Pints With Aquinas - From Atheism to Catholicism w/ Pat Flynn

Episode Date: March 23, 2021

I chat in the studio with Pat Flynn about his conversion from atheism to Catholicism.   FREE E-book "You Can Understand Aquinas": https://pintswithaquinas.com/understanding-thomas   SPONSORS Hallow: http://hallow.app/mattfradd  STRIVE: https://www.strive21.com/ Catholic Chemistry: https://www.catholicchemistry.com/   GIVING Patreon or Directly: https://pintswithaquinas.com/support/  This show (and all the plans we have in store) wouldn't be possible without you. I can't thank those of you who support me enough. Seriously! Thanks for essentially being a co-producer co-producer of the show.   LINKS Merch: https://teespring.com/stores/matt-fradd FREE 21 Day Detox From Porn Course: https://www.strive21.com/   SOCIAL Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PintsWithAquinas Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattfradd Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pints_w_aquinas Gab: https://gab.com/mattfradd   MY BOOKS Does God Exist: https://www.amazon.com/Does-God-Exist-Socratic-Dialogue-ebook/dp/B081ZGYJW3/ref=sr_1_9?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586377974&sr=8-9 Marian Consecration With Aquinas: https://www.amazon.com/Marian-Consecration-Aquinas-Growing-Closer-ebook/dp/B083XRQMTF/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586379026&sr=8-4 The Porn Myth: https://www.ignatius.com/The-Porn-Myth-P1985.aspx   CONTACT Book me to speak: https://www.mattfradd.com/speakerrequestform

Pat Flynn, welcome to Pints with Aquinas. How's it going? It's great to be here, Matt. It's going well. You drove down from Wisconsin. That's right. With your wife and four children. That's absolutely right, yeah.

Why? Because you invited me. And we wanted to get up Wisconsin. What's your wife doing right now? Is she in the hotel? She's in the hotel room, which is, you know, the kids love the hotel room, but hotel rooms are just not very kid-friendly. They're certainly not toddler-friendly.

So it's a little stressful. No, it's brutal. I remember. See, my kids are a little older right now, so my youngest is bribeable. He's six. But y'all have some young kids, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but thanks for being here.

We had you on the show about, I don't know now, was it a year ago? I think that's right. We talked about atheism. We talked a bit about your conversion. Yeah. Stuff like that. We want to talk about it today. Yeah, just a repeat. Someone just said in the chat, like, wait, didn't they just do this? So props to the guy who follows me. We'll try to do some new stuff. Yeah, we'll see. Did you identify as an atheist? I forget from our last interview. I did, yeah. How old were you? Well, that's a good question. I think something that gets overlooked in some of these conversion stories is how gradual the process is,

both in and out. So for me, I can trace back, I think, some significant events in my life that caused some original doubt, right? One was in the fifth or sixth grade, sixth grade, because it was the year 9-11 happened, right? I kind of linked these two things together because you saw the towers fall and like my worldview started collapsing at the same time. So yeah, it was just the teacher and science teacher just sort of outlining the basic, you know, origins of the universe story and me thinking, well, this isn't what I was taught in my first grade Sunday school class. And there was just that first internal tension. This was around the sixth grade. So yeah, you can probably figure out my age from there. Yeah. It's amazing to me that

so many people are like at that time. I'm 31, by the way. So at that time when you were in sixth grade, I was 17 and much smarter than you. Now I'm older, still, obviously, exactly the same amount, and you're much smarter than me. So I don't know how this happens with all these sixth graders. You have a much better beard than I do. But, yeah, okay. No, I know what you mean. It is cool how kids do kind of absorb those things, and they don't even know how to process them right then and there.

It's not like you would have raised your hand and expressed that tension that you were feeling, but something began to unravel. Yeah, it was very uncomfortable. Uncomfortable enough that it stuck with me. And it's not like immediately, oh, I'm an atheist. I wouldn't even know what that meant at the time. It was just like, here's I was told one story, which was just kindergarten theology, and nobody ever really brought me forward from that. And then I hear another story and there's at least a superficial tension, or at least that's how I see it now. It didn't seem superficial back then. So that was something that was undermining in a way. And then there were various other influences

in my life. So I never grew up in a very religious household by any means. We would go to church when the grandparents were in town, Christmas, Easter, that sort of thing. So religion was never something that was really talked about in my family. It was outsourced, right? Like, okay, Sunday school, maybe for a year. And that was about it. So I never had any good formation, no proper catechesis or anything like that. So it didn't take much to undermine it, right? Yeah. I'm always really impressed when people legitimately read their way into the faith or make a decision despite it going against their self-interest so i was just on the phone with a pastor in north carolina who will have on the show soon and he was the head of this um

united methodist church right and a huge congregation. And he's just made the decision to become Catholic. And he preached his last sermon on Sunday. And he's got, so I won't say his name because he's got a sabbatical for a little bit, but then he said like, Matt, I don't have health insurance. I don't know.

But he said, he's like, I'd love to say I'm courageous, but I've been thinking about this for years, but still I'm always very impressed because I think for most of us, it has to do with what we desire and wanting to be accepted by our peers. I don't mean to crap on Mormonism

because obviously many great Mormons and even very intelligent Mormons, but I think they do a really good job at coming around people and inviting them into their community. And I imagine that's really effective, maybe more effective than just sort of here's a book and here's the five reasons you should become a Mormon.

Oh, yeah, yeah, certainly. Thinking back for me, it was a very lonely journey in some respects. I didn't have a community. In fact, my community was all secular. I lost a lot of friends when I became Catholic. Okay. How old were you when you became Catholic? It was four years ago now.

Oh, wow. Were you baptized four years ago? No, I was confirmed. My wife, however, is a convert, and she was baptized and confirmed within the last four years. Wow. So she grew up in a completely irreligious, agnostic household. Yeah.

So, I mean, we can get into some of that if you want, but for me, I mean, so many of my friendships, everything I did, everyone I hung out with, the sorts of things that we did, once I started taking seriously that, yeah, maybe Catholicism is it. Maybe I'll become Catholic. There was a lot of tension there.

Yeah. And it wasn't a tension that I realized actually could be reconciled. So a lot of the friendships, not like they were like nasty or anything like that, but it was just, we just parted ways, right? And a lot of things had to change. For those watching right now, I have, because someone's already saying something in the live chat, I have allergies pretty bad. Someone suggested it's because I smoke too many cigars. That might also be the case. I don't smoke too many cigars, but that's where this voice thing is coming from.

It's not the COVID. Okay, so at sixth grade, you had that tension, and when did you identify as an atheist? All right, so there was also other things I was into, right? And both going away from faith and then into faith, it's not, for me it was never purely intellectual either way, right? I think that

there were intellectual components but I certainly don't want to think it was just like Mr. Spock. So, yeah, growing up I was really into music. Still play guitar. We share a lot from Metallica, don't we? Yeah, we talk about Metallica and Megadeth, and I have theories.

I have theories on that. Who's the best lead guitarist? Well, it's Marty Friedman. It's definitely Marty Friedman. All right, yeah, yeah. You know, there's some beliefs that you just won't give up, and I'll just admit it straight. That's one of them.

That's not going anywhere. I don't care what objections you throw at it. Right. Um, so yeah, so I'm, I'm into all of these other things, right.

Um, things that, uh, and I have all these other, um, people that I look up to in life, musicians, writers,

none of them seem religious. They all seem kind of cool. Kind of want to be like them, uh, in the music world, you know, like Metallica, like Megadeth,

which this, we definitely talked about this last time, so I won't spend much time on it, but it's actually very funny because, like, Dave Mustaine and all these kind of heavy metal guys, like, I thought, like, yeah, they're too cool for religion, so probably I am too. Did you actually make that association? It's one thing to imbibe it without thinking it consciously,

but did you actually think they're not into religion? It's a lot of the lyrics, right? And, like, Mustaine now even admits, like, there's some songs he wouldn't even play live, because now he's a Christian. I know. Right? And like, Alice Cooper is his godfather, which is hilarious. Like, why didn't you tell me this stuff when I was a kid, right? Try to go directly into the... Yeah, yeah, sorry.

Whatever you need. So it's just, you know, things like that. It's like the lyrics, the presentation, so yeah, it didn't have to be explicit, right? But then there were writers, always really into writing, and I found kind of Twain at a relatively young age in high school, and he's always taking shots at religion, right? Sure. Funny, funny stuff. So the cool, clever people are against religion. Right, right. And then there was another writer that I was

and am still into. He's actually one of my favorite atheists, H.L. Mencken. I don't know if you've heard. A lot of people don't know him. He's kind of like an old school Christopher Hitchens. Like if you know Christopher Hitchens, you can tell like he definitely read Mencken. Like he borrows a lot of Mencken style. Hilarious. And Mencken was, you know, he was a journalist. He wasn't a philosopher, but he was engaged in some of the serious questions. I remember going back recently and rereading some of his essays, and he's critiquing Molinism. I'm like, oh, that's kind of serious.

So he was somebody like... Right, he's in the weeds in theology. He's there. He didn't mention anything like Thomism or anything like that, but I'm like, all right, he knows some stuff, so he wasn't completely superficial is what I'm saying. He was influenced heavily by Nietzsche. So people pass you off, right? So, okay, he keeps heavily by Nietzsche. So you can be like, people pass you off, right?

So, okay, he keeps referencing this Nietzsche guy. I'm going to check him out. And so that introduces me to like, that's what gets me into philosophy. How old are you when you're reading Nietzsche? This would be like early, mid high school. Okay, wow. That's pretty rare for someone in early high school to be reading Nietzsche. Like mid, probably like 10th grade, something like that, because I was really into politics at the time too, always very engaged in that. We can get into that later if we want.

So I had just a lot of interest. I've always been just very intellectually curious, a number of things. But I love these writers. And there's something about Nietzsche too. He's kind of edgy. So there's a reason, I think, that young men are, that he appeals to them.

So that introduces me to just philosophy in general and the sort of atheist existentialist and stuff like that. So by the time I'm in college, that would be, if you were to say, are you religious? I would say no. No, I'm in college, right, that would be if you were to say, are you religious?

I would say no. No, I'm an atheist. Was this around the time of Dawkins and the New Atheists? Yeah, probably. Because that was about, what, 2008? Yeah, they were on the scene, right? I was never heavily engaged or even read all that much by them. And when I did, I was never – I like some of their stuff.

So I know a lot of people will just, um, and look, the criticisms are merited. Like some of their stuff is truly bad. Um, but I remember reading some of Harris's stuff. Like, uh, he had a, he had a book called on, on meditation, uh, spirituality without religion or something. I remember kind of liking that one. Um, and I, I did like, I did like Hitchens. He was funny. But they were never big influences on me. I actually kind of like came back to them later. Like if that makes sense, I became Catholic because everyone else seemed so interested in them. But they were never people that I was reading. Were you vocal about your atheism in college? No, no, no, no. I was vocal about political positions, but I was not vocal about, and this is what I've realized since converting and talking with other atheists, there's just many flavors of atheism.

There's many flavors of theism, right? And my atheism was not militant. I would say the snide remark every now and then, which I've tried to temper significantly, right? Right. Because it's just generally unhelpful. But I never had, growing up, like I never had a bad experience with Christianity. You know, the Christians I knew or met, they were all good people, for the most part, at least as good as anybody else.

So I never had like any animus. I think I would have probably promoted a number of cliches that you or myself might challenge now that religion is responsible for this terrible thing or that terrible thing. But certainly I would not have been of the mind to reduce everything wrong with the world to religion. Which Hitchens kind of does in a clever sounding way. Right. Yeah. So I would have parted ways with him from there. So yeah, and then, you know, so my atheism wasn't ever militant.

So in that sense, I think I was, it was probably easier to convert me for that reason because I didn't have so many barriers in place. Were you interested in the big questions? What happens when I die? What's the point of it all? And I guess if you're reading Nietzsche, you are. Yeah, and Nietzsche terrifies you in many respects with psychological egoism, the selfishness of it all.

And these were questions or positions that I was always deeply uncomfortable with. So I was never comfortable with atheism, ever. And that's why I say it wasn't purely intellectual. I'm happy to admit I was never comfortable with the conclusions that I seem to be reaching as kind of pushing through the naturalistic project, if you will. Things that you typically hear that it seems like, okay, well, I believe that some actions are really right and wrong.

But on this worldview, how do I make sense of that? How do I ground that? That was a big thing for me. The psychological egoism thing, right, that everything we do is inherently selfish. I was reading like Ayn Rand and stuff too. That was distressing for me because it seemed like that the good life is more than that.

All human interactions are a transaction of sorts, huh? Yeah, yeah. Everything is just so fundamentally selfish that any action that you analyze is going to come down to just being perfectly self-interested. Aristotelianism has a good answer to that, right? Well, we're inclined to happiness by nature, right? But how we go about that and what we do can be better or worse. And I wasn't exposed to that at the time.

So I was like kind of like stuck in this like nihilistic, incessantly selfish, you know, everything is fundamental particles world view. I was never comfortable with that. Like I wanted to get rid of it. I did. It didn't make a whole lot of sense to me, but I didn't really see what the alternatives were either. Did you have anyone in college try to evangelize you? Were you aware of Christian or other faith groups on campus? No, no. I can firmly say that that never happened to me. I was talking with a friend the other day of how different our upbringings seem to be. Even my wife, like my wife, she grew up in the South, right? Part of the reason she was so against Christianity for so long is she had so many bad experiences of

people trying to evangelize her. She would tell stories of how you could be driving down the street or driving home from school and people would throw Bibles in your window or something like that. Never anything like that. I don't remember if... It may have happened, but I do not have a single memory of anybody ever trying to evangelize me.

Aside from maybe going to a concert venue with people with signs and Bibles or pamphlets they hand out i went i for what it's worth i went to uh just as for undergrad a state university in pennsylvania secular university looking back though are you disappointed that no one ever tried would you know you know it's uh now i see it as god's providence in a way, right? Because everything that I had to go through, the questions that I had to wrestle with, and the positions that I've come to, I think are more mature than they would have been otherwise. I think me kind of losing my faith, in a sense, obviously it's all part of God's providence in the grand scheme.

But I can see the good that came out of that. Whereas maybe if I had converted sooner and hadn't gone through as much struggle, as much questioning, it wouldn't be as deep. And don't get me wrong. It's not like I have every question answered. There's questions and puzzles I'm working with all the time. But I really wrestled for a while

because the stakes were so high for me because I knew everything that I would have to change and all that I might lose. And look, I'm being a baby about it because compared to what other people have given up, it's nothing for me. But it was enough to make me be resistant and slow. What did you have to give up or what did you think you had to give up? Should I bring out the scroll of my past sins? Oh, I see.

Yeah, no, I mean, so that's one of them. So all the personal sins, right? Just, yeah, sexual sins, pornography, right? I mean, all of that stuff. So you talked about in sixth grade there was a tension that was kind of inserted into your brain that led you maybe on this path towards atheism, or at least it was part of that. Before we get to deciding you had to give up things, what was the tension placed in atheism for you other than you didn't really want it to be true?

Right, yeah. What happened? Yeah, I think it was a nihilistic tendency, right? Given the sort of general, and again, there's different flavors of atheism, right? But I was kind of in this sort of reductionist, naturalist, physicalist camp. We were talking about Dostoevsky before the show. You really have to read Crime and Punishment.

Yeah, and I haven't read him. Everybody keeps talking about it. I just need to make the time to read him. I've got a bunch of authors like that myself. And, you know, just kind of starting from a certain premise and trying to be consistent to the conclusions and seeing that it seems to entail some things that I just cannot possibly accept, right? That there is, I mean, everything from moral nihilism, but even weirder than that in

certain respects. Like, how do you make sense of consciousness, self? And, you know, some atheists or some, but not all, are willing to just bite the bullet and, you know, go for the nuclear option, as we say, and they're just eliminativists. They'll say, there is no consciousness. There is no self. He would be an eliminativist. Alex Rosenberg would be another one. And, you know, to me,

a thinker like Rosenberg is very interesting, because I think that he, I think he is, you know, he's not a dummy either. He was like the, you know, head of, or chair of the philosophy department at Duke or something like that. Yeah, I've seen, Braden's... ...attribute psychological motives to his atheism, but he seems like a nerd who's been hurt. Yeah, I have no idea, but I could see how you could, you could read that. But he seems to me like somebody who's trying to be consistent with a starting point. And Rosenberg, in particular,

wants to say it's all fermions and bosons right it's just those those the fundamental particles uh so he denies uh consciousness he denies uh enduring selves he denies truth he denies meaning he denies what else is he doing denies he does denies morality he's a nihilist right i think he has a term like happy nihilism. I'd recommend people check out his debate with Dr. William Lane Craig. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was a good one. That was a good one. I think one of the things Craig said was,

if you believe that you are the same person that walked in here tonight, then you should reject Rosenberg's atheism. Right, right. Because you're a different swirl of particles, right? Yeah. So I wasn't completely in the same line of thought as like rosenberg but there was enough things for me that i i think troubled you yeah that that i would have to deny or or significantly modify that just seemed false to me free will was another one

actually free will is uh it's just um we can get into that more later but that was one where it's just like yeah dang it like it seems like this worldview would lead me to determinism. Now, let's stop there for a second because there are atheists who would say you can be an atheist and either have some sort of free will, whether that be compatible free will, but some would hold to free will. Why did you think that was impossible? Well, I'm an incompatibilist. I don't think it makes any sense to say that we're determined and we still have free will.

Tell us why. Well, I just don'tatibilist. I don't think it makes any sense to say that we're determined and we still have freedom. Tell us why. Well, I just don't think that that makes any sense, right? To say that there's some factor that's prior to and logically sufficient for an effect, and yet that those factors could hold but the effect not hold? That makes no sense to me, right? So to affirm a libertarian freedom, we're going to need a different metaphysics where we're going to be able to be real agents, right, without some factor in the general ontological scenery, if you will, that isn't both prior to and logically sufficient for our action.

And I think we can do that, actually, with divine simplicity, and there's some good work on that. Maybe we'll get there, maybe we won't, right? But if you're a libertarian and you have deep libertarian intuitions with free will, which I did. Just kind of break this down for us a little bit more. For those who are watching and they're like, wait, all that just went past me a little too quickly. It sounds like you're saying if you're an atheist, if you're a materialist at least, you have to deny free will. Just kind of lay that argument out. Yeah, sure. So I mean, the idea is that if we're reducing things to the mere physical order, then say you have, you know, the laws of nature and then some just event A plus B plus C, and then eventually you come along, right? Well, the idea is that you and everything about you

is somehow inextricably linked to those prior factors which are also logically sufficient for you, your beliefs, your actions whatsoever. So if that's your metaphysics, I don't see how you're really getting around determinism, which is why many atheists, not all, but many embrace determinism. They accept the determinism. In fact, we brought up Sam Harris.

He's pretty staunch on determinism. Okay, thanks. Yeah, no, I don't know if that makes sense. No, it does make sense. Absolutely. I just think it's helpful for people. One of the things, again, back to Dr. William Lane Craig in his interview with Alex O'Connor. I'm not sure if you watched that episode.

I had Alex debate Trent on the channel about a year and a half ago. What's that? I only watch your podcast. I appreciate that. But you should watch this one because Alex O'Connor, he studies at Oxford. He's a very bright young man and Cosmic Skeptic is the name of his channel. Yes. And he's got like 300,000, 400,000, 500,000 YouTube followers.

And he had Dr. Craig on. And he's a very open-minded guy. And Craig did incredibly well. Like, it just helped him understand a lot of things. Craig's unreal. But one of the things Craig said was, you know, part of his tactic as a theistic apologist is to give the atheist a price tag for his atheism that's going to cost more than he's willing to pay right and that's sort of what you were talking about i think that's exactly what

happened to me right there were certain things where as i was going deeper into this particular worldview there were costs associated with them and at some point the cost became too much to bear and i didn't immediately hop to becoming a catholic by any means but it caused me to want to look at alternatives more seriously okay see that's a good way to think of it because if you had stopped there it would have just been okay well these things make you uncomfortable therefore they're false that doesn't follow yeah no i you know and i remember like there was a point i remember quite vividly i was sitting in my attic where i was just like i had a book in my hand.

I forget what it was. But I had just reached a point in just my atheistic thinking where I'm like, I don't know what's true. I don't know if this is true. I don't think it's true. But I'm going to keep searching until I figure something out or throw myself off a bridge. This is similar to my experience. My point, it wasn't that because I saw a pretty

grim universe and reality ahead of me and around me. Should atheism be true? That's not a good argument for theism being true. But it did make me want to question, as you just put it, well maybe I should look into these alternatives a little more seriously to see if there's any if they have have any, uh, gas heft. Yeah. That's kind of what you were

doing. Okay. Right. So what did you look to first? The classics go back to Plato, Aristotle. Oh no. Okay. Philosophy. Okay. I didn't know if you kind of jumped into different world religions. No, I mean, religion, man, religion was not on the table for me at all. Okay. Like I thought I was, I would say I would probably be open to the, of, like, a god in the most general sense, right? A deism or pantheism. So I really kind of ran the gamut, right? So as I moved away from atheism and kind of, like, closer to Catholicism, I went through the whole spiritual but not religious phase, right?

So I was reading thinkers like Aldous Huxley, right, and the perennial philosophy and religious pluralists, really, right? And that seemed plausible to me at first. As I dove deeper into it, I realized that it wasn't going to work, especially not like what we call like a naive religious pluralism and say like religions are all just saying the same thing. They definitely aren't, right? they say quite radically different things or you could take a more sophisticated view uh which says something like okay religions are definitely saying different things yeah and they're all wrong but they're also kind of right

so yeah they're all kind of groping at the same ultimate reality that was that was attractive to me it was attractive to me, and that opened me up. And I just parked there for a while, honestly, and I was just reading a lot of philosophy and different thinkers of that sort. That's cool that you were reading Plato. Right. I mean, if I were an atheist, I don't know, I think I'd make a religion out of Plato.

I just love Socrates. You could just be a Platonist, right? Yeah. Well, I mean, it's interesting because I had your introduction to these thinkers at other times, your basic intro to philosophy courses and stuff like that, but I just never spent a lot of time with them. So I decided I want to go back. But what I was referring to, though, was Socrates in prison where his friends try to rescue him. And he says, look, what's the problem?

You know, if he doesn't say this exactly, but if the afterlife exists, then it sounds rather pleasant. And if it doesn't, then I suppose it'll be like going into a dreamless sleep. And who doesn't want that? It's funny, my philosophy professor brought that up one time and I challenged her on it. I'm like, is that really the only alternatives there? Like, what if there's a hell?

What if it's absolutely awful? What if you get reincarnated, right? It seems like you might be leaving out some options, right, that are worth considering. Yeah. So with all respect to Plato, of course. But no, so I mean, you just go and you start reading different perspectives. And I was doing that from many different angles.

Somehow, eventually, I forget how, I stumbled upon the Thomistic tradition. Prior to being a Christian. Yeah, I was a Thomist before I was a Catholic. And a Christian? Yes. Yeah. Yes. Yeah.

Uh-huh. And not just Aquinas himself, but like many of the sort the contemporary Thomistic thinkers were very impressive to me. Father Norris Clark, for example, he was a big influence. The existential Thomists, this was the school that I was very much drawn to. Bernard Lonergan. When I hit those guys, there was just a ring of beauty and truth to the way that they were describing the world. And it checked boxes for me. Did you encounter any of their sort of

existentialist arguments for God's existence from the sort of Thomist lens? Right, yeah. You know what I mean? Of course. The mind is made for truth, and if truth doesn't exist, then individual truths don't satisfy.

Right, yeah. So in Clark, that's his inner path, right? Clark's kind of got the inner path. You know, the mind is kind of hunting for truth. It reaches a set of limits. It enjoys whatever those limits are for a little bit, and then it rebounds, right? It rebounds, and either it's going to be infinite frustration

or we're going to come to rest in the unlimited, the absolute, right? And I think, if I remember rightly, Clark says, like, yeah, this isn't a deductive proof, but it's suggestive. It's definitely suggestive. And then he's got his argument, if I remember right, it's a two-step, right? That there has to be at least one necessary reality, something that's uncaused in the totality of reality, right?

Because there's no cause that can exist outside of it, right? That's right. So in the collection of all that is real, there has to be at least one. I like the term unconditioned reality because if everything's conditioned, then it stands in a dependency relation, things outside itself. And if that's the case for everything, whether it's finite or infinite. It can't be turtles all the way down.

Yeah, the fulfillment of those conditions can never be achieved in principle. So it'd be nothing. It'd be nothing. So that's like his first step. And then his second step is to argue whatever else that fundamental uncaused reality is, it has to be a pure act of existing, existing through itself. And why is

that, he thinks? He thinks it has to be well, it has to be actual, right? Because if it's not, then it would have to be caused, and it's conditioned. That's a contradiction, because we already said it has to be uncaused. And if it exists in virtue of something else, same thing, caused, conditioned, that's a contradiction. So it has to be pure, has to be a pure act of existing through itself. So there can be no part or feature or dimension to it that was different from it. Otherwise you have a caused,

uncaused reality, which makes no sense. So that gives you divine simplicity right there, right? It's this pure, fully actual reality with no limits, no boundaries, no restrictions. So you were reading Clark and other Thomists for their metaphysics, not caring whether or not they were Christian at this point. I was good at ignoring Christianity for a while. I remember admitting that to another friend. And it was funny because it wasn't like I was even deliberately trying to ignore it. I just glossed over it, even with Thomas.

I was just easily able to just be interested in the philosophy. Not like they're dumb or anything like that. It was just very easy for me to just, I just want the philosophy. It was very easy for me to think, I just want the philosophy and I can just... You know what's interesting? When I was coming to faith, I was about 15, 16 years old, and I was just open, right? Really open and searching for something beyond me, beyond the physical.

And so I just started like looking into meditation books and new age things. But whenever they would use Christian terminology, it immediately turned me off. You know, like open your mind and open your heart to... If they use the word heaven, I was totally turned off. I don't know why that was. Maybe familiarity breeds contempt sort of thing. But if I use the word heaven, I was totally turned off. I don't know why that was. Maybe familiarity breeds contempt sort of thing.

My grandma's a Christian. My mom's a Christian. This is all just whatever, trivial. Anyway. Yeah, I'm trying to think if there was any aversion. I mean, there's definitely some aversions that I had, right, of different strands of Protestantism for various reasons. I was a Protestant before I was Catholic. I shouldn't actually say that. I wasn't really Protestant, right? I explored Protestantism for various reasons. I was a Protestant before I was Catholic. I shouldn't actually say that.

I wasn't really Protestant, right? I explored Protestantism before I became Catholic. And part of it was my wife, actually. So we're kind of like traveling along. This is fascinating. Both toward the church, but on separate paths, right? So she was brought up in an agnostic household. She then became very like new ageagey spiritual but not religious.

When she was with you? No, before me. When she met with me, I brought her into—I made her an atheist. Okay. Right? And then she actually was quite upset with me when I thought that maybe we should start considering Christianity. So you—okay, you're married at this point. We're married, right?

So we had a kid, and then we got married in a secular way, and then, yeah, it was a mess. Trying to come into the church with that. But it worked out. Thanks be to God. So, yeah, she had a strong aversion to Christianity. And I remember knowing, like, okay, if I'm going to bring this up to my wife, I've got to be delicate about it, right to be, I'd be delicate about it. Right. I'd be delicate about it. Um, and we got, actually got to a point

where through numerous conversations, her resistance started to break down. And I, you know, I gave her the reasons like, Hey, here's why I think this is credible. Here's why we should at least think about it. And like, we got kids now. Right. And this is, this is another part of the story. It's like, how are we going to raise these, raise these kids? And she had the same feeling, right? She's like, I don't know how to teach my kids. I don't know what to anchor it in. So she wasn't ready to hop to Christianity, but she was struggling with it. So do you remember what it was that got you thinking about Christianity then? It was definitely the philosophers that impressed me that opened me up. You began to realize this guy was a Christian? And I was surprised. I was surprised

when I discovered, I forget where I discovered it from, Bill Craig was definitely helpful at some point. I don't know if he was the first one. That there was actually a credible historical case to make for Christianity. That was something I just assumed was never a thing. I wouldn't have been like, Jesus is definitely a myth type of proponent, but I probably believed that. I probably believed that he was some type of mythological or the spiritual guru type of thing,

because I just never thought very deeply about it, right? That he was just kind of a Buddha type figure. I did read Mere Christianity at one point. You get the trilemma there, which gets you thinking. And the moral argument. You've already made your God there. Yeah, I'd already been working through that, but it was just interesting to see that that's how he opens Mere Christianity. I think that those are good. Because the truth is, if you ask me my favorite arguments for God, I'm probably going to talk like Norris Clark's stuff, right? That, but the moral, it's true that the moral stuff gets you right in the gut, like

it did for me. So, yeah, so there's that. So I'm kind of coming in, and I'm kind of converging on Catholicism at this point. I'm thinking, there's a lot of things that seem right about this. Like, it seems

to explain a lot of stuff. Okay, this is, this is, I mean, you've got to help us understand how you went from considering Christianity, reading C.S. Lewis. I mean, Catholicism, it feels like there's so many more hurdles to jump for many people. There's just so much more to accept, you know. Papacy, not the least of them. See, there were issues that I had in a sense that the question of authority was an interesting one for me. And part of the reason is, politically, I was once very liberal.

Then I became a hardcore libertarian. You know how libertarians feel about authority. Not very friendly, right? And now there's something I'm considering that it's kind of big on the authority question, right? And that's very interesting to me. I mean, part of it was just kind of knocking out options too, right? So sola scriptura always seemed like a non-starter. And what's interesting to me. I mean, part of it was just kind of knocking out options too, right? So solo scriptura always seemed like a non-starter to me.

And what's interesting to me too is you didn't have the sort of Protestant background that would lead you to immediately dismiss out of prejudice prayers to the saints, priesthood, things like this. Right, like the Mary stuff, never an issue for me. Never an issue. The Pope, never an issue for me. It was just, does it make sense? Is there historical credibility? There was never, and this is something I really appreciate or try to appreciate

is that we all have our paradigms, right? We all have that kind of lens that we see things through. And Alistair McIntyre, a great Catholic convert himself, he talks about trying to engage in paradigmatic thinking where it's to really understand a position. Don't just look at it like, you know, don't just analyze the propositions, right? But like, try to step into it. Try and see through that lens. And I obviously haven't lived in every paradigm, but I try to do that. Like, why would, now I try to do it anyways. I didn't always try to do it, but like, why would, you know, a Protestant feel this way about Mary or the Pope?

And I think I understand that. I think I do too. I think I really do understand that. But I didn't have that issue. So that wasn't for me. The idea of a hierarchical structure makes sense. It seems befitting of human nature. We're social animals.

Tradition fits well with that. Soul scriptura, it just seemed like a non-starter, right? You don't have an inspired table of contents. No book can compile itself. No book can interpret itself. And we have huge disagreements about all the stuff that's in Scripture. So it seems like we need another mechanism of some sort, right? So these things were all sense-making to me.

It seemed to fit. There's typology. We were talking about that a little bit before the show. Typology wasn't something that totally... Again, it was cumulative, right? Yeah. So it was just like, here's a weight in the scale. There's another weight.

There's another weight. And maybe there's a weight in the scale for Catholicism that's actually just that I don't think something else works. Yeah. So... And then, yeah. And then just reading the earliest Christians, right? When you read that, you know, Clement, Ignatius, Irenaeus, and not just looking for the papacy, which is quite distinctive,

but you would read things that really seemed like a commitment to the real presence. You'd hear about them talking about altars. Like, what is an altar for? Well, it's for a sacrifice. Right, right. Right? And these were things that seemed very much in line with the Catholic Church, but not in line with, we were going both to a non-denominational and Lutheran.

Oh, interesting. So we're kind of like camping out at different places. And part of that was because when I was first talking to my wife about this, she finally got to the point, she's like, okay, I'll consider becoming Christian, but no way in hell am I ever becoming Catholic. What was her biggest roadblock? Her family actually is largely ex-Catholic. So there's something there, right, that just got handed down about the negativity of the Catholic faith in her family. And then she just, growing up in the South, is a not Christian. That's funny, though, because I would have thought that if she had turned on Christianity, the Christianity of her youth,

that maybe now she'd be open to something just not that Southern-style Christianity. Yeah, I guess it was a version from two different angles, right? She had the Southern-style Christianity, which was off-putting to her. She should let her speak for herself at some point. But then also her family having left the faith and having just largely, it seemed like, negative things to say about it as she was growing up gave her a foul impression. Yeah, that's fair.

So I was kind of, you know, intellectually So I was kind of, you know, intellectually, I was kind of, you know, veering Catholic pretty strongly at this point. What Catholic books or apologetics were you consuming, if any, at the time? The one thing that really got my wife was Bishop Barron's Catholicism series. Oh, it's excellent.

Before, what was I doing at that point? Well, you know, I was reading these philosophers that I mentioned, right? And once I was seriously starting to consider Catholicism, I read a lot on the historical credibility for the resurrection, because that's obviously a linchpin. So that's, you know, Bill Craig's got a book called The Sun Rises, which is good. N.T. Wright's got a book. Brent Petrie's got a book. So I tried to see, is there a credible basis there?

I didn't need it proved, like mathematically. I just needed to see, is it plausible? Because once you kind of get to theism, right, your prior worldview causes you to interpret things differently, right? So like given that I had already come to belief in God and that he's good and it seems like something went seriously wrong in the world,

something like the incarnation in Atonement just kind of makes sense. It's a smaller jump. It kind of just makes sense. Right? So the fact that there's like a basis there historically

for it, it's fitting. It's fitting. Yeah. It presents itself as a very plausible and rational option. So, yeah, if you press me on all the historical stuff, I'm not an apologist.

Well, the fact that, I mean, Catholic apologetics has largely been concerned with Protestant objections, at least up until the recent past with the sort of atheist, new atheist movement that's not so new anymore. And so given the fact that you didn't have a lot of questions about indulgences or authority or Mary, that would probably explain why perhaps you never turned to many modern Catholic apologists. Yeah. And you know, the authority is a big one. So I think if you can, if you can get, so for Catholics, I kind of see it, the apologetic project is broken up into three things, right? You have this God exists, and there you're speaking to atheists and agnostics, skeptics in the, you know, the general sense. Thennostics, skeptics in the general sense, then is Jesus God?

That's the middle pillar, right? And there you're talking to people who might be spiritual but not religious or different religions. And then you've got did Christ give us the Catholic Church, right? Is that church really an authoritative thing in a sense? And I think once you can answer the question of authority, if you can answer it, and I think you can, you don't have to work through everything else, right? I didn't need to work through the indulgence thing.

Because, like, whatever the case is there, and, like, it doesn't mean you get lazy and ignorant, but, like, look, the history of the Catholic Church is huge. No way am I going to be able to parse through every single detail of this, right? I'm just not going to do it. Can I get enough reasons, considerations, evidence that will cause me to assent and say, yes, this is true, that I can then trust that God is really guiding his church? And that if difficulties arise, if they're serious enough, then I'll eventually go look into it. This is a really interesting point.

And I'd love you to talk about this a little bit more. For those who are watching who are on the sort of precipice of accepting Catholicism or something else, this idea that we're so kind of anxious about the fact that we may throw our lives into something that ends up being false. And what you just said there is I can't possibly go through the whole history of Catholicism. I have to know enough so that I can then possibly go through the whole history of Catholicism. I have to know enough so that I can then trust. Talk about that a bit. Yeah, I'd love to.

I think this plays not just into Catholicism but Christianity as well. I think there's kind of like the general big-ticket questions, the hinge points. These are the things you really got to figure out, and there's a parallel here to the resurrection. If Christ really did walk out of his tomb, whatever other issues you have with Christianity, probably you can work through those, right? So like let's keep the main things the main thing, right? If Christ really did found the Catholic Church and this is God's church and God is protecting his church,

you know, I've heard people, you know, say in various like philosophical groups, I try not to spend too much time on social media, but some people are resistant to becoming Catholic because they have issues with divine simplicity, say, or something like that, right? That's one of Cameron Matusi's arguments. Oh, Cameron's a good guy. He's okay.

I had him on my show a long time ago, like when I was, yeah. Anyway, hello to Cameron. And what I want to say to that is that's a difficult thing to think about, first off, right? But it's not a unique difficulty. And can we spend a few minutes on this? On divine simplicity? Well, the general point, and then we can talk about divine simplicity, right?

Because you might be talking to a Muslim, and they might have issues with the Trinity. And they say, I would become Christian, but the Trinity doesn't make any sense to me. Probably a Protestant would say, well, let's focus on the resurrection. Yeah, I like that analogy. Right? And here's the thing, because if Christ really walked out of his tomb, and you could even concede, like, look, I don't really get the Trinity either. It's difficult.

But I can maybe at least show you it's not incoherent. And then let's focus on this thing, and that should be the deciding factor. I would say the same thing with Catholicism. Divine simplicity is difficult. I don't think it's incoherent. And then let's focus on this thing. And that should be the deciding factor. I would say the same thing with Catholicism. Like, divine simplicity is difficult. I don't think it's incoherent. I think we can defend it. Maybe I can't work out every little nook and cranny, but if we can, you know, give good arguments that Christ really did give us a church, hierarchical, unified, right? Then we should join it, right? And then we can, it doesn't mean we can't still look into divine simplicity, but some things are clearer than others. Some things kind of present themselves as a little bit more important than other things.

Yes. And that's the way I would approach that. Yeah, I think that's a really good way of thinking of it. Right now, he thinks it's actually an incoherent belief, divine simplicity. But I see your point. Right. That it's like, for the Muslim, if you accept Christ's resurrection, then you can get on the road to the Trinity.

Likewise, if you accept papal infallibility, then we can work on divine simplicity next, but that's going to be, you know. Right. Yeah, and talking with many Protestants with divine simplicity, and first of all, it's not just a Catholic thing. Many Protestants affirm divine simplicity. with divine simplicity. And first of all,

it's not just a Catholic thing. Like many Protestants affirm divine simplicity. I had two very long conversations on this, both on my show recently with Dr. Gavin Kerr and on another good show, the Classical Theism Podcast with John DeRosa.

So if people want to go in the weeds in that, I'd say check those out. But there's different starting points. And I think that this is important to understand, right? So when I was kind of coming as a skeptic, metaphysics really appealed to me because I was kind of looking for the, like, what's the ultimate explanation of things, right?

And I think a lot of people who come from Scripture start not by looking for an ultimate explanation but looking for an ultimate person. And so they take the idea of God as a person. Well, we're persons. Let's start stripping away limits, right? Well, God doesn't have a body, and let's fill out God's knowledge with only and all true propositions. So you kind of like get some big, mighty thing, but that big, mighty thing doesn't seem to me

like the ultimate metaphysical explanation of things, right? But if you're starting metaphysically and you're kind of carving reality at its joints. Fascinating. And you're like, okay, how do we make sense of the problem of change or the problem of the one in the many? And then you start discovering these distinctions between act potency or later essence and existence. And then you start to hunt down the path of intelligibility. Well, then it seems to me like it's divine simplicity or bust, right?

Because we have these categories of things that stand in need of an explanation, right? We have composites, for example, of essence and existence, and composite things require a cause beyond themselves. We have contingent things with a real distinction. We have things which move from potentiality to actuality, right? So in order to make sense of these certain categories of things, to make sense of why there's any potentiality at all, we're going to have to get to pure actuality. To make sense of why there's any compositeness at all, we're going to have to get to absolutely simple being. So we have to transcend these categories for ultimate explanations, right? And when we do that, we're going to get something that is categorically different, right? That is purely actual, kind of as we sketched out with the Clark argument before, that is utterly simple, non-composite, right? And whose essence just is existence, that God is to

be to be. Now, when you do that, you get to something that might at first seem spooky and aloof, but we have other moves to show that no, this being actually has intellect, has will, is personal, right? Is the reason that any of us exist at all. But we don't start by looking for the ultimate person. We start by looking for the ultimate explanation. And you also have to understand the tools the metaphysician is using, such as proceeding apathetically and analogically. So, you know, sometimes people are worried, and it's a legitimate concern with simplicity and then making certain predications of God.

If God is all-knowing and all-powerful, well, aren't these distinct things? But in God, you're saying the same thing, right? This is the kind of multiple properties objection. That just seems like annoying nonsense, right? Yes. And this is where we have to— That's a great way to put it. We have to—and again a great way to put it. We have to,

and it, like, again, I try to appreciate that. Like, I can see, like, why would somebody think that, and it makes sense given that there's different starting points and approaches. But if you're moving along like Thomas does, and you're moving apathetically, you're striking away the things God is not, not material, not composed, blah, blah, blah, right? But then also when we make positive attributions of God, because we're moving from effect to ultimate cause, and whatever is in the effect must in some way be in the cause, right? In some way. Then when we say that there's power, knowledge, and God, we mean that analogically, right? There's something like power in God. There's something like knowledge in God. And that God's power and God's knowledge, those things are the same, but we can still affirm that knowledge and power in us are distinct. Now, all of that is, you know, a huge can of worms that we may or may not want to open, but it's just in order to, I think, fairly evaluate divine

simplicity, it's very important you don't just start at the conclusion. What is the process that leads up to it? And same thing, like there's different models of divine simplicity too. So you might find one utterly implausible. There's certainly ones that I reject. But then there might be other ones that you find attractive. Yeah, okay. Hey, you said something which I want you to defend. I know Aquinas does.

The idea that if something's composite, it requires a prior cause to bring it together. Why think that's true? Right. So if there's an object that's composed, it presupposes its parts in existence, at the very least. It presupposes... It presupposes what? Its parts.

So take a simple example here, like a chair or something like that, or even me, I have parts. It's almost synonymous. To be composed is to have parts. Yeah, so, right. And it's not just the existence of the parts that's important, but it's the arrangement and function of the parts as well, right. And it's not just the existence of the parts that's important, but it's the arrangement and function of the parts as well, right?

I can't be the cause of what I'm presupposing, right? But my parts also, you know, they constitute me, right? So we'd have an explanatory vicious circle if we didn't get outside of the composed object. Say that again. It went too fast for me. We would have an explanatory vicious circle. Yeah, but how?

If we tried to explain the whole in terms of the parts, but the parts in terms of the whole, because the parts are also part of the whole. Think of like a chair, right? How would a chair come together? Well, this is a pretty easy one. Somebody put it together, right? But it only stays together

because certain other things are operative at the same time. Temperature, friction forces, electromagnet together, right? But it only stays together because certain other things are operative at the same time. Temperature, friction forces, electromagnetism, right? You start, so it's not just that somebody put it together. There's things that hold it together, right? Now, expand that out. You can go metaphysically. So you can go matter and form. I think the easier one, I think,

with this is essence and existence, right? With Aquinas, right? So any finite, qualitatively finite thing exists only insofar as existence is imparted to it, right? Yes. So if there's a real distinction, like I don't own existence, right? It's given to me.

It's donated to. That's what Aquinas means by a real distinction. Well, we need something that, I don't want to say mushed them together, right? But trying to keep the language simple. Otherwise, you have something like imparting existence to itself, and in which sense it would have to pre-exist itself, and in which case, why would it need to impart existence to itself?

So to avoid these type of explanatory vicious circles, depending how, any way you want to look at it, right? Physically, metaphysically, you're going to have to get beyond those categories altogether. You recently had Josh Rasmussen on, if I can give him a shout out. He's got a really cool argument called the argument from limits. Yes. So he, and I think it's very close to the real distinction, just coming at it from a different way, right?

Where he says that you look at a limited thing, right? This iPhone has a particular shape, right? Why does it have that shape, right? Why does it have those limits instead of any other limits? And he's actually very similar to Clark too, right? We reach these limits and what do limits do? Limits point out to an external explanation, right? Always beyond themselves. Well, can we keep pointing out? Can we keep pointing out, keep pointing out, keep pointing out? Or do we have to explode all the limits at some point? Do we have to get beyond all restrictions, all boundaries, right? So if we do that and we get to the unbounded, the unrestricted, the qualitatively infinite, you know, pure actuality, right? We have moved

beyond. We're at something categorically different. And in that sense, it's so different. It doesn't mean we can't say anything about it, but I don't think we should be surprised if it's a little bit spooky. You know what I mean? Given that it transcends all the categories we interact with, yeah. So that was another thing that was never really an issue for me is sometimes people object to the way Aquinas thinks about God or the Catholic faith. It's just too strange. That wasn't an issue for me. But I can appreciate why it would be an issue.

I love what you said earlier, that most of us, as the Christian who now wants to find arguments for God's existence, they basically think of a person, and then they add to it those—they take away the finite properties. That's really interesting to me. as you say for you i hope i'm not caricaturing the other side but that seems no but i can see how that would be the case for some people right right i mean for you you began on the opposite end right and then once you've accepted that uncaused cause then you can look at the arguments that give it knowledge, power, seen through different lenses. So it's funny when you come from different perspectives, right? It's because divine simplicity actually made a lot of sense for me, and the Catholic Church

so boldly affirms it. That was actually a credibility thing for the Catholic faith for me, rather than against. So it goes to show, depending where you're coming from, you know, double-edged sword, right? A moment ago, you talked about different types of simplicity. And I know the church says we must believe God's simple. But you talked about there are different versions of divine simplicity you reject. Right. Would you tell us what's the bare minimum we have to accept, to your knowledge?

And if you can't do it, that's okay. In terms of for the church, I would have to punt. I don't know. Okay, that's fine. And I don't know if I've heard a good answer of that. Then what is the versions of simplicity you reject and why? I'll tell you the one that I like the most. Okay.

And it would be a great thinker. I think somebody I wish would be more well-known, Dr. W. Matthews Grant. He's got a book. would be more well-known, Dr. W. Matthews Grant. He's got a book. It's an excellent book called Human Freedom and God's Universal Causality or something like that. And he's trying to reconcile those two things.

That's his main project. How do we reconcile libertarian freedom and divine universal causality? Because there seems like a superficial tension there. But then he puts out a model called the Extrinsic Model model of divine simplicity in that book. And he's building off of this scholastic project of mixed relations, what Aquinas holds, that God has a rational relation to us, we have a real relation to God. Given that, and divine universal causality comes

up with what's called the extrinsicic Model of Divine Simplicity. So if people are interested in a model that I like the best, it would be that one. And we could talk details if we want. There's also another book that kind of surveys models by a philosopher named J. Richards. I think it's called The Untamed God, if I remember rightly. And that's a good book because he kind of goes through, I think if I remember rightly, he goes through like four to six maybe different models of divine simplicity. He takes issue with a number of them. It's a great name.

Yeah, he's a good thinker. I like Jay a lot. I think I probably diverge with him on the model he settles on, but presumably they're both acceptable within the circles of Catholic orthodoxy. Before we get to questions here, and for those who are watching right now in the live chat, we are going to start taking questions, so have them ready. But at least kind of let's, I don't mean to rush you, but wrap up the story as to how you became Catholic and what that was like. So, yeah, I was actually kind of like sneaking off to Catholic Mass before my wife was.

I love it. I would go to a coffee shop in the morning and kind of do my work because I just work from my computer. And there was a Catholic Mass right down the street, and I would go, and it was a beautiful thing. And, in fact, actually, it was Christmas Eve one night. I'll tell this story very quickly just because, again, just to show it's not all or even mostly intellectual. I just had this deep pull to go to Mass. Yep. And this was before I was sneaking to it.

So I started sneaking to Mass after this first experience. And it was snowing outside, and it was horrendous weather. And I told my wife, I'm like, I think I have to go to that Catholic church down the street. I think I just have to go. And she just gave me this look. She's like, whatever you need to do go to that Catholic church down the street. I think I just have to go. And she just gave me this look. She's like, whatever you need to do, right? Yeah. And I go.

And it was the most beautiful thing, right? I'm not a feelings person. Like, I never have, like, spiritual experiences. I'm, like, just very dry. But that was the closest I've ever came, right? Specifically, when the priest held up the Eucharist, Matt, was like when something hit me. No, I knew then, I knew then at that moment that this is where I need to be. If you were to look back now,

would you say that that was a beautiful liturgy, or was it just a run-up of mill? It was a beautiful liturgy, and it was. I was very fortunate, because that parish was a very, very old, gothic-looking thing. It was in Westchester, Pennsylvania. I'll give them a shout. It was St. Agnes Parish, and it's just a beautiful old— it was built in the 1700s maybe. It's one of the oldest in that area.

Just beautiful and just exceedingly dark. Not a lot of light, but the stained glass and the candles. Beautiful. And the beauty was a huge element. But the reverence, the reverence at the Eucharist, the homily was incredible. I don't even remember it. I remember just, I almost shed a tear, which for me is significant. Is that right?

Right, yeah. So, yes, it was exceedingly beautiful. I don't know what would have happened if I would have went into some tinny drum kit type of mass. But that isn't where God let me go. So then, okay. Then how did you get, you know, RCIA, presumably? That's exactly it. So fast forward a little bit, get the wife on board.

And like I said, she worked her own way through. Did she have an objection to any of the Catholic moral teachings, say to contraception or something like that? And did you? Yes. Well, again, here is another marker for Catholicism, is natural law seemed like the best ethical theory in the market, as far as I could tell. And seeing that the Catholic Church upheld that. Now look, that doesn't mean I was

following it. So intellectually I was there, but I was living a life quite contrary to that, right? And so was my wife, and we both were. And I didn't resolve all that stuff before I became Catholic, but by God's grace, he helped me. Obviously, we still have our shortcomings in many respects, right? But he helped me get rid of a lot of that stuff, a lot of the most significant stuff, and almost like that, right? Oh, my God. Wow.

Yeah, yeah, especially the sexual stuff, right? So we go to RCIA. The church tries to figure out our situation with, like, you know, being married outside of the church and kids, and it was all figured out. And I was confirmed, and then Christine was baptized and confirmed at a beautiful Easter vigil, and we got all the kids baptized. So we got the whole glory together. We had three at that time.

How did your parents and her parents, if you don't mind me asking, that might be too personal, I'm not sure, but how did they take it? Yeah, I think her family was more surprised than mine. Mine seemed, yeah, good. More of my friends were like, what are you doing, man? What's going on here? Her family, she was very, very nervous to tell her family because there was a strong anti-religious attitude.

But it's been good. It's been good. They're not Catholic, but it's been good. I can't really say too many. It wasn't as bumpy as we were expecting. I'll say that. Okay. Well, we might get into some of this in the questions.

I'm sure people will have questions about your particular conversion and things like that. But before we do that, and if you're watching right now, do us a favor. Hit that like button. If you're enjoying this interview, do us a favor and share it because that helps YouTube evangelize. And it's always good to help Google evangelize. But before we do that, I want to say thank you to our sponsor, Catholic Chemistry. I used to work at Catholic Answers, and one of my co-workers was a bloke by the name of Chuck Gallucci. And the two of us would talk about our plans for the future,

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Catholicchemistry.com. All right. This is fantastic. Okay. Are you aware of the folks at Real Atheology? Yeah, I think I have to. They're a podcast. Yeah. We had one of those blokes on to debate Gregory Pine. Right.

At one point. Very respectful guys. Very intelligent guys. Anyway, they said, awesome to see Pat on this podcast. Well, thanks, guys. His, they said, awesome to see Pat on this podcast. Well, thanks, guys. His podcast is great, too. We would love to hear from Pat who he feels are the best defenders of philosophical atheism and the best books defending atheism from his perspective.

Yeah, that's a really good question. So let me first say that I don't actually get a chance to listen to a lot of podcasts. So because I'm always recording them, right? Unless it's Matt. So let me, can I answer this in two ways? I'll answer this in who are my favorite and who I think are the best. I kind of answered my favorite. I'll never get tired of reading Nietzsche, ever. I don't think he's the most rigorous, right? Like if you're looking for a good analytic philosophy or something like that. He's just, I just always enjoy reading him. And I think he's prophetic and important in many ways, even if I don't go with him on his genealogy of morals or something like that.

I wrote a post not too long ago, which somebody commented on recently very kindly, and I think that they themselves are not religious, called The Case for Religion and especially Catholicism. It's a sloppy blog post, but it's on my website if you want to check it out. And in there I named the three atheists that I think are probably the most formidable. J.L. Mackey, John Howard Sobel, and Graham Oppie. And I don't know if you're going to get much more rigorous than that. And I'd be curious if those guys agree to that.

So yeah, Miracle of Theism, Logic and Theism, and Arguing Gods would be three books to start. Now look, if you're not trained in this stuff and you're a believer, you don't go into those books. You're not coming out of those books unless you're seriously engaged in the philosophy of religion. So that's something you've got to be battle-ready to go. But you know what?

I said this on a podcast with John the other day. We were working through some more technical objections to simplicity and stuff like that. And the way I've seen it and the way I saw it back when I was an atheist, and the way I try to see it now. Now we have to, you know, faith is also a gift, so that's there, and we can't put that aside. But we, objections are a good thing, right? Difficulties are a good thing because they can help us reach to a deeper understanding, which is the mind wants. And they can cause us to abandon superficial views. And, you know, in a way, I think that that's what the new atheism has done for many Christians today. I mean, the

sort of rise of William Lane Craig was in response to people like Richard Dawkins, who are essentially asking things like, well, who created God? Which may have been a question that would have stumped the majority of thinking Christians 20 years ago, but today we've thought about these things, even if it's just a matter of having watched a Dr. William and Craig debate. Yeah, you know, and that's interesting because that, I obviously think it's a very bad objection. But it does, it has force in as much as I constantly see it repeated, even on my videos and stuff like that. So, yeah, I mean, what can that do? What can that do?

Who caused God? I mean, just give an example, right? Who caused God? What can that objection do if it rattles you? Well, it can cause you to wonder if any argument rides on the premise that everything has a cause to begin with, right? And that's a good thing to consider. Does everything have a cause?

Well, according to Norris Clark, no. He starts from the opposite. He says that not everything can have a cause. Otherwise, we wind up in absurdity. And that's a wonderful insight, right? That's a wonderful thing to gain clarity on. Not just that the objection is misguided, but it gets you to think more deeply about the structure of reality and how things are.

So even a simple objection like that, that sometimes we might just not take seriously, it could be fruitful. Another question here from Koba. Thank you for your super chat. He says this, and let's see if we can understand this because it looks like a little complicated. When assessing theory X, if theory X implies Y, which is false, then Theory X is probably false, maybe definitely false. If Catholicism implies that all church teachings are true, and I'm skeptical of any detail of teachings, how can I come to believe? Yeah, that's a really good question, right? So you've got a model, right? And say the model predicts something, right?

Say it predicts X, but you think not X, right, and say the model predicts something, right, say it predicts, say it predicts x, but you think not x, right, well then it would seem like not x counts as evidence against your model, right? That sounds like it's kind of what he's saying, right? Maybe we could use an example here with the problem of evil, right? Because sometimes it's thought that if God exists, that that would predict that there wouldn't be evil, right? But we think that there's evil in the world. So does that count against the hypothesis that God exists? And that's kind of like a softened version, right?

We're not saying that there's maybe a logical contradiction between God and evil, but if God exists, then maybe more probably than not, we would predict more of a perfect world or a perfect world or such a thing like that, right? And so let's think through this, and then maybe we can go back and answer his question, because I think it's going to come down to weights and a scale at the end of the day, right? It's going to come down to more than just one consideration as it did for me, because there were some things with the church that I wasn't

sure on, but there was enough of the other stuff that depressed the scales that caused me to want to go re-evaluate is oh is my commitment to this actually right that would be my short answer to him but even for evil um you know bring up josh rasmussen again he's got a nice little paper on this where um he says i hope i don't do injustice to his project but he'll say something like this um what what worldview better predicts evil when you really take the time to think about it? Would it be a physicalism? Well, it's hard to make sense of that because in order to make sense of evil, we need some type of moral standard, and then we need moral communities,

conscious moral beings that can reflect on the moral standard and engage in reasoning and this or that. It's hard to see how you're going to get any of that from just shapes and motion, right? Some people might even think it's just impossible to get something like that, like to traverse those categories would just be impossible, right? But certainly it doesn't seem very probable. Now, what if you have a perfect foundation, supreme being itself, right? And especially as classical theists hold that goodness and being are convertible, right? Well, now we've got a perfect foundation, supreme being itself, right? And especially as classical theists hold that goodness and being are convertible, right? Well, now we've got a perfect foundation,

so it seems like we've got a standard in place. Might God have good reasons to create rational agents? Seems very plausible, right? So now the things that evil is contingent upon, right? So evil itself is contingent upon a moral standard, moral communities. These actually are better explained by theism and very difficult to explain on certain brands of naturalism, if not atheism outright. So in that sense, evil upon a deeper consideration seems to actually point more in the direction of theism than just using the framework that he's bringing up here than atheism. So this was kind of a theme that I found, actually,

is that superficial tensions I had with Catholicism, and superficial doesn't mean like they're weak arguments. It's just there's an initial tension. The longer I thought about them usually led to deeper concord, deeper harmony. So to go back to his very good question, I would say, for me, there was enough wins in the Catholic box already that the places where I was in tension about, and I don't remember off the top of my head, but I do remember there were certain places. The church already had been right so many more times than me. I'm like, okay, maybe I'm wrong.

Maybe I'm wrong on this, So let me go reevaluate. You mentioned those three poles earlier, God's existence, Christianity, Catholicism. I wrote a paper a while back about sort of the apologetics mansion, I called it. You have these three levels, right? That's good. I like that. Yeah. So you want to, the evangelist, the apologist wants to bring you to the summit or to the peak of the mansion. And it's true that God can reveal himself to you in a way that you come to believe Catholicism to be true in a moment. But if you were to think about it sequentially, and suppose you were thinking of this mansion,

and perhaps there are people sitting around the grass by the mansion. These might be atheists. Well, to shout out from the third story window, that would be Catholicism is true, about transubstantiation to someone sitting on the grass, that would be like trying to explain algebra to somebody who denies basic arithmetic. So my only point here is he says, when assessing theory X, if X implies Y, and you've got good reason to think Y is false, but you don't have to kind of buy the whole thing at once. As you did, you can come to believe in an uncaused cause without thinking

it's personal right away. You can come to believe in a personal uncaused cause that Christianity might not be true. This is sort of like when people have terrible, you know, these big objections to the Bible and you think, okay, well, maybe the Bible's false or just a human artifact and nothing more. That wouldn't prove that God doesn't exist. That can be a helpful way. Yeah, I think that's an excellent—I like the point with transubstantiation. I mean, I could—oh, my gosh, I hope I would never start a conversation off with that. Well, that's right.

Almost everybody's probably going to think that that's false. But it is true, though, that some atheists will begin with that. Like they'll say, look, you believe in transubstantiation yeah yeah i get that it's weird especially if you don't hold that god exists if you don't hold god exists of course it's sins ridiculous and if you don't hold like a general like scholastic metaphysics yeah as well right there's just a lot that kind of like leads up to that that you would want to have in place before you even start to bring a subject like that up. Ash Awesome, probably not his real name, says,

Do either of you see the youth of this age, 18 or younger, becoming more God-centric or atheist-centric in matters such as purpose of life and morals? Do you want me to go first on this? Well, just, I mean, the first thing that comes to my mind is just how incredibly enthusiastic the quote unquote social justice crowd are like it would seem uh obviously true that at least if you look at the media that racism is at least something

that's evil right you know that people are pretty moralistic about how we should be living and who should be banned and why. And so in that sense, anyway. Yeah. It's interesting because our culture is superficially relativist, but not really. Right. And I think that's what you're saying, right? Is we have these sort of, I guess these narratives about, you know, we shouldn't judge and then people make judgments about people judging, and this kind of ironic stuff, right? But in terms of what I've seen, actually, I'd be curious your experience, Matt,

because you're much more engaged, I guess, in the kind of Catholic conversation online. But my Instagram inbox is filled with stuff from young men, young college-age men who are very interested very engaged some of them skeptical so there's which kind of surprised me because I didn't I honestly didn't know what to expect because like I said my journey to

Catholicism was kind of like it's kind of solo right I didn't like have a community that was moving with and in fact when I got into the church like I'd go to like a men's group and it was like everybody there was like twice my age and that was moving with. And in fact, when I got into the church, like I'd go to like a men's group and it was like everybody there was like twice my age. And that was, but I've grown more optimistic from what I've seen online, the youth.

And there's, I guess, a benefit there because if you're going to be young and going and really being Catholic, you're going to be challenged from so many different being Catholic, you're going to be challenged from so many different angles that you're probably going to have to really investigate the faith, right, if you're serious about it at this point. It's not such a cultural force anymore that you can kind of just be a nominal Catholic, you know what I mean? Yeah. I think in a way Jordan Peterson before his illness sort of took the baton from the new atheists who are now the old atheists I suppose and they may have sort of overshot and he was

able to kind of come in and kind of talk about the scriptures even from an evolutionary standpoint a psychological standpoint that really appealed to people and at least help them see the value of religion and seeing order in the world and the beauty and helpfulness of stories in their own life. And that at least sort of maybe dulled the kind of hard-edged atheism that the quote-unquote new atheists brought about. I found that interesting. I think you're exactly right.

I think Jordan Peterson and God's providence was that necessary mediating factor for a lot of people. If you imagine Sam Harris sitting down, say, with a Catholic bishop, probably most of people following Sam Harris would just want nothing to do with the religious side of the argument. But Peterson, coming from a secular perspective, but giving a perspective on the Bible that wasn't completely hostile

seemed to soften a lot of people to, okay, maybe there's more here than I initially thought. And I know because I've had people who've messaged me and emailed me say, it was Peterson who opened me up to this stuff. So he really is a bridge for a lot of people. So I see him as, and I pray for him too. I need to buy his new book.

It seems like, man, I don't know. I don't like to make predictions about other people, but it just seems to me like he might. I agree. Yeah, you see what I'm saying? What do you think though about, it feels a little dirty when every Catholic YouTuber kind of capitalizes on him talking about Jesus

and crying about it. I don't mean dirty. Oh, those clips that are just going around? Yes, exactly. And I'm not imputing the motives of these Catholic YouTubers. I think it's fine that and crying about it. I don't mean dirty. And I'm not imputing the motives of these Catholic YouTubers. I think it's fine that they're addressing it. Maybe I'll even address it. It's good. We're addressing it now. But it does feel a bit dirty when you get the sense that we want him on our team. That is a great point. And I was always kind of off-put from that. And I would highly recommend not doing that

unless somebody really is on your team, right? And the reason being is if there's like a cool person out there and you try and get them on your team and you find like one quote or one clip from that person, like, oh, look, they're on my side. And then somebody investigates them and they're like, actually, no, they're not really on your side. You're going to lose a lot of credibility doing something like that so yeah i do think that's true of jim

gaffigan and other sort of i don't know enough about him catholics who um were catholic uh were even somewhat proud of their catholicism and then might come and speak about homosexual marriage or transgenderism in a positive light you're like oh and it. And it's, yeah, I just, I don't know. I guess I'm okay with if there's not as many. I mean, I don't know if people think that I'm a cool person or not, but I just, what are the reasons, right? And if we have some cool people on our team, great.

I hope, I pray that Jordan Peterson, he seems pretty cool to me, becomes Catholic. That would be awesome. But yeah, we shouldn't be like saying like, look at he's one. I mean, he's clearly thinking through things, right? And I honestly don't know enough about him. I did read his first book and I enjoyed it.

Well, I just had Jonathan Pagiot, who is an Orthodox icon carver and an Orthodox Christian on my show a couple of months ago. And Jonathan was just on Peterson's podcast last week. Oh really? And this is where Peterson spoke about even teared up talking about Christ and posted an image of Saint Michael on his Twitter feed something to the effect of when words fail it was Saint Michael defend us. Wow. I mean it's yeah yeah I mean it looks looks like something is at work in

him. Yeah. You know and he suffered a lot it looks like something is at work in him. Yeah. You know, and he suffered a lot, too. And it just goes to show, you know, that the purpose that suffering can serve, even if it doesn't seem like it's serving any purpose at that time, right? Yeah. Yeah. If anyone wants a good book on suffering,

Eleanor Stump's Wandering in Darkness is just a masterpiece. Good. I have to put that one out there for people I've had her on the show before she's brilliant, I love her she's a big influence groovy glory to god man

alright let's go see how many questions we have here if I can give Stump another plug real quick, she's also got an excellent little book, thin, called The God of the Philosopher

and the God of the Bible. So if people are just interested in that project of reconciliation, it's a very good book. Yeah. That kind of reminds me of Pascal, right?

I want the God of the Bible, not the God of the philosophers. Right. She's going to say they're the same thing. They're the same thing, Pascal. Well, I'm looking for questions. I don't think we have many more.

All right. Easy night. Thanks for tuning in, everyone. I hope that this has been great. Your podcast is called what? It is called The Pat Flynn Show. The humbly and originally named Pat Flynn Show. And my website is chroniclesofstrength.com.

So if we're not talking this type of thing, we're usually talking like swinging kettlebells and whatnot. Glory to God, man. Well, thank you for being on the show. I really appreciate it. Pleasure. Thank you for being here. Thank you.

All right. See you later. And thanks to everybody in the live stream. សូវាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្� ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത്ത� Thank you. Bye.