Knowledge Fight - #1081: Tucker, The Man And His Empiricist

Episode Date: October 3, 2025

In this installment, Dan and Jordan dig into an interview that Tucker did recently about how you can rationally argue for the existence of angels and demons, which descends into irrationality almost immediately.

Ina, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, knowledge fight. Dan and Jordan, I am sweating. Knowledgefight.com. It's time to pray. I have great respect for knowledge fight. Knowledge fight. I'm sick of them posing as if they're the good guys, saying we are the bad guys. Knowledge.

Dan and George. Knowledge fight. Riddler. I need money. Andy and Kansas. Andy and Kansas. Stop it. Andy in Kansas.

Andy in Kansas. It's down to pray. Andy in Kansas. You're on the air. Thanks for holding. Hello, Alex. I'm a first time calling. I'm a huge fan.

I love your word. Knowledge fight. Knowledge fight.com. I love you. Hey, everybody. Everybody, welcome back to Knowledge Fight. I'm Dan. I'm Jordan.

Where a couple dudes like to sit around, worship at the altar of Celine, talk a little bit about Alex Jones. Oh, indeed we are, Dan. Jordan. Quick question for you. What's your bright spot today, buddy? My bright spot is I'm fucking around and thinking about bringing back a matter of time. Oh, no. I accidentally discovered that McGiver is on streaming.

Classic McGiver. All right. And I said, why not? watch the pilot of MacGyver. Because why not? I haven't seen McGiver in a long time. Yeah. I watched it when I was a kid.

Did you? A bit. And I think there were more jokes about McGiver than I actually watched. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I've seen definitely a few. I also think a fair amount of them blur together with Walker, Texas Ranger. And so, like, I'm not sure exactly what's Norris, what's Richard Dean Anderson. Me.

And so I turned it on. And I have to tell you, I was overworked. by the opening credits. It is so much boy stuff from my childhood. It's just him doing a bunch of stuff that like rambunctious boys might do in the opening. It's just great. It tickled something in my brain. Yeah.

And I love it. I can't wait to watch however many seasons there are. I don't believe I've ever seen a full episode of. McGiver, but I've seen the last eight minutes of 15 episodes of McGiver, and they are very similar. Yeah. I know that

I've watched plenty. Enough to answer this question that I don't really know, and that is what does he do? Watch the pilot. I don't know. Is he? I feel like he's an independent contractor in some way.

He's not wholly working for the like force. Or you know what I mean? Well, the government definitely tells him we need you to do something. Right. And then he, but he is also told you can turn down this job. Right. You don't have to do this.

It's a very strange relationship he has with the government. Almost like altruistic in a sense. Like, he's like, ah, the government needs me again. I'll just help about it. Yeah. So in this one, there's a explosion in a negative third floor chemical plant. Oh, no. And it turns out that it was said.

by the head scientist because he had created a way to get rid of the ozone layer accidentally and he didn't want it to fall into the wrong hands. Okay. So he lured the only other scientist in the world who understood what he was working on. Right. To the, to his lab. Yeah. Played a chess game with him and then blew it up.

Okay. So they both died? No, they both survived. They both survived? Yeah. Oh, no. A lot of other people died. But they survived.

So McGivers got to go down and get them. Ro, my God. And there's a chemical leak. Yeah. And so the military is going to shoot a missile at them. Of course. He doesn't get their own time. This is a hell of a pilot.

Yes. And while he's down there, he meets the assistant to one of these scientists. Of course. This lady. Sure. And she is like the gal from Indiana Jones. Like she's an adventurer type. All right.

She's ready to go. Okay. they kiss like three times i'm sorry i googled it did they know each other no wow that's quick they thought they were going to die and she's like i just want to thank you oh that's fair and then they kissed two more times wow and i googled it and she's not in another episode i mean i was scandalized i i hate to say this about mciver but perhaps his one character flaws he likes to hit it and quit it i i yeah he was loose with the lips. Also, he's a big brother, and that's cool, and he seems to live in a planetarium.

I don't know. He's like a superhero. But a kid. Yeah, he's like a little boy's imaginary superhero best friend who doesn't have superpowers, but is a good dad, but a dad who's your older brother. Yeah. I worry about how much I'm going to uncover about, like, things from my cantankerous young boy, phases, eras of life

that I'm like, oh wait, that was all just MacGyver. All of a sudden you realize that most of your memories are actually MacGyver episodes? Interesting. I didn't blow up that lab. You were secretly

experimented on by the government to teach you about MacGyver, like in the Matrix, but instead of like learning Kung Fu, you just know Magiver storylines. Yeah. There's also four points where I audibly said, nope. But I love it. Still, it's great.

All right. All right. So it's your bright spot. My bright spot, Dan, is that for the first time in a good long while, my beloved Cubs have won a postseason game. Go, Cubs, go. They will play today this afternoon at 4 o'clock for the chance to make it to the National League Division series. Nice. But for the time being, it's them versus the Padres. One game each.

The dads. This is the third. This is the rubber match. and I'm excited to watch it tonight. I hope we will be wrapped up in time for you to take that in. Oh, yeah, I will have a cold beer in my hand and chips, like an old-fashioned man from the 1940s. Nice.

I will connect with my ancestors. We went to go see a movie earlier in the week. Yes, we did. So we were down near Wrigley, and it was during one of the games, and there was counterterrorism on the L. Yep. And it was very, it was overwhelming. Yeah, there's going to be a lot of people around.

Yeah, our city has been invaded. Yep. So, Jordan, today we have an episode to go over. All right. And without telling you too much about what we're going to be talking about, I wanted to give you a little out of context drop to wet your appetite. If demons do exist, we ought to be heads up about it. Got to be heads up. Heads up.

Demons. Is he wrong? I mean, no. You know, I was just thinking, you can't plan for every disaster. but you can plan for some disasters. And if there are demons, I think we should plan for them. Right. We have, if we assume demons are real.

Right. Big assumption, but we can assume it. Yep. Heads up. The risk is too great. I mean, if they are real and we're not prepared for them, we're fucked. Yeah, because they're tricky. They're unstoppable.

Yeah. So we will get into something about demons. But first, before we do that, let's take a little moment to say hello to some new wongs. Ooh, it's a demon feast. So first, thank you very. very much for feeding my bespoke woke mind virus. Thank you so much. You're now, a policy wonk. I'm a policy wonk.

Thank you very much. Biswoke. Beswoke. Beswoke. Next, from the Church of Dick Flakiel and the latter day erections. Thank you so much. You're now, policy wonk. I'm a policy won. Thank you very much. Dick Flacid, sorry. Gotcha.

Next, Dan, this is Jordan from the future. You're a great friend and I love you. Oh, thank you so much. You're now a policy walk. I'm a policy won't. Thank you very much. Thank you. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's good to know that in the future we're still friends or I'm a weirdo or it could be like in the very near future

or yeah or like maybe it's maybe it's deeper into the future after all of this stuff has broken us up and torn us apart and I was just like I have one message on my deathbed to get back to Dan. Well here we are I'm glad you took the time and it means a lot of course so we also got a technical credit of the mix

so thank you so much too I've got a small coffee company outdoor coffee cult in Oregon called hush hush coffee and I wanted to send you guys some coffee an official offer you a sponsorship for your roast segment in honor of Owen leaving. Hand biter! Thank you so much. You're now a technocrat. I'm a policy won't. Four stars. Go home to your mother and tell her you're brilliant.

Someone, someone, Sodomite sent me a bucket of poop. Daddy Shark! Binks has a Caribbean black accent. He's a loser little little titty baby. I don't want to hate black people. I renounce Jesus Christ. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. It occurs to me that I may have forgotten to reply of that to me a month, because I would like some of that coffee. I don't need a sponsorship.

If you want to send Jordan coffee, he drinks a lot of it. Absolutely. I drink so much. I will say that on our last Owen episode, I did intend to write a roast. Right. I did intend to. But I sat down and I started thinking of roast jokes. Yeah. I realized I hate roast comedy.

It's the worst form of comedy, I think, possible. Yeah. Clever ways of saying, this guy sucks. You suck. Okay. The end. So, Jordan. Yeah.

There's no deny. it. This show has been light on wackiness recently. And I think we've all felt the weight of its absence, especially as the world descends into like a real bad, sure, bad time. We need that. We need something. Yeah. So laying in bed for a few days, I had the, I had the thought, you know, I was sick. Enough. Let's get wacky. So as soon as I got to feeling better, I got straight to this task and I wasn't going to accept anything short of succeeding. And it didn't take me long to strike gold. On September 1st, Tucker Carlson

released an interview with a former journalist named Lee Strobel entitled Quot, Possessions, Miracles, Visions and Encounters with Angels and Demons. And I said, say less. Yeah, no. I'm in. You stop drilling. You have hit oil, my friend. Yep.

We all know Tucker was recently attacked by a demon. He's recently attacked by a demon. This is finally him learning more about how to fight back. Right. This is great. And an opportunity for him to open up. Of course. This is going to be awesome. Tell us more.

Yeah. So what do you think about demons? You know, traditionally against them, but maybe they're misunderstood. You know, I feel like perhaps we've gotten trapped in a dogmatic idea of good versus evil. And maybe that is kept us from evolving as a species. And demons are a fundamental aspect of something that we need to address is something part of our insides. I'll spoil this for you. Lee is opposed.

Opposed. Okay. Well, then I'll go with that. Yeah. So we start off here with Tucker giving a little bit of an intro, Sons guest. So we're told there's no state religion in the West, certainly not in the United States, but in fact there is. It's scientism. It's the worship of science.

It's the belief, and all of us learn this at a young age, that everything around us, everything we experience, can be measured by people in white coats. That's science. If it can't be measured, it's not real. The problem with this religion is that our life, our daily experience, contradicts it. So a belief in science does not require a person to think that our current understanding of science is capable of explaining everything in the world. This is a semantic game that Tucker is playing where he's imposing on his opponents a position that they don't hold. Science can explain a lot and it can explain a shitload more than it could 100 years ago. So anyone who's not a dipshit would understand that in 100 years we'll be able to explain a lot more than we can now.

Science doesn't purport to be able to explain everything, although most people who are into reality probably would concede that almost everything could be explained if we understood how everything worked. Probably. Science is about repeatability, for the most part. It's a process that takes ideas and tests them to see if they reach valid conclusions. What I mean is that science doesn't just say that antibiotics kill infections, and therefore this must be so. rigorous trials and repeated studies that tested antibiotics against infections arrived at that conclusion that they were effective in fighting them so that's become science's position if new repeatable credible information were to come to light that indicated that they didn't work that way

science would change with that new information science isn't a religion this formulation is actually Tucker hiding the ball about what his actual argument is which we'll get to as we go along sure as for the unexplained things that we experience in our day-to-day life, some of that can probably be explained by science you just don't understand. Other parts of it might be stuff that can't be explained by our current body of scientific knowledge, but will be explained by a new discovery that's just waiting to happen. Sure.

Or it could be magic. It's possible. Yes. It is possible that we could all be, in some sense, particles given mass by Higgs field and that, in a certain sense, we are just moving through jello. up and down like a wave or of course could be god could be magic could be any of these things are possible and scienceism is a cult that does make sense and all you need to know is that we're all having supernatural experiences all the fucking time that sounds true constantly all of us are seeing

hearing tasting feeling things that can't be measured by science but it doesn't make them any less real. These are, by definition, supernatural. Supernatural experiences are a feature of everyone's life. And if we're honest, we'll admit that. Tucker is saying that we're seeing, hearing, tasting, and feeling things that cannot be measured by science, which is strange because that's all of our senses except smell. Why aren't people smelling supernatural stuff? Okay. All right. Okay. I'm going to follow this train of thought. If everyone experiences the supernatural, does it not then no longer deserve the term super? Yeah, it's just natural in the way that we don't understand.

Yeah, it's just natural. Or like not even that. If you're tasting something, then we can measure like how spicy it is, right? Sure, there's like capsaic and levels and, you know, scovil units. Yeah, many of the things that you are seeing, tasting, feeling are in fact very measurable by your own. senses. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Tucker isn't talking about tasting a ghost or something here. This is actually just a reference to an idea in Lee Strobel's book, where someone he's interviewing blows his mind by telling him that science can't describe the smell of coffee.

Sensory experiences are tough to capture in words, largely because there's a disconnect between an experience and the awareness of the experience. Every person's reaction to a description of coffee relies on their subjective take on it. So putting that subjective description into more objective terms is difficult. But that doesn't mean that science can't explain why something smell the way they do. This is fairly basic stuff. It's something that we use so effectively that most people probably don't even realize it. For instance, natural gas is odorless, but it's also super dangerous.

Can we measure it with science? Well, when companies produce it, they add an odorizer to the gas so people can detect a leak more easily. Sure. They can do that because the scientific method has uncovered various compounds. that have certain smells. Your experience of smelling one of these odorizers may be different from mine, but the arrangement of atoms that create the stimulus that we describe differently is science. Anyway, the point is that we aren't constantly running around having supernatural experiences.

If you want to add some importance to the unique experience of tasting a peach and that importance improves your life, then I wish you the best with it. But that does not invalidate science, and you sound like an idiot. I appreciate anybody who could write an entire book that I think his thesis boils down to, explain example, with your science. Yes. It does. Except it's a little dumber. Yeah.

I mean, ultimately it comes down to like, well, I don't understand this. Prove that. Like, man, what are we doing here? And I think that we're going to have a tough time because I'm going to be real mean. to Lee Strobel for you. But he seems like a pleasant man. Right. I don't know anything about him

except this interview and do you know what I've read and his book and stuff. But like he seems like a happy person. He's all right. He also seems probably worse than Tucker in some ways. But politer. I mean, I suppose you don't, you know, if you write a book about how angels and demons

are better than science, I don't think I can let you off the hook. Even if you're a polite guy. Wait to hear some of the shit he says. I believe that. I believe that hard. So here's the thing you need to know about Lee before Tucker brings him in. That is the most important thing is he likes to prove shit. Right.

Because he's from journalism. Oh, my God. Well, Lee Strobel was a reporter. He worked for the Chicago Tribune and left and became a pastor. So he has religious faith, but also a grounding in empiricism, the desire to prove things. He is the perfect person to write the book that he did about the supernatural. That would be dreams, mystical dreams, near-death experiences, miracles, ghosts. We set down to them to hear just how common these experiences are and what they mean.

I hate to say it, but the theme's grown on me. Tucker's theme song has grown on me. That little twang, yeah, yeah. Well, it's fair. So this is already what he's, what Tucker is saying is already, huge problem for him because he's trying to prove that Lee Strobel likes to live in the world of proven facts by saying that he worked for a major newspaper. Right. The mainstream media is supposed to be all spin and lies. So the fact that he worked for the Chicago Tribune should probably be a mark

against him in Tucker's world. Yeah. I guess the media is only the enemy of the people when you need it to be. So Lee did work in journalism, but he hasn't since 1987. At that point, he became involved with megachurches and writing Christian apologetics texts designed to argue why it's not irrational to believe in various tenets of the religion. There you go. And I'm sure that most people know, but like, apology in this case is not like, it's not like, I'm sorry. No, no, no, no.

It's argumentative. It's a defense of, uh, uh, of Christianity makes sense. Yeah. I have no problem with him writing these kinds of texts, but it's deeply disingenuous to call him someone who's interested in empiricism. In a religious sense, Lee is an evangelist. And when religion and politics intersect, as they do with Tucker, He's acting as a propagandist.

I don't care about a person working at a newspaper almost 40 years ago. So the presentation of Lee as a rational actor based on that piece of his resume, it's not going to sway me. We'll see how he makes his arguments and presents his information. And from there, we can see if this is an honest empiricist who just has to admit that magic is real. Or if he's a charlatan parading around in an empiricist costume, feeding into a religious hysteria that's going to be used to persecute a ton of people for no reason. Sure. we'll find out you know what I was just thinking

I was just thinking it's the second one here's what I'm doing all right I'm creating a farm system for these guys this is my new plan I hire a bunch

or I like raise a bunch of youth group kids to think you know go become a journalist and then in eight years you'll be the person I'm like oh come to the other side

and you'll be like I worked in journalism for eight years and now I believe in the Lord but actually you did it the whole time it was all a fucking ruse and now you're brought up

to the big game That's what I'm saying. I don't think this is a bad idea. Well, I think that there is some kind of, like, what would Alex call that? Like sheep dipping? Sure, yeah. Dipping someone in credibility. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, that's the way to do it. So Lee comes into the interview. Okay. And, uh, ooh. Lee Strobelth. So you've written a book. I don't do a lot of book interviews, but I couldn't resist this one. Seeing the supernatural, investigating angels, demons, mystical dreams, near death,

encounters and other mysteries of the unseen world. Right. I think a lot of us sense or know on some level. In fact, I think everybody knows on some level that there is a world that science can't measure or quantify. Yeah. That there is, you know, that there's stuff that we can't explain. Yeah. But that it's no less real for our inability to explain it.

So let's go through the list. Yeah. So the elephant in the room here is that Tucker has recently revealed that he was attacked by a demon in his sleep. he didn't interview with an orthodox documentarian about it so it's not just a poorly kept secret or something that Alex has gossiped about without permission Tucker's trying to insinuate that we all know that there are unseen things in the world that science can't explain but doesn't seem to want to tell Lee about his own very real and very serious experience Lee has written a book about encounters with angels and demons so Tucker could he could be a very useful resource when he was writing this book or now he's promoting it should have been should have been consulting Right. Tucker has so much evidence. Like, I'm sure he took pictures of the claw marks and his wife can verify aspects of the story. So it seems like a perfect situation for him and Lee. Lee's the person most motivated to believe Tucker's story. And Tucker is the person who seems like he could provide Lee with solid evidence of a demon attack. Chocolate and peanut butter, baby. I'm sure that we're going to spend a lot of time nailing down the specifics and, you know, Tucker's testimony. Feels very real. He's not going to come up at all. You don't think so? It doesn't come up. It would be. Interesting to see them disagree, though.

That would be the joy. I don't think Lee would disagree with him. As a professional former journalist who studies demons now, I can tell you that demon you are talking about was not real. That claw is a dog size. Yep, yep, yep, yep. You say your dog sleeps in the bed with you? Demons have much bigger claws.

It's like the guy in the, who the Pope hires to be like, no demons are real. But then he finds one. yeah yeah we're going to talk about a guy like that later yeah so uh lee he used to be an atheist sure and he was trained in law you know by the way i i was an atheist i'm trained in journalism and so i'm always looking for corroboration yeah i'm looking for evidence i'm looking for facts and so you're right i think there's an intuitive sense that most people have that there's something beyond what we can see touch and put in a testes eight out of ten americans believe that so law is not a science

law is another it's a system of rules which we like to imagine is based on empiricism but it's actually more influenced by rhetoric lawyers make arguments and courts decide cases which isn't the same as consistently reproducible reactions caused by introducing two chemicals into the same space journalism is also not a science all of these things law journalism and science deal with the concept of truth differently so lee boosting his credentials in law and journalism doesn't mean there is any connection to the scientific method at all. But Lee does have a master's in law from Yale, which makes sense because his career is about arguing. It's not about proving, but instead about pretending that arguing is the same as proving. And that's why he was yet a role in God's Not Dead too. See, here's what's important. I was trained in law and journalism. Two things that everybody knows, like angels and demons, are the single most objective things that have been. Nobody's ever seen a subjective court or a objective piece of journalism, that would be absurd. Right.

Right. So because of this expertise, I can now tell you that angels and demons are real. And I went to Yale so you know the things I believe are good for you. I hold you in contempt. Couldn't think of another court term. Judgment. So, look, how do we know? How do we know things?

How do we know anything? How do we know things? Right. And when you think about how do we know things? How do we know things? You start to realize that atheists are the fucking stupid things. How do we know? What is the evidence?

And that's why I try to get into in the book. How can we be sure through corroborated evidence that indeed there are such things as miracles, as near-death experiences, as deathbed encounters and mystical dreams and things like that? Yeah, atheism is the leap of imagination. It is. That's true. It's hard to be an atheist. It's very true. I admire them in a way, though.

Feel sorry for them. Anyway, okay. Angels. Yeah. Angels. Angels. I think that in life, it's important to respect what is knowable and what is not. And to respect people's right to experience the stuff that's not, however works best for them.

As it stands now, there's not a reliable, reproducible, meaningful way to prove the existence of a personified God. So I think it's fair to count that as part of life that's unknowable for now. Maybe one day we'll create some kind of Geiger counter that can sense angel particles. and then we can talk a bit more about the empirical case for religion, but for now, that's dumb. That said, it's not necessarily dumb, in my opinion, to have faith and choose to believe what you want about unknowable things. In the absence of demonstrable proof that God exists, it makes total sense to choose to believe in an all-loving figure who created us for a reason. Why not? Exactly.

Are you busy? If it helps someone get through the day and find meaning, then it's probably a good thing, generally. The only way that we can live in a balanced society is if we accept what? What is knowable, what is currently unknowable, and treat those things differently. And I think we've lost track of that a little bit. Are you trying to say that there's something subjective about the Bible? I think you've missed the point. Well, I think that there's a subjective and objective mix and enjoy.

Tucker feels the need to deride atheists because he needs to obscure from the fact that he and hardcore atheists suffer from the same fallacy, which is pretending that they can prove something that's impossible to prove. one side says they can prove God does exist the other side says they can prove God doesn't and neither can really accept that they're fundamentally operating from an arbitrary answer that they've come up for an unanswerable question. And their answer is acceptable.

It's just imposing it on everybody else is dumb. Yep. Yep. So. That is kind of the problem. Yeah. It was, it's a little bit like, you know, if you think about what Jesus was saying about the hot or cold concept,

If you're all the way in, right, you're going to treat people nice because you got to get into heaven. That's the most important thing that you could possibly do, right? But if you're all the way out, you got to treat people nice, this is all you've got. This is all you've got left. You're going to die. You're going to fucking die, and then there'll be nothing. So you got to treat people nice.

So that's what you thought the hot and cold was about? It's all the stuff in the middle that's dumb. But also, when something's in the middle, it doesn't burn your mouth or chip your tooth because it's frozen. That's fine for all this stuff around. here, but not for that guy upstairs. That's fair enough. Yep. So I wanted to stress that and kind of like touch on this a little bit because I don't want

to be like, ah, fuck you religion. Like I don't want to come off like that. And I don't want to be like, ha ha, look at these stupid Christians that believe this dumb shit. Sure. These are specific people who believe some dumb shit. Sure. And it's possible to maintain religion and faith in a way that isn't this.

Yeah. And I just want to differentiate between that. One of the most universal things that is true is that everybody believes in dumb shit somewhere. Somewhere or another, you'll find some dumb shit you believe in. Right. And that's essentially the only way to deal with unanswerable questions other than just being like, I don't know. Yeah. There's a I don't know or believe in some dumb shit, and they're both basically the same.

Yeah. Well, one gives you things to do. The other doesn't. Yeah, yeah. So anyway, angels. Sure. Well, you know about angels. Um, good ones or bad ones?

They play in Los Angeles. Because we got the good ones with the wings upstairs, but then we got the bad ones with the wings downstairs because they were upstairs, but then they got into a big fight and then they went downstairs. My man, they became demons and we'll get to them later. All right, fair enough. Angels for now are just the good guys. Just the good side. Okay. So Lee explains what they're up to.

Okay. Angels. Yeah. It's an angel. Fascinating. You know, angels are created by God before humankind was. created. They are spirit beings, so they have, they're not omniscient like God is. They're not omnipresent like God is. They are, they don't age because there's no physical body. They don't marry because there's no physical body. Must be nice. They, they're very intelligent, very smart.

No way in laws. With what? There's no physical body. To serve not only God, but also his people. And what's interesting? The, the Christian Bible, yeah, with the Hebrew Old Testament. Yeah. Makes references. Is there any culture in the world that doesn't believe in some form of angel? It's pretty universal. Pretty universal. Sure. So now we're supposed to believe that Lee is coming from a position of a guy who is Christian faith,

but is also a man of empiricism. So the things that he's saying aren't just wacky ramblings. They're based in fact. Absolutely. If you want to say that you believe that angels exist because of some incident where someone is saved by an angel and there's no explanation that you can come up with for it, then I can accept that you're applying a critical mind. to the situation.

Sure. You're going off the rails and applying critical thinking poorly, but you're seeking an explanation for something that you feel cannot be explained any other way. So you're left to assume, well, maybe it was an angel.

Sure. Conversely, if you're telling me that angels were created before humans and you want to tell me about their biology and dating habits, that I'm no longer convinced that what you're saying is the product of critical thinking.

As we go along, this is one of the crucial things to keep in mind, because it reveals the lie that all of this is based on. Lee is pretending that he's a good faith researcher who has seen stuff that just can't be explained by natural means. So he's left with no choice but to consider the possibility that maybe the supernatural stuff is going on. Right.

But wherein his exploration of trying to explain natural phenomena did he learn that angels don't get married. Oh. Well, because they can't fuck, right? His argument is they don't marry because there's no physical body. Right. Right? They don't age. That's the concept is that or they can't reproduce or whatever.

it is you'd like to say they never have to buy new clothes right right now if i understand this correctly though where where do where do they smart do you know what i mean if there's no physical body what is it that they keep their smarts in you know like we have a brain we're not just like thinky i think there's spatial intelligence people is that how it works they just have existing space you know you know how like turbo on the challenge is really good at like color puzzles and like he's just a machine at those things yeah angels are like that okay that makes enough sense for me I'm in oh boy yeah so this guy I mean like we're already like only a couple minutes into the interview and like you have abandoned the pretense of empiricism

tell me more about the marriage tell me more about why they don't marry tell me if God was like we should get ones that marry and ones that don't marry what are we talking about here They don't marry because they don't have hands and therefore no fingers, so they can't have rings on them. They can't put the rings on the fingers. The ring is an essential part of the union. That makes sense. You're not wrong. And then how would they kiss the bride?

Right. They don't have a body. No lips. No lips. Yep. So, you know who has lips? A guy ever. A Kardashian?

No. So let's hear some more about some angels. All right. Like maybe how they save missionaries. Okay. What's interesting about the Christian interpretation of angels. is that it says in the book of Hebrews in the Bible that we should anticipate the possibility that we would encounter an angel. In other words, it says sometimes when you're providing

hospitality to someone, unbeknownst to you, it's an angel. And so there's an anticipation that perhaps there could be angelic encounters. And so what I tried to look at in the book are cases in which we have angelic encounters. People actually encounter an angel. I'll give you an example. There was a missionary named John G. Peyton, P-A-T-O-N from Scotland. And he went to an island in the South Pacific to be a Christian missionary. And he and his wife were living in a cottage there. And he's talking about Jesus. Well, the local tribes people didn't quite like that. And so one day a mob of them came to burn down their house and kill him. Sure. So they see this mob forming. And he and his wife are in their house. And what can they do? They start to praise. Like, God, protect us, help.

us. They're going to kill us. They're going to burn our house down. What do we do? And they prayed all night long. And by dawn, the mob began to dissipate. A year later, he led the head of that mob to faith in Jesus Christ. Oh, my God. And they're having a conversation. And John said, by the way, do you remember that day when you all came to burn down our house and kill us? Why didn't you do it? And the man said, well, who were all those men you had there? He said, I don't know, men. It was just my wife and I. No, no, no. Your house was surrounded by these muscular men and white guys with drawn soar.

Yes. There's no way we could have hurt you that night. Injected in my veins. Well, what's the explanation for that? I think it could very well have been an angelic encounter that God had sent angels to protect him. It only makes sense. That's the only thing I can think of.

That's the only explanation I think of. I think you and I are both having flashbacks to bullshit stories. Oh, my God. when we were in youth group. So many of these. And it's always, it's always the, and then they prayed all night. It's all night.

It's never they prayed for a couple hours. It's never they prayed for two nights. It's always the whole night. God needs the full eight hours, man. Yeah. And if you clock out early, the mob's coming in. Absolutely. You're done.

Yeah. When Lee asks, what's the explanation here? It's key to remember that he's not really asking a question. No. He's arguing that angels were protecting this guy's house, and there's no other possible explanation that we can come up with. This is a cute anecdote, and I remember hearing shit like this all the time in youth group

because these are stories meant to appease the audience of the faithful. This is the type of content you throw out to literally preach to the choir, because no one else is going to be persuaded by this at all. For one thing, this is a third-hand story at best. The mob leader is telling the missionary about something he allegedly saw, then the missionary is retelling the story, and Lee is retelling hearing about the missionary's story. Right.

This game of telephone doesn't inspire confidence. Further, you notice that Lee knows the missionary's name, but not the guy who saw the angels. Yep. That's suspicious. So Lee uses this anecdote in his book to argue for the existence of angels, but he doesn't use the testimony of the guy who saw the angels or even the missionary John Gilbert Patton.

He cites Billy Graham discussing Patton's story, which is another layer of interpretation, which is being added to this whole thing. Including Billy Graham, which increases the likelihood of truth. Yeah. Billy Graham used this story in his 1975 book, Angels, God's Secret Agents. Lee is just taking Graham's version of the whole thing, which isn't very inquisitive of him, and makes me think that he doesn't care for empiricism. This is because John Gilbert Patton wrote an autobiography that was published in 1889, and this story is in there.

Uh-huh. You aren't going to get the account of the random mob leader who supposedly saw angels, but Patton's story is closer to the event than Graham's retelling of it. So Lee should have consulted that for his book as opposed to Billy Graham's version of the story. You'd think. Because if he'd done that, he would find that Graham is mistelling the story and there's no angels in it. Oh, what? Yeah.

What? So to set the scene. Okay. Patton and his associates were setting up a mission in the new Hebrides. There are some islands in the vicinity of Australia. All right. For the most part, the native population accepted merchants and missionaries, but there had been a flare-up recently due to a quarrel between sandalwood merchants and some locals.

That'll happen. This led to some murders. Hey, what you're going to do? In the aftermath of that, it looked like a full-on war was going to break out, but tensions lowered. All the same, Patton's mission wasn't viewed the same after that, and a lot of people on the island viewed him as the enemy. Sure. A while after that, a chief from another island came to visit and died shortly after returning home. That's no good.

Some people, quote, hearing of his death, ascribed it to me and the worship, and resolved to burn our house and property and either murder the whole mission party or compel us to leave the island. I mean, it does make sense. Well, there's at least like a little bit more of an A to B. Exactly.

You know, it's like, sure, you can believe in angels. I believe that this happened. We just move on. That's how it works. So at this point, Patton had some allies among the native population, like a chief named Nawat, who spoke in Patton's defense

and tried to get them, Hey, don't burn down his house. Hey, come on. This guy's just one of, he's just a guy. Yeah, but it wasn't enough. Quote, the inhabitants from miles around united in seeking our destruction, but God put to it even savage hearts to save us. A meeting of all our enemies on the island was summoned, and it was publicly resolved that a band of men be selected and enjoined to kill the whole of those friendly to the mission. Frenzy and excitement prevailed, and the blood fiend seemed to override the whole assembly, when under the impulse that surely came from the Lord of Pity, one

great warrior chief who had hitherto kept silent rose swung aloft a mighty club and smashed it earthwards cried aloud the man who kills misi must kill me first the man that kill the mission teachers must kill me first and my people for we shall stand by them and defend them till death sure so the guy who stands up for them ends up getting like a slow clap of the chiefs who are all like we got his back right right right he got the missionaries back and then the mission saved. Right. And I, so let me follow this evolution, if I, if you will. So in this real story, well, as real as we're going to get out of this. I mean, it's a late 1800s autobiography by a missionary who seems to think that he's part adventurer, which is kind of a fun tone. Right.

He also doesn't seem to hate native populations, but also kind of hates. I mean, you know, what are you going to do? Yeah. But the point being, the native population. is all doing what they do, and the hero of the story is one of those people. Right. And obviously, you're going to say he's moved by the Lord of Pity. Whatever you like. God moved his heart to protect them. But it is out of the goodness of these chiefs standing up for them and protecting them

that they didn't have their mission burned. So then notoriously, white supremacist Christian Billy Graham gets a hold of this story. And those men are no longer. longer native, but in fact, white-robed white people holding swords? Muscular. That's crazy. That is just crazy. Yeah.

So in his story, Patton says, quote, clearly did our Lord Jesus Christ interposed directly on our behalf that day. I and my defenseless company had spent it in anxious prayers and tears, and our hearts overflowed with gratitude to the Savior who rescued us from the lion's jaws. So when Lee tells the story and asks, what's the explanation? I find his disposition to be dishonest. The explanation is obvious. A missionary who died in 1907 wrote an autobiography

that at times reads like a tin-10. Yeah. And then a Craven evangelist came along and embellished the story for his own book about angels being secret agents for God. Explain that with your science. Lee isn't interested in digging down to uncover truth. He's just financially invested in perpetuating

the same shit Billy Graham was pursuing. Yep. And, man, I might read the rest of that guy's autobiography. I mean, that sounds fun. Yeah. Those old-timey adventure stories are truly great. And a lot of them have some truth to them. Yeah.

And he seemed like an unreliable narrator, but like in a fun way. Yeah, they're all really unreliable narrators because they're just white people having a grand time in the late 19th century. Yeah. What are you going to do? It's long enough ago that I think I can chuckle. Yeah. but also it's horrible. Can't do anything about it now.

Yeah. Let's just face it. There's no going back now. So, um, I think that this story sucks. Yeah. And Lee's argument for angels still at zero. Sure. Uh, but Tucker is like, fuck yeah.

Give me another one. All right. And there's multiple numbers of cases like that. Give me another. Well, uh, I had an encounter myself when I was 12 years old. Um, I was, um, it was the only dream I remember. as a child. It was more of a vision than a dream. An angel appeared to me and started extolling heaven. How beautiful and wonderful heaven is. And I looked at him kind of offhandedly and said,

well, you know, I'm going to go there someday. And he looked at me and said, how do you know? And I was shocked by that. How do I know? And I started to kind of stumble around to justify my goodness. I said, well, I obey my parents pretty much. And I get good grades in school and my friends liked me. And I'm trying to justify why I would get into heaven. And he looked at me And he said, that doesn't matter. And this chill went through my spine. How can this not matter? And he said, someday, you'll understand.

And then disappeared. Well, I kind of wrote it off as being a bad pizza and ultimately became an atheist. But 16 years later, as an atheist, my wife brought me to a church. And I heard the gospel for the first time. That salvation, that the doors of heaven are not flung open based on how nice you are to your parents. or how good grades you get in school. It's based on the grace of God. It's not something we earn.

It's a free gift of God's grace. And I heard that message for the first time, and my mind flashed back to that dream. And I thought, wait a minute, that's what he was trying to tell me back then. Have you thought a lot about that dream in the subsequent years? It would come to me every once in a while. I think about it.

I'd just suppress it. Well, it was a bad pizza, you know. But then I thought there's two forms of corroboration there. Number one, that angel told me something when I was 12. years old that I did not already know. Fair. That salvation is by grace. I'll count that one. Secondly, he made a prophecy, a

prediction that someday I would understand that came true 16 years later. Boom. I think that may have been an angelic encounter that I had. I can't prove it. But that corroboration tells me maybe it really was. I'm sorry, but I don't care about this dream at all. And I have to insist that it doesn't

prove anything. If Lee wants to take some personal meaning from it and if that's important to him, then I don't want insult that or take that away from him, but pretending it's anything more than that is idiotic. The fact that this is the second example he has when trying to argue for the existence of angels is a bad sign. Yeah. It should be a strong indication that his argument is some weak shit.

You know, here's what I'm thinking. Where I'm coming from right here is if you do the hard, hard numbers, the hard economics, right? I think in October there's well over 100 new sci-fi fantasy books coming out and of those less than 100 are going to sell more than like 2,000 copies that's just the truth of the market

that's just how it works but boy buddy Christian bookstores especially Christian apologetics texts from big name people who are like established in the field lie off the shelves Well, and probably subsidized by bulk purchases from churches. You better believe it.

There's all kinds of it. It's definitely a cooler business to be in than sci-fi. Yeah, that's the way. That's the way to go because it's very similar, but one is more lucrative. I also have a working theory that Lee wrote this almost the same book about five years ago. That probably sounds right. Anyway, we'll get to that later. I could nitpick around and say that he could have been.

been more aware of Christianity as a child than he's letting on or that he probably rewrote this memory of the dream in his head a thousand times. But I don't want to do that because I don't care. I will not argue against the meaning that Lee personally has for this dream because that's for him to decide. I will just flatly say that dream-based evidence is not evidence. So no matter how convincing this story is or isn't, it means nothing in our search for angels. If you're accepting angels visiting you in a dream and telling you riddles as a form of evidence, evidence. You're not interested in evidence. This is bad. You know, I always, I love these stories because of the way they, they're told in different places. This story told in the church

group is very God-heavy. This story told in like a dinner party, far less God-heavy. More of just like, you know what? Here's an interesting thing that might have happened to me. Tucker right in the middle of those two, I think. Yep, yep. Probably a little closer to church than dinner. I would say we're probably more in a we can speak freely zone than elsewhere if that's where we're I mean Tucker's been bit by a demon yeah but weirdly Tucker can't

speak freely because he's not bringing up the fact that you got attacked by a demon it is really weird that you've got a demon guy and you're not talking about being attacked by a demon it's literally all I was thinking about while I was watching this whole time crazy so look angels exist sure we've established this yes should you pray

to angels no you and Lee are in agreement about this. But there's nuance. No! But the other thing I learned in my investigation of angels, I thought, you know what? I don't think it's appropriate to pray to angels. I don't believe we're taught to do that. I think there's a slippery slope if you pray two angels that it might slip into worship of angels, which would be blasphemous. But there's nothing wrong with praying to God about angels. Martin Luther in the small catechism has a prayer, an evening prayer that says,

Lord, send your holy angels to protect me from the evil one. And so I never used to do this, but I now make part of my prayer that God would send angels to protect me and my family, my ministry, my grandchildren, and so I think that's totally appropriate to do. Hey, to brag, but we're pretty confident this show is the most vehemently pro-dog podcast you're ever going to see. Okay. Jarring?

Talking about whether you can pray about angels and Tucker comes in with his love of dogs. You don't know what that ad is for? What? Dog telemedicine. Oh, that's not good. Do you want to have a webcam thing? I really don't. I really don't.

You know, I was just thinking that Jesus was just so mean to those money lenders. You know, like that's a real dick move. They didn't deserve that kind of treatment. they need to be more accepting of pro-dog podcasts. That's what's important here. So you're talking about, you know, Jesus and the money changes. Sure, sure, sure. Who do you think that Tucker will later compare to the modern day people that Jesus would throw out with whips?

You know, I bet it's not money lenders. It's not. Yeah. Probably Antifa? LGBQ. There we go. baby hit it so um when i think about why i believe in something sure generally i'm like people did in the past so i should too is that how that works for ducker it is interesting

has there are you aware of any society in the known history of the human race that didn't believe that there was a supernatural realm exactly good and evil yes it's virtually universal yeah I've never heard of any culture that didn't believe that, except post-war West. Yeah. Drop the atom bomb, get rid of the supernatural. Right. Because we're God now. Yeah, that's right.

But before then, I mean, I just think this was taken as a matter of course, right? Of course, yeah, naturally. So if every society in known history reaches the same, a version of the same conclusion, it suggests maybe there's something there? It sure does. It sure does. Why would you come up with that? Exactly.

You know, it's funny. So Tucker's not this stupid. and him making an argument like this is a weaponized attack directed at the audience. Yeah. The argument is supposed to be that in the past, everyone believed in a demonic and angelic supernatural realm, so we should too. Sure. It was pretty universally believed that the sun was God and the earth was flat.

So why should we reject those widely held beliefs just because we're so cool and modern now? Yeah. Like, this is dumb. Fucking kids with their TikTok. Explain that with your science! Mm-hmm. When Tucker's laughing, making that argument, I think he's laughing. at the people who believe that he's making a real point.

Like, there's a part of me that feels like there's a disdain for, like, this is so easy. That is, that is a ridiculous thing to say, especially because we all know that there is a society that lives beneath the ground that worships an unexploded nuclear bomb. And that movie was in the past, so it was in the past, right? Now, I know it was said in the future, but it was in the past. It's also part of Lost. Sure. There's definitely that.

Absolutely. And there's also past and future and lost. What do we do? I don't know. Every society's always believed in that, dumb, dumb. What are we doing? What are we talking about? I think that you and I are both kind of a little bit short-circuity because it's almost a non-sequitur.

It doesn't mean anything. It's crazy to use that as a thing to say. Yeah. I think that what Lee is coming in with is a bit of a swing. Yeah. And, you know, they say that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Sure. He says, nah.

Ah, interesting. People will say, well, you need extraordinary evidence to prove an extraordinary claim, which I don't think is legitimate. I don't think that stands up to scrutiny. But let's take it for a moment on face value and say, you need extraordinary evidence to prove an extraordinary claim. Well, the claim that there are demons is not an extraordinary. extraordinary claims.

Interesting. Because 95% of humanity through history has believed in it. So if you're an atheist, the onus is on you. You must present the extraordinary evidence that the demonic does not exist. No, I don't. When people say that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, they just mean that if you're making a claim that flies in the face of existing evidence, your evidence needs to be more compelling than the existing evidence that says you're wrong.

The burden of proof falls upon a person who makes an affirmative claim. because trying to do things the other way is impossible. For example, in this case, I can't satisfactorily prove to you that demons don't exist. In the same way that I can't prove that any fake thing doesn't exist. You can't prove a negative, which is why you can't put the burden of proof onto a position that requires you to do that in order to establish their position. When people argue against vaccines, it's not fair to demand that they prove that vaccines don't work, because that would be impossible for them to do. What's expected of them is to critically attack the existing evidence that argues the vaccines do work. Vaccines do work is an affirmative position that people can prove by providing supporting evidence.

And then people who want to be contrarian try to poke holes in that evidence. This is how this works. The game. Lee is telling me that demons exist. So he's on the fucking clock. I'm not interested in disproving the existence of demons. So the only thing that's going to happen here is he can present information that I'll respond to or we can go home. He can just pretend that his belief in demons is the default position and I'm somehow out of step with history because I don't share it.

But my little secret is that I don't give a fuck. I don't care about how he feels about this. Yeah. I will prove it by living my entire life, never having an encounter to demon and then dying and then neither of us will care. Mm-hmm. Proof. Tadda. Done.

So this next clip I think is revealing about Tucker's psychology. And I think this scared me a little. Well, there are also moments in the life of every person who's awake and not on fentanyl. Maybe even people who are on fentanyl, I hope, where you know that you are being acted on by an outside force of some kind. You have no idea what it is. But there are moments when you are much better than yourself, much more empathetic. And there are other moments where you're seized by the desire to destroy for the sake of destruction, which is also doesn't make any sense. There's no kind of evolutionary biological accounting for that.

Why would you want this person? for no reason. Yeah. Another person, an object, but the impulse to destroy, clearly, the hallmark of evil, right? It is, and it's consistent with the Christian teaching that the demonic realm exists, that it is intent on luring us away from him. I don't know if the desire to destroy for the sake of destruction is, like, a universal thing, or if Tucker just thinks it is.

because I think it's probably more a piece of his out-of-control anger that he feels all the time. Sure. Instead of dealing with the causes of that anger and letting go of his bullshit, I guess he's just decided to pretend that he's plagued by demons who control his impulses and behavior. Because I don't relate to that. I don't relate to the desire to destroy just for the sake of destruction. I would say that in general, this type of thinking comes from people who are terrified of taking responsibility for their own behavior. generally because their father's, period.

We're in the CIA. Something along those lines. I just find it unrelatable and it feels more like a glimpse into Tucker's mind than anything else. Yeah. I think it's more, it's almost, it feels excusie. You know, what I've, what I've experienced with that specific, that kind of like, destruction for destruction's sake, is that is somebody who thinks it is better, morally. or philosophically to destroy something for destruction's sake than for the reason that they are actually doing it.

Hmm. That is usually like, oh, it's just destruction for destruction's sake as opposed to I want to obtain something and I am going to destroy this to get it. Yeah, I can see that and I think that that falls under the headline or the heading that I had of excuse me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's rationalizing what is a different impulse.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we've already heard a couple of things. of dumb stories about people being saved by angels that don't seem convincing not very convincing how about another one though is it white people no oh and it's a guy in a car excellent so you said that angels in the new testament and perhaps also in the old but it angels are described as present in our world yes we will mistake angels for people good very well that's right that's predicted so do you think that happens yes and if so can you give us an example and what would the purpose of that. Yeah, you know, it's interesting in the book of Hebrews, it says that we

will do it unbeknownst to ourselves. So in other words, the implication is that we will have angelic encounters, but we won't realize they're angels. And I think that does happen. Now, I have a couple of cases in my book. One is a pastor who is driving his car in Ohio. He loses control of the car. He hits a telephone or an electric transformer kind of a pole. type of thing. The wires fall down on his car. The doors are jammed shut. The electricity is coursing through the car so much so that the windshield starts to melt. And he's trapped in this car. He don't know what to do. And he begins to pray. God, I'm stuck. I don't know what to do. And a man, scruffy kind of guy, comes walking up to the car. And he opens the car, whose doors

were jammed he opens the door he reaches in he lifts out this pastor and takes him about 50 yards away from the car which then explodes and he says to the pastor he says you're going to be okay you're okay now but the police are on their way and i can't be here when they get here so you're just know that you're okay and he walked away and disappeared now the people the medics who came the emergency technicians and so forth that came as a result of the accident, and they look at the car, and they can't explain how this is possible that somebody could have opened that car door and not been electrocuted and rescued this pastor.

And yet it happened. And the pastor says, I believe it was an angel. Well, maybe. Could have been. How do you prove something like that? But, I mean, how do you explain it away naturally? Just because you don't have a ready natural explanation, for how something happened,

that doesn't mean that you have to give credibility to a supernatural explanation. This is a dumb leap that he's making. Go ahead. Oh, no, I just finished, I just read this book,

Ghosts of Hiroshima, which is another, it's, I think it's pretty new, but it tells a bunch of these stories of the survivors of people who were in Hiroshima when the nuclear bomb landed and exploded,

and there's just these blast zones, and it's a reproducible phenomena in all of these types of things. They're just these random spots where this person will be telling you a story about how they were having a day and then the entire universe around them was gone

and they were fine. Right? Now, if that person genuinely wanted to be like, there's an angel, I'd be like, man, if anybody was ever getting an angel and I was going to take it, that'd be fine. And they were like, isn't that crazy? This coincidence that happened?

Yeah. Yeah. And I think that this might fall under some of that headline or some of that heading. Lee is supposed to be a guy who likes empirical evidence and he proves things. He worked at a paper. But in this story, there's no evidence of anything. There's a story that a pastor told after he was in a car accident. Outside of this one person who was probably in shock after the crash, no one saw this other character in the story. This scruffy stranger may not exist.

It was Bagger Vance, actually. It could have been. It could have been. Well, it is true and confirmed by emergency responders that an electric transformer did fall on this guy, John Boston's car, and that electricity was surging through the car when they arrived on the scene, we don't know if the door was actually jammed. It might have seemed like the door was jammed initially after the crash, but then he was able to get it open on a second or third try. Who knows? There's a lot of possibilities that aren't even involving malice or lying.

No. There could just be the way your brain. incorporates information. Absolutely. So Boston claims that his seatbelt was stuck and that this scruffy guy named Johnny got him out of the car, but he doesn't know if he cut the seatbelt.

The car ended up pretty badly burned, so I'm not sure there's any way anyone would be able to tell that one way or the other. So Boston's family was doing a vlog on YouTube around the time of this accident, so they ended up recording a fair amount of him in the hospital right afterwards. It's notable that in that video,

he doesn't seem to know what year it is. He thinks that it's July when it's actually April, and he appears to be on some painkillers. At one point later in the vlog, his wife says, quote, okay, he's coming too. He knows I'm recording now. Basically, everything

about this story that makes it seem like maybe an angel was involved comes from one single person. So it's pretty easy for me to reject this as a solid piece of evidence of angelic intervention. Looking at the verifiable information about this incident, you can definitely say that this dude is

lucky but jumping to it was an angel is something you would only do if you were desperate to back up your belief in angels yeah because otherwise it's just this guy told the story there's i guess i get it i i kind of don't i really don't get angels i of all the ones that there are i just don't get angels i don't get that concept i don't get the idea of like oh somebody's always watching over you i don't get away from me man get away from me Don't you have somewhere to be? I think as you get older, you might warm up to angels. You think so?

Yeah. I think demons are young, for the young, angels for the old. Right. Demons are cool, hanging out, doing the sexes. Running away from them. Absolutely. You want to fight maybe? Totally.

Maybe you're scared. Right. And angels, you're really hoping somebody will give you a ride. Yeah. Company. Yeah. You're sitting around the house. I'm going to use an angel.

So, we now have to. to get off the subject of angels. Sure. Because it's time for the dark. It's demon time. It's time for a demon feast. What are demons? Demons are fallen angels.

The Bible, the Bible is a little bit vague on this, but apparently what happened. There was a, um, and it's kind of funny. If I could just pause, this is my totally ignorant read of it. Yeah. But when the supernatural host, you know, all these supernatural beings are referred to in the Bible, there's almost a sense in which. the writer is assuming the reader already knows all that. Yes, that's right.

It doesn't have a passage that says, by the way, these things are real. Yeah, let me explain all this to you. It doesn't do that, which is interesting. Because the, I mean, the culture at the time was familiar with this, and there was kind of no debate that there was a supernatural world. It's sort of like the soul. I have a chapter in the book on the existence of the soul, and because a lot of scientists today will deny that it's a

soul exists. The Bible doesn't say, by the way, you have a soul and here's, let me define it for you. It presumes that we have a soul. Scientists will deny the soul exist. So most of what the big health company sell is loaded with sugar and fillers and synthetic junk, it's probably not too good for you. And that's why we're interested in a company called Peak. It's a modern wellness brand that is actually healthy. It's good for your soul, which does exist and scientists will tell you, it doesn't. Scientists will tell you the soul doesn't exist. Prove that with your science.

And my science will tell you that this supplement that I'm selling will be good for your demons. It'll keep demons at bay. Science-backed science. Old literature often is reflective of the cultural milieu in which it was written and it doesn't take the time to explain why certain things are the way they are.

A lot of early American literature takes it as understood that slavery is a natural thing and that there's a racial hierarchy. that doesn't mean that those things are correct it just means at the time a writer didn't feel the need to justify everything that they knew that their readers would understand yeah this doesn't prove that demons or souls are real it just means that it was a part of the culture at the time it proves that it was a thing then yep great we already knew that because it's there i it's i love whatever it's just something like isn't this really interesting it sounds like it was almost written by some asshole just some regular asshole guy who was like hey how about i had this not some sort of uh guided immortal force just some asshole yeah it sounds it sounds human and of the time yeah weird yeah so do you believe in a soul uh i mean where where do where am i keeping it what where am i keeping the soul somewhere in okay well then somewhere in here all right i mean

Sure. I can't imagine it's lower than the chest, right? Doesn't that feel right? Well, the gut maybe. You know, some people... People do say, I mean, where would it... Is it, is it like, that's what the spleen is for, the souline? I think we can definitely agree it's not in the legs.

Yeah, definitely not in the leg. Left leg especially. That femur is not holding the soul. Sinister left. That's what we're talking about. Good point. Anyway, if you don't believe you have a soul, you're probably going to genocide people. That sounds true.

Highly recommend it. By the way, anyone who denies the soul exists, probably getting ready to genocide you. It's like kind of a soulless experience. Well, if there's no human soul, then how is murder wrong? Well, exactly. And they'll say free will is impossible. So there is no free will.

Yeah, it's crazy. It's crazy. But demons, it started out with Lucifer. Yeah, that's a good place to start. You're going to talk demons and start the Lusifer. Sounds right. So I think a lot of the people who have committed genocides historically have been people who have religious convictions

and probably affirm the existence of a soul kind of a problem for Tucker's argument. I'll be straight up. I don't think I believe in souls, but that ambivalence doesn't affect that my belief that murder is wrong. You can justify that position a lot of ways that don't involve souls,

like that it's just wrong to take away another person's subjective experience of life or that taking life is a transgression against the community that can't be tolerated. Sure. There's a bunch of paths. Whatever you like. If you incorporate an idea of a soul into your morality, that's great. It can add color and texture

to your beliefs and make living a little bit more fun. Sure. I've no problem with that. On the flip side, if you need the idea of a soul to create a functioning morality, you're a baby and you should not be taken seriously in public discourse. Yeah, it's not going to go well. Oh, you need

a soul. It's such a strange argument to make. Like, if there's no soul, then why is murder wrong? when it feels like it's like murder, if you have a soul, it's going to keep going. Murder's not even really a thing. It is only the cessation of your physical body.

If you don't have a soul, you're actually murdering somebody. You're killing them. So that's an interesting point. I doubt he's thought about it. No. And Lee certainly doesn't bring it up. No, I would strongly doubt that. In fairness to Lee, it's because there's more important shit going on.

That's probably true. like Lucifer. That is definitely true. We got to talk about the big guy. How's he doing? He's, ooh, man, he's bad. Bummer. It started out with Lucifer, whose name means Morning Star, and he was kind of first among angels. Name means

morning star? Yeah, Lucifer. What are we doing? What is this? Satan, which, and the name Satan literally means adversary. And so, the implication of Scripture is that this very prominent angel named Lucifer wanted to be worshipped. He

he's the one who wanted the worship. And so his pride is what resulted in him falling from the angelic realm, becoming Satan, becoming someone. And you think about this. When Jesus encounters Satan, what is it Satan wanted from him? Worship. Satan wanted Jesus to worship him. And that's what Lucifer wanted. It was pride that got in the way. He becomes Satan. And a certain percentage of the angels accompanied him in this fall. This happened before the fall of human beings. kind in the Garden of Eden. So what, like 8%? 40%.

You don't know how many angels accompany him, but there are a lot of angels. Seems important. In Revelation chapter 5, there's a scene of Jesus on the throne being worshiped. And if you do the math, because it talks about it a little cryptically, it was a hundred million angels worshipping him at that time. So there's a lot of angels. That's a lot of angels. At that time, though, we don't know what their reproduction rates are because they don't

have bodies. Right. So how many are there now? I guess God could make more, but they don't reproduce because they have no bodies and don't marry. What are you doing with those hundred million? What are you doing with all those angels? I, I, I, where are they going? What do they do?

What do they have to do? Rec sports. That does make sense. That does make sense. Yeah. Start a little soccer league. All of these outfields meet an angel, God damn it. Right.

Inspiring children to do their best. That's fair. That actually would be a pretty solid use of angels. So I got to say, this is grounded and verifiable stuff. And I'm glad that Lee is staying in this impurecism pocket. This guy loves to prove things, and I tip my cap. His history as a journalist and his study of law has really informed this knowledge that there are 100 million angels. Well, it's cryptic. A rough percentage of them did fall to,

wear? Don't know. Again, they don't have bodies. Well, the hundred million is cryptic, too. That is cryptic. And the Bible in Revelation 5, it says, quote, that I looked and heard the voice of many angels numbering thousands upon thousands and 10,000 times 10,000. All right. Is that cryptic? Thousands upon thousands and 10,000 times 10,000 is not a number. No. 10,000 times 10,000 is 100 million. That is a number. So is that cryptic? I don't know. Is that exact? I don't know. Who's keeping who's counting is there a guy at the door with a clicker one in one out absolutely it has to be one in one out otherwise you can't keep track all right i do like the round number too it is nice of god to be nice yeah yeah also i love tucker's fucking specialty the hot pitch that like you responded

to that that like what the face that he does and the fake sort of like oh my god that's so interesting when he says that Satan Lucifer's name means morning star fuck you fuck you got attacked by a demon you dipship in no world is this news to you you dumb fuck fuck you but that's what he does like nobody else yeah that what and he's just got that

sense of believability for a guy like this who's like see he's getting it he's got such a punchably stupid face and like he commits he doesn't care that it's very transparent And, you know, that's kind of fun sometimes. He's got a power to him. So you scared, you scared to Lucifer?

Oh, not particularly. I feel like he's probably bored by now. No. Really? He's fucking busy. Okay. All right. He's so busy.

I mean, you got to stay busy in retirement. I mean, it makes sense. I don't know if he's retired. It seems to me, from listening to this thing, like, he's got to be, like, running all over the place. He's not omniscient like God is. He's not omnipresent like God is. In other words, a guy was telling me, he said, there's probably never a time when you and Satan have both been in the same zip coat.

Because he's only in one place at a time. And so he's got things he's doing. He's probably never been the same zip code you have. But his demons probably have been. And they carry out his will, which is to pull people away from God to discourage people in finding God and to drag as many people to hell with him as they can. Now, his existence, he's sort of on a leash by God at this point.

His ultimate destination in the Lake of Fire is already predicted, so he has no future, really, but he has influence, and he has certain powers. And he and the demon is very intuitive. You'll think they know more than they know, and they go after people. This sucks I hate this kind of shit

Where the devil is the CEO of Evil Incorporated and you've just dealt with middle managers all your life Jesus Christ Like Satan is so busy And he can only be in one place at one time So like where is he? Why? What are the powers?

I want an exact accounting for his powers How does he travel? Right? What are we talking about? What is he busy with? What is he doing? What zip code is he in? Why is he in any zip codes?

In what possible facet could he need to exist within a place? Let me ask you another question. Yes. Because he would be in a zip code. Right. That implies there's a physical form. Physical form. How big is he?

Exactly. Can he be all encompassing? Is he Godzilla size? Okay. Now imagine this. Sure, he's not omnipresent, but is he, can he be any size? Can he be the size of a planet? Ant-Man style.

Right, exactly. Are we varying in size? What is our power set? I want to know whether or not he could defeat Batman. Well, so far, I'm, I, he's, he's, he's, he's, he pretends to know more than he does. I, I, I love, I love the way I'm supposed to be afraid of Satan and his demons. And yet everything that he says makes him sound stupid. I, I'm just picturing like a John Edward psychic type who's like, yeah, like, I see somebody with a letter M in the audience.

Interesting. Somebody who's pretending to know more than they. actually do, but who's also late and needs to get somewhere. That's not a devil I'm super freaked out about. And just that lovely part of like, well, and God's got him on a leash for right now, which is like, really? So then everything is his fault. Again, everything that you're ascribing to Satan, if somebody's got a dog on a leash,

that person is responsible for what the dog does. No, no, no, because the dog has demons. that's fair the dog's demons aren't on a leash they can be anywhere you can't leash something and also not be responsible for what that thing on your leash does also i would suggest that we have a finite number of demons because interesting i mean he says a percentage of the angels left and became demons that's true and there can only be a hundred million possible demons theoretically based upon these numbers 10 000 by 10 000 yeah that's cryptic yeah but like there's a fun night number so humanity should get it together and start fucking hunting these demons yeah i think we could take them out yes we could but there's a billion of us but what would we do what would we hit them with there there's no physical or do they get physical bodies you just have to yell jesus at them oh that sucks right i mean this is a bad this is a bad war exorcists are effective yeah that's true they have they're in their world so like i think we could we could we could

take care of this demon thing. You know what? This is how I feel about vaccines. You know what I'm saying? Like once we found out we could get rid of a disease, we should have had a task force that's like, now we're hunting every one of these fuckers down. To the extent that we can do that without creating more really dangerous things.

There needs to be smart people in charge of it. But you know the concept. You know, like we're going after you. We're going to win this one. Yeah. There's no reason that polio should exist. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

So, yeah, demons could, it's a solvable problem. We could handle this. Right. And then that raises the question, if Satan can create more demons. Or does he have to try and convince them? Or, oh, yeah, like try and recruit some angels of the pool that are still left. Right. Or can he promote?

Can he turn you into it? Oh, okay, okay. So he's grabbing us blood in, blood out. A demon gets their ass kicked by a guy. But then, boom, we show up. Now you're demon number 45,942. And maybe you're not great. I mean, you've never practiced being a demon before.

It's mostly just pretending you no more than you do. And I guess giving people what they want. Yeah, we're going back. All right. So we got to get into a little exorcism talk. Of course. Now. That's good talk.

We find out about a guy, a psychiatrist named Richard Gallagher. I tell the story in my book about a very prominent psychiatrist named Richard Gallagher, educated Ivy League University. I have a quote from the former president of the American Psychiatric Association calling him highest integrity, totally trained and prominent in his field of psychiatry. Of course, he's a medical doctor because he's a psychiatrist. just extolling him as an individual and as a scientist as a psychologist, a psychiatrist. And about 25 years ago, he had two cats. And they got along great. They slept together.

They played together. Everything was fine. Until one night, the cats started to attack each other. Viciously, I mean, they're trying to kill each other. They're clawing each other. They're snarling each other. They're biting each other. It was unbelievable.

And they pulled them apart and put them into separate rooms and thought, what in the world? What's that all about? At 9 a.m. the next day, the doorbell rings. And it was a pre-set appointment. A Catholic priest was bringing by a woman to be examined by Dr. Gallagher. She claimed that she was a high priestess of a satanic cult. Don't do this. And he wanted her to be examined, was she demonically possessed,

what she's just crazy? You don't have to finish the story. So at 9 a.m., the doorbell rings for his appointment. Ding gone. And Dr. Gallagher opens the door, and here's this woman who claims to be a high priestess of a satanic cult. who kind of looks up at him and sneers at him. And says, so, how'd you like those cats last night? There's something going on.

Yeah. Got you with the cats, doob! It's good stuff. Good stuff. No notes. Nope. What a story. Good work, demons.

Convincing story well told. So Richard Gallagher. is a disaster. Yeah. According to his story, he was a doctor minding his own business when he got called on to consult about a woman who he refers to as Julia, who claims that she was the queen of a satanic cult. Sure.

She'd reported herself to a priest who wanted to talk to Gallagher about whether she was mentally ill or maybe if this was a real possession situation. Interesting priest? Hence the consult. Naturally. In the context of their sessions, Gallagher claims that he witnessed magical things that Julia did, like levitating for half an hour and seeming to do telekinesis. Amazing.

He's seen all sorts of stuff, like all this kind of crazy shit. Yeah. But unfortunately, he just has to take his word for it. There's no proof of anything. He just got to kind of take the word. Gallagher's seen so much magic, but nobody can prove any of it, which is part of the devil's plan. Yeah.

He was interviewed in Esquire in 2020, and he had the best explanation for why there's no proof of anything he claims. Quote, you're dealing with creatures who know you're studying them, observing them, and trying to tape them. A lot of people think they're going to capture evidence on camera and prove the existence of demons to the world. But these creatures know when they're being filmed. They're not about to cooperate when a large part of their efforts have been to hide themselves. They're not about to make their existence obvious to people.

That is fair. It makes total sense. I mean, they're, first off, they're canonically older than us, right? So they've had more practice being existing. They never, they never die. they have exactly the same amount of experience with cameras that is a good point that is a good point there's no way they could possibly have had more experience than us on account of we invented them unless they invented them somehow i guess that's possible i suppose so so i like a demon that operates

on the same rules as fairies for charles dixon dickens so that's nice i appreciate that i don't with your cats i don't man If that's what you got, if that's what you got, how you like them cats last night, you're done. No demon, I'm not afraid of demons. Right. Zero fear.

Yeah. Yep. I have had a number of nights where Celine has acted out of character. Yeah. Out of sorts where she'll be like running around the house all crazy. Yep. The next day, witches have not shown up at my house and taunted me about her running around. Oh, I also need to make a correction.

Gallagher didn't actually see Julia levitate. He just heard from some other people that she did. Oh, my God. So I'm convinced. You know, this is why you got to give a little bit of respect to L. Ron Hubbard. At least whenever he tried to prove it, he got a crowd out there. He had the woman trained to do the thing. And then obviously she failed and going clear as bullshit.

Right. But at least he gave it a shot. He's a gambler. Yeah, right? What if it worked this one time? Yeah. It'd be crazy. So there's no information in this story that doesn't come from Gala.

Gallagher himself. So a naturalistic explanation for this is that Gallagher is not trustworthy. He believes other people telling him that someone levitated. So I wouldn't be too surprised if this woman showed up at his house and said like, nice cats. And that turned into proof that she'd possessed the cats the night before or some dumb shit. Anyway, how you like those cats? Is that a genuine question? Yes, it is. I'm genuinely interested. As a high priestess of a Satan cult, we're pretty into cats, buddy. It's kind of our thing. Yeah. Yeah.

So possession happens. Sure. Possession's nine-tenths of the law. Nice. But this is a different. But not God's law. No. No.

And there's no nine-tenths with possession demon-wise because a true Christian can't be possessed. Okay. Because God's in there. A true Christian cannot be demonically possessed. And the reason is a true Christian is indwell by the Holy Spirit. And you can't be indel by evil and good like that in the same way at the same time. So Christians can not be possessed, but they can be oppressed. They can be hectared.

They can be bothered. They can be attacked by demons. And there are some amazing examples of that. And I just mention a couple. So how does he know that? Like, has he done studies on Christians and found that it's impossible to possess them? Yeah, I'm interested in this. I'm interested in some corroboration on quote unquote, a true Christian.

There's nothing. It sounds like a perfect time, though, for Tucker to chime in and say, I was heckered by a demon. Exactly. Strangely, it doesn't come up. But he wasn't possessed. So he should bring up that he is a true Christian. Otherwise, he would have been possessed.

But he was true, so he was Hector. So he was just Hector. Yeah. Let me ask you this question. Please. Is the ratio of Christian proportional to the ratio of possession? Right. So if I'm like 40% Christian, do I get a 60% demon possession?

No, I don't think so. So I think it's all or nothing. It's all or nothing. All right. So you're either a true Christian or you're demon possessable. I think that, yeah, with the Holy Spirit when comes in you. True. It's not, it's just a yes or no proposition.

It's not, it's not, there's no half Holy Spirit. All right. All right. And, hey, I, that's the closest thing to believing his points I'll have. He's like, yeah, it's all or nothing. Good. Okay. Okay.

So I'm the demon. Yeah. Right. I don't have a physical form No. Because you're an angel originally. Exactly. You don't marry. Right, right. And I'm definitely not married. And so I'm like I'm going to possess this person.

You dating? Do I know in advance? Can I see like, oh, no, there's the Holy Spirit. So I'm not even going to bother this person or is it while I'm trying to possess you that I get hit by the Holy Spirit? And I'm like, motherfucker. And then I start like poking you. It's like an airplane bathroom. Yeah. Is that what we're doing? Okay. That's what I needed to know. That's what I needed to know. I think that's how I imagine.

All right. So look, there's miracles all around us. Sure. And Lee talks about his standard for figuring out whether something is a miracle. That's a good question. Or someone just saying some stuff. That's a good question. For me, as I investigate another area I investigate in the book, are miracles.

And for me, if you have solid documentation, medical documentation, if you have multiple eyewitnesses with no motive to deceive, if you have no natural explanation that seems logical. that it can account for the phenomenon. And if it takes place in the context of prayer, then I think it's logical to conclude that a miracle has taken place. Yes. And there have been miracles published in peer-reviewed medical journals. So Lee's standard for justifying belief in a miracle is faulty, and I don't believe for a second he isn't fully aware of it.

Yeah. He says that he'll believe something is a miracle if people involved don't have a motive to lie about it. Does he think that Billy Graham has a huge motive to lie about that? story about the missionary or not like what is he what's his take on that i don't think i trust lee's ability or willingness to judge whether someone has a motive to lie about something and even in a perfect world people often have hidden motives lee is selectively gullible which is on purpose yeah and it's a business strategy and a survival mechanism for this bullshit yeah yeah it is interesting to have so much burden of proof for a miracle and no burden of proof for a

The demon can't get inside you if you're a true Christian. Right. Obviously. Yeah. Duh. There's too much of the Holy Spirit and yet the guy can't fit. Mm-hmm. Because it's got a physical, well, no, he doesn't.

No, no, no, no. Yeah, shit. But, but, you know, you want that burden to prove. Of course. And you want to hear what the information is. Absolutely. How about something that's published in a fucking journal? Yes.

Okay. I got you. Nice. And there have been miracles published in peer-reviewed medical journals. I talked about one of it. in my book. Here's a woman who was blind for 12 years within curable condition. She went to a school for the blind. She learned to read braille. She walked with a white cane. And she married a Baptist pastor. And one night they're getting ready to go to bed. She's already in bed. He comes over to her

and he puts his hand on her shoulder and he begins to cry. And he begins to pray and he says, Lord, I know you can heal my wife. I know you can heal her right now. And I pray that you do it tonight. and with that she opened her eyes to perfect vision she said i was blind when my husband prayed for me i opened my eyes i can see it's a miracle um that was researched by multiple medical researchers and published in a medical journal as a case study what do you do with that what do what did they do with that what did they it kind of leaves it up to the to the reader to say what's your conclusion because they were upset by it well there yeah they certainly certainly does point toward a supernatural event who's upset about what right are you saying that the hospital people are like

oh miracles i hate it when god heals people Tucker has such a knee-jerk instinctual need to like make himself and christians a victim and everything yeah it's very sad everybody would be like hooray everybody was like hooray this is fine this is great so this is from a 2021 article published in the journal, Explore. To put it as politely as possible, Explore is a bullshit journal that publishes a ton of pseudoscientific stuff and it is not taken seriously in an academic setting. But just saying that would be shooting the messenger.

So I decided to give this article a little once over. You decided to explore it. Yeah. As the name would suggest or demand. Learn for yourself. So the woman in this case study was born in 1940 and went blind for unknown reasons in 1958 when she was 18. This timing is a small issue,

because, as the paper points out, quote, this case predates the availability of much of the ophthalmologic testing now used for diagnoses. That means that the information about her condition that led to the experience of sudden blindness is murky, and we don't really know all that much. She was married to a pastor, and then in 1972 he prayed for her to regain her sight, and she did that night. Apparently, this was not something he had prayed about prior in their years of marriage, which I find to be an incredibly dubious claim.

Also, if true, he's kind of a dick. Right. Yeah. So this also stuck out to me from the case study. Uh-huh. Quote, their only prior experience with prayer for healing seems to be when the patient and her husband had briefly visited the meeting of a well-known healing evangelist, but they left before the time in the meeting when the healing practices began.

That gives me the same kind of energy as Bill Clinton saying he didn't inhale. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, I don't believe you. Wow. You went to this faith healer. Come on. Of course.

Calm down. Get the hell out of here. So he says that she had instantly perfect vision, but in fact, the next documentation of her vision is from 1974, two years after she regained her sight, and she was 20 over 100. I don't know if science has a specific explanation for why this woman regained her sight, but I also don't think that the details of this case are that compelling. For one, I don't believe that they never prayed for her to be healed before.

But even leaving that stuff aside, this case is being published. in a shady journal. And if you go to the funding section, you'll see that it was paid for by the very suspiciously named Global Medical Research Institute. A lot of words that sound good. Man, those are the scariest names

in the history of the world. Americans are great. Foundation. Can't trust you. The GMRI is an outlet that funds papers and promotes the medical benefits of proximal intercessory prayer

or laying on hands, like as opposed to prayer over distance. Right, right, right, right. This is a critically biased source, as evidenced by a blog post on their website titled, quote, should I support GMRI? Quote, the answer is that you can't afford not to support GMRI. Without strong scientific evidence that in-person prayer has positive effects on health, authorities have prevented Christians from offering prayer and claiming that they even believe God can heal.

Sure. This is a faith healing advocacy group, so it's hard to imagine that they would publish a study of someone and miraculously getting their vision back and then work all that hard to poke holes and the idea that faith healing did it. Yeah. Treating this case critically is literally the opposite of their mission statement, and it shows.

These are all like very serious credibility issues that Lee would care about if he was actually the person he's pretending to be. Yeah. If he were actually interested in sorting out the truth from bullshit in the area of the supernatural, then he wouldn't be so excited to embellish and misrepresent information like this

that comes from obviously biased sources. You know, it's interesting to think of my origin story in the context of God being real, right? So my origin story begins with faith healing gone wrong where they tried to do the faith healing and then they killed the kid, right? So if they still want to do the faith healing as real thing,

then they have to say that God chose specifically to kill this kid, right? So maybe the leader of your group wasn't on the up and up. Whatever you like. God disfavored him. Sure, exactly. But again, God chose to kill this kid as opposed to healing these other kids.

Well, it's the same with literally every like miracle healing. Exactly. You have to be like, well, okay, well, then I guess he chose all of these other people are dying. Right. Right. But in this specific context, it also is a organization that broke up because of it. So God also included breaking up this Christian organization. So does that mean they were all evil or that maybe, you know, any number of possible situations?

The face of you went wrong in order to knock over all the dominoes that it would take for you to be here. Exactly. Yeah, any number of those things. But the point being, that's a miracle. If you're going to do the anecdote story, you have to do both of them. They're both, they both exist within the same context. Or I feel like just stop it with the anecdote. Like, the way that he's trying to convey this.

information is like really dumb and the the rhythm is so like these stories all have the same spoken word rhythm yeah but doesn't he like what i said at the beginning doesn't he kind of sound more pleasant than a lot of the people that we end up he's got i mean yeah he has a smile in his voice he has a little laugh to him that i think he enjoys life more than a lot of these other assholes these are more fun stories to tell than the like like if you're choosing this side of things you've got the we're all going to die everything is going to explode by gold or you've got do you know what they prayed all night and what happened the next morning miracles yeah like that's pretty fun yeah it's it's probably a better headspace yeah so there's some more miracles if you if you're down sure let's see what we got i don't know if you wanted to hear about some more healing yeah but here's what's interesting there's a woman with a phd from harvard uh who's a professor at Indiana University, major secular university. And she said, I'd like to test whether miracles are possible.

How can we scientifically test that? So here's what she did. Miracles tend to cluster in places where the gospel is just breaking in. And so we see them in China, in Mozambique, in Brazil, places where the gospel is taking root. We see miracles taking place in a disproportionate number. So she says, I'm going to put it to the test. So she sends a team of scientists to Mozambique and researchers to Mozambique

and they go into the bush and they say bring us all your deaf and blind so they bring all the people deaf-blind or with severe hearing or vision problems they bring them and they test them scientifically right there what is your level of vision what is your level of hearing they get that scientifically established

then immediately they are prayed for in the name of Jesus by people who tend to have a track record of God using them that way Sure. And then immediately after that, they're tested again. Guess what they found? Improvement in virtually every case. In fact, get this.

The average improvement in visual acuity was tenfold. Wow. No, that's unacceptable. What? No, you can't do like pretty good. That's not how your God works. You can't do like, oh, man, they went from 20 over 100 to 2040. Can you believe that?

Right. And if you look at the actual study, there's a bunch of people who have, like, false positives who claimed that they were better, but the numbers didn't show that. All right. I don't know about this. So this story that Lee is telling goes back to a paper published in the Southern Medical Association's Journal in 2010. This isn't a shady outlet like Explore, but you'll see that there are some very serious problems with this study. Lee's version of the story is that a researcher at Indiana University wanted to test miracles. So she went to Mozambique and what are you?

know she found that prayer fixes everything. It's all bullshit. Amazing. The author of this paper went to Mozambique because there was already a woman there claiming that she was healing everyone with prayer. This was Heidi Baker, one of the founders of Iris Ministries, who in collaboration with another missionary outlet called Global Awakening was running charismatic Protestant services in rural Mozambique.

The researchers were at church services between June 4th and 12, 2009, where people in attendants were told, hey, if you're deaf or blind, you should come up to this designated area where people will pray for you to be healed. This is already shit based on the design of how they're carrying this out, but it gets worse. Yeah. Here's a description from the published paper about how they did their healing. Published paper. Yeah.

Gotcha. Quote, Western and Mozambican, Iris and Global Awakening leaders and affiliates who administered prayer all used similar protocol. They typically spent one to 15 minutes, sometimes an hour or more, circumstances permitting, administering prayer. They placed their hands on the recipient's head and sometimes embrace the person in a hug, keeping their eyes open to observe results. In soft tones, they petitioned God to heal, invited the Holy Spirit's anointing, and commanded healing and the departure of any evil spirits in Jesus' name.

Those who prayed, then asked recipients whether they were healed. If the recipient responded negatively or stated that the healing was partial, prayer was continued. If they answered in the affirmative. Yeah. If they answered... This is making a murderer. In Mozambique. If they ain't making a miracle.

Oh, boom, there we go. If they answered in the affirmative, informal tests were conducted, such as taking recipients to repeat words, or sounds like handclaps, intoned from behind or to count fingers from roughly 30 centimeters away. If the recipients were unable or partially able to perform tasks, prayer was continued for as long as circumstance is permitted.

Jesus Christ. You basically have someone touching you and emotionally begging you to say that you have been healed. And if you say no, they keep begging you. It's a fundamentally flawed design for research. And I would say that it's not even really all that established house. severe or real the people's hearing and vision problems were.

Yeah. The study makes it clear that they had a limited amount of time and a limited access to any kind of facilities or technology. Yeah. So, like, you could, in theory, be at a charismatic Christian revival. Yeah. Kind of thing. Yeah.

And they're like, hey, I want to heal the blind. And you could go up and pretend your vision was worse than it was. And there's no way they would know. No. so like all of this is shit it's not a good experiment yeah it's not a controlled environment no it's not uh probably going to get you the results that you're looking for also like this dude lee is saying like oh these miracles seem to pop up in places like moseambique and brazil and coincidentally Heidi baker works in Mozambique and brazil that's crazy more miracles

that is so crazy it's almost like she makes it up and follows it yeah well could be so this is nonsense And none of this should be surprising because the funding for this study came from the John Templeton Foundation, an outlet run by a weirdo Christian billionaire who believes in faith healing. He's also dead now, but his family still runs. That sounds right. The researcher who wrote the paper is named Candy Gunther Brown, who strangely was a member of the board of directors of the Global Medical Research Institute, the faith healing promotional outlet that paid for the blindness case study. We're getting a lot of strikes.

Yeah. Yeah. The GMRI itself began as a part of global awareness. which is the charismatic Christian group that put on the tent revival meetings in Mozambique. Yeah, yeah, yeah. These would all be very suspicious details to leave if you were interested in assessing the veracity of the claims that these people are making, but instead you can see how

uncurious he is, which is suspicious. No, no, no, no. Look at that. There's so much corroboration. They're all corroborating each other, each other, not, it's not corroborating itself. Right. That would be ridiculous. So hold on now.

You mean to tell me that this, um, super independent and bold researcher at secular Indiana University is a board member of a faith healing promotional outlet. Okay. That's my favorite. That's my favorite evangelical speak that I just love so much. They can't help themselves but from reinforcing like that secular universe. Like, what are we doing?

Well, it's like Alex saying things are in the mainstream news. Right. It's like even the secular people believe us. Yeah, exactly. Like, what are you doing? What is happening? Yeah. So a lot of these studies are bad.

No. Yeah. But they seem so scientific, which also is empiricism, but also we require faith. It's also not scientific, and I have no faith in it. That fair. But thankfully, Lee is a go-getter. He decided, I'm going to fucking go ahead and do a study myself. Hell yes.

Yeah. So here we get to learn about that. Let's hear it. I did a study. I hired a public opinion firm to do a scientifically accurate study. of American adults, and I asked the question, have you ever had one experience, at least in your life, that you can only explain away as being a miracle of God? Thirty-eight percent of American adults said yes. Wow. And by the way, let's say 99 percent of them are wrong. Let's say they

think it was a miracle, but it was just a big coincidence. So let's just wipe out 99 percent and say, no, no, no, you thought it was a miracle. It really wasn't. Let's wipe away 99 percent. Guess what? that would still mean there would be a million miracles nearly in the United States. Wow. If we're going to assume that 99% of these folks are wrong about the thing they can't explain in being a God-based miracle, why can't we assume it's possible that 100% are wrong? There's no proof of anything here. And yet, Lee is reporting on his self-directed opinion poll as if it's evidence of a million miracles.

Made it. When he's delivering this kind of information, it shines through how much his work, like, this work is like intonation. He needs to sell things as meaning something Because if he just delivered this flatly, it would sound so dumb Imagine for a minute, no, no, close your eyes And imagine that 99% of them aren't real. 99% that's me being unreasonably unfair for my piece Because you might think it's 50-50.

You might think it's 60-40. But I am giving you secular Indiana University a 99-point head start. But if one of them is right. Yeah, Jordan, I got to tell you, there have been 10,000 reported cases of goblins. Yes. Out on the streets. Yes. And if 99% of those cases are bullshit.

Right. If just 1% is true. That's a lot of goblins. Maybe we got a goblin problem. Yikes. This is dumb. So that poll that Lee did was part of a book he released in 2020 called The Case for Miracles, which is part of his The Case.

for a series, or he pretends to present empirical evidence for religious things. Right. Weirdly, one of the things he argues as a miracle in that book is the study about faith healings in Mozambique, authored by Candy Gunther Brown. How about that? It's almost like a bunch of this new book is cut and paste from the other one that he published five years ago because who gives a shit. It's tough to write a new book, and people really just want to hear the hits.

They don't care. They don't care. No. Nobody's reading that book being like, I update your miracles. It's just for the jolt of, yeah, it's all. real yeah and tell the story with a couple uh change some adjectives or whatever people forget that it's the same miracle absolutely because they're all the same miracle god what a dick anyway Satan what about him he's the ruler of the world some say why what's he up to

that's see this is why you and tucker would get along because he has the same question that's a good question why is say why what's he up to there's a couple references at least a couple references in the New Testament to Satan being the ruler of the earth? Yes. What does that mean? It means that in this realm, he in many ways has his way. In other words, he has access to be able to influence people and point them away from the one true hope that there is, which is God.

And so he prowls about, as the Bible says, as a lion, hoping to tear people apart spiritually. I mean, if that's not true, then explain the first world war. Yeah. I mean, there is just no, there's no explanation, even now, over 100 years later for why that war started, oh, you know, Archduke Ferdinand got shot to death in Sarajevo. Really? Okay, that's not a real explanation, actually. Why did Christian Europe commit suicide?

Yeah. And there are many other wars and many other tragedies in. All of our lives, we're like, that doesn't make any sense. That's clearly, you know, supernatural forces are acting in people. I agree. Or like the time you were asleep in a demon attack. Look, I think World War I was probably demons. I think it is.

It definitely couldn't be concentrating too much power in a small group of people who are somehow related to each other. Well, you know, demons. Oh, okay, it could be demons. See, but here's the thing that I like about this. Yeah. This is a plot point in eternal darkness. One of my favorite video games that the elder gods are manipulating humans into killing each other because they need the blood. Right.

So World War I is just part of their feast. Right. And so I guess Tucker believes that about God. I mean, I do appreciate the motivated reasoning behind it because the other option is, we all do government bad, that really fucks up everything that everybody's doing because maybe we should stop doing it, you know? Yeah, and I think that a lot of the political preferences that Tucker has in specific are ones that are definitely not, they lead to World War I-ish type things.

If he was going to build a society, it would look exactly like it did when World War I happened, thus world war one would happen yeah yeah yeah yeah there's a high probability yeah yeah yeah so look satan yeah right yeah this guy he's a bad guy but he's also got to go he's got to go places right he's busy right well i mean he's got so much to do to rule the world yeah absolutely what's his administration strategy like well he i don't know if we ever get to find that out yeah but we do find out that he is efficient and he is good with time and is a prioritizer. Well, then put him in charge. If Satan were smart, which he is, would he go around the country and around the world trying to possess or bother average everyday people? Well, you know what? Much more efficient

to go to Hollywood and to influence a bunch of people there who are very influential in, let's say, the entertainment industry. And let's say he encourages them to create films and television shows that are funny and that are creative and they're fun. But there's an underlying message to them. I feel like you're talking about something.

A normalization of immoral activity that makes it normal. Because, you know, when we laugh, it opens us up to various possibilities. When we laugh, our defenses come down. So I'm thinking of a wonderful, funny TV show like Friends. Remember Friends, the TV show.

It was on TV. for years. Satan's friends. You never saw it, but yeah. But underlying that is a very ugly sexual ethic that normalizes multiple

sexual partners. You old fuck. The kind of thing that Satan would love to in cocaine into American culture. Oh, friends. Are you bitching about friends in 2025?

Yep. I mean, look. Yeah. There's things that were on before, friends. I mean, people have had sex for so many years. Seinfeld was on before friends. The golden girls. The golden girls got laid all the time. At least Blanche. Absolutely. So like, I mean, this guy sucks. This is amazing. The devil made

friends. Imagine. What a fucking, listen, what a fucking devil that is. That is a smart devil. Could he be more funny? Man. The devil, you know, the greatest trick he ever pulled was the Rachel. That haircut. I'm such a big fan of when people have a genius evil villain who does exactly the dumbest possible thing that they think would happen. Because that's the only thing that makes sense. can't be that people have fun well people weren't really fucking before friends that's probably true i

mean the central perk it got people going they it was friends so before friends everybody slept in the twin beds you know like if you you know like in um casablanca there's the twin beds man it's the same thing but then friends happened everybody's sleeping in the queen's eyes together where you can touch parts right disgusting and also i think the legacy of friends taken as a whole is quite monogamous.

I mean, Chandler and Courtney Cox get together and they get married. Ross and David. Everybody couples up. Yeah, I don't know if Phoebe and Matt LeBlock. I don't think they get together, but they're

kind of weirdos. Joey gets a spinoff, though, so you've got that. And then he does a movie movie with a monkey. Is, okay. Well, that wasn't him. If, I mean, it wasn't in Karen. If friends, devil, Joey, devil? Or did Joey

just negotiate that himself? You know what I'm saying? I think there was a lot of LeBlanc excitement. I think people wanted to see him. Sure. I think this is fucking stupid, and obviously there's a bit of anti-Semitism to this. Friends! Friends!

It appeals to these classical narratives about Jewish people taking over Hollywood in order to erode the culture of the United States but I think it's more important to point out that Lee is a fucking dork. Can you imagine that what devil is rebelling against God so much so that they're tossed into the lake of fire? And in the meantime, it's like, well, I got to do friends. The one where God threw me out of heaven. That was the pilot.

We should have known. We should have seen that in advance. Yeah, that all makes sense. It was a very distinct origin story. Yeah. So this is all in service of making the argument that the devil is efficient, and he wants to, like, use mass media in order to sway people as opposed to going and, like, whispering in your ear at your house. No, it does make sense. Because he can only be in one place at a time, and he has a limited amount of demons.

I ask you this question. How did he get there? To Hollywood? Yeah. Hitched. Where did he start from? I mean, the obvious answer is going to be hell. But then, like, we can't, we need a physical look.

Exactly. There's a hellmouth somewhere. I don't know. Why can't he be in more than one place at the same time? Because he's, uh, he has to be corporeal, right? I mean, like, yeah, there's no way around that. Because he can't travel. I mean, well, I would be interested to know.

Can he travel through the earth? Can he walk from California to China? You know what I'm saying? Like does he have phasing powers? Absolutely. They go through walls. If he can, if he can be in one place, it is, can he teleport?

I think not, because if he can be in one place at one time, then he has mass, right? That is, that would be, or at least, yeah, there's no other way to explain it. Yeah. There's just no other way. Even if he's like a floating consciousness, that is spaceless. That is not, that is timeless. Science will one day explain this, but for now, all we got to leave is down the ass. Apparently, my science is shit.

So this, this idea of like, influence. and leaders is something that they start talking about. Sure. And they get into like making priests abused children. That's what the devil does. That feels very not like, okay. That's what the devil's up to. All right.

If I were trying to subvert and destroy, I would go after religious leaders. Yeah. I'd have them like molest kids or get freaky sex lives or steal money from the church. Yes. And I've always noticed that the leadership of Christian churches in just like numerically

way more likely to be screwed up than the people in the views. Interesting. Do you know what I mean? You see these sex scandals with pastors and you're like, how many people who are going to church every Sunday have sex lives like that?

Probably not very many, but a pretty high percentage of pastors and I feel like that is outside influence. Like teachers too. Teachers who young kids look up to, you know, you can imagine when you were kindergarten, first grade, second grade, you looked up to your teachers.

Not one time. There's not one teacher. I like to. Oh, really? Nope. Oh, I sure did. I never know. I felt it was a authoritarian situation. I was totally opposed from kindergarten on. I want to give you a swirley. One day where I respected or liked any of them, not a single one. That is so funny. I'm serious, too. I have to go to public school

growing up, and yet back then in the 50s and 60s, most of the teachers are Christians. Yeah. And so, no, I had some wonderful teachers. It taught me great lessons about life. You grew up in a better America than I did. In Southern California, in the 70s, I thought they were all buffoons, freaks. I wasn't taking orders from them. I really disliked them.

Sorry, excuse me. What a loser. That's funny. But if you want to lead people astray, you subvert their leaders, I guess. Yes, very much so. Yeah, that's sure. So I'm sure some of the teachers that Tucker had

the various boarding schools as parents paid for him to go to were annoying, but man, when I hear someone go off like that, it just feels like them venting their insecurity and their need to be better than any perceived authority figures. Yeah, I mean, that's pathetic. I don't believe that anyone can go through a full education without encountering at least one example of an amazing teacher. There are a lot of duds out there, but there are enough people who care and who are into what they do that I'm certain that any adult that says, I hated all my teachers, is a liar who's trying to look cool because emotionally they're still at that school. Yeah.

And it's fucking sad. There are more than there should be teachers who care about this shit. I mean, I dropped out of high school and I had a miserable time through a fair amount of my time in that, you know, in that era of life. And I, there were a couple teachers that stick out to me is like, amazing. Yeah. No, it's ironic. But the reason that they can be treated so poorly.

is because they care so much about the students they're willing to endure trash. Yeah, and some of them suck, but... And some of them suck, everybody, some people suck. But I would... I would say that I'm always siding with a teacher over Tucker. I think in this... Yeah, yeah, it would be, you know what?

You're right, if there was ever any single person that could defeat that, you know? Yeah. It's got to be him. So they, you know, they're trying to make friends, the show. Right. They're trying to get the teachers. Right.

And now they're trying to sway the kids by having drag performers read to them. And you look at if Satan's going to go after children, what is all this stuff about libraries doing children's readings and drag shows to little kids? Why? Why would that happen? You know what? Because if you can capture the mind of a child very young, it could influence them for the rest of their life. What happens because we put up with that?

Yeah. We do. A healthy society would do. not put up with that for five minutes. That's true. Yeah. Sorry they'd drive them out of the temple immediately with a whip. Right.

Sorry, excuse me. So you think that you believe that demons roam the earth. Yes. Okay. Sure. Great. So if I understand it correctly, volunteering is what gets you kicked out of the church. Yeah.

Or I guess, you know, being gay or a drag performer. Or, you know, like. That doesn't, no, there's no, you could just dress, you could dress in full clothing. Mm-hmm. There's a drag, doesn't, drag is a, doesn't mean anything in this context. It's just purely like a short term for anybody who looks different. Yeah. Yeah.

No, of course. And the society wouldn't put up with this is, uh, boy, that's a standard that gets broad real fast. 1950s America is your hero-worshipping time period. Yeah. But I think that, like, that mentality that Tucker's expressing, a healthy society who wouldn't put up with this, we would have driven them out a long time ago, is exactly what everyone has always been like, this is what you're saying. Yep. And now he's just, you can just say it. You're a Nazi.

Yeah. Yeah. So, um, yeah. A functioning society would burn all of its undesirables. Yeah. People who are like outside the norm or would be too threatening and must be gotten rid of. We should definitely have a bunch of scientists talk about how euthanasia is a preferable option. It's empirical.

Yep. So look, some people are evil. Sure. But what about places? That is a good question. Obviously, places can be evil in and of themselves. This clip bums me out because I think Tucker wants to talk about a haunted house. Oh, my God.

He just won't let himself. Oh, my God. I think there is, just as miracles tend to break out in a positive way in places where the gospel is breaking in, I think we probably see pockets around the globe where Satan has a stronghold. And I would think that physical places. Physical places. Middle East. Like, I think Haiti is a good example of that.

Oh. I've been in some places in the U.S. where I felt that really strongly. I've been I was in a house once I lived in a house once as a child We're part of the house there's someone so wrong with it And every person who lived in the house knew that Does that sound Could be could be

Could be an occultic thing Yeah What's a mystical dream Tell me about the haunted house Tell me about your haunted house I have a poltergeist I'm so disappointed with that pivot to tell me about mystical dreams.

That's bullshit. Yeah. If there was something in your house... My child at home was haunted. Absolutely. Tell me about your dumb fucking haunting. Yeah. God be great.

So, mental illness is something that exists. Gotta euthanize them too. Well, no, not really. Okay. Because they don't exist. Oh! There are certain forms of what we refer to as mental illness. Yeah.

Which is, like, a phrase invented by people pretty recently. Yeah. And clearly there are forms of mental illness, I think, I guess, whatever that is. But there are certain people who have visions that are very unpleasant. Yes. And that bear like almost a precise resemblance to the demonic possession described in the New Testament. And they may be demonic. I don't know.

I have to evaluate each one to try to determine. Of course. These are broad brushes. but you do, is it fair to conclude that maybe not everything the shrink tells you is mental illness? They can never describe where it comes from or how to fix it. They have no idea. But whatever. They know nothing, to be clear.

But is it fair to assume that maybe some of that is spiritual? Yes. I think it can very well be. So Tucker should probably just come out with it and say that he doesn't believe that mental illness is real. And the people who don't conform to the sorts of behaviors he wants to see from them are probably possessed and should be beaten until the demon leaves their body. This weird middle ground where he's very clearly expressing that he doesn't believe in mental illness, but also refuses to commit to that position feels dishonest and kind of cowardly.

Yeah. What Tucker is doing is saying that he doesn't believe that psychiatry and psychology have the answers for what society calls mental illness, so instead you should accept his even less grounded conclusions about demons. It's fine to think that mental health has a field. it doesn't have all the answers and can't provide magic solutions to people's problems, but that doesn't validate the conclusion Tucker is trying to get to and replace it with. It's like they're forgetting to do the part where they have to actually prove there are demons.

They're just kind of waving their hands around, whining about how we don't know everything about the world, and then demanding that I take demons seriously, and I'm not going to. I mean, it's funny. It's always funny and it's always fun. But then it's, it's It's like the real reason for demons is so eventually you can call people demons and then kill them. Sure. That's why we have demons. That's why we have the word demonization. Demons exist so eventually we can say that there is a person who needs to be killed.

That's what it is. Well, and it's unfortunate because that's, you know, the demon won't leave them. Yeah. I mean, hey, it makes me a good person for murder. Isn't that amazing how great demons are in that I can murder somebody, but I'm a good person for it? It's merciful in a way. It's crazy how good a person I am. Why am I wearing this swastika?

Hey, it wasn't originally. Oh, there we go. Is India, you know what I'm saying? There we go. Yeah, I learned. So, you ever speak in tongues? Mm-mm-mm-mm-mm-blah-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-up. I've been to...

The cough was part of my speaking of tongues. I've been to tongue-speakings. Really? Yeah. I've seen some speaking in tongues. I don't know if I have... I mean, I've seen, like, like trans people trying to like you know speak for aliens and stuff definitely that i don't know

if i've seen definitely not in person i don't think i've seen speaking in tongues it's weird um but it seems like it would be pretty easy based on super easy what uh what lee says i have not experienced that personally um but i have credible people who do and have experienced that um there are other christians though who say no no no that ended with the apostles um so That's one of those side issues, theologically, that when we get to heaven, we can raise our hands and ask God, hey, what about that, speaking in tongues thing. Yeah, no, I know that there is a debate over it. I have no idea what I think about it. How? It is, I guess, just as a factual matter, it's true that there are people who seized by some unseen force begin speaking in languages they have never learned.

Yes, and often this is generally, I would say, this is not a language that other people speak. It is a... Or it ever spoken? Yeah, it ever spoken. It's a spiritual language. But then there's someone, and this is a good corroboration, someone who can interpret that. And they understand this language.

That is a good corroboration. Even though it's a spiritual language. It's not Latin. It's not Greek. It's a spiritual language. And that someone else is able to hear, and they have a gift as well to interpret what it's being said. Ah.

What Lee seems to be describing as someone speaking gibberish and then another person making up a translation. Yep. If the only people who can interpret it, this language are also people who have a special gift. It seems to me that this is basically a short form improv game. Yep. Also, Lee is supposed to be the guy who studied this and really tried to prove that these

miracles are real. And he hasn't seen anyone speak in tongues. Like you said you've seen it. And if you give me a week, I probably could find somebody. Yeah, probably. Yeah. What are you doing, Lee? It's one of my favorite things that's ever been invented.

I think it's one of my favorite things to be able to pull this off, right? This is the simplest two-man game in the history of religion. It goes way back because, obviously, if you can convince a bunch of roobes that you can speak in a language that only this other person could understand, you can fleece them for everything. Yeah, yeah, it's good. It's a great game. I would con people right now if I could. I honestly think that it is an improv warm up. I think that doing that is a way.

I mean, there's probably something to it now in a more, like, genuine way, but it comes from stealing for people. Yeah. That's, it's, yeah. All improv comes from stealing. Well, there's that. That's definitely true. Improv classes are theft, at least. So have you died?

Have I died? No. Have you had a near-death experience? I don't believe so. Hmm. Okay. Yeah. Do you believe in them? Uh, no.

Okay. Well, you and Lee disagree on that. Nah, same's right. What's a near-death experience? A near-death experience is when a person is clinically dead. That is generally no brain waves, no respiration, no heartbeat. Yeah. What?

Clinically dead. Yet, they're going to be revived. And so they're dead for a period of time, clinically dead, but they're not permanently dead. So the body will be revived at some point. They're mostly dead. So by the measurements of science, they're dead. Yeah, that's right. That's right.

So maybe right there, if we just pause, like maybe right there we have further evidence that science while useful, of course, and life improving in some ways, does not have the tools to measure the totality of the experience. If Lee really believes that this is what near-death experiences are, then it kind of makes Jesus's whole thing not seem that special. I'm not religious, but this seems like a heretical position. Lee is playing word games here because clinical death is a specific term that means that you're not breathing and your heart is stopped. For certain conditions like aneurysms, patients can be put into a state of clinical death in order for the doctors to operate on them. It's risky, but it's manageable by modern science.

It is what it is. Lee is saying that people who have near-death experiences have no brain function, and that's not part of clinical death. These people did not come back from having no brain function and no blood flow, or else Jesus wasn't that big of a deal. There's no third option here because you're dead if your brain and your body are dead. Well, I mean, what your if these people can die and then be revived by human-made shit

then we have the same power over life or death. That's true. If you can put someone into a state of death and then bring them back. Yeah. That's some Frankenstein shit. Well, I think it's either Frankenstein shit

or we need to update and refine our position on what death is. because death does have to be the point of no return. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just conceptually what that is. You're no longer a thing. Mm-hmm, yeah. And so if we can turn on and off hearts, you know,

as we need to for surgeries and shit, then, like, that's no longer death. Yeah. The faster we can figure that shit out, the faster we can figure out whether or not there's a soul. Right. Because if death is what you're saying it is, then that is when the soul has left you,

or the anima or the breath or the whatever it is you want to call it. Yeah, and I can't help but also say that this is a really good argument for why science, like, updates with new information. Yeah. Science would have told you that death is one thing previously. Yeah. And then as we gained more information, learned more, the definition of death has to change along with that. Because we've, because we've fixed it. Yeah.

So, I don't know. I think, I think science is fine. Also, wasn't there the guy who was like, I'm. I'm going to put some stuff on top of high places in case people have the near-death experience where they can see outside their body. You know, like, hey, take a look. See if you can see this picture of my grandson on the top drawer. I don't know about that. There is one story that he tells of a woman who said that there was a red sticker on one of the ceiling fan things.

But that's just a story from a preacher's book. I don't know if that's true. there's no corroboration of it. Yeah, that sounds right. But while I was poking around, I did find that when doctors are doing these surgeries, they have asked people afterwards if they had a near-death experience. Yeah, yeah, and they had to turn off their heart. Yeah.

And all of them said no. Yeah, that's true. So, like, the ability to recreate a near-death experience has been unsuccessful. Almost scientifically. Right. And so I don't, I'm not familiar specifically with what you're talking about. But I would believe that some asshole would do that. Yeah.

And then be like, what's up there? Did you see that shit? Yeah. Did you see that? No, then you work dead. I imagine some prick would do that to a recovering patient. Very unnecessary. Yeah.

Oh, you're going to die soon. I'm going to put this up there. Tell me if you can see it. Oh, really? Yeah. So you're a no on souls, right? I'm a no on souls. I think I'm going to go with a no on souls.

You can't be president. That's fair. That's not only tragic, it's dangerous. Because if you believe we are only our brain, we're only neurons that are firing, that means technically we have no free will. And seriously, you're saying we don't have free will. How do you punish someone for doing something wrong if they really didn't have free will? Well, it also means we have no inherent rights. We have no right and wrong.

Does a rock have a right? No. Exactly. Right. So maybe that should be. Two rocks don't make a right. For leadership, if you don't believe human beings have souls, if that's not the basis of the way you understand other people

is a separate person with a distinct and unique soul. Right. If you don't believe that, you can have no power. Yeah. In our society, is that fair? I like that. I like that. I never thought of that before, but I certainly wouldn't trust a person personally,

morally, if they believe only that we are a brain. I wouldn't give them a driver's license. That's scary. It is scary. You don't think other people have soul? Exactly. What? You're a psychopath.

Exactly. It's all right. So now we're going to pass a law that you can't get elected to an office if you don't believe that people have souls, right? Well, that's good. Yeah, let's do that. So what's a soul? Oh, anything that I choose to keep you from being elected to office for. If you believe the humans have souls, but in more like an Eastern tradition kind of way, that conception of souls, can you get elected?

No. Or do you have to have a Christian Western? Also, you have to be white. Oh, shit. Also, small flaw in this plan, if you don't believe anyone have souls, then, you know, but I still like, if I'm that person, but I want to get into power, there's no reason for me not to lie and say I believe in souls. It would be ridiculous. Apparently without souls, morality is impossible, so lying isn't wrong for me in that situation. And I can't get into office if I don't say that people have souls.

Right. I think for the most part, you're never going to get someone running for office who's public about believing that humans are just piles of meat. Sure. It's not the kind of message that drives people out to vote. So I think this is a problem that solves itself for Tucker. Yeah. And I think that he's just being a little douche. Yeah.

Yeah, the arguments are so fucking stupid, especially because, again, if you think it's over when it's over, then you won't care so much about saving people's souls by letting them die in a bunch of different ways or killing them in a bunch of different ways. Brother soul had a chance. You'll be more like, oh, life is precious on account of it ends. Well, see, but that life is precious thing is what makes me feel like this might be a crypto conversation about abortion and reproductive rights. Yeah, I would say so. But I don't, they never make that surface. Right.

You know, they never bring it to the forefront, but it feels like maybe that's kind of what they're saying with this like acid test for. Well, I mean, ultimately, the problem with the soul is that when does it go in there? Because when you're talking about abortion, you're talking about the soul. When does the soul enter the body or whatever it is? Right around. Exactly. And then once you try and scientifically answer that question, you sound like a fucking moron.

It's the third trimester. What? Yeah, but see, that's why you make noises. God puts the soul in the third trimester? Why? It's around the... Ridicrous. That's about when the soul comes around.

Okay, so when the sperm and the egg... What? Why? Is the soul already been in there? Do they... Something special happened? they put the soul in if there is a soul does it have mass if there's no soul then why can't there be fucking demons inside of you if also there's a holy spirit well sometimes there's

bad soul okay well that's fair and sometimes there's collective soul sure and then sometimes there's a wreath of franklin yeah yep you got to respect it got to respect it so the other thing you got to respect is Cambridge educated people you want to well what if they tell you that you have a soul. Then you got to respect them. I don't think I trust them at all. I have an interview in my book with a PhD from Cambridge University, a neuroscience, who says the evidence is so persuasive that yes, indeed, we do have a soul. We do have a spirit. Thank you. Yes. Thank you neuroscientist. Yeah. This interview that he does with the doctor is a name. Her name is Sharon Deericks. And she's the one who blew his mind about the smell of coffee. That sounds right. In the

interview, he asks her if there's good evidence for a soul and an afterlife, to which she replies, quote, there have been various studies conducted in the United States, the Netherlands, and elsewhere. Of course, some stories could have been fabricated, but with others, there's very intriguing evidence. Her answer is basically, people are looking into this and there's people making shit up, but some other stuff might be true. That's not persuasive. Who knows is another way of rephrasing that. Yeah, and she goes on to say, quote, I suspect we'll see more data as research continues, but think about it this way. All we really need is one documented case. That statement says a lot, because what it says most is that there are no documented cases

of souls or the afterlife. The Cambridge neuroscientist is saying there's no evidence, but maybe one day. For what it's worth, Derricks has a degree from Cambridge and brain imaging, but she doesn't work for the school. She's a lecturer for the Oxford Center for Christian Apologetics, and almost all of her career has been writing religious books, like, her most recent release, Broken Planet, an exploration of how it's possible for God to exist

when we have all these natural disasters happening. Oh my God. Probably not climate change denial. That is some good apologia, if you will. Yeah, so that's her thing. This is all just Christian apologetics.

Yeah, this is nuts. I mean, I get it. It's really hard now. It was a lot easier. I feel like the scales have tipped, right? Back in the day, You've got the church behind you. If you say you don't believe in God, you get murdered, right?

So you're riding high, right? Now people are like, well, I answer these questions, and you can't because none of it's real. So you get real mad at that. And now you got a Cambridge neuroscientist saying that it's okay for hurricanes and God to be the same. Like, what are we doing? Get back to basics. Yeah. Well, you know, I think that they sold too many books.

And people got a little too used to. that'll happen yeah you sell too many books so uh we've got near death experiences yeah and that's when someone dies they have some crazy times sure and then they come back to their body and they're like whoa i saw the light yeah but there's another thing that happens oh yeah and that's close to death visions okay and that's people who die but before they die they like see a tunnel right so nigh death experiences if you will right yeah and Tucker for some reason thinks that everybody shouldn't be on drugs when they're dying because they need to have these visions okay if you have one of these experiences before you die you think they're going to think i'm i've got dementia they're going to

think they're going to they're going to think you know so a lot of people don't like to talk about it so there's a researcher he went to a huge hospice facility in new york state and they went to all dying people and they said please as a favor if you have a vision a dream unlike any you've ever had um tell us would you tell us and so 88% of those dying people had a pre-death vision that they reported on before they died 88 percent i think the other 12 percent probably had one but they died before they were able to say anything or they were so high on morphine they couldn't talk that's true They get people get drugged up. That's true.

So there's that. I mean, obviously, you don't want people to suffer. You want to alleviate suffering and alleviate pain. I'm totally for that. I want to be clear about it. But there's also this custom, which has grown to ubiquity. Now it's just, it's everybody who dies, gets from the hospice nurses. Yeah.

They kill you with morphine. I mean, that's no one wants to say that out loud, but I've seen it. They kill you with morphine. Yeah. And, okay, first we should just be honest about what's happening. Yeah. always. But second, we should be clear about the cost. So if people, if everybody on the way out is getting visions of some kind, maybe there's a purpose to those visions. Maybe we shouldn't

short circuit that. And talk maybe. Maybe. I hate these people. So even if we just assume that everything that Tucker is saying isn't insane, then 88% of people who report having visions near death, that includes a lot of people on morphine. He's just making up. He's just making up a rule that morphine blocks God's visions so he can complain about end-of-life care in a way that seems designed around wanting old people to suffer for their own good. This was a study that was put out by the Palliative Care Institute, and as far as I can tell, it's not full of shit, but it also really doesn't seem to tell much. Basically, 88% of patients in end-of-life care reported having visions, but the range of what

that means was wide. Some of them were comforting dreams. some were horrible and disturbing, and the report says, quote, religious content was minimal. The study specifically excluded people who had dementia, so all of those people who they were aware they were in hospice care and that death was probably pretty close. It stands to reason that in that community, you'd see a higher incidence of people subconsciously trying to make peace with the process of dying, and having these dreams seems like exactly what you would expect. It's interesting, and it's good to have data like this to help normalize. the grieving process and make death easier for everyone, but it doesn't say anything about an afterlife.

Also, if you're in the hospital, you can refuse any medication they give you. If you're dying and you don't want morphine, doctors aren't going to force it on you. But a lot of people at that point are in so much pain. I would so much rather live in a world where that's an option than one where no one's given painkillers in the last months of their life because Tucker thinks that they should have pain visions. Yeah. This is stupid.

He is a asshole. Yeah. Like, it's not even just dumb. That's mean. Yeah. Yeah, it's one of the problems with these people specifically, right, is that they're competing in this space where it feels like to them, it makes sense as part of their argument that it would be like, isn't 88% enough to convince you?

it's more than even 60%. It's more than 70%. That's a solid B plus, right? But we're in the world of God. We're in the world of is or is not. It's 100% or it is zero. There's no middle ground. Let me be even...

It's God. Well, but they get around that by saying that 12% died before they could report the... They come up with excuses for why it is 100%. But God doesn't need excuses. He's God. Let me do you one better. Even if that study came back.

and found a hundred percent of these people had dreams that they thought were unique and amazing. Right. I still don't think that's proof of an afterlife. No. I think these people are probably preoccupied with and dealing with death. Yep. They're dying in the hospital. If 100% of them reported getting an orientation dream for how to behave following the end of this life, I would go,

fuck, that is very specific. Yes. I don't even know how you would go about finding that out. Ridiculous. If you, yeah, if there was something that was a little bit more like that. Like if they had this dream and came back with a uniform. Yeah, absolutely. Then something where it's.

We got to talk about this. This is the thing. This is the thing. What are you going to do? But as it is, like, I think that if you go to camp, you probably have last day of camp dreams. Yeah. Because you're going to go home from camp. Like, this is something that.

happens people fucking idiots yep anyway let these old people have their drugs just fucking get them high and go to bed so jordan yeah what do you think about ghosts you can't have you can't have ghosts if you're going to go hard religion you can't have ghosts ghosts have to be

angels and demons because otherwise ghosts are souls that god is specifically leaving on earth for some reason or or they're on the run or yeah or they're actively like avoiding God's wrath or favor. Yeah. So I realize that I've set up all these questions so poorly,

and I should be asking you to try and predict what Lee thinks. Sure. You have a take, and I think it's a solid take. Yeah. And I think that Lee's all four ghosts. Well, I just, I think that they're feeling on it is largely, no one likes ghosts. The technical definition of a ghost is someone who dies,

but refuses to go into the afterlife. Their spirit refuses to go into the next. life. I don't see that in the Bible. So I don't think that ghosts per se are from God. I think most likely an apparition that we interpret as being ghosts is most like a demonic apparition. I think people feel that. I think so. Ghosts have a bad rep. Yes. Yeah. No one is summoning ghosts. It's not like Casper who's going to bring you some flowers. Generally people are anti-ghost. Yes, yes. Ghosts suck. Ghosts are bullshit, bra.

They bring a party down. We are not fans of ghosts. Regardless, here's what I like about this. Let's leave the fact of their existence aside. They suck. Yeah. A bunch of douchebags. No one's ever laughed with a ghost.

No. Except for the times that they have. But ghosts have laughed at you. That's definitely true. You're never laughing with a ghost. No one's like, Why not? Slimer, maybe.

Oh, there's definitely slimer. Yeah. Oh, boy. There's a lot of, in Ghostbusters, there's plenty of very funny ghosts. Mm-hmm. I think that he's saying that they're a subset of demons, right? I mean, like, that's kind of where he's coming down. Yeah.

No, I mean, I appreciate that. I think that's the correct choice. You can't have ghosts because that would suggest people are capable of saying, fuck off to God, which you can't have. It has narrative cleanness. Exactly. Yeah. Now, let me ask you about psychics.

Oh, absolutely not So he, so Lee doesn't like psychics Sure We know that Tucker should Tucker is a psychic Well, he's not He likes Alex Yes, exactly

He's a psychic Yes So it's kind of surprising That they both fucking hate psychics Really? Are you pro- psychic? I'm anti-psychic Yeah, I am too

Why are you anti-psychic? Because the Bible says Do not consult mediums Do not consult psychics I mean it's very clear Multiple places in scripture Do not do it Oh, well, among the ancient Hebrews, that was a death penalty offense.

Exactly, it was. Oh, man, this is bad news for Alex. I'm confused. About what? We're, okay. See, now I thought he was going to go with psychics are not real. Oh. I was a fool.

Yeah. Because he's going with psychics are bad. They're very real and bad because their powers are dangerous. Right. When Tucker says that, like, it was a death penalty offense, he explains that it's like, because it was so dangerous that these people could see the future. It was, we,

even if we wanted to use their knowledge, we had to destroy it otherwise it would have corrupted us. Yeah. And I guess, I think that's what the minority report is about. I don't see how he likes Alex. This is Alex's whole thing. I know. It's almost like he makes it all

up as he goes along and this is a complete bullshit. Almost. But along the way, as they make up stuff. Sure. Lee has, what I would describe as a very interesting view on ghosts. Okay. We get back to the idea of people who've been visited by their dead relatives. All right.

And I think that this is so accidentally revealing. Here's my concern. So many times people have contact with these dead people, these are people that lived ungodly lives. And yet they say, everything's fine. I'm fine. Everything's good. Just take care of the family.

Tell everybody I love them. I'm good. Don't worry about me. me. That's the general message people get. Well, what does that say to someone who is thinking about what do I need to do to live a life that will bring me to heaven and to God? Well, Uncle Tom came and told me he's fine. He didn't, he was a, he was a adulterer and a, he never came to faith in Jesus. He's a, you know, bad guy. And yet he says he's fine in the afterlife. Wouldn't that be something that a demon might want to imitate to send a false message?

I think maybe. This is totally cool and empirical. Maybe demons are trying to trick you by impersonating your dead loved ones. This is a guy who applies rigor and critical thought to his beliefs and doesn't just shoot off, you know, from the hip. This is the stupidest shit, but Lee accidentally revealed something about his psychology in that clip that I think is pretty damning, pardon the pun. He's saying that a lot of these returning relatives were ungodly people, and they're coming

back and saying that it's all good. you don't have to be godly to have peace after death. This is a crafty trick that demons are playing on you to get you to not be godly. Buried in that statement is the understood but unspoken premise that no one wants to be religious. It kind of sucks. And if a ghost came back and told you that you didn't have to follow all these weird rules and you'd still be fine after you died, there's no reason why someone like Lee would continue doing it. this is either Lee's perspective of himself

or how he views the general religious people who are his audience. Yeah. The reason this is a problem for Lee is that God is love. And even if a deadbeat relative came back as a ghost and told you that you didn't need to worship God, you should want to anyway because it's good.

It's what powers you. It's what gives you connection to others and the world. And no dime store blinky, pinky, inky or Clyde is going to change that shit. it's unfortunately a very revealing thing for lee to express here because it's kind of the underpinning of this whole school of Christian apologetics. This school of Christianity is built on arguing why people should be okay with being religious because they know that their version of Christianity sucks and a lot of their audience are just a couple bad days away from losing faith

and then who's going to buy these dumb books about demons? The struggle for me here is that Sincerely, I don't hate Christians and I don't hate religious people, but this shit makes the position hard to defend. Sure. This stuff sucks. Yeah. This dude is fucking garbage and just showing it all over. That's the problem. That's the problem with the book, right?

Is that it doesn't mean the same thing to everybody. Mm-hmm. Right? So if you put your same name under something that you believe completely different things about, then people are going to use that to exploit the differences, you know? They're going to use that. That's true. And the church has gone through tons of different characters over the, you know, the span of its existence.

And the one that is becoming ascendant and most prominent now sucks. Yeah. And it's like this. I mean, like the very... And it's mostly a commercial enterprise. Them being like, oh, can you believe the concept? The idea that people wouldn't have free will? that was what you guys believed for a thousand years what are you talking about and you still

kind of do exactly so wild i just i find i find this guy to be like like i said i think he seems pleasant in a lot of ways yeah but also on a level i think he's worse than tucker yeah i think Tucker sucks a whole lot. Yeah. But I think that, yeah, these just, there's a, there's a, whenever I was with these people, right?

When I was growing up in the, in the faith as is the phrase, right? These were the type of people that fucking drove me insane because it was so obvious how stupid and awful this stuff is. And it was so obvious that the other people that I was with in the church, were fine, totally fine. They were fine people, right? They were just everybody.

But whenever they hear this in that same intonation and they're like, and they prayed all night, you can see their hearts like bubble up with the truth. There's something beautiful out there, you know? It's the genre we like. Right. It's something that we like this. We like hearing this.

Right. And it's like these are perfectly fine people and you are fucking. with them and you're fucked up for doing it. Yeah, and I think a lot of the people who, especially I think, maybe it's my experience because I was in a lot of youth groups and stuff, but like I think evangelical Christianity is like a particular thing where it's targeting youth. Oh, it's right for abuse, yeah. But I don't even mean abusing youth.

I mean like trying to look cool to youth. And like someone like Lee Strobel and, like, like, Lee Strobel. like the Christian apologetics. Like there is this tendency to be like, hey, people might think you're a dork because you believe in God, but here's why you should, why God is cool. Yeah. You know, like that's, that God's not dead. That kind of vein of, of Christianity, that's meant to appeal to people who don't

know that you're fucking with that. I mean, here's the one thing that always got me. my dad and I'm putting his business on the streets here but he did the the $100,000 million

bills thing for a while you know you tip a million dollar bill with your like four bucks and they'd be like oh have you heard about Jesus he's worth a million dollars

on there right yeah and it is it is very much like they don't understand it but if you needed to do that there is no God if God can't handle

his own business, if God needs you to trick people with poorly worded bills, you fucked up. And odds are like, the only people you're targeting with that, like, are going to be people who are, like, in a bad place. In a, yeah. Like, it's going to be a product of, oh, shit. Yeah. There's going to be something unhealthy that leads them to you. There's no, there's no, it's one of those, like, do the means justify the ends kind of thing where

it's actually the means and the ends are the same. If you are deceiving people to your God, your God is a deceiver. It's the end. And I think that that's a part of why I wanted to do this episode and why this stuck out to me was that, like, I feel like that distinction is really important. And I don't think that we need to or the impulse to be like super anti-religion is healthy. But I get it. understand when people like this are ascendant and Tucker is doing an interview like this bullshit.

Yeah. Like, I get why people would be like, fuck this, fuck Christianity and all that. I don't agree with that, but I get it. Sure. How can you not? I mean, if this is your face, then. How about, how about we put it this way? I understand where people are coming from, but I look at it as more like Dan Snyder owned the Washington commanders now, I think is what they're called.

when they used to be called what they used to be called. And he's a gigantic piece of shit. Everybody hates this fucking guy. The name is awful. The way he behaves is awful. The fans need to rise up and get rid of the leadership because the Washington football team is fine. Right?

The football team just plays football, man. You're a fan of the football team. Don't let the owner like this fucker tell you what to do. Yeah, there's nothing intrinsically wrong with the team or the sport. There's just something wrong. with the branding and it it's a problem that won't go away on

its own. It won't go away on its own. And I think it requires people who care and people who have good intention as opposed to wanting to destroy. No, take your Christianity back. Yeah. So there's miracles out there. I doubt it. No, what? Yeah. Do you know what a miracle is?

Yes, something that cannot happen. Well, that's a good definition. But Lee's got a better one. Okay. Last question. Miracles. Yeah. What is a miracle? A miracle is an event brought about by the power of God that is a temporary exception to the ordinary course of nature for the purpose of showing that God has acted in history. So in other words, a lot of people have got this definition. Thank you. That's from Robert Pertill, who was a philosopher. I thought that was the best definition I'd heard. That's a great definition of miracles. Is it? I'm going to offer my own.

Okay. Crows, ghosts, the midnight coast, the wonders of the world, mystery's the most. Just open up your mind and there ain't no way to ignore the miracles of every day. It's a dark carnival. Yes, it is. That's what we're out here for. Whoop, whoop, whoop. Yeah.

That's a better definition of miracles. A lot of people, you know, they make fun of the magnets. Yeah. What have you. A lot of better lines. Listen, the magnets are rough. We all accept that. Because I was so mad at this dude.

Yeah. And he's talking about miracles. I ended up watching that music video and then watching a bunch of ICP music videos and I had a fucking depressing realization. What? Do you remember that song, Juggalo Island? No.

We can let our nuts hang in the water. No, I don't remember that. It was about Juggalo Island. Sure. Like, what if they had an island? Naturally. I mean, I can all hang out together. I've already leapt to the end.

I will tell you what, in a very short snippet, I have leapt to the conclusion. Yeah. Quite simple premise. Yep. That came out 15 years ago. That's... That made me so sad.

Oh, man. Because it felt late. It felt like late, ICP. Nope. Nope. Time flies as it goes. Yeah. So we have one last clip here, and it's talking...

There's a point that Lee makes a couple of times, and I think it's a valid point. Okay. And that is that a lot of this stuff, like demons, angels, all this bullshit, a lot of normal mainstream Christian. don't want to get involved with it because they know it's crazy. Yeah. And they don't want to be treated like people who are running around hunting demons. Yes, exactly.

And Tucker's like, then stop being Christians. I accept. I think that's a fair argument. Yeah, that's a fair argument. I think we shy away because we want to be accepted as normal. I don't know why else. Why don't you get out of bed on Sunday to? to sit in a church where they're like pretending that nothing they say is true.

It's a good point. If we believe, if it's not supernatural, like, why are you bothering? It is a good point. You've got to believe in angels. You've got to believe in demons. You've got to believe in Satan. You've got to believe in heaven. You've got to believe in hell.

Because if you believe in Jesus, he taught on all those things. Oh, my goodness. How could you not? I agree with you. How could you not? Yeah. I mean, go on, move on to something else. Yeah.

Go play tennis or something. Hey. Go play tennis. Yeah. That's literally what I did. You love tennis. So I think that, that clip, I think that's a really good summation of this because it is expressing a belief that you also hold in many ways about religion. Sure.

Like if you're looking at the text, why are you doing something other than what the book says? Yeah. It's, it's, you are not doing the thing anymore. Right. You're doing something else. Be your own thing. Right. And in some ways, denominations of Christianity have.

achieved that goal, but you still use the same text. Sure. Whatever. Yeah. The reason that this is, you know, a good parting is that, like, this is Tucker and to a more jovial extent, Lee, expressing, we are not going to tolerate other Christianity within our Christianity. Yep.

Whereas in the past, there was maybe a more tolerant view in the mainstream. of course. The mainstream is going to be taken over by this. Yeah. And this is, they're going to force out more tolerant Christian voices. And, uh, that's bad for the brand. Yeah. I mean, you know, for the longest time, they kind of tolerated these people.

Mm-hmm. Because they were, uh, uh, an almost, they were like a remnant to the more magical times, you know, whenever men of faith walked to the earth and moved mountains and all that kind of stuff. but now you know if you let them in and give them power they're gonna take over

and they're not going to tolerate you it only goes one way I don't I don't know like outside of this being kind of you know I mean he's doing an interview on Tucker's show

but like I don't know how much this is wildly out of sync with like what Lee Strobel was doing 10 years ago it's what I was listening to when I was a kid right it's Dr. James Dobson shit

right but it was confined to, like, church areas. These books would just be on a bookstore, like Christian bookstores. Yep. And you wouldn't, you wouldn't, I don't know, you wouldn't see, you wouldn't see demon interviews on time.

People would read them and they would go, hmm, that's interesting. And they would take little things that it would be basically self-help. It would be like, oh, yeah, I should clean more. Like, that's what they would get out of it. There would be the side excitement of being like, you should clean more for it because God,

you know, and that makes it more. exciting. Yeah. This is not good. No. It's broken loose. Yep. Yep.

It's gotten free. And we are all going to be demons soon. Yes, we are. And there are definitions. That's what demons are for. But you know what? Before that point comes. Before the demon feast?

I'm going to get to work on MacGyver. I'm going to watch some more McGiard. You'll have about 15 minutes at the end to solve everything. Nice. Yeah. So yeah. I don't know. Where are you at?

Um, you know, I would have, I like it whenever, if you've got a, if you've got a mythology that involves, uh, massive battles between heaven and hell, give me a little bit more than like, well, they don't have bodies. What is that? What are you, what are you talking about? Then what did they do? Well, they, they didn't marry. Right. But I mean, so like, essentially what happened then is if they, if they, if you, if you. You've already admitted that they have no bodies, no corporeal form, no aspect other than some sort of will. We learn later they don't actually have wings, or at least not all of them. Right, right, all right. So then you're telling me also that there was a great moment where these angels were fired out of heaven, right, which also doesn't have a spot. No.

Or a place. Nope. Right? So where did they go? How did, who forced them out? How did they get, did God, like, kick them out individually? Did he send them out with a bus? Like, what are we talking about?

Right. Exactly. Like, what are we talking about where you've created this mythology and then the coolest parts are actually not possible to happen? And why is it that the devil is fucking busy as hell and all the demons seem to be able to do is trick you into thinking they know stuff? It is so great. Yeah. Yep. Anyway, we'll get back to maybe something a little more normal next time.

But I want to take a little wacky break. Yay. Dark demons. I loved it. Yeah, it was a lot of fun. So we'll be back. But until then, we have a website. Oh, it's knowledgefight.com.

Yep. We'll be back. I'm until that, I'm Neo. I'm Leo. I'm DZX. Mark. I am the mysterious professor. Woo, yeah, woo, yeah, woo. And now here comes the sex robots.

Andy in Kansas, you're on the air. Thanks for holding. Hello, Alex. I'm a first-time caller. I'm a huge fan. I love your work. I love you.