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


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.