Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to the...
Speaker: What's the deal? Let me try that again. It's the Down With DP podcast with Robert Dunn and Ron Prendamano in 3, 2, 1.
Speaker: What's up? Yo, yo, yo! Holy, holy, holy...
Speaker: Yeah. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome to the Down With DP podcast. As always, I am your host, Ron Prendamano. And with me is my wonderful co-host. Your name again is? Robert Dunn. Robert Dunn. SAG-AFTRA.
Speaker: wow i gotta gotta rep the union hey yeah dudes do do do um dudes or doo doo yeah so we have a uh special episode for you guys today we um have a guest we're gonna talk religion we do we have a guest we're gonna talk religion today my god oh my god it's um it's gonna be fun it's gonna be fun looking forward to this uh Who is the guest, by the way? Our guest is a friend of mine. Her name is Catherine Schmidt, and she is a professor of theology and religious studies at a university in Long Island.
Speaker: Sweet. Okay. Yeah. yeah So this this will be interesting. Yeah. But yeah, yeah. But like yeah, guys, you see where this goes you're in for a very special episode with our guest. And you know what? Let's ah just's just get right into it, shall we? Let's get right into it. Before we do that, before do it, before we bring it in. Oh, just want to say this will air a week after it happened. But I got to say, rest in peace, Dolly Parton. Oh, that's right. She passed.
Speaker: Dolly Parton passed away. We will talk more about this on the next episode. But. Legend. Yeah. Legend. All right. Now, rest in peace, Dolly Parton. And with that said, let's bring the religious studies. On that happy note, let's go. Today on the show, we have a good friend of mine.
Speaker: She is a professor of theology and religious studies at a university in Long Island. ah Ladies and gentlemen, Catherine Schmidt.
Speaker: Hello. Catherine. How are you? What's up, guys? What's up? Welcome to the Down with DP podcast. um So we are going to, for those listening or watching, we are going to talk about religion today.
Speaker: What's that, Ron? It's a fun topic of beliefs that piss people the fuck off. Oh, snap. but Like Zeus? but Kind of like Zeus, yeah, maybe. I just saw the Odyssey and it and it was really loud.
Speaker: you said that, yeah, it was really loud. very loud. That's very Nolan thing, right? Yeah. Yeah. So, Catherine, when you say religious studies, do you mean all religions are you focused more on Christianity?
Speaker: Yeah, so I focus mostly on Christianity, specifically Catholicism, but yeah the department historically had other folks that were teaching other traditions. So it was that the whole discipline went through a thing in the 70s and 80s where they were trying to like most people kind of be more progressive, more inclusive. And so they kind of expanded it.
Speaker: Um, I do teach, uh, some parts like very basic Judaism and Islam as well. Um, I don't, I don't teach a lot of Eastern traditions, but, um, but no, my expertise is in, is in Catholic Christianity.
Speaker: Catholic Christianity. Okay. Um, also, uh, I'm going to put a note. I'm waiting on a package for my job. So just keep going, Ron, keep going. Gotcha.
Speaker: ah ah hey yeah there you go So when you say other religions that were there that you have like monks like Buddhist monks teaching I don't know that we ever had anybody who was a Buddhist monk teaching. We did have some, we had some rabbis um over the years.
Speaker: And then we had other folks who were maybe Christian themselves, but were teaching in other traditions. you know they were teaching Buddhism, they were teaching Hinduism. Okay. um So yeah, it's really mixed, it's a very weird world, religious studies. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: Now, have you always been but Catholic? Yes, I have. i this is Your entire life, every day. My whole life, yep. You did your communion, your confession, all that good stuff. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. have you Have you, has your faith always, have you always been connected to your faith? Because I know our generation, sometimes we distance ourselves from our faith. And so have you always been connected to it? Have you always been like, people ask you, you know, Robert over here going like, I'm an atheist. And he's not, it's fine, but.
Speaker: Yeah, i I felt connected to it. I think that my relationship to the church kind of changes and kind of varies mostly because of our political situation.
Speaker: but But yeah, I think I've always felt it. And I certainly feel it on sort of like a cultural or sort of temperamental level. Like I i kind of understand myself as...
Speaker: um yeah She just lied to all of us. You saw that, right? She was just like, oh, snap. got a spear it Oh, my Trinity, more like tripod. Pick up the frankincense and keep moving. Let's go.
Speaker: All right. Jesus Christ. kath So, yes, the short answer is yes. I don't know what the hell just happened there. That was scary. But don't you think Mary would have been like, oh, thanks for the frankincense and myrrh. But it's really the gold.
Speaker: Yeah, that's thanks. But ah yeah, ah that you can leave that the table. There's like a meme that goes around at Christmas that's like, you know, it's clearly men bringing the gifts like women with but and like diapers and whatever. So funny that's funny.
Speaker: yep Yeah, there was a funny meme of ah there's this girl who's really funny on Instagram dot com and she pretended to be Mary in a like a tick tock live. Yeah, and it was it was it was really good. It was really good. Yeah, very sweet. yeah Send me those things a lot. It's very sweet.
Speaker: na Okay, so where were we before Catherine had an epiphany? um well I just had an apostrophe. arop That was a reference to the Steven Spielberg classic, Hook.
Speaker: So, obviously, the Christianity has changed so much over the years, right? Yeah, yes. So, like, you have, correct me if I'm wrong, you have Catholicism.
Speaker: Yeah. You have Roman Catholicism, okay, which is, it's not even the OG, but we consider it the OG. Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Ethiopian Christianity, like, the first form of Christianity? um it was it was one of the earliest. I mean, it wasn't,
Speaker: Yeah, and they and it's actually quite different. i mean they They do have more books, right? i more i both Have the the longest list of books, which is called the canon. Okay. Yeah, so, but really the first split was between East and West. So that was in 1054. Yeah.
Speaker: Okay. on Yeah. So Orthodox, so like Eastern Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, that that that tradition's pretty old as well. um It's not, so you don't really get Roman Catholicism. That idea comes out of the break with, right? So it's sort of okay between East and West.
Speaker: Gotcha. Yeah. I didn't know that. Yeah. and and The idea of Catholicism itself. I mean, just that the word before that, it was just the church or Christianity. But um yeah, the whole idea of Catholicism as being something separate from other stuff.
Speaker: The first break is East West. And then the second break would be Protestant Catholic. Okay. Protestant. Yeah, I guess I was, I was raised basically like a Presbyterian household.
Speaker: Oh, okay. Which is, you didn't know that about me? i yeah I think you were like vaguely Protestant. I'm and it' i'm an Italian Protestant, yeah. that's That doesn't happen too often. That's so sad. That's my German mother being that's my german but mother being like, nein, kein Catholicism. um but so I'm German, well you know. yeah i and i i grew up probably a catholic when i was a child and then went to methodist but i didn't really like the name didn't really matter it was just like the vibes i felt in the church at the time and methodist again i couldn't you could ask me questions about methodist and i'm like i don't i don't know i just went off of vibes people seem cool enough and uh i didn't then i went there for like youth group i was like really into yeah the church went to a christian school all that yeah
Speaker: many American people our age has some sort of experience with that, right? Like youth groups, is especially, ah but like in the South, it was, you know, that was sort of your social world, you know? Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: It was, I went for the free food. Yeah. I mean, i have free food. So no, the, the youth groups pissed me off my entire life. yeah Okay. No, and I'll tell you, Catherine, you grew up in Virginia, right? Yeah. Okay. We grew up in central Florida where, okay. So some of our Southern traditions still exist. Yeah. Like, like um pudding, for example. Anyway. Oh, I love pudding. I love pudding. The jello pudding. That was terrible.
Speaker: I went to a Presbyterian daycare when I was four. okay The first day I went in there, there were cookies and a big one of those bug juice containers of high sea orange from McDonald's. oh yeah he Hell yeah. Hell yeah. Give me that echo cooler, brother. yeah Sign me up. i pick is thats the The next day I went.
Speaker: Nothing. There were no cookies. There was no orange. Nothing. Do you think we would have more people in the church if it was high C instead of wine? I don't know. thought he Maybe.
Speaker: For the kids. Booze is definitely more of a drug. It better be really strong. boo This is tequila. mike Jesus, oh we only have this water. I give you ecto cooler.
Speaker: um So then years later, my buddy invited me to his his youth group. like It was like a Wednesday night. I think they were like Pentecostal or Episcopalian. It was Wednesdays for me too. Yeah.
Speaker: And they had those wafer cookies, those strawberry wafer cookies yeah that they were giving us. I went next week, no fucking cookies. so i So this has been my experience with the church. every They just lead me on and then they take me away. um Yeah, that's problematic. I mean, I know you're kidding, but like food is so important. No, I'm not kidding. Those are real things that happen to me. Food is super important.
Speaker: I've been teaching a religion and food class. And i go I think food is like food is so important. And it's such an interesting way of looking at history and belief systems and culture and things like that. So i agree.
Speaker: was my favorite part of mass was the communion to eat something. and I mean, I was a little kid, so I was like, yeah, food. Cool. Yeah. Yeah. It is kind of nice to be like, oh, I get to. Well, I think a lot of people like it because it's like you get to participate. And yeah, who doesn't like snack? So don't I don't I don't know this. But this question just came to me.
Speaker: At the Presbyterian Church, we did communion once a month. Yeah. Oh, wow. Catholics, you guys do it every time you step into the church. Yeah, they got it down right. Yeah. every Some people say that. Yeah. like Some people say the Catholics got it right. Yeah. And we kind of did a bastardization version of it. Yeah. Absolutely. i mean, in Methodists, we had grape juice.
Speaker: We had grapes in the little cups. We had the little cups, okay? And true story, I've said this on the podcast. I used to take the little plastic cup home, and I used to keep refilling it with Welcher's grape, and I would just do shots. God bless you. Isn't that weird?
Speaker: And we also didn't have the crackers. We actually had little slices of bread. Yeah, same, same. ah Go to the Catholic Church, you get the flatbread, and you could drink out of the glass if you want, or you could get a little thing on the side. It's up to you. Right. Why? Why do we do this this so differently, Catherine?
Speaker: um Well, it has to do with the Reformation and what Luther and then later Calvin, which is the Presbyterian tradition out of Calvinism, what they thought was happening at communion, right? And so like, as you sort of, like, I like to describe the Reformation as like a rock hitting a windshield. Like if you don't repair it, it just continues to fracture. and really what- ta you know what i mean? Oh my God. See, that's what you get for talking about the Reformation. I know, I know. It's Luther who actually- It's always freaking Luther. um
Speaker: Actually, Luther is like a very interesting person. Anyway, um so yeah, so so as you sort of fracture, a lot of traditions just started to see it as just unnecessary or like not as central. And so it kind of fell out of,
Speaker: rituals, right? So like Presbyterians, I think do it once a month. Baptists will do it like once a quarter, um which I always found really interesting because I'm like, is it like the financial quarter? I don't know. um And some traditions don't do it at all, you know, so really, or they'll do it like at Christmas or something like that. Like it's, it's so far down. And this is really interesting. You can look at sort of practices like that and figure out the theology is sort of like what's being emphasized, you know? So if they're not doing that, what are they doing? And a lot of traditions are like really into preaching, right? Really into like reading scripture and preaching. That's, that's their theme.
Speaker: So yeah. Yeah. Okay. Wow. Um, well, yeah, I grew up in a military, uh, church military context. And so are to stand that attention the whole time or parade? rest No. So like the actual church building was used by at least two religious groups, like sort of vaguely Protestants and then Catholics. And they would Friday night. We have Shabbos Sunday. yeah the service Okay. they would switch it over and they would actually like, so like for the Protestant, the Protestants had this like silver cross with no Jesus on it. And then they would like roll out the Catholic one that had Jesus on it. And then in the pews, right, there were these little, little like um wooden things that had holes in them. And I used to be like, what is this? And I realized my mom, I think, I think maybe somebody left it after the Protestant service. It was a little holder for those little cups.
Speaker: Yeah, that's what those are for, right? oh Yeah. and Okay, that's that's what I thought. i always put them there. And I do think that that actually, like, I've always been interested in religion, but that was like, I remember very early on being like, oh, what's going on here? Like, what what are these? Like, why are why are we doing this differently? Not any kind of bad way, but, you know, like, you just, when you're a kid, like, what makes you curious, I think, is what you end up doing, you know, with your life. So, um so yeah, that was...
Speaker: was to speaking of cups, I'm going to grab another Diet Coke really quickly. I support Diet Okay, sweet, sweet. we I can't wait until we're sponsored by Diet Coke. Wouldn't that be sweet? Ron, would you not agree?
Speaker: All right, we're getting off the topic. If I could drink Coke Zero instead of Diet Coke, what we could talk about it. All right, all right. Okay. One second. ah used to really be diet I used to really be Coke Zero, and now I'm all Diet Coke.
Speaker: I prefer... um back coke's here yeah yeah robert lives in a shed it's all right there it's crazy yeah hey it's a nice shed though it's a nice green screen this is all green screen to look like a one-bedroom apartment in california okay um the little cups and the thingy okay yeah well i well i have kind of questions oh um oh go go go um so uh So, okay, this is kind of like, I'm trying to find a weird transition, but I can't. Good question. Tell me if I am incorrect about the angel aspect in the Catholic Church. there's there Is there a ranking system of Like hierarchy, right? A hierarchy, and if so, why why would God care about, you know, rankings of angels, I guess?
Speaker: I mean, I know there's archangel and stuff like that. Yeah, I don't know too much about archangels. What I can tell you is that a lot of the stuff in Christianity, keep in mind that a lot of like the angel stuff comes out of the medieval period. And like at that point, it was either early separated east and west. or like so this there's Anyway, so it's not just Catholic. Anyway, so I will tell you that there a lot of that stuff comes from the Hebrew Bible.
Speaker: m Oh! so you So you have like in the Hebrew Bible you have you know what what Christians call the Old Testament. The Old Testament. um So you have an early mention of like when when God kicks Adam and Eve out of the garden then like it's guarded by angels and so like you have the seraphim and the cherubim and that's where we get the word cherub. Those are Hebrew words. I have been called a cherub.
Speaker: Yeah, nice. Yeah. And the Garden of Eden was in Jackson County, Missouri. right That's right. According to the Mormons. according to That's right. It was. Yeah. You know, it's so funny. My students always ask me about Mormons and I know so little. And most of what I know is from the Book of Mormon, the musical. Yeah. I've seen it three times. i la Between the musical and the episode of South Park alone. Yeah. yeah That's.
Speaker: I love it. that i actually I actually explained it to one of the friends at at Austin's Catherine. I explained him why Mormon religion exists. And he goes, fucking stupid yeah they are dressed nice though again They are dressed nice.
Speaker: But yeah, the the archangel thing always was a a curious thing to me. ah But yeah, if you're saying it kind of comes from other things. Yeah, so like in ancient Hebrew, like understandings of God and ah and of the universe, they're like heaven is really, well, to the extent that they sort of understand it as heaven, which like is kind of later, but like it's like God is like,
Speaker: it's like crowded up there. Like there's lots and lots of things. There's lots of, and and there's like all these like traditions in the Talmud about like when God is trying to decide something, he has like lawyer angels basically. And there's like one arguing this. And so like, it's this idea that like the whole like space, if you will, is very crowded.
Speaker: um Yeah, it's just a different way of sort sort of seeing things. And then you get to the sort of Christian influence of this. That gets sort of mixed with Greek philosophy. Mm-hmm. Understandings of, like, gods and demigods. And then it becomes something, you know. So, so yeah, I mean, I...
Speaker: I think the way that most people think about it now is like, really, I don't know. I mean, I, I don't think about it too much. Like I, yeah i you know, they yeah, I don't, I don't know what I can say about that. I don't want to like dismiss it.
Speaker: I think it means things of people, but it's not something that is a huge part of my faith, I would say. Because um another thing, because Lucifer was, you know, supposedly the highest ranking angel at the time. um And ah Lucifer a deceived God while in heaven. Is that?
Speaker: Well, it depends. like that So, again, from the from the Hebrew tradition, the rabbis will say that First of all, like Lucifer is different than Satan, which we can talk about. But like, so like, yeah that there was an angel basically. Okay, so when so in the book of Genesis, when God creates humans, he creates humans in the image and likeness of of God.
Speaker: And the the Talmudic story is that God brings the the human to the angels and says, this is my image, and so you need to kneel in front of it. And all of the angels kneel in front of it except for one.
Speaker: And that one says, I'm not kneeling in front of anything except for God. And that's the fallen angel. And that's really interesting because it's a kind of like... rejection of humanity and like a kind of inherent hatred towards humanity. Right. But at the so yeah.
Speaker: And then and then you have this other character called the Satan, which is all through the Hebrew Bible. And that gets those two things get kind of combined together. Did this take place in heaven, you think, or according to them, it took place in heaven?
Speaker: Um, sure, sure. Yeah. I mean, like the only reason why I asked that is because if there is no sin in heaven, and Lucifer committed sin in heaven, i feel like that would go against this rule of no sin in heaven. Well, that's sort of that's sort of where you get the idea of that particular angel being fallen, right? Is that the idea is that, and this is where a lot of theology about the afterlife rests, which is that basically heaven, as far as we can understand it is like perfect communion with God. And so you can like choose not to be in communion with God, but you're like excluding yourself from that.
Speaker: So do you think you can sin in heaven?
Speaker: No. Okay. Okay. Because Lucifer did sin in heaven. So, but it's complicated because like Lucifer is not a human. So, okay.
Speaker: Lucifer kind of did like a reverse Colin Kaepernick. He stood instead of taking a knee and he got kicked out of hell. Is that kind of, gift to or who hell it's like a self-exclusion though. It's like the moment, the moment that, that particular, he protested essentially is what he did. And they're like, get the fuck out.
Speaker: Yeah, but it's not a it's not like a... Again, i don't actually... So Colin Kaepernick is a representation, and I'm just saying. I'm just like... I see the parallels here. I reject analogy.
Speaker: But no, it's like... Oh, we're going to get so much shit online for that. What? I know you combined religion and politics in one. Let's go.
Speaker: oh we're going to get there. Don't worry. We'll get there. go I have a degree in political science as well. oh we're gonna go but we agree We're not to get crazy political, but we are going to talk about relation with the church at some point. um I do want to go in with the archangels and the angels and all that stuff. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but Catholicism is one of the few branches of Christianity that still uses saints to worship to, right?
Speaker: Um, I think some other, what we would call sort of like high church Protestants, basically. Okay. Like they, you know, they might, they're much more loose with sort of that idea, but yeah, but, but Catholics specifically and, and Orthodox and Eastern Orthodox. Orthodox. Yeah, they do too. as well Um,
Speaker: Yeah, and it's not necessarily like, so there's like, there's different levels of reverence and like, like officially saints do not have the same level of reverence as God, because that would be idolatry. But the idea is that you're sort of acknowledging that these people lived an extraordinary life and they,
Speaker: are like, from what we can tell, probably in heaven, right? Have probably like are holy enough with God. And so you sort of like, they're like models of the faith. And then they're also like, like intercede for you in the same way that like a friend would.
Speaker: So we have the first, I think we talked about this on the podcast. There's the first gamer saint. It was a 17 year old. Yeah. Yeah. pretty cool he He helped a lot of the needy and, but he was like a gamer.
Speaker: And so was like, that's kind of cool. I'm actually writing about him right now. I, I. No way. Cool. Oh, cool. I have some mixed feelings about that canonization. Um, I think. Whether his miracles were legit or not, is that. No, I don't really have a dog in that fight. It's more just sort of like who gets elevated, you know, because it's like very political process of like, so it's called a cause for canonization and like it requires money and it requires, and like sort of, I think. you So it's like the Oscars.
Speaker: Basically, you have to take out ads. Oh, okay. Wow. which Which I'll tell you, with but behind the scenes of the Oscars, you are running a campaign like you're running for president. yeah Yes, you are. hundred percent 100%. But you wouldn't say, like, those films aren't worthy. You would just say, like, there are other films that probably could have made it if they had the same financial backing. And so I just think that, and it this is not to, like, again, like, I don't know who's in heaven or not, but, like, I do think that that particular...
Speaker: Saint is very helpful in a time where young people are questioning the church a lot. They're like, he is very helpful for like, as a, you know, a young cool, because his is like, he was a gamer, but he, he died a really long time. Like really long. Like 2004 or something. Yeah. Yeah. Like our understanding of like what he was doing online is very 1.0 and like,
Speaker: So anyway, but I mean, i of course, I still like recognize him as a saint, but I I'm also a critical scholar. And so I kind of have both of those things. I think today's Saint Day, feast day is Saint Genesius, patron saint of actors. Nice. Yeah. Oh, how yeah. You weren't ready for that. Yeah. I love that. Yeah. yeah cool I mean, were they good though?
Speaker: Were they acting? It's, it's the, I was doing a show when, as a kid and, uh, somebody gave me a necklace. I don't know where it, with a little thingy. I don't know where it is, but, um, it had St. Genesius as the patron saint.
Speaker: yeah Yeah. We used to ask St. Genesius to pray for us before going on stage in college. Cause it was, Oh, that's funny. There's another saying for comedians, but I forget what it, who it is. Exactly. Um, I would, I'm going to look that up, but I would recommend St. Lawrence, who is also the patron saint of cooks because he was grilled to death.
Speaker: And what, and the legend is that it it is St. Lawrence. St. Lawrence is the yeah patron saint of comedians. The legend is that he said, flip me over. I'm done on this side. Yes. Yes. Which is a great joke. And I hope it it's funny, but yeah, his patron saint.
Speaker: His feast day was August 10th. Nice. Wow. Catherine, what is your feast day? Uh, well, so my name, you're talking about Catherine? No, your your feast day for your birthday.
Speaker: Oh, so August 14th is my birthday, and that's Saint Maximilian- Happy belated. Thank you. Maximilian Kolbe, who died in a concentration camp, actually. And he's the patron saint of drug addicts.
Speaker: Oh. fun Yeah, he's pretty great, actually. So, yeah. Mine is... I always forget. I can always... Wait, so you have to find a saint that died on your birthday? Is that what we're doing? there There's usually a saint for every day kind of thing. okay um Correct me if I'm wrong, Catherine.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, you can also adopt, like, if it's your name, you know? So, like, I don't... either Neither of you actually, think, have a saint. my My name is spelled slightly differently, and there's lots of St. Catherine's. It can be your confirmation saint, so mine is St. Veronica.
Speaker: I don't know her name, but... Mine is March 7th, which is Felicity and Perpetua. I think I said that right? Yes. So Felicity and Perpetua are amazing. They are early Roman martyrs.
Speaker: And Felicity... Felicity, I think Perpetua was the slave of Felicity, which is problematic, but she was also pregnant. So she was martyred along with Felicity and they were like badasses. So like, of course, I actually have my students read that story because basically like before she goes to get killed by a lioness and it had to be a lioness because they were like a woman needs to kill like a female needs to kill a woman which was gross but um Felicity's like let me fix my hair so that I look good for Jesus which I freaking love it's like amazing so I like the song Christmas Shoes
Speaker: Oh my God. Did you just reference Christmas shoes? Oh my God. Yeah. Like he just would be like, what's wrong with those shoes? I am so happy you brought that up. Oh God.
Speaker: fucking hate that song. I think my, greatness my guy is St. Mark, the evangelist. Is that some evangelist? Why, why did I read it like that? But yes, evangelist. That's basically by tradition, the Mark who wrote the gospel of Mark.
Speaker: Cool, cool, cool, cool. Yeah. You guys got Robert. What's your birthday? April 25th, April. ah If we make Al Pacino a saint, then he would.
Speaker: Because I have a saint birthday. Yeah, Saint Mark. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. I, uh, listen, comes to saints. I think, I think Steve Buscemi should be a saint. I'm sorry. I've said this before. rid of, get rid of Christopher Columbus, put Steve Buscemi in Columbus circle. We have Buscemi circle. It works. Is Christopher Columbus a saint?
Speaker: No. No. just say do know Okay. What do you, what do you think? Okay. With all the controversy surrounding you downgrade a saint, by the way, can you take it back? Or is it like, Oh yeah, I think you can. Right. Yeah, you can. So this happened to St. Christopher. So a lot of folks have St. Christopher medals.
Speaker: for traveling. He's the patron saint of travelers. Oh yeah. okay I think I have to look this up, but, but years ago there was a question about his canonization. So it's not an easy process, but it is possible for sure. I'd be so pissed. No. What do you think of with all the controversy? I think you know where this is going with all the controversy surrounding this person. What do you think of mother Teresa becoming a saint?
Speaker: Yeah, that's re that's really tough. I, I mean, she she was, from what to my understanding, she was cruel. She was a cruel person. Yeah, yeah. cutter Again, i don't, I'd have to read sort of the record, but I do think that both with with Mother Teresa, who actually has a very, so there there is that sort of obvious, the issues with the way she treated her community. Yeah. She also, though, is a very interesting person because she, I actually just watched a really interesting drag performance about Mother Teresa. Yeah.
Speaker: Awesome. That's great. But basically she hears the voice of God very young and then she doesn't hear it again. Like she, she feels like God, like she's totally in the dark. Okay.
Speaker: And that's really interesting as sort of like a person to look up to for faith. Anyway, regardless, um I will say that with Mother Teresa and John Paul II, who we know knew quite a bit about the sex abuse scandal and like covered up a lot of things. um And then not to, you know, sort of as a side note, the the the young saint that we were just talking about, Carlo Acutis, I think he's like, you know, he's he's not in that same category as sort of really problematic, but they were all canonized very quickly. And i I do think that like quickly in church terms, right? like
Speaker: there There used to be this kind of standard practice that you would wait at least 50 years after someone's death. And I do think that that's a really good practice because, you know, I mean, I understand like on the one side, it's like there are still people around maybe who can like, who knew the person that can speak to that. But there's also like stuff that can come out later. you know Yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker: I just feel like if we had waited a little bit, we could maybe be like a little more because the church does not like canonize people willy nilly. Like it is a is a very complex process. But I think if you don't like there could be more evidence that comes in.
Speaker: Yeah. And like like you said, there are people that know them personally. They could make an official statement to be considered years later. Like, oh, well this is what this person said. yeah then you find out all this other stuff. And but yeah, i think that's a really good idea.
Speaker: Yeah, it was kind of i don't I guess it wasn't official church teaching because we have canonized people very quickly. um But I just think we should just take a beat like after someone dies and like, yeah, it's come out. You know what I mean?
Speaker: Another question I have. Have you ever been a St. Peter's Basilica yet? I have. Yeah, I think. Yeah. rome yeah ah Because I was there as well. And one of the things that I thought was a little bit funny is that there is a gift shop in the back of St. Peter's Basilica. Oh, yeah. You literally have to walk past dead popes to go get a magnet with your name on it. And I just thought that was interesting. And it reminded me of like the story of the Bible where Jesus starts flipping tables because they're selling shit in front of the temple.
Speaker: And I'm like, it's just like the same thing. But don't know. it's a great question. I mean, I think. um Yeah, I mean, I think that the the tension between religious spaces and capitalism and tourism sort of always going to be there. yeah You know, it's the same thing you could say about, like, when you go to the 9-11 memorial, there's all these, like, what are we doing? That's true. That's a good point. And I will say they don't charge you, at least they didn't charge me to enter the Basilica. No. So there's that. But they do charge you with the 9-11 museum.
Speaker: Yeah, they do. Oh, they do. Oh, that's weird. arch people And I've been there. For the church in Rome. and Yeah, in Italy. um But yeah, I mean, I you know i i totally get the get the critique. the the The biblical story that you referenced... So one way to read it is that it's not actually...
Speaker: the um selling of things per se, but what was happening is that people had to come to the temple at least yearly to make a sacrifice, and they had to actually make an animal sacrifice. So if you were poor family, it was usually like a dove, right?
Speaker: Well, this led to price gouging because people would would travel all this way having not brought an animal or couldn't afford one. And so these these money changers, right, are price gouging, like you know like a baseball stadium and beer, right? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: And so you could make the case that it's not the selling of things per se, but it's about exploitation um and sort of taking advantage of the poor, which, you know, maybe capitalism does this inherently. i don't know. But um so, yeah, it's interesting that that's a kind of that would be a great question for my students.
Speaker: Cool. Cool. Good job, Robert. Look at you. hey I mean, I have other questions, but I don't want to throw too much out You can go right ahead. That's fine. I go for it. Oh, well, I was going to ask ah because we were talking about heaven. And one of the things about heaven kind of like.
Speaker: ah kind of freaks me out a little bit is do you think that there is free will in heaven? o
Speaker: I'm sorry. I'm pausing because of the the category is sort of
Speaker: and' Yeah, I get it. I mean, it is a weird question. like there There kind of has to be. I mean, if if if how we are as humans, because like ah like ah like a central part of what it means to be human is free will.
Speaker: if If how I am as a human is sort of the same in that state of being, then you'd have to say philosophically, logically, yes.
Speaker: Yeah. um Because then you sort of would lose part of your humanity. But what the human soul actually... consists of when it's in that state of being. I don't know. But but yeah, um because when I think of heaven, if I don't have free will, then I'm just brainwashed. And if i do, I can't imagine enjoying heaven, knowing that like a sibling or a parent didn't make it.
Speaker: And now I'm living the rest of eternity, knowing that they're burning in hell. And i've heard I've had this argument with the S before and some some kind of terrible answers like i've gotten some terrible answers of like well you'll just forget about him and it's like well that's i don't want that um then then again that falls into the brainwash category so that's why heaven in and of itself it's like it's a it's a little bit of a odd concept to me right yeah yeah i mean i personally don't believe in hell i don't it's possible that hell exists but that it's empty
Speaker: um So you you don't believe it's kind oh like a fireman? all my comedy shows is hell? Is that what you're telling me? yeah well yeah All my stand-up shows are hell. here's Here's one thing that might surprise you. That the doctrine of purgatory is actually very helpful here.
Speaker: The doctrine of purgatory, okay. Because the idea of purgatory, right, is that when a person dies, that there are, there's still habits of their soul that kind of leave them out of communion with like the fullness of God's love. Right.
Speaker: So I always say to my students, like I have an unhealthy attachment to like beer and pizza. Right. So I'm going to need to, and my other vices, right. But it's, mean different Different episode, Catherine.
Speaker: I actually am not like ready to be in the fullness of goodness and love yet. I still have some attachments. And so the idea of- Oh, I like how you put that. What's that? I like how you put that.
Speaker: Oh, thanks. So the idea of purgatory is that you're sort of working that out so that you can like then- you know, be in the fullness because, because it's like a, it's like oil and water at that point. Like you're not able to be in communion with God until you're water. You're still kind of got these like oily bits, you know? um So, so yeah. I mean, I, I think this is where purgatory, I find a lot of, as a person of faith, I find a lot of hope in that because, because I think you're right. like That like, if, if my loved ones and quite frankly, if my pets, if my, if I was just thinking of my cat. Yeah. but If all the good
Speaker: and love that I've experienced as moments of God's grace in my life, if those aren't present, then it then it's not any version of heaven, right? yeah um And so there has to be, but again, we're sort of thinking about this in very like human terms that like Yeah. I mean, this is probably something we can't even conceptualize. You sort of have to like be open to the mystery of it, which I know is very frustrating and very yeah satisfying, but you kind of have to figure out a few central things. And for me, God is love is the central thing. And so what does that look like in an afterlife?
Speaker: You know, it's possible that God wants everybody to be in heaven, but the people that aren't are ones who are still actively choosing not to be. Hmm. And would any would any rational person with any kind of human heart at the end of the day truly choose that?
Speaker: So maybe hell is empty. Yeah, think there's a couple out there. Yeah, maybe, Because if I say hell is empty, then I'm like, well, what about Hitler? What about child rapists? What about, you know, I mean, I i do i i do think that there is something to be said for like...
Speaker: judgment but I don't think that I I don't ever want to claim that I know what that is you know right because it's also like if a murderer converts at the very end the victim is also in heaven with them and don't know it's just a yeah checkers drinking wine they happy but you're imagining But you're imagining just sort of like a place or a space where people are coexisting as themselves. Yeah.
Speaker: The person is truly converted, right? If the person like, then there that you have to try to imagine to the best that you can, of like pure goodness and love, which we can't really imagine any, any friction, any tension between people is, is gone, is dispelled. Right. um So you can't imagine sort of like us, the three of us like hanging out in a different place. Like that's not really,
Speaker: that wouldn't be it. Okay. Like that, you know? Right. Okay. That's interesting as fuck. it's pretty it's pretty interesting. it's still gonna I'm gonna sleep well tonight. Thanks, Catherine. Jesus Christ. Is that like not?
Speaker: Oh. No, it's just it's just it's an interesting it's you know, it's it's interesting to fathom these ideas about what, you know, just pure love and happiness in a place like that as a human, which we are,
Speaker: That's impossible for us to think about. Because somebody at some point is going to get too drunk and be an asshole. yeah That's exactly how it's so... yeah To think of that. is it To truly try to think outside the box. Think of the mystery of the... Just pure happiness. It's like...
Speaker: Shit, but also like that's not have to define happiness. Like, I mean, i don't want to get into the nitty gritty of it, but like, oh you do you know, the the problem of good and evil and all that. But, uh, well, yeah, happiness is not.
Speaker: It's tough because the the Greeks understanding of this was a word called eudaimonia and we translated as happiness, but it's not it's it's closer to something like joy or contentment or peace that it's like, um,
Speaker: Kinda like Hakuna Matata. Yeah, something like that. But like, like and happiness for us is sort of like comes and goes, but like this is something like, like if you could that's that's why the Greeks really liked good, right? They were like, it's the good. So if you could imagine like the source of all goodness. and like like, and and other metaphors are like light, right? So like all light, no shadow. That's what I'm talking about. And so it's very difficult to, could I say that I'm like mostly light? Probably, but like I do have shadow. And so like, how do i kind of illuminate the rest of myself so that I can live in the light? Otherwise I'm bringing shadow and that doesn't make sense, you know? Yeah. So basically heaven is Taco Bell in Dunedin, Florida. Is that where we're getting at right now? I've never been. Nothing but pure light and Taco I don't think.
Speaker: Florida has anything to do with heaven whatsoever. Probably. As you and I are Floridians, I think we have. Speaking of Florida, do think that a lot of people...
Speaker: do imagine heaven as something like Disney World, you know? And I think if you, you know, because people need something to like grasp onto, you know, they need to visualize something that, but it, but it really is much, it's beyond sort of our categories. Right.
Speaker: And yeah, it's, yeah Actually, was a I was going to because I've made content before on like I usually do comedic content, but sometimes I get serious. And I did one on a I did like a poem video, but I was thinking about doing another one on my concept of heaven.
Speaker: yeah and uh but i haven't like fully written it yet i haven't even spoken it out loud till right now but it's something i've been thinking about just the what my subjective concept of heaven would be yeah and and there's different different ones again in the hebrew bible like there's different images of what this is what it looks like you know i mean but one of the oldest ones is the garden which makes sense if you're a desert people to imagine a lush garden where there's nothing but food for you.
Speaker: That's good point. makes sense. you know And you see this in in Arabic um architecture. this sort of like A lot of mosques will be decorated with like fruits and plants and things like that. To us, doesn't sound very heavenly, but if you're in the desert, that's that is heaven. you know yeah Right, right.
Speaker: Yeah, i I could definitely see that. I will say my favorite ah afterlife is probably the Mormons because you get your own planet. You get your own Sweet. they kind How cool is that? That's great. I mean, that don't know. It's lot of responsibility to me, but... Yeah, exactly. Yeah, i gotta take care of a planet now? This is my life forever? Eternity? This is... That's a lot of Excel spray. Why did I get the desert planet? Why did I get this one? There's no fruit here.
Speaker: i Ridiculous. um We're gonna shift it a little bit now, Catherine, if that's all right. Yeah, of course. We're gonna get to a little more of a... Robert, if you're okay going here, we're gonna get a little more political...
Speaker: Yeah. Political, you know, the church and their scandals, why Catholicism that hasn't really taken off into politics here in the States. Like, so obviously, i mean, the church and the child scandals, we know about that. we Yeah. um you You like Pope Leo. You and I were obviously texting people.
Speaker: with each other when when that happened, when he became Pope, and we were both like, holy shit, it's an American Pope, we did not. Because we thought it would go back to an Italian Pope, correct? We thought they were gonna go traditional route on that.
Speaker: thought they you were gonna go either way conservative African Pope, or back to a European, probably an Italian, yeah. because they Because they did the Jesuit thing, they're not gonna do that again, obviously. But to go to like ah a curveball and give you, you know, Chicago's finest over here. i mean That was wild. I mean, I as as a non Catholic, I like him. think he's he's got a personality, which is kind of nice. He does.
Speaker: But how do you think he you're a Catholic? How do you think he's doing it in as far as running the Catholic Church? Yeah, I mean, it was a very, i think, shrewd decision by the Cardinals to choose him. um For lots of reasons. I think he's doing a great job. I, you know, I study, I study technology. So obviously I'm super excited about what he's saying about AI and like how into this he is. That is good. i think in a general sense, but also good for my career. very profound yeah for sure
Speaker: But yeah, I think, I mean, you have to keep in mind too, that like, he's younger than you're used to seeing a Pope. um And so it seems like he has a personality. I mean, Pope Francis had a very big personality. He did.
Speaker: But he, you know, he saw him, you know, aging. And so like, that's that's kind of important to remember, I think. um Was Pope Leo younger than John Paul II? That's a good question. I do.
Speaker: I don't know. I'd have to. I think John Paul is still the youngest Pope ever. He was pretty young and because he was Pope for a very long time. Yeah. um Some would say too long. um yeah When he started, he was the first.
Speaker: he became the second because he was so long. i Oh my God. that That was just off the dome. not yeah You know, you throw it at the Actually, in modern times, he might be the young the youngest Pope, but the historical records, Pope Benedict IX became Pope when he was about 20. Wow, 20?
Speaker: About 20. And some say possibly as young as 11, 12 years old. and some say possibly as young as eleven twelve years old Yeah, so there's, like, a period of church history of, like, popes being, like, the sons of cardinals. It was very, like... Yeah....fucked up, and... Oh, okay....a lot of why there was, like, reforms in the 11th century. Anyway. But, um... So, yeah, I think he's great. I think he's a great choice because he's American, but he's, like, not American. I mean, he he's... Okay, he's from the U.S., s but kind of... he Where did he live before? it was in... I forget where he was living before.
Speaker: Peru. He spent... It was Peru, okay. Most his ministry was in Peru. And then he speaks all these languages and, like, you know... And so I've been enjoying what I perceive to be sort of, like, American subtweets, you know? Like, I... Like...
Speaker: he like I think some of what he said, I mean, and and some of it's not so so subtle, right? I mean, I think that, you know, Trump kind of hears it.
Speaker: ah or v He's been very direct with how he feels about them yeah he's that. He has not shunned away from that at all. But you know what's so interesting is that, like, nothing that he said, like like, the AI stuff is is kind of new, but anything that he said about war is, like...
Speaker: standard stuff. I mean, it's stuff that he's been saying at least since the middle part of the 20th century, if not if not way before. So it's like, it's so funny that he's perceived as being this like liberal, because I'm like, not really. I mean, he's, you know,
Speaker: I don't know. He's he's pretty standard and when and when it comes to to the church's position on war. um So that's interesting. But yeah, i think he's I think he's doing a good job. I mean... But he does he does seem to have more of a, what we would consider liberal ideas or as far as much as he can say, like...
Speaker: um Like, didn't he, he said, what did he say? He said something about the gay community that was actually on more of a positive note, if I remember correctly. Like, yeah as long as they're cat Christians or something like that, it's okay. He said something.
Speaker: Yeah, again, I think that, like, so much of this is about sort of how you perceive what a Pope is and then like Francis and Leo kind of disrupt that a little bit, but they don't, they're not actually that different from, i don't know how to say it. Like i I think a lot of people assume like homophobia and for good reason, right? um But like, so when they hear anything that's like vaguely welcoming, it feels like, oh, that's so progressive, but actually like it's not really that progressive. Like it's kind of the standard
Speaker: the standard line, you know, like parishes have like gay ministries. um It's complicated, you know, like doesn like it is' the gay ministries, the gay, isn't that more like, isn't there, there's a whole branch called like the liberal Catholic church, right? And they're not recognized by the Roman Catholic church, but oh they have like, they have women priests and things like that.
Speaker: There are a few offshoots, but in general, liberal Catholics are still part of the, like they're their own thing i mean there might be there might be one that i don't know if that's like officially no there is a separate congregation that used to be called the liberal catholic church yeah no no they're they're not recognized by the roman the catholics no i mean but there's a there's several like these and they're and and most of them are actually quite conservative like they broke off um there's a group in kansas for example um that's that's really really conservative that broke off um But yeah, in general, the church is actually in the United States. The official Catholic is very, ah very much a mixed bag, you know, centrict more of a centrist kind, you would say.
Speaker: Well, I think that it's just it's complicated. Right. So you have all these teachings about war and poverty and this kind of stuff. But then you also have like a death penalty. And then you also have like the positions on birth control and abortion. And that creates kind of this mixed situation.
Speaker: understanding um you know and catholics are not biblical literalists they tend to most most parishes are yeah kind of middle of the road you know um not as political as say your everyday kind of evangelical parent you know kind costable type thing yeah yeah yeah you're gonna say something robert oh i was gonna say can't we just let the priest get married yeah um Yeah, I mean, it's a good question. Like, especially as the church continues to face to face a priest shortage, right?
Speaker: um It actually is, there is a loophole to being married as a priest, which is that you can have been married and then convert and then go through seminary and be a married priest, which is interesting.
Speaker: Really? are Are there a lot of those? No, very few. no That's a TV show idea right there. I'm writing that. It is. um But no. So, yeah. So we we do have deacons, which are um kind of like a like assistance kind of they they are married. um Yeah. Especially with the shortage, but also like.
Speaker: the life of a priest is really not that amenable to having faith. Like, because of the sacraments, so because of all these rituals that they have to perform, and specifically anointing of the sick, so they're, like, constantly in hospitals, constantly visiting people who are sick and dying. Like, I don't know. I mean, that's kind of, uh-oh.
Speaker: Robert, there go. No, there you go. You guys disappeared for me, too. no So, yeah, so it's, it's you know, and the week your weekends are shot. like Yeah, you have you don't you're you're planning, you know, all day for Sunday and there you go. Yeah. Or a holiday or something like that. Yeah, I mean. But what is interesting is that, like, the idea of a priest being...
Speaker: celibate, and in this case that would mean not being married. Well, you could be married and be celibate, trust me. I'm just kidding. It under the lowest level of church teaching, which means it can change.
Speaker: the it falls under the lowest the lowest level of church teaching which means it can change So there are, like, the center is dogma, like, those can't change. And then there's, like, sort of teachings that come out of dogma, which really kind of can change, but usually don't. And then there's church practice, which is which is the priest stuff.
Speaker: um so fish Like fish on Fridays during Lent. Yeah, that kind of stuff, right? but That has changed, though, right? um So it's changed to the degree... First of all, it's up to the local bishops. So, like, you'll see... In Louisiana, you' like, you'll see the bishops say, like...
Speaker: You know, it's, I don't know, there's a festival going on. You can eat meat, whatever. Kind of like how a rabbi runs it kind of thing. kind of depends on local area. Okay. Yeah. um But yeah, so like it used be that you would fast on Fridays altogether and then it became just during Lent and blah, blah, blah. So like those kinds of things. Yeah. Those are, those fall to the level of church practice, which can change. Yeah.
Speaker: They don't, they don't often and they don't change easily, but they can. Is it that the cardinals have to like vote or something like that? is that don' So the cardinals aren't responsible for this. it's the It's the bishops. So the cardinals, the only things that a cardinal does, so a cardinal is also a bishop, um but that title only refers to them voting for the pope. The pope, okay. So would the bishops bishops or archbishops, would they be the ones voting?
Speaker: Yeah, so this the last time that this happened like in a big way was in the 1960s with something called Vatican two And this is, for example, like it used to be that masses, the services were always in Latin, and then they changed it to whatever the local language is. So that would be an example of something change that changed at the level of church practice.
Speaker: Okay. I did not know that at all. Is this not boring to you? No, this is fascinating. I don't know if Robert, how Robert feels. I'm just listening. um This is extremely fascinating to me. So let's, like I said, let's bring this up with politics in the United States. Okay.
Speaker: There have been two Catholic presidents to my understanding. Yep. really biden Joe Biden and JFK. Yep. Two Catholic presidents. Why is it always... is Is it just such a thing when a Catholic is becoming president? Is that because of the history of our nation as in itself?
Speaker: Or, like... Because it's... It's like, well, we're all Christians, right? So who cares if they're Catholic? No. But that... but that they kind of like People get upset. You know... Ron, you know that...
Speaker: in evangelical circles a lot of people don't i know know i know i know that but i want to get your point of view there's also a lot of debate on the trinity too people don't believe in the trinity or they do Right. I mean, like an anti-Catholic sentiment that is deeply embedded in American politics. I mean, when JFK ran, i have these great ah political ah cartoons that I show my students where people were legit concerned that if he was elected, the Pope would be in control of the United States.
Speaker: And so he had to actively tell people, the Pope is not my boss, I'm American, like I'm not gonna, you know. And you know, you see way less of that when it comes to somebody like Joe Biden. I think at this point, it's less that kind of stuff, sort of like the Pope is in control and more a sort of like,
Speaker: cultural fluency. So like, like over the years, uh, uh, presidents have had to kind of talk Christian in a way that is very like, um, specific to American Christianity. And that tends to be Protestant.
Speaker: Right. So you end up with like George W. Bush, um, even Reagan, who himself wasn't very, um, religious, but realized that the evangelicals could help him win the election. So he was born again, kind of,
Speaker: um Even Jimmy Carter, as a Democrat, you know, was able to sort of like speak American Protestant like lingo, you know, and you see this even with Trump, who fails at it, but still has to make those attempts to be like, you know, and and now it's all mixed up in Christian nationalism, which is, you know, its whole thing. But but yeah, I mean, in the one on the one hand, Catholics have come a long way because you have Joe Biden, you had John Boehner, who was Speaker of the House, who was a Catholic. Now you have J.D. Vance, who is a a Catholic convert, you have all these Catholics sort of around.
Speaker: um But yeah, I think it is it's always gonna be a question because of, Catholicism is just is just kind of different when it comes to talking about itself in a way that is intelligible to a lot of rural Americans, I think, and and specifically like like Protestants, right? ah Of all different backgrounds and races and those kinds of things. So yeah.
Speaker: so yeah But the anti-Catholicism is still there for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Robert, do you have anything to add? Oh, no. ah I mean. I do have one more thought, but I was just asking. Yeah, go you can go for it. I wasn't sure um what, a yeah, the agenda, like as far as. Yeah, it's kind it's kind of gone. It's gone all over the rails. Yeah, I know. Yeah, I was letting you hit the categories. You know what I mean? I was expecting it to do it. Yeah.
Speaker: We're going get away from the politics because this has always really interested me and we might end with this, but it's always really interested me and I want to get your opinion, your thoughts, what you know about it.
Speaker: Because to my knowledge, the ah the Protestants, don't we don't do this. Exorcisms. Oh. Exorcisms. Okay. I've been fascinated with the idea of an exorcism since I watched The Exorcist.
Speaker: Yeah. Do you think that they're actually real? Because we seem to have a lot of backing Emily Rose was real. Emily, I saw that movie. You can't break that shit, man. That's true. But I mean, it is it is an old practice. It's not really talked about directly with the church. It's kind of a behind-the-scenes thing, yeah if I'm right. um And there is a book on it.
Speaker: Yeah, yes. um I don't know a ton about this. i What I'll say is that, one, every diocese, which is the local sort of group of churches, yeah and the bishop is the head of that, every diocese does have an exorcist.
Speaker: um How often they are sort of deployed, i don't know. Like you said, it is sort of in the background. I think this is really good. The church realizes that people can, like, misuse this, manipulate it, right? Like, it's...
Speaker: um What else say about it? Yeah, the the demon thing is super interesting. It's kind of related, of course, to what we were talking about with angels, too. yeah um Early, early Christianity had this idea that So there were these these dudes called the Desert Fathers. There were some women there, too.
Speaker: So they laid left. This is like, I'm talking like 200s, maybe. um okay They left the cities. They were frustrated with, like, you know... riches and the the world and things like that. They left the cities, they live in the desert, and they have all these stories about these like beings that are like pulling at them, and they weren't necessarily like all bad. You had sort of like this being was like trying to get you do something good, and this one was trying to get you to something bad, and then that sort of morphed into demons. I think that humans over...
Speaker: history have always tried to find explanations for for stuff especially like mental illness yeah it's like physical illness you know um and so it kind of makes sense and and it's not something that's like this is particular to christianity right you see this in other traditions as well of course um in terms of sort of the theology of it i'll say what i what i normally say about ghosts as well right which yeah which is that if I have a sense of what we would call the metaphysical, right, beyond the physical world, if I'm open to that idea at all, even if it's just God with no angels anything, I kind of have to be open to this idea, right, of something like ghosts or something like demons. um
Speaker: I think it's been over... I think it's been misused. I think it's been used especially against women. um I think it's been used against people who are different from the status quo, and it's like, oh, they have a demon. um But I also don't want to totally discount that there's something going on here. And I also don't want to discount that even if it's not a demon in this kind of like, you know, a kind of devilish kind of way, is there something to a community, right? Cause it's not usually just an exorcist, it's like their family and their friends, right? Being present for a person who's having some sort of episode, right?
Speaker: um And i will ah i will tell you that that what I do know, and this is the case with with um saints and canonization and miracles as well. So you probably know this, but the idea of a devil's advocate, right? That's actually a position in the Vatican of somebody who like challenges all of the miracle stories.
Speaker: Um, exorcists will not try to do anything until the person has gone to doctors until they've gone to like, this is not the first thing that's going to be my question. this is the last resort Yeah, this is like, because we're not anti-science, we're not anti-medicine. It's not that somebody is like, you know, having a schizophrenic episode and the church is like sends exorcists, right? Like it's like, no, you need to go through a medical facility. Like, right. So, you know, if that's what's left and, and, You know, it depends whether you think that that can be right. Is there something else going on here? Does it is it kind of in comparison to like people that go to like, you know, people that put crystals on you to cure their cancer?
Speaker: Yeah. Right. I mean, i think a lot like you might as well kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because also like sleep paralysis, too. Like I've suffered from sleep paralysis. I could totally see someone who has who knows nothing about that. Taking that as a demon possession for sure.
Speaker: 100%. I have um night terrors. like I've had parent like and and i have a friend. I've seen people for sure. I've seen. And I have a friend who has the same the same thing. And he said to me, he's like, could it be demons? And i kind of laughed at him. But like.
Speaker: you know, yeah, like, what do you, what do you do in moments like that? I think you have to do both, right? You sort of like go to the doctors, you take the medication. And then like, for me, like prayer does mean something. It's like the love of the community and sort of connecting you to God. And like, I don't know if it, if it offers solace to a family and to a, to a person in a time of great crisis, then, then, you know,
Speaker: maybe you should just leave it alone. I don't know. When you mentioned about it being women before, it it does seem to be a lot of women these cases come up with. Yeah. how Could that just be sexism in general?
Speaker: Yeah, I think so. I mean, that's why you just sort of have to have the critical. And for me, my kind of... standard practice as a theologian is to leave space for these more kind of traditional practices, these like cultural things, right? Well, at the same time, maintaining a critical lens, right? And I think that a lot of scholars kind of easily dismiss people and be like, well, they're just superstitious. They're just whatever. And I'm like, okay, but like, i kind of want to take people at their word and like, you know, try to try to respect and leave space for, for that while at the same time being critical, you know? yeah
Speaker: And that's that's kind of where theology, I think, is slightly different than sociology or religious studies is that i actually i actually believe to at least some degree like in the metaphysical part of it. I'm not just looking at it from the outside. like i'm I'm kind of an insider to it. you know So I may not totally get on board with some of these practices, but I'm going to at least leave space for them you know as ah as a mystery that I don't fully understand and can't fully dismiss.
Speaker: Okay. that That is a so well well put answer. is a lot of people But a lot of people in in academia would reject it. you know They would say like we need to be sort of like as as ah objective as possible and and be an observer. And I just don't think that's possible, honestly. I think objectivity is a lie. But I but i also think it's like, you know you can say that the majority of the world is full of shit because they believe in God.
Speaker: You can say that, but I'm not sure what that serves. And I'm not sure if that actually helps some of the most marginalized people on the planet to just say that they're full of superstitions, you know? Yeah.
Speaker: And also, I will say as ah more of a skeptic, um I think that people believe what they say. i don't think they're lying, you know, if they believe in a deity. I don't think I think they're truly so I wouldn't want to call them like, oh, you're just making stuff up. I think you truly believe what you're saying, you know, so. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. And it started like the next the next level would be. And I see that it's possible. Right. Whereas, whereas somebody who's more of a skeptic would say like, I don't, I don't think it's possible, but I, I know you believe it. But for me, I'm kind of like, and it might be possible, you know, it might be possible. yeah person for For me, it's just, like I got, I guess I live my life where it's like, I just want to believe more true things and less false things as possible. Of course. So yeah i question everything. Yeah.
Speaker: No, but that's right. I mean, that's, that's the opposite of, of faith is not doubt. You know, I think the opposite of faith is certainty. You know, this idea of like, I know everything.
Speaker: um That's why like questions are not, you know, I think my students struggle with this because they, they're sort of used to these religious contexts where nobody wants them asking questions or that they're, that questions that they ask are not met with any kind of satisfying answer.
Speaker: um Whereas I'm like, no, the the only reason why I still have faith is because I was allowed to question things constantly, you know, ah and still i am, you know?
Speaker: Yeah. that's That's you're still questioning. You still have your faith. Cause yeah, that I get that. That's yeah. Cool. Because ah faith Like I know Hebrews 11 one talks about faith and faith is a confidence in what we hope for and the assurance about things we do not see. Would you define that as basically believing in something without evidence? is that Would you interpret it like that?
Speaker: No, it's interesting because like, I mean, evidence, first of all, is ah is a category. Like if you try to, if you try to use the word evidence in the same way that you would for like a court case would be closer, but like something like scientific evidence, then religious, religion is always going to fail. Right. So it's, um it's already going to fail.
Speaker: Right. But the word confidence is really interesting there. um You know, we do things that are acts of faith all the time that we do have some level of confidence in, but we might not necessarily have all the evidence for, right? And that's not to say that it's the same, but like, I think about this all the time when I'm driving, which I don't do very much anymore, but like I have an immense amount of confidence in the drivers around me, right? That they're not gonna kill me.
Speaker: They could kill me, right? um But I sort of have to operate with a kind of practical level of confidence. um Right. yeah because i i would go on a I don't drive a lot either. And I'm kind of I have to operate the same way. I'm like, they don't want to die either. yeah i mean, think about this with flying. I mean, that's um that is an incredible act of faith to step on an airplane.
Speaker: Thanks. I would go as far as to say I don't I don't do anything based off of faith as far as the airplane goes. I do have an amount of confidence because I know that planes fly.
Speaker: i know that throughout the years people have flown planes and have landed. And so when I step on a plane, I do have an amount of confidence, but because of the evidence that I've seen in the past and also from past flights I've taken that there is a more likelihood that this plane is going to be in the air. So that would be my evidence rather than like a faith. And again, I'm not saying that there's no evidence, but I but i am like, you are also taking on faith that the mechanics, like you don't know every mechanic that looked at that airplane.
Speaker: yeah but i But I know that it has worked before. Sure. Yes. It's like my phone. Like, why should do I have faith that my phone's going to turn on? No, because of the million times that I've turned on my phone before and knowing that phones turn on. So that would be my evidence. So I don't I would say I'm not practicing any faith in that. Yeah. As somebody who works on the plane and Catherine, do not say my airline, please. No.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, I guess I would be, as a flight attendant, I guess I would kind of be the priest on the plane, and you don't always know what goes behind scenes. and However, you do have to trust the bishops and the archbishops and...
Speaker: Maybe not the Pope, but you yeah and you do have to trust the people that do work on the plane and stuff like that because I'm in the i'm i'm getting on the plane too. So yeah um I'm going there like, all right, pilots did their walk around. Everything checks out. I have to have the faith that I'm going to get to Providence, Rhode Island. But I would say you're not i would say you're not having faith in that though because you've been on a plane and you know that planes fly. I disagree with you. Yes, however... Because that's the evidence, that's the experience that you've had. Sure. And a lot of people had experience on TWA 800.
Speaker: Okay? That was a plane that went up in the air and just boom. Sure, but that the science also doesn't claim absolutes. Very true. Very true. yeah There's never been a moment that you've gone on a plane and you're like, this definitely will not fly. and i there There have been times where, um yeah, I have questions from shit mid-flight. Yeah.
Speaker: Why? ah Let's see. One time I was flying and the generator stopped working mid-flight over the Atlantic. So that's evidence, right? The generator is the evidence. Therefore, this might not fly. That's what I'm saying. There's no faith there. But there is faith because you think the generator is going work the whole flight.
Speaker: Well, no, you know generators work. So you have confidence. I do, but that one didn't, so. of course, because it's not an absolute, but you don't need faith to practice to know that generator's going to making my lips dry. Anyway. think another way to think about it could be like.
Speaker: That's also why I've been mostly silent, because I don't want to ask like too many, like, against the grain questions. I should think about it in terms of food safety, right? Which we're seeing now, like, We had immense faith in these structures that protected our food systems. Oh, yeah. Once they're gone, like I didn't. OK, so like when I sit down to eat a salad, it's my experience tells me that that salad is not going to make me sick.
Speaker: But I don't have complete evidence that this particular salad or that particular plane is not going to kill me. Right. i All I have is what's come before me. Right. There's always a chance that it could do the opposite.
Speaker: Absolutely. And so at the end of the day, what I think religious faith is, is has to do with sort of, and this is a vast oversimplification, is sort of whether or not you think the world has any direction.
Speaker: whether or not you think that there is anything, sort of any kind of purpose to any of this shit, right? And once you once you sort of start to investigate that, you realize that these traditions are just sort of different ways of dealing with that question of sort of like what the purpose is, what it looks like, what are its obstacles, those kinds of things. So in terms of it being an act of faith, yeah, it is an act of faith because I i do think that that the world is fundamentally good And I think that it's oriented toward the good that like at the end, like in the end, good will win.
Speaker: That is an act of faith because my experience tells me otherwise. Right. If I look around, my experience tells me that there's a lot of shit. Right. um And so, yeah, I think that is sort of like at the heart of it.
Speaker: But I don't think that my experience, like, I also think I have experience of deep goodness. And so I do have sort of two competing sets of evidence here. And you've chosen one right, which is maybe going the other direction. But I've chosen sort of the other set of evidence. So I don't necessarily think it's a lack of evidence. I just think it's sort of about, like, how you move in the world, like, what What kind of like central claims you're making about the universe and a lot of those things are not verifiable like is it good? Does it have a purpose? You know those kind of things I guess that's why I would consider that faith because it would be a belief without evidence Because if you're just going by the flow of it all then I would define that as faith for sure I have I have lots of evidence that there's good in the world Sure,
Speaker: So I don't think that that's belief without evidence. I mean, I guess what is your claim though? Is your claim that we are heading towards good? My claim is that that fundamentally like there will be more good than bad.
Speaker: And you base that off of that you've seen people do good or what would you say? Yeah, I mean, I think that otherwise why get out of bed in the morning? Like if you think that evil is going to triumph, then why do anything?
Speaker: Well, I mean, I guess we would this would be a really deeper topic because I would go into like what's considered good and what's considered evil. I think there's all shades of gray. i don't think there is just good and evil. um Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: But so to say that the world is going more towards good is definitely a subjective... like you know, opinion on that. But that would that sounds like a. But to say yeah going towards bad is a subjective opinion, too. Sure. Absolutely is. Yeah. And and but I would say that I don't know where we're headed because I don't have any evidence. So I can't make a claim that we're headed towards good or bad.
Speaker: I would just say I don't know. Yeah, but I think that you kind of have to. put one foot in front of the other every day. And so even if you, even if you kind of are intellectually agnostic, if you get up and live your life, you're at least tacitly saying that there is some purpose.
Speaker: Oh, sure. Yeah. I mean, I have purpose in my life, my my own purpose. And yeah I would live towards that. But I mean, I mean, that seems like a different topic as far as like,
Speaker: society as a whole heading towards good. I would hope that... No, I don't think it's society. I mean, I think it's like... I think it's a cosmic thing. Like, I don't... I think that society's going to go, but I think that... I mean, you could think about this in very, like, enlightenment terms and take... yeah self, right? and And say like, even in deep self-reflection, like you said, there's not I'm not just good or evil. Like I'm a mix of these things. And it matters, I think it i think how you answer the question. And a lot of people don't ever ask the question, but it's sort of like,
Speaker: you know, which wolf am I going to feed kind of, you know, like how, am how am I going to live my life in a practical way that either contributes towards the light or contributes towards the shadow. And I do think that even if you don't ask that question, you're still contributing in one way or the other, you know? Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. So like, what would be the point of anything? What would be the point of us even having this conversation? I mean that, you know, and I, yeah, I, I don't know. The evidence thing is really interesting to me because again, i it's a, if you think about a religious statement, you know, God exists as a hypothesis that you then need to prove in the same way that I prove aspirin helps a headache or something, it's going to fail. It's a category, it's a categorical mistake.
Speaker: um i don't I don't think it's the same as saying that. I also don't think though that it's the same as saying that there's no evidence. um I would say that because I would never make the claim that there is no God. I would just say that I don't know if we have enough sufficient evidence to determine that there is.
Speaker: There very well could be in the future. you're not. Yeah. Because it's a categorical difference, right? So like it it is you are trying to use a finite system of evidence to describe something that's infinite. It's never going to work. it's It's always going to be...
Speaker: Like, you're you're not goingnna you're not going to get there. Like, so us trying to describe what heaven is like, if you admit that it is always going to fail because it's an analogy, right?
Speaker: um Yeah, there's never going to be there's never going to be scientific evidence for it. Yeah, unless there's another way to go about it besides scientific evidence, um that's the only method I know of to investigate claims. Well, philosophers thought they had found it. i mean, if you read medieval philosophy and and even like ancient Greek philosophy, they thought that was the method, right? They thought they reason themselves into it. And I do think that those arguments can be persuasive. But what I always tell my students is that an argument like that is never going to you know, fundamentally make you change your life. Like you're not going to, you're not going to then live a different way because somebody's made a good philosophical argument to you. Like that's not what moves people. What moves people is love. What moves people is selflessness. What moves people is their, their friendships, their relationships. So like the arguments are helpful, but they're not like got what my God question class. And we, we talk about all this stuff. We do like all these philosophies. We do atheists. We do all this stuff, agnostics.
Speaker: And, and I'm like, i always tell my students, I was like, you're not, nobody in this class is going to be converted by any of this stuff. You know, you can yeah step in one direction or the other, but no one's going to be like, oh, and now I love Jesus. Like, that's not, right you know. um So, yeah, I think in that case, there is that sort of.
Speaker: But I don't think it's without evidence. I just don't I think it's sort of. This is the best I have, given the life that I've led. And I think that's all any of us can say. Carl Sagan's argument about.
Speaker: about some of these sort of the religious, by religious I mean sociological, right? He's like, it's amazing that people in one part of the world when they have a religious conversion, it looks like Jesus and in the other part of the world they have religious right like Hinduism. I actually don't think that that's necessarily like an argument against it. Like, I think that if you kind of embrace that, it's similar to like language, right? Is that,
Speaker: You know, Heidegger says that there's there's all of these things that were sort of thrown into as human beings. Like you didn't choose your family, you know, you didn't choose your race, you didn't choose like, you know, how your body is, right?
Speaker: And ah for for a lot of us, you can, right? But you were born like, you you know, um So like there are things that you you can change, right?
Speaker: But you will always do so as a person who was thrown into it in a particular way. So when it comes to language, for example, you know, I was i was raised speaking American English. Could I reject American English? Yes.
Speaker: yes work i will always learn another language on the basis of that language that was given to me right and so you are rejecting a particular tradition on the basis of you having been raised in that tradition which is not your rejection is invalid it's just to you have to sort of acknowledge that the enlightenment dream is that you're sort of this free floating like you know saying with no attachments and you make decisions like as a free person we do right but we're also always beholden to the traditions various traditions in which we were in which we were raised and in which we kind of live and breathe right yeah um i guess for me it would be at the end of the it would be like it are my beliefs valid are they true course whether i was brought up protestant or catholic or anything
Speaker: Right. That's what I that's what I try to figure out. everyone my belief Everybody has to do that. i mean, I think this is the this is the strongest argument for education in this in this way is that, you know, I have really no interest in my students being religious or not. like yeah yeah But I want them to interrogate, and I use that word specifically, I want them to interrogate the traditions that they have been raised in, mostly religious, but also economic, also political, right?
Speaker: your tradition cannot withstand questions, then it is a bullshit tradition, right? You may not like sort of the the answers, but you should be able to, that's why I was telling Ron, like, there's no topic that's off limits to me. Like, I don't, I don't feel like attacked by anything because I'm like, yeah, I might be wrong, but I also like know that it can kind of withstand the question, right? and we've got We've had some good conversations in the bar and stuff like that. yeah you you are You're an open book.
Speaker: And if there's a point that can't withstand the question, like I'm always thinking, well, I don't know about that. So now I'm thinking you guys got me thinking about angels and demons and stuff. And i I'm constantly sort of going back over. But like a lot of people don't interrogate anything. Right. they don't They don't. Oh, yeah, for sure. About any of the. And so I think that this is the value of.
Speaker: the humanities, but specifically theology. It's like, even if you end up saying, I don't know about God or like, I think there is no God or whatever, you should at least spend ah like some part of your life asking that question. And for my students, it usually is only a semester, but that's fine. You know? yeah yeah I at least want you find it. But it's true, Ron. like A lot of people just live with like no self-reflection, no reflection on like the question of like what is good, what is evil. like right right you know um you know so So yeah, i mean it's it's quite sad to me, not only because of it's my livelihood, but we're just decimating ethics programs, humanities programs. This is where you end up with an unself-reflective populace that is you know prone to fascism.
Speaker: Yeah. End up with people going, okay, you know, that's fine. Oh yeah. Metaglasses are fine. Like flock cameras. I know. i don't get it because it's like, they don't have any sense of free will or anything. So anyway, now going, that's a good topic. Metaglasses. We should talk about that. Ron. Metaglasses. Yeah. I'm not a fan. I got, I got things to say about that. if I'm not a fan of metaglasses. I had to put, Oh,
Speaker: I had to put like a clause in my syllabus this semester for the first time being like, you can't use metaglasses in class. Like, but they're my prescription. fuck i don't. Yeah. Yeah. It's weird. It's just weird.
Speaker: It's just weird. But, but yeah, I mean, a lot of those folks, like they just don't ever ask the question, like, is this good? Is this good for humanity? Is this good for me? you know, like, yeah base i I think I probably ask questions similar to that to myself. You do, you do. You're a very reflective person, but every but think about your average person, you know, and it's not because they're dumb. It's, it's because, you know,
Speaker: there are people who make a lot of money off of people being unreflective, you know? Absolutely. I mean, that's kind of our society nowadays, right? Like we're kind of brought, we're like you were just saying, we're, we're brought up that way not to think outside the box. Right. And for the and for those of us that do think outside the box, we have podcasts like this. Captive audiences like my students. Yeah, that's right. yeah i mean yeah I mean, you know, this whole thing, the one reason why i brought you on is because this is different and this is shit, you know we want to learn about.
Speaker: Whether people view it or not, that's one thing. Yeah. But, I mean, it'll be great if they do. And it's a hot topic, so I think people will... Yeah. Yeah. Respond to it. But, um i yeah. I do think also if you kind of want to understand...
Speaker: the world, but specifically like what's happening to our country, you should at least know something about religion. Like, agree that's why I always tell my students, I'm like, you can reject it, but you can't pretend like it's not a force in the world, you know? oh absolutely. Yeah, I agree with that.
Speaker: You know, you can you can still kind of have your own, you know, beliefs on it, but you should at least know like what the Bible is and like how people understand it how they misuse it. Like those people, you know. do you Do you guys watch Jeopardy?
Speaker: yeah yeah watched uh no okay because i'm too good at it ron it's too easy yeah cause i don't know exactly no exactly i'm if you okay if you watch jeopardy regularly you probably noticed this over a good 10 to 20 years whenever they put the bible category nobody knows it any anymore yeah it is just not taught anymore it's taught but like you said people They just don't, they either reject it or they, or they cherry pick it. There's a lot of cherry, pick i a lot of cherry picking. i get That's a whole nother topic, but yeah. This is the problem is that my, my discipline has been pigeonholed. It's been, it's been co-opted by,
Speaker: the political right who have basically said, we own this thing. And instead of like Europeans are are kind of much better about this, like understand religion as a discipline to study. And that doesn't necessarily mean, but like, yeah, when, when someone sees like, like I'm going to be teaching the Bible in the spring.
Speaker: If I tell people that they have all these misconceptions about what that is, right. They think I'm like making people memorize Bible verses and like, like that's not, it's more the stuff we were talking about before about. What about Leviticus 18, 20, too what about that yeah yeah and it's like if you hand it over if you're just like oh that's the realm of people that i politically disagree with you are giving that up right you're you you have lost the ability to like engage with that thing that is now a central part of their christian nationalism to be honest with you and like yeah and i agree which means yeah which needs to be called out as a heresy but you can't call it out as a heresy if you don't know the orthodoxy like if you don't know the actual teachings right would you would you say that because people aren't learning the teachings anymore is it get as far as just studying it to study it would you so and they're just following the leader if you will would you say that they're kind of giving up their free will that god has given them a hundred percent yeah okay like i said for me the opposite of faith is not is not doubt it's certainty and anybody who claims to know exactly what god is exactly what god says exactly what god wants that person is ah is a heretic right because i agree you can't be certain about anything you can't
Speaker: and Yeah. That's not to say that you, but you have to at least live, you have to like move in the world, right? So you have to operate on certain certainties, right? But you, but to say like, I know full stop what this particular story means or what this, you know, i mean, i again, I do have some things that I think are pretty true, right? For me, like i said, God is love is probably the the central one. um And i i I'm not going to give that up easily. um But I also don't know what that means. I don't know what the word God actually means because i because it's ah it's an analogy. It's a human word. like I actually don't know the fullness of what love is. So when I say God is love, right I'm operating with an analogy. um And also what you might define as love might be different from what I define as love. Because there are some like...
Speaker: I have some um moral objective, ah you know, arguments against some of the things that God teaches in the Bible. But so it's like, yeah, it's kind of like a subjective, like outlook on what you think.
Speaker: Sure. You know what love would be for someone else. Yeah. And this is why we just constantly need more analogies. Right. So like the one that. is interesting to talk about is like God is father, right? So, so father means something very positive for a lot of people, but for a lot of us, it doesn't. Right. And so I don't want to associate, you know, God with that.
Speaker: That doesn't I necessarily need to get rid of it, but I also need something else. Like I need other analogies, you know? Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, it's a frustrating space to occupy because it's like, I think a lot of people, and Ron, you know this, like when people hear what I do, think they have a lot of misconceptions either on one side or the other, you know, they kind of- Of course, I mean, that's the way mind works now. It immediately goes to politics. Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, you work in religion, so you're a conservative Christian. Right. Yeah, right. Exactly. Yeah. I'm a free thinking Catholic. Very different. Right. Yeah. Which to some people is a contradiction. Like I get that, you know. how Yeah, exactly. I mean, but were I think we're all contradictions, you know, for sure walking contradictions and you kind of just have to acknowledge it. And if you try this is the the purity test that we're in now.
Speaker: This is why we're in this situation that we are, because we're sort of rejecting people for like individual issues. And it's like, people have to live, you know, they have to live, they have to make money, they have to, you know, and I don't know, i think we could all do with being a little less judgmental and i agree yeah open to to uncertainty. and And if I could just say, like, the the biggest issue I have with AI is that it gives the illusion of certainty.
Speaker: um how yeah and And that I think is a spiritual crisis, to be honest. Yeah. Yeah, because when you ask AI something, it tells you this answer, but it's only it's just pulling information from the Internet faster than you can look it up. That's all. Because it it has to give you an answer to give you something. Yeah.
Speaker: So that's the that's the issue. I will never say, I i don't know. a I have said things like, no, that's not right. But they haven't. I don't because I use it on the computer sometimes.
Speaker: I did it for gene genealogy work. And. That's how you came up with all the questions for the episode. that day No, that was from the brain. Yeah, so it's it's a great tool, I think AI is. But to depend on it entirely, such as the metaglasses, things like that, where we start letting it think for us, that's when I think we're getting away from it.
Speaker: Yeah. A lot deeper. Yeah. it led Into a lot deeper territory. that Well, I mean, it's that's scary. Like, you know, some of, some of this stuff is like kind of about temperament, um, the theology. And what I mean by that is that there are people like the three of us who enjoy these conversations that are sort of open-ended and like, we didn't solve anything. And, you know, but there's the plan.
Speaker: people who really are ah you know very uncomfortable with that. And so there is a kind of temperamental kind of quality to this. um And so I do think there's something kind of like natural, but you can also like build it as a skill, like discourse and like being open to these questions and things like that. And I think that the the the younger you start people with a kind of something that like poses itself as an answer machine, the more you're gonna end up with a kind of rigid faith in all sorts of things, right?
Speaker: um That's not necessarily about God, but you're gonna end up with this like, well, no, this machine told me that this is X, or Z. So I'll give you an example. When I teach ethics, And way before ChatGPT and stuff, Snapchat actually had like an AI thing.
Speaker: And I just asked it, like, I asked it, like, what does it mean to be ethical or something like that? And it effectively gave me moral relativism, which is like your version of ethics is whatever.
Speaker: And the way that it proposes that as is like as if that's the universal way of of being, whereas ah there's all of these traditions that are absolutely opposed to moral relativism. But it's sucking up all of this relativism that's just like around, it offers it as a kind of universal thing. And that's really what I'm worried about is sort of the lack of other options, you know, that there's going to be all questions that are just posed. And then like, you know, oh, this is the answer. It's like, no, that's, that's has a very particular location. It's it's similar to a dictionary, to be honest with you. Yeah. And I would definitely think that people should figure out what their own morals are. Like, ah you know, I'm a, have more secular morality and,
Speaker: there There are people that might believe in something or even vote for something because something else told them it was bad rather than them trying to figure it out themselves. I'm like, well, do I actually find this bad or is it because this thing, whatever that thing is, absolutely is telling me it's bad? Every four years I question these things. Every four years.
Speaker: So I've tried to really find a grounding to like where my morality stands and really understand why i believe in the things I believe in rather than just, you know, because something told me or if five following society norms something like that. But I do think that that process of figuring out sort of what your principles are, i think that's done in community with other humans, right? So like, I think that these conversations, like even if you don't agree with somebody, like having a conversation with another person who has their own body, who has their own experiences, has lived in the world, that is sort of the pursuit of truth, right? And that is not possible with like something that is just giving you
Speaker: like word prediction absolutely yep maybe like an angle on it but i i don't think that it actually is tending towards the tending towards the the common like pursuit of truth i think it's actually like a like an obstacle to the truth to be honest yeah you definitely have to talk to other people about morals you know so yeah how can we talk to other people i'm busy i'm doing things Well, it used to be that you could engage with people online. I mean, it like, you know, now it's like I really and kind of getting into like dead Internet theory and stuff. and like Oh, yeah. like We talked about that, I think. Yeah. yeah so but But, you know, but but on its surface, like, you know, social media was not like totally antithetical to this. Like you could engage in some of this stuff, but now it's just –
Speaker: You know, if people aren't aren't using like their own words, like you're no longer using these mediated forums to have an actual conversation, you know? Right. Yeah. That's weird. talk We were talking about MySpace coming back and how it was possibly an anti-algorithm, anti-AI version of social media. I'm like, oh, that would be cool.
Speaker: it would I miss those days. Yeah. When Facebook was like that. Instagram, I think, was never really like that. But yeah. Yeah. Yeah. boring robert no no yeah no no no not at all i got up early today um but i'm i'm always getting up early but um yeah night it's the the demons getting me oh the f sleep paralysis i meant to say sleep paralysis yeah yeah yeah well i think that's that robert yes is it anything else Uh, I don't think so. All right. Catherine, do have anything for us? Anything want to close out with? No, just, you know, thanks for being interested. That means a lot. Yeah. This is also, I think the longest conversation you and I have had sober, which is amazing. So this is also one of our longer episodes. So just want to say thank you so much for being on the show. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Um, Maybe we'll have you back depending on how things go. And, uh, yeah, I'm happy to answer any, any questions I can, you know, and I I'm very happy to say, I don't know, cause there's a lot, I don't know. That's for sure. So. Hell yeah. Anyway. All right, y'all. All right. Thanks for stopping by. Thanks for stopping by. That was fun. That was fun, Ron. That was fun. That was a very interesting conversation.
Speaker: And I do like how this didn't go, you know, it got a little combative at one point because you're a non-believer and a piece of shit. I'm just kidding. Wow. It's one of the two, Ron. But but but it's a healthy it's a healthy conversation, I think we had. And when you have an open mind, such as she does, as we and we do as well, you can have healthy debates. and not necessary and the Let me tell you something, man.
Speaker: I've had some very... That was nothing to some of the beats I had. And I knew it wouldn't be. That's why i wanted her on. Because if we got if we got somebody... on the more conservative Christian side, that would have been a completely different conversation. Oh yeah, for sure. that would That would have been a completely different conversation. So once again, thank you, Catherine, for being on the show. That was great.
Speaker: Had a great time. And um on ah outside of that, ah I just want to say that we have, if you want to support the podcast ah in a way that's not Patreon. We have a buy me a coffee link in our bio. i you You might be surprised to hear, but it does cost money to keep the podcast running. So anything helps the pod. Yes, we're in debt to the pod. So if you'd like to help even a book, what helps us out so that check that out in the bio. ah So buy me a coffee link and appreciate that.
Speaker: Yep. Thanks. That's really it. And next week we'll have a regular scheduled programming. Wow. All right, guys. We'll have the penetrating questions, the fire oven beers. Robert's going rant about something.
Speaker: I got a cold joke. Maybe he's got a cold joke. We'll have more cultures. I'll have three next week. All right, cool. Hold me to it. Okay, I'm going to hold you. To it.
Speaker: All right. Well, I'll see you on the next one, guys. Bye. Hey, everyone. Thanks for listening to today's episode of the Down With DP podcast. If you haven't yet, you can check us out on our socials. We have Instagram at DWDP podcast and on Facebook. Just search Down With DP podcast. If you have a question or a wild story you want us to weigh in on, just fill out our quick anonymous three question form on our socials. or you can email us directly at downwithdppodcast at gmail.com.
