America First - Nicholas J. Fuentes - Nick Fuentes vs. Styxhexenhammer666

00:00:03.000 Nice.

00:00:05.000 So, is the camera on me yet?

00:00:08.000 No, it's still on me.

00:00:12.000 Cool.

00:00:12.000 Okay, then you'll let me know.

00:00:14.000 Just give me a thumbs up when it's like.

00:00:16.000 Okay.

00:00:18.000 What's up, audience?

00:00:29.000 Can you hear me?

00:00:31.000 Welcome to America's number one chatcast worldwide, worldwide, worldwide, worldwide.

00:00:51.000 Welcome to America's number one Chadcast worldwide.

00:00:57.000 This is Call Me Al with the debate of all debates, the question of all questions.

00:01:04.000 We are joined by Styx and Nick Fuentes.

00:01:10.000 Today's central topic is Christianity in the United States.

00:01:15.000 Now, my name is Alan Erickson, but you can call me Al.

00:01:22.000 Nick and Styx.

00:01:24.000 I'm fascinated by the occult and all the esoteric knowledge, but I am a confirmed Catholic.

00:01:29.000 And as I get older, Christianity starts to make more and more sense. 0.84

00:01:34.000 Politically, I represent the Al-Right. 0.88

00:01:37.000 We work out, we read books, we listen to podcasts, we're nationalists. 0.87

00:01:41.000 That's basically it. 0.98

00:01:42.000 Well, you are all welcome to join the Al-Right. 0.99

00:01:44.000 It's popping.

00:01:45.000 We got the best chatcasts in the world.

00:01:48.000 I love being ethnically Catholic because the Irish, the Italians, the Spaniards, even the Mexicans, Some of the most badass nationalities or ethnicities or whatever you want to call it are Catholic.

00:01:57.000 And I think that's very cool.

00:01:59.000 But I always struggled as it pertains to kind of being bored when I go to church.

00:02:03.000 I'm what you call a slacker Catholic.

00:02:05.000 I go to church like once or twice a year just because I get kind of bored. 1.00

00:02:11.000 I've always been envious of the black churches with their performance art. 1.00

00:02:15.000 Even Louis Farrakhan, when he talks about the power of Almighty God. 1.00

00:02:19.000 Like, dude, that gets me going.

00:02:20.000 I love it.

00:02:21.000 I love it.

00:02:23.000 So.

00:02:24.000 Welcome to our chatcast.

00:02:25.000 Subscribe to this channel, like this video.

00:02:26.000 We're going to have an unbelievable, excellent time.

00:02:29.000 I've combined these forces for today, for tonight.

00:02:33.000 And you guys can introduce yourselves.

00:02:36.000 Nick, how are you doing?

00:02:38.000 Doing well, Al.

00:02:39.000 Glad to be here.

00:02:40.000 Glad to be here defending the faith, defending the one, the way, and the light.

00:02:45.000 So I'm excited for a great debate.

00:02:47.000 Looking forward to it.

00:02:49.000 And Sticks, how are you doing tonight?

00:02:51.000 I'm glad to be here as well, here to clank my spoon and hopefully expose the Pope.

00:02:57.000 Wow.

00:02:58.000 So the central theme is Christianity in the United States.

00:03:03.000 Now, here's our first question.

00:03:04.000 We'll start with you, Nick.

00:03:06.000 Do you agree, or do you both agree?

00:03:09.000 Nick will go first, then Sticks will respond.

00:03:11.000 Do you both agree that there is a lack of morality in the United States and nihilism is a problem in American culture?

00:03:18.000 Absolutely.

00:03:19.000 I think the best example of this was the school shooting that we saw a few weeks ago on Valentine's Day in February.

00:03:19.000 Absolutely.

00:03:26.000 I think.

00:03:27.000 When you see these horrendous acts of violence, I think when you see systemic and epidemic drug abuse, suicide, hedonistic sex, and other forms of degeneracy, I think you absolutely have a crisis of nihilism in the country.

00:03:40.000 I think this is one of the few things that all generations, all people can relate to, young or old, middle aged men, women, the lack of meaning in our lives.

00:03:49.000 And this has come, I think, foundationally from the removal of God from the public square, the removal of God from our personal lives.

00:03:58.000 And so I absolutely think nihilism is a problem, and that's my diagnosis for why it's here.

00:04:02.000 Sticks.

00:04:04.000 I would agree that there are grave problems within our culture, but I see them as slightly different, maybe, than the way that Nick sees them.

00:04:10.000 I think we both, like the left and right, all different groups within culture, see that there are problems today.

00:04:16.000 I think we diagnose them differently.

00:04:18.000 He says fundamentally that it's the removal of God.

00:04:21.000 He would, I assume, mean the Christian God or the Catholic God by that.

00:04:26.000 But that deity is actually more prevalent in many people's day to day lives than it was at the founding of this country, ultimately.

00:04:32.000 We were founded upon a deist principle.

00:04:34.000 It was Christian in nature, although not rudimentarily Catholic.

00:04:39.000 However, this concept that there's a mass problem with degeneracy within the culture really depends on your own opinion of what that happens to be.

00:04:48.000 Certainly, there's been a societal breakdown.

00:04:50.000 I see that as a breakdown. 0.96

00:04:51.000 Down along the lines of we've got corrupt entrenched political bodies that are largely Christian, although they're not particularly religious. 1.00

00:04:59.000 And despite that fact, it doesn't do anything to rein in their corruption. 1.00

00:05:04.000 Okay, now, how this is going to work, you guys, I have a set list of questions.

00:05:09.000 I have a ton of questions.

00:05:10.000 Now, if the audience has any questions, you can ask so via super chat.

00:05:14.000 I can't keep up with the chat right now, it's crazy.

00:05:16.000 There's a bunch of spoons, there's a bunch of knives.

00:05:19.000 The chat is absolutely insane.

00:05:20.000 So if you ask a question in the chat, there's no chance I'm going to be able to read it.

00:05:24.000 But if you want to ask a question, you know how to do it.

00:05:26.000 I have a ton of questions already here that these guys have approved.

00:05:30.000 They've looked over and they've agreed on.

00:05:32.000 So I'm really excited.

00:05:34.000 So that's how this is going to work.

00:05:36.000 Again, thank you for being here.

00:05:37.000 This is truly unbelievable.

00:05:41.000 So, Nick.

00:05:43.000 Yes.

00:05:44.000 We'll start with you again and give Styx his response, right?

00:05:48.000 Actually, we'll start with Styx this time.

00:05:50.000 This is a better way to do it. 1.00

00:05:52.000 Styx, with the proliferation of Christianity, Be beneficial to the United States? 0.98

00:05:59.000 No, because if Christianity were beneficial to the United States, we wouldn't be in such a mess to begin with. 0.96

00:06:04.000 The nation, when society began to break down, I'm sure this is probably something that I would agree with Nick on around the time of maybe the late 50s through the 60s. 0.95

00:06:14.000 You begin to have systemic problems within the culture.

00:06:17.000 That was all led by a country. 0.99

00:06:18.000 It was 90 plus percent Christian.

00:06:21.000 The politicians were almost all Christian.

00:06:23.000 We had at the time an actively immigration system which. 0.97

00:06:27.000 Banned people from a lot of non Christian parts of the world from even taking part in the culture. 0.99

00:06:32.000 Now, boiling it down to a mere conspiracy would be one thing, but let me ask this. 0.95

00:06:37.000 If you do, what safeguard does Christianity, or I should say Catholicism specifically, even provide?

00:06:44.000 Because I look at the voting landscape.

00:06:46.000 I look at the voting demographics in the last however many elections.

00:06:50.000 Catholics vote overwhelmingly in favor of things like gun control, in favor of abortion, in favor of what I'm sure would be generally considered by people on, you know, Maybe the fringe right or the new right, certainly libertarians, to be degenerate or to at least be bad for the country.

00:07:08.000 What safeguard has Christianity ever given this country against these things?

00:07:13.000 Well, I think that's sort of interesting that you define Christianity as Catholicism. 0.67

00:07:18.000 I would certainly say that for one to be in communion with Christ's church, you would have to be Catholic, but actually, since the Vatican II Council, Catholics have held that Protestants are still our Christian brethren.

00:07:31.000 If you believe that Jesus Christ is a savior, if you're baptized, if you believe that the Bible is the word of God.

00:07:36.000 We believe that you are a Christian.

00:07:38.000 So it's very interesting from the get go that you're trying to straw man me already by saying that it's better or worse based on some kind of Catholic revitalization as opposed to the country just being Christian.

00:07:50.000 I also think it's interesting that you attribute the problems that have gone on in the country as a result of the decline of Christianity to Christianity. 0.88

00:07:58.000 Can we say that the adverse and pernicious social trends of the 50s and 60s were a result of Christianity? 0.88

00:08:04.000 Did they happen because of Christianity or in spite of it? 0.97

00:08:07.000 I also think it's interesting that you ask for.

00:08:10.000 Safeguards against degeneracy in Christianity when there are no similar standards applied to paganism, applied to nihilism.

00:08:19.000 When, as you've seen religion on the decline in the United States, in Europe, you see a proportionate increase in sexual hedonism, in greed, in public vices.

00:08:30.000 And don't get me wrong, there have always been vices, but have they been systemic?

00:08:33.000 Have they been normative?

00:08:34.000 Have they been on television?

00:08:36.000 Have they been held up by our public officials, by celebrities as moral or as though they're okay?

00:08:42.000 I don't think so.

00:08:43.000 So I think it's all very interesting.

00:08:44.000 And then additionally, my last point my last point would be this.

00:08:48.000 Sticks, you have held in the past that there is no such thing as objective evil.

00:08:52.000 And I don't think anybody who doesn't believe in God can even believe in any evil at all.

00:08:56.000 You can only say that you might think it's evil.

00:08:59.000 So I don't know how you could point to anything and say it's morally wrong or something is wrong at all when you have no objective standard to base that on.

00:09:06.000 There are objective standards within my own life.

00:09:08.000 I use them anecdotally, number one.

00:09:11.000 I simply say that for myself, I believe in a right and wrong, but I don't attempt to project it on others without any certainty.

00:09:17.000 I don't claim moral objectivity.

00:09:20.000 Number two, I never said this is a straw man that you're trying to use.

00:09:23.000 I never said that Christians were the cause of those problems starting, you know, in the 50s and 60s, Red Scare era.

00:09:30.000 You've got the hippies and drugs and all these things you identify as morally problematic. 0.85

00:09:36.000 I never said Christianity was the responsible party, but I'm saying that in a culture that was overwhelmingly Christian, and not only overwhelmingly Christian, but far more religiously Christian, why is it that that culture, if it was being led by such a morally virtuous group, could fall by the wayside into such Habits and patterns. 0.96

00:09:55.000 And by the way, it was pointed out. 0.82

00:09:57.000 I'm not sure whether you're a fan of eugenics or not.

00:10:00.000 Historically speaking, if we look at some of the earliest Victorian occult literature, we see a great appreciation for paganism as having safeguarded, especially the Northern European people, from the same problems that were ended up being introduced by foreign cultures, specifically the Christianized Romans, who, by the way, had already achieved their cultural peak, had achieved basically peak technology in every other possible way.

00:10:26.000 And hit their highest wealth under paganism.

00:10:29.000 Around the time of Christianity, they convert. 0.86

00:10:31.000 Within a couple of centuries, the western half of the empire is in shambles. 1.00

00:10:35.000 The eastern half slowly falls into decadence, despite being overwhelmingly Christian. 0.99

00:10:40.000 Again and again, we see these cultures, not just Christian, although it's definitely of import that this is the case. 1.00

00:10:48.000 They fare little better than other religious cultures. 0.88

00:10:51.000 Secularism, in the sense of atheism, appears to be what you're arguing against.

00:10:55.000 I'm simply arguing in favor of some degree of pluralism.

00:10:59.000 State secularity and paganism, I think, was a better thing for the European cultures than Christendom. 0.60

00:11:06.000 Yes, absolutely. 0.93

00:11:07.000 Well, from the beginning, it's sort of interesting. 0.95

00:11:10.000 You say, well, people were Christian, and it wasn't because of Christianity that things went wrong, but there were Christians that made things go wrong.

00:11:17.000 Why do you think people embraced contraception in the 1950s and 60s against Christian doctrine? 0.65

00:11:24.000 They embraced contraception.

00:11:26.000 They embraced, according to the catechism of the Catholic Church, we're against.

00:11:31.000 We are against birth control.

00:11:33.000 We're against contraception.

00:11:34.000 So, this is against Christian doctrine. 0.81

00:11:36.000 They pursued hedonistic, impulsive sex, premarital sex, against Christian doctrine. 0.96

00:11:42.000 You had the abuse of drugs. 0.95

00:11:43.000 You had the sexual revolution.

00:11:44.000 All this happened, again, not, and I say this again, this happened as Christianity declined, but it also happened in spite of Christian doctrine, in spite of Christian teaching.

00:11:54.000 So, I mean, you seem to be arguing against Christians as opposed to arguing against the doctrine of Christianity.

00:12:00.000 Where, wait, wait, wait, if we embraced.

00:12:02.000 The doctrine of Christianity, then you would see public morals improve.

00:12:06.000 And then to answer the second point, first, we have to talk about the framing of the second point, which is you say that, well, the high watermark essentially of the Roman Empire was achieved under paganism, was achieved under a non Christian or, in your later words, more pluralistic society.

00:12:22.000 Well, that's interesting that you say that, that you attribute the decline of the Roman Empire to Christianity when that wasn't even adopted as the official religion until the fourth century.

00:12:32.000 So the Roman Empire. 0.98

00:12:34.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:12:36.000 The Roman Republic had been there for centuries, and yet you attribute this to Christianity.

00:12:41.000 I would offer a counterexample and say that the British Empire reached the peak of its wealth.

00:12:46.000 This was the biggest empire in world history. 0.87

00:12:48.000 25% of the land in the world was controlled by Britain as a Christian country. 0.73

00:12:52.000 The United States, their power and their wealth peaked either after 1945, I think you could contend. 0.59

00:12:59.000 I think you could contend in 1960.

00:13:01.000 You could contend in 1991, they reached their zenith.

00:13:04.000 All of these points were when they were Christian, not when they were pagan or secular or anything like that.

00:13:10.000 So I think I'll point out in the context of the United States, one quick point, because I'm sure we get to go on to the next question at some point.

00:13:18.000 One quick point.

00:13:19.000 Isn't it funny that the motto of this country was e pluribus unum until the 1950s?

00:13:24.000 Around the time of this societal breakdown, we declare we're going to say, in God, we trust on all of our currency and inject religion into every aspect of the public square.

00:13:33.000 Prior to that, it had always been understood that people in the West or in the US could be religious, that we were led by a God, but we didn't attempt to corrupt it by putting it in with the state.

00:13:44.000 And I see the Vatican roughly as a counterpart to this.

00:13:47.000 Within the Catholic core, the very concept of creating such a centralized hierarchical system, As opposed to letting people have their own spirituality and saying, well, yeah, I believe in Jesus or I believe in some other deity or some other force, inevitably corrupts because power corrupts.

00:14:03.000 The power over their life is no longer a disembodied spirit, a distant God who they can talk to at night before bedtime.

00:14:09.000 It's a state or it's a priest or it's some imam or cleric.

00:14:13.000 I see that as probably the greatest corrupting force of all. 0.69

00:14:16.000 Yes.

00:14:17.000 Are we going to move on or can I rebut that?

00:14:19.000 Honestly, I could listen to this all day.

00:14:22.000 This is so fascinating.

00:14:24.000 And we got two of the biggest brains on the internet.

00:14:26.000 We got two of the biggest superstars on the internet.

00:14:29.000 We got a few super chats.

00:14:30.000 We will get to all of them.

00:14:33.000 But if Nick, if you got something to say in response, I mean, we're all, I'm a fan, both of you guys.

00:14:39.000 I just, so am I.

00:14:41.000 Yeah, go ahead, brother.

00:14:42.000 Go ahead.

00:14:43.000 I think it's kind of patently absurd to say that, you know, this anti communist injection of Christianity into the public school system and the, you know, the coining of the currency within God we trust was.

00:14:55.000 Was the mark of, you know, now it's a Christian nation.

00:14:58.000 It wasn't when it was 97% Christian at the founding of the country, when they did prayers before the constitutional conventions, when they, you know, when they were believers in God, and it was, you know, in the Declaration of Independence, we are endowed by our, we are endowed by our creator with unalienable rights.

00:15:15.000 I mean, this is based on a conception of a world with a God.

00:15:18.000 The country, the consensus was Christian.

00:15:20.000 People were involved.

00:15:21.000 It wasn't this, you know, occult, like personal spirituality thing.

00:15:25.000 People were Christian.

00:15:26.000 People went to church much more often.

00:15:28.000 This was observed even in the generations preceding the boomers.

00:15:31.000 You look at the boomer generation and you look at church attendance, and it went like this.

00:15:35.000 And those are people that were born after 45. 0.72

00:15:37.000 The same time you're saying that, well, because we started coining the currency a certain way, then suddenly it became Christian, and that's when you saw the decline.

00:15:45.000 I don't think anybody would say that MTV and cable television and contraception and sexual promiscuity is Christian.

00:15:52.000 And you seem to be arguing anti Christian morals are bad, and yet. 0.85

00:15:57.000 So, Christian people are responsible for that? 0.78

00:16:00.000 The answer is then don't get rid of Christianity.

00:16:03.000 It's make Christians more accountable to Christianity, make them believe again, abide by the virtues again. 0.68

00:16:09.000 You can't make them believe, number one. 0.98

00:16:12.000 Number two, I would say those sorts of things, promiscuity and so forth, were already prevalent anyway.

00:16:17.000 They just were more underground, they were taboo and not spoken of as much.

00:16:20.000 Have you even read Christian literature from the mid 1700s?

00:16:24.000 I edit some of this stuff for a living.

00:16:26.000 You go through and they're talking about, oh, here's.

00:16:28.000 Here's a fortune of when you're going to tie the nuptial knot and embrace Hymen and all of these other things.

00:16:34.000 They spoke about sex.

00:16:36.000 We're talking the 1700s.

00:16:37.000 They spoke about Christian astrology.

00:16:39.000 They thought that God had put things in a certain order in the sky for religious reasons.

00:16:44.000 They governed basically every aspect of their spiritual life by celestial movements and by essentially pagan lore, anyway.

00:16:51.000 These were the wisest people around, the most literate.

00:16:54.000 They wrote books on it.

00:16:55.000 They governed the original country by it.

00:16:57.000 The original motto wasn't in God we trust, it wasn't even e pluribus unum, it was mind your own business.

00:17:03.000 Our first motto within the United States is nothing to do whatsoever with Christianity.

00:17:06.000 Of course, they were Christians because they were born up in a European culture, pan European diaspora, that believed in the Christian God, but they didn't believe in organized religion.

00:17:16.000 They didn't believe in a church being paired with the state. 0.79

00:17:19.000 And in fact, if you read some of their private writings, especially with Benjamin Franklin, my goodness, the dude went whoring constantly. 0.81

00:17:26.000 He would put any boomer or Gen X or millennial to shame in the bedroom department. 0.73

00:17:32.000 He was a Christian, yes, but he wasn't religious.

00:17:35.000 He openly spurned organized religion, said, Oh, yeah, build a lighthouse.

00:17:38.000 Don't build a church.

00:17:39.000 It's more useful. 0.95

00:17:41.000 Well, again, it's just patently absurd to me to say that, well, because Christians are not following Christian doctrine, Throw away Christian doctrine. 0.75

00:17:48.000 Again, the country was, and you seem to think this is like arbitrary, that the country was composed of almost 100% Christians. 0.72

00:17:57.000 Oh, well, it was just because they were European and they just happened to be Christians.

00:18:01.000 It wasn't by accident that they were Christian.

00:18:03.000 It wasn't by accident that this free Western liberal country was established by Christians.

00:18:08.000 I mean, these ideas. 0.94

00:18:10.000 But they weren't Catholics. 0.58

00:18:11.000 Now, were they?

00:18:12.000 They were Protestants mostly.

00:18:13.000 Okay, but they were Christians.

00:18:14.000 And what we're defending here is Christian doctrine people who believe in salvation through Christ.

00:18:19.000 People believe that the Bible is the word of God.

00:18:21.000 There is a difference. 0.92

00:18:23.000 Christianity is schismatic.

00:18:24.000 That would be like saying a Norse pagan and a Roman pagan a la the Mediterranean style religion are the same thing. 0.69

00:18:30.000 They're both pagans, yeah.

00:18:32.000 They have that in common. 0.60

00:18:33.000 We're talking about Christianity.

00:18:35.000 But we're talking about, but even Catholics recognize that Protestants are Christian.

00:18:40.000 We define Christian.

00:18:41.000 You may not be in communion.

00:18:43.000 Protestants don't see it that way.

00:18:44.000 We may not be in communion with Christ's church, but we are separated brethren.

00:18:49.000 That's the official.

00:18:50.000 The church run by a heretical Marxist.

00:18:52.000 Okay, and here we go.

00:18:54.000 So, Stix, you seem to think this schism.

00:18:57.000 Here we go with the slander.

00:18:58.000 Stix, you think the schism between Protestant Christianity and Catholicism is quite important.

00:19:04.000 Can you expand on that?

00:19:05.000 I think it's important because I've spoken with people on both sides.

00:19:08.000 I used to, in the past, be more understanding of the Catholic side because I was more socially liberal or laissez faire, you could say.

00:19:18.000 I saw the Catholic side generally as maybe a little bit.

00:19:20.000 Morally more virtuous.

00:19:22.000 In time, though, I realized the Vatican is basically a corporation.

00:19:25.000 It's going to remain that way, always has been that way.

00:19:28.000 They simply adopted pagan doctrine, adopted pagan holidays, passed it off as a religion, and they took the words of Christ essentially completely out of context. 0.99

00:19:37.000 I always thought that Protestants that pointed this out were absolutely apeshit. 1.00

00:19:41.000 I thought they were totally fucking crazy. 1.00

00:19:43.000 In time, I realized essentially they were right. 1.00

00:19:45.000 I can look at pagan literature, you know, new neo pagan literature, I can look at occult literature from the Victorian age on forward.

00:19:52.000 They fundamentally agree with the most fire and brimstone evangelicals that I've ever listened to.

00:19:57.000 When I come to realize that, I say maybe there's something to these Protestants ultimately that say we're going to cut a birthday cake for Jesus this Christmas instead of erecting a tree because we don't want to be caught dead worshiping Saturnalia.

00:20:11.000 Wow.

00:20:11.000 Yeah, okay.

00:20:13.000 On the schism here, again, you seem to be conflating Catholicism.

00:20:18.000 Well, actually, first of all, to address this fire and brimstone stuff, and they took it out of context and the pagan roots of Christianity, let me dispel this myth very quickly.

00:20:26.000 There is nothing, you cannot trace the antecedents of Christ the figure in paganism.

00:20:33.000 You may have seen, wait, wait, there are some resurrections in Horus, there are some resurrections in paganism, but the idea of Jesus Christ as the flesh and blood, the Son of God, but also in communion, also one in the same with the Holy Trinity, and being put up on a cross and then rising from the dead, it exists.

00:20:53.000 No, you're crucified on the cross.

00:20:54.000 He was hanged off the tree.

00:20:56.000 That is just simply not true.

00:20:57.000 Banged off a tree, the original definition has nothing to do with crucifixion.

00:21:01.000 There is historical evidence of crucifixion.

00:21:04.000 Eusebius seemed to think so.

00:21:06.000 Yeah, and Josephus and Tacitus and many others.

00:21:08.000 Josephus never talked about Jesus Christ.

00:21:10.000 Josephus did talk about Jesus Christ.

00:21:12.000 No, he didn't.

00:21:13.000 That passage is a forgery.

00:21:14.000 The first there is one which is with Tacitus.

00:21:17.000 There is one passage by Josephus which is put in question, but there is one which nobody disputes.

00:21:23.000 And Tacitus also acknowledges Jesus Christ.

00:21:24.000 I've never heard of that, but there is Tacitus.

00:21:25.000 I've never heard of that, but there is Tacitus.

00:21:28.000 There is Tacitus, but it's funny how these early people don't even say, oh, he's crucified. 0.93

00:21:33.000 He was crucified as a heretic. 0.63

00:21:35.000 Well, Tacitus. 0.71

00:21:35.000 They're not even overlapping Pontius Pilate. 0.71

00:21:37.000 If you look at, and it's interesting to me because people, if we're going to get into the historicity of Jesus Christ in the New Testament, it's funny because people will all day long affirm the veracity and the validity of things like the Iliad, of things like the existence of King Arthur, many other things.

00:21:52.000 For example, the Iliad.

00:21:54.000 We did not see a complete collection of the Iliad writings until 1800 years.

00:22:01.000 After Homer lived 1800 years, and nobody says, Well, we don't know what Homer said in the Iliad, we don't know what was contained in the Iliad, even though it's the first completed account of 1800 years later.

00:22:14.000 And you had fragments for sure.

00:22:16.000 Wait, can you let me finish it?

00:22:18.000 That's the occult.

00:22:19.000 Hold on, guys.

00:22:20.000 Hold on, hold on.

00:22:21.000 Uh, well, let's uh, Nick just finish for like one to two minutes, and then Styx will get his response.

00:22:26.000 This is the debate of all debates.

00:22:31.000 Thanks for being here.

00:22:31.000 Thanks for watching, everybody.

00:22:32.000 This is awesome.

00:22:33.000 Go ahead, Dexter.

00:22:34.000 The point that is being made is that, you know, King Arthur, another example, he's not even mentioned until 500 years after he supposedly raided any historical text.

00:22:42.000 We know that he lived.

00:22:43.000 We know the details of his life.

00:22:44.000 And the same is true of many other ancient accounts.

00:22:46.000 To get into textual studies, when we're looking at ancient texts, we're lucky if we get one or two historical sources.

00:22:53.000 And with Jesus Christ, we have many.

00:22:54.000 We have many secular as well as those in the New Testament.

00:22:58.000 We have Josephus, we have Tacitus, we have Lucian, even pagans acknowledge he existed.

00:23:03.000 And if you even look at the New Testament, which I think is not unfair, you look at, for example, the In 1 Corinthians, St. Paul delivers a creed, and that is dated by scholars, by scholars of the subject, that was recited and gathered within 25 years of Christ's crucifixion.

00:23:18.000 Within 25 years.

00:23:19.000 And if you look at how he was able to have that in such a short amount of time, it was probably compiled less than three years, or around three years after Christ's crucifixion.

00:23:28.000 Additionally, if you look at ancient New Testaments, you can look at ancient Greek New Testaments, of which there are 5,500 that exist from the first few, of which 50 exist from the first few centuries.

00:23:39.000 You have 15,000.

00:23:41.000 Ancient New Testaments and other languages.

00:23:43.000 So, the idea that there's like no accounting for Christ's existence or the New Testament is fiction, this is the result of very recent rationalizations of atheism.

00:23:52.000 Nobody doubted this, not pagans, not the Roman government, not religious people.

00:23:58.000 Sticks turn. 0.94

00:23:59.000 Thanks, Zach.

00:23:59.000 Sticks turn.

00:24:00.000 Totally, totally wrong.

00:24:01.000 I had a text from the 1800s and 1900s that say the same thing, and they were not written by atheists.

00:24:06.000 They were written by people.

00:24:07.000 Some of them were pagans.

00:24:08.000 Many of them were Christians. 0.72

00:24:11.000 Christians involved with science.

00:24:13.000 They felt that religion could be explained in part by science, science could be informed by religion.

00:24:17.000 It's the basis of eugenic thought.

00:24:20.000 Some of them were written by people who were agnostic or deistic.

00:24:23.000 The concept that you have a Bible that was compiled, oh, it was only compiled in 50 or 60 AD, that doesn't prove the existence of a Jesus.

00:24:32.000 And let us assume there's a Jesus.

00:24:34.000 Which Jesus is it? 1.00

00:24:35.000 Is it the Gnostic Jesus?

00:24:36.000 Is it the Jesus that you happen to believe in?

00:24:39.000 Is it the Mormon Jesus? 0.59

00:24:41.000 How do we know that Joseph Smith didn't find some crazy gold leaf book?

00:24:45.000 We can't know that for sure.

00:24:46.000 What I'm saying is that's a pretty piss poor way to govern anything. 0.98

00:24:50.000 It didn't work when we had majorly Christianity in the US. 0.97

00:24:54.000 It didn't work. 0.92

00:24:55.000 It didn't save the British from fracturing apart.

00:24:58.000 It didn't save the French Empire. 1.00

00:25:00.000 You look at Islam, it doesn't save people. 1.00

00:25:02.000 None of these religious groups ever had. 0.99

00:25:04.000 The only answer is, oddly enough, the one that you seem to have arrived at with your nationalism, which is a sort of tribalism.

00:25:11.000 Paganism is nothing more than the spiritual extension of that same tribal mentality.

00:25:16.000 Okay. 0.65

00:25:17.000 Well, the difference between paganism and Christianity is that Christianity is true at the end of the day. 0.90

00:25:22.000 I mean, we seem to have already conceded that.

00:25:24.000 This is where you both philosophically disagree, though.

00:25:26.000 We've had 2,000 years to order the world.

00:25:29.000 To improve it and look at the world around you.

00:25:33.000 Do you think our task is progressives?

00:25:35.000 Do you think that we believe that we will create the world to come? 0.97

00:25:38.000 I think if you believe that that was the task of the church, Christian is to make money off of the church. 1.00

00:25:45.000 All right. 0.99

00:25:45.000 Guys, let's move on. 0.99

00:25:46.000 Let's move on.

00:25:47.000 Because you guys both fundamentally disagree with your own spiritual beliefs.

00:25:52.000 But what we have in common is behind us the United States of America.

00:25:55.000 Now, Sticks. 0.79

00:25:56.000 If Christianity isn't the best way to improve morality in the United States, what is? 1.00

00:26:01.000 This is for Sticks. 1.00

00:26:02.000 Encouraging people to have morality, but they've got to do it themselves.

00:26:06.000 They've got to have a cultural reason for it.

00:26:07.000 What we've seen in our breakdown of culture is that people no longer feel they have something to live for.

00:26:13.000 Now, you can say, well, then we'll give them Jesus.

00:26:15.000 They can live for Jesus.

00:26:16.000 They can live for the church.

00:26:17.000 We've tried that.

00:26:18.000 It's been tried in Western cultures.

00:26:20.000 It didn't work.

00:26:21.000 People forsook that.

00:26:22.000 Then they chased after everything else under the sun.

00:26:25.000 Something else has to be designed.

00:26:26.000 And it's obvious it can't be religious in its main component.

00:26:30.000 It can't even be paganism in the old, strictly understood sense that some pagan living 2,000 years ago would maybe have.

00:26:37.000 It can be nationalistic.

00:26:38.000 It can be tribalistic. 0.79

00:26:40.000 Ultimately, at the end of the day, though, it won't be Christianity.

00:26:43.000 Christianity is a multicultural, globalized religious force that comes out of the Middle East after multiple tribes plagiarized one another.

00:26:51.000 It was then spread to Rome.

00:26:53.000 It spread throughout the Mediterranean.

00:26:54.000 And then, as it converges and turns into Protestantism, it goes into Northern Europe. 0.61

00:26:59.000 Then, all of a sudden, it improves a little bit, crosses the ocean simply because it was there.

00:27:05.000 And then you have the promulgation of Christianity within this hemisphere from both the Catholic.

00:27:09.000 Than the Protestant side.

00:27:11.000 It is a multicultural religion that, mainly, if you look today in the world, the most religious Christians that you'll find, funnily enough, are in places like West Africa or Mexico. 0.58

00:27:22.000 Now, what I would say is if Catholicism or Christianity were so beneficial or so great for a culture, why aren't they first world countries?

00:27:30.000 Why isn't Brazil a superpower by now?

00:27:33.000 Why isn't Mexico much more developed? 1.00

00:27:35.000 Why aren't they the ones saying, hey, we're going to build a wall, keep these godless fucking Americans out? 1.00

00:27:40.000 Why isn't that happening? 1.00

00:27:41.000 Why does it seem like the supposedly decadent, godless culture that supposedly is degenerated and collapsing is the one trying to safeguard itself against these others?

00:27:51.000 Vic, your response.

00:27:52.000 Yeah, you know what I think is fascinating is you were asked the question of how do we improve morals in the United States?

00:27:57.000 And it turns into this screed, this derisive screed with this derision about Christianity.

00:28:03.000 It's just very interesting how you simply cannot contain your hatred for the religion.

00:28:08.000 And that's very interesting.

00:28:09.000 That's number one.

00:28:09.000 No, it's certainly not hatred for the religion.

00:28:11.000 We're talking about Islam.

00:28:12.000 Hey, I didn't interrupt you, my friend.

00:28:14.000 I didn't interrupt you.

00:28:15.000 Number two, I think it's very interesting that sticks can even talk about something like morality that simply could not exist without a God.

00:28:22.000 Certainly, you would have subjective morality.

00:28:25.000 You could have your personal morality, which, again, is entirely up to you and your practice.

00:28:30.000 But can we define that certain things are right and certain things are objectively wrong without religion, without the existence of a God?

00:28:36.000 The answer is no.

00:28:37.000 And so, how could we even, what does this talk about?

00:28:40.000 How do we restore morality in the United States if we don't even, if there is no such thing as, Morality as objectively understood in the real world, but only in our subjective interpretation.

00:28:49.000 For example, as Stick says that raping children is wrong, if there is no God, that's his personal opinion.

00:28:56.000 That is his subjective opinion on what is moral.

00:28:59.000 If I say, no, I think it's right, I think it's the best thing in the world, well, the only thing he can say is he disagrees with me and he finds that distasteful.

00:29:06.000 Well, a lot of different people have a lot of different feelings on what is moral and what isn't.

00:29:10.000 Look at the country today, right and left.

00:29:12.000 Some people think abortion is okay, some people think it's not. 0.63

00:29:15.000 Some people think it's okay to mutilate children and make them transgender, some people think it's not.

00:29:19.000 Some people think it's okay to go to war with other countries and on and on and on.

00:29:23.000 And all we have to mediate these moral conflicts is well, people have this personal spirituality and the Catholic Church is a corporation.

00:29:33.000 There is no answer to that question.

00:29:34.000 There is simply no answer.

00:29:36.000 There is no morality outside of God, objectively understood.

00:29:39.000 And then to address the question of Christianity is multicultural, I mean, to read the Old Testament and believe that Christianity is multicultural, to read, for example, Genesis, the Tower of Babel.

00:29:50.000 Where God created the nations, where he scattered them and divided them by language and all the rest.

00:29:56.000 And then additionally, well, but the Old Testament is the first book in the Christian Bible.

00:30:01.000 And then to look at the Old Testament, which is a story about God favoring one tribe over others, go forth and multiply.

00:30:08.000 It's a message of natalism, it's a message of life.

00:30:11.000 Go forth and then he helps them conquer other neighbors.

00:30:13.000 And then additionally, you could look in and I'll pull this up just for you because I was interested in this.

00:30:19.000 You're bringing up so many things.

00:30:20.000 I got to respond to this.

00:30:21.000 Well, and you went all over the place about, you know, Wealth and Mexico isn't rich and all this.

00:30:26.000 If you actually look at the Catechism of the Catholic Church about immigration, because this is a common myth, if you look at the Catechism of the Catholic Church 2241, it says, the more prosperous nations are obliged to the extent that they are able to welcome the foreigner in search of the security and the means of livelihood which he cannot find in his country of origin.

00:30:48.000 And many people would say, oh, that's we can interpret that as they want mass immigration, but it does say in terms of how they are able.

00:30:56.000 Additionally, it says, Political authorities, for the sake of the common good for which they are responsible, may make the exercise of the right to immigrate subject to various juridical conditions, especially with regard to the immigrants' duties towards their country of adoption.

00:31:11.000 Immigrants are obliged to respect with gratitude the material and spiritual heritage of the country that receives them, to obey its laws, and to assist in carrying its civic burdens.

00:31:22.000 Does that sound like mass immigration to you folks?

00:31:24.000 I don't think so.

00:31:25.000 All right, Nick, you broke it down.

00:31:27.000 We got to give Sticks a chance to respond.

00:31:29.000 Jackson.

00:31:29.000 Jackson, that's not in the way you interpret it, no, but the Pope seems to interpret it a different way.

00:31:34.000 I think that most Catholics are going to listen to him over you, which might be unfortunate for the Catholic churches and Western civilization's survival in the future. 0.98

00:31:42.000 It's funny that you would bring up the Vatican or Catholicism at all in the realm of, oh, well, raping babies. 0.92

00:31:48.000 I think that if you were to say that you thought that was a good thing, you'd be actually agreeing with the Catholic church, oddly enough. 0.96

00:31:54.000 If we look at like Ratzinger, who, by the way, was put in there by Pope John Paul to see over.

00:32:00.000 The church abuse scandals shuttled people around, then becomes Pope.

00:32:04.000 What a holy organization.

00:32:07.000 Your entire argument regarding the Old Testament is funny because you're talking about, oh, well, you know, God, the Tower of Babel, which by the way is a Babylonian myth that the Jews adapted and changed around.

00:32:18.000 It's literally recorded within Babylonian lore on their, I believe, cuneiform, or I don't know if it dates to the Sumerian period. 0.62

00:32:26.000 Literally speaking, you are taking a Zionistic explanation and using that to promulgate your concept of New Testament post nationalism.

00:32:37.000 Somehow, it appears.

00:32:39.000 I'm not exactly.

00:32:40.000 Can you please explain to me why would you use the Old Testament, which is Jewish?

00:32:45.000 Is that your response? 0.85

00:32:46.000 According to the Jews, why would you use that to prop up, you know, like I don't know what form of nationalism you would want to prop up? 1.00

00:32:55.000 First of all, religion. 0.76

00:32:57.000 I think it's hilarious how I bring all the facts and I really just deconstruct the heart of the argument about morality, and you respond with kind of this, you know, Actually, it's Babylonian roots.

00:33:10.000 Well, here's why.

00:33:11.000 To answer the nationalistic matters, you're not going to touch the question of morality. 0.98

00:33:15.000 I'll get to the Jewish part of it. 0.58

00:33:18.000 Here's the common misconception about Judaism and Christianity the Jews rejected Jesus Christ.

00:33:25.000 The modern Jews that you see today are derived from the rabbinical, the Talmudic tradition.

00:33:30.000 These are the Pharisees that were responsible for the crucifixion of Christ.

00:33:34.000 So to say that the Jews of the Old Testament are in any way bearing any kind of resemblance to the Jews of today, which see their scripture not as Not as the five books of Moses, but as the Talmud, as rabbinical law and the halahat, you know, that all that kind of stuff is just evident that you don't know the facts.

00:33:50.000 That's number one.

00:33:51.000 But then number two, the Old Testament, that is the first covenant.

00:33:56.000 I mean, Testament means covenant. 0.52

00:33:58.000 That's the first covenant that God makes, the Christian God makes with people on earth, which is the Jewish people. 0.78

00:34:04.000 Now, Jesus Christ came to save the Jewish people and they rejected him. 0.78

00:34:08.000 And so Jesus Christ then became a savior for all mankind.

00:34:11.000 So this is just betraying a fundamental misunderstanding of what.

00:34:15.000 Judaism is today, and then to invoke Zionism, which is a 19th century political ideology, again, which says we should have the Holy Land.

00:34:23.000 I mean, nowhere can you find this in the Bible.

00:34:25.000 Maybe you could find it in the Schofield Bible, which is, again, a total and complete mistranslation of the Bible.

00:34:32.000 But I mean, you just don't understand what you're talking about.

00:34:36.000 My point is, though, you want to talk about morality.

00:34:39.000 Okay, let's touch upon that.

00:34:41.000 Your view of morality is informed by, in part, your interpretation of that.

00:34:41.000 Okay.

00:34:47.000 Catholicism, what I am saying to you is, does it not matter that throughout time Christians have looked at the same scripture, interpreted it differently, translated it differently, schismed into groups which see it differently?

00:34:59.000 The Pope sees it differently, I believe, than you.

00:35:02.000 What makes you think that you're superior to any of these other groups?

00:35:05.000 And how, therefore, if there is such confusion, how can that even be used for the objective standard of morality that you hope to impart upon a state because you see it as degenerating, as decaying, maybe away into atheism or?

00:35:21.000 Or sexual immorality, as you would say it, or any of these other problems, how is it going to solve anything?

00:35:26.000 Whereas with paganism, it's fairly cut and dry.

00:35:30.000 You don't really need to interpret it.

00:35:32.000 Have you read Plato's Republic?

00:35:34.000 Plato comes out in part of his arguments, or I should say Socrates, rather, through this.

00:35:40.000 Speaking of the concept that a religion should be actually actively designed by the state, for instance, telling people, it would be a lie, it would be a mythology, telling people, oh, the reason why there's inequality in our culture is people were.

00:35:52.000 Formed out of different metals in the earth.

00:35:54.000 So the soldier, he was formed from iron, and this worker was formed from copper, and this person was formed from clay or silver or whatever.

00:36:01.000 And so this helps to stabilize the culture.

00:36:03.000 The idea is that creating that morality, whether objective or whether it's being just sort of compiled as a stand in for real spirituality, now it has a purpose, a pragmatic purpose.

00:36:14.000 Pragmatism matters.

00:36:15.000 What is pragmatic about using the same Christianity that has failed for over 1,500 total years to try to govern cultures? 0.96

00:36:24.000 Well, you're asking two questions. 0.99

00:36:24.000 All right. 0.99

00:36:26.000 The first question is about how is the Pope the infallible Jew driven? 0.85

00:36:32.000 That's not what I'm saying.

00:36:34.000 I didn't tell people infallibility.

00:36:35.000 I'm saying.

00:36:36.000 Why I'm saying that the Pope with his high power degree in his white robe sitting in the Vatican as the head of Catholicism, according to most Catholics, why would a Christian or a Catholic in specific hold your interpretation of dogma maybe to be better than his?

00:36:51.000 Because he'll come out and say, Well, build bridges, don't build walls.

00:36:55.000 Oh, but sticks, walls being a mistake here.

00:36:58.000 I'm not going to judge this group of people.

00:37:00.000 Why is it that your interpretation of that same general?

00:37:04.000 I will tell you, I will tell you because Pope Francis, when Pope Francis goes out and talks about politics.

00:37:11.000 He is not using his power of papal infallibility.

00:37:14.000 When the Pope goes out there and says things like, we should be building bridges and we should take care of the earth, this is not an invocation of papal infallibility.

00:37:22.000 So you exonerate him for his personal views?

00:37:26.000 I'm not exonerating anybody.

00:37:27.000 I'm simply saying that to say that, well, here is this authority, sure, I mean, he is an authority in the church and people respect what he has to say, but the catechism is what's, that's what the Catholic Church believes, that's what's doctrinal.

00:37:41.000 And so, if you read that and you say that the immigrants have to welcome X, Y, and Z, and you read exactly what it says, what is actually doctrinally Catholic, there's no argument that you can make.

00:37:50.000 So, you have to say, oh, well, the Pope said some touchy feely things about building bridges, which are not infallible, which is him.

00:37:58.000 I don't know what he's saying by that.

00:38:00.000 Maybe he's saying we should remember to keep that in mind.

00:38:02.000 We're talking about walls and everything.

00:38:04.000 Who knows?

00:38:05.000 But if we're actually looking at doctrinal Catholicism, whether Pope Francis comes and goes, whether there's a new Pope or an old Pope, that is what it says about immigration.

00:38:13.000 And Catholics can read that.

00:38:14.000 And they can understand that.

00:38:15.000 Now, if the Pope said, and I would concede this if the Pope said, and he invoked his powers infallibly and he was contributing to the dogma, if he was going into that function and he said all that, then I would say we would have a problem.

00:38:28.000 But he didn't do that.

00:38:29.000 He's speaking as simply a Catholic.

00:38:32.000 And then, and again, you keep bringing up this problem of, well, there's problems.

00:38:38.000 Christianity doesn't solve everything, Christianity is not a panacea.

00:38:43.000 You don't, you know, you look at Christian countries and they're not superpowers or not first world countries.

00:38:48.000 And Christianity was never intended to be this political solution to all problems.

00:38:53.000 It was never intended to cure poverty.

00:38:55.000 That's not why we believe it.

00:38:57.000 It is not a consequentialist belief in Christianity.

00:39:01.000 We don't adopt Christianity because we believe it'll make us better off, it'll make us more wealthy.

00:39:06.000 We believe it because it's a truth.

00:39:07.000 And if our souls are in communion with God, that's a good thing.

00:39:10.000 It's ultimately a rejection of the temporal world.

00:39:14.000 And I would ask you you look at the suffering around the world, you look at people being blown to smithereens, people getting executed, you look at horrible injustices.

00:39:22.000 And me, As a Catholic, I can sit well with that because this can be rectified in another life. 1.00

00:39:28.000 For atheists, there is no justice. 1.00

00:39:31.000 Bad thing. 1.00

00:39:32.000 I'm not even.

00:39:33.000 There's no such thing. 0.97

00:39:34.000 You're an apathy. 0.97

00:39:36.000 You're an apathy. 0.99

00:39:37.000 All right, Sticks' turn to respond.

00:39:38.000 Just wrap it up in like 20 seconds.

00:39:40.000 Okay, Sticks' turn. 0.98

00:39:41.000 You're saying, therefore, it doesn't really matter so much to you if things in the world are fucked up. 0.98

00:39:46.000 So why would you be a nationalist? 0.99

00:39:47.000 Why the hell would you care if the white race was maintained? 0.86

00:39:50.000 Why would you care if a nation was maintained? 0.98

00:39:53.000 So, really, if you're going down that road where you're saying, well, you know, in the afterlife, it's all going to be great.

00:39:58.000 Well, also in the afterlife, I guess there won't be a problem with race.

00:40:02.000 Well, then that kind of blows some of your views out of the water.

00:40:05.000 Meanwhile, you're basically saying the Pope isn't even a spiritual authority unless he invokes his infallibility, then we've got a problem.

00:40:12.000 But if the Pope comes out as the highest man in Catholicism and simply suggests that you take in more immigrants, simply suggests that, oh, well, you know, close borders is a bad thing, that won't have a measurable impact upon the behavior of Catholic world leaders, of Catholic laypeople towards the. 0.80

00:40:29.000 I'm not saying it doesn't.

00:40:30.000 Exactly.

00:40:30.000 It'll have a measurable impact.

00:40:32.000 So what the hell does it matter?

00:40:33.000 Well, I mean, it's. 0.68

00:40:35.000 The Protestant doesn't care if he invokes papal infallibility. 0.71

00:40:39.000 Here's why.

00:40:39.000 Because again, you have to, you keep saying that Christians or Catholics are the same as Catholic doctrine and Christian doctrine.

00:40:47.000 These are very different things.

00:40:49.000 The Pope can say one thing today, he can say another thing tomorrow, but the catechism does not change.

00:40:54.000 The magisterium does not change.

00:40:57.000 The wisdom does not change that is in the doctrine.

00:41:00.000 So you're talking about men, which Christ, and when he established his church, he never said that the people in the church.

00:41:07.000 Would be without sin.

00:41:08.000 He never said that.

00:41:09.000 He never said that the Pope would be without sin.

00:41:12.000 He never, the only people that are without sin in the Christian religion are Jesus Christ and Mary.

00:41:17.000 And that's it.

00:41:18.000 All right.

00:41:18.000 So to try and ascribe on, wait, wait, wait.

00:41:21.000 You got it.

00:41:22.000 Hey, Fuentes, you got about a minute and then we'll give Stix a final word on this.

00:41:27.000 I'll try and move on to another question.

00:41:29.000 Yeah.

00:41:30.000 Yeah.

00:41:31.000 So Fuentes, you got this and then Stix, you got the floor.

00:41:34.000 So to try and ascribe this, you know, oh, well, because the Pope said something I disagree with, or this person said something I disagree with, well, Throughout Christianity, throughout Catholicism, it's just very silly. 0.66

00:41:43.000 That's number one. 0.51

00:41:44.000 And then number two, this idea that just because we don't believe that Christianity is a panacea for temporal problems, then we just, whatever, it can all go to hell.

00:41:55.000 Everything can just, you know, who cares?

00:41:57.000 Very different things.

00:41:58.000 Christianity can improve, it has improved.

00:42:01.000 You look at the most prosperous, the most successful countries in the history of the world, they're all Christian.

00:42:05.000 Great Britain, the United States, Germany, when it was at its industrial peak, Russia, an Orthodox country.

00:42:12.000 Not the Soviet Union, obviously, but the Russian Empire, all Christian countries.

00:42:16.000 I don't think anybody would dispute the fact that Christendom is responsible for the scientific revolution, for reason, for everything in the modern world we see today.

00:42:24.000 And other countries may have taken part in it, but we're the progenitors of it.

00:42:27.000 That's what Christianity has offered the world.

00:42:29.000 Christianity was actually antithetical to the scientific revolution.

00:42:34.000 I can look back at texts and see, oh, well, yeah, the church said that the world was not indeed round, despite the fact that it was widely known at the time. 0.57

00:42:44.000 And used to occasionally kill people for that.

00:42:46.000 Now, granted, that was less common than an atheist would say.

00:42:50.000 But you keep dragging out this one funny argument.

00:42:52.000 Why is it that we are only arguing about the relative virtue of Christendom and we're not also saying, hey, there's relative virtue to paganism?

00:43:01.000 Because those cultures, again, before Catholicism invaded, in some cases hundreds of years into the Christian period within Rome, depending on the proximity to the Mediterranean basin, there was already culture.

00:43:15.000 There was already civilization.

00:43:17.000 People were already governing themselves.

00:43:18.000 They already had kingdoms.

00:43:20.000 They already had fortresses and walls and everything else that the Romans had.

00:43:24.000 The difference is, of course, they didn't have as much manpower.

00:43:26.000 Ultimately, it boiled down to politics.

00:43:28.000 Just like Rome ultimately only even adopted Christendom to have a standardized religion, if it had been up to the military, they would have become Mithraists. 0.82

00:43:37.000 That was the main military call. 0.81

00:43:39.000 You'd be speaking probably a language other than English right now, and you'd be worshiping Mithra.

00:43:44.000 Essentially, you'd still be worshiping a Christ like figure, oddly enough, because it coincided.

00:43:50.000 The birthday would be the same.

00:43:51.000 There'd be some of the sun imagery in the most literal sense. 0.92

00:43:55.000 I fail to see, though, how is it that these groups, in spite of not being Christian, they had order, they had law and order, they had virtue, they had a concept of right and wrong.

00:44:05.000 It doesn't require Jesus to have an objective view of right and wrong. 0.99

00:44:09.000 The Muslims have a very objective view of what is or is not right. 1.00

00:44:12.000 It's just a different one from what you have. 1.00

00:44:14.000 And I'm sure you'd say, well, you know, it's degenerated too.

00:44:17.000 Okay, yeah, I would agree with you.

00:44:19.000 Where do you make the objective argument then?

00:44:21.000 And do you really, by the way, I think there's one last thing I'd like to say.

00:44:25.000 Sure. 0.94

00:44:25.000 Within the constitutional framework of the US, why would you want to set a legal precedent for the use of a religion, perhaps for moral reasons at all, when we've got Islam invading the Western world and it seems like Christian leaders don't want to do anything about it despite routinely being religious, so called? 0.94

00:44:42.000 Sure. 0.95

00:44:43.000 So, first, to address the scientific revolution argument, the church and science have been at war forever.

00:44:49.000 I mean, this is middle school level history.

00:44:52.000 We all know, I think everybody who knows anything about the Middle Ages understands that.

00:44:57.000 The church actually invented the university system.

00:45:00.000 If you actually look back at the high or the high middle ages, the reason that we even have university at all is because, or at least the modern university in the way that we look at it. 0.99

00:45:09.000 Muslims make the same argument. 0.96

00:45:11.000 The church makes the same argument. 0.98

00:45:13.000 We invented this in Western Europe.

00:45:15.000 In Western Europe, we invented it.

00:45:17.000 And hey, listen, I'll let you finish.

00:45:20.000 I'll let you finish.

00:45:20.000 Maybe this is maybe we need some objective morality on interrupting, right?

00:45:24.000 But then you look at we invented the university system.

00:45:26.000 Not only that, but if you look at the foremost.

00:45:29.000 Really, the Catholic Church's official philosopher of the church, Thomas Aquinas, the philosophers who justified the existence of God, the early church fathers, these were not people who were based on superstitious belief and they were numbering the stars.

00:45:42.000 Thomas Aquinas set out to find how can we, through reason and rationality, create a metaphysical demonstration for God's existence.

00:45:50.000 And this was back in, this was a thousand years ago.

00:45:53.000 And this is the premier philosopher of Christianity.

00:45:56.000 Additionally, you had Galileo, you had Jesuits who agreed with Galileo, you had Jesuits who preached Galileo.

00:46:03.000 You know, so you talk about some of these early, oh, well, people were thrown out because they didn't believe in what the church said.

00:46:08.000 One of the reasons why Galileo was thrown in jail by the church was because he did not have, he did not prove his argument.

00:46:14.000 His early arguments about the earth revolving around the sun was based on tides, saying that the tides were shaken up in a particular way, had nothing to do with anything else.

00:46:23.000 And there were very good arguments against it that were made by the church.

00:46:26.000 And then additionally, not only was he challenging the church on this doctrine and he couldn't even prove it at the time, but on top of that, on top of that, he was.

00:46:33.000 Reinterpreting Bible verses.

00:46:36.000 He was out there saying the church was misinterpreting the Bible.

00:46:38.000 This was 100 years after the Protestant Reformation, and he was a layman challenging the church on the Bible.

00:46:45.000 I mean, so there were so many other factors in that.

00:46:49.000 It is not a coincidence that the scientific revolution was born out of Christianity, that the Enlightenment was born out of Christianity.

00:46:55.000 Take any one of your friends from the scientific revolution.

00:46:59.000 Newton, for example, was a Catholic, okay?

00:47:01.000 And you look at many of the scientists, and they were Christians. 0.97

00:47:04.000 So, That is a scientific myth. 1.00

00:47:07.000 I don't know.

00:47:07.000 Is Al going to cut me off or can we proceed?

00:47:09.000 No, that was good.

00:47:09.000 Hey, Sticks is going to have a chance to respond.

00:47:11.000 I mean, to respond.

00:47:13.000 This is unreal.

00:47:14.000 And then after Sticks' response, we're almost at halftime, which is unreal.

00:47:19.000 So we'll take some super chat questions at halftime, the good ones.

00:47:23.000 So if you guys want to submit a question, do that.

00:47:24.000 I see some really good ones here.

00:47:26.000 So Sticks will respond to that real quick.

00:47:28.000 Yeah, to let the super chat people ahead, I'll try to keep it short.

00:47:31.000 I'll just say this it seems like Newton is constantly brought up, but no Christian apologist for religiosity ever brings up Ben Franklin.

00:47:39.000 They don't want to bring up many of these other Christian individuals who ultimately were deists, very intelligent, yes, rational and scientific. 0.81

00:47:47.000 It's not organized religion that they liked, though.

00:47:50.000 They're like, yeah, there's a God, there's a Jesus Christ.

00:47:52.000 Church, I don't have time for that.

00:47:54.000 I'm going to my laboratory.

00:47:55.000 Okay, okay.

00:47:57.000 So, first question we got here Can either guest recommend an intermediate weight training program?

00:48:02.000 Absolutely not.

00:48:03.000 That's totally unrelated.

00:48:05.000 Email me because this is the Chadcast and I will respond and I will give you a great intermediate weight training program.

00:48:11.000 Do you think that religion is that important? 0.51

00:48:13.000 We'll start with Nick.

00:48:14.000 Or should we focus on more building localized and involved communities?

00:48:19.000 This is from James Boogley.

00:48:21.000 The prior one was from Capable Guardian.

00:48:23.000 So.

00:48:24.000 Yeah, sure.

00:48:25.000 How do you think you build organized, involved communities but through religion?

00:48:29.000 I mean, what do you think you do when you go to church but you pray in communion with fellow believers?

00:48:34.000 And for all these people who say, well, there are these secular concerns that supersede religion, religion is the center, it's the core of all of them.

00:48:42.000 At the end of the day, if you can't ask yourself, why are we doing this?

00:48:45.000 Why are we here?

00:48:47.000 What is the teleological reason that we exist?

00:48:49.000 I think it's very difficult to get on with any kind of affair, at least if you have any questions about what's going on.

00:48:55.000 So, I think that the question of, well, should religion be more important or building communities?

00:49:00.000 I think the question is one in the same build a community of believers, people that are motivated enough by their belief in the existence of God that they could drink death like water, as Fulton Sheen said.

00:49:09.000 That's the kind of conviction we need.

00:49:11.000 Sticks your response.

00:49:11.000 Wow.

00:49:12.000 I would say it doesn't matter whether it's religious or not.

00:49:15.000 It's perfectly acceptable to structure your culture around religion.

00:49:19.000 I would just prefer that, number one, there is secularity in part in the state, there has to be some degree of tolerance for people who dissent because even that native population within that religion will.

00:49:30.000 Over time, because it's malleable, there will be new opinions that arise and so forth.

00:49:34.000 Number two, you run the risk, I think, as you would with anything else in all honesty, not just a religion.

00:49:40.000 You run the risk at that point of using religion as sort of the central focus of your culture, of people just organizing around religion, becoming very zealous, but ultimately the state sort of lags off, I would say.

00:49:53.000 Okay, great.

00:49:54.000 And this one we'll start with Sticks and then we'll go to Fuentes.

00:50:00.000 Constantine's commenter, commenter, I'm sorry.

00:50:03.000 Wouldn't you say the bigger issue is maintaining homogeneity of belief, whether it be Catholic, pagan, Muslim, etc.?

00:50:13.000 No, because if you look at some homogenous cultures, like most of the Islamic world, they're no better off. 0.86

00:50:18.000 There are homogenous countries in Africa, whether they're Islamic, Christian, some of them are quasi paganistic, spiritualistic, and in a rudimentary sense, they just don't do well. 0.74

00:50:29.000 And it's not just because of colonialism.

00:50:31.000 I know that the New Agers on the left will say, well, We rob them of their resources, we evil Westerners, so that's why some of these countries are messed up.

00:50:39.000 No, that's not why.

00:50:40.000 The homogeneity of their culture also isn't helping them.

00:50:44.000 What it is, is in a secular sense, the structures that they have created within their culture simply don't seem to have the sort of lasting stability that they need.

00:50:52.000 I would say it's perfectly fine to have a mixed culture.

00:50:55.000 Like we see within the United States, even when it was mostly Christian, it's a mix of different Christian backgrounds.

00:51:01.000 There were also Jews, Mormons, which is the sort of American version of Christianity, and pagans as well.

00:51:07.000 Mesoamerican religion, some of the Norse coming in as well.

00:51:10.000 And it worked. 0.96

00:51:11.000 It worked just fine.

00:51:12.000 What really became the problem is that now the state in the Western world is trying to strip everyone of every identity that they have.

00:51:21.000 It's not so much the particular religion, it's that they don't want them to have any spiritual background, any national loyalty, any family structure.

00:51:29.000 That's really what's become the issue, I think, at this point.

00:51:31.000 Nick, your response.

00:51:33.000 Yeah, I actually agree with Stix on that last point about the state and this corporatist kind of thing that we have now.

00:51:40.000 Stripping people of their identities.

00:51:41.000 That's probably the biggest problem that we have. 0.94

00:51:43.000 On the question of homogeneity, it's important to distinguish between homogeneous and homogeneous because they're different.

00:51:49.000 But to get to the point, I think we believe in Christianity, or I believe in Christianity and Catholicism, because it's a truth.

00:51:57.000 And I think that a country is stronger when it abides by the truth, when it's in cohesion, it's in harmony with the person who made the universe.

00:52:05.000 So I don't think it's necessarily about homogeneity.

00:52:08.000 I think it's about what is true, and are we in accordance with that?

00:52:13.000 And I guess I agree with Sticks to some extent that religious homogeneity isn't necessarily all that it's cracked up to be.

00:52:20.000 But I guess I disagree for different reasons.

00:52:22.000 Okay.

00:52:24.000 Randy Williams, I'm assuming you're religious.

00:52:26.000 He says, Gentlemen, I'm Gen X raising two children, 17 boys, 16 year old girls.

00:52:31.000 Both kids, compared to peers, I'm assuming they're not religious, seem to be instilled with a better ideal of future, love, and truth.

00:52:39.000 Counter argument to the alternative.

00:52:43.000 Yeah, it's a little bit unspecific, Randy Williams.

00:52:45.000 Are you Christian or not?

00:52:46.000 Can you please specify?

00:52:48.000 And we will get back to you because it's kind of confusing.

00:52:51.000 He doesn't really specify whether he's Christian or not.

00:52:53.000 So, Randy, we really appreciate it.

00:52:56.000 Please get back to us on that.

00:52:57.000 Just donate like a dollar and then I'll get the notification.

00:53:00.000 So, I don't want to dismiss your question, Randy.

00:53:02.000 I really appreciate it.

00:53:03.000 But it would be better if you told us whether you were Christian or not.

00:53:07.000 I'm assuming it, but I'm not going to have these guys answer a question that needs to be assumed.

00:53:13.000 So, anyways, other question Sticks, could you elaborate on how the end of organized religion can help more spiritually focused Christians like me?

00:53:23.000 Exactly.

00:53:24.000 When you have organized religion, I think the tendency for a lot of people is they get lazy.

00:53:29.000 They listen to somebody else tell them what to believe.

00:53:31.000 They don't really search any deeper themselves.

00:53:34.000 What I've learned through years of literally working with spiritual materials is there's a great appreciation to be had for different opinions.

00:53:41.000 Ultimately, at the end of the day, you can believe that one is the truth.

00:53:45.000 Nick believes, hey, it's self evident.

00:53:47.000 There's a God.

00:53:48.000 It's this particular God.

00:53:49.000 I happen to disagree.

00:53:51.000 Some people agree with him, some won't.

00:53:53.000 But at the end of the day, then, if you assume that that's true, why not at least investigate others?

00:53:57.000 Things.

00:53:58.000 Why do you need a church per se that might end up becoming corrupted to tell you what to believe in?

00:54:03.000 Because if the church were really all that, if it weren't capable of being corrupted, you wouldn't have so many of the problems inherent in these things.

00:54:11.000 It's not like paganism, which is very tribal, it's also very individualistic in many cases.

00:54:16.000 There's a family element, there's certainly a nationalistic one.

00:54:19.000 Ultimately, though, there's no ambiguity involved.

00:54:23.000 You either are or are not a noble person according to those things.

00:54:27.000 There's no, hey, I'm a Christian, therefore I did a bad thing, but I can be forgiven.

00:54:31.000 No, there's no forgiveness for that.

00:54:33.000 Be a good person.

00:54:34.000 Don't do it again.

00:54:36.000 Okay.

00:54:37.000 Well, to take the first point, you said I believed it was self evident that God exists.

00:54:41.000 And this is just very, very brief.

00:54:43.000 I believe that God exists because of the cosmological arguments made by Aquinas and the teleological argument, not like self evident.

00:54:50.000 But that's beside the point.

00:54:51.000 To answer the question about organized religion, I don't know where this contempt for organization comes from.

00:54:58.000 Organization is not like hated in any other way, shape, or form, whether it's spontaneous or otherwise.

00:55:04.000 The reason that we need organization, the reason to answer Styx's question, why do we need a church to tell us what's right and wrong?

00:55:10.000 This is actually a very good question.

00:55:11.000 And this is one that the Catholic Church alone can answer.

00:55:14.000 There has to be authority.

00:55:16.000 All authority in the world means nothing unless it comes from God, unless it comes from without, from another person.

00:55:23.000 Otherwise, you could say, well, you're just another man.

00:55:25.000 What do you know?

00:55:26.000 But with the Catholic Church, we have the distinction that Jesus Christ prayed for the faith of Peter.

00:55:32.000 He said he's going to build his church on the rock, which is Peter, and his successors now.

00:55:37.000 Are protected from fallibility by Jesus Christ.

00:55:40.000 And the reason why this is necessary is because compare yourself, a Christian who reads the Bible and your understanding of it is pretty mainstream compared to other Protestants or Catholics or whatever, a Western conception of Christianity. 0.57

00:55:51.000 Now, compare that to some of these Catholics in Central and South America, where they fuse it with tribal folk religions. 0.74

00:55:59.000 There's one that's based on the saint of death, where there's executions, there's horrible violence, and they interpret the Bible in such a way that's repugnant to us. 0.97

00:56:07.000 And if you don't believe that there's an authority that says one is Christian and one is not, Well, their interpretation is just as good as yours. 0.88

00:56:13.000 And there is no argument against that. 0.94

00:56:15.000 I mean, that's not to say that it's just as good. 0.90

00:56:17.000 It's to say that we don't know because there is no authority telling us a Christian is this and not that.

00:56:23.000 The Bible is this and not that. 0.99

00:56:24.000 Otherwise, an African, some tribal person in Central and South America who's chopping off heads and say, hey, well, I'm a Christian. 1.00

00:56:31.000 I'm just as Christian as you are. 1.00

00:56:32.000 And who are you to say otherwise?

00:56:33.000 And there's no answer.

00:56:35.000 But that claim of objectivity is itself a subjective claim.

00:56:39.000 It's not based in observable evidence that any person, if it were, There would be no question about which religion was true.

00:56:45.000 Everyone would be members of that same Christian religion, the one true faith, I'm sure you would call it.

00:56:51.000 Which, how do you determine, therefore, that the authority in an objective sense should be listened to at all by people who already disagree?

00:56:58.000 Well, what it is, is you're presuming, I have to presume that your primordial argument, that your authority figure and your religion are true in order to take the argument for their trueness seriously.

00:57:09.000 It's circular reasoning, and it's fine.

00:57:12.000 It absolutely is, because you're saying.

00:57:12.000 It is.

00:57:15.000 My God exists.

00:57:16.000 This is the true religion.

00:57:17.000 We need an authority to establish what that is.

00:57:20.000 Why should I consider that particular authority? 0.54

00:57:23.000 That's like saying that some berserker from some pagan tribe, I'm just going to listen to this dude. 0.88

00:57:27.000 He knows what it's about.

00:57:28.000 He saw the spirit in the sky or something.

00:57:30.000 Well, no, I'd like to have my own experiences.

00:57:33.000 I've had spiritual experiences.

00:57:34.000 There's a reason I'm not an atheist, there's a reason I'm not anti spiritualistic like I was many years ago.

00:57:40.000 But that doesn't lead me to believe that somebody else needs to tell me how to interpret what I see.

00:57:45.000 Well, here's why that's different.

00:57:47.000 Here's why that's not true.

00:57:48.000 We have the Bible, and there's so much evidence that Jesus Christ was the Son of God.

00:57:53.000 You could look at the prophecies in the Old Testament, of which there are 456.

00:57:57.000 The odds that they could all come true is astronomical.

00:58:00.000 You could look at the historicity of the New Testament, which many scholars do not refute up until very recently.

00:58:06.000 But then outside of that, you can also look at the philosophy, which, by the way, it has never been disproved.

00:58:12.000 The four cosmological arguments that are made by Aquinas, the teleological argument, these have never been disproved.

00:58:18.000 So there are thousands of years.

00:58:20.000 Of a philosophy, of theology that has not been debunked, that probably hasn't even been read by the new atheists that exist, which is why we can demonstrate metaphysically through reason that God exists.

00:58:31.000 And then when we look at the historical record, we can judge whether Christ was divine or not.

00:58:35.000 If you accept these precepts based on reason and based on the historicity of the New Testament and the divinity of Christ, then you can come together and say, well, if God is real, and then we look at the evidence that Christ's tomb was empty and he was crucified and people did have eyewitness accounts that he rose again, well, then he's probably God's son.

00:58:54.000 And if he's God's son, then what he says is true.

00:58:56.000 And if what he says is true, then we know that Peter is the rock of the church.

00:59:00.000 He was handed the keys of the kingdom to heaven.

00:59:03.000 And if we understand all of that being true, all of that we acknowledge, and there's lots of arguments for that, but this is the demonstration of it, then we understand that his successors in the papacy are an authority on what is Christian, what is the word of God.

00:59:16.000 And so that's, it doesn't, it's not circular reasoning.

00:59:18.000 It doesn't come from, well, we just trust that guy.

00:59:20.000 It comes from thousands of years of history, of theology, of metaphysics, of all.

00:59:25.000 But atheists would like to convince.

00:59:26.000 It's based on opinion. 0.93

00:59:28.000 What's that?

00:59:29.000 Opinion upon opinion.

00:59:31.000 Yeah.

00:59:32.000 Well, we know that in the nihilistic, relativist world of paganism, I mean, we really don't believe in reason.

00:59:38.000 Nothing relativistic, and I don't believe Nick.

00:59:41.000 You know nothing, Nick.

00:59:42.000 You know little about paganism.

00:59:44.000 You conflated it with satanism when you were responding to one of your viewers.

00:59:48.000 You were a satanist and I I wrong.

00:59:50.000 That's not what you said.

00:59:52.000 You said satanism, paganism.

00:59:53.000 What's the difference? 0.77

00:59:54.000 Yeah, it's all the same to me.

00:59:55.000 Satanism is atheistic, satanism is might is right.

00:59:59.000 Basically, it's a libertarian manifesto from the 20s that Levee plagiarized.

01:00:03.000 That's what the cos represent.

01:00:04.000 But you understand the point that was being made if it's not Christian.

01:00:07.000 The point you were making is that they were similar in some, in some metaphysical manner.

01:00:11.000 I can point you To many books from especially the Eugenic period, a period I'm sure you have an appreciation for, that'll say, Oh, the structure of the atom, the action of radium, and all of these scientific principles prove that Jesus was a mystic sorcerer, essentially.

01:00:26.000 Theosophy is true, and we can have the utopia now, and Atlantis existed, and here's death rays, and all this stuff.

01:00:31.000 You can actually read this stuff.

01:00:33.000 Read William Dower sometime.

01:00:35.000 I can look for all sorts of texts on these subjects, but the fact that I can compile a bookshelf full of texts that generally agree with one another and say, Well, this is the truth.

01:00:45.000 Doesn't actually make it true.

01:00:47.000 It is still just people's opinion.

01:00:49.000 Ultimately, those people I consider human, let me grant that Jesus existed at all.

01:00:54.000 Let me not even bother getting into the argument of whether that's even been objectively proven.

01:01:00.000 Okay, there was a person named Jesus.

01:01:02.000 People considered him to be God.

01:01:03.000 There were other people who considered him to be a man.

01:01:06.000 The latter were generally slaughtered out of existence, which might explain why Catholicism took off. 0.52

01:01:12.000 All right. 0.88

01:01:13.000 So moving on.

01:01:14.000 Wait, wait, wait.

01:01:14.000 But it doesn't answer the fundamental point, which is you believe that.

01:01:19.000 Well, when Aquinas makes an argument and nobody can refute it.

01:01:22.000 I don't care about what Aquinas said.

01:01:23.000 He takes it as self evident that there is this God anyway.

01:01:26.000 There you go. 0.97

01:01:27.000 And this is the problem with the new atheists they. 0.97

01:01:29.000 It's not as if this is what you sticks or whatever, whatever it is. 1.00

01:01:33.000 I've seen you.

01:01:34.000 Wait, wait.

01:01:35.000 I just let you finish.

01:01:37.000 I see you, and what you do is you come on and you do this spout off.

01:01:41.000 You do this rapid fire.

01:01:42.000 Well, with all these really edgy, like middle school positions.

01:01:47.000 And yet, wait, wait.

01:01:48.000 There's the rebuttal for this.

01:01:50.000 And yet, you have not grappled with the arguments.

01:01:52.000 You believe that, well, they're all just opinions.

01:01:55.000 It's all just, and all opinions are equally valid.

01:01:57.000 I mean, is that, that's essentially what you're positing, and that's simply not true.

01:02:00.000 No, I'm saying that on something that hasn't been proven on a totally subjective basis.

01:02:05.000 The historicity of Jesus Christ and the metaphysical demonstration that God must exist.

01:02:10.000 Unless you hold secrets, the Catholic can answer the cosmological arguments, then, I mean, I'm sorry, all you have is relativism, essentially.

01:02:21.000 It's not relativism, though.

01:02:23.000 It's a different opinion.

01:02:24.000 You can masquerade it as objective all you want.

01:02:26.000 You haven't answered the opinion.

01:02:27.000 You haven't.

01:02:29.000 You haven't shown me any. 1.00

01:02:31.000 I have this problem with Christians. 1.00

01:02:33.000 Years ago, I said this. 1.00

01:02:34.000 This was back when I was an atheist.

01:02:36.000 Now I'm paganistic, but it doesn't really change.

01:02:39.000 I said, let me grant that there's even a single monotheistic God.

01:02:43.000 Why is it your particular interpretation?

01:02:45.000 Because there are also Christians, theologically based, classically trained, that say, no, if you believe in that certain way or do this certain thing, you go to hell.

01:02:53.000 One person says you're saved by faith, another by grace, another by membership in a certain church or certain actions. 0.78

01:02:59.000 Another says, well, you will manifest faith on the outside.

01:03:02.000 Yes, you have to be saved like sinner's prayer mode, but you will manifest those good behaviors.

01:03:07.000 You'll give to the poor and shelter the orphans and stuff.

01:03:10.000 There are so many different opinions within Christendom.

01:03:13.000 I'm not asking you, I don't really care even if you can prove that that particular deity exists.

01:03:18.000 It doesn't even matter because there are so many opinions about how to interpret the very doctrine.

01:03:24.000 Wow.

01:03:25.000 Well, I mean, if you say it doesn't matter if you can prove that God exists, I think that kind of says it all right there.

01:03:31.000 I'm simply saying that the objective basis of morality you are seeking for a political reason, for the United States, because that's basically what we're saying.

01:03:39.000 For a moral reason.

01:03:40.000 It can't be established by a religion that has so many schismatic tendencies.

01:03:44.000 But paganism just says, yeah, these forces exist.

01:03:47.000 As for the others, we don't care. 0.93

01:03:48.000 The Jews were henotheists, they believed in all the other tribal totems being deities. 0.99

01:03:53.000 They only worshipped one because they thought the others were evil. 0.99

01:03:56.000 Did you even know? 0.86

01:03:57.000 That the very old T basis for your entire religion back during the Babylonian period is a henotheistic religious cult?

01:04:04.000 It's a tribal nationalistic pagan cult that believed literally in these other deities. 0.61

01:04:09.000 They believed in a Bel, literally a Belial.

01:04:11.000 They believed in daimons in both senses, both the strictly evil sense and in the sense of lesser deities of sorts. 0.81

01:04:19.000 They didn't believe in a single creature. 0.71

01:04:20.000 They had Asherah that they were worshiping for a while.

01:04:24.000 They weren't monotheists.

01:04:25.000 They didn't even have a single god.

01:04:27.000 Really?

01:04:28.000 The Old Testament is not monotheistic.

01:04:31.000 Okay.

01:04:31.000 The Old Testament dates the primordial formation of Judaism.

01:04:36.000 This is obvious.

01:04:37.000 Oral stories, you can trace those oral stories back a thousand years further than that.

01:04:42.000 Yes, and there's truth in them.

01:04:44.000 But what you do is you take a thousand years of theology.

01:04:49.000 Like, for example, have you read the four cosmological arguments that Aquinas makes for the existence of theology?

01:04:53.000 It literally doesn't matter unless the basis of the religion is there.

01:04:57.000 There's your answer. 0.92

01:04:58.000 What you do is you take.

01:05:00.000 Have you read any of the texts that I've referenced?

01:05:03.000 No.

01:05:04.000 But you.

01:05:05.000 Interested in Aquinas because I've already studied Christendom.

01:05:08.000 Well, you haven't studied Christendom if you haven't studied Aquinas.

01:05:08.000 Okay.

01:05:12.000 But here's the point you take what, you know, this DD and superficial and this and that, and you obfuscate the reality.

01:05:19.000 You don't want to grapple.

01:05:20.000 I mean, you yourself say that you don't care if we can even prove that God exists.

01:05:24.000 You don't even care if God does exist.

01:05:26.000 You don't even care, you said in one video, if you went to hell.

01:05:29.000 And I just don't understand how a serious person could look at somebody who doesn't even care.

01:05:35.000 And by the way, this is such.

01:05:37.000 A fraud to say, Oh, I don't care if I'm burning in hell for eternity.

01:05:40.000 It's inconsequential to me whether the preeminent, like pure actuality exists in the universe.

01:05:46.000 And then to argue and say, Well, I'm going to be objective about this conversation.

01:05:50.000 You've already admitted that it's irrelevant to you.

01:05:52.000 And then you turn around and you use Christian texts against Christians. 0.86

01:05:55.000 You talk about Jewish tricks, talk about Jewish tricks where you obfuscate the entire Bible, you obfuscate this and that. 0.83

01:06:04.000 We still have not come up with an argument for morality that you seek to impose. 0.83

01:06:08.000 You seem to have problems with things that the church fathers have done or hypocrisies, and yet no standard by which to say that they're so wrong.

01:06:14.000 All right, guys, guys, guys, let's move on.

01:06:15.000 The original ad hominem doesn't work.

01:06:17.000 You resort to, oh, well, it's not an ad hominem.

01:06:19.000 It's not an ad hominem.

01:06:20.000 It's simply to say that I simply don't understand. 1.00

01:06:23.000 A personal attack would be like your hair is dumb. 0.99

01:06:27.000 But I'm saying. 0.99

01:06:28.000 The entire basis of your religion cannot be objective.

01:06:31.000 You don't even know its history. 0.54

01:06:33.000 You don't even understand.

01:06:34.000 Of course we do.

01:06:35.000 Of course we understand the historicity.

01:06:37.000 Look, I'm sure you pulled all these arguments from the zeitgeist.

01:06:40.000 Aquinas, living thousands of years ago, didn't even know the Dead Sea Scrolls existed.

01:06:44.000 Why do his arguments make that much sense?

01:06:46.000 He didn't.

01:06:47.000 All right, guys, hey, let's move on.

01:06:48.000 Let's move on.

01:06:49.000 Let's move on.

01:06:49.000 Because you guys fundamentally disagree, and that's not going to change.

01:06:52.000 But what we both, what all three of us have in common is the good old US of A, Nick.

01:06:57.000 Why is Christianity essential to the future of the United States? 0.54

01:07:03.000 Well, I mean, it's pretty simple.

01:07:03.000 Sure.

01:07:05.000 If we want to be a moral nation, if we want to have a nation that makes sense again, we have to embrace Christianity. 1.00

01:07:10.000 And look at the threats. 0.99

01:07:12.000 That we are under fire from.

01:07:13.000 We're under fire from moral relativism, from the cultural Marxists. 0.77

01:07:17.000 They say that gender doesn't exist.

01:07:17.000 We're under assault.

01:07:19.000 They say that sexuality doesn't mean anything.

01:07:22.000 It's all fluid, it's all this and that.

01:07:24.000 Marriage is under fire.

01:07:25.000 The family is under fire.

01:07:27.000 And look, you can mount consequentialist arguments against those assaults.

01:07:33.000 And you could say, well, here's why we can demonstrate pragmatically why families are better and men should be men and women should be women and X, Y, and Z.

01:07:40.000 We could attempt to do that.

01:07:41.000 But all of it will ultimately fall flat because there's no authority in those arguments.

01:07:46.000 You look at what is being undermined in the United States, and it's the very foundation of why we're here.

01:07:51.000 It's the very foundation of the nature of degrees to get into a Thomistic argument.

01:07:55.000 But fundamentally, look at what we're at assault at.

01:07:58.000 It's not just immigration.

01:07:59.000 It's not just tax policy.

01:08:01.000 It's an assault on what it means to be a man, what it means to be a woman, what it means to be a nation.

01:08:05.000 And how are we going to carry that out if we don't have strong families? 0.59

01:08:08.000 And the only institution that can answer that authoritatively is the church. 0.99

01:08:13.000 You may be able to answer that with a report from the Heritage Foundation or a personal belief, but you cannot say that this is the truth indisputably like Christians can. 0.91

01:08:24.000 So, in that way, it is completely indispensable in the restoration of the country. 1.00

01:08:29.000 Sticks.

01:08:30.000 Not to delve into an atheistic argument, but I can literally claim objective truth on virtually any spiritual statement that I make as long as no negative can be proven.

01:08:39.000 Look, pagans had the nuclear family, the concept of morality, the tribal, the proto nation stateslash nation state mentality long before Christianity exists.

01:08:51.000 Pagans, thousands of years beforehand, managed to run stable cultures that lasted sometimes thousands of years uninterrupted.

01:08:58.000 They didn't have, they weren't screwing everything that moved, other than the Greeks, you know, generally speaking.

01:09:04.000 They had that problem.

01:09:05.000 They weren't screwing everything that moved.

01:09:07.000 They had a nuclear family, especially in northern European groups.

01:09:10.000 They had virtually everything that Nick is talking about wanting. 0.67

01:09:14.000 Why then should Christianity, unless you again are making that, A, it's just the objective truth argument that I don't have to take seriously.

01:09:24.000 Unless you are making that claim, why wouldn't paganism do just as good a job?

01:09:28.000 And some of these pagan cultures, by the way, they lasted so long, they lasted longer than any of the Christian empires so far.

01:09:35.000 I think, isn't the United States approaching the point at which it will be the longest lasting? 0.92

01:09:39.000 And we were formed by deists and we're falling away from that sort of hyper Christian mentality anyway. 0.74

01:09:45.000 Lots of claims being made.

01:09:47.000 Lots of claims being made.

01:09:48.000 But again, the argument is that there is no way that you can authoritatively say that one mode of living is better than the other.

01:09:55.000 And you could say, well, I'm objectively true and this and that.

01:09:57.000 And you could say, well, because we believe in the thunder god or whatever your deity is, your pagan deity.

01:10:03.000 The fact of the matter is, people do not believe in them.

01:10:05.000 There is not theology behind this.

01:10:07.000 There is not historicity behind this.

01:10:09.000 To draw this false equivalence between Christendom, which you have, again, thousands of years, the scholarship that has been done, and people have believed in this, and there is a heritage of this in this country.

01:10:21.000 To speak simply on pragmatic grounds, who do you think can come and convince people that they are objectively correct about the family? 0.64

01:10:27.000 Somebody who says, Hello, Americans, I am a Christian, and the Christianity says this, that, and the other, and this is true. 0.97

01:10:34.000 Or somebody who says, Hello, I praise Odin, I am here with the hammer, and I say, That the pagan family is back. 0.76

01:10:42.000 And additionally, you conveniently leave out the point where the Roman Empire, as successful as it was, it had infanticide. 0.89

01:10:49.000 It had gladiator fights.

01:10:50.000 It had horrible injustices that were being committed.

01:10:52.000 Even the charity that was being done during Roman times was not done for the sake of, well, we should help each other out and we should have real community.

01:11:00.000 It was done because, well, I want to showcase my liberality and maybe I want a debt paid later.

01:11:05.000 So, again, to this false equivalence that's drawn between paganism and Christianity, it can only exist.

01:11:11.000 In this abstract universe, absent the practicality, absent the reality of the situation.

01:11:17.000 Again, that is a subjective claim.

01:11:19.000 I would point out that the Roman Empire persisted in such practices well into the Christian period.

01:11:23.000 They continued to enslave and butcher people.

01:11:27.000 It was a politicized religion. 0.59

01:11:29.000 Catholicism was born literally out of the political Romanization of primordial Christendom.

01:11:36.000 That's fine. 1.00

01:11:36.000 That's all well and good. 1.00

01:11:37.000 What I'm saying is that there's no more objective basis of that and simply saying, well, you know, people will be taken more seriously if they say we're going to restore our nation with Christianity. 0.84

01:11:47.000 All right. 0.63

01:11:48.000 I don't know.

01:11:49.000 Number one, it probably depends on who you.

01:11:51.000 Actually, talk to.

01:11:52.000 And number two, that's a bandwagon fallacy.

01:11:54.000 Who cares?

01:11:55.000 You know, China, it's very fashionable in China to be a spiritualist or a Buddhist or to just be a hardline atheist.

01:12:01.000 That doesn't make one of those paths right. 0.81

01:12:04.000 Well, sticks.

01:12:04.000 I would ask you if narrow is the way that leads to heaven, why does it matter if it's a popularity contest?

01:12:10.000 Well, I didn't say it would be a popularity contest.

01:12:12.000 I said if we're talking about restoring morals and you saying, well, how is your objective thing better than the other?

01:12:17.000 If we're talking purely in terms of a consequentialist lens, that would give you more credibility.

01:12:22.000 But we believe it.

01:12:23.000 I would ask you, you're talking about pagan religions which are interchangeable. 1.00

01:12:23.000 Because it's the truth. 1.00

01:12:27.000 Can you give me an example of a pagan religion which could restore traditional values in the country, which has a convincing theology, a convincing metaphysics that we could start preaching?

01:12:39.000 Considering the similarity of holidays and the similarity of imagery and practice, virtually any of them from Northern Europe.

01:12:46.000 Of course, you could have Norse paganism would be fine, Anglo Saxon paganism.

01:12:51.000 What I would say, though, this is what I've been saying. 0.87

01:12:53.000 I wouldn't even want to use them as that objective.

01:12:57.000 We're getting, I think, hooked up here a little bit on the concept that there has to even be an objective measure for that morality.

01:12:57.000 Method.

01:13:05.000 I am simply saying it's okay for people to be spiritual, including Christian, by the way.

01:13:09.000 I don't fear Christians.

01:13:11.000 I don't, as you think, hate Christianity in a general sense.

01:13:15.000 What I am saying is that Christianity has shown itself, its track record in the last few hundred years is towards the same decadence and decay that you see in the culture. 0.88

01:13:23.000 It's not the absence of Christianity that's causing it any more than the presence, it is simply the fact. 0.91

01:13:29.000 That Christians are capable of being corrupted the same way because your God does not objectively exist. 0.65

01:13:36.000 But aren't you moving the goalposts a little bit?

01:13:38.000 I mean, you started out by saying, well, what makes your religion?

01:13:42.000 If we're going to establish an objective morality, then anyone can, but I don't even care about it.

01:13:46.000 And then you just caught up by saying, well, but I don't even care about it.

01:13:49.000 That's because that's the claim that you made.

01:13:51.000 So I was just responding to your claim of objectivity while this is the one objective.

01:13:55.000 And you answered, by the way, you answered with the religion.

01:13:58.000 Well, but wait, but you answered it.

01:14:00.000 With does Norse mythology riddle me this, my friend?

01:14:03.000 You ask a question, I'm going to answer it.

01:14:05.000 Yeah, it's the way it works.

01:14:07.000 Norse mythology does that, and I ask, does this have a convincing metaphysics?

01:14:12.000 Can you metaphysically demonstrate the existence of tribal Norse gods?

01:14:16.000 Where's the proof for that as opposed to the proofs that have been laid out by Christian apologists for thousands of years?

01:14:22.000 Christian apologists have laid out proof that is convincing to people that are Christians and not convincing to people that aren't, or everyone would be a Christian. 0.98

01:14:30.000 The Muslims literally claim the same friggin' thing. 0.96

01:14:32.000 You yourself said you didn't read the apologies. 1.00

01:14:35.000 You yourself said, you said, wait, they create an apologism that isn't convincing to non Christians. 0.82

01:14:40.000 And you yourself said, not only have you not read the premier apologist, but you don't care what he wrote. 0.69

01:14:45.000 So that's kind of an interesting idea.

01:14:46.000 I am saying that the entire world would have converted by now because of the fervor of Christian missionary activity.

01:14:52.000 Not if they don't read.

01:14:53.000 Objectively convincing.

01:14:55.000 Not if they don't read.

01:14:55.000 Objectively, it's convincing.

01:14:57.000 Yes.

01:14:58.000 Okay, great.

01:14:59.000 That's like saying that if I read spiritual things.

01:14:59.000 Guys, we're moving on.

01:14:59.000 Great.

01:15:01.000 No, I've got to answer this.

01:15:03.000 Okay.

01:15:03.000 I could claim the same objectivity and say, well, a lot of people became occultists and theosophists and all these related new age sort of groups in the eugenics period, including a great many Christians.

01:15:14.000 They became a bunch of mystics.

01:15:15.000 I'm not sure whether many Christians realize that their great grandparents probably practiced black magic. 0.71

01:15:21.000 That certainly happened, not just in the US, but in Europe.

01:15:24.000 That doesn't make the arguments objective and it doesn't make it true.

01:15:27.000 You could even use the same bandwagon appeal.

01:15:30.000 You became a bunch of Christian mystics, hundreds of millions of people.

01:15:33.000 I'm not making the bandwagon argument.

01:15:35.000 That was one argument that was made, but the fact remains that, again, you shift the goalpost.

01:15:41.000 First, you say there is no objective, you make a false equivalency between paganism and Christianity, of which there is.

01:15:46.000 Of which there's no, I mean, I asked you, is there a convincing metaphysics?

01:15:50.000 Is there anything comparable to Christianity?

01:15:52.000 And you twist it on a dime and completely avoid it because the answer is no.

01:15:56.000 And here's the difference between Christianity and other religions Christ was prophesied.

01:16:01.000 There were 456 prophecies for Christ.

01:16:04.000 If God was going to send a savior, he would tell us he was coming.

01:16:07.000 And he did almost 500 times.

01:16:10.000 And Christ affirmed all of those things.

01:16:12.000 And we had 2,000 years of Christendom.

01:16:16.000 We have a metaphysical foundation, a convincing one that has not so far been refuted.

01:16:21.000 And you say, well, how is that any different than the cult of Mithras or the cult of Horus, of which none of these things exist for those religions?

01:16:28.000 So it just strikes me as just disingenuous that you would draw any kind of convincing parallel between the two.

01:16:35.000 They're parallel because those prophecies that you're referring to also, in many cases, not always, but in many cases, overlap with other religious figures too.

01:16:43.000 You could talk about Krishna, Horus would be one.

01:16:46.000 Krishna is probably the closest you could think of. 0.69

01:16:48.000 That doesn't make them real.

01:16:49.000 It doesn't make them real figures.

01:16:51.000 In many cases, Christians look at the Bible and say, well, you know, that part is a metaphor.

01:16:55.000 This part's symbolic in some way.

01:16:58.000 The rock is actually Peter.

01:17:00.000 Well, okay.

01:17:02.000 How do you come around at that actual conclusion?

01:17:04.000 There are Christians who disagree with you.

01:17:06.000 But I mean, at this point, we're just splitting hairs a little bit.

01:17:09.000 That's two different things.

01:17:09.000 No, no, no.

01:17:11.000 That's two different things.

01:17:12.000 The difference that distinguishes Christ from others.

01:17:14.000 Well, because you started out by saying, well, there were other prophecies and that doesn't matter.

01:17:18.000 And then you got into, and anyways, People have this literal versus figurative interpretation, which is a separate argument.

01:17:24.000 To address the first question, the interpretation for pragmatic purposes.

01:17:28.000 Okay, but these are two different arguments.

01:17:30.000 We're talking about using, no, we're having two slightly different conversations at this point, it seems.

01:17:36.000 On the one hand, we're arguing theology.

01:17:38.000 On another, we're arguing the application of that theology in a pragmatic sense.

01:17:42.000 What I am saying, for the political purpose of a state, it doesn't particularly matter which religion is used, gear it towards pragmatism.

01:17:50.000 Where exactly would the difference be in morality? 0.97

01:17:53.000 Between Christians and pagans. 0.53

01:17:54.000 Why were the pagans able to thus be moral even by Christian standards? 0.86

01:17:59.000 Meanwhile, the early Christians in some of those middle age kingdoms were slaughtering people. 0.84

01:18:04.000 They practiced infanticide, cannibalism at times, incest. 0.99

01:18:08.000 They had orgies.

01:18:09.000 There were popes that had orgies. 0.98

01:18:11.000 I think it was the Joust of the Whores, if I remember correctly, if indeed that tale is true. 0.51

01:18:17.000 What I'm saying is that it is in spite of that religious belief system that all of these things still can occur. 0.78

01:18:23.000 Installing Christianity as a sort of state religion isn't going to change that.

01:18:27.000 Nobody's talking about that.

01:18:28.000 But in the first place, you seem to be really running away from the prophecies because this is really where it falls apart, where there is no equivalent to Christianity.

01:18:39.000 I didn't say this proves Christ.

01:18:41.000 I said this proves why Christ is exceptional, why this religion is exceptional when compared with others, pagans, Eastern religions.

01:18:48.000 This is why it's exceptional because there is documented in ancient texts these prophecies that the savior of mankind would have.

01:18:56.000 X, Y, and Z, that he would be born in Nazareth, he would be born in a manger.

01:18:59.000 X, Y, and Z, there's 456 of these, and that's why we study him.

01:19:02.000 That's why he's exceptional.

01:19:05.000 And that makes sense in a proper way.

01:19:07.000 Wait, wait, wait.

01:19:08.000 Come on, my guy.

01:19:08.000 I'll let you through.

01:19:10.000 I'll let you through.

01:19:10.000 Up your theology now, and then you argue, and then your argument is oh, well, you say that what because Christians were bad, that is the same as saying that it doesn't matter if there's a moral right and wrong, which is a very big problem.

01:19:29.000 Hey, listen again, you have this big problem with interrupting.

01:19:32.000 I didn't interrupt you. 0.81

01:19:33.000 The problem is this what you have during the Middle Ages, even when you had popes who were doing orgies, even when you had Christians who were doing bad things, here's the difference.

01:19:43.000 Christian doctrine said this is wrong.

01:19:45.000 And that's the big difference. 0.97

01:19:47.000 This is a difference that matters.

01:19:48.000 Pagans, they may have by accident lived up to Christian standards, but there was no rule saying this is objectively, not one that was built upon the same foundation that Christianity is.

01:20:01.000 And so to say, and maybe they said it was, maybe it didn't, but the important is that you have an objective morality and it'd be based on the one true religion.

01:20:08.000 But beside the point, it's very different to say Christians were misbehaving than to say that Christian doctrine.

01:20:14.000 Is not true or not important.

01:20:17.000 The reason that you can say that Catholic bishops were wrong, and by the way, the scandal in the Catholic Church, the rate of abuse in the Catholic Church is equal or lower than rates of abuse in other institutions in the world.

01:20:30.000 But number two, to even use the vocabulary to say that those things were wrong, you have to have an objective standard of right and wrong.

01:20:30.000 That's a fact.

01:20:37.000 Otherwise, you're just saying, well, I find it personally distasteful, and you just have a personal problem with it.

01:20:42.000 But the thing is, is that we Catholics or Christians can say, well, they did something wrong.

01:20:46.000 And there will be a punishment for them because, regardless of what fallible men do, the doctrine is the same and it's protected from error.

01:20:54.000 So, again, these are like rookie mistakes all over the board.

01:20:57.000 That was believed in by the pagans as well.

01:21:00.000 You keep going back to the idea of, well, I'm right because I say so.

01:21:03.000 I'm right because Aquinas said so a thousand years ago.

01:21:07.000 That is a subjective argument.

01:21:09.000 You can point to prophecies, which I dispute, you can point to abuse rates, which I dispute.

01:21:15.000 That doesn't really matter, though.

01:21:17.000 It ultimately doesn't matter.

01:21:19.000 Ultimately, you can't even come around to one single interpretation of the doctrine.

01:21:23.000 Sure, we can.

01:21:24.000 Yes, there are protections.

01:21:25.000 There are absolutely protections against things like infanticide and rape within paganism.

01:21:29.000 Absolutely.

01:21:30.000 It's not some fluffy thing.

01:21:32.000 Nick, Styx will finish.

01:21:32.000 Nick, chill out.

01:21:34.000 Styx is going to finish, and then we're going to move on to the next question.

01:21:37.000 Where were you when he was interrupting me, big guy?

01:21:39.000 Dude, you both get like three or four minutes each.

01:21:42.000 You guys got plenty of time.

01:21:42.000 All right, yeah.

01:21:44.000 So there's, dude, come on.

01:21:45.000 All right, so Styx, close this out, and then we'll move on to the next question.

01:21:49.000 We can go on to the next question.

01:21:50.000 All right, cool, cool, cool. 0.99

01:21:51.000 Sticks, is the United States a Christian country? 1.00

01:21:54.000 Should it remain so? 1.00

01:21:56.000 It was founded as a deistic, secularized Christian nation, and it should remain that way, yes. 1.00

01:22:01.000 Nick? 1.00

01:22:02.000 It doesn't matter.

01:22:03.000 To follow up, it doesn't matter if paganism becomes some sort of state religion either.

01:22:07.000 It's got to be secularized at the state level.

01:22:11.000 It's just simply not true.

01:22:12.000 I have to laugh when people say that America is not a Christian nation.

01:22:16.000 And you have to define, well, what is a nation?

01:22:18.000 I think if you're abiding by the interpretation that a nation's rhetoric, Is what a nation is, then I think there's a good argument you could make that the rhetoric of the American founding, or maybe the basis of the American political economy, was built on deistic, albeit Christian inspired deistic principles.

01:22:36.000 But if we define a nation as the composition of the nation, which is its people and its institutions, the nation at the founding was Christian.

01:22:44.000 Maybe in the Declaration of Independence, they said by our Creator instead of the Christian God explicitly, and maybe they didn't make reference to it in the rhetoric of the founding documents, but the nation was nearly 100% Christian.

01:22:56.000 Nearly 100% they occupied religious institutions.

01:23:01.000 The church was a big part of the settlement.

01:23:03.000 I mean, look at the first founders at Plymouth in the 17th century.

01:23:06.000 I mean, who were these people but religious separatists, but people who went to form a Puritan religious community?

01:23:11.000 So the idea that America was never a Christian country is just a laughable argument.

01:23:15.000 It's one that you have to stretch and you have to bend the interpretation.

01:23:19.000 You have to play with the language.

01:23:21.000 And I get where the deistic argument comes from.

01:23:23.000 Again, it comes from, you know, well, Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, who said he was a primitive Christian, even though they opened up the constitutional conventions with Christian prayers, et cetera, et cetera.

01:23:32.000 These are minor details.

01:23:33.000 You can make that argument, maybe.

01:23:35.000 But the composition of the country, the nation is its people.

01:23:38.000 The people were Christian, the institutions were Christian.

01:23:42.000 I would say that as a follow up to that, one can pray to the Christian God, hold them to be even self evident without believing in the concept of the establishment of an organized religion.

01:23:53.000 That is, the founders differ from you in the sense that you believe that a central authority is needed to mete out spirituality.

01:24:00.000 Largely, they refuted this argument in the most directive terms.

01:24:04.000 Not just Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson.

01:24:06.000 You would have been hard pressed, I think, to find many of them who are religious to the point of wanting to subjugate themselves. 0.51

01:24:13.000 In many cases, people came specifically to this hemisphere to get away from that concept.

01:24:17.000 I would also point out as a historical note, Roanoke actually comes first and was not established for religious reasons.

01:24:23.000 Okay, but again, you are not answering the, you fell right into the fallacy that I laid out, which is you can, again, you can argue that, well, the framers weren't, they weren't devout Christians.

01:24:34.000 Okay, yeah, and you can make that argument, but that does not change the fact.

01:24:38.000 Okay, but that does not, you could say organized religion is Catholicism, but Christianity is organized religion.

01:24:44.000 They went to They went to church.

01:24:46.000 Religion is the same.

01:24:48.000 And the people were devout.

01:24:50.000 What's that?

01:24:51.000 Religion and theism are two separate things.

01:24:53.000 So is spirituality.

01:24:54.000 I'm spiritual.

01:24:55.000 Let me ask you this.

01:24:56.000 I'm apathetic, but I'm not religious.

01:24:57.000 Let me ask you this.

01:24:58.000 Were the 97% of the Americans at the time of the first census in 1790, the 97% who identified as Protestant Christian, were they deists or were they Protestant Christians?

01:25:11.000 The many were deists, especially those who were part of that literate enlightenment mentality.

01:25:16.000 It's just simply not true.

01:25:17.000 That's just simply not true.

01:25:18.000 That is simply contrary.

01:25:19.000 I can read books that they wrote.

01:25:21.000 I edit them.

01:25:22.000 And you can look where they prayed.

01:25:24.000 Why would they pray to a God that they didn't think mattered?

01:25:27.000 I could pray to God right now.

01:25:28.000 It doesn't mean I'm a member of some Christian congregational prayer.

01:25:31.000 Interesting.

01:25:32.000 Prayer right now and never go to church.

01:25:34.000 You guys fundamentally disagree on this.

01:25:35.000 But again, USA.

01:25:36.000 I don't think everybody knows that. 1.00

01:25:38.000 Bogus.

01:25:38.000 It's USA, right?

01:25:40.000 Common ground, USA, right?

01:25:42.000 I just point to there.

01:25:43.000 And this is a relevant question to a lot of things going on today.

01:25:47.000 We'll start with Nick on this one.

01:25:48.000 Are Christians being discriminated against in the United States?

01:25:52.000 Of course they are.

01:25:53.000 Of course they are.

01:25:55.000 You look at any kind of push by the left, whether it was gay marriage, whether it's gun control, look at the people that comprise the NRA. 0.75

01:26:03.000 It's white Christian men. 0.62

01:26:04.000 I mean, you look at any of the assaults by abortion, on and on, the transgender stuff, most of it can be, most of it amounts to an attack on Christianity. 0.85

01:26:12.000 And this goes back a long time, by the way, when they tried to get God out of the schools, when they tried to get God out of the curriculum. 0.66

01:26:18.000 And they got God out of television, of course they're under assault.

01:26:21.000 I mean, these are the people that are made fun of.

01:26:22.000 These are the people that are laughed at.

01:26:24.000 You know, how many different cartoons and things where they attack Christians?

01:26:28.000 And you could say they attack others, but I mean, the others are not the founders of the country. 0.72

01:26:32.000 The others were not represented in the country.

01:26:34.000 So, of course, they are.

01:26:35.000 They're not afforded the same special treatment as Jews or Muslims or Sikhs or anybody else. 1.00

01:26:40.000 And I think Sticks might agree with that. 1.00

01:26:42.000 Yeah, I would actually agree with him on this one.

01:26:45.000 Christians have been maltreated recently, especially.

01:26:48.000 I would go further and say other groups have been as well, but.

01:26:52.000 I don't want to see Christians censored.

01:26:53.000 I don't want to see Christians mistreated.

01:26:56.000 Our guy, our guy.

01:26:57.000 Yeah, at this point, the nation has become more and more abusive towards anyone with what might be seen as yesteryear's morality, like traditionalist in the 50s sense, especially.

01:27:06.000 So Christians take the brunt of that. 0.76

01:27:08.000 All right, great. 1.00

01:27:09.000 Something we can agree on.

01:27:10.000 Yeah, it's awesome.

01:27:12.000 We all have common ground in the US of A. That's what I figured.

01:27:14.000 You guys disagree so much, but we do have this common ground.

01:27:18.000 Speaking of which, we can talk with each other.

01:27:19.000 Yeah, exactly.

01:27:20.000 I enjoy it.

01:27:21.000 It's crazy fun.

01:27:21.000 Yeah, absolutely.

01:27:22.000 I've been hosting this thing, but I've been just like this the whole time.

01:27:25.000 Like, wow, this is unreal.

01:27:27.000 I'm learning so much, and it's just so much fun.

01:27:29.000 Anyways.

01:27:30.000 Sticks, in your ideal America, what role does Christianity play with our leaders?

01:27:36.000 They can be as Christian as they want to. 0.71

01:27:38.000 I just don't want them legislating from a sense of objective morality. 0.93

01:27:42.000 This would, by the way, extend to paganism.

01:27:44.000 They can be pagan, but I don't want them telling me how to run my own paganism or my own occultism.

01:27:50.000 It shouldn't be the place of the state.

01:27:51.000 The founders understood that would corrupt religion. 0.88

01:27:54.000 Christianity, the easiest way to destroy Christendom is to politicize it, to make it a sort of state religion and expect people at the top to be part of it. 0.71

01:28:02.000 We've been there, we've done that, it didn't work. 0.82

01:28:05.000 Nick?

01:28:06.000 Well, not to, because that's a whole can of worms in and of itself, but to answer the question, I would say that I think Christianity should inform the values and the decisions made by public officials in the sense that the Constitution was written, you know, whether you can argue that it was deistic or not, or the founders were deistic or not, the Constitution was written in the context and upon the shoulders of a thousand years of Christendom and Christian culture and things that were uniquely Christian.

01:28:34.000 And so I think that. 0.79

01:28:36.000 For starters, for any kind of public official or public servant to be acting in parallel with the founding documents or the values of the country, I think they would have to be Christian. 0.82

01:28:45.000 But then number two, I think we can ask ourselves very plainly would we prefer that the country be governed by Christians or by atheists, by Christians or by Muslims or by pagans where they have different beliefs? 0.88

01:28:45.000 That's number one. 0.88

01:28:59.000 I think most people, maybe homosexuals and transgenders and people who want an abortion, would be dismissed from this. 0.97

01:29:06.000 But I think, well, no, because I think that those kinds of people wouldn't want Christians in power. 0.96

01:29:11.000 But I think everybody else would say probably it'd be better. 0.99

01:29:14.000 I don't know.

01:29:14.000 I think they might want the Pope in power at this point.

01:29:17.000 Nah, nah.

01:29:18.000 You think he's your guy, but he hasn't really made any substantive change.

01:29:23.000 Well, I mean, you know what I mean.

01:29:24.000 When he does these kinds of outreaches about these different issues, he hasn't really changed anything substantive yet.

01:29:31.000 All right.

01:29:32.000 Before we enter the fourth quarter of the world's number one Chadcast, We're going to have to hit the super chat a little bit.

01:29:40.000 Randy Williams, I love you.

01:29:42.000 I want you to know that.

01:29:44.000 I think you're great for these donations.

01:29:46.000 He basically answered his own question.

01:29:48.000 He said, There is no doubt as it pertains to Christianity.

01:29:51.000 Thank you, Randy.

01:29:52.000 So, Sigmund T. Washington, Nick, why does the Catholic Church not recognize Mormon baptism?

01:30:02.000 I don't know.

01:30:02.000 I don't know why they don't.

01:30:03.000 Probably because I think they see Mormonism as heretical, right?

01:30:08.000 Even if you're baptized in another Christian denomination, you have to go through a process where you can't have all the sacraments done to you in the Catholic Church.

01:30:08.000 I mean, even.

01:30:18.000 So, on the particular Mormon question, I'm not versed in the Mormon theology.

01:30:22.000 A couple of my viewers tried to turn me on to it, but I looked into it and I was like, nah, not really for me.

01:30:27.000 But I believe that's true of other Protestant denominations that they don't accept the baptism as well. 0.80

01:30:33.000 Awesome.

01:30:33.000 Another quick one from Dana Kerr.

01:30:36.000 So, riddle me this Abraham was asked to sacrifice Isaac just to test the faith of Abraham in Genesis.

01:30:41.000 What says you?

01:30:43.000 Yeah, well, the, and is this for me or is this for Styx?

01:30:46.000 Probably for you.

01:30:47.000 All right.

01:30:48.000 Well, the point of that kind of a sacrifice, I think it gets to the larger question of God's love, which is a lot of people mistake this.

01:30:57.000 They think that Christianity is kind of like this touchy feely kind of a thing.

01:31:00.000 But remember when Christ came in the Gospels, he said that if you love your parents more than me, if you love your family more than me, if you love your children more than me, I don't want you. 0.97

01:31:09.000 I will not remember your name when you enter my kingdom.

01:31:12.000 I mean, this was said in the Gospel that he wanted people who were committed to Christ, committed to God's love above all else.

01:31:19.000 There was, I believe it was said in the gospel, they wanted to go and bury the father.

01:31:23.000 And they said, no, no, let the spiritually dead, you know, take care of the spiritually dead.

01:31:27.000 You're with me now.

01:31:27.000 You're with Christ.

01:31:28.000 So the point was to demonstrate that God's love is greater than our love.

01:31:33.000 It supersedes our love for a spouse, for a child, for a father, for a mother.

01:31:37.000 People might, you know, think there's a problem with that.

01:31:39.000 But what we're in love with is perfection.

01:31:41.000 We're in love with divine beauty, justice, truth, intelligence, all these other things.

01:31:46.000 So that's, that was, I know people might have a problem with it in this day and age, but that was the point.

01:31:51.000 Okay, a quick one for Nick before we enter the fourth quarter.

01:31:55.000 This is from So Based.

01:31:57.000 Which Christian values, and Sticks can answer this too, which Christian values do you personally not agree with?

01:32:04.000 Does total agreement imply subjectivity?

01:32:07.000 Well, Sticks can go first on this one if he wants, but I'll answer that.

01:32:10.000 I don't agree with the concept of turning the other cheek, as Jesus commanded.

01:32:14.000 I believe that you should strike out back at your enemies and get revenge within reason.

01:32:19.000 I mean, you don't commit genocide because someone stole your spoon or something like that.

01:32:23.000 Maybe you do.

01:32:24.000 Yeah, maybe.

01:32:26.000 Depends on if it's a large country or not.

01:32:29.000 No, but I would say that's probably the main one.

01:32:32.000 The concept of forgiveness, in a way to a fault, I would say, I don't believe in either.

01:32:39.000 The concept you would be like, oh, well, this person's like, they've hunted me down my whole life, they killed my whole family.

01:32:45.000 Oh, you know, I forgive them because of some theological reason.

01:32:48.000 I'm not sure that that sits well with me.

01:32:50.000 All right.

01:32:52.000 Yeah.

01:32:53.000 On the trouble of, or not the trouble, but on the question of Christian morals, I know a lot of people have a problem with this with politics.

01:33:00.000 This is something I hear or a frame I hear a lot from moderates, which is how can conservatives believe in everything conservative or liberals, everything that's liberal?

01:33:07.000 You know, don't you diverge a little bit?

01:33:10.000 And with Christianity, it's actually very different because we believe, if you are a Christian, you believe that Christ was the Son of God and therefore everything he said was true.

01:33:19.000 Everything he said was perfect.

01:33:20.000 And so you might disagree with something the Pope says or the clergy says, but you can't disagree with the magisterium.

01:33:25.000 You can't disagree with what Christ said because, you know, And that's where faith comes in.

01:33:29.000 People have this misconception about faith that it's we don't know that God exists.

01:33:33.000 We just take this leap of belief, which is not supported.

01:33:37.000 And faith is actually about we know that God exists.

01:33:40.000 And even when we don't understand his will, even when we don't understand the things he says, or we might personally disagree with it, we have to have faith that it is true because we understand the reason that he exists.

01:33:50.000 So I can't say I disagree with much.

01:33:52.000 I can kind of get to turn the other cheek.

01:33:54.000 There's other interpretations about that, but it's difficult, but we have to have faith.

01:33:58.000 All right, this is a good one from Night Velly.

01:34:01.000 We'll start with Styx.

01:34:02.000 Is faith and science equally important?

01:34:07.000 That one's a little bit more difficult to answer, actually.

01:34:09.000 I would say science, generally speaking, is more important in the sense that if you don't have that technology in today's world, if you don't have technology, if you don't have advancement in the perhaps technological sense in general science, you're going to fall behind everybody else.

01:34:24.000 It's really at that point you'd have to have a lot of faith to say, well, I'm just going to pray about it.

01:34:29.000 You know, medicine, who needs this?

01:34:31.000 Who needs cars?

01:34:33.000 I'll pray to Jesus to teleport me somewhere. 1.00

01:34:35.000 Maybe Muhammad will get me there on his back. 0.99

01:34:37.000 Now, I think that faith certainly has a place in the world.

01:34:40.000 I have no problem with people who have faith.

01:34:42.000 It's just don't tread on others in the application of it.

01:34:45.000 And if it stands in the way of science, sorry, but generally I'm going to favor science unless science is delving into the realm of morality.

01:34:52.000 Like you would think, maybe technologically speaking, maybe algorithmic censorship.

01:34:56.000 Well, yeah, science can certainly do that, but should it?

01:34:59.000 I think I'd rather listen to the average religious leader on the topic.

01:35:04.000 Yeah.

01:35:04.000 All right, Nick.

01:35:06.000 I think that's kind of a misconception between science and faith.

01:35:10.000 I think, first and foremost, people have this conception of science, which is different from how the scholastics saw science, different than how the ancients saw science.

01:35:19.000 Science today is physical science and empirical physical science, whereas before it comprised many different fields, of which theology or rather metaphysics was one of them.

01:35:28.000 And it abided by logic, abided by rationality and reason.

01:35:31.000 I mean, I bring up Aquinas, which is such a fine example because he said, I'm not going to take it on superstition alone.

01:35:37.000 I'm going to demonstrate it through reason that God exists.

01:35:39.000 And I think actually the more that you look at science, the more you have a conviction in God.

01:35:43.000 So I don't think the two are different.

01:35:45.000 And here's something really interesting that I found in preparing, which maybe would convince unbelievers, which I thought was just fascinating.

01:35:51.000 This really isn't an argument for God, but it is something. 0.92

01:35:53.000 Peculiar, which is that this is the fine tuning argument that Christians make, which I think is really something. 0.95

01:36:00.000 That if you look at, for example, the gravitational constant, if the constant, the gravitational constant, which defines gravity, was off by one in 10 to the 60th parts, life would be impossible. 0.99

01:36:13.000 If the cosmological constant was off by one in 10 to the 120th parts, life would be impossible.

01:36:19.000 And you get into these numbers so crazy where our universe shouldn't exist.

01:36:24.000 And if it were purely contingent, you know, I don't think you really make that argument, but It shouldn't exist by these calculations, and yet it does.

01:36:31.000 So I think in many ways science complements faith.

01:36:33.000 I think it's a false dichotomy to begin with.

01:36:36.000 I would point out briefly that isn't that the disappearing puddle argument, I believe it's called, where you're saying, well, you know, this puddle is perfect for this particular fish and it's slowly shrinking, goes away, the fish goes away.

01:36:50.000 If you weren't actually there, if there were a difference in the math that you're talking about, you wouldn't be there to witness the fact that you didn't exist.

01:36:58.000 So it's kind of a flawed.

01:36:59.000 An illogical art.

01:37:00.000 I just think it's, I just think people say it's necessary, but I don't, I don't know why the universe should be necessary.

01:37:05.000 But all right.

01:37:07.000 But it could be a pantheon of gods.

01:37:08.000 Maybe, maybe Odin created things.

01:37:10.000 Oh, yeah.

01:37:11.000 Who knows?

01:37:11.000 Yeah.

01:37:12.000 Okay.

01:37:13.000 This one is before we enter the fourth quarter for the final 15 minutes, like the NBA, this is America's number one Chadcast.

01:37:22.000 What an episode.

01:37:25.000 This is from the dashing rogue for Styx.

01:37:28.000 What is Styx's thoughts on Nick Bugas?

01:37:31.000 A Wyatt Man, art, I'm pronouncing that wrong, but art in the use of it by the alt right.

01:37:40.000 For Nick, do you know about the Abraham, Abraxas foundation?

01:37:47.000 Oh, no, I do not know about that foundation.

01:37:49.000 All right, stick.

01:37:50.000 Can I explain?

01:37:51.000 I can explain your part too.

01:37:53.000 Abraxas refers to the ancient Gnostic deity, I believe the one above the actual Demiurge, if I remember correctly, or maybe it's a different term.

01:38:02.000 I'm rusty on my Gnostic.

01:38:05.000 Nick Bugis is actually, he has forsaken sort of his white nationalist beliefs and is now a Varg style, like pagan survivalist.

01:38:13.000 He uses the pseudonym A. Wyatt Mann.

01:38:15.000 He was actually a contemporary of Nicholas Schreck, he was involved in his ear loss episode, as he's spoken of before.

01:38:20.000 As far as I know, he's not a pagan in the religious sense.

01:38:25.000 I've thought that his cartoons are well drawn.

01:38:29.000 There was a funny time in which I thought Ben Garrison had actually unironically borrowed one of his tropes, actually, had to get that sorted out.

01:38:38.000 But I don't know anything further really about him to tell the truth.

01:38:41.000 I don't even know what his modern views are at this point.

01:38:44.000 All right.

01:38:45.000 We'll start with Nick.

01:38:47.000 Does the abandonment of religion in the United States lead to degeneracy? 0.92

01:38:52.000 Of course, of course it does. 0.59

01:38:53.000 I mean, and this can be argued simply on the consequentialist basis that if people are not subscribing to any moral fine, I think one of the bigger problems in the country to cede a little bit to sticks is that there has been no alternative. 0.59

01:39:07.000 In the absence of Christianity, there has been no replacement.

01:39:10.000 And this was the problem that Nietzsche postulated, Dostoevsky commented on, Evola commented on. 0.87

01:39:15.000 Is in the absence, and even Jung, in the absence of any ritual, spirituality, supernaturalism, anything like that, without any moral foundation, any rules, I think people just simply descend into hedonism.

01:39:27.000 They descend into the pleasure principle.

01:39:30.000 And so, this is one of the problems with so many people they're not brought up Christian or they're not brought up in church or with any kind of convincing or strong Christianity. 0.72

01:39:37.000 And what do they descend into?

01:39:39.000 What is their directionality in their life?

01:39:41.000 It's towards, I want to feel good.

01:39:43.000 I want to feel a good high.

01:39:44.000 I want to get drunk on the weekend.

01:39:46.000 I want to smoke a joint. 0.99

01:39:47.000 I want to have good sex. 0.99

01:39:48.000 And this is their directedness. 0.95

01:39:49.000 I would say that at the very least, if you had an alternative belief, this could be constructive.

01:39:54.000 At least there would be a moral there.

01:39:56.000 But now it's simply the absence, it's a vacuum.

01:39:59.000 And so, of course, it necessarily leads to degeneracy when you have a moral code that there's expectations and there's community enforcement and there's all the rest and there's some kind of divine basis for it.

01:40:09.000 And then now you have nothing.

01:40:10.000 And what are the rules now?

01:40:11.000 Of course, it's going to lead to degeneracy.

01:40:13.000 Sticks.

01:40:14.000 I would say there's plenty of degeneration among individuals who have plenty of religious beliefs.

01:40:19.000 There are also religious groups who have no problem with some of those things.

01:40:22.000 I would say religion is not inherently bad for a culture.

01:40:25.000 That's not what I've been arguing, just so everybody is aware of that fact.

01:40:30.000 I don't really, it's organized religion can be a problem in the sense of the church.

01:40:34.000 Religion itself in the spiritual, the faith side of it, not a problem.

01:40:38.000 Yes, it can cause the denigration of a culture, or the culture can degenerate even though it is present as well, as we've seen with the United States. 0.69

01:40:47.000 Majority Christian nation begins to decline away from the old morality. 0.96

01:40:51.000 Now, some parts of this I see. 0.87

01:40:53.000 Not as degeneracy.

01:40:54.000 I know me and Nick would disagree.

01:40:55.000 I don't see the ending of the drug war as degeneration.

01:40:59.000 I see that as a good thing.

01:41:00.000 I see it as the restoration of how the country was on that issue beforehand.

01:41:05.000 I don't see necessarily like abortion.

01:41:07.000 I don't see that as degenerate because it was happening even while illegal.

01:41:11.000 I suppose the normalization of certain cultural modes can definitely be problematic if they harm the culture.

01:41:17.000 We've certainly fallen into that on immigration.

01:41:20.000 But again, it's primarily Christians or at least Abrahamist Christians and Jews. 0.75

01:41:25.000 That are voting in favor of these things.

01:41:27.000 They vote for politicians that are in favor of these things.

01:41:30.000 One could say even against their own self interest, but that's just the state of mankind.

01:41:34.000 Yeah.

01:41:34.000 I definitely agree with you on the drug war issue.

01:41:37.000 I really don't believe that past civilizations had the drug war. 0.57

01:41:41.000 You know, past advanced civilizations, if they did exist, I really don't think they had the drug war, even if they were Christian.

01:41:48.000 Yeah, they have no problem with alcohol. 0.79

01:41:50.000 Right.

01:41:51.000 Absolutely.

01:41:51.000 Exactly.

01:41:52.000 And it's like, which drugs are you talking about?

01:41:54.000 Yeah, no.

01:41:55.000 We can get into this all another day.

01:41:57.000 Because it's like the legal opiates, I'm telling you, Nick, the legal opiates are just as damaging as the illegal opiates.

01:42:03.000 I don't refute that.

01:42:04.000 Pharmaceuticals are a big problem.

01:42:05.000 Right, right.

01:42:06.000 Okay, cool, cool.

01:42:06.000 I agree with that.

01:42:07.000 All right, so moving on.

01:42:09.000 Is the Pope, this is for sticks to start, is the Pope a false idol in the United States?

01:42:17.000 No, no.

01:42:18.000 He's just a fallible human being, a foreign dignitary who likes to stick his nose in our political business. 1.00

01:42:23.000 He should keep his fucking nose out of our political business, and that's about all. 1.00

01:42:27.000 He has no further meaning because I don't give the religion itself. 0.99

01:42:30.000 Any mystical credence per se beyond some, you know, maybe practices, prayer can be positive for a person.

01:42:36.000 But then again, so can meditation a la Buddhism.

01:42:40.000 But no, the Pope has no significance really to me.

01:42:43.000 I just think he's a confused older gentleman who happens to be relatively wealthy and cared for.

01:42:48.000 And he's not necessarily in touch, I think, at this point, even with the lay Catholics.

01:42:53.000 Maybe at one point, no longer.

01:42:55.000 He's sitting there up in the Vatican.

01:42:57.000 He can make a big show about not wearing the ruby slippers and sitting in the gold throne.

01:43:01.000 At the end of the day, though, he doesn't worry where his next meal is coming from, as maybe a few hundred million Catholics in Latin America or West Africa have the problem of.

01:43:12.000 Can I answer that as well?

01:43:13.000 Absolutely.

01:43:14.000 Well, and specifically in the Catholic definition, an idol is what, if you believe a statue to be a god, that is the strict definition of an idol in Catholicism.

01:43:25.000 And you can look this up, that's actually true.

01:43:27.000 So people might point to the statue of the Virgin Mary, they might point to the Pope, they might point to other things, but defined by the church, only statues that you attribute some kind of divinity to, that's an idol.

01:43:40.000 But on the question of the Pope, I think this is a good point that he brings up because the papacy is one of the wealthiest institutions in the world, it's incalculable.

01:43:48.000 How much wealth that they have, but I think it's important to understand the context of that wealth in the sense that you know, where does most of their wealth derive from?

01:43:55.000 It derives from land and how they've accumulated land over the course of 2,000 years and accumulated land that is appreciated in value considerably because that land obviously was worth a lot less when Western Europe was like a third world in the fourth or the fifth century than it is now.

01:44:12.000 And then, additionally, look at the artifacts historically that they have that you simply can't put a value on.

01:44:16.000 And then, beyond that, I would point to a biblical justification for this where Jesus Christ.

01:44:22.000 He has his feet washed with perfume, and somebody objected to it, and he said, Well, no, that's okay.

01:44:26.000 I'm here now.

01:44:27.000 You can save that for the poor later.

01:44:29.000 But then, number two, I think it's important to understand how much charity is done by Christians and by the church in particular.

01:44:34.000 I think it was in 2017, it was $30 billion that was spent by the Catholic Church just in the United States in terms of charity.

01:44:44.000 The top five charity organizations in the world, I believe it's in the world.

01:44:48.000 Yeah, in the entire world, it's a different figure.

01:44:51.000 In the entire world, the top five. 0.98

01:44:53.000 Charity organizations by expenditure are all Christian. 0.99

01:44:55.000 In the top 10, it's seven of the top 10. 0.60

01:44:57.000 So I think it's important.

01:44:59.000 You know, the church is very wealthy.

01:45:00.000 Christians are wealthy, but there is a tremendous amount of charity going on.

01:45:03.000 All right.

01:45:05.000 And this is kind of a mix.

01:45:08.000 A question for Styx about Nick.

01:45:10.000 Now, Styx, do you think Nick is a hedonist?

01:45:16.000 It's a funny question.

01:45:17.000 So one time, Sernovich called Nick a hedonist.

01:45:19.000 I thought it was the funniest thing ever.

01:45:21.000 It was so funny.

01:45:21.000 So that's what that's from.

01:45:22.000 Do you have a take on that or no?

01:45:25.000 I wouldn't say that by my standards, I don't know enough about his personal life to make that snap judgment.

01:45:31.000 I'm assuming by my standards, probably not just lives a normal life, you wear your suit, whatever.

01:45:36.000 By your own savior's standards, however, you live a life that in the modern sense is considerably more wealthy than even more of the greater nobility that would have lived in his life.

01:45:49.000 Maybe he would have wanted you to sell some of what you own and give to the poor.

01:45:53.000 Again, that's by his words, but he also.

01:45:57.000 Had a problem with anyone having, it seems, ownership at all and not living a migratory lifestyle.

01:46:02.000 Or at least that's how you can interpret it. 0.81

01:46:05.000 Well, I would say that we're all sinners.

01:46:07.000 I mean, that's kind of the point.

01:46:09.000 Jesus Christ said he didn't come to save the people who thought they were righteous, but the people who knew they were sinners.

01:46:15.000 And so you can't point to a single person who isn't, in contrast with God as flesh, is not a sinner.

01:46:23.000 And I would say on the question of being migratory and selling all your belongings, Jesus liked to speak in hyperbole.

01:46:30.000 I mean, this is not disputed by biblical scholars.

01:46:33.000 I mean, he said things like, if you're sinning with your right hand, cut off your right hand, because it's better that you go into heaven without your right hand than to be dragged to hell with it.

01:46:41.000 And I don't think anybody would say that he really meant cut off your limbs, poke out your eyes, you know, do all this crazy stuff.

01:46:48.000 And even with the turn the other cheek business, that was also speaking in hyperbole.

01:46:51.000 He was saying generally you should be pacific, generally you should be more peaceful, but not, I mean, there were crusades, there were all kinds of other things.

01:46:58.000 Jesus told his followers, sell your cloak and buy a sword.

01:47:01.000 So I think Jesus tended to speak in hyperboles and, This is demonstrated by the church.

01:47:09.000 I would maybe disagree with that.

01:47:10.000 If someone's capable of walking on water and turning a couple loaves of bread into enough to feed thousands of people, I don't think that they need to be hyperbolic at that point.

01:47:20.000 I think it might have been, Nick, meant to be taken literally.

01:47:23.000 All right, Sticks, this one is, we'll start with you on this one.

01:47:26.000 Would you prefer to see a Christian majority in the United States or a Muslim majority in the United States? 0.94

01:47:33.000 Yeah, it's kind of obvious. 0.99

01:47:37.000 You go with Christian, right?

01:47:38.000 Was this a question for Nick?

01:47:38.000 Wait, wait, wait.

01:47:40.000 No, to start with you. 0.99

01:47:41.000 Oh, I would rather see a Christian majority, of course. 0.86

01:47:44.000 Okay. 0.79

01:47:44.000 That's because Christianity has had longer to mature and get past being zealous and fanatic. 0.79

01:47:49.000 Most Christians aren't fanatics.

01:47:52.000 Okay.

01:47:52.000 Speaking of which, this one will start with you, Nick.

01:47:55.000 If Styx repented and was baptized in the icy waters of Lake Winnipesaukee, would he be accepted by Christ into heaven's gates?

01:48:04.000 Of course.

01:48:05.000 Unless he's blasphemed the Holy Spirit, he can be saved.

01:48:10.000 Everyone can be saved.

01:48:11.000 And that's what we're trying to do, Styx.

01:48:12.000 We want to save you.

01:48:13.000 We want to see you reunited with your Holy Father.

01:48:17.000 And I'm joking a little bit now, but it's true.

01:48:19.000 I mean, everybody can be saved.

01:48:20.000 That's the beauty of our religion, is that all sins can be forgiven.

01:48:25.000 If you are remorseful about them and you believe in Jesus Christ, anybody can make it through.

01:48:31.000 Now, it is a difficult thing.

01:48:31.000 It's difficult.

01:48:32.000 That is what he says.

01:48:34.000 But if you ask for forgiveness, it's given.

01:48:37.000 I mean, once you recognize that we live under divine wrath, you realize what a beautiful thing divine mercy is.

01:48:44.000 That here we are, we are bugs, and yet.

01:48:47.000 We get to make it.

01:48:48.000 We're all going to make it, lads.

01:48:51.000 In the words of Saruman, save your pity and your mercy.

01:48:54.000 I have no use for it. 0.99

01:48:56.000 Oh, wow.

01:48:58.000 He went there.

01:48:58.000 Okay, great.

01:48:59.000 This is from the Dashing Rogue.

01:49:00.000 And I got another beneath that that I'll get to.

01:49:02.000 I'm not forgetting about you.

01:49:04.000 To Nick and Sticks, does might make right?

01:49:07.000 If so, does Nick and Sticks believe in natural law and natural rights?

01:49:14.000 Sticks, we'll start with you.

01:49:16.000 Is that Sticks or me?

01:49:17.000 Yeah, Sticks.

01:49:18.000 We'll start with Sticks.

01:49:19.000 Okay.

01:49:20.000 I would say might makes right in the pragmatic sense because if you have the ability to do something, you have the ability to do something.

01:49:29.000 It's just that simple.

01:49:30.000 As for whether it is moral, whether it is ethical, I would say the basic concept of the NAP is that you have these different competing poles of power, essentially.

01:49:40.000 You're not trying to stomp on someone else's feet.

01:49:42.000 Do whatever you want, but don't harm other people.

01:49:45.000 It's also a pagan element as well.

01:49:48.000 It's quite literally.

01:49:49.000 If you look at might as right, I know it links up with Satanism, but the original text has more in common with pagan lore, literally Norse lore as well.

01:49:58.000 And if you look at it that way, certainly you have the right to do what you are able to do, but at the same time, other people will try to do it to you.

01:50:05.000 Maybe it's better to have a polite society with some degree of order in it.

01:50:10.000 Well, it's just interesting.

01:50:11.000 I just have to, it's just interesting to me when, and this is not a dig, I'm not trying to be, you know, rude about it, but when you talk about right, it's just very hard for me to pin that down because.

01:50:24.000 Again, you said there's no objective right and wrong.

01:50:26.000 But to answer the question on does might make right, of course it doesn't. 0.57

01:50:29.000 Of course, it doesn't in the Christian tradition.

01:50:30.000 We hold that if somebody is murdered by somebody, even if they were stronger, even if they were able to impose their will, they achieved their will to power.

01:50:38.000 Well, they still did a wrong thing if it was an unjust killing.

01:50:42.000 And so, of course, it doesn't.

01:50:43.000 What's right is what's laid out in the good books.

01:50:48.000 And that's the thing.

01:50:48.000 We actually believe in right, unlike others.

01:50:51.000 There's no other.

01:50:52.000 Might is just might.

01:50:53.000 And who cares about right and wrong if you don't believe in God?

01:50:56.000 You were about to say that there was no other justification for such a system, I think.

01:51:02.000 Other religions think the same thing.

01:51:04.000 Well, but I mean, again, that's different between being a religious person and being apotheist or saying it doesn't matter.

01:51:12.000 It's kind of irrelevant, right?

01:51:13.000 Apotheism is not your religion. 0.60

01:51:16.000 Okay, but point being that you can say, well, Muslims believe that they're right and they have a moral system which they think is objectively true.

01:51:22.000 But if everybody took the position that you're taking of this kind of like what, paganism, and everybody has their own and everybody has their own morals, everybody has this individuated spirituality, it's kind of hard to talk about.

01:51:35.000 What is morality?

01:51:36.000 If it could be everything and nothing, it's not even really a useful expression.

01:51:40.000 I'm saying that the state should set that up in a secular way, enforced by laws and by the force of the state.

01:51:46.000 Who establishes the state?

01:51:48.000 Who establishes the church?

01:51:49.000 Oh, wow. 1.00

01:51:51.000 Believers. 0.90

01:51:51.000 But that's the thing. 0.90

01:51:52.000 I mean, if people who are the state establish the state, if people who drink blood establish the state, I mean, that would be a problem for you, not for us, because we're still Christians. 0.90

01:52:02.000 Yeah. 1.00

01:52:02.000 We're going to put them out. 1.00

01:52:03.000 Okay.

01:52:04.000 That's a nice little blasphemy where the gates are closing sticks.

01:52:09.000 All right.

01:52:10.000 Okay, this is a question from Totally Not Troll.

01:52:12.000 Awesome name. 0.98

01:52:14.000 Why should we get Polish Pope again and how can he help us reclaim Constantinople? 1.00

01:52:22.000 Who's that one to? 1.00

01:52:23.000 Let's start with you.

01:52:25.000 Well, it'll be difficult.

01:52:26.000 I mean, we just have to pray.

01:52:28.000 We have to pray that the church finds some wisdom and appoints somebody who is right for the time.

01:52:34.000 We don't know God's plan, we don't know God's will.

01:52:36.000 So we don't know.

01:52:37.000 I don't think we have the authority to say whether Francis is bad or not.

01:52:40.000 Maybe we could disagree.

01:52:41.000 With what he says politically, but to make an ultimate conclusion about it, I think is a little bit premature.

01:52:48.000 But I do pray. 0.93

01:52:50.000 I think that we need to have somebody in there who understands the threat that we face to Christendom, to the faith, not only in the form of the Muslim world, which is what everybody talks about, but from within Christendom, which are these people, the religious leaders, and they're always out there pushing doubt and doing all these kinds of things, making us doubt our religion, doubt our Savior, like maybe they did a couple thousand years ago. 0.82

01:53:14.000 We need a pope who understands the threats that we face both externally and internally. 0.94

01:53:18.000 Got to pray for it.

01:53:19.000 Hopefully, the cardinals make a good call next time.

01:53:22.000 I would like to point something out. 0.98

01:53:24.000 People back during the Middle Ages and Renaissance used to pray when the great horde of Muslims were trying to invade on all fronts then. 0.98

01:53:32.000 Prayers didn't do anything, but people like Vlad the Impaler, Charles Martel, Charles the Hammer managed to repeatedly slam the Muslim armies. 0.99

01:53:40.000 And they were not themselves, although they professed Christendom in the most extreme sense, they were not themselves very good at following their own religion. 0.78

01:53:48.000 Vlad.

01:53:48.000 Had multiple concubines, apparently knocked one of them up at one point and gutted her and had her impaled because of this fact.

01:53:55.000 Charles Martel loved to drink and womanize.

01:53:58.000 All of these different people did.

01:53:59.000 And yet they were very effective at safeguarding not only European culture, but Christendom itself. 0.89

01:54:05.000 The center of Christendom was saved by a bunch of people who might be considered totally irreligious and elapsed. 0.75

01:54:10.000 They didn't have time to go to church. 0.91

01:54:11.000 Maybe in part.

01:54:13.000 Maybe in part.

01:54:14.000 But of course, the siege of Vienna in 1683 was repelled not by Vlad the Impaler, it was repelled by the Poles. 0.98

01:54:21.000 And thank God. 0.99

01:54:22.000 For the polls.

01:54:23.000 But I don't know if that disproves anything.

01:54:25.000 I mean, people can do this kind of really edgy, well, prayers don't do anything.

01:54:30.000 And we saw a lot of this with the shooting.

01:54:32.000 This was a favorite of Christopher Hitchens.

01:54:33.000 But I mean, I think you say meditation matters.

01:54:37.000 I mean, don't you believe that intentionality matters?

01:54:40.000 Don't you think that an expression of intentionality in the universe, I mean, you are a spiritualist, don't you believe that that can change the outcome of events or no?

01:54:47.000 Yeah, of course.

01:54:48.000 Prayer is not a negative thing.

01:54:49.000 I'm not saying that.

01:54:50.000 I'm simply saying that it's a larger pragmatic effect upon world politics, upon hoping, well, you know, we hope. 0.97

01:54:56.000 That you know, this time around, the Islamic horde that's moving into Europe or something will be repulsed because we want to save Christendom. 1.00

01:55:03.000 Praying about it won't do anything. 1.00

01:55:04.000 The Pope, least of all, is going to do anything about it.

01:55:07.000 What needs to happen is action.

01:55:09.000 More is accomplished on your feet with your hands than on your knees with your words.

01:55:13.000 Yeah, and we're praying for that's really, did you get that from like being atheist on Facebook?

01:55:19.000 But yes, no, come on, it has nothing to do with atheism.

01:55:22.000 The point is, well, you know what the point is.

01:55:24.000 Look, when we pray, it's to say that you know, we're over here in the United States and we pray that the cardinals will have the wisdom, or we pray that the Pope has the wisdom to do the right thing because, of course, he has tremendous power, and we pray that he has the wisdom to exercise it effectively.

01:55:37.000 We're not saying don't go out there and don't repel the invasion, don't elect leaders that will repel this, don't fight them where they are.

01:55:44.000 We're simply saying that on the question of how can we get a pope, this is something that's out of our control.

01:55:50.000 So we should pray that they have the wisdom.

01:55:52.000 And you again walk this line where prayer doesn't mean anything.

01:55:55.000 It's not a bad thing, and I'm a spiritualist, but at the same time, incantation means nothing.

01:56:00.000 On your knees, we need to go and Fight them where they are.

01:56:03.000 But I mean, sometimes all you can do is pray, and that's good.

01:56:06.000 All right.

01:56:06.000 Quick one for Sticks.

01:56:08.000 If you had to choose between Lutheran and Catholic, which would you choose?

01:56:13.000 Neither.

01:56:15.000 Okay.

01:56:15.000 I knew that would be a quick one.

01:56:19.000 I suppose probably Catholicism at that point. 0.98

01:56:21.000 Okay. 0.96

01:56:22.000 He's coming around.

01:56:23.000 Oh, no.

01:56:23.000 What's going on, you guys?

01:56:25.000 Bringing him over.

01:56:27.000 All right.

01:56:28.000 So, okay.

01:56:30.000 For Fuentes, the Ten Commandments state not to kill.

01:56:34.000 Do soldiers go to hell?

01:56:36.000 Do drone pilots go to hell for the civilians killed on their order?

01:56:41.000 Good question.

01:56:42.000 Good question.

01:56:43.000 And this is actually addressed in the gospel where Jesus Christ says that a military man was a good person.

01:56:48.000 So we know that Pontius Pilate was said to be a good person.

01:56:52.000 He was given his orders from above, as they say.

01:56:54.000 And that's when he absolved himself of responsibility for the crucifixion.

01:56:57.000 He washed his hands of it.

01:56:59.000 And certainly I believe that Jesus Christ would say that Pontius Pilate was a moral person, somebody who would be saved.

01:57:05.000 So, no.

01:57:06.000 And remember again, It's about killing.

01:57:08.000 It's not about, or rather, murdering, not about killing.

01:57:11.000 I think there's a distinction between just and unjust.

01:57:14.000 There were killings throughout the Old Testament, and there were killings done by the church and the Crusades and the Inquisitions.

01:57:19.000 Not to the same extent that you see violence from secularists or others, but there were.

01:57:25.000 So I don't think you have to be a Quaker and you have to be a pacifist, but I think that was what was interpreted in the Bible.

01:57:33.000 Sticks, do you have a comment on that?

01:57:35.000 In paganism, being strong is considered a good thing, and going to war is a Really easy way to actually uplift yourself spiritually if you are a good soldier, not a coward, not like gutting women and children, doing crazy things like that.

01:57:49.000 If you're willing to go on the battlefield and be brave, especially for a higher spiritual purpose, yeah, it's perfectly justified.

01:57:55.000 Okay.

01:57:56.000 I would say many wars are unjust, but I'm not going to blame the soldiers.

01:57:59.000 They just follow an order.

01:58:00.000 Okay.

01:58:01.000 This is from the Dashing Rogue to Styx and Nick.

01:58:05.000 What are your thoughts on the cult of Mithras?

01:58:07.000 We'll start with Styx first.

01:58:10.000 Just another group of pagans.

01:58:11.000 Okay.

01:58:12.000 And what are your thoughts on Caesar's Messiah by Joseph Atwell?

01:58:17.000 Never read it.

01:58:18.000 Nick, do you have any comment on that?

01:58:19.000 Yeah, I've never read that either.

01:58:20.000 And in regards to Mithras, yeah, it's just the same.

01:58:23.000 If the contention is about pagan influences on Christianity, again, I would posit that if you look at the complexity of the Christ figure, and you could certainly make the case that a lot of the stories, flood stories, like in Noah's Ark and all that, the Garden of Eden, you can trace a lot of these stories.

01:58:43.000 There are antecedents to it in Sumeria and Babylon.

01:58:46.000 There's stories like this all around the world.

01:58:49.000 Every civilization has a flood story.

01:58:50.000 That's a good example, Gilgamesh and all the rest.

01:58:52.000 But the Christ story is.

01:58:54.000 Is unique.

01:58:55.000 The Trinity is unique.

01:58:56.000 The resurrection, in particular Christian terms, there is no antecedent for this in paganism.

01:59:02.000 Maybe there's resurrections, maybe there's saviors, but not in the same way, not in the complexity, not in the differences where they count of Christ.

01:59:10.000 That's not true.

01:59:11.000 You've got Bacchus, among others, that very well, tell me, literally having his blood drunk in the sense of symbolically with wine, having a birthday, and everything else.

01:59:23.000 It's like the historians.

01:59:24.000 By the way, it was funny you pointed out that some OT work that was based on paganism, I guess.

01:59:30.000 I would think that would undermine the New Testament because the Old Testament is its foundation, but we'll pass that.

01:59:36.000 But on the question of Christ, I mean, tell me about this pagan antecedent. 0.83

01:59:36.000 Wait, wait. 0.83

01:59:41.000 Was there a Trinity?

01:59:42.000 Was he God become man?

01:59:44.000 Was he also God?

01:59:46.000 It did have a female counterpart, although it was not a Trinity.

01:59:50.000 Okay.

01:59:50.000 So this is not anything Christian.

01:59:53.000 It is.

01:59:54.000 We're not saying that the Jesus of York.

01:59:57.000 You know, historical revisionism is based on any single pagan path.

02:00:01.000 It's an amalgamation of many because Rome was an amalgamation of many.

02:00:05.000 It's not just Mithras.

02:00:06.000 It's not just Bacchus.

02:00:07.000 It's not just Greek and Roman paganism.

02:00:10.000 All of these things were fused already into the Roman religion.

02:00:13.000 They simply adapted it further. 0.72

02:00:15.000 If there was a historical Jesus, that person's life has been transmogrified beyond all recall by the Christians, the early Christians. 0.95

02:00:23.000 There's no comparable figure to Christ. 0.99

02:00:26.000 Maybe you could pick out.

02:00:28.000 But, you know, there's nothing new under the sun.

02:00:30.000 But, I mean, the.

02:00:32.000 The Christ figure and the complexity, and in the distinctions that are made by the Catholic Church, there is simply, for the kind of theology that we're talking about, it was so ahead of its time in terms of Trinity, in terms of duality, in terms of all the things that we see that this man who stumbled to the throne, a God who stumbled to the throne, inaugurated his reign with this ignominious defeat, crucified, but then conquering death.

02:00:55.000 I mean, there is simply no equal.

02:00:57.000 I mean, you can point to, well, there's a little here, there's a little there, but nothing like Jesus Christ.

02:01:02.000 Krishna is very similar.

02:01:04.000 Okay, guys, we got one more quick super chat and then we'll do closing statements and we'll close out.

02:01:10.000 This is from David Morris.

02:01:11.000 This is for Sticks.

02:01:12.000 Could you elaborate on how the end of organized religion can help more spiritually focused Christians like me?

02:01:19.000 Yes, what I would say is this.

02:01:21.000 If a person spends all their time listening to other people's interpretation of a religious dogma, they may not take the time to study it for themselves.

02:01:30.000 And if they believe in the concept of being led spiritually at all, I would urge you to simply just assume that you're going to be spiritually led by encountering that material.

02:01:40.000 Judge it for yourself.

02:01:41.000 You are just as intelligent as any of these religious leaders.

02:01:44.000 In many cases, you're probably going to be more intelligent.

02:01:47.000 Some of these people are nothing more than zealots.

02:01:50.000 This has been the case throughout human history.

02:01:52.000 Religions have been politicized, and in some cases, you're going to, depending on the nation that you're in, especially, depending on what religion it is, it may be that you're practicing a religion that you're not even getting the original dogma for the most part.

02:02:05.000 You're worshiping.

02:02:06.000 In essence, a state style religion, some form of animism that's been co opted by a tribal warlord, some variant of Buddhism that's been transformed or reimagined by some communist regime or something.

02:02:19.000 It doesn't pay to do that.

02:02:20.000 If you believe that your eternal soul, especially, is at risk, I would think that you would want to branch out beyond listening to a rabbi or a cleric or something.

02:02:28.000 Okay, two quick ones.

02:02:29.000 Okay, sorry, Nick, go ahead.

02:02:30.000 Yeah, well, I just, yeah, briefly, I think the beautiful thing about Christianity is free will.

02:02:35.000 You're invited to become a Christian, you know, and to say that.

02:02:40.000 You know, regular lay people know better about Christianity.

02:02:44.000 I just think that is something that I thought maybe for a long time considered, but it's just simply not true.

02:02:48.000 And I think, especially if you look at when literacy was almost nearly lost in Western Europe, but it was preserved by the monks, nobody would make the case that the lay people are more intelligent or well read than the monks to really understand the Bible.

02:03:00.000 You look at the priests, the pastors, the bishops, the cardinals, and they've had years of schooling and training, not just on theology, but on philosophy.

02:03:08.000 They've read Aristotle, they've read Plato, they've read Aquinas, they've read the greatest philosophers, they understand.

02:03:12.000 Reason in a scientific sense, metaphysics in a scientific sense.

02:03:15.000 They've read the catechism.

02:03:16.000 I mean, things you wouldn't believe.

02:03:18.000 And so you can, you know, we have free will to decide we want to be Christian and hop on board, but then there is this authority.

02:03:24.000 And thank God for this authority that we have people who have dedicated their lives to this rigorous study of fundamentally the most important issues.

02:03:32.000 So I would just push back a little bit on that.

02:03:34.000 Some Christians believe in predestination, however.

02:03:38.000 Man, they're not a part of the church.

02:03:40.000 Okay.

02:03:41.000 A $20 super chat just came in.

02:03:43.000 People are getting them in at the last minute.

02:03:44.000 We love it.

02:03:45.000 We appreciate you guys.

02:03:46.000 So, Thank you so much for watching.

02:03:48.000 This is for Nick, real quick.

02:03:49.000 We got like three or four more quick ones.

02:03:52.000 But this is just, there's so much value in this.

02:03:54.000 I'm probably going to rewatch this six or seven times.

02:03:58.000 Even though I stuttered like 30 times, I was just so much going on, so many thoughts.

02:04:03.000 It's unreal.

02:04:04.000 Okay, Nick, would you agree, honor thy mother and father, but love your pagan past?

02:04:12.000 Well, here's the thing that we have to understand about our religion and the way we justify it.

02:04:19.000 The pagan ancestors of Christendom and all that, there is value in that. 0.98

02:04:24.000 I mean, Christians don't hold that, let's just throw it all away, let's just set it on fire. 1.00

02:04:28.000 I mean, even something like that, I think there's a really good example that's used by Archbishop Fulton Sheen, where he demonstrates that if the truth is like a circle, if the truth is 360 degrees and every degree is getting closer to it, Aristotle and Plato and Socrates, they might have gotten 180 degrees. 0.99

02:04:45.000 And maybe Hinduism has gotten 230 degrees.

02:04:48.000 And somebody, and so that's not, it's to say that.

02:04:51.000 There is truth in a lot of things.

02:04:53.000 There is truth in a lot of things. 0.99

02:04:54.000 I think we see glimmers of it in a lot of things, but Christianity is the way.

02:04:58.000 So, honor your father and mother and love your heritage. 0.98

02:05:00.000 Love where you came from.

02:05:01.000 This is where I think there's a strong case to be made for traditionalism and nationalism that we love our parents in the way that we should love our nations and the way the nation should love the church.

02:05:11.000 It's all just a love fest over here.

02:05:14.000 So, definitely, I think there's a lot to be learned from those people.

02:05:17.000 But they're in hell.

02:05:19.000 Yeah, they are in limbo.

02:05:22.000 Yeah.

02:05:23.000 The first circle.

02:05:24.000 Having a good time.

02:05:26.000 All right.

02:05:27.000 And this is to Styx, real quick. 0.80

02:05:28.000 I'm not a Christian, but if we get rid of Christianity, it will create a vacuum. 0.75

02:05:33.000 What are your thoughts on that?

02:05:34.000 I don't want to get rid of Christianity. 0.95

02:05:36.000 I simply don't want it to become a state religion that imparts objective morality, so called. 0.92

02:05:41.000 Okay.

02:05:42.000 And Nick, this is for you.

02:05:44.000 What is Nick's opinion on Styx seeing Stolas?

02:05:47.000 Do you believe him?

02:05:48.000 And do you think it's a good thing?

02:05:50.000 What's seeing Stolas?

02:05:51.000 I don't know, Paul. 0.97

02:05:52.000 Stolas is a demon.

02:05:55.000 It's a little bit complicated.

02:05:57.000 I don't believe in demons the way you do, but I use that name because this is the overlapping figure essentially.

02:06:03.000 It's no good.

02:06:03.000 You got to be careful.

02:06:05.000 You've got to be careful, Styx.

02:06:06.000 Look, no, no, I consider Stolis a friendly entity.

02:06:09.000 I don't believe in demons.

02:06:10.000 I believe in the original term daimon, which can mean any spirit, essentially.

02:06:15.000 Satan comes in many forms, big guy. 0.91

02:06:17.000 He's welcome.

02:06:18.000 We can have a drink of wine.

02:06:21.000 Yeah, well, I think my thoughts on Styx, he's just, he's got to be careful with the occult stuff.

02:06:27.000 He's got to, Satan is out there.

02:06:29.000 This is, and I'm not even doing this to be a caricature.

02:06:31.000 I believe evil exists in the world.

02:06:33.000 Satan is the progenitor of it.

02:06:35.000 And we, We have to be very careful not to be deceived by him.

02:06:38.000 We can't allow him to separate us from our spiritual father.

02:06:41.000 But, you know, he doesn't see it as a demon.

02:06:43.000 Yeah.

02:06:44.000 That's his worldview.

02:06:45.000 I think that evil comes from people being naturally having corrupt tendencies.

02:06:50.000 It's essentially the way I explain it is very rationalistic.

02:06:54.000 Evolution gave us certain traits that we now call things like greed and lust.

02:06:58.000 They're no longer useful to us, they're vestigial, but they're still there.

02:07:02.000 All right.

02:07:03.000 This is from Dana.

02:07:05.000 So, riddle me this. 0.99

02:07:07.000 Abraham was asked to say, Oh shit, that's the other one. 0.98

02:07:09.000 She sent two. 0.99

02:07:10.000 Okay, here's that.

02:07:11.000 Sorry, Dana, this is your second one. 0.78

02:07:14.000 When did Christians decide the Bible was finished? 0.92

02:07:17.000 Why are only old texts accepted? 0.87

02:07:19.000 If a dude said God sent him, who decides what is valid now?

02:07:23.000 I guess that's for Nick.

02:07:24.000 Yeah, well, it was the Council of Nicaea.

02:07:26.000 They decided which books would be in the Bible.

02:07:30.000 And what was the second part of the question?

02:07:31.000 About why would they not allow new books to be added?

02:07:35.000 Basically, yeah.

02:07:37.000 I don't, I mean, doesn't that seem kind of preposterous?

02:07:39.000 If you have.

02:07:40.000 A gospel, if you have an account of the biography of Jesus Christ, I mean, why would they let, for example, Joseph Smith contribute to that, you know, or somebody else?

02:07:49.000 And the people who put together the Bible, the Council of Nicaea, these were learned people.

02:07:53.000 I mean, the people that contributed to the construction of the Bible were people who, you know, they were intimate with the text, they were intimate with what needed to be said.

02:08:00.000 I mean, you can read, there's just volumes and volumes and volumes of the early church fathers and what they had to say about it. 0.98

02:08:05.000 So it's important at some point to say, this is what a Christian is, this is what it isn't. 0.96

02:08:12.000 I would just like to follow up. 0.98

02:08:13.000 Each successive religious group says that theirs is the last one that will be added.

02:08:18.000 You're all wrong.

02:08:18.000 Okay.

02:08:19.000 The Jews are all wrong. 1.00

02:08:20.000 Here's our holy books. 1.00

02:08:21.000 The Christians have, well, we've got a few more.

02:08:24.000 The Muslims say, well, those are kind of inspired. 0.96

02:08:26.000 Mormonism says, well, here's our new book. 0.98

02:08:26.000 We get a few more. 0.98

02:08:29.000 It's like the desert trilogy meme.

02:08:31.000 I hate to bring that up because it's usually paired with, you know, fedora.

02:08:35.000 But it is kind of true.

02:08:36.000 Yeah.

02:08:37.000 Hmm.

02:08:38.000 Disagree.

02:08:39.000 But okay.

02:08:39.000 This is a question I think it, Pertains to Salem, Massachusetts.

02:08:43.000 This is the last super chat.

02:08:46.000 How many witches died in the burning times?

02:08:48.000 Sticks, do you know this one?

02:08:50.000 It's not entirely clear because there were comprehensive records for certain events, but we don't necessarily know about them all.

02:08:57.000 It could have been quite a few tens of thousands.

02:09:01.000 Okay.

02:09:02.000 Closing statements.

02:09:03.000 You guys, thank you for being here.

02:09:05.000 Thank you for joining me on the Chadcast for this unbelievable conversation.

02:09:09.000 Nick, do you have any final words for the viewers, for us all?

02:09:15.000 Yeah, I suppose my final words would be that to distinguish between the deontological and the consequential.

02:09:23.000 We believe in Christ not from the consequentialist lens of we would be better off, we would be wealthier, we would be more powerful, things would be better in the temporal world.

02:09:32.000 In consequence, we believe deontologically in God because it is good, because it is the truth.

02:09:38.000 And so I would say that anybody who wants to get on board with this because they want to find passages or rhetoric or talking points that they can use to justify a political agenda, I would say that's not the reason to join the faith.

02:09:47.000 The reason we join the faith is because we believe.

02:09:50.000 That God exists.

02:09:51.000 He is the unmoved mover, the unchanged changer, et cetera, et cetera, as Aquinas defined it.

02:09:56.000 There is intentionality, there is design in the way things are, how things are.

02:10:01.000 You can see the handiwork of God all around you, and that Jesus Christ was his son, and he came and he died for our sins, and what he said was true.

02:10:08.000 And I would just challenge people.

02:10:09.000 I think the one takeaway would be maybe a reading list, because it's a two-hour debate.

02:10:15.000 We've done a good job.

02:10:16.000 Styx did a good job.

02:10:18.000 I did my best defending the points here.

02:10:20.000 But really, I mean, these are very complicated issues that people have debated on for thousands of years.

02:10:25.000 And so I would just encourage everybody who's interested in the subject to read Aquinas, to read Fieser, to read Augustine, and just really interrogate these arguments, because I do believe that there is a real problem.

02:10:36.000 People in this day and age, they don't hear the right justifications for Christianity.

02:10:39.000 They hear Paley, they hear this churchianity type stuff.

02:10:42.000 You got to go back to the roots.

02:10:43.000 So, if anybody could take away anything, it'd be read Aquinas, read up on the subject.

02:10:47.000 We want you in the church, but you're going to come around by your own free will.

02:10:51.000 But thanks for having me and thanks, Sticks, for a great debate.

02:10:53.000 It was really fun.

02:10:54.000 It was civil, and you're a smart guy.

02:10:55.000 So, it was a blast.

02:10:57.000 Awesome.

02:10:58.000 Nick, you are welcome on this Chadcast any day of the week.

02:11:02.000 I want you to know that.

02:11:03.000 I watch America First probably three or four days.

02:11:06.000 Or three or four nights per week.

02:11:07.000 I'm in the chat, you guys.

02:11:08.000 I'm in the chat.

02:11:11.000 Sticks, final thoughts.

02:11:14.000 I would just say, first, it's been an absolute pleasure to be here.

02:11:17.000 And, Nick, great debate.

02:11:18.000 You did a great job.

02:11:20.000 I like your material a lot.

02:11:21.000 So, it was interesting because we can be intellectual and talk about these things.

02:11:26.000 I think it's a testament to the need for free speech on the internet.

02:11:29.000 Just my mandatory anti censorship comment here, because otherwise we can't have these sorts of debates.

02:11:35.000 So, definitely, it's a good thing. 1.00

02:11:37.000 I would say on the spiritual topic, The United States was already a Christian nation for most of its existence, yet it managed to somehow fall into decadence prior to actually losing that religiosity. 0.98

02:11:50.000 This has happened before. 0.92

02:11:51.000 It's not because of Christendom.

02:11:53.000 I've never said that, but it is paired up with that.

02:11:57.000 I would say be very, very careful about people who boil down here's the solution to all of our problems as a society to something as simple as, well, we'll pray, well, we'll have a certain church. 0.75

02:12:07.000 I don't think that it will work.

02:12:09.000 I think if we look at history, which we both pointed out, Pointed to in our debate here.

02:12:14.000 I think if we look at history, that's absolutely not true.

02:12:17.000 And a reading list is actually a really good way to close this, I think.

02:12:20.000 In addition to, you should absolutely read Aquinas.

02:12:23.000 You should absolutely read the Bible, too.

02:12:25.000 And I've encouraged people, regardless of my own religious beliefs, to do so.

02:12:28.000 It's still a spiritually significant work.

02:12:31.000 I would say as well, you should read Dower's work, specifically Occultism for Beginners.

02:12:36.000 You can see some of the same arguments that are made by Christians, including yourself, Nick, really on the topic of the physical or natural world.

02:12:45.000 The reflection of that being God, being the correct faith, the correct path within spirituality.

02:12:51.000 You should definitely read Aryan sun myths if you want to get a greater grasp than I can myself personally explain in a single debate on the topic of Jesus actually literally being adapted from past savior figures within certain groups within paganism.

02:13:06.000 I would say the Epic of Gilgamesh is probably a good place to also begin your reading research.

02:13:12.000 But again, I had a great time and thanks for having me aboard.

02:13:15.000 I'd love to be back sometime.

02:13:17.000 Absolutely.

02:13:17.000 Sticks, you're welcome on this chatcast anytime.

02:13:19.000 It's called Call Meow.

02:13:21.000 We're Tuesdays at 9 p.m.

02:13:22.000 We're going to do special events, weekends.

02:13:24.000 We're going to do live events.

02:13:25.000 Really excited for your new projects.

02:13:28.000 And that's it, right?

02:13:32.000 We're wrapping up.

02:13:32.000 That's it.

02:13:33.000 Unbelievable.

02:13:35.000 What a show.

02:13:36.000 Oh, I'm going to rewatch this three or four times.

02:13:38.000 You guys should watch every single episode.

02:13:41.000 We're only on episode 11.

02:13:42.000 That was episode 11.

02:13:44.000 So we have.

02:13:45.000 We got dubs.

02:13:46.000 Yeah.

02:13:47.000 Yeah.

02:13:48.000 So we got huge plans.

02:13:51.000 Subscribe to this channel, like this video.

02:13:53.000 What'd you think about that debate, man?

02:13:55.000 That was.

02:13:56.000 That was epic.

02:13:56.000 Epic, man.

02:13:57.000 Yeah.

02:13:58.000 Really glad you guys came on board.

02:13:59.000 I appreciate it.

02:14:01.000 I'm going to dig into some Aquinas and Augustine, right?

02:14:07.000 Yes, yes.

02:14:08.000 Good.

02:14:09.000 Excellent.

02:14:09.000 All right, man.

02:14:10.000 Thanks, guys.

02:14:12.000 All right.

02:14:12.000 Thanks so much.

02:14:13.000 Take care, fellas.

02:14:14.000 Peace out.

America First - Nicholas J. Fuentes - March 03, 2018

Nick Fuentes vs. Styxhexenhammer666

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