00:00:00.000Today on The Matt Wells Show, an elementary school in Virginia has been caught trying to indoctrinate kindergartners into left-wing gender theory.
00:00:08.620We'll talk about why this is child abuse and also why the left's theories on gender are contradictory, insane, superstitious, and completely incoherent.
00:00:18.080Also, what is it about the Internet that makes people depressed?
00:00:22.840I'll try to break that down a little bit.
00:00:24.580And finally, Elizabeth Warren says, abolish the Electoral College.
00:23:36.840And 30 seconds later, they forgot what you said.
00:23:39.940So this is the fact that disturbs us that we spend so much time on the internet.
00:23:44.500We invest so much of ourselves into this world of the internet, but we are leaving no mark there, no impression.
00:23:57.420And if we cease to exist, if we disappeared, if we died, nobody on the internet would notice or care or realize that we were gone.
00:24:06.280Our Facebook friends might pause for a second and go, hey, whatever happened to so-and-so?
00:24:12.200But, and if we actually do, if we actually did die and they found out, they might leave a little thing that says RIP on our
00:24:18.620Facebook page or, you know, something like that.
00:24:21.680But then they'll just go back to scrolling Instagram and they'll forget all about it.
00:24:27.200Now, I don't exclude myself from this, by the way.
00:24:29.640I have a larger than average platform on the internet because I do this for a living.
00:24:34.260I do think that writing, not social media posts specifically, but actual writing, actual long form, real writing can definitely move people and have an impact and be remembered and matter in the grand scheme.
00:24:49.580But it's hard to write things that matter, especially these days, especially on the internet.
00:24:54.620And most of what I write, I fully realize.
00:24:58.900Most of what I write on the internet, most of what anyone writes on the internet.
00:25:32.740If you read that article, do you remember what it said?
00:25:35.140I don't remember what it said, and I wrote it.
00:25:37.860I wrote, I think, I wrote, in my opinion, if I do say so myself, a pretty good satirical article this past Friday about the student loan forgiveness idea.
00:26:21.020So if I can stockpile 700,000-some Facebook followers and 200,000-some Twitter followers and hundreds of thousands of readers and all this stuff,
00:26:30.420if I can do that, and still almost everything I say and share online, including what I'm saying right now, is forgotten instantly,
00:26:40.100then how much more must the whole process be defeating for some 17-year-old kid who's trying to secure an identity for himself here on the Internet,
00:26:50.120in this place where nobody knows him, nobody cares, nobody loves him on the Internet,
00:26:54.560where we're all just consumers of and sometimes creators of content and nothing more.
00:29:29.760And one of the major stresses for millennials is, number one, cracked phone screens.
00:29:36.000And number two, getting zero likes on a post on social media is a big time stress.
00:29:42.120In fact, 20% of respondents to this survey said that low engagement on social media is more stressful to them than getting into a heated argument with their spouse.
00:29:53.380And this is exactly what I'm talking about, right?
00:29:57.720That lack of recognition from people who don't know us, don't love us, don't care about us, creates for many of us a greater void and becomes a more pressing concern than even discord and alienation from the people we love.
00:30:23.720So I think that the answer to a lot of this and the answer to a lot of the depression and all of this, the despair and misery that a lot of people feel is just, it's really a matter of we've gotten our priorities just all out of whack.
00:30:44.340And we're looking for something in a place where it cannot be found.
00:30:51.760That is, we're looking for impact and acknowledgement and love and all that stuff in this world where it's just, it's not on offer there.
00:31:05.180There are things you can get on the internet.
00:31:09.820You can even get some correct information every once in a while.
00:31:12.820So there are things you can find, even entertainment, you know, even harmless entertainment sometimes.
00:31:16.560But those deeper, you know, human yearnings cannot be satisfied by the internet, but they can be satisfied, largely anyway, by our real life, the people that are around us.
00:32:12.120The Electoral College definitely presents some challenges, and we can't deny that.
00:32:17.760It's not a perfect system by any means.
00:32:20.060Because of the Electoral College, our presidential elections revolve around a handful of states.
00:32:27.180You know, you've got a few states that decide everything, where all the presidential candidates go, and the whole election comes down to those states.
00:32:34.920And if you're in any of the other states, your vote is basically meaningless, especially if you are, like the situation that I've been in for most of my life, I have been a conservative in a deep blue state.
00:32:48.660I've been a conservative in a state that will never, ever go red, which means that my vote in every presidential election since the day I turned 18 has been completely meaningless because of the Electoral College.
00:33:05.080Now, if you had a national popular vote type of system, then theoretically my vote is worth one vote, and everyone's vote is worth one vote.
00:33:15.160And so if you have 120 million people voting or something like that, then I am one out of those 120 million.
00:33:22.220But with the Electoral College system, well, all of the electoral votes in my state are just going to go to the Democrats.
00:33:31.160So the vote that I sent, it's just, I just threw it down a pit.
00:33:35.760It doesn't, it may have some symbolic meaning.
00:33:39.100I can say, well, I, you know, I did my part.
00:33:41.180Okay, but see, after a while, people get tired of voting symbolically, and you really want to actually vote and have your vote mean something, not just mean something morally, but actually mean something.
00:33:54.000And with the Electoral College system, in many states, depending on your politics, it just, the simple fact is it doesn't mean anything.
00:34:01.760There really is, in the states that I've lived in, there's really been no reason for me to vote for president.
00:34:05.620I know everyone says, well, you got to vote, you got to vote.
00:35:17.240But then, on the other side, I think there are a lot of Republicans who oppose it simply because they know that if that was the system,
00:35:26.700there would never be another Republican president again.
00:35:28.720They're opposing it for that reason, not because they actually think that there's something, you know, objectively wrong or unfair with that kind of system,
00:36:09.080He says, thank you for making the argument that voting rights should be tied to being a contributing member of society.
00:36:14.160I have long believed that the simplest, least discriminatory way to do this would be to restrict voting rights for those who have a net positive tax liability on their last 1040.
00:36:22.900The most important impact of voting is the manner in which the government collects and spends tax revenue.
00:36:28.040So it stands to reason that only people who should be who should be who should be represented are the ones actually paying taxes.
00:37:40.620I was impressed on how you addressed the question of gospel authorship.
00:37:43.820But my retort to these guys who might make a too far-reaching claim about the anonymity of the gospels is, so what?
00:37:51.180They were written by someone and form a coherent document that serve as an eyewitness account.
00:37:55.520You can read Jim Wallace's book, Cold Case Christianity.
00:37:58.480You get this point, if you haven't already.
00:38:00.700And I would think that the textual criticism that has been done on these confirms that one author wrote each one, not a committee.
00:38:09.940And we know that during the time the canon was being gathered as scripture, the rules were that no document that was written by someone who wasn't an eyewitness,
00:38:17.360or did not sit at the feet of an eyewitness, would be part of the canon of scripture.
00:39:08.820I know I'm way late on this, but I was just registering, I guess, listening, and that's supposed to say, listening to the podcast you did about Pascal's wager.
00:39:19.940You were pretty critical of the argument.
00:39:22.220I understand your point of view, but don't think, but don't you think that the wager can be helpful just in getting people to at least stop and consider Christianity?
00:39:29.580It won't take them all the way, but it will get them on the right road.
00:39:33.480Yeah, Linda, I am critical of the argument, and no, I don't really think, I understand your point, but I don't think it's useful, even in the way that you described.
00:39:41.740Pascal's wager, of course, being the argument that first put forward by Blaise Pascal, that you may as well believe in God, because if you're right, you go to heaven.
00:39:51.880If you're wrong, you don't lose anything.
00:39:53.440But if you don't believe in God, and you're wrong, then you could lose eternity, and if you're right, then you don't really gain anything.
00:40:02.620Anyway, so then it's sort of like, you might as well believe, and that's the argument.
00:40:06.960I really dislike the argument, as I said before, because, for one thing, belief just doesn't work that way.
00:40:42.700So, for instance, my kids think that there are leprechauns living in our backyard, and they may think that because I told them.
00:40:54.060I don't remember exactly, but they think that there are leprechauns living in the backyard, and I would love to believe that.
00:41:01.540In fact, I really wish there were leprechauns in the backyard, but if there can't actually be leprechauns, then I would love to believe that there are leprechauns in the backyard.
00:41:08.980Because my kids, I'm talking about my twins are five years old, they live in such a fanciful world where there are leprechauns and fairies and unicorns and everything.
00:41:19.620I would love to believe that also because it's such an exciting world to live in, but I don't believe it.
00:41:29.300And I can't just say to myself, well, you know, it would be really nice to believe that because it would make my life a lot more exciting.
00:43:34.420Because in Islam, they would also say that if you are not a Muslim, and if you don't believe in this God, Allah, you could be in trouble when the time comes.
00:43:50.900So Pascal's wager could apply just as much to Allah.
00:43:58.900It turns out, if we want people to accept Christianity as being true, then we need to give them reasons to think that Christianity is itself true.
00:44:12.480And if we can do that, if we can successfully present reasons to believe that Christianity is true, if we can do that, then we don't need Pascal's wager.
00:44:24.080But if we can't do that, then Pascal's wager is also useless.
00:44:28.480So it seems like it's useless either way.
00:44:39.300You know, World War II was tough, but today's millennials think they are more stressed out than anyone ever because of breaking glass on their cell phones and zero likes on social media.