00:00:00.000I just saw this thing in USA Today celebrating the 100th anniversary of a woman's right to vote.
00:00:06.420It says, when women won the right to vote in 1920, the world changed.
00:00:12.380Please join USA Today in commemorating this milestone by nominating outstanding American women who inspire you.
00:00:18.380You can submit your nominations here, and then there's a link.
00:00:20.720And I've seen a lot of media articles about the 100th anniversary of a woman's right to vote,
00:00:25.220and we'll be seeing many more, I'm sure, in the lead up to August, which will be the official 100th anniversary of when the 19th Amendment was ratified.
00:00:36.300But here's the problem. This is my point.
00:00:38.540And as we see this more and more, and you know what I'm going to say at this point.
00:00:42.880If you watch this show, you know what I'm going to say.
00:00:44.660You know what point I'm about to make here.
00:12:19.380Now, before we move on, a quick word from Noom.
00:12:23.480You know, getting in shape doesn't have to be about losing a specific amount of weight or a magic number on the scale.
00:12:29.260I think sometimes when you get too obsessed with that element of it and you get these arbitrary numbers in place, I want to lose X amount of weight, it can become distracting.
00:12:41.140It's really about building healthier habits and feeling better about yourself.
00:12:45.040If fitting into that favorite pair of jeans is your goal, then great.
00:12:47.640But there are many reasons why you might want to practice self-care, and every person is different.
00:12:52.940And for me, the reason that I use Noom, it's all about simply getting healthier.
00:12:57.100I think the most important thing, before you get into how you look and all of that, the most important thing is to be healthier.
00:13:02.700Now, I don't have to lose a bunch of weight, but I did get into a habit of eating unhealthy and just not living the kind of healthy lifestyle that I wanted to live.
00:13:17.340I'll tell you what else it helps me with is keeping track of my diet, keeping me sort of organized in my attempt to cultivate these healthy habits.
00:13:26.800Because that's being organized, cultivating good habits.
00:13:30.560That's one area where I struggle with.
00:13:32.020I think a lot of people struggle with that, and that's what Noom is all about.
00:13:34.740Noom is the habit-changing solution that helps users learn to develop a new relationship with food through personalized courses.
00:13:41.360Based in psychology, Noom teaches you why you do the things you do.
00:13:44.160It empowers you with the tools you need to break bad habits and replace them with better ones.
00:13:48.460It's not about food being good or bad or off-limits.
00:13:51.840Instead, Noom teaches moderation, and that can be used in conjunction with many pre-existing popular diets, if that's what you want to do.
00:14:00.240So, you don't have to change it all in one day.
00:14:18.020Well, a report in the Daily Wire says,
00:14:21.340In the latest development, prosecutors on Thursday told a judge overseeing the trial of Epstein's former cellmate, accused murderer Nicholas Tartaglioni,
00:14:30.360that surveillance footage of the hallway during Epstein's failed alleged suicide attempt no longer exists because of, quote, technical errors, according to the Associated Press.
00:14:41.560So, the footage is, uh, it doesn't exist.
00:14:59.420Speaking of, uh, totally normal, here's some video footage that's gone viral online over the last few days, and I want to show this to you.
00:15:08.800What you're about to see here, pretty upsetting.
00:15:11.040What you're going to see here is a video of animal rights activists throwing a homeless man to the ground and stealing his dog.
00:15:20.980They're doing this to, quote, save the dog from the horrors of homelessness, uh, and, and here's how that worked out.
00:16:19.380Save the dog, leave the human lying in the street.
00:16:23.060That's, that's, I, I cannot think of a better, I could, I, if you wanted to, I could think of a better 10-second clip of video that would, that would encapsulate and illustrate modern culture than that.
00:16:36.400So, she's yanking the dog out of the hand of a homeless man, leaving him lying there and, and going off to save the dog.
00:16:41.580Now, some people who've defended the animal rights thugs have said that, well, look, the man was not in a position to care for the dog, so this, this was necessary.
00:16:55.660You've taken what is probably the only companion that he has, the only joy he has in life, and you've taken that from him.
00:17:04.020Somebody online said that the dog was his psychological lifeline, which I thought was a great way of putting it, and you're taking that lifeline away from him.
00:17:14.220To be homeless, aside from the physical strains of being exposed to the elements, not having food, and all those very necessary things you don't have, aside from that, I think what, the worst thing about it is the dehumanizing effect of feeling alone, feeling like nobody cares, feeling alienated, ostracized,
00:17:42.400being rejected by society, and not having companionship, and so I think especially for a homeless man, to have a dog, to have that companion is very meaningful.
00:17:56.100You come and rip, literally rip that away from him.
00:18:00.220You think about what that would do psychologically and emotionally to a man in that position.
00:18:04.700Now, if you're concerned about the dog not living in the right conditions, why not find the dog and the man a place to live, if you're that concerned about it?
00:18:20.760But we live in a culture where animal life is often prioritized over human life, and animals tend to engender more sympathy, more compassion, than humans do.
00:18:31.400But it's true, when you think about it.
00:18:35.160Think about how people would react if you're walking down the street, downtown, and you see a homeless dog sitting off on the side of the sidewalk by itself, shivering, hungry, cold.
00:18:52.760Now, of course, there are plenty of dogs in that situation, but that's my point.
00:18:58.640Normally, those dogs, when they're found, they get cared for and adopted, because people, when they see a dog suffering, they react viscerally to it.
00:19:12.820Yet, when we see humans lying in the street, we're more able to step over them and ignore them.
00:19:18.980I think that's the honest reality of it.
00:19:22.760A lot of people, you're walking down the street, you see a human being lying on the sidewalk, versus you see a golden retriever lying alone on the sidewalk, shivering.
00:19:35.020For a lot of people, the golden retriever is just going to be more sympathetic.
00:19:38.420That's going to make you stop and go, oh my gosh, look at this beautiful dog.
00:19:41.980Now, it's true that with a dog, you can take a dog to an animal shelter, and it's not always, of course, that easy with a human being.
00:19:53.600There are homeless shelters, but if the human doesn't want to go there, you can't sort of scoop them up and take them the way that you could with a dog.
00:20:01.260So, it's not always as simple as that, but still, my contention is that people these days in this culture, many people sympathize more with dogs than humans, much of the time.
00:20:12.320I've been talking about this for a long time.
00:22:26.160People do this with their own children.
00:22:28.720You know, you hear people talk about their dog, people have, some people have dogs and kids and talk about their dog as if it's just a second child or a third child.
00:22:41.280So, if you want to talk about we don't deserve, I think saying something like, we don't deserve the love of a child.
00:22:47.520Now, that, yeah, that I can relate to.
00:22:50.080I've often felt that way about my children.
00:22:52.000I've, who are, who just, you know, because young children are so loving, so naturally forgiving, they look up to you, they adore you, they want to, they want to be around you.
00:23:03.880And it's not as though, okay, they're not animals.
00:23:07.120So, it's not, it's, it's actually not as though they don't recognize your flaws or anything like that.
00:23:14.700They, in fact, I think with, with children, they do recognize the flaws, but they're, they're naturally forgiving of them.
00:23:21.020And, and parents, we've experienced this, like, recent example for me, there's so many examples I could point to, but recently, you know, it's at the end of the day, I'm in a, I've had a bad day, I'm in a bad mood, I have a short temper.
00:23:36.040And, and, you know, and as parents, we, we, that's how we are sometimes, we're just a little bit of a short fuse, not proud of it.
00:23:43.700And at the end of the day, my kids are in bed, and I'm, you know, I'm, I'm feeling guilty that I've, I've squandered this time with them at the end of the day by just being in a bad mood.
00:23:53.560So, I go up to see if they're still awake, my daughter's awake, she, she, she's, you know, it's an hour after bedtime, she's been upstairs, she hands me a picture she's been working on.
00:24:02.260And she said, she made me this picture, it's a gift for me, because she could tell I was having a bad day, and she wanted to cheer me up.
00:24:08.560And it was a picture of me and her fishing. And I could tell that she'd been working on it for an hour.
00:24:13.280Now, that's the kind of thing as a parent that it just destroys you. You're just, you're like, it's, it's this mix of, of, of joy and pride, but also guilt and pain.
00:24:28.260Because you think, oh my gosh, what, this, I'm so, it's like, on one hand, thank you for this. That's amazing, thank you.
00:24:35.280On the other hand, now I feel like an even bigger piece of crap. So, I, that's, as a parent, I can relate to that feeling.
00:24:44.560When you, when you compare this pure love of a child with the selfishness of adults, right?
00:24:51.640And the, and, you know, adults can be petty, selfish, malicious, you just don't, you don't see that in young children.
00:24:59.540But I can't relate to that in, in relation to a dog.
00:25:04.260You know, I, the idea that a dog could bring that same feeling out of you.
00:25:10.040Dogs are not capable of loving the way that humans do.
00:25:13.420Okay, a dog is, yeah, a dog might have some capacity for comforting, some capacity for that sort of thing,
00:25:22.240which is why I'm saying, stealing that dog from the homeless man was such a horrible thing.
00:25:28.220Horrible for the person, because I'm focused on the person, the human.
00:28:58.880And, dear Supreme Dictator overall, thank you for so accurately pointing out in your supreme wisdom that The Road by Cormac McCarthy is the best novel of the 21st century so far.
00:29:08.480I wholeheartedly agree, and it's my all-time favorite novel.
00:29:11.220I first read it as a 16-year-old and thought I liked it because it was a nuclear apocalypse book.
00:29:15.700I'm reading it again after discovering that my wife is pregnant, and it turns out I love this book because it's about fatherhood.
00:29:20.500My question is, what are your reasons why it's the best novel of the 21st century?
00:29:25.260Why did it resonate with so many people as to win a Pulitzer?
00:29:29.460As always, thank you for your wit, your curmudgeonly charm, and your willingness to talk about matters people actually care about, like abortion and family values, rather than the same old boring political prattle.
00:29:40.560Yeah, I think that—where were we even talking about this?
00:29:45.320Oh, yeah, so I put up—I asked—I posed the question on Twitter a couple days ago.
00:29:49.480What do you think is the best novel of the 21st century so far?
00:29:53.160I'd be interested to hear your responses to that.
00:29:55.480Part of the reason I asked the question, actually, sort of selfishly, self-interestedly, I was looking for suggestions of recent novels because part of the thing is, yeah, I think The Road is my favorite novel that I've read that was written in the 21st century.
00:30:10.520I also haven't read that many novels that were written in the 21st century.
00:30:13.800I've read a lot of books in the 21st century, but many of—most of them, at least the fiction, were written before, many of them centuries before.
00:30:21.960So I am interested in reading more recent work, recent fiction novels.
00:30:28.440Of the ones I have read, though, The Road was my favorite, and for the reasons that—for the reason that redacted, that you mentioned, because of this story of fatherhood and this bond of this father between the father and the son,
00:30:47.940I have an interesting relationship with this book because I first picked it up maybe six, seven years ago at a bookstore, and I hated it.
00:30:58.860I read maybe 15 pages of 15, 20 pages.
00:31:01.320I sat there and read it, and I thought it was terrible.
00:31:05.140I was—it's not just I didn't like it.
00:31:08.960And I put it down, and then a couple years ago, for some reason, I was motivated to pick it up again, and my reaction could not have been any different.
00:31:21.860It was a total 180 in terms of my perception of the book, and I found it to be really powerful and moving.
00:31:28.520I think I read the whole thing, maybe not in one night, but in two nights.
00:31:30.920I just—I blew through it, and I think a lot of it was a big difference.
00:31:38.040Seven years ago, I didn't have any kids.
00:31:40.640Two years ago, I had three and two sons, and so, of course, you start—once your place in life changes, I think the way that you interact with and respond to works of fiction and art can obviously change dramatically, and that was the case here.
00:31:54.160I tell you, I liked that the story revolves around this father desperately trying to protect his son at all costs, but what I liked about it is he wasn't just trying to protect his son's physical body.
00:32:10.940He wasn't just trying to keep him physically safe, although that was a big part of it, obviously, living in a post-apocalyptic wasteland with cannibals, with cannibal gangs roaming the countryside.
00:32:20.080So a lot of it is physical safety, but a big theme in the book, they always talk about the fire, keeping the fire alive, where the man and the boy who aren't given names, the characters aren't given names in the book, but this is something they say to each other about keeping the fire alive within them.
00:32:41.040And so the father is also very concerned in this bleak, seemingly hopeless environment where people have been reduced to animals, literally eating each other.
00:32:52.840One of his main concerns is not only keeping his son alive, but protecting his goodness and his dignity.
00:33:00.060And I found that to be—I mean, you couldn't find a theme for a book that would resonate more with me than that.
00:33:06.480And so—and I also thought it was just really well, well-written.
00:33:10.560Cormac McCarthy's style of writing is not for everybody.
00:33:42.140You've often talked on your show about proofs of God's existence.
00:33:46.100I find these segments fascinating, but recently I've been beginning to think that the best and most important proof of God's existence is the inner experience we all have of him.
00:34:04.360Maybe that'll surprise you for me to say that.
00:34:06.300But I don't think it's a good apologetic argument at all, actually.
00:34:11.280I've seen really smart people use this argument.
00:34:14.340William Lane Craig uses it in his debates.
00:34:17.520He offers, like, six or seven proofs of God's existence, and this is the last one that he always goes to.
00:34:24.840And it's okay, because his others are really solid.
00:34:28.100But I always cringe a little bit when he gets to the inner experience, the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit as a proof of God to an atheist.
00:34:42.320Number one, in order to use this, again, we're talking about, this is how you're talking about apologetics, not as a devotional thing.
00:34:50.260So apologetic is defending the faith to someone outside of the faith.
00:34:54.820Not just offending it, but most of the time trying to convince them to be open to your arguments and to, you know, the worldview that you're presenting.
00:35:06.980And so that's what we're talking about.
00:35:09.060Now, if we're talking about it in a devotional context, there should be a difference between, like, I've read a lot of apologetic books.
00:35:20.540They're by Christians and for Christians.
00:35:22.120And it's all about strengthening your faith.
00:35:23.660Apologetics, that's not what apologetics are supposed to be.
00:35:30.180It does have the effect of strength in your faith, but that's not the primary goal of it.
00:35:34.580The primary goal is to defend the faith from challenges from the outside.
00:35:39.880Okay, so in that context, as apologetic, I don't like it because, number one, you would need to prove, okay, to use this in an argument, in a debate,
00:35:49.140you would need to prove that your inner conviction of God's existence is actually innate and not merely the product of the fact that you were raised to believe this or that you were raised in a culture where lots of people believe it and thus condition that way.
00:36:05.000Now, this is going to be easier maybe for you to do if you were raised an atheist and then converted to Christianity, then maybe you could talk about how you had this innate knowledge your whole life and finally grew to accept it.
00:36:23.480So maybe I'll make an exception in that case, although it still doesn't work for the reasons I'll get to in a second.
00:36:31.000But if you were raised a Christian in a Christian household, born into a Christian household, told from the earliest age that there is a God,
00:36:43.280and now you're saying that the knowledge is innate, well, you see how that's going to be difficult to prove because your challenger, your interlocutor, can simply say, well, what do you mean?
00:36:54.600How do you know? You've been told this literally since you emerged from the womb, and that's why you believe it.
00:37:01.000I mean, how can you distinguish between something you believe because you've always been told it and something you believe because it's just in your head apart from what you've been told?
00:37:11.900It's very hard to do, and it's impossible to prove.
00:37:17.820Number two, there's the problem of the plurality of religion, and this is when someone brings up the innate knowledge of God in an argument.
00:37:25.640This is always going to be the atheist.
00:37:26.700From my experience, this is the atheist's first move, or at least second move, where they're going to say, they're going to bring up the plurality of religion and point out that there are 7 billion people on earth, and most of them are not Christian.
00:37:39.540Most of them claim that their innate knowledge points to something else entirely.
00:37:43.620So how do you know that your innate knowledge is correct instead of theirs?
00:37:50.440I mean, how do we know that their innate knowledge is correct?
00:37:52.660A Muslim who says that he has an innate knowledge of Allah and Muhammad, well, how do you know that maybe he's right and you're wrong?
00:38:00.920Right, that's the point that's going to be made.
00:38:04.600Number three, if you're saying that knowledge of God is universally innate, and you're talking to an atheist who says he has no such innate knowledge,
00:38:14.680then you're in the position of trying to tell the atheist what he himself is thinking and putting yourself as the higher authority on that subject.
00:38:24.440And that's a disaster, for a debate, that's disastrous.
00:38:29.800When you get into debating what the other person is thinking, you already lose, because you have zero evidence for what they're thinking, and they have 100% of the evidence.
00:38:41.740They are in that room, you know, if there's two of you debating, there is one person, physically present in that room, who is a 100% authority on what they are thinking, and that is that person.
00:38:52.940You are a 100% authority on that subject.
00:38:58.840This is one of my problems with presuppositional apologetics.
00:39:03.600I've seen this in debates, where somebody tries to go the presuppositional route, and they end up having this argument, where the atheist says, well, you know, I don't have this innate knowledge, and the presuppositionalist says, oh, yes, you do.
00:39:29.580It may make you feel better, but it's not going to be convincing to the atheist, and anyone else who witnesses the argument is going to be very put off by your style of argumentation.
00:39:39.680And they're going to think, oh, these people got nothing.
00:39:41.780So, what you're left arguing is that it's an innate knowledge that you also coincidentally had instilled in you from birth, and that for whatever reason leads people to different conclusions about spirituality, and that the atheist you're speaking to really knows, really has this innate knowledge, even if he doesn't know that he has it.
00:40:02.440So, it's not a strong argument from the outside.
00:40:10.740Now, am I saying that knowledge of God is not innate?
00:40:17.340But you asked me about using it apologetically in an argument with an atheist, and I'm telling you how it will come across if you try to do that.
00:40:27.460And so, what I'm, and I think we need to do this as Christians, we don't do it enough, I think, where we take a step back and look at this objectively, and look at it, you know, try to imagine how somebody will see these arguments if they don't share our belief system.
00:40:52.320So, to be an effective debater or to present effective arguments, you have to be able to do that.
00:41:00.700So, in my view, the evidentiary arguments are much stronger.
00:41:04.100Arguments that point to, or point out, point to the objective facts in the world, facts that, as a starting point, you can both agree on, starting with the existence of the world itself.
00:41:17.840So, fine-tuning, first cause, those things.
00:41:23.340So, your starting point there is the world exists.
00:41:27.660Here are some basic facts we know about it, some just physical facts, and that's your starting point.
00:41:37.520And now you're in the realm of arguing over objective facts, external facts.
00:41:42.300You're not trying to argue over what's going on inside that other person's head.
00:41:45.340So, I think now you're on strong footing.
00:41:49.920Then you get into the origin of life, the origin of consciousness.
00:41:54.840I have come to see as one of the, if not the strongest, argument for God.
00:42:01.500Even more so than the origin of the universe.
00:42:03.720I think the origin of consciousness is an even stronger proof.
00:42:06.940And I think all of these are going to give you a much, much stronger foothold in a debate with an atheist than getting into your personal, internal experience.
00:42:18.940Which has, which has a lot of evidentiary value for you and for me personally.
00:42:28.560My own, you know, internal experience has a lot of evidentiary value for me.
00:42:34.700But it has zero evidentiary value for anyone else.
00:42:38.260And I have to acknowledge that and realize that and proceed accordingly.
00:46:07.800If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe.
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00:46:21.480Also, be sure to check out the other Daily Wire podcasts, including the Ben Shapiro Show, Michael Knowles Show, and the Andrew Klavan Show.
00:46:28.700The Matt Wall Show is produced by Sean Hampton, executive producer Jeremy Boring, senior producer Jonathan Hay, supervising producer Mathis Glover, supervising producer Robert Sterling, technical producer Austin Stevens, editor Donovan Fowler, audio mixer Robin Fenderson.
00:46:45.540The Matt Wall Show is a Daily Wire production, copyright Daily Wire 2020.
00:46:50.080If you prefer facts over feelings, aren't offended by the brutal truth, and you can still laugh at the insanity filling our national news cycle, well, tune in to the Ben Shapiro Show.
00:46:58.700We'll get a whole lot of that and much more.