Today on the Matt Walsh Show, the ancient communist, Bernie Sanders, has dropped out of the race finally. He says he “won the ideological struggle,” which is clearly not the case. But will his ideology prevail in the future? And will these shutdowns ultimately move us towards becoming a more socialist country, or will they have the opposite effect? Also Five Headlines including the new unemployment numbers. They are ghastly. And today it brings me no pleasure, but I must cancel the pope.
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, the ancient communist Bernie Sanders has finally dropped out of the race.
He says that he won the ideological struggle, which Is clearly not the case, because he's the guy who dropped out, but will his ideology prevail in the future is the question, and here's something I'm thinking about.
These shutdowns that are happening right now, will they ultimately move us towards becoming a more socialist country, or could it have the opposite effects?
We'll talk about that.
Also, five headlines, including the new unemployment numbers, which are ghastly.
And today, it brings me no pleasure, especially this week of all weeks.
But I must cancel the Pope.
And I'll explain why.
All of that coming up.
So we begin with this.
Of course, Bernie Sanders, as I said, dropping out of the race.
Of course, he did that only after the Wisconsin primaries, which were on Monday, I think.
And people waited in line for hours in the middle of a pandemic.
Bernie Sanders could have spared them that, but he decided, because it's not like the results of the Wisconsin primary mattered anyway in terms of his chances.
So he could have spared them that, decided not to because he needed one last ego trip, but he dropped out yesterday finally.
Did a live stream announcing his decision to end his campaign, and here's, because I'm a masochist, I'm going to for some reason play a little bit of it.
Listen to this.
If we don't believe that we are entitled to health care as a human right, we will never achieve universal health care.
If we don't believe that we are entitled to decent wages and working conditions, millions of us will continue to live in poverty.
If we don't believe that we are entitled to all of the education we require to fulfill our dreams, many of us will leave school saddled with huge debt or never get the education we need.
If we don't believe that we are entitled to live in a world that has a clean environment and is not ravaged by climate change, we will continue to see more drought, floods, rising sea levels, and increasingly uninhabitable planet.
If we don't believe that we are entitled to live in a world of justice, democracy, and fairness, without racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, or religious bigotry, We will continue to have massive income and wealth inequality, prejudice and hatred, mass incarceration, terrified immigrants, and hundreds of thousands of Americans sleeping out on the streets in the richest country on earth.
And focusing on that new vision for America is what our campaign has been about and what in fact we have accomplished.
Few would deny that over the course of the past five years, our movement has won the ideological struggle.
So I wanted to play that part of his spiel because it perfectly encapsulates Bernie Sanders.
Utopian, deluded, narcissistic, incoherent.
Why should merely believing that we're entitled to something make that thing happen?
This is the logic of Peter Pan.
This is the logic of an R. Kelly song, I Believe I Can Fly.
This is not serious thought.
These are not serious ideas.
And then he says at the end there that he won the ideological struggle, which it's a little bit like a guy who just lost one-on-one basketball saying, well, I won the athletic struggle.
That's precisely what you didn't do.
That's exactly what happened here.
What happened here is you losing the athletic struggle.
The exact opposite is the case.
Still, he did reveal, or helped to reveal, Or he is, maybe I would, it's better to say he's a symptom of a very dangerous ideological trend in our country.
So there is a, he didn't win the struggle, his ideology is not prevailing, obviously, but there is a trend.
And it is trending in that direction.
And it's a trend that skews Jung.
A trend towards socialism, a trend towards dependence, entitlement, government control.
And it's especially tragic and concerning to see this among young people, concerning because young people are the future, the future generation.
Now, it's possible, I guess we could hope, that young people, and when I say young people, I'm talking about my own generation, those young whippersnappers, it's possible they could grow up as they get older and grow out of this socialism thing, or not.
But it's tragic because Especially when you're young, you know, to be a young person begging for the government's assistance, being helpless, acting like you're so vulnerable and you need the government to come in and solve all your problems.
I don't think there's ever a point in your life where you should have that attitude, but especially not when you're young.
When you're young, and particularly if you're young and you're not married, you don't have a family, A lot of Bernie Sanders supporters, they're in college or they're just out of college.
They have no real responsibilities in life.
They have nobody depending on them.
This is the time to be independent and to crave independence and to go out and take risks.
I mean, healthy risks, not like... I don't mean trying different drugs type of risks.
I mean, taking risks with trying different things, different career paths.
Figuring out what you're good at, what your passions are.
You know, you move across the country somewhere and you try a job.
If it doesn't work out, it's not a big deal.
You can just go work somewhere else.
It's really, there's not a lot.
Now, of course, these days you can't actually do that, but once all this is over.
So, that's what youth is supposed to be all about.
It's supposed to be about sort of a radical independence.
And to see the opposite trend these days is pretty tragic.
But I have to wonder, Speaking of entitlement and socialism, what impact will recent events have on the ideological struggle that Bernie is talking about?
Because I can see this going one of two ways.
There's the optimistic version, and then there's the pessimistic version.
And you probably already guessed which one I'm leaning towards here.
But let's start with the optimistic version.
Perhaps Americans will see the government obliterating the economy, as it has been doing, And assuming near total control over their lives.
And they will experience this, let's say, sampling of communism.
This is like someone at the grocery store handing out samples of meatballs.
Which, by the way, another tragedy here.
Another casualty of the coronavirus epidemic is probably that free samples at the grocery store.
We're never going to see those again.
Which is really terrible.
But in any case, so this is sort of like a free sample of communism that's being handed out to us.
And maybe, optimistically, people experience this free sample of communism and they revolt against it.
Maybe they see what it's like to be entirely dependent on the government, to be controlled, to live without freedom.
And we as Americans say, enough of this, never again, this is not what I want, this is not how I want to live.
And then this whole experience leads to a great reawakening of American culture.
And we experience again a thirst for independence and freedom.
That's the optimistic possibility.
And by the way, that's the only hope we have.
If there's any way of coming back from this, Especially when we look at what the government has done to society and the economy.
If there's any hope of us clawing our way back from this, it's going to have to be through this.
We would need a massive cultural reawakening.
So that's one possibility.
I don't find it terribly convincing, I'm afraid to say.
The pessimistic, the negative version, is that the government By wiping out millions of jobs, and in just a second we'll talk about how many jobs they've wiped out so far.
But the government, by wiping out millions of jobs, is breeding dependence.
Forcing people to be dependent on it, through no fault of their own.
So if you had your job taken away by the government, And now you're depending on the check they're sending, which won't be nearly enough for most people, but you still need it, though.
Now, in that case, of course, it's not your fault.
It's the government's fault.
And that's why I've even had people send me emails talking about the ethical... What if I get sent a check from the government and I don't want to...
I don't believe in taking that kind of help from the government.
What do I do?
Well, you cash the check.
You should feel no guilt about that whatsoever.
This right now is not welfare.
You actually are entitled to that money because the government has taken your job from you and told you you can't work and support your family.
They do owe you compensation.
So you actually are entitled to that.
It's an entitlement in the literal sense of the word.
The problem with most entitlements is that the people who are getting the entitlement aren't actually entitled to what they're getting.
In this case, you are entitled to it.
So I would feel no guilt about that whatsoever.
No compunction, no hesitation.
You cash the check, you use it for your family.
But, here's my fear.
That the American people, you know, we become accustomed to that dependence.
And the effect of these shutdowns is that society is reordered and shifted permanently towards greater government control, greater dependence, and so on.
And there is precedent here.
I think precedent points towards this pessimistic possibility.
That, you know, that people get used to being dependent on the government.
You look at many different entitlement and welfare-type programs that were supposed to be temporary or were supposed to be limited, and people just kind of get used to it.
At first, there's a revolt against it.
People are protesting.
People don't like it.
But after a while, you just get used to it.
It's part of your reality.
And I'm afraid that's what happens here, is that people get used to being dependent on the government.
We get used to this kind of control.
We start saying, well, you know, it's not that bad.
Having the government tell us when we can leave our house and how long we can spend outside and all these things, it's not that bad.
I can still do most of the things I want to do because most of what I want to do is stay inside and watch TV anyway.
I hear this all the time from people saying, what are you complaining about?
All the government's saying is stay inside and watch Netflix.
Which of course, there's a lot more to it than that, right?
Especially when you're losing your job and you can't feed your family.
I mean, if you're looking at the shutdowns as nothing but an opportunity to watch Netflix, then that means that you're in a pretty privileged position.
A lot of people, it's much more than that.
But even if you're in a privileged position, and so most of what you're doing is watching Netflix, it should still bother you, even if all you want to do is watch Netflix.
Well, it should bother you that that's all you want to do with your life, but it should also bother you that you can't do other things, even if you don't want to do them.
So I'm worried that that attitude takes hold.
And is this happening at a point in history where that is very likely to happen?
Because we're all so dependent on, already, on our phones and on entertainment.
We're obsessed with entertainment.
That's most of what we want to do with our lives anyway.
And as long as the government keeps the bread and circuses going, and they allow us to continue entertaining ourselves, even if we have to do it in our living rooms now, we'll be fine with whatever else they take from us in terms of our liberties and freedoms.
I don't know.
But I could see it heading in that direction, and that's what I think we need to be worried about, and that's why we have to be on guard and we have to be very vigilant.
Okay, I want to move on now, actually, a little bit earlier than usual to headlines, because some of these are very important, especially the first one.
So, let's go to headlines, and in fact, before I do that, actually, I want to tell you about a new weekly podcast from, speaking of jobs and business and everything, it's a good time to tell you about a podcast from Wondery called Business Wars.
Now, each season digs deep into some of the greatest corporate rivalries of all time.
So you think about Facebook versus Snapchat or Nike versus Adidas.
Now, if you're an old school guy like myself, you would say rather than Facebook versus Snapchat, the one you're thinking of is Facebook versus Myspace back in the old days.
On each episode, we give you an inside look at what inspired entrepreneurs to take risks that drove their companies to new heights or into the ground.
At the end of the show, after the credits, at the end of this show, we'll be playing a brief clip from Business Wars season, Starbucks versus Dunkin'.
In it, they follow these two Java giants in a war that started brewing in the 1950s.
It is now hotter than ever.
Coffee, coffee is a, coffee, coffee is a $100 billion plus global industry with these two duking it out at the top.
But their battle is about more than coffee.
And as a big coffee drinker myself, this is the Starbucks versus Dunkin' Donuts controversy is one that is near and dear to my heart.
And I've had this debate many times with people, so I'll be interested in this.
Once the show is over, you're going to hear a clip from the new Starbucks versus Dunkin' season of Business Wars.
But before that, make sure to subscribe to Business Wars and other great podcasts from Wondery on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening right now.
Okay.
On to headlines.
The new unemployment claims are out.
We're looking at 6.6 million new claims last week.
The final number for the week before that, I think originally they said it was about 6.5 million or something, but the week before that, it turns out it was 7.5 million.
So before that, it was 3 million.
So we've lost, give or take, 17 million jobs in three weeks.
And I always have to remind everyone, these are just the people who could and did successfully apply for benefits.
Many millions of people either didn't qualify or were not able to apply because the websites are crashing all over the country.
And you got this influx of people, millions of people all at once, trying to go on these websites and apply for unemployment.
Lots of people don't get through.
So, 17 million is the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
Let's put some perspective on this.
17 million jobs lost is more than we lost in the Great Recession in 18 months.
18 months of the Great Recession, we lost fewer jobs than we lost just now in three weeks.
The shutdowns have killed more jobs.
Better way of putting it, the shutdowns have killed more jobs in three weeks than the Great Recession killed in 18 months.
We have lost 10% of our workforce in three weeks.
Okay?
The worst unemployment rate we have ever seen, or at least that we've seen in the last, say, 30 years up to this point, was about 10%.
Our unemployment rate for just the past three weeks is 10%.
Overall, it's like 13 or 14%.
And again, that's only the beginning.
That's only the tip of the iceberg.
Now, everyone seems to love projections these days, so let's project this out.
We've lost 17 million jobs in 3 weeks for an average of 5.5 million a week.
The White House says now that this could go on for another 8 weeks.
4 to 8 weeks, they're saying.
Or longer.
So 8 times 5.5 million plus the 17 million we've already lost.
We're looking at around 60 million unemployed people by the end of this.
If it ends in 8 weeks, let's say.
We could be looking at something like 60 million unemployed people.
And that is a conservative estimate, because that assumes that the rate won't continue to climb week over week, which there's a very good chance that it does.
Conservative estimate, 60 million, which would be about a third of the workforce, and that's basically the death of the country.
Barring, as I said, a massive great cultural reawakening, and a change in our culture that is just absolutely revolutionary, that will allow us to climb back from this, but it won't be easy.
And it's not going to just snap back into place as people, there are so many deluded people who seem to think that's what's going to happen.
That after all this is over, things are going to just magically go back to normal.
That we could lose like 60 million jobs in the span of a month or two.
And then it's like nothing ever happened once the government says, okay, you can go back to work and just like that, everything's back to normal.
That seems to be what people are expecting.
It's not going to be that.
And let's also remember that when we talk about jobs being lost, these are not just jobs.
We're talking about livelihood.
So another way of putting it is, 17 million people have lost their livelihood in the last three weeks.
It's not just a job.
It's not just money.
This is livelihood.
This is food on the table.
These are kids being clothed and sheltered.
That's what this represents.
Number two, a little hope in these times, and it's looking like our alien overlords may finally be gearing up to come and destroy us.
Fingers crossed, God willing.
Can't happen soon enough.
Here's a video that's gone viral on YouTube, and I don't know who put it up.
We don't know who put it up.
It's from a YouTube channel where there's just one video, and this is it.
It's an anonymous person who put it up there, so you know it's very credible.
And it supposedly shows some very interesting activity on the moon.
Watch this clip.
Now, before we talk about that clip, I wanted to tell you about, I want to take a second
here and tell you about LifeLock.
There are some people who seem like they're prepared for anything, and these days, whether it's an alien invasion like what we're talking about now, but these days you do have to be prepared for anything.
And especially as what we're looking at, what's happening in our society now.
But the truth is that many people who are usually prepared and who worry about identity theft only monitor their credit, which isn't enough.
And I know for me, for a long time, that's the way I was looking at it.
That if you want to be prepared and if you want to guard against identity theft, the main thing you're looking at is your credit or maybe just your bank account or whatever.
But there's a lot more to it than that.
So you may not be as prepared as you think you are.
If that's all you're looking at.
Identity breaches seem like they're happening more these days, and with your breach information, like your name, social security number, and more, criminals can commit identity theft.
That's why LifeLock sees more threats, like someone taking out a payday loan in your name, stuff like that, that you might not have any way of knowing about if not for LifeLock.
And then they're going to alert you to the possible suspicious activity.
And if you end up having an identity theft issue, you'll have a dedicated identity restoration specialist who's just a phone call away.
And so they're protecting you.
And then if the worst case does happen, they're going to be there to help you out.
No one can prevent all identity theft or monitor all transactions of all businesses, of course.
But with breaches on the rise, doesn't it make sense to be prepared?
This is all we're talking about is basic preparation.
And there's really no reason not to do it, especially when you think about the fact that you can join LifeLock today and save up to 25% off your first year.
Go to LifeLock.com slash Walsh, that's LifeLock.com slash Walsh, to save 25% off.
Okay, so I just played the clip of the aliens there.
It does look pretty interesting, pretty convincing.
Of course, when you think about the scale and how quickly The ships moved over that surface area, and how large they were in comparison to the surface, from our perspective, those would have to be ships that are like 10 miles long, and moving probably thousands of miles an hour.
So, if this is real, this is Independence Day.
Remember Independence Day?
The city-wide ships that hovered over the city and then destroyed the city?
That's what this is, if it's real.
The other possibility... Siri's talking to me again.
The other possibility is that, of course, it's fake.
I mean, what's more likely?
That someone came up with a fake YouTube video?
Or that aliens are about to invade and destroy mankind?
I think it's kind of 50-50.
Number three, the chief health officer at the Association of American Medical Colleges, Dr. Janice Orlowski, spoke to a Politico podcast, I should say, this week, and this is what she said, quoting from her.
She said, I believe that we're going to return to a semi-normal life at the end of May, Memorial Day, but the other thing that I would say is that we have to prepare ourselves to go through a similar exercise in the fall.
If you take a look at the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic, if you take a look at how coronavirus is acting, this is not just the winter and spring of 2020, probably late November.
By December, we are going to go through this again.
And this is something we've heard repeatedly, that we could have to do this all over again.
So, okay.
We shed 60 million jobs over the course of a couple months, and then we try to reclaim the economy, and then in the fall we do it all over again.
So, hey, it's just 60 million jobs here or there.
No reason why we can't do that.
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Write Walsh in their how did you hear about us box so that they know that I sent you.
Number four, during the White House coronavirus briefing yesterday,
a reporter had an arguably off topic question, but one that is still of pressing importance.
One of the biggest rating hits of the coronavirus is aside from these briefings has been a show on Netflix
called Tiger King.
Yeah.
And the man who's the star of this is a former zoo owner who's serving a 22-year prison sentence.
He's asking you for a pardon, saying he was unfairly convicted.
Your son yesterday jokingly said that, you know, he was going to advocate for it.
And I was wondering if you've seen the show and if you have any thoughts on pardoning Joe Exotic.
Which son?
It must be Don.
I had a feeling it was Don.
Is that what he said?
I don't know.
I know nothing about it.
He has 22 years for what?
What did he do?
You think he didn't do it?
Are you on his side?
Are you recommending a pardon?
As a reporter, you're not allowed to do that.
You'd be criticized by these.
Would you recommend a pardon?
I don't think you would.
I don't think you would.
Go ahead.
You have a question?
I'll take a look.
Is that Joe Exotic?
That's Joe Exotic?
Could I just say, I'm glad that the reporter asked this question.
Obviously, in the middle of a global pandemic and the oncoming Great Depression, this is the kind, and you have a chance to ask the leader of the free world a question about all of this.
To ask him about a reality TV show makes a lot of sense.
I wouldn't criticize that.
But I would just caution everybody, if you watch Tiger King, which is a fascinating show, but we call it a documentary.
Not really a documentary, though.
It's a reality show.
Emphasis more on show than reality.
So, if you watch this and you think that Joe Exotic is innocent, he must be innocent, let's free him.
No, he's almost certainly guilty as hell.
You can tell that even just in the show, but you can't trust these shows.
As I've said before, Making a Murderer, people watch that and went away from it assuming that Stephen Avery, Avery and the other guy, Brendan, whatever his name was, Dassey, Innocent little flowers.
And of course, you read the court documents and you discover that no, these are psychotic murderous freaks.
And Joe Exotic maybe didn't kill anyone.
He did kill some tigers, it seems like.
Maybe he didn't actually succeed in killing any people, but I'm guessing he's probably guilty.
But you can't make these kinds of judgments based on a Netflix show.
That's all I'm trying to say.
Number five, finally, Tucker Carlson last night on Fox had some thoughts on Joe Biden, and I enjoyed this segment.
Watch this.
Joe Biden is now the presumptive Democratic nominee.
Nobody really chose Biden for this job.
He wound up in it by a series of defaults.
And it shows.
Ask yourself, is Joe Biden ready to lead this country?
Could he find his car in a three-tiered parking garage?
Could he navigate a salad bar?
And by the way, what exactly is his position on the coronavirus pandemic?
Those are the mysteries Democrats now face.
Biden has been virtually invisible for the last month.
That's not an accident.
Joe Biden on camera means more moments like this.
We cannot let this, we've never allowed any crisis from the Civil War straight through to the pandemic of 17, all the way around 16.
We have never, never let our democracy second fiddle.
We can both have a democracy and elections and at the same time correct the public health.
You follow that?
Yeah, that about sums it up.
health. It's hard to imagine a man like that making it through a presidential debate or
even staying awake through the inaugural proceedings. It seems likely that at some point, Democratic
leaders will try to find a way to replace Biden before the November election. Andrew
Cuomo is the obvious replacement, but there are many others.
Whatever happens, it's worth taking Joe Biden seriously for this moment now that he is
officially, in a sense, the nominee.
Yeah, that about sums it up. I think many people are predicting that they're going to
to try to dump Biden at the convention, replace him with somebody else.
I would still say the smart money is on that not happening, just because those sorts of things don't happen.
Those sorts of things are talked about and predicted to happen much more than they actually do happen.
If you recall, 2016, a lot of people were saying that was gonna happen with Trump, and of course it didn't.
But, at the same time, This is a potentially unprecedented situation where you've got a guy, major party nominee, who is literally losing his mind and clearly has dementia.
So unprecedented situation doesn't lead to an unprecedented result.
I think that's quite possible.
But you also have to keep in mind, I mean, you look at Joe Biden supporters.
One of the reasons why Joe Biden is the nominee now, and Bernie Sanders is not, is that Joe Biden has a lot of support among minorities.
So is that something the Democrat Party is going to want to do?
You're going to erase these votes?
Not just any votes, but especially the votes of your minority base.
You're going to erase those votes and just put some... You're going to say to those voters, no, no, no, no, you didn't know what you were doing.
He wasn't the right guy.
We'll tell you who the nominee is going to be.
Now, the party does have the power to do that, but I'm not sure they're going to want to.
Let's move on to your daily cancellation, and as a Catholic, I'm afraid, I'm sorry that I have to do this, but I do have to cancel the Pope, Pope Francis.
And I'll tell you why.
In fact, I'll read now from the New York Post.
It says, Pope Francis likened the coronavirus pandemic to recent fires and floods as one of nature's responses to the world's ambivalence to climate change.
The Pope said in an interview published Wednesday in The Tablet, which is a UK-based Catholic weekly, This is an expression in Spanish, God always forgives, we forgive sometimes, but nature never forgives.
The Pope was responding to whether he believed coronavirus could spur ecological conversion, the idea for people to lead more environmentally conscious lives through the understanding that the natural world is a creation of God.
Pope Francis said the world had yet to respond to recent partial catastrophes related to the climate.
And so he's, the Pope went on to say he believed the COVID-19 outbreak that has ravaged the globe could inspire change.
This is a time to take the decisive step to move forward from using and misusing nature to contemplating it.
Well, of course, this pandemic has, I'm no scientist, but I think I can say that this epidemic has absolutely nothing to do with climate change whatsoever.
And in fact, In many cases, we don't know if this is gonna be the case with this virus, but in many cases, the viruses do much worse in warmer temperatures.
So if anything, global warming is helping us.
It could be a lot worse if we didn't have global warming, who knows?
So there's no connection there at all.
But the main thing that annoys me here, it's not just the silly attempt to connect the coronavirus to climate change, because we know that the climate alarmists, of which the Pope is one of them, They try to connect everything they can to climate change.
They would connect traffic fatalities to climate.
In fact, I'm sure they probably have done that, if you look it up.
They would try to connect anything they can.
But the thing that annoys me, just from a theological perspective, it's true, of course.
It's very possible to make the point that Christians should respect nature, And should refrain from gratuitously defiling nature and polluting and abusing God's creation?
That's a very easy case to make.
It's true.
It's an important point to make, although I think most people probably would agree, so I don't know how necessary it is to say, but sure, you could say that, and most of us would agree.
But you don't need to get into the climate alarmism.
And treating that like its own religion of sorts.
There's no reason for that.
You don't need to be, this is the point, you don't need to be a climate alarmist as a Christian in order to respect God's creation.
It's not necessary.
But this is the message you get from some Christians, including the Pope.
And that's why he is cancelled.
Alright, let's move on to emails.
And we talked yesterday about By the way, you can email the show.
If you become a Daily Wire member, you can email the mailbag that way.
So I've got one email.
This is a Why I'm Wrong email.
And this is representative of many other emails I got making a similar point.
This is from Ryan.
Says, Dear Matt, You were way wrong about everything you said about the cosmological argument.
I appreciate that you're trying to play devil's advocate and poke holes in an argument you agree with.
I think Theis should be doing that much more often.
Iron sharpens iron, etc.
But you botched it big time.
You said the cosmological argument is not the best argument because it isn't persuasive to atheists.
But that doesn't mean it's not the best argument.
An argument is good, or the best, if it is logically sound.
If others are too dumb or biased to be persuaded by a logically sound argument, that doesn't change the fact that it is a logically sound argument.
Now, on to the argument itself.
You said the cosmological argument states that everything has a cause.
But that is not what the cosmological argument states.
The argument goes like this.
1.
Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
2.
The universe began to exist.
3.
Therefore, the universe has a cause.
This is the cosmological argument, and I don't know if it's the ultimate best argument, but it is certainly very good and sound.
It pains me to say it, Matt, but you were wrong.
Okay.
You're right.
Ryan, that an argument's failure to persuade doesn't necessarily mean that it's bad.
I should have said that the cosmological argument's failure to persuade means that it's a less effective argument, or one of the less effective arguments.
I think it's pretty clear in the context that that's what I meant, but you are right.
On that, you got me.
It is possible, especially these days, to make a very good argument to someone and yet not have it persuade them because they're just sort of stupid or they're not paying attention.
That happens to me all the time.
It's one of my great frustrations in life.
Because I know if I make an argument and someone's not persuaded, it must be because they're stupid.
It couldn't possibly be because my argument was bad.
As for the argument, There are many different cosmological arguments.
By the way, if you weren't watching the show yesterday, the reason this came up is someone emailed and asked what are the best, in my opinion, what are the best and worst arguments for the existence of God.
I said the arguments that I personally find to be the most persuasive, though I am biased so it's hard to judge.
The arguments I like, arguments like the argument from morality, the argument from consciousness, the argument from the origins of life, the argument from the fine-tuning argument, I think those are good arguments.
Now, I said that I actually think that the cosmological argument, first cause type arguments are not good.
And I know that I am very much in a minority among Christians and theists in general in saying that, because almost every Christian or theist I've ever talked to would point to this as one of the best, if not the best argument.
I tend to disagree with that, and I try to explain why.
Okay, so back to the points being made here.
As for the argument itself, There are many different cosmological arguments.
The one that was cited there in the email, the one you cited in the email, is the Kalam cosmological argument.
I was responding to the claim that everything must have a beginning or a cause, which is an argument that I've heard Theis put forward many times.
I hear this all the time, in fact, and I was just trying to point out that it's a bad argument because when you say God began or God caused the argument, it leaves you susceptible to the retort of, well, who made God?
Because you just said everything has to have a beginning.
He's part of everything, isn't he?
If everything must have a beginning, then that must include God.
But if God doesn't have to have a beginning, then that concedes that it's possible, at least, for something not to have a beginning, which means that it's possible for the universe not to have a beginning.
You know, it's at least logically possible, even if it's not plausible.
Now, I know the response to that is to say that God is outside of time and space, and God is not a physical entity, whereas the universe is in time, and it is physical, and thus must have a beginning, but I don't I don't think it's actually true that logically or scientifically everything that is quote in time must necessarily have a beginning.
I don't, I just, I think that that's not true.
That strikes me as a bald assertion and nothing more.
And it also doesn't make much sense to say the universe is in time.
You know, I, I hear this all the time and I don't really know what it means because first of all, time is relative.
So to say that the universe is in it, Is a bit confusing.
I don't know that that actually makes sense as a statement.
Maybe it does.
Not sure that it does.
Also, it could be circular to say that God is allowed to have no beginning because he's outside time and space.
The response to that from an atheist could easily be, well, how do you know that God is outside time and space?
How do you know that it's even possible for something to be outside of time and space?
And if your response to that is, he has to be outside it because he made it, Then it's circular.
God is outside time and space because he made time and space, and the way that we know he's outside time and space is that he made it.
It's kind of a circular argument.
But let's move on to the Kalam cosmological argument.
The problem with that argument is that the first two premises aren't necessarily true, and The conclusion doesn't actually prove that God exists.
So we've got a nearly irrelevant conclusion built on two faulty premises.
That's why I think it's actually a very bad argument.
Premise one, everything that begins to exist has a cause.
Well, maybe.
But we don't actually know if that's true or not.
I think it's true.
But it doesn't matter what I think, it matters what you can prove.
And you can't prove that.
I think most modern scientists, quantum physicists and so forth, would tell you that the laws of cause and effect aren't necessarily as clear as we might think when you get down to the quantum level.
And when you go back to the singularity and then before that, the laws of physics, as we know them, break down.
So you can't really make claims based on them, you see.
So that premise, I think, is dubious.
Premise two, the universe began to exist.
Well, even if premise one is conceded, premise two kills the whole thing because that is a statement of fact.
The universe began to exist when we actually don't know that it is a fact.
Remember, you can't bring theological assumptions into this argument.
And that's what I was talking about yesterday.
The cosmological argument can seem very persuasive to you and me because of the theological assumptions that we bring to it.
And those are theological assumptions that I share, that the universe began to exist.
But the reason why I think that the universe began to exist, it's not really because of the Big Bang.
Because as I'll say, as I'll talk about in a minute, the Big Bang itself doesn't prove that the universe began to exist.
The reason I think it, and believe it, is because the Bible tells me that God created the universe.
But in terms of just objective scientific fact, what do we know?
Well, we know that the observable universe, this massive clump of 100 billion galaxies that we call the universe, began.
We know that.
We have no idea what might be beyond that or what might have come before it.
We just have no idea.
So you simply can't make that claim.
Well, you can make it, but it's just a claim.
Can't prove it.
And there are other logical possibilities.
Now, you could say it seems most plausible that the universe began to exist 14.5 billion years ago, whenever it was.
But when you equivocate like that, I think it kind of destroys the argument anyway.
It is possible.
Again, I say this from a purely scientific standpoint.
That we live in a multiverse.
That there are many more.
And when you think about it, it's like, we know the universe is 100 billion galaxies.
Can we really say the universe is 100 billion galaxies?
It couldn't possibly be any bigger than that?
A hundred billion galaxies is incomprehensibly huge already, so who knows?
Maybe it's a quadrillion galaxies big.
Maybe it's eternally big.
I don't know.
It's possible that the universe is like an accordion that expands and contracts eternally.
It's possible.
There are dozens of other possibilities as well.
So, I think that claim that the premise doesn't work.
And then the conclusion, you know, because you say, here are the two premises, then we get the conclusion that the universe has a cause.
Well, even if you get there, I mean, even if you can convince someone of the first two premises, which I'm not sure how exactly you do that, because you're going to need to come forward with scientific discoveries that no one, you're going to need to have some Heretofore, unknown scientific discoveries that you're bringing to bear for those premises to work.
But even if you do, the conclusion only shows that something caused the universe.
It doesn't tell you that that thing is God, you see.
It doesn't even really get you close to that.
Because anybody could dream up a million different logical possibilities of what that thing could be, right?
Now, William Lane Craig, who, first of all, is brilliant, and I'm a huge fan of him.
I admire and respect him.
I think most of his arguments that he makes are great.
But this is the Kalam Cosmological Argument, is one that he popularized.
And on this one, I think it's not good.
And I think he kind of pulls a little bit of a rhetorical bait-and-switch.
Not intentionally, but I think he does.
Because what he'll try to do, if you've ever heard him explain this argument, He'll try to get from, you know, the universe has a cause, and then he'll go immediately from that and say, and that cause must be timeless, spaceless, immaterial, changeless, and infinitely powerful.
And then he'll say, and that's whatever, you know, whatever being is that is God.
That's what we all mean when we say God.
Well, that doesn't really work logically, does it?
Because, yeah, whatever caused it, I guess, would have to be immaterial, spaceless, and timeless, because it is outside of those things.
Although, even there, you could dream up, you know, you could say, well, what if the universe is a simulation in some sort of alien supercomputer?
I don't think that's true, but it's a logical possibility that you can't rule out.
Logically, philosophically, you can't rule it out.
So even that doesn't really work.
But let's put the alien simulation thing aside and let's say, okay, fine.
Spaceless, timeless, immaterial.
But how do you get to changeless and infinitely powerful?
Whatever caused the universe, the act of causing the universe doesn't mean that you have to be changeless.
And it doesn't even mean you have to be infinitely powerful.
It just means that you have to be the spark that sets off the Big Bang and then everything sort of takes over from
there.
Infinitely powerful means that you can do things like things God can do, like read your mind and answer prayers.
But there is nothing about starting a universe that necessitates being able to read someone's mind and answer their prayers,
for example.
And that's why deists through the centuries have believed that the universe was caused by some sort of supernatural entity, and then that entity really hasn't done anything since, or maybe isn't able to do anything else, or maybe doesn't even exist anymore.
I don't think that's true, but there's nothing illogical about it, is my point.
Okay.
And that's why I think that argument is no good.
And that's why I think we should focus again on argument from consciousness, the moral argument, fine-tuning.
Origin of life, I think, is a much better argument than the cosmological argument.
Because it's built on, as I tried to explain, it's built on premises that are not provable.
And if they're not provable, then they don't really work.
And they're also not logically necessary.
It seems to me that they either have to be provable or logically necessary.
And if they're neither of those things, then, you know, you don't get past square one.
And I think that's the issue.
But I enjoy these conversations.
And I always enjoy arguing with people that I agree with.
It's one of my favorite pastimes.
And I think those arguments, you know, when you're talking about arguments for the existence of God, I think those discussions, many times, are much more interesting to have with other people who believe in God, because when you have that shared belief, and that shared sort of framework and groundwork, you can have more detailed and interesting conversations, because you are able to get past square one.
So, I enjoy that.
All right, we'll leave it there.
And also, we're not talking about coronavirus.
So, it was about 10 minutes of corona-free content.
Always nice.
We're gonna be off tomorrow for a good Friday, but I hope you have a blessed and happy Easter, even under these circumstances.
Especially under these circumstances.
And I'll talk to you again next week.
God bless and Godspeed.
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The Matt Wall Show is produced by Sean Hampton, executive producer Jeremy Boring.
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It's 1950 in Quincy, Massachusetts.
At 6 a.m.
on a cool September morning, a big genial man named Bill Rosenberg opens his store's glass door.
He calls the place Open Kettle.
It's the first donut and coffee shop ever to provide seats for its customers.
A group of men wait outside, eager for their morning java.
Some are factory workers.
Others are salesmen and businessmen.
The first to hurry in wears heavy pants and a work shirt.
Morning, Bill.
Hey, Marty.
Ready for the usual?
You bet.
Coffee with two sugars and two glazed donuts.
Gotta have it to start my day.
Morning, guys.
Hey, Bill.
Know what?
Your coffee smells so good it wakes me up before I've had a sip.
The men sit at the low, curved counter on leather-topped stools.
Rosenberg goes behind the counter.
He smiles as he fills their cups with the drink they crave.
As soon as their cups are empty, he fills them up again.
Above the pot, a wall sign reads, Ours is the best coffee in the world.
Every morning, his shop fills up like this and it never fails to make him smile.
He heads into the kitchen.
He loves watching the donut dough cook in the fryer's bubbling oil.
When they turn golden brown, cooks whisk them from the fryer with giant spoons.
He savors the donut's rich, yeasty fragrance as they cool on metal racks.
Beside the racks, deep bowls are filled with frosting in vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, and maple flavors.
Rosenberg grabs a tablespoon and digs out a taste of strawberry icing, his favorite.
Dozens of donuts are iced.
Others are dipped in powdered sugar and shot full of cream.
Many are stuffed with jelly in succulent flavors.
Lemon, blueberry, pineapple, apple spice.
Rosenberg picks up a jelly donut.
As he bites into it, a big magenta blob squirts onto his shirt.
He laughs, wipes it off, and licks it from his finger.
There's just one thing about his store that he doesn't like.
He calls his staff together.
We're doing great, but I hate the name of the store.
You're the one who named it Open Kettle.
True, true.
I'll take the blame.
But we need another name.
Throw out anything that comes to mind.
How about Mr. Donut or Best Donuts?
Maybe... maybe... I feel like we could do better.
I got it!
What do you do with a donut and coffee?
You dunk the donut.
That's it.
Dunkin' Donuts.
Yeah.
It's got a nice ring to it.
But coffee is Rosenberg's true love.
To prove it, the big news sign outside his store reads, Dunkin' Donuts.
The world's finest coffee.
Like every dedicated coffee purveyor who will follow him, Bill Rosenberg is passionate about brewing the perfect cup.
An eighth grade dropout, Rosenberg would teach the average Joe to take their cup of Joe more seriously in America.
Decades in the future, that passion will take his company where he never imagined it would go, head-to-head with a cross-country rival that becomes a global juggernaut.
Starbucks Coffee, Tea & Spice opens in 1971 in a small store in Seattle's historic Pike Place Market.
The store is designed to look slightly nautical.
A long wall with wooden shelves displays 30 different kinds of coffee.
They sell only coffee beans and the best home coffee machines.
But they sometimes offer samples, served in porcelain cups, that make the coffee taste even better.
Seattle is in an economic downturn, but Starbucks catches on.
It's a hit with Seattle citizens who love the idea of savoring their coffee at home, especially on those gloomy days in winter.
And Starbucks is the only place in Seattle that offers quality coffee.
It catches the attention of a young 28-year-old.
From the moment he encounters Starbucks, he and the entire business will never be the same.
His name is... That was just a preview of the first episode of Starbucks vs. Duncan on Business Wars.
