Latest / The Lila Rose Show / E77: Debriefing Whatever Debate + Apologetics w/ Trent Horn

Transcript

E77: Debriefing Whatever Debate + Apologetics w/ Trent Horn · The Lila Rose Show

• 0:01
  Hey guys, I think we're live. Are we live?
• 0:04
  I've got this chat open so I'll know in a moment if you guys can
• 0:07
  hear me. Welcome back to the Lila Rose
• 0:10
  Podcast. We're doing one of these rare
• 0:12
  lives. We're going to try to do more of
• 0:13
  them in the future. This is going to be a really
• 0:15
  special live because we have a very special guest in studio
• 0:18
  today, Trent Horne, who I'll introduce in a moment.
• 0:20
  Some of you guys know about his amazing work.
• 0:23
  But first of all, I just wanted to thank everybody again for
• 0:25
  tuning in. We're getting started here.
• 0:27
  We're going to do some live Q&A during this live stream.
• 0:31
  We're also going to do a quick debrief on the Whatever podcast
• 0:37
  conversation that I had yesterday with Trent Horn.
• 0:40
  It was a debate on is sex work bad for society?
• 0:44
  We're going to talk about that. We're also going to learn more
• 0:47
  about Trent Horn. So you've heard Trent Horn
• 0:49
  before in the podcast. If you remember the episode with
• 0:51
  his lovely wife Laura, who I'm a big fan of, check out her
• 0:54
  YouTube channel too. She does very funny.
• 0:57
  It kind of niche Catholic comedy, but if it's it's inside
• 1:00
  baseball, but it's hilarious. So you can check her her channel
• 1:03
  out. Trent has an amazing channel,
• 1:05
  which is the Council of Trent. And he does amazing Catholic
• 1:10
  apology. He talks about a lot of theology
• 1:13
  issues. He talks about a lot of cultural
• 1:14
  issues. And he's an amazing debater and
• 1:17
  author. So he's a staff apologist for
• 1:19
  Catholic Answers. So he's here in studio.
• 1:21
  Trent, thanks so much for joining.
• 1:24
  So good to be here after we, you know, had a bit of a long day
• 1:28
  and evening yesterday with the debate on whatever.
• 1:31
  But yeah, it's, it's fun to be, it's fun to be in this situation
• 1:35
  and it's a lot more relaxed. We can just kind of chat.
• 1:38
  Yeah, well, and we have a chat here.
• 1:40
  Yeah, which is very kind, I think a lot kinder than the
• 1:45
  Whatever chat at points you get roasted.
• 1:47
  But massive Lila and Trent, when I saw a lot of people commenting
• 1:52
  about what an excellent debater you are, Trent, which I fully
• 1:55
  second you are, you are fantastic.
• 1:58
  Well, let's let's start. I do want to get into the
• 2:00
  Whatever podcast. We will do that.
• 2:03
  That was a three hour debate we had yesterday.
• 2:05
  But I want to start with just people learning more about you.
• 2:09
  You obviously have your channel Council of Trent, but why did
• 2:12
  you get into what got you interested in and why did you
• 2:15
  get into doing apologetics? Sure, so I'm a convert to the
• 2:20
  Catholic faith. I grew up in a kind of a non
• 2:24
  religious home. My dad was Jewish but he didn't
• 2:26
  go to temple and my mom is a former ex Catholic but she
• 2:30
  didn't really go to church. She's Christian and we didn't go
• 2:33
  to church as kids. So I grew up kind of being a
• 2:36
  deist. I believe there was a God out
• 2:37
  there, but I didn't subscribe to any religion.
• 2:39
  I I thought Christianity was false, and when I did more
• 2:43
  research in high school, I realized it was just a certain
• 2:46
  form of Christianity that I thought it was wrong, kind of
• 2:48
  Protestant fundamentalism. I was really attracted to the
• 2:51
  teachings of Catholicism, and I was exposed to them through a
• 2:55
  Catholic youth group in my high school.
• 2:56
  So then I came to accept that Christianity is true.
• 3:00
  Jesus rose from the dead. And then in my investigations
• 3:03
  that the Catholic Church is the church that Jesus Christ
• 3:06
  established. So in doing all of that, like I
• 3:09
  have my objections, my concerns, I need evidence.
• 3:11
  So I have to a lot of people who are apologists, who give
• 3:14
  defenses of the Catholic faith, a fair number of them are
• 3:18
  converts because they had to kind of convince themselves
• 3:20
  first they had to go through all these arguments themselves.
• 3:23
  And after I went through all of that, I, you know, volunteered
• 3:26
  for the same youth group that helped me.
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  I was doing pro-life work because I got convicted about
• 3:30
  that. And people said, oh, you have a
• 3:31
  good ability to teach this to people and to rebut things and
• 3:36
  answer objections. And so I just wanted to be a
• 3:39
  service to others because, you know, this had helped me.
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  I wanted to help other people and, and I, I enjoy it.
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  I enjoy research, I enjoy debate.
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  I was never like a formal debater or anything like that,
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  but it's just the temperament I have.
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  I enjoy this kind of engagement with people and I just enjoy
• 3:57
  helping to remove obstacles to the truth that can form in
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  people, intellectual obstacles that can be in people's paths to
• 4:06
  faith in Christ. So you and I both we have, we
• 4:10
  love obviously and have some background.
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  I was raised evangelical Protestant and I have a lot of
• 4:16
  listeners on the channel who are evangelical or Protestant.
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  Some people don't even ascribe that way.
• 4:21
  Maybe they're orthodox or certainly a lot of Catholics.
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  You made this comment. You said I I saw a lot of
• 4:27
  inconsistencies or you, you you were looking at, you called, I
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  think fundamentalism, fundamentalist Protestantism is,
• 4:33
  is maybe the term you used. Yeah, well, I remember when I
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  was in junior high, so this would have been back in the late
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  90s, the 20th century, as some people would call it.
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  Now I love there's like somebody shares something on social media
• 4:46
  saying, do professor, do you care if I use an older source
• 4:50
  from the late 20th century? And he's just like, you know,
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  like sign like, am I that old? But yeah, I remember I would go
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  on the Internet back then and is investigating religion.
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  So is this a Protestant youth group?
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  No, so the youth group came later.
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  Like in junior high I was just like, there's a God, but
• 5:07
  whatever. What faith did your parents
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  have? They weren't really practicing
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  anything. They didn't practice anything.
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  So I always just choose your own, choose your own adventure.
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  And I would go on the Internet. I would debate Christians who
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  said that, you know, evolution is false and endorsed young
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  earth creationism. And I had read a lot of There
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  was a lot of debate on the Internet back then between
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  creationists, young earth creationists and people who.
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  It wasn't Internet in the 90s. Yeah, I just ran a lot slower.
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  When you turned it on, it sounded like a dying cat.
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  Turn it on or you would clog up the phone line.
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  My mom be like, you got to get off the Internet.
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  I got to use the phone because I use the.
• 5:40
  Phone so you would be doing Internet research in the 90s.
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  That is a true 98. That is a true apologist.
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  In in in waiting it. Was but but yeah.
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  And I remember back then, this was before YouTube, a lot of the
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  debates I listened to were in audio debates.
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  They were not video because this is audio recorded at a college
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  or when a debate happened. And so I was debating then I
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  thought Christians, I thought Christians used faith as a
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  crutch and they're very anti science.
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  Like I love science. So like when I was in the 6th
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  grade, I joined the Young Astronomers Club and I got, we
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  got to go to Jet Propulsion Laboratory and I thought in JPL
• 6:14
  here in Pasadena and I thought this was the coolest thing ever.
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  And I thought science is awesome and why do I need religion?
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  It seems like religious people just scoff at science or they're
• 6:23
  anti scientific. But then later seeing within
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  Catholicism, oh, you have Monsignor Georges Lemaitre, a
• 6:29
  Catholic priest who was The Who developed what later became to
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  be known as The Big Bang theory. Gregor Mendel, an Augustinian
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  monk who was the father of modern genetics.
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  Like seeing within Catholicism, especially for me that faith and
• 6:43
  reasons, science and faith really intertwine.
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  Well, I found that very attractive.
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  And then of course there's also, there's Protestantism, of
• 6:50
  course, that that would be similar there as well.
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  Not all Protestants are young earth creationists.
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  There are Catholics who are young earth creationists, which
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  is fine. The Church says the church
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  doesn't make scientific judgments.
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  The Church says you have to believe that God created the
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  world and he made man in his image.
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  How he did it. Catholics are free to accept
• 7:08
  scientific consensus on that or not.
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  That's fine. But what then?
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  What attracted me beyond just the scientific evidence was
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  seeing, oh, Jesus didn't leave us a book.
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  Jesus didn't tell anyone to write anything down.
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  Prior to his ascension, He didn't tell anyone to write
• 7:20
  anything down. The apostles don't talk about a
• 7:23
  collection of writings being a sole infallible rule of faith.
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  That just Catholicism made more sense of the data I saw from
• 7:30
  Scripture and history. And then and then.
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  But that was the impetus for that was being invited.
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  Just this nice girl who's a friend of mine invited me to the
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  Catholic youth group. And it's like, OK, I'll give it
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  a try. And they, they liked, they would
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  take questions and they were willing to dialogue.
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  They weren't standoffish. And you know, I appreciated
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  that. So how old were you when you
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  became Catholic? I was 2002, so I would have been
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  17 or the process started probably like a year earlier.
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  And then what was the process like from 17 to now?
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  You're a staff apologist at Catholic Answers.
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  Yeah, so. Your whole life is doing in the
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  latter. Part of high school.
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  Let's see. I was.
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  I remember that I, oh, I, I was invited this girl, not Laura,
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  but she's a very nice girl. She's married now, invited me to
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  go to prom with her because she went to a very tiny Catholic
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  school that had like 25 people at it.
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  So they wanted to have a prom so.
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  They. They decided they were all going
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  to invite somebody who didn't go to the school.
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  Each person. Yeah, how do you do a prom with
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  25? Well, if you each is that the
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  whole class the? Whole yeah, it's a very tiny
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  Catholic. School.
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  OK, so all four classes equal 25 people.
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  I I went to one of their senior graduations.
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  It was one person, but he was like valedictorian.
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  Sounds like homeschool. It, it does feel that.
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  Oh, totally. But so they all just said, oh,
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  we'll all invite people who don't go to the school.
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  So now you have 50. And so she invited me and I met
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  her dad and he was the president of the state right to life
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  organization. And he showed me his pro-life
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  work. And I was just really convicted
• 9:00
  at that point. Like, wow, this is and I, I and
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  I got really going down the rabbit hole of the arguments
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  that people make for and against 'cause I was nominally pro-life,
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  but not wasn't as big a deal to me.
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  I read Francis Beckwith's book Politically Correct Death, which
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  he's now he'd reworked as defending life.
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  But Frank is one of the best pro-life philosophers out there,
• 9:22
  along with Chris Kazor and Patrick Lee.
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  Chris Tollefson, if you guys are watching him not playing
• 9:28
  favorites or anything, Not playing favorites, guys, you're
• 9:30
  all great. But I remember reading that and
• 9:32
  just being really addicted to these arguments are so
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  fascinating. And, you know, debating people
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  on that. I was involved in the pro-life
• 9:38
  club at Arizona State when I went there.
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  And then when I graduated college, I decided to, oh, in my
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  last years of college, a pro-life organization called
• 9:47
  Justice for All came to our school and set up these big
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  images with, with abortion on them.
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  And I just was late to class 'cause I just wanted, I just
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  started dialoguing. They had an open mic and I was
• 9:57
  debating people on abortion. And people are like, how can you
• 9:59
  work with these people and, and do this?
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  I'm like, I don't work with these people.
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  I go to school here. I just think they're right.
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  And then I started joining them on trips and I raised funds to
• 10:08
  go work for them. And so I worked for them for
• 10:10
  several years. Then I worked for the Diocese of
• 10:12
  Phoenix as the respect Life coordinator and I was offered a
• 10:15
  position there. And I, I, I left Justice for all
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  and I, I eventually got to the diocese because I was dating
• 10:21
  Laura. We were engaged.
• 10:23
  Then we were going to get married and I got to find some,
• 10:25
  you know, stable employment and then six months where we got
• 10:28
  married. I was leading people on this
• 10:32
  trip to California to go to a marriage conference and do
• 10:35
  pro-life outreach. And I took a tour of Catholic
• 10:38
  Answers and someone called me who had inside knowledge saying,
• 10:40
  hey, they want to hire a new apologist.
• 10:43
  And I had been creating my own materials.
• 10:46
  I had video of me doing those debates on college campuses.
• 10:50
  And I went to them and said, hey, I'm I'm interested.
• 10:52
  Here's my materials I've made. Here's the debates I did on
• 10:55
  college campuses. And I would debate people on
• 10:57
  abortion or atheism, just live, live in person with a
• 11:01
  microphone. And you go, and a lot of my
• 11:03
  debate practice is not, you don't go to a class to learn
• 11:05
  this. You just get out there and you
• 11:07
  just, you know, you just kind of go through and engage people and
• 11:10
  learn what works. And then they, they brought me
• 11:12
  on. That was December of 2012.
• 11:15
  So I've been with them now for over about 10 years.
• 11:18
  Awesome. And you've written how many
• 11:20
  books in that time? Books are kind of like kids.
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  Like after like 7 you're like how many?
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  How many are you at? I am I think like 9.
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  Way to go, Trent. That's.
• 11:29
  Awesome. So I got another one coming out
• 11:31
  in spring and I'm I enjoy writing a lot.
• 11:34
  Writing was something that I really enjoyed when I was
• 11:38
  younger. I have actually terrible
• 11:40
  handwriting. It's it's just absolutely
• 11:43
  illegible. But when I can start writing, I
• 11:46
  remember when I was a kid, writing for me is like the only
• 11:49
  art that I can really do. Like when I was a kid, I tried
• 11:52
  to draw like the third grade and my art teacher like berated me
• 11:55
  for how terrible it was. And I think it like broke my
• 11:57
  spirit. Like I, I I literally so they
• 11:59
  cannot draw and I can't write well my hands.
• 12:01
  Don't because of the third grade teacher.
• 12:03
  I was still always bad. It's not her fault.
• 12:05
  She just recognized how bad I was.
• 12:06
  And that's fair. But when I sit down at A at a
• 12:09
  keyboard and I can just put words together, like I can Draw
• 12:12
  Something with with words and pull ideas together.
• 12:16
  And so I really enjoy writing and my writing style is so
• 12:20
  funny. Some people start at the
• 12:21
  beginning, go to the end or methodical.
• 12:23
  I, I throw stuff around through throwing around.
• 12:26
  I'll start at the middle, I'll go to the end.
• 12:28
  I usually write the introduction of a book at at the end.
• 12:31
  That makes sense though. Yeah.
• 12:33
  The book kind of kind of writes itself to some degree once
• 12:36
  you're. Yeah, putting it all, putting it
• 12:38
  all in there. But nine is 9 is a lot.
• 12:40
  And you can see you can tell that you obviously like to think
• 12:43
  and like to explore different topics, but that you also like
• 12:47
  to write in order to get 9 books and when writing.
• 12:50
  I like research. I remember when somebody asked
• 12:52
  me to endorse their book on a subject and it was an apologetic
• 12:56
  book, but I actually declined because their apologetic book
• 13:00
  had no footnotes in it. And I was like, if you're doing,
• 13:03
  that's fine for like a. Testimony.
• 13:04
  That's rough, yeah. For like a testimony or a
• 13:06
  memoir, that's fine, but you're not doing any research.
• 13:09
  And that's one of my favorite things in my books is to put all
• 13:12
  of that research just in the show.
• 13:14
  Hey, this is true. We can back it up and like
• 13:16
  focus. On well that I will say, let's
• 13:19
  talk about. We're getting a lot of comments
• 13:20
  in the chat, so I want to pay attention to our chat.
• 13:22
  I'm learning the YouTube live thing and I appreciate everyone
• 13:26
  engaging. It's awesome.
• 13:28
  So lots of people are excited to ask questions here.
• 13:32
  Yeah, OK, lots of good ones about the debate and other
• 13:35
  things. So we'll start.
• 13:36
  We'll start with whatever. Let's talk about whatever now.
• 13:38
  We just did that yesterday. That was.
• 13:40
  For each of us, that was our round.
• 13:41
  For each of us, that was our round two on whatever and Round
• 13:44
  2 with destiny. Yeah, it was I, I that's true.
• 13:50
  And you, you had done a great job with your debate with
• 13:52
  Destiny months back on abortion. I also had an abortion debate.
• 13:57
  There was some mixed issues, but you did a fantastic job, very
• 14:00
  well done. But let's, let's let's get a
• 14:02
  question here. So, well, there's first a
• 14:05
  question asking which what you want to share what prompted the
• 14:07
  debate? I hadn't heard this was
• 14:09
  happening until Trent's post on YouTube announcing the debate.
• 14:13
  Yes, so I was perusing the Internet and I saw a debate
• 14:21
  between Jasmine, who was one of the participants in our in our
• 14:25
  discussion with a Christian YouTube.
• 14:30
  And they they were having a discussion about it wasn't about
• 14:34
  only fans or sex work. It was about another topic, but
• 14:37
  I thought that she was, you know, not like, you know how
• 14:41
  sometimes there's the girls will be out there defending this
• 14:43
  stuff and they're kind of like ditzy or they're not well, well
• 14:46
  thought out. But but she seemed to have
• 14:48
  cogent points and was able to put together, put together an
• 14:51
  argument. And when I researched her more,
• 14:53
  I saw that, you know, she she's a lawyer and she can she can
• 14:57
  make arguments. She's not just like spouting off
• 14:59
  stuff. I thought, oh, this is
• 15:00
  interesting. And so I emailed her and I said,
• 15:03
  hey, I've been looking to have a dialogue with someone on whether
• 15:07
  pornography or prostitution is OK.
• 15:09
  Would you like to come on my channel and we'll just dialogue
• 15:11
  about it. And I thought, OK, well what's
• 15:13
  the way I could use this? Because I'm always thinking
• 15:15
  like, how can I reach the most people and especially the most
• 15:18
  non Catholic people? And I want to share the truth.
• 15:21
  I want to get in front of them and present, here's the truth
• 15:23
  and here are good reasons to accept it.
• 15:26
  And what would be a good way to do that?
• 15:27
  And I thought, oh, it might be, this might be a way to get back
• 15:29
  on the Whatever podcast to present that to people.
• 15:34
  And Brian seemed to really enjoy the debate that, you know, I had
• 15:38
  with with Destiny before. I thought, well, what if I
• 15:42
  pulled people together? I thought, well, it could be me
• 15:44
  and Jasmine. If you have more people, it UPS
• 15:46
  the ante and gets people more excited and want this to happen.
• 15:49
  And so Destiny came into the fold.
• 15:51
  But I knew with Jasmine there I really wanted a solid, virtuous
• 15:56
  woman who is intelligent. And then Laura said she was
• 16:00
  busy, so I went with no Laura, I'll.
• 16:03
  Take second to Laura. That's fine.
• 16:05
  No, I said. I actually asked Laura.
• 16:06
  That would have been great. Actually, if Laura had done
• 16:09
  that, that would have been very fun.
• 16:11
  Laura is funny. I I asked her and she said like
• 16:15
  she would love to do it, but also she'd be just like too
• 16:18
  nervous, like, oh, what if I don't say the the right thing or
• 16:21
  like, no, you just go out there, you get them.
• 16:22
  I'm going to. But she's I one thing that
• 16:24
  really attracted me to Laura, though, was during the justice
• 16:27
  for all time when I did the pro-life work on college
• 16:29
  campuses, that's where we met and I saw her on campus like she
• 16:32
  would debate professors and as you know, this little blonde
• 16:35
  girls like, well, why would you do that?
• 16:36
  And she just like, so she's got that, that spirit as well, but
• 16:40
  she is like. By the way, if you want to hear
• 16:41
  Trent and Laura's love story, it's very cute and very fun.
• 16:44
  We have an episode on that from several months back, so you can
• 16:47
  check that out on the podcast. I don't remember the episode
• 16:48
  number, but yeah, yeah, that was, it was very fun.
• 16:51
  So. But I thought I thought you'd be
• 16:52
  a great, great pick to have. And honestly, like I saw people
• 16:55
  in the comments saying that like even just like a comparison of
• 17:00
  the demeanor and rapport and how you and Jasmine carried
• 17:02
  yourselves, it just shows such a stark difference in your world
• 17:07
  views and how you consider sexuality and how to value and
• 17:12
  cherish this. And and so I knew that had that
• 17:14
  I wanted people to especially be able to see because this is an
• 17:19
  issue involving men and women, to see how men and women can
• 17:22
  present themselves in this, you know, kind of virtuous way.
• 17:24
  Yes, well I thought it was great and I that you kind of initiated
• 17:29
  it and I mean you and I both know pornography is everywhere
• 17:34
  yes and there's some so much more sort of social a push to
• 17:37
  accept socially things like only fans, things like, you know
• 17:43
  pornography and sex work as they call it a prostitution.
• 17:46
  So I thought it was great. Some more questions.
• 17:49
  OK, so this is a this is a good one.
• 17:53
  This is kind of the debrief question, right?
• 17:55
  Yeah, sure. So of course, this is from
• 18:00
  Timothy O'Donnell. Of course, nobody's perfect
• 18:02
  during a debate. What would Trent like to have
• 18:05
  phrased differently during the debate?
• 18:08
  And I can tell all things I would have done differently.
• 18:11
  Trent was nearly perfect. Trent did really, really well.
• 18:13
  So what do you think, Trent? What's your?
• 18:15
  What's your? Little things.
• 18:17
  I remember when I was talking about prostitutes and being
• 18:24
  murdered in Germany versus Sweden, and Destiny brought up
• 18:28
  all their population differences and my brain just ran dry about
• 18:31
  the populations of Germany and Sweden.
• 18:34
  Google it right now. Let's see.
• 18:35
  I didn't want to say because I wasn't sure if I was going to be
• 18:37
  right. I want to say Germany.
• 18:38
  I want to say Germany's. I don't know.
• 18:40
  Sweden I think is 5 million. Germany might only be like 10 or
• 18:43
  20 million. I.
• 18:43
  Think it's, I think it's like 50 or 60.
• 18:45
  I think that's what. Yeah, see, that's why I wasn't
• 18:47
  sure, so I didn't. Want to say I can look it up?
• 18:49
  But yeah, so but but even with the.
• 18:51
  Population 83,000,000. Yeah, it's a big country.
• 18:54
  But but even with the differences there, my point is
• 18:57
  that when you examine the two different countries, how they
• 18:59
  treat prostitution, Sweden has dramatically reduced the demand
• 19:02
  for it by criminalizing buying prostitution.
• 19:06
  Even traffickers, police have intercepted their communications
• 19:10
  saying that it's a bad market for sex and for other elements
• 19:14
  like that. But you know, I mean, I was one
• 19:17
  off the top of my head just but I think I, I still talked about
• 19:19
  that really to the study. I don't know, there were just
• 19:22
  other little elements here or there or maybe like I wanted to,
• 19:26
  you know, find something and I couldn't find it or had to wait
• 19:30
  and collect my thoughts of it. But I, I can't really think of
• 19:33
  anything where they brought up an argument for a position that
• 19:39
  I or you wasn't just was unable to to answer.
• 19:43
  I, I really wanted to keep focusing them back on the basic
• 19:47
  moral and value question of just is this stuff bad?
• 19:51
  What does it do to people? And what does the moral
• 19:54
  philosophy that justifies pornography and sex and
• 19:58
  prostitution, What does it also justify?
• 20:01
  What does it naturally lead to? It takes away any principled
• 20:05
  objection towards, which is why I pushed to say this leads to
• 20:09
  accepting extremely depraved things.
• 20:11
  I think it's important for people to see that this is the
• 20:14
  world that you want to endorse. This is what you're going to
• 20:16
  have to buy later. Maybe you don't want to buy
• 20:18
  that. I think that's a great point.
• 20:20
  And I think that was clear in that both Destiny and Jasmine
• 20:24
  effectively had to say, yes, incest is OK, provided there's
• 20:28
  consent. And even on the bestiality
• 20:30
  question, when they were pressed, it seemed that they
• 20:33
  kind of like, yeah. Jasmine didn't want to, but
• 20:35
  destiny realized that the argument doesn't work there.
• 20:38
  I have an episode coming out soon just on that, on the, the
• 20:41
  article Peter Singer shared, 'cause this is not like I said,
• 20:44
  it's not just a fringe thing. Like he's a famous philosopher
• 20:47
  sharing this article. A lot of people have.
• 20:49
  The problem is a lot of people say, oh, it's obvious that it's
• 20:51
  wrong. Well, why is it wrong?
• 20:53
  We always want to say like, give me the reason that something is
• 20:56
  wrong. And then you have to follow
• 20:58
  those reasons like, oh, well, it's just obvious infanticide is
• 21:02
  wrong. Well, why is infanticide wrong?
• 21:04
  If infanticide is wrong, why is it wrong to commit infanticide
• 21:08
  but not kill an intelligent pig to have pork chops?
• 21:12
  Pigs are smart. They, I mean, they can solve
• 21:14
  puzzles even, but pigs are also delicious and I have no qualms
• 21:18
  about eating pigs. But why is it wrong?
• 21:22
  Well, like, why is infanticide so awful?
• 21:24
  But piggy side just is not Well, because infants are human beings
• 21:29
  and there's Oh, so that's your reason?
• 21:31
  Well, who else is a human being we're killing all the time?
• 21:34
  You know, so they're biologically human beings.
• 21:36
  So it's similar. It's a similar way to run
• 21:37
  backwards if you're talking about sexual ethics.
• 21:40
  We do this in pro-life all the time.
• 21:41
  Hey, see this horrible view? That's what pro-choice leads to.
• 21:44
  If you don't want to go there, maybe you should take the other
• 21:46
  view, similar with sexual ethics.
• 21:47
  Hey, see this depraved and wicked sexual act?
• 21:51
  Your worldview leads to that. If you don't want to go there.
• 21:54
  Because in that article, I'm I critique that defended
• 21:57
  bestiality, it said if you make an argument that sex is ordered
• 22:00
  towards a particular purpose, like human procreation, then you
• 22:03
  have a solid argument against bestiality.
• 22:06
  I was like, oh, that's pretty. And I point that out on the
• 22:08
  episode coming up soon. Like the author admits, yeah, if
• 22:10
  that's your defense, we've got a way around it.
• 22:13
  But if you do that well, then other kinds of sexual behaviors
• 22:18
  among human beings, you'll see they're disordered.
• 22:21
  So I was impressed with, well, I was impressed with a few things
• 22:24
  about your performance that was called at the debate.
• 22:27
  But one is before the debate, the amount of prep that I know
• 22:31
  you put into that. I mean, you're, you take this,
• 22:33
  this is not just something that you do.
• 22:36
  This is something you take extremely seriously because I
• 22:40
  know you care deeply about souls and reaching people.
• 22:42
  And so, you know, you and I were going back and forth, but you
• 22:44
  really put in a tremendous amount of time into making sure
• 22:48
  you understood the, the body of research around the harm of
• 22:52
  pornography, the harm of prostitution on both the
• 22:55
  creators and the users. And I was impressed during the
• 22:58
  debate that multiple times, you know, I had some papers and I
• 23:01
  was like looking, but you were just, you knew the study, you
• 23:04
  knew it in the top of your mind and you, you remembered it, you
• 23:06
  had memorized it. I am curious and I've had, you
• 23:10
  know, people I think are curious in general about how you prepare
• 23:14
  for debate. Like what is the process that
• 23:16
  you go through? And also for your channel,
• 23:17
  'cause you and I were talking about this in the car ride back
• 23:19
  last night. But you do you do put a lot of
• 23:22
  prep into your videos and you're very careful with the arguments
• 23:27
  that you include. So what's your process?
• 23:29
  Yeah, so the videos now, the episodes, I started this like 8
• 23:31
  months ago. I, I script them and I'm happy
• 23:34
  to tell people that I mean, I use a teleprompter and I script
• 23:37
  them, but I mean, I'm more than capable of having a discussion
• 23:40
  without a teleprompter. I'm not, I'm not a slave to one,
• 23:42
  but I do that for my episodes. I scripted them out because I
• 23:46
  like writing number one. And two, I just want to be
• 23:49
  really judicious with people's time.
• 23:51
  Like there's so much content out there.
• 23:52
  People are so busy. I want to give them the
• 23:54
  information as efficiently as possible.
• 23:57
  So when you speak off the top of your head, you're always going
• 23:59
  to be inefficient. That's just, this is how it
• 24:02
  goes. Something I script that's 20
• 24:04
  minutes long, if I tried to cover all the same material, it
• 24:08
  would take me 40 minutes and I'd have a bunch of extra stuff that
• 24:10
  doesn't need to be there. So I like the prep, the prep for
• 24:14
  that for debates. It was funny, I was once at the
• 24:17
  University of University of Minnesota.
• 24:20
  I was debating Dan Barker, an atheist.
• 24:22
  It was our second debate. This was on does the Christian
• 24:26
  God exist? All right.
• 24:28
  And so before the debate, I was at the Newman Center.
• 24:30
  I went to Mass and I met some of the people there and the
• 24:32
  football players for the college were there.
• 24:35
  And we were talking about what we do and, like, how you do
• 24:37
  debates. It's awesome.
• 24:38
  I said, yeah, they're like, how do you prepare?
• 24:40
  I said, well, you guys like before you have a big game,
• 24:42
  like, do you watch footage of the other team before you do the
• 24:45
  game? And they said, yeah, we always
• 24:46
  do that. Like a lot of athletes will
• 24:48
  watch footage of someone they're going to play against to see
• 24:52
  what do they do? And do they have little tells?
• 24:54
  Do they have a particular kind of play that they like to use?
• 24:57
  And so that way you're, you know, oh, this is going to
• 25:00
  happen, so I'm prepared for it. And I said to him, I do the same
• 25:03
  thing. Like prior to that debate, I had
• 25:06
  watched four or five of the most recent debates Barker had done
• 25:10
  on this subject. And Dan's been doing debates for
• 25:14
  since I before I was born. I think he's been doing this for
• 25:16
  a long time, but his debates have become very predictable.
• 25:19
  So when we got up for the the when we got up for our debate,
• 25:23
  does the Christian God exist? Dan used a tactic that is called
• 25:26
  the Gish gallop, right? Have you ever heard of that?
• 25:28
  I have heard of that Gish galloping.
• 25:30
  Yes, so the term. A common accusation of a if
• 25:34
  you're upset at the the way your partner debates.
• 25:36
  Yeah, well, the term comes from Dwayne Gish.
• 25:40
  So he was a Protestant who would argue for young Earth
• 25:43
  creationism. And what Gish would do when he
• 25:46
  would debate someone defending evolution, he would say, here's
• 25:49
  25 problems with evolution. And then the other guy doesn't
• 25:53
  have time to solve all 25 problems and explain it's easier
• 25:57
  to make a mess than to clean up a mess, right?
• 25:59
  It takes more time to clean something up than it is to just
• 26:02
  make a mess. And then he would say, look, he
• 26:03
  didn't answer this. He didn't answer that well, you
• 26:05
  threw so much stuff at him. How's he supposed to do?
• 26:07
  That it's a filibuster. It's.
• 26:09
  A little bit like a filibuster. Like a filibuster would be just
• 26:11
  taking up as much time so that you don't have to say stuff, but
• 26:14
  it's more like throwing so much at him they can't possibly
• 26:18
  answer at all. So that's the Gish gallop.
• 26:21
  And Barker did a Gish gallop with me.
• 26:23
  He just said, here's the Christian God doesn't exist
• 26:25
  because of this Bible passage. This Bible passage, this, you
• 26:29
  know, this is embarrassing, this is violent and threw it all out
• 26:32
  there. But I was prepared.
• 26:34
  I basically had reconstructed in my mind, all right before the
• 26:37
  debate, I constructed what his opening statement would probably
• 26:39
  be. So my rebuttal, I scripted out
• 26:43
  my entire rebuttal to answer him point by point as efficiently as
• 26:46
  possible. So now the Gish gallop I could
• 26:49
  run in reverse. I had a bunch of answers I could
• 26:51
  throw back at him and he doesn't have time to answer them all.
• 26:54
  So that's the so the Gish gallop, you're in real trouble
• 26:56
  if you've got a skilled person that can throw them all back.
• 26:58
  So that's what but the only way I was able to do that was I knew
• 27:02
  what he was going to say. I had a pre written rebuttal.
• 27:04
  Now, I don't always have pre written rebuttals, but a lot of
• 27:06
  times when I'll engage people like for this debate, like I
• 27:10
  thought to myself, OK, what would Jasmine say?
• 27:12
  What has she said in her YouTube channel?
• 27:14
  What has Destiny said, if I may? And sometimes I'll try to get in
• 27:17
  the head of that person, like I'm going to make this argument,
• 27:19
  but if I were Destiny, what would I say to that?
• 27:21
  Oh, OK, I would say that if I were Destiny, then I need to say
• 27:24
  this. Well, what would Destiny say to
• 27:26
  that? And so I said before the show
• 27:28
  when we were talking, it's also similar to if you play chess, if
• 27:33
  you want to be good at apologetics or debate or do
• 27:35
  things like that. I don't play chess all the time,
• 27:36
  but I like doing it with my kids.
• 27:39
  You can do jiu jitsu. It's kind of like playing chess
• 27:41
  with your body a little bit so much more painful, but it
• 27:44
  teaches you how to think. If I do this, then this can
• 27:47
  happen and you have a branching tree of arguments and replies
• 27:52
  and the goal is to just become familiar.
• 27:54
  Oh, if they if they do this, I'll just I'll do that now.
• 27:58
  You can't be robotic. You have to go think on your
• 28:00
  feet. But the more you prepare, the
• 28:02
  more you can be like, oh, I'm, I'm used to this.
• 28:05
  This is this I, I know where this is going.
• 28:07
  And then you've got a better way to respond.
• 28:10
  Excellent. All right, we have a lot more
• 28:12
  questions, but we're going to take a quick break for our
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• 29:16
  Right, all right, we're back here with Trent Horn.
• 29:19
  We are doing a live put questions in the chat.
• 29:22
  We're talking about the Whatever podcast yesterday, Catholic
• 29:25
  apologetics and all kinds of fun stuff.
• 29:28
  All right, Trent, another question that just came in
• 29:29
  through the chat from Daniel Peters.
• 29:32
  Question for Trent, What was the hardest or the most frustrating,
• 29:35
  frustrating moment in the debate yesterday?
• 29:37
  The comments on the video video are pretty positive.
• 29:40
  I think just frustrating for me was I wanted to really focus on
• 29:44
  particular moral claims and they would try to shift and get away
• 29:48
  from them like I wanted them to explain.
• 29:50
  Why is it disordered? Why is it unhealthy for friends
• 29:56
  to demand exclusive friendship? But it's not unhealthy.
• 29:59
  In fact, it's expected to demand exclusive sexual relationships
• 30:04
  because if sex can mean whatever you want, if we identify that
• 30:08
  one exchange of feelings to be exclusive is unhealthy, like
• 30:13
  friendship, then why wouldn't you say that about people who
• 30:17
  choose sexual monogamy, if you choose friendly monogamy?
• 30:20
  And I just wanted to push that, but sometimes it's hard.
• 30:23
  You know, people will squirm out or immediately shift the
• 30:26
  subject, try to get out of things.
• 30:27
  So those I was trying very hard to show that their worldview
• 30:32
  cannot explain these very basic moral intuitions we have about
• 30:35
  what sex is for friendship is for what is our human nature.
• 30:40
  And so I think that would be frustrating at some point.
• 30:42
  I think there is also difficulty.
• 30:44
  I think it was important that we had empirical studies to back up
• 30:47
  the problems that pornography and prostitution cause in
• 30:52
  society. I think there's always a danger
• 30:55
  when you present an empirical defense that the other side will
• 30:58
  just say, OK, you have your studies.
• 30:59
  I have my studies, which what Jasmine did also, I have my
• 31:02
  studies also, which I looked at those studies.
• 31:05
  I've looked at them as well. Like I cited some of them.
• 31:07
  I cited a study from 2013 by Nicole Prowse.
• 31:10
  Prowse is a very fervent pro porn advocate.
• 31:15
  She's had beef with Matt Fradd for a while, and she's has
• 31:18
  studies to try to downplay this idea.
• 31:21
  This is that porn could ever be some kind of an addiction.
• 31:23
  Yet I cited her study because her very studies do show the
• 31:28
  changes in the brain and what happens when people have greater
• 31:31
  lesser cue reactivity to pornography.
• 31:34
  So even her own research indirectly makes the points that
• 31:37
  I would be making. I think it could be frustrating.
• 31:39
  We were talking about like porn addiction.
• 31:40
  People go over that really fast. It's like, I think what Jasmine
• 31:43
  was almost treating like, no, it's not like alcohol addiction.
• 31:46
  And I agree. Like if you take alcohol away
• 31:48
  from an alcoholic, they might die.
• 31:50
  But if you take porn away from someone, they're probably not
• 31:52
  going to die. But that's why I like using
• 31:53
  compulsion. It's just like there's a thing
• 31:55
  you do and you don't want to do it anymore, but you feel like
• 32:00
  you can't stop. Like to, to deny there are
• 32:03
  people who feel that way about pornography.
• 32:06
  To borrow the phrase you you gave in the debate, a very good
• 32:09
  one is to live in unreality that there or that, well, it's they
• 32:14
  just shouldn't feel bad about pornography.
• 32:16
  And as I said in the debate, that's like saying to a gambling
• 32:18
  addict, well, you should just stop feeling bad about losing
• 32:20
  money. You're just not feeling bad
• 32:22
  about gambling. You're not you.
• 32:24
  You only feel bad about gambling because you know, you're worried
• 32:27
  about losing your money. And it's you.
• 32:28
  You have a moral incongruence. No, the point is when you're in
• 32:31
  a position and you feel like you can't stop doing something, it's
• 32:34
  a compulsion. And it's changed your brain to
• 32:36
  make you feel like you need to do that.
• 32:37
  And porn does that to people. What did you think of Destiny's
• 32:41
  response to that line of argument about how pornography,
• 32:44
  you can see in brain scans that lights up parts of the brain
• 32:47
  that need more and more stimulation to keep lighting up,
• 32:49
  Which was the argument about increasingly extreme forms of
• 32:53
  pornography are needed for our users to get the kind of the
• 32:57
  dopamine hit that they're seeking.
• 32:59
  But, you know, I think Destiny, if I remember correctly,
• 33:02
  dismissed it by saying, well, when you eat a cheeseburger,
• 33:05
  your brain lights up. So, So what?
• 33:07
  You know that was. But I would say that anything
• 33:09
  that makes you compelled that isn't good for you because I
• 33:12
  think this was something that was kind of lost.
• 33:14
  Like the prompt was is is sex work, quote UN quote.
• 33:19
  Is it is it bad for society? Because you could even hold the
• 33:23
  position. You're neutral on the morality
• 33:26
  and you say it's just bad for people's health.
• 33:28
  Like you could say, I'm not saying smoking cigarettes is
• 33:30
  right or wrong. It's just not good for you.
• 33:33
  Like you can hold that view and you can even hold that view
• 33:35
  about pornography. So I think I would maybe if I
• 33:37
  could go back, I say, you know, I agree.
• 33:38
  I could agree with you that sugar flour probably creates,
• 33:43
  may create similar may create similar pathways in the brain
• 33:46
  that can lead to compulsive behavior.
• 33:48
  But I would, I would say, though, do the studies show that
• 33:51
  pornography does that in a very distinct way?
• 33:53
  And then also say, what about the harms?
• 33:55
  I and I would say that the harms of, you know, excessive sugar
• 33:59
  intake, I think pale in comparison to the harms that,
• 34:04
  you know, pornography intake does to people like that.
• 34:07
  It it's, it's like what Jesus says, do not fear the one that
• 34:12
  can destroy the body. If you're the one that can
• 34:13
  destroy the soul, you know, and even if you're not religious,
• 34:16
  you can talk about soul in the sense of you're becoming a
• 34:18
  person, to become a person that is aroused by simulated violence
• 34:23
  and degradation, that is to lose even the non religious sense of
• 34:27
  the soul. I thought part of the
• 34:29
  conversation that was really interesting that unfortunately
• 34:32
  didn't get as much space because it wasn't it, it wasn't as much
• 34:36
  a debate as a discussion. You know, it really was a free
• 34:38
  flow of of ideas and cross examines and everything else.
• 34:42
  But but I did think this question of what is sex for and
• 34:46
  destiny did you know? To his credit, he did try to say
• 34:49
  this is a separate question then.
• 34:51
  I mean, they're related, but then is it like good or bad at,
• 34:54
  you know, as a net to society? What is the purpose of it?
• 34:58
  What's the meaning of it? You spoke to that.
• 35:00
  I know I spoke to that and I don't know that there was.
• 35:05
  Did you feel that there was a position that was offered that
• 35:08
  was cohesive from Jasmine and Destiny?
• 35:11
  Because they certainly said sex is for recreation and you need
• 35:15
  consent. But my view of what they shared
• 35:18
  was that that's basically the extent.
• 35:20
  And then Destiny even seem to say that this is to expect us to
• 35:24
  put more, you know, to tie it up more than that and to provide
• 35:27
  more of a comprehensive view around that is not necessary.
• 35:31
  No, I I think they gave a minimal answer to the idea of
• 35:34
  what sex is for. And that's a little bit
• 35:36
  different of talking about like the value of sex or sex is just
• 35:39
  for hedonistic purposes. Yeah, I would say that they gave
• 35:44
  an extremely minimal definition. And that's why I asked them,
• 35:48
  like, is there any kind of sexual behavior that's bad that
• 35:53
  would only involve consenting adults?
• 35:55
  And that's why I tried to tease that out of Jasmine more when
• 35:57
  she'd say. And I asked her, which was, I
• 35:58
  thought one of the. There were a few different
• 36:00
  shocking moments in the discussion, but one was just
• 36:02
  asking her is it bad for children to see pornography?
• 36:07
  Like and, and just the idea like, well, the studies are
• 36:10
  mixed and like the studies are mixed.
• 36:12
  We have laws that can send people to prison for showing so.
• 36:15
  Couldn't answer that because her her, her philosophy, or her
• 36:19
  worldview. Couldn't support a clear answer
• 36:21
  because she doesn't have the. She she slipped up a little.
• 36:24
  Because she did. She did say, like, oh, well,
• 36:27
  some people will see it and they'll see that some things
• 36:29
  aren't normal. Like Oh well.
• 36:32
  What parts of it aren't normal? What is normal?
• 36:34
  Let's dive into that a little bit more.
• 36:36
  And so I feel like this view that reduces it all to consent,
• 36:41
  you really lose the ability to say that any kind of sexual
• 36:44
  behavior is abnormal in the moral sense or in the virtuous
• 36:48
  sense rather than just the statistical sense.
• 36:51
  All right, for those who are just tuning in, Disco Barrage
• 36:53
  says what is this about? Was there a second Trent Horn
• 36:55
  Destiny debate? Yes, there was.
• 36:57
  I was also there with Trent. And then Destiny was joined by a
• 37:00
  partner, a woman named Jasmine Jafar.
• 37:04
  And it was the question at work. The question before us is, was,
• 37:07
  is sex work bad for society? So we are debriefing that.
• 37:12
  OK, there's more questions coming in about some other
• 37:14
  topics. I want to get to those 'cause
• 37:17
  they're really interesting. Some Catholic apologetic stuff,
• 37:19
  some bioethical stuff, but any other thoughts?
• 37:23
  No, I mean, how did you feel about just like I feel like you
• 37:27
  and I have different. It was nice to be able to play
• 37:30
  off one. It was one of the few times I've
• 37:31
  done A2 on two debate. Usually.
• 37:33
  Usually I have a like someone asked me to do a two on two
• 37:36
  atheism debate and I said no, there's not really anybody I
• 37:38
  want to do that kind of a debate with me.
• 37:40
  So like I passed on that. Nobody on on atheism.
• 37:44
  It's very few people, but I, I feel like I'd rather just do
• 37:47
  that one-on-one If I, if I did that with someone especially and
• 37:50
  the person was offered, I was offered a debate two on two on
• 37:53
  atheism a while back and I didn't, I was familiar with the
• 37:56
  other person, but I didn't know them that well.
• 37:57
  So like I'm not interested in that.
• 37:59
  But this is probably the first one of the few times I or only
• 38:02
  time I've ever done like a two by two to where you have another
• 38:06
  person and you're you're playing off one another.
• 38:08
  That was fun. It was fun to be able to like be
• 38:11
  able to take a break for a little bit when the other person
• 38:14
  pick up a few things. Well, you did great.
• 38:16
  You can totally. I mean, I, I, you were
• 38:19
  excellent. So it was, I was coughing and
• 38:21
  that was a little annoying to people.
• 38:24
  I had apologies to the people I'm coughing in the side.
• 38:26
  I've had this cough for three weeks.
• 38:27
  But I mean, you did, you did very, very well.
• 38:29
  You gave me some really good advice a few months back because
• 38:32
  we were talking about just debate approach and preparation
• 38:36
  and, you know, the format of debates.
• 38:38
  And you said that you are very intentional and thoughtful about
• 38:43
  not just like the content of the debate, but the format and the,
• 38:47
  you know, who are the presenters during a debate?
• 38:49
  Because that can really make or break dynamics of a debate.
• 38:52
  Yes, it can. And so, yeah, that was, I mean,
• 38:56
  I think in in the past when I've done debates, they're like talk
• 38:59
  shows, you know, or there have been some podcasts, but it has
• 39:02
  been one-on-one or it's just this big group.
• 39:05
  And but it's different when it's like we're having a debate and
• 39:08
  there's a group of specific people chosen.
• 39:10
  You didn't necessarily pick your partners.
• 39:13
  You show up and you're like, you know, navigating this situation.
• 39:17
  And I think you're very prudent to think that through in advance
• 39:20
  and say, is this a choice I'm going to make to do this one?
• 39:23
  Or is this better to bow out and find a format that's more
• 39:26
  amenable to a constructive conversation?
• 39:29
  Yeah, exactly. And you do that very, very well.
• 39:31
  And that's your, your channel to check out the Council of Trent
• 39:33
  on YouTube. Yeah, No, I, I, I thought it
• 39:36
  was, it was a pleasure to debate debate with you.
• 39:38
  And you know, I, I definitely would have done some things
• 39:41
  differently, I think. I mean, the coughing obviously
• 39:43
  was annoying, but I think I there was because of such a free
• 39:47
  flow conversation and there were so many things that were left on
• 39:51
  the table. That's hard like conversations.
• 39:53
  I mean, there are lines that I started with Destiny and Jasmine
• 39:55
  that never got completed because they got sidetracked by a new
• 39:58
  argument that was, you know, asserted.
• 40:00
  And then it just, you just couldn't come, you know, close
• 40:03
  the loop because there was a new argument and you didn't want to
• 40:05
  interrupt too many times. And that's try to interrupt, but
• 40:07
  not too many times. More formal debates with rounds
• 40:11
  and then I like dialogues if we're a bit more not as, but I
• 40:16
  think that that's this is just the format that that whatever
• 40:19
  would prefer just kind of go at it.
• 40:21
  But you're right, it does allow things threads to be left
• 40:23
  unravelled. Yeah.
• 40:25
  And that was my background in high school and college to some
• 40:28
  extent, but was team policy debate and you have, you know, 8
• 40:31
  minutes and 8 minutes and then you have cross examination then
• 40:34
  another 8 minutes and they have 5 minutes and 5 minutes.
• 40:36
  And it's very ordered in that way.
• 40:39
  But I would have, I think, just let you take it a few more times
• 40:42
  because I was engaging with Destiny.
• 40:44
  But and you, you engage many times and did did very, very
• 40:47
  well. But you had a lot to say and you
• 40:50
  were doing doing so well. So it was a pleasure to be
• 40:53
  partnered with someone who is so competent and excellent at
• 40:56
  debating. I remember there.
• 40:57
  Was a moment though, like when we were talking with Jasmine
• 40:59
  about the dignity of work. And I was really glad that you
• 41:01
  just like, like I made a point. It got roundabout and then you
• 41:06
  brought it right back and affirmed it.
• 41:08
  And what you were like, what Trent is saying is this and
• 41:10
  that's true. And like good.
• 41:11
  It's it's all coming together. So there was there was a nice
• 41:14
  interplay. All right, if there's not any
• 41:16
  other comments on Whatever, and again, thank you to Whatever for
• 41:20
  hosting it and thank you to Brian and Jasmine for showing up
• 41:23
  and doing that debate because it you know, these things, three
• 41:26
  hours of conversation about this stuff is not easy and you know
• 41:29
  before a live audience that's often roasting you in the
• 41:32
  comments section, so. I think I wanna I might mention
• 41:34
  one more thing. I think some people were
• 41:36
  critical of me because at one point I was critical of
• 41:41
  Destiny's polyamorous relationship.
• 41:45
  And they said like, and it's come out now that he and his
• 41:48
  wife who've been involved in polyamory are, are getting
• 41:51
  divorced, saying like that. That was a low blow, something
• 41:54
  to go after. And it was not something I
• 41:55
  planned to bring up. We, I planned not to talk about
• 41:58
  that, but I felt it was justified because I felt that
• 42:01
  Destiny made a uncharitable jab. We were talking about the issue
• 42:06
  of consent. And he just straight up said,
• 42:09
  well, you don't understand consent 'cause you're religious.
• 42:12
  And he had frequently been using essentially ad hominem attacks.
• 42:16
  You're wrong 'cause you're religious, you're bad 'cause
• 42:18
  you're religious. And then by saying you don't
• 42:21
  understand consent 'cause you're religious is a way of saying
• 42:24
  because you're religious, you're like indifferent to rape, 'cause
• 42:28
  if you don't understand consent, what does that mean?
• 42:30
  That means that you're going to have some kind of problematic
• 42:32
  view towards rape. And that's when I said no, the
• 42:35
  person who doesn't understand the nature of consent is you.
• 42:39
  And I felt then at that point, it's fair to bring up, if you're
• 42:41
  going to attack something that's important to me, my religion,
• 42:44
  and say it leads to something bad, I'm going to publicly point
• 42:48
  out that something you believe in, that it's perfectly fine for
• 42:52
  your spouse to have sex with other people, that this leads to
• 42:55
  very bad things and that you've promoted this destructive
• 42:58
  behavior, that some people might imitate it to their own
• 43:01
  detriment. And I think it's good to point
• 43:03
  out it's it's For whom the Bell tolls.
• 43:05
  For whom the bell tolls. And with that we're.
• 43:07
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• 43:51
  All right, Trent, you were just talking about why you chose to
• 43:54
  mention on the podcast, which I know it was a a very.
• 43:59
  And it was a heated moment anyways.
• 44:00
  We were just both getting heated.
• 44:01
  But I, I, I do not felt that it was unfair.
• 44:04
  Like I don't think it would be fair to bring up to someone if
• 44:07
  you're going through a private marital difficulty.
• 44:09
  And it's not related to the things being discussed, like
• 44:12
  we're just debating atheism or something.
• 44:14
  But the fact of the matter is, if you publicly defend a
• 44:18
  destructive lifestyle and you, you and you set this off as an
• 44:21
  example to others, that is acceptable.
• 44:24
  If they want to choose to emulate it, then I believe
• 44:28
  you've waived the right to not be criticized of that to say,
• 44:32
  look, it is led to destructive consequence.
• 44:35
  We don't you don't want to see other people shouldn't have to,
• 44:39
  should be able to take a lesson from that.
• 44:41
  And, and normally I wouldn't have, but I feel like if he was
• 44:43
  going to attack something that is important and foundational to
• 44:46
  my life, religion, then I I think it was fair to bring up.
• 44:50
  Well, and I think the other point there is it's not that you
• 44:53
  were revealing information, that was it.
• 44:54
  Was already public knowledge. It was public information and
• 44:57
  yes, I feel very badly for what destiny is going through and I I
• 45:01
  hope things work out very well for him in the end.
• 45:03
  But I think to your point, this is a a kind of a clash of
• 45:06
  lifestyles, right, That are chosen after we hope carefully
• 45:10
  deliberated decisions about how we should we live, right?
• 45:14
  You know, how is what is the right way to live as human
• 45:16
  beings? Is God real?
• 45:19
  What does God have to say? Right.
• 45:20
  What is? What is sex for?
• 45:21
  What is marriage for? Right.
• 45:23
  And I think the accusations that were made sometimes, well,
• 45:26
  you're just Catholic, so you have to believe this.
• 45:28
  And you and I both chose. We weren't even raised Catholic
• 45:31
  and. Most people, even people who are
• 45:33
  not religious, would find it absurd to think that you can
• 45:36
  have an exclusive emotional connection to someone in a
• 45:41
  marriage, quote UN quote, but be fine with that person.
• 45:44
  Having sex with other people doesn't doesn't take a religious
• 45:47
  person, It just takes a grounded person to see that that's that's
• 45:50
  absurd. OK, we're going to do one more
• 45:52
  or maybe two more quick comments on whatever from the chat.
• 45:54
  Thank you guys so much for putting your questions in here.
• 45:57
  Then we're going to go a couple other directions on some
• 45:59
  apologetic stuff which are coming in, which are fun.
• 46:01
  All right, one more thing on the chat for the release when the
• 46:04
  When planning the debate, would you have ever thought that
• 46:06
  Destiny would say bestiality is somehow better than killing an
• 46:11
  animal that was somehow inadvertently stated or
• 46:17
  purposefully in the debate that beastiality is better than
• 46:20
  killing an animal It is better to.
• 46:23
  Yeah, well, I, I. Have sexual acts with an animal
• 46:24
  than it is to kill them. I'll discuss this in an episode
• 46:27
  I already recorded this episode. Looking forward to that coming
• 46:30
  out. Yeah, so I'd already broached
• 46:32
  the topic because I wanted to talk about that singer Peter
• 46:34
  Singer reference to the beastiality article.
• 46:37
  I anticipated and thinking in my head, well, how would they go
• 46:40
  about rebutting this? And I felt like, and I thought
• 46:43
  in my head before it would happen as we were sitting there.
• 46:45
  Oh, and I said, Jasmine, you'll probably it was interesting in
• 46:49
  the engagement. I said, here is my argument.
• 46:50
  Why is this wrong? Jasmine, I bet you would say
• 46:52
  this. This is why it's wrong.
• 46:53
  And she said, yes, I would say that I'm like, OK, but here's
• 46:56
  why that argument doesn't work. And then Destiny said, you're
• 46:59
  right. That isn't why the argument.
• 47:00
  That's why the argument doesn't work.
• 47:02
  And I anticipated that. What Destiny often does is he'll
• 47:05
  just bite the bullet on claims he did.
• 47:07
  We did that before when we debated abortion.
• 47:09
  If it leads to a morally repugnant conclusion, fine,
• 47:12
  whatever. Maybe it's not that morally
• 47:14
  repugnant. We have to get over our feelings
• 47:16
  about that situation. But I think many times there's a
• 47:19
  philosopher, Martha Nussbaum. No, sorry, this is Nussbaum's a
• 47:22
  reply to this, but I think she's wrong.
• 47:23
  Leon Kass wrote an article called The Wisdom of Repugnance
• 47:28
  and that many times in bio. Article.
• 47:30
  Yeah, bioethics, that sense of repugnance can be a morally
• 47:36
  worthwhile intuition to discover whether something is in accord
• 47:39
  with human nature. So I I did anticipate that that
• 47:43
  they would probably just have to bite the bullet because their
• 47:45
  view of sexuality left them really no other options.
• 47:49
  It it if, if consent is all that matters, then you, when you test
• 47:52
  that that sort of standard of consent when it comes to
• 47:56
  animals, it's there's a lot of Gray area.
• 47:58
  So it opens the door to bestiality.
• 48:00
  A couple more comments. The young Catholics love you
• 48:02
  both. Trent, your wife is my fave.
• 48:04
  Isn't she great? Laura too far with Laura Horn a
• 48:07
  shout out. Give her my love.
• 48:09
  The debate was amazing and although I am biased, I think
• 48:11
  each side's conclusions and concessions showed us who won.
• 48:15
  Lots of very positive things here.
• 48:18
  Logan F. Also Destiny deserves some kudos
• 48:21
  because he showed up to the debate with a sensitive topic
• 48:24
  affecting his life. A lot of people would have
• 48:26
  dropped out if news like that dropped about them, no?
• 48:28
  And I appreciate that he, I really appreciate that destiny
• 48:31
  is going through a difficult time.
• 48:32
  I understand that that's difficult.
• 48:34
  And I do appreciate that he continued on with the debate
• 48:37
  while going through that. So I do give him credit for that
• 48:39
  and I did not plan to want to bring that up.
• 48:43
  But it was after about 2 1/2 hours of it was that by the end
• 48:47
  of our conversation when that came up.
• 48:49
  And we have been vigorously engaging each other.
• 48:51
  And at the same time, if you are going to not in the context of a
• 48:56
  debate, but make an accusation that people who are religious
• 49:00
  don't understand things like consent, then I'm going to put
• 49:04
  my foot down. I'm not going to allow you to
• 49:07
  make those accusations while coming from a moral perspective
• 49:10
  that seems perfectly fine when it's not.
• 49:13
  Well said. All right.
• 49:15
  Now kind of shifting topics a little bit from the podcast
• 49:19
  yesterday that whatever debate or discussion will, Judy asks,
• 49:23
  Hi, Trent and Lila, what is both of your takes on adopting frozen
• 49:27
  embryos? I did some research and found
• 49:30
  that the church does not have a clear stance on it.
• 49:32
  Would love to hear your answers. Trent, what are your thoughts?
• 49:34
  So I'm, I'm working with the National Catholic Bioethics
• 49:37
  Center right now on being an editor, a Co editor of an
• 49:42
  anthology dealing with human embryo adoption.
• 49:46
  We have, it's the second edition, but we're completely
• 49:48
  reworking the book and it's got a slate of Catholic authors both
• 49:51
  for and against the permissibility of it.
• 49:55
  And I think I lean morally towards being against it, but I
• 50:01
  have not. It's a, it's a complex issues, a
• 50:03
  lot of arguments for and against.
• 50:05
  So I haven't reached a firm position.
• 50:07
  In fact, I might, if there's time in the editing process, add
• 50:10
  my own chapter that my view would basically be.
• 50:14
  Mostly it's a pragmatic argument that I would say it's something
• 50:18
  even if it were right, it should be inadmissible.
• 50:22
  It's something, for pragmatic reasons we ought not do because
• 50:26
  it will invariably create a market for IVF.
• 50:28
  Like Oh well, these extra embryos get adopted anyways and
• 50:31
  there's too many practical concerns I have.
• 50:33
  But the principle of whether it's right or wrong I lean
• 50:36
  against. But there's a lot of arguments
• 50:39
  on each side, so I'm not firmly committed yet.
• 50:42
  Well, there is the potentially the potential number of a
• 50:47
  million embryos who are basically frozen in the United
• 50:52
  States alone, and the question is what should become of them?
• 50:56
  Some of them may be chosen in the future by the parents that
• 50:59
  brought them into the world to continue the process and allow
• 51:03
  them to grow in in the womb of their mother or a surrogate.
• 51:06
  And then some will be used for research and some will be
• 51:09
  disconnected. But some are just right now kind
• 51:11
  of in suspension. They're in the steep freeze.
• 51:14
  So, you know, that's the, the humanitarian crisis, I would
• 51:18
  call it the human rights abuse of doing that to a human life.
• 51:23
  Yeah. I, I, I mean, I think I agree
• 51:26
  with you, your position in that it's complicated.
• 51:29
  There's not, you know, the church obviously hasn't taken a,
• 51:31
  a position on it. I'm sympathetic to the idea of,
• 51:37
  you know, that the problem is if you take a married woman and you
• 51:41
  prepare her for embryo and plantation, there's things you
• 51:44
  have to do to her body to basically, you know, act as if
• 51:47
  she's already pregnant so she can receive that embryo.
• 51:50
  And that's going to be problematic if she's, you know,
• 51:53
  actually having sex with her husband and won't be able to get
• 51:56
  pregnant with her husband with their child.
• 51:58
  So there's all these sort of ethical issues with a married
• 52:01
  couple adopting an embryo and the risk to the woman and the
• 52:05
  risk to, you know, their own, you know, marital love together
• 52:09
  potentially. Should the only person who
• 52:11
  impregnates her would be like her husband, not a lab
• 52:14
  technician? But also, but also her body can
• 52:17
  be hostile to a new life that she is would be like if she's
• 52:22
  going through that process, her body would be hostile to maybe a
• 52:24
  new life that she and her husband could conceive is like
• 52:26
  the the question there. So it's it's complicated.
• 52:29
  And, you know, that's why the again, the church, the Catholic
• 52:32
  Church in its wisdom, you know, doesn't sometimes there are not
• 52:35
  pronouncements on things. There are, you know, these are
• 52:38
  new technologies. They're questionable.
• 52:40
  And so, you know, in good conscience, you follow your
• 52:43
  conscience. That's what you do as a
• 52:44
  Catholic. And that's why, you know, we
• 52:46
  haven't come out at Live Action or myself about embryo adoption
• 52:49
  like, oh, it's so great or oh, it's wrong.
• 52:52
  It's really you have to follow your conscience.
• 52:55
  All right, let's see. Another question about Catholic
• 52:58
  apologetics. Let me go to this one.
• 53:00
  So this is from Pie Guy, 35, Protestant leaning towards
• 53:05
  Catholicism here. What?
• 53:07
  We've been there or actually I was there.
• 53:11
  He's like off guys. So sorry.
• 53:13
  One tough question for my family.
• 53:15
  Love the tough questions guys. I know Trent loves them.
• 53:18
  What do you do with the Catholic Church burning at the stake or
• 53:22
  otherwise killing many reformers?
• 53:25
  Jan Huss as an example. Sure.
• 53:28
  Go, Trent. What I would say is I would ask
• 53:31
  the person, what is your? What do you do with it?
• 53:35
  I ask what is your? Is this an argument against
• 53:37
  Catholicism? So what I wonder is what sort of
• 53:41
  argument are you making? Are you saying that a church
• 53:45
  could not be the church that Christ established if it used
• 53:50
  violent and lethal means to punish heretics, for example?
• 53:56
  OK, well if that's your argument then I feel like it's going to
• 53:59
  lead to a lot of other conclusions.
• 54:01
  For example, it's true that the Catholic Church has used capital
• 54:06
  punishment on heretics, but during the time of the
• 54:08
  Protestant Reformation, Protestants did this as well.
• 54:11
  Michael surveyed us for example, was a a heretic who left Spain.
• 54:15
  He was being investigated by Catholic authorities.
• 54:17
  He went to John Calvin's Geneva and Calvin had him executed.
• 54:22
  So it's like he did. He didn't do any much better
• 54:25
  there either. I think he was a heretic on the
• 54:27
  Trinity. I think during the Reformation.
• 54:33
  I don't know the exact numbers. You know, I've heard that like
• 54:36
  more Anabaptists were killed by Protestants than Protestants
• 54:40
  were killed by Catholics or the Anabaptists were, be they?
• 54:44
  These are people that Catholics and Protestants both opposed
• 54:46
  because they believed infant baptism was invalid and so you
• 54:49
  had to re baptize people. Anabaptists baptize again.
• 54:54
  So what I would say is that if also going back into Scripture,
• 54:58
  we look in the Old Testament to see how capital punishment was
• 55:01
  used on those who led the worship of the chosen people,
• 55:05
  LED them astray. If you're saying if it was ever
• 55:07
  used by a religious body or you're going to, you're not
• 55:08
  going to believe in the Bible anymore.
• 55:11
  I think what I would say to that person is following what the
• 55:14
  Catechism says is that throughout salvation history,
• 55:18
  different methods have been used to promote the common good of
• 55:21
  society. And they might have been
• 55:23
  necessary in different times and places such as well, we look in
• 55:27
  the Old Testament, for example, God tolerated, he tolerated
• 55:30
  divorce in the Old Testament, but it wasn't ever God's plan,
• 55:32
  but it was tolerated because it's better than people.
• 55:34
  Aquinas said the reason for that was to prevent people from
• 55:37
  murdering their wives, you know, to get out of their marriages
• 55:40
  basically. So tolerating divorce aspects of
• 55:45
  slavery in the ancient world and using capital punishment not
• 55:49
  just for heresy, but throughout the history, you know,
• 55:52
  throughout the history of the Western world, capital
• 55:54
  punishment could be used for people who committed things like
• 55:56
  Grand Theft, you know, hunting on the Lord's land.
• 55:59
  And but we see now our adultery even, but we see more and more
• 56:04
  know even people who are pro death penalty don't want to
• 56:07
  apply it in those circumstances to see that the church has said
• 56:11
  that while some of these actions might have had a justification
• 56:16
  in certain social context to promote the social order.
• 56:19
  When you don't have prisons, you know, and things like that, or
• 56:21
  if heretics are going to destabilize the whole social
• 56:23
  order, it doesn't mean that that was necessarily God's intention
• 56:27
  for for his people for all time. And so we can see that some of
• 56:32
  these things, they might have had their place.
• 56:34
  Now we ought not do them. We ought not do them anymore.
• 56:37
  So if this person's concerned, I think Protestants would feel the
• 56:39
  same way that they don't act like magisterial reformers did
• 56:42
  when they had the same view about dealing with heresy.
• 56:45
  So I would say that if that's your concern, any argument that
• 56:48
  you would make that would release Protestants from their
• 56:52
  and the Bible from its previous use of this would also apply to
• 56:56
  to Catholics as well. One thing that gives me a lot of
• 56:59
  confidence when I hear about any number of, you know, whether
• 57:06
  they're a Gray area quite, you know, questionable acts that,
• 57:09
  you know, Catholic Catholics in the hierarchy have committed or,
• 57:12
  you know, whatever the sins are of any number of Catholics, of
• 57:15
  which there are many. My, my first among them, yes,
• 57:18
  all Catholics are sinners except for Jesus and Mary.
• 57:22
  But anyways, but yeah, I, I, I One thing that gives me a lot of
• 57:26
  confidence when I, when I like, studied the history of the
• 57:29
  Church, which is full of, you know, interesting characters.
• 57:32
  There have been a few bad popes. You know, there have been some
• 57:34
  very bad bishops. There have also been some
• 57:36
  amazing ones and Saints is that in matters of faith and morals,
• 57:41
  that's where the teaching, you know, cannot be, you know, it
• 57:44
  cannot be poisoned. I mean, you're going to have the
• 57:48
  Holy Spirit protecting the Church on these certain matters
• 57:51
  of faith and morals. That doesn't mean the practice
• 57:53
  of the thing will always be perfect.
• 57:55
  And the. Catechism to talk about how the
• 57:58
  Church had used methods of Roman law, even things like torture
• 58:02
  that it adopted, that maybe it should not have used in its
• 58:07
  judicial practice, and maybe, yeah, or that yeah, it should
• 58:10
  not have used. Is torture always wrong?
• 58:12
  Would you would you say? It depends what you mean by the
• 58:14
  term torture. OK, alright.
• 58:16
  That's gonna that'd be a bit to. Divide.
• 58:17
  That's an interesting. That's another debate for
• 58:19
  another day. I am anti torture by the way.
• 58:22
  Well, that that gets back to like.
• 58:23
  I would say this is similar to the lying debate.
• 58:26
  I would say torture and lying are wrong, but depends what you
• 58:29
  mean. You have to define them, yes.
• 58:31
  So yeah, it's, but I would say that also throughout church
• 58:35
  history, remember that the church and the state were
• 58:37
  intertwined in a way that they aren't today, that even during
• 58:40
  the Reformation, you basically had Protestant kingdoms or
• 58:42
  Catholic kingdoms. And so a person's religious
• 58:45
  beliefs were seen as either constitutive of or detrimental
• 58:49
  to the social order, and that they could be punished, similar
• 58:52
  to how we punish treason today. It's a great point.
• 58:54
  You have to look at the context that those decisions are made
• 58:57
  within. And yeah, there was, you know,
• 58:59
  they were, they were, they were ruling in a civil sense, not
• 59:02
  just in a religious sense. And So what does that, what are
• 59:05
  the, the difficult choices that a civil ruler has to make?
• 59:09
  And sometimes they're very pragmatic and complicated.
• 59:12
  So and there's Gray areas. But and again, not to say it was
• 59:16
  right for anyone to born anyone at the stake.
• 59:17
  So like we, I think you would agree that that's wrong.
• 59:20
  Yeah. To burn someone at the stake.
• 59:22
  But yeah, I, I, well, I mean, we have to do.
• 59:25
  You think it's right, Trent? Well.
• 59:26
  I mean, these these punishments were instituted in the Old
• 59:30
  Testament, for example, you know, so.
• 59:32
  But would you say, I mean, have you done the death penalty on
• 59:35
  your channel yet? I've I've talked about it before
• 59:37
  a while back, I mean the. Oh, this is we're going to
• 59:41
  interesting waters here. Yeah, I mean the, the, the death
• 59:44
  penalty prescribed, you know, execution of people for for
• 59:48
  heresy and other crimes including burning, whether that
• 59:52
  is God, you know, God is allowing ancient people to use a
• 59:57
  law code that was most familiar to them and was most familiar
• 1:00:01
  for society. But would you support it?
• 1:00:03
  I think is the question. Would I, Would I support it?
• 1:00:05
  I I definitely wouldn't. I don't support what I have seen
• 1:00:09
  today and I think that we've seen progress in the development
• 1:00:14
  of the relationship between church and state.
• 1:00:16
  What I support today is I, I think that when the church, some
• 1:00:19
  people say, oh, I don't like separation of church and state,
• 1:00:22
  but I, I feel like that the, the church has thrived a lot in the
• 1:00:27
  United States. For example, like when you
• 1:00:29
  compare churches in the United States versus like the the
• 1:00:32
  Catholic Church in the United States versus Catholic churches
• 1:00:35
  in Europe, like in Europe, while they're a lot more secular, they
• 1:00:39
  still have a lot of the vestiges of Catholic or Protestant
• 1:00:44
  kingdoms. Like in Germany, there's the
• 1:00:45
  church tax where you you write down what religion you belong to
• 1:00:49
  and a portion of your tax dollars go to the church.
• 1:00:53
  So you can have the Catholic Church in Germany where people
• 1:00:56
  are leaving, but somehow their incomes keep going up because of
• 1:01:00
  the church tax. And so where you have the state
• 1:01:03
  backing churches and allowing them to be propped up in this
• 1:01:06
  sense by the state, I think they can become barren and lifeless
• 1:01:10
  by because they have the power of the state propping them up
• 1:01:14
  instead of the vibrant holiness and vigor of the the people just
• 1:01:19
  voluntarily promoting them. Like we see here in the US where
• 1:01:22
  churches are not similar. In Canada where you have
• 1:01:26
  Catholic schools that are essentially run by the
• 1:01:28
  government, a lot of these cases are teaching things that are not
• 1:01:30
  very Catholic. But here where you have Catholic
• 1:01:33
  schools that are just completely cut off from government funds,
• 1:01:35
  government intervention, you can you can have that ability to
• 1:01:39
  thrive more. And so I think ultimately we
• 1:01:42
  have seen a lot of of good in that respect versus using the
• 1:01:47
  the power of the state. And, and the church is always
• 1:01:50
  taught that the state should not coerce people to be Catholic.
• 1:01:54
  Like Aquinas taught that forcible baptisms of Jews, for
• 1:01:57
  example, are wrong, forced baptisms are invalid.
• 1:02:00
  I think we start to see more about the danger of trying to
• 1:02:04
  use the state to achieve certain goods, that maybe there are
• 1:02:07
  other spiritual ways to it, but the state should still achieve
• 1:02:10
  some goods, like state should outlaw abortion and.
• 1:02:12
  Outlaw, right? But I think when it comes, I
• 1:02:13
  mean, my sort of basic argument about the death penalty is, no,
• 1:02:16
  it's not acceptable. The only time you can argue in
• 1:02:19
  my opinion that it is useful, it's good, it's acceptable is
• 1:02:22
  when you are dealing with a rule of law situation where you don't
• 1:02:26
  have the infrastructure to keep really dangerous criminals that
• 1:02:29
  are totally disrupting society away from society.
• 1:02:33
  And so you have to use the death penalty because you don't have,
• 1:02:36
  you know, maximum security prisons to put people in.
• 1:02:39
  But with the infrastructure we have now, that's why I, I, I see
• 1:02:43
  the death penalty is wrong and but, but particularly.
• 1:02:45
  Even in very poor countries, they've abolished the death
• 1:02:47
  penalty. The death penalty tends to only
• 1:02:49
  be used now in places like Muslim theocracy, right?
• 1:02:52
  Or North Korea. But burning at the stake as a
• 1:02:54
  form of the death penalty, I think is particularly torturous.
• 1:02:58
  Yeah. And I think absolutely no,
• 1:03:00
  absolutely no to. That I would say no.
• 1:03:01
  And I would say that even if this kind of punishment were
• 1:03:04
  allowed in, in like the Old Testament, we have developed in
• 1:03:10
  our understanding of the natures of punitive measures.
• 1:03:13
  And I think that it is, it is something that, yeah, it
• 1:03:16
  certainly could not be justified.
• 1:03:18
  All right, death penalty there. We we went.
• 1:03:21
  We went there a little bit here. OK, So a question from where is
• 1:03:26
  she? I just saw her.
• 1:03:27
  Maria or Marta, Excuse me, Marta M Have either of you ever had
• 1:03:31
  doubts about the priestly celibacy or the Catholic versus
• 1:03:35
  Protestant question, basically? We can start to try the the the
• 1:03:39
  celibacy one. I've never had doubts about
• 1:03:41
  being Catholic since I've been Catholic.
• 1:03:44
  Or doubts that celibacy, because celibacy is not my understanding
• 1:03:47
  of it. It's not something that yes, of
• 1:03:49
  course it is required of priests today, most priests, but that
• 1:03:53
  hasn't always been the case. And also it it has a potential
• 1:03:56
  to change in the future. You don't by nature, being a
• 1:03:59
  priest, have to be unmarried. It's a discipline of the church
• 1:04:04
  and the question of priestess celibacy is an interesting one.
• 1:04:08
  For several years my wife and I attended A Byzantine Catholic
• 1:04:10
  Church. We've attended different
• 1:04:12
  Byzantine Catholic churches, some with celibate priests, some
• 1:04:14
  with married priests. So I've I've had the pleasure of
• 1:04:17
  knowing both they're they're great men.
• 1:04:19
  In the Eastern Catholic Church it's more common to have married
• 1:04:23
  priests. Some married Anglican priests
• 1:04:25
  become married Western priests when they're received into the
• 1:04:28
  church. But it's a discipline that could
• 1:04:31
  change, you know, they're to require or dispense from
• 1:04:34
  celibacy. But the practical arguments for
• 1:04:36
  changing it or not, that gets some more interesting practical
• 1:04:40
  arguments. I'm not, you know, fiercely
• 1:04:43
  opposed to a change like that. But at the same time, I think
• 1:04:46
  that a priest, like when they're all in black to show that they
• 1:04:50
  are dead to the world, they're alive in Christ, that they've
• 1:04:53
  renounced everything to follow the Kingdom.
• 1:04:55
  Celibacy is a very good thing. Saint Paul says in First
• 1:04:57
  Corinthians 7 he wishes all could be celibate like him
• 1:05:01
  because you're able to fully devote yourself to God.
• 1:05:02
  It's a beautiful witness. And I think it's important to
• 1:05:06
  for more people to see that and to be able to live it out
• 1:05:08
  joyfully. So I don't I'm very opposed to
• 1:05:12
  the idea of dispensing from the obligation of celibacy because
• 1:05:15
  we just need more priests, like we need to make the job more
• 1:05:17
  attractive. That is a, a dangerous attitude.
• 1:05:20
  I feel like a lot of the problems we have and I'm
• 1:05:22
  actually really excited about where the priesthood's going in
• 1:05:25
  the next 30 years. They've done studies showing
• 1:05:29
  that priests who self identify as progressive or orthodox or
• 1:05:35
  conservative, more conservative in their leanings as as priests,
• 1:05:38
  like theologically conservative. That has grown tremendously
• 1:05:42
  since 2002 on and I think there's a reason for that.
• 1:05:48
  I think honestly, a lot of the problems we see like priests,
• 1:05:51
  they're just like, what are you doing here?
• 1:05:53
  Or just a lot of other issues with them.
• 1:05:55
  I think like back in like the 50s through the 70s or the 80s,
• 1:05:59
  you'd have. And this is something that's, by
• 1:06:00
  the way, has happened throughout church history.
• 1:06:02
  So during the Reformation, the Council of Trent said people
• 1:06:06
  born out of wedlock could not be admitted to seminary because
• 1:06:09
  what happened was people would send their their their failure
• 1:06:12
  kids just to the priesthood. Almost like an orphanage.
• 1:06:15
  Basically, yeah. And what what do you get from
• 1:06:17
  that? You have priests who are not
• 1:06:17
  literate, priests that have concubines.
• 1:06:19
  It was a mess. And I think a lot of times one
• 1:06:22
  of the the motivations in the 20th century for people to
• 1:06:24
  become a priest is hey, and people told me this, you know,
• 1:06:27
  it's a great job. It's you know, you've got a lot
• 1:06:29
  of great benefits. People love you.
• 1:06:31
  It's it was. Like, and there were abuses.
• 1:06:33
  I mean, you mentioned concubines and illiteracy, but there were
• 1:06:36
  I'm. Talking about in the 20th
• 1:06:37
  century, though, people are told like, and to be honest, that I'm
• 1:06:42
  sure there are people who are told like, oh, you know, if, if
• 1:06:45
  you don't like women, you know, being a priest, it's a pretty
• 1:06:47
  good like, no one's going to ask any questions about you.
• 1:06:50
  That I think is one of the biggest misunderstandings about
• 1:06:53
  the priesthood because you meant, you made a great point in
• 1:06:55
  a moment earlier about, you know, I don't think you know,
• 1:06:59
  this idea of what we should revoke the celibacy requirement
• 1:07:02
  because we get more priests suddenly, because these guys who
• 1:07:05
  want to be married can be priests.
• 1:07:06
  By the way, there's a DIAC in it where you can be married and you
• 1:07:10
  can do some part of the priestly ministry that are not restricted
• 1:07:13
  from you, where you can give homilies, you can marry, you can
• 1:07:16
  baptize. We need a lot when you can
• 1:07:17
  preach. It's not like it's not like
• 1:07:19
  there's a bunch of married. Married deacons, they're.
• 1:07:21
  Not knocking down the door for that so.
• 1:07:23
  Why? Because people don't know it's
• 1:07:24
  an option. I think that's part of it.
• 1:07:26
  But but what I was going to say is a lot of people, I think,
• 1:07:29
  yeah, there was in the 60s and 70s people entering the seminary
• 1:07:33
  who maybe shouldn't have Yeah, who struggled with same sex
• 1:07:36
  attraction or other sexual issues and that the priesthood
• 1:07:40
  became kind of a cover for it. And that became very toxic.
• 1:07:43
  That's why the CDF said in 2005, people with deep seated same sex
• 1:07:47
  attractions cannot be admitted to the priesthood.
• 1:07:50
  Deep seated. Not just transitory, not just
• 1:07:51
  something you struggled with at one point like in adolescence,
• 1:07:54
  but. A recurring struggle for.
• 1:07:56
  Example, I think priests would benefit in just because you're
• 1:07:59
  celibate doesn't mean you have to be lonely.
• 1:08:01
  Like I think it's good for priests to live in community, to
• 1:08:03
  have a house like a parish serve or a house with three priests
• 1:08:06
  who live together. That's going to be difficult
• 1:08:08
  though if you have sexual attractions to the people you
• 1:08:10
  live with, you know, so that's why, you know, there's this
• 1:08:13
  practical elements there along with the other psychological
• 1:08:16
  elements. But here's why I think though,
• 1:08:18
  the difference about people thinking the the more
• 1:08:22
  conservative priests are coming in the future.
• 1:08:25
  I think before 2002, it was cool to be a priest.
• 1:08:30
  It was socially respectable to be a priest.
• 1:08:32
  It was not socially respectable to be LGBT.
• 1:08:35
  It was coming up, it was happening.
• 1:08:37
  But prior to that point, like, oh, a priest father so and so
• 1:08:40
  fight the demons. Like people didn't really
• 1:08:42
  priests were like cool sort of cool part of society.
• 1:08:45
  You had television shows about priests and they were just a a
• 1:08:48
  stock nice character for Catholics to look up to before
• 1:08:51
  2002. And LGBT was still on its rise.
• 1:08:54
  It was still something that, you know, people were generally
• 1:08:58
  opposed to so-called same sex marriage.
• 1:09:00
  Think about that and all that, right?
• 1:09:02
  But now after 2220 years after that, where are we?
• 1:09:05
  It's totally socially respectable to be LGBT.
• 1:09:08
  So now, like if you were like in the 20th century and you're
• 1:09:11
  like, oh, you know, it's not people won't respect me for
• 1:09:14
  being LGBT, so I want to be a priest.
• 1:09:16
  No, if you go out and identify as LGBT, you, you can get all
• 1:09:19
  kinds of social respect on TikTok and social media.
• 1:09:22
  But if you want social respect today, do you become a priest?
• 1:09:26
  No, but that might be a good thing that the people who do
• 1:09:30
  want to be a priest, like if it's not like back in the 70s,
• 1:09:33
  if someone and of course there are many good people during that
• 1:09:35
  time who chose to be a priest. I'm not maligning anyone who's
• 1:09:37
  or everyone ordained during that period, but it might be more
• 1:09:40
  likely, you know, you have someone looking, oh, I want to
• 1:09:43
  be socially respected and so I'll become a priest and it's a
• 1:09:46
  cushy deal and da, da, da. But I think the vast majority
• 1:09:49
  today, men who go into the priesthood know it's going to be
• 1:09:51
  rough. I'm going to choose this
• 1:09:54
  vocation and people are going to make fun of me and claim that
• 1:09:56
  I'm like a really bad person who does bad things in secret, but I
• 1:10:01
  don't care because I want to serve Christ in this church.
• 1:10:04
  Those kinds of people, they've got the heart and the desire to
• 1:10:08
  serve the Lord that thrives in that kind of adversity,
• 1:10:13
  spiritual adversity. So that that gives me a lot of
• 1:10:15
  hope to see the people that are choosing the priesthood now in
• 1:10:18
  spite of social disrespectability.
• 1:10:20
  I'm excited to see where the church will be as they as they
• 1:10:22
  progress. Amen Every I feel every new
• 1:10:25
  seminarian I meet and new priest I meet are rock stars.
• 1:10:29
  They're like really believe what they what they preach, what they
• 1:10:33
  live, and they've taken the time to make sacrifices to stick with
• 1:10:37
  it in a society that is often hostile to to increasingly
• 1:10:41
  hostile to increase it because of the the bad, you know, the
• 1:10:44
  scandals that there have been horrible scandals.
• 1:10:46
  There was a time when Catholicism was mostly still the
• 1:10:49
  culture can mostly be behind it. Like if you think about when
• 1:10:52
  Sinead O'Connor ripped up that picture of the Pope on Saturday
• 1:10:55
  Night Live, like, like people like SNL and the Windstream,
• 1:11:01
  more wide stream culture really criticize her about that.
• 1:11:05
  Now today, if you did that, people would be like, you know,
• 1:11:08
  cheering you on. Maybe not as much with this
• 1:11:11
  Pope. Well, I it depends who's ripping
• 1:11:13
  the picture. You know what?
• 1:11:14
  Pope Francis is funny. There will be people.
• 1:11:16
  God bless the Holy Father. They'll cheer him on like he's,
• 1:11:19
  you know, in favor of all LGBT. And I'll ask those people, you
• 1:11:22
  know, he said that gender ideology is a dangerous
• 1:11:25
  colonization that hurts people. What do you think of that
• 1:11:28
  conveniently? Yeah, well, one of the one of
• 1:11:30
  the arguments I've heard about against priestly celibacy is
• 1:11:34
  we'll look at the sex abuse scandals.
• 1:11:37
  This is a consequence of celibacy.
• 1:11:39
  And I find that such a such a silly argument because what are
• 1:11:42
  you saying? You're saying people should get
• 1:11:43
  married and that's the way they should deal with sexual
• 1:11:46
  attraction to children. You're going to offload that on
• 1:11:48
  to some wife Plus, I mean, it sounds horrible.
• 1:11:51
  That's not the way to deal with sexual attraction to children.
• 1:11:54
  You should get treatment. I'm interrupting you I feel
• 1:11:56
  like. We're back or whatever.
• 1:11:57
  I'm sorry. No, you're good.
• 1:11:58
  You're good. Go for it.
• 1:12:00
  Making great. Points so many cases of, of
• 1:12:02
  married people who engage in sexual misconduct with children.
• 1:12:06
  You're always hearing some story about like teachers, like young
• 1:12:12
  female teachers who engages, who are married, who have husbands
• 1:12:16
  and they're doing this with their with their students.
• 1:12:18
  It's sexual abuse is not a Catholic problem.
• 1:12:21
  It's a human problem. It's a it's a human problem
• 1:12:24
  that's universal across humanity.
• 1:12:25
  It's sin and it requires a variety of things, spiritual,
• 1:12:29
  emotional, legal to be able to to combat this in and of itself.
• 1:12:34
  That's not going to just saying, oh, just like get married.
• 1:12:36
  There won't be any abuse. No, to stop abuse you have to
• 1:12:39
  implement safeguards and instill a culture that refuses to make
• 1:12:46
  excuses for bad behavior and always is above board and
• 1:12:49
  transparent and keeping people safe.
• 1:12:51
  And you need a better vetting process, which the church is
• 1:12:54
  worth. And now we have that.
• 1:12:55
  Yeah, and we have that. No, well said.
• 1:12:57
  I, I, I totally agree. OK, we've got a few more minutes
• 1:13:00
  with Trent Horn. We've got some more questions
• 1:13:02
  coming in. Someone just asked Christina
• 1:13:05
  Canto just arrived. What are we talking about?
• 1:13:07
  We just talked about the Whatever podcast.
• 1:13:09
  We talked about some of Trent's background.
• 1:13:10
  Now we're doing on a lot of theological questions, some
• 1:13:13
  Catholic apologetic stuff got in, some good evangelical
• 1:13:16
  questions coming in and otherwise.
• 1:13:18
  So keep them coming. OK?
• 1:13:20
  This is a good one from James Coffey.
• 1:13:21
  I like this one. Today's a very special day.
• 1:13:25
  Today's the day of the Immaculate Conception.
• 1:13:26
  That's when we're filming and we're live.
• 1:13:29
  Forgot that December 8th Trent Immaculate Conception question.
• 1:13:34
  Why is the title full of grace given to Mary by the Angel
• 1:13:39
  Gabriel? Does that title appear anywhere
• 1:13:41
  else in Scripture? What does this tell us about the
• 1:13:43
  Immaculate Conception? Well, I would say so that title,
• 1:13:48
  it's, it's not a formal title per SE.
• 1:13:51
  So in Luke 128, the Angel Gabriel says to Mary and Luke
• 1:13:55
  records it in Greek, Kyrae Kacaratomene, hail full of
• 1:14:00
  grace. So he actually does not say Hail
• 1:14:02
  Mary full of grace. We say that in our prayer.
• 1:14:04
  He doesn't actually refer to Mary by her name Miriam.
• 1:14:07
  He just says hail full of of grace and.
• 1:14:10
  Like her new name is full of grace.
• 1:14:12
  Yeah. It's used kind of as, yeah, as
• 1:14:14
  as if it were a name or as if it were a title.
• 1:14:17
  Title not necessarily replacing her name, but it's a very
• 1:14:22
  interesting title that's used. So Kara 2 means grace or grace
• 1:14:27
  filled. And the grammatical form of
• 1:14:29
  kakarotomene points towards the idea of grace being kind of like
• 1:14:33
  an indicative part of Mary's life.
• 1:14:35
  It's not a proof of it. Kakarotomene is used in the book
• 1:14:39
  of Sirach to refer to a grace filled man in general, but it
• 1:14:42
  doesn't mean that that man was like immaculately conceived.
• 1:14:46
  But I think the fact that it is used and it's used as this kind
• 1:14:49
  of a, a title for Mary by Gabriel, it is very unique in,
• 1:14:55
  in that respect. And so I think it, it certainly
• 1:14:58
  points very much towards the dogma of the Immaculate
• 1:15:01
  Conception. When I present evidence, you
• 1:15:04
  know, for different Catholic beliefs, I think it, I think
• 1:15:06
  it's important not to overstate the evidence.
• 1:15:09
  So I, I rarely will say, Oh, this proves it in the Bible,
• 1:15:12
  unless like it's really locked down a strap.
• 1:15:15
  I think there's a lot of evidence in Scripture and in
• 1:15:17
  history that points towards the, you know, that, that definite,
• 1:15:21
  you know, that definitively point towards the truth of this
• 1:15:24
  doctrine and coheres with what you know, what the church
• 1:15:29
  teaches about it. And not just also not just
• 1:15:31
  scripture and tradition. I find an argument from reason I
• 1:15:34
  find really interesting from Jack Mulder Junior.
• 1:15:37
  I like this argument. So the argument goes like this
• 1:15:40
  that so God chose a teenage girl to become pregnant.
• 1:15:47
  God impregnated a teenage girl to bring the savior into the
• 1:15:50
  world and he allowed that teenage girl to freely say yes
• 1:15:53
  or no to that. But consider this situation if
• 1:15:57
  a, if a woman chooses to become pregnant, and if part of her
• 1:16:03
  reason is she's afraid of what the other party is going to do
• 1:16:06
  to her, like punish her if she says no, that's kind of a skeezy
• 1:16:11
  situation, right? Like if if somebody's like, OK,
• 1:16:14
  yeah, we can get pregnant because I'm worried that you
• 1:16:16
  might punish me or do something bad to me if I don't let you
• 1:16:19
  impregnate me. That's really bad.
• 1:16:22
  It's a bad situation, so could. And there is there are people
• 1:16:26
  very upset with Christianity because they believe God coerced
• 1:16:31
  Holy Spirit. It was almost like a assault of
• 1:16:33
  of sorts. And you can, but you can argue
• 1:16:35
  for coercion to say God has a habit in the Old Testament that
• 1:16:38
  when he asks people to do something and they say no, he
• 1:16:41
  punishes them. Look what happened to Jonah.
• 1:16:43
  You know, look what happened to other people.
• 1:16:45
  So even if God doesn't make an explicit promise of warning of
• 1:16:50
  punishment or threat of punishment, past behavior could
• 1:16:53
  still have a coercive effect on this Hebrew girl, Mary.
• 1:16:57
  Like, I know what God's done in the Old Testament.
• 1:16:58
  If I say no, you know, what's he going to do now?
• 1:17:01
  So God would never want her to be in a position like that.
• 1:17:03
  She's only saying yes because she's afraid of what will happen
• 1:17:07
  if she says no. So that gives evidence for
• 1:17:09
  perhaps then for God to still be all good, that he prepared Mary
• 1:17:14
  her entire life so that she was never in a position to be that
• 1:17:19
  saying no would be out of fear of punishment, that she's in a
• 1:17:22
  position where she always does what is God's will.
• 1:17:25
  And so she knows that if she says no, in this case to God,
• 1:17:29
  she is not contradicting his will.
• 1:17:31
  And so she's free to say no or yes.
• 1:17:33
  Well, to put Mary in that kind of position where she, she's
• 1:17:37
  always doing God's will, you'd have to make her free from sin.
• 1:17:40
  And that provides, I think, a very strong philosophical
• 1:17:43
  argument for the plausibility of the Immaculate Conception, that
• 1:17:46
  it's necessary. It's some people get the
• 1:17:49
  necessity wrong by the way, they say, oh, well, Mary had to be
• 1:17:52
  free from sin so that Jesus is free from sin.
• 1:17:55
  That doesn't work because Mary's free from sin, even though St.
• 1:17:59
  Anne was not free from sin. So that's not a good argument.
• 1:18:02
  But the necessity is more that Mary is free to be able to say
• 1:18:06
  yes to God, fully say yes to the divine plan of the Incarnation,
• 1:18:11
  because she could have also chosen no without fear of
• 1:18:14
  punishment, because everything she does is an accord with God's
• 1:18:17
  will. And you have to understand sort
• 1:18:20
  of the, the teaching on the wound of original sin, right?
• 1:18:23
  As opposed to the idea of that, you know, total depravity,
• 1:18:25
  although you're, what you're describing works actually with
• 1:18:28
  the, with the, the, you know, the argument for total depravity
• 1:18:32
  that if Mary was totally depraved, you know, right.
• 1:18:35
  And certainly if Mary was wounded by sin in addition, like
• 1:18:38
  you're saying, it would have been much more difficult for her
• 1:18:40
  maybe to say yes without feeling coerced.
• 1:18:43
  That's right. Yeah.
• 1:18:44
  And so I think that's a beautiful explanation that God
• 1:18:46
  predispositioned her and protected her from the wound of
• 1:18:49
  original sin so that. Sin does not play any part in
• 1:18:52
  the Fiat. In the Fiat, it's a.
• 1:18:54
  Full and free, yes. Yeah, and Adam and Eve were
• 1:18:56
  truly free in the garden. So it's again because they were
• 1:18:59
  free from sin as well. Yes.
• 1:19:00
  And, and, and and that's the other thing.
• 1:19:02
  When we are free from sin, free from the wound of sin, it's not
• 1:19:04
  that we can't still choose evil. Adam and Eve could choose evil,
• 1:19:08
  right? Mary could have chosen evil, but
• 1:19:11
  she obviously never did. Right.
• 1:19:12
  Obviously. I know that's the argument.
• 1:19:14
  Right? It was it obvious, But yeah, no.
• 1:19:17
  Great, Great answer, Trent. OK, we've got just a couple more
• 1:19:19
  minutes. People are enjoying this.
• 1:19:22
  So thanks to people in the chat for your comments in here.
• 1:19:25
  What I'm going to kind of maybe we'll close off this Catholic
• 1:19:30
  apologetics session that we've sort of landed into here.
• 1:19:33
  We did get a pro-life question. Let's do the pro-life question
• 1:19:35
  really quick and then I'm going to.
• 1:19:36
  We'll close that on Catholic apologetics.
• 1:19:38
  Yeah, Yeah, We had a question from SJSGK.
• 1:19:43
  What are your views about using the term fetus?
• 1:19:46
  I teach a high school pro-life apologetics class and there's
• 1:19:49
  disagreement about whether or not using the term fetus is
• 1:19:52
  appropriate during dialogue. Your thoughts?
• 1:19:55
  It depends, but when I use the term fetus, I usually try to
• 1:19:59
  preface it with the word human. So I think that allows it
• 1:20:03
  because fetus can often be used in a dehumanizing way.
• 1:20:06
  So when I'm in a dialogue, like when I dialogue with Destiny or
• 1:20:08
  with other people about abortion.
• 1:20:11
  I might say the unborn. I know some people like preborn.
• 1:20:13
  I just use unborn because it's it's just more common what I've
• 1:20:16
  used. But if I do use the term fetus
• 1:20:19
  or embryo, I just use it as an opportunity to include the the
• 1:20:22
  prefix human before I the the human fetus, the human embryo.
• 1:20:26
  So that's what I would do. I I'm with you on that.
• 1:20:29
  And you know, at Live Action, we do use fetus and embryo.
• 1:20:32
  We talk about how these terms have been used to dehumanize or
• 1:20:35
  depersonalize the pre born. We do say pre born, typically
• 1:20:38
  child, but that we do need to take back these terms because
• 1:20:43
  they're almost used like slurs. It's just a fetus and it's like
• 1:20:46
  a human fetus is a younger than human infant.
• 1:20:49
  You know, it's a stage of development.
• 1:20:51
  And that's something to celebrate, not to like to
• 1:20:53
  denigrate and look down on. So yeah, unfortunately they're
• 1:20:57
  used as dehumanization in dehumanizing terms, but they are
• 1:21:01
  medically accurate terms for stages of development like
• 1:21:03
  adolescent. You know, we've obviously talked
• 1:21:06
  about this all all the time, so but we do also say baby a lot
• 1:21:09
  and child and I think that's because those are accurate too.
• 1:21:11
  And I would prefer to use that. I think it's just hard when
• 1:21:14
  you're in a debate or dialogue and someone accuses you of using
• 1:21:17
  loaded language. So that's why I try to use
• 1:21:20
  language that's helpful, that's the most neutral terms, but
• 1:21:23
  still makes my case. Yeah.
• 1:21:25
  All right, so let's close out here with you are, I think, the
• 1:21:30
  the leading millennial Catholic apologist.
• 1:21:33
  I'm so grateful for your work out there.
• 1:21:35
  And please, again, check out Trent's work at his Council of
• 1:21:38
  Trent YouTube channel. And you're doing a lot of
• 1:21:40
  debates coming up which are going to be really interesting
• 1:21:42
  on theological issues. My dear friend Allie Beth
• 1:21:44
  Stuckey, I think you'll be on her podcast, I heard.
• 1:21:47
  We're we're work. We're working out the details
• 1:21:50
  now. I think the goal would be for
• 1:21:51
  Allie to moderate a discussion between myself and a Protestant
• 1:21:55
  apologist. That'll be that'll be
• 1:21:58
  fascinating. OK, so to close this out, what
• 1:22:00
  is there's, I mean, I there's maybe multiple, there are
• 1:22:04
  multiple that I can think of immediately.
• 1:22:06
  But in your experience, what has been one of the biggest or the
• 1:22:10
  biggest, most difficult to answer challenges to the
• 1:22:17
  Catholic, you know, the person who's maybe considering
• 1:22:20
  Catholicism coming from an evangelical background, the
• 1:22:24
  strongest argument against Catholicism by an evangelical
• 1:22:30
  and then how would you respond? I think that's that's difficult
• 1:22:34
  because what are considered the biggest obstacles are going to
• 1:22:37
  be different. For, well, pick.
• 1:22:38
  Let's pick one that you find maybe personally you found
• 1:22:42
  particularly compelling, or maybe one of the most.
• 1:22:44
  Common I think honestly the the most common by far is the most
• 1:22:49
  common by far when the people who are interested in
• 1:22:51
  Catholicism is is where is that in the Bible that sure I they're
• 1:22:55
  all. Where is Catholicism out there?
• 1:22:57
  They're all variants of that. They're looking at things like
• 1:23:00
  indulgences, the papacy, the different prayers and devotions
• 1:23:05
  that Catholics do. Purgatory.
• 1:23:07
  Yeah. And saying, you know, if I don't
• 1:23:10
  see this explicitly in the Bible, then I don't see how I
• 1:23:14
  can be bound to to believe that or demanding all these things be
• 1:23:17
  proof texted from Scripture. I think that when people start
• 1:23:20
  with that kind of a mindset, it's very difficult for them to
• 1:23:23
  wrap their heads around other other Catholic practices.
• 1:23:26
  So I guess I would encourage them in a few different ways.
• 1:23:30
  Number one, I would say, what do you mean by this?
• 1:23:32
  I I just trust the Bible. OK.
• 1:23:34
  Are you saying that what you believe as a Christian cannot
• 1:23:38
  contradict the Bible, then? Yeah, I, I believe that too.
• 1:23:42
  And, and I firmly believe I might even write a book about
• 1:23:45
  this. Why not another book that every
• 1:23:47
  Catholic doctrine can be shown to, to not contradict Scripture.
• 1:23:51
  Well, I mean, I'll believe it. It's true.
• 1:23:52
  Every Catholic doctrine can be shown to not contradict
• 1:23:55
  Scripture. Indulgences, the temporary
• 1:23:58
  remission, the sorry, the remission of the temporal
• 1:24:01
  punishment of sin that would be purified in purgatory.
• 1:24:04
  That concept does not. The Bible never says that that
• 1:24:07
  doesn't happen. This was hugely important in my
• 1:24:09
  conversion, by the way, because I went through all of these
• 1:24:12
  tough questions, purgatory, Mary, prayer to the Saints, all
• 1:24:16
  of these things, the true presence, you know, transmits
• 1:24:18
  substantiation and it and one of those questions as a kind of at
• 1:24:22
  that time sort of a Bible believing evangelical was is
• 1:24:25
  this in violation in any way of what I have been taught and what
• 1:24:29
  I know to be true from God's word in the Bible?
• 1:24:31
  Yeah. And then you can say, well, no,
• 1:24:32
  it doesn't conjure that. There's many assumptions.
• 1:24:35
  Protestants make many assumptions about what the Bible
• 1:24:37
  teaches like, well, the Bible teaches to be absent from the
• 1:24:40
  body is to be present with the Lord.
• 1:24:41
  No, that's a misquote from Second Corinthians.
• 1:24:44
  That's not what it says The you know, or to say, well, the Bible
• 1:24:48
  teaches were justified by faith alone.
• 1:24:50
  Well, no, the term faith alone is only used in chains where it
• 1:24:52
  says we are not justified by faith alone.
• 1:24:55
  So doesn't contradict, but then saying, well, OK, even doesn't
• 1:24:58
  contradict. I'm only going to do something
• 1:24:59
  like if the Bible doesn't say to pray to Saints, I'm not going to
• 1:25:02
  pray to the Saints. Nobody in the Bible does it.
• 1:25:04
  Why would I do it to its own? I would ask, well, nobody in the
• 1:25:07
  Bible prays to the Holy Spirit. Would you ever pray?
• 1:25:10
  You know, come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and
• 1:25:13
  kindle on them the fire of your love.
• 1:25:15
  Is that a bad prayer? The Bible doesn't record anyone
• 1:25:18
  praying to the Holy Spirit to do something directly.
• 1:25:21
  There are even Protestants who say you shouldn't pray to Jesus.
• 1:25:24
  They would say you should pray to the Father in Jesus name
• 1:25:27
  because it's very rare in scripture for a prayer to be
• 1:25:30
  addressed directly to Jesus. Except when they say Rabbini
• 1:25:33
  Rabbini, they're like, you know the I mean.
• 1:25:36
  They're praying to Jesus in real life.
• 1:25:37
  But then but right. But then the idea they.
• 1:25:39
  Had that beautiful opportunity to get to talk to the Lord in
• 1:25:42
  real life. But a Protestant, though, if I,
• 1:25:44
  if you and I said, yeah, but Gabriel said to Mary, Hail Mary,
• 1:25:47
  why can't I say Hail Mary? They're going to say, well, Mary
• 1:25:50
  was alive at that point. Right.
• 1:25:52
  Don't pray to the dead, but Jesus is alive.
• 1:25:54
  The same the Saints are. Alive.
• 1:25:55
  And the Saints are alive, Yeah, exactly.
• 1:25:57
  But they're not alive here. So that's the argument.
• 1:26:00
  Of course they're in heaven. And so I.
• 1:26:02
  Can ask people to pray for me and I can use this.
• 1:26:04
  To ask, we should do it. With me on the other.
• 1:26:06
  Side we should do another episode at some point where we
• 1:26:08
  do devil's advocate because I, I, I mean, I have so many
• 1:26:12
  wonderful evangelical friends who are very smart.
• 1:26:15
  I've been there. I've been walked through the
• 1:26:16
  arguments and you kind of know that, you know, you know the the
• 1:26:20
  concerns, you know, you know the questions, you know the counter
• 1:26:22
  arguments. But no, I think that's, I think
• 1:26:24
  that's, that is very common what you're describing.
• 1:26:27
  And then just to point out, all right, then that's why I think
• 1:26:29
  it's important to because people will say to me, prove the Pope
• 1:26:32
  from the Bible. Well, look, I got to go through
• 1:26:35
  a lot of steps to do that. First, I need to show you
• 1:26:38
  there's no good reason to believe Sola Scriptura is true
• 1:26:41
  or that the Bible is the only infallible rule of faith.
• 1:26:43
  Even knowing what books, human, human writings are Scripture,
• 1:26:47
  well, Scripture doesn't tell us that.
• 1:26:49
  So just starting with the problem, I would start with the
• 1:26:51
  problem of sola scriptura and then show by the way, when we
• 1:26:54
  look at Scripture and early history, it seems very clear
• 1:26:57
  that the apostles had successors, that the authority
• 1:27:00
  of the church did not die out with the apostles, but was
• 1:27:03
  given, was given to their successors and that the church
• 1:27:06
  continue to be the means by which the deposit of faith was
• 1:27:09
  transmitted. Not a set of writings that
• 1:27:12
  everybody recognized. And then amongst those
• 1:27:14
  successors of the apostles, the bishops, even Satan, nations of
• 1:27:18
  Antioch in the year one O 7 said to follow the Bishop as Jesus
• 1:27:22
  Christ follows the Father. He doesn't tell people to treat
• 1:27:25
  the Bible that way. There was no Bible.
• 1:27:27
  There were Scriptures, but there wasn't a complete understanding
• 1:27:32
  of which ones even among the New Testament were, you know that
• 1:27:35
  these are the definitive sets of inspired writings, but you could
• 1:27:38
  trust the Church and if you follow the Church, you were OK.
• 1:27:42
  I think then amongst those successors, is there anyone that
• 1:27:45
  has more authority over the others, like the successor of
• 1:27:47
  Saint Peter? So it's like knowing to get to
• 1:27:49
  the papacy we got to show Protestantism is wrong about
• 1:27:53
  authority and then show Apostolic succession.
• 1:27:56
  And then you would get to debates about the successors of
• 1:27:58
  the apostles to kind of distinguish between Orthodoxy
• 1:28:02
  and Catholicism. But you can't ask me just to
• 1:28:04
  give you 1 Bible verse on on this.
• 1:28:05
  Stuff well, and that's why I think your channel is so
• 1:28:08
  important, Trent and your work because you take the time to go
• 1:28:11
  through the steps and explain, you know, the the case and this
• 1:28:15
  is not just a talking point. This is not just like a social
• 1:28:17
  media comment. This is really taking that time.
• 1:28:19
  So where can people find your stuff?
• 1:28:21
  I'd recommend, they can go to the Council of Trent on YouTube
• 1:28:23
  COUNSEL that's on YouTube, iTunes, Google Play, and they
• 1:28:28
  can also check me out. Obviously, Catholic Answers, I'm
• 1:28:30
  on Catholic Answers Live often. That's a catholic.com.
• 1:28:34
  Yeah. So any of those sources and they
• 1:28:36
  can support what I do. You can get some of my resources
• 1:28:39
  at trendhorn.com. Awesome.
• 1:28:40
  Well, thank you again, Trent. Great job yesterday.
• 1:28:43
  Thanks for coming on today. Great answers and check out
• 1:28:45
  Trent stuff. It's fantastic.
• 1:28:48
  All right guys, thank you so much for joining the live
• 1:28:50
  stream. Was this fun?
• 1:28:51
  Let me know what you think. We're going to do more of this
• 1:28:53
  in the future. If you're listening to this on
• 1:28:55
  podcast after the fact, always, you can send us a message at
• 1:28:58
  lila@gtbmedia.com. Don't forget to subscribe to the
• 1:29:02
  podcast if you haven't already. Ring the notification bell if
• 1:29:05
  you're on YouTube because I've heard some of you guys don't get
• 1:29:08
  the new episodes when they come out.
• 1:29:09
  So make sure you're getting you're becoming aware of them.
• 1:29:13
  I saw another comment here. Lila, you got to take care of
• 1:29:15
  yourself. You've been sick all week.
• 1:29:16
  It's been 3 weeks. So I'm so ready to be done with
• 1:29:19
  this cough. Thank you for your patience with
• 1:29:21
  it. The next interview we're going
• 1:29:23
  to do, it's not going to be live.
• 1:29:24
  It's going to come out on Tuesday, but I'm going to record
• 1:29:25
  it actually in just a few minutes is one that I think a
• 1:29:28
  lot of you will really enjoy and it will be really interesting.
• 1:29:31
  It's with Erica Commissar on her book Being There, the importance
• 1:29:35
  of the first three years. She is a researcher, a therapist
• 1:29:39
  who's done intensive, extensive work on the important bond
• 1:29:43
  between mother and child, especially in the first three
• 1:29:46
  years, and the importance of the mother being present in the home
• 1:29:49
  with the child. So a lot of questions for
• 1:29:51
  working moms. Of course, daycare, nannies,
• 1:29:53
  we're going to get into all of it.
• 1:29:54
  It's going to be awesome. So if you have questions on and
• 1:29:57
  that too, you can actually put them in the chat here.
• 1:29:59
  And I, I will take a look at them for the interview with
• 1:30:02
  Erica. It's not going to be live.
• 1:30:03
  It'll come out on Tuesday. Again, huge shout out to Trent
• 1:30:06
  Horn. He is fantastic.
• 1:30:07
  Check out his stuff at Council of Trent on YouTube.
• 1:30:10
  And thank you guys so much. We will see you on Tuesday.