On today's show, we have a special guest, Dr. Jordan Peterson, a conservative stand-up comic who has been making headlines for his views on gay issues. We also hear about the first lady's new job, Valerie Jarrett, who is moving into the White House with the Obamas.
00:06:06.000CNN hires her daughter, moving in with the Obamas.
00:06:09.000It gets to a certain point with Chris Cuomo, with Wolf Blitzer, Jarrett hired at CNN. You've got to wonder what the hiring practices are even like there.
00:06:17.000All right, well, thanks for coming in.
00:07:02.000The one thing is, you know, we've talked about this before, but I don't think people know how entrenched the media is with the DNC and particularly with the Clintons.
00:07:09.000We can go through a few examples here.
00:07:33.000news he's the host of this week literally worked for the clintons you don't need a conspiracy you don't need to talk about chemtrails or john podesta uh with little boys in his basement at a pizza parlor this actually happened donna brazil donna brazil of course al gore's campaign manager twice the interim chairperson for the dnc caught sneaking debate questions to hillary clinton worked for cnn openly working for cnn as a correspondent chuck todd Chuck Todd, Democrat campaign staffer, worked on 92...
00:08:01.000Sorry, worked for the 92 presidential campaigns.
00:08:03.000I was going to say worked in 92 presidential campaigns.
00:08:52.000And, you know, the reason for this from the left is they operate from this basis, I think, from Chris Cuomo.
00:08:59.000The only way he could consider himself a news anchor and not an opinion journalist, when he's more opinionated, more slanted than this show, we're incredibly biased, don't get me wrong, but at least we try to admit it and explain it and explore what kind of bias we have and where we might be wrong.
00:09:12.000Chris Cuomo doesn't even allow room for that.
00:09:14.000And I think he would consider himself a news anchor as opposed to opinion journalist because today's progressive lefts It's not necessarily facts or statistics based, but it's just, you know what?
00:10:02.000Yeah, even as entrenched as I think we are in our ideas, we hold this principle that maybe we're going to be wrong and we probably won't know it when we are wrong.
00:10:38.000I do think, and you know, talking about that too, this idea, exploring it a little deeper, that news reporters who fancy themselves arbiters of how society should work, therefore everything's acceptable as news as opposed to opinion.
00:10:50.000There's this idea that there was a golden age of journalism.
00:11:05.000I mean, Walter Cronkite said, you can't be a reporter and be a liberal.
00:11:08.000You can find the quote very easily, but people fancy him as this unbiased journalist.
00:11:12.000I don't think there's ever—I don't think human beings are capable— This is entirely my opinion.
00:11:19.000That's why I have much more respect for people who are open about something on which they're incredibly biased and say, this is how I justify that worldview.
00:11:28.000Because I feel as though Chris Cuomo, Wolf Blitzer, take your pick.
00:11:32.000They're all trying to justify the worldview.
00:12:17.000And then you have these people who come in and then you throw these buzzwords out.
00:12:19.000This is what worries me a little bit about the modern sort of alt-right, quasi-conservative populism movement where people go, oh man, corporate media!
00:12:26.000Now we just exposed and we just talked about the media and how biased they are.
00:12:37.000I mean, you have these same people out there who have Trump in their avatar, Pepe the Frog, and then they go, BBC Man or NPR. Are you out of your tree, sir?
00:13:42.000And you're like, if you just don't understand what you're hearing, you go, yeah, NPR sounds like they're factual, because this, I mean, why would they broadcast anything this boring if it I want to see the number of car wrecks associated with NPR listenership.
00:14:21.000I really think it's just important, instead of just under the blind assumption that this person is biased, this person is not biased, we always tell you that we are biased.
00:14:29.000But be aware of what you're watching and be able to parse it yourselves.
00:14:34.000If you look at the connection with the media, there's no denying that they lean left.
00:14:37.000But the same thing if you tune into a Sean Hannity, who at this point effectively acts as a surrogate for Donald Trump.
00:14:42.000And I like Donald Trump, and I actually like Sean Hannity.
00:14:44.000You need to be aware of what you're watching.
00:14:47.000The golden age in journalism, I don't think it ever existed.
00:14:50.000I just don't think people were aware of what it was that they were consuming.
00:14:52.000We'll talk more about that after this break.
00:14:55.000Then Jordan Beers and an Owen Benjamin.
00:15:18.000Now, William, of course, you've been working with your wife in politics for years on the equal rights on which we all agree for the LGBTQAI community, correct?
00:15:32.000And truly is a civil rights struggle of our time on which all Americans can agree.
00:15:38.000How can we best move forward, of course, in assuring that none of us will, for example, misgender one of the current 57 available offerings?
00:15:47.000Well, I just think that you should probably ask them what they prefer to be called.
00:15:51.000Well, that sounds entirely reasonable.
00:15:53.000Join us again next week for another installment of The Reasonable Conversationalist on NPR. Music I
00:16:27.000call that my Edward the Sound Guy dance.
00:16:30.000I think he was inspired by this, so he was just pointing pistols at you at G. Morgan Jr.
00:17:47.000So Marie Le Pen, France, obviously, listen, undoubtedly a flawed human being, Marie Le Pen.
00:17:52.000So first off, don't expect us to defend everything that Marie Le Pen has done.
00:17:55.000But this story here, for those who don't understand, let me clarify it for you.
00:17:58.000Let me break this down so that then we can talk about it.
00:18:00.000In 2015, Le Pen tweeted out some gruesome pictures of what ISIS actually does.
00:18:07.000Specifically what they did to the American reporter, James Foley.
00:18:13.000So, the socialist left in Europe, European Parliament, just voted to retroactively...
00:18:20.000Now, there's immunity, I guess, applied to certain people, to politicians, where you're not allowed to post certain kinds of images.
00:18:25.000Basically, it's an infringement on free speech.
00:18:27.000There is an immunity that applies to certain politicians, to certain figureheads in Europe.
00:18:33.000Okay, so this applied to Marie Le Pen.
00:18:34.000It applied to Marie Le Pen in 2015 when she tweeted these images out.
00:18:38.000European Parliament elected to retroactively remove her immunity so they can now prosecute her for a crime in 2015, which was totally legal in 2015.
00:19:09.000So she did everything right, it seems.
00:19:11.000Well, listen, again, she's a flawed person.
00:19:13.000I don't know where her heart was with that, but she has a real problem with Islamic terrorism, as do I, and she was trying to showcase them for the evil that they are.
00:19:52.000I've tried to be consistent with that.
00:19:53.000But if CNN is going to complain about not being allowed into an impromptu press gaggle, If this were in the United States, let's apply what this were.
00:20:02.000Imagine that you, in 2015, committed an entirely legal act.
00:20:54.000I'm shocked because this is only a political hit job.
00:20:57.000So you can ask, the European Union can be asked to take away the immunity from anybody who's not performing parliamentary functions, right, if it's an illegal thing.
00:22:43.000You cannot extract from Europe just the socialism policies.
00:22:46.000You can't extract the fiscal authoritarianism while removing the free speech authoritarianism.
00:22:51.000You can't say, we want to be like Europe and talk about a 70% income tax rate or whatever it is, or talk about what's going on in Norway or talk about what's going on in Iceland.
00:22:58.000You cannot say that and then say, but you know what, we want to keep our freedom of speech.
00:23:02.000Europe as a whole, it's an ecosystem, and because of the economic authoritarianism, it has to rely on cultural authoritarianism.
00:23:13.000And that's one thing where a lot of people who are moving along the trail, like, I'm an anti-social justice warrior, but I like Bernie Sanders' socialism.
00:23:19.000This is where it leads always, always, you can find me zero historical examples of it not ending this way.
00:23:28.000And lots of people typically die, too.
00:25:49.000Doesn't seem like Donald Trump hates immigrants because his wife is an immigrant and he has plenty of immigrants who are either married into his family or immigrants who he works with.
00:25:54.000He seems to have a lot of respect for immigrants.
00:25:57.000If it's clear that he doesn't necessarily hate all immigrants, what is the problem that he has if he's talking about building a wall in immigration policy?
00:28:01.000And while we're at it, while you pick, we found this public service video, children's video actually, which hopefully we'll be able to drill it into your noggins, exactly how to make the delineation between legal and illegal.
00:29:13.000Though ladies' work is often thought to be less meaningful, less fulfilling, and less productive than that of her hard-working male counterpart, the weaker sex earns her keep through the daily task of food preparation.
00:29:23.000Ensuring your hubby's fully satisfied is a daunting task.
00:29:54.000I didn't do the kata for this one because I feel like I've been educating people on the art of kata far too much.
00:30:20.000Actually, very excited to have this next guest because when I grew up and I was starting in comedy, I knew who he was and watched him with my brother back when MySpace was still a thing.
00:30:28.000You can follow him on Twitter at Owen Benjamin.
00:30:32.000He has the podcast, Why Didn't They Laugh?
00:30:56.000So we were preparing the shot, and Owen Benjamin was on the other side of Skype, and we're sitting there, and we see this black thing in his teeth.
00:32:46.000That's just kind of the nature of comedy.
00:32:48.000A lot of people think, oh, comedians are silly, but the work ethic required for someone to reach your level of success in this industry, most of the people you've known in your career by this point have probably just dropped off and you're still there.
00:33:02.000Yeah, it's almost like a mental optical illusion that you think everyone just keeps succeeding because you're only really paying attention to those people.
00:33:11.000If you just start thinking of all the funny people you've known and How few of them get to Madison Square Garden?
00:36:43.000And my parents are professors, but they were from, like...
00:36:45.000You know, they taught at, like, Jesuit colleges and stuff, so they had that, like, moral background that I think a lot of professors don't currently have.
00:37:00.000It's like, is that because they don't relate anymore to the party.
00:37:03.000They don't relate that every minority is a victim just for existing, that the Constitution doesn't matter, that censorship is good if it hurts people's feelings.
00:37:14.000You know, I was doing a bit about how a lot of the progressives, I call them indoor cats, and I do this long bit about it, and I started realizing, at first, it was fine.
00:37:25.000Hollywood laughed, and then it got to the point where it became almost political, and I'm like, no, this is about culture.
00:37:32.000Our culture can't become this monster of no one can speak, and everyone's judged based on what victim group they're in.
00:37:40.000And so that's why I just can't call myself a liberal.
00:37:43.000And that's what's crazy about the entertainment industry.
00:37:49.000As a general rule, comedy and the entertainment industry is a pretty good example of a meritocracy.
00:37:54.000If you're the best comedian, you tend to do better.
00:37:56.000actors, and then now they're going, "Oh, crap.
00:37:58.000We gotta give the award to the gay black midget, otherwise there's gonna be a march." And it's changed.
00:38:05.000And the thing is for me, I was talking with Nick DiPaolo about this, I think a lot of comedians who were successful from that generation were, you know, Lenny Bruce, liberal, Bill Hicks, liberal, but free speech advocates.
00:38:14.000So they still think in the clubs they're They're like, no, no.
00:38:17.000In stand-up, it's still a bastion of free speech.
00:38:19.000I'm going, you don't live in the world today where the people who paved the way weren't Lenny Bruce or Bill Hicks.
00:38:24.000It's Amy Schumer and it's Sarah Silverman who are now closing the door behind them for free speech.
00:39:08.000I remember she talked about the, like, Christian Children's Fund, like those sort of Save African Children, and she was like, oh my god, who's allowing these kids to get pregnant?
00:39:17.000Because they all had, like, the bellies.
00:39:37.000You know, and I'm like, you can not like Trump, but just realize he was democratically elected, you know, and you just got to go with that.
00:39:44.000And it's just, they started talking very scary to me.
00:39:48.000And that's why I don't really, I'm not going to pretend I agree with any of those things.
00:39:52.000Well, have you been shunned since you've, because I know you say you've always sort of had these views, but you've become more outspoken about them, certainly on social media.
00:40:20.000And do you feel that you've had some friends or people who you consider open-minded who've shunned you since they found out about your views?
00:40:26.000Yeah, for me, it was being on Sullivan& Son on TBS because it was produced by Vince Vaughn and starring Steve Byrne.
00:40:34.000Roy Wood Jr., Ahmed Ahmed, all these people.
00:40:37.000And it was so multicultural, but not in that left victim-y way.
00:41:14.000Don't, let's just, Jared, we'll talk about that another time.
00:41:16.000The guest doesn't have that much time.
00:41:17.000And so I just saw that it was hypocritical, and I got into comedy because I'm not good at lying.
00:41:26.000Like, I'm just, it's not in my nature to kind of pretend I'm something I'm not, and I still don't really consider myself very political.
00:41:34.000I just can't agree with this whole identity politics and limiting of free speech and all this stuff that I have so much pride in being American for.
00:42:55.000In the area that people like to claim they're from.
00:42:57.000He was actually inside of 8 Mile in Detroit proper.
00:43:00.000And divorced family, was part of the racial integration busing system, got his ass kicked.
00:43:08.000Yeah, do I think that maybe I've enjoyed some advantages that other people haven't?
00:43:20.000You can attribute it to being white, maybe.
00:43:22.000But I also think that other people have had privileges that I haven't had being raised to a divorced family in inner-city Detroit in a lower-middle-class household.
00:43:31.000It's called life, and he got so mad about that.
00:43:33.000But it seems that even people his age, when he talks with his friends who are black, they feel the same way.
00:43:38.000It's like, welcome to the world, population, earth, plus you now, once you understand it.
00:47:08.000It was hard for you leaving Los Angeles.
00:47:10.000And I think it's a smart decision, raising a family, getting out of the intolerance.
00:47:13.000But a big part of stand-up comedians, their identity is in stand-up.
00:47:17.000And so there's this hierarchy like, man, if you're not on the road grinding out with clubs, whereas most of them would rather be Bill Burr doing giant theaters, not having to do that, or have a career like you have, where you have a sustainable audience.
00:47:29.000But there's this idea that unless you're sticking, this is the only pure form of entertainment.
00:47:48.000If there's going to be a political joke, I can tell you exactly what it's going to be, and I can tell you which subjects they'll touch on to be politically incorrect while avoiding the real subjects they're not allowed to talk about.
00:49:14.000And I'm like, I always thought the left was the one that had, like, No, and with Michael Ian Black, I will say it got more heated than I would like, and we'll have him back on the show.
00:49:31.000But, you know, I really honestly, if you want to talk about debate, look to someone like Ben Shapiro.
00:49:38.000I genuinely, not gay Jared knows this, when we have someone on who I disagree with, I do research to see what their views are, and I genuinely try and conduct a debate.
00:49:48.000First off, the rule is, not gay Jared's not allowed to jump in at all.
00:49:59.000And I genuinely am trying to get to the truth, because if I'm wrong, I want to know it.
00:50:05.000And if you listen to some of our debates, there's been some common ground that could be found, but not with, like, Christopher Titus, you know, where it was the gun debate, and he's like, why don't you care about dead kids?
00:50:13.000Or Michael Ian Black going, isn't one rape too many?
00:50:19.000It's the worst possible straw man you can possibly do, where it's like, that's why I'm having a hard time with that side, because it's like, it's almost like they're not trying to learn, they're trying to win.
00:51:34.000You know, I'm like, do they knowingly do this?
00:51:37.000Because my motto is I might be wrong, but I'm not lying.
00:51:42.000And I'm like, if he knew it and did that, that's such divisive, evil stuff.
00:51:49.000And it's one thing if you don't know, but it's like, you know, you see Thomas Sowell in 1984 hashing out these issues, and it's like, how does he not know that that's not real?
00:52:00.000It's kind of like the gun thing not involving suicides, where it's like, you know that.
00:52:04.000Like, you're inflating this number on, like when someone says X amount of gun deaths a year, and they don't include the fact that It's half suicides.
00:52:16.000And then they compare gun crime rates across countries and not crime rates.
00:52:20.000And it's like, well, listen, obviously if guns are more accessible in a country that has allowed firearms, they're going to be used to carry out more crimes.
00:52:26.000But that doesn't mean that the crime rate is worse or the homicide rate is worse.
00:56:46.000One thing that has happened, though, is that I now get up at five in the morning and start working, because in order to keep up with this at the moment, that was pretty much what I had to do.
00:56:57.000I'm a curious person, and a lot of people have probably already figured that out.
00:57:02.000I don't mean that I'm curious in the eccentric way, I mean that I'm curious about things, and so I'm very curious about this.
00:57:10.000It certainly wasn't something I expected.
00:57:13.000Although I have to tell you that I've been amazed for decades that I've been allowed to teach what I do teach at the university and that no one's ever noticed and stopped me from doing it.
00:57:21.000So the fact that attention has been brought to it, in some sense, I suppose doesn't come as a surprise.
00:57:26.000But I'm happy about the opportunities that it's bringing me.
00:57:48.000And it's remarkable that, you know, in the age of sort of the Kardashians and the reality star sort of generation, as we call it, you skyrocketed to public awareness really through telling the truth, which has sort of become the counterculture.
00:58:02.000I know you're going to be doing a series.
00:58:32.000The plan at the moment is to rent a theatre on the University of Toronto campus, and I'd like to do a lecture every week for as long as it takes.
00:58:39.000It might be a number of years, but the first plan is for 25 weeks.
00:58:44.000I've wanted to walk my way through the Bible from a psychological perspective.
00:58:51.000I've been thinking about it for a decade.
00:58:52.000I talked to a TV producer here who I've worked with for a very long time who was interested in that.
00:59:04.000Just figured we'd end your career right now, just dead on arrival.
00:59:08.000Yeah, so I mean, I've spent a lot of time on many of the ancient stories in the Bible, trying to understand what they mean from a psychological perspective, and this would certainly provide me with the necessity for doing that.
00:59:22.000My life is structured so, and I think this is true for many people, so that unless I have a deadline and an absolute necessity for doing something, the probability that it will fall off my list of priorities is very high.
00:59:34.000So now I know that if I make this series, then I can get tens of thousands of people.
00:59:41.000I know that there are tens of thousands of people who would be We're engaging with it online, and it just seems foolish not to do it.
00:59:50.000Well, I do have a lot of respect for you in this area, because obviously with, you know, sort of fighting social justice warriors, as they're called, has become somewhat popular now, and it's kind of accepted because they're so absurd, right?
01:00:05.000People, they love to make them a whipping post.
01:00:09.000I think it's a perfect whipping post to people who are social justice warriors.
01:00:12.000However, a lot of these people who are coming along this sort of political-cultural trail, I've noticed, were previously part of this sort of leftist-atheist coalition.
01:00:20.000So it's still immensely unpopular to be someone whose faith really is a big part of what defines them as a human.
01:00:30.000And you were on Sam Harris's podcast, and that was one that really sort of went back and forth.
01:00:35.000I was surprised as to how roundabout he went with you a little bit, for someone who's usually very, very clear in his thoughtful approach.
01:00:43.000What was the reaction to that, and have you had more atheists upset, saying, well, I used to respect you until I found out you believe in the flying spaghetti monster, which we all get, or have you found more of them interested in what you have to say and wanting to learn about it?
01:00:56.000Well, I would say certainly that one of the consequences of appearing on Sam's show was that more people were attracted to watch my videos.
01:01:04.000And so I have had responses from people that are of the sort that you described who said, well, I am pleased with Dr.
01:01:13.000Peterson's political stance, but when he starts talking about the intersection between religion and psychology, then I just tune out.
01:01:29.000It's up to people to think whatever they want, and if they don't find what I'm saying convincing or interesting, then that's perfectly fine.
01:01:38.000I'm also not claiming that what I'm saying is correct, because what I'm trying to talk about is insanely complicated, which is partly why I wanted to talk to Sam Harris about it.
01:01:47.000I mean, the thing about Harris is that he has...
01:01:53.000He has concentrated on many of the same problems that have bothered me and has actually come to similar conclusions, but for very different reasons.
01:02:00.000And I thought we could have an interesting conversation about that, because he does believe that people have a primary moral obligation to speak the truth, and that he also believes that one of the primary moral obligations that characterize human beings, let's say, Is that they should try to work to mitigate unnecessary suffering, which is also something that I agree with.
01:02:24.000But I think the problem with his approach is that it is, I don't think that what he's promoting is grounded deeply enough to have the kind of power that's necessary to make it It manifests itself properly.
01:02:44.000And I also think that Harris and Dawkins, it's quite funny because they just talked to each other very recently.
01:02:51.000Harris put Dawkins on the spot by suggesting that there may have been evolutionary reasons for the selection of religious ideation.
01:02:59.000And I actually happen to believe that.
01:03:01.000And I think that both Harris and Dawkins, and this is mostly at Dawkins' feet, has never taken the...
01:03:10.000The fact of the prevalence of religious thinking with the sort of seriousness that an evolutionary biologist should...
01:03:23.000And not only that, it's how we thought, it's how all of us thought all the time, roughly speaking, before the scientific method was invented.
01:03:31.000And so for the vast majority of our evolutionary history, The essential way that we oriented ourselves in the world was indistinguishable from the religious, and it worked.
01:03:46.000And we're also fascinated, most psychologists, with sort of these evolutionary psychological coping mechanisms.
01:03:51.000And so I would imagine that an atheist might sort of toss that out, maybe as a smokescreen, that, well, it's a coping mechanism for what we don't understand in the physical world.
01:03:59.000Well, that's what Freud said, roughly speaking.
01:04:02.000Right, but it's interesting that, like you said, sort of the most prominent atheist thinkers, or certainly speakers, I don't know if we'd call them philosophers, I don't know the proper terminology necessarily, it's interesting that they really don't touch upon that a whole lot.
01:04:12.000I mean, I've read Dawkins, I've listened to Harris quite a bit, and it surprises people, often being a Christian.
01:04:18.000And I do think that you're part of, I would say, sort of a new wave where I think that a big reason for this culturally is there was Sam Harris, there was Richard Dawkins, and then there were people out there who would just say crazy outlandish things on behalf of Christianity.
01:04:33.000And I don't know if that's because atheists sort of kept people like you from the podium, or it's just that the craziest Christians sometimes grabbed the podium.
01:04:40.000But this thoughtful professorial approach, which really was the norm in Christianity, if you go back to, you know, C.S. Lewis or Chesterton, right?
01:04:50.000But it certainly has been absent for the last several decades.
01:04:52.000And it seems like you're part of a new wave who might usher in a new era of critical thinking for Christians to discuss with atheists alike.
01:05:00.000Do you feel like you're a part of that?
01:05:01.000Well, that would be lovely, I would say, because it's certainly something that I'm interested in.
01:05:05.000I mean, I think that there's a very profound discussion that has to be had between evolutionary biologists and psychologists and people with, well, with people of deep and profound religious faith.
01:05:25.000I think the evidence that There are elements of religious phenomenology that are rooted in our biology as absolutely overwhelming.
01:05:36.000So, for example, you can reliably induce experiences that people characterize as religious with hallucinogens like psilocybin.
01:05:46.000And extraordinarily well-documented evidence of that, particularly in recent years coming from Johns Hopkins, a very reliable and conservative medical...
01:05:57.000A hate group, to hear Jess Herbst's Transgender Mays of New Hope refer to it, Johns Hopkins, a hate group.
01:06:07.000But the researchers there have shown that People who are given psilocybin, for example, a very large majority of them report extraordinarily powerful mystical experiences that they regard as among the most important of their life, and not only that, that those experiences have a profound and lasting impact on their personality.
01:06:31.000Now, I'm not necessarily certain that More traditional religious people are going to be very thrilled with the idea that some of this kind of, at least the mystical end of this experience, can be induced with psychedelic drugs, for example.
01:06:45.000Can be induced with what Not Gay Jared does at a nightclub on a Friday night.
01:07:08.000Because it's terrifying, the idea that a spiritual experience can genuinely be induced, or perhaps not genuinely, depending on how you look at it, but can be induced reliably with a chemical is certainly terrifying.
01:07:23.000It could give credence to all those druggies who are like, man, just drop acid.
01:07:28.000That's how you reach the higher level.
01:07:30.000And then a cult starts, and Leia Remedy has a reality show.
01:07:33.000You're going to be talking about this in your class, going through the Bible stories.
01:07:37.000An atheist here on Twitter, I don't have it up in front of me, specifically asked, said your views on these were fascinating, and he really liked listening to you discuss these subjects.
01:07:45.000So if you're going to go through these stories...
01:07:47.000For example, I don't know if you go through Daniel in the lion's den through the New Testament.
01:07:52.000I don't know if you go through Genesis.
01:08:03.000You just look at it from a modern psychological perspective?
01:08:05.000No, no, that's a really good question.
01:08:07.000Well, look, when I was a kid, when I was first in university, I had the opportunity to go out to the Edmonton Maximum Security Prison a couple of times with this very eccentric psychologist who taught a course on creativity at the University of Alberta.
01:08:26.000One moment, who could possibly be sentenced to a maximum security prison in Edmonton?
01:08:33.000They collected them from many places across Canada, and there were plenty of guys in there that you would not want to meet in a dark alley, or even in a well-lit space if you were surrounded by policemen.
01:10:27.000You know, you can compare it to modern Aesop fable, but there is a case to be made, I certainly believe this, for Jesus Christ as a historical figure, and I would not consider the New Testament fiction.
01:10:36.000And that's one issue where it's very hard to discuss with atheists, you know, oh, flying spaghetti monster.
01:10:40.000But I came to this, I was raised in a Christian household, but at a certain point, people say, were you born a Christian?
01:10:50.000reading from, you know, reading, you know, Tacitus, Josephus, Justin Martyr, looking, you know, Tertullian, all of these arguments, you know, obviously the empty tomb, that's an argument that is kind of one that has to be accounted for.
01:11:00.000I looked at it from a logical perspective and said, okay, what are the odds of this occurring?
01:11:05.000This is the historical evidence we have for Christ as a historical figure.
01:11:08.000And then I will tell you, as someone who likes to think of themselves as logical, what's the gamble on this being an act of chance?
01:11:16.000And so I think it is important for people, and I think a lot of atheists don't get this, there are some things that are literal.
01:11:21.000There are some areas where it's a historical document in the Bible.
01:11:23.000And as you're saying, sometimes this is meant to be taken as a morality tale.
01:11:29.000Yeah, look, I mean, the Bible is an extraordinarily complicated document, and it is a strange mix of history and mythology.
01:11:37.000And separating one from the other is no straightforward thing.
01:11:41.000And you probably hit on the most crucial issue there with regards to the, let's call it, the empirical reality of the resurrection of Christ.
01:11:51.000Now, The first thing I have to say about that is that I do not understand it well enough to have a proper opinion about it.
01:11:59.000And what I mean by a proper opinion is that I don't understand it.
01:12:04.000One of the things that's very interesting about the story of Christ is that it is heavily mythologized, and on multiple levels.
01:12:12.000So for example, there's a cosmology that's associated with Christ.
01:12:15.000So Christ is the son, I mean the literal son in the cosmology, and there's 12 disciples because each of the disciples represents an astrological house.
01:12:25.000The thing that's so interesting about the story of Christ is that it can be retold at multiple levels of analysis and has been, and those have all been integrated into something that all says the same thing.
01:12:36.000Now, that leaves open the issue of the relationship between the historical reality and the archetype and the mythology.
01:12:47.000For example, it's quite obvious that many of the elements of Christ's life, the way that it's presented in the New Testament, have Right.
01:13:04.000And who is also represented quite frequently as an infant sitting on the lap of Isis, his mother, in the same way that Christ is represented sitting on the lap of Mary.
01:13:11.000So there are these historical parallels, and they're deep and profound.
01:13:15.000And one way of reading them is that that's just evidence that the entire story is a variation of a myth.
01:14:25.000Sorry, this is personal opinion, but you're the scholar.
01:14:28.000The issue for me in relationship to that is twofold.
01:14:34.000The first thing is that that's a problem that I'm actively working on trying to understand, and I hope to do a lot more of that over the next three or four years because it's an extraordinarily deep problem.
01:14:47.000I would also say that I've understood it in large part in a manner that was offered to me by my understanding of Carl Jung.
01:14:56.000And so Jung said, so imagine, I made a case that you can think about the Bible as a form of extraordinarily distilled fiction, and fiction in the best sense, in that fiction is a kind of abstraction.
01:15:11.000From reality, like mathematics is a kind of abstraction from reality.
01:15:15.000And you might say, well, are numbers real?
01:15:19.000And the other answer is, yeah, they're more real than anything else.
01:15:23.000And you can make a very strong case for both of those viewpoints because they're not real the same way like a cup is real, but they're real in the way that allows you to make atom bombs.
01:15:33.000I love, by the way, that a doctor has a solo cup.
01:15:36.000You'd expect a mug and a very distinguished pen.
01:15:39.000It's the thing you use to play beer pong.
01:15:41.000I have my Louder with Crowder mug at home and use it frequently.
01:17:48.000The cross is the burden of being alive and the knowledge of their own mortality and fragility.
01:17:54.000And you can either bear that honorably or dishonorably.
01:17:57.000And if you bear it honorably, then you do it by telling the truth and living a forthright life and aiming at the best.
01:18:05.000And those are all things that are characteristic of the Christ that we know from the Gospels.
01:18:10.000But then, to make that a truly archetypal story, you have to magnify it to its ultimate degree.
01:18:17.000And so that's also what's happened in the Christian story, because you have the perfect man, who's innocent of all things, so that's sinless, who is betrayed by his friends, which is the worst thing that can happen to you socially, And who's then subject to torture and death reserved for a criminal.
01:18:36.000So it's the most unjust possible sequence of things happening to the best possible person.
01:19:43.000But then and now and then someone comes along who really partially embodies that archetype, who really is a manifestation of something approaching the ideal.
01:19:53.000And then now and then someone comes along who really closely matches that ideal.
01:19:58.000Well, Steven Seagal claims that he's the Dalai Lama incarnate.
01:20:09.000It's a hell of a thing to call someone who's the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama.
01:20:13.000Yes, it would be if that were the case.
01:20:15.000I could talk about this all day, and maybe we'll do an extended version.
01:20:19.000We do have other topics to get to, and of course we have several guests today.
01:20:23.000I do find all that interesting conceptually.
01:20:25.000And then, you know, for me, when it comes down to, you know, people aren't willing to live their life or end their life for merely a concept.
01:20:32.000So again, the historical context, and actually Gerald, it would be interesting if we had him here for the interview.
01:20:39.000When you look at people who are persecuting Christians and then willing to die for something in that lifetime, that's a rarity.
01:20:46.000And that is something that, again, needs to be accounted for when you can look at it historically and say, okay, these people were willing to die for someone they knew.
01:20:54.000That's different from a concept, and that's a whole other layer that we can get into, which, again, there are several different views that, you know...
01:21:00.000If you're talking about a tree branch with Christianity, that's one thing, too.
01:21:03.000The reason I don't engage in these conversations as much with militant atheists is because they go, well, Christians, and you and I understand that the Christian umbrella is far different from, I guess, atheists in the sense that you can go, okay, Christian, you have Catholic, you have Catholic, you have Protestant, then you have Protestant, you have five-point Calvinism, you have this idea of predestination.
01:21:20.000And there are so many different variables there that someone who doesn't believe in the Christian faith at all won't necessarily understand or really be able to have a productive conversation about it.
01:21:31.000And I think this is one where hopefully it's been illuminating for people and we can bring you back on to talk about it more.
01:21:37.000I mean, this is something that can occur for hours.
01:21:38.000It would be nice to continue to develop that because I would like to talk more about the relationship between Christ as a historical figure, say, as a literal figure, and the mythological representations of Christ.
01:25:56.000So hopefully if you're listening in your car, of course you can subscribe on iTunes, SoundCloud, Audio, if you don't want to watch the video while you're on the go.
01:26:04.000I know it's not audio-downloadable, the daily show, for Mug Club members.
01:26:08.000LotofCutter.com slash Mug Club CRTV members.
01:26:10.000That's going to be there soon, by the way, in the app.
01:26:13.000So you'll be able to watch the video or you'll be able to download the audio version to take with you.
01:26:36.000I'll tell you what doesn't get better.
01:26:38.000The state of CNN. That is only going to get worse.
01:26:43.000About this earlier in the show and it's interesting that you know Jordan Peterson I can have a discussion where even we even branch out sort of on on the discussion of of Christianity somewhat I don't know how much we disagree or agree because we were talking about it more conceptually, but It's interesting that we can have I guarantee if you're to line up Jordan Peterson me and Owen Benjamin in a room and actually go through what our exact views are That we all would have very seriously differing opinions on certain subjects.
01:27:10.000I I actually think that would probably happen in this room quite a bit, even though we're all right-wing or more conservative.
01:27:16.000But I don't think it happens at places like CNN. I think that with this stuff, when you see someone who's being praised, we talked about, if you just cycle through these stories, when you see how no one at CNN is like, you know, we really should be covering more of this story with Europe and Marie Le Pen, who's having her speech silenced, and no one goes, yeah, we should.
01:27:35.000When everyone's saying, you know, it's really brave, this Latino woman, yeah, Donald Trump hates immigrants, and no one is there saying, eh, well, maybe it's illegal immigrants.
01:27:44.000We've talked about this, getting into an echo chamber and surrounding yourself, either only with yes-men in your own personal life, or certainly politically and culturally, surrounding yourself with people, even if they agree with you, who won't challenge you.
01:27:57.000Gerald and I have gotten to some knock-down, drag-out brawls.
01:29:47.000I can give it to you all the right time.
01:29:49.000They said it might be a falsified study, but this was for a long time accepted in sports training that the Olympic lifters would actually outrun some of the 100-meter dashers, or maybe it was the 400-meter, like up in the 10 yards first, like that explosive off the blocks.
01:30:05.000And it surprised a lot of people, and so they incorporated a lot of that sort of dynamic training into it.
01:30:10.000And so I was talking about that with soccer, and then we got into the portion where soccer just sucks as a general concept.
01:30:21.000So the point is, we end this argument about it, but having a room full of people who still feel comfortable questioning each other and fact-checking each other, saying, I disagree with you on that, is a much more healthy atmosphere than I think you even see in traditional media outlets.
01:30:36.000And you have to ask yourself, we're talking about the golden age of journalism.
01:30:39.000To take it back to that, what do you think changed?
01:30:41.000The golden age of journalists, the same networks, ABC, NBC, CBS, largely the same corporations, or certainly the same level of power of these giant corporations.
01:30:50.000So did it change overnight, where all of a sudden everyone at NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, the most trusted name, did it change overnight, where all of a sudden they decided we're only going to hire liberals to the point where Chris Cuomo will go out there and actually believe that he's a news anchor?
01:31:06.000Or is it maybe something that was always there that you weren't aware about because they've always been in a room where they agree with each other?
01:31:13.000And you will be amazed sometimes when you don't have to accept this premise.
01:31:20.000Sometimes people—Owen Benjamin was very complimentary.
01:31:21.000I do not fancy myself a skilled debater at all.
01:31:23.000Like I've said, Thomas Sowell, Ben Shapiro, even Jordan Peterson are— Listen, they're way more educated and they're way more skilled in the art of debate than I am.
01:31:33.000For people who ask for that, if you're actually looking for truth...
01:31:37.000When you're having a conversation and a debate, and you'll see this happen with Chris Cuomo, you'll see this happen with a lot of members of traditional media who were once respected.
01:31:43.000If you just check them on something very simple, that, well, Donald Trump hates immigrants, you can literally get the upper hand in that conversation, in a conversation seeking the truth, not just talking about a debate.
01:31:55.000I say, well, no, no, hold on a second.
01:31:56.000The problem we have is with illegal immigration.
01:31:59.000And you would assume that they will be able to handle that, and they'll have a counter-argument, and then you'll have three or four prepared, which you always should, but most of the time it doesn't happen.
01:32:07.000Certainly not with people who are coming from the entertainment industry or coming from the New York DC media elite.
01:32:13.000It is remarkable where we've gotten to a point where the most rudimentary debating techniques or skills, the most rudimentary employment of the Socratic method.
01:32:24.000It destroys their entire basis of arguing in the first place.
01:32:30.000And this is a really interesting time in history because I don't think that this is the first time people have woken up.
01:32:35.000I don't think this is the first time that people are starting to be willing to...
01:32:40.000To concede that, I think we're at a time in history where people have been so coddled, where people in the entertainment industry and people in the media have been so used to like-minded thinking, and because of the information superhighway that is the internet, they're now being questioned on it.
01:32:57.000This is why you see Chris Cuomo and Don Lemon freaking out and getting into Twitter fights.
01:33:01.000Look, you make millions of dollars every year and you're on one of the biggest news networks in the world and you're getting mad because someone said that you're wrong on Twitter.
01:33:13.000I don't think they've been exposed to this information as they've gotten from the walking meme on Twitter who just said his own Benjamin said, no, 77 cents in the dollar is a lie.
01:33:30.000Have you ever had this where you're getting into a conversation or to an argument, and someone else says something that is sort of assumed as a truth, and they say it confidently, so you go, well, hold on a second.