Pints With Aquinas - 3 Hours of Wisdom from Peter Kreeft

Episode Date: September 12, 2024

Peter John Kreeft is a professor of philosophy at Boston College and The King's College. A convert to Catholicism, he is the author of over eighty books on Christian philosophy, theology and apologetics. Matt talks to Dr. Peter Kreeft about God, baseball, stoicism, sex, heaven, Hell, Buddhism, Socrates ... look, just watch the show. Show Sponsors: https://hallow.com/mattfradd https://strive21.com/matt https://exodus90.com/matt  

So one of the things I like about you is how honest you are. So how much do you hate that coffee on a scale from one to ten? It's five. Passing. Do you have your favorite coffee? I have very proletarian tastes. My favorite coffee is milk and donuts coffee. My favorite beer is Budweiser.

My favorite wine is cheap wine. My favorite bourbon is cheap bourbon. I'm proud of that. You're proud of your humility, right? I'm super proud of my humility. I'm just a man of the people. That's me. People always saying that. I'm superior to you. Budweiser actually is in, I guess the brand comes from the Czech Republic. My wife and I were there and they sell beers that say Budweiser on them, but they look completely different

and taste completely better. I think what sells the beer is the horses. Horses, not women in bikinis. Not horses in bikinis. Well, almost everybody's got women in bikinis in their ads, but only they had the Clydesdales. Yeah. They're amazing.

What is its signal? Strength. Yes. American durability. They're amazing. What is it? Signal strength? Yes. American. Do you think of beers? We're not into Kings, but we are into the King of Beers. All the King of Kings. But we are. Christians are anyway. Oh, good.

Remember that time I shamefully gave you a peanut butter beer? You tried and you said, why would you drink that? And I didn't have an answer because you like it. Before we got on the show, we were talking about Dostoevsky and sad people. And you said, why is it that we love sad people? What is what? What do you mean? Or say that again? That's a fascinating question. Why do we find?

Past sorrow or other sorrows pleasant? Why do we love to reminisce about our own past? Not necessarily sorrows, but adventures. What's an adventure? Chesterton says an adventure is only an inconvenience rightly construed. You remember that great blizzard we had when we were snowbound for three days and we ate everything in the house and we were hungry until we finally went to the store. It wasn't fun at the time, but it's fun recalling it.

Is it because we're not in it? I have to think the nostalgia is a little bit like that. Yeah, it's like humor. We laugh at stupidity. We don't laugh at stupidity when we're in it, but we laugh at stupidity when we're outside of it, either ours or somebody else's. But it's more than laughing, isn't it? You're saying it's something we enjoy to think about. Yes. Like my wife and I will sometimes talk to the children about how when we were married,

there was a period of time that we were correct, like legitimately beneath the poverty line, and couldn't afford things like meat or beer, even Budweiser and things like that. And there's a kind of, it's pleasant to reminisce on those times. And I don't know if we're right in considering it a good time, or if we're wrong? We're looking at it from a transcendent point of view as God looks at it and if God loves us and his will is for our maximum joy he gives us sorrow to maximize our joy and we don't understand that at the time but later we can which is the secret of humor it's a kind of self transcendence it's a cheap little mystical experience. You're outside yourself laughing at yourself.

But I don't understand what you mean by laughing at yourself because I don't find it humorous. I find it pleasant in a sort of calm way. Both. Humor is pleasant, which is why comedian is a sacred vocation. It makes people happy. What about nostalgia? Because you think back on the good old days and they just seem as good as anything could possibly be. Though you know that when you were there, you didn't think that. Maybe memory is like putting a gold frame around an ordinary picture. It gives you either the right perspective or an illusionary perspective that raises it up to something golden.

But it is a form of self-transcendence. We have a time machine, it's called memory. We also have another one called anticipation or desire. We don't live in the present merely. And those who would tell us to live in the present only are telling us to be like animals, whose memory is not nearly as rich as ours and whose hope and anticipation is not nearly as rich as ours. But there's wisdom in living in the present. I think it was Faustina who said something like, the past is gone, I entrust it to God's

mercy, the future I entrust to his providence. Well, most all profound truths are paradoxes, apparent contradictions. It's very wise to live in the present, it's very foolish to live in the present. What's another one of those paradoxes? Well, the two ingredients that make any storytelling a good story. Storytelling is the most universal and human of all arts. There's no culture in history that hasn't perfected that art to some extent. Well, you can't have a story without some sort of predestination or destiny. The author is in control.

And you can't have a story without some sort of free choice. The characters have to be interesting and unpredictable and dramatic. So, philosophers cannot reconcile predestination and free choice, but stories can. Back to the Brothers. Yes. Any great story. I think one of the greatest lies about the Brothers Karamazov is that it's difficult to understand. It's very easy to understand. Right? I can I can understand it. I don't understand most profound things. What makes me a good philosophy teacher is not that I'm more intelligent than most philosophers, but less. I understand ordinary people's common sense. So that's a very common-sensical novel. Yeah, it reminds me of Plato. When you read Plato, you sort of understand him on first reading,

unlike, say, the metaphysics by Aristotle. But you can always go deeper with Plato. I think that Dostoevsky is like that as well. I was afraid and intimidated by it, and I think my intimidation was preventing me from actually just reading what was in front of me. Once I just started under, like, realizing this was a book that was written for a Russian newspaper in serial forms, you know. Yeah, it's a bloody beautiful book. He's able to pack so much into a sentence or two. Because he doesn't care about the conventions. He's like Shakespeare. He invents his own forms.

One of the rules that most writers' workshops teach is don't preach to people. Don't talk directly to them. Don't interrupt yourself. And he does that all the time. He inserts himself into the story. What do you mean? Well, he says, this is what I think about Al-Yosha. Other people think he's a fool.

But it's written from the perspective of a narrator though, isn't it? He's saying this event took place in our town. Like the stage manager in our town. The Lord of the Rings is like that as well, where you know that there's an end point that Tolkien's directing everyone to, but you don't, it doesn't feel contrived in any way, shape or form. And Tolkien himself didn't know what the end point would be. Really? He says that he almost abandoned the story when he didn't

know how it would end. Interesting. Here, he's got the hobbits at Weathertop, assaulted by the Black Riders. They're going to escape somehow. What next? They can't just go to Rivendell and solve all the problems. And he didn't know what was coming next.

You find out who your characters are and what's going to happen to them in the very process of writing. I never understood that until I wrote a novel. It's probably not a very good novel, but it's at least a novel. And it took me many, many years to write it because I had to wait until my characters matured.

Not to be too clever, but is that like human beings? Yes, very much like human beings. Writing a novel is like having a family. What's that kid going to be? Well, let's wait and see when he grows up. Well, I mean ourselves though, like not knowing who we are, and on the journey beginning to understand who we are and what we're for. Yes. That's one of the reasons I love Socrates.

He doesn't necessarily apply this to psychology, but the know-thyself is a co-op puzzle. It's impossible You can only know yourself up to the present point what you're going to be in the future since you have radical free choice is Unpredictable you don't know That's what makes life interesting If we were just watching a movie that we had seen before we'd be bored. Mm-hmm. I Remember hearing you say that a lot of money and a lot of security makes life predictable and

boring and you said this is why the rich are blowing their brains out at an alarmingly faster rate than the rest of us. Yes and my gesture and says that the world's greatest adventure is simply being born. It's like Santa Claus coming down your chimney and dropping off, not a present, but a baby. And that baby has to learn to live with these strangers, which are his parents and his siblings and the house. Did you ever because did you ever go through, I guess, like a midlife crisis of even if you didn't label it that did you ever go through something like that?

I think a mild one. my first book was about death. The reason I ask is I imagine that comes about when you have hit this point of security in your mid years right? I never hit that point. No. But I think that's why your midlife crisis wasn't so bad but it feels like if you get to a point where you've got security, you've got your wife, you've got your house, you've got your career, you're like, well where's the adventure? There's no adventure left.

Do you think that's part of why people... No, I don't. Having a wife, having children, and even having a career, if it's teaching, is an adventure. Yeah. Yeah. Security. I never saw that word as a comforting thing. Security is boring. Maybe because I have ADD.

Everything's interesting. Look at that dog. Yes. Okay. But what do you so when you said maybe you went through something like that, were you joking or? Half joking. Most terms are fuzzy.

And some terms are paradoxical. They have opposite meanings. So security is one of those terms. Obviously it's meant to be something positive, something we all seek. Insecurity is scary. On the other hand, security is boring. We don't want too much insecurity in some fields like financial investing, and therefore stocks are called securities, although they're notoriously unpredictable, but they pretend to be predictable. But suppose

all of your life was like investing money. Suppose you took an economic approach to everything in life. How boring that would be. Even economists call them their own science the gray science, the most boring of all sciences. Hmm. I think it was Peterson who was talking recently about that yin yang symbol with the chaos and order and our job is to walk down the center of that because you have too much chaos you get swamped and your life is in ruins. If you have too much order then you've got Dostoevsky's wicked character in Notes from Underground.

I think it was him or it was certainly in that book that he talked about if God gave us everything we wanted, you know, so that all we had to be concerned about was the propagation of the species and eating cake, we would destroy everything. Well, there's there's two other thinkers who say something similar. Augustine in one of his sermons called On the Pure Love of God, imagines God coming to you and saying, I'll make a deal with you if you like. I'll give you total security, total happiness, everything you want, every single one of your desires

will be satisfied. You will never be bored, you will never be self-destructive, you will never be punished, you will never go to hell. You can have anything you want, except me. You'll never see me again. Would you take the deal? Fascinating question. Yeah, all right, let me think about that. And another is Robert Nozick, a

contemporary philosopher who wrote an essay called something like the happiness machine or the joy machine. Yeah, that's fascinating. If you could walk into this machine which controlled your thought and give you everything you could possibly desire without any bad side effects, would you walk into the machine or not? Yeah. And when he first wrote the article, he said he used it on his students.

And something like 70% or 75% of the students said, no, of course I would not walk into the machine. And then something like 30 years later, he did the same experiment with a new group of students and almost the same percentage that they would. That's scary. I think it's important. I haven't read the article, but I imagine to help people understand it, we're not talking about a superficial degree of happiness. The thought experiment, it seems to me, would be, you know, if I had this machine in your bedroom and I said, it's

this brand new machine, it was given to us by Alien Life. Walk in here, lay down, all we have to do is plug this in and you will have the highest levels of meaning and joy and happiness, at least perceived meaning, but there would be nothing superficial about it that you could possibly experience. It's interesting, eh? Why wouldn't we do that? There's a whole novel about that by Arthur C. Clarke,

a science fiction novel called Childhood's End. The Earth is visited by a superior civilization that has discovered the secret of peace and tranquility and happiness and they give it to humans. All poverty is gone, all war is gone, all psychological problems like addictions are gone and the result is that the aliens are puzzled by the fact that the earthmen are committing suicide more than ever before because they're bored. Yeah. Electric sheep.

That's wild that we would do that. We're weird. That makes us interesting. Why would we wish to kill ourselves in heaven? We're not born in heaven because God's there. He's infinite. So that's the thing. It's the boredom thing. And infinity of finite things can't satisfy us.

Only infinity itself can. And that's not satisfaction either, because that's endless progress and uncertainty and investigation. If there are days in heaven, you wake up every morning saying, I wonder what's going to happen today. Is there going to be something new? God's always new. Yeah, we can't imagine that we can believe it, but we can't imagine it. Yeah.

And since imagination is so much easier than faith, we make a lot of mistakes by using our imagination instead of our faith. For heaven and for hell, huh? Yep. I had this dream once of falling into one of those kids ball pits, you know, the different colored balls they have at those like theme parks. Kids jump in plastic balls. Oh, balls. Yeah, ball is my. I thought it was balls. Yeah, I had this I had this kind of idea of sinking into that for all eternity. Well, we're thinking into our screens. All right. Like in the movie Poltergeist, you know, the screen is inviting.

So we identify with it and identity is sucked in kind of a black hole. That's what addiction does. Take your identity out of yourself. It's a fake mystical experience. Mystical experience is also a self-transcendence. You lose yourself. But hell is also a losing of yourself, the opposite kind of loss of self, sinking into a black hole instead of rising above yourself. But hell is also a losing of yourself, the opposite kind of loss of self, sinking into a black hole instead of rising above yourself, having an out-of-body experience.

Imagine if someone had approached 21-year-old Peter Crave and tried to explain this to you. How would that have gone? I'm naive enough to think that I would probably think that thing is thinking that must be demonically inspired. There must be a little demon manipulating the stuff in there because I don't know enough science to know how it's possible. Yeah because I mean that seems insane to 21 year old Matt Fred and that wasn't as long ago as I still find myself subject to the temptation to believe that Some evil spirit, maybe the spirit of Bill Gates is still operating through Microsoft Word to torture me

Yeah Because no matter how I try to control it. I can't have you heard of or use chat GBT. Oh My goodness Because I can ask it a question here. Yes Have you heard of or used chat GBT? Oh my goodness. Cause I can ask you the question here. Yes. What is Peter Crafft's, I'm not going to ruin that word. Peter Crafft's favorite breakfast. Let's see if it knows. Could you imagine if it did? It knows everything. Peter Crafft has not publicly stated a favorite breakfast in any of his writings or talks.

However, Crave often discusses philosophy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. He announced your favorite breakfast cereal and we'll ask it again. He likes bacon. He told me himself. Now it's saying memory updating and the demons are working. That's great to know. Bacon seems fitting for someone like Peter craved.

Simple yet classic. Who the hell do you think you are? It's like a fortune cookie. What is Peter craves? I'm going to ask you one more time. Favorite breakfast. Tom favorite breakfast. Peter Crave's favorite breakfast includes bacon.

As he personally told you. It even knows who you are. It's nuts. I think chat bots will destroy the humanity of humanities. It can now write our essays, it can write our books, it can write our poems. I think chat bots will destroy the humanity, the humanities. It can now write our essays, it can write our books, it can write our poems. Are you experiencing that in class when people sit? Yes, yes. Like this person couldn't write a week ago.

We just had a message from the administration at Boston College, a very reasonable message, saying you have to set policies for the limitation of artificial intelligence and it's going to be different in different departments, different in the humanities, different in the sciences. And my previous policy was if I suspected that this was written by a robot and I think I have a pretty good intuitive grasp about how robots work what at least how robots work in chat GBT yeah you see a pattern and the pattern is too perfect for a student and there are no weaknesses and no mistakes although students sometimes

deliberately misspell words to make you think that they're not. Anyway, I think I'm pretty good at. I have to say, has it happened in the pattern? That's happened about half a dozen times in the last few years. And every time I say to the student, I think that this is not your work. I think you plagiarize not from another human being, but from a machine.

And if I can prove it I will report you to the administration and you will be guilty of plagiarism and this will go on your record And if I cannot prove it you get an A on this because even though you're a C student you you've written an A paper Which I doubt very much Every single time they fold it and they said yes, I confess it was a it was a chat bot And did you say to them if you admit you won't report them, is that part of the deal? That's right. I'll give them no credit whatsoever for the paper, but I didn't report them. Yeah. Now they're so sophisticated now that I probably wouldn't be able to get away with that anymore.

Yeah. What does that do to us? It forces us into a defensive posture. If you're a good teacher in the humanities, you simply forbid the use of these devices, and you design your essays and tests and final exams in ways that you think the body cannot imitate. Maybe oral tests, having them stand up and you ask them questions. It seems more human than writing anyway. That was the way it used to be for hundreds of years. But how long is it going to be until they plant something in our brain stem that can help us pull up information? You have to let them do that. Yeah. You have to want it.

Well enough people will want it and it will. You have to use your free will to sell yourself into slavery. But my point is when that maybe you won't do it and maybe I won't do it but there will be people who will do it and then how will you know as you're asking them questions and we'll just give over our brain entirely there's no point for thinking and no need. Yeah. At that point what does apologetics and argumentation even look like? Nothing. What's the point of it? No point. No one's arguing actually. It's just two computers. Well, I think that destruction of a human soul would be similar to the destruction of death, the conquest of death, by genetic engineering. They're working on that too, especially the transhumanists in Silicon Valley. And I think that if that succeeded and was available to the whole world, I think that

would provoke the second coming in the end of the world, because that would produce hell on earth if everybody was in it. If you could, if one of these Silicon Valley fellows came to you and it turned out that science had advanced more than we had realized and said I can give you another 50 years you'd be in the exact cognitive and physical state that you're currently in, what would you say? No thank you I've got arthritis. No, God deliberately humiliates us because we need humility. So that's what old age does.

You know, the golden years are the world's biggest scam. Yeah. When did you get arthritis? Oh, I've had it for a long time. And what does it feel like? Very gradually. It's not that serious. It's just an inconvenience.

Is it just pain in your wrists and joints? Knees mainly. Yeah. I don't want an operation, so I'm just stretching it out. But in dozens of ways, we get weaker and older and less capable of ordinary pleasures as we get older, and that's designed. Isn't that wonderful?

Isn't it wonderful? It's wonderful and terrifying. I mean, you see how many people are getting their faces done today. Gigantic lips and..., you see how many people are getting their faces done today. Gigantic lips and you see, do you see this? I don't know. Is this happening in Boston? It's happening in Florida where I live. A lot of people come up and talk to me. They don't have one wrinkle on their face. Ridiculous. But it's ridiculous, but I, I, I,

I hurt when I see it because I know why they do it. Cause I know that I also don't want to be old and ugly, but am becoming that. Do you know what I mean? Well, we all have a similar temptation, probably not through plastic surgery, but to stay young forever. We don't like getting old and decrepit and ugly.

Yeah. And God does. The ugly parts, that's interesting. Because I think a lot of people would be willing to look young, even if all of their everything else fell apart. So they had tremendous pain in their joints, fingers, toes. If they could look young, I think they would take that. They would, which is why people lie. That would be a lie. That would be,

look at me. This is what I am. It's not true. Beneath that exterior, you're falling apart. So if you value truth above even suffering versus pleasure, you make one decision, if you judge pleasure as the most important thing and pain as the most important thing and pain as the Most important negative thing then you lie you tell you tell lies Mm-hmm, I think Aquinas or Augustine in there talking about I don't think I don't know if this is apocryphal or not I'm gonna say it and people can tell me if it's apocryphal I think it was Augustine or Augustine quoting someone that if women are gonna dye their hair they should dye

it red so it will match the flames of hell that will one day engulf them. That sounds like Augustine, certainly not Aquinas. Aquinas said the opposite. In the film he asked is it in any way sinful for women to use makeup and he said no if the purpose is to attract their husbands. Yes if the purpose is to attract their husbands yes if its purpose is to attract other men interesting yeah I don't know how I feel about makeup like when my wife puts on makeup if she I don't she have a very simple philosophy there well if if you're beautiful you don't want to use makeup so the only reason you use makeup is that you think you're ugly.

But I don't think women are more beautiful in makeup. I think women are more beautiful without makeup. And I think most men agree with me. You know, I think I think I might agree with you. I'm trying not to agree with you too quickly because it sounds like I'm trying to virtue signal by saying, you know, but I was at a big event last night and a lot of no, the night before, a lot of people were in makeup and it's just like, oh, well, if you have something that I'm being lied

to, that's what it is, I think. That's why I had a fellow say, if you take if you go on a date, your first date, you should take your girlfriend to the beach or the pool so you'll see what she actually looks like without makeup. Well, if you have something really ugly, like a big wart, it's reasonable to want to cover that up. But if you don't have anything remarkably ugly or anything that you think is remarkably beautiful, don't use makeup because some man will fall in love with you as you really are

and think that you are remarkably beautiful. So is that the difference between maybe an unnatural imperfection and natural imperfection? Yes. Yeah. So if you've got a giant something that could be covered up or a small thing that could be covered up, that's sort of, yeah, not natural. Fascinating piece of data here is that many people who report out-of-body experiences, apparently temporary death, brain death and heart death, and they come back into their bodies and they say that they saw some of the people on the

other side. Sometimes they see people who had wartime injuries or were martyred. The signs of their martyrdom or their injury are still there. Jesus, when he appeared, still had his wounds. But now they're transfigured. They're wounds of glory. They're like badges. Do you ever sometimes think about heaven and think the whole idea is nonsense?

I don't mean when you think about it deeply, but do you sometimes go, Oh, of course. What the hell have we been telling ourselves? Where is this heaven supposed to be anyway? Freud's argument is quite persuasive. He said, if there were no God, we would have to invent him, and he would have to have all knowledge and all power, because that's what your father has

when you're a tiny little child, and you realize your father's gonna die. So that gives you a tremendous insecurity. So if there's a father in heaven who's even better than your father on earth, then life is handleable. That's a persuasive argument. It's a hypothesis that fits the facts. The problem is with that kind of atheistic argument,

if that is meant to be an argument, let's say for atheism, is it definitely cuts both ways. Like if there's actually no ultimate accountability, then I can live however the hell I want and do the things that I've actually kind of the darker side of me, the more irrational side of me has wanted to engage in and there's no repercussions. But that doesn't prove that God exists. It doesn't prove anything but it shows that there is a case for atheism. It's not foolishness. I think the best arguments for atheism aren't arguments, they're just these like vibes,

they're these feelings that the whole thing's ridiculous. Feelings are not arguments. That's what I said, I, they're these feelings, that the whole thing's ridiculous. Feelings are not arguments. That's what I said, I said they're not arguments. So like when I look at the problem of evil, put in a syllogism or something, or the way Mackie did it, I think I see Plantinga's response and go, yeah, that seems good enough. But it's when I just start going, wait a minute,

am I just believing stuff that's just complete BS? That's always got to be a possibility if faith is to be a choice. Faith can't be obvious. You're not in the beatific vision now. You have to have doubts. Doubts are the ants in the pants that keep faith moving. I like it. That's a great quote.

Someone go tweet that or X that or whatever. Yeah. I think it's important though that people do reflect on that because sometimes we're embarrassed to reflect on that. You know, is this just ridiculous? But I think that's kind of tricky because there's one kind of doubt that is sinful and Jesus condemns it. Another kind of doubt that's honest and good. Yeah, helpful. Yeah, I mean to use doubt as a way to ascertain truth. Yes.

Because if you... Socratic method. If you... Well, yeah, we'll get to that. If you don't look at that stuff within you, because I remember I was in Guatemala and we were on a boat and my beautiful boy Peter pointed up at the top of this mountain and he said, is that where heaven is? And I had this rush of him. I had two things happen, like how sweet he is and how like oh, maybe it's all ridiculous

And if I wasn't to then go, okay play that as an argument Matt Like show me the show me rationally the argument for why it's ridiculous If I didn't do that if I instead was too ashamed to look at it that would linger with me It was only upon putting it into an argument form that I realized Oh, yeah, like that's not at all a good argument against theism. Well that's where Freud is right. Things that are suppressed in our soul aren't killed. They're there and they poison us in some ways, so they have to be expressed. They have to be brought from the unconscious up to the level of

consciousness. That's always a progress, no matter what that thing is, including doubts. Has that ever played a major role in your own faith journey, doubts? Have you ever? In my philosophical journey, yes. In my faith journey, no. I think faith has to be very simple. That's why my favorite prayer is Sister Faustine's

five words, Jesus, I trust in you. You put your money in the first supernatural bank and trust company, you trust your money to this bank, you bank on it. And then you go and do your philosophy, and you have serious doubts, and you look at them and you say, you know, I can't really answer that question, but I will trust that God can. Because you live in academia, and you've been there for a long time, and you've interacted with people who you may consider much smarter than you, more capable than you in certain philosophical respects. What's that like when you encounter them and maybe don't know how to respond to them? I don't care. I know who God is and they don't and even though they're smarter than I, I pity them.

And they don't. And even though they're smarter than I, I pity them. Maybe that's selfish and it's rather simplistic. But there's a child in me that I've never totally grown out of. And I think that's good. It's also good to be sophisticated and as expert as you can in your field. But it's also very good to be simple, To have a simple heart and a complex head. To have a soft heart and a hard head. This is why I love Augustine. Medieval statues always have him with an open book in one hand and a burning heart in the other. If you have one of those

two things and not the other, you're in trouble. There's that line in the Gospels where I think Christ says, don't let your hearts grow weary through dissipation and drunkenness or something to that effect. Yeah. Do I have that right? Was that our blessed Lord? What's funny to me about that is I think the reason we fall into dissipation, what does that word mean? Dissipation. Does it mean just kind of giving over to the passions? I instinctively think it is the opposite of courage. Courage strengthens and tightens your heart, whereas dissipation loosens it so you can fall apart. And courage is a virtue because there's always reason for not having courage.

Courage means facing apparently unfacable problems, striding right into the middle of the battle when you're just a hobbit and you're fighting orcs. And yet we're commanded to have that courage, that irrational courage. Yeah, but Christ's point about like, don't lose heart. Would he sign to the effect of like, if you engage in these things, you'll lose heart. But I thought, no, I thought it was the opposite.

I thought it was cause we lose heart that we end up in dissipation and drunkenness, you know? Like I'm tired. Well, the cause and effect probably work both forward and backwards. There's that paradox again, maybe. Yes. Yeah.

Stupidity causes immorality and immorality causes stupidity. Plato got only half of that paradox. He knew that all moral evil comes from ignorance. He didn't know that ignorance comes from our moral ignoring the truth. Let's say you're tempted. It's April 15th and you can lie and cheat to the government and make an extra $10,000 and buy that new car that you always wanted. So there's an angel whispering in one ear,

you know that's not wrong and that's not right. And you know that's not going to make you happy. And the devil whispers in the other ear, yeah, but you really want that new car and you get such a joy if you did it. You have to ignore one of those two voices. You have to make a choice to listen to reason or unreason. So the will moves the mind as well as the mind moves the will. Works both ways.

But how do you keep your heart simple? I think that's the reason I brought up the dissipation piece. It seems to me that you've had God's given you the grace to do that, but how do you do that? How do you keep your heart simple? Well I think that's... the answer to that question in theory is extremely obvious and extremely simple. There's only one God. God is your Absolute. There is no God but God. La ilaha illa Allah. Why is the Muslim Zoroastrian repeating that over and over again? But in practice, to live that, to stop going after false gods and idols and false ways to happiness, that's extremely difficult. But it certainly helps

to realize that this is the truth. There is only one God, nothing else will make you perfectly happy. So always keep that angel ear open, even when the devil ear is also open. How do we determine the false gods we're currently bowing down before? Because we can fool ourselves into thinking, because I have no golden statues in my house that I'm burning incense to. Well the philosophical answer to that question is both a priori and a posteriori, both by reason and experience, both by applying the principles that you believe to the situation, and by looking at what actually happens when you do worship idols, you're miserable. That's not enough though because we we have an immense

database in our lives, no matter how simple our lives may be, that proves that every time we say to God, your will be done, we're deeply and truly happy in the end, and every time we don't, and they say, when we say my will be done instead, we mess it up, we mess ourselves up. And yet every new temptation is a new one. Maybe it'll work this time. Yeah. Einstein, I think, famously said, here's the definition of insanity. You've tried the same experiment over and over again.

It's never worked. And you're going to try it again. Yeah. That is the temptation. Because you can always think if I had just a bit more money, a bit more sex, a bit more power, that's, you know. And you don't really think that. Deep down, you know that that's not going to work. But you want to think that. So you are thinking that and you're not thinking that at the same time. That's what I think James calls being double-minded. We're all somewhat schizophrenic. Yeah, I asked you keeping your heart simple. You said to believe there's only one God, and then the way we decide whether we're worshiping other gods is if we're

miserable. That's one way. Yeah. But we're not automatically instantly, clearly miserable. If sin wasn't fun, we'd all be saints. The devil's got very effective temptations. He's a fisherman. And he baits his ugly sharp hook with nice wiggly worms. And we see the worm and we don't see the hook. So we bite. Yeah. And then I think the other thing we can do is just blame everybody and everything else around us for our misery.

And there too we're double-minded because when we're blaming other people, we realize, at least unconsciously, that we're to blame. That our happiness doesn't depend upon something outside of us, but something inside of us. We know that, and yet we suppress that knowledge. I don't know what the Greek word is, but it must be a very profound one, where St. Paul says in Romans, the first chapter, about the pagans, they know the true God, but they suppress that knowledge in their wickedness. They don't want that to be true. I remember a couple of conversations I had, some live and some in email, with atheists who were arguing about whether you could prove the existence of God, and I like to use C.S. Lewis's

argument from desire. Any universal natural desire must correspond to some reality, otherwise it's meaningless. And we want there to be a God and union with God and heaven instinctively deeply universally wouldn't everybody want to be in heaven perceiving the beatific vision absolute beauty and truth and if that is data doesn't that data at least strongly suggest, if not prove, that there is something like God in heaven? And every time I use that argument on intelligent atheists, they say, that's a logical argument, but it has a false premise.

That desire is not universal. That's true only of religious people. I don't want there to be a God. I don't want there to be a heaven. I don't want to go to heaven. I just want to stay on earth as comfortable a worldly life as possible. So I disagree with the atheist, but I'm not sure if the argument works still, because I think we find ourselves here and we have a desire for the fulfillment of our nature just in a natural sense. Maybe we've evolved such that if things aren't right, we desire them to be right. And so we have this desire for perfection in of our nature so that we can just be banging in all cylinders naturally. But then what we do is we put upon that desire religious language that's

unnecessary. Maybe that's their argument. Oh, and and I say don't don't you at least doubt that premise That this desire is totally explainable by conditioning Doesn't seem to be a natural desire As natural as it is natural, but I'm agreeing with you. I think it's natural I just don't think it proves God. I think we find within ourselves a desire for Perfection what surprised me with these atheists that I talked to that's what I thought they'd say proves God. I think we find within ourselves a desire for the perfection of our nature. That's what surprised me with these atheists that I talked to. That's what I thought they'd say. I thought they'd criticize the logic. I thought they'd say, your argument is a known

sequitur. The premises are true, but the illusion does not follow. They don't. They question the premise. There is no such thing as a natural desire for God, they say. But wouldn't they say that there is a natural desire for health and well-being? Yes. But they say, I don't want supernatural health. I just want natural health. And I don't want supernatural well-being. I don't want to be a mystic.

I just want to be a satisfied human being. But their ambitions are so low. But wouldn't you say to be a satisfied human being is the same to be a mystic? Because a human being isn't merely physical, isn't merely carnal, so to be a satisfied human being is to be satisfied spiritually. No, I think the mystic is dissatisfied and satisfied at the same time. He goes beyond the search for happiness. Joy is always a surprise, which is why I love CS Lewis's title, Surprised by Joy. Happiness is not a surprise.

Happiness is predictable. This is what I want. And I'm unhappy because I don't have it. And once you have it, you're happy. You're content. You're satisfied, but you're bored. I'm surprised that these intelligent atheists aren't bored with their earthly desires.

What's the difference between happiness and joy then? Joy is ecstatic. Joy is surprising. Joy is self-transcendence. Happiness is what Aristotle called it the the maturity and fulfillment of all natural desires. Desires for things in nature. But one of the things that is a natural desire is for something beyond nature. That's a paradox. The distinction between the natural and the supernatural has to be kept. But one of the desires that is present in human nature is the desire for something supernatural, because we've got all natural goods.

We'd still be bored. It's Augustine's restless heart, this infinite canyon, which can't be filled with a lot of marbles. And most atheists, at least some atheists that I know, say there is no such canyon. It can be filled with enough marbles. What does self-transcendence mean? See, that's what- That's a very good question.

It could mean a self-transcendence in consciousness such that... I don't mean it in a clever way. I'm asking what the words mean. What does it... Well, to be outside yourself. Yeah, that's what the literal meaning of the word ecstasy is. Ec means outside of, and stasis means standing. So you find yourself outside of yourself. Well, in mystical experience, that means you share the mind of God,

and you see yourself as God sees you. In out-of-body experiences, it means you see yourself in an immaterial body looking at yourself down there in the operating table and saying, I hear the doctor saying he's dead now. Why do we want that? Why do we want to be outside of ourselves? Well that's another question. But we're talking about self transcendence is a good thing, are we? Yes we are. And all the arts help you towards 12 self transcendence. Take the most universal of all arts, every culture that has ever existed, no matter how sophisticated or primitive it is, tells stories. Storytelling is the most universal art. All right?

If the story is any good and you're reading it and somebody asks you, where are you? Your answer is not, I am sitting here in this chair in Steubenville reading this book. You say I am in Mordor trying to destroy the ring, or I am in Paris trying to survive the French Revolution, or I am on the plains of Spain fighting the Spanish Civil War. That's self-transcendence. Humor is self-transcendence. You laugh at yourself as if you're a second person. I guess what I'm trying to get at is the difference between self-transcendence in the good way and addiction and absorption.

Because I think a lot of the things we enjoy are things that grab our attention and help us to kind of not exist for a while. They kind of suck us into the thing. And it's like time, it's like time goes like that. That's why video games feel like that. There's a very simple answer to that question. In self-transcendence, you're two selves. In the bad self-transcendence, you're no self. Addiction means you lose yourself, you lose your soul, you lose your freedom.

You sink into the black hole, the tube, whatever it is. In self-transcendence, you're still human, but you also have a transhuman dimension that can judge and evaluate that human dimension. And in a sense, all self-criticism is self-transcendence. This is what I am, this is what I ought to be, and I want to be. That's almost schizophrenic.

I identify with Jesus, I wanna be like Jesus. And I'm not gonna be satisfied until I'm totally transformed into him. But I'm far from that now. When did you get married? How old were you roughly? 25. When you were 25, if you don't mind me asking,

what parts of you did you wish would mature? Or how were you failing that you're like, I gotta get over this, I gotta get better at this. Competence I'm pretty competent mentally but I'm very incompetent physically mechanically technologically even psychologically I'm not good at ordinary conversation at. I'm not good at ordinary conversation, at making friends with ordinary people and fascinating them. I'm not competent at a lot of things. Like dinner parties? You and your wife would go to dinner parties and you weren't terribly good at the game? Yeah, I would sneak off into the bathroom and read a book. Or maybe do a prank. I was a prankster when I was a youngster because I was bored.

What's some of the best pranks you've pulled? Oh there was a party that we had where I overheard two people say let's play a game. There was only one bathroom with a lot of people at the party. We're drinking a lot of beer. So whenever somebody went into the bathroom they listened for the sound of peeing and they timed it. So the question was who has the biggest bladder? And one guy was peeing for 55 minutes, no 55 seconds, 55 seconds, almost a minute. And he was he was the champion. So they didn't know I was hearing this. So I snuck a bottle of water in my pants and went into the bathroom and I kept dripping it for three minutes When I came out everybody was a And when did you tell them that you did

That's funny do people still pay play pranks Not that much. It's forbidden. It's it's it's Not that much. It's forbidden. We're becoming puritanical. We can't make jokes. People have thin skins. They get offended. My daughter put, what's that called, cling wrap over the toilet bowl and then shut the seat, which I thought was clever. I don't think that worked, but it was at least clever. One of my favorite toys as a kid was a snake that would move and I put it in the toilet thinking that somebody would see it. It didn't work. It was too obviously mechanical.

But see, when I was a teenager, we used to, this is not terribly good. It's like pranks that go wrong from the beginning. Not in a funny way. You're not about to laugh. We'd make bombs. So we would, um, well, maybe I shouldn't explain to people how to make bombs, but we would make different bombs that weren't terrible. Some were destructive.

You know, the sparklers. Oh yeah. We'd put a, we'd tape a sparkler to a soda. I just did bulb or soda. Or put about a hundred caps together. You know what caps are? Oh yeah. We'd tape a sparkler to a soda. I just did bulb or soda. Or put about a hundred caps together. You know what caps are. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we'd put it in teachers letter boxes or egg houses.

Did you ever do stuff like that? Not to teachers. We were scared of teachers. Yeah. To each other. Yeah. We were scared of them as well. We'd do it in the middle of the night. One of our favorite things were lighting farts.

Sometimes it works. Yeah, it does work. And that's scary. I only boys like farts. Sometimes it works. Yeah, it does work. And that's scary. I don't think that's true. That's the difference between men and women right there. Yes. Yeah. We would also, I would spray my feet with, um, like sproot or underarm spray, you know, and light my feet on fire. Oh, and run down the road with my friends. Isn't that stupid? Oh no, sorry. With sneakers on. We'd like the base of our sneakers on fire and run on the road with my friends. Isn't that so? Oh no, sorry, with sneakers on. We'd like the

base of our sneakers on fire and run around the road. I hope people still do that. My fear is that the phones have taken care of that. I knew a student at Villanova who was a prankster and he was a philosophy major and he wrote a thesis on Thomas Aquinas and he knew that his teacher was lazy and wouldn't read the thesis so he inserted an appendix and said this is a document that I just discovered that Aquinas wrote and it hasn't been translated into English. De Ignatione Flotorum on the igniting of farts and he went through all four parasitilian causes of the igniting of farts. It was brilliantly done and he passed and no one said

anything about it so he knew his teacher didn't read it. What? We almost had another pigeon in the office. Okay. Just for those who are at home, we were up on a high floor in a building and a pigeon just tried to get into the office and that's happened once before and it was terrifying so thank you. That is funny, but I feel like pigeons are like arguments from atheists.

No, I don't. I'm going to get this analogy right. I think that Christians are like pigeons and atheists are chasing us on a beach. Okay, not pigeons, seagulls. Because seagulls don't seem scary. You can chase them away. But if a seagull turned on you, you'd be terrified. And I feel like you, Ed Faeser, Dr. William M. Craig and others have helped us go just you don't have to be afraid of these atheist objections. Just turn around. That's been my experience. I just

think that- I don't think most people are afraid of atheist objections much because they don't believe in reason anymore. Who doesn't? Most ordinary people don't believe in reason. Most prospective converts. Or maybe we doubt that reason can grab anything anymore. Well, seagulls certainly can.

One of the funniest scenes in movies is the seagulls in Nemo. They have only one word, mine, mine, mine, mine. Yeah, that is funny. That's an image of hell. That's the one word nobody speaks in heaven. How can we have a realistic assurance that we're in the state of grace and will be saved? I think Catholic theology says you can't. It's a divine gift given to only some but not most. You can't be absolutely certain. You can't be absolutely certain, but I think Aquinas says that there are certain things that we can sort of observe. Oh, of course. Yeah. I mean, every time

we receive the Eucharist, we're stating that we believe ourselves to be in a state of grace. Of course. We believe. Yeah. And belief can be psychologically certain. The sure and certain hope of the resurrection from the burial service. But it's not self-evident. It's not like two and two is four. It's not unthinkable that you could go to hell. God's existence is like that, isn't it?

In itself, it is self-evident. To us, it is not. Right. And something similar could be said that in the mind of God, it's self, not self-evident perhaps, but whether we're in the set of grace or not, but to us, it's unclear.

In fact, the higher the truth is the more mysterious And obscure it is to us Yeah, we know that two and two are four and we know that This paper clip will hold two pieces of paper together and we know how to repair a bicycle And we might even know how to repair a car and maybe even a rocket ship, but not a human soul Hmm Reality is so bizarre but not a human soul. Reality is so bizarre. Hey, sometimes I'll have this like experience where I'll go from blank slate and absolute nothingness and then in a millisecond, I'll experience reality

and be like, what the hell is this? This is wild. That's a wonderfully mystical experience. Good grief. Things exist. Yeah, really like unironically That's how I feel like the fact that you exist is bizarre What is would the story of this prisoner in Cuba? No with the stone? I think his name is valid Ares and I think the book is called against all hope Castro imprisoned him. I think he was a Baptist preacher.

And like most tyrants, he wanted to control the mind and not just the body. So he put him in solitary and he held out. And he found his his guards found out that he was communicating with the other prisoners in some way. Morse code, I think. So they isolated him even further. And he made friends with a little spider in his jail cell. It was wet and dark and miserable,

but he talked to the spider and the spider was tame and that kept him sane. And the guard discovered that he was doing that. He stepped on the spider and killed him. And Voledrari said, that almost killed me. I had nothing human anymore. And then God answered, because a stone in the ceiling fell loose and dropped at my feet, a little rock.

And I said, rock, you are real. You are part of a community of things that are real and God is the creator of everything real. So I see God in you and that stone kept me alive until I was rescued. How long was he in solitary confinement? I'm not sure. Yeah, it was a long time ago. And I'm not even sure whether I actually read the book or read a summary and review of the book. But that scene really touched me.

It speaks to our deep-seated need for communion. Things really exist. Thomas Aquinas says the thing a baby first understands is being. There's something there. I don't know what it is, but there's something there. I used your analogy with my children recently about heaven, and I think it's one of the best analogies I've ever heard to people who are either trying to understand heaven or are skeptical of it. Maybe you'd like to recount it for us. It has to do with the two fetuses or feti or whatever the plural is. Well, imagine two unborn babies communicating in the womb.

Do you think there's life after birth? One thinks yes, the other thinks no. Well, what is it like? Well, it's like a bigger and better womb. We all have more desires and they're all satisfied and it's more comfortable. And then they're both born and they're both surprised. One is surprised that it exists at all.

And the other is surprised at how mysterious it is. Well, the analogy there is that that's a good analogy for death. Birth and death are very similar. They're great mysteries. And when you're born, and only when you're born, you can turn around and look at women and wombs and yourself in the womb and say, you know, I was always in the world.

I just didn't see it until I got born. And I suspect that when we die and we're in heaven, we will look back at this life and this world and say, you know, I was always in heaven. I just didn't realize that until I died. Yeah, that's really... Who is it that said, one of the saints, all the way to heaven is heaven? Yeah. Yeah, I forget who said that. It's heaven all the way to the saints, all the way to heaven is heaven? Yeah, yeah, I forget who said that. It's heaven all the way to heaven and hell all the way to hell. Yeah.

Well, it's not hell all the way to hell. No? Because hell's final, and life isn't final. Oh, but heaven... Well, it depends on which version of heaven you take. Whether it's like an increasing opening to grace or not. It's got to be increasing. It would be boring otherwise. There's a fella here. He's more of a Franciscan in his sort of approach. Dr. Alex Plato, brilliant guy.

And he doesn't think that hell is like that with heaven. He thinks that hell is a mercy, and it catches us in our depravity and we stay there. We don't sink into hell in the way that we go up into heaven. Why does he say hell is a mercy? Because it's God preventing our descent into the abyss of wickedness. Something like that. So that you could become even more rotten than you currently are. So that you could become even more rotten than you currently are. But when you die, you'll be... That's true in this life.

But how can that be true in the next life? I think he's not denying the existence of hell or that people go to hell. I think what he's saying is, you're in hell, but you don't continue to grow in wickedness. You're caught in that level of depravity or unhumanist. Whereas in heaven he thinks that we continue to open up to receive more grace. That doesn't sound that terrifying. The most terrifying notion of hell I've ever seen is in Charles Williams' book, Descent

into Hell, in which an ordinary man gradually descends into hell until he dies and then he loses all hope. But his hell is simply nothingness. There is no other. There are no friends, is simply nothingness. There is no other. There are no friends, there are no people, there is no God. You're all alone forever without any hope. All right. Honest question. How do you live knowing that that's a possibility for you? How do you in any way like go to sleep at night?

In ignorance. If I think if we had a clear view of hell, we would despair. Edmund Spenser in The Fairy Queen has a vignette in which the Red Cross Knight, who is a hero, is invited to peer into a well at the bottom of which is hell, and he succumbs to the temptation, and he peers into the well, and he loses hope. I forget whether he actually jumps into the well or tries to and is restrained, but if we saw hell as it really is, I think we would give up all hope. But it seems to me that just talking about it at this level is enough to make people give up all hope. The fact that hell is awful, we can't understand it, and we might be going there.

Hell is awful. We can't understand it and we might be going there. No, that's not giving up all hope that's giving up all security. The world is round in space, but it's flat in time and there's an edge to the world and you can fall off of it forever. And if you're close to that edge, you're terrified, but you're not over the edge yet. Not until you die. Death is the end of the flat world. And if you're close to that edge, you're terrified, but you're not over the edge yet, not until you die. Death is the end of the flat world. I don't know what that means. It's all in the Silmarillion. Yeah, don't explain it. I just read that.

What do they teach in the schools nowadays? What does that mean? Death is the end of the flat world. Well, here, this table is flat and this little bottle cap is securely on the table and it's getting closer and closer to the edge, but it's still on the table. And once it goes over the edge, it's not on the table anymore at all. So the edge of the table is the table's absolute and death is the absolute of the world in time. Oh, okay. How do you answer the question, why wouldn't all... It seems to me from one line of reasoning that if God was as good as the Christians say that he is,

he would be about the business of rehabilitation, not condemning souls forever to hopelessness. Oh, he is. Oh, it's not God who sends you to hell. It's yourself. He does everything possible to stop it. And the only thing he could do more than he does do is to take away your free will, in which case you would be a happy robot instead of a human being. He won't do that. Love doesn't do that. instead of a human being, he won't do that. Love doesn't do that. Well, isn't it possible that he,

God could create a world where all human beings could eventually be won over? Like how could one not be won over by beauty and goodness itself? That's a good question. And I think the answer is that the presupposition of that question is that God is a lot like us. He's looking at possible worlds. Let's see, I could do this, I could do that, I have to choose between this world and that world

and therefore I choose the best world. That's Leibniz's notion that this must be the best of all possible worlds. We know that that's not true. Right. Obviously this is not the best of all possible worlds. You have arthritis, for example. Well that's a good thing. Okay. God likes to weaken us. Well, this coffee wasn't as good as it could have been. But there's no such thing as the best of all possible worlds, because any finite world can have something else that's in it that's good. Yeah.

An extra palm tree. Yeah. An extra species. A world without frogs. Yeah. Frogs are okay, but not cockroaches. What's the point of cockroaches? A world with frogs is better than a world without frogs?

All right. How about a world of tame pterodactyls who survived evolution? Wouldn't that be more interesting? Yes, but we don't have that world. Yeah So the point what's the point? Something you lost the point We fell off the edge of the world one of the ways God humiliates us is he makes us forgetful and stupid. Yeah. But when you're stupid, you're also stooped, and that's to bow. If you're not stupid and you're always upright,

you never bow, and you have no humility, and you have no. I met an old woman the other day in my neighborhood. She was going on a walk and I was kind of reluctant to sort of strike up a conversation with her because I thought it might be awkward. You know, what do I have in relation with this person? She probably don't want to talk to me anyway. But I said, oh, hi there. How are you? She was beautiful.

She was probably about 85. She was walking around the neighborhood on a walker. She was so I just want to be in her presence more. She was lovely and kind. I said to her, Oh, you have to wait till my wife comes. She's much more enjoyable than me. You'll like me a lot more when you meet her. Like I'm not good at making first impressions. She said, well, don't say that about yourself. I think you're lovely. But how do you become old and lovely? My wife is old and lovely. Her hair is all gray.

And she's more beautiful now than she ever was. Why? I don't know. In one sense she isn't, right? In one sense she isn't, of course not. But in another sense she is. It's like a play. You go through each act and each act is different.

And you either succeed or you fail to write five good parts to a play. And old age is the fifth and last part. So succeeding in Act 5 is different than succeeding in Act 1. A successful old age is different than a successful infancy. And his beauty is different. But there is a beauty. Some poet said, like a white candle in a holy place, so is the beauty of an aged face. Don't know what poet that is.

I think it may be Emily Dickinson. What did you and your wife used to do for dates when you were younger? Oh, she was born in the Bronx and I was born in New Jersey, and we went through New York City, She was born in the Bronx and I was born in New Jersey. And we went through New York City, which is a marvelous place for very good things and very bad things. We discovered Peter, Paul and Mary

before the world knew them at the Bitter End Cafe in Greenwich Village where we lived for a summer. So you'd go to concerts and- Oh yeah, some. And New York's a fantastic place. It never sleeps, literally. You can get anything you want to eat at any time of night. When I went to New York City for the first time, I said to my wife, I finally found a place that can keep up with me. You're that active, are you?

Apparently. Well, not physically, but just maybe mentally. Yes, yes. And then I remember leaving New York and going back to my little town in North Georgia and it felt like everything was on half speed. Yeah, yeah. I think it's Samuel Johnson who said, he who hates London hates life. There's everything there. There's a lot of depravity in New York.

Oh yeah. It's quite disgusting. And one thing you see very few of in New York is children. Yeah. Yeah. So you go to concerts. So I think now a lot of marriages talk about having a date night and the importance of that. And I think there's value to that. But did you talk like that when you were in your raising kids?

Yeah, but they don't anymore. College kids don't date anymore. The hookup culture has destroyed dating. In fact, there's a teacher in our philosophy department, Kelly Cronin, who teaches a whole philosophy course on dating about human relationships. And she says that the students are very reluctant to have a date, a face-to-face encounter that lasts a couple of hours so that you actually get to know the other person. But once they do it, they say, what a great idea. Yeah, I don't know how to give dating advice anymore. I'm too old. I don't understand people of his generation and others. I can't, I don't know what. I'm just so glad I got married. Well, I'm beyond that gap too. Yeah. Everybody who's

under 30 or 40 lives in the digital world. I don't. I'm an alien. I can't even turn out my own TV without my daughter's help. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I actually do feel that way about my wife. It was sad the other day. My wife put up this post on Instagram and it was her next to two younger women who are in their 20s, my wife's in her 40s, and someone said, you must love Matt. She was very cynical comment. How lovely that your husband gets to be around these young 20 year olds while you're post menopausal or something like that. It was from the depths of hell, but it was funny because I actually, she doesn't understand me or my wife at all.

You know, like I've never thought I wish my wife was 20 or had a 20 year old body. I actually haven't. I don't want that. Yeah. So it's funny that she would just live in that reality as if that were real, this sort of cynical reality. Maybe she's been deeply hurt. To be a cynic is not only a moral and psychological deprivation, it's an intellectual deprivation. It's a lack of empathy. It's a lack of understanding of other people and where they're coming from. Let me ask you if this was an example of a lack of empathy.

I was on an airplane and there was a fella a few seats in front of me and he was listening to a video on his phone and the rest of us around him had to endure it. And I thought that man should be executed. Or at least no longer allowed to vote. What do you think? There's a scene, I watch a lot of movies and used to be in the theater now it's mostly on TV. And one of the movies that got the most loud, spontaneous clapping from all the audience was one of the Star Trek movies where Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock go back in time to San Francisco to try to save the whales and they're on a bus and there's some guy with a boom

box that's bothering everybody and Spock does the body hold and he collapses and everybody claps. Do you have pet peeves like that? Are there things that as you've gotten older that bother you a lot more than they used to? Not from people, from machines. Machines are supposed to be obedient servants instead of demonic masters. And I'm so incompetent mechanically

that to me they are demonic masters. A lot of people as they get older seem to become more frustrated with people and say things like, you know, the world's going to hell or we'll look at people today. You don't seem like you have that attitude. Did you escape that on purpose or is it just built into you not to be upset with the way the world is going? Or I don't know. To me, that's a philosophical thing.

I believe that people have free will and they're all made an image of God and they're all potential saints, no matter how stupid they may be, no matter how destructive their ideology is. So how do you react? You go to the movies ever? Yeah. How do you react if there's someone behind you like talking loudly? I ignore it.

Yeah, it doesn't bother you? Yeah, it bothers me but not that much. It's gonna happen, people are stupid. One of the wisest things anybody ever said to me, my wife's father when I, we were, I'm not sure whether it was before or after I got married, but I got my PhD from Fordham University. And it was a big ceremony, and I came with a cap and gown and the form.

And my Italian father-in-law who spoke broken English said, Peter, I'm not a philosopher, but I got a piece of wisdom for you. Remember this. Whichever way you turn, and wherever you are, there's always of wisdom for you. Remember this, whichever way you turn and wherever you are, there's always an asshole behind you. So that was a wonderful piece of wisdom. So of course, I'm an asshole too.

And so are you. So let's tolerate each other. Make the best of it. How did your father-in-law think about you marrying his daughter? Did you ever ask his blessing father-in-law think about you marrying his daughter? Did you ever kind of ask his blessing? He talked about it. He said, oh, finally somebody takes her off my hands. Good luck.

She's all yours. Thank you very much. Yeah. Oh, I'd love to meet your wife. I asked you once, what's the difference between you and your wife? And you said, she's Italian and impatient. I'm Dutch and patient. Is that what you said to me?

Yeah, I guess so. That's that's part of that sounds about right that's part of it if if a potato could talk it would speak Dutch haha one of the best you know what a meme is yes little images online that people share it said is the picture of a potato and it said, if this can become vodka, you can become a saint. That's a good one. Yeah. I'll remember. Probably the best meme I've ever seen. Yeah. Um, is there things that you've done in your earlier life that you really regret,

maybe in your marriage that you didn't handle well or raising children that you weren't good at, that looking back on you like, I wish I could do that again. Oh, hundreds of little things. No one big thing. I'm not the world's best husband and father. Not the worst either. Yeah. If you could live life all over again, would you do the same thing? Or would you? I'd marry the same woman. I'd have the same children, I'd have the same job, yes,

but I hope I'll do each of those three things a bit better. Can I tell you about that conversation I had with my wife once? We'd woken up and the house was a mess. We got in from travel, kids were screaming, it was like 6.30 in the morning, we were exhausted. Stop me if I told you this. I said to my wife, we were laying in bed. I said, honey,

you remember that poster we saw once? It said, if I could do it all over again, I'd find you sooner so I could love you longer. She said, yeah. I said, I think I'd be a Dominican. In other words, you were not buying into the poster. Yeah. That's the joke. The joke is I would not marry you. I'd be alone somewhere reading a book. That's a temptation to every intellectual, I think.

But I don't mean it. Of course. I definitely don't mean it. Of course. Yeah. But it is funny that we always want to be where we're... Maybe that's not true. You seem like a much more contented man than me, but I think a lot of us would like to be anywhere other than we are.

I'm an escapist. I have this dream of going off to a cabin in the Yukon somewhere, which is just a silly temptation. But I don't feel that right now. I don't want to be anywhere else. I'm enjoying being with you. I'm enjoying. I think conversations are very beautiful and it's the best thing I that's my favorite thing to do

It's a cheap and available Joy that that we neglect and when you have a podcast you can force people to talk to you That's what I do. I make them turn their phones off and talk to me. It's great Well, you know Wyoming Catholic College requires that students have no phones at all on campus ever and many requires that students have no phones at all on campus ever. God bless them. And many applicants say, I can't go to that place. And most of them say, I'm not sure I'm going to like this. And every graduating senior says that's one of the best things about it.

They all love it. Yeah, yeah. The real world instead of screens. Yeah, I think it was Larry David who said, wherever I am, I just want to get the hell out of there. Oh, what a terrible thing to say. It's a terrible thing to say. But I think it was Larry David who said, wherever I am, I just want to get the hell out of there. Oh, what a terrible thing to say. It's a terrible thing to say, but I get it. Only in hell do you validly say that.

No, but I get it. Every red light I sit at, I think to myself, why do I hate this red light? If I was on the other side, I'd be just as unhappy as I am now. So why do I want the green? Why is it so important to me? Because you're stupid. Because I'm stupid. Good. We figured that out. And that's funny. People who aren't stupid aren't funny. So we're stupid and we're funny. Do you have a favorite stand-up comedian? Who's the Boston guy? I'm getting through all, I forget names. Is he, is he? Steven, Steven Wright.

Okay. Master of one-liners. Okay. He's very philosophical. Things like, I went home to my apartment and I discovered that someone had stolen everything I possess and replaced it with an identical item. How would you know? That'd be a good premise for a horror story. I wrote one once. Tell me about it.

Men is coming home in a train, notices little things out of place. There was no house here this morning. How did they build a house here in one day? That house was yellow every other week that I...how come now it's red? And he comes home and he notices little things. His son is a little skinnier. He couldn't have lost that much weight. And there are bumps on his daughter's head. And his wife is unnaturally nice and he touches the table and it seems to be full of hair instead of wood and then he sees the horns and the hoofs and everything is a satanic imposition. And what's the conclusion? Is he in hell? He goes insane, yes. Yeah that's that conclusion? Is he going insane? Yes.

Yeah, that's that's love craft in right now. He seems to kind of take you out of. Your equilibrium and thrust you into a strange place that makes you mad. Yes, I love fantasy and science fiction when I was a kid. Yeah, I love horror. I love horror that's more strange than bloody. It's the strangeness that scares me. Exactly. Exactly. It's the power of suggestion. I heard a premise for a horror story, which I'm currently writing.

A fella is woken up at two in the morning by his next door neighbor, who's a recluse. He says, quick, come with me. And he comes across, what the hell's going on? Just come, just come. So I'm actually, my sister and I are in the process of writing it. And so what happens is he's sitting down. This is the story of the recluse. He's woken up to the screams of his daughter upstairs and he rushes upstairs and the daughter's on the bed terrified. And she says, daddy, Daddy, there's someone under my bed. And to placate her and to soothe her, he gets down on his knees and he lifts up the skirt of the bed.

And it's his daughter who says, Daddy, Daddy, there's someone on top of my bed. That's fricking terrifying, Peter. Yeah, isn't it? Yeah. Is that too terrifying? Especially if they're identical. Yeah are identical and then what happens help me finish the story well the stories well he goes he runs downstairs gets the next door neighbor and then what did some fool he finds that the same thing is happening to everybody else and he's the only one left in the world who has only one body. Okay. Hang on. Hang on. Hey, would you mind if I asked you to make me a coffee?

We're still recording there, right? Okay. That's okay. Hang on. He what if, Oh, what if so the next door neighbor, he's sitting on the couch and he explains to his neighbor that this is what just happened to me. What if his next door neighbor, not the recluse, is like, yeah, that's totally normal. What's the matter like that?

No. But what do you mean it's happening to everybody? Why does it matter what fell? Don't you love how professional we are? I mean, you've been on EWTN. You've been on Jordan Peterson show. But it was I just said I'm not the one who kicked that's not professional. That's friendship.

What's that? Well, you and Jordan Peterson and EWTN are my friends. You're a beautiful person. Yes. On the other hand, I have water here if you need it. Although I'm friends with my colleagues and my employers and my students, my job is a job. Uh, and the job, I would describe as intellectual prostitution known by my body. So I sell my mind and Boston colleges and my pimp. Yep. So students pay their tuition and some of it comes back to me as salary.

Yeah, that's terrifying. I want to go back to the horror story. All right. So, okay, let's call it. So you've got the main narrator. We'll call him John. His next door neighbor's crazy. We'll call him Gary. That's a crazy name. It's my dad's name. He's not crazy. So Gary tells John what happened with the two girls. How does John respond? Please don't use some water. You're not using stupid water, are you?

Oh, my gosh. You're trying to kill me. No, I will not be a man. Stupendor water will give you a cancer and a third eye, I think. Oh, wonderful. Yeah. Love canal. But don't worry, you're not drinking it. Well, in some way or other.

The guy splits into two. Who? The recluse? No, the other one. Oh, I see what you're saying. So you identify with a recluse and it turns out he's the only single man left of the world. Okay. That's good. Not enough.

It's not. It's not. Does he need to come in by the mic or is he good? That's something like the story of the doppelganger in traditional German mythology. You see yourself coming towards yourself but you're dead. But that dead self is identical with the living self and you know that when the dead self approaches you close enough to touch you, you will become dead too.

And each night you have a dream in which you're double getting closer and closer to you. Okay. Forgive me. I know I'm a bit spastic here. I'm trying to think this through. All right. So you got John goes over to see Gary. Gary tells him about the two daughters under his bed. John reassures Gary by going back to John's house to wake up John. Yes. Come on.

Yes. Thank you. This is good. I have to write this now. It's terrifying. And do you think it's got to it's got to be more terrifying next rather than less. Yeah, it's a short story.

That's why I like short stories are easy to do. All right. So John, John and Gary go to see John to talk to him about the two girls. And is second John like really concerned that Gary's crazy? Also, are you comfortable with how this interview is progressing? Because I feel like I... Oh, yes. Okay, good. Yes, yes. We're making something beautiful because it's so ugly together.

Hmm. Maybe everything in the world should have a double, not just people. Okay. And maybe it starts with people and then it flows over to pets. Uh, and then to flies and spiders and that, that, that doesn't go anywhere. I also don't like overly complicated stories, probably because I'm not a good storyteller, but I like keeping things really tight and right simple right Shakespeare's plots are too complicated too many minor characters I do like the idea of John thinking Gary's crazy going back to John's house to see John and the two of them looking at it like thank you so much the two of them look do you need another coffee or

That would be nice. Yes. Thank you a pint Yeah That's good well you have to ask John is the narrator that's the other thing I like first-person horror stories There's those are the most terrifying you know Dracula Frankenstein is like that well if John is the narrator then he must be the same person and Gary must be a no. But what if I think John's the crazy person who doesn't realize he's crazy and John is telling the account about his crazy neighbor who doesn't realize that there's two of everything. What about that?

Yes, yes. I think I'm not sure what novelist it is. I think it's Cormac McCarthy, who wrote a story. I'm not sure it's a short story or a novel. I haven't read it, read reviews of it in which the the narrator is, well, not crazy, but stupid and wicked. But he doesn't think he's stupid and wicked. So the whole story is told from his point of view. It's very and wicked. So the whole story is told from his point of view. It's a very ordinary story.

And you realize only at the end that you're in the mind of a horrible human being. Now that's really good because you instinctively trust the narrator. Yes, yes. But if you start picking up on signs that the narrator's off, you'll immediately think

that the author did something wrong and then begin to realize that something... The ultimate horror then would be to realize in the end that the storyteller who's telling all these stories, namely God, is insane. Oh, yeah. Imar Bergman has a movie in which a preacher is losing his faith and he finally sees God as a giant spider about to consume him. Yeah, that would be terrifying.

That is the ultimate horror. Nothing is safe. I have one horror story where a man is drinking tea late at night before going to bed. No one else is in the house. His family are on vacation and his big black dog turns around and looks at him and says No one will ever believe you and turns around and lays down So the story is about how they that would that would destroy your life Don't you think most kids would say no that just fulfills my desire to talk to the animals like that But then the dog never talks again

So the wife comes home and he tells his wife what happened and she's never talks again. So the wife comes home and he tells his wife what happened and she's sympathetic because she's worried about him and he's begging the dog to talk. Please buddy, say it again. Anyway, the story ends where he buries his dog inside of his basement wall because he's starving it to try to get it to talk again. But then he ends up burying it. And then the dog turns out to be immortal and comes back to haunt him. Reminds me of, was it not Lovecraft? Thank you. Who's the other fella? Poe?

Poe, Edgar Allen Poe. About the cat? Don't know the cat story. Which one is that? Oh, I think he tortures his cat, gouges its eyes out or something, and then the cat sets his house on fire. I forget. I love, I love horror stories so much. its eyes out or something and the cat sets his house on fire. I forget. Hmm. I love I love horror stories so much. There's a lot of filth. There's a lot of junk, right? Obviously that goes without saying the Jason's the Freddy Krueger's all of that stuff.

There's a lot of junk in the fantasy world too, but Lord of the Rings is a masterpiece. Yeah. What's the difference between fantasy and sci-fi? Sci-fi doesn't have a supernatural dimension. Everything can be explained by science. In fantasy, you go beyond the bounds of natural science. Oh, that's excellent. That's really good.

Who's that fantasy writer, Oscar, Oscar, Oscar? That didn't give you much to go on. He made a joke. He said the difference is that sci-fi, that fantasy has trees on the cover, which I thought was funny. It's a joke. But I like your answer. I don't get it. Explain the joke. Well, fantasy and sci-fi, what's the difference? It was meant to be a joke, just that fantasy

has trees on the front cover, and sci-fi books never do. Ah, yes. Machines and the trees. Maybe it has to do more with the natural, maybe that's kind of similar to your point that one has to do with natural sciences and where it leads us and the other. I find that sci-fi devotees either gravitate to Ray Bradbury. Yeah. Or to... That's him. Say it again. Orson Scott Card. That fella. I think I've read him. I've read him. Powerful narrator. I think he's a Mormon. Can you double check that? Pretty sure he's a Mormon. Cordwainer Smith is another compelling science fiction writer. I love people who like sci-fi. You know what I mean? If I meet someone like, oh, I love sci-fi, even if I don't love sci-fi, I know I will like them. Hmm. Perhaps because how they think. I like when people are into weird things or things that aren't...

Well fantasy has been weirder than sci-fi. Yeah, so it would be the same if I met someone and they loved fantasy. Yeah, me too. Yeah. They're interesting. Yeah. What books are you reading right now? Well, I'm reading some of my own books, the ones that I'm writing, and I'm discovering something that's quite remarkable. When I read a book that I And I never read the whole of but little parts of a book that I wrote many years ago Or when I'm rereading a manuscript that I finished a couple months ago, and now I'm rereading it I often am surprised at some sentences. My goodness. Did I say that?

Why am I surprised by myself? Well, I have a bad memory. Yeah, but it's always the good passages. Wow. Did I say that? It's amazing. Now, it's as if someone else wrote that passage just for me. Now, I suppose there are psychological explanations for this in terms of memory and the

suppression of the subconscious, but philosophically, I know I'm not a schizophrenic, I'm not two different selves, and I experience some of my writing as coming from another self, which is far wiser than this self. So the most likely hypothesis that explains that piece of datum is divine inspiration. God says, you're not that good a writer, so I'll take your hand for a while and scribble out a few sentences here. Yeah. And this is a new book of yours you just gave me, thank you, What Would Socrates Say?

WWSS. Not What Would Jesus Do, What Would Socrates Say. Is that the play? Maybe, unconsciously. Did you come up with a title? No. But I've written a lot of books of Socratic dialogue, and I think the key thing that makes them successful and makes the readers like them or not, I don't know, I probably don't care, is that I don't write them as a philosopher would. I don't first of all set out the issues, the arguments, and then put characters in it.

I start with the characters. I identify with Socrates, I love Socrates. I think I understand Socrates. So I unfold that title. What would Socrates say if he were here talking to a modern student who knows the history of philosophy? What would he say and what would the student reply? So I just use my imagination.

And the topic is the philosophical issues. But I think that's the right way to write a Socratic dialogue. That's that's what makes Plato so good. He knows Socrates very well. Philosophers have tried to imitate Socratic dialogue, and none of them have succeeded very well at all. Their philosophy is good, maybe better than Plato's, but they don't have Socrates right.

Do you think you do a good job? I think I do a better job than Barclay or Santiano or other philosophers who have Socratic dialogues. Yeah, I'm not as brilliant a philosopher as them, but I think I've got Socrates right. Yep. Right. That's why it works for dozens of books. And it's also an implied critique of modern institutionalized education, because here we have Socrates sitting on one end of a log and a student called Nat Wilk, which is all in English for I Know Not Who. I'll put it up here, Josiah, if you want to show them. It's a beautiful front cover.

Yes. And these two people, just two, So Socrates and one other person, one at a time, like Mother Teresa, on a log. And that log is Socrates University, the ideal university. Socrates is one in the log, you are the other. Nothing else. No administration, no fees, no anything else. So do you know how many books you've written? Is this the latest? Because I saw you also did one for World on Fire about Catholic plays or plays that we can...

Ah, yes, yes. Got on stage. Yeah. I'm over 100 now. I've lost count. I don't care. 100 was my goal when I reached that, so everything else is extra. It's time to get into horror now.

No, no. I know my limits. So everything else is extra. It's time to get into horror now. No, no, I know my limits. I think I want to write a book about Purgatory. Yeah. Because I'm getting close to death and that's what I anticipate. Yeah. And what's gonna come next? Reading St. Catherine of Genoa

has changed my view of Purgatory very significantly. Who is that person and tell me what she has to? St. Catherine of Genoa had view of Purgatory very significantly. Who is that person and tell me what she has to? St. Catherine of Genoa had visions of Purgatory. And she tells about her visions. And without contradicting anything the church has always taught that Purgatory exists because of our sinful habits and it's very painful to get rid of them and the pains of Purgatory

are greater than the pains of Earth. She adds that the joys of purgatory are greater than the pains of earth, she adds that the joys of purgatory are greater than the joys of earth, because as all the saints say, in purgatory you're incapable of sinning. You're perfectly online with God's will. You will only what God wills. And God wills those purgatorial sufferings. And therefore, even though they're intense, you want them. In a sense, you enjoy them, even though they're painful. Well, you're also infallibly certain of your salvation, because you've been saved. So that's a done deed. How could you not be joyful?

Guaranteed. Yeah. And your relationship to time is different. Your eventual salvation is not just future, although it is future, it's also present in a way that it's not on earth. We know infallibly that... Do you know when she lived? I've heard the name, but I don't know anything about her. She's not a recent... 14th century, 15th century, something like that. Yeah. I find that purgatory is a concept a lot of Protestants are more open to these

days as Lewis was. I do too. I'm writing a series of dialogues. I originally intended it to be a kind of a Catholic apologetic to Protestant evangelicals, and then I realized that the Protestant evangelical that I dialogued with the most and that I love and care about the most was my own father, who was scandalized when I became a Catholic. And I remember some of the conversations we have, so those are the two characters. The book is written by John Craeft and Peter Craeft. Ah, that's lovely. And one of the dialogues was about purgatory, and I remember it intensely,

because we were talking about the Catholic doctor of purgatory and he as an evangelical was staunchly opposed to it and had some good arguments against it and I had some good arguments for it. My mother was listening and my father was quite intelligent. He was a kind of amateur theologian and had some very good arguments. And my mother was a very good person and truly loving, but it was, it wasn't stupid, but sort of passive and, you know, go along with anything. She was listening and she interrupted at one point after we were getting nowhere.

And she said to my father, John, I think Peter believes the same thing we do about purgatory. And my father said, of course he doesn't. He believes in purgatory. We don we do about purgatory. And my father said, of course he does. And he believes in purgatory. We don't believe in purgatory. And she said, well, no, not the Catholic version of it, but we believe in everything in the Bible, don't we? And my father said, yes, of course.

Well, she said, the Bible says that we're all sinners. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. And the saints say they're great sinners. And that's true at every moment of our lives. So when we die, we die as sinners. I'm only a sinner saved by grace. My father says, yes, that's true. Okay, my mother said.

Now, Bible also says that there's no sin in heaven. In heaven, everybody's perfect. Nothing evil can enter heaven. My father says, yeah, no sin in heaven. In heaven, everybody's perfect. Nothing evil can enter heaven. My father says, yeah, that's true too. And then my mother says, well, the difference between sin and evil is immense. It's like the Grand Canyon. So we're gonna have to change terrifically when we die,

and God's gotta do something to us. So if the Catholics wanna call that pur purgatory and we don't, aren't we just arguing about a word? And I remember my father's look. He looked at my mother with a new wisdom. You know, maybe you're right. Let's talk about something else. And we never return to the subject.

Wow. That's amazing. She anticipated Catholic apologetics so many years later, because that's really how a lot of Catholics will talk about it. Yeah, the final rush of our sanctification. Because if I'm in heaven and I'm still like this, I don't know if that could be heaven. Yeah, I'm still an idiot. I'm still attached to sin. I'm still attracted by it. Well, C.S. Lewis was definitely a Protestant, firmly believed in purgatory.

He said, our souls want purgatory, don't they? When you, I love this analogy, when you step into the heavenly mansion and God the Father says, welcome, my beloved child, but you see that you stink and you are full of bugs and dirt, wouldn't you like to have a nice hot shower first? Wouldn't you say, oh yes please. And he'll say, but it will hurt you now. Wouldn't you say, oh please give me the shower. Yeah, you wouldn't say, you wouldn't want a God to be like, we accept you as you are. No.

Come on. No. Ah, okay. No. To accept yourself as you are, what a horrible thing. Yeah. In one sense, it's a necessary thing. You must love yourself ontologically, but you must be profoundly dissatisfied with yourself morally.

Yeah. You're a stupid sinner. It's probably a sign that you're not too far gone if you're disgusted by yourself. Yeah. The second chapter of The Imitation of Christ talks about you should be mean in your own eyes, like to look upon yourself and to not want flattery because you're aware of who you are.

Yeah. At the same time, you see yourself as something of incalculable value. You're one of God's kids. Yeah. You're not King Kong's kids, you're King God's kid. How has your wife made you a better man? In every possible way. By showing what a wise mother is. She's a much wiser mother than I am a wise father. By making life pleasant for me and by making life painful and challenging for me,

we all do that to each other. So here's a complete package, a human being. And there's a lot of virtues and some vices. We all have vices. We all have stuff we're bad at. And even the stuff we're both bad at is something that is divinely used as a way of making each other better. My impatience and her impatience together is like flint and steel. And of course there are arguments and disagreements and uncomfortableness and problems in communication.

And that's good, that's great. That makes each of us stronger and better. If there is that basic respect, that basic ontologically, you are through and through solid. Although you, you drive me crazy sometimes. We all drive each other crazy sometimes. If we're close enough, if we're not close, we don't drive each other crazy. But if we get really close, we drive each other crazy and we

fall madly in love with each other at the same time. It's funny how in the, I've only been married 18 years, but it's funny in the course of that time that I I I I need to be with her. I need to walk with her like I I don't know what I'm trying to say. Like I'm not trying to be spiritual. It's just I want her in the way that I want my. Your left leg. My left leg.

It's a part of you. Yeah. I love you. Yeah. I mean, she's not around. It doesn't feel right. I love that saying in St. Paul, one of his letters, he says, paraphrasing now, Christian husband, how could you possibly hate your wife? No man hates his own flesh.

Yeah, that's you. That's right. Yeah, maybe that's the other half of you. OK, you said that she makes your life more pleasant. How does she do that in kind of practical ways? Well, in a practical way, when we argue, she's usually right and I'm usually wrong. It must be difficult to argue with a philosopher who writes books on logic. Oh no, it's easy. I've never won an argument with her. Even when I'm right, I lose.

Yes. That's funny. I remember one of the wisest things she does and she's ever done is she doesn't read my books ever. Well, I don't know. Maybe she sneaks a look sometimes, but we don't we don't argue about philosophy. Yeah, we tried once. There was a book that early in my career we wrote together. At least I wrote the first draft

and she made some very good corrections. It's called Angels and Demons. And when I sent it to Ignatius Press, I think it was my third or fourth or fifth book for Ignatius Press, Father Fessio, the editor said, Peter, what happened? Your style is so much better on this book than the other ones. I said, well, I felt me right. But we had arguments about that book. That's got to be a colon, not a

semicolon. No, it's a semicolon. We would argue for an hour, not a semicolon. How would imagine, you know, like back to the future, imagine if you had never married and you were sitting before me now, how would you be different, do you think? I would be much less wise. I would be much less complete. I would probably have written 200 books instead of 100. And I wouldn't have either as much trouble or as much joy in my life as I have now. And I wouldn't have children and grandchildren. And great-grandchildren.

You have great-grandchildren? One, yes. So all of those people, till the end of the world and all of their deeds would be subtracted from the world. It would be a much poorer world. Yeah. Do you like hanging out with your grandchildren? What do you do with them? Grandchildren are so much easier than children. There ought to be a way of skipping children, just having grandchildren. Isn't that because it's somebody else's responsibility? My great grandchild is, they name him Leo, and that's perfect because he's like a lion. He's very strong.

He's very large. He's very active. He's very happy. Yeah, I love my grandchildren. What do you do with them? Well, they're living in New York state and he's only, I think, six months old, so I haven't actually touched him yet. Oh.

Yes, I did. Yes, I did. I carried him for a day when they visited, yes. Lovely. But you also have did. Yes, I did. I carried him for a day when they visited. Yes. But you also have grandchildren. And how old are they? Are they still? Let's see. Oldest one. What's the young? Because they're not young, I guess, your grandchildren. They're not. No. Yeah, that's what I'm getting hung up on. When I think of grandchildren, I think of kids. But you're old enough that your grandchildren have children. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's what I'm getting hung up on. When I think of grandchildren, I think of kids, but you're old enough that your grandchildren are having children. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. But it's amazing that if one little thing had gone differently in my past, and I hadn't married or had married somebody else, all those children and all those grandchildren and all that difference that they would make to the world would be subtracted.

It's amazing. It would be, but maybe the kids you would have had from the other wife would have been better than your kids. Impossible. Really? No, no. Was it difficult for you as your, I asked this, was it difficult for you not to interfere with how your children raised your grandchildren?

Did you see them doing things and think, oh, they shouldn't be? No, because they all lived fairly far away. So we would see them to visit, but we wouldn't be there day to day. So we weren't in a big extended family. And that's a shame because you have more problems, but you also have more intimacy and love in a big extended family. Did you ever consider moving from Boston? Not seriously. No. When we got married, I was from New Jersey and my wife from New York, and we both had families in New Jersey and New York,

and we said, where are we gonna live? We drew two circles. One circle was about 20, 25, 30 miles from those two cities, and inside that circle is too close, because mommy and daddy would want to be around all the time and that would be too, and then we drew another circle which was about 200 miles away and outside of that, that would be too difficult.

You'd have to have an overnight to visit your parents. So there were only two cities between the two circles and one was Boston, the other was Philadelphia. So the first job I took was in Philadelphia at Villanova. The second job I took was in Boston at Boston College. So that's been good. Just close enough and just far away enough that you've got your privacy and your independence,

but you can go there. Yeah. Yeah, I know it was very sad for my parents that we don't live in Australia. I miss them, but I'm glad we live here, but it is sad. Your parents are still in Australia? Yeah, yeah. Hopefully they'll come and visit one more time.

Yeah, that's a long trip. I've been invited to Australia a couple of times, and it's too far. Yeah. What is it, a 13 hour plane trip? From LA, it's about 13, yeah, to Sydney. But then if you've got to go somewhere else. Yeah.

And then from Boston, what's it like five hours to LA or so. So my wife and I went to Japan. Yeah. One year old. He told me about this to study Buddhism. Yeah. But we stopped in San Francisco and Hawaii on the way. Yeah. Is there a place you'd like to visit if you didn't have to endure such a grueling flight? The Holy land. Once the have you ever been? Once the bullets stopped. I haven't been either. I think the most beautiful place I've ever seen

was Norway, the fjords. We've traveled enough. I just spent six months in Europe. I was in Austria and then I got to go to a different country every weekend for three months to preach. It was really beautiful. My goodness, you've been all and all around yeah what's your favorite place I was so blown away by Slovenia really didn't even know it was a country

before I went there what's in Slovenia not Melania Trump she didn't tell me but she wasn't there it was very upsetting that's where she's from there was like it was just beautiful it was on a canal we were in this place called Ljubljana or Ljubljana I can never pronounce it properly and it was just stunningly beautiful yeah hmm a lot of beautiful women too my wife and I both realized this were like how come all these women are supermodels and all the men come up to their shoulders hmm yeah so that was beautiful where else do we go that we loved? Romania was lovely.

We got to preach in Transylvania. Again, didn't know that existed. Thought that was just in a book. I'm a very ignorant person. How do you account for the popularity of the Dracula legend? Oh, well, I don't know. I bet, I mean, I've got some thoughts, but you've probably thought about this a lot longer than me if you're asking me.

So I like the first part of Dracula. When it gets to the epistolary back and forth, I lose interest. That first part with him in the castle, seeing him walk down like a spider that was like a big insect, like, and when he sees him in the coffin and talks him talks about him like a big bloated insect with sticky blood on his that was really frightening yeah my wife and I would actually listen to an audio book of it before we'd go to bed at night and we'd feel afraid which was fun yeah but what what do you think I think the image of the Antichrist But what what do you think? I think the image of the Antichrist.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. The sacred blood, but sucked out of us instead of given to us. By a creature who uses his supernatural powers for evil. Transforms. Something inhuman, something deliberately unnatural. The notion of nature, I think, is disappearing. The natural law is no longer reigning in ethics, and human nature itself is

usually thought to be changeable. But deep down we know that evil and the unnatural go together. That terrifying scene in The Shining with Jack Nicholson where he visits these demonic creatures. You see a dog with a man's face or a man with a dog's face. The devil loves to make things unnatural, hates nature. That scene in the shining with the woman in the bathtub, uh, remind, I think is a good analogy for pornography and fornication, because, um, you've got this beautiful woman who tempts him, beckons him. He begins to give himself to her and then

sees the horror only after right I think I think fornication pornography when we act sexually the temptation says to us come to me and I'll give you your the desires of your heart and then it leaves you with a rotting corpse that does that most effectively I think is Charles Williams' descent into hell, because the anti-protagonist falls in love with this woman who rejects him, and there's a demonic counterfeit of the woman who's perfect in every way, like the object of pornography, and he has to constantly make choices between the real woman and the false woman who fulfills

all his desires. And he chooses the false woman. And it's not just the woman, but the whole world then becomes like this false woman. Mason Harkness Okay, I'm sorry, I missed a step. So it's real life and he wants this woman who rejects him, but there's another woman who's essentially the same in appearance? RK This other woman doesn't exist. It's a demonic illusion. But he doesn't know that, and he doesn't see that. And he sees her as real, and as someone who will fulfil his every desire, as the real woman won't. And he gradually

learns that the only way to fulfil all his desires is to is to follow Satan's way Because he can he can do that God won't when he encounters the illusion does he think she's real? Yes, yes, he doesn't summon her or no that he's no yeah No, and what's the first giveaway that it's does he know it's not her? And what's the first giveaway that it's does he know it's not her? What's the book? I have a first. He first does this in other areas. He deliberately tells lies when they're convenient and doesn't do anything that displeases him.

He learns that he can get away with it. Yeah. So he gradually prefers the dishonest world of the honest world and all its details. It's a terrifying piece. It's psychologically very subtle. It's not a horror movie. Nothing awful happens. Oh, it's a movie? No, no, no. Oh, sorry, I see your point.

It's a book, but it wouldn't make a good movie because it's not visually stunning, but it's psychologically stunning. I assigned it a couple of times in a philosophy and literature course, and every time I assigned it I had at least one student in the class say, I could not read this book. I was too overcome with terror. Was it called Descent into Hell? By Charles Williams. Wow. I haven't heard of it, but I should read it.

Williams was something of a mystic, a good friend of C.S. Lewis's. And his books are not easy to read, but they're fascinating. They're supernatural thrillers. One of them, All Hallows Eve, has two protagonists who die on page one. They die on page one. There are no flashbacks, and it's about this world rather than the next. Figure that one out. He dies on page one. The two protagonists die on page one. And there's no flashbacks but. But it's not about the next world, it's about this world. There's another one, The Place of the Lion, which is the one that got Louis interested in, in which the protagonists are platonic forms.

Platonic lions come and inhabit a real lion, like hunting butterflies. Everything is larger than itself. Yeah. And, and more, more than itself. Interesting. That's, that's a strange way of describing the plot of a movie. You watch the Twilight Zone, I'm sure. Oh, yeah. Yeah, there's one. I haven't actually haven't seen this episode, but someone told me that there's an episode of The Twilight Zone where a fella dies and he shows up

and he's gambling and he's winning money and he's got the women and he's drinking. He thinks he's in heaven, but he eventually at the end realizes it's actually hell. Well, there's another one, something like that, where three criminals are robbing a bank and they get caught and shot. And the wickedest one of all, you see him die and you see his soul leave his body

and it goes upwards and there's fluffy white clouds and apparently angels singing on their harps and he enters the Golden City and St. Peter at the door says, Welcome, welcome. And the criminal says, I've got a mistake. I don't belong here. I belong in the other place. No, no. Right here. Sit in stone. We make no mistakes here. And the criminal says, oh, great. What do I get? Anything you want. Anything I want? Yeah. Gold. All right. How much? Fill Yankee Stadium with gold. St. Peter snaps his fingers. Yankee Stadium is full of gold. It's all mine. Yes. Well, what can I do with it? Anything you want? St. Peter snaps his fingers. Yankee Stadium is full of gold. It's all mine. Yes.

Well, what can I do with it? Anything you want? Can I buy anything with it? No, everything's free here. Oh, what good is it then? Well, give me women. So a harem of scantily clads passed before him. He picks this one, that one, this one.

And there's an enormous bed and he goes to bed with three women and the lights go out. This is back in the 50s and 60s. That's what teenagers thought happened when you had sex. And he wakes up and he's bored. So he slaps one of these girls on the face and says, wake up, bitch. And she wakes up and kisses him and says, no, I want to fight with you. And he says, oh, I want that too. And he keeps slapping her around, she has orgasms. So he takes a chair and tries to kill her. Just, oh, do it again, I love it, I love it. He rings for St. Peter, says, you made a mistake.

I'm in the wrong place. Send me where lefties and two finger is. They're in the other place. I gotta be with them. He says, sorry, no mistake here. Well, wait a minute. Wait a minute. I thought heaven was the place where you get everything you want.

And then St. Peter, you see his horns just, oh, no, that's the other place. And this is a Twilight Zone episode or? Twilight Zone. He's in hell. He gets everything he wants. Yeah. And he hates it. I wonder if that's the one someone was telling me about. Yeah, that's interesting.

Sci-fi. I love that. I never got into Star Trek. But I, yeah. Star Trek is one of the most philosophical shows in the history of TV. Love it. Know all the episodes. The. Star Trek is one of the most philosophical shows in the history of TV. Love it. Know all the episodes. The original Star Trek.

It's better than its successors, not technologically or even in acting. It's kind of crude, but the philosophy of it is subtle. It's amazing that the more contemporary a movie is, the better its technology is, and the shallow where its characterization and plot is. Mason- Yeah, that's interesting. Like it substitutes for story. Did you ever watch the horror movie

The Thing? David- Yes. That's truly horrible, yes. Mason- I mean, if people like horror, watch that movie. Kurt Russell. I saw it a long time ago and then someone again said, you have to watch it. It's better than you remember and it was Mm-hmm. It was really really good excellent story Powerful suggestion. Yeah, that's why night. Shea Alman is effective, especially that first movie they Sixth Sense Sixth Sense. That's his best one. Did you watch the movie about the beach? I think

there was Shyamalan. On the beach? Yeah. About Australia. Oh no. Josiah, maybe you can help me with this. I think it was M. Night. Old. Oh, please watch this. What's the name of it? Old. OLD. So it's about a group of people don't know each other, you know, three or four families. Some have kids, most don't. Oh, yeah. They show up on this beach which ages them rapidly. Right? Yes.

Have you seen it? Yes, I've seen that. That broke my heart, that movie. That broke my heart. I was in, I was weeping watching that movie, especially with that Sheila in the cave, you know, who wants to be beautiful, but it's gradually getting older and she starts breaking. Yeah.

Dear Lord. Who wrote the screenplay for that? Was it a screenplay? How did you? It was a movie, it had to be. Oh, I didn't know that that's what that meant. It was a script. Oh, the script. Is that M. Night Shyamalan? Yeah.

Ah, that's the one. Yeah, yeah. That movie really... Some movies you watch and you... It's hard to recover. There's a short story by Dostoevsky called A Gentle Creature that did that to me. That destroyed me, that little story.

I didn't read that. Oh, please read it. It'll take you four hours. It is... It's a long, short story. Oh, please read it. It'll take you four hours. It is a long short story. Well yeah, novella they call them I suppose. Something like the dream of a ridiculous man. That's another good one. It starts, I'm not giving it away because it says this in the beginning, the way the

story starts, a woman kills herself and her dead body is on the card table and people are interviewing the husband and he's talking about how it came to this. And I read that and it made me realize I need to love my wife better. Yeah, because he talks about how he kind of manipulated her and how he wouldn't talk to her and he would try to punish her and try to train her and teach her. He was bragging about this? I don't know if he was bragging or if he was so miserable he was delighting in his misery as Russian characters seem to do.

Taking delight in how wicked they could be. Isn't it amazing that the Russians who are so profound and sensitive are also so spectacularly wicked? You told me about a commencement speech that a Russian gave once who he said, we Russians, you Americans are boring, we are at least wicked but we're interesting. Salya Knudson's great Harvard commencement address, 1978, one of the great speeches in the history of civilization. I'm glad you told me that because I've shared that little anecdote with a friend and he wants to know where that came from, so that's good to know.

I'm sure that's available online. I was there. What? I was there. It was raining all day. And the people in the front row, actually I saw this on television later because I wasn't that close to the front row. When he started with his critique of Western civilization, there were important people there. I think either the president or the vice president was there. Their faces were set in stone. They were scowling.

Up until that point, he was lionized as the greatest writer in the world. After that, he was dropped like a hot potato. It was like Mother Teresa's address to Congress. Yeah, about abortion, which he started talking about. So what was his critique of Western civilization that you thought was valid? We've forgotten God. And without God, we're boring. And he said the most striking thing I find in coming to America is, and I'm not praising Russian communism by any means.

I'm not suggesting that that's better, but there's no courage here. You don't need courage. Life is too easy. And without courage, you don't have any of the other virtues. People are shocked by that. You know what is kind of heartening though? I feel like when we put in a place where courage is needed, you do find heroes. You do. Even among the kind of insipid modern culture. You know if you hear about like a school shooting or someone there's usually stories of people who step up to the plate. Yep. Even in New

York City after 9-11. Yeah. Heroes all over the place. God bless them. Yeah. Yeah it's like we're made to be courageous. It's like our personality comes forth. We become more fully alive. But our ideology moves in the opposite direction in trying to create a world in which you don't need to be a hero. Yeah. In which all your needs are taken care of. Back to the machine that you plug yourself into. Yeah. Did you know father Benedict Grichaud very well? Yes. Yes. Tell me about wonderful man. Combination of a brilliant psychologist and a Jewish comedian. Great New York sense of humor. Yeah.

I remember someone asking him on a radio show if he was, you know, how he was feeling about death and he was like, Oh, I can't wait. I'm so done. Something like that. Well, you know, Father Fessio was interviewed recently and the interviewer said, you're complaining a lot about our crazy culture and civilization. How come you're so happy? And he says, I'm 86 years old and I'm getting out of this crazy inside asylum. Yeah, Father Fessio isn't someone, I'm sure he is a happy man, but he's not someone that gives that vibe off.

Right. Yeah. Well, okay, tell me more about Benedict Rochelle. Do you have any memories of him? I think of him as Gandalf. Gandalf the Grey. Tough, wise, no nonsense, no baloney. A combination of great empathy with foolish people and no empathy at all for foolishness.

Intolerant of stupid ideas and stupid practices, but very tolerant of the people. And it's a shame that our ideology is moving in the opposite direction. Be tolerant of ideas, and if you're not tolerant of ideas, we're not gonna tolerate you. Yeah, that seems to be a mark of the holy man, is that they have a...

They're not scandalized by sin or the sins of others. Love the sinner, hate the sin. It's pretty wild actually. You know, the holier people are, it seems in my experience, they seem to be less shocked when you tell them how wicked you are. This is why I'm... Just to finish that thought, and I want to hear your point, but conversely, it seems to me the shallower or further away people are from God, the more we pearl clutch and

are horrified by people. Yeah, yeah, that... What were you going to say? That inevitably follows, you see, because evil can only ape good. It depends on good. It's defined by good. It doesn't have anything positive in it. No, people who hate that saying love the sinner and hate the sin, who say, this thing that

you call a sin, this is my identity. And if you criticize my so-called sin, you're criticizing me. If you hate my sin, you hate me. I am my, what you call sin. That's terrifying. Because that makes repentance impossible. Repentance is like dissolving the glue between the sinner and the sin. All sins have their destiny in the garbage dump hell. And if you identify with that, if that's your identity, then you're going to hell.

Not because the thing you do is particularly wicked. All sins are equally wicked. You can go to hell for a minor sin as well as a major sin as long as you don't repent of it. But the attitude that you have towards your own sin, this is not something that is a weakness that I wish I didn't have, this is not something that I'm ashamed of, this is something I embrace. I am proud of it. That's terrifying. That's that's Phariseeism. But the new Pharisees was very different than the old. The old Pharisees were were proud of their virtues. The new Pharisees are proud of their vices. It's very easy to condemn sins that we have no inclination to committing. Oh, yeah.

So I wonder like the conservative Catholic who condemns sins that we have no inclination to committing. Oh yeah. So I wonder like the conservative Catholic who condemns things like, uh, sodomy or pornography or something like that. It's very easy cause it's sort of, it's not because those things aren't disordered, but it sort of separates us from the thing that we're not even inclined to commit. Whereas we might be bad to our wife or we yell at our kids or we think we don't have time for the people who meet with us on the street. We're simply arrogant and self-centered, although respectable. The sins that are invisible are much more dangerous than the sins that are visible. Okay. That's why Jesus didn't have harsh things to say to the prostitutes, but to the Pharisees.

Jesus didn't have harsh things to say to the prostitutes, but to the Pharisees. Yeah. How do you know if you're arrogant? Oh, can you? That's like, how do you know if you're prejudiced? If you don't think you're prejudiced, you're really prejudiced. Oh, no, I'm not arrogant. Oh, what arrogance. Proud of your humility. What does arrogance mean?

In your face, pride. Yeah. Pride that that is proud of itself. Like I'm somehow superior to you. Yeah, I'm proud, but I'm not proud of it. Oh, that's good. I know what that means, but I like it. Oh Yeah, no, I like it. Oh, yeah, that's clever. Yeah. No, I like no I get it now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I

Think one may be indicator that you're proud or that I'm proud is how easily we become offended. Oh I hope that isn't true because people are becoming radically more thin-skinned nowadays. You don't dare say things. Even compliments are sometimes seen as insults. The Cleveland Indians have to be the Cleveland Guardians because Indians is a bad word. What an insult to Indians. No, say the thought police. You may not say that word. That's judgmental.

What? You can't say that there's something that distinguishes you from other people without, you can't draw lines without being discriminatory in a bad sense. God created the world by discriminating between being and non-being and between light and darkness without being discriminatory in a bad sense. God created the world by discriminating between being and non-being, and between light and darkness, and between day and night, and between sea and land, and between living and non-living, and between one species and another, and even between men and women. R. Yeah. I wonder if that is a sign of the demonic.

Man tries to become like God. Woman tries to become like man we live in a society that says children are have the same rights and homogenization yeah yep yeah no hierarchy no hierarchy that's a bad word yeah that's elitist yeah which is funny because hierarchy is a bad word at the same time anarchy is becoming in vogue, which would make sense since the two are opposites. Two Harvard sociologists, David Reisman and Nathan Glazer back in the 50s, wrote a book called The Lonely Crowd.

It's a very scientific book. It's kind of dull reading, but its point is fascinating. They say that we all want to be respected by other people and accepted by other people, it's cross-cultural, but what causes that in ancient cultures is always the admiration of excellence. You admire somebody who's better than you are. Today is the opposite. If you're excellent, people are envious of you and they want to drag you down, and you're accepted for being just like everybody else. We're like sheep that don't have a shepherd,

but just follow each other. The zeitgeist, the spirit of the times, what everybody thinks. Conformity. If it's okay, I have some questions from our local supporters that I'd like to ask you. I haven't even seen you today. Pardon? Philosophers eat questions like they eat sandwiches. Ha ha, what did you say?

We do have to take a break together. Oh, okay, let's take a quick break and then we'll come back with, yeah. All right, quick break coming up. I want to tell you about Halo, which is the number one downloaded prayer app in the world. It's outstanding. Halo.com slash Matt Fradd. Sign up over there right now and you will get the first three months for free.

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if you're a parent, you could play little Bible stories for them at night. It'll help them pray. Fantastic. Hello.com slash Mattcom. I want to tell you about a course that I have created for men to overcome pornography. It is called strive21.com slash Matt. You go there right now or if you text strive to 66866, we'll send you the link. It's 100% free and it's a course I've created to help men to give them the tools to overcome pornography. Usually men know that porn is wrong, they don't need me or you to convince them that it's wrong. What they need is a battle plan to get out.

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because literally tens of thousands of men have now gone through this course and As you go through the different videos there's comments from men all around the world encouraging each other, offering to be each other's accountability partners and things like that. Strive21, that's Strive21.com slash Matt or as I say Text Strive to 66866 to get started today. You won't regret it. Men have you checked out Exodus 90 lately? If you've heard of Exodus 90 before, you're probably thinking of cold showers and Lent, but the Exodus 90 app offers so much more.

It's a daily companion to help you grow closer to God and to become the man you wanna be. This summer, I'm following along with the app's daily scriptures, reflections, and prayers. It's awesome. On the app, you can join the enthronement to the Sacred Heart, the Exodus 90 Summer Book Club and St. Michael's Lent, which starts August 15th and leads up

to the feast of St. Michael the Archangel on September 29th. St. Michael's Lent is an ancient tradition of prayer and fasting, popularised by St. Francis in the Middle Ages that's been lost in our time. Let's bring it back. Join the men of Exodus 90 and Father Carlos Martins, Catholic priest, exorcist and host of the exorcist files who will serve as our spiritual guide for St. Michael's Lent this year on the Exodus 90 app. We will awaken to invisible realities and enter into the spiritual battle that rages around us all the time. Go to Exodus90.com.com for a 14-day free trial to the Exodus 90 app and to learn more about St. Michael's Lent. That's Exodus90.com.com. Any sinner is capable of being a great sinner. The secret therefore of character development is the realization of this power that there is in each and every one of us.

For good and for evil. The good Lord would have us lay hold of what is worst in ourselves. Do not think that people who have virtue and kindness and other great talents just came by these things naturally. They had to work hard, very hard. Any sinner is capable of being a great saint. A great saint. A great saint. And any saint is also capable of being a great sinner. A great sinner.

A great sinner. A great sinner. A great sinner. A great sinner. A great sinner. A great sinner. A great sinner. A great sinner.

A great sinner. A great sinner. A great sinner. Yeah, we're going live. Go! All right, now can you tell me the, is this a joke you can tell publicly? Yes. Okay. Good What's the difference between a young philosopher and a large pizza? Uh, oh

I know is it something like the large pizza can feed a family of five exactly Very good. Very good. All right. Well, we're back and we're taking locals questions I want to let people know that most of the shows that we do aren't live. And so we're about to start releasing episodes one week early over on locals. So please consider supporting us over at matfrad.locals.com. When you become an annual supporter, we will send you this free excellent beer stein. You'll also get these episodes a week early. You'll also get to ask our guests questions. So with that, here is a question.

This is from Emma. She says, how do you want people to remember you when you die? It's a little negative, isn't it? Little morbid. Was it C.S. Lewis who composed his epitaph, When I am dead and gone, may it be said, his sins were scarlet but his books were red? Yeah. Pun on red. I don't know. I've never considered that question and I don't think it's worthy to consider, so I won't answer it. Yeah, okay. Fair enough.

This person asks, do you have anything more you want to accomplish before you die? I don't have a list of accomplishments. When I write a book, I don't say, there is this need and I need to accomplish this solution to this need and therefore I will write this book. I don't think that way. No. So that's another question that I politely decline to answer. What if it doesn't have to do with, you know, your work as a philosopher? Are there things that you think, I would like to be able to do this or that before I die or no? I would like to be able to honestly say that I was doing God's will in all things, but I can't really honestly say that until I'm in heaven I guess, or at least in purgatory. Jay Herner asks, what is one of the most significant things you have come to change

your mind on because of your age or life experiences. I used to be something of an individualist. Uh, and Dostoevsky convinced me mainly through the Brothers Karamazov that what the Russians call subornost is a reality. It's a kind of spiritual gravity. We're all responsible for each other because we all influence each other in direct or indirect ways and therefore the common good takes precedence over the private good. I used to resist that but now I accept it. Christopher Rogers asks, what is some practical advice on raising your son to

be a true gentleman with courage, strength and masculinity throughout their toddler life and all the way through when they go into their vocation. Leave good books around the house, books about heroes. Okay. Cardonas asks, Dr. Craeft in mere Christianity, CS Lewis says he can't help a Christian discerning which denomination to choose and advises to leave that topic to expert theologians. Do you think he took this attitude out of humility, understanding his limitations or out of prudence, trying to avoid offending his Anglican friends or out of fear or laziness? The first of those three hypotheses I think is most likely to be true. Lewis made enemies and offended many people.

He was not one of these thin-skinned, ideologically correct people. So that hypothesis is out of the question. I think he was actually uncertain himself, because he was very sympathetic to Catholics. And I even think that it was something of a miracle that he never became a Catholic himself. God needed a missionary among the evangelicals, so he created CS Lewis. Okay. Josh Cohen says, Dr. Craift, what was the gateway for your

conversion to Catholicism? I converse with a number of Calvinists, so I'm just wondering how to best converse in a loving way, but to still try to convert them. If by a gateway you mean the beginning, it was probably a conversation I had with my roommate the first day I was on campus at Calvin College. He was just a kind of a Socratic troublemaker who liked to raise questions. And he said, why don't we pray to the saints like Catholics do? And I said, because we're not Catholics, of course. And he said, well, that's not logical. Let's argue in a circle.

What's wrong with praying to saints? I said, I don't know. We just don't do it. Shouldn't there be a reason? I said, well, because, well, I don't know, we just don't do it. He said, shouldn't there be a reason? I said, well, because, well, I don't know, really. And it just ended there. And I said, well, here's a question that's not terribly important to me,

but I don't have an answer to it. Maybe I'll do a little investigating and find out why Catholics do pray to saints. It sounds like idolatry. And that just began me on a four-year journey. Maybe it was even earlier than that, the time when I was quite young, maybe eight or ten, we visited St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York, and I said to my father, who was an elder in the Reformed Church, Dad, this is a Catholic Church, isn't it? He said, yes.

I said, the Catholics are wrong, aren't they? Oh, yes, they're terribly wrong. Well, then why are their churches more beautiful than ours? I was struck by the beauty. It just sat there in the back of my mind for a long time. But if you're asking what was the final thing that brought me over, I think it was, well, I'm

a kind of a procrastinator like Hamlet, and I became convinced that very probably the church was right on everything, but I didn't yet become a Catholic until I had a kind of a, not quite a vision, but an imaginative waking dream in which I saw the church in the form of Noah's Ark and all the saints were on board, including my favorite saints, Augustine and Aquinas, and they said, why don't you come on board? You're on this spiffy little life boat who's gonna get to heaven because it's sailing in this wake, but why don't you come on the Ark? There's a lot of interesting animals here and I

couldn't give a reason for not, so I did. I'm sure you're familiar with St. John Bosco's dream about the church that's being besailed by ships on the sides, and it has two chains to two giant pillars, one with the Holy Eucharist, one with the Blessed Virgin Mary. So I think the idea is, you know, so long as we have these devotions, we're in good shape. What do you think about that? That is a famous work of art and a great one. And half of that corresponds to my experience, the Eucharist part. Of all the distinctively Catholic doctrines, that was the one that most forced me to be a Catholic. Because if it isn't true, if Christ is not

really present in the Eucharist, if it's just a holy symbol, then all Christians in the world for 1,500 years have been committing the most egregious idolatry, worshipping bread and wine and thinking that it's God. How could that be? How could all the saints be wrong about that? Yeah, at the very least we should worship the gold and monstrance within it, which is contained. But no, we're so stupid that we don't even consider that. A little piece of bread. The Mary issue didn't concern me that much. Most Protestants are hung up on that issue. And I wasn't. I understood that Catholics don't worship

Mary. They make a big deal about her because they're in love with her because he's so holy, and we're all supposed to be holy. But I do realize that most evangelicals trip over Mary more than anything else. I don't know why. I think you've said that you like to pray the Holy Rosary. Oh yes, I like simple prayers. Yeah, when do you pray it and how do you pray it?

Every day if I can, usually in the car or while I'm doing something else. And if I don't get to pray it under those circumstances, I take 15 minutes out before I go to bed, even though I'm tired then, because it's the thing I can do. I can accomplish that. And you don't have to be brilliant

and you don't have to have mystical visions and you don't have to have great feelings of sanctity. You just say the prayers faithfully. Yeah. And I know some people maybe get a little scrupulous because they wonder, well, I think I stopped meditating halfway through or my mind was fleeting. What advice do you give to people like that? like that. The fact that Mary wants us to pray this and she obviously knows as a mother that she has to be compassionate and patient with us because we are so distracted and and and we love too many things too much. So she gives us this as as as a kind of a a cure, a medicine for distraction. It's a great prayer for people with ADD. Mm-hmm.

Thomas Aquinas in the Summa talks about prayer and even talks about distractions. And one of the things he says is, if we're kind of choosing to be distracted, we're intentionally distracting ourselves, this is a sin. But we shouldn't be surprised by distractions so long as the intention was to be prayerful and to meditate. Which is really great to hear.

Because sometimes I'll be praying the rosary. And I'll be thinking of everything else. And I think those distractions, when they're not willed by us, when we don't originate them, are gifts from God. They're little flies and they're bothersome, but we exercise our muscles in swatting them. And the virtue that we gain from saying no to a distraction is greater than the vice that the distraction causes. I think it was Teresa of Avila who talked about within her, within us, we have this like crazy old woman. So you sit down to pray and there's this crazy old woman

running about the house, shutting the windows and cooking and doing all sorts of things. Martha. Yeah and I think Teresa's point was that's okay, just don't follow her. Like let her go. Let her be crazy. One of the saints uses something like that. He says, we must do the deeds of Martha with the spirit of Mary. We must be contemplative even in our actions. Increasingly, I feel like the Lord is calling me to peace

and gentleness, peace and gentleness. And I find that so often when I'm sort of not praying at all times, when I'm not like recollecting myself, I'm just fleeting about, running about, kind of aggressively hitting the day, trying to accomplish things, not having time for people who bump into me. I think that's wrong. I think that I should be more recollected and at peace and that when I'm not at peace, when I find myself agitated, I can be sure that I'm outside of the will of God. You know what group impresses me enormously? They have Buddhists. They have no theology, they have no God, and yet they practice

very well this peace, this, this awareness. It's just being there for others. I think God gave them that gift to compensate for the lack of their theological gifts. It's almost like presentness, like being present to this moment is almost the same as recollection or peace. Yeah.

Like right now, kind of feeling my body, being aware of where I am, being intentional about now with you here. It's the most important gift we can give to each other because it's the gift of self. When I met Mother Teresa, I was online or hundreds of people there. And it took only three or four seconds. But she looked at me and I knew that I was the only person in the world for her. The whole world passed away. It was just she and and I. And all she said was, God bless you, God love you. And that's all. But I later discovered that other people who met Brother Teresa had that

same impression. She was totally present to you. I've had that happen to me, that feeling. Maybe it's happened to me that I wasn't aware to be present to the presentness, but the time that struck me, there's a founder of a religious order in Canada, Father Bob Bedard. he founded the Companions of the Cross. And I remember going up to him after a talk and he spoke to me. And it was as if I was the only person in the universe and everything else faded away. Yeah. Yeah. That's the one thing you can't do if you're distracted. You can't be present. Yeah.

And that's what we want the most when we die. What can I do for you? Just be here. Woody Allen, of all people, said famously, 90% of life is just showing up, just being present. Yeah. There's a priest who wrote a book called Searching for a Maintaining Peace, Jacques Philippe, and it's excellent. He uses the analogy, which I'm sure you've heard before, about the surface of a pond, which is reflecting the sun, but if'm sure you've heard before, about the surface of a pond, which is reflecting the sun, but if you throw a rock in it, it doesn't reflect it very well.

And we are meant to reflect Christ to people we meet, and when we are agitated, we don't do that very well. We don't, yeah, we don't, I can't interpret what's around me. And yet, if we have faith, even when we're agitated on the surface, the depths can be peaceful. If the anchor is down there, you can maintain the anchor even if there's surface storms. When my daughter was diagnosed many years ago with a brain tumor, which appeared to be malignant and only partially operable and they gave her six to 12 months to live. I was in that situation. I said to myself, this is a mistake. God is making a mistake. I'm not a hero. I can't endure this.

This is my perfect little daughter and she's only five years old and she's going to suffer and die in front of my eyes. I can't take this. So there were storms on the surface. And yet at the same time, I knew the anchor was there. That knowledge didn't percolate out into my feelings at all whatsoever. But the knowledge was there. I know that God knows what he's doing. I don't understand it. I don't like it. I can't stand it, but I know it's true. Can I ask what happened? How that? A miracle happened. The tumor that showed up on the CAT scan as a medulla blastoma,

which is malignant, turned out to be a juvenile astrocytoma, a totally different type of tumor. And the surgeon who was an atheist wrote on his report, I cannot understand this, have no re no, no explanation for it. Checked it out, checked that the records were correct. No, we got a miracle. We had a lot of people praying. What was it like when you were informed that she was okay? Surprisingly, I wasn't that surprised. I didn't expect a miracle, but I believed in miracles and I knew it was a miracle. So I wasn't spectacularly overjoyed and went around clapping my hands and bragging to everybody.

I said, thank you, God. Yeah, that's what you do. Yeah, just like we can have a sorrow that's agitated, that causes us to sort of act irrationally or not presently. We can have joys like that. Maybe not joys. We can have kind of fits of hysterics, you know, like when people, I remember my brother and I used to laugh uncontrollably at the dinner table

and my dad would say, nothing is that funny. And that itself is funny. It's very good, isn't it? But it is true that we can be sort of irrational in a joyful sense, just like irrational in an agitated sense. Don't you think? Laughing frivolously. Yes. Well, comedians elicit that. When you shake uncontrollably at a really, really good joke. Yeah, that's not, I don't think that's what I mean though. Because that's good. You want that. You want a little bit of wee to come out if you can. If it's a profound joke,

and not just a relief from suffering, not just an oasis in the desert, but a momentary vision that this world is crazy and isn't that wonderful. Yeah, that's almost a mystical experience. Yeah. Oh, yeah, we're doing questions. M. Solomon says, Any thoughts on dealing with intellectual pride? I have spent eight or so years at the graduate level studying theology. I find it difficult to pray with the scriptures and in talking to people about the spiritual life without sounding like a jerk.

Thank you, Dr. Kreft. Well, your use of the word jerk shows that even though you're proud, you're not proud of your proudness, of your pride. So it's healable. And I can't heal it, but God can. So keep praying. The first, I was just reading the first two chapters of Imitation of Christ, and there's a lot in those two chapters that would speak to this. And he says if we become aware of what we know, he's like, be humbled by how much you don't know, and also realize what good would it do for you if you could argue about the

Trinity while displeasing the Trinity? He says, I would rather feel compunction than know how to define it. Yeah, touche. Yeah. But I like his point because it's an honest question. Yes. Yes. compunction than know how to define it. But I like his point because it's an honest question. Yes. Because I've had that experience where you read the scriptures and you're like, I would be more interested if I was reading Nietzsche for heaven's sake, or Plato, or anybody.

I don't want to be reading the gospel again. I'm getting nothing from it. But you're giving something to it. What does that mean? You're giving God your attention, your pride. I remember a Carmelite priest saying this, Father Mark Foley, he said that the best advice he would give to people who want to pray is to waste time in prayer, because you give God everything when you're in prayer.

Just be there, just do it. And I think I really like this Father Mark Foley character. I'd love to get him on the show. Carmelite Priest in his 80s, I think. Seems like a New Englander, two of you get along, I'm sure. He says, spiritual progress is not synonymous with emotional healing. And it just may very well be the fact, and probably will be the fact, that you're going to have emotional issues, like maybe you're neurotic, or maybe you care too much or other people think about you,

or maybe you've been traumatized by the death of a parent, and you'll never heal from that. Like suffering is so mysterious that the good Lord might be doing good through those traumas in ways we can't understand. And so don't try to get over it. Just try to do the right thing now. Ask God for the grace to do the right thing in spite of your emotions.

As Teresa, Therese of Lisieux did when her father said, oh gee, you know, I hope she, I hope this is the last year we have to put up with this sort of foolishness when you're hiding the presence in the shoe. Therese overheard this, and she said, God gave her the grace to overcome that somehow. And so she came down pretending she didn't hear it, acted with great surprise, and she said the Lord healed her.

Not because she never had kind of emotional immaturity after that, but that God gave her the grace to act rightly in spite of those emotions. One of the things, Therese, is supposedly, her the grace to act rightly in spite of those emotions. One of the things, Teresa, supposedly, as her dying words, that everything is grace, including the fact that God doesn't give you the grace for emotional healing. Because if he did, you wouldn't have as much goodness and joy in the end as you would have if you had to develop your spiritual muscles in dealing with those emotional problems.

I think we all pay much too much attention to our emotions. Yeah. Where we fondle our feelings. We become a kind of spiritual masturbators. We've got to have healing in our feelings. Well, we've got to have healing in our feelings. Well, we've got to have healing in our will. That's absolute. Oh yeah, that's it.

But not necessarily in our feelings. How did Jesus feel to Judas? The same way he felt towards John? Of course not. How did he feel on the cross? Did he feel the way Monty Python made him feel in Life of Brian? Behind every cloud is a silver lining. That that person on the cross was not Nat Flanders on the San-

Life's a piece of shit. When you look at it, that's a laugh and death. The joke is true. Yeah. Yeah, that's very hard for the will to control the emotions, but it's not a question of control. It's a question of the will itself. You will God's will as your absolute. It's your absolutely absolute absolute. You don't judge it by anything. You say, God is God and God therefore knows perfectly what I need. And apparently I need, at least for now, this emotional distress, so I'll deal with it as best I can. I won't demand that he takes it away. Will Barron Do you think that's the difference between

Christianity's view of God's will and Stoicism? Stoicism receives whatever is given, but the Christian has to love it. Dr. Richard B. Cotter And there's no God in Stoicism. Will Barron There's no loving father, right? Dr. Richard B. Cotter It's the love of fate. You can't love fate. Fate is an abstraction. God is a father. I'm sorry that keeps going off. That's the one name of God that's in the Bible that's not in the Quran, Father.

That's Jesus' favorite name of God. Yeah. That intimacy. Christians have it. Charlie asks, how do you, Peter, stay so joyful? Also, I want to say how much Peter has helped my conversion as I am using his words of wisdom to describe the love of faith. I'm sorry, that keeps going off.

That's the one name of God that's in the Bible that's not in the Quran, Father. That's Jesus' favorite name of God. Yeah. That intimacy. Christians have it. Charlie asks, how do you, Peter, stay so joyful? Also, I want to say how much Peter has helped my conversion as I am using his words of wisdom to describe the love of faith.

I want to say how much Peter has helped my conversion as I am using his words of wisdom to describe the love of faith. I want to say how much Peter has helped my conversion as I am using his words of wisdom to stay so joyful? Also, I want to say how much Peter has helped my conversion as I am using his food for the soul every Sunday. First of all, what is food for the soul that she's referring to and, or him? A series of homilies on the readings from Mass. Oh yeah. Word on fire. Word on fire publishes in it. God bless them. I'm not emotionally joyful. I'm a pessimist. I'm a puddle glum. Christ is my joy. So my joy is invested in him, not in my own feelings. And I know he loves me and seeks my joy and uses all things to elicit my greater joy in the end.

So the fact that I am not right now a joyful person or have joyful emotions is good for me. So I accept that. So that's the kind of deeper, more peaceful joy. Tim asks, will we have free will in heaven? Of course, we're not going to turn into robots there, but we'll be so enlightened and so in love with God that all our choices will be good. Sin will be psychologically impossible. And yet it will be ontologically possible

because we'll have the free will. But the free will will be extended to goods. I'll choose between this good and that good, but not between good and evil. And that's a higher freedom. St. Augustine distinguishes two meanings of the word freedom. One is libertas, which is liberty from sin. That's the higher freedom that remains in heaven. The other is libertum arbitrium. That means the freedom to to arbitrate as in a court case. Let's see, I've got a devil whispering in one ear and an angel whispering in the other ear, which one shall I obey? I'll obey the angel. That's free will in this life.

Since the devil disappears in heaven, that kind of free will does disappear in heaven too. You don't choose between good and evil because there's no evil in heaven. But you choose between good and good. in heaven, but you choose between good and good. Christian P says, Dr. Crave, Catholics who live in smaller, more rural areas are dealing with rapidly aging slash shrinking congregations, closed parishes and lack of priests. What advice would you give to families in these areas besides having more kids? Well, if you're asking me personally, rather than me

as an amateur sociologist, psychologist, or politician, I would say keep the doors of the church open and imitate the Jehovah's Witnesses and go door to door and invite them in and evangelize like crazy until you fill the church. Don't give up. I think my advice would be consider giving up and moving to another town that has a...

That's practical, that's reasonable. Yeah, yeah. I mean, sometimes that's not possible for people, but... Well, I'm not asking what... I'm not answering the question, what do I think you should do? Nor am I answering the question, what would I think you should do, nor am I answering the question, what would I do if I was actually in that situation?

I'm answering the question, what would a saint do? And I think a saint would not close the doors. Jay Smitty says, how excited are you for this year's Boston College football team? Moderately excited, as we should be. Loyalty is a good thing, including loyalty to one's own team, especially since no one quite expected it. And even the Red Sox, who probably won't get into the playoff, but were picked for last place, are doing fairly well. So it's delightful that they surprise us by doing as well as they do. Do you watch baseball at home? Where do you do you kind of order your schedule around it sometimes?

No, I don't schedule around it. I go to Fenway Park occasionally with my son, who's also a great Red Sox fan. I've never, I'd love to go to a game. I love cricket. You've never been to a major league baseball game? You know, as soon as I said that, I think I have once that Houston Astros, but I wasn't really paying attention. So once I did it. Well, you've got to go to either Fenway Park or Wrigley Field. Those I would love to. Those are the backyard places.

Hmm. Yeah, I remember when I started dating my wife, the only other American I had met was this Sheila from the Bronx, who's now a nun, actually, beautiful woman, Esther Adrova. I don't know what she goes by now, but she was a Yankees fan. And so I got to know her. All sins can be forgiven. Yeah, except the sin of,

and she talked me into, you gotta go for the Yankees. So I thought, all right, fine, I'm a Yankees fan, whatever, whatever that means. So you went to Yankee Stadium? No, never did that. But then I met my wife and I met her dad and her dad was a diehard Boston Red Sox because he's from Boston.

And so I had to quickly change my tune. That said, I've never been to a game. I'd love to go watch a, well that would be the game to go see, hey, Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees. Oh yes, that's the great rivalry. My wife's father was a diehard Yankee fan and they lived near Yankee Stadium.

So when we got married, I said to my wife, mixed marriages never work, and I'm not going to become a Yankees fan, so you have to become a Red Sox fan. So she agreed. Okay, that's good. When my son dated girls at Boston College, he would ask her two questions. Are you a Catholic, and are you a Red Sox fan? And if she didn't answer yes to both questions, he wouldn't consider her seriously. I know cricket has changed dramatically and it's really upsetting because it's typically a five-day game, as you may know. They then changed it to a

one-day game by limiting the amount of overs or balls that could be bowled so that it was now like a seven-hour game or so. I don't know exactly. But since that time, and I think it's maybe because of the influence of American sports and things, I blame it on America, they've changed it to like a couple of hour game as well. So now they have all three iterations. I think they call it 2020, if I'm not mistaken. So they limit the amount of ball.

I hate that so much, right? Because it's also changed the sport. So rather than it being a more strategic five-day event, it's turned into a slogfest like baseball for all the excitement. And so I wonder, has something similar happened? I have no idea about American baseball. Has something similar happened over the years in baseball? Bregman No, there's a pitch clock now. So the average length of a game is now two and a half hours instead of three. That's not a radical change. It's a pitch clock now. So the average length of a game is now two and a half hours instead of three. That's not a radical change.

It's a reasonable change. What about from what about wooden to aluminum bats? Aluminum bats never were allowed in the major leagues, only in Little League. They're still not. Oh, no. OK. No. But has there been something like that that has changed? Not radically, no, not as as radical as the change in cricket. I suppose cricket is something Americans couldn't possibly understand.

It's such a great game. Could you imagine? I'll take your word for it. Imagine realizing, all right, we've got five days. That's beautiful. Because you go to work and you come home and nothing's happened. Or maybe one guy got out.

And you just sort of plan. It's just beautiful. It's like this thing that's happening in the background for five days. The conversation is how's Australia doing? It's like this sign that you see in antique shops on this site in 1882. Absolutely nothing happened. Yeah, that's good. Well, I'll have to I'm going to have to go to Boston and. Yeah, let me know if you want to go sometime.

I'll buy the seats. There's a wonderful article by Michael Novak, who died fairly recently. I forget what publication is there. It's called Take Me Out to the Liturgy, in which he proves that baseball is a symbolic version of the mass. Hmm. It's something like George Carlin's favorite famous routine, baseball and football, two philosophies of life. He's a foul-mouthed comedian, but he's brilliant. And if you've never Googled that, Google it. It's a brilliant thing. Baseball

and football, two philosophies of life. What can you tell us his major point or do we just need to watch it? Baseball is the religion of peace and football is the religion of war. Okay. Yeah. Okay, good. I'm gonna have to go watch a game. Jordan says, doctor, by the way, how much are tickets? Like what's the best seat in baseball? Is it up the front or you want to be somewhere else? The best seat is behind home plate where you can see the difference between balls and strikes. Okay. The worst seat in Fenway Park is far right field because you have to twist your neck. The best bargain is left field because there's a section there that doesn't allow liquor. Oh, so they're cheaper. My dad used to sneak into cricket games as a younger man with these big tubs of sunscreen,

you know, but he'd fill it up with with liquor, I think. But how much does a seat go for behind home plate if it's Yankees and Red Sox? If it's Yankees and Red Sox behind home plate, well, the first two rows are astronomical. But let's say, well, 10 or 15 rows back in the second row of box seats, you can get a decent ticket even for Red Sox Yankees for about $175, maybe 200. And you have to book well in advance.

I'm sure that place, that part of the stadium. There are ticket agencies. Half half the seats in Fenway Park are owned by season ticket holders. And they often sell their tickets to ordinary ticket people who raise the price a little bit and make money. Yeah. But it's usually possible to get pretty decent seats. And it seems to me as an outsider, the baseball has dropped significantly in popularity. Oh yeah. Yeah. Is that sad for you to see that?

Yes, because it's the world's greatest game. But frankly, football is interesting too. Yeah. Yeah. I find that sad because in Australia it was the same thing. Aussie rules football, which is a game developed from Gaelic football, was a game that was originally, I think, meant in part to keep cricket players fit in the winter. That's why Aussie rules football takes place on an oval field. You know, so our fields are ovals. You've got it because cricket is done on an oval and then Aussie rules football is

on that same oval rugby is obviously not. But but now, you know know rugby and Aussie rules football are much bigger I think I think that's fair to say than cricket and I guess sad to me you have no baseball at all in Australia I think isn't cricket the father of baseball you're welcome isn't that right it's certainly predates baseball obviously yeah yeah it's a great game. Baseball was invented fairly early, early in the 19th century. There were almost 100 years of non-professional baseball. It's a game kids naturally invent.

Yeah. I love basketball. I don't watch it, but it seems like a sport that I could... The athleticism is beautiful to watch, especially in high definition and slow motion. It. So quick. I think that is what I like. It's quick and colorful and exciting. Yeah. All right. Jordan says, Dr. Craift, it seems to me that a manual count is prominent among founders of modern life. His ethics emphasizes duty and responsibility, but modern modernity emphasizes rights. How did this happen? I don't know.

I don't know enough about the history of human consciousness to answer that question. But the focus on rights as distinct from the claiming that we have rights as a last resort is, I think, a fairly recent development. And I suspect that it stems from fear or envy. You almost never hear that word spoken by lovers. They don't assert their rights against each other. Yeah. And if they do, it's not a great way to make the other person trust and be more affectionate.

Not at all. Not at all. So the less you're worried about your rights, the better off you are. You have them, and they're kind of a last ditch defense, But you can't run a society on rights alone. You certainly can't run a marriage on rights. No, that's because it's friendship, isn't it? Yes. It was a form of love.

Yeah, I think it was Aquinas who said it's the most beautiful of friendships. But friendship, I think that has to be understood correctly, right? Because it's like I'm not meant to be one of my wife's girlfriends. And my wife's not a buddy, you know, who I dump everything on and chat with. And God invented masculinity and femininity. And that's one of the things the devil is succeeding in uninventing. Yeah. Jonah Sala says, Dr. Crave, do you have a saint that you are particularly devoted to and that inspires you? If so, who and why?

As a philosopher, Aquinas, who is, I think, simply the most brilliant mind who ever lived, Justin is, I think, the greatest writer among the saints and the greatest poet, and he's the complete package. And if God were to give me, as a gift in heaven, a dinner with one of the saints, I think I'd choose Augustine. Joe Sim says, what are some good philosophy puzzles to accompany the first two volumes of his Socrates children collection? So far I've done the Ship of Theseus with my high scores. I don't know what that is.

Well, I'm going to say something offensive here. There are no such things as good philosophy puzzles. Philosophy is not a set of puzzles to be solved. It's a series of mysteries to be explored and reveled in. Just as life is not a problem to be solved, but an adventure to be lived. What would be another way to put it, then? Because I like to ask my kids that, you know, they game 20 questions where you think of something that's fun because it helps children think categorically.

It does. So what's your question? So what is this ship of Theseus? Oh, it's basically an argument that Hume and Buddha are right in denying that there is such a thing as a substantial self. Imagine a ship that is rotting and each part of it is replaced by a new item. Is it the same ship or is it not? And each cell in our body is replaced every seven years. So do we have the same body? That's an interesting puzzle,

but I don't think it's philosophy. I think philosophy is the love of wisdom. And the answer to that question is not necessarily wisdom, it's simply cleverness. Well, then how would you, what's something a teacher could do to help children or young adults love wisdom, love truth? What might be better? Start with Socrates, start with Plato's Socratic dialogues. They're usually about values, about good and evil in some way, and they're severely logical, just as modern clever analytic philosophy is

severely logical, but they also have a deep wisdom dimension and a personal dimension. Daniel Pacelli says, have you ever thought about making your own mac and cheese brand called Craved Mac and Cheese? Well, the Kraft family would probably sue me for imitation. I'm not big on mac and cheese, although I love cheese and I love macaroni, but putting them together is, well, great if you're five or ten years old, but not that great for an adult who prefers French food. God, by the way, favors the French largely because of their cooking. I think all dinners in heaven are made either in France or Italy.

Lally, yeah, I agree with that. Lally33 says, Peter Craeft has one of the most joyful dispositions I've ever seen and even though I have never met him in real life, it is infectious when I listen to him speak. Does he have any insights or suggestions on how to keep present that true Christian joy at all times? R. The secret of joy is the presence of Jesus Christ. Knowing that you have him, the whole of God, at your disposal, because he loves you. And he's always right, and he's always present, and he's always powerful, and he's always wise, and he's always acting in your life. So if you believe that, how can you have anything less than joy,

even if you're temperamentally a puddle glum, as I am? I'm always expecting the worst. I'm always worrying about things. So that doesn't matter. That's just one of his gifts. Okay. We have somebody here asking about, uh, youth afro. Will he address the piety problem posed? Let me rephrase that just for people at home a little differently. Is something good because God commands it, or does God command that thing because it is good?

How does the Catholic respond? That's the question that Socrates asks Euthyphro. And Euthyphro, who believes in the many arbitrary gods of Greek mythology, says, well, the thing is good only because the gods command it. And Socrates says, which gods? They contradict each other. And Euthyphro said, well, all the gods must be agreed on something, says, which gods? They contradict each other.

And Uthofro said, well, all the gods must be agreed on something, for instance, that I'm a good person. And Socrates, instead of refuting that, which is easy, that's like shooting ducks in a barrel, says, all right, well, even if that is so, is the reason the gods command it because it's good in itself, or is it good only because the gods command it? And Uthofro says, it's good in itself, or is it good only because the God's commanded? And Uthavra says it's good only because all the gods command it.

And Socrates says, well that can't be true, because then if the gods commanded you to kill yourself or to hate yourself or to destroy the world, that would be good. And that makes the gods arbitrary. The gods are arbitrary, they're rational. And therefore the gods command a thing because this thing is good in itself. Well, I think that's a half truth. It can't be the whole truth. It can't be that God wakes up every morning and looks at the Ten Commandments on his wall and says, I better do that today. There's nothing above God as there is something above us,

but that doesn't mean he's arbitrary. So the relation between God and moral goodness, which is the question of the youth of row is the wrong question. There's not a relation between six and half a dozen of the same thing. So God is goodness, goodness is His essence. So a thing is good because God commands it and because it is good in itself. Okay. All right, good. Final question and then we'll let you go. This has been a joy. Thank you. How do Catholics not become obsessed with the political climate? You know, usually

this time we just get so absorbed into it. I mean, you've seen a lot of elections come and go. Number two, two things. President Biden loves to say number one, number two, it's all imitative. Number one, don't become obsessed with anything. Obsession is a form of addiction. Be free and easy. Number two, if you're going to become obsessed with something, don't become obsessed with politics. Because politics, meaning the word politics, it's got two parts to it. The first part is poly, which means many.

Second part is ticks, which means annoying little blood-sucking bugs. All right, that's good. Well, thanks again for flying out here. I really appreciate it. Is there anything else you want to say or point people to as we wrap up? Thank you for having me. It's fun and the greatest fun the greatest joy in all of life is knowing Jesus Christ Amen All right. Thank you. Dr. Krafft