The Catholic Case for a Young Earth | Christian Bergsma (Full LOCALS Show)

A dinosaur bone with intact hemoglobin proteins should make you stop mid scroll. If the standard story says “millions of years,” what do we do with evidence that looks more like “thousands,” and why do the stakes feel bigger than a science argument? We sit down with Christian to talk through the young earth vs old earth debate from a Catholic lens that starts where most conversations never start: what creation is meant to reveal about God Himself. 

We get into why the Church Fathers and scholastic theologians treat creation as a deliberate act of divine teaching, not a distant process God simply watches unfold. That opens into hard questions about Genesis interpretation, the theological problem of death and suffering before the Fall, and why modern “trust the science” instincts can quietly replace the authority of Scripture and tradition with a new default creed. Along the way, we talk dinosaurs and soft tissue, the pitfalls of sediment based dating assumptions, and why radiometric dating rests on big premises about closed systems, contamination, and constant decay rates. 

Then we widen the lens: Graham Hancock’s lost civilization claims, global pyramid style structures, the flood question, and the Sphinx weathering debate. Whether you agree with every conclusion or not, you’ll leave with clearer categories, better questions, and a stronger sense of what’s actually being claimed when someone says “science has settled it.” 

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Transcript

Cold Open And Guest Setup

SPEAKER_03 0:52

These intros are so sick.

SPEAKER_01 1:02

Don't get the wrong idea that that's a specific person. I was that's one of our viewers that's ocean.

SPEAKER_02 1:08

I am so sorry to involve you in our rip rap, Christian. I'm like, that was great. It's like a respected uh young man who is uh no no don't don't believe him.

SPEAKER_01 1:21

He knew that intro was that and he chose it anyways.

Why Christian Studies Creation

SPEAKER_02 1:24

Um so all right, so Christian, you came up um you came up on our show the other night because I saw you on another show, and I I saw your name on it, and I was like, wait, that's John Bergsman's son. I'm like, are you kidding me? That is so interesting. So we were talking about it on locals, and I was like, I'm I'm gonna try and reach out to him and see if we can get in touch with him. But I reached reached out to him. It was really Alex, it was Alex Poe. Yeah, yeah, Alex was on with us. Yeah, so Alex reached out to you, and then I had somebody else reach out to you, but um, but also Ryan Katsu Rivera, who's been a friend of the show for years, he now works for Sam Hyde, and they had an Egyptologist coming on their show soon. And Ryan had called me and he's like, Hey, we have this Egyptologist come on coming on. He kind of subscribes to like the Graham Hancock idea of the age of the universe and like that uh uh oh the age of civilization, like that there was this uh civilization that existed like 25,000 years ago and stuff like that. He's like, Do you have any good um anybody good in mind that I could maybe throw some questions at to maybe just like push back on the guy a little bit? So I've I found out that you do a lot of studying on the theology of of creation and uh some of the stuff you do is on young earth. So I thought you'd be actually the perfect person to get on to discuss some of that stuff with. Um what got you into this uh this area?

SPEAKER_00 2:56

Yeah, um, I'd say I was uh always interested in um the sciences growing up, right? Uh especially biology. Um and uh uh to a lesser extent, maybe you know, some of the others like astronomy. And um, so I always kind of I always kind of knew evolution uh was false. Um and I had a kind of turning point though, I guess I would say, you know, maybe in my teen years or going into college, where I realized that there are actual theological um consequences that come from uh not simply evolution, um, but uh from uh the the reinterpretation of Genesis that uh sort of is birthed in the late 18th century and comes into fruition in the and peaks at the end of the 19th century, um, before you know uh Genesis has kind of thrown out the door altogether. Um so no, I've always been interested in that. You know, obviously, you know, it's no secret, you know, my family, we love the Bible. We're very interested in these kinds of things. Uh so I was reading a lot growing up, and not just a lot of Catholic literature, a lot of other literature, um speaking of ancient civilizations, you know, at a very young age, I read uh Hidden History of the Human Race, uh, which is uh it's a book by a Hare Krishna scientist. And his whole kind of angle is he's trying to advocate for this idea that humanity is actually billions of years old. Um, but his evidence that he shows some of it's quite good. He's uh some of the examples he's gone through, like uh maybe gold chains found in supposedly Pre-Cambrian shale and stuff like that. But I think you can also go the other way around and say, well, maybe this indicts uh the theory that these layers are actually that old in the first place. I've always been inquisitive about that. But what happened, what I where I really got active is people were always asking me questions. Everyone was coming to me, like, Christian, what do you think about this? Christian, you said this one theologian said this thing this one time. Can you and I said, you know what? I don't want to be in a million conversations about this all the time. So I'm just gonna make a telegram channel where I'm gonna post all of all of my research, everything I have, just as a way of keeping notes. And I'm gonna share that with my friends, just my friends, so that my friends aren't asking me questions. They can just go to the channel and copy paste the quote if they're ever in a conversation because they're always like, Hey, I'm in this debate, can you help me out? Um, but then after a while, they started adding more people and started snowballing. So I said, Okay, I'll just make this my thing now.

SPEAKER_02 5:33

Okay, uh, do Rob, let's uh let's plug his telegram for anybody that is actually interested in that. Um I have the I have it here. You have the telegram? Let's make sure we plug that for him to uh to to get him uh as many people on there as possible. So Rob and I uh it's kind of funny. Uh Rob and I we like the way our show progressed. The the uh the first year we covered like um like the the conversion of the pagan world, and then we kind of got tired of that topic, and then we spent like almost a full year diving into young earth evolution, all that stuff. Like we well ones from the Colby Center on, and my entire opinion on the topic completely changed over the course of that year. I had grown up in just like the run-of-the-mill Nova Sordo Catholic world, where we were basically told, oh, we're Catholics, we're not like those crazy Protestants. We believe in uh we believe in evolution and all, you know, we're not against the science and sciences and all this stuff. And the more we looked into it, the more our minds were blown. And I and it just I got to a point where I was like, the the the story of evolution itself and the and the idea that the a the earth is millions and billions of years old uh is just the atheist creation myth. Like that's that's all it is, it's the atheist creation myth, and it's meant to distract us from looking at the actual creation uh story that God gave us. So um did you did you attend that conference uh in Steubenville with uh um Gideon?

SPEAKER_00 7:07

Yeah, I was there. Um, that's how I met Gideon, and uh I saw I saw the episode you you guys had him on, as I recall. Um yeah, so I I know him personally. Uh we share notes sometimes.

SPEAKER_02 7:20

Yeah, that's like it's because I what are some of the big pitfalls you think people fall into by not taking this topic

What Creation Reveals About God

SPEAKER_02 7:28

seriously? Like, like is it is there, but and then I also want to get into like these ancient structures, like the Graham Hancock theory, because I'm not against the idea that all these ancient structures were from the anti-deluvian world, like a pre-flood world, yeah. And then the flood comes, and then after that, civilization reappears and they kind of repurpose these structures and stuff like that. Like, I'm not against that. I just I never had I never knew if we have to like literally believe it's six thousand years old, or can we stretch that a little bit to 10,000 years, 12,000 years? I just know it's not millions and millions of years.

SPEAKER_00 8:07

Okay, well, to uh to to address your first point of the pitfalls, okay. Um people talk about the six days, people talk about six thousand years, they talk about the chronology. Um these are all well and good discussions to have. This is this is all you know worthy to talk about, and the theologians do. Um, but I would say it's not where you want to start if you're going to start thinking about the question, because it's downstream from the real fundamental issues that are at stake. It's that it's sort of downstream, it flows from a fundamental difference that's actually higher up the chain, so to speak. And this difference in understanding is um how does God choose to reveal himself to us, reveal who he is and things about his nature? Because God does he acts completely freely, he doesn't act with any constraints. Okay. So everything he does, he does very, very intentionally, with extreme, extreme precision and reason behind everything he does. And every external act he does, where wherein he manifests himself in some way in the created world, is done for our benefit. This is what all the theologians say is that when he acts, when he acts either miraculously or at the beginning of time, when he was not so much superseding the laws of nature, but rather establishing them, he acts in a way that is directed towards us so that he can pedagogically reveal things about himself to us. And so the question you have to ask is what do God's acts or our interpretation of how God acted in the past in establishing each individual thing in the world reveal to us about him? That is really where the scholastic theologians and the church fathers and also the doctors of the church come in very importantly, because they all say and they all teach us that God chose to act in these unbelievable ways almost that were not uh subject to, firstly, not subject to time because time is a creature, and God wanted to show that he was not uh subject to having to use instrumentality because he was showing the absolute creaturliness of creation and his absolute superiority over it by creating it. So, not subject to long periods of time and also not subject to secondary causes, natural causes. That was the whole point of create of the way he chose to create over the course of six days, or all in a moment, which which whichever interpretation you may take, although the second is while listed is not really exegetically defensible. Um that that's the logic. So St. Francis de Sales, for example, makes this contrast when he he there's this part in one of his books where he's talking about the creation of the stars and how God didn't make a star here and make a star there, but he actually created the sun and the stars all in the same instant, all the celestial bodies he makes in the same instant. And Saint Francis de Sales says he makes a contrast between how nature works and how God works. And he's saying God created in a certain way to contrast himself to nature, to set himself apart to nature, because he knew he really foresees the fall and he wants to communicate his nature to fallen people who you know eventually really will uh start worshiping nature. And so Saint Francis de Sales makes this comparison between a painter and a printer, right? So a painter has to often brush over his own details, he has to start in one corner and finish in another and add a detail here and there. And he says this is kind of how nature works to bring something about. But God is like a picture printer, he has the whole stamp and just slams it down, and all of the details are there. And and this is how yeah, this is how God sets himself apart. So I would say that is really the key thing we have to get at here is that the God, the old earth creationist God is essentially a deist god, and all and on old earth creationists, old earth creationism in general comes from deists, it comes from really Buffon and other deists who are drawing from Boulanger, who is an atheist, actually. But um he's a de essentially a quasi-deist god because he interferes here and there, he'll create life here and there, right? Uh, but for the most part, for like non-organic matter, he lets things develop and and he stands back. And this creates this kind of distance, right? Uh between uh uh our perception of us and God. So um, and not the good kind. So um that that's uh I think the fundamental point. And I can go into more detail if you like, but no, no, I want to I want to jump on this. On a very high level, on a very high level, I would say that's the distinction that first has to be made before we even get to talking about are the six days of creation 24 hour days or not, or is it 12,000, is it six thousand a year? Before you get into any of that, you need to understand what does creation actually mean? What is God's intention by doing this and revealing it to us, right?

SPEAKER_02 13:25

I I think that the what you just said there about him being the master over time is such an important one, right? Because God stands outside of time, he's not subject to time. It's how even prophecy is revealed because God knows the story before it's finished, right? Like, so that's that's how prophecy works. Like he can tell us exactly what's going to happen in in in the most beautiful way where he gives it to us in prophecy where we don't know it until it's fulfilled and you only see it in hindsight. But the fact that he's not subject to time is such an important thing that he doesn't kind of like set something in motion and kind of let it play out and just you know, I'll take Yeah. St.

SPEAKER_00 14:07

Augustine has that rhetorical question where he's he's posing the question rhetorically was at did Adam develop like an embryo, or was he made in an instant out of the slime of the earth? And he poses that question, was the maker of time in need of time? You know, as a as a as a question to answer his question, right? And uh uh Saint Um Cyril of Alexandria, for example, he talks about the way God creates, and he says he he does it instantaneously and incomprehensibly, just according to his will. That's the words he used instantaneously and incomprehensibly, um, in a way that kind of begars belief, right? Anyway, go on.

SPEAKER_02 14:48

Yeah, no, it's just uh it's because I remember growing up, it was always kind of taught to us like, well, you know, a day in the eyes of the Lord is but a thousand years, you know, you know, so they kind of like throw those those things at you, and you just I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 15:04

Yeah, but that also goes back the other way. Like um uh uh Luisa Granada, for example, Luis de Granada, oh the the great Dominican uh mystic uh and the theologian. Um he says, even if God had a thousand years or or or ten thousand years to contemplate how he was going to create, he still wouldn't have created any differently than he did. And he's explaining why God didn't make in this passage, why God didn't make this fish now and this fish later, but he actually made every kind of fish, every kind of aquatic creature simultaneously in the same moment. And uh he was uh basically his his ultimate point in the passage is that he he did that to uh uh manifest his glory in a way that would cause shock and awe and basically you know prom uh instill the fear of God and worship in man. Um, and that's what that's you know what Moses communicates to us.

SPEAKER_02 16:00

But go on. Did you did you get into this? Like, were you starting to debate people when you got it when you started uh studying this stuff? Or was it just like a a passion of yours on the side where you just started reading the church fathers and and it kind of just developed like that?

SPEAKER_00 16:14

I did I did one debate uh at Franciscan. There was a student debate. We've tried twice to have another one, but both times the um we've had we've run into issues um where either people we were gonna have present uh on our side chickened out, or else um uh the the opposing side uh would would say, oh, I don't the Colby Center, they're uh dirty, I don't trust them or something, and back out or something stupid like that. That was back when I was working for the Colby Center a little a little more frequently. Um yeah, I mean, I would get into certain debates with my friends, especially on like the cosmology aspect of it, but a lot of that was very scientific. I think it's it's really when you really see the evidence with the fathers and uh the scholastic theologians, it uh you know, the the weight, the theological weight is really stacked against uh uh stacked against you if you take an honest approach. And the best you can say is, well, you know, the position hasn't been condemned and you know it's been tolerated and stuff like that, but it's hard to make a positive theological argument for it rather than just like a negative one. Um and uh and so people you know say, well, the science, the science, we gotta trust the science, whatever. So that's that's usually where it ends up if you try to debate people.

SPEAKER_02 17:24

Well,

Dinosaurs And Protein Preservation

SPEAKER_02 17:25

yeah. So what do you make of because we've we were told our whole lives that dinosaurs are millions of years old, right? And these were six, like it's kind of interesting if you watch, I know you don't want to do evolution, but it uh like uh tonight.

SPEAKER_00 17:39

Well, no, this is good because dinosaurs are a great example, and they actually provide us a great uh uh uh argument against the old earth. Because if dinosaurs are these millions of years old, ostensibly, how do we still have intact hemoglobin proteins that we're pulling out of them? And this is the thing, guys. One thing you have to realize, because this is uh people have been talking about this for a while, but uh I think it was just last year we got a development in this case. Because for the longest time, people, you know, we talk about, you know, we find blood, traces of blood, blood cells, whatever, um, in in T-Rex bones. And the the argument was, oh, it's just heme. It's not blood, it's just heme. You know, it's just a part of the hemoglobin protein that makes blood. Um, and it's and it's long since broken down. Well, come to find out, I believe it was either this year or or late last year, uh, turns out there there are in fact intact hemoglobin proteins in T-Rex bone fragments that we're pulling out. Guys, this is a protein that you can't even keep intact in a in control lab environments for more than a few for for for a for a very long time, okay, before it breaks down. Because temp mild temperature fluctuate fluctuations, sorry, tend to break down organic pro organic uh uh molecules very quickly. All right, hemoglobin in a T-Rex, this thing cannot be more than a few thousand years old. I'm sorry, that it's like that this is a pretty knockout case, okay? So dinosaurs is a great example if we want to talk about that.

Geology Layers And Time Assumptions

SPEAKER_02 19:12

Well, I I just I just I just find it interesting. Like uh the one of the one of the most interesting things that Hugh Owen brought up to us when he was on was that the way the way science works is they will see that a layer of uh let's say a layer of dirt forms on something uh over the course of 10 years at this rate. So then they just multiply that rate by a million times, and that's how they get their number. And it's like you're you're acting as if the the environment around that dirt never changed. Like there was not some major event that could have changed the the uh the the environment that that that layer of whatever it was.

SPEAKER_00 19:56

This was the weakness of the epistemological assumptions uh of the uh 19th century geologists or an 18th century geologist, uh like Hutton, Lyell, Covier, however, whoever you want to include in there. Um because their arguments were based on sedimentology, they didn't have radiometric dating. And so Lyell would um uh make some assumption on uh you know, like layers of sand or something like that, and you would project that back. Um the funny thing about those kinds of assumptions is that firstly the geologists don't really use that to date anymore, even though that that dating method was what was used to try to to and really to great effect to kind of undermine everyone's faith in the biblical chronology. That was what everyone abandoned the biblical chronology for, is this now outdated and passe method of saying we have this layer and then we have this layer, and we're going to project so many uh hundreds of thousands, millions of years between these two layers. Um, that's no longer really how the time scale is set. It's really radiometric dating. In in uh in 1932, they sort of um or sometime in the 30s, they sort of realized that, oh, like this stuff isn't really rigorous, and everyone kind of switched over to radiometric dating, but radiometric dating is really the only uh standard used today, uh objectively. But what's funny too is after the fact, we have guys like Guiberto, who you know, in his like warehouse-sized laboratory with these uh fluid sluices, has proved that in in these flows where you have different kinds of sediments altogether, multiple layers are actually being deposited at once. So you can't point at one layer and say there's this gap of so many years between the layer. And so all the assumptions of the 19th century and 18th century geologists are all in the trash now. And yet that was what was used to make everybody abandon, um abandon uh this stuff. And and now they use radiometric dating, and we can get we will get into that. Um but he Yeah, yeah, that's uh that's kind of funny

Death Suffering And The Fall

SPEAKER_00 22:03

if you think about it.

SPEAKER_02 22:03

I w I wanna I want to jump into some of the theological stuff because even uh Rob's wife is in the chat, and Rob's wife's kind of one of the first ones that kind of tried to red pill Rob and I on this subject is pretty good. So uh one of the major issues I came up and and found theologically was well, if sin and death come through the world through the eating of the of the forbidden fruit, and evolution happens to bring man about, like how does that like that means there's millions of years of death, killing, suffering, disease, all these things. So sin and death is already in the world before Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit.

SPEAKER_00 22:39

Yeah, so uh what that's a little complicated because I would say excuse me, there isn't there isn't it's it's dis it's kind of divided. The fathers are kind of divided, the theologians kind of divided whether there's some form of animal death before the fall, okay. But what's really the kicker is the suffering, because uh the the there's a and my I'm drawing a blank here, great medieval poet who wrote about this. Uh but he talks about how uh before the fall, it's possible that that the certain certain animals would pass away from age for natural causes, right? Not for necessarily from predation, but they would do so without pain. Uh but they would do so may uh perhaps as uh in a pedag for a pedagogical reason, so man wouldn't really know what death was, right? What that when God said if you eat of this, you'll die, you know, he actually has that natural knowledge of like, oh, that that's what he means. I'm gonna like and but he the the theologians say they would just go back to the dirt, they they wouldn't like molder and and and rot in the same way, they would they would just go back into the ground. Um so the real thing is like cancer, they're like horrible suffering, some of these really sick acts of predation that we see in nature, like these kinds of things existing for millions of years before the fall, when the theologians all talk about the the these things as being uh more or less and to greater or lesser degrees, results of nature's bondage to sin. And that's the thing is that the modern theologians have given up the idea that nature was affected by the fall, they just think you know humans uh were. But since all creation is under his dominion, yes, exactly. And all of it, and this is the explicit, this is something we argued about at the uh conference uh that Gideon was at, you mentioned because one of these guys was trying to trying to say that, well, the fathers actually say that the the animals weren't subject to this, which is completely not true. And I would I would proof text all I started proof texting all these fathers against some like uh St. John Chrysostom, for example. Their explicit interpretation of St. Paul is that nature has become subject to suffering, to a greater degree of suffering that ever existed before the fall because of us, because all of nature was under our dominion. And if you don't mind me going on a little further, this dovetails into one of the other greater theological issues with the old earth. Because the theologians, all the saints, uh the Bible, all of it tell us that all of nature was set under man's dominion, that man was the pinnacle of creation, that he was supposed he was what everything was made for. So all creatures were made for his service, even the stars. Okay. Uh, I think it's Deuteronomy 4. It's either Leviticus or Deuteronomy. My dad's gonna kill me. But uh Leviticus or Deuteronomy 4. Maybe it's Leviticus 4. I think it's Leviticus 4, actually. No, it wouldn't be Deuteronomy. So Leviticus 4 says that um all of the do not you know gaze up at the stars and think to worship them because they were made for the service of the nations. So even though the stars were made either for our wonderment or for uh being able to navigate and tell time and stuff like that. So all of these creatures were made for our sake. Yet in the old earth model, most of the creatures who've ever lived on this planet uh on this globe, I should say, Hugh Owen's gonna kill me if I call it a planet. Um ever lived on this globe have lived their entire existence and gone extinct and disappeared completely long before man came on the scene. They had no relationship to us, let alone dominion. We never had dominion over those creatures. We never knew about them until very recently, and they never had any relationship to us. So the only conclusion is that they were made for their own sake. So it's another one of these problems that you guys have had uh O'Connor on to talk about aliens and stuff, where it's this idea that you know the Bible really just concerns man and his sphere, but there's other creatures made for their own sake and stuff like that, you know, multiple incarnations or whatever. But it comes down to the same problem with the old earth that most of the creatures who are ever made on this earth were made for the basically for their own sake, because they never had any relationship to man at all. They never were made for a service, and that's a that's a really big pro bad problem because then it's like, are we are we that special? Are we really the pinnacle, the the cream of creation? Maybe God does love us in some way and he cares for us, but there's this distance, there's this veil that gets put between us and God all of a sudden. It's to make us insignificant, right?

SPEAKER_02 27:16

Like to all all of that. That's why I see all of these topics evolution, aliens, uh, old earth, all of these topics are very tightly connected because all of them are made to make us feel insignificant and to make it seem like we're just you know an accident.

SPEAKER_00 27:34

Yeah, or just part of this, you know, grand uh cosmic scheme, but we're not actually the summit of it.

Tradition Versus Trust The Science

SPEAKER_02 27:43

I I find it really frustrating that a lot of the um the mainstream Catholic uh voices out there are so uh they go so easy on the alien question and evolution, like not just either like they'll they'll say, well, you know, none of this is uh defeat a you're allowed to hold these opinions, but they don't just they don't just say like, oh, you're allowed. It's more like uh the acceptable thing is to believe in evolution and old earth, but we'll allow you to allow it. We won't call you a heretic for it, but you are still an idiot if you kind of believe that like that's the impression they give. And it's pretty pretty frustrating. Do you do you think it's I do think the younger generation is turning on that though? Like, I think I think the younger converts and all the younger people coming into the faith, they're definitely changing their position on a lot of this stuff.

SPEAKER_00 28:39

Yeah, people are pretty tired of it. You get pretty sick of it because it's just shoved down your throat, and it's being you know shoved down your throat by people at this point who you're probably not gonna terribly like or respect. Um because they're you know boomers, um, or or whatever, Gen X, same diff at this point. Um But yeah, I mean that that is the thing, is that the default is that you know, is uh believeless science. And uh if you you can believe what you want, but you know, that's kind of you're you're kind of an idiot. Whereas it really it's the other way around. I mean, the the burden of proof is on the scientists, and proof in the scientific world is a very, very high bar, right? And this is this is you know what uh Cardinal Mazella and and Cardinal Bellerman talk about uh with with the sciences, even if they there wasn't these strong theological arguments, even if it wasn't say an ex profeso consensus of the fathers, it was just a regular consensus. We still ought to default to that tradition in the absence of proof, and we don't have the proof, you know. That burden of proof lies with the scientists. But this sort of started to change. This this attitude of the burden of proof started to change sometime in the 18th century because beforehand you had the congregation, the index, you had the censorship. They took the approach that we can legitimately censor a scientist for making claims uh uh of something to be physically true when it goes against the consensus of the theologians or the consensus of the fathers, uh, you know, until it's it's absolutely proven. And absolute proof is a very high bar. Um, or you know, so even if it wasn't you know going against something defidae, if it's just something that's you know a pious belief, we still need to default to that pious belief in the absence of proof. That got turned around with one of the guys who came into the congregation, the index, Father Jacques Hyacinth Sari, or Jacinto Seri, one of the Dominicans. And I'm sorry to say he's not my favorite theologian. Um, but he's one of one of these Thomas Dominican uh theologians. Um, but uh not not one. Around what year? By any means, I don't think. Uh 1730s. So he comes in and he says I he says, I don't, yes, but he says, I don't believe there was this big debate going on around Cartesian physics at the time because Cartesian physics doesn't really seem to work with the the dogma of transubstantiation. And then there was also the debate of oh, well, should we relax the restrictions on geocentrism and all that? I'm not gonna get into all that. But he says, I don't even think geocentrism is true. He says, I don't even think Cartesianism is true, but we don't have any right to censor these guys unless we can absolutely prove that there is no way we can twist the words of scripture, there's no way we can change the words of scripture to fit with what they're saying. So it's the complete inverse of how it was, where it was, unless you can absolutely prove that it's true, we're not going to change our interpretation of scripture. Now it's unless we can absolutely prove that there's no way we can change scripture to work with what you're saying, we can't censor you. That was his and so that started not immediately, but that started to grow and and just kind of snowball that kind of uh Yeah.

Big Bang Priest And Modernism

SPEAKER_02 31:47

One thing that annoys me is when people brag about how it was a Catholic priest who came up with the big bang. I'm like, Yeah, that guy sucked.

SPEAKER_00 31:53

Yeah, he sucked. He was a complete modernist. He liked he uh he didn't believe in miracles, he didn't but he thought the story of uh the book of Jonah was completely made up because he thinks it's a scientific absurdity for a man to be to survive inside a whale, which I guess it is, but that's a whole point. It's a miracle. But he didn't really, if you really, really read between the lines of what he's saying, and not even just between the lines, it's almost explicit. He did not actually believe in miracles. He was actually like opposed to the idea. And this is this is where people make a huge mistake with the Big Bang, is that they think that the Big Bang is let there be light. Yes, it's let there be light, or it's a re and and and uh Lemaitre didn't actually like Pius XII making that comparison. He actually corrected Pius XII for that. But they think that it's um uh the fur it it implies a first mover or implies an hour of motion. But if you actually look at the math that he did, and it's it's not great great, it doesn't make sense. But his argument was that what was basically that the universe moved itself at the beginning because he wanted to separate the idea of miraculous or the idea of God interfering with nature out so much that he wanted a mode of beginning for the universe that actually he won so you know steady state wasn't working out. We needed some way that time sort of starts moving, but he wants to find a way for time to start moving that doesn't involve that initial flick. And so he's very explicit about this that there is that the idea of a first mover is a purely philosophical, uh met or well, really metaphysical idea that God sort of that maybe creation emanates from God and and or or proceeds from God in this metaphysical way, but physically there is no first mover, and that's like uh you know all damn near denying dogma. It probably is. Yeah, um, so now he was a heretic, he sucked. Yeah, all the all these guys, oh man.

SPEAKER_02 33:52

Whenever whenever people say that, I'm just like, stop pointing that out. Yeah, it's the dumbest.

SPEAKER_00 33:58

That's like the lowest, all these like low low IQ, like Catholic slop, like, oh look, Catholics did cool things in the history.

SPEAKER_02 34:04

Oh, it really is. It really is that. It really is that pointing out at some bad.

SPEAKER_01 34:12

You guys know Kevin James is Catholic too.

SPEAKER_02 34:14

That's it's literally what it is. It's like like somebody posting that you know, some somebody, some some famous Catholic was wearing their rosary. It's like cool, oh my god. Okay, we get it.

SPEAKER_00 34:24

That guy Sachin knows that.

SPEAKER_02 34:25

Yeah, it's like that's the worst of oh my it is the worst Catholic slot there is, man. It's so funny.

SPEAKER_01 34:35

Why did you block this guy on Twitter, Ant?

SPEAKER_02 34:38

Oh, we have that we'll do that on locals because there's so much I want to get to on locals that I I have to I want to wait till we're over there because I definitely want to. I like I know you lost a brother recently. Like, I want to I'd rather talk that kind of stuff on on the other side. So um there's there's a lot of questions I have uh for you, but we'll do it, we'll do it behind the paywall so that it's you know, if there's anything you don't want us to put out, we'll delete it or anything like that. But um yeah, all right. So some of the other theological um so are there are there other like theological theologically important things that Catholics really do need to to grasp about the way God tells us creation happened versus the way the secular world tries to convince you that it happened?

SPEAKER_00 35:21

Yeah, I mean uh just in no particular order. Um we are not only bound to the consensus of the fathers when they speak ex profeso, when they speak of something as a matter of faith, which in this case they do, okay. They do actually speak about it as a review matter of revealed faith, divine faith, and not just a physical proposition. Excuse me. Um but also to one overlook thing, I think is the scholastic theologians. These are theologians from roughly uh medieval times to about uh the end of the 17th century, beginning of the 18th century. And if you actually look at the the theological manuals, uh the theology about the scholastics, um, they actually also have a slightly less, but basically a somewhat binding consensus. Okay, where if if they're in consensus on something, then it provides us with theological certainty. Um now, maybe, maybe not uh uh maybe maybe it's not as binding to the same degree. I'm not, I don't know. I'm a you'd ask asker. Is that a dogma? Um Ribburger, it yeah, it's it it's it we'll we'll say it's a certainty of the faith, which is proximate to dogma. That's what we would say. So Ribiger has a book about this, so you you can read, he's done done the work. Uh Cardinal Mazzella uh talks about this. So when we look at those scholastics, they even go further in depth, even than the fathers, building on the fathers, of course. Um, so that's something to take into consideration is that when you read these guys who in these theologians uh in the 19th century who start throwing the stuff out, throwing the common understanding of Genesis out, and introducing all these new theories. And their theories of interpretation vary person by person. They have no really like they have very little common ground because um, as Father Barewell says, what you get is a a different interpretation of the Bible for every different theory, right? So it just they're it just made a mess of theology of Genesis. Um, but when you read them, they don't consult the fathers, they don't do a careful, they'll maybe talk about Augustine, they'll quote my they'll mine a quote here and there from Augustine, take it out of context. Uh they'll talk about St. Thomas, they won't talk about the other fathers, or they'll straight up lie or make stuff up about the fathers, which I've seen in some of the theological manuals. Was one guy from Notre Dame? I forget. Uh Monsignor Cowley uh was just saying the fathers were saying things they weren't even saying. So that and this guy's book was like very popular in America in the 19th century uh for for seminaries. So um they don't take that into consideration, but these are things that actually bind us. So anyway, that's a very long way of saying, uh, yeah, one of the considerations we have to take into account is is the fathers and the but also the scholastics. Um so that's that's another theological problem because you're just you just have to say the scholastics were wrong and unanimously wrong, you know.

SPEAKER_02 38:23

That's what that's yeah, that should bother anybody, right? It's like and yeah, and and not just that, like you see how much the world has been disrupted since people started taking that position that the scholastics were wrong, right? You see the the like uh the the pravity that the sciences have gotten into. You see, like once you remove the theological underpinnings of science, and once once you once you stop following this very specific structure that the church had put in place for the way we understand the sciences, it devolves into us creating chimeras and and and trying to you know genetically modify things.

SPEAKER_01 39:04

I mean, look how look how worried um was it Pius or Leo? Uh Leo was with uh attorney Patras. Remember that cycle? Yeah, where he like you know, he he foresaw so much of the last 150 years uh intellectual.

SPEAKER_00 39:22

I agree. I mean, he he uh I think he he went too easy uh on the theologians of his time as well. I think he went he went definitely went too easy. Obviously, his magisteriums is is impeccable. Um damn, even his poetry is impeccable. He was writing poems uh get calling out the the the rise of evolution. I don't know if you knew that Leo the Thirteenth was, but anyway, um but I think and I do think he was a little he was uh uh overly permissive at uh with that's one of the issues we so we've been doing we've been doing like a series on papal encyclicals, and it's like you read the encyclicals and they're phenomenal, and you're just like, oh my goodness, this is so great.

SPEAKER_02 40:00

But then you find out behind the scenes they're kind of just way too permissive because they're trying to figure out a way to yeah, yeah, there was a lot of things on the prudential level.

SPEAKER_00 40:12

There there were things left to be desired, um for sure. Um, and that's that's one thing I wanted to. That's what I'm doing with this with integrity magazine right now. Because right now I haven't been putting a lot of like creationist content up there yet, because I don't think people are always quite ready for it. Because what they need to understand first is that you can't just trust something because it came, it was written before the council and got an implementer before the council, okay? That you can't that this is what I'm trying to wake people up to, and so I'm looking at general things, general things in in biblical scholarship. I'm not getting to creation quite yet, but I want to wake people up to the fact that this is very deeply rooted, it goes to the French Revolution and a little bit, you know, a little before. So it was building up 200 years before the council. So all this stuff, people people like, oh, it's it's an imprimatur in 1958. That means you know, it's like no.

SPEAKER_02 41:01

This is actually kind of the stuff I want to talk to you about on the other side. I want to I want to get into some of that

Graham Hancock And Flood Explanations

SPEAKER_02 41:06

stuff. I didn't know if you you wanted to talk about it over here, but um but before we do go over there though, I do want to talk to because all right, so the the Graham Hancock series that came out. Um when I watched that, I was listening to his theories on like all well, you know, the the younger dryest and all these different things, and I'm like meltwater pulse 11b or whatever, yeah. Yeah, like he's coming up with all these theories, and it's like uh he he his point is that uh civilization was together, he was trying to come up with a a like a logical reason why structures in South America look almost identical to structures you're finding in China and structures you're finding all over the world. Like you're finding these structures, they're all pyramids and things like that. And when I watched it, I'm saying, first off, the event he's talking about is the flood. And yes, my interpretation of it was the reason these structures look similar, probably, is because they are temples built to gods, and gods, no matter where on the planet they are, are are desiring to be worshipped similarly. And that's why you're finding these structures throughout the world. Yeah, that's part of it.

SPEAKER_00 42:18

And also it's it's um diaspora from a very uh uh you know tight-knit group of original humans who all sort of share this uh these ancestral strains, uh, you know, that don't go that far back. It's actually easier to explain these things if they're less ancient, because all of humanity has a more recent connection, right? Cultural or memory um than if these are 20,000 years old. So here's what here's what I respect about Graham Hancock and Robert Schock and these guys, okay? Um they are the they are some of the only people, only people in the old earth and evolutionist camp who are trying to actually address a huge elephant in the room for that side, okay? Because there is a really big problem that you run into with old earth. Uh so firstly, starting off, homo, you have homo longi skulls, and homo longi, they're they're essentially anatomically human. The evolutionists would say they're a close they're a sister's a sister species, the closest to us that interbreeded with us. So an old earth creationist would just say they're human, okay? They're they're humans essentially. Um you have so these homo longi, which are basically human skulls that are coming up with with dates, radiometric dates to a million years ago or beyond. You have human footprint footprints, anatomically perfect human footprints that are found in uh layers in England, and these layers are supposed to be about 900,000 years old. Okay. So the age of humanity keeps getting pushed back and back and back and back and back. And the problem is in the conventional time scale, we only really get writing advanced. Art, agriculture, serious uh civilization in the last like 10,000 years. So if humanity is that old, where's the receipts? Where's the civilization? Okay. So Graham Hancock is at least trying to engage with this question. He's trying to add so he's at least trying to be intellectually honest, which I respect it for. And by the way, he added me back on LinkedIn when I reached out to him, which is weird. I don't know why, because he I was literally nobody has no idea who I am. So maybe he just adds people on LinkedIn. So everybody go add Graham Hancock on LinkedIn. Maybe, maybe he'll add you back. Um so anyway, that's what I kind of respect about him. He's trying to deal with this glaring issue that you have like, you know, humanity is just running around throwing rocks and sticks for almost a million years before they start doing stuff. Okay. Um the the problem with him is that he's not really consistent in his method. And so I'll give you an example. The the first place he goes in in his documentary, at least the one I saw, is Gunung Padang, which is this megalithic structure in West Java. And he makes his claim is that it's 20,000 years old and that it predates all of the Javan civilization that's there. And uh he bases this off one drilling that was done and some radiometric dating, some carbon dating, I believe it was, that was done on the soil underneath it, which firstly shouldn't even really be relevant because the age of the soil doesn't determine the age of the structure built on top of it. But anyway, so um, and they and and also it's based on radiometric dating, which we can get into tons of problems with that. The problem is he always talks about these traditions, you know, these oral traditions, these written traditions, uh, that humanity has this kind of collective memory of these certain things, right? But then he disregards the oral traditions when they conflict with his information, uh sorry, when they conflict with his uh position. So, case in point, the local Javanese people say that this structure was built during the Muslim conquest of Java by a king who refused to convert. Um, and they they this king is semi semi-mythical in the sense that we know he was a real guy, we just we're not quite sure which historical king we want to link it to. But they say that their king built this uh during the Muslim conquest of Java in like the 1400s, you know. So why wouldn't you? If I was an ethnologist or an anthropologist or an archaeologist or whatever, urologist, whatever, I would listen to the uh uh testimony of the locals, right? Yeah, because that that would seem to okay, they say it was built in the Middle Ages. Yeah, that makes sense. You know, they've been well.

SPEAKER_02 46:44

He also there's the a couple of other problems he has is one is that he completely refuses to acknowledge the Christian myth, right? Like not the myth, but you know what I mean. Like the Christian legend that the whole earth was flooded. Like that he'll he'll touch on all these crazy events that could have happened, but he will not acknowledge that there's a biblical flood that we all that like every culture on earth has this memory of a flood.

SPEAKER_00 47:09

I think I think he realizes there's this ancestral memory of the flood, but he wants to make it a he wants he wants a naturalistic uh explanation. Yeah, he wants one that he can sell to uh to a broader audience. Um Christian adjacent, like because he believes in the Ark uh the Covenant and that it was like hidden, he has this whole documentary on the Ark of the Covenant, but anyway.

SPEAKER_02 47:36

What he did reveal is that when you try to challenge the consensus of the narrow of like the progression of human history, like if you try to challenge it at all, like the the consent they freak out, right? Like, so if if you if you try to push against what they've established as well, this is exactly what happened. If if you push against that at all, they'll call you a racist, they'll call you like they'll go nuts on them, they'll call you anything to get you to shut your mouth because they don't want anybody to hear that you're pushing against this theory that they've come up with, and it's like you have to just take you have to take it as if it's written in stone, whatever theory they've come up with.

SPEAKER_00 48:19

Yeah, and I respect him for that, you know, because he's he's actually doing his his thing, you know. Yeah, he's doing his own thing. Um with Robert Schock, that who I believe is gonna be on Sam H. That's who's supposed to be going on Sam Hunt. Yeah, yeah.

The Sphinx Weathering Debate

SPEAKER_00 48:33

So so his whole thing is the the Sphinx flooding. And I'll just go over this, what I think about this briefly, just my thoughts for whatever they're worth. And I I know other people in the Colby Center, like my geologist friend Adam R, who I'm actually writing a paper about the flood with right now. Um, that'll be out soon, but uh, he has his own theory about you know how this works. Okay. But that but this is these are my thoughts. Okay, you look at the Sphinx, and according to Robert Schock, and I have no reason to believe he's making this up, that there's there's weathering from heavy rain, there's apparent weathering from heavy rain, okay? There's water damage on at least. I don't know if it was submerged or not, but it was water damage at least apparent on the Sphinx. Um my thought, uh my initial thought is this if you go down to the border between Sudan and Egypt and you walk away from the Nile, so you just go way, way, way out in the desert, you find Nubian rock art where they're depicting sailing boats out in the desert, okay? Um, and raising cattle in the marshes out there and stuff like that. And there's crocs and hippos. Okay. Where and and this is this is pure desert for miles and miles and miles, as far as you can see. And apparently it was once like wetlands, like very, you know. Um, so there's good evidence that at some point in the past, and and conventionally they'd say 5,000 years ago, I'd say it's closer to 4,000. And there are some mainstream sources that would agree with me. Um the monsoon belt that goes through Africa was quite a bit broader and reached way farther up north. Even today, you'll get the occasional heavy rain shower on a freak day in Cairo where the Sphinx is. So I'm just saying I don't see it as unreasonable to think that at one that at one time in the not so distant past it was raining pretty heavily in Cairo when they built the Sphinx. That's like my that's like the simplest possible explanation. So I think that's probably the best explanation. Now, now Adamar has a very interesting, complicated theory of how that works with the post-flood world and all that. Um, so you know, uh, I'm not dogmatic about this. Oh my gosh, I hit my computer. Um, but yeah, that's my thoughts on it.

Sponsors Telegram And Superchats

SPEAKER_02 50:46

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SPEAKER_00 51:35

Okay, because that's what I've been using. I've been I don't do anything that's less than maybe nine milligrams. I do 12 and 100, probably. Uh 12 to 900. We're gonna hook you up.

SPEAKER_02 51:44

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SPEAKER_01 52:29

Do we want to answer any of the questions we have so far, though?

SPEAKER_02 52:32

Are they super chats? Uh, there are some, yeah. If they're super chats, yes. If they're not super chats, then no, these cheap people need to pay for locals and send money when they got questions. I am tired of the freebies. So if it's a super chat, bring it up.

SPEAKER_01 52:47

How would a geocentric earth change the way we view God's creation of the universe?

SPEAKER_00 52:53

Uh, I would say that the the initial issue with geocentrism wasn't actually the anthropocentrism of the universe, although that's related. That's something people get wrong a lot, is that people thought that man wouldn't be the center of the universe if geocentrism was dethroned. Now they did think that, but that wasn't the real controversy. Controversy is the authority of scripture and the authority of the exegetes and and and how that relates to science. So it's it would indirectly change our view. Um, I would say, but I'd say that most the more direct intro the more direct issue with geocentrism is the idea of scripture. Okay. So it's a scriptural idea. Anthropocentrically, though, um certainly uh it would um I think it's it's a much grander thing to believe that the heavens are in motion than that we are, right? It's a much grander thing that to think rather than the earth as being in motion, that the heavens are in motion. And when the theologians talk about God, the saints talk about God putting the heavens into motion around us, um, there is a there's a real, I think, sublime beauty to that. I think I've benefited very much by accepting geocentrism. I'm not necessarily dogmatic about it, maybe not as much as some of the others in the in the say the Colby Center circles. Um, but I think my my personal uh love of God, my feeling of intimacy with God has grown by realizing that there is nothing physically, there is no real physical objection to geocentrism. There's nothing preventing it from being true. And so why not just accept it?

SPEAKER_02 54:25

You know, you said uh uh you said Hugh Owens would get mad if you called us a planet instead of a globe. Why why is that?

SPEAKER_00 54:31

Because the the earth is not a planet, the earth is the earth, the earth is unique, the planets are the planets. The planet means a wanderer, a planet uh it wanders around, you know, in the sky, it doesn't have the fixed course like the fix like the fixed stars. Um, but the earth is not one of those. And the in and tihard de Chardon was absolutely right when he said that the at the Galileo trial, it was actually the evolutionary ideology that was at stake. And here's why because it's the idea of categories. What is the earth? The earth is a planet. What is man? Man is an animal, right? What is uh it's it it keeps devolving to where this one thing that's unique. What is the sun? The sun's just a the sun is a star. No, the sun is not a star, the sun is the sun. Okay, so these things that are unique and special because of their relationship to humanity, and they're actually designed specifically. Our planet are not our globe and this the uh sun were designed specifically for us, and they're not they're not the same as any of the other bodies out there exactly. Um, but to say the sun is a star, the earth is a planet, man isn't is a is an animal. We take these special things that God made uh as pinnacles of the creation, and we reduce them to the same level of everything else. Um, and to we we just bump put them in these categories where they don't really stand out uniquely. So um, yeah, that's why Hugh Owen's totally right. You should not call the earth a planet. It's not a planet, it's the earth. This is this is I love how passionate you are about this. This is amazing.

SPEAKER_01 56:01

Uh, do we have any other super chats, Rob? Uh yes, one.

SPEAKER_02 56:05

Uh, if evidence is so good for young earth, why do most in mainstream science not back the theory? I find this topic fascinating. Secular science bias has corrupted the mainstream.

SPEAKER_00 56:15

Um okay. So, I mean, if the evidence is so good for young earth, there we you can't physically prove young earth. There's no like there's no like physical, and you can't prove physically prove old earth. That's the thing, is that science doesn't prove things. So the when we talk about things like, you know, if the evidence is so good for that, the evidence is so good for that, a lot of this is very interpretive and based on your worldview. So that's why you gotta really start with a theology. And obviously, the scientists are never good, you know, the vast majority of the scientists, vast majority of people live in a secular world. They, you know, they're not gonna accept a religious principle, right? No, you know, no, I have never met a um a person who came over from evolutionism or old earth who did so for physical reasons, for like they saw the physical proof and they were convinced. Okay, maybe a few people with evolution. Oh, yeah, I'll give them that. But with the old earth, I've never seen they've always come over because they had a theological breakthrough which changed their outlook and the way they interpret the evidence. Now, I'm not saying that you know, the um that one argument is as good as the other. Obviously, I think that you know, we we can't we have uh much stronger refutations of the old earth than the old earth has uh has uh the ability to poke holes in our theory for sure. Um, but yeah, I would say it's not really about the evidence because you can convince somebody intellectually of something, but if they're if the will isn't there, if they don't will to accept it, they're never gonna accept it. You can you can actually you show them all the evidence and they're still they're still not gonna believe.

SPEAKER_02 57:49

It's you know it's for for some uh not like all the proofs in the world won't convince them. For those, no proof is needed. Like for some, no proof is needed, right? You just that's that's that's the old the old age.

SPEAKER_00 58:00

It's never going to be the commonly accepted theory because it it it is it is predicated on things that 99.9% of people will will just simply never countenance, you know.

SPEAKER_02 58:13

I mean, look how much evidence there is for the resurrection and how many people just disregard it. It's as it's as simple as that. It's it's the resurrection.

SPEAKER_00 58:20

So I can show you the hemoglobin proteins. Um, I can show you the the axis of evil if we're talking about uh geocentrism with uh the alignment of uh uh of the uh the radiation across the uh plane between the earth and the sun or something like that. I can show you these shocking things that should be impossible. And you're the 99% of people still throw it out.

SPEAKER_02 58:44

Yeah, yeah, 100%.

Locals Shift And Family Context

SPEAKER_02 58:46

So all right, we're going to go over the other side. Uh I have I have some questions I want to ask you, and I don't I don't want to put you on the spot on YouTube, so I don't want anybody cutting it up and putting it out there. So um, if you guys are not locals members, this is where we go when we ask the fun questions, where we go have a better conversation. We don't give it for free. You cheapos wouldn't even super chat us tonight. For those of you who did super chat us, we appreciate you and love you. For those of you too cheap to buy locals. See you later. Take us out, Rob. Uh I wasn't ready.

unknown 59:17

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_01 59:18

I know, I know, I know.

SPEAKER_02 59:19

Like, I you're supposed to hit your post, Rob. That's like I le I lead up. I was busy, I was busy putting the locals link in. Oh, wait, no, no, no, let's plug Christian's Telegram before we go.

SPEAKER_01 59:29

Yeah, yeah. Okay, that's already in there.

SPEAKER_02 59:32

That's in there. Okay, so uh if people are on Telegram, they want to just look it up. If they're uh is there a quick way to look it up?

SPEAKER_00 59:39

Yeah, just search Catholicism and creation. And the and is an and symbol. Catholicism and creation. The the link is like the t.me slash or whatever, and then it's creation quotations. Um but the name of the channel is Catholicism and Creation. Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 59:57

All right, yeah. Let's make sure everybody, everybody go and check out his telegram channel. He's got some cool stuff on there. I subscribed to it yesterday. And uh, are you going to hit your post this time, Rob?

SPEAKER_03 1:00:07

Um, all right.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:40

Um uh one of the things I was super curious about, like, you're writing for integrity. That's that's why I was kind of blown away by that. And I'm like, um it how how is that going over with you with your uh with your family? Like are they do they know or are they totally because Steven's a bit out there?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:02

Um, I don't really talk about that with them. You know, they know my my disposition on things. Um, I don't really talk so much about the writing, but I I barely talk about it with my wife. I mean, I don't talk about that with most people. Um, no, my brother loves Stephen Cox, though. So it's it's so it's all right.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:23

So that's kind of what I want to wanna wanna get at is because you look, your oh man, your dad is probably one of the most famous Catholic converts uh like of the past 40 years. Him, Scott Hahn, those guys like that. I was telling, I was telling you in the green room, like that I don't know if this show exists without your dad. You know, the the my love for scripture comes from listening to conferences your dad and Scott put on. I'm going to see your dad in September when he comes to Long Island. But I mean, even me, like I definitely lean way more on the show. I would love to get. I was planning on asking him when I met him.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:06

But yeah, he was oh Anthony was also definitely gonna at some point.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:10

I was planning on I was planning on like hoping to meet him and ask him to come on. I because if I if I had your dad on, I would want to talk to him about um Okay, yeah, sorry, you were breaking up there. I think that connection's a little bad. Oh, I think it's yours. Yeah, your your connection's a little bad.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:27

Are we gonna go is this connection gonna be bad while we're on here? It shouldn't be. It should be the same as how about now?

SPEAKER_02 1:02:34

Is the timing is the timing linked up good now? Oh no.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:40

The connection's gonna blow Anthony's spot. Sorry if I'm lagging, by the way. You guys you guys are lagging for me. Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry. Can you hear me? No?

SPEAKER_02 1:02:49

We can hear you, but it's way off. The timing is off.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:53

He's doing that thing I do with uh with Indian scam callers. I'm like, I can't hear you.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:58

I can't hear you. Oh no, Kristen, you want to sign you wanna you want to log off and then log back in real quick? Sometimes I think that'll help. Yeah, log off and then log back on because this is this is stuff I want to uh I want to talk about. Um yeah, I want to know uh like especially if like he's he's saying he has a brother who loves loves Stephen Cox. Like that's that's super.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:37

You guys are gonna make me give Steven a chance and I hate it.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:40

I like Steven. I don't know. I mean, I saw I talk to Steven all the time. He's the one that uh put us in touch with Christian. I know, I just I don't know. It's a good dude, man. Just has some different ideas than us. Like, I like a lot of people uh think that like if somebody disagrees with you, you can't be friends with them. It's like, oh, that's better. I could see it's better. All right, that's better.

unknown 1:04:02

Perfect.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:02

I just can't hear us now.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:04

I can hear you, I just can't see you moving.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:07

Oh man, you look perfect to us now. Oh, well, that's all that matters, and the timing's up better. Okay, so what I was saying is like uh your dad's like one of the most famous Catholic converts of the past 50 years. Um, very mainstream, right? Like, this show doesn't exist probably without like what I learned from your dad, but even me, like I'm way more trad than your dad is. Um what what is like does it does it call like the does he look at it like uh it's kind of crazy that you're going down, like even talking about how yeah, like the pre-conciliar popes weren't even that great. Like, what is your what is your dad's views of the of this stuff?

SPEAKER_00 1:04:47

Um uh we disagree to disagree, I guess. Yeah, um, yeah. So I mean, uh, we have a great relationship, just to put that out there, firstly, that like um I will never I will never say anything bad. No, but well, this is kind of just like I yeah, this is but um and and we we get along great regardless of all of this. Um yeah, so you know, uh we talk and he helps me out with a lot. He's he's fantastic, but no, that is a point of contention between us, I would say. Um so I mean, um it is what it is. Uh my brother, my my one of my brothers agrees with me, came it, came over uh kind of to to that side. So I I talk with him if I talk with anyone in the family about it. But uh the rest I just kind of try not to bring stuff up.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:37

Well, it's got it's look, it's interesting. Like I have family members who are Catholic too, and it's like you know, we we just lean more on the trad side, we're not as crazy about some of the stuff we're seeing. It's like, but we're still Catholic, you know what I mean? It's like we still it's just uh there's I was just actually saying to Rob like Rob, Rob's not crazy about Stephen Cox because Stephen Cox goes further than he will. Like, you don't you don't need To uh come to the same exact conclusions as everybody to remember that we are Catholic and it's okay, you know. And it's like, but I mean, clearly your dad did an amazing job instilling the faith in you guys. Like, if you're all like you, he he lit some kind of a passion in you that you're deep diving deep into the fathers and the scholastics and even touching on these topics, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:06:20

I it's yeah, I would say I would say he always um uh always pushed uh to read us to read and and uh to be inquisitive and uh you know to think about uh think about things in in a in a bigger picture. Um so yeah, I I obviously I I certainly get that from him. Everyone says we're so much alike, I don't necess I don't necessarily see it. Um but uh yeah, no, I definitely get that from my dad. And you know, my dad's my dad has a great faith, he has really strong faith.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:53

Um so there's no um there's no like church politics at dinner. Not at dinner, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:07:03

Not at dinner drinks after dinner, maybe. I don't uh I don't know. I mean, look, full disclosure,

Crisis In The Church And Authority

SPEAKER_00 1:07:10

guys. Like I I think the seat's vacant. Like that's where I'm at right now. Really? Wow.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:17

Holy crack. We didn't even have to ask the question and he answered it.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:21

I don't push that. Um, I'm just saying because like you're dancing around. I I don't push that on my channel. I because like this is the thing, is like there's a million people smarter than me and more knowledgeable about me, uh sorry, knowledgeable than me on ecclesiology and stuff like that. So like I'm not out here to be this to convince people about this, about this. I I I believe I think it I'm not out here to necessarily um uh uh you know bring people over to that persuasion because there's a million people who are who are more knowledgeable about uh the those that kind of topic. Like I have my niche, I have my topics.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:58

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:59

Well, listen, the the look, the thing is like something clearly happened at that council, like something clearly freaking happened. And that's kind of what I was getting at. Like you have the you have the mainstream Catholic position, right? And then we're looking at it and we're like, we're like, what the hell happened to the faith? Like, what happened to the church? Something disastrous happened, and all of us are just like the only solace we can find is if we go to tradition, right? Like it's it's the only solace we can find. So we're jumping into uh just pre-conciliar everything because it's like you you find look, you you study the church uh through history and you see what it's capable of uh when things are working, and it's like it converts the entire pagan world, it it brings nations to a heel and governments all over the world, and kings worship the king of kings. He's called the king of kings because the kings of the earth show honor to Christ the king, right? And we live in a time where I mean, I'm you I was I'm literally looking at uh I'm reading a book, The Catechism of Modernism, and the whole thing's like the Pope's job, like the first few questions. Uh, what is the first duty assigned to the sovereign pontiff by our Lord Jesus Christ? His holiness answers us the office divinely committed to us of feeding the Lord's flock is especially this duty assigned to it by Christ, namely to guard with greatest vigilance the deposit of faith, delivered to the saints. There's a lot of things clearly going on right now, and that's not happening, right? Like there's something wrong. So I like I I don't know, man. I think that I think the I just think the mainstream uh especially like Catholic converts that came in, because you're a cradle, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:09:51

I mean, I was born and baptized a Protestant, but yeah, I'm essentially a cradle because I'm a Catholic as long as I can remember. When what year did your dad convert? 2001. Who's that? If I recall correctly. Uh I'm not trying, I'm not the reason I did this on locals is I didn't I don't want to like bring yeah, I don't want to bring up like family drama.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:10

I'm just like 2001. I'm not trying to bring up family drama, I'm more just like the younger generation that are coming up seem to be more inquisitive about this stuff and seem to be like, man, what the hell happened here?

SPEAKER_01 1:10:24

You know, yeah, what the hell happened is a great question. I was uh sorry, go on. I was gonna say, I I think the one of the reasons the younger generation uh finds it easier to to have those questions is that they don't have that nostalgia for you know for for yeah JP.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:45

We weren't there, we weren't it wasn't marketed to us, you know. Right, we're right, yeah. You you I mean I don't want to call it grand rushing, but even Ratzinger, like I mean, that's uh you know, that's I was you know fairly young, you know, when he died still, even yeah, and I mean my goodness, I was just reading um Ratzinger's um uh account of like the history of of it's a

Ratzinger Claims And Council Fallout

SPEAKER_00 1:11:10

partial account. Uh he and uh Aloy Grillmeyer uh uh do focus on different chapters, but he's talking about the writing of Dei Veraboom at the council, okay, and the first two chapters in the prologue of Dei Verabum. And uh he he talks about how the wording was uh a change from the original draft specifically to leave the question of the authorship of the gospels open, that the gospel writers might not have been the event, you know, the the uh the apostles, uh you know, the or or who we who it's traditionally uh uh ascribe to. And it was I was just like, wow, that's a modernist. That is mind-blowing that that was done. Oh yeah, Ratzinger was absolutely a modernist from his head to his toes. Oh, 100%.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:55

He's he's a super interesting figure, Ratzinger. Man, I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:00

Like, I denied he denied um the necessity of infant baptism and never retracted that. Um he uh uh he denied uh uh basically essentially denied the physical resurrection of our Lord. If you read what he says, he says that Saint Luke was uh uh uh piously exaggerating when he talks about our Lord eating a fish. He says Luke contradicts himself and is exaggerating in his zeal um because he doesn't really believe uh that Christ's body literally was resuscitated. He thinks he he calls it a uh a leap in evolution, he calls the resurrection a leap in evolution that Christ moves on to this uh this new state uh of being that's beyond you know uh physical and beyond what we can you know understand. And it's like, well, no, that's not Catholic dogma. Catholic dogma is his soul was reunited with his body and he actually took his body up to heaven, and he was actually a man, like a physical man, right there when he was talking to and eating the fish and stuff like that. So um, yeah, so he I think I think really digging to Ratzinger, it blows it blows it'll blow your mind.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:03

I think we had Tim Flanders on for an episode discussing that, Rob. Like years ago, we we had an had Flanders on to discuss did Ratzinger deny the resurrection? And um Yeah, we did have an episode on that. I remember that, and it's just uh yeah, looks some what what um around what time did you come to that? It was, I mean, it was clearly under Francis, right? Like Francis probably just rocked your whole no.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:31

No, I well, well, under Francis, I started questioning things. I remember being 15 and at the table and asking my dad, why does the Pope hate us? Like, why is he he literally literally hates us for being trying to be uh good Catholic? Um but if you're talking about the vacancy, no, that was much more recently. Yeah, um, yeah, look, man, um we all asked that under Francis, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:13:56

We were all like, Why does the Pope hate us? Like, the Pope hated us. It was the it was the most bizarre thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:03

Yeah, it's like it's it's impossible to to look at this person as someone who has um uh a paternal uh role for you, and it's a and uh he he clearly does not, he's clearly not being guided by the assistance of the Holy Ghost uh in in looking out for your spiritual good, you know. Um and so that it was deeply troubling for a lot of people and woke a lot of people up, I think, from a kind of uh slumber.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:29

Yeah, in some ways, I think Francis uh God allowed Francis for that reason to wake people up from their spiritual malaise, and it made us go back and re-look at Ratzinger and re-look at John Paul II and re-look at all this stuff and go, Wait a minute, you know, because uh man, uh like you're too young to remember. Rob and I talk about it a lot. My my um, like I start taking my faith seriously around 2005 when I get married, so it's like a couple of years after your dad converts and stuff. And but growing up, I was in a very Catholic home, and like my parents went to Mejigory, and like yeah, it was like my dad that they were like charismatic Catholics, my opinion.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:16

Giving money to those uh millionaire seers, yeah, dude. It's wild. That's have you read uh Michael Davies' book about that?

SPEAKER_02 1:15:23

Even that's kind of dated now, even that's kind of dated now because we have a lot more on those uh vision supposed visionaries, but anyway, yeah, so that was my upbringing, and I'm being raised in a home where they're telling me John Paul II was a living saint, and like Mother Teresa, then you go back and you hear Mother Teresa say things like if you're Muslim, be a good Muslim. If you're Buddhist, be a good Buddhist, and you're like, like, holy crap, all this stuff is something totally off with this stuff. But the thing is, like, because we have talked about stuff like that on this show, like it kind of puts me outside the realm of talking to guys that are more in the mainstream, even though I still love and respect those guys. Like, I still like I'm going to see your dad and Scott Hahn because I still love those guys.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:05

If you if you respect him, you should have him on the show. Honestly, I'll ask him for you if you want. I probably can't do it anytime soon. He's very busy.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:12

Well, I was planning on asking him when I went to see him, you know. Like that was the that was not part of the plan. I was going to just ask him. But it's not like I would ask him on to discuss this. Like, it's obviously not. No, obviously not.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:25

I would ask him if he wants to talk about because he he will fully admit to you, like that's not his area of it.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:32

Yeah, it would be it would be more like, hey, let's let's talk about the Dead Sea Scrolls, or let's talk about that. Yeah, you know, something that's more in his wheelhouse and more like something that would be edifying for Catholics and stuff.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:42

It's just yeah, it's it's it's a hard, it's a hard um, it's a tight rope you have to balance in this in this space because I'm kind of like my dad in that way, and that like I think all Catholics can benefit from the content I put out. Um even that even if you don't, you know, uh ascribe to my persuasion on the crisis. You know, I think people, if you have good faith, and if you have an integral faith, what we'll call an maybe not a perfect faith, but an integral faith, right? That you have it, you actually have the supernatural virtue, even though you may be terribly confused and and you know it well, whatever. Um, I think you can benefit from uh the stuff I put out because it's it's it it relates to um everyone can relate to it, I think.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:28

So yeah. How old is your brother that uh also holds the similar views to you?

SPEAKER_00 1:17:34

Uh he's a little older than me. He's maybe like two years older than me. Really? Oh man. Yeah, maybe three years, I think. Yeah. Actually, I can't remember if he's two or three years older than me. If he's 29 or 28, I have to show that's terrible. Uh I don't know. I don't know how old my younger brother is.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:50

Dude, I have eight siblings. I have four brothers, four sisters. If you ask me to name yeah, if you ask me to name their ages, like I might get close, but I don't I don't think I know all their ages. Um yeah, man, it's it's a it's a wild, yeah. Because when I saw you were on with um when you were on with Steven, I was like, man, that's super interesting, John Burns with Son. Like, but I also didn't want to discuss this on YouTube because I didn't want to put you on the spot where there's a hundred people that are seeing this. Nobody's, you know, it's not yeah. I I think um I think you're taking a good approach though, in just covering the stuff you're covering. Like, don't make your channel about convincing people that the chair is vacant.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:32

Like just produce like if it comes up, I'll say what I think. But again, it's like that's not that's not my kind, that's not my brand, you know, that's not my content. And um, and you know, I I I I don't think everyone, I'm not one of those guys who thinks everyone in the Novus Ordo is a heretic and non-Catholic. I think people there are, you know, people maybe the vast minority, you'd probably agree with me anyway, even in the Novus Orda Church. The the vast minority of people in the Nova Sorta Church don't have faith and like so basically aren't Catholics. But I think there is, you know, that minority that you have an integral, at least an integral faith and and are of goodwill and and trying to, you know. So I I don't I don't have that same kind of you know uh uh I guess hostility. I don't know how to put it, but yeah, no, I think you're right. I I I don't want to make I mean uh American Reform has some good stuff on that topic. He has a couple different bailiwicks that he works with. Um, you know, but I'm I'm that's that's not my my uh oh yeah we love American reform, man.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:34

He's like uh I know him personally. I know him. Yeah, he's he's awesome. Like uh like when I want to go into pre-conciliar papal statements on a topic, he especially on the Jewish question. That's what I really want to ask you about.

The Jewish Question And End Times

SPEAKER_02 1:19:49

Um the Jewish question because dude, I want to tell you this. Like I came to my position on the Jewish question because of listening to Scott Hahn's uh thesis on Romans 9 through 11 and understanding that the reason they call it Zionism is because it has to do with like like the the enmity between Jews and Christians is a very biblical uh enmity, right? Like it's it's from the first chapters of Genesis. I will put enmity between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman. And Jesus is identifying uh the Pharisees with the seed of the serpent by calling them vipers, and like there's so much there that like I I think is such a I think it's the most important topic that we've lost as Catholics because it goes to the root of what is going to happen in the apocalypse. Like, like the Jews are going to play a very important role in the apocalypse and that they will persecute the church just as they persecuted the Christ. And there's also going to be an element where we are handed up to our own religious authorities, going to be like the synagogue and our own religious authorities colluding together to persecute the true church. That's that's kind of my thesis on it.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:13

I don't know. I used to um make a lot of parallels between the um the sacrifices of the old hierarchy uh in the old testament and the church today that I don't think are necessarily appropriate now. Um, but I I can see where you're coming from. Um, like uh for example, that the the idea that there could be a sacrifice that is um uh uh ritually valid yet still displeasing to God. I think that's you know that was kind of a a turning point for me where I realized, oh, that's in the Old Testament, that they have there are these ritually sac ritually valid sacrifices that are being done that are uh that still do not, you know, still are not pleasing to God, even though technically, you know, they're they're they're correct. So that when I was kind of like with the the SSPX, I was I that was kind of my thing. I don't know if that's really if that's really a good comparison anymore. I have to think about it. But um yeah, I the Jews are definitely going to be the the main uh you know the final in the final act, yeah. I would agree that that's that's not again, it's not my specialty, it's not my forte to talk about. I just I'll defer to American reform. I'll not agree with you.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:29

Yeah, keep listening to American Reform.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:33

Um yeah, no, the Jews, yeah, I don't know what to say.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:39

Well, the thing is my spell. Like, even Scott Hahn will say because people are trying to try to uh say, like uh uh no suretate basically said that the Jews uh have you know the the gifts and promises were never revoked, right? And Scott's like, yeah, no, but like if you're a Jew and you're in the old covenant, you're in a burning house because you're under the curses of the old covenant.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:08

Uh the real the real problem with the no seretate is the idea that the Jews corporately today don't bear responsibility for the death of Christ. Yeah, even Gideon Lazar doesn't accept that, by the way. Yeah, okay. I don't want to speak for him, but I've talked to them. No, I have a lot of conversations with Gideon about this. He doesn't even like you know, like that's completely false. And yet that was the interpretation, that was the intention of the document. Okay, you can try to do this hermeneutic of continuity thing where you try to spin it in some way, but that wasn't that wasn't what they were trying to say. They were trying to say that the Jews today corporately don't bear responsibility for Christ's death. Well, the problem with that is then the then the Jews today corporately don't really have a connection to the Jews of Christ's time, which is a huge issue for the whole thing.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:57

That's actually a really good freaking point.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:00

Like by these idiots who come out and say, Well, the Jews today aren't actually the Jews of the time of Jesus, they're a different race because they're Khazars and they intermarried with Europeans, all that bullshit. Okay. People who say that destroy the whole foundation of the Christian theology of what the Jews are and what they're supposed to be. Um, because if the Jews today aren't a recognizable, identifiable group that has lineage back to the who the Jews were and who the Bible calls the Jews at the time of Jesus, then there is no point in having an address to the Jews, like no stereotype, because there is no lineage, right? And but the problem is, yeah. So what do you do with the with the interpretation of the fathers and forgive my language by the way back there? But what do you do with the fathers and the scholastics? Um, you know, when who who interpret, you know, his blood be upon us and upon our children. That's not those aren't empty words, those aren't empty words. All right. The man who who who and I you know at risk of falling into sounding like you know the Jordan Peters and Art Tar archetypes or whatever, Judas Iscariot is his name is Judah. Okay, he is the the arc, he's he represents the what the Jews have done to Christ. Okay, he's the the archetype of of the Jews in a sense, right? Um, so yeah, there's two Judases.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:19

There's two Judases and the Apostles, right? There's two Judases. It's to represent the two Judas Iscariot and Saint Jude. One like one is the archetype for the Jews who follow Christ, and one is the archetype for the ones who don't.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:35

Yeah, that there's two Jews. Yeah, that's that's a really that's a really good point.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:38

It's it's very important because it's it's like you have this the whole like we've gone through this so many times on our show, how the whole theme in the old testament is the promise is supposed to go to the elder brother, and it ends up going to the younger brother, right? And it's like Moses goes out and tells Pharaoh, Israel is my firstborn son, which implies the nations are his secondborn. The promises are supposed to go to the firstborn, but it goes to the secondborn. But at the end, like when you go to Apocalypse 3, John says, Um, those who say they are Jews and are not, and he flips the prophecy in Isaiah around to where the Jews think all the nations will bow to them, and John flips it and says, Those who say they are Jews and are not will then bow to the church, and they will say, like, long have we not known you, you know, like it's going to be this inversion where the Jews will actually bow to the Christians because they will see what they have missed for 2,000 years or whenever the hell the eschaton is. You know, it's like that that's a very important part. And you're right, like if we say 2033 AD is coming up pretty quick. Yeah, it certainly is. There's a lot of things coming up, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:26:55

That'd be a very that'd be that'd be very on the nose with God to do that.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:59

Yeah, somebody asked the other day, do you think uh do you think we'll see the antichrist in our time? I certainly think we will. I don't know. Things are just the what the way things are even okay, I think it's certainly possible. Here we go, guys. From a SEDA perspective, like if you think the seat is vacant, because this is one of my one of my biggest contentions with the Sedeys who don't think we're in a in the apocalypse. Like uh me and me and Mario um uh uh Dirksen kind of he him and I kind of butt heads on his idea of what uh what the passion of the church looks like versus my view of what the passion of the church looks like.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:37

And yeah, I mean I I I don't think this said a yeah. Um I I can't I don't want to speak uh in certain terms when we talk about this because we can't certainly say we're in the end times. You know, um it it certainly feels that way and seems that way. But perhaps it would have and and I I think the crisis we're in was way worse than the Great Western Schism. But okay, like something something like the Great Western Schism would have been unimaginable to the Catholic before it happened. That you have three rival popes all from a material perspective, seemingly to be valued, seemingly validly elected by cardinals, very difficult time. Uh so it's like something like that is uh you know, like you couldn't just you couldn't fathom going through it.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:29

So I'm not it's I I I don't want to speak um but I think the crisis is so much worse than even anybody wants to go like you see, yeah, you see, like even traders are like, Oh, we're in a crisis. I'm like, none of you can do that.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:44

It's not a crisis, it's not a crisis.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:46

Yeah, it's this is this is apocalyptic. It is absolutely apocalyptic. Like the the faith is the church is literally teaching the most horrific things at the moment.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:58

The church isn't teaching the church, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:29:00

Yes, I don't, but we have the church just seems to be teaching. Yes, I'm I'm not even saying the church, I what I mean is the hierarchy are coming out with some of the most wicked things out of Rome lately, like out of the Vatican. I can't I don't even I won't even say Rome, out of the Vatican, like the most wicked, pernicious things that are leading people astray. Like this crisis is so insane. And I don't know, it's just like I I don't I don't see how it can be anything but apocalyptic. And it's like we're waiting for the return of the king right now, and we're all just trying to bear down and find a place where we can be Catholic, worship as Catholics are supposed to worship, and just I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:46

Like what I would say, what I would say is that's you you're probably right that this is it. This is probably it. From my perspective, though, I think we would have to me uh accepting the vacancy, I would have to operate under the belief that we need to work towards getting a pope again and getting stuff re-established because we can't just say it this is it, you know. So I would say I I hope for a restoration on earth still. I I would say that's something that should be worked that should be worked towards.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:21

Um I do think that it may or may not I do think that Peter will be restored just as after he denies Christ three times, he has but he won't vote by the way when he denied Christ. Yeah, but typology doesn't work out perfectly like that. It just you know it's it's it doesn't that's not how like the the story is that Peter denies Christ and then he's kind of uh he's like fit he's given back his dignity by you know, yes, you know I love yes, I love you, Lord. So I do think there will be a restoration of Peter. I don't know how that happens, I don't know when that happens, but I do see the the office of Peter being restored.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:05

And we have like uh so you think the office, so what do you what do you where do you think the office is just not being used or something?

SPEAKER_02 1:31:12

I think that we are in the midst. I think we are in the midst of Peter's denial right now. Okay, like I just think what like if you if you see it as we're in the passion of the church, I think we're in the part of the story where you have Judas betraying what so you have all these Judas priests betraying our Lord.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:33

I I actually I want to I want to give a correction here if we're gonna be talking about miss not correction to you, uh to my position, if we're gonna be talking about uh um uh the the typology and the mysticism. I don't think we're in the passage of the church, I think the church is in the tomb underground. Like I like uh that that's where I think I think the passion has happened, and right now the church is hidden like Christ was hidden for three days in the tomb, and it's just it's not it's it's eclipsed in a certain way. Um well that I do think the church is eclipsed in a certain way. Um But I would say we're not we're we're actually if if we're going to apply this typology to what's going on, which again we can't subordinate real theology and ecclesiology, we can't subordinate that we can't, yeah, we can't subordinate that to the to theory though. Um to to but if we are going to talk about this typology, I would say the passion already happened and we're just waiting on the resurrection.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:36

Yeah, I don't know. I think we're in the midst of it. Like, well, how how would you account for your like the grace you received growing up in the Novus Ordo? Like, do you think you received actual grace growing up in the Novus Ordo? Like, do you think you were raised Catholic?

SPEAKER_00 1:32:57

Uh, that goes back to the distinction, like I said, between like a perfect or an integral faith. Like, I think you can you can be um cat you can be uh materially within say the the the Novus Order church or kind of captive in in a sense, um, but you still you you you you have your proximate rules of faith, you have your rules of faith, but if you just end up following those to the proper conclusions, um you you may you are not going to necessarily remain in that church. Um so uh would I say do did I receive grace? Um your sacraments valid? Were your were your confessions valid? Baptism is probably valid. Confessions, yes, would be valid because um God supplies uh in a state where you're not aware, like if a priest isn't a priest or something, somebody dresses up and priest impersonates a priest, and you give a good confession, like God still gives you the grace for that. Communion, no, I would say. Uh uh Really? Yeah, yeah. I don't think I grew up receiving uh the Eucharist. Um, I know this is all like very like like shocking, and I'm not saying I or contend or offend you guys because like you know, okay, I totally get where you guys are coming from. Um I get where you guys are coming from, and I like you guys a lot. So I don't want to and like I said, I don't think you're like uh I'm not saying you're like uh like heretics or whatever, schismatics or whatever. Um but uh no, I don't think that was valid. And um I think I think there were there were opportunities for me to receive grace um uh through that God supplies, but I don't think it's the same you know sacramental grace that He intends for us you know to receive uh in the church.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:41

That's a that's that's a heavy thought, man. Yeah, no, I would I would take it that look, and and the thing is like it's fine if we have a different position on this. Like you just came to your position recently, right? Like it's not like I think the crisis is so insane.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:55

So you need a it took me, I I agonized over this. It took me a very long time to come to this. It it it uh it was very, very difficult and went through many stages. So I was like in the SSPX recognize the resist position for a long time. Um so yeah, it was very it was it was a very difficult process. Um but uh so uh like I said, I I'm not out here to to try to uh really even convince anybody.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:22

Yeah, no, we're listening we're just Catholics like shooting the shit, trying to trying to hammer out like what we're what we're all trying to make how we're making sense of this stuff, you know? Because I think I think that's really that's kind of my position on it. Like we're all in the midst of this insane crisis, we all see there's something clearly wrong, and I think that people are going to come to different positions, and it doesn't mean like I look down on the people who come to a different position than me. I think that we're all doing the best we can to live that integral Catholic life that you're talking about.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:55

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so no, I uh I would agree. Um so uh, you know it's so funny.

Radiometric Dating Under The Microscope

SPEAKER_00 1:36:04

I did all this research before, not really research because I knew the stuff, but I did all this digging to get my sources together to talk about radiometric dating on the show, and like we never would like to hear that actually. We've been talking for like 25 minutes about like this the vacancy or whatever, like which I was not even planning on bringing up. Well, the thing is, I was just curious.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:23

Like, I I actually was just curious to to just look, we're all I don't know, we're all facing the same kind of crisis. But look, all right, let's get back into radiometric dating.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:32

I want to turn radiometric dating into a good clip.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:35

I'll talk, uh I'll talk about uh anything you guys want to talk about, to be honest. So I'm enjoying this. But uh no, I I had brought up, you know, the the fact that um according to the guy who they actually call the father of the geological timescale back in the 1930s, he he said that you know we don't um we we don't really uh use these you know sedimentological records as like a dating method anymore. And we everything the only objective thing we have is radioisotope dating. Okay. So that's kind of been like the the party line for like a hundred years. And uh, you know, uh that's where uh these these crazy ages that uh Graham Hancockle, like I say, uh ascribes to Goon, Padong, you know, he gets it from from radiocarbon, I think, specifically dating. Here's the thing radiometric dating is is it's it's a fundamentally flawed system. And and here's why. Uh because it's based on three assumptions which are at best untestable or unprovable, and at worst even falsified. Okay. So when you look at your you take your sample, and basically the the over the SparkNotes version of it is you look at the ratio between the parent isotopes and the daughter isotopes, and you assume that you're starting with uh you know all parents, and you uh take that the uh observed current under normal conditions uh radiometric decay rate that you have for the that element, and then you just do the math. Okay, and the percentage of how much has been converted over is uh how much has decayed uh supposedly gives you the age of the sample that you took. So there's three key assumptions here. The first is that no daughter isotopes were inherited when the rock formed. You have to assume that there are not daughter isotopes already in the rock when the rock gets formed, because that sets your date way, that'll set your date way, way younger. You're assuming that there was a uh it was a closed system and uh it was it was fixed when the rock formed, it had an absolute, it it was all parent isotopes.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:55

Do you want to quickly explain what an elemental isotope actually is?

SPEAKER_00 1:39:00

Yeah, so it's it's like uh they're they're radioactive um atoms and they're decaying. Um and so they they uh you you uh lose a no, you uh you believe you lose a neutron from the nucleus, if I'm not mistaken. Um yeah, you you're you're decaying and you lose. I can look up like a good scientific definition um of what the don't they yeah, so they say so so so an isotope, yeah, it's it's they're all the same element, but they have different number of of neutrons. And in rate during radioactive decay, you shed the neutrons and then you go down from one element, you you might uh decay into another whole element or you decay into another, you know, like an isotope, an isotopic version of of the of uh the same element. So the second assumption is that no parent isotopes have migrated out of the rock, have leached out of the rock, and no daughter isotopes have leached in, which is is we happens all the time with contamination, especially when there's groundwater, stuff seeping in from the soil, that you get contamination. You get all these kind of the daughter isotopes entering the system, even if you didn't have any inherited from the beginning. And then you have uh, you know, the parents can move, uh right. So they have supposed corrections for these problems, for these first two assumptions, but the corrections are circular and selective. And so I'm I'll give you an example. So I was reading a paper, this was from back in like maybe 2014, but they were uh dating a zircon crystal that they dug up in sandstone somewhere around Perth. Okay. And the reason they like to date the zircon crystals is that um the the assumption is that when the zircon crystallized, it uh froze all of the atoms within it in time, essentially, that it's that it's in a closed system, so that you can't you your assumption is there isn't stuff migrating out and in because it's basically trapped everything that's inside it. Now, that again, that's an assumption. We don't know that, but that's kind of why they like to use these, and they use Zircon to uh to produce dates for almost for like the planet itself. I shouldn't call it planet again, but the globe itself. Um, so because zircon crystals tend to date to very much older with radiometric dating than the rocks that they're in for whatever reason. So they were dating this tiny little, it was like half a hair's breadth or less, tiny little uh zircon crystal. Okay. So they already assume that some of the lead has been the lead atoms. They're doing uh uranium-thorium-lead uh dating, okay, the decay uranium, uh thorium to uh lead, uranium to lead. Okay, they're dating that chain of decay. Um so they already assume some of the lead was inherited because of their assumptions of how the planet uh formed, ironically. Um, but again, how much do you assume? How much uh why are you uh why are you what what gives you that number? Why don't you how don't you know how do you know which amount, what percentage of all that lead was inherited? So they assume that, and they're saying, okay, we want to uh but we're also going to assume that this is a closed system and that no lead has entered and no lead has left. Okay, very good, but now you have another problem because the crystal lattices, the lattices in the crystal have different regions that are heterogeneous, and the decay of the uranium can actually cause the lead inside the crystal to move around to these different regions. And that's a problem if the lead is moving all around, because now you date one little one region of the crystal and now you date another, and they get you different dates because the uh the ratios are different, you know. So they try to they want to correct for this. So, firstly, they go to the outer layer and they do a lead-lead dating, which it's a little complicated. It's like the something to do with the ratio of um uh the non-radio or the lead that was not produced by radioactive uh decay and the lead that was, and then you compare it and then you get like a date indirectly from that. So they do lead-lead dating and they get 3.4 billion years for the outer layer of the crystal, which they assume was formed later. Um, very good. Okay. But then in the footnotes, you notice they looked at the thorium-lead decay, the or the thorium-lead ratio in the outer layer, and it only dated to 492 million years, which is like 400 14, only 14% of the lead-lead number. So, why are these two measurements yielding vastly different uh values? We we'll get to that, but they just throw out the one that doesn't fit with their model and then keep that. So then they say, okay, to really know the age of this crystal, because they're trying to fix the age of like when the earth cooled, because their assumption is these zircon crystals were formed when the earth was all magma, and then suddenly everything cooled down and crystallized, and that's how you get it. So they're trying to uh fix the date of when that happened. So we have to go to the core of the crystal. Oh, great. So they uh they go into the the core of the crystal and they they say, okay, to correct for all these lead atoms moving around, we're gonna look at um just these, we're gonna compare these tiny little uh clusters of lead that we find, which we assume were the ones that moved. I won't get into why they assume, but they assume that they know which lead moved and which didn't. Then they they look at the tiny little clusters of lead and they say, well, it has the same isotopic composition as the rest uh ratio basically of the rest of the lead in the sample. So we're basically safe to test the whole sample, do the thorium and lead date. So they do the thorium-lead date, great. It's 4.4 billion years. Boom, all the they they publish this out to the world that you know now we fixed the date of when the earth cooled. It was 4.4 billion years ago when everything went from magma to oceans. Great. Well, what they don't publish, and what you actually have to read the literature to see, is that the lead-lead dates from those little clusters gave 5.5 billion years, which is older than the earth is even supposed to be. So they're using lead-lead to date the outer shell of the crystal and throwing away the thorium lead because they don't like the the the result, and then they go to the core of the very same crystal and they use thorium lead, the method that they threw out for the outside, to date it because it gives them a date they like, and they throw out the lead lead.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:50

And it's it's not just older than that.

SPEAKER_00 1:45:53

Do you guys understand what I'm saying? Is that yeah, it should be older, that would be make it older than the earth. So they say, well, obviously this is an absurd date, and they throw it out. Well, if that date can't be trusted, why can none of it why how can any of the others be trusted? And you have to realize you have to actually read the scientific literature to understand this. And I'm sorry I had to go into so much detail to give you to explain what I'm saying. But what I'm saying here is that they select for the dates that they're looking for, and when they don't get the dates they don't they want, they use another method because the radioactive the different methods of finding the radioactive uh the radiometric age yield wildly to like an order of magnitude different results.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:32

But how are they talking about how are they even getting dates that old though? Like, doesn't the doesn't like if you're doing radiometric dating, don't those isotopes totally die off completely at a certain point? Like, shouldn't it shouldn't it all die off now?

SPEAKER_00 1:46:49

Not theoretically, and this is why the reason they're getting discordant dates, uh it well, okay, here's the thing. We don't know the exact reason they're getting discordant gates, but obviously the data isn't good. Um, and they're doing they're doing all kinds of manipulation of the data to make it look like they're getting consistent results when they're not. So that was the point I was trying to make there. Even when they're doing the so-called corrections for migration and inheritance that I explained in this case, they're still basing it on all kinds of assumption and throwing out the bits of the data that they don't like. Um, and really all of the literature is like this. I'm just giving you this one example. But the third, this gets us to our third assumption. I mentioned the two, okay? Inheritance and migration. The third assumption is that the decay rates have remained stable for the whole history of the sample. Now, we've been measuring these decay rates for a hundred years. They seem to be pretty consistent, but here's the problem. Yeah, drastically different for one. For two, um we have there is serious literature, and I'm not claiming this is total this is absolutely proven, but there's serious literature to suggest that there are two very important causes that are very prevalent on Earth that affect the rate of decay for these zones. The first being pressure, and the second being uh uh neutrinos from solar solar radiation coming and hitting the atoms and doing what's called exciting them, where it bounces the electron out to a further field. So with pressure, um this this is fairly recent that this started, maybe just in the last like 25 years. So in 2000, you had a team of scientists in Taipei, um, and they were actually able to speed up the decay of beryllium by putting it in what's called a um a diamond anvil, which is made to kind of like uh uh simulate the the pressure that you get deep in the earth. Um, and then they they suggested, hey, this this has uh geological implications because this could affect you know the decay, the the rate of um uh uh potassium to argon, potassium-argon dating is very common in geology. So a year later than that, there's a Russian team in the Kirchitov Institute. And I'm I know I'm going into a lot of detail, but I want to give detail because if you talk about this stuff, everyone's gonna challenge everything you say and they're gonna try to debunk you. So sorry if I'm being long-winded. But in Moscow, um, they they were exploding titanium foils in solutions of isotopes, and they were showing that the pressure applied to that, applying to the applied to these isotopes was massively accelerating the decay rates. And this was independent independently confirmed. This wasn't just one experiment, independently confirmed twice, once the next year at Dubna, and then the Lebedev U Physics Institute in 2002, a year later, uh confirmed this as well, specifically with thorium and uranium. Uranium and thorium very commonly used, like I said to uh to date in geology. So in 2018, there was a team of scientists in Rome, an Italian team, and this is the real, this is really crazy. They were looking at the What cavitation, the pressure from cavitation does to the isotopes. Cavitation is when vapor bubbles get generated in a really violent flow and then they implode and they create this blast of localized pressure that's really, really strong. We see this if you look at the the propeller on a boat, there's divots in the metal for an old propeller. The metal is actually getting destroyed by the cavitation of the bubbles is causing very smart bringing it back to a boat. Good job. They did these uh uh flows to cause cavitation in these ion solutions. They were able to speed up the decay of thorium, the the decay rate of thorium by 10,000 times. And they were questioned, they were questioned on that. Yes, that will make it look much older, like it decayed over a very long time. And they were questioned on this, but to be honest, I think they answered all the objections on their methodology. I think they put up a very good defense. Against I again, I'm not claiming this stuff is proven, it's it's still in the experiment stage, but still they we should not assume the decay rates were constant, especially when we're having stuff like this happen. Okay, that we can speed up the decay rates with by putting it putting them under crazy pressure. Anyway, the other thing is ionize uh ionization is one thing. Oh, we'll get that neutrinos. Basically, they if if you excite um an atom, and even if you have a couple excited atoms, because all of the standard like decay rates are that we have assume are based on uh like the ground what call the ground state of these atoms, if you excite an atom, it's uh radiodometric decay can increase uh significantly. And uh even if you have a couple excited atoms in the uh in the sample that you're doing, that can throw your measurement off by a huge degree. I even I was reading a paper uh from like 2010 that said that you could even have potentially samples dating to billions of years old and have that condensed to thousands if you actually account for the excited atoms. So, anyway, all of that, I just wanted to get all that out because I had all that ready to go and put out on that. There you go.

SPEAKER_02 1:52:10

Uh because that's what I was expecting to talk about and not like the crazy. I am sorry for derailing it when we came to this side. It was just, yeah, it was just you when you came up on the show the other night, I was like, oh man, I'm like, Christian's writing for integrity. That's kind of interesting. I was like, I kind of wonder what the backstory is there, but but look, I just think that we're you know, to to bring it back to that subject for a bit, I just think we're all trying to make sense of stuff right

Wrap Up And Where To Follow

SPEAKER_02 1:52:34

now. So um, Christian, we it we're coming up on two hours. We're not gonna keep you any longer, but dude, we're very grateful you came on, man. It was very cool meeting you. Um, if there's anything you want us to plug ever, just give me a shoot me a text anytime, man. I'll help you, I'll help you plug anything. Um, if there's ever a topic you want to come on and discuss, let us know. You come on and discuss it. And uh yeah, man, good thank you for coming on. Very nice meeting you.

SPEAKER_00 1:52:58

Yeah, for sure. Um, speaking of plugs, just before I go, I would say um pretty soon here I'm going to well, I'm gonna be on Alex Poe's show for one, um, and then like sometime in early August. Um, but also my friend Andrew Orozco, he's got he just started a YouTube channel. It's called Word Made Flesh. It's at WRD and then made flesh. But uh he interviews people on on these kinds of things. So I'll be going on his show. Um, I think we're shooting it on Saturday. So look out for that.

SPEAKER_02 1:53:33

All right, sounds awesome, man. Yeah, like I said, if you if you have something specifically you want me to plug, you shoot me a text and I'll plug it on my Twitter. I'll plug it on the show. So yeah, I appreciate you guys having me on.

SPEAKER_00 1:53:44

No, it was very cool. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 1:53:46

And uh yeah, we'll do it again sometime. God, take us out, Rob. Sounds good.