April 14, 2026 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:44:30
The Joys of Christian Conversion! X Space
Stefan Molyneux and callers dissect the "Me Plus" performance trap, contrasting it with a caller's Christian conversion born from his son's death. While the host critiques faith as an emotional bribe suspending reason, Plain Trotter defends it as a source of strength against suffering. The dialogue shifts to philosophical contradictions regarding God and evolution, before Molyneux argues marijuana persists only because it serves powerful interests, distinguishing himself from self-medicating "druggies." Ultimately, the episode challenges listeners to choose between hedonistic comfort or the demanding virtue of engaging moral battles without guaranteed bliss. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
|
Time
Text
Worth Something Through Performance00:04:45
All righty, righty.
Good morning, my friends.
Good morning, good morning.
Welcome to your Sunday morning philosophy chat.
And happy to take questions, comments, issues, challenges, problems, criticisms, whatever is on your mind.
I'm happy to chat about.
What I did want to talk about a little bit this morning was the question of me plus.
Me plus is an idea that I introduced to the world many years ago.
On the death of expert comedian Robin Williams.
That Robin Williams, I guessed or imagined or felt or thought, had to be himself plus making people laugh in order to be worth something.
And that's kind of exhausting.
Now, I like to make people laugh.
I have a reasonably decent sense of humor.
But it's not like a compulsion.
Have you ever known those people, like the compulsive jokers?
They can't not make jokes.
It's kind of a desperate plea or requirement or demand for them.
So, those people can be fun, kind of a little exhausting.
There are people who always have to be doing stuff for others.
There are people who have to have a lot of talent.
There are people who have to bring a lot of money to relationships in order to feel that they are worth something, that they are worthwhile.
And all of that is kind of exhausting.
It's like this endless treadmill that people get on, that it seems almost impossible for them to get off.
Women do this too.
I have to be myself plus makeup.
I have to be myself plus great hair.
I have to be myself plus a hot body.
I have to be myself plus an RBS attitude.
RBF attitude, sorry.
So I have to be myself plus.
And the people who are me plus tend to have unsatisfying relationships.
Because what happens is, let's say that you have someone who's a compulsive joker.
These are people, and I've been guilty of this myself from time to time.
So I say this with all due humility and my usual speech about being right down there in the trenches with everyone else.
But the jokesters or the storytellers, I have to watch myself.
See, when you have kids, all your stories are new to them, right?
All of your histories are new to them.
And I've noticed in myself over the years a bit of a habit that when a certain topic comes up, I have like three stories to pivot to on a particular topic.
And my wife and I will sometimes mentally pop a champagne bottle, pop a cork, if I have a new story.
Hey, I haven't heard, because, you know, Mary's 20.
Four years, been together almost a quarter century.
And so, the news stories, and we spend all our time together.
I mean, we spend all our time together.
So, I don't go out and get new stories.
I guess, well, I did have a new story when I came back after being tear gassed in Hong Kong for marching with the anti communist protesters, but that's seven years ago or six and a half, whatever, right?
So, I can see my wife's eyes widen from time to time when I am in possession of and delivery of a new story about my past.
Because, you know, she's heard a lot of the stuff that's gone on in my life.
And my daughter now, of course, is of the age, she'll be 18 this year, right?
So, my daughter is of the age where if she's heard a story before, well, she'll say, Dad, I know this one, heard this one.
Nope.
So I have to watch that automatic input output and not have the go to stories, which, you know, at this age of my life, I tried and tested to be customer pleasing, but only if the customer has not heard them before, particularly, perhaps even more than once.
So what happens is the people who are funny get invited to parties, they get invited to dinner parties.
The Trap of Go-To Stories00:04:51
If you have that dry kind of Christopher Hitchens table side wit, then.
You get invited to parties and you're funny.
And it's kind of an expectation.
You sing for your supper.
And of course, there were stories of playwrights, people who were witty in the past.
If they fell on hard times, they would still get invited to dinner and they would tell stories or be witty or expert conversational raconteurs for their money.
Oscar Wilde famously ran across on hard times after he was jailed for semi predatory sexual activities with young men.
He famously sort of ran upon hard times after being the toast of the town for his very witty plays and would tell stories and get food that way.
And he died relatively young in a horrible little flop house with the most appalling wallpaper.
And he sat up in his bed, gazed at the wallpaper, and said, My God, one of us has to go, and died.
Fantastic.
Hey, look, there's another story.
See, I'm demonstrating it even now.
Now I'm.
Once we talk about deathbeds, I like to pivot to Winston Churchill, who was supposed to have died.
The nurse felt his feet and said, Now his feet are still warm.
Nobody dies with their feet still warm.
And Winston Churchill sat up and said, Joan of Arc did, and then died.
Was it somebody else?
Albert Einstein said his final words in German, but the nurse didn't understand German, so we have no idea what they were.
Doesn't really matter, I suppose.
My final words will probably be, I have a story for that.
Or, whoops, Jesus, sorry.
So, if you're witty, you'll get invited places and people will like you because you produce dopamine.
You're a dopamine delivery system to them.
And being witty, being funny is a plus.
It's a good thing.
And none of these things are bad.
It's not bad to have a banging body.
It's not bad to wear a little makeup.
It's not bad to have nice hair.
It's not bad.
It's a question of degree.
A personal grooming is a matter of the Aristotelian mean.
You don't want to be a slob.
You don't want to be overly obsessed with your appearance because then you can't relax and enjoy yourself.
You don't want to be like the woman I worked with up north.
Here's another story to go to.
The woman I worked with up north who had to spend an hour getting ready to go into town to buy groceries.
I don't know.
Maybe she thought that Rick Springfield might be doing his groceries in Makina.
So if you're witty, say, or a good storyteller, did two account of the same thing in many ways, then you'll be invited places and people will like you and so on.
And you'll get some dates.
You'll get some relationships, romantic relationships out of that.
Ah, but, ah, but, ah, but.
Always, always with the BBL, but buffoons linger of the interaction.
So if you're funny, then that becomes your thing, your shtick, and you've got to be funny.
And this goes even into relationships.
You've got to be funny.
There was a movie.
I think it was called Stand Up with Tom Hanks many years ago, a really boring and forgettable movie, and had one of, at least to me, the historical deepities of Hollywood screenwriting, which was he said, I'm a comedian because I think nothing is funny.
And, you know, that's one of these things that kind of stuck in my head because it's not particularly deep.
It's just one of these contradictions, you know.
I'm a doctor because I love disease.
You know, it sounds deep, but it's just a kind of contradiction.
But why do people even develop the ability to tell great stories and great jokes?
Well, it's to add value.
To add value.
The problem is it's performative, it's a performance.
And the problem with performances is they breed resentment.
A funny guy who gets jokes because he's funny.
And I don't know, have you ever had this experience if you're good at telling jokes or good at telling stories?
Oh, tell that story.
Oh, tell that joke.
You kind of get prompted to provide your value.
You know, like when Freddie Mercury was once going to be arrested, I think, for non payment of taxes, and was it in Zurich or someplace?
I can't remember.
He's like, Oh, darlings, I'll just sing a song for you because that's his value, right?
He's a great singer.
Resentment in Performative Comedy00:03:20
So that's what he was going to do because there was conflict.
So it's performative.
And what that means, of course, is that you get tired of it.
Of being a clapping seal, a dancing animal, a flipping porpoise, whatever you want to call it.
You're a novelty item.
You're a performer.
You're a performer.
My brother, when we were little, he had a very funny shtick.
My brother is wittier than I in general.
And he would have this very funny shtick called being cool.
I won't sort of describe it because you can never get these things across in the right way.
Plus, I was like, Five or six years old.
And he would be cool, which was hilarious to me.
And for a while, a good chunk of our negotiations were me trying to get him to act cool because I found it hilarious.
He has Monty Python esque British humor and is genuinely, deeply funny.
I actually grew up in Canada in my teens.
I was with a group of people.
Who were staggeringly witty and funny and fast and could invent characters and make jokes and do stories and reversals.
And honestly, it was so blindingly rapid, I got dizzy.
I mean, I'm not slow, or there was some inhibition within me, or something like that, or maybe just obviously a lack of that kind of talent.
But I was like, this is like having Monty Python in your living room.
This is like, SCTV, Second City Television, which was birthed a whole bunch of Canadian comics.
And they were so funny.
We went once to Niagara Falls, and on the car drive on the way down, my friends decided as we were going on a tour, we had a whole bunch of places we wanted to go and see, and they decided to have a sprinting tour.
It really was hilarious because they would sprint from place to place and make up a variety of wild facts and accents.
Every place we landed had a different one, we were nominated to be a different guide with a different accent, and they just did it.
It was hilarious.
I could barely breathe, A, because of sprinting, and B, because it was so funny.
And I mean, this just, I don't know if this comes across at all, probably doesn't, but it's a memorable day of really throwing yourself into stuff.
And it was very, very funny.
And I kept thinking, you know, and I kept telling them, go be comedians, go make a living.
Like, this is fantastic.
You guys are brilliant.
I think that was the last time.
I felt inadequate in what my brain could do.
I feel pretty adequate in what, I mean, unless I go into becoming a mathlete or something like that.
But it's the last time I've sort of felt inadequate was when the jokes would rip fast and furious with my teenage friends.
And I would just, honestly, I gave up trying to keep up.
It was too rapid, too creative, too inventive.
And I could not keep pace even remotely.
Feeling Used for Your Humor00:10:11
And, you know, when people are really in the groove, you don't throw something in if you're not particularly good at it.
If people are really jamming and riffing, and it's amazing, you don't.
And yeah, they never did anything with it.
Amazing, amazing ability.
Well, I'm not sure they ended up with particularly satisfying relationships.
And in part, that's because of this performative thing.
Because if you're funny and people like you because you're funny and you get into a relationship in part because you're witty and you're funny, then you're expected to be witty and funny.
Not once in a while, not at a dinner party, but as a basis.
If a woman chooses you in part because you make her laugh, the feeling is, especially when you're young, man, you better keep making her laugh.
If you don't make her laugh, she's going to leave you.
Then you've got to wake up and you've got to be funny.
And when you've got a headache, you've got to be funny.
And when you've stubbed your toe, you've got to be funny.
And when you're feeling down, you've got to be funny.
And when you're tired, you've got to be funny.
And right.
It's exhausting.
And this is why a lot of comedians end up turning to drugs, because they have to be funny and they have to be on when they're not feeling funny and they're not feeling on.
And this is why they end up on drugs, which was, of course,.
Famously, the case with Robin Williams.
And then what happens is you feel hollowed out.
You feel like a performing animal.
You feel like a performing animal.
There was a time when the sort of skills that I bring to the call in show, this is really ripping off the band aids of history for me, but there was a time when, with friends, like I developed the call in show stuff to some degree because I was the guy who helped his friends.
And they would come to me with their problems, and I would give to them.
My thoughts about their problems.
I didn't just walk into the call in show cold, like this format where people call in and ask me about their problems.
There was a time before the show when I would help my friends with their problems.
And that was not super great in the long run because then I just become the guy who helps you with your problems.
And that's what a lot of conversations ended up devolving to, which was not ideal.
In the long run, I mean, I can provide a lot of value in friendships, so I always have to make sure that my friendships are not me peddling madly to provide value.
So you get into a relationship because you're funny or whatever, make money, you're high status, you're handsome, whatever it is, then you feel like you're not loved for you, right?
Because this is the big question what are you loved for?
It's one of the most foundational questions of life.
What are you loved for?
Why do people care about you?
Want to see you?
Why do they spend time with you?
Why do they enjoy your company?
Why do they want you to get together with them?
What value do you provide in the world?
So, again, just to finish up the funny thing if you're a funny guy, you're a funny guy, you're there to amuse people like a clown, like Joe Pesci, then what happens is you end up resenting people because you kind of have to always be on for them, and you feel like you're being used as a sort of laughter dopamine delivery mechanism, and you feel like a drug.
You feel like you're being used.
Like a drug.
And you resent people.
And it starts to feel nakedly, sometimes literally so, nakedly transactional, right?
Nakedly transactional.
And what happens is you start to feel like you're surrounded by a bunch of junkies that you've got to deliver their drug.
Hey, man, be funny.
Hey, man, be cool.
Hey, tell that story.
And it's like people are giving you five bucks or ten bucks or.
A plate of food or sex or a place to go in return for you making them laugh or telling a great story or paying the bills?
Is it money?
Are you funny?
Are you hot?
What are you delivering to people that they want you around?
What are you delivering to people that they want you around?
It's a really foundational question.
And once you start asking that question, then you also have to start asking the other question, which is, What are people delivering to you that you want them around?
And you start to resent people.
This happens very much with women.
Like, why is it that women are often considered a little less funny, developing a little less interesting hobbies?
Why is it that women are often considered less good at storytelling to some degree?
Well, because they can deliver sex, sexual access, right?
They can deliver sex.
Young men in particular are sex crazed.
17 times the level of testosterone, and they're sex crazed.
It is a kind of possession, it is a kind of madness almost.
And Socrates talks about it in his 70s being delivered from the demon of lust like an exorcism.
So women can provide sex, that's the me.
Who do I have to be that is not my natural state in order to add value to others?
Who do I have to be other than myself in order to add value to others?
Do I have to have muscles?
Do I have to have capped teeth?
Do I have to have particular subculture signaling like being a furry or being a goth or being a punk or being a preppy or whatever, a yuppie?
What do I have to do so people will like me, find value in me, and want me around?
Because we're social animals, right?
We have to provide value.
And men offering up sex, I mean, except for, you know, rock stars or the top 1% of guys offering, for the top 1% of guys offering up sex, it doesn't really add much.
It's kind of a given.
It's like saying, I will bring gravity to this date.
I'm like, you know, it's pretty much going to be there whether you show up or not.
So I don't know that that's a huge value add.
But women can offer sex.
And if a woman offers up sex in order to add value to get a guy, she's going to resent him.
And she's going to resent him because the whole relationship is a falsehood.
And in particular, the man is lying.
The woman offers up sex, and the man says, Oh, I love you.
You're the greatest.
You're the best.
You're wonderful.
I love you.
And it's just sexual discharge and testosterone hysteria, including the testes, I suppose.
So she knows he's lying.
And she knows that sex is the basic coinage of the relationship.
She offers sex.
He wants to be with her because she's sexy.
She offers sex.
She'll have sex with him.
But he says, Oh, I love you.
But it's all nonsense.
It's just sexual access.
So she gets the relationship.
And after she gets the relationship, she resents the relationship.
There's a movie with one of the Deschanelles, Zoui Deschanelles, where it's actually quite funny.
Where.
He talks about all the cute little habits she has.
Ooh, the way she purses her lips when she reads, or something like that, right?
All these cute little habits that she has.
That's why he loves her.
And then later in the movie, when they're doing the inevitable fighting and crack up and break up, those same habits return as things that bug the living crap out of him.
I can't stand the way she purses her lips when she reads.
Why do you need to do that?
You know.
But that's when you pretend that the naked transaction of sex or resources is something more, something about love or virtue or.
Nobility or the things that we really should care about in people.
When that wears off, you feel disgust and contempt at the lies.
You start off with this haze of sex and devotion and pretend love and, right, hysterical R selected attachment, and it's all a lie.
And the man says, I love you with your pants off.
But, you know, he doesn't say the last couple of words.
And then that the high of lying and sex and orgasm wears off, and the woman resents the man for lying, and the man resents the woman because he doesn't particularly like her.
And then they break up.
And it's the same thing if the man is bringing a lot of money, he's happy to pay, he feels like a golden god provider.
And then after a while, he gets annoyed at having to pay for everything and he feels exploited for his money.
And then he dislikes her.
And then he decides to test her.
And he says, Can you pay for it this time?
To see.
And if she says, Oh, yeah, absolutely, right?
As I mentioned before, I've had dinner on occasion with some staggeringly wealthy people and I always make sure I pay because the last thing I'd ever want is.
Any transactional nonsense about that.
And the resentment kicks in.
The resentment kicks in.
Are you here for me or for the dopamine I provide?
Are you here for me or for the sex I provide?
Are you here for me or for the jokes I provide?
Are you here for me?
Or because I help you solve problems?
Are you here for me?
Or because I'm funny and deliver dopamine that way?
Are you here for me or what I provide to you?
And I know this because you've got to provide something.
Conditional Love vs Unconditional Care00:07:28
I'm not.
It's not black and white.
Like, there's no platonic Zen abstract loving the person without any provision.
But this is why relationships start with lust, start with greed, and end with despair, contempt, and destruction.
You put something out that draws someone in, they come for that, pretend it's for you, and then you end up resenting them for not being there for you.
If that makes sense?
Robin, I see your call request.
Let me just finish this up in a minute or two, and then I'd be happy to chat.
What are you loved for?
What value do you provide?
Why do people want to spend time with you?
Why are there people in your life?
I mean, there's historical momentum and prior attachments, such as your parents, family members you grew up with, and there's nothing wrong with that.
I mean, nothing wrong with that.
That's not necessarily automatically any kind of bad thing, but it has a kind of momentum to it.
Family relations are kind of like the socialism of the free market of friends.
They're assigned to you by nature, circumstances, history, proximity.
They're unchosen.
It doesn't mean that they're wrong at all.
My daughter did not choose me as a father, but we get along pretty well.
What are you loved for?
Why do people want you there?
So there are three categories here that I want you to grind into your bone marrow, like really, really meditate on this stuff.
Three categories.
Why are you loved?
Number one, because of who you are.
Number two, because of what you do.
Number three, because of a shared moral mission.
These three categories.
Now, the first category are you loved for who you are?
That's for babies and toddlers.
That's for babies and toddlers.
That is for babies and toddlers.
That is not for adults.
That is not for teenagers.
That's certainly not for dating.
You love the baby.
You have great affection for the baby.
You care about the baby, not because the baby tells you jokes.
Not because the baby has money, not because the baby can get you a job, not because the baby can help you solve your problems, not because the baby's a good listener.
You love the baby for the baby.
The baby doesn't have to be anything other than himself or herself for you to love the baby.
They are super cute.
So that doesn't work as an adult.
But we yearn for that, especially if we didn't get the experience, if we didn't have the experience of being loved for who we are as a baby.
We spend the rest of our lives in this tortured state of wanting to be loved for who we are, but then having to perform and resenting it, resenting that we have to perform.
This is what people mean by unconditional love versus conditional love.
Unconditional love is I love you no matter what.
And that's what people yearn for if they didn't get it as a baby.
I apparently did get it as a baby, not from my mother, who was hospitalized for, I think, postpartum depression for months after I was born, but from an aunt who.
I bonded with and connected with very strongly.
And thank you, Auntie, gave me a good foundation for a much better life than would have been expected from my later circumstances.
So, after you're a toddler, you're not going to be loved for who you are.
And if you weren't loved for who you are as a baby and toddler, then you got to grieve that.
You got to grieve it.
Because if you try to be loved for who you are as an adult, You will wreck your relationships and you won't even get the other possibility of love.
So, the second, the first is do you want to be loved for who you are?
Just who you are, no matter what.
When you're throwing punches in the air, when you're acting like you just don't care, are you strong enough to be my man?
If you can't love me at my worst, you don't deserve me at my best.
And her worst is throwing plates and lamps around, and her best is a badly cooked meal.
So then we say, okay, well, I can't be loved for who I am, and that's more of a female thing.
I'll be loved for what I do.
I'll be loved for what I do.
I'll be funny.
I'll be wealthy.
I'll have muscles.
I'll pay for things.
I'll tell great stories.
I'll have abs, whatever, right?
So you'll be loved.
Now you're loved for what you do, what you provide, your status, and so on, right?
And that doesn't work in the long run because you resent.
The falsehood of people saying they care for you when they in fact only care for what you provide.
I had a girlfriend many years ago who would make jokes.
And she'd say, I love your jawline.
I love your fluffy, fluffy hair.
I mean, she would make jokes about I love you and then switch it to some inconsequential attribute, which was, I think, kind of daring in hindsight and actually driven by some foundational unconscious truths.
You can't be loved just for what you provide because you end up feeling like a dray horse, a workhorse, a performing circus animal, an endless stand up comedian, and you resent not just having to provide things in order to get any kind of affection, but you resent the lies where people say, I care about you, when they in fact only care about what you provide.
And then what you do is you withdraw that thing to see if you're still loved.
So this is typical in sexless marriages.
So sexless marriages, they start off based on crashing waves of tsunami style lust, and then.
The woman feels uncared for.
She feels that she's only cared for because she provides sex.
So then she starts to withhold sex to see if she's still cared for.
And then the man gets resentful, and she gets resentful, and they have this tug of war and this battle over sexual access, which is why you get 10 to 20% of marriages end up sexless, and there's a lot of them with a lot of sexual dysfunction.
Because the woman wants to know hey, do you only care about me because I put out?
Okay, I'm not going to put out.
The man feels rejected and gets depressed or hostile or both, and it just goes downhill from there.
Spends a lot of money on what his wife wants.
Wants a big house, wants to renovate, finish the basement, redo the kitchen.
And he gets tired of paying for all of this stuff.
And he feels like he's a workhorse who just goes to feed his wife's and fuel his wife's inconsequential vanity projects.
And so he stops wanting to provide money, income, gets depressed at work, starts to become less productive.
If he can't say no at home, he'll perform less well at work.
Because he wants to know, am I just here as a money delivery mechanism?
Am I just a lottery ticket?
This is the sort of famous example of the teenagers who descend upon the man's wallet like a bunch of jackals and need money and, oh, I love you, Dad.
Thanks for the money.
You know, and he's just like, am I just a banker here?
Hell, not even a banker.
Is my life just financial roadkill that the vultures feed on?
So he starts to withdraw and become distant.
Finding True Fulfillment Beyond Status00:15:37
And if you're loved for what you do, it's going to be not too long before you just stop wanting to do it because you resent the lies of people saying, Oh, I love you.
Nope, just what you provide.
And then the third category, which is the one that I've always advocated for, is the shared moral mission.
Shared moral mission.
If you have a mission to bring truth, reason, virtue, and reality to the world, you will love each other based upon.
Your deep respect for that shared moral mission.
And that's adult love, that's mature love, that is moral love, that is actually just love.
Do you have a moral mission?
Are you trying to do good in the world?
Are you trying to bring virtue to the world?
Are you engaged in pushing back against the designs of evildoers and furthering and supporting those who do and pursue moral goods, moral values in the world?
Do you admire your husband, your wife, your boyfriend, your girlfriend?
Do you admire that person for their dedication to a moral mission?
Because if you don't admire your spouse's dedication to a moral mission, their virtue, their integrity, their honor, their courage, then it's all mostly bullshit and frivolity and nonsense and lies.
Me plus is corrosive and destructive with one exception.
Me plus virtue.
Ah, aha!
Now we're talking sustainable love.
But in order to have me plus virtue, you've got to do moral things, you've got to take on moral battles, you've got to have moral integrity, you've got to dedicate yourself to truth and honor, and you can't be just greedy for lust.
All right, thank you for your patience, Robin.
I'm all ears.
Correct me where I have gone astray.
Use the winds of your vocal cords to blow my ship.
Towards the port of truth.
If you want to unmute, I'm all ears.
Hi.
Was I supposed to have my hand raised?
I'm not sure, but you are certainly on the air now.
So I'm all ears.
Okay.
Thank you.
I have actually spent most of my life doing all that you explained and conveyed in your message.
And I have never.
Receive fulfillment in chasing love and acceptance from other people.
I think you need to find fulfillment within yourself before you're ever going to be completely tapping into those phases that you mentioned.
Where do you think true fulfillment comes from?
Well, that's interesting.
So you're saying that if you're fulfilled within yourself, but tell me what you mean by.
Fulfilled.
It's one of these words that means a lot of things to a lot of different people.
I want to make sure we're both talking about the same topic.
So, what do you mean by fulfillment within yourself?
For me, it meant identifying where I was at spiritually.
And I was never fulfilled.
My heart was never fulfilled until I found my divine source.
Okay.
That may mean a little bit more to you than to me because you know what you're talking about in more detail.
Do you mean?
That you found God and you found a moral mission, or there was something else?
Yes, I found God, which.
I was always a non believer.
I would say atheist, and then I moved towards agnosticism.
But it was not until I accepted Christ as my savior that I found true fulfillment.
And it took me 42 years to find that.
And how old are you now?
I'm 57.
Okay.
And tell me what you mean by fulfillment.
Fulfillment is just having that knowledge and feeling truly loved by God.
And when you feel that deep love that He has for you, you realize that chasing it on a human level, you're never going to find it.
You're never going to find true love based off of the things that you mentioned and true acceptance by trying to measure up physically or sexually.
Certainly true.
Yeah.
I certainly, I probably would disagree with you in some areas, but certainly you're right about that.
And tell me about the things that you pursued when you were younger that you thought would bring you love that you didn't.
I'm embarrassed to say, but I tried to find fulfillment.
Through drugs, alcohol, sex with random people and emotionally connected people, and through appearance, materialism, working hard, making money, trying to be fulfilled by material possessions.
None of that works for me.
Right.
Okay.
And what was it that led you to finding God?
For me, I don't want to ramble on, but I had a son that was born with a congenital heart defect, and he had to have two open heart surgeries to reconstruct his heart.
And there were a bunch of Christians in my presence, and they had complete fulfillment.
And they had peace when their babies were dying.
And I thought they were on drugs.
And when my baby died, I felt so angry.
And I yelled at this God and said, Why didn't you fix his heart?
And something was impressed upon me.
And it was that my heart needed to change.
And then I started asking them questions.
About, you know, how they find their peace and all of this, how you can praise God when I felt God was the one that took my baby from me and I had it all backwards.
Sorry.
So, how old were you when?
I'm so sorry to hear the awful story, and my heart goes out to you.
Thank you.
How old were you when your baby died?
33.
And were you religious at this point?
No, not at all.
But then why are you thinking God is taking your baby if you're not religious?
Well, because they were worshiping and praising God.
And I thought God was the enemy.
Because not only was I not sure, I was agnostic at the time.
When you're agnostic, you think maybe there is, maybe there isn't.
I really don't know.
And if there is a God, he's the one that's trying to take my baby from me and bring him to what they call heaven or paradises.
And I was very confused spiritually.
And were you married at the time?
Yes.
Yes.
And how was your relationship with your husband?
Very good.
We had a pretty healthy relationship, but I wouldn't say that we both had fulfillment, true fulfillment.
Okay.
And sorry, did you have other children?
Yes.
We had an older, two years old.
We had a two year old son.
Okay.
And that son, of course, survived and flourished?
Yeah.
And now.
And did you, sorry, did you stay married?
Yes, yes.
And the hostel administration told us that 70% of marriages, when you lose a child, end up in divorce.
So that was a miracle that we even stayed together because you grieved so differently.
Right, right.
And was your husband also religious at this time?
Did he become religious?
No.
He both.
Our discovery came by witnessing the true faith of these believers.
And it took a lot of them.
Showing us the way when we were completely lost.
I guess it was them witnessing to us.
Now, do you have to do anything to earn God's love or is God's love bestowed upon you no matter what?
No matter what.
Even in our sin, God loves us because all sin is.
Was taken on by his son.
He took a beating, Jesus did, so that we could spend eternity with him.
And you can find that eternity like right now in your spirit.
Okay, so you don't have to do anything.
And even if you are a terrible or evil person, you are still loved by God.
You could.
Yeah, so that's the infancy stuff that I was talking about in that.
You love infants.
You know, if an adult urinates in your face that's assaulted, you'd put them in jail.
But if a baby does it, it's just an accident and it's actually kind of funny.
So we love babies no matter what they do.
And I think that you have a kind of relationship with God as if you were an infant and no matter what you do, you are loved.
Yes, you have to approach him in a childlike way.
Sorry, I'm losing your audio.
You have to come as a child.
That's what Jesus said.
Come to me as a child in innocence.
Like, have simple faith in me.
Right.
So, that means to suspend judgment and to be as a toddler or as a baby.
And that's not, for me, I got to tell you, just straight up, that to me is not how I want to be loved.
I want to be loved for the good that I do.
In the world, I want to be loved for the virtues that I pursue and spread.
I want to have that strictness.
I don't want love no matter what I do.
Because I think that we can only love virtue.
And this doesn't mean we all have to be perfect.
I mean, there's a certain amount of.
So that to me, I don't want love no matter what.
That would be like getting money, even if I don't work.
It would just make me lazy.
Well, when you find God, you start to turn away from your sin and start producing works like you're doing.
So it automatically happens.
You want to.
Well, okay, so hang on.
But you're just describing a process.
So, and I'm not disagreeing with you.
I just don't quite understand the process.
So, what are the, and I'm sure you are doing these things.
So I don't mean this in a skeptical way, but what are the good works that you and your family are doing in the world?
Just loving people where they're at.
Like if you see someone that is addicted.
To drugs, you want to try to show them the way out and that the fulfillment they're trying to seek by being a drug addict or an alcoholic is never going to happen.
You can't beat it into people.
You just have to love them where they're at and then do charitable things.
And so, what specifically?
Like volunteering your time, finding a passion that you have and volunteering toward it.
Mine is for elderly people, and I spend my time volunteering in that capacity.
Do you think that we have a conscience that makes us feel bad if we sin?
I believe that that's the Holy Spirit.
Convicting you.
The whole thing.
Okay, so hang on.
Sorry.
If we feel bad when we do evil, and I don't mean like little mistakes or little bits of carelessness or thoughtlessness, I mean somebody who is a drug addict who neglects or beats his children or something like that, like some real, real evil, some real sin.
So if we feel bad when we sin, should we reject that and not feel bad when we sin?
I think, no, you should not reject that.
You should follow your conscience.
But once you find the divine connection, you're going to automatically want to turn from that.
You have the Holy Spirit guiding you and prompting you from day to day.
And as long as you yield to that spirit within you, You're going to turn from sin.
I agree.
Okay, so we have to dislike something about herself in order to be better because our conscience, generally, if we're doing bad, our conscience makes us feel bad.
Following Conscience Over Bliss00:15:16
It's like pain.
Like if you do something that hurts your body, you get pain, which trains you to not do that negative thing.
And so we have to dislike our actions in order to change them.
Do you agree with that?
No.
No.
I don't.
Sorry, I thought you just said that the conscience makes us feel bad if we sin.
The Holy Spirit, which you would call conscience, I call the Holy Spirit.
Well, yes, but we feel bad when we sin.
And that's what has us, like you said, that you felt bad when you were doing the sin of sex and drugs and alcohol and money making and so on.
That you felt bad and unfulfilled.
And that's partly what had you changed.
Can I have you talk to my husband who can probably explain it more coherently than me?
Like he's right there now?
Yeah.
Oh, sure.
Yeah.
Hi.
My name's Michael.
I've been listening in.
And I think there's the difficulty in connecting with this is that when you truly accept Christ, what begins to happen inside of you is this conviction, but the conviction isn't actually like a change in your conscience.
When you're not in Christ and you're doing bad things, largely you're unaware of it.
When you accept Christ, now you have a new awareness.
And that awareness leads you to say, oh, this is wrong and I shouldn't be doing it.
And you start to move away from it.
It's not an overnight thing.
For us, it took years.
Does that make sense?
Somewhat.
I think your wife said, and I appreciate the conversation.
It's nice to meet you.
So I think your wife was saying that she felt unfulfilled or spiritually empty.
And then, of course, you had the horrible agony for which, you know, father to father, my heart goes out to you, human being to human being, the suffering of your child who died.
I'm so sorry about that.
But so you were in a, your wife and I think yourself were in a sort of negative frame of mind, unfulfillment.
From sex and alcohol and drugs and money making and all the sort of greed and materialism stuff.
And so you were in a negative state.
And then some of that, of course, was just an accident, right?
That your child happened to be born with a congenital heart defect.
And some of it was as the result of bad choices, you know, sex, drugs, rock and roll, whatever that hedonistic stuff was.
And so you were in a negative state of mind and then you felt better at finding God.
So that was sort of what I was trying to understand is.
Does your conscience make you feel negative and then you gain relief from doing good?
Not necessarily.
And it's not like, yeah, we were in a negative frame of mind.
Obviously, our child was dying, which would do that to most anyone.
There were times when we were younger that we weren't in a negative frame of mind.
And that goes back to that unawareness, you know, that you are doing things that are harmful to yourself or that you're harmful to your spouse and you're doing it and you're largely unaware of it, even, you know, like if.
Robin got angry at me about something.
I'd be like, Yeah, whatever.
This is who I am.
I'm going to do it, type thing.
Where once you accept Christ, and now it's like you have this, it's hard to explain, but you get this awareness that, you know what?
I shouldn't be a jerk to my wife.
I shouldn't say those things about her in front of others.
Those types of thoughts start entering your mind.
And as Robin was alluding to, that's what's called a conviction of the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit saying to you, Hey, this is wrong.
You shouldn't be doing this.
And that's what's kind of like I said, it's kind of made this a slow turn.
It's like turning a big ship with a small rudder.
But that small rudder, the Holy Spirit, once you're turned in the right direction, it becomes easier and easier.
And it just becomes your own nature.
Well, but sin, my understanding was that your wife said that conscience causes pain in you when you sin or some sort of negative experience.
And I get it's muted and so on, and it takes a while.
I mean, lots of people are alcoholics.
They have a great deal of fun when they're drinking, or lots of people are drug addicts.
They have a lot of fun when they're doing their drugs.
Same thing with sex addicts.
But after a while, it kind of hollers you out, and you realize that simply tickling your dopamine receptors with material objects, whether it's alcohol, drugs, or People's genitalia or something like that is not a very noble or heightened or moral way to live.
And so it kind of hollows people out.
And usually there is a conscience.
Now, people don't often experience their conscience.
I think what you're saying is quite true.
People often won't experience the negative effects of their conscience, but that's only because they stay around other sinners who don't call them to any higher place or state of being.
And so they are trapped in an underworld of.
Co sinners, so that the conscience remains unprovoked, right?
The purpose of the devil, so to speak, is to not provoke your conscience, because when your conscience gets provoked, then you start looking for a better way to live.
So the price of not feeling your sin is remaining in constant contact with other sinners, which is a horrifying and horrible underworld.
It's like hell on earth to me, like to live around people who sin and have kind of a mutual unspoken contract.
To not provoke each other's conscience with any call to higher action.
And this is the eternal cry of this underworld the moment you try to improve this yourself, they try to tear you down.
Oh, you think you're so much better than us, you know, that kind of stuff, and just try and pull you back down.
So it is true, I think, I agree with you that there's a lot of people who don't feel their sin, but that's only because they resolutely stay away from anybody who might call them to a higher purpose or a higher place.
But nonetheless, even if you don't feel the cancer, the cancer is still there and spreading.
And so I think you have to have displeasure with some aspect of yourself in order to change, right?
I mean, if you're happy to be fat, you're not going to diet.
If you're happy to be an alcoholic, you're not going to stop.
Drinking, you have to have a dissatisfaction with yourself and your life in order to change for something better.
Yeah, I would agree with most everything that you're saying.
And I think the idea of like, but I would maybe somewhat contend that if you, it's not just because you have discontentment or you're not happy with yourself.
I mean, there are people in this world who have been Christian and have accepted Jesus at a young age and have followed that path.
And to your point, they were surrounded by.
People who help them stay in that path.
So even when they're older, they have that.
They never had a moment, moments.
I'm sure they had moments where they were angry or upset.
But to your point of discontentment to make that switch, I mean, I think there are two different types of Christians.
There's Christians who have basically been immersed in it since birth.
And then there's people like myself and Robin who, yeah, we had church, but we were never taught anything and we never really were understood what it meant to fully.
Accept what it says in Romans about accepting Christ as your Savior until we were older.
So I think we're kind of a different mold.
We kind of came from whatever you want to say, we were in the enemy's camp or however you want to put it, and then switched over.
And we spent a long time in discontentment, but I don't think it was discontentment that led to change until we were shown something different, right?
And that too, I think she made the point of the people that we were surrounded by while.
Their kids are dying.
They're showing, showering us with love and grace.
And we're like, what's going on with you guys?
You guys are, I mean, you're praising God.
You're singing at the piano every night.
Like, are you guys on something?
You know, what drugs are you taking?
You know, it was almost like we thought they were ignorant.
Your child is dying, but they were far from it.
They were content in all circumstances.
And it's like, dang, this would be something that, you know, we need to explore because if these people can be content in all circumstances, this is about as bad as it gets.
Well, I assume from the Christian perspective, their child was being cured of an ailment called life and going straight to heaven.
So for them, there was something to celebrate.
I don't follow that particular belief myself, so I wouldn't have that relief.
And I suppose, you know, the concern I have with this stuff, and, you know, I certainly respect what you guys are doing in many ways, but the concern that I have with it is you're basically offering up eternal happiness in return for the suspension of critical judgment.
So, I mean, there are reasons to not believe in the existence of God.
There are horrible injustices in the world that God created and designed and populated with his chosen creatures and so on.
So there's reasons to be skeptical, of course.
I mean, I think everybody would accept that.
Otherwise you don't need the virtue called faith.
And my concern with this sort of stuff is that you're offering kind of eternal bliss, eternal happiness and so on in return, though, for the suspension of critical judgment and reason in some ways.
And I view that to be perfectly frank.
As a kind of bribery, which is you'll just get eternal happiness and you'll be loved no matter what you do, which is like a state of infancy.
Well, we never stated that we would be eternally happy.
I mean, there's still going to be things happening that are not going to make us happy.
We don't have this bliss and happiness.
But I think it comes down to this, and I think you said that you talked about the word faith, and you're going to have faith in something, right?
You either have faith that You know, we're going to be six feet under and worm food someday, or you could believe that you're going to be in heaven with Christ.
But that's the eternal happiness that I was talking about in particular.
Yeah, but it doesn't necessarily mean that you're having a blissful existence and, you know, walking with God's enrainment on earth.
I mean.
Oh, no, yeah, yeah.
No, on earth there's still going to be difficulties, but your difficulties are almost always cured by more faith, right?
Like if you feel like you're having difficulties or horrible things are happening, as is the case when your child was dying and you were going through the greatest agony that.
Parents and human beings can go through, which is watching helplessly as your beloved child dies.
You had people who were, as you say, happy and singing songs while their children were dying, and you wanted that, which I can completely understand.
But if you are unhappy in this world, it is usually because you lack faith or you're not assuming that God has a plan for you or there's something good that is going to come out of your suffering.
So the suffering fundamentally arises from a lack of faith, not from the external circumstances, if that makes sense.
And so the cure is more faith.
And so if you have more faith, then you will achieve happiness and you can sing songs while your child is dying.
And to me, that is kind of like a bribery.
Like, can you.
Can you offer God, Jesus, Christianity, religion, can you offer it without the bribe of happiness and relief from suffering?
And I don't know that that's, for me, as a philosopher, that's not the most honest transaction.
Look, if I said to people, if you believe in everything that I say, you will be perfectly blissfully happy.
And if you are unhappy, it's because you're not believing hard enough in what I say.
Or, to be more direct, if I were to give people a drug, For believing what I say, even if it's hugely contradictory, that would not be honest.
And my concern is that by offering people this bliss, this perfect love, no matter what you do, and you will no longer ever need to be particularly unhappy with yourself, and you can survive all negative things with this happiness, I don't view it, philosophically speaking, it is not an argument to say, believe what I believe, and you'll be way happier.
I think that virtue comes with a lot of suffering in this world because when you're virtuous, you interfere with the plans of evildoers and you will be attacked by evildoers.
And that's just one of the reasons I was asking for your wife's virtues and what she does in the world.
And listen, the fact that she goes to old people and comforts them is lovely, but it's not going to ruffle any evil people's feathers in particular.
So she's not going to be attacked for it.
And in general, virtue is that which interferes with the plans of evildoers and then you get attacked.
And that does not make you often.
Overjoyed, right?
It's not a happy state.
I mean, I don't think Jesus was happy to be nailed upon the cross, but he did that in order to do good in the world.
And I think that offering people great happiness and love no matter what they do and spiritual connection and satisfaction and fulfillment, I think was the word that your wife used.
To me, that's honestly just kind of an emotional bribery like, believe what we believe and you will be happy.
And I think that's just another kind of hedonism.
Well, I think using the word bribery to describe a relationship with Jesus, I don't think there's a bribery.
It's more of a if you look this direction, there's something better.
That doesn't mean that there's a lot that you have to give up.
I get the idea that bribery is like you're accepting something to do something for someone else.
If someone comes to Christ, it's not because of me, it's because of God working through me.
I'm not the one who's leading people.
I'm not the one that's offering the so called bribe.
And I think that if Jesus, if going, you know, the only way to God is through Jesus, and if people learn to accept that and start to understand what it truly means, it doesn't feel like you're, you know, a bribe at all.
It's almost like you're making the reference, you know, are you drinking the Kool Aid here?
And it's, again, it's like what we have faith and what we see is, you know, versus what we don't see.
And what we don't see is, you know, this spiritual world.
And we always want to, you know, if some people really like, they just have this thing, they want proof all the time.
We got to have proof, you know, show me, show me, show me.
And I guess what is the true cost of, you know, to use your words, accept this bribe?
What's the true cost for you?
I mean, what are you giving up by accepting it?
What am I giving up?
The Cost of Suspending Judgment00:11:45
Oh, I already mentioned that, which I would be giving up my adult critical faculties.
But again, I don't believe that virtue in the state of the world as is, and I know this from direct personal experience.
I've been attacked by evildoers for decades.
I don't believe that virtue is something that you can sell on the basis of happiness.
So I've always told people if you start really doing good in the world, then you're going to suffer, and bad people are going to make sure that you suffer.
And they will attack your reputation.
They will attack your income.
They will do, you know, pretty terrible things.
And so I've always said that philosophy, to me, is well worthwhile and the virtues are well worthwhile because you can't love anything except virtue, you can't love anything except the good.
And so I've always been concerned with modern Christianity, and I was raised a Christian, so I do understand a little bit.
And this is sort of what your wife was putting out.
No disrespect to her.
I appreciate the honesty of the conversation.
But what your wife was putting out was you know, you should believe in Jesus because you'll be fulfilled, you'll be content, you'll be loved no matter what you do.
And that's kind of like a hypnotic offering of kind of hedonism.
I don't want to be loved no matter what I do.
I want to be loved because I'm doing good.
I want to be loved for my integrity, my virtue, my honesty, my directness, my reason, my moral courage, and so on.
I don't want to be loved no matter what I do.
That would be.
To put me in the state of toddlerhood or babyhood.
And as your wife pointed out, that you have to come to Jesus as a child or as a toddler.
I don't want to be a toddler.
I want to be an adult male with critical faculties and so on.
And my concern is that when religion is offered up in a hedonistic format, in other words, you will be happier, you will suffer less, you will have more fulfillment, more contentment, you'll be loved no matter what.
That's kind of like a hypnotic.
And the reason I say bribe is that you are offering people a positive, To suspend their judgment and to accept things that, you know, rationally and objectively certainly have some logical issues and empirical issues and so on.
And I don't like, I'm just telling you honestly, emotionally, right?
I'm not sort of trying to criticize anyone.
I don't like it when people say, if you suspend your critical judgment and just believe what I say, I'm going to offer you this contentment, fulfillment, happiness, eternal bliss, eternal joy in heaven and so on.
And if you run into problems here on earth, you can just believe harder and they'll all go away and you'll be happy and you can sing songs when your child is dying and so on.
I don't like to be offered pleasure in return for accepting beliefs.
That strikes me as hedonistic.
Okay.
Well, so just a couple of things to those points.
First thing is like when Robin was talking about this acceptance of Jesus and this transformation that occurs inside, where we talked about this awareness.
Of your sin and what you're doing is not right, you start to turn away from that on your own.
It's not a free path to go out and sin freely.
It's not a free pass to go out and sin freely.
Basically, this conviction starts to work on you because there is some of that in Christianity today where it is you come here, you accept Jesus, you become a Christian, go do whatever the heck you want.
No, that's not what happens.
If you truly accept Christ and it's truly working, he's truly working inside of you, then you start to have those convictions, those changes of consciousness, you might refer to it as.
The other thing.
Is that, oh my gosh, I just lost my train of thought.
But when you do have that acceptance and you do start to make that conversion, you will start to step away from sinful behavior.
It just organically happens.
And part of the problem with church, and I'm very critical, is that when you go and just say what you're thinking about here is that, oh, if you just accept this, you have this bliss, you have this harmony, go sin, go do what you want to do.
I mean, that's where you start.
No, no, sorry.
You get it?
I don't want.
The reason I'm sorry.
The reason I'm interrupting is that.
That's not what I'm saying.
And I didn't say that you can then go and sin or do whatever you want.
What I'm saying is that offering people happiness in exchange for accepting irrational beliefs is not an honest philosophical argument.
And Jesus, of course, himself, as you know, said that he's come to set father against child and daughter against mother and families against families, that there's going to be conflict and difficulty and unhappiness in the pursuit of virtue, as he himself suffered.
And of course, as the early Christians suffered enormously for their pursuit of Christianity, torn apart by lions, of course, and other creatures in the amphitheater, and tormented by the Romans, and thrown in jail, and physically tortured, and murdered by the thousands.
And so when people say, That if you accept God, you will be happier, and any desire for sin you have will just wash away and so on.
Well, if you've done a lot of wrong, then when you start to become a better person, you have to face the harm that you've done to others.
You have to face the evils that you've done in the world.
And listen, I mean, I've done some bad things in the past.
I think everyone has.
I'm not a particularly bad person, but I've obviously not lived a perfect life, particularly prior to learning about moral philosophy and so on.
And so, when people say, Oh, accept this and you'll be happy and you won't have any desire to sin, to me, if you start to become a good person, you have to face the wrongs that you did.
I mean, if you and your wife had these lives of hedonism and drugs and alcohol and hypersexuality and so on, like that did a lot of harm to people, that did a lot of harm to society.
And when you start to do good, there's a very unpleasant process of confronting the wrongs that you've done.
And that all will That always gets kind of skated over.
And then also, if you become good, you're setting yourself up to be targeted and attacked by evildoers and so on.
And so, you are when you offer people a life of sort of happiness and contentment and spiritual fulfillment and all this sort of stuff and immediate release from sin with almost no negatives.
Like, I've never really met a Christian who said, well, you know, if you accept Jesus, then you have to confront all of the sins of your past, and that's really gruesome, and you have to go apologize to people and you have to really humble yourself.
It's always like, oh, you'll get this great spiritual fulfillment and happiness.
To me, that's why I say it's a bribery.
It's like saying, well, if you join the gym, man, you're just going to get all of these wonderful muscles by just holding a gym membership, and it's never going to be any struggle or strain or strife or pain or anything like that.
And it's like, but that's not how virtue works.
Well, and let me ask you an honest question.
If you go get your gym membership, so you would not do anything with it, there are Christians that do that.
They get the membership and they don't do anything with it.
But then, are they truly members?
I mean, we talked about this earlier about how you start to see this change when Jesus, you accept Jesus to live inside of you.
And this change is abrupt.
It slowly happens, but you start to think about, you know what?
I don't think I want to go out drinking with the guys tonight.
I think I'm going to stay home with my wife.
No, no, sorry.
I get that.
I have to avoid the sort of repetition.
I'm sorry to interrupt.
I get all of that.
So you're saying that you turn away from sin, but what about the regret?
What about the regret of the evil and harm that you've done?
And if you have that evil and regret, And what Christians refer to this as like, you have to repent from your sin.
And if Jesus, if you feel so led, go back to those people that you harmed.
I mean, you will feel led to do that in some cases.
Not in every case, but in some cases.
Wait, so you don't have to do that.
It's only if you feel the impulse to do that.
Well, it's not an impulse because an impulse is, I mean, I'm talking about an actual.
Yeah, but you said feel led, right?
Which means that there's not an objective doctrine that says you have to go back and repair the evils that you've done.
It's just, well, if.
You feel called to, or, you know, in other words, if you have some sort of feeling that you, you have to do that.
And in my experience, the acceptance of virtue after, particularly after a life of hedonism is a very painful thing and the pain goes on for a long time.
And recovering from that pain of the harm that we've done.
And we can say, listen, I was untutored.
I didn't have good instruction and I didn't have any good rules.
And society kind of promotes hedonism.
So we can have some excuses.
But I'm always concerned when people offer up all the positives and none of the negatives of pursuing virtue.
I think that's not honest.
And I'm not saying you're dishonest.
I'm just saying the way in which it was communicated on my show.
No, I think what I'll leave you with is this that Jesus even said that life as a Christian is going to be hard, there is going to be persecution.
Right?
So he, he, it's all, we all acknowledge this.
And I mean, this idea that you accept Christ and then it's just going to be all blissful happiness is not true whatsoever.
It hasn't been true for us either.
We've gone through hard times since then, right?
It didn't mean just, you mean in terms of being persecuted.
Well, whether it's be persecuted, judged by others, criticized by others, you know, oh, Mike, you're a holy roller now.
Well, criticism by others is a natural state.
But I mean, criticizing your life, what?
How about that?
Okay.
Okay.
But, That's not really being criticized, is not the same as being persecuted.
And that's why I asked, What sort of good have you done?
And again, it's nice that you guys go and talk to the old and give them comfort.
That's a nice thing to do.
But it's safe with regards to provoking the ire of evildoers.
So that's why I'm concerned.
If all the positives are put forward and none of the challenges are negatives, then I have a doubt as to the directness of the conversation.
And I think one other thing, I know Robin talked about what she's done when working with elderly.
I mean, Robin has come alongside when she first was in her walk and was really excited.
She would come alongside some people that were in very dark places, and she would love them just where they were at, the whole meeting where they're at.
So I would think that she's stepped into more difficult situations and circumstances than I have.
And for her to go and basically hang out with a drug addict or someone who was prostituting themselves.
And walk alongside them and try and, you know, try and have conversations with them and do and be a bright light, be good in their life.
She put herself in a lot of risky circumstances too.
And I wasn't even, even myself, I was like, I don't know if you should be doing that.
I mean, you're, you know, you're going to probably want to beat the crap out of her for taking one of his prostitutes.
So, okay, I've got a bunch of other callers.
I really do appreciate you both calling in and thank you so much.
But yeah, I don't like it when people say there's all of this wonderful stuff and there isn't any.
And you get this fulfillment and all of that, you really do have to talk about the difficulties of virtue.
Otherwise, and I don't see a lot of Christians, to be honest, I don't see a lot of Christians rising up and talking about the necessary virtues in the world at the moment.
I see a lot of them taking kind of selfish pleasure in their relationship with God and not doing the difficult things that need to be done in the world to make the world a better place.
Observing Reality Through Science00:15:22
So that's not an argument, it's just something I've noticed.
All right, Plain Trotter, if you would like to.
Good morning, sir.
Good morning, everyone.
Thank you so much for the opportunity.
And if I can start by saying that I used to be, let's say, more socialistic many years ago.
And I think I stumbled upon your video.
Well, actually, a friend showed me your videos way back in the day, maybe in like 2013.
And I watched for a little bit.
And I guess over time, the algorithm stopped showing it.
So I haven't listened recently.
And I'm not like, where you changed your mind.
So, do you mind if I ask you?
So, I'm going to try to point you to continue where they left off, like just pointing you guys towards God and Jesus.
So, but I would like to know where you stand right now.
Are you like a deist, agnostic, atheist, or what?
Atheist.
Atheist, okay.
So, let me.
So, so you believe basically all the science, all the claims that science currently makes, like evolution, Big Bang, and things like that, right?
No, no, I don't believe all the claims that science makes because science is not a.
The process of making claims, but of proving over time.
The Big Bang has never been definitively established.
String theory has been worked on for like 40 years and has yet to be established.
So there's a bunch of nonsense.
I think evolution is the best explanation as to why we have the diversity of life forms on the planet over 4 billion years.
But no, I don't believe the claims of, I mean, I don't believe in catastrophic anthropogenic global warming and things like that.
And science regularly opposes basic truths like IQ.
And so, I don't view scientists as priests.
And especially when they're paid for by the government, I view them as mostly political court toadies in white coats performing a new mystery religion called Believe What We Say, even though we're going to hide the data, like they tried to with the mRNA vaccines and safety data and so on.
So, no, I don't believe all the claims of science.
I put them through the same process of rational skepticism and empiricism as I would any other claim.
Okay, I appreciate that.
That was very helpful.
So, now let me ask you would you agree that all scientific knowledge should be acquired through the scientific method?
Yeah, I think the scientific method we have is the best methodology for establishing physical truths about the universe.
And for me, the scientific method starts with non contradiction.
So if you have a scientific theory that contradicts itself, then you don't need to put it through the scientific method.
Self contradictory theories can never be valid.
Like if I say, let's go look around for a square circle, there's no such thing as something that is both a circle and a square at the same time.
So we don't need to test for that.
So I look for logical contradictions.
Before anything else.
Okay, so, but like the step one of the scientific method is observation, right?
Well, it depends what you mean by observation.
Well, I mean, how would you describe the scientific method if you were like step by step?
So, the scientific method is, excuse me, you notice something about the world and you come up with a theory that applies to all matter.
And then you come up with a.
I know what I'm referring to.
Hang on.
You asked me to describe something.
Don't interrupt me when I'm just starting.
You asked me to describe the entire scientific method.
Unless you disagree with it, it starts with observation about things in the world.
Then go ahead.
Okay.
So, no, actually, I do agree that it starts with observations.
And that's what I'm going to lean to in right now.
So, a lot of it, by the way, I believe that.
Okay.
Hang on.
You asked me to describe the scientific method.
Yes.
So, but we are going to start.
Hang on.
Hang on.
We have to have a conversation here, right?
So, I don't want you to start talking when I'm in the middle of talking unless I've got something egregiously wrong.
So, you asked me to describe the scientific method, and I got one part in, and now you want to talk about something else.
No, no, no, no.
I want to lean on the first part of the scientific method, which is observation.
And when you started your answer, you say, you observe, you see something about the world, and then you kept going through all the steps.
But let's just pause for step one right now.
So, if I just, oh, let me say, before I even.
Go in the observation.
I'm gonna wear on my sleeve.
I believe the Bible is literally true, no exceptions.
So, Adam and Eve, Noah's flood, earth is flat, all the gold is money, yada, yada, yada.
But okay, so I'm just warning you.
So, if you look around you, everything that we observe, if you see a truck that is a system, it's not chaos, it's organized, it's created by an intelligent mind.
If you see a book, it has an intelligent mind.
If you see a skyscraper, a bridge, I mean, a golf course, plumbing systems, electrical grids, everything that makes sense has an intelligence mind behind it.
But people that put too much weight on science take a leap of faith and think that science can do more than it really can.
And then you make a leap of logic and you kind of like, oh, okay, we don't need to observe a biogenesis.
We don't need to observe an amoeba self designing itself in a puddle of elements.
Just throw the words millions and millions of years.
And just hide it behind that.
I think if you look at the, you know, I'm not talking about like, oh, a wolf turns into a dog.
That's observable.
That's a small variance, but it's still the same kind of animal.
That variance or microevolution, the Bible allows because it says there are 8,000 kinds of animals.
But if you look at the earlier claims of evolution, they are all non observable.
There's nothing I can do to observe.
A unicellular organism self-designed itself, which, by the way, even the best scientists in the world cannot create that from scratch.
They cannot create a unicellular organism that's alive and replicates itself.
So, to make an argument that that self-designed itself, where when the most brilliant scientists in the world can't do it, and you're attributed to randomness and just millions and millions of years, is completely unobservable.
And it doesn't even match the other parallels, which is everything around us that we observe, and this organism has a system, had a Intelligent mind behind it.
Do you, where do you stand on that?
I mean, you just had a speech.
We're not having a conversation, right?
Okay, but so I just made a bunch of claims.
Like, have I made a mistake yet?
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Tons of mistakes.
So science is only a couple of hundred years old.
So the idea that it's going to figure out the entire origins of life in the universe, it's like a tiny, tiny slice in the history of humanity, let alone life, let alone the universe, and so on.
Have we observed a solar system being formed out of dust, right?
Because the general theory is that the solar system is formed out of accumulating dust and so on.
Have we observed the formation of A star or being able to recreate it in a lab.
No.
So the fact that we haven't been able to observe something that takes hundreds of millions of years or billions of years, the fact that we haven't been able to observe something that by its very nature takes hundreds of millions of years and billions of years is kind of by definition.
Of course, we haven't been able to observe it because the timeframe is so long.
So I don't see how that particularly answers everything.
The idea that a truck or a book, as you pointed out, is made by a person with a purpose, sure.
Sure.
And one of the reasons we know that a book is made by a person is it's full of comprehensible language with almost no wasted space.
Now, if you look at the universe, we see that there's life on, certainly intelligent life on only one of the eight or nine planets.
I can't remember what the number is these days.
In the world, there's no life on the moon.
And so it's like having a giant book with only one letter on it.
We would say that that's not a particularly well made book.
If the purpose of matter and the universe is the souls that can enter into human beings to see if they live well or badly and then assign them to heaven or hell based upon the results, Then why would there be so much emptiness?
Why would there be so much wasted space, so to speak?
Why does Jupiter have like 28 moons which have no life on them whatsoever?
Why are there gas giants where you couldn't really have any kind of human life?
Why is there Mercury which has no atmosphere?
Why is there Venus that has only acid for atmosphere?
It doesn't make any sense.
If the universe was designed for humanity, then why is so much of it empty and wasted?
That would be more along the lines of an accident and so on.
So I don't really see that.
Looking at the universe as a whole, we got 100 billion stars in 100 billion different galaxies.
There's no signs of intelligent life out there at all.
And so almost all of the universe is composed either of void or hydrogen, not even carbon, which is the essential building blocks of life.
So the idea that the universe was designed only with human beings in mind doesn't really make sense given how much of the universe is completely inhospitable to human beings and there's no other intelligent life out there that could worship God.
That doesn't really make much sense.
Sense that's like, you know, if you have an aquarium, you put a small habitat together for your fish.
If you have a terrarium, you put a small habitat together, all designed around a lizard or a frog or whatever it is you're keeping in there.
But if the universe is designed for human beings, it's not a very good terrarium at all because it's mostly inhospitable to human beings and contains no intelligent life that we can detect whatsoever.
So I don't think that that follows.
Okay, so I would say that what you're saying about the wasted space is handled with flat Earth and a firmament, but that's just too far from the main point.
But don't you think it's a logical fallacy to say, okay, so I believe the scientific method is observation, and there's all these things that I can't observe myself.
And then I'm going to appeal to authority and say the scientists know what happens to me.
No, Come on, come on.
You've got to debate with some degree of reasonableness and fairness, right?
Have I said that the scientific method is observation?
No.
So you can't straw man me and say, well, when you say that the scientific method is observation, that's not accurate.
And if you can't even reproduce my own perspectives back to me, then how are we going to have a conversation?
So I think if I just look up steps for the scientific method and I click images, every single image is going to have step one as observation.
Well, if you say that step one of the scientific method is observation, that's fine.
But if you say the scientific method is observation, that is incorrect.
Like if you say that the first step of making an omelet is to go and buy the eggs, therefore going to buy the eggs is the same as making the omelet, that would be incorrect, right?
Yes.
Okay.
So you can't say that the scientific method is observation when it's only the first of many steps.
I understand that.
I'm just focusing on that, but I know you got to test the observation, hypothesis, design the experiment, test it, see the results.
Whether they contradict or support the original hypothesis, and then they should be repeatable.
So, that's at least my basic understanding of it.
And I don't think abiogenesis fits anywhere there.
I can't observe it.
I don't even think other scientists can observe it.
It's never been observed.
So, there's a leap of logic.
Sorry, but you say Genesis, I'm not sure what you're referring to.
Scientists don't observe Genesis because it's the first chapter of the Bible.
No, no, no.
Abiogenesis, which means life without God, like the creation of life without God being like the spark for it.
Basically, so your belief is that you answer the question of how life came to be by saying a being that's entirely self contradictory that we can't possibly comprehend did it in some magical manner that we'll never be able to understand, and that's your answer.
Well, my answer is more like if you see a crime scene and you but no, you don't see it, you like stumble upon the aftermath of a crime scene.
You didn't see analogies are not arguments.
Can you deal with what I said?
Wait, wait, I'll let you talk.
I'll let you talk.
So Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me.
You don't get to let me talk on my show, just so you understand.
No, I'm saying like I didn't interrupt after you requested.
Yes, but you also didn't answer my arguments.
So the purpose of conversation is not for you to give a speech, me to respond to that, and then you to give another speech.
Let me ask you more direct questions because another analogy is not a proof of anything.
So, can you comprehend the true nature of God as immortal?
To a certain degree.
Okay.
What percentage of the true nature of an eternal, omniscient, all powerful God, what percentage do you think could you comprehend as immortal?
I don't know, but it's to whatever percent he allowed it to be.
Okay.
But it's, there has to be a difference between if I say I understand physics 1% or 99%.
That's a big difference in knowledge.
So I'm just curious how much of eternal, omniscient, all powerful God do you as a mortal truly understand?
I mean, I would say if I'm just going to throw a dart in the dark, you know, 50%?
Okay, so God is all knowing.
So you comprehend what it's like to be all knowing at a 50% rate?
No, that's the part where I probably wouldn't comprehend, right?
That would be the other 50%.
What about all powerful?
God is all powerful, and you say you comprehend what it is to be all powerful at a 50% rate.
Well, that's a lot easier to understand, right?
You can just see He created everything and everything.
He can make things happen or He can allow things to happen too.
Yes, but you can't make everything happen.
You can only make a very small and limited amount of things happening, and you can't prevent most things from happening.
You can't prevent the sunlight from reaching the earth and so on.
So, my point is that you claim to.
Sorry, you've got to remove your background noise if you don't mind.
It's kind of rude to call in with a lot of background noise.
So let me ask you this Is God both all knowing and all powerful?
I believe so.
Okay.
So if God is all knowing, he knows what's going to happen in the future.
Correct.
Okay.
Can God change what's going to happen in the future?
I believe he would have the power to, but he already predetermined everything.
So he can't change what's going to happen in the future without destroying his knowledge of what happens in the future, right?
And also, this is where I would lean on the 50%.
I'm, you know, just because you know, like, let's say I'm playing chess, if I know I'm about to checkmate you, but I don't know because I'm winning, but I don't know the exact number of sequences, maybe he just knows where the checkmate is, but he allows like little things.
Logical Contradictions in Divine Plans00:02:49
Like, was this conversation part of his plan?
Maybe not.
Maybe he doesn't care and this is relevant and he's not interested in it.
Okay, so then hang on, hang on.
So then he's not all knowing if he doesn't know this conversation was going to happen.
You were asking me if he knows about the future.
Well, everything that happens is part of the past, present, or future.
So.
You said that God might not have a plan for this conversation, which means he doesn't know that this conversation was going to happen, so he's not all knowing.
But I'm coming with a way of like, you know, like I don't really see that's my 50%.
I don't know if he cares to keep track of like things that are trivial, like how many leaves are falling in a forest.
Okay, hang on, hang on.
So this is disingenuous, right?
So you said God is all knowing and all powerful, and I'm pointing out a contradiction, and now you're changing your definition.
That maybe it's trivial and that God doesn't know that stuff, and so on, right?
So you can't say that God is all knowing and all powerful because these two are contradictory characteristics.
If God is all knowing, he knows exactly what's going to happen in the future because that's perfect knowledge.
If he knows exactly what's going to happen in the future, he can't change it because then that would invalidate that knowledge.
So he's either all knowing or all powerful.
He cannot be both.
That's just a logical contradiction.
And you can either be honest and say that is a logical contradiction, or you can try and create separate categories, which is kind of weaseling out, called Oh, it's trivial and therefore it doesn't matter, and therefore, right?
I mean, but you understand that it's a logical contradiction, right?
So if he was all powerful and 97% all knowing, how would you call that?
I don't know what you're talking about.
You made a claim that God was all knowing.
Hang on, hang on, hang on.
You made a claim that God was all knowing and all powerful.
Do you understand that that's a logical contradiction?
I can see why you see it like that.
I just don't see it like that.
I don't know what you mean.
Do you understand that you cannot be both all knowing and all powerful?
Again, I don't, like, I can see why you see a contradiction, but I just don't see a contradiction.
Okay.
Well, then I'm going to have to move on to another caller because if you don't recognize contradictions, we can't have a conversation.
All right.
Kale, thank you for your patience.
I am all ears, my friend.
What is on your mind?
I'm well, thanks.
How are you doing?
I'm well, thank you.
It's been a while since we spoke.
So I'm always very appreciative to have you take my call so I can add to the conversation, hopefully.
I really enjoyed your beginning about talking about the Me Plus.
I think that's been some really monumental advice that I've utilized and recognized throughout my life.
And so I had a comment and then I had a question, if you don't mind.
My comment would be well, no, I guess I'll just start with my question.
You mentioned how.
Exploiting Trauma With Drugs00:11:32
Not experiencing being loved for who you are at the beginning of the show.
And you touched on the importance of grieving that.
So I was wondering if you could share a practical sense or any advice on how to properly grieve not experiencing being loved for who you are.
Well, not being loved for who you are is painful because people have lied to you and claimed to love you for who you are.
So you have to grieve.
The corruption and immorality of people saying that they love you for who you are when they only love you for what you provide.
So, a man who claims to love a woman for who she is when he really only appreciates the fact that she offers him sex or, I don't know, folds his laundry or makes his meals or, I don't know, gives him a job or whatever it is, right?
So, it is very corrupt to tell people that you love them when you only want to use them and you hide that from them because you are.
Requiring that people have a desire to be loved, which is basic human nature.
We all desire love and acceptance, and we're social animals, so we need the approval of the group, and so on.
And so, you are taking someone's human nature, which is a desire to be loved.
You're also recognizing that they are defenseless against claims of love that are false.
And so, you are exploiting someone's prior trauma, prior not being loved, and lying to them and drugging them with something that they're semi helpless to resist because of a lack of prior love.
So, you've been Manipulated and exploited.
And everyone thinks that grieving has to do with sadness, and that's certainly involved.
But particularly for men, maybe for women too, it's a little tougher for me to tell.
But for men, a lot of grieving is anger.
So if somebody, if some woman comes along and says, Oh, I love you, I love you, I love you, and then you have to pay for everything, and she wants you to, I don't know, spend all this money on her, and you want her to, she wants you to give her all these advantages, and you end up just being pillaged financially.
Then, she saw that you needed love.
And dangled that in front of you in return for money.
And that's a wretched and horrible thing to do to someone.
And so the anger at being exploited is pretty key.
So a lot of the grieving has to do with sadness at all of the circumstances that led you to be vulnerable to be ripped off and exploited in that kind of way.
But also it has to do with anger at the people who very quickly figured out your vulnerabilities and exploited them and lied to you to get resources.
And the same thing can happen in reverse, that just happened to be one example.
Yeah, the grieving.
And then if you're sad because you were unloved and you were left vulnerable to somebody who gave you the love bomb, there's sadness at all of that.
But then there's also anger at all the people who harmed you so much that you were so desperate for love that you were agreed to be exploited and so on.
And so it is, there's a lot of anger involved in having been exploited and ripped off.
Sadness for sure, but everyone underestimates the value of the anger.
No, that makes great sense.
I'm glad you clarified that.
It's not necessarily a process of being sad, but for males, in my sense, it's getting angry as well.
Yeah, no, that's really interesting.
I'm learning a little bit more about person centered therapy.
And I guess the emphasis on that approach is the importance of self actualization, which that definition always been very kind of vague to me.
But I think what you said earlier about me plus virtue, I think if individuals value that sense of me plus virtue, I think that's a much better definition to what exactly.
Self actualization means?
Well, a lot of psychology is involved in giving you vague positive sounding terms that don't.
A lot of psychology, of course, is involved in giving you vague positive sounding terms like self actualization and authenticity and fulfillment and so on that don't come with any particularly specific moral requirements and clear virtues.
And it's just, again, it's just dangling hedonism in front of desperate people so that they can grab at happiness without the requirement of being morally courageous and virtuous.
Yeah, gotcha.
Sorry, you were on mute on the beginning of your reply, so I kind of missed out on most of it, but I agree with what you were saying.
The comment that I wanted to share about the Me Plus in my experience was two comments.
Me Plus growing up without much of a parental guidance or being tutored was in the form of getting approval from my peers.
And growing up, it was heavily with marijuana usage, drug partying scene, that kind of stuff.
Me plus, uh, I know the place where we can go hang out.
I have the open house, I have enough money to buy uh, weed for friends.
So that was always kind of the me plus that I experienced growing up, and it kind of definitely um carried over to young adulthood.
Um, it was kind of amazing to me to see how much of that was kind of the mo for a lot of people.
Um, and I just wanted to well, sorry, I just wanted to mention as well, sorry, but the me plus.
There's also embedded in it the me minus, which is the me minus judgment, the me minus standards, the me with like, yeah, man, it's all natural.
You can do whatever you want.
Hedonism is a me minus, minus long term moral judgment and so on.
So the me plus is providing stuff.
The me minus is withholding stuff such as moral judgment.
But sorry, go ahead.
Yeah, no, thanks for the clarification.
And just to piggyback on more of that, I wanted to give you some shout out and some kudos and praise.
I think you're the only person that I've ever spoken to or known that has not.
Used or experimented with marijuana, which is just unbelievably incredible to me.
I mean, I've met countless of people, peers, and everything, close people.
I'm not so much, not anymore now that I'm older family, but it was always something that was a common denominator growing up on how I would connect with people.
Everybody's experimented, everybody's tried it.
It was something that we did as a connection.
Culture or trying to find your people, so to speak.
So, knowing your past and how much you've talked to, how, you know, I know you've been into philosophy very early in your stage, but you said you really didn't practice it later on, maybe in your 30s or something like that.
But the fact that you were able to just resist that temptation, even in the art scene, and I know you're doing playwright and growing up with minimal parental supervision or guidance.
I just think it's absolutely amazing that you're able to do that.
So, I just want to give you a lot of praise and respect.
So, I just think that's amazing.
Good for you.
Well, thank you.
I appreciate that.
And, you know, some of that may have had a bit of moral courage to it, but a lot of it had to do with the fact that I just really like my own brain.
And if you really like your own brain, why would you want to mess with it?
I mean, I did.
I got drunk, I don't know, maybe a half dozen times over the course of my teenage life, and I think once in my early 20s after a play.
And I just, I don't, I'm pretty disinhibited, perhaps a bit too disinhibited.
But the one thing that I was always suspicious about with regards to marijuana is if you look at how efficiently I was taken out of the public square, right?
It really was remarkable.
I mean, it was years in the making, it was a whole bunch of planted stories, a whole bunch of lies, you know, a whole bunch of set up.
It was really elegantly done, that sort of wind up and the taking out of me in the public square.
You know, like a bunch of different media got involved, governments got involved, and so on, and private organizations as well.
And it was all beautifully coordinated and very well executed.
And honestly, you have to hand it to the evildoers.
They did a great job.
Now, knowing that, and if you look at how, you know, the Jan Sixers were hunted down and so on, when the government wants to be efficient, when The powers that be, which is not just the government, but the media and other companies as well, when they want to achieve something, they can achieve it.
And so for me, the fact that marijuana was so omnipresent, despite being illegal, meant that it had to serve the interests of the powers that be in some manner.
Because if they wanted to get rid of it, they absolutely could.
Because when they want to get rid of people who are saying things inconvenient to the power structures, they can do it.
And when they want to hunt their political enemies and so on, they can do it.
And the coordination that also had it become progressively more difficult for me to speak in public because of bomb threats and death threats and actual violence and so on.
I mean, that's all very well coordinated and it is what is allowed to happen.
Like all crime is allowed to happen, particularly these days when you can trace and track anybody and you can cut off funding and so on, right?
So, marijuana, and now that it's legal in a lot of places, marijuana does not harm at all.
In fact, it serves the interests of the powers that be.
And because I've always been skeptical of power, and I kind of knew that they could stop whatever they wanted to, and the fact that they let it continue to occur means that it had to serve their interests.
And I don't like partaking of anything really that serves the interests of the powers that be.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
Now that's even a more enlightening kind of perspective on how you were able to resist it.
It sounds to me like at an early age, you learn to value the, uh, The approval of yourself versus the approval of others.
So, I just think that's really incredible.
I think people learn that lesson far too late in life.
That's certainly something that I'm still trying to work through.
So, and pot people are kind of sad.
Pot people lie all the time.
They claim that they're not addicted.
They claim that it's fine because it's all natural.
Our stick is natural.
What the hell does that mean?
You know, you could very clearly see the loss of ambition, you could very clearly see the loss of energy and the loss of drive.
And sure, you know, you can point out the Beatles did drugs and so on.
It's like, bro, you ain't the Beatles.
You know, the Beatles are hardworking people who did drugs from time to time, but most people who do drugs are just kind of wallowing in staring at their own belly buttons.
You know, there's a memorable David Spade bit about a guy who did drugs in a basement near his house, and his friend was like, hey, man, you know the fish, the blue fish?
He really likes to go into that back corner.
It's like, yeah, that's your life, man, observing where fish go.
And so I just didn't ever see any inspiring.
Druggies, when I was growing up, it all just seemed very, very sad.
And I really dislike because the druggies lie all the time.
Like they lie that they're addicted.
And I sort of mentioned they lie.
Drug addiction or drugs use is just lying.
And I just really hate lying.
You know, you can't be a philosopher and be comfortable with lying.
And so I really dislike lying as a whole and seeing, you know, the lack of ambition and the lying and the waste of life and this.
And they always had to hang out around with other kind of losers like themselves.
Lying About Addiction and Loss00:01:27
And it just like, like, Like, ew!
Like, the Dungeons and Dragons crew was way cooler.
Sorry, you're muted if you're talking.
All right.
It looks like he has left.
Oh, maybe he got upset because I was talking about druggies being losers.
Look, I have a lot of sympathy.
I have a lot of sympathy because, of course, druggies are self medicating for childhood trauma.
So I get all of that.
But the way that I was sort of perceiving it as a teenager is that I had no respect for the drug people.
Same with the drinkers, like the habitual drinkers.
It was all.
Tragic and very sad.
All right.
Okay.
Well, I'm going to have to stop here.
I really do appreciate everyone's time this morning.
A great, great chat.
And thank you so much.
I do appreciate the people calling in.
I appreciate the challenges.
I appreciate the conversation.
Everybody is welcome to call.
And I really do love these conversations as a whole.
Freedomain.comslash an eight.
Come on.
It's commercial free, ad free.
You can listen to it without we interrupt this for a special announcement of whatever, whatever.
So I hope that you will help out the show so that.
You can show your appreciation for the fact that we have no ads anywhere in the show and never have and never will, despite offers, despite offers.
So, freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show.
Shop.freedomain.com for your tasty merch.
Peacefulparenting.com.
Please share that free resource and the AI there to help people improve their parenting.