, at least the fiction, were written before.
Many of them centuries before.
So I am interested in reading more recent work, recent fiction novels.
Of the ones I have read, though, The Road was my favorite, and for the reason that redacted that you mentioned, because of this story of fatherhood and this bond of this father between the father and the son, I have an interesting relationship with this book because I first picked it up maybe six, seven years ago at a bookstore.
And, um, I hated it.
I read maybe 15 pages of 15, 20 pages.
I sat there and read it and I thought it was terrible.
I was, it's not just, I didn't like it.
I thought it was really, really bad and I put it down.
And then a couple of years ago, for some reason, I was motivated to pick it up again.
And my reaction could not have been any different.
It was a total 180 in terms of my perception of the book.
And I found it to be really powerful and moving.
I think I read the whole thing, maybe not in one night, but in two nights.
I just, I blew through it.
And I think a lot of it was.
A big difference, seven years ago, I didn't have any kids.
Two years ago, I had three.
And two sons.
And so, of course, you start, once your place in life changes, I think the way that you interact with and respond to works of fiction and art can obviously change dramatically, and that was the case here.
I tell you, I liked that the story revolves around this father desperately trying to protect his son at all costs.
But what I liked about it is he wasn't just trying to protect his son's physical body.
He wasn't just trying to keep him physically safe, although that was a big part of it, obviously, living in a post-apocalyptic wasteland with cannibals, with cannibal gangs roaming the countryside.
So a lot of it is physical safety.
But a big theme in the book, they always talk about the fire, keeping the fire alive, where the man and the boy who aren't given names, the characters aren't given names in the book, But this is something they say to each other about keeping the fire alive within them.
What is the fire?
It's the fire of goodness.
And so the father is also very concerned in this bleak, seemingly hopeless environment where people have been reduced to animals, literally eating each other.
One of his main concerns is not only keeping his son alive, but protecting his goodness and his dignity.
And I found that to be, I mean, You couldn't find a theme for a book that would resonate more with me than that.
And I also thought it was just really well written.
Cormac McCarthy's style of writing is not for everybody.
It takes some getting used to.
I think when I first picked it up six, seven years ago, that was part of what jarred me.
It was the first McCarthy book I'd read or tried to read, and I found the style hard to stomach.
Now I kind of appreciate it.
Okay, this is from Saul, or Sol.
I'm not sure how to pronounce that.
It says, Matt, absolutely love your show.
Thanks for what you do.
You've often talked on your show about proofs of God's existence.
I find these segments fascinating, but recently I've been beginning to think that the best and most important proof of God's existence is the inner experience we all have of him.
Knowledge of God is innate.
Do you think that's something that should be used more in an apologetic context?
No, I don't.
I don't.
Maybe that'll surprise you for me to say that.
But I don't think it's a good apologetic argument at all, actually.
I've seen really smart people use this argument.
William Lane Craig uses it in his debates.
He offers like six or seven proofs of God's existence and this is the last one that he always goes to.
And it's okay because his others are really solid.
But I always cringe a little bit when he gets to the inner experience, the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit as a proof of God to an atheist.
I think it's not effective.
And I'll give you three reasons why.
Number one, in order to use this, again, we're talking about, this is how you're talking about apologetics, not as a devotional thing.
So, apologetic is defending the faith to someone outside of the faith.
Not just offending it, but most of the time trying to convince them to be open to your arguments and to the worldview that you're presenting.
And so that's what we're talking about.
Now, if we're talking about it in a devotional context, there should be a difference between... I've read a lot of apologetic books.
I've read a lot of devotional books.
Devotional books are for Christians.
They're by Christians and for Christians.
And it's all about strengthening your faith.
Apologetics, that's not what apologetics are supposed to be.
It does have the effect of strengthening your faith, but that's not the primary goal of it.
The primary goal is to defend the faith from challenges from the outside.
Okay, so, in that context, as an apologetic, I don't like it, because number one, you would need to prove, okay, to use this in an argument, in a debate, you would need to prove that your inner conviction of God's existence He's actually innate and not merely the product of the fact that you were raised to believe this or that you were raised in a culture where lots of people believe it and thus conditioned that way.
Now, this is going to be easier maybe for you to do if you are a convert from atheism.
So, if you were raised an atheist and then converted to Christianity, then maybe you could talk about how you had this innate knowledge your whole life and finally grew to accept it.
So, maybe I'll make an exception in that case.
Although, it still doesn't work for reasons I'll get to in a second.
But, if you were raised a Christian, in a Christian household, born into a Christian household, told from the earliest age that there is a God, and now you're saying that the knowledge is innate, well, you see how that's going to be difficult to prove, because your challenger Your interlocutor can simply say, well, what do you mean?
You've been told this literally since you emerged from the womb, and that's why you believe it.
How can you distinguish between something you believe because you've always been told it, and something you believe because it's just in your head, apart from what you've been told?
It's very hard to do, and it's impossible to prove.
Okay.
That's the first problem.
Number two, there's the problem of the plurality of religion, and this is when someone brings up the innate knowledge of God, in an argument, this is always going to be the atheist, from my experience, this is the atheist's first move, or at least second move, where they're going to say, they're going to bring up the plurality of religion, and point out that there are seven billion people on earth, and most of them are not Christian, Most of them claim that their innate knowledge points to something else entirely.
So, how do you know that your innate knowledge is correct instead of theirs?
How do we know that their innate knowledge is correct?
A Muslim who says that he has innate knowledge of Allah and Muhammad, well, how do you know that maybe he's right and you're wrong?
That's the point that's going to be made.
Number three, if you're saying that knowledge of God is universally innate, And you're talking to an atheist who says he has no such innate knowledge, then you're in the position of trying to tell the atheist what he himself is thinking, and putting yourself as the higher authority on that subject.
And that's a disa—for a debate, that's disastrous.
When you get into debating what you're—what the other person is thinking, You already lose, because you have zero evidence for what they're thinking, and they have 100% of the evidence.
They are in that room, you know, if there's two of you debating, there is one person, physically present in that room, who is a 100% authority on what they are thinking, and that is that person.
You are a 0% authority on that subject.
And I've seen this.
This is one of my problems with presuppositional apologetics.
I've seen this in debates.
Where somebody tries to go the presuppositional route, and they end up having this argument, where the atheist says, well, you know, I don't have this innate knowledge, and the presuppositional says, oh, yes, you do.
Well, you do, though.
I'm telling you what you think.
You're not going to win.
You cannot win that argument.
It may be convincing to you, it may make you feel better, but it's not going to be convincing to the atheist, and anyone else who witnesses the argument, Is going to be very put off by your style of argumentation and they're going to think, oh, these people got nothing.
So, um, what you're left arguing is that it's an innate knowledge that you also coincidentally had instilled in you from birth and that for whatever reason leads people to different conclusions about spirituality and that the atheist you're speaking to really knows, really has this innate knowledge, even if he doesn't know that he has it.
So you've, you, it's, it's a, It's not a strong argument from the outside.
Now, am I saying that knowledge of God is not innate?
No, I'm not saying that.
But you asked me about using it apologetically in an argument with an atheist, and I'm telling you how it will come across if you try to do that.
And I think we need to do this as Christians.
We don't do it enough, I think, where we take a step back And look at this objectively and look at it, you know, try to imagine how somebody will see these arguments if they don't share our belief system.
To be an effective debater or to present effective arguments, you have to be able to do that.
So, in my view, the evidentiary arguments are much stronger.
Arguments that point to, or point out, point to the objective facts in the world.
Facts that, as a starting point, you can both agree on.
Starting with the existence of the world itself.
So, fine-tuning, first cause, those things.
So, your starting point there is, the world exists, here are some basic Facts we know about it.
Some just physical facts.
And that's your starting point.
And now you're in the realm of arguing over objective facts, external facts.
You're not trying to argue over what's going on inside that other person's head.
So I think now you're on strong footing.
Then you get into the origin of life, the origin of consciousness.
I have come to see as one of the, if not the strongest, argument for God, even more so than the origin of the universe.
I think the origin of consciousness is an even stronger proof.
And I think all of these are going to give you a much, much stronger foothold in a debate with an atheist than getting into your personal internal experience, which has a lot of evidentiary value for you and for me personally, my own in a internal experience has a lot of evidentiary value for
me, but it has zero evidentiary value for anyone else.
And I have to acknowledge that and realize that and proceed accordingly.
Okay, this is from Tony, says, Hello, great one. I'm probably late to the party,
but have you seen that Justin Trudeau has a beard?
I'm in shock.
How could a man who had Melania and Ivanka Trump staring intently at his beautiful baby face grow a beard?
I'm dumbstruck.
Maybe he did it as a way to just make his face appear a bit darker.
We all know he has a weird fetish for that kind of thing.
So does this make you like him more or less?
Now that he's a beard bro, do you feel a kindred spirit with the Canadian Prime Minister?
I'd love to hear your thoughts on the biggest story of the week.
Thank you.
Well, Tony, I'm a firm believer in celebrating all beards, all facial hair.
And when it comes to facial hair, I believe in tolerance, inclusivity.
And I invite and welcome anyone into the beard club.
Okay?
I'm not going to get into, you're not a real, true beardsman.
Okay?
I don't get into that.
A lot of beardsmen, they do... And by the way, that's what we call ourselves.
According to me.
A lot of beardsmen, that's what they... They'll get into that.
They'll get into, oh no, he's not real.
He's not part of the community.
I don't believe in that.
I think if you grow the beard, you're in the community.
And now we do have that bond.
We do have that brotherhood.
Doesn't mean I agree with everything... I don't have to agree with everything you say.
And everything you do.
But... And the Halloween costumes you wear.
In Justin Trudeau's case.
But he's in the community now.
And I will defend his beard to the death if I have to.
Speaking of beards, another beard-related question from Don says, Matt, what kind of dye do you use for your beard?
OK, I wanted to answer this because we're talking about beard discrimination.
And so I get this email.
You have no idea how often I get this from people asking me if I dye my beard.
And I want to say right now, this is a vicious rumor that's been circulating.
Despite my attempts to debunk it.
I do not dye my beard.
Never have.
Never would.
In fact, it pains me when people bring this up.
Because I'm actually, I am developing a little bit of grey in my beard.
A little bit of dignified grey.
I've been waiting since I was like 17 to grow some grey in my beard.
Okay?
I've been an old soul my whole life.
May not surprise you to learn.
So now that I'm finally getting a little bit of gray, I'm excited about that.
And now I've got all these people, apparently, I guess it doesn't come through on camera, you can't see it.
If anything, I would dye my gray to put gray, to dye my beard to put gray into it.
That's what I would do.
Dyeing your beard is crazy.
That, now that is offensive, I think, to the bearded community.
Because you should accept and love your beard, whatever color it comes in.
And if you're getting gray in the beard, that's, why, why try to hide from that?
Now you could just start, you know, you could start developing that Civil War General kind of look.
Who doesn't want that?
So no, I, I don't dye my beard and never would.
How dare, how dare all of you?
Um, let's see.
I guess we'll leave it there.
No better topic to leave it on than beards.
And I hope you guys have a great weekend.
Enjoy football.
Go Ravens.
Godspeed.
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