Today on the Matt Walsh Show, some of the mayors in major cities that are under lockdown have decided that they are allowed to break their own rules. Apparently, as Orwell wrote, some animals are more equal than others. Also Five Headlines including a dad being arrested in front of his six-year-old daughter for playing t-ball in a park. And today we cancel the media outlets that have decided to become propaganda arms for the Chinese government.
Check out The Cold War: What We Saw, a new podcast written and presented by Bill Whittle at https://www.dailywire.com/coldwar. In Part 1 we peel back the layers of mystery cloaking the Terror state run by the Kremlin, and watch as America takes its first small steps onto the stage of world leadership.
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Today on the Matt Wall Show, some of the mayors in major cities that are currently under lockdown have decided that they're allowed to break their own rules because apparently, as Orwell wrote famously, some animals are more equal than others.
So we'll talk about that.
Also, five headlines, including a dad being arrested in front of his six-year-old daughter in an empty park in Colorado because they were playing t-ball, which is against the law now.
So that will also be discussed.
And today we cancel the media outlets All of them that have decided to become propaganda arms for the Chinese government.
And it's only getting worse.
And they're being more and more blatant about it.
So the latest example of this is really blood-curdling.
So all of that today on the way.
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Also, before we get into the meat of things here, I also wanted to mention we are, on a programming note, we're unveiling a new segment on the show that I'm pretty excited about.
Because you know that, as you know, I'm a theocratic fascist dictator, and my word is gospel.
Everything I say goes.
My word is infallible, you know, and I must be obeyed.
Always.
Upon penalty of death.
So, that makes me sort of a trusted advisor and someone whose advice you can trust and in fact must trust.
You have no choice.
So the new segment, eventually you're going to have the ability to actually call in, which
will be pretty exciting.
You can call into the show and you can solicit my advice that way.
But for now, if you want to, you can send a video.
You can send it to mattwalshshow at gmail.com.
If you have any kind of question, anything at all.
You need guidance.
You need advice.
You have a dispute, a dilemma.
Really, anything at all.
Just record a video.
Make it short.
Don't go babbling forever like I do.
Maybe just under 30 seconds.
You can send it to mattwalshow at gmail.com and then maybe I'll play your video on the show and impart my infallible decree upon your dilemma.
Okay.
It will perhaps not surprise you to learn that our fearless leaders in government, who have shut down nearly every aspect of our daily lives, are not terribly interested in following their own orders.
Mayor Bill de Blasio, just as one example, you may recall that he, a couple weeks ago, was working out still at a gym.
He was going to a gym to work out.
Everyone else was told to stay inside, and if you want to work out,
you could do crunches or push-ups or something.
But no, he had to go work out at a gym.
And then this week, it turns out, after getting criticism for that,
Mayor de Blasio stopped going to the gym.
But he has decided to replace the gym with instead going to walk in a park each day.
And the problem there is that the park is 11 miles from his house.
Now, why can't he walk around his house?
Around where he actually lives?
Or, I'm sure there's a park closer to his house.
Or a treadmill.
I'm sure he has a treadmill.
But no, he says that he was asked about this and he said that he needs to go to this particular park and walk because it helps him be effective.
Now, I'm almost tempted to say that if this is his version of effective, then he should probably keep doing the walks because I'd hate to see him ineffective.
If this is what he looks like effective, then can you only imagine?
Can you imagine how downright catastrophic his ineffective must be?
But of course, whether he needs it, quote-unquote, or not, is irrelevant because everybody else is told not to drive those kinds of distances for non-essential reasons.
In most of the states and cities that are locked down, you can't drive 11 miles to go to a park.
If they find out you're doing that, you're going to be in trouble.
And then we get to the mayor of Chicago.
She has, like most other mayors around the country, put her city on lockdown as well, of course, closed non-essential businesses, quote-unquote non-essential businesses.
She's even told her residents how long they're allowed to spend outside and for what reasons they're permitted to be outside.
So she has said that outside is not for 5Ks.
So if you're running 5K, 5 kilometers, it's not for that.
She's telling her residents what the outside is for.
Outdoors is for a certain purpose, and she'll tell you what that purpose is.
This is how long you're permitted to walk, and no longer.
Now, as part of this shutdown, obviously hair salons are closed and residents are forbidden from getting a professional haircut.
And if you are a professional hair stylist or a barber or something, you're forbidden from operating your business.
But guess what Mayor Lightfoot did?
That's right.
She went and got her haircut this weekend.
And here she is justifying that decision.
Listen.
I'm the public face of this city.
I'm on national media, and I'm out in the public eye.
And, you know, I'm a person who, I take my personal hygiene very seriously.
As I said, I felt like I needed to have a haircut.
I'm not able to do that myself, and so I got a haircut.
You want to talk more about that?
You really got to love that note of indignation at the end there.
Where she says, you want to keep talking about this?
You really want to talk about this, really?
This is what you want to talk about?
You're worried about my haircuts?
So she's trying to get indignant about it.
Meanwhile, if you were caught at a barbershop getting a haircut in Chicago, you could be arrested, and the person cutting your hair could be arrested.
So, that's what happens if you get your hair cut.
But if she gets her hair cut, she doesn't even want to talk about it.
It's such a silly thing to even talk about.
Why are we talking about this?
Yeah, I've only shut down every hair salon in the city, forcibly.
And if any of them are caught open, then I'm going to send the cavalry out and there's going to be arrest made.
But, no, don't ask me about that.
This is silly.
By the way, here's a PSA she did a couple weeks ago telling people all the things that they don't need to do.
And there's one thing in particular that she mentions that I think is of note now.
Listen to this.
The data shows that social distancing works.
Please pay attention.
Stay home.
Save lives.
Here's what's up.
If I make this shot, you gotta stay home.
She shoots, she scores!
Bye!
you Debbie, getting your roots done is not essential.
Your dog doesn't need to see his friends.
You can work on your jump shot inside.
Yeah, just a cute little Stylish, relatable PSA of the mayor telling you all the things you'll be arrested if you do.
But it's okay because you see the thing where she took the... With the basketball hoop.
That was funny.
That was cute.
That was... It makes it okay.
Everything that she's saying is okay then.
We wouldn't want a question.
But she does say getting your roots done is not essential.
So getting your roots done is not essential, but getting your hair cut for a TV appearance is?
That doesn't make a lot of sense.
But, of course, the answer is that her haircut is essential because she's important.
Yours is not essential because you're a peon.
In fact, listen to the reasoning she gave.
She said, I'm someone who takes hygiene very seriously.
Think about that justification.
Well, I take hygiene very seriously.
Okay, and the rest of us don't?
Are you saying that all the rest of the people in Chicago don't take hygiene seriously?
Now, I've been to Chicago, and I can say that some of them clearly don't, but still.
What is the insinuation here?
That she takes hygiene seriously, but the unwashed masses don't.
So she's saying, you guys can all be dirty and unkempt, because you're the peasants.
I, on the other hand, am on television.
National television, for God's sake.
What do you want me to do?
I would tend to think that actually appearing on TV as the mayor with uncut hair would be a great example to set.
The fact that she's on TV, I would say, is all the more reason not to get your hair cut.
So that you can show all the good people of your town that you are following your own rules.
So I think, if you're in Chicago and you're watching TV and you see the mayor on TV, what is more important for you to see?
For you to see her with her freshly cut hair?
Or for you to see that she's following her own rules?
What is better leadership?
What's something, as a citizen, that you would more like to see?
I think probably you want to see the mayor following her own rules.
But here's the really frustrating thing.
That the excuses that are given by these mayors for what they're doing, the excuses are actually completely legitimate.
In a vacuum, I mean.
Without context, they're legit.
De Blasio says he likes to go to a park and walk.
And it's something he needs to do for his physical and psychological health, and it helps him be effective.
Never mind the fact that he's not effective, but still.
And I get that.
The mayor of Chicago says, look, I need a haircut, I like to take care of my appearance, I'm in the public eye, and I don't want to come off like a slob.
And she also stipulated that the hairstylist was wearing a mask.
Again, in a vacuum, that reasoning is perfectly coherent and perfectly understandable.
Yeah, okay, I understand.
Yeah, I get that.
The problem, though, is that the reasoning only applies to them and nobody else.
That's the issue.
Because that reasoning makes a lot of sense for them, it would also make a lot of sense for everybody else.
The way they're operating in their personal lives is exactly what the policy should be.
So there's the frustration.
Yes, that's exactly it.
There's no reason why you can't go 11 miles and walk around a park.
There's no reason why de Blasio can't do it.
There's no reason why anybody else can't do it.
And yeah, you know what, if you want to get your hair cut and you're both practicing good hygiene, you're washing your hands, the hairstylist washes her hands, and she's wearing a mask, maybe you wear a mask too, it's probably okay.
What are the chances, what are the chances of the virus being passed?
I asked this exact question before.
What are the chances of the virus being passed between two people, Let's say a barber and a guy getting his hair cut.
If both of them are wearing masks, both of them wash their hands, and both are not showing symptoms.
And I know that you can still pass the virus when you're not showing symptoms.
But that is still something that lowers the probability, right?
So if you've got all those things working in your favor, what's the chance that you're still going to pass the virus?
It's not non-existent, but I would think it's pretty negligible.
And the mayor of Chicago must think that it's negligible, otherwise she wouldn't have done it.
So this is the point that a lot of us have been making.
The way that these people are operating, that's exactly what the rest of us should be able to do.
That's the point.
Just taking reasonable precautions.
But otherwise, if you're asymptomatic, and if you don't have pre-existing conditions, and if you're not elderly, go about your life while taking those precautions that may include even something like wearing a mask.
That's what these people are doing.
Why can't we?
That would be reasonable.
And you can keep the economy going.
Now, all this stuff we hear from the mayor of Chicago and these other mayors about stay home and save lives and they're saying that if you go out and do something like get a haircut that you're putting people's lives at risk.
You may be directly responsible for killing people.
Well, then she goes and gets her hair cut.
So, either she's okay with killing people, either she really believes that you might kill someone by getting your hair cut, and yet she did it anyway, so she's a sociopath, in which case she's not fit for office, or she doesn't really believe that and she knows that, look, if you're taking precautions, you're not a serial killer because you leave your house.
I'm thinking it's probably the latter.
In which case, a lot of the things that she's saying, she doesn't really believe, but she's saying in any way to control people.
These are the supposedly, they believe, the noble lies, quote-unquote noble, that they're telling the public for our own good.
It's just like the thing with the mask.
The CDC, and WHO, and even the Surgeon General, told us weeks ago that masks are ineffective, and that was a lie.
The only reason they said it was for our own good, because they knew that we're stupid, and if they tell us that masks are effective, we're going to run out and buy masks, and there's not going to be any available for medical professionals.
Just a straight-up lie, but for our own good.
How many other lies are they telling us for our own good?
The lie that if you drive too far and go walk around at a park, or if you're, you know, if you're going about your daily life but wearing a mask, you're putting lives at risk or whatever.
Apparently, they don't really believe that.
Now, if you don't think that what we're seeing here is a power trip, and more about control than about safety and about saving lives, then I don't know what could convince you at this point.
That is exceedingly clear.
Yet I still talk to people all the time who are skeptical of that.
You tell them that these politicians and bureaucrats are on a power trip, and they'll say, no, no, no, they're just trying to help us.
These are good people.
They're saving our lives.
We should be grateful to them.
I can't imagine being that ignorant and dense and gullible.
But of course that's going to happen, right?
Of course it's going to be a power trip.
When you give people this kind of control and power, the majority of people will go insane with it.
Think about the amount of power these mayors have right now.
Over every aspect of your life.
Down to telling you how long you're allowed to be outside when you exit your home.
That's an incredible amount of power.
And unless you are a person of great integrity and humility, it's gonna go to your head and you're gonna become a petty tyrant like these people have.
And we know that Mayor Lightfoot and Mayor de Blasio and a lot of the other ones, they certainly are not people of great integrity and humility.
That much is clear.
Alright, let's move on to headlines.
At the White House press briefing yesterday, Dr. Birx made an interesting admission.
I thought this was...
Really worth paying attention to.
Listen to this.
So I think in this country, we've taken a very liberal approach to mortality.
And I think the reporting here has been pretty straightforward over the last five to six weeks.
Prior to that, when there wasn't testing in January and February, that's a very different situation and unknown.
There are other countries that if you had a pre-existing condition, And let's say the virus calls you to go to the ICU and then have a heart or kidney problem.
Some countries are recording that as a heart issue or a kidney issue and not a COVID-19 death.
Right now, we're still recording it and we'll, I mean, the great thing about having forms that come in
and a form that has the ability to market as COVID-19 infection, the intent is right now
that those, if someone dies with COVID-19, we are counting that as a COVID-19 death.
A liberal approach to mortality.
Okay, so she says, and I wanna get the exact quote right.
She says, if someone dies with COVID-19, we are counting that as a COVID-19 death.
Thank you.
The problem with that should be obvious.
That's her exact quote, that's what she said.
The problem is that just because someone has a virus and then dies doesn't mean that they died of the virus.
And that's just like with anything else.
If somebody dies and it turns out they had pancreatic cancer, it doesn't necessarily mean they died of the cancer.
They could have died of something else.
They could have died of the cancer, but it doesn't mean they did, automatically.
And considering that so many of the COVID-19 deaths, the vast majority of fact, are people with pre-existing conditions, you have to wonder how many of them died from the virus as opposed to merely with the virus.
And what she's telling us, plain as day, is that they're not making a distinction, in this country anyway, we're not making a distinction between dying with the virus and dying from the virus.
Even though there is a very, very clear and important distinction.
Number two, a father in Colorado was playing t-ball with his daughter in a park and wound up getting handcuffed and arrested for it.
Supposedly, he was violating social distancing.
Despite being with his own family, in apparently an empty park, playing t-ball, they were arrested.
So this is where we are now.
A man being cuffed in front of his six-year-old daughter, put in a squad car.
Here's the report done by Fox 31 in Denver.
Watch.
Matt Mooney says his family just wanted some fresh air.
Say they went to an open space to play some t-ball.
Never guessing what landed him in the back of a police cruiser.
Now, he wants a public apology.
Brighton police are apparently arresting a dad for throwing a ball to his daughter.
It was a former city council member who could not believe what he was recording.
In a park of about, I don't know, 30-40 acres.
But apparently that is not allowed by Brighton.
Well, if you don't give us your information, we're going to put you in handcuffs in front of your six-year-old daughter.
Matt Mooney is the 33-year-old dad who assured his daughter they were doing nothing wrong when police approached and told them they were violating the state's social distancing guideline.
She's like, Daddy, I don't want you to get arrested.
And at this point, I'm thinking, there's no way they're going to arrest me.
There's no way.
Insane.
And you know, so I'm telling her, I'm like, don't worry, daddy's not going to get arrested.
You know, I've done nothing wrong, you know, don't worry about it.
And then they arrest me.
The sign at Donaldson Park says closed, but in smaller print says in groups of no more than four persons, parks remain open for walking, hiking, biking, running, and similar activities.
Matt was just there with his wife and six year old.
He says it was the officers who were violating social distancing guidelines.
During this whole contact, none of the officers had masks on, none of them had gloves on.
And they're in my face, handcuffing me.
They're touching me.
First of all, this isn't really the most important point here, but what the hell kind of camera was he recording on?
How do you even get footage like that these days?
And was he jumping around on a trampoline while he was recording it?
It was just the grainiest and jumpiest footage of something I've seen in a long time.
It looked like battlefield footage from like World War I or something.
Dude is out there with a video camera from 1917.
I guess he got it from the same store that all the people who have spotted Bigfoot get their cameras.
But anyway, that's not the point.
The excuse you'll hear Is that the guy was arrested not because he was playing t-ball in a park, but because, which it even said there in the package, that you're allowed to do that.
Even by the draconian laws that they put in place there in Colorado, you're still allowed to go to a park as long as you don't have more than four people and you're doing some approved activity, which it would seem that a guy going with his daughter, and I think the mom was there, playing t-ball would be a fine activity.
So he wasn't actually arrested for that.
He was arrested because you wouldn't show his ID.
A cop came up to him and asked for his ID and he wouldn't provide his ID.
But why should he have to give his ID when he's in a park playing with his daughter?
Why would a cop even ask for it?
What does your ID have to do with anything?
Do you need a license to play in a park with your daughter?
What are you asking for the license in the first place?
And in America, it's supposed to be that a cop needs to have a reason to ask you for something like that.
I mean, what is it?
Basically, it's now a cop is coming up and demanding to see your papers.
That's essentially what this is.
Number three, here's the headline from the New York Times that says, environmentalists are using these strange times to make a point.
Pollution is not something that can't be reversed.
We've just reversed it.
And I bring this to your attention again, only as further support for the point that I was making a couple weeks ago, and that many people have made.
That this, what we're seeing now, is setting a precedent that the left is absolutely going to use.
And they are advertising the fact that they're going to use it.
And so here they're saying, look, we can stop pollution.
Of course, all you have to do to cut back on pollution is just to grind the global economy to a halt and send millions of people plunging into destitution.
But it can be done, apparently.
So look out for the next Democratic administration.
Number four, the White House is now saying that it would like to start reopening the economy in four to eight weeks, is what they're saying.
Now, of course, there's a lot of vagueness, as usual, and it's indicated that it could be earlier than that, could be later than that, who knows?
But they're shooting for four to eight weeks.
Of course, the problem is, four to eight weeks, if you try to reopen the economy in four to eight weeks, there's not going to be an economy to reopen.
That is much too far in the future.
That is way too long.
It's already been too long.
And this vagueness, again, this vagueness, the ambiguity, is a big part of the problem.
It's, you just, you can't do this.
You can't put people's lives on hold indefinitely and not tell them when it's gonna be over.
Businesses need to plan ahead if they have any chance of surviving.
Families need to be able to plan ahead and budget, and they need to know, if you've got a family without an income right now, they need to know, how long am I gonna be without an income?
I might have some savings, but I gotta know how I'm rationing this thing out.
Number five, legendary songwriter John Prine died at the age of 73 from, we're told, according to reports, complications related to coronavirus.
This one I'm pretty broken up about, personally.
John Prine has been one of my favorite artists, just a brilliant songwriter.
He had this incredible ability to tell stories through song, but what was unique about John Prine And there's a startling number of people I discovered last night, and I was talking about this online, startling number of people who've never heard of John Prine.
I don't know how you, but if that's the case, go look him up.
He's a great storyteller through song, but what was unique is that he would tell other people's stories much of the time.
Music today often rears much more towards the self-referential, where the artist is constantly talking about himself.
Which there's not anything wrong with that necessarily, but I think most of John Prine's greatest songs were about other people.
So he was, I suppose, America's most empathetic songwriter, you might say.
Angel from Montgomery.
Probably his most well-known song.
Beautiful song.
It's a song about an aging woman in a loveless marriage.
He wrote that, you know, despite not being a woman himself.
And he wrote that as a young man.
Hello In There is a song about the elderly.
Another beautiful song.
And about the loneliness of aging.
But he wrote that when he was in, I think, his 20s.
A song called Sam Stone.
Another great song.
John Prine song.
A song about a drug-addicted veteran.
So, just songs with depth and meaning.
Very lyrical.
And I would put John Prine probably above Bob Dylan, as a personal preference.
Certainly, I would say John Prine was writing great songs for longer than Bob Dylan has.
Again, in my opinion.
Number six, a bonus story, just to lighten things up a little bit.
Just to give us something to point and laugh at, because it's been pretty heavy up until now.
So, some Democrats in Congress have been trying to set a good example, walking around in masks.
Okay, good for them.
The only problem is that, well, look at these pictures here.
We've got Chuck Schumer and Sheila Jackson Lee wearing masks.
What's the problem here with the way they're wearing them?
There seems to be a conceptual problem.
They seem to be having an issue with the very concept of the mask.
Covering... Sorry, I missed that.
Could you say it again, please?
Why is Siri talking to me?
Hold on.
What do you want, Siri?
Siri, what do you want?
Why are you talking to me?
Are we all gonna die, Siri?
Siri!
Siri!
Okay.
That was creepy.
They're listening.
She's listening.
She's listening to every word I say.
Anyway, we're worried.
Okay, so yeah, they don't know how to wear masks.
They're leaving the nose uncovered, but the mouth... It's kind of like a football player Wearing a face mask but no helmet?
Kind of defeats the purpose.
Let's go to your daily cancellation.
This will be a quick one.
People's Daily is a propaganda outfit for the Chinese government.
And it poses as a news outlet, of course, as all propaganda outfits do.
Yesterday, it posted a video of a video that I think this video deserves to be mentioned in the dictionary under tone-deaf.
Because look at this screenshot.
They've deleted it, apparently.
I'm just discovering.
So they took it down.
But here's a screenshot.
It says, have a taste of Wuhan.
Let these mouth-watering specialties in Wuhan satisfy your stomach.
A taste of Wuhan.
Mouth-watering specials.
Yes, yes.
We've had a taste of Wuhan all right.
We've had quite enough of Wuhan.
I think the entire world has.
What do you think though?
You see that dish there.
What is that dish in the picture?
Because it's got some sort of dark black substance.
I'm thinking it looks maybe like a ground bat over pasta with scallions.
Which is a pretty good dish, by the way.
Definitely a staple in my house.
Kind of a comfort food.
I grew up with it.
Though I do prefer usually my bat to be seared in a cast iron skillet and then just lightly baked.
So what you're going for is that crispy crust of the bat and then inside you want a nice medium rare cook.
That's how I prefer it.
Really delicious.
But you know, if I'm going to cancel anyone for Chinese propaganda actually, it shouldn't be a Chinese propaganda outlet because that's their job, right?
Is to just do Chinese propaganda and so you can hardly blame them for it.
But I think our media...
Our media doing propaganda for the Chinese government.
That's a much bigger problem.
So for example, there are many examples of this.
Here's the latest.
One of the most egregious.
ABC News this morning posted a video from China of a light show that the government put on to celebrate that they're opening Wuhan again.
And here's the video.
This is a video that ABC News posted on their Twitter account.
Watch.
Okay, so that is literal Chinese state propaganda That ABC News is passing along
They're not reporting on it.
They're not offering commentary on it.
They're just passing it along, like the Chinese propaganda outlets in China do.
The Chinese government comes up with the propaganda piece, the video package, and they just assign it.
They hand it out, and now even our media says, okay, we'll go ahead and amplify that message for you.
Absolutely despicable.
Let's move on to emails, and you can email the show.
You've got to become a Daily Wire member.
If you're a Daily Wire member, you have access to the mailbag, and you can send your emails.
And as always, I do enjoy emails telling me why I'm wrong about things so that we can argue with each other, which is my favorite pastime.
So I've got a why I'm wrong email, but first, a couple others I want to read briefly.
This is from Liz.
It says, I just wanted to say, I too suffer from the fear of elevators shooting out of the top of the building.
I was, I divulged that irrational fear of mine yesterday and then immediately regretted Saying it out loud.
Although I've gotten a few emails from people saying that this is apparently a more common fear than I thought.
Liz says, I was recently, well not too recently, in a hospital and needed to go to the top floor.
Unbeknownst to me, the attached parking garage was not as tall as the hospital itself.
I get in the elevator, one with a glass side that's exposed to said parking garage.
As the elevator climbed, it began going above the parking garage and I lost my mind.
My brain ceased functioning, and as I saw the parking garage get farther below me, I thought for sure my fear was coming to fruition.
Rest assured, the elevator stopped safely at the top of the hospital, let me out, and I haven't stepped foot on one since.
I'm just glad to know I'm not alone, Liz.
So it's me, Liz, I think it was two other people that emailed and said they have the same fear.
I never worry about an elevator crashing.
That would be way too reasonable to worry about that.
My worry is that something malfunctioned and it just blasts out the top of the building.
This is from Chad.
It says, thank you for bringing up the article about the virus reactivating and how the science does not support this.
I am a biochemist in Michigan that predominantly studies pediatric cancer.
However, with the current situation, the local hospital system has elicited support from the university I work for to do literature reviews for scientific papers involving COVID-19, so as to help emphasize what literature should be reviewed by local clinicians as they prepare to care for infected patients.
I was eager to be involved in the process, to in a small way contribute in helping the healthcare workers that are sacrificing every day to help those that are sick.
On a side note, my sister's a nurse in Detroit, and my niece is a nurse in the Bronx, so from conversations with them, I am very aware of the sacrifices they're making.
While doing these literature reviews, I have been sadly disappointed in the poor level of science that is being exhibited in most of these articles.
I know this pandemic is new and evolving very quickly, and there's a need to get literature out quickly, but I have found that most articles are either simply opinion pieces or straight propaganda from Chinese scientists proclaiming how well their country handled the situation.
Having done science for close to 20 years, I would normally shrug this off as papers that were submitted to low-quality journals.
However, I've noticed that even high-quality journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine and Nature have published papers that are low in quality and scientific value.
I am saddened that the scientific community seems to be divulging into propaganda.
Maybe I am naive in believing this is only happening now.
As scientists, we often live in a bubble of our specific field.
And a certain set of journals.
Anyway, long story short, I'm grateful that you're using the platform to inform others to be more skeptical of the literature that is being presented to us.
Well, Chad, I appreciate that insight.
That's interesting to hear from someone with actual scientific expertise, of which I have none myself.
Alright, why I'm wrong.
This is from Tony.
Says, hey Matt, thanks for a great show.
You always have interesting and unique perspectives.
I was listening to your recent All Access Live show, which you can hear at 8 p.m.
Eastern, 5 p.m.
Pacific, every single day, All Access Live.
And this is open to, if you're a Daily Wire member, you don't have to be an All Access member for now.
And we do these every day.
A little bit of companionship, a way of breaking up the isolation.
So I did one on Monday.
And one of the questions I was asked, it's just kind of a back and forth Q&A type of thing, but one of the questions I was asked by somebody was, what do I think is the best argument for God, for the existence of God?
And I gave what I thought was the best and what I thought were, I gave a few examples of arguments that I thought were not very persuasive.
And I said that I think the cosmological argument, the argument from first cause, you know, any version of that, I find those to be unpersuasive arguments, whereas the argument from consciousness, in my opinion, is one of the best arguments for God.
Okay.
You said the cosmological argument was not a strong argument when in fact it is generally cited as one of the strongest, if not the strongest, argument for God's existence by many Christian apologists.
In response to your objection saying that the universe can be eternal, I think you missed the point that the universe is in itself a physical quantity.
The universe is composed of time, space, and matter, which points to a timeless, spaceless, and immaterial cause of the universe.
Furthermore, if the universe somehow extended into the past forever, we would never have arrived at this current moment.
The idea of the eternal universe, therefore, becomes nonsensical.
And finally, all current scientific evidence points to a beginning of the universe, i.e.
the Big Bang Theory.
Not to criticize you too much, but your argument from consciousness didn't quite square with me either.
Could you not say that we evolved to have a consciousness to help us survive?
I've read some things about how consciousness helps us run simulations in our head, which ultimately help us to make better decisions.
Looking at it this way, couldn't an atheist easily say we evolved consciousness because it is beneficial to our species?
Of course, this would be to commit the genetic fallacy, but that's another story.
Thanks, Tony.
Okay, Tony, well, I would say, yeah, I know that I'm taking the contrarian view here, which probably shouldn't surprise you, and I'm playing devil's advocate, okay?
So we're talking about what I think is, just from my perspective, What are the best arguments for God?
And I know that there are some Christians, and many Christians probably, who you talk to who would basically say that every argument for the existence of God is great, and persuasive, and compelling, and decisive.
But that's just, that's obviously our bias talking, because some arguments are better than others.
And you say that the Christian apologists all say that this is a really compelling argument.
Well, okay, but of course they're going to find it compelling.
See, but when you're making an argument, an apologetic argument, you're not trying to convince Christian apologists, because they already share your assumptions.
There are certain basic assumptions we bring to the... Obviously, we have a certain worldview, we bring it to every discussion.
And so, if a certain argument is compelling to people who share your basic assumptions, that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be compelling to people who don't share that assumption.
And so, I think it's interesting if you can You get an atheist, a thoughtful atheist who's going to be honest about it, and ask them what do they think the strongest theistic arguments are.
And I've heard, you know, many atheists give their opinion on this.
And you're not going to hear them say the cosmological argument.
What they will say, oftentimes, is a fine-tuning argument.
That was, in fact, Christopher Hitchens said that he thinks that's the strongest argument for theism.
Which, that doesn't mean that it's necessarily the best argument just because Christopher Hitchens said it, but if someone who does not share your underlying assumptions, even they say, okay, that's a pretty strong argument, then that should tell you something.
So, there's that.
In general, though, with the cosmological argument, I think, okay, here's the basic problem I have with it.
When you argue that, well, the universe had to have a beginning because it's illogical for something to have no beginning, for it to exist forever.
So it had to have some sort of cause, and then God is that cause.
Well, it seems like what you're trying to do is to say that it is illogical, it's a logical impossibility for something to have no cause or no beginning.
But if it is a logical impossibility, then that would also apply to God, right?
Because even God cannot do things that are logically impossible.
God cannot make a rectangular square, right?
Or a circular triangle.
It's a logical impossibility.
It's nonsensical.
So the whole thing about, can God make a boulder too heavy for him to lift?
It's a logical impossibility, and so sort of the answer is no.
And there's no real problem there saying no.
So it seems like the argument is trying to make a logical case, but then that would apply to God.
So what if you say well, you know something has to have a beginning
Or you know something has to have a beginning And then that's then God is the beginning of the universe
then of course the atheist response is well, then who started God or who caused God and
And typically, this is where most theists will kind of scoff at that response and say, that's silly.
It's actually not a silly response.
It's a totally legitimate, logical response to your argument because you just said that everything has to have a beginning.
Well, God is something, isn't he?
So, it seems like it's trying to make a logical argument that it then abandons.
When it comes to God, and that doesn't quite work.
Also, look...
You know, there are ways, atheists have ways around this.
They'll say, yeah, well we know that there was a big bang, we know that the observable universe has a beginning, but we don't know what happened before then, and we also don't know, you know, we could live in a multiverse, we could live in a bubble universe where there are trillions, maybe infinite number of universes, and we're just living in one little section, one little bubble that started 14 billion years ago, but that doesn't mean that the entire thing started 14 billion years ago.
Maybe every black hole contains its own universe.
There's all kinds of maybes and what-ifs.
All that sounds implausible.
It sounds implausible to me, too.
But it's not impossible, logically.
It could be true.
And I think all the atheist needs to do is say, is argue, that it's at least possible that we live in an eternal multiverse.
That's a possible thing.
It's not scientifically impossible.
And if you agree to that, which I think you have to, because it is scientifically possible, then it kind of destroys that argument, I think.
But, going to the argument for consciousness.
Now, as I said, I think that that is at least one of the strongest arguments for theism, along with the fine-tuning argument, I think, is strong.
And there are others too.
The argument for morality, I think, is strong.
But the consciousness argument, now you say the atheist response to that is, well, we would have evolved consciousness because it's very useful.
Well, yeah, I can see how consciousness is useful, but this is not a question of why is consciousness useful, it's how could inanimate matter first become animate, become life, and then develop somehow a sense of its own self?
Because on a purely materialistic basis, we are all just atoms, right?
We're all just collections of atoms.
So how could it be that a collection of atoms could come together in a certain way to develop an experience, an awareness of its own self?
That, to me, seems like it is impossible.
Even almost a logical impossibility.
And so it demands some other kind of immaterial explanation.
Especially when consciousness itself appears to be an immaterial thing.
And so that, I would argue, gets us away from, or it pokes a huge hole in at least, materialism.
And now you've opened the door for God.
That's why I think that's a compelling argument.
But again, you know, I'm speaking as someone obviously with a huge bias, so that's just...
From my own perspective.
But thanks for that email.
Thanks, everybody, for watching.
Have a great day.
God bless.
Godspeed.
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