The Michael Knowles Show - March 20, 2018


Ep. 124 - The Atheist Delusion ft. Anthony DeStefano


Episode Stats

Length

36 minutes

Words per Minute

193.47209

Word Count

7,117

Sentence Count

574

Misogynist Sentences

3

Hate Speech Sentences

27


Summary

Anthony Di Stefano, best-selling author of Inside the Atheist Mind, Unmasking the Religion of Those Who Say There Is No God, joins me to talk about his new book, "Inside The Atheist's Mind."


Transcript

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00:00:37.760 An atheist, a vegan, and a crossfitter walk into a bar. I only know that because they told everyone
00:00:43.980 within two minutes. We talk a fair bit about faith and philosophy and science on this show,
00:00:48.780 and sometimes we're even respectful of those with whom we disagree. Today is not one of those days.
00:00:53.880 I am joined today by Anthony DiStefano, best-selling author of Inside the Atheist Mind,
00:00:59.840 Unmasking the Religion of Those Who Say There Is No God. Anthony has written a number of other books
00:01:05.180 and appeared all over TV poking fun at those insufferable, pseudo-sophisticate atheists we
00:01:10.660 have all been subjected to since 9-11 when we decided to pretend that all religion was evil per se,
00:01:16.220 rather than deal explicitly with Islam. We will discuss the nature of atheism,
00:01:20.340 then why people are killing themselves on International Day of Happiness. Facebook
00:01:25.000 is in trouble because conservatives used it better than Democrats, and they're very upset about that,
00:01:29.620 and Google is trying to shut down right-leaning news sites. I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The
00:01:33.700 Michael Knowles Show. Before we get to all of that, before we get to talk about this book,
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00:04:25.380 joinhoney.com slash covfefe, C-O-V-F-E-F-E. I will begin before we bring our guest on
00:04:32.060 by quoting from an early part of the book. Anthony writes, quote, if you were a militant
00:04:38.200 atheist, this book is not for you. It's about you. This book is also not meant for agnostics
00:04:43.940 who are sincerely searching for the truth. The focus of this book is on those obnoxious
00:04:48.960 and aggressive new atheists who not only reject God, but also wish to evangelize the whole world
00:04:54.880 with their gospel of nothingness. Too many books written in response to these pseudo-intellectual
00:05:00.200 blowhards have been altogether too nice. I like it. You know, some weeks get a little
00:05:05.340 too nice sometimes. Not exactly subtle. Yesterday, you know, I talked to Jordan Peterson about God
00:05:10.840 and the nature of truth. And I, I asked him, does God exist? I'm not talking about metaphor.
00:05:14.460 I'm not talking about signifier signified. Is he, does he exist metaphysically and physically,
00:05:19.820 or, uh, is he just a total fantasy? And Jordan did this little dance and he said, he actually
00:05:26.160 admitted, he said, I don't know. I can't, I can't, I'm not going to tell you he doesn't. I can't,
00:05:30.200 I just don't, you know, he was very honest about that. Um, he, he was reluctant to admit what I
00:05:36.800 think is the crucial essence of, uh, the whole thing. He just wrote a book explaining in 12 rules
00:05:42.080 for life. My guest today is not a victim of such subtlety. Uh, let's bring Anthony on so we can
00:05:48.400 talk about this. Anthony, thank you for being here. Thank you for having me. I'm thrilled. So
00:05:53.160 you, you write this book about the new atheists and the new atheists. We all remember that's
00:05:57.220 Christopher Hitchens, who's right. I actually love his writing, but his points about religion.
00:06:01.960 Yeah. A lot of us do because he's such a wonderful wordsmith and his points about religion are
00:06:06.800 ridiculous. Uh, Richard Dawkins, uh, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris. I want to know the four
00:06:13.160 horsemen of the apocalypse. How did these guys crop up and why did they all crop up around the
00:06:18.880 same time in the early two thousands? You know, it's just a question of atheists gaining more power
00:06:24.760 once they had more power politically. And once they had more power in the media and power in
00:06:28.960 Hollywood, once they had more power, they reared their ugly heads, but this is nothing new. Uh, this
00:06:34.640 kind of rabid, uh, anti-god rhetoric has gone right back to the days of Nietzsche and, uh, all those
00:06:41.740 existential atheists of the 19th century, but they got some power now and they, they, they were able
00:06:46.760 to, uh, get a little, uh, a little brave. I think they had an opening too. I agree with Andrew
00:06:51.500 Klavan on this point who observes it all happened after nine 11 and nine 11 presented us with this
00:06:57.460 problem, which is that clearly at least one religion has a big problem to deal with. And there were,
00:07:03.200 there were two options for the West. Either we could deal with Islam and say this religion
00:07:08.200 specifically has a problem, uh, or we could say, oh, it's just all, yeah, just God in general,
00:07:12.940 just all religion. It's, it's no, eh, we don't like it. And there was this combination, which you
00:07:17.060 write about of arrogance and ignorance. Uh, you, you talk about the arrogance of the new atheists,
00:07:20.940 then you write about their ignorance. Mark Twain wrote, it ain't what you don't know that gets you
00:07:26.160 into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so. And I've always found that intellectual
00:07:31.060 snobbery has been an effective tool against the frivolous arguments of the new atheists because
00:07:36.720 they're, they think they're intellectuals, but they're neither really middle brow. How can guys
00:07:41.500 as credentialed as they are, Daniel Dennett, uh, Richard Dawkins, how can they be so ignorant?
00:07:47.320 How have they missed so much historical and philosophical education?
00:07:51.640 Well, they want to miss it. That's what it really comes down to. Uh, the atheism really is a kind
00:08:00.420 of a faith. It's not just ignorance. Uh, it's, uh, it's a faith with its, a whole system of beliefs,
00:08:06.560 really a system with its own, uh, philosophy, uh, materialism, its own, uh, uh, culture, secularism,
00:08:14.080 its own, uh, politics, social Darwinism, its own morality, relativism. It's, it's even got its own
00:08:20.380 sacraments, abortion and euthanasia. So it's a whole, once you understand that it's a faith system,
00:08:25.180 then, then their, their arrogance and the, the, the, the evangelistic quality of their writing.
00:08:32.240 And there, there are so many versions of this. Everybody's got to serve somebody. And so the
00:08:37.380 environmentalists have, uh, the original sin of pollution and they have, uh, the sacrament of, uh,
00:08:44.180 they, they sell indulgences in the form of those carbon tax credits, don't they? They're in certain
00:08:49.300 versions of intersectionality. There's the original sin of privilege. There is, there's actually the
00:08:54.700 Gnostic metaphysics of transgenderism. I am, I appear to be a man, but the flesh is evil. And
00:09:00.440 really metaphysically, I'm a woman. Uh, you, you see all of these sorts of things crop up all of the
00:09:06.080 time. Uh, atheists, they pull away when you say that their religion is a faith. Uh, how, how can we
00:09:11.880 convince them of this point? Well, the faith is just believing something that you can't mathematically
00:09:17.880 prove. That's all faith is. And faith and atheists take so many things on faith. They believe
00:09:22.600 that everything came from nothing. Well, that's, you can't prove that scientifically. They believe
00:09:27.500 that this, this amazing universe of ours of incomparable beauty, harmony, and order came
00:09:33.120 about by itself. That that's, that's faith. Uh, they, they're trapped into this whole materialist
00:09:37.980 worldview where everything has to do with atoms and molecules, you know, all our hopes and dreams
00:09:42.660 and desires, all our art and culture and history, all, all our deepest desire for everything that's
00:09:48.520 good and beautiful and true. All that to them is just the, due to the random movement of molecules.
00:09:53.600 That's not, that's not science. That's faith. What's more, that's an irrational faith. That's
00:09:59.180 the basis for all superstition. So they have a faith. They must be called out on this point because
00:10:03.840 this faith that they have has been, has been responsible for more bloodshed and carnage than any
00:10:09.480 system of beliefs. The world has ever known. And really in service of the faith there, I've always
00:10:13.800 liked the definition that faith is the, the substance of things hoped for and the evidence
00:10:18.620 of things unseen and how, how better to describe the utopian political goals of the left. The, the
00:10:26.020 idea that, yeah, you've got to crack some eggs to make an omelet. We're just going to kill a few
00:10:29.700 more million people, but then we'll have world peace. Then we'll have prosperity. Then we'll have
00:10:34.500 equality or tolerance or whatever you say about this. You push back on the point, all of the new
00:10:39.120 atheists say that, uh, religion and God have caused all of the wars in the world. You say that
00:10:45.360 that isn't true at all. Oh my goodness. It's, it's an incontrovertible fact that it's not true.
00:10:52.020 And the opposite is true. Atheists have caused more war and bloodshed than anyone. Uh, if you look at
00:10:57.300 Philip Axelrod's monumental, uh, encyclopedia of war, he cataloged all the wars from 8,000 BC onto today.
00:11:05.220 And he found that 6.98% of them were due to religious causes. And if you eliminate Islam
00:11:11.280 from that equation, uh, only Christianity is only responsible for 3.2%. So you're talking 96% of all
00:11:18.620 the wars on this planet were due to other reasons like economic gain, territorial gain, uh, uh, civil
00:11:24.720 war, revolutionary war. Those are the reasons for war. And if you look at the last hundred years alone,
00:11:30.860 you'll see that atheist regimes like Stalin and Mao Zedong and Pol Pot, and yes, Adolf Hitler,
00:11:37.300 because he was an atheist, are responsible for 150 million murders, 150 million deaths.
00:11:44.060 That is incontrovertible fact. And they don't want to look at that though, because it, because it, uh,
00:11:49.300 it, it's so obvious. Yeah. And they're kind of damned if they do and damned if they don't, because
00:11:53.580 speaking of Hitler's religion, I think we're going to hopefully do an interview. There's a good book
00:11:58.700 out on Hitler's religion. A lot of people would like to pretend it was Christianity, but there's
00:12:03.200 no, there's a lot of evidence that that wasn't even close to the case. But of course, if atheism
00:12:07.360 is a faith, then I suppose we can say all of the wars of the world are religious. But, but if we're
00:12:12.380 talking about Christianity, if we're talking about the religions of the West, then certainly that
00:12:16.800 cannot be the case. And the 20th century is all of the evidence we need for that. Uh, Sam Harris
00:12:21.240 said, oh, I've got, um, you know, before we keep talking about Sam, we got to make some more money.
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00:15:30.840 could rid the world of rape or religion, he would choose religion. Christopher Hitchens said that all
00:15:35.760 faith claims are equally rotten, false, dishonest, corrupt, humorless, and dangerous. Everything from
00:15:42.960 that friendly Unitarian down the street to the axe wielding jihadi. Sam Harris said some propositions
00:15:49.080 are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them. Why are the new
00:15:55.140 atheists so fanatically intolerant to borrow a buzzword? Well, it goes back to what we just were
00:16:03.920 talking about. It's a faith. It's a religion. Every bit as evangelical and as driven as, as,
00:16:09.880 as Islamic fundamentalism. Uh, there, there, there's a saying that, uh, uh, atheism is a religion,
00:16:16.080 uh, with two doctrines. Uh, one, there is no God and two, I hate him. Uh, so, and the, you know,
00:16:24.400 psychologically it might just be that misery loves company. You know, these people are basically
00:16:29.000 miserably unhappy and cynical and, and like all miserably unhappy people, they want the rest of
00:16:34.500 us to be as unhappy and hopeless as they are. And the other, the other point is that something that
00:16:39.180 Peter Hitchens, who, which is, who is Christopher Hitchens brother, he made this, he believed in God
00:16:43.840 and he said, why in the world would these atheists choose to believe in this cosmic car crash where
00:16:49.520 nothing means anything, where they don't, where nothing has any value. The reason is because they
00:16:53.760 don't want anything to have any transcendent, transcendent values. They want everything to
00:16:58.640 just be centered around themselves. They worship themselves and anything that gets in the way of
00:17:03.780 that worship of themselves they're against. And, and theology, Christian theology is a,
00:17:08.980 it's funny because today is international day of happiness. This was something founded by the UN
00:17:14.600 about five years ago. And yet, according to a UN study, uh, happiness is at a 10 year low in America
00:17:20.240 and suicide rates are skyrocketing among various demographics, not just among middle-aged men who
00:17:26.280 comprise, um, or constitute most suicides in the country. Uh, the, the question of happiness is a
00:17:34.020 strange one when it comes to atheism because, uh, C.S. Lewis wrote, if you look for truth, you might find
00:17:39.140 comfort in the end, but if you look for comfort, you'll find neither truth nor comfort, only soft soap
00:17:44.420 and wishful thinking to begin. And in the end, despair, it seems that we're looking for the happiness,
00:17:49.120 happiness, but we're not, uh, we're not acknowledging the truth that will create that
00:17:54.760 happiness. And to your point, Norm MacDonald, the great philosopher, but really the greatest,
00:17:59.920 greatest standup comedian of our, uh, of our age, Norm says he doesn't believe they're atheists
00:18:04.440 because like you don't, if you don't think something is real, you don't spend your entire
00:18:08.740 life talking about it. You know, I don't spend like, I don't spend my whole life talking about
00:18:12.720 dragons or something. I don't, I don't, I don't spend any time on of that. Uh, to this point,
00:18:18.980 say what you will about atheism, at least the worldview is clear. You know, uh, Dr. Johnson
00:18:23.580 famously remarked, all shallows are clear, uh, benighted atheists, totally ignorant of whole
00:18:29.800 categories of thought, millennia of intellectual history. They hurl out these varied frivolous
00:18:34.700 objections to the existence of God. You quote Vincent Bugliosi by observing atheism is nothing,
00:18:41.160 really nothing, but a sorry litany of non sequiturs. So I want to ask it, maybe the only nice thing we can
00:18:47.000 say about atheists all day and atheistic philosophy. Is there a coherent atheism?
00:18:52.140 Does anybody posit a coherent atheism? And if so, who's?
00:18:57.020 Uh, not, not recently. If you want coherent atheism, you have to go back to Nietzsche and Camus
00:19:02.640 and all of those older atheists who in many ways were much braver and more intelligent than today's
00:19:08.940 kind of sappy atheists who sort of play at atheism. Those atheists knew how to take the logical
00:19:15.960 implications of their thinking all the way forward. They knew that, that if you didn't believe in God,
00:19:20.100 then there was no such thing as good and evil. You had to go beyond good and evil. They knew that
00:19:24.200 there was not no such thing as the dignity of the human person and that human beings could be used
00:19:28.420 and that the only philosophy was one of strength. Those atheists and the, and those atheists to their
00:19:34.040 credit said life is absurd and unhappy. And so therefore we have to assert ourselves boldly and assert
00:19:40.200 our will and be brave in the face of this absurdity and tragedy. Today's atheists, this,
00:19:44.840 these milquetoast cowards are just, uh, they, they, they, they just say, oh, you don't believe in God
00:19:49.840 and, and everything is just, we could be just as nice as you and everybody's okay.
00:19:53.260 That's an excellent point. Say what you will about Nietzsche, but at least he had the decency to die
00:19:56.240 a madman. He denied the logic of the universe and he, and he lived through those results. Uh, the same
00:20:03.440 is true. I know, uh, Drew talks about the Marquis de Sade as a coherent atheist, the guy that we get
00:20:08.140 sadism from it, what he writes about is totally coherent and it's horrifying. And people would
00:20:12.980 say, no, no, thank you. I don't want any of that. Uh, this does get the cowardliness of this new
00:20:19.260 atheism that wants all the good stuff, all the good fruits of Christianity, but it just doesn't
00:20:24.520 want that pesky belief, uh, that belief in God or anything like that. Uh, in your sixth chapter,
00:20:29.720 the thesis is that you can't practice vice virtuously. And, uh, this is a compelling argument
00:20:36.720 of atheists. I think this is the compelling argument. Oh, the moral law couldn't possibly
00:20:41.560 prohibit days long drug fueled orgies because I really like those things. So I don't, it
00:20:46.560 couldn't possibly be immoral or something like that. Uh, you write quote, if you're a
00:20:51.120 habitual thief, then it's safe to assume that you are not going to be a very faithful person
00:20:55.220 either. It's just a ridiculous Hollywood fantasy to think that someone who sells drugs
00:20:59.260 for a living is also going to be a model citizen and demonstrate heroic virtue in his personal
00:21:04.080 life. How much atheist thought of these new kinds, these sentimental saccharine do whatever
00:21:10.540 we want kinds, how much atheist thought is really not intellectual at all, but just a way
00:21:16.140 of rationalizing our debauched and decadent behavior. Oh, 80 to 90 to 99% of it. They don't
00:21:24.100 have any rational arguments. They have a complete mystery. Where did everything come from? They
00:21:29.320 cannot prove anything. They cannot prove their position logically or scientifically. Uh, so they're
00:21:36.220 reduced to making, to, to yelling and screaming. Even my book, which came out just today, I had one
00:21:41.180 article online. And if you look on Amazon or at these, uh, or on Fox online, you'll see hundreds
00:21:48.080 of comments against me, yelling, screaming that I'm the worst person who ever lived. No arguments.
00:21:53.260 There's no rational arguments about God or about anything I said about history or the murderer,
00:21:57.900 murder, atheist murderers. They're just mad at me. They're throwing a temper tantrum and that's
00:22:02.080 what they do. Yeah, that's right. I do like your article today calls them bullies. And I do like
00:22:06.860 when I looked on the Amazon link, cause I said, Oh, let's see how this book is going to be. And it's
00:22:11.400 got all like zero store reviews. And I thought, Oh gosh, this is going to be a tough morning. I'm
00:22:15.560 gonna have to slog through this book. And I realized that nobody had read the book. It was all just
00:22:20.220 these. That's right. It just came out. It just came out. It was a pleasant surprise. I got to,
00:22:26.200 with my, my coffee. I got to think, Oh, that's pretty, pretty nice. Actually, I really am learning
00:22:30.220 something and enjoying it. Uh, on this final point, the atheism as a faith, the faith perhaps
00:22:36.340 that requires the biggest leap of faith at all. Uh, you know, the, the book makes a good argument.
00:22:42.540 It's a whole system of beliefs based on undemonstrable axioms. It forces you to deny just about every
00:22:48.940 aspect of our experience of the world, truth, beauty, reason, you know, it's all just nothing.
00:22:53.480 It's all a fantasy. What I want to know is, is atheism the fastest growing religion or is it
00:22:59.840 dying out? Both. Okay. In the West, it's growing fast. Okay. Uh, the fact the, those who consider
00:23:08.660 themselves atheists or religiously unaffiliated account for up to a quarter of the population
00:23:13.220 today. And in Europe, they're like in second place. Uh, on the other hand though, on the other
00:23:18.580 hand, in places like Africa and the, in Asia, China and Russia, Christianity is growing in an
00:23:24.980 incredible, incredibly fast clip. So Christianity is actually outpacing atheism, even though in the
00:23:30.860 West, atheism is doing better and it must lose in the end because it's the religion of atheism is the
00:23:37.360 religion of hopelessness. No matter what they claim, it's the religion of hopelessness and despair.
00:23:42.320 People need more. It just doesn't have the stuff of happiness. And so in the end,
00:23:47.100 especially if we want to celebrate the international day of happiness, that's absolutely
00:23:51.040 right. I really like it. I do recommend reading it because this book, you read so many books and
00:23:56.760 they try to say, Oh, you can't, you've got to be polite. Oh, you know, everyone has every idea is
00:24:01.720 worthwhile. Oh, every, and you say like, no guys, the emperor has no clothes. This is a terrible
00:24:06.400 philosophy. It's stupid. It's based on nothing and it will make you miserable, which I love the
00:24:12.920 bluntness. And they're nasty to us all the time. Look at all the billboards, look at all the blogs
00:24:18.920 where you have to, we're not punching bags, especially sometime. Even Jesus threw the money
00:24:24.440 changes out of the temple and got mad once in a while. I will say too, especially since
00:24:27.660 Christopher Hitchens died, they're not even witty anymore. They're not even good with their pen.
00:24:32.140 Absolutely right. The book is inside the atheist mind, unmasking the religion of those who say there
00:24:37.500 is no God. The author is Anthony DiStefano. Anthony, thank you for being here. We'll have to have you
00:24:42.100 back again. Thanks for having me. All right. Let's talk about International Day of Happiness.
00:24:47.680 This is, it all ties in. It's all really nice providence, really nice coincidences. I see this
00:24:53.300 on Twitter this morning. It's trending the International Day of Happiness. So what's the
00:24:57.080 International Day of Happiness? The International Day of Happiness was founded five years ago by the
00:25:02.100 United Nations. I know. It's both very recent and founded by the UN. I'm more than skeptical to say
00:25:08.580 the least. So then I looked. According to a UN study, American happiness is at a 10-year low.
00:25:14.500 Only the United Nations could be this tone deaf and incompetent. They would, as they are figuring out
00:25:19.700 that the entire world is unhappy, they'll say, okay, we'll be happy. Okay, now we'll be, are we happy?
00:25:24.560 Let's all pretend we're happy and then it'll be fine. That's the United Nations in a nutshell.
00:25:28.700 But it gets a lot worse. I mean, there are some really awful numbers that have come out.
00:25:32.500 Young people are killing themselves. We talk about gun crime and gun homicides every year.
00:25:37.300 Two-thirds of gun deaths, as they say, are middle-aged guys killing themselves. Very sad.
00:25:44.340 That demographic is expanding. Suicides are expanding to different demographics. According
00:25:48.920 to the CDC, youth suicide, specifically white children between the ages of 10 and 17,
00:25:54.740 has skyrocketed 70% in 10 years. That is a huge increase. Black children are far less likely than
00:26:01.820 white children to kill themselves, but their number is actually now higher. The rate of
00:26:06.660 growth is higher, 77% higher in just the last few years. Suicide rate among teenage girls is way up.
00:26:15.180 It's at a 40-year high now. Ben wrote a good piece just detailing this today and putting all the
00:26:19.720 statistics together. There have been various explanations for why this is. They'll say the
00:26:24.820 bad economy is the, you know, the 2007 financial crisis or the opioid epidemic or sexual frustration,
00:26:31.560 but none of this explains it away because then those things pass and nevertheless, the rate keeps
00:26:38.900 increasing. Also, the economy is gangbusters right now. We're the most economically prosperous people
00:26:45.340 in the history of the world. The opioid epidemic just simply does not, hasn't been widespread or long
00:26:52.860 enough to account for those numbers. And we're the most sexually inventive people ever there were.
00:26:58.200 I don't think it's sexual frustration. There was a thought that people felt bad that they had
00:27:03.400 different sexual preferences and it was not accepted by society. Now the White House is painted
00:27:08.860 in rainbow colors and the number just keeps going up. Really what it is, is the perception of
00:27:14.180 meaninglessness. This is how Jordan Peterson became a worldwide celebrity. Jordan Peterson is a soft-spoken
00:27:19.980 psychologist who tells people that the world entails some suffering and also clean your rooms. He is
00:27:26.200 treated as a prophet in the world because in some ways he is. He's one of the few people with the
00:27:30.720 clarity or the courage to just say these basic facts of the world. People are starving for someone
00:27:36.440 to tell them the unfashionable truth that they have suspected all along, but they've been bullied
00:27:42.280 into pretending it isn't true, which is that life has meaning and humans have purpose. My point on this
00:27:48.900 is that you can't just stop at Jordan's book. I do recommend it. I had a great time talking to him
00:27:53.680 yesterday. You should read it, 12 Rules for Life. It's a good reminder that until three,
00:28:00.100 four hundred years ago, we all understood human beings as having a purpose, a teleology,
00:28:06.320 a telos for men. Until very recently, we've accepted the Christian undergirding of our civilization.
00:28:14.680 You've got to go further than that, though. There is a tendency, I think, now. I told you
00:28:21.620 Jordan yesterday didn't want to. He didn't say, well, you know, baptize me, Michael. Get your toaster
00:28:26.800 from the bishop. Every year in, you know, we did it. He basically wrote a book about Jesus. He wrote a
00:28:33.020 really beautiful book about Jesus, but he was unwilling to make that point and say, yes, I'm going to get
00:28:40.300 down on my knees. Yes, this is what it is. He was almost there. Maybe it's, it's, it's, he's clearly
00:28:46.220 on the edge of it. Andrew Klavan has find God in 60 days. That's a video that he had done. Ben wears
00:28:53.280 the yarmulke all the time. There is a step beyond just thinking about it. There is a step beyond
00:28:59.260 saying, yes, well, I can intellectualize a way in which God could mean this and metaphor and
00:29:04.840 metaphysical. In, in Christ is the unity of heaven and earth, of the metaphor and the reality of the
00:29:11.100 metaphysical and the physical. You got to do it. You've got to get down on your knees. You have to
00:29:16.220 go to church. You have to clean your room. You can't just clean your room. You have to clean your
00:29:20.240 spiritual room too. And that means going to church, going, praying, reading the Bible, going to
00:29:26.080 confession, perhaps doing these things. This is why sacraments exist is to bring together those two
00:29:32.160 things, the intellectual and the physical and put them together in one place on earth. There have
00:29:36.120 been various heresies throughout the history of Christendom, which are Gnostic heresies. They say,
00:29:40.780 oh, the physical doesn't matter. It's, we hate the physical. It's no good. Just the mind, that's all
00:29:45.520 that matters. But that isn't true. We know that isn't true. We're people. We have bodies. We live in
00:29:49.980 time and space. Before the West lost its mind in the 17th and 18th centuries, it was commonly understood
00:29:55.920 that there is a unity of the virtues. The body is unified. There are plenty of heresies, say,
00:30:02.160 just, you know, just think this, don't do this. The Albigensian heresy, the Gnostic heresy,
00:30:06.120 new age spirituality, the various Christian splinters that deny or suppress free will.
00:30:12.020 You have free will. Use it. Do it. Don't just think about it. Do it. I don't know how much more
00:30:16.580 I want to shake you because it's international day of happiness. Be happy, damn it. Do something
00:30:20.580 for yourself. Make yourself happy. Let's move on to Facebook. Facebook is getting killed right now.
00:30:26.960 They are being raked over the coals for the data security scandal involving Cambridge Analytica.
00:30:32.160 For those who have missed it, Cambridge Analytica is a data mining and data analysis company and it
00:30:38.400 hired a third-party firm, Global Science Research, that created a clicky personality quiz prompting
00:30:44.840 users to give them a bunch of their data as well as all of their friends' data.
00:30:48.720 So this wasn't like some big hack. This wasn't the Russians and the Macedonian teenagers and the
00:30:54.120 Russian Macedonian teenage robots or whatever. They just, there was a personality quiz. It was little,
00:30:59.760 you know, the stupid apps on Facebook and people clicked it and they voluntarily gave
00:31:03.520 them their data. The, the, uh, firm got, uh, user data for 50 million people. Uh, Facebook
00:31:09.400 covered this up for two years. This didn't happen five minutes ago. It didn't happen even
00:31:12.600 a year ago. Two years, they covered it up. The FTC is now investigating. Facebook's stock
00:31:17.320 price fell 8% yesterday. It's already fallen 5% this morning. As of putting this together,
00:31:22.460 may have fallen more since then. Just yesterday's dip, just yesterday alone shaved $40 billion from
00:31:28.900 Facebook's market value. 40 billion. Biggest single day decline in four years. And the worst
00:31:34.080 part of it all, I don't care about your 401ks. I don't care about Facebook's company dropping down
00:31:39.720 into the gutter. The worst part is that I have to defend Facebook. I wish I didn't have to. I really
00:31:45.000 wish I didn't have to. People, this is not Facebook's fault. This is not Cambridge Analytica's fault.
00:31:50.540 It's not global science research's fault. It's not the Macedonian teenager's fault. You put your
00:31:56.900 data there. You put your data up there. You clicked on that stupid personality quiz so that you could
00:32:01.900 say, I'm an EPLJP and this, it doesn't make me special. And which ones are you? You did it. This is
00:32:09.460 what freedom looks like. You, we can't control your whole lives. You can't rely on the government
00:32:15.400 to control your whole life. You chose to put your data out there. Now advertisers have your data
00:32:19.360 tough. Democrats are only freaking out about this because it's connected to Donald Trump.
00:32:24.560 Here's how it's connected to Trump. Apparently the Republican donor, Robert Mercer, invested in this
00:32:30.500 company on the advice of Steve Bannon. So they were sort of involved getting some data, whatever.
00:32:37.440 Democrats do this sort of thing all the time. Do you remember when Barack Obama was the digital
00:32:41.580 candidate? He had the best data mining digital operation. It was so cool and cutting edge and
00:32:47.440 admirable. Wow. He's so, wow. He's so cool. Then Republicans do it and it's nefarious.
00:32:52.920 They do the same thing, but it's, that's bad. Why is it bad? I don't know. It just is because
00:32:57.940 of the data and privacy. What, what, what, what, what, what, what when the other guy, no, no,
00:33:01.540 that was cool. That was cool. That's bad. Cool, bad. That's how it works. Absolutely not. You put
00:33:06.660 your stuff up there. You should never put anything on the internet that you would be on, uh, unwilling to
00:33:11.520 see on the cover of the New York times, or I guess on the cover of the daily wire, because no one reads the
00:33:15.080 New York times anymore. So anything that you would not like to be public, you shouldn't put on the
00:33:19.520 internet. The internet is public and the internet is forever. Use your freedom. Uh, uh, you know,
00:33:25.280 I'm sorry that our guys used it this time. I'm sorry that our guys were better at the internet
00:33:29.300 and we used the internet to beat you. I know that's, it's really hard and everything, but tough,
00:33:33.920 sad to quote a great man, sad. Uh, finally, we got to hit in the last few minutes, we got to hit Google,
00:33:39.000 Google and Facebook. Here we are. Google has declared war on conservatives. So, uh,
00:33:44.640 Google is now spending $300 million. It has announced over the next three years to fight
00:33:50.340 fake news. Le fake news, c'est moi. C'est moi. You're looking at fake news, baby. This is what
00:33:56.340 they mean when they say fake news. They're going to be attacking what it considers to be fake news.
00:34:00.580 And that's us. They're already doing it. When you search for daily wire articles,
00:34:04.920 what pops up, you see the daily wire and then it pops up with all these left-wing fact checker
00:34:08.800 websites, but they're not fact checker websites. They're left-wing opinion columns. Uh, when you search for
00:34:13.660 left-wing outlets, that doesn't happen. When you search for left-wing outlets, you get the left-wing
00:34:17.720 outlet you're searching for. When you search for us, you get left-wing websites that are trying to
00:34:22.420 convince you not to click on our website. They've been doing this for a while. They've been ramping
00:34:26.420 it up. They've been demonetizing our videos on YouTube. They've been hitting conservatives way
00:34:31.320 harder than they've hit lefties, if they've hit lefties at all. And now they're going to be gunning
00:34:35.740 after us even more $300 million, basically just to take us down. Uh, what, one other thing they're going to be
00:34:42.240 investing the money in is making it easier to subscribe to the New York times and the financial
00:34:46.800 times, two very left-wing papers. I kid you not. They are going to try to block places like the
00:34:51.980 daily wire. They are going to try to make it easier to subscribe to left-wing news websites.
00:34:56.700 They have lost their minds. They've lost their minds because we are better at the internet.
00:35:02.160 They were so upset. They thought they were going to be better at the internet. It would have been all
00:35:07.000 okay if they were just better at the internet, but they're not. We are, we were funnier on the
00:35:12.900 internet. We use the internet to crack the monopoly, the media monopoly of lefties and Democrats,
00:35:19.640 the mainstream media monopoly that just wouldn't air us, that wouldn't air our views, that would
00:35:23.740 selectively edit our interviews. We used it to break right through them and they are out for blood.
00:35:29.700 They are out for revenge. They're very angry and then it's not going to stop. There has to be
00:35:34.060 some alternative here and you're, and it is going to make strange bedfellows. Let me tell you,
00:35:39.080 you are going to see conservatives calling for regulation, not special regulation, not unfair
00:35:44.060 regulation, but fairly applied rules to publishers who pretend that they're not publishers. It is going
00:35:50.060 to be really nasty, but this is where the fight is. All of the information on the internet goes through
00:35:54.580 these guys. The vast, vast preponderance of news and political information goes through these guys.
00:35:59.800 We cannot give it up. We cannot cede it to them. This fight is only beginning now. It
00:36:04.780 is only going to get worse. Gird yourselves, but be happy about it because it's International
00:36:08.500 Day of Happiness. Okay. That's our show today. Make sure you get your mailbag questions in.
00:36:13.240 We will be doing all of that. We've got some more good guests for you, but I'm not going to tell you.
00:36:17.320 I'm not going to, I want there to be a surprise. I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael
00:36:20.860 Knowles Show. I'll see you tomorrow. The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire
00:36:28.920 Forward Publishing production. Executive producer, Jeremy Boring. Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.
00:36:34.840 Supervising producer, Mathis Glover. Our technical producer is Austin Stevens. Edited by Alex Zingaro.
00:36:40.640 Audio is mixed by Mike Coromina. Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera. Copyright Forward Publishing 2018.