Dyer masterfully connects ancient philosophy to modern faith, exposing the hidden logical flaws that shaped Western theology. It is a brilliant, high-level critique that demands serious intellectual engagement from its audience.
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JAY DYER on Tucker, debate, and solving the world's problems. Q&A and chillstream.
Added:Black Kang, black bishops, black players, people of the chocolate persuasion. Black gang, black bishops, black players, people of the chocolate persuasion. Black gang, black bishops, black players, people of the chocolate persuasion. Black king, black bishops, black players, people of the chocolate persuasion. But the dark ages was a time when black people ruled Europe. So when you go into the real history, you'll see King James was That's King James right there. That's Jame Leon.
That's King Leon right there. Black. He was not a white guy. You'll see his whole lineage of kings. Black Kings, black bishops, black players, people of the chocolate persuasion. Black Kang, black bishops, black players, people of the chocolate persuasion. Black gang, black bishops, black players. People of the chocolate persuasion. Black king, black bishops, black players, people of the chocolate persuasion who was a homosexual himself who was in love with his sister, Lucricia, who they made the image of Lucricia to be married. And that became the Renaissance era. Lricia, are you telling me Lucricia? That's a black name right there. How you going to say that the people that was framing the black people were also black? That don't make no sense. Lricia is a black as hell name. Lquishia.
The church even allowed it. You know what I'm saying? The church allowed for straight pimp that have been suppressed.
That have been suppressed. Listen to my brother. The 1500s it was legal to be a pimp. Black kings, black bishops, black players. People of the chocolate persuasion. Black kang, black bishops, black players, people of the chocolate persuasion.
I I I I I I was born in Romania in a Christian family.
Pentecost.
Pentecost.
I was born in Romania in a Christian family.
Pentecost.
Pentecost.
>> That's a damn church right there. That's about a church, son. We about to have a eyes wide, shut church party in the basement, too. That's what That's what they call the after party. Y'all ever heard of the after party?
You know what I'm saying?
>> I was born in Romania in a Christian family.
Pentecost.
Pentecost.
I was born in Romania in a Christian family.
Pentecost.
Pentecost.
I put my key in the kitchen. I fresh out the kitchen. I put my key in the first.
It's a freaking weekend, baby. We about to have some church. some church.
>> I was born in Romania in a Christian family.
Pentecostal.
Antal.
I was born in Romania in a Christian family.
Antalostal.
That's a damn church right there.
space.
Let's create life.
Space that has a body.
It's a very funny body.
Feels good.
Woman in the space wise.
Woman in space wise in the highlight.
Magic underwear fitting tight. Magic underwear is feeling right.
Spacewise moving space in the seas with you on the planet of the moon.
Space Twilight right there.
Space Twilight Space.
It's a very tall body.
Let's create life.
Magic underwear tight. Magic underwear is feeling right.
core.
Did you ever have victory outreach experience when you were on the west coast?
>> Uh, what is that?
>> It's basically like Cholo Church.
>> Oh, really?
>> Cholo church. Hey, dude. This is Cholo Church. Look, homie, you could go anywhere, bro. So, Cholo Church, I'd be going here instead of freaking Ruse Church or whatever, dude.
Cholo church. Dude, this church is about 50 times less gay than freaking Roosevel, bro. Cholo church, dude. How come I didn't even know about freaking Cholo church? JP, dude, why?
How come he ain't at Cholo church, bro?
Cholo church. He's over trying to get inside of the freaking Rouslon butt buddy church. Cholo church, dude. He need to go to Cholo church, bro.
>> Cholo church.
I'm going to grab me a little blondhaired blue-eyed white boy AND PUT HIM ON THE WHITE SIDE OF TOWN, you know.
And if that ain't good enough, I'm going to grab me a little ching chain pink boy and put him ON THE ASIAN SIDE of town.
Oh, dude. Damn, bro. They based as hell over at Cholo Church. They making freaking white jokes, bro. They don't even how the all the Cholo women like they were fat before everybody was fat, dude.
It's like Cholo women were just always like a circle, dude. Like they was born coming out like a circle, bro. Like they didn't even go through like a transformation where they were like hot when they were young or whatever. Like they was just straight a circle the whole time, bro. A spheres, bro. That's the orbs that Sam was talking about.
And how could you refute me or whatever?
Jello sir, >> I will grease you up very good. You have a very prompt booty.
Who? Voice of reasons. Got a point. You have a very prompt booty. I will grease you up. Very good. You have a very prom booty.
Who voice got a point? You have a very prom booty. I will grease you up. Very good. You have a very prom booty.
Well, what's the reason he's got a point? You have a very dumb bush.
>> But I mean, like, what does it take for y'all to see through these people? I don't even understand it. Like, what's the point of even talking about it?
I could have told you that dude was a goober [ __ ] A goblin, a demon, and a goober [ __ ] The counc of did not say that you cannot text a girl with a very plum booty. I will get you up. Very good. You have a very plum booty.
Oh, boys and Reese's got a point. You have a very brown booty. I will boost you up. Very good. You have a very prom booty.
Who has got a point? You have a very proud booty.
>> I don't even want to spend any time in the loser sphere.
>> I was just texting to the plumb booties.
Could I send you some more texts?
>> I already told you I was a good [ __ ] I can't believe that the losers were acting like the losers that they are.
Losers were acting like losers.
I will glitch you up. Very good. You have a very plump booty.
Oh, boys and Reese's got a point. You have a very booty. I will glitch you up.
Very good. You have a very plump booty.
Who has got a point? You have a very booty.
The council of Ephesus made an error when it said that you can't talk about brown booties. I would like a prop booty on my face. This is for a reason.
That'll never get old. I don't know how Voice of Grez will ever lift down that blunder that the council of Ephesus was wrong. Well, uh I see in the chat here we got Thank you for bearing with me, guys. I appreciate all you. We have uh what are these gems? I've been seeing like gems recently. whatever they are.
Thank you very much uh Austin Tom for the gems. Five bucks from faith can move mountains. America will be orthodox, God willing. Yes. Silver ogre member for seven months. Free milestone. Yes. Uncle Alert 440. Dude, what are these gems?
This is literally the first time I'm seeing these gems. Laughing disco. 250 gems from Steel and two bucks from Lenny. Bipok time tags. I mean, I don't think you should expect any less. I have backstage right now the bipok king himself, the e diva uh and top debater on YouTube. We have Jay Dyer.
How are you doing, Jay? Welcome to the channel.
>> I'm doing great. Alex, how are you?
Thanks for having me. Glad to be back.
>> Yeah, honestly, I think it's uh it's I think overdue to have like a proper, you know, sit down and talk. I know you've been on the channel like a few times before, but you know, you had me on your channel and I was like, man, how am I going to have him on? and like what are what are we going to talk about? What are we even going to go into? But I think now is as great a time as ever. Uh I mean you guys all know Jay I have like this little intro prepared but uh you know uh author of numerous books including esoteric Hollywood one two and three host of the Alex Jones show and writer on the Sam Hyde show. His reputation precedes him. Philosopher apologist top debater. You were recently on Tucker J. And uh he comes off sometimes as like maybe a little eccentric or like kooky to some people, you know, he has that like notorious laugh. Uh but he's had like recently Father Josiah on Father Steven D. Young.
Now he's had you and it seems like this whole time he like grilled you on Holy Orthodoxy. So I guess if you could talk a bit about like how was Tucker in person and like what sense do you get of his assessment of uh holy orthodoxy?
He was um not that I didn't think he was intelligent, but in person he was a lot smarter than I assumed.
And I think that comes with the way journalism and podcasting works where if you're a host, uh which usually he's the host, uh he's asking a lot of questions and so they just kind of assume, well, he doesn't know because he's asking the question, so he's learning. I think most of the time he already knows what he's asking questions about. I know in our discussion a lot of what he asked he had previously asked at breakfast and then also you know filled in more details later on showing that he had pretty extensive knowledge of a lot of the subjects that we covered. There were definitely areas I think of church history and theology that that what I said was somewhat new to him. But the first thing that really surprised me was when we got there and we discussed over breakfast mainly geopolitical stuff and media stuff. I don't think there was anything I brought up that was even new to him uh or he didn't have a decent fluent knowledge on uh or of other than maybe the Vatican bank type of stuff might have been somewhat new. But for the most part, you know, everything we talked about he uh had had extensive knowledge of. And then I think theologically in church history wise, I didn't expect him to be very interested in the metaphysics of penal substitutionary atonement. Uh had no expectation of that. As I said, I think many times on my streams and other people's podcast, I didn't really know where we were going to go. Uh they said, you know, what do you want to talk about? I listed several topics. I assumed they would pick one or two. They were just like, yeah, sure. So it was kind of up in the air what we'd talk about. And uh uh I crammed hard, as I said, for geopolitics.
And we got there, we ate, talked geopolitics, and he's like, "Yeah, I'm over all that. I'm over it. I don't want to talk about that. I'm over it." I'm like, "Uh, what do you want to talk about?" He's like, "What's about orthodoxy? Let's talk about that." Like, okay. Uh, what do you want to talk about? And then, so he just launches in again. I had no idea where we'd go first. Right. So, and for those that don't know, you can't really see it from the way the camera angles are, but when he asks you a question, he looks at you in one eyes like this and he looks at you like this.
>> It's like a pirate.
>> He But he just like he just sort of like almost scowls. I mean, I'm not saying he was like rude or bad. It was just a little bit. And maybe that was like some kind of uh journalism training or something, but um I I think the whole idea was to kind of have it not be wrote or scripted to be fresh.
So, uh, my sense is that, um, given that he went into a full hardcore hour of straight orthodox topics and two hot button issues with, you know, icons, justification by faith alone. I think those those were also, you know, key issues that we discussed after the interview where he was like, I'm still struggling with these issues. I I like orthodox people. I like orthodoxy. I'm not yet at the point, he said, where I can admit I'm ready to grapple with icons and soul scriptura. So, those are the two kind of issues that he um he he was honest about, but he just simply said, I I don't have arguments against those positions, but I'm not yet ready to grapple with it because I feel like I don't have arguments.
>> Like something he's working through on his own kind of. Yeah. Like >> Yeah. But I appreciated that he was like, >> you know, just last thing I was going to say, I appreciated that he was like >> admitted. I don't have intellectual arguments against them. I'm just >> grappling with it.
>> Yeah. Because at that point, it's like, well, then he just has to accept it. But I really liked your presentation on icons because it dug into the Old Testament and I feel like a lot of the questions that he has even with Father Steven, like most of that was on the Old Testament. And I mean, you've done countless debates with Protestants, and I'm discovering in my debates with Protestants, too, they have no idea what to do with the Old Testament. Like, they are totally lost when it comes to the Old Testament stuff. I mean, did you get a sense of that from Tucker as well?
Yeah. And, you know, I think in other podcasts, I don't see every Tucker podcast, but other ones I have seen, I've seen him admit that he grapples with elements of the Old Testament. He's not sure what to deal with. you know, Canaanite conquest or, you know, animal sacrifices, the worship of the temple. A lot of that stuff seems foreign, I think, to the the Protestant mind that that he comes from, which is the sort of liberal Episcopalian upbringing, which he never really gave a lot of serious thought to until recently, he said. And in his his mind, the Episcopal Church is fake and gay. And he just said that.
He's like, "That's fake and gay. That's fiscal. Fake and gay." So, I'm like, "Well, yeah, we agree there." And uh he's like, and he said that the only people that he has met that he thinks are really sincere Christians are all Orthodox. I thought that was an interesting I mean, not that there aren't sincere Christians outside of Orthodox, but he says he the most sincere people that he's met happen to be Orthodox.
And so, those are all good signs, but um yeah, I think he's grappling with those other issues. And I I do think the Old Testament was crucial. Um I remember discussing iconography from the Old Testament, but I really was trying to think of creative ways to talk about re reconciliation for his issues that he might not have heard. So in other words, I didn't want to answer with things that perhaps Father Josiah would have would have said. Not that I'm knocking, you know, conversations he might have had with Father Josiah or Father Stephen Young.
>> It's like he has this working knowledge already and you're trying to fill in gaps.
>> So I want to fill in other gaps of like, you know, maybe he hasn't heard about, you know, something over here in the Old Testament that relates to this. And so I just wanted to kind of provide other sources and avenues of argumentation and um you know particularly with like the idea of of liturgy for the text or scripture or with um uh I'm trying to remember all the specifics that came up like the nominalism issue like my assumption was that he probably because that's not a common critique for PSA you know what I mean it's more niche stuff that we talk about >> so I just kind of gambled on you Maybe he's never heard this type of a critique of what the Lutheran position amounts to and what influenced Luther. I never said Luther was a hardcore anomalist. I never said he adopted wholesale everything from AAM and Gabriel Bile or any of that. I said that the doctrine justification is influenced by a specific idea of divorcing the signifier from the reality. Uh and that's what I was trying to highlight and that relates to the denial of universals. is not identical to that. But yeah, a lot of people took issue with that. But um that was just sort of you know on the fly just trying to come up with I wonder you know maybe he's never heard this critique that you know I was kind of intrigued maybe one of the most powerful ones. It is such like a devastating I think defeater for that paradigm because like it's impossible for any ancient person to have had that kind of paradigm. So you can't read the text that way. But I do want to talk about like the the Bible as a lurggical text for a second before we talk more about the nominalism because I think that section got quite a bit of attention from people. Probably not as much as the nominalism stuff, but it did like circulate on Twitter a bit. And you know, I was doing some research into the uh text to the Bible and the manuscripts underlying it. Uh see that like I think it was 40% of the New Testament manuscripts that we have today are from lectionaries. And I'm just sitting over here thinking, if you're a Protestant, like an evangelical, they don't have lectionaries like at all. Like, wouldn't that be a red flag? Like, shouldn't that tell you something? like all these ancient Christians had lectionaries and you don't that you're probably not like these ancient Christians and that it played a role in you know canonicity and influencing you know various councils in terms of helping to help not totally but helping them to choose you know which canonical lists and traditions are you know probably apostolic or authentic or whatever. So, you know, that was devastating when I was a Protestant because I read FF Bruce and Lee McDonald. I know they talked about it. I've got some other, you know, uh, Protestant scholars that discuss this in their history of the formation of the canon. But also outside of that, I was encountering the same idea in lurggical texts and histories of the liturgy. So, when I was Protestant, I'd never really thought about liturgy. You just kind of assume that that's some later madeup thing that Catholics and Orthodox and and Anglicans do. It's like pagan influences over >> I mean I had a little more sophisticate like because when I was a Calvinist we thought that there were these accretions to use the Gavin language and that the best thing to do was to just sort of shave off the accretions right so I didn't think that it was I was past like the Alexander Hisla Baptist phase of thinking that it was like pagan you know Babylon worship but I thought that they had adopted these sort of accretion from wherever just you know man-made traditions and or or whatever and then you start to realize so it's not just the history of the formation of the canon it's also like the history of worship itself and so in an indirect way some of the reformed principles that and I mean we've talked about this before I don't want to beat a dead horse but you know the idea of the the uh regulative principle of worship which Calvinists are so uh married to that was kind of an indirect way for me to start looking into liturgy because it's like well wait a minute if worship is so important that Naab and Abahu get killed in Leviticus over it why do we not have like the form of work like there ought to be like at the maybe why why is there not like an appendix you know maybe the apostles should have written an appendix at the end of the book that they forneew would be the Bible and like here is the appendix of how you're supposed to do the worship service and if we're going to be Calvinist and be so kind of extreme about whether you can only sing psalms or can you sing some hymns? Um, can you have head coverings or are you supposed to always have head coverings?
Is it optional? Right? These are the kind of intercalvinist disputes that were happening when I was in the Calvis the Presbyterian church. And then it's like, well, we're kind of missing the big picture here of what how come there's not a worship service resolving these issues? And why is our worship service not at all like the first 1500 years of worship service? So I think those are just really all kill shots when you really get down to it.
>> Yeah. And it like also ties in again to that continuity of worship where in the icon section you were saying you have like holy images all over the tabernacle, all over the temple. Like the temple itself is a holy image that uh the people of Israel would bow down to. Like it represents the worship of the divine assembly in heaven. Um, and it all ties in at the end to like worship at the end of the day. That's like kind of an approach that I took to like the debate that I did with JP and uh with uh what's his name, the other Paul as well on icons that like you cannot separate these things from you cannot separate intercession of the saints from worship. You cannot separate icons from worship like it's all a package deal which is like the your whole apologetic is like taking a worldview as a whole, right? that it's a package deal. You can't take these things peacemeal, which I think brings us to that like nominalism part where you can't change one little thing. It's going to have domino effects all the way down, right? So, in one of the books I've been going through uh the ontology of death, which I think is a book that you're familiar with. It's like a petristic review of uh you know, how they would interact with nominalism. And then there's like a few other books on just like modernity. This is by I think he's a Roman Catholic uh scholar, the theological origins of modernity. He talks about the influence of nominalism and oddly enough Islam also on the west.
Like a lot of that aristotilian revival in the scholastic period came from Muslim scholars like Veroise and Avisenna and they influenced a lot of that scholasticism. So I mean if you could speak a bit about like fill in the gaps a bit on that nominalism portion they didn't get to talk about on the Tucker. Yeah, I think we could really uh you know the origin of this dispute you could say is prescratics and even very early but it's the question that Plato has in regard to excuse me the aerosol has in regard to his master Plato because Plato thinks that what's most real and what's very real is the universal or the ideal the form uh and so that's higher onlogically prior superior to the particulars, the many um and that Greek dialectical position is fleshed out for many centuries amongst neoplatonists, amongst even church fathers combating neoplatinists. It's fleshed out even in Christologology when you have a dialectical view of the will, the divine will and the human will with the monotheites and the mono energed out even with you know St. Justinian shutting down the platonic academy. uh it's it comes back you know with like even dealing with baram between St. Gregor Palmus and Barlam. So a lot of these issues are going back to how we view distinctions in nature or in theology and they they could be viewed as complimentary uh or as in opposition.
And so I think a lot of the Greek tradition tended not everything but tended to see fundamental principles as uh in some degree of opposition. This is Dr. David Bradshaw's thesis in the first few chapters of Aristotle East and West.
She talks about um for example for the Greek mind and this is why so many church father theological battles end up being about uh for example becoming versus being. So you have is is stasis greater than change?
Uh most of the Greek philosophers would have said yeah absolutely of course I mean eternal stasis is the ideal movement change that's a lesser form of reality. Is eternity superior to time and temporality? Oh, of course. Is unity superior to multiplicity? Absolutely. Of course. Yeah. So, uh, very early on in in the book, Bradshaw's book, he highlights this, uh, God history dialectic, the trilogy by Farel. Same principles there that this is kind of what's going on. So, that's my thought process when I approach these these questions, even something like nominalism. And I'm aware of the background question with with Aristotle you have the idea that well maybe my teacher isn't right Plato when he talks about this reality to a universal essence or form or nature that is somehow onlogically transcendent. And so Aristotle says maybe it's just individual particulars that in some way make up a collective uh substance.
There's not a real collective reality that they share. So technically speaking, Aristotle is a step in the direction of nominalism even though he is not a nominalist strictly speaking because he believes in essences. So he would be still be an essentialist but he's the beginning of questioning the universals as realities >> or onloically existing transcendent realities in the realm of the forms.
>> And we can actually agree with this to to an extent because St. John Damascus's move is to say that it's a kind of a moderate realism that the universals are really universal, but they exist in the particulars as also universal. So, uh there's not just particulars, there's not just collections or sets of things.
There's also an ontological reality that all human beings have a fundamentally connected human nature and that Christ assumed universal human nature in a single divine hypothesis. Thus all men are resurrected because they're all in Christ. Uh that's what's necessary for christologology. Once you see that, then we begin to understand that this idea that Jesus only affects the elect in grace or resurrection becomes very problematic because why are the reprobate resurrected being that the only way to be resurrected is to have that connection to Christ. So I never could resolve those questions as a Calvinist or as a Protestant. They were just weird questions to me. Uh you can even see Augustine and on the trinity seems to struggle with that question of why would the rep probate ever be elected? Because even in his mind they don't really have a connection to Christ. So there's no notion of cosmic significance for the incarnation and resurrection like you have in the Eastern church fathers and especially you know by the time of St. Maximus. So that's what underlies my thought process. Of course, St. Maximus writes extensively about universals.
There's absolutely no way you could get some form of nominalism in St. Maximus or any of the church fathers really because it didn't exist as a system or as a toolkit of doing philosophy. So you come to William and he begins to challenge the idea that universals have any real existence. And he's not uh a total modernist in the sense of like an atheistic, you know, he's not as an atheist, but he's the first to really begin to challenge the idea of uh universals having an onlogical existence. And perhaps they're also just names, right? Maybe they're just uh sets that humans create a collection of things that share traits. That's what the set is. It's not necessarily an onlogical reality that the other that they all share other than that they have the same traits. So it's not to say that he's there no sets, but it's a move again away from essentialism or that things have essences other than just being whatever essence that particular thing is. So there's a bunch of particulars. They have four legs or two legs, two arms.
That's what two eyes. That's man. And you can say it's a set, but the set is just the collection of the particulars together. That's different from Aristotle or Plato who would say no, they actually have a common essence or nature that makes them that thing and not another thing that's an essence or a nature. That's what nature essence is.
So that prepares the stage for Luther looking for a way to have a theological declaration of how you're righteous even though you're wicked. There needs to be some divorce between the word and the ontological reality of what you are. And thus nominalism as a systemic approach to naming, declaring and denying the reference is that very ideology which not just me but plenty of people have talked about for many years. So it's not a new idea. In fact, I forgot this when I was in the discussion with Tucker. And it's actually Tim Gordon talking to me that reminded me of this. I first encountered the critique of Luther as anomalous was when I was a trad. This is an older Roman Catholic critique of Martin Luther to divide the ontological status of the thing from the terminological definition or reference to the thing. Uh that's an old Catholic, not old Catholic in the sense of the schism, but an old Cath Roman Catholic critique of Luther that I forgotten. U I wish I'd remembered that in in the Tucker interview. I could have referenced that made it a little bit a little bit simpler, but that's that's it. That's the I forgive me for yapping for five minutes straight, but that's that's the whole thing right there.
>> Yeah. No, it's important to get it out there because I have seen like a lot of people saying that Aristotle was a nominalist, but they're ignoring like >> Well, he's a proto nominalist, but yeah.
>> Yeah. They're ignoring that like this medieval nominalism is kind of a unique thing in and of itself.
>> And then by the Enlightenment figures, I mean, they're all nominalists.
>> I mean, whether I mean the empiricists, right? Empiricism is a logical step beyond a bile to say well wait a minute if we're not perceiving essences then we're not perceiving any universal thing at all we're only perceiving the immediate particulars in sense data so you can see how nominalism pretty quickly becomes empiricism so David Hume and John Lock etc >> I think another connection that Tucker might have been surprised by was the connection between it's like Protestantism and Ros the Rosacrusian I wish I'd had a thought to bring because I didn't know we were going to talk about any of that. But um I did mention Dane Francis Yates's book which is the classic on that. And we're not I'm not saying that Luther and Calvin themselves were super devoted to esoteric subjects. I don't really think they were at least if they were. I've not seen any evidence. There was a Roman Catholic author uh I want to say Dave um his name escapes me now but 20 years ago there was a guy named Dave something that had a pretty consistent uh Roman Catholic blog that he that he used to update and he was a Roman Catholic apologist who would do a lot of debates 20 years ago and at his blog I think it's called Scripture Catholic was the name of it uh he did f actually dig up some proof that Luther was influenced by the theologia Germanica and some of the esoteric texts uh of his day but that's really the only thing I could think of for Luther himself. I think uh Anthony Westgate has shown from some scholars that Zwingley seems to have had some interest and perhaps influence from coalistic sources. Uh I don't really detect much of that in in Calvin himself, but it's more so with the next generation of the reformers, particularly Meenan, Johan Andre amongst the the Lutheran, perhaps some of the other Calvinists were into that esoteric stuff. But it does seem that there is there is some evidence for the second generation of Reformation.
>> Guys, go watch Jay's interview on Tucker. I mean, it's so good. Honestly, we got to get it up to a million views so that Jay >> We're getting there. We're at 800 in a week. So hopefully it doesn't die out.
>> Yeah. No, it's very good content. And uh I mean you you mentioned like all this literature, all these resources and like throughout the interview you were very well uh cited throughout like you cited all your sources. And I think that kind of brings me to like the debate portion, which is that your views are not necessarily like novel views. Like you're always citing other people that have come up with like I think the synthesis of putting them all together like has your own trademark on it. Uh but I mean I know you it seems like from what you've said you were always a debater maybe like a born debater like you were doing it in college. Uh I presume throughout high school and through even your upbringing that >> not high school upbringing. No, I never got I had no interest in any of that. In fact, when I because I was a theater kid, but I'm heterosexual, not gay.
>> I was a theater kid and we used to have in theater uh the option to do debate and I never did it.
>> Why was that?
>> I just thought it was boring. I didn't care about it because we were always doing uh improv and sketch stuff, like comedy stuff. So my buddy, my best friend and I, we were both in the the on the theater team for all four years of high school and we always did either the uh you know me the duo interp uh duo improv and we actually won several of the tournaments together doing those.
But I hated debate, never wanted anything to do with it. Thought it was super boring and stupid. I just like comedy. But when I got to college >> Yeah. What changed? Well, when I got to college and I got into apologetics and philosophy, uh, this is like age 18, 19, 20, um, I came across Greg Bonson and I'd never heard a a debate between a Christian and atheist before. So, this was brand new to me. my my first introduction. It wasn't uh like there used to be these evangelical dudes that would do some of that back in the day like uh Josh McDow like he has that you know the big book Evidences is a demand a verdict and that was very popular in the in the late 90s when I was first getting into reading the Bible and going to evangelical churches but um I never I don't remember seeing any debates with >> and it would have been evangelicals versus atheists or whatever. So, it did exist, but it just wasn't really a thing because you'd have to be watching a >> VHS or getting a like a tape cassette.
And the first debate I heard was Greg Bronson's cassette tape debate versus the atheist Gordon Stein. So, I heard this debate. I was like, "Whoa, this is crazy. I didn't even know you could like, you know, make these logical arguments for your theological position." So, uh, I, you know, went crazy with it. I remember listening to that debate probably 10 times, uh, when I, I mean, I wore the tape out basically. listening to it, taking notes, trying to memorize and figure out exactly how Dr. Bonson was arguing and I was just thought it was so crazy.
>> So, you were interested in Christianity at the time already and like defending your belief in Christianity, right?
>> Yeah. I mean, I was I was raised Baptist, but I wasn't really ever very serious about it until uh junior and senior year of high school. I started getting more serious and I just had some friends that were Christians, evangelicals, and they would invite me to Bible studies and uh at first I was like h you know because it was very fluffy evangelical and you know it's like everybody's singing the songs and the praise.
>> What does this passage mean for you today? Like that kind of >> I mean to be fair they they were better than the average evangelical Bible study because it happened to be some Church of Christ people that were very interested.
Yeah, they were they were very interested in like they were always reading the Bible, right? So, I'll give them credit for not being super effeminite and like but I mean we would always begin the Bible studies with like you know 20 30 minutes of like praise and worship and singing these songs and I think even some people had some guitars and um and I think probably the first time I went I was just going cuz there was cute girls there, right? So, it's like I had a I had a >> motivator. I'll bet if you're >> I had a buddy who was Yeah. I had a evangelical buddy whose girlfriend went there and he was like, "Hey, dude. Uh you should come to the uh the Bible study at my my buddy's house. There should be some girls there." Yeah, sure.
Whatever. Um and then I >> Ryan Kelly says, "Sold me."
>> But I actually started getting really interested in the Bible parts, right?
So, like we would we would be reading the scriptures and I never really paid attention to, you know, the gospels when you know growing up or whatever. So I was I got really interested in the the biatitudes and I remember we would sing the Psalms and I was like oh these are interesting. I like these Psalms and I remember the first Bible book that really hooked me was Proverbs because I never read Proverbs and so I was junior senior in high school and I remember reading through all of Proverbs. I was like wow this is really fascinating.
Never paid attention. I should have been listening to the Bible the whole time.
But um anyway, so I remember going to basically because you know if you grow up in a small town in the Bible belt, all of your friends are from various denominations. So you're going to have Church of Christ friends, you're going to have charismatic friends, you're going to have Baptist friends, you're going to have uh Anglican Episcopal friends, etc. Right? So you're going to have all these friends across Methodists. And I remember, you know, we basically would go every week to one of our friends different churches. So, uh, that I think eventually got me wondering, well, which one of which one of these is the church? Because, you know, I think when you're Protestant evangelical, you think, well, we're all the church, bro. But then it's like, well, does that make sense? Like, they can't all be right because they all all have very different theologies. So >> right >> that kind of I think planted in me the idea of there should be some logical way to delineate well which ones are right or wrong.
>> Um so I went to Bible college for a little while and ended up not liking that. Long story short at ended up back at university just studying philosophy.
And uh that's I think where I really got deeper into debate because I've been listening to a lot of Greg Bonson when I was 19 20 21. And most of your professors of course are going to be atheist especially if you study philosophy. They're going to be super leftist, super atheist. Uh and they're they're very evangelistic. Like they really want to convert you.
So I always that always bugged me because it was like well why do they care whether I'm a Christian or not?
like why are they so adamant about, you know, converting me and they certainly don't want me converting anyone to to theism, but they're very adamant that they want you to not be, you know, >> and then here you are, you have like a nuke in your hands with Dr. Bonson's arguments for God. And so you're going through these videos like taking notes like understanding how this argument works and then you use them on your professors >> and then I go to college. So I'd be taking all these Bonson notes and I would go into my prof Yeah. I would go into my classroom with a professor and I do not recommend this now looking back by the way like I was a super arrogant you know Calvinist 20-year-old kid uh you know 19-year-old whatever >> right >> I would not recommend going back and debating all the professors but I was young and immature and I thought well I can convince them if I if I have the better argument like I'll convince the atheist professors to become you know Calvinists or whatever so what I was thinking but >> um but yeah no that's that's what happened I remember I I bought like I would get my page paycheck and I would spend the whole paycheck on theology books and Bonsson talks cuz back then you had to buy these cassette tape like courses, lectures and they were like 30, 50, 70 bucks. So I would like save up my paycheck, order the Bonsson set, wait for it to come in the mail a week later and then I would sit at work in my with my cassette tape headphones taking notes on all the Bonsson talks. So, I went through I think I' I've done every Bonsson course and he taught a lot of courses. In fact, I just found some new courses that they put up online which I I don't think I'd ever seen before. So, I think there's actually people are discovering like like archaeology.
They're like doing Bonsson digs and covering, you know, discovering new Bonsson lectures that he did. So, anyway, long story short, yeah, that's what happened with me was just getting super into debating mainly through Bonsson and Van Hill. Ventil didn't really ever do debates, but Bonsson did.
Um, and then I actually uh went to a conference with so's protege was a guy named Michael Butler. And I went to a Michael Butler Ken Gentry conference in I want to say 19 I want to say 2000 2001. And uh that was the first in-person debate that I've ever seen with a theist atheist.
And so uh Michael Butler, like I said, Bonson's protege, debated uh the guy who was like the head of like atheist society or something. And uh I thought it was so much fun. It was awesome. It's like, you know, 100 200 people, you know, atheist Christian debate. It was formal. It was it was awesome. my first in-person debate. So, I think from that point on, I was just fell in love with debating. I loved it more back then than I do now. I don't mind doing it, but I've kind of, you know, I think at a certain point, you kind of get get a little tired of it. But, um, but yeah, so it was it was Bonson and then going and seeing debate in person. Um, those are the things that really got me into debating.
>> And I joined at that time, we had debate club, too. So, >> philosophy club had a debate team at that time in college. um for like freshman sophomore year. Uh but I think by the time of junior senior year I had so much stuff to do. I didn't really have time for debate team but because I was having to write so many papers but but anyway. Yeah.
>> Yeah. Well, I think you're right cuz you've been critiquing recently that the overall tier of debate has just like across the board has gone down. Like you see the same arguments being used over and over again by evangelicals and they're they're bad arguments like they lose every you'd think that like they come uh to the next debate with like a little twist on it or like some different take and it's it's just the same thing over and over again. It's like you don't see a new Bonsson coming up nowadays >> and it's it's the same stuff I've been hearing since 1998.
So, I mean, it'd be cool if there was something I mean, I remember there's one guy that called in this year, a Protestant dude who did have one I don't even remember what it was, but I was like, you know, I'm going to give you a point because that was a different argument I've never heard. So, there was one guy, >> if I remember, I think it was something about intuction.
He was talking about I think it was some uh method of the receiving the Eucharist. I might be wrong on that.
Well, there it was something to do with um the the way that Old Testament sacrifices were conducted and I was I don't even remember what it was, but it was just a good question. It wasn't like a thing that refuted orthodoxy and proved Protestants. It was just like the first time I've heard a Protestant have, you know, interesting insightful insightful take. And and one reason I think that is unfortunate that might be the reason for this is if you go back to the 90s and the 2000s uh even though the internet was becoming very you know omnipresent it still wasn't and most people's connections were slow so you didn't have video stuff and audio stuff everywhere you had articles. So that era, people were still reading all the time, especially in the theology world. And I think nowadays, I don't think any of these people read. I think that they >> punch up on AI summaries. I think they um watch YouTube videos and they don't read these books. So I think that's another major reason for the decline in the quality of debates.
>> Yeah. The quality and the creativity.
Um, so what I think there's a that critique aside, there are a lot of people that will say like, "Oh, debates are pointless. They don't you're not changing the other person's mind." And I think I've like gone out of the way on the channel a little bit to be like, "Look, I know I'm not going to change the other guy's mind, right? Like I show up with my mind made up, he shows up with his mind made up. We're really just trying to fight for like a small sliver of people in the middle that are like open to even having their mind changed."
And it's like one of my favorite Bible verses on this is St. uh Apollos. Uh at the end of Acts 18, it says, "When Apollos wanted to cross over to Aaya, the brothers encouraged him and wrote to the disciples to welcome him. When he arrived, he assisted greatly those who had believed by grace, for he refuted the Jews vigorously in public debate, demonstrating from the scriptures that the Christ was Jesus." Right? So you have like, of course, you know, Acts 17 and St. Steven, it says that like when he was taken before the Sanhedrin, right before that, he was debating with these bad guys, you know, and you see throughout the the New Testament that the apo the apostles, they relied of course on like signs and wonders, but also on debate and it's like advocacy for their position and logical reputations and relying on the precedent in the Old Testament to uh convince like the Bereans for example. Uh and what would you say is like your overall purpose in engaging in these debates?
because I think this is like a criticism people get frequently that it's pointless or something.
>> Well, Proverbs says debate your case with your neighbor. So, we have already told in the Old Testament that uh it's a good thing if you read the uh Septuagent version of Ezekiel, you know, and we've covered this on my channel. There's one I think it's about Ezekiel around Ezekiel 7 or 810. God says, uh, I'm going to speak through you. I will give you arguments that the rest of Israel will not be able to refute. I thought God didn't like debating. Why is he giving Ezekiel these ironclad arguments that that the rest of Israel car? So, I mean, there's so many examples of uh you know, this kind of stuff in scripture.
So, first of all, it's it's not biblical if you are opposed to debate. Um Paul in many cases v vigorously debates. Uh in fact, as you mentioned with the Apollo text there, I mean St. Paul also would go to the synagogues and debate and dispute with the Jews for extended periods of time. So it's just and Jesus himself consistently debates with the Pharisees, the scradducees, the lawyers.
Um even amongst the apostles at times there's reasoning dialogue and correction that occurs uh from Christ or even amongst the apostles themselves. We know for example that there's a dispute between Paul and Peter at one point and they appeal to obviously different different ideas but Paul is of course correct in that debate. So debating itself uh you know God says in Isaiah let us reason together. How are we going to reason together if debating is futile and there's such thing as debate? So there's just so many examples as why this is absurd. Um my purpose in debate is uh at this point you know I feel it feels like a duty because I feel like I you know supposed to defend the faith. I ought to defend the faith even when there's many things that I might rather be doing. Uh it does feel like something that I should be doing because for whatever reason people do resonate with the way that I debate. They think that it's effective. Like you said, it doesn't have to convince the opponent because what's I mean, if a debate convinces one person to change their mind and become orthodox or or to come out of atheism, well, that's uh you know, the angels in heaven rejoice. So, >> right, >> uh even one person being converted from a debate is good enough. But we've already seen many many many thousands of people have been converted from uh all kinds of debates. Muslims end up converting sometimes. um you know atheists convert, Roman Catholics convert. So you know it's just first of all it's unbiblical. It's ahistorical.
Uh the history of western pedagogy has always included in its educational structure, pedagogical structure, rhetoric and debate. So the fact that if you're anti you're then you're already like against education. It's just kind of an ignorant position. Many church fathers were apologists. St. Justin the apologist. Many church fathers were the most learned scholars of their day like St. Phodias. Uh and so by the way, debate doesn't have to be verbally back and forth. If you're engaging in writing treatises, refuting your opponents, that's a form of debate, >> right?
>> So most of the church fathers writings in terms of what we have up here, that's a lot of debates.
>> A lot of them start with contra, right?
>> And they're also in many cases uh you know, full of invectives. They have no problem, you know, making fun of and calling their opponents idiots and retards and all this kind of stuff. Now, if that's all you have, then that's not very effective and that's not very good.
And we see a lot >> it's not the foundation of the pyramid.
It's going to be at the at the top there.
>> Yeah. Exactly. Like it's part of the it's part of rhetoric, right? Rhetoric is part of the structure and the pros that you're going to be using. At times you're going to want to have jabs, you want to make jokes. That's part of debate, part of Western pedagogy. So, the fact that people aren't aware of this again just speaks to kind of their own ignorance. But um yeah, sometimes it can go too far, but that's going to happen. It's a you know, just just what happens in the nature of this this game.
But um you know, we see for example, even amongst the apostles, that's not unheard of because there ends up being a huge falling out between Paul and uh Zab Barnabas. Uh they end up having a huge dispute and they don't talk for a while, but they eventually get reconciled. But I'm just giving example. I'm not saying that's what we shoot for. I'm just saying that well, we're all human beings and the apostles were human beings, too.
And to act like everybody's going to be uh immaculate and like not have falling outs and disputes. It's just kind of it's unrealistic and absurd. Even Paul uh and Barnabas had a huge falling out.
Paul and Peter had a falling out. So, uh I'm not saying that we ought to have falling outs. I'm saying that to get annoyed because people have debates and there's falling outs is an absurd level of expectation that's not reality even in the New Testament. So, um anyway, >> yeah, I wanted to get into a little bit if you don't mind like your mindset going into part of the mechanics of debate because I think there are like I make this analogy sometimes between like MMA and debate. I mean, you'd think that they're polar opposites, but really, you can't really enjoy watching MMA unless you kind of know what's going on there, especially with something like as technical as like jiu-jitsu. And I know we can make a insert gay joke about Cleave here for being sick at jiu-jitsu.
But, uh, two sweaty guys on top of each other. There you go. Uh, but like unless you know like, oh, he put his ankle like he hooked his leg through that that shifts his center of gravity. Like unless you're aware of that, you can't really enjoy the technical nature of what's going on. Uh so like when it comes to like an opening statement for instance, if we could go through like the main parts of a debate, like what's your mindset going into an opening statement? Like what are you trying to do? Uh and like what are your goals? Cuz like I I shared recently your opening statement against Muslim Lantern, which was like insane because there was like so much energy behind it and so substantive and comprehensive. But that's not just like something that happens overnight like before you had already debated uh Shabir Ali before that who has a doctoral level degree in like Muslim theology or whatever it was.
Shake Azar Rasheed, you debated Jake, you debated Daniel Hiku at that point.
So you already have the substance like in your head and you know what the proper evidences are and the result of that is like oh after you've done many of these you know it's a bit more stream of consciousness where you can put together like this uh knockout opening statement because it's not the first time you've done it before right you have years of preparation before this but like overall what are your thoughts for like opening statements >> well in that example I would say that it was also uh within a time frame when I had and studying monarchical trinitarianism pretty heavily. Uh so all all that was super fresh in my mind. All the Capidoshian stuff was fresh in my mind. Um so that made it a lot easier to just spit it out. Uh I was probably a little energized too because that all happened last minute because Andrew left that debate and they Sneo reached out to me and said, "Hey, will you come fill in?" And it's a big enough channel at that time I didn't want to say no. I was like, "Oh, yeah, sure." Uh, so I was a little excited with the fact that, you know, I think even then Sneo had at least a million followers. So, >> right, >> it was going to be a large, you know, a lot of views. Uh, so my first thought was to just kind of spit out as concisely and clearly as I could monarchical trinitarianism to kind of undercut the possibility of Muslim lantern using the go-to standard low tier Muslim arguments of, you know, how does Jesus say father greater, right? That's one of their classic things. So, I wanted the opening statement, and I think this is a good technique trick I try to use a lot. Uh, if you can't always do this, but if you know that the opponent, you you can sometimes guess the lines of argument they're going to use. If you can in your opening statement undercut a bunch of their arguments and if you're going first, it's going to be even automatically weaker for them because their opening statement is going to have a bunch of stuff that you've already uh you know, pull the rug out from under.
So, that's a good strategy if if you're going first in a debate. And even if you're not, you can still do that because let's say Muslim Lantern went first and he said a bunch of stuff that I didn't expect and then I do my opening statement. My opening statement that has things that anticipate could still work because he might go back to those later on. So, and usually with Muslims, unless you, you know, are dealing with some unique outlier that has, you know, crazy hyperspecific metaphysical arguments, which is rare, usually they're going to use the same type of stuff because most of these people are lazy. Most people are not reading the books. I know that, for example, in the case I will say for Jake, I think Jake did do reading.
I don't know exactly what and how far, but at least Jake was willing to get the Orthodox books and show them on screen.
Although they didn't look like they were read, but at least he got them. Like most people are super lazy. They're not going to buy any books. They're going to go to a website and copy and paste, you know, or now ask ChatGpt. used to be just go to the website and like you know find uh uh you know Muslims for example they they have a history of going to Jehovah's Witness websites and then just copy pasting Jehovah's Witness arguments and just repeating them and it's like that's so lazy dude like >> yeah and again maybe we should do a little preface number one thing to do for debates is you need to here's my rules my principles debate number one you need to go into a debate wanting to lose and I mean that seriously why because the goal is not this guy versus the other. It's the goal is truth. And it doesn't matter whether your opponent's interested in what's true. As long as you care about what's true, you have the upper hand, right? A lot of times your opponents are not good faith.
They won't care what's true. So if you have the advantage of I only care what's true, you're going to win because you're committed to what's true, even if you're wrong. So if you're wrong at a point in the debate, you got to be honest and say, you know what, you're right about that. Now, technically speaking, that shouldn't cost you the whole debate unless you're wrong about the premise of the debate. But, right, you know, there a lot of times in debate, I remember I think in one of the Ibara debates or the or the Ibar debate, I got a point wrong, >> but I don't think that means that I lost a whole debate because my argument didn't hinge on that point. It was and everybody's going to have this in in in debates. You're going to make a mistake.
You're going to reference a wrong council. You're going to reference a wrong name. You're going to get a date wrong. That happens to everybody. Uh, and that's not a huge deal unless it's, you know, something huge or significant.
Um, but point being is that number one rule is you want to be concerned with what's true over everything else. Number two rule is you want to try to know your opponent's argument better than them if you can. Now, if you're debating somebody on their PhD thesis, you're probably not going to know the subject better than them. But if you're debating a Muslim on, you know, Allah, is he is is God one or many? uh you know this kind of a thing. Well, I want to know his aka. I want to know the school of Islam that he comes from. I want to know, you know, what his Sunni position on the attributes and the body of God is. Does Allah have a body? Does he is he of the Salafi tradition? Right? So, you want to try to know your opponent's position as best you can. And Bonson used to say this, and I think it's a great idea, even though in today's debate, climate is probably not going to work. But he used to say that you need to be able to state your opponent's argument to their satisfaction. If you can do that, you've got another upper hand. Because most people go into a debate only caring about themselves.
They don't care about what's true. They don't care about stating your argument to your satisfaction. If you're able to do that, that makes you way more effective because you can demonstrate that no, I understand your argument.
Even though I don't agree with it, I understand it. That's why it was so, I think, effective when we ask all those Muslims, can you restate the Islamic dilemma? I don't believe it. I do not believe Islamic I know you don't believe it. I just want to know, can you restate the argument? I don't believe that argument. No. Okay. Yeah, we know. But so um so you've got to be able to I think it was Aristotle. Bon is just expressing what Aristotle said. An intelligent man can express an idea and explain it without even necessarily agreeing with it. So those are some of the key like points. So long that was way too long of an answer. I apologize.
>> No, you're good. But I think that like that point on being able to admit when you get something wrong like something I mention all the time like espe when you are being cross-examined and this is a little bit further ahead in the debate like you really want to kind of keep it to like yes no or I don't.
>> Yeah. This was a strategy. Yeah. Lewis brought this up to uh when I'm being cross-examined I don't want to say a whole bunch of stuff because the more I talk the more I could potentially be trapped >> be hung with.
more things they can pull on to. Uh, now when your opponent is giving their opening statement, I'm very curious about what you're going to say to this.
What are you doing when your opponent is giving their opening statement?
>> I am. Every time I'm listening to an opening statement, you'll notice I'm drawing I am drawing a caricature of that person. I'm not uh I'm drawing them with a pig face. No, I'm I'm uh writing each uh contradiction or mistake I hear.
>> Thank you. Yes. I tell people this all the time. I'm like, if you see the other side like giving their opening statement and somebody like has turned their camera off or is like not taking notes, you have to be taking notes cuz you're not going to remember everything that they say in their opening statement.
>> The other thing I've noticed too is, and this is what is the quick thinking part of debates.
I've never had a debate where I got through every problem I listed in either an opening statement or a rebuttal or whatever. So you have to very quickly choose which are the ones you think are the big hitters, right? So if I hear a Muslim dude opening statement with like 10 contradictions, I got to quickly choose pick the most ones.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah, that's right. Uh now when it comes for so in those rebuttal in the rebuttal period, you're going to bring up those like the main contradictions. All right.
Are you really concerned with like unless the other side unless they have something like terribly devastating? I mean, at at this point, like you're very experienced in debate and you're probably familiar with most of the critiques you could get. Uh uh how are you dealing with the p the uh your opponent's rebuttal to to your opening?
Usually, I'm treating a rebuttal the exact same way as I would treat an opening statement. I'm going to listen and I'm going to jot down the big points that I think are are a mistake. But what often happens in debates, at least in my experience, is let's say in the opening statements, uh I write down uh five things that were major problems in what they said. um when I rebut him, I highlight let's say two. Okay? It usually ends up being a situation where the next phase of the debate ends up being where we're going back and forth on one of these. So, uh, that often times ends up occupying a lot of the time and then usually debates end up for me being one or two topics for the whole time because I want to pin them down on a point and show that they never resolve this issue. And the number one thing that many, many, many people do in debates is immediately try to get away from the thing that they're pinned down on. So that's why you want to highlight a couple things that you don't want to let them get away from. Although you might have to in some cases make a judgment call and decide, okay, you know what? Let's just move on from that one.
Right? For example, if it seems like you've illustrated to the point of death that they're not answering this question, in that case, it might be prudent to move on to the next big thing to get them on, right?
Uh, so you might want to sometimes let it go, but uh, I try to extend it as long as I can if I can demonstrate that that person is intentionally obiscating to not be pinned down on a major issue and none of the answers that they've given allow them to escape being pinned down and then I might move on to the next big one and then do the exact same thing. I think >> but one thing I never do is allow people because this is what everybody tries to do. They'll throw up every bit of smoke and mirror, every bit of rabbit trail, every red herring >> to go into all these other million things. And the the reason people think I'm so mean is usually because I'm saying you never answered this problem.
You did all these other things which are way to get away from this. So I keep bringing them back. And that's what people think is mean and so, you know, annoying about debating me is I don't let you off the hook. No, you're gonna come back to this point. You're gonna resolve this. Then we might move on.
>> Yeah. And I guess that's like we can move forward to the cross exam now. Like there are a few factors that I want to con that I'm always considering in the cross exam that I think you are too.
Like one of them is control which I think you've been alluding to a bit here was like no if they give like a sentence already and I can tell that their answer is not responsive to my question. I'm just going to interrupt and bring them back to the question. Right. Uh so control is very important but like overall it seems like you said you focus on maybe like one two or three things like the major things the major defeaters >> only because they'll go off they'll go off into everything to get away from those.
>> Yeah. So I guess like what's your mindset going into a cross exam and like what things are you like what factors are you considering?
>> Yeah. So the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to highlight one of those two and it might be more it might be three or four, right? Because >> yeah, >> sometimes people uh for example in the Jake debate, I remember there was a couple times where I thought I had a really strong point and although although I don't think Jake had a good answer, Jake is cunning enough at certain points to be able to say, you know, let's say something like I don't even remember if he specifically did this, but there was something like this where he he can say, well, you know, I'm not I I'm not really committal on that position.
you know, I'm I'm I I have my position.
Iben Tamia says this. I'm not really committed either way. And it's like, so sometimes there might be a curveball where a person has a way out and it could put you in a position to where you could keep pursuing it, but it might look like to the audience that you're just pushing on a thing that doesn't have much behind it.
>> Right? even even if you might have a good point like there are times where people can kind of wiggle out of stuff.
So what I would do if it if I sense that the person could conceivably even if it's just the audience's perspective even if I know they're not really getting out of this if I think the audience might perceive them as getting out of it I might move on to the next uh kill shot because it might not be worth pursuing.
The other thing too is to not pursue uh even let's this is a temptation I think a lot a lot of people might have is let's say you caught somebody on something very minor.
Do I want to hammer home the major kill shot or do I want to hammer home something that they totally got wrong that's minor?
I would probably go with the kill shot over the minor because even though I might be able to score a point, I would rather use the time within the debate to go after the kill shot and try to nail that over a minor point. So focus on, you know, the uh the kill shots for sure and try to keep it to a few of those because this the simpler you can keep it in terms of subjects without going all over like I remember in the uh the Neil Neil the Gnostic debate, right? So, we start talking about Trinity and one and many and then Neil's like going off into ancient texts about gnostic groups and it's like and that's not going to go anywhere because I could okay so there's all these Gnostic groups well see this long line of argumentation somehow proves that the Old Testament is not real because and it's like it's just a red herring >> right >> and that's I think was to get away from the stronger points where Neil was making some very fundamental mistakes about how something can't be one and many at the same time.
>> I'm like, >> that was one of the the debates where I think you insisted where like I don't know how many times like we have to go through the is this like is this one thing or is this is this three things?
>> Yeah. I think when he realized he was making some mistakes then it turned into well what are you going to do with the scholars that say that the kuman community of the and blah blah blah.
It's like the other thing too is uh don't get into competing scholar claims.
That's a big trap just because it's not that you can't bring in evidences or site scholars. You can as evidences because that's but that's really all they function as. So yeah, it's fine to say, you know, most of today's say, you know, a lot of Jewish scholarship today believes that the Old Testament references to God are not unitarian.
There's pretty significant evidences amongst Jewish scholars today of multiple hypoases or, you know, multiplicity in Yahweh. um that's a good evidence to use. It doesn't prove the trinity. It doesn't disprove Islam, right? It just demonstrates that there is some academic attestation to this position. Uh and it's also useful to cite the Jewish source obviously because they're not interested in proving Christianity. So, uh don't but I would not get bogged down on throwing a bunch of academic claims back and forth. And a lot of evidentialists, a lot of scholars get really bogged down in this because they think, you know, well, if I just pile up, you know, here's 15 scholars agreeing with this pos. And it's like it's a waste of time. So, it's also kind of a waste of time. I mean, you can proof text, but it's also kind of a waste of time to throw a bunch of verses at people machine gun style. Those are all kind of low tier kind of noob >> level mistakes, but I'm sorry. It's more like it's more like here's this principle and then if you really want some support for it, here are the verses or academics that that support the principle. But I think like just generally you see this like evidentialist like of course you need evidences, right? But evidentialism is like kind of a boomer style of uh apologetics that's like kind of going out of fashion or just honestly you just can't keep up with the worldview apologetics that we see now. And I was talking to my chat uh some people in my chat even mentioned that recently the connects debated uh Kora the Muslim lady uh apologist and uh Libyano the Orthodox Muslim and it was just devastating for the connects like they >> they did horribly. I don't know if you watched it but >> well every debate I've seen the the knuckleheads in they've done terrible.
though. Uh I don't know why they thought it would be a good idea to debate any Muslim because debate is not their strong suit. I don't know what their strong suit is. It's certainly not debate.
>> Maybe preaching at college campuses or something.
>> That's you know I think people the preaching is not debate. They're very different very different things. And a lot of people think that preaching is debate. Uh people that come on the streams even a lot of Muslims they think that debating is like you just spit out all of your views. That's not >> maybe this is a good talk. Can you say what is not talk about what is not debate for a moment?
>> So debating is not arguing, right? So you know you're going to have arguments with your wife and an argument might have some features that overlap with a debate because you're going evidences.
>> Yeah. You're going back and forth.
there's evidence of but that's not what so a debate is a formal structured back and forth that usually includes I mean I think people know the formal debate structure but it doesn't have to be formal to also be a debate you could have a civil exchange you know we had for example um David Riley the the SSPX guy on and that was an exchange that almost was kind of a debate but not exactly uh and we've had plenty civil uh, you know, open back and forth with people for uh, we had that um, uh, that guy that's buddies with Tim Gordon, I forget his name, but the Roman Catholic guy that that came on and we had a back and forth about the papacy and geopolitical power about a year ago. So, uh, it was a debate, but it wasn't a structured debate. So, you can have a conversational debate. You can also have a blood sport style, you know, back and forth like I had with Tim Gordon on Timcast. So, you know, all of those things I think could qualify as debates, but strictly speaking, you have a thesis and you have for affirmation or negation. It doesn't have to be that. It can be also, you know, uh, orthodoxy is good because of this, no is bad because of this, but um, usually you've got, you know, some degree of back and forth. I don't like debates that don't have cross-examinations because they're very boring. A lot of people are scared of cross-examinations. I was going to bring that up cuz it seems like a lot of the debates nowadays, it's just like 5 minute opening, 60-minute dialogue and there's no guarantee that you're going to be able to get your questions out or make your points or really be able to corner the other side on something and demonstrate your point to the audience.
Like I'm a huge advocate of like keep the cross exams. They're necessary and they're fair because you and the other side, they both get the same amount of time to ask their questions.
>> Yeah. Again, that that's the thing like if you don't have that then and and I don't I'm okay at times with it doesn't really bother me but because I'm a very aggressive kind of debater but you know if you're not an aggressive type of person uh then the 60-minute open discussion would probably not benefit you well because a person who is aggressive you know >> get steamrolled moon will be you know yapping 90 miles an hour on top exactly >> um so that kind of favors certain types of personalities. But, uh, I do like again it's got to it needs to have some form of cross-examination because you really need to show, you know, errors in the person's position and both sides need the power to interrupt, >> right? And because everybody [ __ ] in a debate, he's interrupting me. Well, there needs to be those phases in the debate to where I have five minutes to interrupt you and to say, "You're not answering the question. Can you come back to this? You're uh filibustering.
You're yapping."
And then you have the same ability to do that. So, you can do that to me, too.
That's only fair. But a lot of people are scared of that and they don't want that in their >> Yeah. Uh, Father Deacon Ananas makes a good point in the chat here. He says, "You don't pull out $100 bills." That's true. in your uh 2v2 with uh Dr. Doerty.
Uh I mean, how many times have you been challenged to an actual fight in a in a supposedly gentlemanly debate?
>> Actually, more than more than you would expect.
>> I've been punched in debates. So, Father Deacon was there for that.
>> When did you get punched in a debate? Do you want to share the story or >> I don't That's a funny at a monastery.
>> What happened? So the first Sophia conference was 20 that I went to was 2019 I think and uh at that time it was at the uh Holy Angels Monastery in San Antonio and so uh Dr. Bradshaw I think was there and Father Hans was there, FDA was there. Uh well, a bunch of people I don't remember were there and there was a certain uh ethics professor that was there. I didn't know this guy. The first time I met him and uh we were just conversing, you know, we we'd all arrived. We're all sort of newly there kind of in the the meshole, so to speak, where everybody eats. And we were just all sort of sitting around chatting and uh and I said something. Yeah, I'm going to be uh presenting a paper I wrote on tag, you know, some years ago, blah blah blah.
And uh this person took issue with the idea that you could do a tag argument.
Well, I'm I'm here to present that paper. I think you can. This got more and more heated, more and more escalation.
Uh this guy said, "You had better leave my presence or you will regret it." I said, "I will not leave your presence because you're not going to do anything." And uh that escalated even further. And so what happened was I did decide I would turn and not engage in this. But as I turned and this guy had all of his like professor book bag stuff on his arm. He like decided to go for a punch, but it was it missed. And so it was more like it hit me back here and it was a it was a push a push punch.
So he push punched me, but he's a he was like a big kind of Vikingish beerbelly dude. So he push punched me and I went tumbling over a pulled out table.
Uh I was like kind of shocked. I was like, "What the heck just happened? I got punched at a at a monastery at a philosophy conference. Who?"
>> Yeah, I don't think many people can say that.
>> True story. I won't say the person because we end we did end up um he did apologize the next day. So we we were I was this close to just leaving and uh Father Hans is like just let it go. And guys are good like this. Like guys can you know punch each other and then be like all right we're cool. So uh all is forgiven. I don't have any anger towards that guy. Uh we had a great conversation the next night when he apologized.
Everything's cool. So uh but it's it is a funny story. And uh uh and then I think that guy wanted to but uh there have been several. So Bryson Gray wanted to do MMA match.
Um Brent Dhy said he wanted to fight and then somebody else wanted to fight. I don't remember who. But uh I mean to me that's just silly because I mean who's actually gonna I'm not like I'm not an MMA guy. I probably would I would probably get my ass beat. So you're probably gonna beat me up. But if you try to fight me I would probably am winning the debate. So >> there you go. Uh, one of your the cross exams I enjoyed the most was of course with Tim Gordon, you had like three debates back to back in the same night, but uh, when you were talking about the the the portion when you were discussing the Filioquay, you I counted and I I don't remember the number.
>> I remember your counting. That was funny.
>> Yes, you asked him who does the spirit spirate for like 40 times or something.
I didn't realize in the midst of asking that that for him spiration doesn't mean what we mean. So like >> when he would say the spirit spirates for us that's causal, >> right?
>> So the father as the cause, right? Is the cause of the generation of the son.
And so if the spirit is spy rating, who is he causing? What does that mean?
So for him they have this scholastic weird idea of passive spiration which is the I I don't even know what that is but it's not capidosian it's not you know constant number one so it's just nonsense but um yeah I I remember after watching your stream where you counted all of that all of that uh I finally realized I was like so he does he just doesn't even think of it causally it's like some other thing. It's weird.
>> Yeah. Well, I think that like that whole scholastic uh notion of the trinity, right, is flawed at its very basis because they put like nature and essence ahead of person where for us it begins with the person of the father.
>> Yeah. It just ends up being um essentially a philosophical formulation.
>> Yeah.
>> Um and I'm not saying that we don't have philosophical formulations. I'm saying that it begins with this philosophical formulation and metaphysical dogma. And I think for us the metaphysical dogma is conditioned by divine revelation. For them the metaphysical dogma conditions the divine revelation.
>> Right. Okay. So I I did also want to mention like wanted to talk a little bit about how there are so many different issues in the culture nowadays like feminism and wokeism and cultural Marxism and they're like the result of many different philosophies uh over a lot of time.
Like the reason why I I focus the channel a lot on the theology stuff was like, well, first of all, I did the channel in the first place cuz I got sick and tired of being sent Gavin Ortland videos by like friends and family and I was like, if I could just like to have a concise response to send back to them and I didn't really see the video, so I was like, I'll make the video then to respond to it. But it kind of, you know, grew over time. I got some support from like you and Cleave and these other channels uh and uh like Transfigured Life and those guys uh and from the the viewers as well. And it's like well okay well maybe we can make a change in in our society a bit and like the most fundamental uh part of your worldview I think that affects like how you see these political issues or social issues is your theology and like everything is kind of downstream from that. I know you've talked about that a bit because, you know, we see like the great work that the Wilsons are doing and like exposing how ridiculous these feminist ideas are.
You debated uh what's that that lady's name? Yeah. Not so aridite.
>> Um and Jim Bob as well has been debating a lot of like evolutionists, but really it's like it's it seems like they have their theology wrong or they're not sure about it. So, of course, they're going to fall for any gimmick that society gives them, right? Right. So, if you could talk a bit about that.
>> Well, one recent theme that keeps keeps emerging across various podcasts that might seem to be disconnected but end up providentially kind of being connected is this idea that uh everybody's worldview is fundamentally religious.
And this is something that I didn't exactly expect Tucker to bring up, but he did. uh you know towards the second half he he made he makes this point that even the atheists and the occultists and the or the secularists really have religious commitments. Um when I debated the uh uh agnostic philosophy guy the other day on modern day debate that ended up being the whole theme of that debate was you're just making reason do the things that God does in my worldview. So, so you're still having a fundamentally religious commitment. And that's what I was trying to illustrate with continually asking him of why he's appealing to universal principles when he admittedly doesn't know that there are or could be any universals. So, uh, and then the series that we just finished the fifth episode of with Pavle Shayen, the the Russian PJO, that has also ended up being the theme of critiquing classical liberalism and the enlightenment to think that there's neutrality. So, essentially, we're getting to this idea that if neutrality is a myth, then that means everything is theory laden. And if everything is theoryladen, it's going to be conditioned by your worldview. and you're going to interpret reality through the lens of your basic commitments in epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics. So, if and that's the essence of that paradigm shift that you hinted at earlier with like boomer evangelical evidentialism.
uh the way Roman Catholics and Thomas think like and and again this is to credit and again I'm not a Calvinist obviously but to Bonson and Bantil's credit they did ex accurately note that this is a paradigm shift in thinking so once you begin to think in this way you really don't go back to not thinking this way because >> yeah you can't unsee it >> it makes yeah it makes so much more sense it's like the they live glasses when you know Rody Rodney Pipery Rowdy Roddy Piper puts the they live glasses on. Uh you couldn't go back to the idea that you know oh it's just self-evident that you know this or that. So, uh, you know, over and over and over this gets sort of this is reemerging, I think, as the philosophical, uh, red pill, so to speak, that everybody's beginning to realize. And I think this even underlies the critique that you see, >> uh, you know, Rachel or Andrew doing with internal critiques of the liberal positions that they're usually arguing against. If it's me arguing against, you know, an atheist or whatever, or even when I debated Trent Horn, you know, our natural theology debate was actually about this this whole principle that natural theology is kind of predicated on on the notion that >> there's all these self-evident principles >> that we all agree on and then thus we'll build the theology uh uh and the position on all of that.
And even the Ibara debate, right? If you go back to when I had that impromptu bar debate, the whole his whole approach was, you know, Jay, let me stack all of these papal evidences up and then like won't it eventually tip the scales over if I put enough up there? And it's like I'm arguing against the whole paradigm.
So I'm arguing about the fundamental assumptions of papism and if there's one dogmatic contradiction, it doesn't matter how many evidences you pile up because this is prior to this is the scale itself. This is not all these evidences. I'm going to rip the whole scale out from under you, not let you have these evidence.
>> Yeah, that's what I was like the way what you're building is the lens through which to interpret those evidences in the first place.
>> And this comes out of not just presuppositional apologetics, but also separate from that, if you study philosophy in undergrad and grad school, you're going to encounter those ideas.
You're going to encounter people for example in the philosophy of science you're going to deal with Thomas Coon's structure of scientific revolutions. One of the most famous books in the history of philosophy probably the most famous in philosophy of science is this idea that well now wait a minute if things were actually neutral then all of the scientists would have immediately jumped on the true position once there was a scientific revolution. But he shows that no it actually took a really long time because people don't just accept things on the basis of facts and evidences. In fact they have pre-commitments that they don't want to give up. That's part of human nature. So really the whole project of neutrality and brute factuality is just self absurd. It's kind of silly and it's so philosophically kind of childish when you think about it. And that's why so many of the people that want to defend they they end up like just like well but it's common sense. They just appeal to these like sort of generic things that it's like I mean you're a philosoph >> with who?
>> Jr.
>> who I think he's like the French sounding or I'm sorry it was u J something I'm forgetting. It was one of theostic. It was a long time ago. Uh agnosticism.
Uh, let me pull it up. Uh, I'm sure the chat will probably get to it faster than >> Oh, uh, JF.
>> JF? Yes.
>> Oh, yeah. No, he's he was straight up atheist. He was hardcore. Yeah.
>> Yeah.
>> So, yeah. Well, JF, >> yeah, but it's like it's always this like, don't you know that reality is just like reality, Jay?
>> Oh, you talking about Tump. That was Tdump's argument was reality is reality.
But, but JF JF had the same sort of assumptions that >> Yes. Well, all we do is just look to science and science has these established facts that we all agree on and we start there and then we just build up from there and it's like no, no, no. I'm I'm questioning what's prior to that, right? That's what the worldview critique is doing.
>> Yeah, exactly. Uh, and I feel like for a lot of people, they can't like it's just one little extra step of thinking that they just they don't want to do like they don't want to go there because they know it like undercuts exactly what they're >> Well, that's why they don't want to deal with any of those arguments and they just say stuff like, "Oh, they're preops. They're [ __ ] They just >> I've seen that too." Yes.
>> God, my argument's God is, therefore God is. It's like that's not at all what we're arguing.
>> Yeah. But like now they because they don't know how to deal with it. I have seen that a few times now where they're like, "Oh, we're not doing presupp in this debate." Like, what are you talking about? You can challenge You can challenge my presuppositions and I can't challenge yours. Like, what?
>> For example, Destiny explicitly says, "I will not debate anybody tag or presupp."
He just says, "I no, I won't."
>> Sounds like a concession to me.
They don't know how to deal with it.
>> Not that I'm eager to debate Destiny. I think that dude's a goblin.
Yeah, I guess uh we can get to some super chats at this point. We have uh in the filth rise for the this is at the very beginning. All rise for the emperor and quester of wigantium Texas guys. High five. Goat trophy from Eio Mask.
>> Are gems currency? What are these gems?
Are they currency?
>> This is the the first time ever that I'm Can somebody in the chat give me an >> Is this like Pokemon money? This is Pokemon currency.
Pokemon currency. Love it. Monopoly money. Canadian dollars.
Uh Mrs. Momento Mary 100. Uh >> there we're we're righteous gemstones.
So these are our gemstones.
>> There you go. Katakuman says girl power.
That's for the I guess the the two bipok uh uh edivas.
Chile Mrs. Momento power potion.
>> So you you're not even getting dollars, you're getting gems. I don't even know.
>> Here's some dollars.
>> I need to turn off the gems. I uh Tribulation Saints 10 bucks says, "Jay did the best job representing Orthodoxy on Tucker, hands down." Uh we are all forever grateful to Jay for this. Thanks for everything you do as well, Alex. God bless you guys. Any comments?
>> Nice.
>> Again, I mean, I just want to uh reiterate that I did not know we were going to talk about Orthodoxy. In fact, I didn't actually think we would. I thought it would be, you know, just because Tucker I my thought was, well, he just had Father Josiah and Father Steven Young on so he's probably gonna want to talk about geopolitics and nation state of Israel and Rothschild. I thought that's what but no orthodoxy right away.
>> I noticed that too. He was like, "Jay Dyer, thanks for coming on. So tell me about this orthodoxy thing." Just went right into it.
>> We just went right into it. Y >> Orthodox Bill says goat trophy. Banana Chan silver star climb for Christ. Let him cook. Another clapping seal. Cleave.
Spam Alex with supers. Now do it guys.
Spam me with super chats. That's how am I ever going to beat Rouslon.
The race to seven figures. Banana Chan 200 gems sunshine. I don't even know what this means. Lenny five bucks. Every Protestant effectively disobys St. Paul because they dismiss everything he told them to hold to calling it traditions of bed. This something I see they'll go to every single passage about Jesus criticizing the Pharisees for like the corban rule or like some tradition and they'll say see Jesus is against the traditions. I'm like he's talking about like very specific phariseaical traditions. He also says in Matthew 23 to obey the Pharisees regardless to do what they say, just don't do what they do because they're hypocrites, but they're still like legitimate authorities.
>> And and there's there a passage also in Corinthians where Paul says >> to keep the to the traditions as I handed them down to you. Not the Thessalonians passage. There's another one in Corinthians where he says, "Keep the traditions."
>> Yeah. He says, "I praise you for holding on to the traditions just as I delivered them to you."
>> That's it.
>> Yeah. Uh, sons of Oh, it's for the Okay, I see what you guys are saying. It's for the trophies that for the gifts that they're buying. Okay. Uh, Yanan, please continue to pray for Mama Jean. She died. Well, memory eternal. Uh, Ash, I just thought this was a funny comment, so I started. He says, "Look, it's King Ortho bro and Eliakim. Does that mean I have the keys?"
Thanks uh for the comment, Ash Elshadai.
Five bucks. Look at the Think Institute live stream timestamp. 3:4253 to 4:32. It was crazy. Y'all will have a ball. He was talking to Kingdom in Context. Sean, I think. Isn't Kingdom in Context like some famous Unarian or something.
>> He's got a big channel. I think he's got like 100K.
>> Did you have an exchange with this Think Institute guy about Ukris or something?
>> Oh, yeah. He was trying to say it was cannibalism. And I like ran out of ways to try to explain it to him. I was like, "It's not because there's no like dead human that you have to kill and consume.
It's the deified flesh of the god man."
And then he's like, "Well, that's notorian because you're splitting the natures." I'm like, literally nobody thought you were being historian. In fact, >> exactly. That's Notorius's argument.
>> Yes. is it revolves around I was like >> notorius keeps if you read the anathemos of serial he serial's notorious is the one saying that no I'm sorry serial is critiquing about nourus by saying that if it's not the same subject if it's a dual subject then you're eating the flesh of some dude so you're the cannibal >> we are partaking of the deified flesh of the god man >> and I told him too I was like so you are taking the very position that the pagans took against St. Justin like St. Justin Martyr at that time when they were having that dispute and like I brought up also St. Serial of Alexandria and his anathemas and then also because I know he's like kind of Calvinisty like he's a Calangelical the colloquy of Mont Balard between the Calvinists and the Lutheran where because the Lutheran they believe in that communicatio idiomatum that like it is the body and blood of Christ like in the the bread and wine and the Calvinists have this like very unique real spiritual presence. The spiritual presence. Yeah.
>> The Lutheran accused the Calvinists of being uh Ntorian because they rejected like a communication of attributes between the two natures or something.
>> Yeah.
>> So I made I brought up that for the the guy couldn't see it for for the the life of him. But >> well the thing is it's difficult to debate the sacrament with a Protestant because the sacrament view is going to be hinging on the incarnation view. So, they're not going to get it. I'm not faulting you because I had a guy call in today on my stream doing the exact same thing saying it's cannibalism and and then it just reiterated to me that like well the only reason he's thinking this is because he doesn't understand what's happening in the incarnation because if you understood that it was a vine subject assuming human nature uh but most Protestants are thinking of the incarn as I used to do too by the way they think of the incarnation or hypet union as divine nature plus human nature produces Jesus and it's That's not exactly right. So, it's a divine person with a human nature that assumes a human, excuse me, divine person with a divine nature assuming a human nature, not a human person. That's what you have to understand. That's why the subject hypothesis is the vine. It's the word, right? And the flesh has no hypoasis of its own. That's orthodox theology. When you understand that, that's how you understand that he was already a subject before he became incarnate. So if he becomes incarnate and then we're not an historian, then it has to still be a divine subject.
That means then that what's happening is the human nature that's assumed is participating in divinity. Not the divine nature, St. Serill says, but the unccreated immortality that is the grace of the word. That's what's deifying the flesh. That's what we're partaking of to be deified. So it's a deified flesh of the God man. It's not just some dude's body and blood. It's a rational noetic sacrifice that deifies uses.
>> Right. And uh I think even after that dialogue after he left, I brought that up to like I realized after the fact it's like we could have gone back and forth for like days and days, but the problem is upstream like you mentioned.
It's Christologology is wrong. So unless we get that right, like he's just never going to understand. That's why most of the time when Calvinists call in, uh, I I don't debate them on Eucharist and stuff because they're not going to understand that until they understand that they have an historian Christologology, even though they don't realize it, >> right? Uh, five bucks from Chase Crosp.
Will you guys explain the pedagogy of God and how it pertains to theosis for the person and slash or how it pertains to the Old Testament, to the gospel, to the second coming? Uh, that's really broad question. I mean, is that a book?
Like because it's capitalized. I don't know what pedagogy of God is. Sounds like a book.
>> I just thought he meant like the manner like God, how God reveals himself to humanity just like But it does sound like a book. If it is a book, I'm unfamiliar with the book.
So, >> I mean, yeah. I don't know.
>> Uh, Green Emperor, five bucks. What are your thoughts on 17th Lutheran like Ghard? Lutheran claim they have a form of theosis but seems disconnected from modern Lutheran. Uh >> I I don't I didn't read very deep into Luther. I mean I read six or seven books of Luther. Um I didn't I haven't read Lenin. I haven't read uh any of the other Lutheran scholastics. So I can't speak to that.
>> Yeah. I have seen like Dr. Jordan B.
Cooper trying to use some of this like theosis language while also trying to distance himself like there are some Calvinist ideas that emphasize unity of Christ or unity with Christ but I don't know like Bavink has some stuff on that but >> right but mystical union and Calvinist theology is it's not it's not theosis and and and the thing that I think is crucial at this point is a lot of times in the theology world you'll meet Anglicans or or Calvin ists or evangelicals who are like, "Oh, I like this idea of theosis. That's kind of cool. Yeah, I don't have a problem with that. Yeah, we can talk about deep." But they don't understand that kind of like with God logic, you can't just have monarchical trinitarianism on its own in evangelicalism.
>> Like, you got to have the rest of the theology that goes with it because it's a package deal. You know, it's it's it's it's as silly as thinking that, well, I believe the nine creed, but not one holy Catholic apostolic. Well, then you're you don't believe the nine creed. Like, you don't get like 90% of it. You don't get to, oh, I agree with 80% of it.
Like, it doesn't work like that. And it even less doesn't work like that with Christologology because there's a necessary connection. there's a necessary entailment of your uh christologology affecting your eucharistic theology all the way to your view of icons. I mean the seventh ecumenical council is a council that is the culmination of Christologology.
What the doctrines are at and na 2 if you read St. Theodore the Sudite they're literally just the conclusions of him being a divine hypostasis deifying the human nature and the divine energies.
That's how he concludes to icons being windows of heaven that circumscribe the deity in his hypothasis, not the divine nature.
>> Right. Uh Syi says, "Have you guys seen the roots of grifting story on the orthodox saint dilemma? They're trying to make something stick against Eio.
It's so low tier." And >> I mean, I've always heard that. I mean, I know I think Cleave was interviewing Ubie about it. Um, and Ubie had a different take than what I've heard.
I've always heard that St. Isaac was uh in communion during his time. So, um, the arguments that Ubie presented were new to me, but uh, I I don't understand why that would be a dilemma when we have a different ecclesiology. I mean, if I had a papal scheme uh uh that I tr I mean, if we took the Orthodox ecclesiology and tried to paste that on to Roman Catholicism, they would immediately be like, "That's not our ecclesiology, dude. You can't make that argu."
every one of their arguments, whether it's Loftton back in the day or these guys, these guys are like just the new Loftton really >> because all of the ways that they're going about their argumentation, literally the stuff that Loftton was doing in 2018, 1920, they're just re repeating old Loftton stuff.
>> So, uh, yeah, I mean, I've again like not hearing anything new from these guys. So super low tier stuff and they still don't seem to understand that the critiques that you have of our system can't be based on papal presuppositions.
It just doesn't make any sense.
>> See Icon Corner is also in the chat.
Icon Corner is former Church of Christ I think because you mentioned Church of Christ earlier. He's now uh Orthodox. So he's got some good stuff if you're a Church of Christ person considering uh orthodoxy. Uh, compendium says for for five bucks for Alex to get a new camera as good as Jay's. Well, and you guys got to get me up to seven figures like Rouslon. That's I need more super chat.
I need more super chats. There you go.
Clip it. Uh, Lenigrad, five bucks.
Debating is also great for learning how to think rationally, but you also see people argue themselves into corners in heresies. Needs humility. Yeah, that's like what Jay is saying is that you need to interact with the best version of the other side's argument. like you can't you have to be familiar with their side and like that Bonson quote to be able to state it to the other side's satisfaction and that it takes humility it takes time to go read the other side's stuff. Yeah. I like the same thing with that uh the the guy from think institute who called in like halfway through that exchange he was like oh wait you guys have a different view from the Roman Catholics and I was like yes it's like when you have that lack of a formal structure like if there was a 15minute opener then it would be less likely that he would misunderstand you right >> Vulpz two bucks Jerome calling vigilanteas a dumb gall is hilarious that's yeah against uh vigilante and Helvidius he's a master of invective St. Jerome is St. Athanasius called the uh the Aryans like in modern parlance basically gay he called them like effeminate uh St. Cyprien, if you read his letters, he's like no a stranger to the use of invective. Um, but yeah, like Jay said, it just can't be the meat of what you're what you're offering.
Uh, Ash made another comment. Says, "The opening statement with Freemasons are essentially a group of butt buddies."
That was like I think also one of your better like they're all good, but one of your better opening statements.
>> Did I say that? I don't even remember.
Did I actually say that?
>> I don't know if you said this quote exactly, >> but something like that. Yeah. Okay.
probably something like that.
>> Yeah, I need to use that more. I I'm glad I I got uh Butt buddies in into the Tucker interview. So, >> five bucks from Lenny. Alex, for every super chat, you should zoom in a little bit until your face occupies the entire frame. I mean, I'm pretty close to five bucks unlisted logos. Uh, must debate end in immediate agreement. No.
Modernity overemphasizes immediiacy, but can't a strong argument simply be a seed for a later realization?
>> I think that's mostly what happens.
>> Yeah.
>> I mean, I like I mean, sometimes opponents do convert. I mean, Cleave and I had an argument. We had a debate and then a year later, you know, Cleave converted. I'm not saying he converted from our discussion, but you know, him doing a bunch of his own, you know, research and reading and you know, that that some certain contributed to some degree. So you know debate can you never know what seeds are being planted with debates. So sure and not just with debates but with anything you know but you could uh you could reference a documentary on icons that you know I've heard a lot of people say I watched that icon documentary years ago and that kind of piqu my interest in orthodoxy or I saw the pretty icons and then I got interested in orthodoxy. So there's a lot of different seeds that could be planted. I feel like that's the those are the crazy ones where it's like something from the like a long time ago that comes up like Clee posted like a documentary I guess or like a compilation of a bunch of testimonies from these and one of them was like I saw uh Alex Saurin debate Elijah Yasi and Yasi basically conceded that the pope can do whatever he wants now under Vatican 1 and I was like that was I mean not that long ago but I mean compared to like the guy's like in this the scale of his conversion I was like oh that you never know like you do it once and it'll keep on affecting people like down the road.
>> Yeah. Exactly. I mean who people might be watching you know people still watch that uh JF debate from 10 years ago. So >> yeah. Uh Elf Cintier 10 bucks just for the fun of it. Thank you for the donation. Uh August 20 bucks. I saw an argument today comparing EOS with the Pharisees. I've seen that comparison before too. The seed of Moses do as they say, not what they do, etc. Pharisees equal EOS. Pharisees were the bad guys.
I'm sure you guys know this argument.
What's your thoughts?
>> I mean, they're they're trying to find a way to dog on continuity. It's like >> Pharisees crucify Christ and we believe in Christ. So, that's one argument that we're not the Pharisees. So, >> we are Christians.
>> Yeah. Right.
>> Yeah. But I've seen that they're trying to draw comparisons, I think, so that their arguments against tradition stick a little more because like Christ, he does have scathing uh remarks about uh the Corban rule in Mark and I think in Matthew was the other passage rails on them for it that you make void the word of God with the traditions of men and they want so badly to use that against us. I just always point out that that's a category error. It's like the traditions that St. Paul is talking about in Corinthians and in Thessalonians. It's not the same traditions that Christ is railing on in the Gospels.
>> I mean, in this very passage, he's actually citing a tradition that's not in the scriptures. So, >> uh, five bucks from Mr. Funzerker. How different and similar is online debate from litigation? I understand some, but still learning. Rising too here. Well, congrats on law school. I'd say there I online debate is its own unique thing.
Uh, and it's very interdisciplinary.
Like, yeah, there are a lot of skills in litigation that cross over to online debate, but being a good litigator, like 90% of our arguing is in writing. In litigation, like the in-person stuff is like not as frequent as the the debating in writing. So, uh, yeah, if you're a litigator that's like in court, you're arguing like motions, uh, like procedural ones and like dispositive motions that talk about the actual merits of the case, like yeah, that'll cross over a lot because you have to think, you have to plan, you have to consider what is the other side going to say. Uh, if you're in criminal law, you're going to be doing a lot more like tri like actual trials. Uh, and that will be more of like opening statements, crossexaminations. Uh that said, you're going to do cross- examinations throughout any litigation. So like depositions are just a seven-hour long cross exam. So like that skill crosses over a lot. Uh but you if you're you're a 2L, you should take uh advocacy like 101, whatever they have. Try to get into all the mock trials. Try to get into all the uh moot court type of stuff because you need exposure to that. Like a lot of lawyers are kind of it's it's really easy nowadays in the information age to just end up being in a cubicle like your your whole career. Don't don't do that.
Find a job at like a boutique law firm where you get like one-on-one uh interaction with like the senior partners and you have actually get to follow them around and and do real lawyer work. So, >> how close is uh like TV law court cases to reality? Is it super fake, 50% accurate? What would you say? I like to say that it's 100% accurate so that way people think I'm a lot cooler than I actually am. But it's not. I mean, a lot like the principles are kind of the same, but like you're not going to court very often. 97% of cases or something like that settle outside of outside of court. Like yeah, you're going to go to court for motion practice. There's a lot of motion practice and uh for trials, you're going to do a lot of depositions.
So, you need to be good at crossexam.
You need to be good at just presenting a an argument in like simple terms.
>> Yeah.
>> And taking like maybe like graduate level ideas and trying to communicate them at like a middle school reading level, right? So like synthesis of the ideas is really important too. Um but yeah, in terms of like you will have enemies and like they are petty personalities, so there is some drama there, but legal accuracy it's not not really >> interesting. Okay. Yeah.
Uh, Ash, two bucks. Stop running, Jay.
Beard versus solo mustache debate. Ash is a Biscath content creator. And uh, so I told him I was like, Biscath, you're almost there. Like, you're pretty close.
>> Is he talking about >> the He's got a He's got a huge beard. So, I think like for >> I have some hair, so I'm not solo mustache.
>> It's not mustache alone. It's a >> Yeah, >> I had a Pentecostal who called into He's like, "I don't want to debate Solo Scriptor. I want to debate Prima Scriptor."
Like my whole argument was basically that there's like no difference. It's like the same critiques apply. Yeah.
He's not solo mustache. He's just mustache uh prima mustache.
He also says, "A cross-exam.
Do you think a random collection of facial hair stubble counts as a beard or does a beard necessitate a visible unity? if it necessitates visible unity.
I am also like probably on the cusp of of not beard.
>> Yes, because technically a beard literally is a random collection of facial hair stubble. That is what a beard is. It's just the stubble is a little more stubbly.
>> Refuted in real time.
Uh huge super chat from Paul Harper. 100 bucks. Thank you, man. Let's go. Thank you guys for everything. You have activated the soundboard, my friend. Uh your uh interview with Jesse Lee Peterson gave me quite a few uh good sound bites.
>> I'm bipog too. I identify as black.
>> Uh 10 bucks from Lengrad. Many people re uh really treat debates like storytelling competitions. Jay seems mean when he doesn't let them get away with it. Yeah. Cross jam is not the time to pontificate or like it's you're the examiner. It's your time to make your point by asking them questions, right?
and demonstrating to the audience that the other side's going to hit a wall at some point that they can't go through.
>> Well, this is a major mistake that a lot of people make, both noviceses and people who have done many de I still see I mean even Matt Dillah Hunty after like years of debating would still equate an argument with storytelling >> a narrative.
>> That's not an argument, dude.
>> Yeah.
Uh 160 from Zack. Thank you guys for the generosity tonight. Jay, you should come on more often. Protestant No, Zack Zach basically owns the channel at this point. Thank you. Uh these BB Netanyahu in disguise. Protestant pastors when they hear that opening statements in a debate aren't supposed to be sermons or personal testimonies. Yes, that's I was uh reviewing it was Leighton Flowers versus this like an upand cominging Calvinist guy Jeremiah Nortier. And uh it's just both of them. You could see the their pastoral background in both their opening statements. It's like there's like the emotional appeal, the call to action that's like trying to convict them in their hearts.
>> Well, I remember like I think when I debated Pastor P, he was like trying to do ultra like >> do you do you know >> I guess that's a good point is that sometimes in debates like the knowledge gap is so wide that you can kind of get away with some things. That's kind of dangerous. I think that's you got to keep challenging like recently I debated a Lutheran pastor who he doesn't really have a big following on social media or anything but it's like you can't get lazy you know so I thought like debating a historical Protestant might be a bit more challenging but you know turns out it was not that different >> I don't where are all the Protestant debaters they used to be everywhere like they don't exist anymore >> they're afraid they're just making response videos now they don't actually want to talk to us >> yeah I asked uh Jordan Cooper in multiple posts. One of them had 800 other thousand likes on it. So I know he saw it. I sent him a DM too and just total silence, totally ignored. So >> yeah. Uh yeah. And the other Paul recently made a two and a half hour video on Cleave who has not even received into the church yet.
I was like, man, of all the the people you're going to invest time into, it's like you're gonna and I mean, I'm going to be reacting to that on Cle's channel tomorrow. The arguments are not impressive either. There's this they try to use it as a flur as a slurge. They try to call us Fotians.
Like, but when Fodius was rehabilitated, the West agreed to that. Pope John, I think it's the eth signed off on that on the 879 880 council. It's like that that doesn't your insults don't even make sense. I mean, the modern Vatican calls them saints, too. So, >> yeah. Um, Lenny, grab five bucks. Honey, your opening statement ran over time. I'm taking that back in my rebuttal. Yeah, that's People bring up like new arguments. I There's like rules of evidence that I think people don't quite get. Uh, like you're supposed to present a primaascia case in your opening statement. If you're going to present new evidence or new arguments later, you have to make it relevant to what the other person is saying. like people don't really they like try to bring up new arguments later on. It's like I'm supposed to be arguing against your opening statement. You know, this happened uh in my debate with the other Paul on icons. So, the exchange was like uh I said, "Well, the temple is an image, right? It's Hebrews says it's a copy or a sketch of the the heavenly liturgy." And he was like, "Yes." And I was like, "So, they're bowing to the image. They're bowing towards the temple. It says in the Psalms like multiple times, bow towards the holy temple to partake in the worship of the divine assembly. And he goes, well, they're worshiping to God. And I said, well, God didn't manifest himself in the second temple that way. But by using that defense, he opens up the door to the iconic principle, right? So, you're telling me that the honor they give to the temple doesn't pass to the prototype, right? So, now he like opens the door to all these other issues when he's trying to the debate prompt is really just a historical issue. But anyway, that's that's boring nerdy stuff.
Obviously, that ethics guy took chalk.
We had that debate with that ethics guy, right, recently?
>> Oh, you Yeah, my my debate with that, uh, yeah, people were saying that guy needs some chalk. So, >> uh, five bucks from Lenny. Atheists essentially have no defense against soypism and radical skepticism, which is why precept scares them. Yep. Rightfully so. and father or Saint Sarapim Rose's essay talks about that Funko Pop currency from abstract. Thank you. 10 bucks from Thomas Scott. Jay, I know Philip Bun argued with you. Re Hegel. I know him IRL. And when I get annoyed with you, while I get what annoyed you, he is taking Orthodoxy seriously and engaging with fathers Josiah and Steven D. Young.
My brother and I are working on him.
Please pray.
>> Yeah. This is the main guy who was really like spuring out over me saying Hegel believed in thesis, antithesis, synthesis because Hegel didn't actually use those words. So, he had a huge uh squabble. I just thought he was like a hostile reform dude. I didn't know that he had any interest in orthodoxy at all.
So, uh good. That's uh I'm glad he's uh engaging. Um but no, I didn't know any of that.
>> Yeah, I I still think you got to put like substance over form here. Like, so what if he didn't use that the exact words? I mean, he the concepts are there, so like, who cares?
Uh, Canadian something. Five bucks. I got IP to admit that he didn't want to turn off his GoFundMe. Jay is right about the grift again. I sent the clip to Cleave.
Let me know if you want it. Yeah, send it in the DMs for sure.
>> Now, all the same evangelical sphere accuse all of us all the time of being grifters. And then when we point out the indicators of actual grifting. Oh, no, no, no.
>> I don't know how like us emphasizing exclusivity and like being extremely principled about our positions like how is that in any way like relevant to grifting? Like what doesn't it make more sense that like being more open with your principles that that would make you a grifter? I don't know.
Orthodox Bill two books. Can you spell the Pablo guy's last name mentioned?
That was one of your books.
>> Me?
>> Yeah, I think book book recommendation.
I don't know.
>> Pablo Pelon. Who's Pablo?
>> I don't know. Uh, Orthodox Bill, if you want. It's E S O B A R. Pablo Escobar.
>> I might need another super chat for you to explain.
>> Yeah, I don't know who Pablo is.
Uh, two bucks from Smoky Welder. Y'all are killing it. Well, thank you. I'm doing my best to keep up with King here.
Vulp's five bucks. Uh, as is tradition, I'm going to ask Jay for a Terrence McKenna impression. They always make me chuckle. You're going to hear about the uh when you in the Tucker interview, you brought him up for the uh the nominalism, right? The name.
>> Yeah. It's funny because I did an impression of him and then people were fact-checking me that Terrence McKenna never actually said that. I'm like, "It's an impression, dummy." Of course, he didn't say that.
But I mean, they were actually factchecking impressions. I'm like, "Dude, come on.
>> We do need the impression that we paid five."
>> Well, if you're if you're struggling with your sexuality, then maybe you need to talk to the mushroom because the mushroom looks like a fallace.
>> That's awesome. Iron Giant Man, five bucks. Alex, you should go on Nephilim Death Squad and try not to get cancer by the pure cringe radiating off those goos. uh they don't want to discuss it.
They just they just don't like it. And you know, I was friendly and and talked to those guys for a long time and tried to have not mean debate, but like let's have a friendly back and forth that I don't think they're interested.
>> Yeah. There's like a bit of insecurity there or like part of it, Father Steven mentions this too, is like okay, but you're a man. Like don't you want a little bit of push back on your ideas to make sure that you're right on some things? Like >> yeah, >> Orthodox Bill two bucks. Jay's meta narrative book is top tier. A must buy.
Buy it.
>> Yeah, >> buy it, guys. Uh 10 bucks from Gabe K.
How would you critique pansism?
Panskism.
>> Pansychism. All his mind, all his everything everything isism. Yeah.
Learned of these views recently on Okconor's channel and they have been distressing to me to be honest. How do you deal with the lack of existential certainty? An epistemic question for you.
>> Yeah, there are self-refeeing positions.
For example, if everything was illusion or illusory, you could not come to know that everything was illusory because your knowing of that proposition would also be under the umbrella of the illusion. So, it would be unknowable.
>> Yeah, there you go. Refuted in under 30 seconds. Uh, budget basin two bucks.
That's cannibalism versus we eat God.
It's definitely like a virgin that's cannibalism versus Chad we eat God.
Well, the guy that called into my stream today was like, "You're consuming the Holy Spirit, not the flesh and blood of Christ." I'm like, >> "The essence itself."
>> I'm like, "What? So you so you do believe we eat God?" And he was like, "Uh, >> cuz he said I was spirit." Yeah.
>> He said, "Yeah, you consume the I'm" like, "How do you consume the Holy Spirit?" Yes.
But you have a problem with the real presence. I mean then why >> Giovanni with the one month membership.
Thank you for the support. Hey Alex. Hey Jay. Bisi. Alitoi. I love you both. Well we love you too. Orthodox Bill. Can you run me through God knowing everything but not meeting determinism. Thus we do have free will. As our will changes. God sees our outcome change. No. I like the uh Kayla example of David at Kayla where God knows that uh King Solomon will uh he's like so you have David in the city.
King Solomon finds out that he's there.
He wants to go lay siege to the city for uh to capture King David. King David gets well he's not king yet but David gets the ephod. He prays to God. God what's going to happen? And God says Solomon will come down to the city. He will lay siege to it and the people will give you up. And they're like def pretty definitive statements like God he will come down to the city the people will give you up and David leaves and King Saul never goes and lays siege to the city and those are like things that God knew that he had foreign knowledge of that never happened right so it's not as straightforward as you know well it it just shows that God knowing something does not mean that he's causing that thing to occur.
>> Yes great example.
>> Yeah. Uh but yeah, I think when I think uh St. Seno's uh first two or first book on the trinity like time doesn't apply as a category to God. So when you say like as our will changes, God sees our outcome change. Time doesn't apply to God just in general as as a category. So I mean what are your thoughts on that, Jay? Or am I getting too met?
>> I agree. And I apologize. I'm I'm starting to I'm not like you're not boring. I'm just yawning because I've been chatting for uh uh many hours today. So, apologize.
>> I send super chat so keep Jay here.
>> Uh compendium five bucks for the seven figures. Thank you. I'll remember you.
>> Natn G's five bucks. Wouldn't the fact that there's no onlogical change when justified that makes theosis kind of impossible in the reformed system? Well, they would just say it's not justification. It's sanctification that's the transformation.
>> Yeah, >> because they think there's a a strict difference between justification and sanctification.
>> Josh Nadau, what's up, dude? That's a sword and pencil. What's up? Good to see you. The Tucker interview was great, dude. I hope it opens up more and more doors. Me, too. That's uh >> Thanks, man. Yeah, I'd like to, you know, maybe Rogan or, you know, PBD or some of these other big ones. Yeah, you hear that, Rogan. I know Rogan's watching my tiny live stream right now.
Have Jay on. He knows about all that stuff that you're interested in. Anyway, uh Southern Israelite. Ah, I have learned uh something about you recently.
This guy has published like 50 books, by the way, all on these like conspiracy theories of uh like the Bible. I have Judith Butler. Butler's gender trouble.
What page does she discuss nominalism?
He's sitechecking you, Jay.
I mean I and I don't I'm not citing that book in my argumentation. I didn't cite it in the Tucker interview. I cited the uh Haiko Oberman book on the influence on Luther's doctrine.
>> Not relevant. Southern Israelite. Uh Johnny Del Romero TBucks. Been trying to call in Jay X is new to me. I'm struggling spiritually from the Protestant to Roman Catholic and now discovering the truth. went to my first Orthodox service and I was underwhelmed and disappointed. Well, emotions are not a good uh criteria for making decisions.
You need to look at things logically. Uh but also just because you feel like why did you feel underwhelmed and disappointed? This is not enough information.
>> Jay, thoughts?
>> Um I'm not familiar with this this person trying to call in. Um, I mean, if if maybe there was something at that church that caused the lack of wellming, so try another Orthodox church to get more whelming.
You get overwhelmed.
Giovanni 20 bucks. The tradition argument is ridiculous because they'll bring up Isaiah 66 1-4, but it's not about the tradition. It's where the heart is oriented as the practice is being done. St. Serial of Alexandria and St. John Chrysum defend this.
Yes, thank you for the 20 bucks.
Macaulay roofing 100 bucks. What's the difference between a lawyer and a prostitute? That's enormous. Super chat.
Thank you very much. All right. Macaulay roofing now owns the channel. I'm sorry, Zach. You have fallen into second place yet again. The prostitute stops when you die. That's right. We will rob your grave. Don't mess with us.
Uh El Shadai, five bucks. Every Protestant YouTuber video has Jay Dyer slapped onto it just to receive views.
It's kind of funny and crazy. Yeah. I mean, uh, can't believe Jay Dyer did this. Jay Dyer did that. You know, they'll address anything Jay Dyer does except the merits of his arguments. It's pretty phenomenal.
Uh, Grits Carl Carl, that's a funny name. Uh, 10 bucks. Jay Dyer did nothing wrong. Thank you, Jay, for helping me come to orthodoxy. Yeah, I think Jay, your work helped me a lot. And it was like a lot of uh the spiritual side.
Father Steven kind of made that make sense. And then there was like all like the the logistics and like apostolic succession was a huge argument because I think my my thinking is just already kind of wired that way to think about in terms of like precedent and succession and stuff. So I think those arguments were like big ones and you're able to synthesize them down really well. Like like doesn't St. Paul say to St. Timothy, I laid hands on you. Go lay hands on other qualified men, but don't do so hastily. It's like there you go.
You just boil down the whole argument and then if you need the proof text, they're there. Like this what you're saying in a debate, you don't need to like ad nauseium cite all of these verses. Just like say what you want to say and have the bonafidees to back them up if you need it, but otherwise just make the principal note. Macau 100 bucks. The effing thing won't let me type my joke out.
Thank you for the very generous donations. Macaulay the honorary owner of the channel. Cameron uh Deboy two undefeated debaters in the same stream.
Alex 9 and0 Jay a billion.
That's why I said like people are like Alex why are you doing so many debates?
Uh where are the edutainment videos? I'm like well I got to build up the resume you know. I'm the good guy. I can't or the the new guy. Like I can't just hop in. I got to put in the work. It does feel like a billion debates over over all these years. But >> was there one I mean generally at like I think everybody the consensus is that you're undefeated, but was there one that you were like nervous about or had second thoughts about ever like any of those debates or >> I mean probably some of the f earliest ones cuz like I mean when I debated JF I didn't really know what to expect.
>> Uhhuh. Um, and that was only the second public debate that I done. I did Adam Coach and I was a little nervous for that because he at that time he had like 200,000 subscribers. I had none. So I was a little nervous with Kash just because of the numbers and then I was a little nervous with JF because at that time that was when Warski was first blowing up. So he had like quarter million subscribers.
I think there was like 5,000 live on the JF debate. I was super nervous, but not really because of the arguments, just because of the audience size for the first time. And I remember being a little nervous nervous too for um Matt Dillah Hunty because that had 5,000 people live and I was like, you know, this is the first big debate on my channel starting to get real. Yeah, >> that was the first Yeah. Like big because JF wasn't a bigname atheist debater. He was just like an alt-right commentator.
But then D Hunty is, you know, at that time he was like the top atheist debater guy on YouTube maybe. I mean, I know, well, I don't think TJ Kirk did debates.
He just did videos. But I think >> outside of, you know, the four horsemen of atheism or whatever, like Matt Deloney was the biggest YouTube name of atheism debate at that time. So, I was nervous just because of the numbers, but I didn't expect any like significant arguments that were going to be something I wasn't aware of.
>> Five bucks from refurbished poop. Hey Jay, what's your critique on the true orthodoxy denomination?
>> All the stuff that Cleave talked to that guy about in that video I shared.
>> Ah, yeah. Cleave had a good one.
>> That guy b I'm not trying to say that guy. I don't know if that guy's watched my stuff or not, but everything that guy said and the reasons he left is the stuff I've been saying about that for 10 years.
>> Yeah. I think like I don't know how they would deal with something like the Cordto Desimman controversy because it's like if you're going to go start like a whole new like faction or sect based off the calendar. I mean the church has shown historically the power to bind and lose the calendar like I don't know. Two bucks from Ash.
Another $2 juper chat for your grift.
Thanks, J. Uh, Ash is a formerly Orthodox Jew who converted to Christianity. So, uh, GJ Beard, five bucks. Can't wait to see you in September. Jay, also Father Mark, uh, that you didn't know in the list. He is the abbot over joy of all who sorrow here in Tennessee.
>> Okay. I'm not I don't I don't know. Is that a monastery? I'm not sure. But uh September I'm guessing that is referring to Lwell conference. Yeah.
>> Yeah. I'm going to be at Debate Con 9, not Debate Con 8 in a few weeks, but I think we're both going to that one in October.
>> So you'll be at or the Orlando one.
>> Orlando. Yes.
>> Okay. So I'll be debating >> I'll be debating David Wood. Who are you debating there?
>> Wed the Muslim guy that you're debating this time.
>> Oh, cool.
>> Yeah. So there you go.
>> Wait. Uh >> Wii or >> Naim or whatever his name you >> Yes, that guy.
>> Uh Orthodox Bill.
>> What's that?
>> What are y'all debating?
>> I don't know yet. Probably Islam or Christianity, which is true.
>> Something like something broad.
>> Uh Orthodox Bill two bucks said he was the Russian version of PJO.
Uh yeah, there that interview that you did recently, didn't you say? I think there was a post on Twitter you said like this guy's the Russian version of Pio.
>> Yeah, Pav Shayen is the Russian PJO. He has one of the largest Russian YouTube channels speak Russian language channels.
Uh he's done some English stuff with like John Heres and and other and he's done some podcast with Pio. He spoke at Pio's Symbolic World Conference and we've filmed now five episodes of a show like a I mean it's a podcast show in a podcast studio with us discussing Americanism. We're five episodes in. Um, but that won't be released until I think they want to do 10, but it won't be released, I don't think, until September.
>> All right, just got a few more super chats left here. 10 bucks from Bridge City Marketing. Has Jay talked with Rogan's people about getting on the show?
>> I mean, by I mean Rogan's people like just in the sense of like people that he knows like Triple E or Sam or Alex Jones or but not Rogan's schedule or people know. I've never talked to them.
Five bucks from Quentyn. Is Orthodoxy the for sure way to Christ? Yes. I've heard people say they can't say nonorthodox are going to hell because it's not their place. Thoughts? Yeah. I mean, we're not going to pass judgment uh especially final judgment on these people. uh at the end like when your soul leaves your body and you go to whatever shaol or hades or whatever of course you can't repent but you can still be forgiven which is why we pray for the dead in the Russian tradition there's St. varys who they it's he's particularly appealed to for people that uh repose outside of the bounds of the church, right? So, yeah, we're not going to speculate about like the final judgment uh in the final destination of people. That said, you can still tell somebody like I told um who was it? Uh JP and Sam Farra and these other guys, your soul is in danger. you need to join the Orthodox Church because that is the Church of Christ. You are in a madeup church. So that that doesn't really it doesn't take any intensity or urgency away from our message as lay apologists.
I don't think Gavin, thank you for the seven months.
Gavin Sullivan, thank you both. You've been very influential in my conversion.
Well, glory to God.
Five bucks from Tribulation Saints. Are you guys seeing new Orthodox converts still holding on to Zionist belief systems like I have seen everywhere?
Not like widespread, just like a little bit here and there. But I think that like look what Jay and I do I think gets them in the door. But like I have been clear and Jay has been abundantly clear.
We're not anybody's spiritual father.
It's like once they get in the door, you have to be catechized by a priest like somebody that actually has, you know, authority in the church.
>> Well, I mean Yeah. I mean, you know, we all saw AP has not been received into the church cuz he won't give this up.
So, >> yeah.
>> Thomas of Utah, good to see you again, man. Uh, is there any way to get through to someone whose view on religion is mostly feelings based? Bring them to the liturgy, I guess. Yes. Just have to appeal to them in a different way. uh bring them to a monastery, show them like the beauty of some not everybody is lo like for me it was once the logical arguments all made sense and the succession made sense and like the theology made sense I was like okay now I should probably go somewhere and see what this is actually about for other people you have to do that the opposite way >> like bring them there first to see the view so they can see that there's something special and then they'll be like oh now I need to ask some questions about this >> or send them some good orthodox music and chant so Yeah, >> that made me when I was new to orthodoxy. It made me feel good. So, >> uh, Byzantine Melvin 10 bucks. Mean machine is underrated. McCaulay Caulkin racing the roof. Thank you. Al should I BRZ couldn't let you retire their YouTube channels would have taken a hit.
What else would they talk about if you're retired? Grifting off your name.
Yeah, exactly. And last one here from Matthew Soy. Uh, what's y'all's take on Pujo's take on the Odyssey? Uh, the movie, guys. So, I'll give the simple answer first. I think Pujo gave them gave Nolan a little too much credit on that to be honest. Uh, I I haven't seen the movie, but from what I gather, like part of me thought like maybe Nolan can't even get this movie made unless he includes all of these woke elements in there. But the reviews were like almost across the board outside of Peasio's like negative, like overly negative.
>> Uh Jay, >> um I'm participating in the boycott, so I will not pay money to see it. So when it's available to see free somewhere, uh then I'll let you know what I think of the film, but uh I do not have high hopes or expectations.
>> Got a few stragglers at the end here.
Five bucks from the static ball. Hey Jay, as a Roman Catholic, I can't wait for you to steamroll Trent in December.
Yeah, that'll be nice to watch. Really love your content and apprec appreciate you for everything you do. God bless.
>> Yeah.
>> I'm surprised that I'm surprised the Roman Catholic is eager to see me seem real Trent. But >> hopefully he's inquiring into orthodoxy.
But yeah, I think your first debate with Trent, like I kind of feel bad about that one because you were like very differential, like extremely polite in that debate. that debate I was like, "Oh, so Jay has like the most defensible position because like you did play offense on that one, but Trent also is like when when he's got his ducks in a row, he's a good cross-examiner, too.
So, he can play some offense as well."
But that's in that debate, I was like, "Oh, so this position like it literally like it cannot be defeated."
So, >> thought you did a good job on that one obviously.
>> Thank you.
>> Yeah, Chase Hagrid, two books. What's up, Chase? Uh, Chase helped me prep for I also debated Neil from Gnostic Informant on whether Muslims and Christians worship the same God.
>> I remember that. I'll watch that. Yeah.
>> Yeah. Chase helped me prep for that one a little bit. Says, "Alex, can you ask Jay why he come why come he do that stuff? Why?"
>> Yeah. It's cuz I'm an evil evil bad person. So that's I mean I know what he's looking for. I'm just going to give him what he wants. He wants me to admit that he's good and I'm evil. So there you go. That's what it is. Moses says, "Jay, do you think your debate with David Wood will be serious at all or will he troll you as he did Andrew Wilson?"
>> I mean, if he's coming in person to Modern Day debate in Orlando to do it twice, I assume he's going to be halfway serious, but I don't know what to expect. I'm I'm going to wear like a Soviet KGB uniform. So, I'm serious. I'm gonna buy like I'm gonna buy like a KGB hat and a Soviet outfit to wear.
>> You also got to give me the the latest uh memo that's been circulating for the KGB meetings. I not sure when the next one's going to be.
>> Just join our Telegram group, dude.
>> Oh, okay. My bad. I didn't know.
>> KGB is just out of the Telegram group now.
>> The static ball says, "As a slow boy learning tag, it annoys me when atheists debate you with no understanding of epistemology." Eg. There's something like people don't when you sign up for debate is like at least do some research on the guy you're going to debate like like you or like this is what frustrated me with the connectly is like Libyano and that Kora girl have like hundreds if not thousands of hours of their debates online. They've already spent all of their stuff already. Like there's no excuse to come into a debate like not expecting these questions. But like >> how do they know you're not going to bring up epistemology? And like also in the realm of debate, you sign up to discuss like what is your foundation for for these like how do you justify this belief like >> Yeah.
>> Yeah. I mean >> atheist Yeah. Sorry. Go ahead.
>> No.
Are there any academic ones that would like Graham Offy or somebody like that? But um it's I mean even the academic atheists don't really do a lot of debates. So >> yeah, Joseph Henry says, "AP was spotted at my Orthodox church." Well, that's good that he's still going in orthopraxis. Any books I can read on tag?
>> I mean, you could read Vanil's apologetic, but it's going to be it's going to be tough. I mean, you could read uh Jason Lyall's book. Uh I just went blank on the title. My mind is turning motion because I'm tired. Um, I forget the name of it, but it's his little book on uh, absolute proof or I forget what it is.
>> Yeah, I think there was a book on your recommended reading list like something like Bonsson's like >> always ready is okay. It's okay.
>> Vaniel I think is a little complicated, but I think Bonsson boils it down really well.
>> Well, the little Jason Ly book is more accessible than Bonson's even. So, I would say that one's probably better for like a first time.
>> Yeah. All right, that's all the super chats. Jay, thanks so much for being very generous with your time here tonight. I know you already had a long stream.
>> Uh, >> no, glad to be with you, man. It was a great conversation. Appreciate it.
>> Yeah, likewise. All right, guys. Go watch Jayce Tucker video and thank you for the very generous super chats and uh I will see you guys uh tomorrow on Cle's channel. Jay, do you have anything coming up? Anything you want to plug?
Uh, you know, we may do a uh Star Wars podcast tomorrow with me and Jamie.
We've been wanting to do a movie stream.
We haven't done one in a while. So, uh, that might be tomorrow night. Uh, and then we've got like, you know, debate this weekend. So, looking forward to that. And I'll have books and everything that people want to get books signed.
>> Bet. All right. Thanks again, guys.
Thanks again, everybody. And thank you, Jake. Go watch his Tucker interview and share
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