The Matt Walsh Show - February 12, 2019


Ep. 196 - A Party Of Bigots


Episode Stats

Length

39 minutes

Words per Minute

166.03575

Word Count

6,550

Sentence Count

418

Misogynist Sentences

5

Hate Speech Sentences

20


Summary

On this episode of The Matt Walsh Show, we will examine the rampant bigotry in the Democratic Party. Also, we ll get the latest on the Jussie Smollett Hate Crime Case, a story that is falling apart more and more right before our eyes. And finally, I want to play a video for you of Bill Nye making the case for abortion.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Today on the Matt Wall Show, we will examine the rampant bigotry in the Democratic Party.
00:00:05.440 Also, we'll get the latest on the Jussie Smollett alleged hate crime attack, a story that is
00:00:11.440 falling apart more and more right before our eyes. And finally, I want to play a video for you of
00:00:17.640 Bill Nye making the case for abortion. And it is maybe the stupidest thing that you'll see at
00:00:26.820 least this week. So we'll talk about that today as well on the Matt Wall Show.
00:00:36.600 So a Jew-hating Congresswoman Ilhan Omar tweeted yesterday a standard anti-Semitic trope,
00:00:44.900 well actually that was on Sunday, claiming that the Jews over in Israel are paying off Republicans,
00:00:51.380 buying their support. This is the same, you know, you have to look at this in the context of the sort
00:00:56.420 stuff that this woman often says and tweets. She tweeted out a few years ago that Israel has
00:01:03.360 quote, hypnotized the world. And she prayed that Allah would help us all see the evil doings
00:01:10.340 of the Israelis. So this is, this is all part of a pattern, a pattern that you can find
00:01:17.420 throughout the Democratic Party with anti-Semitism and bigotry of all different kinds. Bigotry in
00:01:24.340 general is a common theme in, in the Democrat Party. This after all is, is the party that
00:01:32.240 subjects Christian judges to unconstitutional religious tests, examining their belief systems
00:01:38.460 and their religious affiliations and convictions as if that's somehow relevant to the, to, to what
00:01:44.700 they're going to be doing. You remember one of the most bigoted statements I think uttered by an
00:01:50.900 American politician in recent memory was Dianne Feinstein, um, telling Amy Coney Barrett that her
00:01:58.060 Catholic dogma quote, lives loudly within her. Um, and that's a concern she said. So if you want to
00:02:06.920 understand why that's bigoted, well then all you have to do is imagine a Republican Senator saying
00:02:14.800 something like that to a Muslim, um, judicial nominee and saying, you know, your, your Islamic,
00:02:21.800 uh, your Islamic faith lives loudly within you. And that's a concern. Now, of course, in that context,
00:02:30.720 everybody would agree. And, and, and the left would be calling it Islamophobic and so on and so forth.
00:02:35.420 Um, senators Kamala Harris and Maisie Hirono have, have likewise scrutinized Christian judges for their
00:02:42.940 faith. Um, or, or, or if they're affiliated with, uh, you know, the dastardly Knights of Columbus.
00:02:49.960 And this is nothing of course, compared to what Democrat politicians and Democrat policies and
00:02:56.140 state governments do to Christian business owners who face, um, who face persecution penalties, fines
00:03:03.740 for simply trying to operate, uh, and live according to biblical precepts. Um, the democratic party
00:03:11.000 is also your one-stop shop for man-hating and anti-white rhetoric. And, uh, they've come out
00:03:17.860 against stay-at-home moms and, you know, Midwesterners and Southerners and homeschoolers.
00:03:22.840 Um, and of course, if we're talking about bigotry among Democrats, there is no group more reviled,
00:03:32.020 um, more diminished and discriminated against by Democrats than the unborn who, according to nearly
00:03:39.520 every single Democrat in the country at every level of government, don't even count as people.
00:03:46.360 Okay. So when you think about this, it's, it's really no wonder that Democrats are constantly
00:03:52.260 trying to hang the bigot label around other people's necks, trying to call other people bigots.
00:03:58.260 This is just a classic case of projection. That's all. You don't need to be a, uh, a psychotherapist
00:04:03.760 to see what's happening here. This is, it's very similar to the cheating husband who, uh, becomes
00:04:10.140 very suspicious of his wife. Um, which because, because he's cheating, he kind of sees that in
00:04:18.260 everybody else because that's how he is. There was a recent survey that was done that, that showed
00:04:23.060 that a sizable majority, over 60% of registered Democrats think that Republicans are bigoted and
00:04:29.640 sexist. Now keep in mind, um, that many of these same people think that babies aren't human.
00:04:38.840 Masculinity is toxic. The Jewish state has no right to exist. Uh, Christians should be forced
00:04:45.040 to bake cakes for gay weddings against their will. So among other things. So they are so immersed in
00:04:52.860 their fanatical prejudices that they, they cannot see anything but prejudice in others because that's
00:04:59.460 just, that's the world they live in. And this is no surprise really, because that's how it is with
00:05:06.220 bigots all the time. That's how bigots operate. They never think that their own bigotry counts,
00:05:11.800 right? There are very few bigots who will just admit, oh yeah, yeah, I'm a bigot. Sure.
00:05:20.400 No, the, the justification is always, well, no, no, no. Yeah. I'm allowed to hate those people
00:05:26.860 because they deserve it. Of course I can hate them. No, it doesn't count. If, if, if I'm, if I,
00:05:32.140 you know, say something awful about white men, well, that's okay. Cause they deserve it. I'm allowed
00:05:36.780 to say that. In fact, that is, that is literally the, the leftist philosophy. That is their theories
00:05:46.540 of race and gender dynamics exempt them from any charge of prejudice or discrimination. This is what
00:05:52.860 they believe. This is what they, um, are taught and teach in college that essentially, you know,
00:06:00.940 it's impossible for, for instance, a white man to be the victim of racism or sexism. You can treat him
00:06:06.840 however you want. You can say whatever you want to him. It doesn't matter because his institutional
00:06:11.520 power insulates him from bigotry or some such nonsense. These kinds of rationales allow their
00:06:18.640 hatred and their bigotry to go unchecked and unnoticed, but bigotry is still bigotry. And the
00:06:27.080 democratic party is where it thrives in our culture. Now you could, you could say that, well, you know,
00:06:34.380 if you go to the far right, extreme end of the spectrum, you've got white nationalists and, and
00:06:39.860 racists over there and sure. Okay, fine. Um, a couple of differences though. Number one, that is a
00:06:48.420 despite what you may hear from the media, that is a pretty small group. And number two, um, they are
00:06:54.980 denounced by everybody else on the right, nearly everybody, certainly in the mainstream, you know,
00:07:03.220 white nationalism has been, has been denounced. And any time a Republican or conservative says
00:07:10.720 something perceived as racist, you're going to have other conservatives and Republicans lining up
00:07:17.960 to condemn it. The difference is on the left, you don't really find that
00:07:23.000 on the left. It's, if there are condemnations, now it took a, it took a while with, um, with this
00:07:31.460 Ilan Omar stuff there, it took a while. Some Democrats eventually did come out and condemn it.
00:07:36.520 It took them a while to do it. They did it. Um, but depending on the group being insulted or targeted,
00:07:43.520 you may not hear any condemnation from the left. So that's the difference because you have to keep
00:07:51.380 in mind that they really do believe this is their philosophy. They believe that there are certain
00:07:57.240 groups you're allowed to hate and the hatred is totally justified. And in fact, it is impossible
00:08:04.000 to be bigoted against those groups. That is their, that's their philosophy.
00:08:09.840 All right. Um, speaking of, uh, of bigotry, here's, here's a sort of a different form of bigotry.
00:08:16.940 Jussie Smollett, um, the actor from the show Empire, a black man, also a gay man. I'm sure you've been
00:08:28.280 following this story. He claims, we'll just review here briefly. He claims that he was the victim of
00:08:34.080 a racist and homophobic attack and claims is the key word here. Uh, huge emphasis on claims.
00:08:41.720 So as the story goes, he was, um, walking through downtown Chicago at around 2 30 AM one night,
00:08:49.600 several weeks ago, and he was then attacked and brutally beaten, he says. And he says the attackers
00:08:56.600 shouted, um, this is MAGA country as they were beating him in Chicago. Okay. So these are,
00:09:04.680 these are racist whites who are claiming that Chicago is MAGA country. Um, and they, he says
00:09:11.180 that they called him the N word and the F word and so on. So fast forward over several days, uh,
00:09:17.360 police investigate the attack. They find no evidence to support the claim. None at all. Uh,
00:09:23.640 Smollett says that he was, he was on the phone at the time of the attack with his manager and his
00:09:28.540 manager heard it happening. So police asked for him to turn over his phone and he refused for a
00:09:33.420 while. Uh, finally, he did turn over some phone records, but he redacted them so heavily as to
00:09:37.920 make them useless. Police also checked camera footage, um, security cameras. Now, as it happens,
00:09:44.260 he was, he was, he was walking down the street at 2 30 AM in Chicago in the winter. It's,
00:09:49.320 you know, extremely, extremely cold. Um, he was on his way, I think to subway to get a sandwich.
00:09:57.340 And he says that he was attacked on the way. Well, it just so happens you're in Chicago,
00:10:01.800 major city, there are security cameras everywhere. So his entire trip to subway is caught on camera,
00:10:09.500 except for 60 seconds. There is just a 60 second gap where cameras don't pick him up,
00:10:16.800 where he's out of sight of cameras. Um, the, but all the rest of it, there is,
00:10:23.700 there is no, you don't see him getting attacked. Um, we don't see the alleged culprits.
00:10:30.560 So he says, Oh no, you know, it just so happens that the attack occurred in that 60 second gap.
00:10:36.740 You know, it just so happens kind of conveniently. Um, but we don't see that. Um, he says that he was
00:10:45.120 beaten to within an inch of his life in that 60 seconds, but then he just casually got up and
00:10:50.880 walked the subway anyway. And in fact, he kept, um, he says that he was, um, that they poured bleach
00:10:57.420 on him and that they tied a rope around his neck. And oddly enough, he kept the rope around his neck
00:11:04.840 and went to subway and then went home and he kept wearing the rope because that's what you would do,
00:11:09.260 right? If, if you were attacked with someone with a rope, you would just wear the rope the whole time.
00:11:13.300 Um, he also, he didn't want to call police. He didn't call police. He didn't call,
00:11:18.300 you know, he didn't go seek medical help, um, or anything like that. Eventually his friends
00:11:23.300 convinced him that he should call the police. And so he did. Now, uh, some of his neighbors have come
00:11:29.440 out and they say that, uh, they don't believe him. His neighbors point out that they live in a
00:11:34.840 neighborhood with a lot of gay people and a lot of minorities, and they live in one of the most
00:11:39.960 liberal cities in the country. So this is one of the most liberal towns and one of the most
00:11:44.860 liberal cities in the entire country. It is essentially the last place on earth where you
00:11:50.340 would expect to find a roving group of white racists randomly attacking minorities in the
00:11:55.180 middle of the street, in the middle of the night when it's, you know, negative 10 degrees outside or
00:11:58.760 whatever. Um, but of course, even if this happened in like Alabama or somewhere like that, it would
00:12:06.240 still be extremely far-fetched because even before you find out that, um, the security camera footage
00:12:14.400 doesn't capture the attack and that he didn't turn over his phone records and all the rest of it,
00:12:19.620 you should still hear that story and think, uh, yeah, I don't, no, I don't think so. I really,
00:12:27.740 I don't think that happened. That just doesn't sound like a thing that would happen. In fact,
00:12:33.020 that sounds like the kind of thing that liberals make up all the time. It doesn't actually sound
00:12:37.880 like the kind of thing that really happens though. Um, also, by the way, we should note that
00:12:44.760 nobody else in the town has reported an attack like this, but these two culprits, if they existed,
00:12:52.320 which they almost certainly don't, but, um, that would mean that they either just so happened
00:13:00.900 to have a noose and a bottle of bleach and that they happen to be walking down the street in the
00:13:05.500 middle of the night when it's freezing cold outside with a noose and a bottle of bleach.
00:13:08.740 And then they happen to find this guy and then attack him. Or they, they took those items
00:13:15.880 and they went out essentially hunting for a minority or a homosexual to attack.
00:13:21.700 But if that's the case, it's very unlikely that this would be their first time doing it.
00:13:29.120 Okay. You're not going to have two guys that just up and decide one night to go do that.
00:13:33.820 And this is, you kind of work up to that. If, if, if, if you have someone who is so psychotic
00:13:39.480 and so racist and violent that they would not just one person, but two people that they would
00:13:44.280 go out and do that, it's probably not their first time. Um, yet there've been no other reports
00:13:49.380 of anything like that. So, uh, the police have, have not yet filed charges against Smollett for,
00:13:59.280 um, for filing a false report. I, I think it's pretty, pretty clear that if this guy wasn't
00:14:06.680 a celebrity or if the whole thing wasn't so politically charged, or if he was a white guy
00:14:13.280 making this claim, uh, uh, saying that two black men had attacked him, you know, you know,
00:14:18.060 in some sort of racist attack in any of those scenarios, I think there would already be files.
00:14:23.140 There would already already be charges filed for filing a false report. Um, but in this case,
00:14:29.600 they haven't, because I guess, you know, it's like 99.999% certain that this is all made up,
00:14:38.380 but there is that 60 second gap. So the police can say that, well, technically, I mean,
00:14:44.160 it could have happened in that 60 seconds. And then he just casually got up with the rope around
00:14:49.400 his neck and went and got a sandwich and went home. Um, I mean, we, and then, and then the,
00:14:54.980 the two attackers, by the way, just vanished into thin air, or maybe they, they scaled a building or
00:15:00.320 something like Spider-Man and, um, escaped into the shadows. I mean, it's possible that that happened.
00:15:08.300 So I think, I think basically they're going to need to find total incontrovertible,
00:15:15.280 absolute evidence that this was invented before they file those, before they charge him with, um,
00:15:21.760 Smollett, I mean, charge him with a crime. And unless they find video for that 60 second gap,
00:15:27.320 they're not going to have that kind of evidence. Um, so I don't know. So maybe he'll get away with it.
00:15:34.240 This was, if this is made up, if this is a hoax, which again, uh, all signs are pointing in that
00:15:41.500 direction. If it's, if it's a hoax, then, then what's the point? You know, why do people do this
00:15:47.100 kind of stuff? And you do find this on the left rather frequently. Uh, usually it's not as elaborate
00:15:53.720 as this classic, classic hoaxes usually involve like, um, a waiter or waitress claiming that
00:16:03.340 somebody wrote something racist on a receipt, you know, that kind of thing. And then, and then always
00:16:07.600 a couple of days later, it comes out that, Oh no, they actually wrote it themselves. So why do they do
00:16:11.160 this? And I think it's pretty clear that there, there are two elements to it. Um, one is definitely
00:16:16.440 political, trying to paint your political enemies. And, you know, as, as these dangerous lunatics
00:16:23.000 roving the street, looking for minorities to assault. So there's that political element to it.
00:16:26.980 But I think psychologically, even before that, it's just a, um, it's just a ploy for attention.
00:16:34.440 Why do people look for attention in that way? Um, you know, it's, it's hard to know people that just
00:16:40.340 have a, some sort of hole inside them, some sort of emptiness. And, um, and this is how they want
00:16:48.640 attention. And I also think that on the left, especially, um, we have to remember that victimhood
00:16:56.780 is, is a painted as a desirable thing. Um, victimhood on the left is power. That's how you have power is
00:17:09.520 if you're a victim. And so there's always this competition among people on the left, different
00:17:15.840 groups competing about who is the greater victim, who faces the most persecution.
00:17:22.820 And so I think people are sort of conditioned this way.
00:17:28.420 And they're almost so, you know, you have this guy's a, he's a Hollywood actor, um, living in a kind
00:17:37.100 of upscale neighborhood in a, in an urban area. Um, you know, I assume he gets paid pretty well.
00:17:45.480 So he, so he lives a pretty comfortable life and it seems like he's almost disappointed by that.
00:17:51.260 He wants to be a victim because that's how people are conditioned by liberals. And so he invents this
00:17:58.700 story. All right. I want to get to this. This, uh, this video is from a couple of years ago,
00:18:06.680 but it's making the rounds online again. And I want to play it because it is just such a wonderful
00:18:12.400 sort of distillation of every fallacious pro-abortion argument. It really is incredible.
00:18:20.500 Um, every single bad pro-abortion argument, just in one video, one after another, after another in
00:18:27.940 succession. This is a Bill Nye, the fake science guy. And he did this video a couple of years ago,
00:18:33.760 um, rambling on about why he supports abortion. And I just, I'm going to play the whole thing for
00:18:39.860 you. I want you to watch this and then we'll talk about it. But, but here it is. If you're going to
00:18:44.720 say when an egg is fertilized, it's therefore all has the same rights as an individual. Then who are
00:18:53.540 you going to sue? Whom are you going to sue? Whom are you going to imprison? Every woman who's had a
00:18:58.740 fertilized egg pass through her? Every guy whose sperm has fertilized an egg and then it didn't
00:19:05.100 become a human? Have all these people failed you? Uh, it's just a reflection of a deep scientific lack
00:19:12.020 of understanding. And, uh, you literally or apparently literally don't know what you're talking about.
00:19:21.460 And so, uh, uh, when it comes to women's rights with respect to their reproduction,
00:19:28.980 I think you should leave it to women. It's really, uh, you cannot help but notice. I mean,
00:19:35.060 I'm not the first guy to observe this. You have a lot of men of European descent passing these
00:19:41.940 extraordinary laws based on ignorance. Sorry, you guys. I know it was written or your interpretation
00:19:50.500 of a book written 5,000 years ago, 50 centuries ago, makes you think that when a man and a woman
00:20:03.060 have sexual intercourse they always have a baby. That's wrong. And so to pass laws based on that
00:20:10.740 belief is inconsistent with nature. I mean, it's hard not to get frustrated with this everybody.
00:20:22.660 And I know nobody likes abortion. Okay. But you can't tell somebody what to do. I mean, she has rights
00:20:35.300 over this, especially if she doesn't like the guy that got her pregnant. Like she doesn't want
00:20:40.740 anything to do with your genes. Get over it, especially if she were raped and all this. So
00:20:47.380 it's very frustrating on the outside, on the other side. We have so many more important things to be
00:20:53.940 dealing with. We have so many more problems to squander resources on this argument based on
00:21:01.460 bad science, on just lack of understanding. Wow. What a fantastic idiot.
00:21:10.820 This may be the dumbest two and a half minutes ever recorded. It's really incredible. Yet, as I said,
00:21:19.300 it also perfectly represents the pro-abortion side. So what does that tell you?
00:21:24.420 All right. Let's run through this. So he begins by conflating abortion with miscarriage
00:21:33.540 and claiming that pro-lifers want to put women in jail for having miscarriages.
00:21:38.820 And he even says that we want to put men in jail if they have sex, but fail to conceive.
00:21:44.660 Yeah, because, because that's an argument that we, that we make all the time as pro-lifers, right?
00:21:52.820 But yeah, if you go to the March for Life, you'll see people holding big banners saying,
00:21:56.340 put men in jail for not conceiving children.
00:22:01.220 Um, he then claims that the pro-life side is a conspiracy among men of European descent.
00:22:08.580 When of course, in fact, the pro-life side is at least 50% women, if not more.
00:22:13.220 Then he says that pro-lifers base their position solely on the Bible. And he claims that the Bible
00:22:18.900 was written 5,000 years ago, uh, which is, which is remarkably stupid.
00:22:29.220 Even that, let's just focus on that part alone for a minute. He says the Bible was written 5,000 years
00:22:34.900 ago. And he says it with such confidence, 5,000 years ago, 50 centuries. You think the whole Bible
00:22:41.540 was written 5,000 years ago? No, the, the oldest books in the Bible were written maybe 3,000 years
00:22:48.900 ago. Um, much of the Old Testament is far more recent than that. And then of course the New Testament,
00:22:55.060 uh, was, was written, uh, less than 2,000 years ago. So five, you couldn't be more wrong with 5,000.
00:23:04.820 Now I know it seems like I'm semantics or something, but this is a grown adult man claims to be a
00:23:11.940 scientist, uh, claims to be very knowledgeable. He does these shows where he's instructing people
00:23:18.260 on all these different subjects. And he thinks the Bible was written 5,000 years ago. My kids are
00:23:24.020 five years old and even they know better than that. Um, he then spends a while explaining that
00:23:30.140 sex doesn't always lead to a baby, which thoroughly debunks a view that literally nobody holds.
00:23:35.660 Then he says that, uh, nobody likes abortion, which actually the feminist movement is clear that
00:23:40.500 they are proud of abortion and they do like it. And finally he gets to his big mic drop moment,
00:23:45.800 the summary of his whole case. And he says, you know, he's kind of, he's kind of condensing it all
00:23:53.040 down. And he says that, well, abortion has to be legal because quote, you can't tell somebody what
00:24:00.480 to do, which you can't tell. So that's his argument. Why should abortion be legal? Well, because you
00:24:07.900 can't, you can't tell somebody what to do. Okay. Well, if that's the case, then that means that we can't
00:24:14.240 have any laws of any kind at all. You have just undermined law itself because every law tells
00:24:22.720 people what to do and what not to do. Um, and then at the end, after spending two and a half minutes
00:24:28.080 torching the most absurd straw man ever constructed, he accuses the other side of having a lack of
00:24:33.880 understanding. Um, it's, it's wow. But remember something else that, you know, as stupid as this
00:24:44.600 is, you can't do much better than that. If, if you're going to spend two and a half minutes
00:24:50.560 trying to defend killing babies, it's not like you can make a good argument. Uh, I think you could be
00:24:58.700 more eloquent and more coherent than Bill Nye, which isn't hard to do, but if we're kind of grading
00:25:08.880 this on a curve, then although it was supremely moronic, we would have to say that as far as pro
00:25:18.760 abortion arguments go, it's maybe like a B minus because there aren't any good ones anyway. Uh, that
00:25:28.060 is just, wow. But the really sad thing, you know, we can, we can laugh at how crazy it is, but the sad
00:25:35.520 thing is that there are millions of Americans who will watch that video and, and say, Oh wow. Yeah.
00:25:45.120 He really, he really debunked the pro-life position. Didn't he? Wow. That was quite a debunking
00:25:49.560 mic drop. There are millions of Americans will see that and think that it's convincing. They'll be
00:25:55.820 convinced by it. All right. We'll go check the, uh, check the inbox. If you want to send a message
00:26:02.460 email, uh, to the show, a message email, um, then you can do that at mattwallshowatgmail.com.
00:26:11.220 This is from AJ. It says, hi Matt, I love your show. Especially love when you talk about the
00:26:15.000 historical case for Jesus, ancient manuscripts, biblical history, et cetera. Considering your
00:26:20.060 interest in those subjects, I was wondering if you'd seen slash read Lee Strobel's, The Case for Christ.
00:26:26.420 I assume you have, but I'd be interested in your take on it. Hi AJ. Yes, I have read it. Um,
00:26:32.920 I haven't seen the movie, but, uh, I've read the book now for anyone who isn't familiar. The Case
00:26:39.460 for Christ is a really famous Christian book, um, turned movie written by a guy named Lee Strobel.
00:26:46.220 And the conceit of the book, the framework is that I can't speak. I don't know. I assume the movie
00:26:50.420 follows the same, the same beats, but I can't speak to that. So in the book, um, Lee Strobel is a
00:26:58.500 journalist, uh, an atheist journalist who sets out on this kind of investigation to discover the truth
00:27:05.320 about Jesus, hoping to disprove Christianity. Um, but along the way he found that Christianity was
00:27:12.640 true. And so he converted. So the book and movie two, I assume consists mainly of, of Strobel's
00:27:18.920 interviews with various new Testament scholars, uh, extreme, one of the most famous Christian books
00:27:25.120 written in the last, you know, 30 or 40 years. Um, and it's very popular. I know a lot of people love
00:27:31.100 the book. This is what I'll say about it. It is a nice devotional book. It's, it's nice spiritual
00:27:38.760 reading. Um, it's, it's good encouragement for Christians, but that's not how it advertises itself.
00:27:47.760 It advertises itself as a historical investigation. And on that front, it fails. So ultimately,
00:27:54.940 I didn't like the book because I think that there's a lot of false advertising with it.
00:27:59.420 And, um, and I, I don't really appreciate that. I found it disappointing, honestly.
00:28:04.040 So I think it's a well-written book. It's an entertaining book. Um, but no, I didn't like it.
00:28:11.320 Here's my problem with it. Strobel says that he was an atheist hoping to disprove Christianity.
00:28:19.760 Okay. So, which is, which is a great premise. I mean, the premise of the book is great.
00:28:24.940 Then you've got an atheist journalist who wants to prove that Christianity is wrong. So he goes and
00:28:28.780 he interviews a bunch of scholars and historians and so on. And at the end of the interview process,
00:28:33.060 he's, he, he, he comes to the opposite conclusion and says, oh my gosh, nevermind. Um, so that's a
00:28:39.140 great premise. And so I love the way the book is presented. I was excited to finally read it because
00:28:43.580 I thought, well, that's, that's, that's awesome. Let me read this, this book. Um, the problem is that
00:28:49.140 he only interviews conservative Christian scholars, which is of course, totally ridiculous.
00:28:56.480 This is supposed to be an atheist who's trying to disprove Christianity and he doesn't interview
00:29:01.720 one single skeptic or secular historian. Um, how can you possibly claim to be conducting an objective
00:29:10.480 investigation if you only take talk to one side? And he's supposed to be an atheist while he's doing
00:29:16.720 these interviews. Yet an atheist would only talk to evangelical apologists. He wouldn't take the time
00:29:24.340 to hear from the other side at all. There are, there are, I forget how many interviews, maybe a
00:29:29.720 dozen interviews in the book. He doesn't talk to one single person who's on the other side of the
00:29:35.160 issue. Um, obviously I agree with the evangelical apologists about the historical case for Christianity.
00:29:41.240 I'm just saying that the book advertises itself as a sort of objective historical inquiry and then
00:29:46.440 proceeds to be absurdly one-sided. Uh, in fact, this is how, this is how bad it gets. There's even a
00:29:52.380 chapter in the book called the rebuttal evidence. And so I'm reading the book and you know, there,
00:30:00.020 there are several Christian scholars interviewed making their case. And then finally we get to a
00:30:04.840 chapter called rebuttal. And so now I'm thinking, okay, this is going to get good. This is going to be
00:30:08.640 interesting. This is where he brings in an atheist or a secular person and has them rebut everything
00:30:15.340 that he's just learned. Um, and so this is, this is going to be interesting, except that for the
00:30:22.280 other side, for the rebuttal, he interviews an evangelical apologist. Instead of getting a
00:30:27.780 secular historian to tell his own side, he has an evangelical apologist give his version of the
00:30:34.580 opposing side. Uh, so it's, it's, I, I, it's ridiculous. Now I've heard people justifying this
00:30:42.780 and saying, well, Strobel is the skeptic. He is the other side. So he doesn't need to talk to someone
00:30:48.180 on that side. He already is. So he's representing that side, talking to, uh, Christians, but that's
00:30:53.020 not really true because the whole point is that he doesn't really know either side. He goes into the
00:30:58.080 investigation, not really knowing anything about the historical, uh, the historical context for
00:31:06.420 Jesus. He was ignorant of the whole issue. He knew very little about it either way. So no, he can't
00:31:12.780 represent that side. He can't represent the side of historical, of secular historical experts and
00:31:19.260 scholars, considering he was not an expert or scholar himself. And in fact, throughout the book,
00:31:24.860 he's constantly being told basic historical information, um, things that a lot of us,
00:31:30.760 most of us who aren't scholars know things about like Josephus and, you know, and he's told these
00:31:36.440 things and he reacts with surprise. Like it's the first time he's heard it. He didn't know it
00:31:40.080 beforehand. Now in a real investigation, he would then take that information and go to the other side
00:31:46.240 and say, okay, this is what they're claiming. What's your take? Um, I mean, imagine a book written by
00:31:53.760 someone, imagine a book with the opposite, that goes the opposite direction. Imagine a book written
00:31:59.540 by a Christian, a former Christian claiming that he did an investigation and talked to experts and,
00:32:05.900 and discovered that Jesus was not the son of God. Uh, so he had a deconversion. He went the other way.
00:32:11.800 Well, imagine if that book only interviewed atheists. Imagine if he never once spoke to a single
00:32:17.880 Christian expert. What would we say about that book? We would laugh at it. We would say, well,
00:32:23.340 this is just atheist propaganda. Obviously the guy knew which side he wanted to believe beforehand
00:32:28.900 and he only talked to them. So it's the same thing with this. I think it's a well-written book,
00:32:34.620 enjoyable book in some respects. Um, obviously I concur with the conclusions, but I think that it's
00:32:39.220 not what it bills itself to be. And for that reason, it's not going to convince anything, anyone of
00:32:42.780 anything. Christians might find it compelling, but it's not going to convince atheists. And if you talk to
00:32:46.720 atheists about this book, they just laugh at it and they say, well, that's, you know, they make all
00:32:51.440 the points that I just made in their fair points anyway. Um, and it's really a missed opportunity.
00:32:55.320 I would love to see a book, uh, you know, when it comes to this sort of thing, usually you can pick
00:33:00.960 up a Christian book or you pick up an atheist book and you're going to get one side. And then the other,
00:33:05.800 I would love to see a book that kind of goes back and forth. And there's this debate inside the book
00:33:09.740 between both sides. And I think that'd be really interesting. Um, but that's not what this book is.
00:33:14.420 All right. From Paul. Now I got a bunch of emails. I mentioned yesterday on the show, uh, this question
00:33:20.900 of, of, um, if you, you know, a person can survive with half a brain. Um, and so theoretically it's,
00:33:34.380 it would be, may, it might be possible in the future to do a brain transplant. We can't right now,
00:33:38.800 we're not anywhere close to that, but so the, the sort of thought experiment is imagine if, um,
00:33:45.280 you cut, you cut my brain in half and transplanted half of my brain into someone else's body. Uh,
00:33:53.960 where did I go? You know, where is my consciousness? Where is my soul? In other words,
00:33:59.200 that's the thought I didn't come up with that thought experiment. It was something that a philosopher,
00:34:02.640 uh, proposed a few decades ago. And so I mentioned on the show, I got a lot of emails about this and I
00:34:08.340 found it really interesting. Some of these emails, uh, I'll read a few of them. This is from Paul.
00:34:12.480 He says, I would think that the soul follows the right brain. We never hear things like, wow,
00:34:18.060 that math equation has a lot of soul, but we do hear that being set up music since art, music,
00:34:22.820 and other forms of creative, creative expression originate in the right brain. It would seem that
00:34:27.460 that's where the soul resides. Interesting. This is from Stuart. He says, I've been a listener reader
00:34:33.520 for several years. I wanted to say, thank you for your boldness and speaking out for what you believe.
00:34:37.300 Um, okay. I'll skip over the compliments. Uh, although I appreciate them, Stuart. Anyway,
00:34:44.920 I listened to your show today and had a theory about the brain transplant thought experiment.
00:34:49.000 I'm with you that I don't think God would let a soul be divided, but I'm also with you that
00:34:52.740 the response is bit of a caveat. My response to this was the only response I could think of is,
00:34:57.940 uh, is that, well, you just, you couldn't do it because the human soul is immutable. It can't be
00:35:03.520 divided. And so my, my response to, you know, hypothetically, if it were possible, my response
00:35:10.340 is, well, it could never be possible, which is a total, which is a bad response at a total cop-out.
00:35:14.260 Uh, so he says, ultimately, I think your answer is overemphasizing the role of the brain in
00:35:18.460 constituting the soul. In other words, it's a faulty assumption that the processes and parts of the brain
00:35:23.220 that manifest in consciousness are to some extent, the source of the soul. But I think rather than
00:35:28.400 being the source, maybe they're more like the window to the soul. The true you is a separate
00:35:33.620 metaphysical entity sustained and empowered by the spirit of God and experienced and expressed
00:35:38.540 through the filter of you, the body, including the brain. So speaking strictly biologically,
00:35:43.620 if we think of a brain as what it really is, an organ, or even more generally a machine,
00:35:48.180 it's just a window or a medium through which the true metaphysical self, the you, is expressed.
00:35:53.040 In theory, if my soul was connected to somebody else's brain, I'd still be me. I'd just experience
00:35:58.480 some different thoughts, emotions, compulsions, et cetera, all of which are just flavors of the
00:36:02.480 brain chemistry you possess. Just like if my soul was connected to somebody else's body,
00:36:06.400 I may be stronger or weaker or slower or faster, but I'd still be me. Technically,
00:36:10.400 if there was a way to connect my soul to a toaster, I'd still be me, but that would be weird.
00:36:15.600 Uh, I know this sounds like it verges on Gnosticism, but I don't think that's the case. It's not the
00:36:21.760 spirit and physical are two divided, unconnected realms, really the opposite. It's more that the
00:36:26.160 physical world we live in is just a limited window through which we interpret the true
00:36:30.080 spiritual reality. And this also, this is also not to diminish the free will we do possess,
00:36:35.200 but it is to say the free will our souls possess is certainly impacted by our bodies,
00:36:39.040 brain chemistry included. So back to the question, based on this whole theory,
00:36:42.240 my guess is that if we were to wire the brains together, we wouldn't get a conscious being at all.
00:36:45.920 But both, both people would just die and the resulting Frankenstein monster would just fire
00:36:50.240 off neurons and twitch around, but would never achieve a consciousness as we understand it.
00:36:54.400 In a physical sense, the brain would be able to control the limbs and move the body,
00:36:57.920 but wouldn't ever possess a will to drive it, to interpret the world and make decisions.
00:37:01.840 This is a much better answer than the one that I gave. I wish I had, uh, maybe you should just do
00:37:06.560 the show, Stuart. I will just clarify. No, I don't think the brain is the source of the soul at all.
00:37:11.680 Of course, it's not the source. Uh, but there is a, uh, it's in, in this life anyway, um,
00:37:19.120 in our mortal realm, there is an inextricable, uh, relationship and link obviously between
00:37:25.680 the body and the soul and, and the mind. And I think of the mind is just sort of another word for
00:37:31.360 the soul. Um, but everything else you said there, I agree with last one. This is from Patty. I recently
00:37:38.400 watched an episode of the good doctor in which the face of a girl who was killed in a car accident
00:37:42.560 was removed to replace the face of another girl who had been badly disfigured in a separate car
00:37:47.280 accident. I think that scenario may help to address the question you raised about the irreplaceability
00:37:52.400 of the soul, making it impossible to transplant one person's brain with another watching the
00:37:56.560 transplant and seeing the face of the one girl on the other was bizarre and unsettling precisely
00:38:01.200 because it almost seemed that the living girl was no longer herself, but was taking on the identity
00:38:06.320 that is the very person of the dead girl. Yet the soul being spiritual is the immutable part of
00:38:11.440 the person. Whereas the body being material is subject to constant change and can be altered
00:38:16.800 through human intervention, such as transplants, even of the face or the brain and not constitute
00:38:21.600 the loss of the person, a brain injured person or one in a vegetative state still has his soul
00:38:25.680 abiding in his body despite the lack of normal consciousness. So I would think that even someone
00:38:30.320 with the face or the brain of another, of another person would remain himself, albeit not in the ideal
00:38:36.160 sense originally intended. That's from Patty. A lot of good answers. There were probably dozens of
00:38:44.320 answers to this. All of them much more interesting than what I offered. So I appreciate that. All right,
00:38:51.360 we'll leave it there. Thanks for watching everybody. Thanks for listening. Godspeed.
00:39:08.560 Hi everybody. I'm Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show. Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats are angry
00:39:14.800 at Congresswoman Ilhan Omar because her anti-Semitic remarks are getting in the way of the Democratic
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00:39:24.720 it on The Andrew Klavan Show. I'm Andrew Klavan.