Ep. 223 - The One Thing Saving Us From Civil War
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Summary
With all of these very deep ideological and cultural divides, are we on the verge of a civil war? A lot of people are talking about this and seem to think we re headed in that direction. We ll talk about that. Also, how old is too old to be to be president? Should there be an age limit on the presidency? And finally, what does it mean that the Bible is the inspired word of God? This obviously is what Christians say, but what does that mean exactly, practically speaking?
Transcript
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Today on the Matt Wall Show, with all of these very deep ideological and cultural divides,
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are we on the verge of a civil war? A lot of people are talking about this and seem to think
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we're headed in that direction, but are we? We'll talk about that. Also, how old is too old to be
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to be president? Should there be an age limit on the presidency? And finally, what does it mean to
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say that the Bible is the inspired word of God? This obviously is what Christians say,
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but what does that mean exactly, practically speaking? We'll talk about that as well today
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on the Matt Wall Show. Well, you've heard the old canard probably having you about how a movement,
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if it sticks around too long, it will eventually become a business and then it goes from a business
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into a racket. And I think that that has proven correct over history. It is certainly true of
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the so-called Never Trump movement. Now, Never Trump meant something. It served a purpose in the
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campaign, especially in the primaries. The idea was very simple. Trump cannot be the nominee. We
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cannot support Trump as a nominee. That was the idea. But as you may remember, he did become the nominee
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and then he became president. So it makes no sense to still identify as Never Trump when Trump is the
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president. What does that even mean now? It's not a matter of voting anymore. He's already there. So
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Never Trump, never what? Never Trump what? What is it that you're never doing in regards to Trump?
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Now, the only thing that makes sense now, now that he's president, and this has been my strategy for
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the last two years, I think it's the only honest path forward, the only rational path forward, and
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that is to hold Trump accountable like we should for any president, any politician, to criticize him
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when he's wrong and to support him when he's right. And that, again, is what we should do for any
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politician, any president. And it is the only morally and intellectually defensible path.
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Any path aside from that is absurd. Now, some former so-called Never Trumpers,
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myself included, although I never really liked that label, but I would have been lumped in with that
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category during the primaries. So this is what I've tried to do. I will defend Trump a hundred times
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in a week. I'll defend him passionately if I think that he's right or if I think a certain attack is
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unfair. I've defended him on many topics, including very stridently on the whole Cohen thing. I think
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that the whole concept of taking the president's lawyer and forcing him to give up dirt on the
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president is dangerous and unethical in the extreme. So of course I'm going to defend Trump
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on that. But I will also criticize Trump and I will criticize him passionately if I think that he's
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wrong. I'm not shy about that. I don't care. And as far as I'm concerned, anyone in the audience,
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anyone who reads me or watches the show, listens to it and has and cannot stomach any criticism of
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Trump whatsoever. Well, then that's not someone that I care to appeal to. And if they decide to
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never listen to me again, I'm perfectly fine with that. Honestly, that's someone who I don't think I
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even want to appeal to that sort of person. Someone who's just a narrow-minded sycophant
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who is just a groupie for a politician. That's just not the kind of audience that I personally want to
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assemble. So for instance, Trump obsessively whining about a man who died months ago and
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attacking the man's family and complaining that no one thanked him for allowing the man to have a
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funeral. That I think is completely ridiculous. And you have to be a totally sold out sycophant to
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defend Trump on that score. Not saying that, I mean, there are plenty of reasons to be opposed
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to the kinds of things that John McCain did when he was a politician. And I was certainly a big
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McCain critic myself. But this obsession with him and attacking him after he died, this is just the
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kind of thing that, of course, if any Democrat president did that to anyone, it doesn't matter who
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they are. Um, every Republican would be freaking out about it. So, uh, it's just, it's, it's, it is
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indefensible. Now there are other never Trumpers who have, uh, who have become sold out, who have
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become sold out sycophants themselves. They went from opposing Trump and warning that he would be
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disastrous for the country and for conservatism. And now they follow him around like a puppy,
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licking his palms, begging for treats. Um, some net former never Trumpers have done that. They
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have completely flipped. They went from, no, we can't have Trump to now they are bowing before him
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as a God and they defend him on everything. Now, those are people that when they were never Trump
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and now these are just people that, that are, uh, they're just pandering to whatever they think the
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biggest audience will be. Um, they have no integrity. They have nothing to offer. There's no reason to
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listen to them on anything. On the other end though, you have some former never Trumpers who
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have become essentially Democrats and they have decided to get revenge on Trump by becoming full
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time lackeys of the left. And I find these people completely repugnant. Uh, Bill Kristol donated to
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Ralph Northam's campaign in Virginia because he's so, uh, Trump made his tummy hurt. And so then he went
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and donated to Ralph Northam. Ralph Northam is the radically pro-abortion infanticidal governor of
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Virginia who also wore blackface. Now we didn't know about the blackface thing. We also didn't
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necessarily know about the infanticide thing when he ran. We did know that he was a Democrat and a
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pro-abortion Democrat. That's the only kind that exists anymore. Um, Kristol, uh, supported him
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because he hates Trump so much. Kristol also helped to start a publication called the Bulwark.
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It is a, it's a never, a never Trump, uh, a liberal website because that's, that's basically
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what never Trump means of you. If you still identify as that, that means that that's what
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it's become. It has become a liberal racket. Uh, it has become a wing of the Democrat party.
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And that's not because I'm not saying that if you criticize Trump, you're a Democrat. No,
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that's a stupid thing to say. Uh, what I'm saying is if you still identify as that,
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what that means now is that you will oppose Trump no matter what he does and whatever he says,
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you're going to take the opposite approach. So even when, so that means if Trump comes out and
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says, Oh, we're going to take some money from Planned Parenthood, or we're going to do this
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pro-life thing, you're all of a sudden against it. Uh, so that just makes you a Democrat is what
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it makes you. They have this, uh, Kristol started this, helped to start this publication called
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the bulwark, uh, which claims to be a website defending conservatism, which is a total joke.
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It is a website which now pushes, uh, democratic liberalism. It is in the business of attacking
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conservatism and, uh, and conservatives individually and conservative values. They sent a pro-abortion
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extremist to CPAC, to mock pro-lifers, just to give you an idea of, of what, uh, the never
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Trump crowd's up to now. They also had an article reason I'm bringing this up. They had an article,
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um, making the rounds yesterday, blasting a whole, a whole host of conservatives for,
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according to the article, agitating for civil war. Um, and the article gives examples of various
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conservatives who have been warning that a civil war is on the horizon. And, uh, the writer of the
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article wags his little finger at these, uh, conservatives who are supposedly engaging in
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violent and dangerous and, uh, scary rhetoric about civil war. Uh, except that obviously the
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people who are saying that we may be on the verge of a civil war, it's not that they want one. They're
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not saying that let's have a civil war. They're saying that I think that's where we're headed.
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Now, is that true? Well, I think it is. Uh, it might not be fun to talk. Now, I think we are on that
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path, but I don't think there actually will be a civil war and I'll explain why. Uh, and, and this is
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all, it's not fun to talk about. It is unpleasant, but that doesn't make it wrong. We have most of the
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ingredients now for civil strife and unrest, if, if not full on civil war. Um, so let's think about
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it here. We have first and foremost, deep and unbridgeable ideological divides. When I say
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unbridgeable, uh, I mean, unbridgeable in the sense that there is no meeting in the middle. There's no
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compromise. Okay. It's not like you've got one side saying one thing, another side saying another,
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and you could meet in the middle and, you know, you each could have a little bit of,
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you know, it's, it's, you're, you're come to an understanding or something like that. Um,
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it, the divides are so deep and irrevocable that the only way to meet is for one side or the other
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to give up their defenses and to surrender and say, you know what, you're right. That's,
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that's the only thing that can happen. Um, so you have one side saying, for instance,
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that babies aren't people and advocating for the continued slaughter of, uh, the unborn.
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Uh, they say that it's that, uh, that biological sex isn't real. Um, they say that America is
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systematically racist and sexist. Masculinity is toxic. Religion is poison. Uh, let's, let's have
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drag queens come in and talk to kindergartners, that kind of thing. Then you have the other side
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that takes the opposite position on all of those topics. Um, these are positions that cannot be
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brought together in understanding like either unborn babies are people or they aren't either.
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It is a horrendous crime against humanity to kill those individuals, or it's perfectly fine. You know,
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it can't be sort of one and sort of the other. So we have that. We also have as a corollary to the
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ideological divide. We also have a, a cultural divide. And this was one of the primary things
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that led to the, the civil, the first, let's hope the only civil war, um, in 1861, even aside from
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slavery or politics or economics, all of those things obviously played a part in, in, in the civil war.
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But the fact also was that the antebellum South and the industrial North were like two different
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countries. Um, with people in both countries who didn't understand or particularly like the folks
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in the other, uh, on the other side. Now our cultural divide isn't so much between industrialized
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and agricultural or whatever, but it's, it, our divide is more religious and, um, ideological and kind
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of, uh, uh, philosophical in nature, which I think is, shall we say, an even spicier issue to be divided
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on. Um, because at the end of the day, even in civil war times, you had people with very different,
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from very different cultures, different priorities and things, but they did agree on some really
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fundamental basic issues. Uh, first and foremost being, they were all religious. Um, they were almost
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all Christian. They believed in God. I mean, almost all of them did. And so that is a, obviously a, a,
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one really significant foundational similarity that we don't even have that anymore.
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Um, we also have economic divides. We have geographic divides. Now the geographic divides
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aren't quite as clear cut as North versus South, but you could point on a map to, well, these are
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basically liberal areas and here are conservative areas. The point is, yes, if civil war is a chili,
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let's say, then we've got most of the ingredients. We've got the beef, we've got the pork. Yes, you should
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put a little pork in your chili. Uh, we've got the spices, we've got the peppers, no beans ever in
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chili. Um, but we are missing one ingredient. We're missing the beer in the chili and you can't
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make a chili without a beer. Um, and the beer for us in this particular chili is, is really simple.
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It's, it's willingness. We have, um, we don't, that's the difference. We don't, we don't have sort
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of the willingness to fight like they did back then. So the men in the civil war era era, these
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were, these guys were fighters, especially in the South. They were willing to fight it out. Um,
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they also were not living comfortable lives. Many of them, a lot of the generals were living
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comfortable lives, but the, the grunts, the infantry guys, they were coming from poverty.
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They were coming from dirt floors and working in the fields. That's the life that they have.
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Um, the thing that saves us from violent conflict, I think is that we're pretty comfortable at the end
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of the day. We're pretty lazy. Uh, we're unwilling to, to completely upend our apple cart and make the
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sacrifices that such a conflict would require. And I say that with gratitude. I mean, I don't like that
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people are lazy, but I'm grateful that we're not going to have a civil war. I don't, that's,
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I don't want that. 600,000 people died in the civil war. Anyone who would root for that is a
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psychopath. Um, but my point is simply that people aren't, you know, the, the, the factor that I
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think prevents civil war in our case is that people aren't willing to do it. Um, back in the civil war
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times, guys were still dueling, right? You had duels. Like if a guy insulted you, you would say,
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sir, I challenge you to a duel and you would go out and you would shoot bullets at each other's
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head. Uh, these, these were guys willing to die to defend their honor. Now, these days,
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if somebody insults you and you pull out a gun and say, sir, I challenge you to a duel. The guy's
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going to say, Whoa, wait, dude, dude. Okay. I'm sorry. Nevermind. Forget what I just said. It's
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the calm down, man. Like take it easy. Uh, and that would be the end of it. And that's probably
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good. It's better to end that way than by shooting someone in the head. But, um, but those
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were, uh, different sorts of men. And, uh, they were men who weren't afraid of death really
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not, not nearly, they were afraid, but not nearly as afraid as we are. Um, they had much
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more physical courage typically. And I'm not advocating that we prove our courage by dueling
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or by fighting civil wars. I'm just observing a fact. So that was the beer in their chili.
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That was the one remaining factor that they had. They had, we have a lot of the things
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that they have. Um, but they also had, they had that kind of desperation, that willingness
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that, uh, for lack of a better term, that more violent kind of nature that we don't have.
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And that's, what's going to stop it. But, um, it prevents a civil war. I think it will not
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prevent the continuing and deepening divide between us. That's the thing.
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Um, and where does that divide lead? I don't know exactly. I'm not a, I'm not a prophet.
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I can't prophesy about it. Uh, but it doesn't lead anywhere good. And I could more realistically
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see a scenario where, um, I could see a scenario where you've got, I mean, look at the, the riots
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and things we had, um, especially for a period of, you know, a year or two there where it
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seemed like every few weeks or every couple of months, there would be a riot in one of
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these cities. Um, I could see a scenario where you see where things like that happen much
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more frequently. Um, how do we stop? How do we pull ourselves back from that? I wish I
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had the answer to that question. I don't know, because as I said, there is no easy
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All right. Uh, let's see here. Joe Biden, a little bit of political news. Joe Biden is
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about to announce his presidential campaign. Um, Biden, by the way, is 76 years old, soon
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to be 77. So I want you to think about something here. You have to be 35 years old to run for
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president. Uh, now nobody seems to complain about that, right? Nobody calls that ageism.
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There are certain realities about age. And one of those realities is that typically wisdom,
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uh, and it, when you age, you gain wisdom and you gain experience. And so we would say that
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if somebody is 25 or 26 years old, they aren't, they are going to probably be short on wisdom and
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experience. And so that's someone who we don't want in the white house, not because, not because
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we're discriminating against them or because there's anything wrong with being 25 or 26 years
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old. There's nothing wrong with being any age. It's just, you can't help it. You're, you're
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inevitably going to be every age until eventually you die. And then you're not going to be any more
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ages after that. Um, so we don't, we don't consider that ageism. Well, there are realities about age
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on the other end of the spectrum too. And the most harsh reality on the other end of the spectrum
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is that age will eventually kill you unless something else does the job first.
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Uh, age is a deadly thing. And before you die, if you live long enough, your mental and physical
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capacities will diminish. It's going to happen. The only way that it won't happen to you is if
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you die before that. But if you don't, then it will happen. It happens to everyone. We are mortal
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animals. This is part of the package. And so that is why it's completely absurd for elderly men
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in this, when you're 78 years old, Joe Biden is going to be 78 years old on inauguration day. That
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is elderly. The, the, the life expectancy for men in America is 76. Now, yeah, that number is way down
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by men who die much younger, but still point is it's, it's really old. Um, way too old to take on
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the most stressful job on the planet. Now, as I pointed out before, think about what the job did
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to George Bush, who was a young man when he got into office or Barack Obama also, you know, both of
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them relatively young men. Think about what they look like after eight years. Um, it aged them
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considerably. Now think about what it would do to a guy who's 78 when he gets into office.
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By the time midterms roll around, Joe Biden will be 80 years old at 80 years old. You will be,
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you will have been AARP eligible for 30 years at 80, uh, 80 years old is also the age where people
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typically start to get dementia. If they're going to get it, it's not ageism. Okay. I'm not being,
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that's just a reality at 80 years old, your chances of getting dementia, uh, of developing
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dementia are, are pretty good at it. At the age of 50 or 60, they are very, very low.
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What happens when a president gets dementia? Does anyone know? What do we do about that? I mean,
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how, how do we know that he, I mean, sometimes it's not obvious right away. And what happens when
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he has the early onset of dementia? Do we, what do you do? Well, um, we've never really had to figure
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that out, but Joe Biden's insatiable thirst for power may force us to, to figure it out. Uh, Joe
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Biden and Bernie Sanders have been running for political office or holding political office
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for a hundred years between them. They just can't get enough of it. And they're going to keep going
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until it literally kills them. And I think that's reason enough to, to, to oppose their candidacies.
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And I haven't even gotten into their bad policy ideas. But before you even get to that,
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the fact is these are elderly men who are obsessed with power and cannot let it go.
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Um, anyone who wants to be president so bad that they'll run for president at the age of 78,
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You know, the other problem I think with having someone at that age be president is that an elderly
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person isn't going to be around to reap the consequences of their policies and their actions.
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And I think that's just not fair to the rest of us. Like, it's not fair that you have control
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over the future of America and it's a future you're not even going to be a part of.
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That's not fair to us. We deserve to have somebody in there who's going to have to also live
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with the consequences of whatever they do. Um, how do you hold such a person accountable? I mean,
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when someone is 80 years old and they're president, they are almost definitely going to be dead
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within 10 years, probably be within five. Now that I look, it's, it's not a pleasant reality.
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It's just the reality of the situation. Most people don't live past 85, especially men.
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Yeah, there are exceptions, but most people don't. So it's just, why should a person like that care
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what the voters think? Well, they're not going to, they have nothing to lose. And you know, it's,
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it's, it's, it's, it, it's difficult enough when you have a lame duck president, like when you've got
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a, some, a president on his second term and he knows he's leaving after this. Well, what about when
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you have someone who's about to be term limited out of existence itself? I mean, how do you,
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how do you control someone like that? Now there are many reasons to not vote for Bernie Sanders
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and Joe Biden. I just think that, um, this is, this is definitely one of them. And this is why
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there should be an age limit on the presidency. It should be, you can't run until you're 35 and you
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can't run after you're 75. That gives you a good 40 year window to become president. And guess what?
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If you, if, if you can't do it in those 40 years, then it's just over. I let it go, go home and play
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with your grandchildren. Um, you don't get to be president. Well, you know what? Almost nobody gets
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to be president. So that's okay. It's not much of an injustice. I'm never going to be president.
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You've never been president and never will be. So, so, so why should Joe Biden be president?
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Joe Biden ran for president the first time 30 years ago. Okay. I mean, you, it's let it go now. It's,
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it's over. Every time I talk about this, there are people who say, uh, I was talking about it
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yesterday and someone said, well, my, my, uh, grandmother is, is 92 years old and she's sharp
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as a tack. And your, your, your generalizations are ageist. Oh, come on. First of all,
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nothing I have said here is factually inaccurate. Are you going to deny that, that your mental and
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physical capacities diminish generally over time? Are you going to deny that you're much more likely
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to get dementia at 80 than you are at 50? Are you going to deny that most people die before they're
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85? No, you cannot deny any of that. Those are just facts to call something ageist because it's a,
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that's like, if I said, you know, uh, one-year-olds can't, uh, can't, you need, need diapers because
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they can't, they can't use the toilet. And you said, well, that's ageist. How could you make
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such a sweeping statement about one-year-olds? It's not ageist. That's just a reality of their
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age. Yes. Your 92 year old grandmother may be sharp as a tack, but, uh, there are most 92 year
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old, most people don't live to 92. Most people die before that. And, and most 92 year olds who
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are living, they may be sharp for 92, but they're not as sharp as they were when they were 50.
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And they, and so physically they're definitely not going to be as, as there is no 92 year old
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living today who is, uh, in good physical shape compared to a 50 or 40 year old.
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It's just this, we are mortals. Okay. It's just what happens. I know it's uncomfortable to think
00:25:31.860
about. I, you know, I think part of this, when I talk about this and people are react, well, how dare you
00:25:36.400
say that? I, you know what? I think part of it, because the reaction on the surface seems so
00:25:40.980
ridiculous because everything I'm saying is factually correct. You cannot deny it.
00:25:47.100
But the people who react that way, I think part of it is just a fear of death. Like they're afraid
00:25:51.960
of their own mortality. They don't want to admit that this is just what happens. Like we are all
00:25:56.760
marching into this. We're all marching into the abyss of, you know, of death and diminishment. And
00:26:05.960
that's where we're headed. It's just, I'm sorry. I don't, I don't like it any more than you do.
00:26:12.700
Um, there is no good reason. I, there is no good reason to have 78 year olds running for president.
00:26:21.000
There isn't, there isn't, it does not benefit the country. You cannot think of a good reason for it.
00:26:26.200
Um, it would not harm the country in any way whatsoever to cap it at 75. And I could think
00:26:32.060
of many ways that would help us. Uh, I mean, at 75, you forget about running for president. You
00:26:39.740
should have to go and retake driver's debts. I mean, the fact that we let people drive until
00:26:45.380
they're 90 without, that alone is crazy enough. Um, let alone be president. So, all right, let's see.
00:26:58.700
Uh, I think I'm going to jump ahead to emails because there were several emails,
00:27:04.900
emails that I wanted to answer some really interesting, um, subjects.
00:27:08.840
Okay. Let's, uh, check in with the inbox, mattwalshowatgmail.com, mattwalshowatgmail.com.
00:27:17.260
If you want to, um, get ahold of the show, this is from Daniel says, dear Matt, I am a
00:27:22.200
firm believer in Jesus Christ and thoroughly enjoy the subject of apologetics. One of the
00:27:25.960
tougher subjects that I have often wrestled with is the veracity of scripture. While the
00:27:30.840
Bible states that the word of God is forever preserved in heaven, it does not explicitly state
00:27:36.040
that God preserves his word here on earth. A great example of this is found in second Kings 22,
00:27:42.460
where King Josiah finds the book of the law hidden within the temple. This means that there was a long
00:27:47.320
time where the people of God did not have portions of scripture. How do we defend the canon that we
00:27:52.100
have today? I've often heard, uh, the Bible challenged in that it is simply a conglomeration of
00:27:56.920
texts chosen by men. Historically, this is true. And the accusation is hard to deny. Ultimately,
00:28:01.600
I personally accept the veracity of scripture by faith, since it is so accurately describes the
00:28:06.740
world around me and how I relate to God. That being said, that is a defense from faith. And
00:28:11.800
while there is nothing unholy about it, it is a difficult defense with which to convince a skeptic.
00:28:17.180
Along this topic, I have a couple of other related questions. Being a Protestant, I have a general
00:28:21.800
understanding that the Catholic faith accepts the Apocrypha. I am not sure where you stand on this,
00:28:26.460
and please correct me if I'm wrong, but could you let me know why or why not you accept the Apocrypha
00:28:31.220
scripture? Last of all, within Protestant circles, there is often a very strong debate concerning
00:28:37.000
translations. While I do not believe that any translation is God-breathed, there are many
00:28:41.900
around me who do, namely the King James Version. I believe that translations can be open to error,
00:28:47.300
and the only truly scripture, the only truly scripture, the only, I think it means to say,
00:28:53.140
the only scripture truly inspired by God are the original manuscripts, which appear to have been lost
00:28:58.120
to time. I do believe that a translation can be truly evil when it distorts and changes biblical
00:29:03.240
doctrine, but I believe there are many consistent and faithful translations that I would deem
00:29:07.900
acceptable for knowing God. How would you define the need for looking at translations, as well as
00:29:12.940
addressing those who choose one translation only and condemn the rest? All right.
00:29:18.040
Thanks for that email. That's a great email. Very meaty. And this is why, this is my favorite part
00:29:25.700
of the show, because I get these great topics, and I don't even consider them questions. Like,
00:29:30.400
it's not like you're coming to me so I could teach you, because I think a lot of you probably know more
00:29:35.260
than I do about almost everything. But it's just, you're bringing up a topic that we could talk about,
00:29:39.620
which I really appreciate. And I also like how, Daniel, you, same thing I said to someone yesterday,
00:29:47.120
I think. I think it's great how you're thinking about these things and being critically minded.
00:29:57.460
I love when I see that in Christians. I think that, unfortunately, it's somewhat rare.
00:30:03.620
I could be wrong. My general impression, my feeling is that most Christians, at least in America,
00:30:11.720
don't really think about these things. They don't think about the Bible.
00:30:18.280
They don't really try to understand it, especially not from a historical standpoint.
00:30:23.620
And I think that's unfortunate. And so then one of the problems is, you probably run into this,
00:30:28.600
Daniel, is that if you are someone who thinks about this and reads about it and wrestles
00:30:33.540
with it, struggles with it, it can get to feel kind of lonely. Because when you try to talk to
00:30:38.680
someone else about it, another Christian, you just get this blank stare, like they've never even
00:30:43.200
thought about it. And so this could be a forum for these kinds of conversations. So we know that
00:30:51.600
we're not alone. And I think that that's a good, that's enough. All right. So we do believe the Bible
00:30:57.700
isn't the inspired word of God, obviously. However, that idea of the inspired word of God
00:31:05.500
doesn't have one obvious meaning. So it's easy to say, oh, it's the inspired word of God. Okay.
00:31:14.920
Yes. What does that mean, though? What does it actually mean?
00:31:19.260
Um, and don't just spit talking points at me or doctrine. Like, what does it actually mean,
00:31:25.540
though? There's a debate to be had, and a debate has been had for centuries about what that means
00:31:32.240
exactly and how that works. The very simplistic sort of childish understanding is that God basically
00:31:39.200
bent down from heaven. And he said, hey, come over here. And he audibly spoke the words of that would
00:31:46.520
eventually be in the Bible. He spoke those words to the writers of these various books.
00:31:51.080
And those writers just became essentially cosmic stenographers. And they just wrote down
00:31:56.180
what God was telling them. And they said, well, hold on. What was that you that you said there,
00:31:59.080
God about? Okay, let me write that down. Um, and that is not how it worked. As we grow and we study and
00:32:08.560
we mature, we begin to see that that's just not the way the Bible came together. Uh, the Bible is a
00:32:15.140
collection of different types of literature across many centuries, um, and written for many different
00:32:23.160
reasons to many different sorts of audiences and written by people who did not know that they were
00:32:31.160
writing something that would eventually be compiled in a book that we now call the Bible. Um,
00:32:36.780
that's the reality. And we also know, this is the important part. We know that many of these writers
00:32:45.220
used sources or probably they all did used sources. They conducted investigations. They went through a
00:32:53.800
process, um, that would have looked like a very human process and they incorporated oral tradition and
00:33:00.620
they incorporated all these different things. Um, Luke, you know, Luke even tells us at the
00:33:06.140
beginning of his gospel that he conducted interviews and he did research and so on. Luke does not say
00:33:11.140
that, Oh, an angel came down from heaven and told me all this. And I wrote it down. He doesn't say
00:33:15.540
that he says he, he, he went in and he tried to investigate and figure out what the heck's going on.
00:33:19.500
And this is what he came up with. He tells us that. So, um, what does it mean to say that the Bible is
00:33:26.460
inspired? It means that God somehow guided that human process. Um, and that everything in the
00:33:36.040
Bible is in the Bible because God wants it to be, I think it's sort of as simple as that. I think
00:33:43.920
that's the best way of looking at it. Everything's in the Bible because God wants it there. I think
00:33:51.300
it's better to say that than to say something like everything in the Bible is accurate. I'm not
00:33:59.300
saying that everything in the Bible is not accurate, but I am saying that there are many different forms
00:34:03.880
and genres of literature in the Bible. And for some of those genres to call them accurate just makes
00:34:09.360
no sense. What does it mean to say that the song of Solomon is accurate? What does it mean to say that
00:34:14.380
the Psalms are accurate? Uh, what does it even mean to say that, you know, the book of James is accurate?
00:34:21.300
Uh, you know, when you've got poetry or, um, you know, uh, essentially sermons, which is,
00:34:31.240
which is what the, the, the epistles do letters to call them accurate. It just, it's true in a
00:34:38.440
certain sense, but it's not exactly the word you would use. Uh, like you're not going to listen to,
00:34:44.140
um, uh, you know, a Mozart sympathy, sympathy, sympathy, sympathy. I can't even speak symphony.
00:34:50.860
You're not going to listen to Mozart and say, well, that, that's very accurate. Like that doesn't
00:34:54.520
mean anything. Uh, what you're going to say is that it's beautiful. It's deep. It's meaningful.
00:35:00.540
I'm going to use a lot of great words to describe it. Not necessarily accurate. So I, I think that
00:35:06.900
the, the best way of putting it is, as I said, it's there because that's God wanted it to be there.
00:35:12.260
Um, because we will get something from it that we need to get from it. And what that thing is,
00:35:19.240
will be different depending on what book we're reading. Um, so how do we defend that notion?
00:35:29.160
Well, I agree that you can't defend it by demanding that the person you're talking to
00:35:34.300
believe the Bible on faith. Um, you can't defend the Bible by using the Bible. This, this is something
00:35:41.920
that Christians try to do. And it's kind of embarrassing because it's, it's, they're
00:35:47.940
essentially trying to prove the veracity of the Bible by pointing out that the Bible claims that
00:35:52.660
it has veracity, which first of all, uh, is, is circular reasoning to say, well, why should I believe
00:35:59.420
the Bible? Because the Bible says it's true. Yeah, but why should I believe that? Well, because the
00:36:04.140
Bible is true. You see, it's a circle and that's just, that's not good reasoning. You're not gonna be
00:36:07.600
able to convince anyone that way. And the second problem is that the Bible actually makes no claims
00:36:12.600
about itself because no, as I said, no one who contributed to the Bible knew that they were
00:36:19.720
contributing to something that we now call the Bible. None of them knew that. So I think we have to be
00:36:28.040
able to launch a more sophisticated defense, uh, which is a whole other subject I could talk about
00:36:33.300
for 10 hours, but I think that defense has to be historical, philosophical, theological, literary,
00:36:44.180
spiritual, all of it. We have to be able to launch a defense that is multifaceted and that engages on
00:36:52.280
all of these different levels. Uh, and what, what we certainly know is not the case is we can't
00:37:00.460
convince someone that the Bible is true by just throwing it at them and beating them over the head
00:37:05.560
with it and say, the Bible says it, the Bible says it. And that's a stereotype. It's a cliche, but that is
00:37:11.880
what some Christians do. And it is so incredibly ineffective and they're making fools of themselves.
00:37:16.760
Um, you ask about what you call the Apocrypha. That would be a collection of books in the Old
00:37:23.940
Testament. Uh, Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Maccabees, a couple others. I don't remember all of them. Uh,
00:37:31.040
the Protestant Bible excludes those books and you know, you call it Apocrypha. Obviously I don't call
00:37:36.260
it Apocrypha. It's sort of a negative label to use obviously. Um, so why do I accept it? Well,
00:37:43.060
it's simply a matter of history for me. When I look at the Septuagint, the, the Greek, uh,
00:37:48.140
tran the earliest Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. Um, I see that most of those books are in
00:37:54.020
it and that is very convincing to me. When I read the church fathers, I see that most of them
00:37:59.740
accepted these books. That's very convincing to me. Um, I think that a Bible with those books has a
00:38:06.860
better historical claim than a Bible without them. And it's really as simple as that. And by the way,
00:38:11.960
the Catholic church is not the only one that accepts them. The Catholic church accepts them.
00:38:15.380
The Coptic church accepts them. The Coptic church has been around since the very beginning. The
00:38:19.860
Coptic church, the Coptic church can trace its roots back, uh, almost 2000 years. Um, the Greek
00:38:26.540
Orthodox church accepts them. The Russian Orthodox church accepts them. A lot of very ancient churches
00:38:33.540
accept these books. And that should tell us something. If somebody decided in the 16th century
00:38:40.720
that these books shouldn't be in there. Well, personally, I'm more inclined to listen to
00:38:45.280
someone in the third century or the fourth century, someone who was a little bit closer
00:38:48.780
to, um, not only when these books were written, but when they were ultimately compiled and everything.
00:38:55.560
Finally on translations, uh, as I've said before, the claim that the King James Bible,
00:39:01.620
the King James version is the most accurate. The only inspired translation is completely absurd.
00:39:07.180
Um, the whole house of cards comes tumbling down. As I talked about a few weeks ago,
00:39:11.680
just based on the fact that the King James version has the Johanna and comma,
00:39:15.700
which is, um, an interpolation in the epistle of John, which talks about the Trinity and that we
00:39:21.940
know was not in the earliest manuscripts and was added in centuries later by someone who decided,
00:39:28.300
Oh, you know what? This should really be in there. And I'm just going to put it in.
00:39:30.340
Um, so that it shouldn't be in there. The King James version has it almost no other Bible
00:39:35.500
translation. You're going to find in America has that because most, almost every scholar knows it
00:39:40.300
shouldn't be there. So that's a pretty glaring error that the KJV has doesn't make it worthless.
00:39:45.580
I still, I still read the KJV. I like that style, especially for certain books, but, um,
00:39:53.820
to call it the most accurate or the only inspired version is just completely wrong. Um,
00:39:59.120
I'm not dogmatic about translations. I have a bunch of translations back there. I flip between them.
00:40:05.600
Uh, as you said, they, you know, some, some of them have issues, they have different sorts of
00:40:11.080
issues. And so, you know, you can't get too attached to one translation. That's my feeling,
00:40:14.200
by the way, uh, if you don't read Greek and you don't read Hebrew, then all you're, you're only
00:40:19.280
stuck with pale imitations. Talk to someone who reads Greek and they'll tell you that
00:40:23.540
what you're getting in the English Bible, it is, it's the best you can do. It's better than nothing,
00:40:28.020
but it is, you're missing a lot. Um, when you don't know the original language and I don't know
00:40:34.520
it. So I already know. So it's just, it's, it's already weird to be really attached to an English
00:40:40.720
translation. If you're going to get really attached to a translation, then get attached to a Greek
00:40:45.400
train, learn Greek and get attached to that. All right. Um, okay. That was a long answer.
00:40:52.420
There was one other here. This is also a long one. That's all right. I'll do it. Uh, from
00:40:57.920
Robert says, hi, Matt. I enjoyed your thoughts on Pascal's wager. I agree that it's the weakest
00:41:02.160
Christian argument. I think the best Christian argument, at least one of the best is one from
00:41:06.560
C.S. Lewis saying that Jesus must have either been Lord, lunatic, or liar because only someone
00:41:11.980
who's a con man, crazy, or actually God would claim to be God as Jesus did. I've always thought
00:41:16.960
that this is a really logical argument and I'm not sure how unbelievers deal with it or dismiss
00:41:20.900
it. Seems rock solid to me. Have you heard this argument? What do you think?
00:41:27.600
Yeah, Robert, that's the trilemma argument. I've actually dealt with it on the show.
00:41:32.020
I, I'm pretty sure. I love C.S. Lewis. Uh, I get what he's doing in the argument,
00:41:38.260
but no, I'm afraid that it's, I don't think it's a good argument. Uh, I think it's maybe
00:41:43.260
even weaker than Pascal's wager. And I think it's the, by far the weakest argument that C.S. Lewis
00:41:48.720
ever made, which is, which is a shame that it became his most famous argument. He made a lot
00:41:52.620
of great arguments. Um, and I think that maybe is his worst one yet. That's the one that a lot
00:41:57.500
of people have grown attached to. So let's, uh, let's read what C.S. Lewis did. He's not the first
00:42:03.840
one to make this argument, by the way, but he did popularize it. This is from near Christianity.
00:42:08.680
C.S. Lewis says, I'm trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that
00:42:13.500
people often say about him. I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept
00:42:18.300
his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the
00:42:23.920
sorts of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic on the
00:42:29.440
level with a man who says he is a poached egg or else he would be the devil of hell. You must make
00:42:34.360
your choice. Either this man was and is the son of God or else a madman or something worse. You can
00:42:40.560
shut him up for a fool. You can spit at him and call him a demon, or you can fall at his feet and
00:42:46.000
call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great
00:42:51.360
human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. Now, it seems to me obvious
00:42:57.860
that he, that he, that he was neither a lunatic nor a fiend. And consequently, however strange or
00:43:03.380
terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that he was and is God.
00:43:09.780
Very eloquently put, but there are two problems. First, the argument operates from the assumption
00:43:16.740
that Jesus actually did say everything that the gospels claim he said. And that's a fine
00:43:23.720
assumption among us Christians. It's one that I share, but the argument isn't for Christians,
00:43:29.580
right? If you're going to, you're not going to make this argument to another Christian. They already
00:43:32.860
agree. So if you're making this argument, then you must be making it to someone who is outside the
00:43:37.820
faith, to non-Christians. And non-Christians do not assume that the gospels are 100% accurate. If
00:43:45.680
they did, they'd already be Christian. So you know, you're talking to someone who looks at the gospels
00:43:50.740
and says, you know, that's a book like every other holy book. It's a, you know, there's maybe some
00:43:55.580
accuracy in it. There's some fables, there's some this and that. That's how they're looking at the
00:43:59.580
Bible. So when you say, Hey, Jesus claimed to be God, which means that he must've been God or else
00:44:04.860
he was crazy or a con man. The obvious response from an unbeliever is okay. Well then he didn't
00:44:10.020
claim to be God. And this would be a perfectly logical retort from the perspective of an
00:44:17.780
unbeliever, especially because almost all of Jesus's most explicit claims to divinity are in the gospel
00:44:25.240
of John, which was written, um, written last and written maybe 60 or 70 years after Jesus died.
00:44:34.040
So all a person needs to say to diffuse this argument from C.S. Lewis, all a person needs to
00:44:40.540
say is, uh, well, the gospel of John was, it was written 70 years later by someone who obviously was
00:44:47.200
not an eyewitness from their perspective. And it is a theological and poetic work and also a
00:44:54.800
mythological work. And so I just don't, I don't accept that it's historically accurate.
00:45:00.680
And, uh, like I said, that's a, that is a logically sound response. The second problem with the argument,
00:45:08.800
though we don't need a second argument because the first problem is enough, is devastating enough.
00:45:13.440
But the second argument is that it's not necessarily true that anyone who claims to be God
00:45:18.940
and isn't God, uh, must be lying or crazy. I mean, even today you could talk to people who are kind
00:45:26.960
of these new agey pantheists and they'll say that, yeah, I'm God. We're all God. You know,
00:45:32.600
God is everything and everyone we're all God. Now that's nonsense. It doesn't mean anything,
00:45:37.560
but that's what they would say. Um, Jesus was not a pantheist, obviously, but the point simply is that
00:45:44.560
you could conceivably come up with a spiritual, you could come up with a scenario where a person may
00:45:52.160
develop a spiritual notion of their own divinity without necessarily being totally insane and while
00:46:00.420
actually believing what they say. Um, it is, it is so, I just, I think that it's, it's too simplistic
00:46:09.660
on those grounds as well. Uh, I think it is, it's conceivable that a person could come to think of
00:46:17.560
themselves as some sort of divinity, um, without being crazy. Uh, especially in ancient times. I mean,
00:46:26.100
the Roman emperors, uh, considered themselves divine. They weren't crazy and I don't think they were lying
00:46:34.580
exactly. They, they really thought it was true. Of course it wasn't. So, you know, those are the two
00:46:41.580
problems with it. I would recommend everyone go, go read CS Lewis. So many great arguments, so many
00:46:48.440
great points that he raises. Um, that's just not, that's just not one of them. Uh, and, and I'm telling
00:46:56.040
you, I mean, take this argument and present it to any atheist. And what I just said, that's exactly what
00:47:03.340
they're going to say. Uh, and then, so then what, what the argument really becomes is, is an argument
00:47:08.880
about proving, uh, the historical veracity of the gospels because that's what it all hinges on.
00:47:14.760
So I would say now cut out the trilemma thing and just talk about that. And if you feel like you can
00:47:20.740
prove that or provide evidence for that, then great. Just do that. Uh, because if you can get
00:47:26.240
them to accept the historical veracity of the gospel, then you don't even need the trilemma because
00:47:30.940
they're already going to be Christian at that point. Right. All right. We'll leave it there.
00:47:35.140
Um, thanks for the great questions and have a great weekend. Godspeed.
00:47:53.480
Today on the Ben Shapiro show, a time magazine journalist reveals the true motivation behind
00:47:58.520
AOC's rise and we checked the mailbag that's today on the Ben Shapiro show.